Early spring, orioles flying and grass turning green, over a land torn by war.
The time was the thirteenth year since the Jurchens’ first southern invasion, the eleventh year since the Wu dynasty crossed south of the river. The Wu court, once magnificent in history, having held sway for over two hundred years, existed now, at this moment, in name only.
The company carrying the last line of the Wu bloodline had named this year the First Year of Revival. Amid these war-torn times, the new Wu emperor, Zhou Junwu, who bore the ambition of revival, had not yet, for the time being, become the focus of the age’s attention.
In the first month, the Princess Imperial’s party, having landed in Fujian, took the key city of Fuzhou with ease with the help of Cheng Zhouhai and others. By mid-first-month, a grand fleet of dragon ships sailed north along the coast, meeting up with the main body of Zhou Junwu’s group to bring them aboard and assist their flight south; at one point the fleet entered the mouth of the Qiantang River, pressing close to and threatening Lin’an.
Given that the plan to hunt down and kill Zhou Junwu had become unlikely to succeed in the short term, in early second month, as the snow melted and the ice broke, Zongfu and Zongbi announced victory in the southern campaign. After leaving part of their force to hold Lin’an, they led the great bulk of their army, breaking camp and marching back north.
Given the objectives of this southern campaign, as the eastern army, Zongfu and Zongbi could already claim a triumphant return. By this point, after more than half a year of Jurchen maneuvering, the Wu court’s small regime in Lin’an had already fractured in every direction. Failing to capture Zhou Junwu and thereby wholly extinguish the Zhou bloodline was a minor blemish—regrettable to abandon, perhaps, but there wasn’t much flavor left in continuing to chew on it either.
On the other hand, the fact that the western army, which had set out with such fanfare to wipe out the southwest, had gotten bogged down in a quagmire of war was, in its own way, good news for Zongfu and Zongbi. To be sure, as kinsmen, Zongfu and Zongbi still hoped Zonghan and the others would win—and indeed, they surely would—but the worse things went before that victory, the better, as far as they were concerned.
The war in the southwest had, by this point, become the focal point that the whole realm was watching—some gloating, others anxious on its behalf. During this same period, the corresponding Battle of Changsha, unfolding in parallel, also drew the attention of many people. Given the disparity in forces around Changsha, when it finally concluded toward the end of the second month of that year, the results that came back left a great many people utterly stunned.
Among all the soldiers who took part in the Battle of Changsha, those on the Jin side numbered, in total, several hundred thousand over the course of the campaign; of these, the elite Jin force led by the veteran Jurchen general Yinshuke alone numbered over thirty thousand, and of these thirty thousand, more than half were cavalry that Xiyin had specifically requested from Zongbi. Beyond Yinshuke’s own force, the surrendered Han armies that arrived over time numbered more than three hundred thousand.
On the Huaxia Army side, the Miao-territory forces led by Chen Fan numbered no more than ten thousand or so; even including over two thousand elite special-operations troops, plus the assorted irregulars and local militia under commanders such as the hot-blooded Zhu Jing, the total number never exceeded forty thousand.
Though early in the previous year’s fighting, Chen Fan had led seven thousand elite troops on a long-range strike and, in less than a month, swiftly crushed an invading Han army of over one hundred thousand led by Li Touhe, Yu Gusheng, and others, once Yinshuke’s main force arrived, the Battle of Changsha that followed—lasting roughly half a year—proved extremely difficult for the Huaxia Army.
Chen Fan abandoned Changsha at one point, later retook it in a surprise reversal, then abandoned it again… Throughout the entire campaign, Chen Fan’s forces consistently fought a mobile war relying on the terrain. Juling, where Zhu Jing was stationed, was once overrun by the Jurchens and its population slaughtered, and after that there was nothing but continual flight and relocation.
