Han Fu stood entirely paralyzed, his mind spinning into a vortex of sheer disbelief.
Is Ye City, a regional capital where I have tens of thousands of garrisoned troops stationed, made of paper?
War had broken out... No, that wasn't right. More accurately, it had only been a declaration of war. On the fifth day since the first marching orders were issued in Qing Province, Zhang Xin had already breached his capital? How on earth did he get in?
Fortunately, the shrill screams bouncing off the walls inside and outside the State Prefecture violently yanked him back to reality.
"My wife and children!" Han Fu cried out internally, a sudden jolt of adrenaline snapping his frozen limbs into motion. He spun on his heel and sprinted deeper into the residential quarters.
Since the situation had collapsed into utter madness, what else could he do? Run!
Han Fu's wife and children had also been violently awakened by the external cacophony. Clad in their sleeping robes, they were huddled together in a blind, trembling panic.
"Go, go, go! Move, hurry!" Han Fu shouted, grabbing his wife by the arm and pushing his children ahead of him. He didn't even bother to secure his coin purses, his ceremonial robes, or any traveling clothes. He dragged his family through the chaotic corridors and burst through the main gates of the State Prefecture.
The moment he hit the street, he bellowed at the frantic sentries guarding the entrance: "Quickly! Find me a carriage! Now!"
The personal guards had clearly been listening to the terrifying screams echoing from the main thoroughfares. Upon hearing the Governor's direct order to retreat, they didn't dare delay for a single second. They quickly commandeered a plain, unmarked transport carriage, practically shoved Han Fu's family inside, and formed an armored escort to flee for their lives.
Beyond the palace gates, the brutal sounds of slaughter grew sharper, cutting through the heavy night air. The streets were an absolute nightmare of human traffic—thousands of panicked civilians were trampling one another to escape, while scattered detachments of garrison soldiers tried in vain to maintain some semblance of order.
The chaotic sight sent Han Fu's heart plunging into a deeper, colder panic.
"Zhang Xin launched his offensive from Liyang, which means he must be assaulting the South Gate," Han Fu muttered, his hands shaking as he peered through the carriage curtain. In this absolute moment of life and death, his usually sluggish intellect briefly took the high ground. "We cannot go south. We will break through the North Gate and drive straight for Julu to seek refuge with Gao Lan!"
The carriage driver cracked his whip, and the horses galloped furiously through the winding streets, heading due north.
Upon reaching the massive archway of the northern gate, Han Fu's convoy was, as expected, brought to an abrupt halt by a wall of lowered spears.
"Halt!" a defending soldier stepped forward, thrusting his torch toward the carriage. "The Governor has strictly decreed that no one is permitted to exit the city gates without explicit clearance!"
He glared at the driver. "You are attempting to evacuate the city in the dead of night. Do you possess a signed, sealed written order from the Governor's hand?"
"Are you blind, you miserable dog?!" Han Fu crawled out of the carriage cabin, his face flushed with rage as he screamed at the sentry. "How dare you block my personal carriage? Step aside immediately!"
The sentry was merely a low-ranking grunt; he had never seen Han Fu's face in his life. While the carriage was surrounded by heavily armored personal guards, signaling that the passenger was an elite noble, Han Fu was riding in an ordinary, unmarked wooden cart for his escape. It wasn't the ornate, golden Governor's carriage, nor did it fly the official provincial seals or banners.
The devastating news of Zhang Xin capturing Liyang had already spread like wildfire through the civilian population during the day. In such an extraordinary crisis, how could a common gatekeeper dare to let a random convoy slip past the perimeter? Even if the passenger claimed to be the ruler of the province, rules were rules.
"You claim to be the Governor," the soldier said, his voice tightening as his grip on his spear hardened. "Can you prove it? Where is your seal?"
That single sentence left Han Fu entirely speechless. He had been in such a frantic rush to escape the perceived slaughter that he hadn't even grabbed his wealth, let alone remembered to fetch the massive jade Governor's seal from his study.
