Yu Jiuling lay in bed, turning the same question over and over in his mind. He had been thinking about it since he woke up, worrying about it still.

Little Zhang Zhenren sat beside him, slumped over and fast asleep. He had taken over the watch from Master Ye in the second half of the night, and had only just fallen asleep not long ago.

After waking, Yu Jiuling lay staring at the ceiling, a look of anxiety in his eyes. Though he had slept barely more than an hour, with the sky still dark before dawn, he found he could not fall back to sleep.

First, because the wound hurt. Second, because he was turning over a great matter of life.

A short while later, Little Zhang Zhenren stretched, sat up, rubbed his eyes, and noticed the strange expression on Yu Jiuling’s face.

“What’s wrong? Is the wound hurting?”

Little Zhang Zhenren asked quickly.

Yu Jiuling shook his head: “I’ve been thinking — now that I have an extra hole in both my front and my back, what if when I drink water it starts flowing out both sides?”

Little Zhang Zhenren considered this seriously for a moment and replied: “If you’re that worried about it, you might want to consider Master Ye’s solution.”

Yu Jiuling shot him a withering look.

Little Zhang Zhenren laughed. “Relax — water flows downward. As long as you don’t drink lying down, and don’t drink while standing on your head, it shouldn’t come out the front and back.”

“Water flows downward…”

Yu Jiuling thought about it and suddenly found the structure of the human body genuinely wondrous — wondrous enough to make one’s head spin if you thought too hard.

Surely humans had to exist before anyone could arrive at the principle that water flows downward. So in the age before people understood such principles, the human body had already, by its very nature, been built on that very principle.

What if the place for urinating were on top of the head, and the place for drinking were at the navel, or at the…

Yu Jiuling shook his head. Why was he even thinking about such nonsense?

But… if *that* part were for drinking, and the mouth were for urinating… At that thought Yu Jiuling suddenly started dry-heaving, quite unable to contain it.

Little Zhang Zhenren was completely baffled by Yu Jiuling’s reaction. He had no way of knowing that Yu Jiuling had managed to think his way through all of that in the span of a few moments.

Yu Jiuling gasped for a while, and eventually settled down somewhat.

“What on earth were you thinking about?!”

Little Zhang Zhenren asked curiously: “It looks like you almost died of self-inflicted disgust just now.”

Yu Jiuling looked Little Zhang Zhenren in the eye: “If you had to choose — between your nose and your mouth, one of them must be used for urinating — which would you pick?”

Little Zhang Zhenren’s eyes went wide. “Why?! On what possible grounds?! Is that thing supposed to be put up on a pedestal and worshipped if it’s not used for urinating?! What else is it going to do if not that?!”

Yu Jiuling sighed: “You truly do not know the pleasures of life.”

Little Zhang Zhenren: “You asking me this makes me think that just using it for urinating is already something to be grateful for.”

Yu Jiuling: “I’m just posing a hypothetical.”

Little Zhang Zhenren: “Why are you positing such a thing?!”

Yu Jiuling looked at Little Zhang Zhenren: “Why are you reacting so strongly?”

Little Zhang Zhenren: “Are you hiding an injury you haven’t told anyone about? In some hard-to-discuss location?”

He instinctively looked toward a certain region of Yu Jiuling’s blanket, as if he could see through it to verify whether any damage had been done. Yu Jiuling sighed: “I’m just casually musing…”

Little Zhang Zhenren was now convinced that Yu Jiuling must have suffered damage there. Otherwise, why would he be considering which of his nose or mouth to use for urinating? Only a man in that level of despair would let his mind wander to such places.

“Jiuling…”

Little Zhang Zhenren said in the soothing voice one uses with a child: “Actually… perhaps it’s not as bad as you think. Just because something gets a bit battered doesn’t mean it stops working entirely. At least they wouldn’t have cut it off entirely. And even if they did… you could… start getting used to squatting.”

Yu Jiuling: “Please remove yourself politely from my presence…”

Little Zhang Zhenren: “We’re all to blame — we’ve been calling you ‘Ninth Sister’ all this time.”