Looking back on it, the overall outlook for the Changsha campaign, even within the Huaxia Army itself, had generally not been considered promising. Chen Fan’s strategy relied on Yinshuke’s unfamiliarity with the southern mountain terrain, waging continuous guerrilla warfare, seizing any opportunity to swiftly crush one enemy unit at a time—his tactics and command ability had been shaped by Fang Qifo years before, refined further by his own accumulated experience over the years. His fighting style was steady and decisive: astonishingly fast on long strikes, extraordinarily sharp at seizing opportunities, ferociously aggressive on the attack, and, once a plan failed to pan out, utterly clean and unhesitating in retreat.
Even under the pressure of Yinshuke’s pursuit, Chen Fan managed to pull off several striking victories in the gaps between armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands—one of them even crushing one of Yinshuke’s detached units outright, swallowing up nearly six hundred elite Jin troops before slipping away.
But even the finest command could only go so far. Facing purely surrendered Wu dynasty troops, Chen Fan, with ten thousand men, might have been able to cut through the south of the Yangtze seven times over. But against a Jurchen veteran of Yinshuke’s caliber, occasionally gaining the upper hand was already the outer limit of what tactical maneuvering could achieve.
Within the Huaxia Army, the general prediction for the overall trend had been that Chen Fan, after prolonged maneuvering, would gradually withdraw deep into the Miao mountains to hold out. Simply not being wiped out would already count as a major victory.
No one had anticipated that the Battle of Changsha would end with Yinshuke’s defeat and death.
No one had anticipated that, within the ranks of the Wu dynasty’s own army, there would emerge an “anomaly” as resolute and ferocious as Yu Mingzhou.
The Battle of Changsha came to a close on the twenty-fourth day of the second month that year.
Wanyan Qingjue had been captured on the evening of the twenty-first day of the second month. He remembered gunpowder smoke thick in the air, the sunset a deep red; southeast of Changsha, near Liuyang County, a large engagement had already broken out. It was an attempt to encircle and cut down Zhu Jing’s unit, with the ultimate goal of swallowing Chen Fan’s relief force as it arrived.
In that sunset light, the young Wu general, notorious for his fierce temper but whom Wanyan Qingjue had rather liked, suddenly threw a punch that knocked him clean off his horse.
Wanyan Qingjue hadn’t even had time to brace himself; he blacked out for an instant, and by the time the ringing in his head cleared, he turned his head to react, only to find the scene before him already one of slaughter—Yu Mingzhou, still mounted, loomed over him, his face bloody and savage, then drew his blade.
That was Wanyan Qingjue’s last memory of that day. After that, someone knocked him fully unconscious and stuffed him into a sack.
This was the second time Wanyan Qingjue had been captured by the Huaxia Army.
When he woke, he was locked in a crude camp, everything around him still in chaos. The fighting was still ongoing at the time; someone kept watch over him, but not particularly attentively—meaning that if he tried to escape, they’d likely kill him outright rather than merely knock him out again.
Wanyan Qingjue found no chance to escape, and for a while had no idea how things were developing outside. Aside from hearing someone shout “Victory!” outside on the evening of the twenty-fourth, he learned nothing. On the twenty-fifth, he was escorted toward Changsha city—before he’d been knocked out, Changsha had still been in Jin hands, but clearly the Huaxia Army had struck again and retaken Changsha for the third time.
Along the road, the soldiers escorting the prisoners seemed to have entirely forgotten any threat from Jin forces—as if they’d already achieved total victory. That shouldn’t have been possible; even with another Huaxia Army victory, Marshal Yinshuke’s elite troops couldn’t possibly have been wiped out entirely—after all, victory and defeat were the ordinary rhythm of war.
He stayed silent the whole way, never asking about it. Not until the sunset of the twenty-fifth, as he neared Changsha city, the setting sun pouring down over his vision like a wash of orange-red blood, did he see, hanging from a flagpole atop the city walls, the armor of Marshal Yinshuke. Beside the armor hung Yinshuke’s severed, grimacing head.
There were other travelers on the road, soldiers coming and going. Wanyan Qingjue’s steps grew unsteady, and he sank to his knees at the roadside. “What… what happened…”
His voice came out hoarse and weak as he asked, but a sword hilt struck him across the back, urging him onward. His eyes bloodshot, he turned to point at the head on the flagpole, glaring back at the guard, his expression twisted with something terrible. The soldier raised a foot and stamped it hard into his face, kicking him sprawling into the mud.
