Yin Xin’an was truly seething with rage. Everything that had happened today felt as if every person in the world was treating him as a fool to be toyed with.

And so he charged out of Maoyang County in a frenzy, and the people fleeing ahead of him ran just as frantically.

The pursuers were confident they could catch up; the fleeing were equally confident they would be caught — it was only a matter of where.

The two lines tore along the main road, each pushing deeper and farther from the city. Dong Dongdong and Qi Qiangqi, hidden in their vantage point, exchanged a look and both sighed.

“It seems this really has nothing to do with the two of us.”

Qi Qiangqi said: “And yet we’re the ones who were ordered to investigate this case.”

He looked at Dong Dongdong: “Could it be… that others came from Jizhou besides Lord Gui Yuanshu?”

Dong Dongdong sighed: “It’s possible that we’ve been out here so long we simply don’t know how things have been arranged back home.”

About half a year or so ago, these two — who had originally been serving with General Tang Pidi on campaign as Tingwei Army Hundredth Officers — had one day been summoned by Tang Pidi, who told them the rear might be growing unstable and asked them to go back and take a look.

The two of them, wanting to leave more support for the general at the front, had set out without a single subordinate between them.

That had been during a particularly tense stretch of the fighting — every additional person left at the front was one more measure of strength.

They had been investigating the case for several months now and had more or less pieced together the full picture, when they had happened upon Gui Yuanshu’s party.

And then, right on the heels of that, they had discovered that this case appeared to involve not just the Intelligence Guard Army, but other parties besides.

After leaving the gully, they had found those silenced pursuers — four or five hundred men, all killed. Clearly the work of a highly trained force. To have eliminated all of the pursuing troops in such a short span of time — that had to be elite work, precision forces among precision forces.

So this case, it seemed, had nothing much to do with the two of them after all.

“It wouldn’t be Jizhou calling up troops to send here, would it.”

Qi Qiangqi said: “But the timing doesn’t add up either. We sent word to the Tingwei Army in Jizhou by military courier only last month. Even if someone was dispatched immediately, in one month they couldn’t even reach the South Peaceful River.”

Dong Dongdong turned over onto his back and lay there staring blankly at the sky.

“What if the two of us just… headed back?”

Qi Qiangqi looked over at Dong Dongdong staring into space and asked: “Back where?”

And then he also flipped over onto his back, looked at the sky, and went blank too.

A large net descended over both men from above, and just like that, two Hundredth Officers were caught in it.

It wasn’t that they hadn’t reacted in time. It was that they didn’t know how to react.

They were rolled up in the net and lifted out from their hiding spot, their warhorses also collected along with them.

Someone came and pressed their heads down so they couldn’t look around. They could only see the ground, silently counting — by their estimate, they walked for roughly a quarter-hour.

The two of them were then carried and tossed into a carriage and left with no further attention, as if capturing them wasn’t really of much consequence.

The carriage traveled for what felt like half a quarter-hour, then stopped. Someone came and released them from the net, set down two flasks of water, and smiled at them, as if this were all terribly funny.

It wasn’t clear how long they waited after that. Neither dared to speak too loudly, because they weren’t certain whether what they had seen was real or not.

If it was real, there was nothing more they needed to say. If it wasn’t, then words would be useless regardless.

Perhaps a full double-hour passed, perhaps two — when people wait, their sense of time always becomes unreliable.

Urgently trying to accomplish something, or desperately waiting for someone — time in those moments and time during a holiday never seem to be the same thing at all.

One might reasonably suspect that time secretly speeds up and slows down when it pleases.

In all that time, not a single person had come to check on them.

They sat in the carriage and didn’t feel they ought to get out, though no one had actually told them they couldn’t.

“Someone’s coming back.”

Dong Dongdong heard the sound of warhorses and the clamor of hooves — from the sound of it, no small number of people were returning.

Not long after, someone finally opened the carriage door: the same person who had snared them earlier, grinning at them cheerfully and beckoning.

And then both men were struck speechless by what they saw.

Before they’d been caught, they had seen the net-thrower — which was the only reason they hadn’t resisted. And yet confronting it all now, face to face, was still enough to make their breath catch.

Unharvested cornfields from the autumn had been left untended, the stalks still standing in dense, dry rows — a good place to conceal oneself without easily being found.

In the cleared space in the middle of the field stood ranks upon ranks of people.

Black cavalry.

In the moment just before they’d been caught, Dong Dongdong had grown weary from lying in his hiding spot and turned over onto his back — and saw, in a tree above him, a man looking down at them with a smile.

In that instant, he saw the man’s black Tingwei brocade robes, and his mind went blank.

The next moment, when Qi Qiangqi also turned over, he saw the same smiling figure in the tree. And so both men had frozen.

Then they’d watched that man throw down a net and, leaping from the branch, say: “We got here first.”

Standing in those cleared rows were ranks of black cavalry in iron masks — perfectly ordered, like a collection of machines for war that felt nothing, the icy air that surrounded them enough to make one’s courage falter.

In the center of the clearing stood a carriage. Beside it sat a reclining chair, and in it reclined a young man whose expression was dark and cold as the bottom of a pool, looking as though he was somewhat tired and resting with his eyes closed.

Dong Dongdong and Qi Qiangqi were brought over. The cold, deep-pool-grim young man slowly opened his eyes.

He only looked at them for a moment, and yet both men felt as though everything they’d held in their hearts had been read clean through.

“Whose people are you?”

The young man asked.

