Amid the ebb and flow of a chaotic age, people move in different directions. Though most drift along with the tide, numb and unthinking, there are always some who turn against the current and draw their swords forward.

Ever since the Jurchen western army broke through Xiangyang and Fancheng, the gates of the Wu Dynasty had been thrown wide open, and the thousand-li stretch of territory from Xiangyang-Fancheng to Jianmen Pass fell rapidly. Countless people and armies knelt before the Jurchens, and in less than half a year, city after city, large and small, across this thousand-li stretch, opened their gates to the Jurchens.

Some who resisted died at the time; armies willing to surrender to the Jurchens submitted their pledges of loyalty in one way or another. But there were always some who genuinely chose to play along outwardly while quietly waiting for their chance.

Returning from the southwest to the north, crossing the Yangtze was not possible only by way of Xiangyang and Fancheng — but geographically, the location of Xiangyang-Fancheng was indeed critically important. The Jurchen forces, never having considered the possibility of defeat, had always kept their fleet concentrated at the Xiangyang-Fancheng crossing. Because of this, the idea of a raid on Xiangyang-Fancheng to sever the Jurchens’ line of retreat had already been circling in the minds of certain audacious men since the previous year.

The Jin’s defeat at Wangyuan Bridge had struck a nerve with men like Liu Guangshi, Xia Zhongxin, and Xiao Zheng, prompting them to swiftly make their own choices. At the same time, there were always others who began making contact and putting their own plans into motion as well.

On the seventh of the third month, after coordinating with each other, Qi Xinhan led a brigade-strength force and set out, advancing along a carefully scouted route. On the twenty-seventh, they arrived at the foot of Fancheng, attempting a coordinated inside-outside surprise attack.

Had the raid succeeded, it would have dealt a devastating blow to the retreating Jurchen western army. But what followed did not go smoothly.

Three thousand men marching nearly a thousand li, along a route that in effect passed through the enemy’s own rear, was an extremely risky undertaking by any measure. But given the tension between the Jin forces and the Han troops under them, and the significance of this operation, Qin Shaoqian had ultimately approved it. He chose the most elite troops in his army and drew up several contingency plans — though the Han side secretly in contact with the Chinese Army had worked out a detailed plan of their own, in the end the Chinese Army did not follow it.

This proved to be entirely necessary. As they approached the Fancheng area, Qi Xinhan sent his scouts out wide and had them observe the situation beneath Fancheng’s walls ahead of time. At the appointed hour, the army did not enter the designated meeting point.

The inside contact within Fancheng had failed to show up, and as the scout unit to the south of the city deliberately sent up a signal, someone leapt from the city wall above.

The man who had been arranged to open the gates from within Fancheng had originally been a minor Han army officer from the Central Plains — but it was now clear that the Jurchens had seen through the entire plan. They had dragged this young officer up onto the city wall and ordered him to deceive the Chinese Army — but his leap from the wall had utterly extinguished that possibility.

The Jurchen forces and elite puppet troops stationed around Xiangyang-Fancheng had not previously confirmed the Chinese Army’s movements; only after capturing the inside contact did they mobilize on a large scale, with over ten thousand troops, including three thousand Tushan Guard, rapidly moving to encircle the area outside the city. Qi Xinhan, undaunted, quickly withdrew his three thousand men toward Danyang Township southwest of Fancheng, and under cover of darkness, used the terrain to set an ambush.

Seeing that the Jurchens had seen through the Black Banner’s attempt to seize the city, the Han troops within Fancheng, upon turning back to flee, found their fighting resolve suddenly hardened. Several thousand of them quickly pursued to Danyang, and seeing a Black Banner unit retreating into the mountains, surged forward en masse in an attempt to seize the advantageous terrain. Before they could even reach the mountain, the Chinese Army struck from the middle of their formation, splitting it in two; then another ambushing force struck from the rear, first seizing the gunpowder, carts, and cannon the pursuing troops were carrying.

By the time Tushan Guard arrived, the first wave of six thousand Han troops was already scattering across the mountainside in flight. The Chinese Army split into two groups and set up a pincer-shaped artillery formation in the mountains, waiting for Tushan Guard’s frontal assault.