No one explained anything to him. He was locked away in the Changsha prison. Victory and defeat traded places, regimes changed hands—even from within a jail cell, one could occasionally sense the turmoil outside, from the mutterings of passing jailers, the shouts of prisoners being escorted to and fro, the murmurs of the wounded… but none of it added up to the full picture. Not until the afternoon of the twenty-seventh was he finally led out.
He was taken from the cell, down a long corridor, and out to a courtyard behind the prison. Here he could already see a number of soldiers, and possibly prisoners held under guard, digging at the ground. Two men, apparently Huaxia Army members, were talking under the corridor—one, middle-aged, in uniform; the other, a young man in a long robe with slicked-back hair. Both wore serious expressions; the slick-haired young man gave a slight cupped-hand salute to the other, glanced this way once—Wanyan Qingjue found the face familiar—but he was then led off into an empty room to the side.
The empty room was simple but spacious, with a window through which he could see soldiers standing guard front and back. After a while, that vaguely familiar young man walked in. Wanyan Qingjue narrowed his eyes, and then it came to him: this was one of the treacherous Yu Mingzhou’s followers—not his most trusted right-hand man, which was why, in the past, Wanyan Qingjue had only glimpsed him once or twice.
The young man was rather good-looking, almost like an actor; recalling his past impression, Wanyan Qingjue had even once thought this fellow might be a kept lover of Yu Mingzhou’s—given Yu Mingzhou’s irritable, violent temperament and the pleasure-seeking habits typical of an aristocratic son, it wouldn’t have been especially strange. But in this moment, Wanyan Qingjue couldn’t read much at all from the young man’s face; his gaze was calm, tinged with a certain melancholy. He shut the door after entering.
He walked over. Wanyan Qingjue’s hands were bound to the table, unable to move; he lifted his head, struggled a little, then gritted his teeth. “Where’s that little cur Yu? Sending a subordinate to deal with me at a time like this—no manners at all, he…”
Facing him in that moment, given Yinshuke’s death and the crushing defeat at Changsha, Wanyan Qingjue—who as Xiyin’s disciple had spent half his life proud—had already thrown all caution to the wind, past caring about life or death, and was about to spit out a few mocking, filthy words when a savage light flashed in the eyes of the young man standing over him, looking down.
A fierce punch landed square on Wanyan Qingjue’s face.
There was a ringing crash, and Wanyan Qingjue’s whole head rang with it; his body twisted sideways. By the time he came back to himself, his mouth was already full of blood—two teeth had been knocked out and fallen from his mouth, and half his remaining teeth were loosened. Wanyan Qingjue struggled to spit out the blood in his mouth.
“Hnn… you…”
“Yu Mingzhou said, long ago, that one day he’d personally land a punch on that smug face of yours, so you’d never be able to laugh again.”
“Cough… let him come do it himself, then…” Wanyan Qingjue managed, with difficulty.
“He can’t come. So, after finishing up business, I came to see you instead.”
“You animal!” Wanyan Qingjue tilted his head back. “He’d even sell out his own father…”
“He only sold out everything he owned. Uncle Yu isn’t dead…” the young man said, sitting down across from him. “And all of this, you people brought on yourselves, too.”
“Have him come see me, and say it to my face. He’s a big shot now, isn’t he, so impressive… He doesn’t dare face me, is that it? Afraid I’ll bring things up? He’s a dog!” Wanyan Qingjue said.
The young man set his hands on the table, slowly rolling up his sleeves, his gaze not meeting Wanyan Qingjue’s. “He’s not a dog…” He fell silent a moment. “You’ve seen me before, but you don’t know who I am. Let’s get acquainted—my name is Zuo Wenhuai, courtesy name Jiazhen. Does this surname mean anything to you, young lord Wanyan?”
“Go! To! Hell! Kill me, then!” Wanyan Qingjue struggled with all his strength.
