Chapter 185: The Fear of Xin Qiji

Yanshan, Piaoquan.

Xin Qiji folded the letter, placed it back on the desk, and remained silent for a long time.

The letter was delivered by Tian Junmai. This old comrade had fought for half a month beneath Lingbi City, shot in the right arm; the characters were written with his left hand, crooked and uneven, yet every detail of the battle was recorded with meticulous precision—from the initial probing attacks to the final street fighting, to Heshilie Zhizhong’s narrow escape. Tian Junmai ended his letter: “You’an, Lingbi has fallen; Suzhou lies ahead. Yet I cannot understand one thing: if the Jin truly intended to hold fast, why is their southern front so thinly manned? If they did not intend to hold, why did Heshilie Zhizhong fight to the death at Lingbi? There must be a trick here. You, behind the lines, may see more clearly.”

Xin Qiji turned the letter over; on the back was an additional line, hastily added by Tian Junmai—“P.S.: Scouts report that Jin border garrisons along the northern wall have not stirred a single soldier; the western forces guarding against the Xia have not been redeployed southward. The Jin would rather let their southern front be riddled with holes than move a single man from the north. I am dull-witted; I cannot fathom why.”

This letter arrived five days ago. After reading it, Xin Qiji sat alone by Piaoquan the entire afternoon. The next day he received two more letters: one from an old subordinate in the central army, stating that General Xue was besieging Dengzhou and facing extreme difficulty; the other from Sichuan, written by a former aide now serving as a minor official in Wu Xi’s army. That letter used coded language, but Xin Qiji understood it—Wu Xi was stalling; the western army could not break through Dasanguan; Cheng Song was frantic but powerless.

Placing the three letters side by side, Xin Qiji stood before the map in his study until midnight.

The night at Piaoquan was silent. In May, southern Jiangnan buzzed with frog drums and murmuring streams; bamboo shadows outside the window swayed gently in the moonlight. This quiet was identical to that of decades past—decades ago, he too had sat before maps at night, studying northern expedition routes; he was twenty then, having returned south from Shandong, full of vigor. Now he was over sixty, half his hair white, retired in a Jiangxi village, thousands of miles from the front. Each letter from the front reached him days after the events it described. Yet what he discerned from these letters was more than many frontline generals saw on the battlefield.

“Not true victory.”

Xin Qiji murmured to himself before the map. His finger traced from Sizhoucheng, across Hongxian, Lingbi, Tangzhou, northward. Sizhoucheng fell in less than half a day—two thousand defenders fled without resistance. Hongxian held for six days; Wanyan Salar fought to the death, but with only fifteen hundred men and no reinforcements, the walls were eventually crushed by trebuchets. Lingbi was the hardest nail—Heshilie Zhizhong held for fifteen days, yet still fell. But that nail had only five thousand men. What of Tangzhou? One letter took it. The northern expedition surged forward like a bamboo shoot splitting rock, its victories dazzling. But Xin Qiji saw not victories, but numbers—Sizhoucheng: two thousand; Hongxian: fifteen hundred; Lingbi: five thousand; Tangzhou: three thousand. Combined, the Jin had committed fewer than twelve thousand men to the southern front, all scattered, isolated, with no mutual support. This was no battle—it was not even a proper engagement.

He moved his finger northward, resting it on Kaifeng. Kaifeng was Bianjing, the Jin’s central seat of power in the Central Plains. The Song’s goal was to reclaim Kaifeng, to water horses at the Yellow River. But between the Huai and Kaifeng lay Suzhou, Xuzhou, Shangqiu, Chenliu—each a fortified city. If the Jin truly intended to defend the Central Plains, these cities should have formed layered defenses, each a meat grinder. Yet how many troops had the Jin deployed on the southern front? Fewer than fifty thousand. Fifty thousand men spread across hundreds of miles from the Huai to the Yellow River—this was not defense; it was scattering fifty thousand men across a sand table like grains of sand.

Xin Qiji slowly sat back in his chair, hand pressed to his forehead. The candle flame flickered; the wick popped. He remembered one man—Wanyan Honglie. Two months ago, Wanyan Honglie had personally come to Lin’an, meeting secretly with Han Tuozhou at Doutingyi. No one knew what they discussed, but later, while serving in Zhenjiang, Xin Qiji learned one phrase through his own channels: “If the Jin fall, the Song will be next.”

