Huanghe City truly had beautiful scenery. Li Chi and Gao Xining spent several days wandering through the city and still felt reluctant to leave.

The local street food was especially enticing. Given enough time, the two of them could have kept eating indefinitely.

The two of them went out without guards — slipping away quietly, making no fuss about it.

Strictly speaking, this was not proper conduct. But for two people of their temperament, where was there room for so many constraints?

Along the river, there were pleasure boats. The fare was very cheap — five copper coins per person for one round trip, from the north bank to the south bank and back.

Gao Xining was in the mood for it and wanted to take a look, so Li Chi spent the grand sum of ten copper coins and the two of them boarded the boat.

He asked whether two people could get a discount, and the boatman said two people were still people, and people were five copper coins each — was that not infuriating?

It was a river boat roughly ten-odd zhang in length — quite large. Though the boat was a bit aged, it had been swept clean and looked very comfortable.

After boarding, the two of them sat down along the side. They stretched their hands out, and could feel the river breeze threading through their fingertips.

The old boatman called out for departure. Two sturdy young men used long poles to push the boat away from the bank. The great vessel swung sideways and the bow turned south.

The boatman looked like someone who had spent years working this stretch of river. His skin was deeply tanned. Though it was only the fourth month and the hot season had not yet arrived, with the river breeze blowing strong, he wore only a short-sleeved collarless jacket, leaving both arms bare, with quite striking lines of muscle.

This boatman looked to be about forty years of age. Whether those two strapping young men were his sons or hired apprentices was unclear.

“The wind is strong on the river. Mind your grip.”

The boatman called out once, then took the helm. The two young men, one on each side, pushed the boat forward with their long poles.

The poles were extraordinarily long. To use them, one had to walk from the stern all the way to the bow.

On a vessel this large, propelled only by those two young men with their poles, the boat moved at a surprisingly steady and unhurried pace.

“If you’re lucky, you might see an ironhead fish.”

The boatman said from the helm: “The largest ironhead fish I’ve ever seen had a head bigger than a millstone. If the boat were any smaller, it could have capsized it.”

Someone asked curiously: “Does it… eat people?”

The boatman smiled and didn’t answer.

Perhaps he thought the question rather childish, or perhaps he simply did not wish to reply.

Because of the boatman’s words, Gao Xining kept turning her head to watch the river, hoping to catch a glimpse of the ironhead fish with a head the size of a millstone.

“Father!”

Just then, the young man on the left shouted: “Here they come again!”

The boatman looked toward the side of the river, and his expression immediately changed — a look that was both furious and helpless.

“Everyone hold on — we need to turn back.”

As he spoke, the young man on the left had already sprinted to the bow and shoved the pole hard, swinging the boat’s prow away.

The vessel turned so sharply that people pitched and stumbled all over the boat.

Many passengers were already cursing. The ones with short tempers stood up swearing viciously, looking as though they might come to blows at any moment.

But Li Chi’s eyes were fixed on the left side of the great vessel. Three small boats were approaching, each carrying roughly seven or eight people, all armed with an assortment of weapons.

“River bandits.”

Li Chi murmured in Gao Xining’s ear: “Don’t look in a moment.”

The burly man with the short temper was already stalking toward the boatman, cursing as he went, as though he might throw a punch at any second.

The boatman said: “Just sit down. I’m trying to save you.”

The man didn’t understand at first. It was only when he followed the boatman’s gaze and spotted those three approaching small boats that he understood.

The river was far too wide, and the large vessel was cumbersome. Though the boatman and his two sons moved with swift and practiced coordination, the small boats caught up all the same.

Several grappling hooks came flying over and latched onto the gunwale. With a thud, a small boat pulled up alongside. The river bandits used hands and feet to scramble up along the grapple lines.

Li Chi and Gao Xining shifted positions, moving Gao Xining to the inner side.

At this moment, Li Chi noticed a man near the stern who looked distinctly out of the ordinary — a scholar in a green robe.

Every other passenger on the boat was already terrified. Some were even weeping from fright. Yet this scholar kept his head bowed over the book in his hands.

The bandit leader looked to be in his thirties. After jumping aboard, he pointed his blade at the boatman: “Old Jiang, am I being too soft on you? Every time you try to run — can you actually get away?”

The boatman looked at the bandit leader and said: “Don’t you fear retribution for this?”

The bandit leader swore at him in the local dialect — whatever he said was impossible to make out.

“Old Jiang, you’d better be sensible. My big brother has already given you more than enough face. Every time we only take eighty percent of your fare and leave you something to live on. Keep running your mouth, and this time we’ll cut you down with the rest.”

One of the bandits finished cursing at Old Jiang, then turned to face the passengers. “Hand over everything valuable you’re carrying. We won’t make it hard for you. Don’t hand it over and we’ll cut you dead and throw you in the river to feed the fish.”

Fish do not eat people — unless a person is cut up and thrown in.

Old Jiang sighed and said to the passengers: “Just do as they say. Save yourselves the suffering.”

“You’re in on it with them!”

A young man stood up. “We’ve boarded a pirate ship.”

“Ha ha ha ha ha!”

The bandit leader laughed loudly. “Old Jiang, actually this works too. From now on let’s just go into business together. When these fat sheep board, you sail straight to my place. I’ll even cut you in on the take.”