Though Tushan Guard was an elite Jurchen force, the total number under Xiyin’s command outside Jiange did not exceed thirty thousand, and of those, only a smaller number could be spared for deployment to Fancheng and subsequent pursuit. Facing comparable numbers, Qi Xinhan, having just crushed a Han force twice his own size, immediately issued a direct challenge to the approaching Tushan Guard.

The commander leading this contingent of Tushan Guard was himself a formidable warrior; seeing the Chinese Army’s arrogant posture, he launched an attack at once.

The fighting that first night was extraordinarily fierce. Though the Chinese Army had just come from one engagement, having secured favorable terrain and formed up, they in fact held a considerable advantage — which was precisely why Qi Xinhan had provoked the enemy so directly. But the Jurchen commander leading the charge was no fool either; partway through the first wave of attacks, he recognized the problem and directed a large body of troops to attempt a flanking maneuver, while also summoning more Han troops from south of Fancheng to block the escape routes. Before his encirclement could be completed, Qi Xinhan, relying on terrain he had already scouted and favored, swiftly began his withdrawal before dawn.

Tushan Guard pursued relentlessly.

Though the Jurchens held the advantage in numbers, the three thousand men under Qi Xinhan had trained for a long time on the plateau, and long-distance raids across rugged terrain were second nature to them. They wove through the mountains, and whenever they encountered Han troops, crushed them with a single strike. This kind of situation left the Jurchen side utterly unable to seize the initiative in the first two days. All anyone knew was that fierce fighting had broken out, in a great and noisy fashion, near Fancheng.

The flames of battle had already been lit on the battlefield. Outside the battlefield, the situation had grown no less complicated.

……

On the twenty-ninth of the third month, north of Zhaohua, the sky hung dark and heavy over the rear headquarters of the Jin western army.

Forty-three-year-old Jin general Wanyan Yuchi lifted the tent flap and paid his respects to the commander seated within. “Master.”

Lanterns burned inside the tent. At the center stood a great sand table, dotted with small flags marking the positions of various factions and armies, their names written upon them — updated and rearranged daily as fresh intelligence arrived.

Wanyan Xiyin, his hair now half white, his frame recently grown gaunt yet still full of vigor, sat in a chair before the sand table. Wanyan Yuchi noticed that his master held two flags in his hand, gazing at them as though lost in thought.

“Master.” Wanyan Yuchi had followed Xiyin for many years. Compared to the rather hopeless young prince Qingjue, Wanyan Yuchi came from a far less distinguished family — but for that very reason, he had climbed up through solid, real achievement, and could be counted as one of Xiyin’s most trusted disciples and right-hand men. Seeing Xiyin’s manner, he could already guess something of what had happened. “…Have you found the men?”

“Mm.” Wanyan Xiyin nodded, turning the little flags bearing names in his hand. After a moment, he sighed faintly, yet a trace of a smile appeared on his face. “Dai Mengwei, Wang Zhainan — do you remember these two?”

Wanyan Yuchi thought for a moment. “Dai Mengwei is the great Confucian scholar of Xicheng County, and Wang Zhainan is also a scholar-general. Around New Year’s they sent gifts that Master was quite pleased with, and you spoke with them at length… Have they turned traitor?”

“They never truly submitted in the first place, so what ‘turning traitor’ is there to speak of? Yuchi — I told you long ago, Confucian learning runs deep and broad. These southern scholars are not all men who kneel down. Knowing it’s them, I actually feel a certain measure of relief.”

“Yes.” Wanyan Yuchi nodded. In truth, though Xiyin held deep reverence for Han learning, not all of his disciples shared a love of books.

“Go and handle it.”

With that simple statement from Xiyin, another wave of bloodshed and turmoil followed.

……

Even as Wanyan Yuchi marched out with his troops, across the thousand-li stretch of territory between the Yangtze and Jiange, members of the Chinese Army’s intelligence network, long lying dormant, were also swiftly making their own moves.