Both men answered simultaneously: “Reporting to the Thousandth Officer, sir — we are subordinates of Hundredth Officer Fang Xidao. Before the war we were seconded to the general’s forces, and it was on the general’s orders that we returned to investigate this case.”

“That explains it.”

The young man gave a relaxed nod and then asked them both: “Do you know who I am?”

Dong Dongdong answered: “We don’t. We recognize the Thousandth Officer’s robes.”

The young man made a sound of acknowledgment: “Not knowing is fine. Prepare rations for these two.”

Then: “Tell me what you’ve found.”

Qi Qiangqi asked: “When you moved to capture us earlier — you already knew we were Tingwei Army?”

The one who’d thrown the net smiled: “We didn’t know. But you both had something concealed in your hair-bindings — other than Tingwei Army people, who else would that be?”

The two men gave a full and detailed account of everything they had investigated over the past months. The young Thousandth Officer then waved his hand: “Go rest.”

Dong Dongdong and Qi Qiangqi stepped away, muttering to each other as they went.

“Who is this Thousandth Officer, anyway?”

“No idea. But get too close and you feel a chill you can’t shake — like falling into an ice pit.”

They were still talking when they saw a group of people, hands bound, being shoved before that Thousandth Officer by several Tingwei soldiers, who kicked their legs behind the knees and forced them to kneel.

Dong Dongdong and Qi Qiangqi exchanged a look, both stepped back several paces — but didn’t walk away, standing where they were to watch.

The Thousandth Officer raised a hand and rubbed his brow, seemingly genuinely fatigued.

The people forced to kneel before him were almost all in official robes, and from the rank insignia, not low-ranking either. Dong Dongdong and Qi Qiangqi recognized one of them as the Dengzhou prefectural governor Yin Xin’an from earlier; the rest were likely his subordinates.

At that moment, from the carriage stepped another person — also in official robes, the same rank as Yin Xin’an.

The instant Yin Xin’an laid eyes on the person stepping down from the carriage, his eyes went wide, as if he were about to lunge forward and swallow the man whole.

“Brother Yin, I hope you’ve been well.”

The one who’d stepped down smiled, and took a seat beside the Thousandth Officer.

Yin Xin’an raged: “Xu Ji! You despicable wretch!”

Xu Ji smiled back: “You lured me here to have me seized, or to use me as leverage to force Fengzhou to open its gates, or to have me trick the gates open, so as to threaten the general into withdrawing — so what right do you have to call me despicable?”

Yin Xin’an’s expression changed sharply. Clearly he had not expected Xu Ji to know all of this so clearly.

Xu Ji smiled pleasantly and said: “I assumed that whatever else you might or might not be, at the least you’d have some trace of gratitude — that you’d hold some memory of what I’d done for you. And yet your only thought was to have me killed… you’ve made it very clear indeed what classmates owe each other.”

Yin Xin’an sneered: “You simply want me out of the way. Everything you’ve just said is fabricated. You’re framing me!”

Xu Ji looked toward the Thousandth Officer: “He seems to think we’re all fools.”

The Thousandth Officer said nothing — he didn’t seem to particularly care for Xu Ji either.

Xu Ji registered a slightly awkward warmth met with indifference, but he was in a good mood and didn’t seem to mind.

Xu Ji said: “Brother Yin, what do you think of the plan? You had the advantage of ground and the advantage of countless hidden troops inside the city — so the best option was to lure you out, and you actually fell for it. Who could have expected it.”

Yin Xin’an said: “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I invited you in good faith to Maoyang County to see the iron ore vein in Floating Smoke Mountain…”

He hadn’t finished speaking when the Thousandth Officer who had been silent throughout stood, turned, and instructed someone behind him: “Be quick about it. I don’t like listening to people prattle.”

“Yes, sir!”

Several Tingwei soldiers came forward carrying a chest that was plainly extraordinarily heavy.

They set the chest before Yin Xin’an and opened it, removing instruments from inside one by one.

The instruments came in a bewildering variety of shapes — strange and varied in form — yet each one bore the same grayish-brown staining. Dried blood.

When these instruments appeared, Dong Dongdong and Qi Qiangqi — watching from their distance — had their eyes go wide at once. They had figured out who this Thousandth Officer was.

And at the sight of these instruments, Yin Xin’an knew too.

“Zhang Tang!”

Yin Xin’an’s voice trembled — and trembled violently.

“You are Zhang Tang!”

Zhang Tang glanced at him with a flat, dispassionate look, then turned and walked away into the distance, as if he’d already lost interest in watching.

“Kill me!”

Yin Xin’an screamed: “Kill me now!”

In Jizhou and Yuzhou both, there was no one who did not know the name of Zhang Tang.

In Jizhou and Yuzhou both, there was no one who did not know that Zhang Tang was a devil.

If there was any difference between how the people of Jizhou and the people of Yuzhou understood Zhang Tang, it was this: the people of Yuzhou had only heard of him.

Moments later, Yin Xin’an’s wails began to ring out — and except for him, not a single other sound.

Zhang Tang walked to the edge of the cornfield and stood there, looking in the direction of Maoyang County.

He had barely walked over when one of his subordinates hurried up behind him, bowing: “My lord — he can be questioned now.”

Zhang Tang made a quiet sound of acknowledgment, then turned and looked over toward Yin Xin’an.

He was silent for a moment, then instructed: “Ask Lord Xu Ji to leave. Tell him he may go to Dengzhou now.”

And having given the order, he added to himself: “I don’t like that man.”

—