Yuan Qianshou turned his head and found Li Chi turning at the same moment to look at him. The two met each other’s eyes and smiled — the elder doing his best to look kindly and benevolent, the young man doing his best to look harmless and guileless.

Yuan Qianshou could almost have said *what a well-behaved young friend*, and Li Chi could almost have said *what a wonderful old grandfather*.

In terms of age, Yuan Qianshou was somewhat older even than Changmei the Daoist. He held the position of patron of the Storm Gate, and was the martial uncle of the current sect master — a figure with a long-established place in the jianghu. Li Chi, for his part, was nothing more than a young colt of a boy.

Perhaps both felt their smiles were getting a little undignified. Li Chi turned to look elsewhere; Yuan Qianshou lowered the curtain over the carriage window.

In that instant, both the old man and the young man let out a quiet breath of relief.

Tiring business.

A few more li ahead lay a vast forest — no end visible to the eye. This stretch of woodland had long been notorious as one of the most dangerous spots on the road outside Jizhou City; those who preyed on travelers and lay in ambush all chose this place, falling on lone passersby with violence.

This was an age where danger lurked everywhere, and no one could say when it might come.

Li Chi urged his horse forward until he drew alongside Tang Pidi. The latter was sitting on his horse looking on the verge of falling asleep — eyes closed, body swaying gently side to side, as if he might tumble off at any moment, yet somehow never quite did.

Li Chi had seen from behind that Tang Pidi might be drowsy and had worried about him falling, so he had ridden up to call out to him.

When he got close, he realized Tang Pidi would never have fallen regardless — even if he had actually fallen asleep, he would not have come off that horse.

“What remarkable horsemanship,” Li Chi said in sincere admiration.

Tang Pidi opened one eye, looked at Li Chi, and replied in his usual unhurried way: “Nothing special. Only the legs held tight.”

Then he laughed at his own words.

Li Chi laughed too. “When you were on the steppe, did you talk like that?”

Tang Pidi shook his head. “No. Most steppe people don’t speak the central plains language, so even jokes don’t land right for them. They’re not used to anyone speaking to them in the tongue of the plains either.”

Li Chi said: “So you must have gone a long time on the steppe without being able to say a word from home.”

“No.” Tang Pidi’s same unhurried register. He looked at Li Chi and said: “The men under my command — when they speak to me, they speak the central plains tongue. And not just any dialect, either — the Jizhou regional variety.”

Li Chi said: “So those few sentences just now were your build-up to showing off in front of me?”

Tang Pidi said: “You’re right.”

Li Chi smiled. “So how did you manage it — getting them all to willingly learn the central plains tongue, and the regional dialect on top of that?”

Tang Pidi said: “I told them: when I give orders in battle, they need to understand me — but the enemy won’t. So they all had to learn the dialect.”

Li Chi nodded. “Then teach our people the steppe tongue. We might need it one day.”

Tang Pidi acknowledged this with a sound of agreement, then smiled. “Let me teach you a few words right now.”

Li Chi said: “All right.”

Tang Pidi looked toward the large man sitting atop the forward carriage — as broad and imposing as a bull, radiating sheer physical pressure just by sitting there.

He instructed Li Chi: “Tule mo.”

Li Chi asked: “What does that mean?”

Tang Pidi said: “It means ‘big.'”

Li Chi nodded and repeated to himself: “Tule mo — means big.”

Tang Pidi continued: “Teni ge.”

Li Chi asked: “And what does that mean?”

Tang Pidi explained: “It means handsome — extremely good-looking, attractive. Best said of a man.”

Then he laughed to himself.

Li Chi grinned and gave the big man up ahead a thumbs-up, then shouted: “Tule mo, teni ge!”

The man who had been sitting quite peacefully spun around and bellowed at Li Chi: “Who are you calling teni ge?! I’ll kill you!”

Li Chi startled. The man had already leapt down from the carriage and was bearing down on Li Chi in great strides, shouting: “I’m Goskh! Did you think I wouldn’t understand?!”

Li Chi stared at Tang Pidi. “What did it actually mean…”

Tang Pidi was grinning. “Tule mo really does mean big. But teni ge, in the steppe interpretation, means ‘idiot’ — which translates into the plains tongue as something more like ‘stupid oaf.’ Tule mo teni ge — big stupid oaf.”

Li Chi: “You’re the big stupid oaf!”

Tang Pidi roared with laughter.

The man reached Li Chi and stopped. Standing on the ground, he was nearly level with Li Chi on horseback. He jabbed a finger up at him: “Why the hell did you just insult me!”

Li Chi hurried to explain: “It’s a misunderstanding, a complete misunderstanding! I was practicing steppe phrases and I wanted to compliment you on being so tall and powerful — I got the words mixed up. Please don’t be angry.”

Li Chi unhooked the flask from his belt and held it out: “Let me offer you a drink — I sincerely apologize. I really don’t know the steppe tongue very well yet. Please, how do you say ‘tall and powerful and impressive’ in the language of the steppe?”

The man had been ready to throw a punch, but he caught a signal from Shici in the distance — a wave of the hand meaning *not yet* — so he snorted, snatched Li Chi’s flask, and turned to walk away.

Tang Pidi said: “See? You almost got a beating.”

Li Chi: “Thank you very much.”

Tang Pidi said: “Don’t mention it.”

Li Chi asked: “So how do you say ‘thank you’ in the steppe tongue?”

Tang Pidi replied earnestly: “Call me Father.”

Li Chi: “Hm?”

Tang Pidi: “How can you not believe me?”

Li Chi: “If I believed that I’d be a pig. I’m a divine eagle.”

