Rising Phoenix

Yu Liang froze, immediately understanding Yao Yangyu’s assessment. Shivers ran down his spine as he turned to look at Feng Zhiwei.

Wei Zhi sat in the moonlight, he and his horse unmoved as they looked down at the corpses, his gaze so calm that Yu Liang could not help but doubt Yao Yangyu’s suspicions.

“Impossible…” Yu Liang murmured. The Master Wei he knew was so brilliant and friendly, how could he be so indifferent if he had let a hundred men die?

But Yao Yangyu had already turned to Feng Zhiwei.

“You’ve been here for a while, right?” His voice was hoarse as he gestured around him with weak limb. “You’ve been following us since we attacked the bandits? You waited for us to fall into the ambush so that you can ambush Da Yue in turn, and we were your bait, right?”

Feng Zhiwei said nothing, her eyes clear and placid.

“The war is bigger than us, so fine, I’m your bait!” Yao Yangyu spat angrily, leaning against a new blade. “But they didn’t have to die! Not all of them! You just watched, watched as they were cut down and butchered, slaughtered by those Da Yue wolves! Their heads rolled by your feet, eyes uncut, and you just watched it all while doing nothing! You did nothing! You’re so strong, so fierce, so vicious — we just played in front of you until no one would have ever guessed that we were bait, and all of that just for Jin Siyu’s horse?”

He threw the scavenged blade down in front of Feng Zhiwei, his hoarse voice tearing with his sad, angry roar:

“A hundred lives for a horse!”

Feng Zhiwei looked down at the bloody blade, the metal flecked with Yao Yangyu’s life-blood and the deaths of his enemies. None of the original color could be seen, and as she stared down at the piece of deadly metal, she thought back to the playboy she had first met as he played around in Dijing’s brothels.

Finally, she stepped aside.

Zong Chen and Gu Nanyi silently shifted.

Yao Yangyu could only stare in stunned disbelief.

There was nothing but shadow and night in the paths behind the three saviors, trees and grass and not a soldier in sight.

They’d been rescued from a small army by three men!

“You were our bait.” Feng Zhiwei finally said, her voice calm. “When we discovered your army, we also saw Da Yue’s men sneaking out. The Hu Zhuo Steel Battalion separated, one half attacking the Eastern Road Army’s rations, the other setting an ambush for Jin Siyu’s path back to camp. Hu Zhuo’s main infantry is still marching, and Hu Zhuo Steel Battalion only has three thousand men. We could not split them three ways, so there were only three of us following you. I believed that the only way to force Jin Siyu’s retreat was by attacking this Eastern Army, and this area’s terrain could hide our lack of men. Jin Siyu is a cautious man, and this was the only way I could imagine stopping him. I apologize, but we could not act earlier. Once they discovered that we had no soldiers, they would have never retreated — even the greatest expert cannot defeat ten thousand arrows raining down from the cliffs.

Yao Yangyu and his friends stared down the empty paths as their sweeping eyes looked for more men. Only now did they understand why Master Gu had not attacked Jin Siyu — with such limited forces, if they had assassinated the enemy general, they would not have been able to save Yao Yangyu. Master Wei had chosen their lives over that of the most important man in the enemy army.

Yao Yangyu had been bait, his soldiers allowed to die in heartless calculation.

But then their lives had been saved and the enemy general allowed to escape in defiance of cold calculation.

Yao Yangyu could only stare in a dumb daze, a mess of emotions battling within him and his mind utterly blank. He did not know whether to feel gratitude or resentment, whether to approve or scream in dismay.

Feng Zhiwei’s calm voice turned harsh.

“A proud, arrogant army is sure to lose! Before today these were only words in your books, so take these hundred corpses as your lesson. If you cannot remember this, you will never be able to lead Tian Sheng’s armies!”

Feng Zhiwei leapt from her horse, kicked Yao Yangyu’s scavenged blade into her hand and snapped it in half.

“Hear this last lesson — life is like a broken blade, you cannot piece it back together! This blade has slaughtered cut no fewer than ten heads, and so it has fulfilled its purpose! Men are the same! A ruler can never shirk from sacrifice as long as the sacrifice is worth it!

The broken blade clattered at Yao Yangyu’s feet, and by the time he looked up from it, Feng Zhiwei was already leaving.

“Master Wei!”

Knees thudded to the ground.

Feng Zhiwei turned back, cold moonlight gleaming down around her. She looked down at the proud, arrogant Dijing young masters kneeling in blood and death.

The autumn moon was white as frost, but the young face’s before her were paler still. Feverish eyes stared up at her, pained and deep and full of emotion.

“My life in service of a great man! I am forever your servant!”

In August of the Fourteenth Year of Chang Xi, Wei Zhi reappeared in Qianjin Ditch after a half-year absence. He only rescued Yao Yangyu and his two friends from honorable suicide after they fell into an ambush, but also destroyed the Da Yue Eastern Army’s grain supply while ambushing Supreme Commander Jin Siyu on the Lijiao Flatlands on his way back to camp.

Wei Zhi’s valiant Hu Zhuo Steel Battalion fell down the hill like a wrecking ball, smashing into Jin Siyu’s army and bleeding the Da Yue soldiers until their blood flowed like a river. Nevertheless, Jin Siyu displayed his impressive talent, managing a decisive escape down dangerous mountain paths, leaving behind rearguard sacrifices to lure the ferocious Steel Battalion astray. In a miraculous escape out of certain defeat, Jin Siyu managed to return to camp with most of his twenty thousand men alive.

Such was the first defeat of Da Yue’s Prince An, a defeat that cost not manpower, but the morale he had built on his series of victories. It was said that His Highness Prince An had his men wash and clean themselves before calmly returning to camp, but nothing could hide the standard warhorse that the astonished soldiers saw His Highness riding.

Rumors spread like wind, and it quickly known that their seemingly omnipotent Prince An had suffered a humiliating defeat at Qianjin Ditch, losing three valuable hostages and his irreplaceable warhorse to a seventeen year old youth named Wei. Prince An had been forced into retreat without a single arrow being loosed.

Jin Siyu had the three most prolific gossips executed, but the falling heads could not stop living tongues, and soon morale was plummeting everywhere. By the time the news of the Eastern Army’s military grain debacle, the Da Yue soldiers were ready for a full-blown panic.