Yuzhou City.

It was an ordinary commoner’s home — situated in one of the more out-of-the-way corners of the city, the kind of place where no great family or wealthy household would ever reside.

In the courtyard, Fourth Under Heaven used a hoe to dig a pit and buried the bodies of the household inside. With every swing, blood seeped from his wound.

On the stone steps of the courtyard rested his guqin — its body now split open by a single slash.

Once the bodies were buried, Fourth Under Heaven caught his breath and went back to sit on the steps. He turned his head and looked at his instrument — that qin that was as much a part of him as his own life.

After a long silence, Fourth Under Heaven let out a quiet sigh, then pulled aside his clothing. The wound was still bleeding, the medicinal powder he had applied already soaked through and washed away.

He sat quietly for a moment, then rose and built a fire in the courtyard. He rummaged through the kitchen of the household and surveyed what little ironware the family possessed, selecting from among the modest collection. The cleaver seemed to be the most serviceable thing.

He returned to the courtyard, heated the cleaver red-hot in the flames, then drew a deep breath and pressed the blade against his wound. A wisp of greenish smoke rose, carrying with it the acrid smell of seared flesh.

A moment later the cleaver flew out of his grip and lodged itself with a thunk into one of the trees in the courtyard.

Fourth Under Heaven’s forehead was drenched in sweat, his face white as paper. He sat there swaying, barely holding himself upright.

He closed his eyes.

That slash.

How could he have anticipated it — encountering a group of travelers on the road at random, and finding among them a master of the blade like that, wielding a knife like that.

His guqin was close to a divine artifact. It had originally belonged to a prince during the Three-Way Division of the realm more than a thousand years ago.

Later, war came. The prince’s household was consumed by fire — the blaze reducing the entire estate to bare ash. Yet when searchers dug through the ruins afterward, they found the guqin still intact, with only the tail end scorched.

In time, the instrument passed into the hands of the founding emperor of the Great Zhou dynasty, who named it “Charred Tail.”

When the Great Zhou fell, the guqin drifted westward to the frontier lands.

Fourth Under Heaven had acquired it there, in those western regions — entirely on his own, with no master or lineage of any kind, he had divined the instrument’s secret through sheer personal insight.

This thing was no musical instrument. It was the rarest and most lethal killing weapon in the world.

He had named himself Fourth Under Heaven because, after discovering the guqin’s secret, he realized he was the fourth true master of this divine artifact in its entire history.

Across a thousand years, only four people, in total, had ever understood how to kill with this instrument.

But here, north of Yuzhou City, his qin had been cleaved open by a blade. It had not been destroyed outright, but repairing it would be no simple matter.

He sat with his eyes closed, turning that slash over and over in his memory.

If he encountered that person again — if he faced that blade again — how would he go about killing the man and claiming the weapon?

That blade was also of divine artifact caliber.

He had spotted a remarkably beautiful woman on the road. For someone like Fourth Under Heaven, when a woman caught his eye, would he trouble himself with whether she had companions?

Then the young man in the scholar’s long robe had stepped in front of him, as though intending to teach him a lesson.

In that moment, Fourth Under Heaven had been pleased.

The girl had stirred his desire — a primal desire. And the young man had stirred a different desire altogether: the desire to kill.

He simply hadn’t expected the encounter to be so thoroughly unpleasant.

Fourth Under Heaven understood that news of this sudden violent clash would reach Yuzhou City quickly.

Had the young man’s blade not been so terrifyingly capable, the woman would already have been seized by Fourth Under Heaven in full view of everyone, and would likely already be a corpse by now.

So Fourth Under Heaven made a judgment: he could not flee in any direction — the Tingwei Army might give chase, and he was injured.

Enter Yuzhou City. This was the last thing the Tingwei Army would expect.

He left the main road, circled around the outer edge of Yuzhou City, waited at the eastern gate for a merchant convoy to arrive, concealed himself among them, and slipped inside.

For him, this was no great difficulty.

