Chapter 185: Xin Qiji's Fear

Yanshan, Piaoyuan.

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

The letter was brought by a messenger on behalf of Tian Junmai. This old comrade had fought fiercely beneath the walls of Lingbi for half a month and was struck by an arrow in his right arm; the characters on the letter were written with his left hand, crooked and uneven, yet the battle situation at Lingbi was recorded meticulously. From the probing attacks on the first day to the final street fighting, to He Shilie Heshilie Zhizhong barely escaping with his life—every detail was written down. Tian Junmai's letter ended: "Brother You'an, Lingbi has been captured, and Suzhou is in sight. However, there is one matter I do not understand: if the Jin truly intend to defend to the death, why is the southern front so empty? If they do not intend to defend to the death, why did He Shilie Heshilie Zhizhong fight for his life at Lingbi? There must be something suspicious here; you are in the rear, so you may see more clearly."

Xin Qiji turned the letter over; on the back was a small line of text added by Tian Junmai at the last moment: "Postscript: Scouts report that the troops stationed along the northern border wall of the Jin Empire have not moved an inch, and the western army defending against Xia has not been moved south. The Jin would rather turn the southern front into a sieve than move a single soldier from the north. I am dull and do not understand the reason."

This letter arrived five days ago. After reading it, Xin Qiji sat alone by Piaoyuan for an entire afternoon. The next day, he received two more letters: one from an old subordinate in the Central Army, stating that Marshal Xue was besieging Dengzhou and fighting with extreme difficulty; the other from Sichuan, written by a former subordinate of his who now served 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 exit Daxiguan, Cheng Song was jumping with anxiety, but had no way to act.

With the three letters laid out together, Xin Qiji stood before the map in his study until midnight.

The night at Piaoyuan was very quiet. In the Jiangnan of May, frog croaks were like drums, the stream murmured, and the bamboo shadows outside the window swayed slightly in the moonlight. This quiet was exactly the same as decades ago—decades ago, he too had studied the routes for the Northern Expedition against such a map on such a night; back then he was only twenty, returning from southern Shandong, full of spirit and ambition. Now he was over sixty, his hair mostly white, living in seclusion in the Jiangxi countryside, thousands of li from the front lines. Those letters from the front lines reached his hands only days after the events occurred. Yet the things he saw in these letters were more than many generals on the front lines saw on the battlefield.

"Not a true victory."

Xin Qiji murmured to himself before the map. His finger started at Sizhou, swept across Hongxian, Lingbi, and Tangzhou, all the way north. Sizhou was lost in less than half a day—two thousand defending troops fled without much resistance. Hongxian held for six days; Wanyan Sala fought to the death without retreating, but his forces numbered only fifteen hundred, with no reinforcements, and finally the city walls were smashed down by trebuchets. Lingbi was the hardest nail; He Shilie Heshilie Zhizhong held it for fifteen days but was finally defeated. Yet this nail brought only five thousand men. What about Tangzhou? It was taken with a single letter. The Northern Expeditionary Army advanced like a storm, pushing north, appearing to achieve brilliant results. But what Xin Qiji saw was not results, but numbers—two thousand at Sizhou, fifteen hundred at Hongxian, five thousand at Lingbi, three thousand at Tangzhou. In total, the Jin forces deployed on the southern front numbered less than twelve thousand, and they were all scattered, fighting independently, isolated units with no reinforcements or coordination. How could this be a decisive battle? It didn't even qualify as a proper engagement.

He moved his finger north, pointing to the location of Kaifeng. Kaifeng was Bianjing, the center of Jin rule in the Central Plains. The Song army's goal was to recover Kaifeng and water their horses at the Yellow River. But between the Huaihe and Kaifeng lay Suzhou, Xuzhou, Shangqiu, and Chenliu; every one was a fortified city. If the Jin truly intended to defend the Central Plains, these cities should have been layered with defenses, advancing step by step; every city should have been a meat grinder. Yet how many men did the Jin deploy on the southern front in total? Less than fifty thousand. Fifty thousand men scattered across a front line of several hundred li from the Huaihe to the Yellow River; this was not defense, this was scattering fifty thousand men across a sand table to be used as sand.

Xin Qiji slowly sat back in his chair, propping his forehead with his hand. The candle flame in the study flickered, and the wick crackled with a pop. He thought of one person—Wanyan Honglie. Two months ago, Wanyan Honglie had personally rushed to Lin'an and held a private meeting with Han Tuozhou at the Dutong Post. No one knew the content of the discussion, but later, while serving in Zhenjiang Prefecture, Xin Qiji learned a single sentence through his own channels. That sentence was spoken by Wanyan Honglie, and only one sentence: "If the Jin Empire falls, the next to fall will be the Great Song."

