This was a tree that had quite possibly been dead for ages — and even with Cao Lie’s breadth of knowledge, he could not identify all the trees of the north by name.

Yanzhou especially, where even the cold-weather pines alone came in many varieties, and yet to him they all looked more or less alike.

Then there was that stand of trees he had seen before entering the city — he had asked if they were poplars, and been told they were silver birches.

He always felt that the northern varieties of things were fewer than in the south. Trees, for instance — the species found in the south seemed to far outnumber those of this cold and bitter land.

And yet it was precisely the things that all looked alike which were hardest to tell apart.

Such as… Mei Wujiu and Lü Wuman.

Cao Lie had been standing beside that withered-looking tree in the courtyard for quite some time, his head tilted back, gazing at the sky, apparently lost in thought.

When Mu Fengliu came through the gate and walked quickly over, he bowed low: “I pay my respects to the Young Lord.”

Cao Lie only gave a soft acknowledgment, then asked: “Did Mei Wujiu take the bait?”

Mu Fengliu shook his head: “He let me believe he had — but I could tell he was still testing me. And if I truly had gone to contact someone from Shanhe Seal on his behalf, he would most likely have intended to use that thread to trace back to the source.”

Cao Lie smiled: “A man like him — once he’s made a choice, how could he so easily go back on it…”

He pulled his gaze down from the sky and pointed at the withered-looking tree: “What is this dead tree actually called?”

“It’s not dead.”

Mu Fengliu replied: “That is a winter plum. In the normal course of things, it should bloom in another month or two — and it doesn’t grow leaves before it flowers.”

Cao Lie laughed: “Even trees know how to feign death.”

He rubbed his hands together and turned to walk inside. “We never intended to rely on Mei Wujiu taking that bait — to be precise, we never expected him to fall for that one.”

Mu Fengliu smiled: “So the other trap — that one he will certainly fall into.”

Cao Lie entered the room and sat down. The attendants had already set out freshly steeped tea and a go board, as though they had calculated exactly when Mu Fengliu would return.

The two men sat across from each other. Cao Lie picked up two wooden lots from a box and gestured them toward Mu Fengliu.

Mu Fengliu pointed to one. Cao Lie opened his hand — it was the long lot; the other was the short one.

Cao Lie made a welcoming gesture: “Advisor takes black.”

Mu Fengliu said: “Grant me the advantage — Young Lord goes first.”

Cao Lie smiled: “You’re as confident as ever, Advisor.”

Mu Fengliu said: “It’s mostly that I’m old. Old men are cunning — and the older and more cunning you get, the more you prefer to act second and gain the upper hand.”

Cao Lie paused, then shook his head: “I know a young man roughly my own age — others all thought he was a newcomer, and yet he loved nothing more than striking second. And he used it better than anyone.”

Mu Fengliu smiled: “Is the Young Lord speaking of Li Chi?”

Cao Lie gave a soft sound of assent. “Who else would it be? Show me another person who has used the art of the countermove with such mastery — and such consistent effect.”

Mu Fengliu said: “Those who prefer to strike second are generally very difficult to deal with. Such people possess at least two great advantages: first, they can hold their ground and bide their time; second, they have an excellent grasp of the overall situation.”

Cao Lie smiled: “That self-praise, Advisor — it’s getting a little less discreet.”

Mu Fengliu laughed heartily. He waited until Cao Lie had placed the first stone, then followed with a move of his own, and continued: “I have been advising Mei Wujiu — if nothing goes wrong, Lü Wuman should return to the Western Capital in short order.”

Cao Lie gave a soft sound of assent and studied the board, as though sunk in thought despite only two stones having been placed.

“In Advisor’s estimation — which of the two will win?”

Mu Fengliu replied: “Neither of them will win. The Young Lord is the one who wins.”

Cao Lie sighed: “Those who love to strike second likely have one more innate advantage — the Advisor neglected to mention it just now.”

