Jiutou Mountain is located north of Yuzhou City and is a famous ghost mountain. Legend has it that a divine being killed a nine headed monstrous eagle that was tormenting the people. The nine heads of the monstrous eagle fell here, forming nine rolling mountain peaks, which is how Jiutou Mountain got its name.

Of course, these are all exaggerated mythical rumors among the common people and do not prove how ghostly and eerie it truly is. What genuinely established its reputation as a ghost mountain was a fierce battle from over a dozen years ago.

Although this fierce battle happened over a dozen years ago, people on the streets and alleys of Yuzhou City still talk about it with great relish, just like telling a story, because such things only happen in stories.

To talk about this fierce battle, one must first mention the global situation. The land of Huaxia was divided into three, with the three great empires separated by the Qinling Mountains and the Huaihe River. East of the Qinling Mountains and north of the Huaihe River lay the Sui Kingdom where Zhong Yueping lived. West of the Qinling Mountains was the Tang Kingdom, which had the vastest territory. East of the Qinling Mountains and south of the Huaihe River was the Song Kingdom, which had the most developed economy. The three way division between Sui, Tang, and Song had lasted for several hundred years. During these hundreds of years, countless large and small wars broke out, and the fierce battle from over a dozen years ago was the most brutal fight among them.

Yuzhou City was located east of the Qinling Mountains and north of the Huaihe River, originally belonging to the territory of the Great Sui. However, twenty years ago, the Sui Emperor listened to the words of a sorcerer and took a so called golden elixir of immortality, dying instantly. The new emperor, Yang Zhi, had just ascended the throne, and before his footing was even stable, he was eager to implement drastic reforms, only to face obstruction from the old ministers of the previous reign. As the saying goes, a new ruler brings new courtiers, so Yang Zhi cleverly set up a trap at a banquet and executed over a dozen high ranking officials.

Because Yang Zhi had a temporary moment of softheartedness and showed brotherly affection, he did not include Prince Yang An, who held the military power, in the purge. However, Yang An knew very well that serving a king is like running with tigers, and he figured that one day he would follow in the footsteps of those executed high officials. Consequently, a year later, Yang An rose in rebellion. Because he had carried out meticulous planning, he marched into the capital the following month.

If it were an ordinary, cowardly emperor, they probably would have slit their own throat or opened the city gates to surrender when the army pressed down upon the city walls. Yet Yang Zhi remained calm and collected. On one hand, he sent messengers to seek aid from the Tang Kingdom, which possessed the strongest military force, promising to cede Yuzhou as a reward afterward. On the other hand, he deployed the imperial guards and city defense soldiers to dig pits inside the city, filling them with fire oil.

The rebel army thought they had won a total victory upon breaking into the high red walls of the capital, so they let their guard down. Suddenly, they saw huge fires ignite all around them, and in their panic to find an escape route, countless men burned to death. Seeing the rebel army in total chaos, the defending general ordered several thousand soldiers to charge out. Instantly, the sounds of battle cries and mournful wails mixed together inside the capital, and the flames reached the sky, looking like hell on earth.

Although the rebel army was scattered, their numbers were massive, and every single one of them was a veteran worker who had experienced a hundred battles. A few hours later, in this great battle amid the capital fire, the rebel army defeated the joint surprise force composed of city guards and imperial guards at the cost of losing over half their own numbers in heavy casualties. The remaining half of the rebel army flooded into the imperial palace like a tidal wave.

Inside the palace was another scene of chaotic warfare. Amid the chaos, the imperial guards cut a path through the blood for Yang Zhi. Yang Zhi followed his trusted ministers and fled to the Northern Wilderness, wanting to ask for help from the Northern Wilderness forces to aid him in restoring his kingdom. North of the Sui Kingdom, outside the land of Huaxia, lay a wild and barren land overgrown with thorns. In this wild, primeval jungle, there lived a powerful nomadic tribe.

They moved about this thorn covered primeval jungle during the spring and autumn seasons, living on hunting and wild fruits. In the summer, the Northern Wilderness grew incomparably hot, and not a single fruit could be found in the jungle. Furthermore, a type of disease carrying mosquito would appear, and once it bit someone, an epidemic would spread rapidly. In the winter, the northern cold lands were frozen for thousands of miles, and the prey went into hibernation. Therefore, during the summer and winter seasons, they would migrate out of this primeval jungle and roam the vast grasslands on the border of the Tang Kingdom, relying on the prey they caught and herding to make a living.

