The Last Watch in Bianjing

He was once a modern special forces officer. When he woke, he had become the “last line of defense” outside Bianjing in the late Northern Song. The city was on the verge of falling, and the country was on the verge of ruin. Behind him were a hundred thousand civilians and the cries of a child not yet three months old; before him, 150,000 Jin troops marching south, their iron-armored cavalry trampling the land to dust. The court ordered him to hold the city and forbade him to attack. Civil officials withheld his provisions and mocked him for courting death. The enemy declared, “We’ll take the city in three days and slaughter everyone in Bianjing.” Chen Ke said only one thing: “The city doesn’t have to be held. But you’re all going to die.”

And so, he used the Thirty-Six Stratagems to make fools of the Jin; he brought special-operations tactics to the ancient battlefield, crushing the enemy with an overwhelming advantage. He made grenades, planted mines, launched night raids, carried out decapitation strikes, and burned supplies. Battle after battle, he went from defending the city to counterattacking, from the brink of defeat to utterly overwhelming his foes! The Iron Pagoda cavalry? One slash broke their armor. The Jin commander? Wounded on the spot. An army of 150,000? Routed! While everyone thought he was merely a “city defender,” he had already set his sights on a greater goal: a northern campaign to reclaim the Central Plains and reunite the realm!

What he didn’t know was that the ones truly out to kill him weren’t beyond the city walls. They were in the imperial court.