Alone, this sounded like empty bluster. But paired with the twenty thousand elite troops unmoved along the Jin’s northern border, it was no bluff. The Jin were using their southern collapse to prove one thing: they faced a far more dangerous enemy to the north. They would rather surrender Sizhoucheng to Han Tuozhou, surrender Hongxian to Han Tuozhou, let Heshilie Zhizhong fight to the death at Lingbi for fifteen days and still lose it—all these losses, Wanyan Jing refused to shift a single soldier from the northern or western frontiers.

What did this mean? Xin Qiji closed his eyes. He recalled, over two years ago, while still in Zhenjiang, a returnee from the north had spoken of a force on the steppe called the Xinming Party: “firearms like thunder,” “cavalry like walls,” “all nobles purged.” Those words sounded like madness; he had not taken them seriously then. But two years had passed. That organization had swallowed the steppe, swallowed the Xia, and now crouched beyond the Jin’s northern border, silently digesting the Xia’s iron mines and population. The Jin would rather let Han Tuozhou reach the Yellow River than move a single elite soldier from the north. Those twenty thousand were not for offense—the Jin dared not attack—they were a shield. The Jin were betting their fate on a time differential: endure the silent pressure from the north, then exhaust the Song army in the south.

“Trading space for time.” Xin Qiji softly uttered those five words.

It was the only explanation. The Jin did not mass troops on the southern front not because it was unimportant, but because their central command judged that losing a few prefectures, a few cities, even the entire Lianghuai, mattered less than the northern front. Lose territory in the south, and the Jin remain the Jin. Break through the north, and the Jin cease to exist. Hence Wanyan Abao withdrew so cleanly from Tangzhou, leaving the granaries intact for Xue Shusi—not because he lacked will, but because his orders were to retreat. Hence Heshilie Zhizhong, after fighting at Lingbi, broke out with fewer than two hundred survivors—he had no choice, because his orders were not “defend Lingbi to the death,” but “delay the Song army as long as possible.” He delayed fifteen days; the mission was complete; he left.

If this judgment is correct, then every victory of the northern expedition is helping the Xinming Party gnaw at the Jin’s southern bones. Every Song city taken weakens the silent colossus to the north. When the Jin collapse under pressure from both sides, the Song will not face a dying Jin, but a red regime that has absorbed the steppe, the Xia, and all the resources of the Jin’s northern territories.

Xin Qiji rose and walked to the window. Outside lay the May night of Jiangxi, eerily quiet. Yet beneath that stillness, he seemed to hear the hammering of iron at Helan Mountain’s foundries, the hoofbeats of steppe cavalry, the crack of that red banner in the northern wind. Those sounds were distant, yet clear.

He suddenly remembered Lu You. That old madman had been writing poems day and night by Jinghu, reportedly composing over a hundred, each one praising the northern expedition and Han Tuozhou. When Xin Qiji last visited Shanyin, he looked at Lu You’s stacks of poems, then merely waved his hand and sighed. Now he understood: that gesture was not a rejection of Lu You, but a helpless acknowledgment of his own powerlessness. He could see through the Jin’s strategy, but he could change nothing.

All he could do was write a few letters, advising his old subordinates on the front: “Preserve your strength; do not advance alone.” But he could not say too much—too many words would shake morale. In today’s Lin’an, where everyone shouted “Reclaim Bianjing, wash away national shame,” any cautious word was deemed cowardice, any calm analysis branded “pro-peace.”

Xin Qiji returned to his desk, spread out a sheet of paper, lifted his brush to write a memorial to Han Tuozhou. The tip hovered above the paper for a long time, then slowly lowered. He had too much to say, but none of it was what Han Tuozhou wanted to hear. Han Tuozhou did not seek strategic analysis—he wanted victories, poetry, the unreserved praise of Lu You of Shanyin. He could not give it. Not because he could not, but because he would not. The most valuable thing he had in life was this untimely clarity.

He rolled up the paper. Then walked to the door, gazing at the moon over Piaoquan. The lotuses by Jinghu had not yet bloomed; the moonlight on the water lay shattered in fragments. He stood there, his broad back silent and still. Reports of northern victories still traveled the roads; Lin’an’s revelry continued. But he had already seen what would remain on the shore when the tide receded.

The northern expedition’s end may not be Bianjing.