The echo of victory at Anyi still burned bright in the memory of every peasant-soldier, but Xu Ping allowed no one to linger in glory. Celebration, he knew, was a luxury for those who had already won the world. His fifty thousand men, soon reinforced by waves of new recruits and defectors from the Imperial ranks, were thrown almost immediately into a relentless campaign of pursuit and extermination. Piece by piece, day after day, week after week, the so-called People's Army made it clear to all that the war had changed masters.
After their humiliation at Anyi, the Imperial host of one hundred thousand men—divided by Luo Wen into scattered columns and garrisons—was no longer an army but a mosaic of fragments. Some detachments wandered aimlessly southward, morale broken. Others descended into banditry, plundering villages for grain and livestock. A few tried desperately to regroup, but without coordination, without orders, without the backbone of command. Word of defeat spread like a poison in their blood, sapping discipline and eroding the iron will that had once driven them.
The peasants no longer saw these soldiers as monsters wrapped in steel, but as weary, vulnerable men—men who could be broken by the storm now rolling down upon them.
Sensing the moment, Xu Ping gathered his captains beneath the new banners—red cloth embroidered with the plow and the spear crossed in defiance—and laid out his vision:
"The Empire has lost its spine. We will not yet storm their walled cities; we will not squander strength against stone towers. We hunt fragments. Each isolated column will be destroyed. If they march a thousand, we shall fall with ten thousand. If they gather five thousand, we shall strike with twenty. We shall give them no rest, no reprieve, no breath. This is how one bleeds a giant dry."
The strategy was simple, almost brutally so—speed over stagnation, numbers over pride, the land itself as a weapon. Strike swiftly, overwhelm, and leave no chance for the survivors to knit themselves back into an army.
The first prey was a detachment of eight thousand Imperials encamped in a fertile valley, busy looting granaries and pressing villagers into service. They were confident, convinced no ragged mob of peasants would dare to face them. Xu Ping encircled them with twenty thousand men, an iron ring that closed in silence through the night.
At dawn, peasant trumpets wailed from the ridgelines. The hills seemed to vomit forth waves of armed men, and the Imperials found themselves struck from every direction at once. They tried to form their disciplined shield lines, but within hours the formation buckled and collapsed. Survivors were corralled like cattle. As was now routine, they were subjected to sessions of fiery propaganda and moral persuasion; most ended up swearing loyalty to the People's Army. The spoils were staggering: grain enough to feed an army for months, horses, polished spears, iron shields, and gleaming armor stripped from the fallen.
From there, the campaign rolled on like a storm. Five thousand Imperials hiding in a nearby forest—wiped out. Three thousand huddled in a fortified village—absorbed after a bloody siege. Two thousand retreating stragglers—surrounded, slaughtered, or converted. One after another, these fragments were annihilated, and each triumph not only swelled Xu Ping's numbers but hardened the spirit of his followers.
In less than two months, the fifty thousand survivors of Anyi had become sixty thousand seasoned fighters. True, many had perished in ambushes and charges, but the flood of deserters crossing over and prisoners re-armed more than replenished the ranks. Xu Ping no longer commanded a desperate mob. He commanded a war machine—hungry, growing, and disciplined by the reforms he had hammered into place.
The Empire, by contrast, groped blindly. Luo Wen, sealed away in Guangling's freshly rebuilt halls, was bombarded with contradictory reports: vanished columns, entire villages rising in rebellion, supply trains ambushed and lost. His officers begged for reinforcements, but there were none left to give. The once-endless reservoir of Imperial manpower had run dry.
The decisive strike came on the southern plains of Anyi. There, some twelve thousand Imperials under a grizzled general had managed to regroup. Xu Ping wasted no time. With forty thousand of his own, he ringed their camp like wolves circling wounded prey.
For three days and nights, the harassment never ceased—arrows by the thousands, night raids, fires set to supplies. Exhaustion and fear did what swords alone could not. When the Imperial lines finally cracked and tried to break out, the peasant horde descended like a tidal wave. Their resistance collapsed, their proud discipline crumbled, and the camp was overrun in chaos.
Few survived. Most either perished in the blood and fire or surrendered. Once again, Xu Ping's machine of integration went to work: propaganda, lectures, promises of equality, the chance to fight for something other than noble masters. Many of those who had fought him now carried his banners.
By the end of the campaign, the hundred thousand men Luo Wen had once promised would "crush the peasant plague" were all but annihilated. Xu Ping stood tall with sixty thousand soldiers—veterans bound by reform, hardened by victory, welded together by a common cause.
In every liberated village, the propagandists spread the new gospel:
"The Empire sends armies to enslave us. The People turn those armies into their own. The noble's iron now belongs to the peasant."
And the villagers, watching the unstoppable tide of Xu Ping's rise, ceased to see him as a ragged rebel. To many, he had already become the only legitimate authority in the north.
In his command tent, maps spread before him, Xu Ping studied the land with a keen, unblinking eye. He knew Luo Wen would not sit idle. The Invincible Chancellor would seek vengeance. Wei Lian, lurking across the seas, would wait for his chance to strike. But for the first time, Xu Ping had more than hope. He had an army capable of staring the Empire in the eye.
The peasants no longer trembled at the beat of red Imperial drums. Now they marched to their own rhythm, their own thunder, and it was they who dictated the tempo of war. The hammer of the People would fall again and again, until the chains of nobility were shattered into dust.