On the fourth day Mu Anbang came back.

Ning Chen held the tiger cub. There was nothing at all in his face as he looked at Mu Anbang, who stood in front of him with his hands at his sides.

"How many did you find?"

Mu Anbang swallowed nervously. "Three thousand five hundred and seventy-two."

Ning Chen's face was a terrible thing to see.

Of twenty-five thousand men, only two thousand-odd had come back. Close to twenty thousand were dead.

If the rest of the officers and men were alive, they would have come to Linhai City.

None had come, so if any were still alive, there could not be many of them.

"Your account will be settled after Xiangzhou is taken... Get out."

Mu Anbang's face was heavy with self-reproach, and he withdrew without a word.

Yuan Long and the others did not dare speak either.

Under military law, the loss of close to twenty thousand officers and men meant beheading on the spot.

If Mu Anbang could win some great merit in the attack on Xiangzhou, he might yet come out of it alive.

Ning Chen was keeping him out of old feeling: he wanted the man to earn that merit and save his life by it.

Ning Chen let out a breath and said heavily, "Pass my order. The army marches tomorrow!"

"Yes!"

The next day.

The Ning'an Army, the ten thousand of the frontier army under Sun Gaohan, the twenty thousand captured eastern frontier army men, Mu Anbang's six thousand-odd, and the baggage train with them — some fifty thousand men in all — marched straight for Haizhong City.

Haizhong City could be reached by land; there was no need to go by ship.

Seven or eight days would see them there.

On the evening of the fourth day the army halted to rest.

Ning Chen was in his tent, playing with the tiger cub.

The little creature was growing fast. In only a few days it was already close to forty centimeters long.

Ning Chen had had a bamboo creel made for the cub, and…