“…Yu Mingzhou and I have known each other since childhood.”

Afternoon sunlight streamed in through the window; the air of the second month still held a chill. Amid Wanyan Qingjue’s questioning, the young man before him simply looked at his own fingers resting on the table, and spoke calmly, recalling the past.

“The first time I met him was in the ninth year of Jinghan, the winter I turned five… My Zuo family is a great clan that has passed down scholarship for generations, while the Yu family rose through military command—prosperous for barely two generations. They’d once intermarried with a side branch of my Zuo family. That year Yu Mingzhou was also five; he was clever from a young age, and Uncle Yu brought him to our door, hoping to have him accepted into my Zuo family’s tutelage, to focus on scholarly studies…”

“At the time, the Wu dynasty was actually still fairly prosperous—Jin’s campaign against Liao looked set to succeed, and calls for a Wu northern expedition were running high. My granduncle, seeing that Yu Mingzhou was indeed rather sharp, urged him to study both letters and arms—to study texts at the Zuo family’s private school, and afterward invited several renowned generals from the court to teach him martial skill and strategy. Several children from my Zuo family went along too, myself among them. Over time, Yu Mingzhou and I became close friends…”

“Yu Mingzhou came from a family of generals, was in sound health, but of a mild, even temperament. As for me, though from a side branch of the Zuo family, as a child I thought rather too highly of myself…”

In the room, as Zuo Wenhuai’s account unfolded slowly, Wanyan Qingjue gradually pieced together the whole story. Of course, much of it was different from what he’d seen before—for instance, the Yu Mingzhou he’d known was a young general of fierce and terrible temper, who, ever since his first defeat at Chen Fan’s hands, had raged about wanting to slaughter every last member of the Huaxia Army—nothing like the mild-tempered figure being described.

And this young man before him, Zuo Wenhuai, slick-haired and smooth-faced, calm-eyed, looked rather like a porcelain doll. Apart from that punch when they’d first met, there was no trace left of the childhood “thinking too highly of himself.”

This was a story from the south that Wanyan Qingjue had never heard before.

In the ninth year of Jinghan, two five-year-old boys had met at the Zuo family estate, and thanks to their complementary temperaments, became friends. Zuo Wenhuai, proud and strong-willed, was usually the dominant one between the two friends, while Yu Mingzhou, from a family of generals, had a comparatively gentler disposition, and in many matters tended to defer to Zuo Wenhuai.

Their childhood held nothing especially remarkable—skipping lessons together at the private school, getting punished together, getting into fights with other children their age. By then, Zuo Duanyou had likely already sensed some looming crisis approaching, and pushed this group of children harder toward martial studies—thorough grounding in military strategy, familiarity with troop deployment and formations.

A household of generals carried the atmosphere of a household of generals; aside from more fighting and brawling, by the time they were seven or eight, this group of proud, gifted children had already begun to grasp, in a preliminary way, what it meant to be a military man. In the gaps between fights, tending each other’s wounds, the group of children also began setting their sights on someday reviving the Wu dynasty, reclaiming the lost northern territories, becoming men like Wei Qing and Huo Qubing who could sweep the realm clean for the Wu dynasty.

By the time the Jinghan era gave way to the humiliation of the Jingping era, the two boys were still only just past ten years old, too young to share in the burdens of the nation. Outside, the world was in an uproar, hearts were uneasy everywhere, and the Zuo family too was busy relocating to avoid the danger. As a great clan of Hedong, even after the initial fall of the Central Plains, Zuo Duanyou still held his ground locally—maintaining an uneasy truce on the surface with forces that had surrendered to the Jurchens while quietly funding the many righteous armies and resistance forces across the Central Plains, carrying on the struggle. But when it came to the women, children, and elderly of his own household, the old man had already moved ahead of time to send them south of the river, preserving the seeds of the future.

It was under these circumstances that Zuo Wenhuai and Yu Mingzhou were relocated to Jiangnan. There, they never felt the direct threat of war, but they felt everything else that came with it, the anxieties that never let up: teachers who kept changing, adults in the family who disappeared without a trace, a world thrown into disorder, and countless refugees streaming south.