He moved with the convoy through the streets and alleys, slipped away through the rear courtyard of the trading house, then chose a household entirely at random. He had no concern for who lived there, what their names were, or how many people called it home. He killed them as a matter of course, and moved in.

His judgment had been correct. News reached Yuzhou City quickly.

Li Chi, who had not long since ridden out of the city at the head of the Tingwei Army’s Black Cavalry, was caught up by his subordinates and informed that a suspicious individual had been spotted north of Yuzhou City — possibly the very Fourth Under Heaven the Tingwei Army was looking for.

The column that had exited through the southern gate turned around, cut through the city, and went out the northern gate to investigate. At precisely this moment, Fourth Under Heaven, concealed within the merchant convoy, slipped into Yuzhou City.

About twenty li outside the northern gate, the Tingwei Army’s Black Cavalry column came to a stop.

Li Chi crouched down to examine the bodies on the ground. Four people had died here — four young men, each with a long wooden case strapped to their back. The cases were still on their backs, which meant they hadn’t even had time to unsling them before being killed.

Each had died in a single strike. Each bore a small hole at the center of their brow — like the wound made by an arrowhead, yet considerably smaller than any arrow’s entry wound.

Through-and-through.

Li Chi pondered for a moment, then rose and stepped back approximately seven or eight paces. He closed his eyes and began reconstructing the scene of the fight in his mind.

Master Ye had already sent word back, so Li Chi naturally knew what Fourth Under Heaven’s weapon was.

In his mind’s eye, he saw Fourth Under Heaven plucking the strings — four strings launching outward, each one tipped with a tiny iron spike, those small fittings that fixed the strings to the instrument’s body, now transformed into instruments of death.

Four strings, four kills. Each of the four victims had barely managed to brush their fingers against the cases on their backs — not enough to draw them free.

This was why all four bodies had fallen in nearly the same posture.

Then someone had struck. The first cut severed all four strings, and by their momentum, the strings flew onward.

The second cut fell against the qin itself.

Fourth Under Heaven had been careless. He clearly had not imagined any blade could breach his instrument — which was precisely why he had taken that wound.

Master Ye’s iron fan had been unable to break that qin, which gave some measure of how extraordinary this blade must be.

And it was precisely because the qin was sturdy enough that Fourth Under Heaven had not been cut in two — the carelessness had saved him from the full consequence of his own distraction.

But the person wielding the blade had also been wounded, and almost certainly more seriously than Fourth Under Heaven.

Fourth Under Heaven had already fought Master Ye just before this and taken a kick from him. Li Chi knew full well how devastating a single blow from Master Ye could be — which meant Fourth Under Heaven had come into this second fight already carrying an injury, his capabilities already diminished, and yet had still managed this terrifying degree of lethality.

Li Chi opened his eyes, raised his hand, and pointed in several directions. The Tingwei Army dispersed accordingly, combing those areas carefully to recover the severed qin strings that had fallen to the ground.

Li Chi had the strings laid out on a roadside stone, then drew his black blade and brought it down in a single cut.

A faint, clean sound — and with that blindingly swift stroke, the blade severed the strings with perfect precision, leaving the stone beneath completely untouched.

Li Chi leaned down and checked. Four strings — three severed. One had not been cut through, because the estimation of the material’s resistance had been slightly off, the force fractionally insufficient.

But this was enough to confirm it: the blade that had severed those strings… was exceptional beyond measure.

At the very least, it was the equal of Li Chi’s own black blade — if not superior.

Li Chi sheathed his black blade, thought carefully for a moment, then turned and pointed back toward Yuzhou City. “Back inside. We’re looking for someone.”

Gao Xining asked, “You think both groups will have slipped into Yuzhou City to recuperate from their wounds?”

Li Chi said, “Who first came up with that line… ‘the most dangerous place is the safest place’… what utter nonsense that is. And yet it’s the first thing anyone thinks of.”

He glanced back at the tea stall proprietor. Even after all this time had passed, that guileless man had still not fully come back to himself.

Before his very eyes, four people had died. For a commoner to witness a scene like that — how could he simply accept it and move on?

