Book 2 Chapter 70

AN:Another early chapter - I have a conflict at my usual time.

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"Noyan Bergeit allowed five of his Nine-Horned cattle to graze upon my lands, knowing full well that the pasture had been claimed in my name-"

"Lies and slander. If you are a man, fight me beneath the blue sky instead of whimpering to the Khan!"

The accusations and counteraccusations rolled through the yurt like the barking of quarrelsome dogs.

Tayang Khan sat upon his raised seat beneath the banners of the Grey Horde, one hand pressed against his temple, desperately trying to suppress the headache that had been gnawing at him since dawn. Around him, the great and terrible confederation of tribes his father had left him squabbled as though they were children fighting over scraps.

Five cattle. Five miserable, horned cattle. Somewhere in the endless grasslands, five animals had wandered from one pasture into another, and somehow the matter had become important enough for two grown men to threaten one another with bloodshed before their Khan.

Tayang closed his eyes. He could not muster the slightest hint of interest. Like most days, he found himself wondering why they had bothered bringing the matter before him at all. When he had first inherited the Horde, Tayang had tried. Gods, how he had tried. He had been young then, a new Khan, and regarded with deep suspicion by nearly everyone beneath his banners. He was too strange, too quiet, too soft, and too much like his father.

That last accusation had been the most dangerous. His father – the previous Khan – had been an unsettling figure among the Yuan. He had possessed ideas that made traditionalists uneasy and spent much of his reign trying to reshape customs that had endured for generations. To many of the tribes, his reforms had been an insult disguised as progress. His willingness to adopt foreign practices, his fascination with the settled peoples to the south, and his refusal to behave as a proper Yuan Khan should had earned him little but distrust.

Tayang had inherited not only his father's throne, but his father's convictions.

At first, however, he had done everything within his power to prove that he was different. He drank mare's milk by the horn until his stomach rebelled. He rode with the warriors. He accepted challenges beneath the open sky and fought men who outnumbered him, and sometimes clearly intended to kill him. When victory required it, he transformed himself into a chimeric centaur, four legs pounding across the earth as he rode down his challengers, giving the Horde the spectacle of a Khan who could still fight as fiercely as any warrior beneath the Eternal Blue Sky.

He participated in races, wrestling matches, feasts, and hunts. He laughed when others laughed, shouted when others shouted, forced himself to boast, to roar, to drink, to fight, and to celebrate every victory as though the life of a traditional Yuan Khan was precisely what he had always dreamed of. For a while, it worked. Not completely, but enough. The Horde stopped looking at him as though they expected him to suddenly reveal some terrible weakness inherited from his father. Some even began to tolerate him. A few warriors came to respect him. Others, grudgingly, began to admit that perhaps the young Khan was not as soft as they had feared.

But tolerance was not acceptance, and Tayang could pretend, but he could not truly become what they wanted him to be.

Little by little, the forced enthusiasm began to fade. The laughter became less frequent, the shouting became an effort, the long feasts became exhausting, and the races ceased to excite him. Even victories in combat left him with little more than weariness. The days when he could throw back his head and laugh with genuine joy slipped quietly away, replaced by sighs, silence, and long periods spent staring into the distance while imagining all the things he wished he could do.

There were books he wished to read, places he wished to see, ideas he wished to explore, cities he wished to visit without an army at his back, and people he wished to speak with without first having to consider whether they were his enemies. There was an entire world beyond the grasslands, and Tayang could see it only from afar. Yet he was Khan, and a Khan, according to his people, was not supposed to dream of such things.

His father had discovered that lesson the hard way. Despite being Khan, despite possessing all the power and authority that title represented, his father had spent nearly his entire reign putting out fires. Every reform created another enemy. Every new idea gave some ambitious chieftain an excuse to challenge him. Every attempt to alter the Horde's customs was treated as proof that he had abandoned the ways of his ancestors. One challenger after another had risen against him. Some wanted his throne, some wanted his death, while others simply wanted to restore the old order. His father had fought them all. When Tayang inherited the Horde, he had foolishly believed he might avoid the same fate by hiding the parts of himself that resembled his father. He had been wrong. The Grey Horde remembered, and now they saw those same tendencies in Tayang.

