From the tea garden, a vicious dog launched itself at Li Chi, jaws driving for his throat.

These mastiffs had clearly been trained for killing — their bloodlust was extreme. They had killed before, living targets. Nothing else could explain such ferocity, such immediate precision in going for the throat first.

Such creatures — trained to kill men on sight — were not something you’d see without deliberate human conditioning.

Li Chi had just landed, with no time to adjust his footing. The mastiff’s jaws were nearly upon him. He thrust both hands out at once, one high and one low, and seized the dog’s snout. Then he drove his hands apart.

A sharp crack. The jaw was torn open.

He swung the mastiff outward, slamming it into the second dog that was already charging in, sending both tumbling.

Li Chi drew his blade. The third and fourth mastiffs lunged almost simultaneously, teeth bared and snarling, a sight enough to make anyone’s hair stand on end.

And in that instant —

The tea garden behind Li Chi looked as though something had plowed a straight furrow through it. Tea bushes fell in a visible ripple.

There was a heavy thud.

The mastiff nearest Li Chi went flying straight up into the air. High into the sky — its belly torn open with a gaping, bloody wound.

As it rose, blood rained down.

Most chilling of all, the wound was so wide that at first blood simply poured from it, and then a length of something — some piece of viscera — pushed its way out.

When the mastiff crashed back to earth, it let out a shriek of raw agony.

The divine falcon came charging through from behind Li Chi, standing tall beside him like a sovereign, and called once toward the pack of mastiffs.

These vicious dogs had never laid eyes on anything like this before.

The divine falcon dwarfed them completely — its enormous body, over a thousand catties, loomed over them like a mountain. Not just mastiffs — even ordinary tigers and leopards, confronted with a creature of this dominance, would not dare to fight.

A cry rang from the sky above — as though marking a direction.

The divine falcon heard the dog’s call and immediately charged in that direction.

A mastiff crouching behind a tea bush, preparing to ambush, was smashed sideways as the falcon ripped through the bush and sent it flying.

The falcon lurched forward, drove one massive trotter down onto the mastiff’s head — nearly burying the hoof into the skull.

Two more mastiffs lunged from behind. A dark shadow flickered in the sky, arriving in an eyeblink.

The dog — the falcon-hawk — dove from above, both talons driving into the eyes of one mastiff.

That mastiff screamed in agony, thrashing and biting wildly, unable to touch the hawk at all.

The hawk beat its wings and rose again, circling — and then dove a second time, once more sinking its talons into a mastiff’s eyes with perfect precision.

Just as its claws sank in, the mastiff beside it lunged and bit at it.

The divine falcon erupted in fury.

If moments before it had looked upon these dogs without overwhelming killing intent — perhaps because it had grown up alongside a dog from its earliest days and had absorbed much of their nature — then now, with one mastiff daring to bare its teeth at the hawk, the falcon’s mercy evaporated.

The way it had looked at these mastiffs before might have been: these are bad dogs. Now it was: these worthless pieces of filth.

With a thunderous rush, its massive body slammed forward.

It knocked one mastiff flat, then closed its beak around the mastiff’s neck, shaking its head from side to side — the mastiff’s body thrashed in its grip like a strand of noodles.

These mastiffs were far larger than ordinary dogs, but before the divine falcon, their size meant nothing.

The pig and the hawk, working in tandem, tore through the pack of mastiffs.

Before long, with several more dying screams, another five or six mastiffs were killed by these two overlords. The remaining dogs’ courage broke — they turned and fled.

But this delay had given Pei Lang enough time to haul Master Qiu into the village at speed.

Pei Lang grabbed a camel, snatched up his weapon, and turned back as though to return and fight.

Master Qiu seized his arm: “Do you want to get everyone killed? If the Young Mistress heard of it, what would you say?”

The mention of the Young Mistress, and Pei Lang’s expression shifted at once.

He looked down at the iron rod in his hand — over a hundred catties’ weight — and finally let out a long, heavy breath, and yanked the camel’s reins.

An ordinary horse could not bear his weight.

This camel was no common beast either. An ordinary camel could carry perhaps three hundred catties, but Pei Lang alone weighed over three hundred — not to mention the iron rod weighing another hundred or more.

His mount had been sought for years at Changsun Wuyou’s personal request, someone sent all the way to the northwest to find it.

It was a single-humped desert camel — captured with enormous effort. Larger than any ordinary camel by a full size, it looked almost monstrous.

Those who had fled into the village quickly mounted up. Master Qiu took the reins and looked back. The mastiffs were charging back — but their numbers were less than a third of what had gone in.

“Move out!”

Master Qiu called.

Pei Lang and the others followed immediately, withdrawing through the back of the village.

On the other side of the slope, the cavalry that had been waiting to receive Master Qiu and the others was intercepted by Gao Zhen’s horsemen.

One charge, and these self-important martial artists were scattered in all directions.

One-on-one, their individual skill was respectable — they could hold their own against cavalry. But on a battlefield like this, a few hundred of them were nothing more than loose sand.

Besides, among the Ning Army rode someone as terrifyingly skilled as Gao Zhen.

These roving swordsmen who might hold their own on foot were no match at all for cavalry — let alone finding a single one who could survive even a single exchange with Gao Zhen.

Gao Zhen cleared out that cavalry force and then led his men in pursuit — but the assassins in the village had already escaped too far.

He turned to see Li Chi arriving, and immediately dismounted and bowed.

“This subordinate Gao Zhen, under the General’s orders, comes to welcome the King of Ning.”

Li Chi helped Gao Zhen to his feet: “The General anticipated danger at this location?”

Gao Zhen said: “The General said that of all the places along Your Highness’s route south, this one was most suited to an ambush — so he sent me with troops to come ahead and give warning. Only, Your Highness moved faster than expected, and I arrived too late.”

