Traveling north from Jizhou to where the Yanshan Camp was located would, under normal circumstances, take at least half a month.

And yet, the last time the Yanshan Camp had marched south, they had proven by example that a person’s limits could indeed be pushed a little further.

Li Chi and the others were in a hurry as well, for they had left the city without horses. Yu Jiuling had tried to buy weapons at the city gate and had asked about horses too, but the squad commander had looked at him as though he had lost his mind.

Even the Yizhou Army soldiers couldn’t get their hands on horses right now — all warhorses had been rounded up and centralized by Pannuo’s orders. If Li Chi and his group had actually been caught riding horses, those soldiers might well have drawn bows on them without a second thought.

Their most pressing need now was to find mounts — horses, donkeys, anything that could carry them.

In practice, however, Jizhou had endured battle after battle. North of Jizhou, beyond the larger towns, there was almost no sign of human habitation.

Those who remained were destitute souls who had already set their lives aside. With death waiting either way, they’d rather go home to the village and die there.

Following the main road northward, everything Li Chi and his companions saw matched the season perfectly.

Early winter, bleak. The age, equally bleak.

Yu Jiuling walked and regretted with every step. If only he’d ridden out on Shenque, he thought — warhorses would certainly be checked, but a pig was another matter entirely.

There was absolutely no law against riding a pig.

When he said this aloud, Elder Ye turned it over in his mind, and decided that if Shenque were really brought out, it would be less of a mount and more of a morale gift to the Yizhou Army soldiers — one magnificent pig, one well-fed garrison.

Elder Ye said, “Could you bear to watch them eat Shenque?”

Yu Jiuling shot back immediately, “Of course not. If anyone’s eating him, it won’t be those bastards. I’ve been wanting to eat him for ages myself…”

At those words, Li Chi’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Yu Jiuling sensed a chill in the air and hurried to add, “What Shenque and I have — that’s a bond beyond words. Shenque is my dearest friend, my brother in life and death…”

Zhang Yuxu turned to Peng Shiqi with utmost sincerity and said, “You see? This is what you’re like.”

Peng Shiqi was stunned, and firmly refused to accept it: “Impossible. No matter how ugly or shameless I am, I could not possibly be like that.”

Yu Jiuling sighed. “From this moment on, you two have made an enemy of each other.”

Peng Shiqi turned to Zhang Yuxu and said, “You see? That’s exactly why I can’t be that kind of person. My enemies are that kind of person. I am the opposite of that kind of person. Therefore, I am one of the good ones.”

Zhang Yuxu nodded thoughtfully. “That’s not entirely without logic.”

Yu Jiuling said, “I am, at the very least, a founding elder of our Yongning Tongyuan Carriage and Horse Company. Could the two of you, as newcomers, show me just a little respect?”

Zhang Yuxu said, “Perhaps… what we respect is the company’s traditions.”

Yu Jiuling said, “Nonsense. The company has barely been around two years. What traditions?”

Peng Shiqi said carefully, “Well… there’s the tradition of… giving Yu Jiuling a hard time.”

Yu Jiuling: “…”

Elder Ye said with warm approval, “A young person who already knows how to honor tradition — how bad could they really be?”

Yu Jiuling: “…”

After about half a day’s walk, they reached Dafang Town. Before the siege of Jizhou had even begun, Dafang Town’s residents had long since fled. No one who lived there had dared stay behind and wait for death — the town sat only a few dozen li from Jizhou, and when the fires of war reached you, it was simply a matter of life and death.

Once inside the town, Yu Jiuling and the others searched the shops along the street. Horses were out of the question, but there were abandoned things still useful enough.

Li Chi and his group found charcoal and were able to use the stoves in one of the shops to heat their rations before eating.

“Boss.”

Peng Shiqi came running in from outside, his tone a little urgent. “In the back courtyard of the shop across the street, I found signs that someone’s been living there — and they can’t have left long ago.”

At first, Li Chi didn’t think much of it. That someone would take the risk of staying behind in Dafang Town seemed perfectly understandable — people thought differently about these things.

He followed Peng Shiqi across to the other shop. Most of the tables and chairs inside were thick with dust, but one table and the countertop were spotlessly clean.

“Someone’s been living here for a while.”

Yu Jiuling said, “Sleeping on the counter, by the looks of it.”

He pointed to the scattered footprints inside. “A woman, too — small feet. And lazy. She only cleaned where she slept; everything else she left alone.”

Li Chi looked it over carefully and said, “Or you could say she had very clear priorities. She didn’t do unnecessary things and didn’t want to waste time or energy.”

Yu Jiuling said, “Do you always take women’s side like this?”

Li Chi: “…”

They moved to the back courtyard. There were hoofprints — two horses, by the look of it — and some scattered wild grass.

“A woman, two horses. She’s been here at least ten days, perhaps longer.”

Li Chi read the evidence: the thickness of the dust, the number of footprints, the depth of the hoofmarks.

Yu Jiuling crouched down, studied the horse droppings, and offered his own assessment. “This is fresh. Not warm anymore, but it looks like it’s from this morning — or maybe yesterday.”

Peng Shiqi said, “I was already very impressed by the things the boss deduces. Nine-Sis, your deductions have left me even more in awe.”

Elder Ye, standing nearby at an unhurried pace, remarked, “He has a gift for it. Identifying people by the smell of their droppings.”

Yu Jiuling said, “Elder Ye, you are a person of considerable dignity and esteem—”

Elder Ye raised his gaze toward the heavens.

“She probably left this morning.”

Li Chi said, “There must have been food stored here that she found, which is why she settled in. A woman alone with two horses, nowhere to go, hiding out for ten-odd days…”

Li Chi couldn’t quite work it out, and could only guess she was some wandering woman of the jianghu, traveling alone, sheltering from the war.

