Zhang Ni and Shamoke huddled inside the command tent, poring over maps until the candles burned low. Every possible path forward lay spread out before them. But eventually, exhaustion won. Zhang Ni's eyelids drooped. His head dipped. He jerked himself upright, then nodded off again.
Shamoke knew exactly when a man had hit his limit. He had enough sense to see it plain. He excused himself and stepped outside, leaving Zhang Ni free to finally collapse into sleep.
But the weight of command never truly lifted. Shamoke carried two heavy titles. Chief of the Wuxi tribes and Acting Magistrate of Hanshou. Both demanded his attention whether he rested or not.
He stepped out into the open. The fields around Hanshou lay in utter ruin. Earth torn wide open. Defenses smashed to splinters. Bodies lay everywhere, piled in tangled heaps across the mud.
Shu-Han soldiers from the north rested side by side with Wuxi tribesmen from the south. Only hours before, they had fought back to back against the invaders. And scattered all around them lay the fallen soldiers of Sun Wu. In death, all men looked much the same. One blade stroke across the throat wiped every difference clean. They were nothing more than flesh lying cold in the mud.
Shamoke walked along the broken stone wall, finishing his patrol. The cold wind bit hard at his face. He let out a long, heavy sigh.
"War."
He breathed the word so softly it nearly vanished into the night breeze.
Years back, he was just some curious kid. Snuck off all by himself to catch the legendary Battle of Red Cliffs. Sat perched way up on a hill, watching Sun Quan and Cao Cao tear each other apart on the great river. What a sight. Pure chaos. Flames ate the sky. The Yangtze turned red like someone just dumped a whole ocean of blood into it.
Back then, Shamoke thought it was the coolest thing ever. All that grandeur. All that fire. He pictured war as something magnificent. He imagined Cao Cao barking one order and eight hundred thousand armored warriors just rolling forward to swallow everything in their path. He pictured Commander Zhou Yu standing calm on his flagship, grinning easy while burning an entire fleet down to ash. Looked like the greatest stage a man could ever step onto. The perfect place to become a legend.
Turns out, war feels very different when you are standing right in the middle of the mess.
Hanshou cured him of every silly fancy. The wounded groaned all across the fields. The dead lay wordless and still, covering the hills. There was no poetry here. No grand speeches. Just pain and bodies rotting in the mud.
His thoughts drifted. He instinctively thought of Master Ma. In the past, Shamoke always brought his complicated questions to the young scholar, and Master Ma never failed to provide a clear answer. If the scholar were standing here in the ruins of Hanshou, he could probably explain the deeper meaning behind this senseless slaughter.
But Shamoke was the Wuxi Chief. He did not have the luxury of parading his soft emotions around the camp. He shoved the philosophical questions to the back of his mind. He needed to win this battle for Lord Liu Bei. He needed to slaughter the enemy. He needed to pacify the realm. The grand philosophical questions could wait until the world was at peace.
---
Zhang Ni finally slept long and deep without interruption. He woke feeling like himself again. The morning sun had barely touched the horizon, and Shamoke stood waiting already bearing fresh news.
"Han Dang retreated?" Zhang Ni asked, his eyes sharpening.
He reached for his meal. The fare was simple and hearty. A bowl of wild tropical fruit, thick steamed bread, and a plate of roasted game. Zhang Ni ate with the steady speed of a soldier. His manners stayed polite and neat, yet his hands moved like lightning. He cleared every last bite in almost no time at all.
Shamoke had clearly been up for hours. He sat across the table, watching Zhang Ni devour the food while delivering the morning scout report without missing a beat.
The scouts brought back a clear picture. The Jiangdong camp had been struck and packed away with perfect order. Not a single broken spear or spilled grain sack left behind. This was no wild rout. A textbook withdrawal. Calm, measured, and organized down to the last detail. Before dawn, the scouts had pushed further out and confirmed it. The entire enemy column was marching straight north.
Zhang Ni chewed his final piece of roasted meat. He swallowed. He wiped his mouth.
"The situation at Jiangling is shifting," Zhang Ni stated flatly. "We need to march immediately."
The big picture was plain as day. You did not need the genius brain of Master Lu or Zhuge Liang to see this one. Jiangdong had thrown everything at the south, trying to sweep through and wipe Wuling off the map. That push? Dead in the mud outside Hanshou. Gone. And now their fleet was pulling east, their army marching north. Every move pointed in one direction. They were shifting focus. Abandoning the southern theater. Betting everything on Jiangling instead.
