In April of the first year of the Wuzhenxing era—the thirteenth year since Ning Yi had risen in fury to slay his sovereign and raise the Huaxia banner—as early summer arrived, countless assumptions long taken for granted across this world were being violently overturned.
The Jin state’s fourth great southern campaign, now nearly two years in progress, was drawing toward its conclusion. During this same span, the Southwestern campaign—seemingly marginal, yet in truth a matter watched by countless people across the realm—was also nearing its end. The Wu dynasty had fallen and collapsed under the assault of the Jin’s Eastern Route Army; the tragedy of nearly the entire realm kneeling before the Jurchens filled people with grief and regret, yet it had not, in truth, come as much of a surprise to most.
Throughout the whole course of the Jin–Wu war, the Wu dynasty had at times acted with folly, and at other times mounted tragic resistance—but whether before the war or after, people understood clearly that in this great conflict, Wu was the true underdog. The underdog’s defeat was a cause for lament and heartbreak, but nearly everyone across the realm had, at one point or another, at least imagined this outcome.
As for the Black Banner in the southwest, people had, for a long time, been reluctant to even look at it directly. The people of Wu held an impression of it that was, more often than not, skewed. Even among the many forces that had long traded and cooperated with the southwest, few were inclined to rate very highly this small population of a few hundred thousand, once huddled away in the mountains of Liangshan—and even that “very highly” amounted, at most, to putting them on par with Wu.
Even within the Jin state, the vast majority had never seriously weighed the so-called threat of the “Black Banner.” Although the great battle years earlier in the northwest had once cost Jin two great generals, in the end that campaign had still concluded with a Jin victory and a massacre of the northwest. The only ones who truly saw the danger posed by the Black Banner were Zonghan, Xiyin, and a handful of others at the top of the Jin leadership—and even their thinking remained rooted in “better late than never.” By the time of the fourth southern campaign, with the Eastern Route Army striking at Wu and the Western Route Army setting its sights on the southwest, once Zonghan and Xiyin were paying such close attention, no one else felt the need to worry much further about the Black Banner’s hidden threat.
Zongfu and Zongbi’s campaign against southern Wu might well end in failure and return empty-handed—but the target of the Western Route Army, that band of Wu bandits hiding in the mountains, essentially had no way of escaping.
People watched the sweeping clash between Jin and Wu, watched the process of Southern Wu’s disintegration and collapse, and toward the advance of the Western Route Army, most held a fairly comfortable attitude. If the war in Wu could sustain wave after wave of thrilling wagers, the developments of the southwestern campaign, for a long stretch of time, could only support wagers on timing: when would Zonghan break Zizhou, when would he break Chengdu, when would he crush the so-called Huaxia Fifth Army, when would he return home in triumph… By the beginning of this year, such wagers might have needed some adjustment—but on the whole, the broad direction had not changed much.
Until the demon of the southwest, like a magician turning over his cards one after another, began revealing what he had truly been holding.
No one had expected that the Black Banner Army—confined to its corner for so long, with a population base of only a few hundred thousand for most of that time—could hold within it such tremendous power. In the latter half of last year, when the Western Route Army entered Jiange, that demon’s hand had still, for the most part, turned over its cards slowly and calmly, one at a time; Zonghan, leading the Western Route Army, believed he faced nothing more than a small pond, one he was gradually wading deeper into.
But this year, especially from February onward, the cards in that demon’s hand began coming faster—each one more violent than the last. The small pond began to shake; magma was gathering beneath the surface, and Zonghan and the others, already deep within it, found themselves facing what felt like surging lava rushing toward them—people who had prepared to deal with a small pond instead found themselves facing a volcanic eruption.
From the defeat at Wangyuan Bridge in February to the running pursuit throughout March, every assumption people had held shattered before their eyes. Most had believed the Black Banner was simply another unruly rebel force within Wu—like Fang La, like Tian Hu, at most a fiercer, more extreme version of the two—but no one had expected that what the Black Banner was now displaying had already surpassed even the terrifying rise of the once “invincible” Jurchens.
Most terrifying of all was that this power still showed no sign of a floor. If the firearms that had appeared in the southwest in February and March could be dismissed as a momentary breakthrough built on clever contrivances, then by April, at the decisive battle in Hanzhong on which Zonghan had staked his last hopes, people were shown, with startling clarity, a scene that surpassed even the power of such ingenious contrivances.
On the nineteenth of April—in the records and summaries of later generations—this was the moment the terrifying power of a modern military system and a modern military faith were truly, fully displayed. As Qin Shaoqian led the Seventh Army charging forward, the Jurchen forces, once holding to the mindset of “an army of the doomed” even while their individual soldiers remained at the very peak of the era’s fighting ability, were caught utterly off guard and smashed brutally to the ground. This was the performance of twenty thousand Huaxia troops against ninety thousand Jin soldiers.
