The air was thick with the smell of gunpowder smoke and blood; flames still burned across the earth, corpses lay sprawled on the ground, and hysterical shouts, screams of agony, the sound of running feet, and even weeping all mixed together.

The cavalry, no longer daring to circle wide, charged straight at the Huaxia Army’s human wall; ahead of them, row after row of smoke rose into the air.

Horses collapsed mid-gallop, their riders thrown to the ground; horses weighing over a thousand catties crushed and shattered the bodies of their riders, bones breaking, flesh crushed, blood bursting through torn skin; behind them, more comrades fell in turn.

At the moment of full engagement, Ning Yi sat on horseback, surveying everything around him.

If this were a film or television production of a later age, this might be the moment for grand, tragic music to swell — a piece perhaps titled Twilight of an Empire, or Merciless History…

An eagle that had lost its master soared through the sky.

Wensa fell into a pool of blood.

He had been indirectly knocked down by the second volley of rocket fire; his armor slammed against the ground, knocking him unconscious for an instant. When he woke, a droning buzz of countless sounds echoed through his mind.

A horse nearby with a broken leg neighed and thrashed; in the distance, a horse charred black by an explosion lay in view, the remaining flames still burning on the ground; wounded horses and wounded men staggered to their feet nearby… He turned to look toward the far end of the battlefield — the surging mass of cavalry charging the Huaxia Army’s position, then crashing as if against a reef, the front-most horses collapsing like a mountain falling, while more scattered like sea-spray, fleeing chaotically in every direction.

His mind couldn’t even manage a coherent reaction — not even the thought “it’s over” descended upon him at this moment.

As a Jurchen veteran, he had lived through countless battles, through victory and through defeat, and had climbed to his feet from among the corpses of comrades more than once before. But in this moment, the sense of powerlessness that felt both terribly real and strangely unreal was something he had never once experienced in his entire life.

That man named Ning Yi had turned over his unimaginable trump card, and now held the Great Jin’s thirty thousand elites crushed beneath his palm.

Mixed into this realization was something else, something more vague, something he could only faintly sense — before the battle began, no one in the army had lacked the awareness that Ning Yi might have some trick up his sleeve. But at most, what they had imagined was the thirty thousand suffering a defeat, retreating, and then regrouping.

That thirty thousand Jurchen elites might simply be swallowed whole by six thousand Black Banner troops — even in the worst imaginings, no one had ever discussed such a possibility with a comrade.

But what if it were real?

The smoke and flame, along with his blood-flushed vision, had already made it impossible for him to make out the state of the Huaxia Army’s position clearly, but he found himself recalling again that indifferent gaze of Ning Yi’s.

This man, who had beheaded Marshal Cibushi in the northwest — on this day, he had made that same fate a reality.

So what would come next…

That thought flashed through his mind, and then, his body drenched in blood, he let out a howling roar toward the front. Ever since Hubudagang, they had run rampant across the realm, and that same kind of cry Wensa had heard from the mouths of countless opponents. Some had come from the battlefield itself; some had come from prisoners whose families had been shattered and whose armies had been defeated — those people, covered in blood, their eyes full of tears and despair, had always made him feel his own strength all the more keenly.

In this moment, it was the first time he himself let out that same hysterical roar.

…

The human wall kept advancing amid the gunfire, corpses continually peeling away from it; the fire of the bombardment had, for a moment, formed a barrier, clearing a swath of scorched ground straight ahead in the midst of the crowd, the shells twisting men’s bodies into grotesque shapes.

This day at Wangyuan Bridge, it could not really be said that the participating Jurchen forces lacked courage, or had chosen some terribly wrong response. Looking back from the outcome, crossing the river to fight and letting Ning Yi choose the moment of battle was certainly a mistaken decision, but under the circumstances of thirty thousand against six thousand, this concession of Wanyan Xiebao’s could only be counted as a fault not truly his own.

Facing a leap in technology across an entire threshold, no matter who it was, someone was bound to take that blow on the crown of their head. Xiebao’s judgment and reaction in that first moment of crisis met the standard of a great commander — he could not possibly have ordered thirty thousand men to turn around the instant battle began; the only option left was to strike fast and hard, breaking through the strange barrier the enemy had formed.

And the vast majority of mid- and low-level commanders among the Jin troops also felt this same sense of urgency the very instant the horn sounded.

