“Brother Nie.”
Dantai Yajing asked Nie Hongfu: “About how long will we be traveling?”
Nie Hongfu said: “If we’re going to the outermost territory under White Mountain Army control — that would be Yuanshi City — it’ll take just over a month. If we’re going all the way to the innermost area, probably two and a half months.”
He looked toward Dantai Yajing and said: “The roads on this side of Yanzhou aren’t easy, and in this weather, it’ll be even harder going.”
Dantai Yajing made a sound of acknowledgment. According to the arrangement, the place they needed to reach was precisely Yuanshi City. The intelligence agents were waiting there — after rendezvousing at Yuanshi City, they would move on to meet up with Lin Huiyun and the others.
“Just over a month…”
Dantai Yajing felt a measure of worry in his heart. A month’s time was long enough for far too many things to go wrong. By the time they arrived, that mother and her two children might have already come to harm.
“General, you’ve brought only this many men — if you run into a large Shanhai Army force…”
Nie Hongfu couldn’t bring himself to finish the thought, but Dantai Yajing understood what he meant.
He smiled and said: “If we run into a large Shanhai Army force, you all leave first. Don’t worry about us — you can go back and wait, or find somewhere to hide.”
Nie Hongfu let out a breath of relief: “It’s just that… the two children still need me to look after them.”
Dantai Yajing nodded: “I understand. Being a parent isn’t easy.”
Nie Datian said: “Father, what kind of talk is that? Before we set out, how did you teach us? You said a person can be without learning, but must never be without character. You also said that keeping your word is what it means to have good character. When we’ve promised someone something, even through mountains of blades and seas of fire, we see it through.”
Nie Hongfu grinned sheepishly: “What does a kid know? Keep your mouth shut.”
Nie Xiaodi said: “My sister’s still young! And those big feet of hers are even bigger than mine — when she wears my shoes, her big toe pokes right at the end.”
Nie Datian tilted her head back toward the sky: “Father, I’d like to invoke the family code.”
Nie Hongfu said: “Since when has our family had a code? If we did, would you two have turned out like this?”
Nie Xiaodi said: “Exactly — if we had a family code, and Father doesn’t have the final say, shouldn’t the two of us be the ones invoking it to deal with him?”
Nie Hongfu: “…”
Nie Datian looked at her younger brother: “Thinking about it now, you being this dim might be partly my fault…”
Nie Xiaodi said: “You’re finally admitting it! Father, every bit of stupidity I have, I learned from her — and she won’t even let me say so.”
Dantai Yajing watched this family of three, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
He and his own father had rarely shared exchanges like this. Things had changed somewhat after that last trip back with Li Chi and the others, but he had left Liangzhou again very soon after. All those years, he and his father had barely exchanged more than a few words a day. He had even gone out of his way to avoid his father. Now, looking back on it, he always felt a twinge of regret somewhere inside.
“General… you must be laughing at us.”
Nie Hongfu said: “We’re farming folk. We’ve never read books, and we haven’t raised these children very well either. Those two just say whatever comes to their mouths without any filter. If we ever make it to Jizhou, and there’s the means for it, I hope they’ll both be able to study, learn to read, and understand how to conduct themselves properly.”
Dantai Yajing said without thinking: “If you want to study when you get to Jizhou, I can help you.”
Nie Datian looked at this fair-skinned, clean-cut general and thought to herself that this pretty boy at least had a decent heart.
Still, she couldn’t help feeling that someone like Dantai Yajing looked a bit soft and limp. A pretty boy like him — she figured she could take on fifty of his kind.
In her mind, a real man ought to be tall, broad, and built like an ox — the kind who could wrestle a bear and come out on top. In her eyes, Dantai Yajing, no matter how he looked, fell squarely into the category of effeminate.
She even suspected he’d gotten his general’s rank through connections.
The thought led her gaze drifting to the large lance hanging at the side of Dantai Yajing’s horse. She stared at it and thought: *Whatever that thing is, it sure looks impressive — like a flagpole.*
A girl with her background, who had lived her whole life in a village, far from the wider world, had never laid eyes on a weapon like a lance.
And it wasn’t just her — her father hadn’t either. In fact, most rebel soldiers on the Yanzhou side had never seen one.
Lances were extraordinarily costly to produce, and the craft involved was exceptionally complex. The shaft alone, to be made properly, required nearly a year from start to finish.
“Hey…”
Nie Datian pointed at the lance: “What’s that?”
Dantai Yajing glanced at her, then at the lance, and replied: “A lance.”
Nie Datian nodded: “Mm. So tell me.”
Dantai Yajing turned his gaze back to the road ahead. Nie Datian waited a moment, and when Dantai Yajing said nothing further, she pressed impatiently: “Well, go on then.”
Dantai Yajing looked at her, a little bewildered — perhaps she hadn’t heard him — and so he answered again: “A lance.”
Nie Datian: “Speak! Speak, just say it!”
Dantai Yajing grew a little exasperated himself: “It’s a lance!”
Nie Datian: “Are you messing with me?”
Dantai Yajing: “Are you messing with me?”
Nie Hongfu immediately shot his daughter a stern look: “What’s wrong with you, child, being so unreasonable? Stop making trouble. And from now on, not another word out of you.”
Dantai Yajing thought to himself: *Well, at least the father is a reasonable man.* The girl really had been quite unreasonable.
Then he heard Nie Hongfu continue to lecture his daughter: “The general didn’t feel like explaining — wait to ask another time. Can’t you see the general is thinking right now? What kind of manners is that, pestering someone like that?”
Dantai Yajing: “…”
He collected himself and said: “What I’m saying is — this is a lance.”
The three of them looked at Dantai Yajing, then at each other, and this time their expressions carried a rare unity of meaning: all three were now convinced that Dantai Yajing was stringing them along on purpose.
