Kingdom really is the series that can’t catch a break.  It already suffered the longest pandemic delays of any scheduled 2020 series (a full year).  Now, having somehow dodged the Olympic bullet, it got pushed back a week due to a typhoon in Kyuushu.  It was a critical moment too, after a hell of a cliffhanger.  Not so much suspense over what was going to happen (and did) but how it was going to play out.  But a pleasure deferred is still a pleasure, and this episode – like the last one – certainly didn’t disappoint.

I don’t think there was ever any doubt that Lord Biao was on a suicide mission here, and I think he knew that full well.  Li Mu is too big a fish to fry at this point of the story (and maybe any point, at least until the very end).  Still, their faceoff was a fascinating one.  Li Mu’s admission that he’s never unsheathed his sword in battle tells you a lot about him.  It seems almost unsavory in a way, though that’s purely an instinctive reaction on my part.  Still – how does a general who relies completely on strategy and tactics triumph in single combat?  The obvious answer is that he doesn’t – but simply ordering his men to slay Biao for him doesn’t make for much of a story.

The answer, as it turns out, is Pang Nuan. And it’s perfectly logical that he’d be here, but as it’s been more than seven years since I’ve seen him you’ll forgive me if I had to check my old posts to remember who the heck he was.  He’s the blunt instrument in Li Mu’s hand, the fire to his ice.  The man who was able to slay the invincible Wang Qi, whose massive figure still casts a shadow over this series even now.  Though that may only have been possible because Wang Qi had already taken an arrow wound – something Lord Biao uses to get under the unflappable Pang Nuan’s skin.

Xin and his men are of course horrified to see Pang Nuan turn up (it hasn’t been seven years for them).  Xin’s instinct is to fight his way to his general’s side and aid him, but from the start Biao wants no part of that – one way or the other he knows how this is going to end for him.  Xin is young and bursting with potential, and the greatest peril lies ahead as Li Mu’s army reaches Xianyang.  He orders Xin “Onward!” to the capital – even flinging his shield to him in an act as symbolic as it is literal.  As for Li Mu he’s under no real threat – Biao can’t turn on him with Pang occupying him, and his men are vastly outnumbered (and soon massacred).

Li Mu is honorable in his way, but he’s a cold bastard.  He takes no joy in killing but neither does he allow for the sentiment of war to sway him.  This is exceptionally hard on Xin of course.  He’s already lost one man he worshipped to Pang Nuan, and he’s about to lose another.  And there’s nothing he can do to stop it.  Indeed, all he can do is fling himself towards Pang Nuan in the hopeless pursuit of revenge.  Fortunately Bi is willing to commit insubordination on the battlefield in order to stop Xin from making a terrible mistake.  And he’s absolutely right – Biao’s death only has meaning if Xin lives on and reaches the capital, and becomes a great general himself to honor those whose guidance helped him along the way.

That’s the right thing for Xin to do, but you totally get why it kills him to do it.  Biao was just as much a father figure to him as Wang Qi, and Xin, let’s remember, is still a very young man.  Biao certainly goes out with panache and honor, but dead is dead.  And he isn’t able to take Pang Nuan’s head with him as he promised – though he does wing him a bit.  And perhaps psychologically as well as physically, as Li Mu’s inward observations suggest that the instinctive general pegged Pang Nuan’s weakness – the so-called contradiction of his existence.  However many are left when Xin makes it to Xianyiang, things are looking bleak for Qin here – something Li Mu is keen to make sure the defenders are very well aware of…