The shadow of chaos fell across the eyes of these once arrogant children, but for children, the pressures of reality still meant little for the time being. Then, in the second year of Jianshuo, when both Zuo Wenhuai and Yu Mingzhou turned thirteen, came their first true separation in eight years.

At thirteen, in that era, “adulthood” was not far off; the boys already had a basic framework of understanding, and made a promise to each other that when they met again, they would fight side by side to wipe out the Jin dogs and revive the great Wu.

At the time, Yu Mingzhou had no idea where Zuo Wenhuai had gone, and Zuo Wenhuai himself had no clear idea of his family’s arrangements for him either. On Zuo Duanyou’s instructions, a group of young Zuo family sons was quickly sent north, to be placed under Ning Yi’s tutelage at Xiaocang River—this course of study lasted more than two years.

In the third year of Jianshuo, the Jurchens began their assault on Xiaocang River, opening the curtain on the three-year Xiaocang River campaign. Ning Yi had at one point wanted to send these children back to the Zuo family, so they wouldn’t come to harm in the fighting and betray the family’s trust. But Zuo Duanyou wrote back refusing—the old man wanted the children of his family to endure the same trials as the children of the Huaxia Army. If they couldn’t be forged into something worthwhile, then even coming home, they’d be useless.

Not until the autumn of the fourth year of Jianshuo did Zuo Wenhuai and the others finally travel south with the first group of women and children to leave. By then, they had already experienced the hardship of the siege of Xiaocang River, and witnessed the valor of the Huaxia Army’s soldiers in battle.

At that age, there are things that, once witnessed even a single time, become carved into the soul forever.

Having gone to the southwest and taken part in a period of construction work before returning once more to the Zuo family, Zuo Wenhuai was, by then, a sixteen-year-old “adult.” When he met Yu Mingzhou again, what lay within him now was closer to steel. The three-year Xiaocang River campaign had just drawn to a close, and news of Mr. Ning’s death had just come out; Zuo Wenhuai’s heart had taken a tremendous blow—on the one hand, he couldn’t believe it, and on the other, he found himself unable to stop thinking about the future of the realm.

Yu Mingzhou, meanwhile, had spent these past few years amid a false peace and prosperity; though his thinking remained sunny and upright, his understanding of the Jurchens’ savagery had grown thin, and he held little more than a faint wariness toward the softness bred by the south’s false peace, his head still full of optimism.

Now sixteen, both young men were old enough to decide their own futures. Owing to the strict secrecy training he’d received at Xiaocang River, Zuo Wenhuai did not, for a time, reveal to Yu Mingzhou where he’d been these past three years. He took Yu Mingzhou, his own studies complete, away from Jiangnan, and the two crossed the Yangtze and traveled widely through the Central Plains, at one point even reaching the Jin border.

The year or two following the end of the Xiaocang River campaign were among the most chaotic periods in the Central Plains, as the Huaxia Army’s final network of agents planted within the various regional warlords caused the “Great Qi” faction under Liu Yu to lash out almost madly. Famine, the ravages of war, the brutality of officials at every level, countless scenes of inhuman suffering—all of it unfolded before the two young men one after another. Even Zuo Wenhuai, who had lived through the Xiaocang River war, found it almost more than he could bear; how much more so for Yu Mingzhou, who had spent his whole life amid false peace and prosperity.

After a year of such traveling, Zuo Wenhuai finally began, gradually, to tell Yu Mingzhou about the Huaxia Army’s deeds, explaining everything he’d witnessed at Xiaocang River over the past several years.

But Zuo Wenhuai, only seventeen himself at the time, had also harbored the illusion that laying everything out plainly would naturally bring understanding. His most formative three years had been spent witnessing Xiaocang River and everything about the Huaxia Army; Yu Mingzhou’s most formative three years, by contrast, had been spent under the tutelage of a stern, upright general loyal to the Wu dynasty. When Zuo Wenhuai laid his thoughts bare, the two close friends erupted into a violent quarrel.

