The day after the fall of Baiyuan brought no peace, no pause, and certainly no celebration.
There were no ceremonies to mark the victory, no proud speeches echoing through captured halls, and no time spared to mourn the fallen. Shen Ruolin, still clad in the same armor he had worn the day before—its plates crusted with dried blood, stained with ash and dirt—stood tall before his gathered officers as the first pale light of dawn crept through the lingering mist. His voice, cold and unyielding like a spear driven into stone, left no room for hesitation or doubt:
—"We will not let them go. Not with their horses, not with their plunder, and certainly not with their lives. The enemy runs. So we hunt."
Barely had the first imperial dead been buried when the order was carried across the army: by horn, by drum, by rider. The command was clear, brutal in its simplicity. Strike now. Show no mercy.
The three corps of the imperial army reorganized with the ruthless efficiency of a blade being sharpened for a final cut. The freshest troops, alongside light cavalry battalions, assembled without delay. There was no elegance in their march, no pomp or order. It was a pursuit born of bloodlust, of hunger, of vengeance sharpened by weeks of siege and the bitterness of exhaustion.
Shen Ruolin understood one thing above all: the Khan's retreat was not a defeat—not yet. It was an opening.And openings were meant to be seized with steel and sacrifice.
—"The north is their refuge," he told his captains, leaning over the war-map spread across a battered table, now darkened with grease, blood, and dirt. "But that refuge can become a tomb. If we keep the pressure on, if we harass their supply lines and strike their fleeing columns... they won't escape. They'll stumble. And when they do, they'll bleed."
So it began.
The vanguard of the imperial pursuit—commanded by hardened veterans like Liang Fei and Duan Yun—rode out at full gallop toward the northern frontier, taking only what they needed: food, arrows, and fury. Their orders were plain as bone: strike hard, strike fast, vanish like smoke. Hit the supply wagons. Burn the food. Cut down the stragglers. Make every man looking over his shoulder think he's already dead.
And it worked.
In the mountain passes and narrow trails of the north, the barbarian columns began to falter. Some clans, now desperate, abandoned their wounded or executed them where they lay so as not to slow down. Others turned inward, fighting amongst themselves over dwindling supplies. The Khan was forced to deploy valuable riders to protect his flanks, which only further slowed the retreat.
The imperial raids were not decisive strikes. They did not break the horde in one glorious charge.But they were relentless.Like blades that don't kill with a single cut—but by a thousand.
And every hour that passed was another nail in the coffin of the enemy's momentum.
From a snowy ridge overlooking one of these skirmishes, Shen Ruolin watched in silence as smoke curled upward from the wreckage of a burned supply caravan. His second-in-command stood beside him, eyes narrowed against the wind.
—"We've forced them to keep looking back," he said quietly. "But we haven't made them fall yet."
Ruolin didn't answer at first. His gaze remained fixed on the horizon, but his mind was already further ahead—far beyond the line of hills and the shattered trails of retreat.
An idea had begun to take root.A bold move. A dangerous one.But it could work.
—"Luo Wen…"
He spoke the name more to himself than to anyone else. His eyes drifted westward—toward the unseen, toward the silent distance that had yet to yield its final card.
He knew Luo Wen was still out there. That the capital of the barbarian clans had fallen by his hand was certain. But where was he now? How close had he drawn to the fleeing remnants of the enemy host? Was he already riding back? Or perhaps, unknowingly, drawing near to the perfect trap?
Then, with quiet intensity, Ruolin finally said:
—"If we can push them up through the northern pass... if we can tighten the corridor of their escape… maybe Luo Wen can close it. We could box them in—trap them between the mountains and the sword."
It was a gamble. They had no certainty of Luo Wen's position, nor of the strength he still commanded. But if it worked—if their timing aligned, if the Khan's army could be crushed between two great blades of the empire…
—"We wouldn't just defeat them," Shen Ruolin whispered."We'd erase them."
Not just scattered.Not just broken.Annihilated.
For the first time since this campaign had begun, his eyes burned not just with the righteous determination of duty—but with something more primal. Something final. The hunger to end it. To leave no seeds behind for future rebellion. No survivors to reignite the flame.
He ordered his messengers to prepare both fast riders and carrier pigeons. Messages were sent westward, encoded and urgent. If Luo Wen was close… he would know how to read them.
Meanwhile, the imperial tide kept rolling forward.
Enemy clans were caught in the open. Their wagons were torched. More and more fires burned along the retreat route like scars across the land. Some barbarian riders, cornered and isolated, surrendered on their knees. Others, too proud or too enraged, fought to the death, their blood soaking the snowy earth.
And far ahead, beyond the reach of scouts and maps, the Khan rode with what remained of his once-fearsome host. He believed he fled toward safety.
But what waited for him at the end of that road…Was not freedom.It was the edge of another sword.Luo Wen's sword.
And this time…
There would be no horizon far enough to escape it.