"Power from the upper arm. Swing outward. Your whole body doesn't need to move that much."

"First action in aiming — press the butt into your shoulder. Press it in first."

"Push-ups. Don't stick your ass up. Tuck your stomach."

The commands crackled across the training ground, sharp and unrelenting. The instructors' voices carried an edge of urgency but no real anger — certainly no abuse. The young soldiers moved through their drills in ragged synchronization, faces flushed crimson, backs dark with sweat.

Gu Lu, Division Political Commissar, kept pace with the rest. The Sports Science department of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army had spent years refining a daily training regimen through accumulated data and field observation. Every commander, Gu Lu included, was required to complete the full workload during training periods.

One hundred sit-ups. One hundred push-ups. Leg presses and splits during the brief rest. Thirty pull-ups. Then a three-thousand-meter run. Every morning, Gu Lu ran through this sequence with the men, took a cold shower, and only then began his office work.

Once the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army crossed the Yellow River, the posture against Beiyang would shift from defensive to openly offensive. The Yellow River was no Yangtze, but it was no ditch either. Logistics would depend almost entirely on the Beijing-Hankou Railway. The safety of the bridge spanning the river could not be left to chance — security troops would need to be stationed along the entire line.

"Commissar Gu, when do we fight the Beiyang Second Division?"

Men from the Division Political Department had been asking the same question for days. Gu Lu laughed. "We haven't even crossed the river, and you're already dreaming of Anyang?"

"The soldiers' morale is high after visiting their families, Commissar. Wipe out the Beiyang Second Division — the new recruits say it like they're already there."

At the Division Political Commissar meeting, the mood was buoyant. Gu Lu's question cut through it. "Aside from thoughts of repaying kindness, how much class consciousness have the comrades actually developed?"

"Down with the Beiyang exploiting class, liberate all of Henan," a company political instructor called out. "We're propagating these principles."

Gu Lu smiled, but the smile was bitter. Beiyang was the government; it could be counted among the exploiting classes, but it hardly deserved the title. The company instructor's political concepts were still crude — not good news. Yet Gu Lu could not be too harsh. A year ago, he and this instructor had stood at the same level. When the 4407th Division entered Henan, it had since expanded into the 504th Corps — twenty thousand men becoming one hundred thousand. Gu Lu had risen from Division Political Commissar to Corps Political Commissar, retaining his old division post. Even with reinforcements from other base areas, expecting the troops' overall quality to soar while expanding this fast was delusion.

The original plan had been to cross the Yellow River in May 1914. After expansion gutted troop quality, the date slipped to June, after the summer harvest. But June came and the preparations remained unfinished — the army had been deployed en masse to help rural civilians, especially military families and state-run farms, with the harvest. Training was delayed again. By July 1, 1914, the decision was final: cross after August.

Gu Lu was mid-sentence, assigning work, when a guard burst in. "Commissar Gu! Secretary Zhang and Commander Chai order you to drop everything immediately and report to the Provincial Committee!"

The guard thrust an order into his hands. Gu Lu stared at it, wondering what could demand such urgency. When he reached the Provincial Committee, there were no signs of a large assembly. Inside, only six people. Zhang Yu and Chai Qingguo, naturally. Henan Military District Political Commissar Yang Baogui. 504th Corps Commander Lv Zhonglin. And someone Gu Lu had not expected — Kang Dingyong, Director of the Henan Branch of the People's Internal Affairs Committee.

Zhang Yu, usually imperturbable, was visibly agitated. "The Central Committee orders that from this moment, we are free to act against Beiyang and the foreign devils."

The room went still. The Party Central Committee had never shown such naked hostility toward the foreign powers. Chai Qingguo and Gu Lu knew something of Chen Ke's calculations, but the others had not imagined a shift of this magnitude.

"Secretary Zhang," Yang Baogui asked, astonished, "what happened?"

Zhang Yu's eyes shone. "On June 28th — a few days ago — the Austrian Crown Prince was killed by a bomb in Sarajevo. The Central Committee believes a European war will break out soon. Once it does, Britain and France won't be able to strike at our base areas directly. If they can't free their hands to hit us, we can free ours to deal with the foreign devils."

"Secretary Zhang — was this Chairman Chen's judgment?"

Yang Baogui cared deeply about the answer. Years earlier, after Chen Ke wrote Killing Cixi, Yang had been a division commander accompanying him to meet Feng Xu and Shen Zengzhi. Since then, he had never doubted Chen Ke's strategic vision.

Zhang Yu handed him the telegram. The content matched his words exactly. The signature at the bottom: Chen Ke.

Yang Baogui's shoulders dropped. "Then how does the Central Committee want us to fight?"

