Solitary Mountain

Shen Mo won that battle. The general, who had been stripped of his military power and demoted to a garrison four years ago, led 30,000 old and weak soldiers through the sixty-mile Huanshui River Valley in the snow just before the city of Weizhou was defeated, and went around to the rear of the Khitan camp. The moment the fire broke out, the 100,000 cavalrymen who were attacking the city were attacked from both sides and were completely defeated. But this victory was not a pleasant one. The man he rescued was called Li Shu - the censor who read out his charges word for word in the Fengtian Palace four years ago. When they met at the city gate, they were more than ten steps apart and neither of them spoke. Shen Mo just squatted down and bandaged the wounds of the unattended wounded soldiers one by one, closed his eyes, and wrote down names in the small book in his arms. That notebook was densely packed with dead people. When the messenger desperately delivered the letter asking for help to him, he said that Li Shu had never asked for help in his life. Shen Mo folded the letter, stuffed it into his arms, and led the people into the Khitan camp. The battle is over. The snow is still falling. Shen Mo stood in the snow in Weizhou City, holding the list of fallen soldiers in his arms, and the wound on his back was still bleeding. He didn't wait for Li Shu to speak, nor did he look back at the city he desperately saved. He just kept walking, toward the next pile of wounded soldiers. He won this battle. But some things are harder to explain than winning or losing.