—

Up in the great forest ahead, a man had been waiting on a tree branch close to the road for quite some time now. His name was Yao Busheng, and he was the first to strike in this ambush. According to the plan, he would launch the opening blow on Li Chi from above — if he could kill in one stroke, all the better; if not, the moment he struck, Yuan Qianshou and Zhong Dashu would close in from front and rear, leaving Li Chi no way out.

He stood on his branch gazing ahead. The convoy was nearly at the tree line. He could not say why, but this seasoned killer — who had cut down more lives than he could count — felt a slight tension.

He was a notorious solitary bandit of the jianghu, and over the years his crimes had left marks across both Jizhou and Youzhou. Officers of the law and righteous knights of the jianghu alike had never managed to catch him.

His greatest pride was his lightness technique, which could keep him alive even when outmatched in direct combat — if worst came to worst, he could always save himself by simply being faster than everyone else.

The killing strike that awaited him had been rehearsed in his mind countless times. The tree was tall, the branch was thick, and the leaves were dense enough to conceal him entirely. Once Li Chi rode beneath this tree, he would drop from the branch and drive his sword straight through Li Chi’s throat.

He watched the convoy drawing closer, let out a slow breath, and drew his sword.

At that moment he heard a sound from above his head — very faint, very thin, with a slightly sharp quality to it. Not the sort of sound that came out without considerable effort. Unless you were clenching hard enough, it wouldn’t come at all.

*Tzzz… tzz tzz… ttz… pfft, pfft pfft pfft pfft…*

Yao Busheng snapped his head upward — and his scalp crawled. He had never noticed until this moment that roughly half a zhang above his head, on the branch that grew out at a right angle, someone else was crouching there too.

He looked up. That person looked apologetically back down.

“I’m — I’m sorry. This morning I shouldn’t have been so greedy and eaten the other half of that roasted sweet potato from last night… I truly couldn’t help it. Please believe me…”

Yu Jiuling crouched on the upper branch, embarrassed to his core. This was genuinely unexpected even to him. But some things are beyond the power of clenching to contain — it is simply outside your control.

“Who the hell are you!”

Yao Busheng demanded.

Yu Jiuling adjusted his crouch, clasped his hands in the standard jianghu salute, and announced: “My surname is Squat, and my given name is rather long — it’s Squatting Higher Than You.”

Yao Busheng flew into a rage: “Looking to die!”

He launched himself off his branch, done caring who this person was, and thrust his sword forward.

Yu Jiuling jumped in fright. The man went from words to drawn steel without so much as a breath between — truly no capacity for equanimity. All this over a few stray sounds from below. Was it really worth it?

He sprang from the branch like a nimble gibbon, leaping to a neighboring one — a distance of about another zhang — and still found time on the way to reach back and scratch his backside.

It genuinely itched, possibly from the draft just now. But in Yao Busheng’s eyes, this was the most profound insult imaginable.

And so Yao Busheng gripped his sword and gave chase. The two of them launched into a pursuit through the forest — one fleeing, one pursuing — dodging and weaving through the trees at a pace that left the jaw dropping.

The terrain in the forest was uneven and complex, choked with undergrowth and tangled branches, yet both men moved so fast they hardly seemed human. Their speed through the chase was something ordinary eyes struggled to follow.

“Stop chasing!” Yu Jiuling shouted over his shoulder as he ran. “Over a few farts you’ve chased me this far — is it really worth it? And besides, you can’t actually catch me. You’re clearly someone of standing in the jianghu. If people found out you were made a fool of by someone’s farts and still couldn’t catch him — wouldn’t you be the laughing stock of your grandmother’s house? Even your grandmother would say you’d disgraced yourself.”

This, which had the sound of good-natured advice, nearly caused every organ in Yao Busheng’s chest to detonate with rage. It did not sound like good-natured advice.

“You die today!”

Yao Busheng ground his teeth and pushed harder, but the further he ran the more his heart sank. The young man up ahead — someone he had absolutely no recollection of — moved with a technique that looked preposterous, almost laughably graceless, with a form that was ugly beyond description, and yet — it was fast.

He ran like a duck, backside swinging in the most undignified fashion imaginable. And for all Yao Busheng’s vaunted lightness technique, he had spent half an eternity chasing that duck and hadn’t come close to the tail feathers.

“Who exactly are you!”

Yao Busheng shouted.

Yu Jiuling answered as he ran: “Just a passerby who had a stomach ache and wanted to climb a tree to relieve himself. You came after I was already up there — I was there first. Have you no sense of fairness?”

Yao Busheng roared: “Who relieves themselves up a tree?!”

Yu Jiuling said: “I like doing it up in trees — what business is it of yours? And you haven’t even apologized to me yet. I was up there, about to go, and you showed up. If I weren’t a civilized person, I’d have relieved myself right on your head.”

Yao Busheng: “Die!”

Still chasing, teeth clenched.

Yu Jiuling called back: “Can’t you be reasonable? Keep chasing and don’t blame me for cutting loose on you — you, of all people… you can’t even run that well, and you insist on running anyway. If you had any self-respect you’d go back and squat on your own tree. I’ll find another one — I’ll even give you that prime real estate.”

He talked while he ran without so much as a gasp for breath. Meanwhile Yao Busheng behind him, who had said far less, was already breathing a little hard — though admittedly that might also have been sheer fury.

He bellowed: “I won’t stop today until I’ve torn your mouth off your face.”

Yu Jiuling called back: “Which one?”

Yao Busheng: “Looking to die!”

Yu Jiuling: “Sure, but you can’t catch me.”

Yao Busheng: “…”

The two of them were like a pair of shadows flitting through the trees. Yao Busheng chased in blinding fury, all thought of Li Chi or anything else long gone from his head. There was only one thing he wanted: to kill the one who had let loose on him.

—