After three bounding leaps, Tang Pidi—traveling light—had already swept onto the battlements, descending like a great eagle.

This method of advance was not something one could attempt at any time.

If he were truly facing a heavily garrisoned fortress, charging forward like that would get not just Tang Pidi, but even a Grand Golden Immortal shot into a pincushion by a storm of arrows.

Under a concentrated barrage of bolts, a man could be riddled like a hedgehog.

At this moment, however, there were no soldiers left on the battlements—only a scattering of jianghu fighters. Their archery, truth be told, was decidedly mediocre.

Besides, so long as the arrows weren’t thick enough to make dodging impossible, Tang Pidi reckoned he could take the chance.

Midway through his leap, Tang Pidi flung the coiled rope from his back, lassoing a merlon. He sent the other end dropping straight down.

The moment the rope fell, his personal guard officers below seized it and began climbing with startling speed.

Tang Pidi’s hand rose to shoulder height and drew his blade.

“Protect the Gate Master.”

Someone shouted, then lunged forward, sword in hand.

The blade carried a chill gleam, thrusting straight at Tang Pidi’s chest.

But the moment the sword’s momentum began, its wielder caught sight of a white streak—

The broadsword fell from on high, a single flash of light, and the man was split down the middle.

With a wet, heavy sound, his entrails spilled across the ground in a bloody, glistening heap.

The others, witnessing Tang Pidi’s power, understood at once that they were no match for him.

And yet—he was only one man. So they reasoned that numbers would tip the odds in their favor, and surged forward together.

They had no choice but to press on. If they couldn’t cut Tang Pidi down and sever that rope, more of Prince Ning’s troops would clamber up. Every man who climbed brought another rope dangling behind him. One after another, it would not be long before the battle-hardened soldiers of the Ning Army seized the entire battlement.

So they came to know that blade.

The chance to know such a blade comes but once in a lifetime.

When Tang Pidi had killed Zhang Yi, he had remarked: *So you only know the spear.*

Zhang Yi had retorted: *You’re nothing but a good horse and a good spear.*

He didn’t know. Tang Pidi’s true preference was close-quarters combat.

Before Tang Pidi’s blade, all things are equal.

A cluster of men escorted Cao Ziluo away down the sloping path on the far side of the wall. What else could they do but run?

Tang Pidi held the rope alone. Within moments, he had cut down over a dozen men.

Before long, his guard officers had climbed up, tied off their own ropes, and flung them down. The soldiers below grabbed hold and began their ascent.

These personal guards—every last one was an elite among elites.

The speed at which they scaled the wall was jaw-dropping.

While all attention converged on Tang Pidi, Li Chi, on the far side of the wall below, strolled over carrying a coil of rope.

*These people,* he thought to himself. *Are you all truly blind?*

Li Chi decided he should tie a few stones to the loop first—without them, he couldn’t get any distance on the throw.

He crouched there and unhurriedly bound the stones on, then stepped back two paces.

Getting the rope loop to swing in a complete circle was already no easy feat. With stones tied to it, making it spin into a full arc was considerably harder.

Li Chi twirled it for a while before he found the knack. He flung the loop up at the battlements—and put too much force into it. The loop failed to catch on the merlons. Two of the stones flew clean off.

Two stones.

Both were small—only a touch larger than a fist.

Down below in the commotion, one jianghu fighter was drifting about at the back of the crowd with his sword in hand. Any seasoned observer would have pegged him instantly as a man stringing along. He didn’t dare go near Tang Pidi, yet couldn’t bring himself to simply turn and run, so he lingered at the rear, blade in hand, stepping left, stepping right, back and forth—making a convincing show of it.

At that precise moment, one of the stones Li Chi had flung sailing through the air and struck him squarely on the back of the head.

*Thwack.*

The jianghu fighter went completely dazed, pitching forward in a rigid sprawl, his skull ringing with a dull hum.

He lay there for a good while, unable to recover his wits.

Down below the wall, Li Chi hauled the rope back and discovered the stones had flown off. Sighing, he crouched down to tie them on again.

