Chapter 953

When dozens or hundreds of people fought tangled together, it was a battle.

But when the numbers grew to thousands, tens of thousands, it could no longer be called a battle.

It was war.

A war in which both sides threw everything they had into the fight.

And Jin Wikyung had no intention of staking everything he had on a single gamble.

“Jin Mukyung, Commander of the Heaven Shaking Squad, reporting to the Lesser Family Head.”

His voice was calm, though his whole body was soaked in blood.

Mukyung had left at noon and returned only around midnight. He looked like a blood demon.

So did his men, whose squad took its name from his epithet, the Heaven Shaking Sword.

But their proud strides and bright, fierce eyes were proof of the Jin Family of Taiyuan’s first victory.

“By your command, we broke the enemy’s vanguard and returned.”

Mukyung went on with his report.

Of the slightly more than two hundred men in the Heaven Shaking Squad, twenty-three had died and thirty-seven had suffered injuries, serious or minor.

Several of the senior leaders grew somber at the news. In a single battle, the Jin Family of Taiyuan had lost sixty men from an elite force it had devoted itself to raising alongside the Jin Dragon Squad. But the rest of Mukyung’s report swept even that brief sorrow away.

A thousand.

They had annihilated an enemy vanguard five times their number.

And among them had been a hundred of the enemy’s elite troops.

“Waaaah!”

Everyone who had been listening in tense silence cheered at once.

Their first victory against the enemy.

An overwhelming victory, beyond any dispute.

Yet even as excitement surged around him, Jin Wikyung kept his composure.

This is only the beginning.

He knew it.

War was like building a sandcastle. You had to scoop up sand and pile it on, again and again, before it was complete.

And even a sandcastle built with such care could collapse from a single hard kick.

But if we build it solidly enough to withstand that kick, it’s another story.

Fortunately, the Jin Family of Taiyuan’s preparations had been thorough despite the little time they’d had.

By now, the grassland army—likely crossing the Great Wall and passing through northern Shanxi Province—must have been bewildered.

First, by the news that its vanguard, which included its finest troops, had been wiped out.

And then by finding the north truly empty.

You won’t find a thing to take there.

It wasn’t only the people who had left the north.

Wikyung had withdrawn all the troops and commoners and ordered every field, though harvest was near, burned.

A scorched-earth strategy.

Against an army of tens of thousands, it was an excellent tactic. Even so, Wikyung had agonized over the decision dozens of times—until Assistant Military Commissioner Li Feng of Shanxi Province and several hundred others came to him of their own accord.

“We have several tens of thousands of seok¹ of provisions in reserve. We can more than handle their food supply.”

With Zhu Bao and Hong Jin absent, Li Feng was effectively the highest-ranking official at the Shanxi Provincial Office. He promised his full cooperation.

“Just burn the whole damn lot.”

The people of the north who had been forced to leave their homes overnight—or rather, their village headmen—were already half blind with rage.

“Those damn bastards. They come raiding and raising hell all the time, and now they want to take what’s growing in our fields, too?”

“Everyone in our village has already agreed. If even one grain of rice gets into those barbarian bastards’ mouths, I’ll be torn to pieces.”

“I’d sooner feed rice to the cows and pigs. I won’t stand for those bastards eating it, even when I’m dead!”

“Shit. If anyone objects, step forward now. I don’t care who you are—open your mouth and I’ll take you for a barbarian, shave your head, and give you a queue.²”

“Hey, Mr. Song! Why aren’t you saying anything? You got honey spread over your fields?”

Mr. Song, the village headman who had said nothing at all, earned everyone’s applause with a single suggestion.

“Don’t just set fires. Let’s poison the wells.”

“…!”

“It’d be even better if we took a dump and pissed in the stream before we left.”

“What’s the shit and piss for?”

“It’ll dirty the water. You think those bastards will be fine after gulping down water mixed with shit and piss?”

“Good heavens! How did you come up with a plan like that…?”

“I tried it once. Drank about half a gallon. Thought I was going to die.”

Mr. Song, a farmer with the unusual distinction of having drunk sewage, became a hero overnight. As people shoved poisonous weeds into the wells and shat and pissed by the streams, they wondered why he hadn’t placed first in the civil service exams.

All while saying that the only good barbarian was a dead one—words that would have shocked someone if they’d heard them.

The road here won’t be easy.

Jin Wikyung smiled coldly.

Shanxi Province was undeniably a frontier.

It produced plenty of grain, but it was neither as developed as the Central Plains nor as strong militarily.

Yet that was why its people could unite all the more fiercely in a crisis.

Long years of raids by mounted bandits and nomads had instilled a stubborn resolve in the people of Shanxi. Now that resolve had caught fire.

We will protect it. No matter what.

Wikyung had already made up his mind.

He had gone without sleep or rest to devote himself to the preparations. He sent swift-footed subordinates to watch the north and organized small detachments to look for any enemy forces that might split off from the main army.

He had ordered traps and iron caltrops set along every detour except Jeongyang. Checking the progress of the work himself was part of that effort.

“How is the earthen fort coming along?”

“With the reinforcement work included, it should be finished within half a day at the latest.”

Eight Spring Gorge.

At the far end of the vase-shaped gorge, which had swallowed countless lives from the Great Faction War to the present day, stood five towers where none had stood before.

Built of mud, wood, and stone, each rose three jang³ high. Each had a level platform large enough to hold a little over two hundred people.