Only Tayang was worse in one crucial respect. He was less willing to fight them over it. That, more than anything, had become the source of their contempt. They mocked his "southern tendencies." They laughed at his fascination with settled lands and foreign customs. They whispered that their Khan had become soft. And when other Khans mocked the Grey Horde for having such a leader, his people could not challenge those Khans, so they did what people so often did when they could not strike at the source of their humiliation.

They struck at one another. A pasture dispute became a feud, a stolen Thousand Mile Horse became a blood debt, an insult became a challenge, and that challenge became a duel. And every quarrel, no matter how insignificant, eventually found its way to Tayang's tent.

He opened his eyes. The two men were still arguing.

Both displayed their transformation in full. They were four-legged, their lower bodies resembling horses and their upper bodies retaining a humanoid shape, though both were completely covered in fine green scales. Draconic claws tipped their feet instead of hooves, while Bergeit's face had taken on more distinctly draconic features than human ones. His elongated snout, in particular, was unmistakably reptilian. Sukhbat, on the other hand, was newly at Core Formation, and his transformation had not yet progressed as far. His face remained entirely human, while the golden flames that adorned his body like a mane burned far less brightly than those of his opponent.

This was the form most Yuan cultivators eventually came to possess. At Qi Condensation, the transformation manifested as scales spreading across the body and, often, the emergence of hoofed feet, though the latter was not guaranteed. At Foundation Establishment, it progressed further, producing the chimeric, centaur-like form they now displayed. At Core Formation, the transformation deepened still further, reshaping the remaining human features into something distinctly equine and draconic. And at Nascent Soul, it reached its apex, allowing a cultivator to shed all traces of their human appearance, if they so wished.

Nascent Soul cultivators could finally exert complete control over their transformations. Many Khans therefore chose to return to a two-legged form, retaining little more than their scales and horns – the latter a feature that no one below that realm could manifest. Tayang had gone even further. From the outside, he appeared completely human. There were no scales upon his skin, no horns protruding from his forehead, and no flames crowning his head. He looked like a man who did not cultivate at all, a form eerily reminiscent of his father before him.

Yet to the Horde, that appearance was more than a personal preference. It was a silent mockery, almost a challenge. To them, a Khan was a Khan precisely because he possessed the deepest connection to the Steppes and to their common qilin ancestor. The more clearly that heritage manifested in his body, the more legitimate his claim to the title. And Tayang, by choosing to look human, appeared to reject it entirely.

He was just about to speak, his irritation mounting and his headache worsening. He was going to order Bergeit to surrender the five cattle and Sukhbat to cede some of his land – not because either ruling was particularly just, but because perhaps it would teach them not to drag such petty disputes before him – when a chime rang through the tent.

Tayang immediately knew it was not an attack.

The others heard it as well. So did his Keshig, and two of his loyal guards hurried into the tent to see what the disturbance was. Tayang waved them back, then gestured for Bergeit and Sukhbat to remain silent as well, allowing the message to play out. The chime seemed to ring only within his ears, even though that was not the case at all. He could have blocked it, of course, but both the novelty of the transmission and, more importantly, the name of its sender stopped him in his tracks.

"...Xiang Muxue, Princess of the Great Xiang Empire, greets the ever-mighty Tayang Khan, whose banners have never known defeat, master of the four quarters, leader of the Grey Horde."

Tayang let the stream of flattery continue, his thoughts churning. He recognized the name, and more importantly, he recognized her father: Xiang Mingyuan. The man had once been the crown prince of the Southern Empire, and a close friend of Tayang's father. Tariq Khan had spoken of him often, and always with unreserved praise. On more than one occasion, his father had spoken of plans and ambitions that involved Mingyuan, plans that might have forged something greater than the fragmented Hordes and rival kingdoms that divided their world.

But all of those dreams had died fifty years ago. Xiang Mingyuan had been ambushed less than a hundred li from their Great Wall by an alliance of seven tribes and two minor Hordes. When word had reached Tariq Khan, he had ridden out immediately, galloping across the sky upon trails of golden fire in an attempt to rescue his old friend. He had returned alone.

Xiang Mingyuan was dead. And with him had seemingly died whatever future Tariq Khan had once envisioned with the people of the South. Tayang still remembered those days dimly. He had been little more than a boy then. He remembered his father laughing one evening and casually remarking that Mingyuan had a daughter who was slightly older than Tayang. Perhaps, his father had mused, there might be a marriage in the future. Tayang, at the time, had been far more interested in escaping the stuffy confines of the tent and running across the grasslands than in the prospect of marrying some girl he had never met. He had paid the matter no mind.