For several agonizing minutes, the two sides remained locked in a tense, hostile deadlock. Driven to the absolute brink of frustration, a hysterical Han Fu finally ordered his personal guards to draw their blades and execute the insolent soldier on the spot.
Seeing the guards unsheathe their swords, the sentry instantly blew his whistle, screaming for reinforcements. The commotion quickly drew the attention of the North Gate's commanding general, who came rushing down from the battlements with a massive cohort of heavy infantry.
"Governor?" The defending general skidded to a halt, his eyes widening in complete shock as the torchlight illuminated Han Fu's face. "Why is the Governor at the perimeter gates at this hour of the night?"
"Zhang Xin's main army has already breached our lines and entered the city!" Han Fu's voice was high-pitched and breathless. "Throw open the gates immediately! Abandon your post, gather your men, and escort me to Julu!"
"What?!" The general turned pale, his heart skipping a beat. He instinctively spun around to yell at the gatehouse crews. "Open the city—!"
"Do not open that city gate!" a booming voice roared from the dark streets behind them.
Han Fu whipped his head around. Galloping through the shadows on a foaming warhorse was Ju Shou, his robes disheveled and his face covered in soot.
"The gate must remain sealed!" Ju Shou skidded his mount to a halt, threw himself out of the saddle, and offered a swift, tense salute. "Please, Lord—you must return to the State Prefecture immediately to take charge of the defense."
"Return to what State Prefecture?!" Han Fu shrieked, gesturing wildly. "Zhang Xin has already broken through our defenses! If I go back there, I am a dead man!"
"Zhang Xin has not broken into the city," Ju Shou interrupted firmly, his voice cutting through Han Fu's hysteria like a knife. "Calm yourself, Lord. The city walls are entirely secure."
"He hasn't...?" Han Fu froze, his mouth hanging open. "Then why are the citizens in the streets screaming that the Marquis of Xuanwei has breached the gates? And what is that horrific noise? Listen to those war cries!"
"The slaughter is happening entirely outside the walls," Ju Shou explained, taking a deep breath to steady his own racing pulse. "Zhang Xin launched a devastating midnight raid. He struck the vanguard camp of the Southern Xiongnu cavalry. But his forces have already broken contact and retreated into the dark."
The regional army had been scheduled to march south at dawn, and Ju Shou, acting as the Grand Imperial Supervisor, was mandated to ride with them. Consequently, he had chosen to spend the night in Yuan Shao's massive encampment just outside the city walls.
In the dead of night, the sudden, earth-shattering roar of battle had violently shaken him from his cot. Ju Shou had sprinted from his tent and scrambled up the highest wooden watchtower to survey the field. From that vantage point, he had watched in horror as Yufuro's massive Xiongnu cavalry camp was transformed into a raging sea of fire.
The sheer ferocity of the sudden assault had instantly catalyzed a chain reaction throughout the neighboring sectors. The raw recruits and seasoned veterans within Yuan Shao's main camp were jarred awake by the terrifying screams of their burning allies. Hearing the nearby sounds of industrial-scale slaughter in the absolute pitch black, the soldiers immediately succumbed to blind, unadulterated panic.
Some tried to grope in the dark for their weapons to form a defensive line, others bolted blindly into the night to save their own skins, and thousands simply shrieked in terror, spreading the panic like a viral contagion.
This total collapse of discipline in the dead of night was the absolute ultimate nightmare of every military commander in history. It possessed a terrifying technical name—
A camp explosion!
This was Ju Shou's very first time embedded with a live army. While he had read extensive historical treatises on the psychological phenomena of camp panics, actually standing atop a tower and witnessing tens of thousands of men lose their minds simultaneously left him utterly powerless. He could do nothing but watch helplessly as the terrified soldiers within Yuan Shao's ranks began to blindly trample, stab, and slaughter one another in the dark, mistaking their own comrades for Zhang Xin's elite raiders.
Fortunately, Yuan Shao and his core officers possessed extensive operational experience with frontline chaos.
