Though the stated purpose of going to the city gate was to check on the refugee situation outside, in truth, with no prior baseline for comparison, there was no one readily available who truly understood the situation well enough to consult. Nor could Ning Yi hope to draw any real conclusion simply by counting heads. The real reason for this outing was that they’d already been cooped up in Taiping Lane for several days now, and it was time to see the state of the city for himself.

As something of an outsider in this world, Ning Yi could, for the most part, view the current chaos inside and outside the city almost like watching a simple disaster film. In an age like this, so long as a city’s basic order held, no amount of hardship could truly touch those with some standing and means.

And yet, faced with the many desolate scenes in the rain, even Ning Yi couldn’t help but feel a stirring of pity—much as he had during the flooding that sealed off Jiangning the year before. That time had mostly meant famine; this time, the situation was even starker—the injured from the earthquake, those who’d lost house and livelihood, beggars, refugees.

In circumstances like these, a great many of the injured simply couldn’t afford a doctor, let alone medicine. Makeshift shelters had been thrown up amid the still-uncleared rubble along both sides of the road, and those living in them all wore the same look of desolation—some braving the rain to dig through the wreckage of their own homes. Those badly hurt, or missing hands or feet, had nowhere left to go, huddling beneath sagging eaves with nothing but mats for cover, their fate uncertain. It was already the fifth day since the earthquake; a few days earlier they might still have had the strength to cry out, but by now most had been worn down into silence.

There were also children who’d lost their parents, or who had already been beggars trailing after a father or mother before the quake—injured or not, some shivered in the rain, others huddled wherever they could find shelter. Some still cried, though many had already cried themselves hoarse. Starving children crept out to scavenge through the rubble, and whatever they managed to find, whatever it was, went straight into their mouths—though this was, after all, no age of surplus food; hardly any household had much to spare even for itself. More often than not, the children were simply chased off and beaten when spotted.

Children adrift in the rain looked almost like stray dogs. There were some among the better-off, having settled their own household affairs, who felt genuine pity stir in them. But given the productive capacity of this age, no amount of kindness could ever be enough. The authorities and great households like the Qian family handed out porridge and rice to keep some from dying outright, but it couldn’t disguise the fact that a good many had already lost all hope for the future.

Such, in the end, was simply the nature of these times—in a place like Hangzhou or Jiangning, if only a few dozen people froze to death outside the city walls in a given winter, that already counted as an age of true peace and prosperity. Ning Yi understood this well enough in the abstract, but seeing it firsthand still weighed on him. This was, after all, only what could be seen along the streets inside the city itself. Su Tan’er and Xiao Chan, though they too felt pity, had grown rather more accustomed to such sights, and their mood was noticeably less sentimental than his.

Peering out from behind the carriage curtain for a while and noticing Ning Yi’s grave expression and low spirits, Xiao Chan said softly, “Xiao Chan was sold off too, you know, back when her family was about to starve…” She meant only to comfort him, without any trace of self-pity in her tone. Ning Yi smiled faintly; Su Tan’er drew her close, letting her rest her forehead against her shoulder, and stroked her hair.

The scene outside the walls was harder to make out in detail. In fact, the refugees who’d been pouring in these past few days had by now surrounded several of Hangzhou’s city gates, and Wude Battalion soldiers had already sealed them off. The gates themselves weren’t closed, but passing in or out had become considerably difficult. Ning Yi had the pass provided by the Qian family, but there was no real need to go outside—their carriage and manner of dress alone would likely draw a crowd the moment they passed through the gate.

Ning Yi got down from the carriage near the gate and went to look things over on his own for a while; before long a wary soldier came over to question him. Ning Yi produced the Qian family’s calling card, and the soldier moved on. The area outside the gate was in poor condition, thick with mud everywhere; a number of soldiers had set up shelters outside the wall to maintain order, mainly to keep the main road clear.

The collapsed section of the wall wasn’t far off, and a great many workers were laboring there. With the city itself still busy with self-rescue efforts, sorting out each household’s own ruined affairs, there weren’t many workers to be hired locally—more than half of those working here had likely been recruited straight from the refugees outside the walls, able-bodied men given food and grain in exchange for labor, which was why they seemed to be working with such genuine energy.

