Nie Xiaodi sidled up to Dantai Yajing, glanced around first to make sure no one was listening, then lowered his voice and asked: “General, what kind of monster is sealed in that stick of yours?”

Dantai Yajing sighed inwardly. What had been nothing more than a throwaway joke, he realized, had been taken entirely at face value by both siblings.

But thinking about it again — they really had been living deep in the mountains their whole lives, with no exposure to worldly knowledge. Then the bandit troubles came, and even though they’d changed locations, they’d still ended up deep in the mountains — just a different mountain. Everything the two of them had grown up hearing the elders tell were stories of gods and spirits and monsters. And it wasn’t just them — many people genuinely and firmly believed in such things.

If he was being frank, even someone like Dantai Yajing — who had grown up reading widely and cultivating a rational mind — still had moments when he was not entirely unconvinced by talk of ghosts and gods.

And even if he didn’t quite believe in ghosts, he did believe in charlatans. Take Li Chi, for instance.

Especially ever since young Daoist Zhang had told him about the story of the Yama King getting beaten — whenever Dantai Yajing looked at Li Chi after that, he always felt as though some genuine deity were hiding inside that man’s body.

The only thing he couldn’t work out was: in all the lore of gods and spirits, what true divine being had deception and cunning and gluttony as his defining traits?

Young Daoist Zhang called Li Chi a Human Emperor. But Dantai Yajing’s instincts kept telling him that a Human Emperor really ought not to be like that…

On second thought, perhaps the Yama King hadn’t been beaten at all — perhaps he’d simply been talked in circles by Li Chi until he was howling in frustration.

When you thought about it this way, if people weren’t so willing to believe in gods and spirits, Li Chi’s legend as the Yaksha would never have spread across all of Jizhou.

And now it wasn’t just Jizhou — word of the Yaksha was probably starting to circulate even in the imperial capital of Dachu by now.

Nie Xiaodi had genuinely believed every word, and he was gazing at Dantai Yajing with wide, expectant eyes, waiting for his answer — with no idea that Dantai Yajing had been lost in this entire chain of thought.

Dantai Yajing came back to himself, saw that Nie Xiaodi was still looking at him with pure anticipation in his eyes, and decided he couldn’t deceive the child.

“I was joking. There’s no such thing as gods or monsters. This weapon is called a lance — not a stick, and not a flagpole.”

Nie Xiaodi was clearly unsatisfied with this answer, and leaned in closer: “I know. People who know the arts of monsters never want to spread it around. Just tell me on the quiet — I absolutely won’t tell anyone.”

Dantai Yajing: “This really is just a weapon.”

Nie Xiaodi: “General, you really are stingy. I already said I won’t tell anyone… just tell me, would you? What kind of monster is sealed inside that stick?”

Dantai Yajing had no desire to keep explaining. He turned and walked away. Nie Xiaodi evidently refused to let him off that easily, sticking close to his heels, question after question, over and over again.

Unable to endure it any longer, Dantai Yajing finally deflected: “Fine, fine — yes, there’s a monster sealed inside it. There’s a stick sealed inside my stick.”

Nie Xiaodi wore the expression of a man who has just had a great mystery resolved: “A stick, with a stick-spirit sealed inside it. That makes complete sense.”

Dantai Yajing muttered: “Once I get you all to Jizhou, I’m going to personally take you to Shen Medical Hall to have your head looked at.”

Nie Xiaodi asked curiously: “What’s Shen Medical Hall?”

Dantai Yajing said: “It’s where immortals dwell. The people there are the ones who sealed that stick-spirit into my stick.”

Nie Xiaodi snapped his hand to his waist and yanked out the cleaver hanging there: “Then can you ask the people at Shen Medical Hall to seal a monster into my cleaver too?”

As he said this, Dantai Yajing glanced down — and then pressed a hand over his face.

When Nie Xiaodi had snapped the cleaver out with a flourish, he’d sliced through the drawstring of his trousers. They slid straight down.