At least in that first moment of contact, what the Jin army launched could be called a charge of one mind, ten thousand strong.

Yet the fear in some of them had already taken root, in the brief moment after the second volley of rockets struck.

The second volley of rocket shells, launched in groups of five, seven groups totaling thirty-five rockets, fell in a long line across the central axis of the thirty-thousand-strong charge within a short span of time. The rising flames at one point nearly drowned out the very sound of the charging Jurchen army. Each group of rocket shells carved a curve across the ground; men were swept clear, bodies flung into the air, and the men still charging from behind would suddenly halt, causing a violent surge of crowding and trampling.

One group of rocket shells even fell directly into a stockpile of Jin artillery ammunition, setting off an even more violent chain of explosions.

The central axis of the charge instantly fell into chaos.

Some men’s legs, without their even realizing it, went weak from fright.

And along the front line, a single volley from over four thousand rifles soaked up a full measure of blood — in a short span, over a thousand men were shot, close to two thousand toppled and rolled to the ground — truly like a dam bursting, a scene as grand and terrible as a flood surging across the land. Amid this scene, with the great cloud of dust rising, the men behind pressed forward in an instant, but the entire charging line had already twisted itself into something unrecognizable.

Generally speaking, veterans of the battlefield were accustomed to a certain rule of thumb: an ordinary army will collapse after losing one-tenth of its men; an army that can endure two-tenths losses is already an elite force; and one that can endure over three-tenths losses without collapsing is a force capable of dominating the realm. But this rule of thumb, in truth, has its own limits of applicability.

The distinctions of one-tenth, two-tenths, three-tenths losses mainly refer to what an army can endure within a single engagement, within a set span of time. An ordinary army that loses one-tenth can still regroup and continue fighting — but this ratio does not hold across a continuous, extended campaign. And in the present case, Xiebao’s Army of Vengeance, judged by quality, was an elite force capable of continuing to fight even after losses exceeding three-tenths in an ordinary engagement — but the measure could not be applied here in this current battle.

The losses in that very first instant had simply been too great.

The courage stirred up in the first moment of battle can make a man temporarily forget fear, charging forward heedless of everything. But such courage naturally has its limits. If something strikes down hard at the very peak of that courage, or if the charging soldiers suddenly snap back to their senses, then that seemingly limitless courage can also plunge suddenly into the depths.

The three ranks of riflemen fired a volley, and then another; the surging army, like a field of wheat swept by a great wind, kept falling in waves. By this point, the thirty thousand Jurchen soldiers had been charging for six or seven hundred meters; by the time they reached the hundred-meter line, their speed had already slowed. The shouting still shook the heavens, and soldiers who had not yet fully grasped the situation still held onto their high spirits — but no one truly crossed into the range where hand-to-hand combat with the Huaxia Army was possible.

The heavily armored Jurchen generals had, by this point, perhaps fallen behind; soldiers wearing lighter, softer armor, once past the hundred-meter line — or the fifty-meter line — had, in fact, already lost any ability to resist the penetrating power of the rifles.

The rifles fired volley after volley almost mechanically. A small number of soldiers were wounded by incoming arrows, and a few rifles even burst during firing, injuring the men holding them, but the rest in the ranks simply went on, mechanically loading, aiming, firing. After this came a third volley of rocket shells, dozens of them tracing a crooked line across the hundred-meter mark of the Jurchen charge.

Fear could no longer be held back.

Some soldiers who had fallen to the ground began playing dead; some, mid-run, found their legs going weak and simply stopped, looking around them, even glancing behind — chaos had already begun to spread. Wanyan Xiebao, blade held level across his mount, shouted to the generals around him: “Follow me and strike the enemy—”

Then someone else shouted: “Whoever halts, dies—” This shout did have some effect, but in truth, by this point the charge had already lost all restraint of formation, and the military police had no room left to enforce any law.

At the Huaxia Army’s position, Ning Yi gave the order to the rocket formation: “Prepare three groups, sweep their line of retreat. Tell them, there’s no way out—”

After that, some Jurchen generals and soldiers launched wave after wave of charges at the Huaxia Army’s position, but it was already useless.

