Oh FFS, my notepad isn’t even big enough…

At some point I’m just going to give up on trying to track all these names.  Even splitting the volume 50% by ignoring the Japanese (soundtrack) readings and going only with the Chinese (subtitle) ones, the sheer volume is overwhelming.  It’s not unrealistic – Kingdom is a story with a humongous sweep, spanning across an era where multiple states were at perpetual war with each other.  It’s not like Pierrot has any other way of handling it.  It’s just that the sheer magnitude of them has become almost comical in trying to follow along as a viewer, never mind writing about the series.

Some of the names in the story this week are familiar ones – Wang Ben (and Jian), Teng, Wu Fengming.  The focus turns to Zhuyong, on the border between Qin and Wei.  It’s vital to Qin’s next phase of expansion, and Wei has sent their top dog (Wu) to head up the defense.  In charge of Qin’s forces is General Teng, maybe the guy currently at the top of their pyramid of generals given the thinning of ranks we’ve seen over the past several on-screen years.  In short, this is a battle of titans – and each great general has summoned reinforcements to aid in the fight.

On the Qin side, that means Xin and the Fei Xin Force, and Wang Ben and his Yu Feng Army.  These two young lions don’t get along as well with each other as they do with the third corner of the triangle, Meng Tian, and they’re at each other’s throats pretty seriously until Teng comes along and orders them to save their “mating dance” for after Zhuyong is taken.  Teng has already narrowly escaped one of Wu’s traps, and recognizes that he doesn’t currently have enough troops to take his target.  He’s about to request reinforcements from Wang Jian, but Wang Ben urges against it on the grounds that if Wang Jian leaves his current post on the Zhao border, Qin risks an invasion from Zhao and being pincered between Zhao and Wei.

Wang Ben grudgingly admits he’d personally rather not fight alongside his father (they don’t get along) but sells the others on a plan to split their forces and take on the Wei army at their three weakest (though hardly weak) points.  These attacks would be uncoordinated, with only a mutually agreed deadline of high noon on the third day for each to attack Wu Fengming’s camp.  What they don’t know, however, is that Wu Fengming isn’t the only fresh blood that’s been called into the defense.

It’s on the Wei side that the sheer avalanche of new faces appears.  They’re all connected to the Fire Dragons of Wei – a real group of seven great generals, one of whom was Wu Fengming’s father.  Three are dead, and it’s the three who killed them – who’ve been in prison for it for 14 years and thought dead by the world – who Wu has summoned.  Zi Bai, Kai Meng, and Ling Huang – the last of whom was Wu’s instructor in strategy and tactics.  Their presence makes Wang Ben’s plan, already seemingly a long-shot, even more of a Hail, Mary.

The key to all this is Teng – who’s been left out of Wang Ben’s three-pronged attack so as not to draw attention to his force.  For Wu Fengming and Ling Huang, Teng is the most dangerous man in Qin, and his elimination is the main goal of this engagement.  There’s been a growing sense that the Achilles’ heel of Qin’s ambition to unify the warring states is that their ranks of great generals have been decimated.  Losing Teng would be a crippling blow.  Fortunately he’s sussed out the situation after seeing Ling’s battle flag, but with so many of his men sent away incommunicado as part of Wang Ben’s stratagem, he’s extremely vulnerable.  It’s a situation fraught with potential disaster for Qin, that’s for certain.