Nie Datian, who had been sneaking a curious listen nearby, caught the whole thing, and immediately whipped her head away: “Nie Xiaodi, you great oaf!”

Nie Xiaodi hastily hauled his trousers back up, one hand holding them in place, still pestering Dantai Yajing: “General, can you put in a word with Shen Medical Hall for me?”

Dantai Yajing, hand still over his eyes: “What would you want sealed in?”

Nie Xiaodi gave it genuine thought, and then said very earnestly: “Seal a brother-in-law into my cleaver. That way, whenever my sister picks on me, I can summon my brother-in-law out to hit her.”

Nie Datian took a long, deep breath, turned around, and looked at Nie Xiaodi: “Do you know what I mean when I say I’m going to flatten you?”

Nie Xiaodi grabbed his trousers and bolted, shouting back over his shoulder as he ran: “General, we have a deal! Seal a brother-in-law spirit in for me!”

Nie Hongfu came over looking mortified, apologizing to Dantai Yajing at length: “General, don’t stoop to a child’s level, he never studied, his head’s a bit slow… but you shouldn’t have tricked him like that either! A stick with a stick-spirit — what kind of sense does that make? Tell me, General — what’s actually sealed in that stick of yours?”

Dantai Yajing tilted his head back and stared at the sky, struck all at once by a profound sense that life was a strange and wondrous thing. You could never know what you’d encounter, and in how many ways it would knead and batter your soul.

Nie Datian walked over to Dantai Yajing’s side. She let out a long breath, then reached up and patted him on the shoulder.

She was short — her head barely cleared his shoulder — so the gesture looked something like a small child giving a world-weary pat to their elder.

She tilted her head up at Dantai Yajing: “General, my brother is dim, don’t mind him. When you think about it, my brother is my father’s child — the dimness was passed down from our father. And don’t blame our father either — he probably got it from our grandfather… I’m different. They may not believe you, but I do. You are not the type to lie. This stick must definitely have a stick-spirit sealed inside it.”

Dantai Yajing was suddenly seized by an overwhelming urge to turn around and drive his head headfirst into a snowdrift — not hard enough to die, but deeply enough that he had no intention of pulling it back out.

The group traveled swiftly, but it was never dull.

This was largely due to the existence of Nie Xiaodi and Nie Datian. The things those two got up to weren’t just a private torment for Dantai Yajing — his men felt it too. Almost to a person, they walked around with the vague sensation that they were dreaming.

But perhaps heaven was fair in its own way. The two siblings were simple-hearted souls, essentially blank slates.

Yet both of them possessed a physical strength that defied belief. Nie Datian’s raw power was already enough to astonish Dantai Yajing. The strength Nie Xiaodi occasionally revealed, without even seeming to try, astonished him even more.

Not long before, Nie Xiaodi had gone chasing a wild hare that darted behind a boulder to hide. Nie Xiaodi strolled over and gave it a casual shove — quite matter-of-factly, as though it were nothing — and moved a rock that had to weigh at least two or three hundred jin clean out of the way.

And that was already startling enough. Then there came something even more startling.

At a river crossing, Nie Xiaodi revealed both a staggering capacity for logical reasoning and a staggering display of strength.

When they reached the bank, the surface of the river was covered in a thick layer of ice. The whole column picked their way across with great care, dreading the moment the ice might give way.

Nie Xiaodi had a deep-rooted fear of this — when he was about ten years old, back in his home village, he’d been riding his family’s mountain goat out on the ice, and the goat had given a leap and punched through the surface.

Both he and the goat had gone into the water. If his father hadn’t been nearby, spent every last bit of strength he had fishing the boy out, what the family might have lost was not merely their only goat.

The goat had slipped through the hole beneath the ice and been swept away by the current. They never found it.

That loss — falling on an already poor household — had only made things harder. It had also earned Nie Xiaodi a sound thrashing when he got home.

From that day forward, Nie Xiaodi had been terrified of river crossings. No matter how solidly frozen the surface looked, fear gripped him.