Dantai Yajing: “This thing is called a lance!”
Nie Hongfu suddenly had a flash of recognition: “A lance — oh… now I remember.”
Nie Xiaodi asked: “Father, what did you remember?”
Nie Hongfu lowered his voice and said: “I remembered that I’ve never heard of any such thing.”
He looked at Dantai Yajing with an embarrassed smile. Dantai Yajing’s expression was one of helpless resignation, and he started wondering how he ought to explain that the lance was the most magnificent weapon under heaven.
At that very moment, the scouts at the front suddenly sent up a warning signal — a whistling arrow shot into the sky.
Dantai Yajing’s face changed. He spurred his horse forward.
The moment he moved, more than two hundred mounted soldiers accelerated in perfect unison.
With a thundering surge, that entire force of two hundred or more riders charged ahead — leaving the family of three staring at each other. All three of them, at the exact same moment, had the same first thought: *these people are trying to ditch us.*
“After them.”
Nie Xiaodi shouted, spurring his horse forward.
Though the two of them had only just learned to ride, their natural ability was remarkable — far better than their father’s.
The two younger ones had already bolted ahead. Nie Hongfu was still back there negotiating with his horse: “Go on, chase them…”
After charging about four li, Dantai Yajing spotted the trouble ahead — several of his scouts had been surrounded by a wolf pack.
In this brutal weather, the wolves were starving, and at the sight of people they were practically salivating. A hungry wolf would never easily give up a hunt. Even with danger bearing down on them, they would not retreat without getting that bite.
The scouts’ repeating crossbows had apparently been emptied. They were holding the wolves off with their sabers, working in formation to fend off the lunging attacks.
Worried that loosing arrows might hit his own men, Dantai Yajing leapt from his horse, reached out, and yanked the lance free from its holder.
The moment his feet hit the ground, the snow was kicked up into a hollow beneath him.
He surged forward at full speed, right hand gripping the lance shaft near the butt end. Two enormous strides and he was nearly upon the wolves — each stride covering roughly two zhang of ground.
In that instant, Nie Datian, galloping up behind him, was left stunned.
That man she’d pegged as effeminate — those two strides had outpaced a charging warhorse.
Dantai Yajing’s right hand gripped the lance shaft. A flick of the wrist, and the great lance swept a full half-circle in a sweeping arc—
With a dull thud, the nearest wolf was cut clean through the waist. In the next breath, Dantai Yajing’s lance struck in both directions — the left side caving in the skull of one wolf, the right sending another flying through the air.
“Watch out!”
Nie Datian saw a wolf leap at Dantai Yajing from the side and shouted on instinct.
Dantai Yajing’s right hand held the lance shaft — he drove it through one wolf’s belly — then his left hand released the shaft and shot sideways, closing squarely around the throat of the lunging wolf.
He slammed that wolf into the ground, and before it could recover, planted his foot down on its back with such force that the animal was nearly bent in half. It let out a single agonized yelp and never rose again.
Dantai Yajing didn’t so much as spare it another glance — he strode forward.
Behind him, one of his personal guards finished the wolf with a single chop and quickened his pace to keep up.
In Nie Datian’s eyes, what she was watching was that unit of fierce soldiers moving in flawless coordination — and that effeminate general fighting as though something had taken hold of him.
As reinforcements poured in and the besieged scouts were reached, their repeating crossbows were finally brought to bear as well.
Dantai Yajing drove the lance into the ground, unhooked his repeating crossbow with his left hand, and drew his saber with his right.
“We’re eating well tonight.”
He gave the order.
“Move!”
His personal guards fanned out in all directions, advancing steadily and firing their crossbows in measured bursts. When one man’s magazine ran empty, he stepped back a pace; the man behind him stepped up and pressed forward. Two rotations of this, and every last wolf in that pack lay dead across the bloodied snow — here a patch of red, there a patch of red, the whole scene somewhat grim to look at.
Nie Datian stared at the lance standing upright in the ground, eyes wide. *So that thing is actually terrifying,* she thought.
Too embarrassed to ask Dantai Yajing directly, she spotted a figure nearby — some fellow in a long black robe wearing a heavy cloak — who looked approachable enough, and went over: “Hey, big brother, that lance — is it some kind of magical implement? How else would it make an effeminate man suddenly turn so fearsome?”
Zaoyunjian heard this and blinked, then thought it over and gave the girl a simple explanation — she evidently didn’t know what she was looking at.
When Nie Datian learned that Dantai Yajing’s lance might be worth a thousand gold pieces, her eyes went even wider, round as apricots.
“No wonder. Something that can make a person turn powerful like that — expensive things earn their price.”
She walked over to Dantai Yajing’s side, held her tongue for a moment, but couldn’t hold out: “That lance of yours — was it enchanted by someone?”
Dantai Yajing: “Enchanted? What kind of enchantment?”
Nie Datian said: “The kind that gives you strength.”
That was when Dantai Yajing finally understood. This girl genuinely thought poorly of him — and not in a performative way either. It was the kind of contempt that went all the way down to the bone. Even after he’d just slaughtered that many wolves — which ought by any measure to look suitably fierce and formidable — in this girl’s understanding, it was still the lance that had been enchanted.
And so Dantai Yajing nodded: “In fact, this is a divine weapon. A monster is sealed inside it — a monster of boundless strength. I myself can’t tie up a chicken, but the moment I lay hands on this lance, I’m filled with power.”
Before Nie Datian could respond, Nie Xiaodi murmured to himself: “Can’t tie up a chicken?”
He looked at Dantai Yajing with something approaching sympathy, and asked: “So when you need to relieve yourself, does someone else have to hold it for you?”
Dantai Yajing froze.
For a very long time, he could not recover.
—