Jizhou City.

He had just come out of the main camp when Li Chi got that feeling again — the feeling that something was off.

It wasn’t that this particular place felt off. The truth was that lately everything felt off to Li Chi.

At the wagon relay station, something felt off. At the general’s residence, something felt off. Even squatting in the outhouse, he could feel that something outside was off.

The moment he stepped out of the camp just now, the feeling returned.

As if the city of Jizhou had grown invisible multitudes, watching him from places he couldn’t see.

It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant feeling, because he had a fairly good guess as to the cause.

The Judicial Army.

Eight hundred absolutely elite soldiers of the Judicial Army, rotating through their watches, forming a vast, seamless net around him.

On the street, both sides of the road, every alley he passed — there might well be Judicial Army personnel posted at any point.

Thinking of the lengths that young woman went to in order to protect him, the corners of Li Chi’s mouth would lift almost imperceptibly.

She had created the Judicial Army for one purpose only: to keep Li Chi safe.

The general’s residence was large — formerly the office of the Jizhou military governor, though it had never served as that official’s private home.

Back when Zeng Ling had been in power, the military governor’s offices were offices, not a residence. Whatever else one might say about him, Zeng Ling had at least known how to play a part — he had wanted the townspeople to see a frugal, practical military governor.

Pan Nuo, the man who came after, was a different creature entirely. Pan Nuo was not a Jizhou man and had no attachment to the place.

He had never intended to bind his fate to Jizhou. When the time to leave came, he would simply walk away.

He was Prince Wu’s man; the Jizhou military governorship had been nothing more than a temporary posting in his eyes.

So while he was here, he lived extravagantly and without restraint. The governor’s offices were the offices; he had simply claimed the old Cui family estate for his own private residence.

Precisely because the general’s residence was so grand and imposing, Li Chi felt vaguely ill at ease there.

Li Chi was different from Zeng Ling. Zeng Ling had deliberately performed simplicity and modesty to earn the goodwill of the townspeople.

Li Chi simply, genuinely, did not like it.

He liked older buildings — they were comfortable to live in. He liked well-worn clothes — they were comfortable to wear.

So Yu Jiuling was always saying to him: you’re like an old man.

Li Chi would always reply: you don’t understand old men. Old men actually prefer new things — they just pretend not to.

At which point Changmei the Daoist had expressed his approval and tapped his staff in endorsement of Li Chi’s observation.

What Li Chi had said was: Little Ninth Sister, you only see the surface of things. As a man grows older, his taste for novelty grows stronger — and markedly so past thirty or so, growing more pronounced each year, a condition that only worsens.

At seventeen or eighteen you find mature women most beautiful, and want to pursue them…

At this point in the conversation, Gao Xining had promptly expressed her own endorsement, rewarding Li Chi with a clod of dirt.

So most of the time, Li Chi still preferred to live at the wagon relay station — he liked watching the brothers attempt the flowing cloud formations, watching them get stuck and limp out one after another.

He’d sit there watching and laughing, looking like an absolute idiot.

Coming back to the wagon relay station, Li Chi found Gao Xining in the courtyard training. Her natural aptitude for martial arts was, in truth… rather ordinary. But when she set her mind to something, she was more than diligent enough.

So fate tends not to shortchange people who take things seriously. Even in an area where brilliance does not come naturally, some measure of results will follow.

Gao Xining, for instance: it was only after Li Chi saw her effortlessly lift a hundred-catty stone lock that he realized a flung clod of earth could kill a man.

What he didn’t know was that long before that — far back — that very incident with the clod of earth had unlocked a new technique in Gao Xining.

Throwing.

When Li Chi returned, he arrived just in time to see.

Gao Xining was standing in the small training ground behind the wagon relay station’s courtyard. Before her, at varying distances, five target boards had been set up.

The distances were six paces, eight, ten, twelve, and fifteen.

The target boards were roughly the size of a basin, painted with concentric rings, the very center a red bullseye the size of an egg.

Gao Xining wore a small satchel on a diagonal strap across her body, filled with pebbles the size of pigeon eggs.

She breathed in twice, deeply, then moved with startling speed — throwing five times in quick succession. All five pebbles struck the targets.

The first four all hit the bullseye. The fifth fell slightly short on force and drifted off-center.

Watching this, Li Chi thought: much obliged to my lady for sparing my life.

He walked over, smiling. “You could try something else now — stones are limited in stopping power. What about throwing knives?”

Gao Xining actually flushed slightly.

“I… tried…”

She laughed sheepishly. “Every single throw hits handle-first. I have no idea why. One hundred percent — handle every time.”

“Knives with conscience,” Li Chi said.

He took a few of the pebbles from her hand and gave it a try — only two of his landed on the targets at all, neither near the bullseye.

After tossing the last of the pebbles, he said: “The Judicial Army personnel — have they added more people recently?”

Gao Xining acknowledged: “You noticed?”

“The feeling’s getting stronger every time I go out — something off in all directions.”

He asked: “Has something come up?”

“The Anyang Army.”

She led Li Chi to a nearby seat, and while pouring tea she said: “In the summer, the great flood wiped out the Anyang Army.”

“The moment that happened, I told myself: as long as Meng Kedi is alive, he will seek revenge — but he has no confidence about directly attacking Jizhou. The only option left to him would be…”

Li Chi finished her thought: “Assassinate me. Ideally kill me and take my head back to Anyang to hang on the city wall for public display.”

