The low-key prince summons trainees from the Imperial Household Department at the start of the game.

Chen Jing's command tent was set up in Daning City, which was further north in the northern border, some distance from Yanmen Pass.

That winter, his cough worsened again. When he coughed, his entire chest would vibrate, like an old, leaky bell being struck one beat after another.

The army doctor advised him to retreat to a warmer place in the rear to recuperate, but the old man put down his medicine bowl and said, "To recuperate, one must retreat; to fight, one must advance. How can one advance if one retreats?" He then never mentioned the matter again.

Thick felt was hung on all four sides of the command tent, and the seams between the felts were pressed down again and again, with even the corners being blocked with stones.

But the chill seeping in from the north could still seep in through the gaps in the felt fibers, like an invisible layer of water overflowing the threshold and seeping into the very bones.

A brazier burned in the corner, the charcoal glowing red, but the heat was blocked by the cold air as it rose into the air.

A small, warm blanket forms around the rim of the basin, but the coldness quickly retreats beyond that area.

When Han Chong arrived, Chen Jing was wearing an old fur coat and hunched over his desk reading a military report that had just been sent from Yunzhou.

The collar of the fur coat was worn shiny, and there were several patches on the cuffs with coarse and dense stitches, as if he had sewed them himself.

Next to the oil lamp on the table was a bowl of medicine. The medicine stains on the bowl had dried, indicating that it hadn't been drunk much.

Hearing the curtain being lifted, Chen Jing didn't raise his head, only humming in response. His voice, coming from above the military report, was short and precise, honed from years of speaking with his subordinates: "The Marquis of Dingyuan has arrived. Please sit down while I finish reading this."

Han Chong did not stand on ceremony.

He was as familiar with this command tent as he was with his own study.

He found an old wooden stool and sat down. One of the stool's legs was a little short, so it would tilt slightly to one side when he sat down. He was already used to it, and his body naturally tilted to the other side to steady himself.

An attendant handed him a cup of hot tea, which he took and held in his hands. The warmth of the rough earthenware cup seeped into the frostbite on his palms, like a small, living thing slowly rubbing between his frozen fingers.

After a long while, Chen Jing finally finished reading the military report, wrote a single word at the end, and put the pen back on the pen holder.

When he looked up, Han Chongcai realized that he had indeed aged a lot.

His eyes were sunken, his cheekbones were high, and the skin on his cheeks was stretched like a layer of old sheepskin by the winds of the North, revealing the outline of his bones underneath.

But those eyes were still shining, so brightly they were almost blinding, as if the cold winds of the North had blown everything else away, leaving only those two flames firmly embedded in their sockets.

He picked up the pipe next to him, but didn't light it. He just placed it on the table and rubbed his thumb back and forth on the handle, as if habitually confirming that it was still there.

Then he spoke, his voice a little hoarse than before: "You came specifically for that grassland man?"

Han Chong placed the teacup on his lap and nodded: "Altan of the Left Wise King's tribe has sent an envoy with the token from my alliance with the old commander years ago, requesting to borrow troops."

As he spoke, he took the wolf-head bronze plaque from his sleeve and placed it on the table in front of Chen Jing.

The sound of the bronze plaque hitting the table was very soft, like a thin piece of iron falling on old wood.

Chen Jing picked it up and looked at it.

He held the bronze plaque close to the oil lamp, tilting it to let the light shine from the side of the wolf's head. He looked at the turquoise eyes, then turned it over to look at the four characters "Two will not betray each other," pressing his fingertip on the engraving for a moment.

"You personally received this plaque from the old commander back then."

His tone held no doubt; he was confirming something he already knew.

Han Chongdao: "Yes, his son has sent someone."

Chen Jing snorted.

The hum was short, like a wisp of stale air squeezed out of the nose, carrying a sense of "I knew it": "Even they have their moments of desperation."

Han Chong did not respond to that sentence.