Just as the column turned back toward Yuzhou City, behind them, a troop of cavalry came riding in hard from the distance, also heading for Yuzhou.

They were Cao Lie’s men.

He had been operating in Dengzhou and Fengzhou, using a patient watch-and-wait approach, and had captured several hundred people in one sweep — all skilled operatives sent by Yang Xuanji.

Under interrogation, they had disclosed that a major figure from Yang Xuanji’s inner circle had personally led a team into the Yuzhou area: a man named Zhuge Jingzhan, Yang Xuanji’s foremost strategist.

If this man could be caught, not only could every enemy operative currently infiltrating Yuzhou be swept up, but a vast trove of intelligence concerning Yang Xuanji’s forces would fall into their hands as well.

Those captured by Cao Lie had stated that Zhuge Jingzhan held an extraordinarily high position within the Mandate of Heaven Army, inseparable from Yang Xuanji himself in nearly every significant matter.

So Cao Lie immediately raced back to Yuzhou. This was the big fish he was after.

Several hundred small fish netted across Dengzhou and Fengzhou could hardly satisfy his appetite.

He had barely entered the city when he caught up with Li Chi’s Tingwei Army Black Cavalry column, meeting them just outside the gates of the Plum Garden.

“Leave it to me.”

Cao Lie relayed his intelligence to Li Chi, then listened as Li Chi shared his side of things. Now he wanted to take the matter into his own hands.

“You said it yourself — matters of the martial world go through me.”

Li Chi looked at him and shook his head. “This Fourth Under Heaven is formidable. And strange.”

Cao Lie smiled. “Have you ever seen me fight?”

Li Chi shook his head again. “No.”

Cao Lie said, “That’s because under ordinary circumstances, there’s no need for me to fight personally… Don’t forget — this is Yuzhou City.”

Li Chi smiled.

He had nearly forgotten. Cao Lie was Yuzhou City’s very own homegrown demon king.

Cao Lie glanced at the main gate of the Plum Garden. Hanging above the entrance was the enormous plaque bearing the name Tingwei Residence.

Cao Lie pursed his lips. Seeing that expression of displeasure, Li Chi sighed and said, “We can consider it a rental from you.”

Cao Lie smiled. “What’s the rental arrangement?”

Li Chi said, “Deducted from your salary.”

Cao Lie froze. He thought about it. What in the world did those two things have to do with each other?

The Plum Garden was being rented from him, and then rental payments were to be deducted from his own salary and given back to him as the landlord — meaning, by this logic, Cao Lie was renting his own property from himself?

And given what his salary actually was, he might not even be able to afford his own rent?

Cao Lie sighed. “The rent… can be waived.”

Li Chi said, “Think nothing of it.”

Cao Lie gave him a sideways look. “You are the Ning King. Not every matter calls for you to step in personally. A Ning King of your stature should have some decorum.”

Li Chi smiled slightly. “It is nothing more than doing a few things for my humble wife.”

Cao Lie: “Good lord…”

Li Chi said, “Off you go. The matter is yours. My estimate is that both groups are somewhere in Yuzhou City — I’ll see how you manage to root them out.”

Cao Lie smiled. “Trust me — in Yuzhou City, if I want to find someone, it’s truly not that difficult.”

—

One hour later, at the Pine Crane Tower.

Cao Lie surveyed the several hundred people spread across the tower’s upper and lower floors — representatives of Yuzhou City’s martial world factions, both the open and the hidden.

To convene them all, Cao Lie had needed only a word.

To flush out the ones he was looking for, he would likely need only a word as well.

His gaze swept once around the room. Then he spoke slowly: “Find them — and I’ll host a banquet here at Pine Crane Tower. Fail to find them — and you’ll still be at Pine Crane Tower, wondering how to face me.”

“Yes!”

The response came from hundreds of voices at once. Shortly after, they dispersed in every direction.

Cao Lie rested a hand on the railing and murmured to himself: “Fourth Under Heaven, is it…”