After occupying this region, the Jurchens had killed and razed cities; those who resisted died or surrendered, but there were always some who fled into the mountains to become bandits, or hid among refugees, continuing their resistance without pause. Among the Han troops and the gentry there were also those who leaned toward the Chinese Army — and it was precisely men like Dai Mengwei and Wang Zhainan, who held sway over several localities, who had reached out to the Chinese Army with a plan to seize Fancheng.

But it was clear that Wanyan Xiyin had long anticipated the strategic importance of the Xiangyang-Fancheng region, and had even factored into his calculations the possibility that Han troops previously loyal to his side might conspire with the Black Banner. As the upheaval at Wangyuan Bridge unfolded and Qi Xinhan closed in on Fancheng, Xiyin’s prepared countermeasures came into play. After repelling Qi Xinhan, a brief review of earlier intelligence brought Dai Mengwei and Wang Zhainan into Xiyin’s sights.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Army’s intelligence apparatus had to begin considering the possibility that Dai Mengwei and Wang Zhainan might, in fact, be genuine traitors to the Han cause. Once this possibility was preliminarily ruled out, word of the operation went out in every direction.

The many bandit heroes and resistance forces originally lying in wait among the various cities and refugee camps, led by Fu Lu, began to mobilize. Their goal was to unite forces from every side to rescue Dai and Wang, along with the families and clansmen of these two resistance figures. Uprisings broke out one after another amid rallying cries, and at the same time, the Chinese Army began reaching out to persuade every remaining Han army unit across the thousand-li stretch that might still be turned.

Both sides continued to place their pieces on the board. Wanyan Xiyin waited for the rebels to reveal themselves, hoping to crush them all in a single stroke — killing the chicken to warn the monkey, so to speak — preemptively detonating and clearing away any hidden threats along the northward retreat route. For the Chinese Army, with the reckless gamble of three thousand men as an opening move, Qin Shaoqian meant to remind everyone: the hour of decisive battle was drawing near.

……

Even as the fuse was lit outside Jianmen Pass, fierce fighting continued unabated within it.

South of Huangming County, the air hung humid and dark, gunsmoke drifting through the sky, the choking stench of blood filling everyone’s nostrils.

Wanyan Sheyema swung his long blade, shouting loudly, thick in the midst of the fighting at the front lines. His relentless presence bolstered the Jin army’s morale.

A rocket shell named “Diyi” launched from a wooden frame atop a small hill, shrieking through the air with a terrifying tail of flame before crashing into a nearby stream and exploding. Wanyan Sheyema led his troops charging toward the small hill, held by a handful of Chinese Army soldiers.

From the twenty-first at Yushui Creek to this day at Huangming County, he had been fighting for days on end, his voice hoarse from shouting. In truth, the most critical moment of Zonghan’s withdrawal from the southwest had already arrived.

This was the most difficult, most desperate battle of his life. The fighting at Yushui Creek had raged for five days, and at one point Sheyema had believed he would die there in those mountain forests. Qu Zhengyan had led no more than four thousand-odd men; though flying Ning Yi’s banner was, in truth, little more than an empty-fort bluff, the men who came with him were among the fiercest, most battle-hardened units in the Black Banner army. As Jin morale steadily crumbled, cracks began showing as early as the second day of direct combat; by the third day, Sheyema found himself pinned in a narrow mountain pass, nearly encircled and swallowed whole by two Black Banner units closing in like dumplings being wrapped.

But even among the Jin, there were still men of valor. Nishelang, an Xi tribesman who had fought at Sheyema’s side for nearly twenty years as his deputy, carried Sheyema’s battle standard and broke through the encirclement with everything he had. In the end, Nishelang was shot dead by the Black Banner forces, but Sheyema managed to break free by sheer luck and escape with his life.

A man weak all his life rarely becomes suddenly hard; a man proud and unyielding all his life does not suddenly turn soft either. Through days of continuous fighting, brothers-in-arms dead, his second-in-command dead, and during the breakout, even his favorite warhorse, which he had treated almost as an extension of himself, dead as well — the soldiers around him showed a look of despair and desolation they had never shown before. Sheyema, strangely, found himself forgetting fear altogether. In the two more days of fighting that followed as he regrouped his forces, not a single shot from the Black Banner’s cannon fire or a single stray arrow on the battlefield so much as grazed him.