"Move one division across the Yellow River first," Zhang Yu said. "Regardless of readiness."

While Zhang Yu issued these instructions, Chen Ke sat in his own Central Committee meeting, the weight that had pressed on his chest for months finally lifting. Once the Great War began, he would know who his true enemy was. He had cultivated relations with the United States, but had never dared truly offend the British. Now China's greatest adversary would have no attention to spare for the East. Chen Ke felt light, almost giddy, as if he might rise from his chair.

The other Central Committee members sensed his mood. A large batch of cadres had toured abroad in the past two years; they knew the European situation at least in outline. Germany and Austria were allied. The Austrian Crown Prince and his wife dead by bomb — war was unavoidable.

More detailed intelligence had arrived by telegram in recent days. At the end of 1912, the First Balkan War had driven the Turks from the Balkan League. But during peace negotiations, the European powers nearly expanded the conflict into a war among themselves. Serbia demanded access to the Adriatic through northern Albania; Austria-Hungary opposed, backed by Germany and Italy. Russia and France supported Serbia. Both Russia and Austria carried out partial mobilization. The situation was tense, but Russia, weak and unprepared, conceded to Germany and Austria. The Balkan question went to an international conference.

In December 1912, a peace conference convened in London, alongside an ambassadors' conference of Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Germany, and Austria. The Entente backed the Balkan League; the Central Powers backed Turkey. Then a coup in Turkey brought a pro-German government to power. With German support, it refused to surrender Adrianople. Negotiations collapsed. On February 3, 1913, the Balkan League resumed military operations. By March they had captured Adrianople. Turkey sued for peace again. The London Conference reconvened in May. A treaty was signed: Turkey ceded all territory west of the Enos-Midia line, retaining only a narrow strip near Istanbul. Albania won independence.

Quarrels over the spoils split the Balkan League. Bulgaria had taken the most land. Serbia demanded part of Macedonia. Greece wanted southern Macedonia and Western Thrace. Montenegro and even Romania, which had not fought, pressed claims. Bulgaria refused all of them. Turkey saw its chance to retake Eastern Thrace. The aggrieved nations united against Bulgaria.

The Central Powers worked to destroy the Balkan League. The Entente openly backed Greece and Serbia. On June 1, 1913, Serbia and Greece signed an anti-Bulgarian alliance; Romania joined. Bulgaria struck first, declaring war on Serbia on June 29. Montenegro and Turkey joined the anti-Bulgarian coalition. Bulgaria was defeated. On August 10, the Treaty of Bucharest was signed: Romania took Southern Dobruja, Serbia the greater part of Macedonia, Greece southern Macedonia, Western Thrace, and Crete. Turkey retook Adrianople.

The two Balkan Wars ignited the Slavic national movement in Bosnia and Herzegovina under Austro-Hungarian rule. They demanded union with Serbia — a Greater Serbia. Austria-Hungary opposed any Serbian expansion and resolved to annex Serbia outright. The conflict between Austria and Serbia would inevitably drag in Russia, and with it, the Central Powers against the Entente. The Balkans had become the focal point of European contradictions, the powder keg of the continent.

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary commanded a military exercise in Bosnia, with neighboring Serbia as the imaginary enemy. A secret Serbian organization sent multiple assassins to lie in ambush in Sarajevo. After the exercise, Ferdinand and his wife entered the city in an open-top automobile. An assassin threw a bomb. The automobile erupted in flames.

The assassination was seized by both military blocs pushing for war. Austro-Hungarian militarists clamored: "Draw the sword, aim at Serbia." A Vienna newspaper wrote: "For six years we have been waiting for all the serious tensions to finally explode... We want war, because this is our inner conviction. Our ideal can only be realized through war, in a radical and sudden manner: that is a powerful Austria." The day after the assassination, Chief of General Staff Hötzendorf and Foreign Minister Berchtold agreed the moment to "solve the Serbian problem" had arrived. They demanded immediate mobilization. But they feared Russian intervention, and so asked Kaiser Wilhelm for backing.

What the People's Party did not yet know was how closely this bomb was tied to them. Synthetic ammonia technology had sent the Party's production of nitro-high explosives surging. Chen Ke had loved chemistry since boyhood — perhaps it was simply a boy's nature, or perhaps something more antisocial; in any case, he had once been obsessed with the study of illegal chemical stimulants and explosives. The Party's gel explosive production was substantial. Beyond mines and engineering projects across China, a portion was even sold to India.

Merchants, it turned out, were the same everywhere. For profit, a small quantity of gel explosives had found its way from India to the Balkans. During the investigation of the assassination, a fragment of iron was found in the wreckage of the Crown Prince's automobile. Stamped on it, in clear characters: Made in China. The trademark the People's Party used on all its gel explosives.