Just from this brief look, Ning Yi understood enough already.

“It’s not just Hangzhou—Suzhou’s been affected too, and there are simply too many disaster victims. If we tried to travel overland, we’d probably be robbed before we got very far. For now, all we can do is stay here and wait for things to improve…”

Back in the carriage, Ning Yi sighed and was about to have the driver head back to Taiping Lane when he heard voices rising outside the gate, through the rain. Something seemed to be happening. He listened for a moment and made out someone shouting, faintly: “We want to see the prefect! We want to see the prefect!” It seemed the refugees outside had broken into unrest.

Faced with this, the Wude Battalion troops stationed near the wall showed no sign of panic. Ning Yi pulled back the carriage curtain to look and saw an officer climb up onto the wall through the misty rain to survey the scene for a moment. At the same time, one squad moved to secure the construction site along the wall, another remained stationed at the gate, and a third moved out to handle either pacifying or suppressing the crowd. A few old men passing near the gate could be heard saying, “Ah, kicking up trouble again.”

“Can’t blame them, times are hard for them too…”

It seemed this sort of small disturbance wasn’t the first of its kind. After a while the commotion outside died down; Ning Yi heard no screaming, so it likely hadn’t come to any bloody suppression or arrests. Having watched idly for a while longer, he waved for the carriage to head back.

That afternoon, as evening drew near, the rain gradually let up. The gloom that had hung over the city began to lift, the air turned fresh and clear, and a rainbow appeared on the horizon; the trees planted along Taiping Lane looked greener than before, as if signaling that this disaster had finally found its first moment of respite—what remained now was the true work of recovery and rebuilding.

Understanding that they’d have to stay put here for a while yet, Ning Yi began planning ahead for the family to remain another month or so. With the city gates sealed for now, the supply of fresh vegetables would likely be cut off, and no small number of households’ cellars had probably collapsed in the quake—all things that needed accounting for. Fortunately, the Su family had just absorbed a third of the Wu family’s assets and wealth, and at the moment they were flush enough that even with the rift now opened with the Lou family, Su Tan’er could simply set aside business here entirely if need be; however inflated the price of rice or vegetables might climb, they could easily afford it. That much, at least, wasn’t a serious concern.

The Lou family’s earlier hostility had also been one of the more pressing worries, but the sudden earthquake should, at least for now, have distracted their attention from it. Once things settled down, even if the Lou family still harbored ill intent, Ning Yi and the others could simply seek shelter under the Qian family’s protection—the gunpowder, too, had been prepared partly with the Lou family problem in mind.

Though he himself had been through a great deal and had more than enough capacity to handle a crisis and turn the tables if needed, what Ning Yi truly preferred was the open, overwhelming approach—leveraging vast amounts of information and higher-level strength, much like Yang Wei-li in Legend of the Galactic Heroes: no one who has the numbers actually prefers clever schemes. To stubbornly grind it out against an opponent here with only the limited resources at his disposal now would be true recklessness. If the Lou family truly refused to let the matter go and meant to try something, he could simply wait until reaching the capital and have Old Qin deal with them properly—it would be no more than a matter of course, requiring no great deliberation at all.

And so that afternoon he spent arranging various household matters with Su Tan’er, and by evening, smoke from cooking fires rose everywhere across Hangzhou—most of the firewood being damp at this point—settling against the sunset and the rainbow like the glow over some great, thriving settlement. A dog ran along the road, barking and chasing after the rainbow, looking lively and full of spirit.

“Actually, dogs are colorblind… it can’t see the rainbow, it can only sense it somehow…”

For the first time in several days, the sun had come out; the household gathered in and around the courtyard, waiting for dinner, and Ning Yi and Xiao Chan chatted and laughed about the dog, with a few of the children drifting over, curiously peppering them with questions. Su Tan’er, for once with no thought for her usual poise, sat among the ruins nearby, chin propped in her hands, smiling as she watched the scene unfold. For the moment she let down some of the tension she’d been carrying these past several days, setting aside her air of the capable businesswoman, and looked instead like nothing more than a simple young woman gazing fondly at the husband she loved.