If Jiangdong grabbed that fortress, they would plant a bone that would never come loose. Stuck right in Liu Bei's throat. From there they could push slow and steady. And sooner or later, the whole south would slowly choke.
Zhang Ni intended to break those fingers before they could squeeze.
"If I were Han Dang," Zhang Ni said, frowning in deep thought. He leaned over the crude leather map Shamoke provided, tracing the winding blue lines of the regional waterways. "I would split my forces. I would station a detachment right here, on the northern bank of the Li River."
He tapped the map. "Your Wuxi warriors are vicious in the mountains but terrible on the water. Han Dang knows this. He only needs a thousand men on the opposite bank to guard the river crossing. That small blockade lets him sleep soundly at night, and his main force can march north to reinforce the Jiangling siege without looking over their shoulders."
Shamoke studied the map. He processed the tactical logic. He nodded slowly. The analysis was sound. A river blockade was the smartest move for a northern commander.
Then Shamoke threw his head back and let out a booming laugh.
"Why is that a problem?" Shamoke grinned. "My ancestors have lived in these jungles for a thousand generations! Do you think a bunch of Sun Wu sailors know this terrain better than we do?"
He slammed his heavy hand onto the table.
"If we are marching to save Jiangling, just follow my lead! Let those Jiangdong idiots sit by the Li River and watch the fish swim by! We will walk right around them!"
Zhang Ni's eyes lit up. A wave of pure relief washed over him. He stood up instantly, clasped his hands together, and bowed deeply.
"In that case, I will leave the route through these mountains in your hands, Brother Sha."
Shamoke waved off the formal gesture. "We both serve Liu Huangsu. There is no need for this stiff formality. We are all..."
He paused. He took a slow breath. He spoke the next words with quiet conviction.
"We are all fighting for the Great Han."
---
Hundreds of miles to the north, everything Zhang Ni and Shamoke had predicted was playing out in brutal, bloody detail. The siege of Jiangling had hit its breaking point.
Lu Meng stood outside the city walls with a weight pressing down on his chest that just would not quit. He had marched this massive army all the way here. Wrapped it around Jiangling like a noose. And now? March away empty-handed? Not an option. That would be a failure so complete, so catastrophic, that his name would be cursed for generations. The kind of failure where your own grandchildren pretend they are not related to you.
But launching a plain infantry charge from the west was practically suicide. The walls bristled with heavy crossbows. The defenders poured death down on anyone stupid enough to step within range. Morale in the Jiangdong trenches had completely collapsed. Soldiers were quietly plotting to kill their own officers and vanish into the dark. Hard to order a frontal assault when your men are literally planning to stab you and run.
Time was running out fast. Reports confirmed the Jingzhou fleet was sailing down the Yangtze straight toward Jiangdong territory. Jianye itself was in the crosshairs. Lu Meng knew he would soon have to pack everything and hurry home. He hated the thought of leaving empty-handed. Absolutely hated it. But supply lines and basic strategy left him no choice.
Then a secret letter slipped out of Jiangling under cover of night. It landed right on Lu Meng's desk. And what it said made him stop cold.
The letter was signed by a man named Pan Jun. Lu Meng recognized the name. Back in Jianye, he had seen intelligence reports from this spy before. Pan Jun was not exactly Liu Bei's inner circle and rarely sent anything truly useful. But he had previously reported that Liu Bei held secretive meetings with his core staff every three months. That one detail stuck in Lu Meng's memory. It gave the man a tiny shred of credibility. Just enough to not toss the letter straight into the fire.
Seeing the familiar signature, Lu Meng decided to trust the core premise. For now.
The document contained a mountain of useless filler. Pan Jun spent whole paragraphs bragging about the wealth and influence of the Pan clan in Hanshou, practically begging for political favors. Lu Meng skimmed past the sycophantic garbage. Sun Quan could deal with this traitor's career ambitions later. Not his problem.
What Lu Meng cared about was the military intelligence. The letter offered two critical revelations.
First, Liu Bei was secretly funding and training a large tribal army in Hanshou. The local Pan clan was suffering under their presence, or so Pan Jun claimed. The letter urged Sun Quan to wipe out this hidden force before it became a real threat. And of course, the Pan clan was more than happy to help. For a price, naturally.
Second, the letter laid out a concrete plan to breach Jiangling's walls.