Now, fifty years later, that same girl, Xiang Mingyuan's daughter, the princess of the Great Xiang Empire, was somehow reaching across the gulf of half a century to contact him.

"...extend a hand in friendship, to rekindle old ties and convey news of great import. A criminal of the Empire, the former Lion General, has escaped with an artifact of great importance to your people... the Black Sulde-"

Tayang almost rose from his seat in shock. The Black Sulde. What was the banner of the Great Khan doing in the hands of the Empire? Had they found it? Stolen it? Somehow preserved it all these centuries?

The Black Sulde was the symbol of the Great Khan himself. He had carried it during his later campaigns, after the Hidden Emperor had halted his advance at the place where the Great Wall now stood. A thousand and one legends surrounded the artifact. Some claimed the Great Khan had forged it himself. Others said he had discovered it, wrested it from the corpse of an immortal, or even received it from Heavenly Messengers. Whatever its true origin, it had passed from the Great Khan to his heir, Ogedei, then to Chatur, then Jaghatai, and finally to Kublai.

And then Kublai had lost it.

Khans had searched for it and fought over it for centuries afterward, even as the Great Horde fractured into the many Hordes that now ruled the Steppes, but the banner had never reappeared. Until now. Somehow, the Empire had found it, and then somehow lost it to a criminal who had fled with it into the Steppes. And now the princess was pursuing him. What sequence of events was this?

But the message was not finished. "...aims to find the Great Khan's grave, seek a method to control the Horde Without End, and unleash upon the world an army that only an immortal can hope to withstand..."

It was too much. Tayang exploded from his seat. His aura erupted outward, making the yurt tremble and sending ripples of power through the ground beyond it. The entire encampment of the Grey Horde seemed to shudder beneath the force of his presence. He tried to rein it in, he really did, but one fantastical piece of news after another kept eroding his control.

How many fools throughout history had tried to control that great congregation of feral qilins known to the world as the Horde Without End? Millions. How many had succeeded? None.

Only one man in all of history had ever managed to make the Horde Without End submit to his will: The Great Khan – who had been dead for millennia. Of course, every legend, every mendicant, every shaman, and every fool in every Horde and tribe whispered about his grave. It was said to lie somewhere deep in the heart of the Steppes, containing treasures beyond imagination. And, above all, it was said to contain the means by which the Great Khan's chosen heir could inherit his authority and command the Horde Without End.

It was utter foolishness, nothing more. Anyone who had ever attempted to find that grave in the heart of the Steppes had never returned. Oh, stories surfaced with every thaw. Someone had glimpsed the grave. Someone had followed a strange light. Someone had watched a great tomb appear upon the horizon, only for it to vanish moments later. Every tale claimed the same thing: the grave lay somewhere deep within the Steppes, always drawing those who sought it farther toward the center.

Tayang had always dismissed them as fevered imaginations. Even if such a secret truly existed – and why had the Great Khan never shared it with Ogedei if it did? – reaching it should have been impossible. It was like an impenetrable box that could only be opened with a specific key, except the key was locked inside the box. How was anyone supposed to open it? To journey into the heart of the Steppes, one first needed a way to contend with the Horde Without End. But if one possessed the power to contend with the Horde Without End, there would be no reason to make the journey in the first place.

It was a perfect paradox.

And yet...

A criminal of the Empire, fleeing toward the heart of the Steppes while carrying the legendary Black Sulde, claiming to have seen the Great Khan's grave-

No, it was impossible. Tayang could not have invented such a story if he had tried.

And still, Muxue's message was not finished. "...must remain secret... avoid Chiggis's war... invite the Mighty Tayang Khan to participate... meet at the Last Hoofprint of Nezha..."

An opportunity? A trap? An ambush? It was all too fantastical. Tayang forced himself to calm down and think, even as spiritual senses converged upon his yurt from the elders, seeking to discover what had caused their Khan to suddenly lose control. Muxue had not revealed the composition of her forces, but this former Lion General had to be at the peak of the Nascent Soul realm. She likely had the support of the Horse Army, along with whatever guards and experts had been assigned to her for the task.

And now she was inviting him to join her. Was this an attempt to walk the path her father had started? Or was it something else? Perhaps she intended to use him and his people as shields. As guides. As a means of protecting herself from the anger of the rest of the Yuan.