“Everything wrong in the Central Plains was caused by the Huaxia Army,” “Ning Liheng is nothing but a reckless butcher,” “It’s the Black Flag Army that should bear the blood debt of the whole realm”—as Zuo Wenhuai recounted the Huaxia Army’s deeds, Yu Mingzhou launched into his own accusations from the opposite direction. The two friends, as close as brothers, argued for half a month, the quarrel escalating from words to blows; after the seemingly frail-looking Zuo Wenhuai repeatedly knocked Yu Mingzhou to the ground, Yu Mingzhou chose to sever ties with him entirely.

“The Wu dynasty will surely find a way forward that doesn’t run through the Black Flag Army!”

Holding fast to this conviction, after parting ways with Zuo Wenhuai, Yu Mingzhou traveled the chaotic land of the Central Plains alone for nearly another year; no one knew how many more scenes of unspeakable suffering he witnessed. Zuo Wenhuai, meanwhile, returned to Jiangnan and threw himself into the work he was meant to do. A year later, he learned Yu Mingzhou had come back to resume his study of military strategy—but as for the possibility that Zuo Wenhuai himself might, by then, have already become a member of the Huaxia Army, that he never once revealed to anyone else.

Starting in the ninth year of Jianshuo, the Jurchens prepared their fourth southern campaign; by the tenth year, the whole realm was plunged into war. Yu Mingzhou, barely into his twenties, did what he could, but it was, inevitably, of no real use. No one knew, as he watched the realm collapsing before his eyes, what anguish churned inside this young man who still had no standing or real power of his own.

This continued until the autumn of the eleventh year, when an unexpected turn of events finally occurred: Yu Gusheng, seeking to save himself, surrendered to the Jurchens and, under Xiyin’s direction, was sent to attack Changsha. Through a secret channel, Yu Mingzhou managed to reach Zuo Wenhuai.

When the two met again, what Zuo Wenhuai saw was a Yu Mingzhou who had already made up his mind about something—bloodshot eyes, a faint edge of madness beneath them. “I have a plan. It might help you defeat Yinshuke and hold Changsha… Can you work with me on it?”

Eager for the chance to gain reinforcements, Zuo Wenhuai naturally nodded along readily—but once Yu Mingzhou had laid out roughly how the plan would begin, Zuo Wenhuai shook his head firmly. Giving up his own fifty-thousand-man army to earn the trust of the Jurchen high command, gambling everything on the hope that it would deliver a decisive blow at the critical moment—it relied far too heavily on luck. If that was really the plan, it would be better to try to persuade Yu Gusheng to bring his army over and defect back.

But Yu Mingzhou only laughed bitterly. “The moment we surrendered to the Jin dogs, half my family was already under their watch. Never mind whether that spineless father of mine has the nerve to defect—even if he did fight alongside you, that army of fifty thousand pampered lordlings wouldn’t survive a single charge from Yinshuke. What use would padding your numbers with that be to you?”

Looking back on it later, Yu Mingzhou, in deciding to betray his own troops—even his own birth father—must already have gone through a series of events that left him in despair: the atrocities in the Central Plains, the collapse in Jiangnan, the utter uselessness of the Han armies, the scattering and mass surrender of ten million people…

After passing along the army’s information to Chen Fan through Zuo Wenhuai, Yu Mingzhou, having just suffered his first great defeat, encountered, within the Jurchen camp, the hastily arrived young prince Wanyan Qingjue.

……

“The information about you was, at the time, passed to Yu Mingzhou through me first. All the details you later saw were gradually filled in and perfected from there. The irritable, helpless Yu Mingzhou you saw was, in fact, entirely built out of his imitation of you…”

As Zuo Wenhuai spoke, Wanyan Qingjue’s hands slammed down hard on the table, fury rising in him at the sheer insult buried in those words…

……

Wanyan Qingjue’s arrival had increased the odds of Yu Mingzhou’s plan succeeding. As Xiyin’s disciple and a young prince of the Jin state, Wanyan Qingjue held a position of special standing in this Battle of Changsha. He could, of course, never have imagined that during his earlier stint as a Huaxia Army prisoner, the army’s staff had studied and analyzed him extensively—even having someone imitate his behavior, speech, and appearance. Among the three armies Chen Fan first crushed, the one led by Li Touhe had actually been lured astray by a Huaxia Army unit disguised as the young prince’s forces, deceived with false intelligence and ambushed with a decapitation strike that led to their rout.

