The sun rose slowly above the jagged peaks of the Anyi mountains, painting their snow-capped ridges with a shimmering gold and casting the steep slopes in shades of crimson. The morning air was sharp and cool, filled with the clean fragrance of pine needles and the earthy musk of damp soil after a night of rain. For Xu Ping, this landscape was not just terrain—it was memory. These mountains were the cradle of his childhood, the footpaths where he had once run barefoot, the forests where he had learned to stalk game with his father, the villages that had fed him and forged him. Here, among narrow valleys and hidden gorges, he knew every rock and stream, every deer trail and forgotten cave. Anyi was not simply a battleground. It was his home—and in his home, defeat was unthinkable.
When his column of thirty-five thousand weary men reached the foothills of Anyi, the sight that greeted him sent a tremor through his chest. Red banners, crude but proud, fluttered from the ridgelines of the gorges. They had made it. Messengers confirmed what his heart dared hope: scattered detachments that had strayed during the long march were arriving, one after another, converging from every corner of the horizon. The camp spread across the slopes like fireflies at dusk—hundreds of bonfires glowing in terraces carved from the mountainside, men and women huddled around them, exhausted to the bone yet unbroken in spirit.
The count was sobering. Of the eighty thousand who had sworn themselves to the Great Uprising, only sixty thousand had reached Anyi. Twenty thousand were gone—cut down in skirmishes, lost to ambushes, executed by Imperial patrols, or dissolved into the chaos of endless war. Yet those who stood before him now were no longer trembling peasants or rudderless brigands. They were veterans, hardened by weeks of relentless marching, forged by fire in ambushes and ceaseless pursuit, tempered by the iron discipline Xu Ping had demanded at every step.
They were, for the first time, an army.
The terrain of Anyi was a gift from heaven. At its entrance, the valley widened into fertile fields where once rice and barley had flourished. But as it wound deeper into the mountains, the land pinched narrow, until the road could scarcely admit two carts abreast. For Imperial generals trained to maneuver in wide plains and open fields, such ground was a trap. Xu Ping knew that if he lured them into those choke points, their superior armor, their drilled formations, their cavalry charges—all of it—would crumble.
He gathered his captains beneath an ancient oak, its roots sprawling like the veins of the earth. Spread before them lay rough maps, scrawled onto tanned hides. Xu Ping traced the jagged lines of the ravines with a calloused finger.
—"The enemy hunts us with a hundred thousand men. But arrogance blinds them—they march in pieces, not as one. Only forty thousand are headed for Anyi. The rest scatter, looting villages or guarding their convoys. This is our moment."
One of his lieutenants, a former officer of Wei Lian who had seen more defeats than triumphs, frowned.—"Even so, forty thousand Imperials are still superior in steel and in training, my lord."
Xu Ping's nod was calm, almost serene.—"Yes. They are professionals. We are peasants with pitchforks, deserters in patched mail, brigands who have been taught new discipline. But here we will not fight on their terms. There will be no open fields, no glorious cavalry charges. Here, the mountains themselves will fight for us."
The plan was shared swiftly and with precision. Guerrilla bands melted into every gorge and forested ridge. Massive stones were loosened, ready to be pushed down with a shove at the right moment. Logs, cut in secret, were placed to tumble and seal the rear. Hidden bonfires, piled with brush and oil, lay waiting for a single spark to become infernos. The strategy was simple yet merciless: slice the Imperials into pieces, isolate them, harry them without rest, and then close the jaws of fire and iron.
The villagers of Anyi—farmers, hunters, woodcutters—came to Xu Ping with knowledge passed down through generations. They pointed out deer trails unseen from the main road, narrow passes invisible to outsiders, caves where whole companies could vanish. Many brought food and livestock, water jars, and tools. To them, Xu Ping was not just a rebel leader—he was the son of the valley, come home to defend his people.