Mu Fengliu asked: “What does the Young Lord mean?”

Cao Lie smiled: “A natural gift for shamelessness in flattery — it shows far more effortlessly than in others.”

Mu Fengliu said: “Young Lord, that’s not entirely fair. Those who prefer to strike second are probably all a little thick-skinned — I, however, came to it through years of practice; it is not an innate quality. That other person — now that is true congenital shamelessness.”

*That other person…*

Cao Lie couldn’t help laughing out loud. Though Li Chi had destroyed much of his family’s fortune, dismantled his status and standing — and most significantly, his father had very likely perished as a result — he could not deny it: Cao Lie genuinely held a measure of admiration for Li Chi.

He always felt that the man had truly embodied every quality a successful person needed. To others, many of those qualities might not appear to be virtues at all — for instance, insufficient boldness, and insufficient ruthlessness. For someone aspiring to be a supreme overlord, these two shortcomings would ordinarily make the ambition unachievable.

And yet Li Chi was exactly that way — at least on the surface.

Cao Lie placed another stone, then asked: “This Yanzhou — so harsh and exhausted — does the Advisor truly believe something can be built here?”

Mu Fengliu said: “Young Lord, it is not that I believe Yanzhou can succeed — it is that the places left available to the Young Lord are genuinely running out.”

Cao Lie paused, then smiled again: “The Advisor’s manner of speaking is really something — one moment the flattery lands smoothly, the next it lands like a needle.”

Mu Fengliu said: “Since ancient times, a minister who cannot flatter and a minister who can do nothing but flatter are both poor ministers.”

He looked squarely at Cao Lie: “A minister’s duty — if one only contradicts and challenges the lord without ever lifting his spirits, it is too great a strain on the relationship between ruler and subject. So the art of flattery must be properly learned. But if that is the only art one has mastered, one is about fit to be a head eunuch.”

Cao Lie was amused into laughing again, and placed another stone.

After a moment, Cao Lie said: “I can only hope that Li Chi, for the time being, won’t set his sights on Yanzhou.”

Mu Fengliu said: “He will, inevitably. Fortunately, his primary attention is now occupied in the south — he doesn’t yet have the capacity to spare for Yanzhou. Otherwise, given Li Chi’s nature of advancing step by careful step, how could he possibly allow a threat to fester at his own back?”

Cao Lie nodded: “The Advisor is right… Advisor, you read Li Chi so well — can you discern what his greatest weakness is?”

Mu Fengliu smiled: “A man with no shame tends to have fewer weaknesses than most.”

Cao Lie laughed again: “The Advisor has indeed seen through Li Chi entirely.”

He watched Mu Fengliu place a stone, then responded almost immediately.

“Advisor — how much time do we have at most?”

Mu Fengliu replied: “One year.”

Cao Lie frowned slightly. “One year… that does seem rather short.”

Mu Fengliu said: “I say one year — and I may be giving too many. If it were only Li Chi, it would be manageable. But the other great variable in this game is Tang Pidi.”

Cao Lie fell into deep thought and placed a stone, seemingly on reflex.

Tang Pidi — that man was in some ways different from Li Chi. Li Chi’s origins, his history, made sense of who he had become; to Cao Lie’s mind, if Li Chi were any other way, it wouldn’t fit. But Tang Pidi was genuinely inexplicable — because his origins and his history simply did not account for his becoming what he now was: an undefeated war god. He was a man who defied comprehension, and the way he commanded armies defied comprehension too.

“Some people are simply favored by heaven.”

Cao Lie let out a slow breath. And then he thought: if Tang Pidi was the one favored by heaven — was Li Chi not favored even more? Because even someone like Tang Pidi had chosen, willingly, to serve beneath Li Chi. Was that not even harder to explain?

So Cao Lie sighed again: “The people on that side — all beyond reason. Not one of them can be predicted by common logic.”