Viewed alone, this sentence seemed like blustering intimidation. But paired with the twenty thousand elite troops on the Jin northern border who had not moved an inch, it was not intimidation. It was the Jin using the entire collapse of the southern front to prove one thing: they had an enemy on their north far more dangerous than the Great Song. They would rather surrender Sizhou to Han Tuozhou, surrender Hongxian to Han Tuozhou, let He Shilie Heshilie Zhizhong fight the Song army to a standstill at Lingbi for half a month and finally lose Lingbi—rather than endure all these losses, Wanyan Jing would absolutely not move a single soldier from the northern border and western front to the south.

What did this mean? Xin Qiji closed his eyes. He recalled that more than two years ago, while still serving in Zhenjiang, some returnees from the north had spoken of a power on the steppes called the "New Ming Party." "Firearms and thunder," "cavalry like walls," "the nobility completely purged"... those words sounded like madness, so back then he had not fully believed them. But two years had passed; that organization had swallowed the steppes, swallowed Western Xia, and now sat outside the Jin northern border, silently digesting Western Xia's iron mines and population. The Jin would rather be pushed by Han Tuozhou to the banks of the Yellow River than not place those twenty thousand elites before that organization. Those twenty thousand men were not for offense—the Jin dared not attack at all—they were used as a shield. The Jin was gambling their national fate on a time difference: first withstand the silent pressure from the north, then drag down the Song army in the south.

"Space for time," Xin Qiji softly uttered these five characters.

This was the only explanation. The Jin did not deploy heavy troops on the southern front not because the southern front was unimportant, but because in the judgment of the Jin central authority, losing a few prefectures, losing a few cities, or even losing the entire Lianghuai region on the southern front was less important than the northern front. Losing territory on the southern front, the Jin would still be the Jin. Once the northern front was breached, the Jin would be gone. That was why Wanyan Alubao withdrew so decisively from Tangzhou, leaving the granaries intact to Xue Shushi—not because he did not want to fight, but because the order he received was to contract. That was why, after finishing the battle at Lingbi, He Shilie Heshilie Zhizhong broke out with fewer than two hundred remnants and fled; he had to flee because the order he received was not "defend Lingbi to the death," but "delay the Song army as much as possible." So he delayed for fifteen days, the mission was accomplished, and he left.

If this judgment was correct, then every victory of the Northern Expeditionary Army was helping that New Ming Party gnaw on the bones of the Jin southern front. Every city the Song army captured weakened the Jin on behalf of that silent giant in the north. By the time the Jin was crushed from both north and south, the Great Song would face not a dying Jin, but a red regime that had already digested the steppes, Western Xia, and all the resources of the Jin northern border.

Xin Qiji stood up and walked to the window. Outside was the night of Jiangnan in May, quiet to the point of unreality. Yet beneath this quiet night, he seemed to hear the sound of iron hammers at the Helan Mountain ironworks, the hoofbeats of steppe cavalry, and the sound of that red flag snapping in the north wind. Those sounds were still very distant, but very clear.

He suddenly thought of Lu You. That old madman wrote poetry day and night by Jinghu; it was said he had already written over a hundred poems, each one praising the Northern Expedition and praising Han Tuozhou. The last time Xin Qiji went to Shanyin, looking at Lu You's pile of manuscripts, he finally only waved his hand and sighed. Now thinking back, that gesture was not a rejection of Lu You, but a helplessness regarding his own powerlessness. He could see through the Jin's layout, but he could change nothing.

The most he could do was write a few letters, offering a few words of advice to old subordinates on the front lines: "Be careful to preserve your strength; do not penetrate deep with isolated forces." But these words could not be said too much; saying too much would shake morale. In the current frenzy in Lin'an where everyone was shouting "Recover Bianjing! Avenge the national humiliation!", any cautious word would be taken as cowardice, and any calm analysis would be labeled as belonging to the Zhuhe Sect.

Xin Qiji returned to his desk, spread out a sheet of paper, and raised his brush to write a memorial to Han Tuozhou. The brush tip hovered over the paper for a long time, then he slowly lowered the brush. He had too many things to say, but every sentence was not what Han Tuozhou wanted to hear. What Han Tuozhou wanted was not strategic analysis, but victory reports, poetry, and unrestrained praise like that of Lu Fangweng of Shanyin. He could not provide it. Not that he could not, but that he did not want to. The most valuable thing about him in this life was this untimely clarity.

He put the paper away. Then he walked to the door, gazing at the moonlight over Piaoyuan. The lotuses by Jinghu had not yet bloomed; the moonlight on the water was shattered into pieces. He stood there, his back broad and silent. The victory reports of the Northern Expedition were still on the way, the carnival in Lin'an continued, yet he had already seen what would be left on the shore after the tide receded.

The endpoint of the Northern Expedition might not be Bianjing.