What followed was a peaceful night, more peaceful even than the rainy nights before it. The household’s seven guards, led by Steward Geng, took turns keeping watch through the night, and the city—exhausted after days of turmoil—seemed at last to find something like the sleep it had long been denied. The commotion that had marked both day and night these past few days finally quieted down, though around midnight a small theft broke out on a nearby street, faint shouts carrying through the dark.

The next day, the sun rose high in the sky.

Everything proceeded as usual; with the sun out, everyone seemed to work with renewed energy. But by midday, the fierce heat had already begun steaming away the last of the moisture, as though the season had been dragged back from the plum rains straight into the height of summer once more. In the afternoon, a squad of soldiers suddenly approached Taiping Lane; from a distance it looked like a young officer leading the group. Ning Yi happened to be chatting with Xiao Chan out on the street just then, keeping an eye on the ongoing work nearby, when the young officer, after apparently asking a question or two of people at the corner, turned and looked this way. His gaze found Ning Yi from a distance; he lifted his chin and, hand resting on the hilt of his sword, started toward them.

This was almost certainly something Lou Shuweng had arranged to cause trouble… Ning Yi could more or less confirm as much with a single glance. He sighed inwardly. In his own original expectations, he’d assumed that in the first day or two after the earthquake, when legal order had utterly broken down, if he’d been in Lou Shuweng’s position, he’d have simply gathered a group of men, disguised their identities, and come straight in to slaughter through the dozens of people in his household, making it look like looting—even if no one died outright, they could still cripple a few, leaving nothing traceable afterward. But it seemed the Lou family’s own losses had been considerable enough to keep them from reacting in time; by now, the people of Taiping Lane had already banded together in the face of the city’s chaos, leaving Lou Shuweng no choice but to resort to other methods.

The young officer, leading over twenty men, was just approaching when several warhorses came galloping up from down the street—five riders in all—cutting the group off. The one in the lead was a lieutenant, clearly senior to the young officer, who quickly offered a salute. The two exchanged a few words; the young officer shot a resentful glance in Ning Yi’s direction before leading his men away, and only then did the five riders approach. The lieutenant dismounted and clasped his hands toward Ning Yi in greeting—it was the same soldier who’d traded a blow with Ning Yi that day at Xiaoyingzhou, apparently named Yuan Dingqi.

After a brief exchange of greetings, the man got straight to the point without unnecessary formality: “That young master of the Lou family has already been boasting among his friends about coming to make trouble for Master Ning, but Master Ning needn’t worry about it. Guests of Master Qian will never be given trouble here in Hangzhou. The moment Commander Du heard of today’s business, he sent me to bring Master Ning this token—if anyone from the military ever comes to trouble you again, simply show them this.”

Yuan Dingqi handed over a token carved with the character “Du” as he spoke. This was, of course, not any official token for mobilizing troops, but a private token belonging personally to the Wude Battalion’s current commander. That commander, named Du Hong, courtesy name Ruofei, was said to have some grounding in poetry and letters—a scholarly military man—and shared a teacher-student bond with Qian Xiwen, having even had Qian Xiwen choose his courtesy name for him. Military men received little regard in this era, and for an officer to have earned such a literary connection was no small thing; Commander Du took considerable pride in being counted among Qian Xiwen’s circle, and though he’d never met Ning Yi personally, he’d dispatched help the moment he’d heard of the matter.

Yuan Dingqi, having traded blows with Ning Yi that day at Xiaoyingzhou, was still rather curious about the fact that this scholar knew martial arts. His own superior—a military man dabbling in letters, what people called “borrowing refinement”—was common enough, but a scholar practicing martial arts, as Ning Yi apparently did, was far less usual. He asked a few more questions in passing, then said with a smile that he’d welcome the chance to spar with him properly sometime, before leading his men away without further ceremony.

With this token in hand, the odds of the military system giving him trouble without cause had grown considerably slimmer.

That day passed with this one small incident, and time went on. As night fell and deepened, sometime around the small hours, something happened that caught everyone entirely off guard.