Astonishing fighting will, superb battlefield coordination, and an extraordinarily high degree of organization—when made manifest in open combat, the resulting disparity in combat power was almost that of a steel blade cutting through bean curd. On the afternoon of the nineteenth of April, the vanguard force led by Pucha, as if struck by some colossal grinding wheel, collapsed uncontrollably under a large-scale decapitation tactic that they had never seen coming.
Before this engagement, this had been a force that was, in its own era, iron-hard and unyielding; but that iron was, in the end, ground to pieces right there. Wanyan Shaba, arriving soon after, could almost hear the crisp sound of that iron shattering.
In the many years that followed, evaluations of the Jin army’s performance in this Battle of Hanzhong would often diverge along two lines.
One view held that, by this point, the Jurchen army was already in decline—especially after the defeat in the southwest, its morale having collapsed into a genuine mess—and so the combat power the Huaxia Seventh Army displayed here should be discounted somewhat accordingly. In Qin Shaoqian’s own words at the time, it amounted, more or less, to eating the cold leftovers the Fifth Army had left behind.
The other view held that, in contrast to the peak combat power the Huaxia Army displayed here—rooted in its modern military system—the Jin troops, under the leadership of Zonghan and the others, had also, within a certain span of time, summoned forth something close to the peak strength a feudal army could achieve. This was the last remaining pride of a Jurchen military that had swept across the realm for over thirty years; after the defeat in the southwest, as their difficult march north continued, the further setback at Hanzhong had at last stirred something of a doomed-army resolve within them—during the retreat through the southwest, awareness of being a “doomed army” had perhaps existed only among a small circle of senior nobles and generals like Balishu, but by the time they reached Hanzhong, even the middle and lower ranks had gradually come to feel the very real fear of possibly never making it home.
This sense of being a doomed army had, to some degree, spurred their fighting strength. And among the high command, several generals gave performances that were, in fact, remarkably striking—almost as if they were burning themselves to produce that light. Wanyan Shaba, for instance, after the failed attempt to rescue Pucha, chose to consolidate his position and dig in defensively, and on the second day, during a desperate cavalry raid, gave the Huaxia Army no small amount of trouble.
But the most striking response of all, perhaps, came from Wanyan Zonghan himself that night. Upon receiving the message relayed by Shaba’s personal guard, this Jurchen elder general, who had campaigned across the realm for over forty years, silently and swiftly mobilized his forces, preparing for a night raid or even an ambush counterattack. At the time, thirty-odd li away, facing off against the Huaxia Seventh Army’s Second Division was Gao Qingyi; the fighting there raged fiercely, great fires even breaking out among the hills—but this later proved to be a Huaxia feint.
Qin Shaoqian, leading the Second Division’s main force, circled dozens of li through the mountain paths that night, launching an attack on Zonghan’s main camp in the early hours of the twentieth, at the moment when men are most exhausted and prone to sleep. Zonghan’s response that night was as precise as a wild beast’s instincts. He himself did not sleep the entire night, and had his camp’s officers and men prepared to meet the assault as well. The Huaxia Army’s attack subsequently fell into a trap—this was, for the Jin side, the most brilliantly executed moment of the entire Hanzhong campaign.
Yet the Huaxia Army’s own quality of troops proved astonishing as well. The company responsible for the forward assault was the first to sense something amiss, and began splitting off to scout—this prevented the Jurchen ambush from fully encircling the Huaxia main force. In the first quarter-hour after the engagement began, the Huaxia vanguard was, for a moment, at a disadvantage under cannon fire and fire-attack, but soon mounted a stubborn resistance and broke out.
In the fighting that followed, both sides displayed extraordinary fighting will. Zonghan and Han Qixian both went personally to the front lines to direct the battle, and upon discovering the enemy’s command core, a number of Huaxia companies and squads caught in the partial encirclement even launched assaults toward the enemy’s core position. This came at a certain cost, without yielding results. As the Huaxia forces withdrew, the Jin troops, their morale high, pressed the pursuit—only to run, not long after, into a Huaxia counter-charge, in which over a thousand Jin soldiers were routed in the darkness.
Compared to the losses the Huaxia Army had suffered upon falling into the ambush, the subsequent fighting instead cost the Jin side even more casualties. Zonghan had, by now, come to understand just how terrifying this Huaxia army’s combat power truly was, and from then on began building layer upon layer of defenses.
That night’s fighting also seemed to bear out what Ning Yi had said before: the Huaxia Army had, indeed, already attained astonishing combat quality, and had, through its staff office, pooled the collective wisdom of many minds—but in on-the-spot command and tactical execution during actual battle, it still fell somewhat short of Jin generals who had fought and survived through decades of trials across the realm. Pang Liu’an’s loss of Huangming County had stemmed from this very reason, and Qin Shaoqian’s failed night raid this evening arose from it as well.