He recounted the whole story, highlighting the most important points.

From Agula's annexation of the Qiyan tribe, to the appearance of the Yin Corpse on the battlefield, to Altan's dispatch of Saghtai to the Hunxie King's tribe only to be thwarted.

The journey to Yunzhou by Saghtai took seven days; the details of his personal interrogation; the feedback from Huo Qubing and Li Wenzhong; and finally, the conditions Saghtai proposed for borrowing troops.

He spoke very concisely, as if reading a prepared summary of a military report, pausing after each paragraph to allow Chen Jing time to process it before continuing.

After listening, Chen Jing slowly placed the bronze plaque back on the table.

He didn't speak immediately. He picked up the bowl of medicine, which had gone cold, glanced at it, and then put it down, as if he were deciding on something unimportant.

Then he looked up at Han Chong, his voice so flat it was almost emotionless: "Do you believe me?"

Han Chong, without avoiding his gaze, said, "I believe half of it."

Chen Jing's eyebrows twitched slightly, a barely perceptible crease like a breeze ripples across a lake: "Which half?"

"I believe those things do exist." Han Chong switched the teacup in his hand to make himself more stable. "Huo Qubing and Li Wenzhong both interrogated those scouts. One of them had a black handprint on his lower back. It wasn't a birthmark; the knuckles were distinct, as if something had pinched him."

"The army doctor examined it and said that the skin and flesh were rotting and that yin energy had entered the body. It was not an ordinary knife or arrow wound. In the days before the army set off, many scouts did see green flames in the direction of the Xiutu tribe at midnight."

"The grass and water plants along the Hulan River have withered. The herders say it was caused by some kind of black smoke. Those things should be in Agula's camp."

"I only believe half of it." Chen Jing repeated these four words, as if biting into a hard fruit to confirm just how hard the pit was. "And the other half?"

Han Chong put down his teacup and leaned forward slightly: "The other half, the grassland people's plea for help, is half true and half false. They really want a way to survive, but they also really hate us."

"Altan is indeed in a desperate situation right now, but if we let them catch their breath, will they still remember that someone borrowed a light from them tonight, ten years from now?"

"I don't believe it, but that doesn't affect whether we should save them now or not. Saving them now is saving this line of defense outside Yanmen Pass."

"If they turn against us ten years from now, that's a matter for ten years from now. Tonight, we're talking about tonight's snowstorm."

Chen Jing remained silent for a moment.

He reached for the bowl of now-cold medicine, frowned, and drank it all in one gulp. The bottom of the bowl hit the table with a dull thud. Then he wiped the medicine stains from the corner of his mouth, his voice now tinged with the harshness of battle: "The Longevity Cult."

Han Chong nodded.

Chen Jing coughed for a while.

When he coughed, his entire upper body trembled, and the collar of his old fur coat loosened by half an inch, revealing the faded undergarment beneath.

Han Chong sat there without moving, neither offering water nor patting his back. He knew the old man didn't like being touched when he coughed.

After the coughing subsided, Chen Jing wiped his mouth with his sleeve, took a few breaths, and pointed to the map hanging on the side wall of the tent.

The map was made of cowhide, the edges of which were slightly curled up by the heat of the brazier. The locations of garrisons and scout lines were marked on it with charcoal and vermilion.

The route of the thirty-mile border wall in the north was drawn as a thick ink line, stretching from Yanmen Pass all the way to the edge of the Gobi Desert in the northwest.

"If Agula were to truly unify the grasslands," Chen Jing's voice was still hoarse from coughing, but beneath that hoarseness lay something much deeper than before, "...my thirty-mile border wall in the north wouldn't be enough for him to breach in one night. When the Hu people fight, they only care about pastures and livestock; they rush in to plunder, and then retreat. But those cultists..."

He pointed to a blank area on the north side of the map with one finger. "What we want are lives. Let them rise up. In the future, it won't just be the grassland people who die. After we've conquered the grasslands, their next target will be this wall."

