After the battle for Ji Prefecture Garrison, the grand war on the Northern Frontier abruptly became a game with every card laid bare.
The generals commanding the Tartars' three armies all knew they had lost their best chance to breach the passes. Dragging things out would only bury their remaining three hundred thousand elite troops outside the Great Wall. They had to leave soon-the sooner, the better. But they also knew that Great Wei's defenders inside the passes would never simply watch them retreat unhurriedly into the depths of the Northern Desert Grasslands.
On Great Wei's side, the Generals-in-Chief of Liaodong, Ji Prefecture, and Datong, along with Lan Ying, the General Who Conquers the Barbarians, knew just as clearly that the Tartars were bound to flee. They also knew they could not let those three hundred thousand able-bodied young men return to the depths of the grasslands, survive this calamity, and come surging back.
Both sides prepared for battle with everything they had.
The Tartar tribal chiefs overturned tables in the command tent every day over the thorny question of who would retreat first and who would bring up the rear.
Great Wei, too, constantly moved troops and deployed commanders, gathering strength to send a great army beyond the passes.
The increasingly oppressive atmosphere of impending battle hung over both sides of the passes like black clouds...
Everyone struggled beneath that immense, suffocating pressure.
Wars could be just or unjust.
Yet there seemed to be no distinction between winners and losers.
Perhaps once the guns roared, everyone lost.
Yang Ge, an outsider who was no soldier yet lived among the troops, stood at the heart of those oppressive black clouds and found much to reflect upon.
He heard the officers' commanding cries as they pointed out their grand designs and