They lived in this bitterly cold land year round and suffered greatly from migration, so they had always cast a greedy eye on the land of Huaxia, wanting to enter the central plains at all times. Because of this, they frequently harassed the two kingdoms of Sui and Tang, leaving the citizens on the northern borders of both nations with grievances they could not voice, angrily calling them barbarians.

Since this group of people had no country title and no formal army, possessing only seven tribal chiefs, the Sui Kingdom called them the Spring and Autumn State based on the seasons they appeared on the border. However, the Tang Kingdom did not call them the Summer and Winter State, but instead called them the Warring States. This was because on the Tang border, there were no wild fruits and they could not hunt, so their entire population became soldiers, launching several large scale campaigns against the Tang Kingdom. Because of their warlike nature, the Tang Kingdom called them the Warring States, and called those seven tribal chiefs the Seven Heroes of the Warring States.

When they were on the Sui border, they had plenty of food and clothing, and had tree houses to live in, so they rarely invaded the Sui Kingdom. Moreover, two peace loving tribes would declare a truce during this time. Therefore, only five tribes always harassed the Sui border, and they were called the Five Hegemons of the Spring and Autumn by the Sui Kingdom.

Yang Zhi fled to the Northern Wilderness, found the Spring and Autumn Warring States, and promised to give them half of the Great Sui territory as a reward for helping him restore his kingdom. Seeing the internal turmoil within the Great Sui, the seven tribal chiefs realized they could now use the banner of helping the Sui Emperor Yang Zhi restore his kingdom. This would not only give them a legitimate reason to go to war, but it was also the perfect opportunity to launch a military campaign against the Sui, so they gladly agreed.

The following month, an army of one hundred thousand from the Spring and Autumn Warring States, led by Yang Zhi’s trusted followers, bypassed Shanhai Pass, followed the Qinling mountain range, and snuck into Jiutou Mountain north of the Great Sui’s Yuzhou City.

The new Sui Emperor, Yang An, had risen in rebellion only after plotting for a year, so he had already planned out the arrangements for after his ascension well in advance. After he ascended the throne, he smoothed out the domestic order and restored the national laws and regulations in just half a month. As the saying goes, a bird leaves a track wherever it flies. With an army of one hundred thousand sneaking into the already settled Sui Kingdom, scouts had long since discovered the enemy’s movements, and urgent military dispatches were sent to the capital. Yang An, who was originally a general holding military power from fighting across the land and had won the throne by raising an army, was deeply versed in military strategy, and he concluded that the enemy army would launch a surprise attack on Yuzhou City from Jiutou Mountain.

Yuzhou City was surrounded by mountains on all sides and was a famous city among mountains. The city had ample grain reserves and was also the granary of the Sui army on the border. If Yuzhou was lost, the border would surely fall into chaos. Yang An led the army in person, setting up an ambush of two hundred thousand soldiers at Jiutou Mountain, waiting for the enemy to step into the trap.

Who would have thought that the ones who arrived were not the one hundred thousand barbarian soldiers of the Spring and Autumn Warring States, but instead two hundred thousand elite troops of the Great Tang. It turned out that the messenger Yang Zhi sent to the Tang Kingdom had been killed, but the Tang Kingdom had received intelligence about the great chaos in the Sui Kingdom, and happened to have the exact same thought as the Spring and Autumn Warring States. A grand army of two hundred thousand Tang soldiers crossed the Qinling Mountains and headed straight up Jiutou Mountain.

According to the recollections of the Yuzhou citizens, during that month, the cries of battle on Jiutou Mountain never stopped. The three countries invested a total force of five hundred thousand men, engaging in hand to hand combat and slaughter among those nine mountain ridges. There were no war horses or war chariots, only blood fights with real blades and spears, which was incredibly brutal.

However, the strangest thing occurred just when the battle was raging like wildfire.

It was when the battle had been going on for a month, and the three kingdoms were still stuck in a stalemate. The Sui army defended their territory, viewing death as returning home. The Tang army were all elites, and retreating blindly would damage the military prestige of the Great Tang. The Spring and Autumn Warring States had joined the battlefield last, and seeing that their former enemies, the Tang and Sui armies, were both exhausted, how could they not eat the fat meat right at their mouths? Therefore, none of the three kingdoms had any intention of retreating.

The citizens of Yuzhou City lived in constant fear every day, terrified that the enemy army would break into their homes, living in perpetual anxiety. But exactly one month later, out of nowhere one day, the battle cries on Jiutou Mountain suddenly stopped. No one knew what had happened on the mountain. The supply teams sent by the Sui army went up the mountain and never returned either. Consequently, the Sui army sent out thirty six waves of scouts in a row, but every single one went and never came back, like a stone dropping into the vast ocean.