Zuo Wenhuai had vouched for Yu Mingzhou within the Huaxia Army, and Wanyan Qingjue’s file was subsequently handed over to Yu Mingzhou.

In that first ambush and rout, although Yu Gusheng’s main force was driven back by Chen Fan, Yu Mingzhou displayed real command ability during the retreat, rallying the scattered remnants and fighting a fighting withdrawal with considerable skill. But the Jurchens, deeply suspicious of Han troops at heart, were not about to reward him for his talent just because of that—Yu Mingzhou needed to find another angle.

Chen Fan’s forces were few in number; against an army of over a hundred thousand, he could only choose to break them, not annihilate them wholesale, so Yu’s scattered forces were regrouped after each defeat. The second rout was arranged to coincide with the attack on Wanyan Qingjue—the intelligence itself had been leaked by Yu Mingzhou, who also led troops closer to Wanyan Qingjue’s position. Amid the enormous confusion, Yu Gusheng was ambushed and “died,” while Yu Mingzhou commanded the remaining troops in a stubborn defense, shielding Wanyan Qingjue’s retreat.

In this battle, Yu Mingzhou not only “lost” his father, but also lost three fingers on his left hand.

……

“He cut off his own fingers, with his own hand… I told him afterward, one would have been enough. He said cutting off just one in a single stroke would have looked too stingy—if he’d cut off four, his hand would have been ruined, and he couldn’t bring himself to do that.”

In the room, Zuo Wenhuai’s calm words carried an undertone that sent a chill through the listener. Wanyan Qingjue drew a deep breath—he certainly remembered that bloody hand, and the look of that young general, nearly mad with hatred, at the time.

……

Yu Mingzhou had killed one of his own uncles, personally kidnapped his own father, cut off three of his own fingers, and then began playing the role of a mad general bent on revenge against the Huaxia Army.

His hatred, and the unrestrained, degrading spectacle he later put on, Wanyan Qingjue understood all too well, on some deep level.

Being captured so easily by the Huaxia Army back then had been the deepest wound in Wanyan Qingjue’s heart, yet he could never let his desire for revenge against the Huaxia Army show. As a decision-maker, and Gushen’s disciple no less, he’d had to project calm, calculated composure; privately, he feared far more that others would mock him over the incident.

The even more degrading spectacle Yu Mingzhou put on gave him a mirror to look into—yes, he too wanted to make Huaxia Army soldiers pay dearly, wanted to slaughter their entire families, wanted to watch them wail and beg for mercy. Such vulgar thoughts filled him with shame, and it was precisely for that reason that Yu Mingzhou’s suffering brought him a certain pleasure.

As it happened, Yu Mingzhou really wasn’t an incompetent commander—he had real skill in command and strategic planning, and knew the Wu dynasty’s bureaucracy and military inside and out. Privately, he was also remarkably well-versed in the Wu dynasty’s pleasures and vices; he would, seemingly by chance, offer Wanyan Qingjue various avenues of amusement, procure treasures and curiosities that caught Wanyan Qingjue’s fancy, and pass them along to him quietly, without drawing attention—while, in return, siphoning off military supplies under the guise of “revenge,” then vanishing without a trace.

After four months together, Wanyan Qingjue had come to trust Yu Mingzhou completely, and the unit under Yu Mingzhou’s command had become one of the Han armies most relied upon by the Jurchens in the Battle of Changsha. By the twenty-first of the second month, a large-scale battle had already begun, and after repeated calculations, Yu Mingzhou chose to make his move.

The plot was laid bare at last.

……

The last time Zuo Wenhuai saw Yu Mingzhou was the moment his eyes were full of blood, when he’d finally decided to act.

Friends for more than ten years, though separated for several of those years, in the months since reconnecting they had already been able to say much of what needed saying to each other. Zuo Wenhuai actually had a great deal he wanted to say—he wanted to persuade Yu Mingzhou to go over the whole plan once more—but on this matter, Yu Mingzhou remained as stubbornly set in his ways as ever.