There was nothing more to be gathered from thinking about it, and it had little enough to do with them, so the group let it rest and pressed on.

After resting briefly, they set out again. Traveling entirely on foot, it would take another day and a half to reach the next place where mounts might be bought — they had no desire to linger.

North of Dafang Town lay Gao County, a small county that had been struck by rebel forces and bandits so many times that even its city gates were gone.

There was no longer any government office in the city. The people still remaining there had nothing left to be afraid of — they were too poor to be worth robbing, unless someone wanted their lives.

The battlements were crumbling, the gates gone, weeds grew untended everywhere, and ruined houses stood in varying states of collapse throughout the town.

Gong Shu Yingying rode into the city on horseback. She glanced left and right. The ragged figures who saw her instinctively shrank away and hid.

The elderly sat in the shelter of walls, greedily soaking up the sun — perhaps the last thing in the world they could still be greedy about. For the sake of that warmth, they wouldn’t even bother to hide. The old people watched her with blank, empty eyes. The children watched her with curiosity. The adults watched her with fear.

“Where can I get something to eat?” Gong Shu Yingying asked.

No one answered.

When they saw she was alone, some of the men began to press closer. In this place of grey and earthen tones, Gong Shu Yingying was the only vivid color — and so she stood out.

When she saw those grimy, foul-smelling men closing in, she frowned slightly, raised her repeating crossbow, and leveled it at them. They stopped immediately.

It wasn’t a woman they feared — it was the crossbow. A crossbow was not something an ordinary person possessed. To provoke someone carrying a repeating crossbow was to risk drawing a whole army down on yourself — it had become an instinctive calculation for those surviving in this age of chaos.

“Bring me something to eat.”

Gong Shu Yingying aimed the crossbow at one of the men and gave the order, but the man only retreated step by step without responding.

So Gong Shu Yingying decided to make an exception. In the past, she had only killed for money; without payment, she didn’t move.

She clicked the crossbow. The man took an arrow through the throat, and fell, spraying blood.

So now the colors of this town held more than just Gong Shu Yingying’s vivid presence.

“Bring something to eat,” Gong Shu Yingying said again.

The crowd broke apart and scattered in every direction. Even the elderly who had seemed to have already made their peace with life and death, who had only wanted to sit and steal a little warmth from the sun, now struggled to their feet and fled, leaning on wooden sticks.

Gong Shu Yingying gave a self-mocking smile, though the scene itself was not amusing in the least.

She noticed a gaunt, skeletal dog watching her from the corner of a wall, tail between its legs, not even daring to bark.

She shot it dead with a single bolt. She decided she would roast it and eat it — however disgusting that might seem.

She suddenly found herself wondering: these people had been reduced to such poverty and starvation — why hadn’t they eaten the dog themselves?

While the thought was still forming, a half-grown youth of about fifteen, so filthy his skin color couldn’t be made out, came sprinting over with desperate, wordless cries. He ran straight to the dog’s body, dropped to a crouch, and came away with a hand full of blood.

And then he went wild. He snatched up a stone and charged at Gong Shu Yingying.

Anyone who tried to eat his dog would have to fight him to the death. He had already killed two people over it, and after that, no one dared.

Pfft!

A crossbow bolt came flying from behind the half-grown youth, piercing clean through his throat. The screaming boy pitched forward and collapsed, and blood slowly spread beneath him.

He became yet another vivid stain of red in the grey-brown town.

Across from Gong Shu Yingying, a column of cavalry came riding slowly forward — dust-covered, grey-brown as the rest. The grime on every person’s clothing was thick enough that the original color had long since disappeared. They had wrapped grey-brown scarves across their faces, as though that might keep the dust out. The column was substantial in number, and though they moved in near-silence, only the sound of hooves, the killing intent about them was heavy.

Their clothing was not the style of Central Plains people. The way they had wrapped their hair made it clear at a glance: they had come from beyond the northern frontier.

The column halted about seven or eight zhang from Gong Shu Yingying. Someone drew a bow, training it on her.

“Leave your horse. Leave your weapons. Leave your water and food.” The leader called out to her: “You’d best leave your clothes as well. The person can go.”

Gong Shu Yingying smiled. In that grey, muted world, her smile made her look even more striking.

“You’re a woman too,” she said to the one who had spoken. “So you should know — a woman who travels alone in times like these doesn’t generally invite trouble, because trouble comes back on you.”

The woman across from her pulled down her scarf. She studied Gong Shu Yingying with curiosity, then after a moment asked, “So why are you still alive?”

Before Gong Shu Yingying could answer, the woman asked another question: “For money?”

Gong Shu Yingying nodded. “That’ll do.”

The woman unhooked a bag from the side of her warhorse, and shook it. Full to the brim — the sound was unmistakably silver.

She said, “I’ll give you silver. You help me kill someone.”

Gong Shu Yingying looked at the column. There were at least several hundred of them. “You don’t seem to be short of people,” she said, puzzled.

The woman replied, “I never have too many. Especially when I urgently want someone dead.”

Gong Shu Yingying smiled, with a trace of mockery.

“Surely the truth is,” she said, “that no matter how many people you have, you’re not confident you can actually kill whoever it is you’re after.”

She raised her hand casually, and with a click of the crossbow struck a tattered paper lantern more than ten zhang away — the bolt hit the lantern cord. The broken lantern dropped and hit the ground with a rustling thud, more ruined than before.

She said to the woman, “That much silver won’t buy me.”

The woman across from her was silent for a moment, then said, “Do you have anyone you want to kill? Help me, and I’ll help you in return.”

And so Gong Shu Yingying smiled.

She did have someone she wanted to kill.

—