“…Those steppe people out there — they’re throwing corpses into the city.”

The sky hung heavy with gloom, dark clouds pressing steadily downward. In the old courtyard stood a rain shelter, beneath which boxes of every size were stacked; in a corner of the yard, firewood and straw were piled high, and beneath the eaves a stove burned, boiling water. Tang Minjie, dressed as a porter, a broad-brimmed hat on his head, sat beneath the eaves with a teacup in hand, speaking quietly with Lu Mingfang, exchanging news.

Lu Mingfang was dressed a little better than Tang Minjie, though his manner at the moment was fairly casual; he traveled the realm in the guise of a merchant, and with the steppe people’s sudden siege, Yunzhong Prefecture had become impossible to leave — the goods he had accumulated now sat piled uselessly in the courtyard as well.

“Throwing corpses?”

“There are heads, and bodies hacked into pieces, even organs — all wrapped up and thrown in. Some come with helmets still attached. Whatever the case, once they hit the ground, the stench is unbearable. These must be the commanders of the Jin relief forces who’ve been marching in these past days — the steppe people killed them, made captives dismember and package the bodies, left them out in the sun for a few days, then threw them into the city.” Tang Minjie removed his hat, staring down into his tea. “Those pampered young Jurchen nobles were absolutely furious once they saw the heads…”

“Throwing corpses into the city — are they trying to start a plague?”

“Won’t work.” Tang Minjie shook his head. “The bodies have been left out for days, so once they’re thrown in, they’re not easy to deal with, but it’s mostly just disgusting. Shi Li’ai has handled it properly — the corpses that get cleared out are cremated on the spot, and the outer garments worn by the men doing the clearing are soaked in boiling water first. I’ve shipped in some lime myself, scattered it along the base of the walls… They’re following our teacher’s old methods. Even if the steppe people really are trying to throw plague-infected corpses in, chances are they’ll be the first ones to catch it themselves.”

“…Have you got a clearer picture of the situation outside the city?”

“I did some digging.” Tang Minjie shook his head. “It seems even the Jurchens themselves aren’t entirely sure what’s going on. That old fox Shi Li’ai is steady as an old rock at the bottom of an outhouse. On the second day after the steppe people arrived, he sent men out to test them — and I hear they actually had the upper hand at first — but something must have caught his eye, because before long he called everyone back and forced the whole city to shut its gates and stay put. These past two days the steppe people have set up their trebuchets, and they’ve got Jin prisoners of war standing around them — they throw corpses, the men on the wall throw stones back in return, and it’s their own people getting smashed to bits, one batch after another…”

Tang Minjie brought the teacup to his lips, unable to hold back a chuckle. “Heh… those young hotheads must be absolutely furious, but with Shi Li’ai giving no orders, there’s nothing they can do…”

Lu Mingfang took a sip of tea. “Shi Li’ai only grows sharper with age — his judgment and foresight aren’t something to underestimate. He must have noticed something.”

“The two sides barely started fighting, and the first exchange went their way — and then suddenly they turned into a turtle hiding in its shell. Playing it this way leaves a big opening — there ought to be something we can use here later on, heh…” Tang Minjie turned to look at him. “What are you thinking on your end?”

“First, the steppe people’s objective,” Lu Mingfang said. “Yunzhong Prefecture has sealed itself off — news can’t get in from outside now, and nothing inside can get out either. Based on what information we’ve managed to piece together, this group of steppe raiders isn’t acting without a plan. A few years back they clashed with the Jurchens to the west and came away without much to show for it, then turned their attention toward the Western Xia instead. This time they’ve circled around into the Central Plains, and after breaking through Yanmen Pass they reached Yunzhong almost the very same day — and whatever they did on the way, it was enough to put Shi Li’ai on guard. All of this suggests they have some larger scheme in mind — this campaign isn’t being fought without purpose.”