“This is my affair. Kill Yinshuke, and then we’ll see who’s really the better man,” Yu Mingzhou said, his expression proud and unyielding. “…The Wu dynasty has its own way to win, too. Give me another twenty years, and I wouldn’t need any of you.”

Having said this, he hesitated slightly, but in the end… said nothing more.

Throughout the entire operation, Yu Mingzhou had only one chance. He seized Wanyan Qingjue, then threw the communication system into chaos, sending out a false order drafted in advance, luring Yinshuke’s forces, in Wanyan Qingjue’s name, into the mountains, using the terrain to split the force apart, then mobilizing large numbers of Han troops to block the roads.

He had laid a large-scale minefield ambush for Yinshuke, but even so, the plan couldn’t keep pace with events. As a Jurchen veteran who had campaigned his whole life, Yinshuke sensed something was wrong just ahead of time, and the minefield failed to inflict serious damage on him. The situation in the mountains descended into chaos; Yinshuke led his elite troops charging out, aiming to rejoin the main force.

Chen Fan’s forces were still maneuvering through the mountains and hadn’t yet arrived. Yu Mingzhou personally led troops forward to block the way; Yinshuke, realizing where the trouble lay, charged straight for Yu Mingzhou’s own position. Yu Mingzhou threw everything he had into it, weaving through the mountains, sometimes engaging, sometimes fleeing, to pin Yinshuke down.

On the morning of the twenty-fourth day of the second month, after fighting through the entire night, Yu Mingzhou, leading a small remaining band of personal guards, found himself cornered by Yinshuke in the mountains—having played the defector for so long, so much had to be kept secret that he’d never had many genuinely capable troops around him. The bulk of his forces, caught in Yinshuke’s charge, proved no match at all, and in the end scattered in flight across the mountainside. By the moment he found himself cornered, Yu Mingzhou, half his body soaked in blood, his armor shattered, held a single blade and laughed wildly at Yinshuke’s approaching troops, shouting his challenge.

“Hahahaha, Yinshuke! Here stands Yu Mingzhou of the Wu dynasty! It was I who brought you to this point! If you want revenge, do you dare face me one on one—”

His hand was shaking, barely able to hold the blood-soaked blade any longer, but even as he shouted, he kept walking forward, his eyes burning with a hatred etched into his very bones. Yinshuke accepted his challenge, and charged forward alone.

As the morning sun rose, Yu Mingzhou threw himself at his Jin enemy without reservation, fighting with everything he had—

……

“Yu Mingzhou can’t come see you. On the morning of the twenty-fourth, he died fighting Yinshuke,” Zuo Wenhuai said. “Unlike the Huaxia Army, he had too few comrades—right up to the end, hardly anyone was there to fight beside him. That is why the Wu dynasty fell. But as a man, he truly did not lose to anyone in this world.”

“He…”

Zuo Wenhuai weighed his words a moment, deep sorrow flickering in his eyes, but he said nothing more.

The problem he faced was too immense, the world he faced too brutal, the burden he had to carry too heavy—so he could only resist in this most uncompromising way. Selling out his father, killing his own kin, mutilating his own body, casting aside his own dignity—was this simply his cruel nature? It was only that the world had grown so rotten that a hero had no other way left to fight back.

He fought his way through, blade in hand, all the way to the end. Who could ever measure up to him?

Zuo Wenhuai rose slowly and left the room.

……

The chaos in communications, and the departure of the supreme commander from his position, caused enormous losses on the battlefield—losses that proved decisive.

Yinshuke died in the hour following Yu Mingzhou’s own death, when Chen Fan’s forces finally caught up with him.

Someone told Chen Fan of Yu Mingzhou’s death. Not long after, Chen Fan dismounted from his horse and walked toward the Jurchen marshal, now at the end of his road.

“Translate this for him. Yinshuke! Here’s your chance! The two of us will decide the outcome of this war!”

Yinshuke’s warhorse had already died under Yu Mingzhou’s blade. He waved off his guards, threw aside his helmet, and advanced with his spear leveled. Not long after, on the slopes near Liuyang County, this veteran Jurchen general, in fierce close combat, was beaten to death by Chen Fan with his bare hands.