More than ten days went by in a blink.

That old rogue Prince Rui had bled Xiangzhou white and left it groaning. Now it was gradually growing quiet again.

With the common people lending a hand, the rebels had nowhere left to hide.

Xiangzhou. Inside a teahouse.

"General Ning stands eight feet tall. One sweep of his arm carries a thousand pounds of force. He holds a mountain-splitting axe and rides a blue-maned wind-chasing colt. When he took his stand below the city wall and let out one furious roar, the very wind and clouds changed color and the thunder of heaven came rolling."

"And up on top of the wall, the rebel commander Qu Lang was so terrified that he fell from the wall then and there and smashed to a pulp... and as for that Zhaohe general Shanben Junjie, the fright went through his liver and gall, blood poured from all seven openings of his head, and he died of terror where he stood....."

On the platform the storyteller's brows flew and his face danced. He told it with every rise and fall in the right place, and the whole room went with him. A wave of cheering came back at him.

Three people were sitting below the platform, at a table near the door.

They were Ning Chen, Feng Qizheng and Yue Congyun.

Just then the storyteller cracked his wake-block (TL Note: 醒木, the small block of hardwood a Chinese storyteller slaps on the table to open a passage or mark a turn in the tale.) and said loudly, "And then there is Feng Qizheng, the foremost fighting man under General Ning's command. He wields a length of rebar, and for sheer ferocity he has no equal. The rebels had only to hear his great name and every one of them lost his nerve."

"Under General Ning there is also a woman officer, Yue Congyun, who is Feng Qizheng's betrothed. She may have a woman's body, but a woman's headdress gives no ground to a man's beard. She carries a silver spear, and no man can stand…