Everyone else led their horses across with careful, measured steps. Nie Xiaodi stood there thinking hard for quite a long time.

The memory of falling through the ice on that goat rose unbidden. He did not trust these four-legged creatures — and a horse was even bigger than a goat.

So he hoisted the horse onto his shoulders and carried it across.

Dantai Yajing was stunned. He quickly moved to stop him: “Put the horse down. Carrying it makes you heavier combined.”

Nie Xiaodi said: “That’s nonsense.”

Dantai Yajing blinked a few times. “How is that nonsense?”

Nie Xiaodi said: “Listen to my reasoning. If I lead the horse, how many legs between us? Six. If I ride the horse, how many legs? Four. If I carry the horse, how many legs? Two. I’m just asking — is that right or not?”

Dantai Yajing blinked again. For a moment he was genuinely at a loss for words.

Nie Xiaodi said: “Tell me — isn’t it true that fewer legs means a lower chance of breaking through the ice? I’m just asking — is that right or not?”

Nie Datian said to Dantai Yajing very seriously: “General, stop arguing with him. He’s slow in the head — you know that.”

Then she looped her arm around the horse’s neck, swept its legs with a throw, and brought it down — then grabbed one of its legs and dragged it flat across the ice as she walked: “Isn’t this also two legs? And the weight is lower as well?”

The horse lay flat on the ice, thoroughly terrified, unable to get up, being hauled forward by one leg — a rather pitiful sight.

Nie Hongfu: “Now that’s clever, daughter!”

He tried to wrap his arms around his own horse’s neck to bring it down as well, and nearly got flipped by the horse instead.

Dantai Yajing had never imagined that one day his understanding of how the world worked would be trampled so thoroughly, so mercilessly, without a single shred of consideration for his feelings.

He had also never imagined that a horse’s understanding of how the world worked would collapse in quite the same way.

Once they were across the river, Nie Datian’s horse refused to stand up. Nie Datian snorted: “Look at you, all cowardly.”

Then she picked the horse up and set it on its feet.

Beside her, Nie Xiaodi had set his own horse down — his horse was trembling too, and it was impossible to say which sibling had frightened their respective animal more thoroughly.

The group continued northeast. After about ten days of travel, while they were making camp to rest, Dantai Yajing noticed Nie Hongfu had climbed up to a high point and was gazing out into the distance.

The man stood up there looking out, and he seemed to be trembling slightly. He had mentioned before that they were drawing ever closer to his hometown.

Dantai Yajing could understand that feeling. He himself had been away from home long enough. He never liked to bring it up, but how could he not miss the people there, not miss Liangzhou? Every person’s longing for their hometown was carved into the bone — it was just that younger people perhaps thought of it a little less often, so it seemed lighter than in the old. Or perhaps it was simply that young people had richer lives to fill the space.

The older one grew, the heavier that longing became. That was why so many people who had spent the better part of their lives clawing their way to standing in some great city found themselves in their later years wanting nothing more than to go back to the village they came from.

And now, watching Nie Hongfu stand up there looking out at the distance, Dantai Yajing felt it keenly.

When Nie Hongfu came back down, his color still wasn’t good, and he was still trembling faintly — whether from the cold or from feeling, it was hard to say.

Dantai Yajing offered a word of comfort: “Don’t overthink it. When we get close to your hometown, we’ll swing by so you can have a look. We’re passing through that direction anyway — we just can’t linger too long, since we’re on our way to rescue someone.”

Nie Hongfu was so moved he nearly had tears in his eyes. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but seemed unable to find the words.

Dantai Yajing said: “It’s fine. I miss home too — it’s been two or three years since I’ve been back. So I understand.”

Nie Hongfu nodded vigorously: “I’m glad the general understands… It’s just… could you perhaps understand one more thing?”

Dantai Yajing asked: “One more thing — what thing?”

Nie Hongfu said: “What I mean is… well, if it turned out… that we may have taken a wrong road… could the general find it in himself to understand?”

Dantai Yajing: “????”

—