Carp swam past the quiet rockery in the pond; in the courtyard garden, rich with cultivated atmosphere, the silence lingered for a long while.
Looking in through the open window, the two white-haired men of consequence had both fallen silent for a long time after receiving the news.
The realm had already been plunged into fierce chaos for some time. Even near Xicheng County, a campaign against the Black Banner was still underway; the fighting at Hanzhong had been fierce, but that it would end sooner or later was never in question. In his lectures over the past few days, when discussing the great trends of the realm, Dai Mengwei had, using his rhetorical skill, even mentioned phrases like “even should the Black Banner prevail…” — to demonstrate his foresight, so that once the curtain fell on the war, no gap would be found in his words.
But considering such an outcome in one’s mind was one thing; the manner and timing of its arrival was quite another. By now, everyone had come to regard the Huaxia Seventh Army as a vengeful, fearless beast of an army. Though hard to picture in concrete terms, many had already prepared themselves mentally for the idea that the Huaxia Seventh Army might hold its own even against the very army that had risen with Aguda himself.
And yet, even having braced themselves for such a possibility, to hear that in the space of a single day it had utterly crushed the entire Jurchen Western Route Army — Nianhan’s hundred thousand men together with Wanyan Xiyin’s reinforcements — defeating both Nianhan and Xiyin at once, was a result almost impossible to accept even as a matter of superstition.
Nianhan was no mediocre commander — he was the most brilliant military strategist in the entire realm. And though Xiyin had long occupied the position of deputy, his reputation as “Gushen” made him, in the eyes of the many Wu Dynasty scholars who revered ingenious stratagems and worshipped the likes of Zhuge Liang, perhaps an even more formidable figure than Nianhan himself. Commanding from the rear, he had engaged in several campaigns of strategy; though he had never faced that demon of the southwest directly, his remote maneuvers had, on several occasions, displayed a grandeur of vision that commanded admiration. And yet, arriving at the battlefield in full strength and confidence, he still could not turn the tide? Could not overpower the exhausted Black Banner troops who had already been holding on through four or five days of fighting? And on top of that, allowed Qin Shaoqian to crush Nianhan’s main force head-on?
An overwhelming reality of this magnitude could strike people with an impact beyond imagining — indeed, in that instant, both Liu Guangshi and Dai Mengwei might well have felt, if only for a moment, the urge to simply drop to their knees. But both were, after all, men who had lived through countless great events; Dai Mengwei had even staked the lives of his closest kin on this very gamble. After a long moment of contemplation, their expressions shifting, they both chose, in the end, to suppress the incomprehensible reality before them and turn instead to considering how to respond to it.
“Lord Dai…”
Liu Guangshi was the first to speak, his voice a little hoarse. He paused, then said: “Lord Dai… with this news arrived, the realm is about to change.”
Dai Mengwei nodded. “Indeed…”
“…The battle at Hanzhong was chaotic beyond description. This nephew had already speculated about the possibility of a Black Banner victory, but at this moment, I must confess — for the outcome to be decided as early as yesterday is somewhat astonishing… Xiyin arrived at the Hanzhong battlefield the evening before last, and battle was joined yesterday morning. Nianhan’s side must surely have believed they held the upper hand, and so they arrayed themselves openly for a head-on confrontation — but this also means that the Black Banner Seventh Army, having already fought for days on end and being far fewer in number, crushed them utterly in open battle, at the very moment when the Tushan Guard’s fighting spirit was at its highest… And afterward, in pursuing and killing Nianhan, they even cut down Sheyema in person — not to mention everything else…”
Liu Guangshi sorted through the situation in his mind, choosing his words with care: “News like this is enough to frighten you and me — and it will frighten others too. Right now there are still three thousand Black Banner troops fighting near Chuanlinpu, and to the east of Xicheng County, armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands are gathering… Lord Dai, the Black Banner may be unrighteous, but its fighting strength is real, and sooner or later it will run rampant across the realm. This nephew has come here having already set aside all thought of life and death — I only wonder whether Lord Dai’s resolve remains the same.”
Dai Mengwei closed his eyes, then opened them again, his tone calm. “Lord Liu, everything this old man said before was never falsehood. Judging by the great trend, it is inevitable that within a few years, our Wu Dynasty will be no match for the Black Banner. Having dared to offend the Black Banner here, this old man long ago set aside thoughts of life and death. Indeed, judging by the greater trend, with the millions south of here having only just escaped their cage, if this old man were killed by the Black Banner at Xicheng County, it would only awaken the scholars of the realm all the more. If the Black Banner wishes to kill me, this old man has long been prepared…”
His expression had returned entirely to calm as he looked at Liu Guangshi. “Of course, empty words alone are hard to make people believe — but let Lord Liu watch how events unfold from here.”
