The sound of the night watchman’s drum drifted in from outside. Chi Yi spoke softly, “Your Majesty, it is time to retire for the night.”
Wen Yanran nodded. Attendants nearby stepped forward to gather the books and scrolls from the wooden desk and moved aside the candles.
“Tao Jing has likely arrived in Lai’an several days ago. On my behalf, deliver a message to Minister Zhong to expedite the transportation of supplies from the rear. As for General Tao, he may now set out as well.”
Lai’an was situated at the border between Tai Province and Dan Province, holding particular strategic significance. Tao Jing had been sent ahead with the vanguard to garrison the area and construct barracks. Among the officers and soldiers accompanying him were many veterans who had served under Tao Jia. In this era, military positions were often passed down through bloodlines. As the direct descendant of Tao Jia, even if he had never commanded troops before, Tao Jing naturally held a certain degree of authority within this force.
Both Chi Yi and Zhang Luo, serving by the Emperor’s side, were well aware that no correspondence had yet arrived from Lai’an. However, they had long been accustomed to the Emperor’s foresight. Since Her Majesty declared that the troops had arrived, then they must have arrived.
Wen Yanran remained unaware of her attendants’ thoughts. For her, keeping track of the vanguard’s movements was no real difficulty. Ever since her transmigration, the system – which had mostly resembled a decorative façade – finally proved its worth. It clearly displayed the movements of her forces on the [War Sandbox]…
Fifteen minutes later.
Zhong Zhiwei, still on duty in the camp, listened to the Emperor’s message, and a glimmer of understanding flashed in her eyes.
The military commander beside her looked somewhat puzzled. Zhong Zhiwei explained, “Her Majesty once discussed matters of the Western Tribes with Senior General Tao and has a deep understanding of the local situation. Although Tao Jing advanced with remarkable speed, Prefect Wang is also a shrewd and experienced strategist. Furthermore, Lai’an’s position is crucial. While Young General Tao has likely reached Lai’an by now, he most likely cannot enter the city and must instead encamp outside its walls. Therefore, we must transport more supplies there to facilitate the construction of barracks on-site.”
In the military camp outside Lai’an.
“Prefect Wang truly lives up to her reputation as the Tiger Might General who once shook Tai Province,” remarked Tao Jing. The title “Tiger Might General” was one Wang You had arrogated to herself years ago, taking advantage of the turmoil caused by the indigenous rebellion in Tai Province.
Tao Jing had indeed been unable to enter Lai’an. Although the four clans of Tai Province were caught up in internal strife and conflict, Wang You was ultimately a decisive woman. Upon learning that the Jianping army was stationed at Shangxing Pass, she immediately dispatched forces to occupy Lai’an. As a result, Tao Jing had no choice but to set up camp outside the city. Fortunately, internal instability in Tai Province allowed him to proceed methodically with the construction of the barracks.
Due to his family’s decline, Tao Jing, despite being born into a military lineage, possessed a remarkably steady temperament. Learning from the lessons of his elders’ past, he was committed to a cautious and steady approach. Particularly now, fighting far from home, he left behind a contingent of troops to build barracks at each stage of his advance into Tai Province. This ensured that his forces could maintain communication and support between the front and rear lines.
Some of the accompanying officers harbored reservations about Tao Jing’s methods. There were even those who believed that both the Tao father and son had been cowed by Wang You. After all, had Tao Jing not been so cautious, he might have reached Lai’an before Tai Province could react. To quell dissent and steady morale, Tao Jing had even executed a military commander.
Once settled in the camp, Tao Jing promptly dispatched a messenger to Shangxing Pass.
A subordinate came forward to seek orders: “Young General, what should we do next?”
Tao Jing replied, “For now, strengthen our vigilance, improve the camp’s defenses, and await my father’s arrival.” He added, “There is no need for excessive concern on your part. Her Majesty has already reached a clear decision on this matter.”
The Sovereign commanded immense authority. Since Tao Jing attributed the strategy to the Emperor’s will, no matter their personal opinions, everyone was bound to express their support.
Tao Jia arrived with remarkable speed. In fact, before Tao Jing’s letter even reached Shangxing Pass, Wen Yanran – who had already grasped the frontline situation through the [War Sandbox] – had dispatched him. Tao Jing’s earlier establishment of staging posts along the route, while slowing his own advance, had facilitated the movement of subsequent forces. Unburdened by concerns over supplies and other logistical details, Tao Jia, leading a thousand cavalry, arrived in just three days. He had even taken care to rest and recuperate the night before his departure.
Approaching his fifties, by the standards of the Great Zhou, he was considered quite advanced in years. Others could readily understand why Tao Jia had come to Tai Province – if he failed to redeem himself this time, he would have no further opportunity to cleanse the stain of past disgrace.