Still, if the Jin generals excelled in tactics, what the Huaxia Army excelled in was strategy. Ning Yi was skilled at overall planning, and the modern military discipline combined with the brutal training regimen had already forged the Seventh Army to a standard of quality sufficient to smooth over the odd tactical flaw. Even if a thousand men were to surround five hundred, those five hundred needed only to turn around and shatter the thousand instead.
After that night, Qin Shaoqian split off half his forces to rush north, coordinating with the First Division’s advance to strike jointly at Wanyan Shaba; Shaba, straining to hold his ground, tried to use his artillery advantage to drag the situation into a large-scale positional defensive battle. Meanwhile, Gao Qingyi and Zonghan struck camp and moved north, with Qin Shaoqian leading his troops to strike at the center. Zonghan mobilized a great number of mid- and lower-ranking officers, launching wave after wave of fierce and prolonged clashes against the Huaxia Army.
Faced with the astonishing combat power the Huaxia Army had already displayed, Zonghan did not choose to retreat—retreat, at this point, would truly have been the road to ruin. Though the Huaxia Seventh Army’s combat power was already extremely formidable, its total numbers came to no more than twenty thousand; this old Jurchen general understood that gritting his teeth and grinding the enemy down through attrition was the only way out.
He, Han Qixian, Gao Qingyi, and the others did everything in their power to maintain the army’s cohesion, dividing their still-considerable numbers into small-scale units, launching continuous and frequent attacks against the Huaxia Army wave after wave—by this point, they were already losing more often than winning in localized engagements, but as long as they avoided a massed decisive clash on the scale of Hubaogang, Zonghan had resolved that even relying on numerical superiority alone, he would grind this Huaxia army down until it broke.
Across a stretch of a hundred li, the two armies crisscrossed in confused fashion, contesting point by point, hill by hill. The Huaxia troops fought stubbornly, but under the direction of Zonghan, Gao Qingyi, and the others, the Jurchen forces were densely deployed and swift to respond. Whenever one of their units was broken, two more would be sent in to replace it; break those two, and two more still would be waiting behind them… The Jurchen style of warfare had always been one of brute force—for forty years, one round of rousing morale followed by one charge had been enough to settle the vast majority of enemies across the realm. But after forty years of holding the army together, Wanyan Zonghan now found himself, unavoidably, facing an entirely different kind of test—and no one had expected he would meet this test in quite the way he did.
An army of tens of thousands was, by his hand, all but carved into units of roughly a hundred men each, and Zonghan threw these units about like pieces on a chessboard. Some units received unconditional orders to hold at all costs; others were given more flexible commands. Every meng’an and mouke in the army received relatively specific instructions directly from him. There was always some inherent delay in the transmission of battlefield information, but Zonghan and the others relied on years of battlefield experience, together with the responsiveness of the other senior officers, to anticipate how the battle would unfold.
Some of his arrangements fell through, but the broad direction of the fighting was, for the most part, anticipated in advance by this old man. In several high-intensity combat zones, Jurchen reinforcements arrived in an unbroken stream, wearing down even the Huaxia Army until it, too, showed signs of fatigue.
According to records made years later, some Jurchen soldiers testified that during these first days of the Hanzhong decisive battle, Wanyan Zonghan “did not sleep for three days, his eyes bloodshot, his hair and beard turned entirely white.” This old man, who carried half of the Jin state’s hopes on his shoulders, drove himself to the very limit.
As for the Huaxia Army, after their initial night raid failed, they shifted to a more methodical and composed style of fighting. Although the intensity of the combat remained extremely high, with sorties, engagements, splitting of forces, and repositioning occurring with great frequency, the planning coming out of the staff office was never thrown into disarray. The twenty thousand men maintained coordination and cohesion across the larger strategic picture, and every attack sought to break the enemy at the smallest possible cost—since Wanyan Zonghan had already shown himself to be cautious in his responses, leaving no opening for a direct strike at his command, the Huaxia Army simply resolved to become countless small blades, wearing the enemy down through one localized victory after another, chipping away until their spirit broke entirely.
Around Hanzhong, over a million “Han troops”—or perhaps merely their commanders—held their breath, watching this mad and ferocious clash unfold. But the news changed even faster than their capacity to grasp reality could keep up. From the nineteenth to the morning of the twenty-third of April, those watching from outside still had no way of clearly discerning how the fires of war west of Hanzhong were truly burning. At most, they knew only that the Jin’s veteran generals were burning themselves to the utmost, trying to consume the terrifying enemy before them, while the Huaxia Army’s assaults came down like hammer blow after hammer blow, trying to extinguish the great Jin fire—both sides’ fighting had already gone beyond all past precedent…
That same day, around noon, a battalion of the Huaxia Seventh Army, disguised as routed Jurchen troops, seized the southern gate of Hanzhong by trickery. That afternoon, the focal point of contention between the two armies shifted here. What had originally been a fire burning west of Hanzhong suddenly seemed to spread; in an instant, the whole of Hanzhong itself became a sea of flame—