He had to know. He would send scouts. He would make contact with the merchants beneath his banners, with the yams and ortoghs who traveled between the Hordes and would be willing to speak with him. He needed to determine how much of this was true. Not because he doubted Muxue's words; the message had been layered with the very concept of Truth, a power he could easily recognize, but only a fool would take the word of someone he had never met without verifying it himself.

If this truly was as she claimed...

If he could somehow gain an advantage...

Tayang imagined what it would be like to claim the Black Sulde. He was a young Khan compared to some of the ancient monsters still roaming the Steppes – Chiggis included – and he himself was only in the early stage of Nascent Soul realm. With the Sulde in hand, he would immediately rise to the mid-stage. And then what?

War, obviously. Every Horde, great and small, along with countless tribes, would descend upon his encampment. They would batter down his defenses and trample his people into the earth, all for the chance to claim the Sulde for themselves. There was no succession anymore. They were all descendants of the Great Khan's bloodline. So whoever was strongest would claim it.

Could Tayang keep it? No. To him, the Black Sulde would be nothing more than a death sentence.

His ardor cooled and his reasoning returned. Tayang exhaled slowly and thought the matter through more deeply. The Black Sulde was not something he could claim. But what of everything else? The rest, he decided, was simply nonsense. He refused to believe that any man could gain control of the Horde Without End, Sulde in hand or not. More likely, this Shi Wanjun would enter the Steppes, be devoured by the Horde Without End, or be reduced to nothing more than a corpse.

And afterward, nothing would change. The Steppes would remain, and so would the Hordes.

Slowly, he brought his aura back under control. His qi swept outward, reassuring the elders that everything was fine. The people outside, who had stopped to stare at his yurt, slowly went about their business again, exchanging baffled looks. The library that housed his prized collection of jade slips – which he had opened to everyone – stopped shaking, its wooden pillars settling into stillness. The massive lake beside his camp, Sarnai's Pool, gradually calmed as well, its waters, whipped into towering waves only moments before, slowly settling back into tranquility.

He should at least send an answer. Whatever Muxue was doing was interesting enough to warrant showing an interest, but not interesting enough for him to actually go.

Then came the finishing blow. "...I have informed the other Khans as well. Though, in light of our old ties, you are the first one, Mighty-"

The receding aura surged outward with full force. Bergeit and Sukhbat, who had been standing in one corner exchanging hateful looks, were flattened against the ground. So was the yurt, and so were the fifty tents surrounding it. The very earth beneath them was crushed downward, forming a widening crater. Sarnai's Pool instantly transformed into a raging tsunami, its waters surging skyward. The library collapsed in upon itself – mercifully empty, as it almost always was – and across the encampment, Yuan warriors roared and shouted as they reached for weapons or condensed them from golden flames.

Their Khan was signaling that some great force was descending upon them. Was it another Horde? Was it Chiggis, even though the latest reports placed him far from the Grey Horde?

The earth shook. The skies trembled. Clouds spiraled overhead as Tayang Khan's qi inundated the entire encampment. Then his voice followed. It reached every ear; loud, draconic, and mighty enough to shake the air itself, though the words were considerably less majestic.

"WHAT? THIS BRAINLESS WOMAN-"

Tayang cut himself off, gnashing his teeth. He forced himself to calm down. He was educated, he was composed, he was sophisticated, he was different. There had to be a purpose behind this. Why would Muxue deliberately draw the attention of the Khans and take such an enormous risk?

The answer came to him almost immediately: she was starting a race.

Could she be certain that she could hunt this Lion General down herself? No.

Then could she be certain that Tayang would come if she asked him to? Again, no.

So from her perspective, releasing the news and sending every Khan into a frenzy to hunt down Shi Wanjun made perfect sense. And the Khans would come, especially those old monsters at the peak of the Nascent Soul realm. With the Black Sulde in hand, they would be taking half a step toward immortality. More than that, if they could impose their authority over the other Hordes...

It would mean war. But it would be a war that, despite knowing it could very well lead to their deaths, every Khan would gladly fight.

No, Tayang thought even deeper. Chiggis. That fool from the Orange Horde who was even now agitating at the Wall, preaching about invading the South and dragging vast amounts of wealth and tribute back into the Steppes. Would he ignore this? Could he? No to both questions. He would come. He would abandon his plans for the South, all for the chance to participate in this contest for the Sulde. Surely the Empire had been worried about his threat to the border, but now that threat would be easily neutralized. No one would care about the South or the Wall when such a prize was at stake.