Upon arriving with his troops, Tao Jia immediately summoned all mid-level and higher officers for a council.
Nominally, their presence was to demand an explanation from Tai Province regarding the local clans’ alleged seditious intentions. However, both sides understood the truth: the powerful Western Tribes would never send their leaders to the capital to plead guilty. This was merely a pretext for war. Now, with Tai Province’s delayed response and its refusal to allow the imperial army into Lai’an, the two sides could be said to have formally cast aside all pretense.
A military scribe voiced her concern, “I harbor some apprehension. The cities of Tai Province are easy to defend and hard to attack. If Wang You simply turtles up and refuses to engage, what should we do?”
Her concern was quite reasonable. Lai’an could rely on logistical support from the heartland of Tai Province, whereas their own provisions and fodder had to be transported all the way from east of Shangxing Pass. Although the nation’s strength could still sustain this, prolonged delays would inevitably hinder the court. Moreover, with the Emperor personally overseeing the war from Shangxing Pass, if they failed to achieve results quickly, it would be difficult to justify themselves to the court.
Tao Jia smiled. “In truth, for Wang You, holding fast within the city walls would be the superior strategy. However, given the current situation in Tai Province, if she wishes to maintain her former prestige, she has no choice but to take the field.”
The military scribe was momentarily taken aback before exclaiming in admiration, “Her Majesty is truly sagacious.”
She now understood even more clearly why, before taking action, the Sovereign had sent an envoy to Tai Province to confer an official title on Wang Tian.
As long as the other major clans harbored doubts about the Wang clan’s stance, they would inevitably exert pressure, both overt and covert, preventing Wang You from choosing a purely defensive strategy and forcing her to take the offensive.
Tao Jia raised his head and looked ahead. He knew he had returned to Tai Province, the place that had once brought the shame of defeat to his family. His sharp gaze seemed to pierce through the tents and city walls, landing directly upon a certain old adversary:
“Tomorrow, raise my banner. Let Wang You know that the Sovereign of Great Zhou has sent her general to her.”
Just as Tao Jia reached the military camp, Wang You arrived at Lai’an.
Though aged, her gaze still held the intimidating intensity that could make others tremble. Mounted on her warhorse, the general who had once shaken Tai Province seemed to have returned to the army. Many veteran generals of the Western lands, merely seeing her armored figure, found themselves moved to tears.
However, Wang You’s own mood was far from light.
Her de facto control over Tai Province for many years rested on two pillars: her military leadership and her administrative abilities. These complemented each other. Had she not been overly greedy and cruel, she might well have been hailed as a capable minister and renowned general. As an experienced and resourceful inspector, she could clearly see that the current situation favored a defensive posture locally. After all, it was a campaign far from home, and it remained uncertain whether the troops could adapt. By waiting until enemy morale faltered before striking, she could achieve twice the result with half the effort.
Yet the Li and other major clans kept urging Wang You to act. Moreover, commanding troops this time was different from before. Each clan had sent its own people to lead their forces, and they only nominally followed her orders now. Wang You needed a victory to re-establish her authority. With that, whether she chose to carve out an independent domain or negotiate with Jianping, she would have the necessary leverage.
At that moment, a personal guard rushed in to report. “General, the banners outside have changed!”
Wang You narrowed her eyes and walked to the city wall to look. Indeed, the banner flying over the enemy camp had changed to “Great Zhou Vanguard General, Tao.”
Perhaps because the sun was setting westward, its fiery light painting the dusk clouds, Wang You’s eyes now held a chilling intensity, like cold ashes after a fire has burned out.
With a forceful wave of her hand, the banners on Lai’an’s wall also changed, now reading “Tiger Might General, Wang.”
Wang You knew Tao Jia had arrived. She wanted to make him understand that just as she had once inflicted a crushing defeat upon him, today she could do it a second time!
In the camp of the Jianping vanguard army.
Although Tao Jia had the soldiers prepare their meals at the usual time today, he ordered them to retire early for the night.
“Wang You is a bold and fierce commander. Once she moves her troops, it will be swift as thunder. She is within the city walls, while we are outside. We must guard against the possibility of a dawn raid on our camp.”
While they had already established their camp, its defensive capabilities still fell short of a fortified city. Wang You was a skilled military commander, and Tao Jia judged there was a sixty percent chance she would launch an attack at dawn.
As an old adversary, his assessment of Wang You was remarkably accurate.
Before six in the morning, troops bearing the banner of “Tiger Might General, Wang” surged forth from Lai’an like a torrent.