The Imperial force of forty thousand moved like a machine. Their armor gleamed in the morning light, shields interlocked in flawless walls, spears polished and sharp. Drums thundered, echoing down the valley, a sound that had heralded conquest across half the continent. Officers, proud and unbending, rode at the front, confident that no rabble of peasants could withstand a disciplined army.
Their commander, a lesser general in Luo Wen's service, had been given simple orders: "Exterminate the peasant plague." He imagined himself marching back to Guangling within days, Xu Ping's severed head mounted on a pike before him. He expected disorganized rabble, men already worn thin by hunger and flight.
But as the column entered the tightening valleys of Anyi, certainty began to falter. The paths narrowed, the forests loomed close, and soldiers muttered uneasily of unseen eyes upon them.
The storm broke at dawn.
As the column wound into a gorge barely wide enough for two carts, a sudden blare of horns rolled from the heights above. Then the mountains themselves seemed to roar. Boulders, loosed from hidden perches, tumbled down like thunder, smashing through ranks, crushing bodies and splintering formations. Logs cascaded onto the road behind, sealing thousands in a deadly corridor.
Before officers could even rally their men, volleys of arrows rained from the treeline. Hidden guerrillas, shooting from cover, picked off captains and standard-bearers with ruthless precision. The iron discipline of the Imperials, forged on open fields, cracked under the invisible fury of an enemy that struck from shadows.
From the flanks surged his thirty-five thousand, swelled by detachments from smaller bands. They erupted with deafening cries, a human tide of weathered faces and scarred hands. They lacked the polish of Imperial drill, but they carried the weight of men who had survived weeks of pursuit, who had learned to kill or die with nothing but sharpened hoes and stolen swords.
The clash was savage. The Imperials locked shields, their walls bristling with spears, driving back the first rush with sheer discipline. Their steel cut deeper, their armor turned many blows. But every step they gained was answered with rocks and arrows from above, with peasants hurling themselves from the trees, with fire bursting along their rear. Every regrouping faltered under another wave of screaming villagers.
Xu Ping himself fought in the thick of it, wielding a plain iron spear, his voice carrying above the chaos.—"You are not peasants! You are not bandits! You are the People's Army! Today, you prove that the blood of the farmer weighs heavier than the blood of the noble!"
Propagandists, scattered through the ranks, repeated his words like a chorus until the mountains themselves seemed to echo them. Morale, instead of breaking, blazed hotter with each assault.
Hours dragged on in a storm of blood and iron. The Imperial army, cut into fragments by the terrain, lost cohesion. The cavalry—once their deadliest weapon—was useless, penned by cliffs and blocked paths. Commanders shouted until their throats bled, but their orders drowned beneath the din of battle and the howling war cries of peasants fighting for their lives.
Attempts to force a breakthrough ended in disaster, ambushed at every turn by hidden reserves. When night finally cloaked the valley, the once-proud column was in ruins. Of forty thousand, barely half staggered free, fleeing southward in ragged clumps, hounded by pursuers who harried them into the darkness.
When the battlefield quieted, Xu Ping walked among the dead. The air stank of blood and smoke, of sweat and charred wood. Corpses of Imperials and peasants lay tangled together, but the living raised their voices in ragged cheers. They had not merely survived—they had triumphed against an army better armed, better trained, and long feared as unstoppable.
The tally came grim but proud: five thousand of their own lost, but half the Imperial force annihilated, their stores, weapons, and armor now spoils of the People's Army. For the first time, this was no raid or skirmish. This was a battle—a victory carved into the stone of history.
That night, as flames leapt skyward from campfires, the propagandists went from circle to circle, reciting Xu Ping's words:—"Today, the people have proven they can stand against the Empire. Today, at Anyi, we have been reborn as a true army."
The mountains rang with chants: "The People's Army, the voice of justice!"
Xu Ping sat silently before his fire, gaze distant but steady. He knew Luo Wen would not forgive such humiliation, and far away, Wei Lian's eyes watched from the sea. But this night, Anyi had changed everything. The rebellion was no longer scattered sparks. It was a blaze—and it had only just begun to spread.