Lu Mingfang went on. “So if they have a scheme, what exactly is it? First of all, the odds of them actually taking Yunzhong are slim. The Jin state may have sent tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of troops off on campaign, sounding grand as it is, but that doesn’t mean there’s no one left behind — there’s still plenty of talent among the nobility and the veteran soldiers. Pull together a few tens of thousands, even over a hundred thousand men from various regions, and that’s no great difficulty. Setting aside that these steppe people don’t even have proper siege equipment — even if they were somehow blessed with heaven-sent genius and managed, through some trick, to actually take Yunzhong, there’s no way they could hold it for long. If the steppe people were capable of pulling off this campaign from Yanmen Pass all the way to Yunzhong Prefecture, they must surely see this themselves. So if taking the city isn’t the goal, then what are they after…”

He counted off on his fingers. “Grain and supplies, war horses, manpower… or perhaps something even more critical. Their objective would tell us just how sophisticated their understanding of warfare really is. If it were me, I might set my sights first on the Grand Armory — and failing that, on one of the other supply depots and stockpile sites. The two nearest ones, Hongshan and Langlang, for instance, were both built by Zonghan specifically to store supplies, and are both heavily guarded — but if Yunzhong is threatened and reinforcements are drawn out to relieve it, those garrisons might well be pulled away from their posts… But the real question is, do these steppe people actually understand firearms and military equipment well enough for that…”

Tang Minjie watched him quietly.

Lu Mingfang continued. “If we understood what the steppe people are really after, we could probably predict how this whole war is going to unfold. We might be able to make contact with this group, but we’d need to be extremely cautious, and stay as low-profile as possible about it. What matters most right now is this — if the war between the steppe people and the Jurchens continues, the Han people trapped outside the city might just have a chance at survival. We could plan out a few routes in advance, and see whether we can save some of them while the two sides are too busy tearing each other apart to notice.”

Tang Minjie listened quietly to all this, then fell silent for a moment. “Why haven’t we considered the possibility of an alliance with them? Does your side know something about this that I don’t, old Lu?”

“Our teacher has spoken on this.”

“Hm?” Tang Minjie’s brow furrowed.

Lu Mingfang sat down, weighing his words carefully before speaking, then seemed to catch on, and gave Tang Minjie a knowing smile. “…Is that what you were really after from the start?”

A faint, sly gleam of amusement showed at the corner of Tang Minjie’s eyes as well. “When you see your enemy’s enemy, the first instinct, naturally, is that they could be a friend. When the steppe people first laid siege to the city, I actually wondered whether we might help them get the gates open — but the difficulty proved too great. As for the steppe people’s movements, I privately recalled something — a few years back, before our teacher revealed himself again after faking his death, he made a trip to the Western Xia. It occurred to me that these steppe raiders’ actions might have something to do with our teacher’s own arrangements — and I found myself wondering why you hadn’t already briefed me on what to do about it…”

His gaze was earnest as he went on. “Opening the gates carries enormous risk, but if anyone were to do it, I should by rights be the natural choice. I even began to wonder whether, on this particular matter, the two of you had simply stopped trusting me.”

Tang Minjie said all this with open sincerity, a smile in his eyes. Though he was known for schemes both cunning and ruthless, and could seem mad and terrifying at times, in front of his own people he was, as a rule, quite candid. Lu Mingfang smiled in turn. “Our teacher never gave any assignment concerning the steppe people.”

“Say that, and I understand.” Tang Minjie took a sip of his tea, and behind the cup his eyes turned faintly dangerous as thought worked behind them. “If our teacher had no part in this, and the steppe people’s actions are entirely their own doing, then that means there’s someone among this group out there with truly far-reaching vision, a genuine strategist… that’s a dangerous thing indeed.”

Having said this, he had clearly turned his full attention now toward the steppe riders outside the city. Then he turned back. “Right, you mentioned our teacher a moment ago.”

Lu Mingfang nodded. “The last time I went back to the southwest, I gave some thought to what our teacher was doing before he revealed himself again — after all, he did go to the Western Xia, which suggests he took the steppe peoples somewhat seriously. After I gave my report, I spoke with him about it for a while. My thinking was that since the Western Xia lies fairly close to us, if he had set anything in motion there, it might be useful for us to have some idea of it once it came within our reach. But he shook his head — he said he had left nothing behind in the Western Xia at all.”

“…That doesn’t sound like our teacher’s usual style at all,” Tang Minjie muttered, brow furrowing.

“There was one thing he said afterward that stuck with me. He said, the steppe people are our enemies — all we need to think about is how to defeat them. That’s why I say we need to be extremely cautious about making contact.”