While he was doing so, Tingwei Army officer Zao Yunjian unclipped a grappling hook from his gear and held it out. “My lord…”

Li Chi turned his head, looked at it, and blinked.

“Why didn’t you give me this earlier?” he asked.

Zao Yunjian said, “My apologies, my lord—I simply… I truly could not make sense of what you were doing earlier…”

Li Chi held himself back, reminding himself not to laugh. *I need to be serious. Solemn. I am Prince Ning, after all.*

He took the grappling hook. The chain wasn’t long enough on its own, so he tied it to the rope from before.

He stepped back two paces, swung the hook in a wide arc, and sent it sailing up over the battlements. Watching it clear the wall cleanly, Li Chi felt only one thing.

*I am simply magnificent.*

The jianghu fighter had just shakily staggered back to his feet when Li Chi’s grappling hook snagged on the collar of his coat.

Li Chi gave it a tug. The fighter plopped straight down onto his backside. *Didn’t catch,* Li Chi noted.

So he began hauling the rope back in. The man was dragged along until he fetched up against the base of the wall and got stuck.

Li Chi pulled again. Nothing. Figuring the hook had just caught something, he gripped the rope and climbed.

When he reached the top of the wall, the first thing he saw was the man with his eyes rolled back in his head. Li Chi was startled.

*Where did this ugly wretch come from?*

Then he looked more closely. The grappling hook had snagged the man’s collar and very nearly strangled him.

Li Chi reached over and checked the man’s breathing—found the faintest trace of life still in him—and let out a breath of relief.

With a look of mild apology, Li Chi detached the hook from the man’s coat, hung it on a merlon—and then, still with mild apology, picked the man up and hurled him off the wall. Headfirst.

He looked around. Tang Pidi was now surrounded by a layer of bodies, with a second layer steadily accumulating. That blade of his, tempered in some underworld forge, claimed a life with every swing.

His guard officers were up in fair numbers now, forming a line and pressing forward. Moments later, Tang Pidi’s burden had lightened considerably.

*Old Tang doesn’t need any help over there,* Li Chi thought. So he strolled leisurely down the rampart’s slope and spotted a group of men hustling along ahead, clustering around a middle-aged man in fine silk robes.

Li Chi glanced left and right. Not far away lay a fist-sized stone that looked somehow familiar.

A moment’s thought—it must have been one of the two he’d flung, and it had somehow cleared the wall and landed on the inside.

He walked over and picked it up, then noticed at the corner there was another man lying face-down, a bloody dent in his skull.

Li Chi picked up the stone, took aim at the fleeing figures ahead, drew back his arm, and threw.

He watched the stone arc through the air and come down on someone’s head. That person dropped.

*No wonder Gao Xining enjoys this,* Li Chi thought. *Enormously satisfying.*

Behind him, Zao Yunjian had also come down the slope. Watching Li Chi knock someone flat with a single stone, his eyes went wide.

Li Chi ran ahead in pursuit of Cao Ziluo’s group. Zao Yunjian scooped up a pile of stones, bundled them in his coat, and chased after Li Chi.

“My lord, here, here!”

Zao Yunjian caught up quickly. Li Chi looked back—it was nobody else, it was a walking weapons depot.

So he ran and threw. Ran and threw. Those in front ran and cursed.

This should have been a deadly serious affair—a life-or-death pursuit, how could it not be serious? And yet Li Chi made it thoroughly unserous, until even a man of Zao Yunjian’s stiff, cold temperament was laughing.

The person Li Chi was now—compared to the man who had skewered Zhang Tang with one thrust and killed the enemy with a second back in Lu County—seemed like an entirely different person.

Joy is contagious.

Spending every day around someone like Zhang Tang versus spending every day around someone like Li Chi—could the difference be anything less than vast?

Several of those ahead had been knocked down. The group, apparently pushed beyond patience, sent back five or six men with blades drawn, charging straight at Li Chi.

In the distance, Tang Pidi—leading his guard battalion, having cut down every last enemy on the battlements through relentless, blood-soaked fighting—arrived at the base of the wall, looked ahead, and saw Li Chi running around throwing stones at people.