Drawing his blade, Yuan Shao had personally led his son Yuan Tan, along with Chunyu Qiong and a brutal contingent of heavy personal guards, into the thick of the panic. They executed a merciless series of summary slaughters against their own fleeing men, eventually carving order back into the ranks through sheer, unmitigated terror and suppressing the camp explosion.
By the time the internal chaos was brought under control, Zhang Xin's strike cavalry had already finished butchering the Xiongnu camp, thoroughly torched their supplies, and vanished back into the night.
Realizing the severity of the psychological damage, Ju Shou had immediately ridden back into the city to brief Han Fu and prevent a secondary panic within the capital. But he had completely failed to anticipate that the terror would leap over the stone walls; not only had the external camps exploded, but the civilian population and the internal garrison had also lost their minds. Even the supreme commander of the province was currently halfway out the back door.
Ju Shou had arrived at the empty State Prefecture, found Han Fu missing, and spent a frantic hour interrogating fleeing staff before finally tracking his lord's trajectory to the northern exit.
Zhang Xin's main infantry vanguard hadn't even arrived on the horizon yet. If the supreme commander-in-chief of Ji Province was directly frightened into exile by a mere midnight cavalry skirmish, then what was the point of continuing this war? They might as well just march down to Pingyuan and hand Zhang Xin the provincial keys.
"Zhang Xin didn't enter the city? Are you absolutely certain he didn't breach the walls?" Han Fu demanded, confirming the detail repeatedly as his eyes darted around. "Xun You, you wouldn't deceive me on this matter, would you? He truly isn't inside?"
"He has completely evacuated the sector," Ju Shou stated, letting out a weary, exhausted sigh.
Even he hadn't anticipated that Zhang Xin, who had just executed a brutal siege to capture Liyang during the daylight hours, would have the sheer, ungodly audacity to march another hundred li north to execute a complex midnight raid on the capital's doorstep within the exact same twenty-four-hour window.
Too fast! The operational tempo was so blisteringly rapid that it defied conventional military doctrine. As swift as the wind, as fierce as fire—the ancient texts described it perfectly, but seeing it in reality was a different horror entirely.
Zhang Xin's riders had pushed through five hundred li in three days, yet they still possessed the stamina, morale, and sheer nerve to launch a flawless night raid against an entrenched enemy force...
What did this indicate? It indicated that Zhang Xin's mastery over his soldiers' physical thresholds, his logistical pacing, and his warhorses' stamina had reached an elite, scientific level that Ju Shou simply could not comprehend.
Thinking of this, an icy chill crept down Ju Shou's spine. Tonight, Zhang Xin had only deployed a minuscule detachment of cavalry to harass them, yet the mere sound of his approach had caused the entire capital region—inside and out—to completely explode, sending the Governor fleeing in his underwear. With such a profound, systemic terror dominating their ranks from top to bottom, did they genuinely stand a single ghost of a chance at winning this war?
Han Fu felt a massive wave of relief wash over him. Once his heart rate stabilized, his cowardice instantly morphed back into a display of loud, blustering fury.
"That arrogant brat Zhang Xin... that traitorous scoundrel Qu Yi...!"
It didn't take a master strategist to deduce how Zhang Xin had managed to pinpoint the exact coordinates of the Xiongnu cavalry camp amidst the sprawling, miles-wide network of fortifications outside Ye City. Qu Yi had undoubtedly sold out their entire defensive layout the moment he surrendered Liyang.
Under Ju Shou's patient, calculated appeasement, Han Fu finally ordered his carriage to turn around and returned to the State Prefecture. With an incident of this magnitude shattering the night, any hope of sleep was entirely gone. Han Fu spent the remainder of the dark hours locked in an emergency war council with Ju Shou, anxiously waiting for dawn to assess the true structural damage to their forces.
As the horizon gradually bled into a pale, grey dawn, the reports were still being compiled. Before the exact casualty numbers from the camp explosion could be tallied, a mud-splattered scout burst into the grand hall.
"Governor! Urgent report! Twenty li due east of the city walls, Zhang Xin's strike cavalry has been spotted! They have unsaddled their mounts and are openly resting along the banks of the Zhang River!"