He paused, withdrew his hand, and placed it on the table as if to confirm that the table was still stable: "But sending troops is a major event. Without His Majesty's decree, we cannot move a single soldier."

"The Northern Army doesn't belong to me; it belongs to the imperial court. If I were to mobilize it without authorization, it would be tantamount to rebellion."

Han Chong nodded: "That's what I meant too, so I want to draft a memorial first, to clearly describe what is happening on the grasslands, and send it to the capital by fast horse."

"List them one by one: the existence of the Yin Corpse, the movements of the Longevity Cult, the progress of Agula's annexation of various tribes, and the conditions for the Left Wise King's tribe to request assistance."

"We can't let the people in the capital just think it's a fight between two northern tribes; they need to understand that this is something else entirely."

He paused for a moment, then said, "However, you are the Supreme Commander of the North, so it is most appropriate for you to deliver this memorial."

Chen Jing glanced at him.

That glance, though brief, carried the unspoken understanding between two veterans: "I can submit it, but you have to sign it too."

Han Chong replied without hesitation, "Of course, this matter is neither yours nor mine."

Chen Jing smiled.

The smile shone through the lines at the corners of his eyes, carrying the crispness of a seasoned veteran, a frankness that said, "We both know what's important": "Our differences in the court are our own business, but once we're in the Northern Border, we only have one enemy left: the North."

As he spoke, he reached into the corner of the table, pulled out a blank origami sheet, flattened it, and pressed it down on both sides with a copper paperweight.

He then took a wolf-hair brush from the brush holder, dipped it in ink, and held it above the paper, but did not immediately put pen to paper.

He looked down at the blank paper, as if looking at a patch of snow that hadn't yet been touched, and then began to write.

He wrote very slowly.

Each character seems to have been sketched in the mind before being written on paper, with no unnecessary connections between strokes, like an inscription carved on a stone.

Han Chong sat to the side and watched without making a sound to disturb him, only occasionally picking up his teacup to take a sip. The tea had already gone cold, but he didn't care.

The wind outside the tent howled across the felt, as if something was dragging the same tune along a distant mountain ridge, seemingly without end.

Chen Jing stopped writing halfway through his work.

He placed the pen beside the inkstone and rubbed the wrist of the hand that held the pen.

There's an old wound there that aches on rainy days, and it's probably aching right now.

He looked up at Han Chong, changed the subject, and his tone softened, as if casually asking a junior member of the family while taking a break from writing: "That kid Huo Qubing, has he gotten you into any trouble lately?"

Han Chong took the teacup away from his mouth, thought for a moment, and said, "When does he not cause trouble? Last month, he led a team of scouts to chase a group of bandits passing through the area. They chased them for more than a hundred miles, and when they came back, two of their horses were worn out."

"When the quartermaster asked him for an expense report, he said, 'The horse died from running, I didn't kill it.'"

As he said this, a slight smile curved his lips. "But then again, he was also the best at killing enemies. There were seventeen bandits in total, and he chased them for over a hundred miles, bringing back fourteen heads. The three who escaped were only let go because he felt they weren't worth chasing anymore."

Chen Jing hummed in agreement, his smile deepening slightly: "That kid is like an unsheathed sword; if used well, he can cleave the sky."

Han Chong continued, "Li Wenzhong is the complete opposite of him; he's as steady as a veteran general. When these two are together, it's like two hammers, one cold and one hot, each striking its own blow, yet the result is quite neat."

Chen Jing smiled, then picked up his pen again, wrote two lines, paused, and suddenly said, "Li Wenzhong is steady because his father died early, and he had to make his own decisions from the age of fifteen."

"Huo Qubing is impetuous because he hasn't been tempered enough by the winds of the North. Let them be tempered for a few more years, and a hundred years from now, the North will belong to the two of them."

After saying that, he didn't wait for Han Chong to reply, and then lowered his head to continue writing the folded paper.

