That afternoon, the autumn sunshine shone brightly, and a rustling autumn wind suddenly blew in from the Great River.
But among the hundred-odd thousand men on both sides of the Qin River's west bank, few paid any attention to the rising wind... There was no helping it. The real battle had begun.
At the orders of the two supreme commanders, war drums thundered, and the first echelons of the enormous formations, stretching more than ten li-or, in a broader sense, perhaps several dozen li-surged forward together. Armor and weapons gleamed in the sunlight, and the dense banners rippled in the wind like a forest. Neither side had yet raised its battle cries, but the clamor alone drowned out everything else.
Everyone, from the commanders who had hurried back to their central armies, to the leaders anchoring the battle lines at the front, to the generals of the battalions and Guard Prefectures on both sides, and even some knowledgeable common soldiers, had the same thought: it really had come to this.
Ever since Great Zhou had split apart and Hebei and Guanlong had become rivals, the two powers had fought over Heluo again and again. There had been no fewer than seven or eight major battles worth counting, battles that lingered in memory. In those seven or eight battles, how many illustrious commanders and great generals had blazed up like wildfires, only to vanish like shooting stars? Even emperors, kings, generals, ministers, powerful courtiers, and usurpers had risen and fallen here... And what of now?
Everyone said that people now yearned for stability, that the fighting would not continue as it had before. But even so, how many more battles like this would it take to decide the victor? Where would they themselves be then? Would anyone remember them?
Amid these