Old Jiang simply sat at the helm, looking as though he had grown somewhat numb — or as though he could not be bothered to respond.

The bandits opened up burlap sacks and had the passengers one by one drop in their cash and valuables.

Gao Xining was hardly frightened by a scene like this. Though her talent for martial arts was truly mediocre, at her current level of skill, dealing with a few river bandits was well within her ability.

Besides — why would she need to act personally?

The bandits started from the stern. When they reached the scholar in the green robe, one bandit grinned: “What the hell, have you read yourself stupid? We’re robbing the boat here and you’re still reading. Did your book ever teach you what to do when you meet people like us?”

The scholar in the green robe looked up at the bandit and asked: “What do you want?”

He appeared to have genuinely read himself into a stupor.

The bandit burst out laughing and swung his sword hilt toward the scholar’s head, wanting to give that skull a good knock to see whether it was solid wood.

But the scholar spoke very earnestly: “Don’t resort to violence. Just say what you want.”

“Hand over every coin you’re carrying!”

the bandit shouted.

The scholar in the green robe truly did reach into his sleeve and pull out his coin purse. Then, in a very serious tone, he said: “I cannot give it all to you. I still need to keep enough for lodging — at minimum one night’s stay.”

The bandit snatched the coin purse away: “Stop your bloody babbling.”

The scholar watched his coin purse get taken, and let out a soft sigh.

Li Chi had noticed him earlier, because he could tell this was no ordinary person. Yet the man’s reaction was far beyond what Li Chi had expected.

“Can we reason this out?”

The scholar asked.

That question genuinely irritated the bandit, who raised his hand to strike — but the bandit leader called out: “Wait. Let me reason with him.”

Perhaps because these bandits had never encountered a man who had genuinely read himself witless, they found it amusing.

The bandit leader came over, leaned down, and looked at the scholar with a grin: “You want to reason things out? Let me lay out our logic: we are robbers. You know what robbing means? It means we take your things and they become ours. If we don’t take everything, aren’t we being incompetent?”

He clapped a hand on the scholar’s shoulder: “Think about it — is that not sound reasoning?”

The scholar nodded: “Very sound. But it’s your reasoning.”

The bandit leader laughed heartily: “Then let’s hear yours.”

The scholar raised a hand and pointed at Li Chi: “On this boat, apart from him, I don’t think anyone else knows martial arts. About sixty or seventy percent of the passengers are elderly or children. They have never witnessed killing or bloodshed. If they do, they will be very frightened — perhaps for many years to come, every time they remember it, they will be frightened again.”

The bandit leader asked: “So?”

The scholar said: “So I was going to give you the money, you leave me enough for one night’s lodging, and tomorrow morning I go to your bandit lair and kill all of you. The reason I say tomorrow morning rather than tonight is that my eyesight is not very good and I dislike traveling after dark.”

“Ha ha ha ha ha…”

The bandit leader bent over with laughter. “You know what — that also makes a damn lot of sense.”

Then he held out his hand: “Bring me a blade.”

A subordinate handed him a blade — one of those long chopping knives, the kind that looked like a woodcutter’s tool, though sharpened to a keen edge.

The bandit leader turned the blade around and offered the handle to the scholar: “Come on. Let me see how you kill people.”

The scholar shook his head: “Your blade is not very good. I’m not particularly fond of using it.”

The bandit leader turned the blade back around, gripped the handle, and gave it a few weighted swings: “You think I’m joking with you?”

Then he swung the blade straight at the scholar’s neck.

No warning whatsoever. The ferocity of the bandit was plain to see.

With a dull sound, many passengers already covered their eyes, not daring to look.

The blade was still in the bandit leader’s hand. Yet a head was no longer on his neck. The blade was bloodied.

In other words — the bandit leader had been decapitated by the very blade in his own hand.

Li Chi covered Gao Xining’s eyes, yet the corners of his own mouth curved faintly upward.

Just as he’d thought.

In the scholar’s hand was now a human head. He swept his gaze around and said: “Since you’ve covered your eyes, don’t open them.”

Then he stepped forward.

Within a few breaths, every bandit on the large boat was dead — killed by that chopping blade. The scholar in the green robe now held seven or eight human heads. Seeming to find it troublesome, he set the heads down near where Li Chi was sitting, then asked in a tone both gentle and earnest: “Could you watch these for me?”

Li Chi nodded: “Absolutely.”

Then the scholar leapt off the boat, like a great sheet of bamboo leaf taking flight.

The bandits on the other two small boats had not boarded the large vessel, yet they could not escape either. The seven or eight men on the first small boat — within a few breaths, they were all killed, every one of them decapitated.

What made it even more terrifying was that after the scholar had slaughtered an entire boatload, he came back to the large vessel, set the heads down again, and cast Li Chi a glance of thanks.

The bandits on the other small boat were already fleeing, spinning their boat around and rowing for their lives.

The scholar glanced at the long pole in the young man’s hands, then walked over: “May I borrow this for a moment?”

The young man blanked for a moment, then instinctively nodded: “Y-yes, of course.”

The scholar took the pole, heaved it outward — and leapt after it. The pole landed flat on the river surface and skated forward, and he landed on it, pushed off once, and was on that small boat.

Not long after, he stood on the small boat holding seven or eight human heads, apparently thinking through the problem of how to get back.

—