And a Tingwei Army officer playing pack mule for him.

Tang Pidi paused. He looked back at his own men—every one of them with battle robes drenched in blood.

Then he looked at Li Chi.

*How did he get up there?* Tang Pidi wondered. *And when?*

The wall was long. Everyone had been focused on stopping Tang Pidi. And Li Chi had simply gotten up.

The five or six men coming back drew blades and bore down on Li Chi. Zao Yunjian shouted: “My lord, keep chasing—I’ll handle them!”

Li Chi made an affirmative sound. He planted his foot, drove off the ground with a crack—the earth practically exploded beneath him—and blasted through the middle of the group like a heavy crossbow bolt. Before their blades had even descended, Li Chi was already past them.

Zao Yunjian drew his longsword and smiled coldly. “Let me entertain you.”

In this moment, Zao Yunjian looked like his ordinary self again.

Ahead, Cao Ziluo ran and glanced back. Seeing his men had blocked the one in pursuit, he exhaled slightly.

But this fortress had been built too large. From the battlements, one had to run the full length of the gorge to reach the castle proper, then circle around it to reach the mountains beyond.

After two or three li at a run, he looked back again—and the stone-throwing man was already almost upon him.

“Stop him!”

Cao Ziluo shouted at once.

He still had twenty or thirty men in close escort, and split off five or six to block the way.

Cao Ziluo himself was a man of comfort and refinement—no martial arts master—and running was hardly his strong suit.

His men, seeing the situation, hit upon a solution: two of them seized Cao Ziluo, hoisted him overhead, and ran with him at full stretch.

Li Chi was just about to throw his stone when he saw them carrying the middle-aged man aloft with outstretched arms.

*These people are something else,* he thought. *I’m throwing stones at them from behind, and they’ve lifted their own leader over their heads?*

However you looked at it, that didn’t seem like loyal devotion.

Li Chi aimed and threw. The stone flew high. Cao Ziluo, being carried face-up, watched it coming—and could do nothing. He shouted at his men to move sideways; the men below couldn’t be bothered.

So he watched, helpless, as the stone struck exactly the place where being struck causes a man’s whole body to curl inward.

It was only at this point that Li Chi remembered: he hadn’t brought any weapons.

Fortunately, the enemy had some.

Moments later, five or six more bodies were on the ground—and Li Chi was jogging along with four or five longswords tucked under his left arm and one in his right hand.

He ran and threw. Throwing longswords beat throwing stones by a considerable margin.

One jianghu fighter was in full sprint when a coldness pierced his back—and then a blade tip emerged from his chest.

Clean through.

A second blade flew. Another jianghu fighter running ahead had his throat transfixed, the full length of the blade passing clean through.

Li Chi ran and threw. Ran and picked up. Threw, picked up, picked up, threw—after roughly another quarter-hour of pursuit, only six or seven men remained ahead of him.

So many bodies lay behind that Tang Pidi, charging in fast pursuit, found the sight of them somewhat puzzling.

The way these men had died… looked distinctly strange, however you looked at it.

—

Meanwhile, on the main road running from Yuzhou toward Fengzhou, a roadside tea stall had drawn two or three dozen men who sat drinking tea and resting.

Just then, a rider came at full gallop from the south—extraordinary speed.

The men rose at once. They watched the approaching horseman. He spotted them too, and reined his mount to a stop.

When they recognized the rider, every one of them bent in a deep bow.

“We pay our respects to the Young Marquis!”

Cao Lie waved a hand. “No time for formalities. My father may have met with disaster. Follow me out of Yuzhou.”

One of the men asked, “Young Marquis, where are we going?”

Cao Lie said, “I was careless—I misjudged the situation. Yuzhou is likely no longer safe for us. We go to Jizhou.”

They all stared.

“Li Chi won’t think to look for us returning to Jizhou,” Cao Lie said. “We regroup there, gather our forces, and make contact with our people in other regions.”

He spurred his horse forward. “Those willing, follow. Those unwilling, go your own way.”

He rode out, and the men mounted immediately and fell in behind him.

Dozens of riders—racing north.

—