Lu Meng read the first point and felt a cold chill crawl down his spine. He remembered a disturbing report from the Yunmeng Marsh garrison. General Dong Xi had launched a rapid strike against the southern town of Linyuan. After that? Nothing. Complete communications blackout. Dong Xi had vanished off the face of the earth.
At the time, Lu Meng shrugged it off. He figured Dong Xi was off doing his usual side hustle, illegally enslaving mountain tribes and selling them to wealthy eastern families. It was a common gig for Jiangdong generals. Lucrative, too. Lu Meng assumed Dong Xi was somewhere counting his illicit gold, too busy to file paperwork.
Now, looking at the map, Lu Meng realized Linyuan sat right next to Hanshou. The pieces snapped together with a sickening click. Dong Xi hadn't gone slaving. He had kicked a steel plate and shattered his leg. Marched straight into Liu Bei's hidden tribal army. Dong Xi was almost certainly dead.
The sun rose on a new day. A messenger arrived carrying a handwritten decree from Sun Quan.
The orders were absolute. Take Jiangling at all costs. Sun Quan promised to personally oversee the defense of Jianye against the incoming Jingzhou fleet. Lu Meng was ordered to ignore the naval threat entirely and focus every ounce of strength on the siege.
Lu Meng held the bamboo slips in trembling hands. He faced east. Dropped to his knees. Slammed his forehead into the dirt over and over, tears of gratitude and crushing pressure streaming down his weathered face. He swore an oath right then and there. Capture the city, or die trying.
Then he stood up. Eyes cold. All business. He reorganized the entire siege deployment around Gong'an County and split his forces into three distinct groups.
First, a naval detachment back east. Combined with yesterday's redeployment, that made roughly twenty thousand men sailing home to protect Sun Quan. Yes, the supreme commander had explicitly ordered him not to send reinforcements. But Lu Meng was a master of political survival. He knew which orders required blind obedience and which required a little creative interpretation. Leaving his sovereign completely undefended was a fantastic way to end his career. Or his life.
Second, he carved out ten thousand veteran infantry and handed them to General Pan Zhang. Their orders were simple. Link up with Han Dang near Yunmeng Marsh, smash whatever was left of Hanshou, and figure out the truth behind this so-called secret tribal army.
Lu Meng took command of the remaining forces and prepared to launch a suicidal, all-or-nothing assault on Jiangling.
He finally reviewed Pan Jun's tactical proposal for breaching the city. The spy's plan was surprisingly simple. Pan Jun quoted a drunken joke made by Governor Jiang Wan himself, who had once laughed and claimed the western walls were solid iron but the eastern walls were brittle as bamboo. Pan Jun suggested shifting the attack away from the west. He also claimed he had twenty highly trained assassins hidden inside his manor, ready to open a city gate from the inside at the critical moment.
Lu Meng scoffed. Twenty random thugs opening a heavy gate? Please. He was not about to stake his entire career on that. But the core logic? That was sound. Battering against the iron defenses of the west was a fool's game. They needed to hit the city where it was brittle.
---
Inside the walls of Jiangling, the atmosphere was surreal.
Gentle music drifted through the halls of the General's manor. Jiang Wan sat in his reception room. His old friend, the scholar Zhou Qun, sat across from him.
The recent arrest of the traitor Pan Jun and his entire network had not been kept quiet. Everyone in the political elite knew exactly what had happened. Zhou Qun poured a cup of tea and asked the obvious question.
"According to my sources, there really is a large force of Wuling tribes stationed in Hanshou. Does your little counter-intelligence plot put those allies in a terrible position?"
Jiang Wan remained perfectly calm. His voice carried no emotion.
"A lie built entirely on fiction fools no one smart. A lie built entirely on truth leaves you with no room to maneuver. You have to weave the truth and the fiction together seamlessly. That is how you build a believable trap."
He paused. A flicker of genuine regret crossed his eyes.
"As for the Wuxi tribes... they have lived in those southern lands for generations. They will have outposts watching the riverways. They will spot the Jiangdong army coming long before it arrives. All they have to do is vanish into the deep mountains. The eastern army cannot chase them into the jungle."
Zhou Qun nodded slowly. He hailed from Langzhong in Yizhou and had seen endless border skirmishes between the Han military and the southern mountain tribes. The tribes always held the ultimate geographical advantage. They could melt into the canopy whenever they pleased. They would be fine.