The earth trembled under the thunder of hoofbeats, and resounding horn blasts pierced the heavens.
Lai’an, situated on the border between two provinces, was only relatively open terrain. Fighting here still gave the local horses of the Western Tribes an advantage. Yet, Tao Jia’s side showed no fear. Although the Imperial Guard’s Iron Cavalry Camp numbered only three thousand, the horse shoes forged by the Imperial Household were not limited to outfitting just three thousand warhorses. With the Tai Province region being so rocky, to prevent hoof wear, the vanguard’s horses had been fitted with iron shoes in advance. Mounted, the cavalry charged toward the enemy in a V-shaped formation, led by none other than the Vanguard General, Tao Jia himself.
Wang You, likewise unwilling to be outdone, found her own fighting spirit ignited when she saw the Jianping army’s charge was even more ferocious than anticipated. Riding at the forefront, she wielded a massive halberd, sweeping it forward with formidable force. The halberd’s head hooked the weapon of an enemy horseman. Leveraging her forward momentum, Wang You let out a great roar and actually dragged the man from his saddle, then trampled him to death beneath her horse’s hooves.
The Jianping troops assigned to the vanguard were elite soldiers in their own right. Yet when faced with Wang You, not a single one of them could withstand her even for a single exchange. Seeing this, Tao Jia immediately lifted his long-handled sabre and charged straight at her.
Blade and halberd crashed together, erupting in a thunderous roar. In flashes of cold silver light, the two traded dozens of blows in rapid succession. The sound of weapons striking rang out with such abnormal density that, to anyone listening from afar, it merged into a single continuous note.
Tai Province’s climate was damp, and fine threads of rain drifted down from the sky. Yet before the rain could even reach either combatant, it was blasted aside by the force radiating from their clashing weapons.
Tao Jia felt moisture on his cheeks, though he could not tell whether it was rain or blood. At this moment, his eyes held only Wang You – and Wang You’s eyes held only him. Each had their own personal guards providing cover, and there, at the very heart of the battlefield, the two engaged in a savage, primal struggle.
Wang You held the city and defended it from within, enjoying the natural advantage of terrain. Although the Jianping forces were greater in number and better equipped, the moment they drew close to the walls they were forced back by volleys of arrows. Fortunately, Tao Jia enforced discipline with an iron hand: before the battle, he had ordered the army supervisor to supervise from the rear – anyone who retreated would be executed on the spot, with their commanding officer punished as well. As a result, the soldiers fought with all their strength.
In an instant, shouts of killing and the clash of weapons drowned out everything in all directions. Deputy generals such as Tao Jing each led their personal troops forward. Tao Jing’s warhorse was struck by an arrow from the city walls, sending him tumbling to the ground. He did not retreat; instead, he drew the longbow from his back and loosed an arrow of his own. At this point he was already extremely close to the wall, and because the walls of Lai’an were not as high as those of a major city like Jianping, he actually succeeded in shooting dead a junior officer on the battlements.
Neither side’s determination to win this battle yielded in the slightest. The two armies crashed into one another like a pair of ancient behemoths locked in a contest of strength. They fought from dawn until midday, and by then most of the soldiers on both sides were utterly exhausted, leaving them no choice but to sound the gongs and withdraw their troops.
A member of Wang You’s personal guard came to report, “General, the trench outside the city has already been filled in by them.”
Wang You let out a cold laugh. “If they can fill it, then we can keep digging it. Once night falls, send men out of the city to re-excavate the trench.” She added, “Tell the Li clan, the Lao clan, and the Fuhe clan to hurry and send the provincial troops here. If Lai’an falls, we’ll have no option but to retreat – we won’t be able to advance at all.”
The guard’s face showed his distress, yet he had no choice but to obey his superior’s orders, and went on to press the great local clans of Tai Province once more.
The fighting dragged on for three days. On both sides it was nothing more than a brutal contest of attrition, a head-on grinding down of strength. Tao Jia’s confidence, however, lay in Jianping itself – his forces were simply the stronger. Just as the balance of the situation was beginning to tilt in his favor, on the morning of the fourth day Wang You discovered that her opponent had withdrawn his troops without the slightest warning.
Although Wang You was fierce and domineering, she was by no means careless. Unsure whether this might be a feigned retreat, she did not give chase at once, but instead dispatched forward scouts to investigate. What they brought back, however, was a piece of “good news” that sent her rage surging.
After receiving her letters, the great clans such as the Li family had indeed raised a considerable number of troops – but they had not sent them to Wang You at all. Instead, acting on their own initiative, they gathered together, exploited their familiarity with the terrain, and took minor roads to circle around to Tao Jia’s rear. There they struck him a devastating blow, even coming close to capturing Tao Jia’s son, Tao Jing, who had been assigned to the rear to supervise provisions and convoy supplies. And the commander leading the forces of the Li clan and the other great families was none other than the current generation’s young clan head of the Li family: Li Huaidao.