"Damn you, Shi Wanjun!" Tayang roared hatefully. This man – this fool of a man – had handed the Empire the perfect opportunity to pull this off. The timing was so providential that Tayang almost wanted to cry at the unfairness of it. "Don't you ever fall into my hands," he growled. "Or I'll break your dantian and cripple you before killing you."

And as for Muxue...

This would only make sense if she could remain hidden. Which likely meant she possessed some object, artifact, treasure, or technique capable of concealing her from everyone. Tayang doubted any Khan would be able to find her. After all, she was a descendant of the Hidden Emperor. She almost certainly had some trump card hidden away. She would remain concealed, provoke every Khan into chasing after the Lion General, and accomplish her task of hunting him down by borrowing their strength. And perhaps, once they had weakened themselves fighting one another, she would swoop in and claim the prize herself.

It was an almost perfect plan.

Maybe she did not even care if the Sulde fell into some Khan's hands. Would the Hidden Emperor truly be threatened by someone like that? Even the Great Khan had never managed to match that man, and his strength and power were beyond anything the Steppes could currently claim. Muxue was here to kill Shi Wanjun and divert the coming war away from her borders. As long as she accomplished those two things, her goals would likely be met.

And the worst part – the absolute, most infuriating part – was that Tayang could no longer sit this one out. It would have been one thing if he were the only Khan she had informed. But now, with every Khan soon to be racing toward the heart of the Steppes after the Black Sulde, sitting still would guarantee his defeat. Because if another Khan claimed it – if Chiggis claimed it – then every Horde would be on the chopping block. It would be war of an entirely different sort.

And the Grey Horde would be devoured.

The same was true for every major Horde in the Steppes. But... if Tayang were the first to get his hands on the Sulde, he did not necessarily have to keep it. He could make the intelligent choice. He could present it to his favored contender, someone like Batuk Khan of the Blue Horde or Tsetseg Khan of the Purple Horde. And in return, the Grey Horde would become the favored ally of the Khan who possessed the greatest symbol of authority in the Steppes. The coming war would become far more manageable. After all, I don't need to be a Great Khan. I only need to make sure the next Great Khan owes his or her position to me.

Tayang's eyes narrowed. He also had one advantage. Muxue had said she had informed the other Khans, but only after him. If the message had only just reached him, then it would be some time before the others received theirs. If he moved quickly... If he reached the Last Hoofprint of Nezha before the others... If he met Muxue there and learned the truth for himself... Then perhaps there was a chance. A very real chance.

Tayang sighed.

I wish I could say, I don't care. Let the other fools fight.

Unfortunately, if I don't fight, the other fools will decide the future of my Horde.

He had to summon the elders. He had to summon everyone. The Horde would have to move out as soon as he had even a basic confirmation of the situation. Inwardly, he could not help but curse and praise Muxue in equal measure for what she had done. He had heard from passing merchants that the Empire's new Crown Heir was a poisonous individual, but now he had experienced it for himself.

Truly, the daughter was nothing like the father.

She must have been scheming for years. Perhaps ever since her father's death...

Tayang's thoughts stuttered. Was this another part of her plan? Was she deliberately provoking war in the Steppes as a means of taking revenge upon the Yuan who had killed her father? Tayang felt a chill run through him.

This woman... just how many layers are there to her scheming and ruthlessness?

And now he had to set out to meet her. That headache from the morning had been a sign. The entire day was cursed.

Tayang finally paid attention to his surroundings, only to find that his yurt had collapsed into a crater. Bergeit and Sukhbat were struggling at the bottom of it, fighting one another, though at least they had the sense not to use qi. They were reduced to claws and fangs, snarling and grappling like beasts. Around him, hundreds of his people surrounded him, forming rings in the air and on the ground. A dozen elders had arrived – half the total number within the encampment – and all of them waited for their Khan to emerge from his thoughts and explain the situation.

Many were still watching the skies, as though expecting an enemy to descend upon them at any moment, despite there being no sign of anyone coming.

Tayang withheld another sigh. He rose into the air. He would have to explain.

A new wind was blowing across the Steppes, and a wise warrior did not stand against the wind. He bent with it.

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AN: That evil Muxue! Such cunning, such ruthless schemes! 😈

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