Ning Yi woke from the commotion; Tan’er lay beside him, holding him gently, unwilling to let go. He pried her hands loose, and after a moment threw on his clothes and went outside—to the north, the city was already burning red, the sky glowing much as it had the night of the earthquake itself. Smoke blotted out the night sky.

Steward Geng and the others were already out in the courtyard, watching. Ning Yi walked over and looked for a moment. “What happened?”

“Not sure how it started, but there’s a fire…”

“That firefighting racket sounds like pure chaos…”

Various sounds of confusion drifted faintly through the night air. A moment later, Su Tan’er, now dressed, came out as well; Xiao Chan emerged from the room next door, rubbing her eyes. “It just rained—how could it catch fire so badly?”

“Let’s hope it’s just a fire…”

Ning Yi said this with a frown.

But it was not, in fact, just a fire.

As dawn approached, the chaotic noise had grown steadily louder, and then, abruptly, word came through: “Fighting’s broken out, fighting’s broken out! The people up north, they’ve clashed with the Wude Battalion, someone’s been killed, they say…”

Ning Yi hadn’t heard much news from the city the day before—right after the rain finally stopped, everyone had been consumed with the general sense of picking up the pieces. But it was also the day before that the army had resumed collecting bodies for disposal, given how fast the heat was returning, and this had led to some small friction with the people who’d already set up memorial sheds in the northern part of the city.

Then, that night, fire had broken out—several memorial sheds of various sizes across a few streets catching fire simultaneously, dozens of coffined bodies burning, the flames spreading so quickly that within moments there was no stopping it, and dozens of people had been burned to death in the process. This uncontrollable blaze had left everyone stunned, and when someone came forward claiming to have seen Wude Battalion soldiers setting the fire, residents across several streets immediately clashed with the soldiers who arrived on the scene.

Those in Taiping Lane had no way of knowing the details yet—only that, as dawn broke, the situation seemed to be growing steadily worse. Then gongs and horns began sounding urgently, and unrest began breaking out in the western part of the city as well. As Ning Yi and the others set up a simple barricade at the mouth of Taiping Lane, the deputy headman came rushing back, gasping for breath, just as a group of over a dozen armed men from the martial world came charging in from a side street, apparently intent on forcing their way straight into the lane.

The whole thing had come on suddenly—it looked as though certain opportunists who’d been hoping to exploit the chaos had now found their moment. The defense here in Taiping Lane relied mainly on the men of the Liu Martial Arts Academy, and rather than engage the dozen-odd attackers directly, Ning Yi and the others had no time to sort out who they were dealing with—they simply grabbed stones and hurled them back. Two of the attackers were struck and left bleeding from the head, and the rest fled in disarray.

“What exactly happened?”

Ning Yi turned to ask. The deputy headman, still catching his breath from the shock, said, “Trouble—real trouble. There’s fighting up north, people dead…”

“We already knew people were dead. How did it come to this?”

“Someone important’s dead—now it’s really out of hand. There was a… a lieutenant who went over to try and calm things down, and he got killed by accident. That lieutenant—I think his name was Yuan, Yuan Dingqi—got caught in the crowd, and someone cut his head clean off with a single blow, they say. Everyone’s seeing red now, this is going to turn into real chaos. We need to secure the entrance right away, don’t let anyone in…”

“One blow… cut clean off?”

Ning Yi froze for a long moment, thinking back to Yuan Dingqi. Whatever his own martial skill might have been, the man’s abilities had clearly exceeded his own, and by all accounts he’d been quite formidable. For a man like that to be cut down with a single blow amid a crowd of common rioters?

A bad feeling stirred in Ning Yi’s chest, and he found himself almost laughing despite himself—a man like that… A faint chill crept along the back of his neck.

Then, amid the spreading chaos, that feeling began to take shape as fact. Word came that refugees at the western gate had seized the opportunity to riot—a genuine uprising this time, though it failed; by mid-morning, the well-prepared Wude Battalion had managed to pin them down outside the gate. But by then, one piece of information had already come through with unmistakable clarity.

Seven days after the earthquake, Fang La’s forces had already completed their initial gathering—and they had struck, brazen and unrestrained!