Yu Jiuling: “Out with you — I don’t want to see you anymore. ‘Start getting used to squatting’ — what, sooner or later I’d be squatting anyway?”

Little Zhang Zhenren said: “You… have been wronged.”

Yu Jiuling: “Someone come — get this thing out of here.”

—

Tingwei yamen. The study.

Dawn was nearly breaking. The Tingwei forces were still scouring the city. Reports kept arriving — but the great majority held nothing of value.

“Ninth Sister said that when he was seized, he managed to scatter tracking powder on the one who had him.”

Gao Xining looked toward Li Chi: “But it has been raining continuously. The tracking powder will be useless by now. And besides, these people are absolute experts — the Tingwei mastiffs may not be fast enough to catch them.”

Those mastiffs had come about in part because of the last time Li Chi was attacked.

Someone had set an ambush to assassinate Li Chi on the road to Yu Province — it was the time Chang Meiou Wuhen led men to lay in wait on Tea Mountain.

Afterward, the Tingwei forces had cleared out a kennel operation and obtained a number of mastiffs, which they trained until every one of those ferocious beasts could serve the Tingwei reliably.

These mastiffs were extraordinarily powerful — ordinary jianghu fighters would be hard-pressed to deal with them — fast, ferocious, and highly disciplined in their training.

Li Chi nodded, stretched, and looked to Gao Xining: “Go rest. You’ve been up all night.”

Gao Xining said: “So have you.”

Li Chi said: “I’m a man.”

Gao Xining said: “And what of it? In what way are men stronger than us women?”

Li Chi: “That is a question that could get a man killed.”

Gao Xining smiled — but at that moment, senior officer Zao Yunjian came rushing in from outside: “My lord, my lady — something has happened at the Yunyue Inn. One of our junior officers and one company commander have been killed.”

Li Chi rose immediately.

The Yunyue Inn was not close to the Tingwei yamen, but it was not far at all from the Yu Province prefectural yamen — right across and slightly down the main street from the front gate.

“Talk on the way.”

Li Chi said as he walked, glancing back at Gao Xining who had followed: “You stay here.”

No room for argument in his tone.

Gao Xining stopped, nodded: “All right. Be careful.”

Li Chi nodded, and looked toward the Tingwei guard at the door: “Please ask Master Ye to come hold the fort here.”

Li Chi had to consider another possibility: what if the enemy was feinting in one direction and striking in another? The last time, the fourth-ranked fighter in the world had done exactly that. If Li Chi had not seen through it in time, Gao Xining could have come to harm.

Though the Tingwei yamen was heavily guarded, if an absolutely elite fighter infiltrated it, they could move like a ghost without leaving a trace.

The guard at the door immediately acknowledged and ran off to summon Ye Zhangzhu.

—

Not long after. The Yunyue Inn.

After dismounting, Li Chi saw that the Tingwei forces had already sealed off the inn. In the front hall, two bodies lay on the floor.

“When we came here on the sweep, the innkeeper heard we were checking on outside visitors and mentioned that one guest in particular had been very strange — moved in and never left the room at all, just stood at the window all day staring into space.”

Senior officer Yu Hongyi indicated the innkeeper: “He can report directly to you, my lord.”

The Yunyue Inn’s innkeeper immediately stepped forward, bowed, and said: “That man moved in five days ago and has not left his room since. All his food and drink were sent up to him, but the payment was never short.”

“He stood there all day staring out the window. In all those days, the only thing he said on his own to my server was to ask whether the server had heard any reports of jianghu fighters clashing in the city — the kind that would attract the government’s attention.”

Li Chi frowned.

Zao Yunjian said: “I was leading people in the search alongside Yu Hongyi when we spotted the distress signal and brought the men here. Junior officer Zheng Xian and company commander Du Chunyong have already died in combat.”