Zhou Qun connected the dots and looked at the Governor with deep curiosity. "If that is true, you are not counting on a southern breakout. You are placing all your hopes on an army marching from the north?"
Jiang Wan paused. He stared into his tea, completely ignoring the question.
"By now, Lord Liu Bei should have entered Chang'an," he murmured softly. "I truly wish I could see it with my own eyes."
Zhou Qun blinked. The city was surrounded by tens of thousands of hostile soldiers, and Jiang Wan was daydreaming about his lord conquering the ancient western capital. Unreal.
Jiang Wan had no interest in discussing grand strategy any further. He drained his cold tea in one gulp and stood.
"Lu Meng is out of time. He is going to throw every trick he has at these walls."
He paused near the doorway. He had meant to simply tell Zhou Qun to stay inside and read books until the siege ended. But a strange impulse seized him. The words left his mouth before he could stop them.
"Zhongzhi." Jiang Wan used the scholar's courtesy name. "I heard a rumor. They say your skills in face-reading and destiny-weaving rival the late Master Zhang Yu. Is that true?"
The question hung in the air like a drawn blade. Zhou Qun froze.
Face-reading was a highly dangerous political art. Zhou Qun had personally watched the executioner chop off Zhang Yu's head for making the wrong prediction. Telling powerful men their future was a fantastic way to get yourself killed.
Zhou Qun swallowed hard. He chose his words with extreme caution. "I am merely a foolish man who has read too many old books."
Jiang Wan smiled. He did not press. He simply turned and looked the nervous scholar dead in the eye.
"I do not possess the face of a man destined to die young, right, Zhongzhi? My future holds unimaginable nobility."
Zhou Qun was struck speechless. He studied Jiang Wan's elegant posture, the sheer confidence radiating from him like heat from a furnace. Finally, he nodded.
"You possess the visage of longevity, Gongyan. You carry the unmistakable aura of boundless nobility."
The smile reached Jiang Wan's eyes. He nodded in satisfaction. "The fighting ahead will be brutal. If you have no urgent business, do not leave this courtyard, Zhongzhi."
He turned and strode away, long powerful steps like a tiger descending a mountain. Zhou Qun watched him go, shook his head, and let out a disbelieving laugh.
---
Lu Meng threw caution to the wind. He wanted Jiangling, and he was willing to burn the whole world down to get it. Not because he was reckless. He had simply done the math and decided Jiangling was worth the price. Whatever that price turned out to be.
He drew inspiration from a recent report. The Jingzhou fleet had shattered Jiangxia's defenses using aggressive river tactics. Lu Meng figured, why not borrow the idea? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.
Right at noon, chaos exploded on Jiangling's northern walls. The defenders started screaming like men who had just seen their own graves.
"Fire ships! They're sending fire ships!"
Messengers sprinted to find Jiang Wan. The Governor rushed to the northern battlements without even stopping to put on his helmet.
Jiangling's defenses were wildly uneven. The western wall faced flat, open ground, perfect for siege towers and infantry blocks. So that side was packed with heavy crossbows and elite troops. The other three walls dropped straight into the river. No solid ground meant no foothold for an attacker, so the garrisons there were much thinner. Made sense. Until today.
The northern wall had one glaring weakness. A large water gate designed to let merchant barges sail straight into the city's inner canals during peacetime. Great for trade. Terrible for defense.
Jiang Wan gripped the stone parapet and stared down at the dark water. Two small attack boats were screaming toward the heavy wooden doors of the water gate. Flames danced across their decks like hungry ghosts. No rams. No armor. Just speed and fire. They slammed into the gate and shattered on impact.
The wooden planks split open. Their cargo gushed into the water.
"Fire-oil!" a soldier screamed.
Black, viscous liquid poured from the cracked hulls, spreading across the surface. The flames from the deck caught the slick instantly. A wall of fire erupted against the base of the gate.
"Thank the heavens it was only two boats," a soldier muttered, wiping sweat from his brow.
He immediately looked like he wanted to swallow those words.
From the elevated battlements, the defenders could see everything. Across the river, the Jiangdong camp erupted into wild cheering. Three more boats shot out from the enemy docks, caught the current, and lined up directly for the burning gate. No tricks. No subtlety. Just a blunt, brute-force message. We have more.
Jiang Wan's face turned to stone.