Gao Xining acknowledged. “So not long after that battle, I selected fifty people from the Judicial Army and sent them to Anyang.”

“Over the past half-year, they have been operating in deep cover there. Partly to prepare in advance should you ever move against Anyang. Partly to gather intelligence on Meng Kedi.”

“A few days ago,” Gao Xining said, “our people there sent back word: large numbers of wandering swordsmen had begun appearing in Anyang City — none of them locals, converging from all directions.”

“They bribed a household steward in Meng Kedi’s residence and learned that Meng Kedi was recruiting a group of pugilistic martial artists, though he gave no indication of what for.”

Li Chi smiled. “So you guessed that the only thing Meng Kedi would want done was to have me killed.”

Gao Xining nodded. “The timing fits as well — their people would have needed time to confirm your identity and then recruit assassins…”

Li Chi gave Gao Xining’s shoulder a pat. “I suddenly have an urge to boast. May I?”

“Go ahead.”

“I have already become the number one assassination target of an imperial general,” Li Chi said. “Not bad — worthy of being Gao Xining’s man.”

Gao Xining looked at him, then: “Ha ha ha ha ha…”

Li Chi: “Ha ha ha ha ha…”

In the distance, Yu Jiuling watched the two of them, muttering to himself: “The chief and Ning are having another episode of their intermittent madness…”

Gao Xining said to Li Chi: “I spent some money recently.”

“Spend away.”

“I had new uniforms made for the Judicial Army,” she said. “Before, the Judicial Army only had military armor. But this situation made me realize — they also need civilian clothes.”

“So I had a batch made. Like these.”

She went off, and a short while later came back out of her room already changed.

A black long robe, with a distinctive collar cut differently from what was common among the people of Great Chu. When turned up, the collar covered the lower half of the face — only the eyes showing. Paired with a wide-brimmed bamboo hat, the wearer’s features would be entirely concealed.

“Sister Shen helped me think it through.”

Gao Xining smiled. “You know — the clothing styles on Yunyin Mountain are different from anything in the Central Plains. Apparently the mountain’s founding patriarch left behind a book filled with all manner of garment designs. Sister Shen says there is nothing you can imagine that isn’t somewhere in that book. I’ve been longing to have a look at it…”

She didn’t fully know the half of it, in truth. Yunyin Mountain’s expertise stretched far beyond clothing design — there was also cosmetics and hair arrangement.

A man like Mister Yan — nothing he produced should come as a surprise.

Take Yu Jiuling, for instance. The pig-breeding operation he was running in Jizhou had already grown to considerable scale, all built on knowledge Mister Yan had passed on to him. In this field, Yu Jiuling was well on his way to becoming a figure of the first order.

Tang Pidi’s words for Yu Jiuling: the Ning Army’s Grand Superintendent of Swine.

At the time, Yu Jiuling heard it as “Grand Commander” and felt rather pleased with himself.

“Why are the sleeves made a touch long?” Li Chi asked. “The palms are entirely inside the sleeves.”

Gao Xining gave a small laugh, and from within her sleeve, a metal skewer slid down into her hand.

The martial techniques taught to the Judicial Army soldiers had been personally trained by Tang Pidi; this skewer was now the Judicial Army’s standard weapon.

To make it easier to conceal within the sleeve, the skewer was noticeably shorter than Tang Pidi’s own — Tang Pidi’s iron skewer was over three feet long, while the Judicial Army issue was under two.

The robes were cut wide and full, because within them, a good deal was concealed.

The standard-issue continuous-fire crossbow rode at the waist, nearly invisible beneath the folds of the long robe.

Beyond that, a plainclothes Judicial Army soldier would also carry a short blade hidden within the robe — and on the belt, a length of chain.

Every day, Judicial Army training included techniques with the skewer and the chain. The basic maneuver was: left hand swings the chain to catch an enemy around the neck, pulls them in, right hand brings the skewer out of the sleeve and into the heart.

As head of the Judicial Army — the Grand Judicial Commissioner — Gao Xining felt she couldn’t be utterly useless in every area, and so had been forcing herself to practice the thrown stone technique.

“You look very striking in this,” Li Chi said.

“What a tepid compliment,” Gao Xining said.

“I can’t explain why,” Li Chi said, “but seeing you in this outfit, I feel a certain vague… impulse…”

Gao Xining’s eyes narrowed slightly. She crooked one finger. “Is it because you heard I have a chain?”

“Good gods! What have you been learning?!”

“Ha ha ha ha ha… Come on then, let the impulse out, young man!”

Li Chi turned and ran.

Gao Xining gripped the chain with her left hand, gave it a crisp shake, and took off after him.

The two of them were still running when Gao Yuanzhang and Changmei the Daoist came ambling back through the gate from their evening walk, and stopped short at the sight.

Gao Yuanzhang glanced at Changmei. Changmei quickly said: “The young ones, playing around…”

Gao Yuanzhang said: “So it would seem — but why does something about it feel rather strange?”

Changmei the Daoist nodded. “I also find it somewhat strange.”

Meanwhile, at the Jizhou city gate.

Roughly forty or fifty figures in black had come to a halt at the gate. What they wore was precisely the Judicial Army’s black long robe.

“The Grand Judicial Commissioner has said,” the foremost of the black-clad figures spoke, “that passively waiting for things to happen has never been what the Judicial Army should do. What we must do is — discover threats before they materialize, and prevent them from ever materializing.”

“What we go to do now,” he continued, “is ensure that what has not yet happened — never happens at all.”

“Move out!”

—