Yu Hongyi said: “When they went upstairs to investigate, they found the door open. The Tingwei officer stepped forward to question the man. The man didn’t answer — he only looked at the officer’s blade at his side. Junior officer Zheng Xian sensed something wrong and told his men to fall back, positioning himself in front of them — but the man seized his blade and killed him. Company commander Du Chunyong fought a rearguard action to cover the other Tingwei officers’ retreat, and was killed as well…”

When danger came, the senior man went first — this had always been the rule, in the Tingwei forces and throughout the Ning Army.

Zao Yunjian said: “By the time we arrived, the man had already vanished. The Tingwei guards said his movement was extraordinarily fast — one moment he was there and in a flash he was simply gone. There was no keeping up with him.”

“Seized a blade to kill with…”

Li Chi thought. This sounded very much like the Sacred Blade Sect’s Gate Master.

But the one who had dealt with Yu Jiuling and this one didn’t seem to be working together, because something about this didn’t add up. If they were the same group, there would have been no reason to stay in the inn waiting to be swept up by the Tingwei — unless the whole point was to stay deliberately, to kill someone and make a show of it.

“Take the brothers back and prepare the funeral rites.”

Li Chi looked at those two fallen Tingwei officers. A flash of something that had not appeared in his eyes for a long time passed through them — and was gone.

—

Shortly after daybreak. The Songhe Tower.

Cao Lie sat in the center of the main hall on the ground floor of the Songhe Tower. Outside, figures had been arriving one after another — all the heads of the various jianghu and underworld forces in Yuzhou City. Under normal circumstances, not one of them would be awake at this hour.

Most of them slept late and rose close to noon — because so much of what these people dealt in was business that only opened at night.

Cao Lie had put out word for all jianghu forces in Yuzhou City, whether known or hidden, to get themselves to the Songhe Tower as quickly as possible.

“Lord Hou.”

These figures of the jianghu world filed in one by one, each one bowing toward Cao Lie with a deep and respectful obeisance.

In the jianghu world of Yu Province, no matter how powerful a force, they all met Cao Lie this way — with careful, proper respect. To be disrespectful before Cao Lie meant there would be no future opportunity to learn better manners.

Not long before this, Cao Lie had declared the founding of the Junlin Assembly. The name alone made its nature easy to understand.

When Cao Lie announced its founding, he required every sect and faction in the Yu Province jianghu to send representatives to the Junlin Assembly to register — their location, the size of their membership — all of these basic facts had to be truthfully disclosed.

Cao Lie’s particular brand of authority rested on this: what he said, he generally said only once.

“I was born proud, and I have always been proud. So I have few friends, and fewer still that I would call brothers.”

Cao Lie slowly exhaled.

“One brother has just returned with me from a great undertaking — we went into mortal danger side by side, one covering for the other. Yet the moment he came back to Yuzhou City, someone made an attempt on his life. He now lies gravely wounded.”

Cao Lie’s gaze swept over the assembled figures of the jianghu world.

“I know it could not have been any of you who ordered this. If it had been, I would not have invited you here — I would have come to your doors myself.”

Cao Lie said: “Someone wants my brother’s life. You all know what to do.”

“Yes!”

All of them bowed together.

From the day the Junlin Assembly was founded, Cao Lie had ceased to be the young master of the Cao household, had ceased to be the foremost idle young lord of Yuzhou City.

He had once moved in and out of the jianghu freely — in it when he chose, out of it when he chose.

But with the Junlin Assembly, he had put down roots in the jianghu. And with that came a new identity — a name that was already beginning to spread through the jianghu world: Jingzhe Hou. The Marquis Jingzhe.

Cao Lie said: “Let word go out. Say that I have a blade — named Jingzhe, the blade that once cleaved through the Grandmaster’s Sacred Blade. If there is any blade in the jianghu that can match Jingzhe, come and test it against me. Whoever defeats Jingzhe will be rewarded with ten thousand taels of gold.”

He rose: “Say that from this day forward, I will not leave the Songhe Tower. Whoever wishes to come and contest blades with me is welcome at any hour. I will be waiting.”