Liu Guangshi waved a hand.
“These words from Lord Dai are enough! Since Lord Dai has been so candid, I too will speak plainly.” He looked up at the still-tranquil sky outside the courtyard. “Now that the Black Banner has won such a great victory, from this moment on, disturbances are bound to arise near Xicheng County as well. Lord Dai has taken over more than ten military units from the Jurchen, but not enough time has passed — there will be no shortage of men harboring their own hidden agendas. These men, having once surrendered to the Jin, may in the future just as readily surrender to the Black Banner as a matter of course — at the very least, the fighting at Chuanlinpu will surely be unable to continue. Many preparations must be made starting now…”
He continued: “Of these dozen or so units, how many can Lord Dai truly command, how many are you truly familiar with? Whatever understanding or promises existed before, they must all be recalculated from this moment on. Fortunately, Lord Dai’s virtue runs deep, and this nephew is also on good terms with the leaders of some of these forces. If we join hands, we may yet be able to persuade the various parties quickly and keep the overall situation from collapsing… Some of these men had already been in contact and planning with me a month ago; however much they may fear the Black Banner, if they see the two of us standing together, they will surely not abandon the cause of righteousness — men like Yuan Jinwen, Hou Xiao…”
As Liu Guangshi spoke, his pace of speech quickened. Though he had spent his life guarding his own skin and had suffered more than his share of defeats, to have reached this position his thinking and abilities naturally far surpassed the ordinary man. The Black Banner Seventh Army’s record of victory was certainly enough to frighten many, but in such a brutal campaign, the Black Banner’s own losses had also been immense, and it would need years to recover. Dai Mengwei alone, or Liu Guangshi alone, could not possibly stand against the Black Banner — but a large group of allied forces, scheming to seize the Central Plains once the Jurchen had withdrawn, presented a genuinely tempting prospect, full of advantages scattered everywhere. Compared to surrendering to the Black Banner, such a prospect held far greater appeal.
After all, however strong the Black Banner might appear now, the possibility that it was strong yet brittle still existed — and might well be considerable. Moreover, surrendering to the Black Banner after it had crushed the Jurchen Western Route Army — setting aside whether they would even be well received, or whether there might be a reckoning — the sheer strictness of the Black Banner’s military discipline, its merciless rule of advance-only-no-retreat on the battlefield, would far exceed what many men of privileged, comfortable backgrounds from the great clans could endure.
Surrendering to the Black Banner now, at the height of its victory, would mean the surrendered troops became mere pawns entirely at its mercy. But if instead they followed Dai and Liu in taking the Central Plains and building it up over several years, life would be far more comfortable in the near term — and even years later, should the Black Banner still not have fallen, surrendering only after a valiant last stand on the battlefield would earn them far greater respect from the Black Banner than surrendering now. Committing crimes and then accepting amnesty — but at present, with the Black Banner riding so high and their own side lacking the strength to cause enough trouble to matter, such an amnesty was simply not available to them.
Liu Guangshi and Dai Mengwei understood these calculations perfectly well — though naturally, some things could not be spoken aloud. For the moment, so long as they could persuade the crowd with appeals to righteousness, once the Central Plains were taken and reforms carried out in earnest, there would be ample opportunity, in due time, to weed out the weak and useless among their ranks and rebuild anew.
At this moment, outside the courtyard the sunlight lay tranquil, and a light breeze passed through the hall. Both men knew they had reached the most critical juncture, and so they now laid their cards on the table with as much candor as they could manage. Even as they discussed matters urgently, they had already summoned attendants to carry word to the various armies — setting aside the report from Hanzhong for the moment, they focused first on spreading news of Liu and Dai’s decision to join forces to everyone as quickly as possible. This way, by the time the news from Hanzhong spread, anyone tempted toward duplicity might pause and reconsider before acting.
Under the sunlight, the riders carrying the message passed through the bustling streets of the county town, and an anxious tension began to ferment beneath the surface of the seemingly peaceful atmosphere. By the fifteen-minute mark past four in the afternoon, a scout came in from outside the town, reporting signs of unusual movement in a certain military camp to the east.
Liu Guangshi left the town by carriage, passing through crowds of people kneeling and chatting, intent on persuading the various parties as quickly as possible to help Dai Mengwei stabilize the situation. But broadly speaking, he had come out ahead in this whole affair — because with the Black Banner victorious, Xicheng County stood first in the line of fire, and Dai Mengwei was the one most urgently in need of relief. Where his true strength within the army lay, and exactly which units he genuinely controlled — under these circumstances, he could not afford to hold anything back. In other words, Dai Mengwei had truly shown him his hand, while his own efforts to network with and control the various factions could remain, to some degree, undisclosed.