With matters having reached this point, Wang You had no choice but to lead her troops out of the city – on the one hand to pursue Tao Jia, and on the other to rendezvous with her own forces. When the two sides finally joined up, she fixed her gaze coldly on Li Huaidao and said harshly, “You acted on your own and sent troops without authorization – that alone would be bad enough. Why did you not inform me beforehand? If you and I had coordinated, striking from front and rear, there is no way Tao Jia would have been allowed to withdraw safely.”
Had the other side communicated in time, Wang You knew that Tao Jia would have been in full retreat today after a clear defeat, and she would never have let such an opportunity for pursuit slip by.
Li Huaidao had already failed to trap the Tao father and son, and his temper was frayed to begin with. Now he showed not the slightest restraint, responding with biting sarcasm. “If I had informed you, I’m afraid that man surnamed Tao would not have ‘withdrawn safely’ – he would have returned in great victory instead.” He went on, “If you are worried about orders not being carried out smoothly, you can hand over the authority to deploy troops. I swear in the name of the Li clan that I will beat those Jianping dogs until they flee in utter disgrace!”
He was no fool. He understood perfectly well that Wang You needed to consolidate her authority. If he had communicated in advance, Wang You would inevitably have sent her own men to seize the credit. And in that case, what benefit would the Li clan have gained at all?
Wang You stared at him, her gaze gradually turning vicious. She had originally planned that, once she had won a battle, she would adopt a strategy of delay – dragging matters out. But now, at this very moment, the limelight had been snatched away by others…
Wang You drew a deep breath and altered her original plan. She had never intended to strike a fatal blow against Jianping; yet circumstances left her no choice but to act.
Two days after Tao Jia withdrew from Lai’an, news of the defeat reached Shangxing Pass.
The ministers who had accompanied the expedition were, to be sure, somewhat unsettled, but they were still able to maintain their composure. What they had not anticipated, however, was that this was only the beginning.
After Li Huaidao’s decisive victory, the Tai Province forces pressed their advantage, launching repeated assaults and overrunning seven of Jianping’s forward camps in succession. The main army under Tao Jia had already begun to show clear signs of collapse.
When this news arrived, Shangxing Pass was thrown into turmoil; Dan Province was shaken as well, and even Jianping itself felt the shock. Wen Yanran’s uncle of the imperial clan took the trouble to write personally to express his concern for his niece, who was on imperial inspection away from the capital. In earnest and impassioned terms, he urged Her Majesty to consider the fate of the realm and return at once to Jianzhou. As for the local officials, they came day after day seeking audiences, begging her not to persist so stubbornly on her present course.
Fine rain fell from the sky like threads of silk.
Wen Yanran, dressed in a long robe of crow-blue, sat by the window. Before her lay a chessboard and two boxes of glass-made pieces – items she had deliberately brought along from Tianfu Palace before setting out.
The Sovereign was playing a game of chess against herself. Ordinarily, no one would have dared to disturb her, yet the noise outside had grown steadily louder, so much so that it could be faintly heard even in the rear offices. With no alternative, Wang Youyin – who hailed from the residence of Grand Tutor Yuan – came to request the Emperor’s instructions.
After entering the courtyard, she deliberately slowed her steps, striving to make her movements appear no different from usual.
In the rear garden, a small pond had been laid with bluish stone bricks. Several fish drifted about at ease within it, while threads of rain dimpled the water’s surface, scattering it into rippling points of light.
Perhaps because of the rain, perhaps because of the wind, the air carried a fresh fragrance of grass and herbs.
Rain-soaked jasmine petals had fallen onto the stone paving, spreading across it like a white brocade carpet.
Wang Youyin did not dare step onto the stairs. With her head lowered, she stood in the rain and asked an inner attendant to convey her request. From this angle, she could see the silhouette of the Sovereign cast upon the window paper, while from inside came the crisp sound of chess pieces being set down.
The Sovereign was still the Sovereign. No matter how the situation shifted, she remained composed as ever.
Chi Yi had already gone to report. Moments later, the window was gently pushed open. Wen Yanran held a chess piece between her fingers, her gaze sweeping briefly over Wang Youyin before she spoke in an unhurried tone:
“I will remain here. I am going nowhere. Grant General of the Rear Army Zhong Zhiwei the authority of Jiajieyue; issue strict orders both within and without – whether in the army or in the court – no one is to speak recklessly and disrupt morale. Those who violate this command are to be executed.”