"What?!" Han Fu slammed his fist onto the table, his face twisted in a volatile mix of shock and unadulterated fury. "That little brat Zhang Xin is pushing his luck too far!"
He was shocked by the sheer brazenness of the move, but more than anything, he was profoundly insulted.
You son of a bitch. After launching a illegal midnight raid on my capital, instead of fleeing back to your lines under the cover of darkness, you dare to casually set up camp and rest your horses right under my nose? Are you treating the hundred thousand Imperial troops garrisoned inside this city as absolute non-entities?!
"Someone!" The more Han Fu dwelled on the insult, the hotter his blood boiled, and he let out a savage roar. "Issue an immediate mandate! Mobilize the legions! Hunt down Zhang Xin's cavalry and slaughter them! Hunt them down!"
"Wait!" Ju Shou stepped forward, throwing his hand up to intercept the messengers. He spun around to face the panicked scout. "What is the exact composition of the enemy force along the riverbank? How many men are we talking about?"
"Our lookouts count just over two thousand riders," the scout replied instantly.
"Only two thousand...?" Ju Shou's expression hardened, a deep frown carving into his brow. He pressed further: "Whose personal heraldry are they displaying?"
"They are flying the primary golden dragon banner of the Marquis of Xuanwei himself," the scout confirmed.
"It is actually Zhang Xin leading them in person?" Ju Shou muttered, his mind racing as a sudden sense of dread washed over him.
"Good! Sublime timing!" Han Fu sneered, a vindictive gleam in his eyes. "He has barely two thousand men at his back, they are completely exhausted from a three-day forced march and a frantic night raid, yet he dares to display such monumental arrogance! Issue my direct command: order Gongsun Zan to immediately mobilize the elite White Horse Volunteers! Launch a full-scale sweep and bring me Zhang Xin's head—or capture him alive!"
"Absolutely not!" Ju Shou shouted, his voice echoing sharply across the stone pillars. "Governor, I implore you to reconsider! Zhang Xin's tactical acumen is legendary; he deploys troops like a god. If a commander of his caliber is displaying such blatant, exposed carelessness right outside our gates, it is almost certainly a trap!"
He stepped closer to Han Fu, his tone urgent. "Last night, the Xiongnu camp was utterly annihilated, and our own main infantry ranks are still deeply shaken from the camp explosion. The true extent of our structural losses is still entirely unknown. If the Governor rashly deploys our finest shock cavalry into an unverified sector and we lose the White Horse Volunteers, what strategic assets will our army have left to counter Zhang Xin's mobile forces in the battles to come?"
Upon hearing Ju Shou's cold, logical breakdown, the fiery rage in Han Fu's chest began to rapidly cool, replaced once more by the paralyzing fear that had dominated his mind the night before.
"Ju Shou... then this time... are we truly just going to sit behind our walls and let him mock us?"
"We must let it go," Ju Shou nodded grimly, his voice heavy. "Governor, our army's absolute highest tactical priority right now is not vengeance—it is stabilizing the shattered morale of our own men!"
Last night, a single cavalry charge from Zhang Xin had caused the entire military apparatus of Ye City to completely explode from the inside out. How could they expect men who were currently trembling in their tents to execute a complex offensive sweep against the fiercest warrior in the realm? They simply couldn't.
Han Fu's facial expression cycled rapidly between cowardice, humiliation, and impotent anger. After a long, agonizing silence, he managed to spit out a single, bitter sentence.
"That little brat Zhang Xin... is truly a demon."
Just as the words left his mouth, another vanguard officer shattered the chamber doors, sprinting inward with a look of absolute panic.
"Governor! Crisis! The commander of the Right, Gongsun Zan, received word that Zhang Xin was personally exposed by the riverbank! Without waiting for the State Prefecture's instructions or a formal military tally, he has already thrown open the eastern gates and launched a full-scale assault!"
Ju Shou's eyes went completely wide, his heart dropping into his stomach.
"What?!"