With this in hand, even if Bianliang were eventually recovered and a new court had to rely on this old man, Liu Guangshi’s own standing within that court, and his control over it, would still outrank Dai Mengwei’s.
As the carriage picked up speed, he ran through the gains and losses of this whole affair in his mind, plotting his next moves, before throwing himself with characteristic swiftness and decisiveness into the “battlefield” at which he most excelled.
At this moment, it was as though fire and turmoil were beginning to smolder up from beneath the ground of Xicheng County itself. Most people had no idea of how far it would spread.
When the news of the outcome of the Hanzhong battle reached him, Ning Yi stood on a hilltop, silent for a long while.
It was already the morning of the twenty-sixth of the fourth month. Due to poor communication during the march, the first wave of scouts sent south the previous night had missed the Huaxia Army heading north and had likely already reached Sword Pavilion by now; it was the second wave of messengers who found Ning Yi’s column, bringing with them relatively detailed news.
At this moment the wind rolled the clouds along, and it looked as though rain might fall at any time. On the hillside, the Huaxia Army troops marched at a run — this elite force of over two thousand men, since leaving Zhaohua, had been advancing at a pace of over sixty li a day, all while actually maintaining enough reserve strength to fight along the way, since Nianhan and Xiyin were both formidable enemies, and it was hard to be certain whether they might make a desperate, all-or-nothing attempt to ambush Ning Yi along the road and reverse the outcome of the battle.
The straight-line distance from Zhaohua to Hanzhong was over two hundred sixty li, with the actual road distance exceeding four hundred. Ning Yi and Qu Zhengyan had left Zhaohua on the twenty-third; in theory, even moving at their fastest, they would not arrive before the twenty-ninth at the earliest — of course, if they were willing to push themselves to the limit, marching over one hundred twenty li a day, these two thousand-odd men could certainly manage it. But before the widespread adoption of firearms, arriving at the battlefield after such an exhausting forced march would have been pointless — they would have arrived with nothing left to give.
Qin Shaoqian had begun leading the Seventh Army into battle on the nineteenth of the fourth month, and the very first round of fighting had already reached a white-hot intensity. Ning Yi and Qu Zhengyan’s march north was, in many ways, more a matter of doing what they could and leaving the rest to fate — much of the psychological preparation for this had already been made in advance.
Whatever the outcome, victory or defeat, both had been possible.
But confirmation of the news still delivered a tremendous shock, as it always did. Ning Yi stood on the mountainside, enveloped by an overwhelming surge of emotion. Years of martial training meant running and marching held no difficulty for him, but at this moment he felt drained of strength, letting his emotions take hold of him as he stood there, stunned, for a long while.
As the victor, to savor this moment — even to lose himself in it — was a right he was entitled to. More than a decade had passed since the very first moment the Jurchen came south. Back then, Ning Ji had only just been born; when he had set out to march north, his family, including Tan’er, had all tried to stop him. Though he had touched upon many things in his life, when it came to military affairs and warfare he had always felt himself lacking — as the tide of events swept forward, he had simply gritted his teeth and pressed on.
After more than a decade of struggle, Nianhan and Xiyin had finally been crushed.
After Sheyema was killed outside Hanzhong, the remaining Jurchen commanders had escorted Nianhan in flight toward Hanzhong, while Xiyin — the only one among them still capable of fighting — built defenses in and around Hanzhong and mobilized boats in preparation for escape. The pursuing army pressed all the way into Hanzhong; that night, the resistance of the Jurchen had lit up nearly half the city, even as large numbers of terrified Jurchen troops fled for their lives. Xiyin and the others eventually gave up the fight, escorting Nianhan and part of the main force onto boats heading east, leaving only a small force behind to gather what stragglers they could and flee.
Across the entire Hanzhong battlefield, the routed and scattered Jin forces numbered in the tens of thousands. The Huaxia Army forced some to surrender, but in the end had to abandon pursuit and annihilation of the majority. In truth, in this brutal battle, the Huaxia Seventh Army had already lost over a third of its own men, with many more scattered and separated in the chaos — the exact numbers were still being tallied, and as of the twenty-fifth there had not yet even been a chance to count the wounded, light or severe.
Once Nianhan had fled, the Seventh Army no longer had the strength left to pursue.
The brutality of the fighting could never be fully captured on a small sheet of paper.
Qu Zhengyan walked over from nearby. Ning Yi handed him the report; after reading it, Qu Zhengyan almost unconsciously pumped his fist, then stood there stunned for a moment himself before turning to Ning Yi. “So… this is what we expected all along. After this battle…”
“Too many people died,” Ning Yi said.