Fire-oil was rare and precious in the north. Down here? Jingzhou, Yizhou, Jiangdong were practically floating on the stuff. If Lu Meng had decided to bet everything on this tactic, there was no telling how many barrels he could throw at them.
Panic ripped through the defenders. Junior officers shrieked at the crossbow teams to sink the boats before they hit.
The veteran artillery captain shook his head in pure frustration. "We already tried! The bolts punch straight through the wood or get stuck in the deck! You can't sink a raft with a needle! By the time enough water leaks in, the thing's already rammed the gate!"
Jiang Wan did not panic. His mind raced through options. He found one.
"Bring up the fire arrows," he commanded.
His guards sprinted down the stairs. Within minutes, heavy crates were hauled up to the firing line. The crossbowmen loaded the strange, thick bolts into the heavy ballistas, hands trembling.
"Aim." Jiang Wan's voice sliced through the chaos. "Ignite the fuse. Loose."
The design was brutally simple. The shaft was hollow, packed with raw oil, and threaded with a slow-burning hemp cord. On impact, the wood shattered, splashing oil everywhere while the fuse lit the whole mess.
Jiang Wan watched one of the bolts slam into an incoming ship. The result was instantaneous. The boat became a fireball. The rowers, suddenly realizing they were sitting on a floating bomb, abandoned ship and dove frantically into the river. The burning wreck drifted harmlessly away from the wall.
Jiang Wan shook his head. A good trick. But not nearly enough. The accuracy rate was too low, and Lu Meng had too many boats.
He gave his final orders to the artillery crews. "Do your best to hit the boats. If you have spare time, shoot the ones swimming."
Then he turned his back on the river, drew his sword, and rallied the reserve infantry.
"Grab shovels! I need earth!"
For the rest of the afternoon, Jiang Wan worked shoulder to shoulder with the common soldiers, hauling heavy baskets of dirt and gravel to the inner canal. They dumped load after load into the water, choking the channel. If the outer gate burned down, the flaming oil would be trapped outside. It would not flow into the city and turn the civilian quarters to ash.
---
The next day, Lu Meng sent six boats.
The day after, twelve.
By the fourth day, the attacks were coming in waves so dense the defenders stopped bothering to count. The fires burned around the clock. The stone gates glowed dull red at night. The heat was so intense that men stationed on the northern wall had to be rotated every two hours or risk collapsing from exhaustion.
The smoke was the worst part. It got into everything. Clothes. Food. Lungs. Even Jiang Wan, the elegant Governor who normally looked like he had stepped out of a court painting, was now coated head to toe in greasy black soot. He looked like a coal miner who had not seen daylight in a decade.
The small boats felt like an endless swarm of burning insects. But Jiang Wan knew they were just the warm-up act. Lu Meng was testing him. Probing. Spending cheap wood and cheaper oil to soften the target before the real blow landed.
On the fifth day, the supply of small skiffs finally ran dry. Jiang Wan stood on the battlements, eyes stinging from the smoke, and watched the true nightmare come rolling down the river.
Mengchong assault ships.
These were big, medium-class naval vessels, usually fitted with thick leather roofs and armored sides to protect the rowers. But Lu Meng had stripped them to the bone. The defensive superstructures were gone. The ships were flat wooden platforms now.
And they were chained together.
Heavy iron links bound the hulls, clanking and groaning against the current. The sheer cost of that much forged iron was staggering. The chained ships stretched across the river in an unbroken line, drifting downstream like a wooden monster that had swallowed the horizon.
There were so many ships that they choked the entire width of the Yangtze.
Which was exactly the point.
The linked barges crashed against the city walls and held. They formed a single, solid platform. Jiang Wan stared down and realized he was no longer looking at a river.
He was staring at a floating bridge. A wooden highway leading straight to his doorstep.
The arrogance of it took his breath away.
And for the first time since the siege began, Jiang Wan felt something cold settle in his stomach. Fire he could fight. Ships he could burn. But a bridge? A bridge meant infantry. A bridge meant scaling ladders and siege towers rolling right up to his walls. A bridge meant Lu Meng had turned the river into solid ground.
He had no counter for this. Not yet.
On the distant riverbank, Lu Meng watched his creation lock into place. He was not smiling like a madman. There was no wild cackling, no unhinged screaming at the heavens. He simply stood there, arms crossed, eyes cold, watching his plan unfold exactly as he had calculated.
Jiangling was within his reach. The city would fall. It would belong to Jiangdong.
The price did not matter. He would pay it.