The evening’s crimson sun sank once more into a sky full of stars, transforming again into the churning clouds of daytime.

News of the great victory at Wangyuan Bridge in the southwest, and of Zonghan’s forces fleeing in disarray, had by April gradually spread through every corner of Jiangnan and the Central Plains.

This war, one that could be said to determine the direction of the entire realm, was now unfolding in a manner that defied most people’s expectations. The Chinese Army’s fighting strength and tenacity stunned many observers. Some were shocked, some fearful, some found themselves stirred and encouraged by these results, others grew wary because of them. But regardless of the attitude or feeling one held, no one with even the slightest standing to move upon this stage of the realm could remain indifferent or unmoved — that much was beyond dispute.

Even from thousands of li away, the two forces atop Liangshan were stirred to excitement as well, with mountain bandits and rural militias flocking to join from every direction. There were even two small-scale clashes and scuffles, of all things, between the Chinese Army faction led by Zhu Biao and Liu Chengzong, and the Guangwu Army led by Wang Shanyue and Xue Changgong, both provoked by this great victory — a rather absurd turn of events.

Farther away in Baoding, Wanyan Chang, alarmed by the restlessness stirring on Liangshan, strengthened his defenses across the Central Plains region, wary that these groups in Shandong, emboldened by news of the southwestern campaign, might take some reckless action.

Farther still, within the Jin state’s own borders, a large-scale ripple effect was gradually building. In Yunzhong, when the first wave of news arrived, it was not made public, circulating quietly only among certain prominent noble households within Jin. Upon learning of the western army’s defeat, some of the founding noble families of Great Jin dragged out their Han slaves, killed a number of them, and then quite brazenly went to the local office to pay the fine.

The truly devastating news regarding the western army’s retreat would take still more time to travel back from the southwest, thousands of li away — and when it finally did, a massive upheaval would erupt within the Jin state.

Jin territory.

As the cavalry column crossed the rolling hills and turned toward a small basin at the mountain’s edge, Lou Shuwan lifted the curtain of the carriage in the middle of the column and saw, below, the faint traces of black smoke and smoldering embers still lingering.

Fire had ravaged the village and its wheat fields; nearby troops had already arrived, salvaging whatever could still be saved amid the wreckage. The closer the column drew, the more clearly the sound of weeping carried on the wind.

“…Beasts.”

She clenched her fist and cursed under her breath.

This was a scene from the third month.

Had it not been for what had begun unfolding that spring, Lou Shuwan might have drawn far greater encouragement from the intelligence coming out of the southwestern campaign. But at this moment, Jin territory was beset by a sudden onslaught, and she found herself utterly overwhelmed.

The winter snows had melted by the second lunar month, and the struggle for control of Jin territory between Lou Shuwan’s faction and Liao Yiren’s faction had flared up once more. This time, foreign reinforcements suddenly appearing on Liao Yiren’s side had used one method or another to seize two counties from Lou Shuwan’s side. Their methods were brutal, with heavy loss of life; after investigation, it was confirmed that those involved in the assault were very likely steppe warriors who had fought their way over from the direction of Western Xia.

This newly appeared band of foreign mercenaries fought with remarkable flexibility and displayed an intense appetite for combat and slaughter. In both cities they had seized, they had disguised themselves as merchants, made contact with the garrison, and, once granted entry, seized the gates with a small elite force before unleashing slaughter and arson. Judging solely from the tactics used to seize the gates, it was clear this force represented a formidable fighting elite, not to be underestimated in this age.

The city seizures in the second month had already put Lou Shuwan and Yu Yulin’s side on alert; by the end of the second month, the enemy’s operations had run into obstacles, and after one plot was uncovered, in early March this force turned to ambushing patrols and spreading false information to strike two more small counties. At the same time, they also began launching even more inhuman attacks against the civilian population within Tiger King’s territory.

Using small, highly mobile cavalry units and elite hunters, they infiltrated the villages and towns of the region, striking under cover of darkness — and most crucially, burning down homes and torching the wheat fields. Such tactics, even Liao Yiren himself, in all his past campaigns, had never dared employ — yet through the month of March, this side had already suffered more than ten of these deranged assaults.

