The Doubts

The First Day of the Melee.

The Dragon King issued his final ultimatum, demanding that the kings' armies surrender before nightfall, relinquish their kingly titles, and await the new Khan King's renewed investiture. Such an arrogant and outrageous order, of course, went unanswered. That afternoon, the war began.

To distinguish it from the melee that had erupted on the night the Old Khan King ascended to heaven, this second clash was later called the "Battle of the Full Moon," marking a month of warfare since the Old Khan King had left the world.

The Imperial Guard was divided into ten armies of ten thousand men each. Five swept through the ruins of the Dragon Court; the other five marched in different directions, their targets hundreds of miles away.

Shulitu's thirty thousand cavalrymen were also committed to the battlefield at the Dragon Court as reserves.

The surviving kings hastened to join the Holy Sun King and raised the banner of the "Five Kings," mustering some fifty or sixty thousand troops.

The Imperial Guard demonstrated its formidable strength, but also exposed the inexperience of its newly appointed officers. They defeated an enemy force of roughly equal size, but suffered losses in the thousands themselves. Only when the thirty thousand reserves launched their attack after nightfall did they finally rout the enemy.

Gu Shenwei watched the battle but did not take part. The Red-Crowned Great Peng stood beside him, and every time it took flight, a wave of attacks surged in its wake.

The victory was not decisive. Though the Holy Sun King's forces were driven back at every turn and abandoned their camp near the ruins, retreating dozens of miles to set up a new one, they still numbered tens of thousands.

In Shulitu's name, the Dragon King finally occupied the entire