Mu Fengliu said: “The Young Lord has been watching Li Chi all along. The first person to determine that Li Chi would one day rise to greatness was the Young Lord himself — so the Young Lord truly understands, in his heart, why Li Chi could surge forth so unexpectedly in a game of pieces that was not made for him. The most essential reason is: he does not play by the rules of the board.”

Cao Lie seemed to arrive at a realization and nodded: “He is writing his own rules.”

Mu Fengliu said: “Farmers say Li Chi is good — he distributes land, distributes grain, reduces taxes. Merchants also say he is good… The only ones who say otherwise are the old aristocracy. But when farmers and merchants have lost their reverence for the nobility, the nobility ceases to be something anyone must necessarily heed…”

Cao Lie said: “A supply of both soldiers and wealth, already in place.”

Mu Fengliu gave a soft sound of assent. “So neither Mei Wujiu nor Lü Wuman could ever be a match for Li Chi. Yanzhou is also one of the few places still available to the Young Lord — this time, there truly can be no mistakes.”

He looked at Cao Lie, and seemed to hesitate for a moment before finally saying it: “There is a slight problem with the Young Lord’s current frame of mind.”

Cao Lie looked at him: “What does the Advisor mean?”

Mu Fengliu said: “Has the Young Lord not noticed — you are spending more and more of your thoughts on Li Chi, to the point where you have grown increasingly inclined to model yourself after him…”

He paused briefly, then gently shook his head: “I am fully confident that Li Chi will ultimately fail to achieve the supreme conquest. Those he relies upon — the farmers and the merchants — are people of the lower orders. Using the lower orders to contend with the upper orders may win a corner of the realm; it cannot win the whole of it.”

He looked at Cao Lie and said: “So the Young Lord should understand — in every conceivable respect, the Young Lord surpasses Li Chi. Why measure yourself against him in every little thing?”

Cao Lie fell silent. After a long while he nodded: “The Advisor’s counsel is well taken. I will be more mindful going forward.”

He placed a stone.

Mu Fengliu frowned slightly, as if something had only just caught his attention: “Has the Young Lord been placing stones while we were talking — more than a few extra moves?”

Cao Lie burst out laughing: “So I’ve been found out after all — the Advisor caught it. You just said it’s no good to follow Li Chi’s example in everything — but has the Advisor not noticed? That is precisely what Li Chi loves to do. Moving pieces on the sly.”

Mu Fengliu froze. He carefully turned over what Cao Lie had just said in his mind.

Cao Lie smiled: “Within the same game, while others follow the rules — your move, my move — Li Chi moves when no one is looking. He makes sure no one notices he’s placing more pieces than they are. Others take one step; he has already, imperceptibly, taken several. You just said so yourself — Li Chi doesn’t play by the rules. And yet you still let your guard down… You can call it cunning, you can call it shameless, you can call it cheating — but it is genuinely effective…”

He pointed at the board: “When the Advisor is focused on a single matter, no one can match you. But what Li Chi can do is run several lines simultaneously — all at once. In that, no one can match him either. Advisor… do you still believe Li Chi is not the greatest adversary?”

Cao Lie rose and walked to the doorway, looking again at that tree which appeared to have died.

“We probably don’t have a full year.”

He murmured it to himself.

Then he turned to look at Mu Fengliu and said: “The Advisor claims Li Chi only uses farmers and merchants — that is where you are wrong. Look at what he did in Yuzhou: on the surface, by dealing with the Cao family, he made most of the established figures in Yuzhou unable to serve him. But was taking down the Cao family truly a net loss? Not at all… He knocked out the biggest one, then elevated the smaller ones…”

He paused to steady his breath, then continued: “Others thought he picked up sesame seeds and dropped the watermelon — and laughed at his shortsightedness. But they failed to notice: he had already seized the watermelon. He simply didn’t let go of the sesame seeds either.”

A moment later, Cao Lie said, with some weight in his voice: “Within half a year — Yanzhou must be secured.”

—