The terrain at Yushui Creek was complex, and over those five days, though round after round of fighting failed to produce a clear victor, from the Jin perspective, this fierce struggle did genuinely succeed in delaying Qu Zhengyan’s continued advance. Once the Black Banner forces massed at Yushui Creek had grown in number, Sheyema withdrew his troops toward Huangming County.

By now, a great mass of Jurchen troops was also pouring into the narrow mountain pass at Huangming, with the Chinese Army pursuing relentlessly at their heels, inflicting heavy casualties on the Jin forces.

A little over a month earlier, the force that had reached the Lion Ridge–Xiukou front had totaled fifty thousand Han troops and nearly a hundred thousand Jin main forces, with an additional thirty thousand-odd wounded and rear-guard troops stationed in various places along the mountain roads behind them. After the defeat at Wangyuan Bridge, most of the Han troops had chosen to surrender; the Jin forces setting out from Lion Ridge and Xiukou had numbered nearly seventy thousand, but including personnel along the roads to the rear, the total had reached as many as a hundred thousand.

Over more than half a month, under repeated Chinese Army assaults, Jin casualties and missing personnel had reached nearly twenty thousand; a small number of wounded men who could no longer possibly withdraw had chosen to surrender. By the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth, roughly fifty thousand Jurchen troops had successfully passed through the Huangming mountain pass, with more than twenty thousand-odd still blocked before the mountain entrance. Since the area around Huangming County offered very little room for detouring along side paths, the Chinese Army units arriving in succession launched charge after charge against the fleeing Jurchen forces, taking prisoners after each rout.

The troops left furthest behind already suffered from low morale. Though they often occupied the roads and formed defensive lines, the range of the Chinese Army’s rocket shells far exceeded that of their own cannon, and often a single volley of rockets followed by a single charge was enough to send the rearmost Jin units surrendering en masse. During this period, the desperate fighting of men like Balisu and Saba helped slow the pace of collapse to some degree, and Sheyema, having just arrived from Yushui Creek, joined them as well, working hard to steady morale.

On the twenty-ninth, a small Chinese Army unit approaching from the flank managed, through a surprise attack, to seize a hillside beside the road, nearly cutting off the retreat of several thousand men in the rear column. Sheyema led two assaults up the hill; the vastly outnumbered Chinese Army unit, after firing off the handful of rocket shells they carried, finally chose to withdraw as the Jurchens surged forward in overwhelming numbers.

A rocket shell exploded near a large boulder not far from Sheyema, sending a soldier beside him flying through the air. Sheyema, already hoarse from shouting, stood rooted to the spot for a long while after his personal guard rushed over to him, before finally realizing that once again, by sheer luck, he had survived.

The Chinese Army soldiers on the hilltop had withdrawn in disarray.

— And he himself was still alive.

He thought of the many men once hailed as heroes among the Jurchens — Aguda, his father, Zongwang, Xiyin, Loushi, Balisu… Only in this moment did he suddenly understand where he fell short of them. He had followed the army in campaigns for twenty years, and had always considered himself brave and capable — but in truth, most of the battles he himself had fought as a grown man had been battles fought from a position of advantage.

Aguda, his father, and Xiyin’s generation were different. Looking back, later generations saw only their bold, heroic march of conquest — but back then, from Ningjiang Prefecture to Huburdagang, fighting the vastly more numerous Liao forces again and again with a fraction of their numbers, they had walked that path time and again along the very edge of life and death.

Only now did he truly understand just how difficult a thing survival really was.

A pale sun hung at the edge of the sky, the valley shrouded in gloom — but in this moment, before his eyes, everything seemed vividly, achingly alive. Before long, he saw Balisu approaching from the other end of the road; the two men, both spattered with gunsmoke and blood, nodded to each other without exchanging many words.

So long as I can make it back to the northern lands, I will not let Great Jin fall at the hands of the Black Banner.

In that moment, this was what he thought.