The northern winds began to carry a new scent: dust, yes, and the dry grass of the steppe, but underneath it, the sharp, acrid tang of fear. Villages near the border sent their last desperate messages before going silent. The scouts' reports, once cautious, were now stark and terrified. Batu's horde was on the move. Not a raiding party, but an army. A sea of riders, their numbers swallowing the horizon, driven by hunger and a new, terrifying unity.
Panic, a commodity more contagious than any plague, began to seep into the capital. The price of grain in the markets spiked, despite the imperial granaries being full. The court, which had buzzed with the energy of reform, now hummed with a low, constant dread. Minister Liu and his faction, while terrified themselves, saw an opportunity. Their whispers changed tune.
"The barbarians are upon us because the heavens are angered!" they murmured in the corridors. "The emperor tinkers with barbarian plants and strange weapons when he should be performing the proper rites! He has neglected the ancestors, and this is our punishment!"
The pressure mounted on the Jade Dew Pavilion. Memorials flooded in, not from the border, but from court officials, begging the emperor to abandon his "unorthodox" projects and return to the traditional ways: mass conscription, prayers, and fortifying the wall.
Zhu Haolang read them with growing irritation. It was the same short-term, exhausting thinking. Throwing bodies at the problem. He could already feel the weight of leading a massive army, the logistical nightmare, the sheer, mind-numbing effort of it all.
"No," he said to the empty pavilion. "Absolutely not."
Eunuch Xi entered, his face ashen. "Your Majesty, Generals Gao and Li are here. They… they insist."
"Send them in."
The two generals, one from the armory and one from the northern garrison, entered and kowtowed. General Li's armor was still dusty from the road.
"Your Majesty," General Li began, his voice gravelly with fatigue and fear. "Batu's vanguard will be at the outer passes within a week. My men are brave, but they are outnumbered ten to one. We need reinforcements. We need the levies from the south. Now."
"Levies from the south will take a month to march," Zhu Haolang said flatly. "And they are farmers, not soldiers. Sending them is sending lambs to the slaughter. It is inefficient."
General Li looked like he'd been struck. "Then what would you have us do, Your Majesty? Die efficiently?"
"General Gao?" the emperor ignored Li's outburst. "The project?"
General Gao's eyes, which had been wide with fear, now shone with a fanatical light. "The 'Lazy Dragon's Repeating Crossbow' is ready, Your Majesty. The lever-action windlass works. A trained man can fire three bolts in the time it takes to fire one from the old model. We have five hundred of them. The 'loud fertilizer'…" He hesitated. "The gunpowder mixture, based on your notes… it is unstable. Volatile. But my artisans have produced two dozen clay pots filled with it, with a fuse. We have tested one. The noise… it is as you said. Like the roar of a dragon. It… it shattered the test dummy and set the earth on fire."
General Li stared at Gao as if he'd grown a second head. "What madness is this? Toys and firecrackers? We face the Mongol horde!"
"Silence," Zhu Haolang's voice cut through the room, quiet but absolute. He stood up. The lazy aura was gone, replaced by a cold, calculating intensity. "General Li. You will not reinforce the outer passes. You will abandon them."
"Abandon them?! Your Majesty, that is—!"
"—the plan," the emperor finished. "You will pull your forces back to the Valley of the Black Raven. The pass is narrow. It funnels their advance. It is where their numbers mean the least." He turned to Gao. "You will deploy all five hundred crossbows there, in staggered lines. And you will bring all the 'firepots.'"
He walked to the map, his finger tracing the valley. "You will let the vanguard enter. You will wait until the heart of their force is in the narrowest point. Then, you will fire. Not at the men. At the horses. Create a wall of panicking, wounded animals. Then, you will drop the firepots from the cliffs above."
He looked at the two stunned generals. "Your goal is not to win a battle. It is to win a story. I want the survivors to run back to Batu and tell him of a narrow valley where the Ming skies rained fire and bolts, where the earth itself exploded, where their horses went mad with terror. I want them to call it the Valley of the Screaming Ghosts. I want the story to be more terrifying than any army."
General Li was speechless. It was a brutal, ruthless, and psychologically brilliant strategy. It wasn't about killing every Mongol; it was about breaking their will to fight.
"It is a gamble, Your Majesty," General Gao whispered, awed.
"War is a gamble," Zhu Haolang replied. "But this is the laziest bet I could make. We are betting on their superstition over our own exhaustion. Now go. You have a week to prepare a performance. And General Li," he added as the man turned to leave. "No heroic charges. Your job is to stand behind the crossbowmen, look intimidating, and let the machines do the work. Understood?"
The generals left, one filled with terror, the other with a terrifying hope.
Zhu Haolang sank back onto his divan. The court would be furious he'd abandoned territory. Liu would call it a coward's move.
But he was done playing their game. He was playing his own. A game of efficiency, of psychological warfare, of using just enough force to make the problem go away for good.
He closed his eyes. The fate of the empire now rested on a farmer's conscript's ability to crank a lever, on the reliability of a primitive grenade, and on the superstitious fear of a Mongol warrior.
It was, he had to admit, his laziest plan yet.