One General's Glory, Ten Thousand Bones Wither

Finding an open patch of ground, Du Chengfeng set down the stool and weighed the command banner in his hand.

The banner pole was roughly eight chi long, made entirely of hardwood, with a spearhead set into its tip. The old banner cloth had already frayed around the edges, and even the soaring fire phoenix embroidered upon it had faded.

"Good, good."

Du Chengfeng secretly counted himself lucky.

He still did not know how to maintain the cloth portion of the banner, but at least the thing had a spearhead.

With a spearhead, it would be easy enough to deal with. He could use this thing for sharpening.

So after pouring out some water to wet the whetstone, Du Chengfeng laid the whole banner flat and began to sharpen it.

As the saying went, "Broken halberds sank in sand, yet their iron had not worn away; I polished and washed them myself, and recognized a former dynasty."

Wait, a former dynasty?

"Yo!"

Du Chengfeng's heart gave a jolt.

Could the Jizhou Arsenal actually contain a command banner from a former dynasty? Was Commander Liu really planning to rebel?

But after continuing to sharpen it, Du Chengfeng realized that this former dynasty was not that former dynasty.

The current dynasty should have been Great Chen. Du Chengfeng had already seen those memories through Fatty Yang's experiences. Before Great Chen had been Great Yu, the era in which Fatty Yang had once lived—and this command banner came from an even more distant age.

That was the dynasty before Great Yu, known as Great Chu.

Unlike the troop formations and city defenses popular today, Great Chu placed courage above all else. Rather than calmly engaging the enemy in orderly battle, Great Chu's soldiers preferred to take the initiative, crushing all enemy resistance with the wildfire sweep of a blazing inferno.

And the valiant generals who charged at the very front in those days carried this Phoenix Banner in their hands.

In Great Chu culture, the phoenix was also called the Undying Bird. As the saying went, "At dawn I set forth from Tianjin; by dusk I reached the western limit. Phoenixes thronged beneath the banners, soaring high on wings spread wide." Every Chu citizen believed that under the guidance of the fire phoenix, they would not simply die. The undying phoenix would guide their souls and carry them soaring above the nine heavens.

Whenever the Phoenix Banner charged into the enemy ranks as the vanguard, every Chu soldier would fight to be first, following behind that undying bird and cutting down every enemy before them.

For that very reason, every general qualified to bear the Phoenix Banner was a fearsome warrior capable of facing a thousand riders alone.

Waving the Phoenix command banner, they would always charge at the very front of the formation, using strength that could only be called inhuman to carve a path for the soldiers behind them. When these fierce generals grew old, the Phoenix battle banners symbolizing such vanguard champions would be passed to the strongest warrior in the army. The new generation of vanguard champions would then take the place of the old generals, continuing to appear in the most dangerous places on the battlefield and bringing Great Chu victory after victory.

And beneath those repeated victories, the Chu generals who held the command banners also kindled a fire-like desire for conquest in their hearts.

Jizhou had not yet been called Jizhou at that time. During Great Chu, this place was known as Yuyang. Yuyang's defending commandant, Long Yan, possessed courage unmatched by ten thousand men, his strength surpassing all three armies. By rights, such a fierce general should have been able to establish great achievements amid troubled times, but Long Yan had the misfortune of being born into an age of peace.

Great Chu had already settled after the chaos of war and needed time to rest and recuperate. Commandants leading troops in every region served only as defenders and no longer campaigned abroad. This was naturally a good thing for the common people, but fierce generals like Long Yan, who yearned to expand the realm, suddenly had nowhere to display their abilities.

After all, there were no other powers left under heaven to attack. They could hardly turn their blades around and fight themselves, could they?

It was then that Long Yan turned his gaze toward the grasslands.

Yuyang lay on the northern frontier, making it convenient to strike into the grasslands. Though those grasslanders had always followed water and pasture and possessed no fixed cities for him to attack, would charging all the way through not still count as expanding the realm?

If he truly broke the Grassland Royal Court and captured the Chanyu alive, perhaps he could even be made a marquis and appointed a general, rising to the very pinnacle of officialdom!

"Kill!"

With that thought, Long Yan decided to go all in.

He conscripted laborers, marshaled his troops, and prepared for war. As the commandant leading the troops, Long Yan mobilized nearly every force Yuyang Commandery could muster. The grasslanders truly could not stand against Great Chu's soldiers, who swept over them like wildfire. For a time, they were beaten into a panic, fearing the Chu army as they feared a ferocious tiger.

Yet at that very moment, the Northern Desert Royal Court hidden deep within the grasslands began to move.

It was Long Yan's hardest battle. Though he was immensely valiant, charging through the enemy lines like a tiger descending the mountain, those cunning grassland elite cavalry refused to meet him head-on. Instead, they wheeled far around his blade, burst in from the flanks, and slaughtered every soldier behind him.

As the battle continued, the soldiers able to follow behind Long Yan grew fewer and fewer.

Until in the end, only Long Yan remained.

Only then did Long Yan realize the enormity of his mistake. He wished he could become like the Undying Bird on the banner and immediately fly back, fly back to Yingdu of Great Chu, to tell the Chu generals that Great Chu's current methods of warfare possessed a grave flaw—but it was all too late. Five cavalry lances had already pierced through his body, pinning him to the ground.

And Yuyang Commandery fell with him.

As spoils of war, this command banner was left in the grasslanders' forward camp. It was not until Great Yu later recovered Yuyang's lost territory and renamed it Jizhou that the banner was placed in the Jizhou Arsenal, piled together with other old weapons in case of need.

No one cared about this old command banner. Without the fierce vanguard general carrying it, this banner was nothing more than a tattered old scrap of cloth.

That was why this old command banner had slept within the arsenal all this time, gathering dust.

"Hiss..."

Du Chengfeng, having finished sharpening it, frowned slightly.

Something was wrong. That feeling just now had been somewhat off. This old command banner had not been sleeping all along—at the very least, before he entered the arsenal just now, the fierce Sha Qi clinging to this banner...

"Wait?"

Du Chengfeng suddenly froze.

He glanced over the weapon racks beside him, where swords, spears, blades, and halberds were displayed, then looked at the command banner in his hand. Understanding dawned on him.

The Sha Qi he had sensed earlier had not come from this command banner.

It had been the combined force of all the weapon Sha Qi from every sword, spear, blade, and halberd in Storehouse Jia-7.

In other words, even though Long Yan, who had once carried this command banner, had died in battle, the banner itself had never admitted defeat.

It still wanted to muster its troops and fight another battle.

Just as it had when charging through enemy lines all those years ago.

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