Li Chi waved it off. He looked over at the captives being held, then turned to the three Tingwei Army senior officers who had come with him.

“Go and question them.”

All three bowed immediately and withdrew.

—

Half an hour later.

Li Chi was crouching by the divine falcon, hand-feeding it meat, checking its body for wounds. He found a few scrapes — but on closer inspection, just ruffled feathers.

Its skin and flesh were so tough that even a mastiff’s bite left no real mark.

The hawk perched on the falcon’s back, wearing its usual cool, imperious air.

But every now and then it would look down and check on the falcon — a clear, worried glance.

That mix of evident concern wrapped in deliberate aloofness was so amusing that even Li Chi found himself charmed.

“Your Highness.”

Fang Xidao, a Tingwei Army senior officer, came running from a distance, drew close, and bowed: “These men were all recruited under heavy payment. They had no idea who they were targeting, and no idea who hired them — only that they were to set an ambush here.”

Li Chi gave a small nod. He had already guessed it would be something like this.

Fang Xidao continued: “These individuals are all criminals from within Yuzhou — outlaws, habitual thieves, hired killers — all assembled through the Fog Map.”

“The Fog Map?”

Li Chi repeated the three characters.

The Fog Map had appeared in Jizhou. Now it was in Yuzhou too. This seemed only to reinforce the idea that the root of the Mountain River Seal and the Fog Map was right here in Yuzhou.

Fang Xidao said: “Some of them mentioned they had arrived here several days earlier. Behind the village, there is a disused quarry — they had been sheltering in it beforehand.”

“Those who received them seemed unusually familiar with the quarry and had a key to its locks.”

Fang Xidao looked at Li Chi: “We can trace the matter from that angle.”

Li Chi was about to respond when a voice came from behind him — flat and vaguely resigned: “No need to trace anything. The quarry belongs to my family.”

Li Chi turned to find Cao Lie standing there, wearing a thoroughly dejected expression.

Seeing Li Chi look at him, Cao Lie shrugged: “And so, as you can see, what a coincidence.”

Fang Xidao and the others turned toward Cao Lie immediately. Their hands closed around their sword hilts. The surrounding Tingwei Army men moved in to encircle him.

Li Chi waved them off: “Stand down. He’s not that stupid.”

Fang Xidao withdrew with his people.

Cao Lie sat down beside Li Chi, glanced at the nearby mastiff carcasses, and his expression grew even more dismal.

“If I told you there was also a mastiff breeding ground belonging to my family about a hundred-odd li from here — would you think that was too much of a coincidence?”

Li Chi’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Cao Lie said: “The quarry in Fengzhou — back then, when the walls of Fengzhou were being rebuilt, my father handled the project, so he set up a quarry here. Eventually it was half-abandoned once the Fengzhou fortifications were complete. Not entirely without use, though — locals still came to buy stone, so it still had several dozen workers. Though I expect they’re all dead now.”

He paused, then continued: “As for the mastiff breeding ground… Fengzhou and the surrounding area has a fierce, combative local character. One of the favored pastimes among the wealthy here is dog fighting.”

Cao Lie looked at the mastiff carcasses nearby: “Do you know how much one of these mastiffs is worth?”

Li Chi said: “How much?”

Cao Lie said: “Training them to this level of savagery requires unusual methods. The more vicious the mastiff, the more the wealthy men of this region prize it. A single one of these — probably a few thousand taels of silver.”

“The most ferocious ones have sold for ten thousand taels or more — that’s nothing extraordinary here… Though I expect that breeding ground no longer has anything to do with my family anymore.”

Li Chi said: “One mastiff worth thousands of taels. So their plan was to crush me to death with money.”

Cao Lie sighed: “If they understood you well enough, they might have done better just to actually throw money at you. Might have landed a hit.”

Li Chi gave him a look.

Cao Lie said: “I’m starting to understand, a little, why you want my family’s Yuzhou operations.”

The Cao family’s business holdings were vast and complex.

Operations like the quarry, the mastiff breeding ground — enterprises like these had no trusted Cao family members running them day-to-day.

So how many of the Cao family’s holdings had already been infiltrated and seized by others? How many Cao employees had been bought and turned? The answer was likely more than a few.

These smaller operations aside — if even the medicine trade and weapons workshop had been compromised, the Cao family would be a powder keg sitting inside Yuzhou.

After Cao Lie finished speaking, Li Chi looked at him and replied with three words: “You’re welcome.”

Then he added three more.

“Thank you.”

Cao Lie stared at him, a faint unease beginning to creep in.

“Why… are you thanking me?”

Li Chi said: “If not for the quarry and the mastiff breeding ground, I would have had to rack my brain for some pretext to take over your family’s operations — and whatever I came up with, it would still look unjustified. Now I have a reason.”

He said it entirely in earnest: “You know how I am — taking something without proper justification would get people calling me shameless.”

Cao Lie stared at Li Chi without speaking. But Li Chi understood his expression — and shot him a look.

A moment later, Cao Lie looked at Li Chi: “You’ll be exploited by this. Once you move, there will be countless people pushing back. The Cao family’s holdings are too large — when a business gets large enough, it stops being one family’s interests and becomes many families’ interests.”

Li Chi said: “So there’s an unexpected bonus?”

Cao Lie: “…”

Li Chi smiled, looked at Cao Lie, and said: “You can go on ahead now. Head back into Yuzhou first. See whether those who don’t want me touching the Cao family’s holdings are willing to hear what you have to say.”

Cao Lie sighed quietly: “In Jizhou, you were nearly assassinated thirty-two times in two months. Once you’re in Yuzhou… you might have thirty-two attempts in a single day.”

Li Chi said: “One day?”

He thought it over, then said: “Then I expect I’ll be quite tired.”

—