Mo Lili had anticipated that Li Chi would be furious. He had not anticipated that Li Chi would break Yang Jing’s legs too.

From every piece of intelligence he had gathered over the years, he had drawn a conclusion: Li Chi was a man who didn’t fit the image of a ruler.

Impulsive. Valuing loyalty over strategy. He weighed the people around him more heavily than he weighed interests — that alone disqualified him from being a true sovereign.

He had also concluded that Li Chi lacked the ruthlessness and cold-blooded means of a true hegemon. Capable enough to hold a domain, but not the sort to come out on top in the end.

And yet Li Chi’s rise had far exceeded his calculations, and left him doubting his own judgment.

But when he weighed everything carefully, his analysis couldn’t be entirely wrong. A true hegemon does not have this many weaknesses. A man who cannot put himself and his interests above all else — how can he call himself a hegemon?

That was the very reason he had devised this hostage-exchange plan. Because he was certain that as long as he held someone Li Chi cared about, it would work.

Had the same plan been aimed at Yang Xuanji, or Han Feibao — it would have failed.

Threaten Yang Xuanji with a woman? He’d probably kill the woman himself in front of you, and tell you that you were being naïve.

Use it against Han Feibao? Han Feibao wouldn’t have let Yang Jing live this long in the first place. Whatever you tried to threaten him with — Yang Jing, under Han Feibao’s hands, would have been nothing but rotting meat by now.

Out on the street, lying with broken legs, Mo Lili was still running through all of this in his head.

What surprised him even more was that Li Chi had simply thrown him back out. Shouldn’t he have kept him, released a few unimportant lackeys as messengers? Every move Li Chi made seemed to fall outside his calculations — and that gave Mo Lili a deep sense of defeat.

His legs were broken, and yet the plan had clearly succeeded. So why this feeling of failure?

Not long after he was thrown out, his own men came to carry him away. There was no longer any point in worrying about exposure — the King of Ning had put him out himself.

Flag Officer Zhou Xiaoxin helped Mo Lili into a carriage and stared at his broken legs, clearly wanting to ask something but not daring.

“It’s fine,” Mo Lili said. “Jin Jinjin’s people didn’t know their own strength — they broke Yu Jiuling’s legs. This is Li Chi’s repayment.”

Zhou Xiaoxin passed him a folded cloth. “Sir — brace yourself.”

He wanted to set the broken bones. Mo Lili looked at the cloth and shook his head. “Yu Jiuling didn’t use one.”

Zhou Xiaoxin carefully felt around until he found the break, then suddenly applied force to align the bones.

In that instant, Mo Lili’s forehead broke out in a layer of sweat. He bit through his own lip to keep from crying out.

He found himself thinking back to what the intelligence files had said about Yu Jiuling: *Yu Jiuling. Greedy, lecherous, timid and cowardly. Rose in the King of Ning’s service through flattery. Exceptionally gifted in lightness techniques; possesses no other notable ability.*

A man whose file described him as *greedy, lecherous, timid and cowardly* — hadn’t made a sound when his broken bones were set. Had managed to eat with full appetite, without so much as a change of expression.

Mo Lili came back to himself. When he looked down, Zhou Xiaoxin had already used a stick as a makeshift splint and tied his leg into place.

“Done, sir.”

Zhou Xiaoxin raised a hand to wipe the sweat from his own forehead. His heart was still pounding from the tension.

“Let’s go back. Don’t worry about being followed by the King of Ning’s people — he put me out himself, so he won’t make a move against us.”

Mo Lili let out a long breath and said nothing more.

Back at the safehouse, Mo Lili turned the hostage-exchange plan over in his mind repeatedly. He traced it against the map, confirmed the time and location, wrote a letter, and handed it to a subordinate to deliver to the Yu family compound.

The subordinate was terrified — especially after seeing Mo Lili’s broken legs — and naturally feared that delivering this letter might earn him a pair of broken legs from the King of Ning as well. But he didn’t dare refuse the order, and went steeling himself for it. Mercifully, he dropped the letter and bolted without waiting for anyone to do anything to him — he ran so fast no one had the chance.

Mo Lili ordered a withdrawal from Daxing City. He knew the King of Ning’s people would follow, but as long as Yu Jiuling had not been returned, they would not strike.

Several carriages moved along the main road, heading southeast. Behind them rode a contingent of Ning cavalry — not pressing close, not falling back. When they moved, the cavalry moved; when they stopped, the cavalry stopped.

Behind that cavalry was another unit: the black cavalry of the Magistrate Bureau. Two battalions, twenty-four hundred riders in total, divided into a vanguard and a rear guard, with several carriages in between.

Li Chi and Gao Xining rode in one carriage together. Behind theirs was a prison wagon — the broken-legged Yang Jing and Yu Wenli sharing the same cage.

Yu Wenli’s nerves had not settled since the whole affair began. He looked at Yang Jing’s bloodless face and wanted to offer some comfort, but couldn’t find a single word.

This time the King of Ning had been truly enraged. Yu Wenli saw no chance that they would survive.

“Are you blaming me?” Yang Jing asked suddenly.

Yu Wenli shook his head. “I wouldn’t dare.”

Yang Jing looked down at his legs — Yu Wenli had done his best to bandage them, but he knew nothing of medicine. Whether the bones had been set properly was anyone’s guess.

