Tianheng: Jing’an

Mid-October, the fifth year of Jingkang. The Canglang River had not yet frozen over. On the grassland across the river, three thousand Qiyan horsemen were closing in. Li Jing was twenty-three, a junior officer at Beacon Tower Seven. He had spent eight years in the frontier army, and no one thought he was anything special. His swordsmanship was unremarkable, his riding was nothing extraordinary, and he always won by “a hair” in training-ground bouts. The soldiers privately said he “didn’t seem like a general, more like a schoolteacher.” But not a single soldier had deserted Beacon Tower Seven in two years. Literacy classes taught squad leaders to read battlefield markers, while bamboo whistles let three hundred men charge more silently and sharply than any army. Over two years and countless meals shared from the same pot, he had forged a blade from a starving band of frontier soldiers. Now it was time to draw that blade. Tuo Huan’s men would cross the river in three days. Tianheng’s grain and pay were already eight months in arrears. No one at court would care whether a remote frontier post survived. Standing atop the beacon tower, Li Jing smelled smoke on the wind and knew that what was coming would come at last. What he didn’t know was that three thousand cavalrymen were only the beginning. Kuo Chu’s four hundred thousand horsemen were still gathering deep in the grasslands, and the court’s hidden arrows were already aimed at him. Meanwhile, the question he had never dared to consider was closing in on everyone’s throats: if they couldn’t hold out, should they replace the realm? Tianheng: Jing’an is a story about “not letting anyone die in vain.”