The pen tip scratched across the paper, like a worm gnawing at winter wood.

Han Chong remained silent.

He looked down at the bowl of tea in his hand, which had gone completely cold. A thin layer of tea dust floated on the surface, like the surface of water ruffled by the wind.

He didn't drink it; he just held it for a while and then put it back.

The two veterans wrote that folded paper stroke by stroke in the snowy night.

After Chen Jing finished writing the main part, he handed it to Han Chong to review. Han Chong added a few lines at the end to supplement the details about what the scouts in the Yunzhou camp had seen and heard, and then put down his pen.

Chen Jing read the folded document again from beginning to end to make sure that no key information was missing. Then he folded it up, sealed it, and wrote "Northern Border Army Confidential Express" on the cover. He then stamped his commander's seal below the words and had Han Chong also affix his seal.

Outside the tent, the north wind howled as it swept through the camp, as if countless wronged souls were crying out in the wind.

The sound was not loud, but it was continuous, like an endless river flowing over the sky above.

Inside the tent, the charcoal fire occasionally crackled with a "pop," as if something was being burned and cracked in the fire. The sound was short and crisp, and it disappeared after a brief moment in the tent.

The surrounding silence seemed even thicker, like an old cotton quilt, covering both sound and light.

Han Chong stood up, put the folded book into his pocket, patted the dust off the hem of his robe, and turned to look at Chen Jing.

Chen Jing had already leaned back in his chair, the collar of his old fur coat loose. His gaze was fixed on the blank area in the north of the map, as if he were playing a game of chess with that blank space that had not yet begun.

His fingers tapped unconsciously twice on the table, the rhythm slow, like someone waiting for a breeze that might come at any time.

"It will take at least half a month for this memorial to reach the capital," Han Chong said. "In that half a month, who knows how much will have changed on the grasslands?"

Chen Jing didn't turn around; his gaze remained fixed on the map. "Once the memorial reaches His Majesty, he can make the decision. We've done what we needed to do; the rest isn't about warhorses and scimitars."

Han Chong nodded and turned to walk towards the tent entrance.

He stopped at the door and glanced back at Chen Jing.

The brazier in the tent had been burning for most of the night; the charcoal had burned down to the second half, and the fire had dimmed, enveloping the entire tent in a warm, hazy glow.

Chen Jing sat on that old chair, an old fur coat draped over his shoulders, one hand resting on the edge of the table, the other hanging by his knee. He looked like a stone statue worn down by wind and sand for too long; the edges were still there, but the spaces between them were now filled with fine, broken lines.

Han Chong didn't say things like "You should rest well," because he knew the old man wouldn't like to hear that.

He only said one sentence: "Did you see the last line of text in the section about the scouts' observations that I added to the folded book?"

Chen Jing turned his head and glanced at him: "I saw it, 'The water plants along the Hulan River have withered, and there is no living thing within a hundred miles.'"

Han Chong nodded: "When I saw those words, I thought to myself, 'That thing Agula has is probably faster than we thought.'"

Chen Jing did not respond.

Han Chong lifted the tent flap and went out.

As the curtain closed behind him, a gust of cold wind rushed in halfway up his heels, only to be pushed back in by the weight of the curtain.

The tent fell silent again, with only the occasional soft crackling of the charcoal burning slowly in the brazier and the slightly yellowed background of the blank area on the north side of the map under the lamplight.

The folded letter written by the two veterans was wrapped in an oilcloth and pressed against the messenger's chest. He was preparing to leave through the side gate of Daning City before dawn and head south towards the capital.

The sound of horses' hooves crushing the snow would rise before dawn, and then the horses would change, the riders would change, and the stations would change again, like a taut thread, to deliver news from the North to the throne.

Inside the tent, Chen Jing would remain seated, continuing to gaze at the blank area, watching the north wind rush in from there, like a doorway without a door panel.