Red is the color of ruin. It is the sky burning with the ashes of his home. It is the color of rage, clouding vision and deafening the ears with his own heartbeat. It is the color of the lifeblood spilling from the broken skinless thing that was his youngest son, breathing its last as his men pulled the bodies down from the charred walls.

One hundred years, he has given his all. He is the Scarlet General, the Marcher Lord, the bloody spear and unbreaking shield in the hands of Duke Bai Fuxi. He has driven back the barbarians a hundred, hundred times. It is said that the river Tiesha sometimes runs red with the blood of sacrifices from their terrible temple cities, but he knows that it has run black as mud with the ashes from the pyres he orders the bodies be burned in.

He is among the most hated of men in Zhenjian, despised and mocked behind whispering sleeves. The high caste called him a brute and a butcher, the one mistake ever made by Duke Fuxi. They called him the mud that thinks itself a lotus. He wondered sometimes whether his duke did this with purpose, knowing that he would serve as a lightning rod for the cruelties of his court, to keep the knives faced outward.

He is hated because he took office that many believe only a true blooded Bai should hold and for daring to command above his caste. He accepted this hate long ago. He has accepted disruptions of his supply, insults to his messengers, lagging responses to his calls for aid, and even insubordination on campaign. All of it, all of it for his home, for his family, for his land. He reported faithfully to the duke, but it is as if his words are wind.

His fist struck the ground, blood seeping from his clenched fist, and the land groaned in complaint as earth and stone rippled with the force. Men shouted, and horses screamed. The burning ruins of his castle crumbled further. His eyes stung, but he will not let himself weep.

“My deepest condolences,” murmured a silky voice, and Sun Shao turned his head to catch the figure in his vision.

A young man in white robes embroidered with the finest scrollwork, his face was pale and aristocratic, his expression set in the smallest show of sadness, and his hands behind his back. This was Bai Luxian, commander of the western reserve, grandson of Fuxi, cousin to the man whose blunder had seen Sun Shao raised to this position, and son of Bai Lijie, favored daughter of the duke.

“With the forces which had slipped past, it simply was not possible to reinforce your guards in time. Unfortunate that your men stumbled so.”

Unfortunate that the commander there had been recalled for a spurious inspection. Lu Dan was a man of impeccable character, and such a recall could only be done by one who could bypass his authority entirely.

His men were now dead too.

Sun Shao felt his head spinning. It was as if his spirit were leaving his body, and the furnace of his soul burned the air and made it shimmer, wilting grass and driving men to their knees.

He had accepted it all. One hundred years, he had done his duty without complaint. One hundred years, he had fought and fought and fought with undersupplied men and lazy support. One hundred years, he had shaped himself, his way, and his family for this role.

One hundred damned years, and this was his reward. His manse burned and his family dead because this vile brat still felt affronted that Sun Shao had shown that his cousin was a worthless waste of skin and qi.

It would be so easy, he thought. So easy to crush this smirking brat’s throat in his hand, to drive a spear of burning blood through his heart, to flense him alive, as his family had been. He had come to sip the power of the sixth realm and begun to awaken the Sovereignty of War, and this White Serpent but played around in the fourth, just beginning to touch the fifth.

“General, your restraint is failing you,” said Bai Luxian calmly. “I give you some leeway for grief, but I cannot tolerate such disrespectful eyes for long.”

Something broke deep in his chest like a snapping sinew, and his second and third dantians trembled. Sun Shao tasted blood on his tongue.

It would be so easy, if not for the truth. Bai Luxian was not merely a man. He was Bai, a White Serpent, and thus, he wore an armor more terrifying and invulnerable than even the blows of a sixth realm expert of war. If Sun Shao did as his heart screamed for him to do, he would die. His surviving sons would die. Their families would die. His officers would die. His officers' families would die. Anyone who had ever professed their loyalty to him would die.

Sun Shao lowered his eyes.

But if loyalty, too, was death, how much life did his submission buy?

How much cruelty can be suffered before death became his answer?

He squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed the blood in his mouth. He swallowed the beast of rage in his heart and kept in the blades which wished to break his skin. Surely, this was too far, too much. He would report to Duke Fuxi. He would…

Even if he could no longer believe in the Bai clan as a whole, even if his loyalty had been spat on, broken, and crushed, the Lord of the Thousand Lakes was a just man. Sun Shao still believed that. The duke had granted Sun Shao this position, knowing him worthy of it. If he could just present the evidence that had been streaming to him in his march back home from the front, then justice would be done.

Surely.

Surely, justice would be done.

His Thousand Lakes, his land, could not be a place so unworthy.

Because if it was, he did not know what he would do.