Two hundred archers, to be exact.

“Taking the heights above the gorge isn’t enough. These forts are essential to victory. Please do everything you can to make sure they don’t collapse.”

“Of course, sir.”

The old carpenter answered in a folksy drawl.

Even as the two spoke, countless people around them went about their assigned tasks.

They came from all walks of life.

Martial artists in uniforms bearing the names of their sects hauled weapons and heavy materials without pause. Government troops in official uniforms moved at their officers’ commands.

But Wikyung’s gaze settled on another group, people dressed in all sorts of clothes with no affiliation to mark them, working just as hard.

“Pull on three!”

“One, twooo!”

“Hyaah!”

Men covered in dust kept up the grueling labor, sweat pouring off them.

“Where should we put these arrows?”

“Oil! Bring the oil over here!”

Women carried supplies for the battle and prepared simple food.

Looking at the thousands of commoners, Wikyung felt a tightness in his chest.

I told them to flee as far away as they could.

He had warned them sincerely, again and again. He had tried to persuade them.

This wasn’t merely a dispute among martial artists.

It was a brutal war that would claim countless lives, and they, with no strength to defend themselves, would suffer the most.

But they had made up their minds and refused to leave.

They had even come to help here, on a battlefield that would soon be swept by bloodshed.

Like the old carpenter standing before him.

“Looks like our Lesser Family Head has a lot on his mind.”

The old carpenter, who had been glancing sideways at Jin Wikyung, chuckled.

He had passed seventy several years ago. When he laughed, air whistled through the gaps between the few teeth he had left.

“Don’t you worry about it. This old man and all those folks out there came prepared.”

“But still… how could I not worry?”

“Goodness, please don’t speak so formally to me. I may be an old man without much time left, but I’m not shameless enough to expect honorifics from the Lesser Family Head.”

The old carpenter hurriedly waved his hands. Warmth shone in his pale gray eyes as he looked at Wikyung.

“Even a beast that can’t speak will repay a kindness someday. How could people turn their backs at a time like this?”

“What do you mean…?”

“When I was young and full of life, you’d have thought the country was falling apart. The Demonic Cult, or demons, or whatever those wretches were, stirred up trouble everywhere. Then came years of famine.”

It had happened long ago, before Jin Wikyung was born.

But the old carpenter remembered it clearly: boiling leather to eat and stripping bark from trees to chew.

Everyone was starving. There was no one they could ask for help, and no one able to give it.

If a group of men hadn’t come to their village one day under the blazing sun, he and his family would have starved to death before long.

“Is this Hong Family Village?”

“Y-yes, it is. What brings you here…?”

“Phew. Thank goodness we found the right place.”

What was the point of tilling fields that yielded not a single grain?

They had abandoned the barren land long before, gone into the mountains, and become slash-and-burn farmers.

So at first, they had thought the newcomers were bandits.

Or men sent by someone powerful to squeeze the last drops from people who had neither an iron coin nor a handful of grain left.

Why else would anyone come this deep into the mountains?

But instead of drawing the swords at their waists, the men set down the loads on their backs.

They were huge sacks.

Dozens of them, filled to the brim with grain and meat—the kind of sight they could barely remember ever seeing.

“W-what in the world is this…?”

“Get in line. We’ll hand it out in order.”

It felt like a dream.

It still felt like one when everyone in the village lined up as the men instructed, and when he watched his wife and children, who had lain weak and helpless for days, eat until their bellies were full to bursting.

Only after staring at that unbelievable sight and swallowing a mouthful of warm meat broth did he realize it was real.

So he cried.

No—everyone cried.

They wept aloud even as they chewed and swallowed the food in their mouths.

Because they wanted to live. Because they wanted to know they were alive.

“If they hadn’t helped us that day, this old man and my family would have starved to death there.”

The old carpenter looked at Wikyung with tears in his eyes. Unlike back then, he had a broad smile on his face.

“But those good people tried to leave without a word. So I grabbed one of them by the leg and hung on.”

He couldn’t read, not even the writing on their clothes.

So he’d clung on stubbornly, asking where they were from and begging them to tell him their three-character names.⁴

After a long struggle, he got the answer he wanted.

“From that day on, I vowed that if the Jin Family of Taiyuan ever needed me, I would give this worthless life of mine.”

“…!”

“And I’m not the only one. Every person here has received help from the Jin Family of Taiyuan, large or small.”

Some of those who had received that kindness had left. Others had stayed.

And those who stayed were ready to lay down their lives.

To protect the land where their fathers and mothers had lived, where they themselves had lived.

For the Jin Family of Taiyuan, who had reached out to them when they lay exhausted, waiting to die.

That was the Jin Family of Taiyuan’s true strength. It was what had sustained a distinguished family through three hundred years of rises and falls.

Ah.

Wikyung felt an ache deep in his chest.

Perhaps he was the one who had underestimated the Jin Family of Taiyuan—and Shanxi Province—most of all.

He turned away to hide his reddened eyes.

Thududududu!

Hooves pounded fiercely, their sound clear even from far away.

A fine horse raced across the gorge as though something were chasing it. Hanging from the horse was a martial artist of the Jin Family of Taiyuan, dead with his eyes wide open.

“…!”

“…!”

The air froze in an instant. Jin Wikyung shouted as if spitting blood.

“Everyone, prepare for battle!”

They were here.