The Ning soldiers hadn’t stopped him from trying. Perhaps out of some basic human decency. Or perhaps because they simply didn’t care.

Because every time one of those Ning soldiers looked at him, Yang Jing could feel it — they were looking at a dead man.

“When we arrive,” Yang Jing said, “I’ll do what I can to plead for you. You had no power to change any of this. It has nothing to do with you.”

Yu Wenli looked at Yang Jing and sighed.

“Your Majesty, do you still not understand? After they hurt General Yu — the moment General Yu makes it back to the King of Ning’s side, what follows is simply the King of Ning deciding how to kill us.”

“I’ve thought it over carefully,” Yang Jing said. “Those people must already have a complete plan. It’s not as if we have no chance at all.”

For the first time, Yu Wenli felt something like weariness. He had no desire to argue further.

He leaned back, closed his eyes, but his face remained ashen.

Ahead of the Ning column, Mo Lili jolted awake from a half-sleep. The road was rough, the rest was fitful — he’d barely slept the whole night before, and exhaustion had finally dragged him under. He thought he’d been asleep for a long time, but when he opened his eyes and asked, he’d been out less than half an hour.

His broken legs throbbed in a steady rhythm of pain, though that wasn’t what had kept him from sleeping.

“Sir,” Flag Officer Dian Cang came back from checking on the rear and climbed into the carriage. “The Ning cavalry is still following. At least several thousand, from the look of it.”

Mo Lili acknowledged this.

He looked around them, then reached for the water flask. Dian Cang quickly handed it to him.

Mo Lili drank and said, “Expected. Don’t be afraid. Once we reach the river, I’ll stay on the northern bank alone. The rest of you cross to the southern bank.”

Dian Cang shook his head. “Sir — we’ll all stay with you.”

“You should understand,” Mo Lili said. “Anyone who stays has no chance of surviving.”

Dian Cang fell silent.

“At the river,” Mo Lili continued, “I stay behind, and you cross south. Send Yu Jiuling to the middle of the river by small boat. Then Yang Jing and I will board a separate boat to the midpoint as well.”

“We could negotiate with the King of Ning’s people,” Dian Cang said. “Ask them to send a few men to the southern bank to receive General Yu.”

“Have you forgotten,” Mo Lili said, “the Ning army never negotiates. That the King of Ning agreed to this exchange at all — that already doesn’t count as a negotiation.”

Dian Cang sighed inwardly. The Ning army never negotiates — when had that started? No one could quite remember. But every enemy Li Chi had ever made already knew it.

“One more thing,” Mo Lili said. “Once you’re on the southern bank, have Jin Jinjin take his men and pilot the boat carrying General Yu to the midpoint.”

Dian Cang startled. “Sir, are you truly giving up on Jin Jinjin’s group?”

“There’s no choice,” Mo Lili said. “If we don’t hand those people over, the King of Ning will hunt us to Shuzhou and show no mercy to anyone.”

Dian Cang fell silent again.

After a long pause, he asked, “Sir — have we won?”

Mo Lili answered quietly, “I think so. Probably.”

The column traveled south for nearly a month before reaching its destination: the great crossing where Han Feibao had once come north over the river. A large ferry landing, with a sizable town just to the north of the bank. Less than a year had passed since the fighting had moved away from here, and life was already returning.

War does not leave its deepest wounds in the ruin of daily life. Daily life can be rebuilt. What takes longest to heal — what time can perhaps only ever cover over — is the damage done to people’s hearts.

“No one moves without my order.”

Mo Lili climbed down with a crutch, then walked alone toward the Ning formation.

In a certain sense he was a capable leader. But the decision he had made to sacrifice Jin Jinjin and his men made it impossible to simply admire that quality in him.

He didn’t think he had done wrong. Saving the people who didn’t need to die — that was all he could do.

Li Chi stood at the roadside watching him approach. From the moment Mo Lili had first felt that cold radiating from the King of Ning, in the compound a month ago, to now — drawing near again — it still cut through him, shearing away at his confidence.

He was the Curtain Camp’s Zhongyuan Officer. He had a reputation for decisive, unflinching judgment. He had an breadth of experience that most men never accumulated.

None of it helped him. The first time that cold had entered him, he had never again found a way to resist it.

“Your Highness the King of Ning.”

Mo Lili bowed.

Li Chi said the same three words he had said in the Yu family compound.

“Say it directly.”

Mo Lili laid out the plan. Li Chi heard him through, then answered without the slightest pause — without even appearing to think.

“As you wish.”

Those two words made Mo Lili’s heart clench.

*As you wish* — yet Mo Lili felt no confidence at all.

What those two words meant was: *bring Yu Jiuling back safely, or none of you will survive.*

On the surface, this was the King of Ning yielding a second time, shattering once more the myth of the Ning army that never negotiates.

But the more Li Chi seemed to yield, the harder Mo Lili found it to name the fear that crept through him.

“Thank you for the King of Ning’s grace.”

Mo Lili bowed again, then turned and made his way back — walking with some difficulty, on his double-broken legs. Without his own martial skill to maintain balance, he’d have barely been able to stand.

Back at his own group, Mo Lili looked at Dian Cang and Zhou Xiaoxin. “Go. Follow the plan.”

The two of them looked at each other, expressions complicated.

—