Winter wheat was typically sown in the eighth or ninth lunar month of the previous year and harvested in the fifth month of the following year — for Lou Shuwan, this was the single most critical harvest for the revival of Jin territory. Liao Yiren, too, was a prominent local clan; though their struggle on the battlefield was one of life and death, both sides had always understood that victory was meant to bring a better life afterward — no one, in the past, would ever have set fire to the common people’s wheat fields. But the arrival of the steppe warriors opened this grim precedent.

In the second and third months, Yu Yulin mustered his troops and recaptured two more towns, but the outer perimeter of his forces, near the plains, also suffered harassment from steppe cavalry. Skilled in coordinated volley fire, they targeted weaker units, firing a volley and immediately retreating, then firing again once they had put distance between themselves and their target — always picking off the weak, never engaging a strong opponent directly — which caused Yu Yulin considerable trouble.

As a commander of many years’ experience, Yu Yulin, along with quite a few others, could see clearly that these steppe warriors were not weak fighters — they simply preferred this style of warfare. Perhaps because the survival of Jin territory meant nothing to them, having been hired by Liao Yiren, they simply went about relentlessly exploiting everyone’s weaknesses. For them, this was a relatively easy, carefree kind of warfare — but for Yu Yulin and Lou Shuwan, it left only frustration and outrage.

The only consolation on this side was that, having lost the support of the people, Liao Yiren’s forces had become entirely unable to match Yu Yulin’s advance on the open battlefield. But the enemy had adopted a defensive posture, and even if everything went smoothly, it would still take nearly half a year to crush Liao Yiren and reclaim all of Jin territory. No one could say what atrocities this band of steppe warriors might commit in that half year, nor could anyone be certain what might happen if these men were truly determined to launch a full offensive into Jin territory.

Amid the friction and investigations following contact between the two sides, reports on the southwestern campaign trickled in one after another. Zhan Wu, responsible for handling this matter on their side, once reminded Lou Shuwan that although little attention had been paid to the situation in Western Xia and the surrounding areas since the northwest had been turned into a blank wasteland, Mr. Ning had, before coming to Jin territory, once led men into Western Xia to investigate the movements of these very steppe peoples.

That Ning Yi would have secretly kept an eye on this particular force was, in itself, a kind of signal and warning. Lou Shuwan therefore took the matter far more seriously. She asked Zhan Wu what Ning Yi’s view of these people had been, and whether he had left behind any countermeasures or contingency plans — but Zhan Wu found himself in an awkward position.

“…When Mr. Ning came through that time, he only arranged matters concerning Tiger King. Perhaps he never anticipated that this group would extend their reach into the Central Plains — as for what he learned in Western Xia, he never mentioned it to anyone…”

Lou Shuwan, already in a foul mood, heard this answer and scowled fiercely. “Get out. You Black Banner people are just like that Ning Yi — fed and cared for so well, and not a single bit of use to anyone!”

Whenever something came up involving Ning Yi, she couldn’t help but curse a little, sometimes quite crudely, and Zhan Wu could only bear it helplessly. Especially since taking the other side’s aid the previous year, the Chinese Army’s people had grown tongue-tied and meek before her, always slinking away in defeat. What was face worth, anyway — it had long since stopped mattering.

With no way of knowing Ning Yi’s views on the steppe warriors, Zhan Wu had no choice but to hastily write a letter reporting the situation back. Lou Shuwan, for her part, summoned Yu Yulin and the others, instructing them to raise their guard and prepare for a hard fight. As for Liao Yiren, they would try to resolve that matter as quickly as possible; though the steppe warriors’ guerrilla tactics remained slippery for now, everyone needed to be mentally prepared for a hard engagement with them as well — every method for countering their hit-and-run strategy needed to begin being put in place right away.

And so the planned offensive against the Liao clan was pulled back, its overall timeline pushed back to April. During this period, Lou Shuwan and the others maintained a cautious defensive posture along the perimeter of their territory, but reports of villages under attack still trickled in from time to time.

Every burned wheat field and razed village felt like a blade twisting in Lou Shuwan’s heart. Under these circumstances, she even brought her personal guard and pushed the center of her administration forward toward the front line. The planned offensive was still some time away; in the meantime, secret efforts to persuade and negotiate with Liao Yiren’s side were proceeding in earnest. Tension simmered across Jin territory, and by early April, the atmosphere had turned grim and watchful — because people suddenly noticed that the steppe warriors’ raiding and harassment had, for some inexplicable reason, come to a stop since the end of March.

