The noise of the killing shook the sky!

On the wall, outside the wall, everywhere men were fighting each other for their lives.

The ground was heaped with bodies.

One soldier caught sight of Ning Chen and his eyes lit up as though he had seen a great ingot of silver.

This man had no white cloth strip tied around his arm. He was one of the enemy.

Because Zhao Bokang’s officers and men all wore the Great Xuan’s own uniform.

The armor and the uniforms were the same on both sides, and Ning Chen had been afraid they would not be able to tell friend from enemy on the field, so he had the men tie white cloth strips around their arms.

The Great Xuan’s uniforms were black, so a white strip showed up well.

The soldier came running over in high spirits, took hold of Ning Chen’s ear and made ready to cut it off with his blade.

On a battlefield, killing one of the enemy is merit, and merit is a tael of silver.

In earlier times they had cut the heads off the enemy they killed and carried them back to claim the reward.

But it was found later that a belt hung with heads got in the way of the fighting, so it became the right ear instead.

Every soldier had a cloth bag at his waist. Kill an enemy, cut off his right ear, and when the war was over you took them back and claimed your reward.

There had been men, of course, who murdered the innocent and passed it off as merit.

That is, quietly cutting the ears off their own side and taking them back for the reward.

Worse still, there were men who massacred villages and killed men who had surrendered for the sake of merit, sparing neither the old nor the weak nor women nor children — since any right ear at all could be taken back and claimed on.

And there were men more far gone than that, who cut the ears off their own comrades.

Such things were far from rare.

Until they angered the late emperor, who in a fit of rage — because the ears did not tally with the enemy’s dead — had thirty thousand men put to the sword, killed from the top of the army to the bottom, and their families put to the sword after them.

Only then was the thing brought under control.

Even now, after one reform on top of another, it happens very rarely.

Because if the count of ears differs from the count of the enemy dead by more than five, there is not only no merit in it — there are questions to answer, and the commander of that army is beaten to death under the rod.

The men of the archer battalion cannot come to hand-to-hand with the enemy, but every archer’s arrows carry his own mark, and in the end the mark shows who shot which of the enemy down.

At any rate, after one reform after another, murdering the innocent to claim merit has become a rare thing.

Ning Chen had the men tie white strips around their arms, but he had forgotten to tie one on himself.

The crucial thing was that Ning Chen’s face was now filthy with blood, plastered over with it, and not every soldier in the army knew him by sight — so this one took him for one of the enemy.

Ordinarily a commander in chief would wear gold armor, but Ning Chen was a general appointed for the emergency, with no tiger tally and no proper gold armor, so he wore an ordinary officer’s armor.

The soldier took Ning Chen for an enemy and cheerfully set about picking up an easy prize — cut off the ear and take it back for the reward.

It was the pain that woke Ning Chen.

He let out a muffled grunt and his eyes flew open.

That gave the soldier who was about to cut his ear off a bad fright, and he staggered backward.

But his eyes hardened at once, and he swung his blade down at Ning Chen.

Ning Chen was badly startled and rolled along the ground on reflex, getting clear of the blade, then came up on the movement.

Ning Chen saw the white strip on the man’s arm and could not hold his temper.

“You’re asking to die. You dare raise a hand to me?”

The soldier gripped his blade and shouted, “General Ning’s order — surrender and live, resist and be cut down where you stand. If you want to live, get down on your knees.”

Ning Chen was taken aback and stared at him, at a loss. “Are you blind? Don’t you know me?”

“A traitor who’s gone over to the enemy, and this insolent? Your life, now!”

The soldier swung his blade at Ning Chen.

Ning Chen lost his temper and kicked him flying.

“You dog, I—”

Before Ning Chen could finish, several of the enemy came charging at him.

Ning Chen picked a long blade up off the ground — where his own had gone he had no idea, so he took the first that came to hand — and cut down the men charging at him, one stroke each.

By the time he looked back, the soldier who had been about to cut his ear off was gone.

Christ!

He would settle with that dog later.

His sharp eyes swept the bodies on the ground.

Then his eyes narrowed to points. Ning Chen had found Zhao Bokang.

Ning Chen rushed over and drove his blade into Zhao Bokang’s chest.

In fact Zhao Bokang had been dead some time.

When the two of them fell from the wall, Zhao Bokang had come down head first. His neck had broken and he had died on the spot.

Ning Chen had been lucky and landed on a body, which had saved his life.

A hardness came into Ning Chen’s eyes, and with one stroke he took Zhao Bokang’s head off.

Carrying Zhao Bokang’s head, he killed his way back up onto the wall and roared at the top of his voice, “Zhao Bokang is dead! Lay down your weapons and surrender and your lives will be spared!”

But Ning Chen’s voice was swallowed in the killing, and only the soldiers near him heard it. They turned to look.

They looked at the head in Ning Chen’s hand.

“Brother, is that really Zhao Bokang’s head?”

Ning Chen: “???”

“You dare doubt my word?”

“Who are you?”

Ning Chen was furious. “You dog, don’t you even know me? I am Ning Chen.”

“Ning Chen? General Ning?”

“You’re General Ning?”

Ning Chen was at a loss. How was it that not one of these men knew him?

But he had no time for that now, and bellowed, “Shout it for me — Zhao Bokang is dead! Lay down your weapons and surrender and your lives will be spared!”

The soldiers around him began to shout it at the tops of their lungs. “By General Ning’s order — Zhao Bokang has been cut down by General Ning! Lay down your weapons and surrender and General Ning will spare your lives!”

The sound of it came like a tide.

First a dozen or so men shouting, then hundreds and thousands, and at last tens of thousands roaring it together.

The sound rolled out and swept across the battlefield.

Word that Zhao Bokang had been cut down went through the whole field in a moment.

The enemy’s spirit had been low to begin with. Now their whole army came apart.

And just at that moment, Qi Yuanzhong led a party in and cut down the enemy’s war banner.

Watching the banner go down, and hearing at their ears that Zhao Bokang had been cut down, Zhao Bokang’s soldiers fell into complete confusion, and their spirit sank as low as it could go.

Ning Chen had a flagstaff brought, hung Zhao Bokang’s head on it, put the banner guard around it, and set them running along the wall with it.

Once they saw Zhao Bokang’s head, Zhao Bokang’s soldiers had no heart left for fighting.

The commander in chief himself had been killed. How was the battle to be fought now?

Most of them were secretly glad of it.

They were all one people. They had never wanted to fight in the first place, and besides, the other side had muskets and those things that took out a whole patch of ground in one burst. This battle was always going to end with them beaten.

Before, there had been nothing they could do. Now Zhao Bokang was dead, so what was the point of fighting?

And General Ning had said it: surrender and live.

The rebel troops began to throw down their arms and surrender.

The whole length of the wall rang with the clatter of weapons hitting the ground.

The banner guard were still running with Zhao Bokang’s head up on the staff.

The cry of quarter to any man who surrenders rang across the battlefield.

The battle slowly came to its end.

But there were still several bodies of men fighting on, all of them Zhao Bokang’s own guard.

They were cut down and the resistance was crushed soon enough.

There were many soldiers with tears standing in their eyes. They were all young men of the Great Xuan, and fighting their own was too hard to bear. Among the rebels were men who had been their friends, men from their own villages, sworn brothers, even blood kin — and now they had to kill one another, and their hearts were bleeding with it.

No more fighting at last!

Some cheered, some were red-eyed, and some held a body in their arms and wept aloud.

(End of Chapter 276)