A look of sorrow flickered through the eyes of the young man called Zuo Wenhuai before him. “Compared to your teacher Wanyan Xiyin, you truly are nothing more than an unremarkable young wastrel. Compared to Mingzhou, you fall far, far short as well. Zuo Jiyun was my uncle—one of the elders of my Zuo clan was a man named Zuo Duanyou. Back then, to kill him, didn’t you people offer a rather generous bounty?”
Wanyan Qingjue’s mind cleared with realization.
The great Wu dynasty Zuo family, after the Wu court moved south, had followed the Jianshuo court down to Jiangnan. The eminent Confucian scholar Zuo Duanyou reportedly had visited Xiaocang River several times, sitting and debating with Ning Yi without either side conceding the argument; though he later settled in with the Wu court in Jiangnan, the Zuo family had always harbored a certain goodwill toward the Huaxia Army from Xiaocang River, and rumors had even circulated at one point that the Zuo family had secret dealings with them.
Such rumors might well have been true, but they were never confirmed. Partly this was because Zuo Duanyou carried great renown among the Wu dynasty’s Confucian circles, with a deeply rooted family network; and partly because, ever since the Jianshuo court’s move south, the Crown Prince and Princess Imperial had also shown some goodwill toward the Huaxia Army, so calls for revenge on behalf of Zhou Zhe had gradually faded—some families had even begun trading with the Huaxia Army, hoping to “learn the barbarians’ skills in order to control the Jurchens.” Rumors about who exactly was close to the Huaxia Army thus always remained just rumors.
Only on the Jurchen side had a bounty ever actually been placed on Zuo Duanyou’s head—not only because he really had visited Xiaocang River and been treated courteously by Ning Yi, but also because Zuo Duanyou had once been on good terms with Qin Siyuan. Together, these two reasons gave them cause enough to want him dead.
In the end, Zuo Duanyou never died at Jurchen hands—he died a natural death in Jiangnan. But throughout it all, the Zuo family had indeed built countless ties with the Huaxia Army; of course, just how deep those ties ran was, for now, still impossible to say for certain.
After Zongfu and Zongbi, together with Xiyin, broke through the defenses of Jiangnan, Xiyin had at one point turned his attention to the Zuo family, but by then the entire Zuo clan had vanished quietly from view. Xiyin had merely assumed this was the wisdom of a great family avoiding disaster. But now, here, one of the Zuo family’s own sons had come to stand before Wanyan Qingjue.
Wanyan Qingjue thought it over a moment, then spoke. “Winner takes all, loser takes the blame—I lost by one move, and now naturally you people can say whatever you like…”
He was responding to Zuo Wenhuai’s characterization of him as a “wastrel.” Zuo Wenhuai looked at him a moment, then said, “I am a soldier of the Huaxia Army.”
“…Of course you little curs are all soldiers of the Huaxia Army. Heh, you know what Yu Mingzhou has done…”
Zuo Wenhuai shook his head. “The reason I’ve come to see you today is to tell you exactly this: I am a soldier of the Huaxia Army. I once studied at Xiaocang River, taught personally by Mr. Ning. But the man who handed you this crushing defeat, Yu Mingzhou, was never, from beginning to end, a member of the Huaxia Army. From start to finish, he was a soldier of the Wu dynasty—his heart devoted to the Wu dynasty, loyal to its ten million common people. He grieved bitterly for the fate of the Wu dynasty…”
Zuo Wenhuai stared at him, speaking slowly, word by word: “Remember this—it was a man like that who defeated you and Yinshuke.”
Wanyan Qingjue tilted his head. That earlier punch had left his thoughts moving painfully slowly, but in this moment, hearing these words, he finally began to grasp something…
“Hah… hah… Yu Mingzhou… how is he?”
What flashed through his mind was the image of Yu Mingzhou looking down at him from horseback that evening of the twenty-first, eyes full of savage fury.
Gunpowder smoke thick in the air, the sunset like fire. Some grudges, in some years, people never get to settle. And so, in a moment like this, certain feelings finally became clear…