Qu Zhengyan found himself somewhat at a loss for how to respond to this. War, of course, brought casualties — the Seventh Army, with fewer than twenty thousand men, had crushed Nianhan and Xiyin’s hundred-thousand-strong army, killing beyond count. Such a price was cruel, no doubt, but if this price had not been paid, that would have been naive in the extreme. As he thought this through, he heard Ning Yi add: “…The ones who should have died didn’t.” Only then did he understand that Ning Yi’s mind had drifted to someone else entirely — though as to who, there was no need to guess too hard at this point.
He said, “Should we have the column stop and rest, and tell them the news?”
Ning Yi shook his head.
“Keep moving. Treat it as a training march.”
With that, he broke into a light run toward the front of the column. Banners fluttered as the long line of troops crossed mountains and ridges. In the distant sky, the clouds churned, threatening rain, but for now the sky was clear, sunlight pouring down from above.
And so the column continued marching for several more days beneath clouds and occasional rain. On the twenty-ninth of the fourth month, Ning Yi arrived near Hanzhong. As he crested a hillside, Qin Shaoqian came forward to meet him with his men — still one-eyed, still wrapped in bandages, his wounds not yet healed, his hair disheveled — yet amid the smell of medicine, his grin was bold and hearty as he extended his uninjured right hand toward Ning Yi.
“We won. What do you think?”
“Nothing to say except that you look dashing.”
There was a hint of a sigh in Ning Yi’s words as the two men embraced. After a moment, Qin Shaoqian reached up to wipe his eyes, then put an arm around Ning Yi’s shoulder, and the group made their way toward the nearby camp.
The drums and gongs of victory were already sounding.
…
The moment he arrived, Ning Yi went to visit the wounded in the field hospital, then attended a meeting to review and report on the state of the battle — a summary and account of the situation not only at Hanzhong but across the surrounding several hundred li. Days’ worth of developments across half the realm had piled up together, and this first round of reporting was chaotic and packed tight with information.
Ning Yi spent most of the day in meetings, gaining a broad overview of the entire situation, his mind growing weary by the end. As evening approached, he sat down on a slope outside the camp. The setting sun had not yet turned red; nearby lay the camp, and not far beyond, Hanzhong. The traces of the fierce fighting had already largely faded from view — the wounded lay resting in the camp, while those who had died were now gone forever. And all this had happened only a few days ago. Such an awareness stirred a wave of melancholy. Ning Yi could only imagine that the very ground he now sat on had, only days before, witnessed the most ferocious clashes imaginable.
Qin Shaoqian came up from nearby, waving off his attendants, and stood beside him. “We won a great victory — we should be more festive about it.”
“Too many people died who should have lived, even without this battle at Hanzhong…”
“Without this battle, they would have suffered for the rest of their lives… These twenty thousand men of the Seventh Army were trained by extreme methods from the start — every drop of their blood and effort was wrung out of them, meant to be spent living for this very battle, living for revenge. After the war in the southwest, we had already proven to the realm the strength of the Huaxia Army — but without this battle, these twenty thousand men of the Seventh Army could not have gone on living. They might have turned into vengeful demons, disrupting the order of the realm. With this great victory now won, those who survived may finally be able to live properly…”
Qin Shaoqian said this, fell silent for a moment, then patted Ning Yi on the shoulder. “There’s no need for me to say these things — you already understand them perfectly well in your heart. Besides, the reason Nianhan and Xiyin were willing to commit to a decisive battle was precisely because you couldn’t reach Hanzhong in time. If you had arrived, they would have withdrawn; only because you hadn’t come could this battle happen at all. So no matter how you look at it, this had to be a battle the Seventh Army fought and won on its own. And this outcome — it’s excellent. I’m genuinely gratified. My father and elder brother, if their spirits are watching from above, would be gratified too.”
Ning Yi remained silent for a while, then smiled. “If old Qin’s spirit is watching from above, I imagine he’d want to fight me himself.”
“So what if he did? You’re already unmatched under heaven — he wouldn’t be able to beat you.”
“You have a point there.”
Ning Yi answered thus, and Qin Shaoqian sat down beside him — just as they had, many years ago, on the fifteenth of the eighth month, when Zongwang and Guo Yaoshi had come charging in and Qin Shaoqian was about to lead his troops out to meet them. They had sat together on that same grassy slope back then, with the crimson glow of sunset before them. Today was the twenty-ninth of the fourth month, in the first year of the Zhenxing era.
From the nearby camp came the sound of soldiers singing. The two men listened for a while before Qin Shaoqian spoke up.
“So what’s next… shall we make someone emperor?”
Everything now seemed within reach.
(The chapter number is fittingly apt — it happens to correspond to the hexagram line: “Nine in the fifth place: the flying dragon is in the heavens.”)