Before the noon hour had fully passed, dust rose in countless columns across the plain south of Wangyuan Bridge. The Huaxia Army’s riflemen began advancing in formation, officers shouting ahead, “Surrender and live!” Rocket shells continued to fly out from time to time, falling among the fleeing or still-attacking crowds. Large numbers of soldiers began retreating toward the river, and because the position of Wangyuan Bridge itself was under continuous concentrated rocket fire, and because the vast majority of Jurchen soldiers could not swim, they had no way to escape across the water.

Across the plain, group after group of men threw down their weapons and knelt; even more tried to scatter and flee in every direction. Han Jing, leading a cavalry force of over a thousand men, had already come up in reinforcement — not large in number, but perfectly suited for chasing down scattered fleeing troops.

Wanyan Xiebao’s valiant charge did not, in fact, alter the course of the battle by much. In truth, the only real wager he had ever had a chance to make was the choice, at the very start of the battle, between “attack” and “flee.” And once he saw the situation had already collapsed, he did not choose to flee at the first opportunity — he had to make at least one more effort.

Perhaps — he thought — there might still be a chance.

Many years before, when the still deeply weak Jurchen army had first risen in revolt against the Liao, Aguda had won at Chuhe Shop, three thousand seven hundred men against seven thousand — and in truth, the men they truly faced were far more than that seven thousand. Later, at Hubudagang, twenty thousand had faced and defeated seventy thousand — at the time, had the Jurchens ever had real certainty of victory?

“When there’s no certainty, all you can do is gamble everything on one throw.”

The Jurchens’ many years of glory had all been won this way.

In his heart he prayed to the war-songs of his people, as light shone down upon the charging army. In the course of the charge, Xiebao’s warhorse was struck down first by an incoming bullet; he himself tumbled to the ground and fell unconscious. Several bodyguards tried to rush over to save him, but many were shot down in the attempt.

…

O my White Tiger Mountain Spirit, roar!

I am the one who has bested ten thousand men and received Heaven’s favor!

…

He came to briefly once more, wrenched free of the hands supporting him, raised his blade, and shouted “Charge—” before a bullet struck his armor and knocked him back down.

In his daze, he thought of his father; he thought of the country and people he had once been proud of; he thought of his mother…

…

O sun of the nine southern mountains!

O unyielding grandfather of the east!

Watch over me—

…

The Huaxia Army soldiers reached him and seized him. Someone gave him a quick check, then dragged him forward. As the last of his fervor cooled somewhat, Xiebao, in this unfamiliar situation, thought of what might follow, and began struggling with all his might, shouting hysterically. The Huaxia Army soldiers dragged him through one smoke-shrouded blast site after another. Xiebao raised his head — a man in a long military coat was walking toward him.

This was Ning Yi.

This was also the first time he had ever stood face to face with this devil among the Han people. His face was like that of a scholar, only his gaze was sharp and cold.

…

Watch over me—

…

“I…”

Xiebao roared out!

“…I’ll kill you! You practice witchcraft! This is sorcery—”

His hands were bound behind his back, blood spraying from his mouth, his face twisted into something feral. His legs suddenly kicked out with force, his head lunging forward as if to headbutt or bite the man before him. In this moment, even facing death, he wanted to give this devil at least one good scare, to let him understand the fierce courage of the Jurchen blood.

The White Tiger Spirit and his ancestors sang for him. But the face of Ning Yi walking toward him showed not the slightest change of expression. His stride did not break; his right hand rose.

Almost the instant Xiebao lunged, Ning Yi’s fist came whistling out and struck him full across the side of the face.

The song in his head cut off with a buzz. Xiebao’s body spun through the air and crashed heavily to the ground; half the teeth on that side of his mouth fell out, his mind a blank haze.

Turning with effort, Ning Yi stood over him, looking coldly down at his face. Huaxia Army soldiers came over and hauled him up off the ground.

“Don’t let him die. I want to execute him in front of Wanyan Zonghan, in person.”

Before Xiebao could once again begin thrashing madly, someone dislocated his jaw and bound him hand and foot.

The fighting at Wangyuan Bridge began at the third quarter of the noon hour on the twenty-eighth of February; by the time the hour of Wei arrived, the main body of the battle had, in fact, already come to its close. The subsequent mopping up of the battlefield took another hour or two. After the hour of Wei had passed, Zonghan and the others, at the Shiling headquarters, received the first report from Wangyuan Bridge. Wanyan Sheyema shouted, “This must be false — bind the messenger!”

Confirming the report, in fact, did not take long at all.

What followed was a taste of something none of them had ever experienced before.