Tang Minjie lowered his head, deep in thought for a long while; when he finally looked up, he spoke only after weighing his words carefully once more. “If our teacher really did say that, then he genuinely doesn’t want to play any game of allying with the distant against the near with the steppe people… that’s strange, though. Even granting that the Zhou dynasty fell partly from too much scheming, we’ve never exactly relied on clever tricks ourselves. When I studied under our teacher, he stressed again and again that victory is built up from countless small, accumulated calculations. He went to the Western Xia, yet made no move there at all — what could he have been weighing?”

Lu Mingfang smiled. “Our teacher never said he’d formed any alliance with the steppe people, but he never explicitly said we couldn’t make use of them either. If you have an idea, and can convince me of it, I’m willing to go along with it.”

Tang Minjie shook his head. “There may be some deeper reasoning behind our teacher’s thinking — I’ll ask him carefully about it next time I see him. For now, since there’s no explicit order either way, let’s proceed as we normally would — nothing too reckless where the risk is too great, but where the risk is manageable, we’ll do what needs doing. As for the matter of saving people you mentioned, old Lu, that’s something we absolutely should do. As for how to make contact, we’ll see. If there really is someone extraordinary among this group, it’s worth paying closer attention.”

Lu Mingfang nodded in agreement.

Tang Minjie had come into this conversation with a lingering doubt in his mind — the siege had already lasted ten days now, and an event of this scale would normally be the sort of thing worth fishing for advantage in the chaos. Lu Mingfang’s movements had seemed rather modest, and he had wondered whether some larger operation was already underway that he simply hadn’t been included in. Now that doubt had been laid to rest, and he felt considerably lighter for it, taking another sip of tea and finding himself smiling.

“Oh, right, old Lu.”

“Hm?”

“Do you think — maybe when our teacher and the others went to the Western Xia, some clueless steppe barbarians offended that lady of the Overlord Blade, and our teacher just decided to have them wiped out?”

“…That’s — you’re really not thinking about the bigger picture here, are you?”

“Fair enough.” Tang Minjie laughed. “If that really happened, in front of that lady of the Overlord Blade, I doubt many of those steppe barbarians would still be alive today.”

He paused. “And besides — if the steppe people really had offended our teacher, and he couldn’t retaliate right away, that would only mean he’d have left even more contingencies in place, not fewer.”

Only now did he truly work it through in his mind — if Ning Yi genuinely held some grudge against this group of steppe raiders, his attitude would never have simply been to let them go their own way; by now he would surely have laid out every scheme imaginable — allying with the distant against the near, opening trade, extending goodwill, drawing them in. Ning Yi had done nothing of the sort, and while this was strange indeed, Tang Minjie chose to keep his doubts to himself for now — there might well be some interesting explanation buried in all of it, and he found himself rather curious.

Having talked matters through this far, the two of them had, more or less, worked out a rough outline for what came next. Lu Mingfang planned to go find Chen Wenjun to gather more information; Tang Minjie, it seemed, still had something else on his mind, hesitating as he was about to leave. Lu Mingfang asked, “What is it?” Only then did he say, “You know Luo Ye in the army?”

“I know him. Mad Luo. One of the veterans who rose up with the Wurui Camp. He’s been asking us to help find a younger sister of his, I think… What about it?”

“…”

“Is there a lead? Is she alive? Dead?”

“…Never mind. I’ll confirm it first, and tell you after.” Tang Minjie hesitated a moment, then finally said this.

Lu Mingfang nodded. “All right.”

Tang Minjie said nothing further, and he did not press for more either. After all these years in the northern territories, he had seen every kind of thing there was to see. So much time had already passed since the humiliation of Jingping; the first wave of Han slaves taken north had, by now, almost entirely died out. News of this kind, good or bad, was in itself — regardless of its outcome — enough to break an ordinary person’s entire life. Until true and total victory arrived, the only way to endure it all was simply to swallow it down, again and again, without dwelling on it too closely — that was the only way to have any hope of staying whole.

The two of them left the courtyard, each heading off in a different direction.

Under that same sky, far to the southwest, the flames of war at Jianmen Pass still burned on unabated. And now, the great decisive battle between the Jin forces led by Wanyan Zonghan and the Seventh Huaxia Army led by Qin Shaoqian had already begun.