A prolonged silence like this might well mean preparations for another wave of attacks. Recognizing this, Lou Shuwan ordered the troops to heighten their vigilance while sending men ahead to gather intelligence. Before long, an utterly bizarre piece of news came through, from within Liao’s own forces…

……

North of Fenyang, in Huixian County, where Liao Yiren’s ancestral home was located, chaos still continued to unfold.

The steppe warriors had struck without warning.

It happened on the evening of the twenty-eighth of the third month. A banquet hosted by the Liao family was underway in this great manor when, before long, a Mongol cavalry force launched an assault on the nearby garrison. They captured the army’s commander and seized every commanding position within the Liao family’s inner compound. From then on, the Mongols held control of the Liao family estate for a full four days. Having clearly planned this in advance, the surrounding armory was stripped bare, with a large number of steppe warriors coming through to haul away the gunpowder, cannon, and munitions they now valued most.

Though the operation appeared long premeditated, the Mongols nonetheless showed signs throughout of considerable haste, and at the time it was difficult to determine why they had chosen this particular moment to move against the Liao family. Whatever the reason, over the four days that followed, all manner of inhuman atrocities unfolded within the Liao family manor. Liao Yiren himself had not yet died at that point, and in later years, no one would feel any sympathy for him. But in the early part of the fourth month, he and part of the Liao clan had, for a time, simply gone missing — and with the Liao family’s power thrown into disarray, at the time no one paid much attention to where the Mongols had gone after their raid.

On the second of the fourth month, the Mongol cavalry withdrew from the Liao estate, and the nearby garrison was massacred. By the third, the first people to arrive discovered the Liao family’s compound littered with corpses. Starting on the fifth, word of surrender began reaching Lou Shuwan’s side one after another. At the time, people were still too caught up in the confusion to understand why any of this had happened, and could not yet see what effect it would have on the future. Where had the Mongols gone? A deliberate investigation was not launched until after the fifth, and the shocking answer did not come back until after the tenth.

Only many years later would people, piecing together accounts from survivors, be able to assemble a rough outline of what had happened in Jin territory…

No one knew whether it was a bird flying past the window, or some member of the Liao clan wandering by unwittingly, that alerted the two Mongol commanders — Jamukha and Chilaun — as they discussed matters in a room in Jin territory on the afternoon of the twenty-seventh of the third month. But whatever the case, the order to move was issued not long after.

In the three months since arriving in Jin territory, the Mongols had, even as they fought, been carefully learning the state of the entire realm. By this point they already knew of the far more powerful enemy in the southwest who had crushed Wanyan Zonghan. What Jamukha and Chilaun had been discussing was their next planned move — and events outside pushed that plan forward ahead of schedule.

By the time the Mongol forces marched north with a group of Liao family members driven like livestock before them, they had already extracted more than enough information through interrogation.

The key to the operation lay with several stewards and direct relatives who had long been involved in the Liao family’s trading business. On the seventh, a merchant caravan flying the Liao family banner arrived at the northernmost point in the Central Plains — Yanmen Pass.

Since the Jurchens had taken control of Yanmen Pass and, in effect, controlled the Central Plains, trade between the two sides had grown sparse amid the region’s decline — but it still existed. The Liao family was one of the few factions with trading rights, and having stood in resolute opposition to Lou Shuwan and Yu Yulin, the Liao family’s standing among the local warlords had risen considerably.

This was a caravan of over two hundred men, carrying a large amount of goods — and a large amount of goods meant the garrison troops guarding the pass stood to profit handsomely. So the two sides entered into a friendly negotiation: the Jurchen troops stationed at the pass made some show of difficulty, and the Liao representative leading the caravan wasted no time throwing out a great pile of treasures to bribe them — an urgency that, in itself, was rather unusual, but the Jurchen commander guarding Yanmen Pass, long accustomed to living off bribes and kickbacks from every direction, noticed nothing amiss in the moment.

The more than two hundred men passed through the gates of Yanmen Pass. Among them traveled a number of men who would, in time to come, carve out formidable reputations for themselves: Jamukha, Chilaun, Muqali, Jebe, Bo’orchu, Tolui, Khasar, and Börjigin Temüjin…

Still more cavalry waited quietly in the mountains south of Yanmen Pass…

This was the moment when the Jurchens’ rear defenses stood empty.

The tiger had bared its fangs. Before long, the spearhead of the Mongols would pierce straight through the entire Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, driving all the way to Yunzhong…