Everyone has a moment in their life that defines everything after it. Seize it, and the world you live in may look entirely different.

Yes — this vast and brilliant world has different layers, different ranks and classes.

This was a truth Fang Biehen’s shifu had once taught him. He had been very young then, and hadn’t understood.

By the time he understood, it was because he had already learned to regret.

Back in the village, he’d always felt he couldn’t hold his head up — because his family was genuinely poor. His shifu was the village butcher. How many times a year Fang Biehen’s family got to eat meat depended entirely on how generous the butcher felt.

The butcher once said to him: *Why should I feel sorry for your family? Just because mine does a little better, I should hand over meat I could sell?*

The butcher never showed charity. The one who showed charity was the butcher’s daughter — she was called Ding Weilu.

No one could quite explain how a man as rough as the butcher had come up with a name like that. It wasn’t particularly elegant or beautiful, yet it didn’t feel like the kind of name a butcher should be able to think of.

In the end, it was the butcher himself who drove Fang Biehen out, because he had noticed the way his daughter looked at his apprentice.

*”You are not worthy of her.”*

Those were the butcher’s exact words.

Fang Biehen never felt he should resent the butcher for it. The man was a father — a father who loved his daughter — and no such father should hand his daughter’s fate to a penniless boy with no prospects.

The butcher said: *If you have any pride at all, stop hanging around here picking at scraps. Go out and make something of yourself. I’ll wait three years — no more.*

When Fang Biehen asked when he should come back, the butcher said: *When you feel you’ve become someone respectable.*

And so Fang Biehen went out into the jianghu. He was a stubborn man — he wouldn’t earn dirty money, wouldn’t do things that weighed on his conscience — and so respectability never came. Even after he’d made something of a name for himself in the jianghu, he was still a man who didn’t know where his next meal was coming from.

Then one day, he met Jiang Wei and Mo Lili — two people who had walked out of the mountains of Shu together. They had grown up as childhood friends, and that bond made Fang Biehen deeply envious.

Later, when Jiang Wei learned of Fang Biehen’s circumstances, he asked: *What kind of respectability do you want?*

Fang Biehen asked: *What kind should it be?*

Jiang Wei said: *Without fine robes on your back, how can there be any respectability?*

He added: *With your abilities, you could kill men and pillage goods, gather a mountain stronghold, and make yourself feared by all. If you showed up back home with followers at your back, who would dare stop you from taking the woman you love? The butcher couldn’t do a thing.*

Fang Biehen shook his head. If that sort of respectability was all he wanted, he wouldn’t have waited until now.

Jiang Wei said: *Then let’s stake everything. We join the army.*

And so the three of them did. They started as civilian militia in a county town, and after risking their lives to wipe out a band of mountain bandits, their deeds were reported up to the prefecture. The garrison command at the time was recruiting talent, and the names of all three men appeared in the files placed before Jiedushi Pei Qi.

Three men, in a rainstorm, had stormed a mountain bandit camp, rescued seven kidnapped women, and killed over forty bandits.

Their good fortune lay in the fact that this happened in Shu Prefecture — not anywhere else. Because Pei Qi was secretly plotting against the court, he actually ran his own territory with exceptional fairness, and kept his subordinates far more disciplined than commanders elsewhere. Just as an example: had this happened in Jing Prefecture, in the shadow of the Son of Heaven himself, none of the credit would have found its way to the three of them.

Whether that counts as fortune or misfortune — happening in Shu — is hard to say.

After Pei Qi brought all three into his garrison command, the first training they received was exactly that: routing the bandits entrenched in the mountains. Shu was a land of endless ranges, and bandits ran rampant through them. Pei Qi’s method of training his men was simple — throw them into that brutal environment and make them survive and win.

And so the men who came out of that garrison command were every one of them formidable, their cunning and their martial skill both beyond the ordinary.

Over three years of bloodshed, the three helped each other. He had taken a blade for the others; the others had taken blades for him. Jiang Wei was the brain of the three — much of their ability to rise above the rest in that brutal environment was owed to his mind.

Gradually, Jiang Wei’s talents drew Pei Qi’s attention. And it was around this time that Fang Biehen began to notice that Jiang Wei seemed to have changed. Mo Lili was no longer the free and easy Mo Lili he had known — he had slowly become Jiang Wei’s puppet on a string.

Fang Biehen didn’t know whether it was he himself who had gone wrong or Jiang Wei. But there was no denying it: his own stubbornness had caused Jiang Wei to grow distant from him. Put another way — Fang Biehen had simply stopped being obedient enough.

By the time Fang Biehen was promoted to Banner Officer and returned home with his troops to propose, the girl he loved — the girl who loved him — had already been given in marriage by the butcher to the son of a private school teacher.

When Fang Biehen arrived, she had been married for less than a month.

He didn’t blame the butcher. He had come back a month too late. The butcher had kept to the three-year agreement.

That night, in the butcher’s home, Fang Biehen drank a great deal with the man and asked him once more: *What should I do?*

The butcher told him once more: *Respectability.*

So Fang Biehen kowtowed to the butcher — in gratitude, because without the skills the butcher had taught him, he would never have become a Banner Officer. Without the butcher’s care, his mother and father could not have lived in peace while he was away.

Fang Biehen left. He did not go to disturb her. He thought — perhaps this is what the butcher meant by respectability.

But not long after he left, a band of mountain bandits raided the village. The butcher fought them alone to the last, killing over thirty of them before dying under a storm of arrows. His defense gave most of the villagers time to flee — but by the time Fang Biehen received word and rushed back, he couldn’t find any trace of his parents.

Later, Shu Prefecture’s army wiped out that large band of bandits, killing over a thousand. But Fang Biehen still found no trace of his parents. Someone told him that the villagers who escaped that day had not made it far before they were run down. Not one survived — all taken by the bandits and killed somewhere, their bodies thrown into some stretch of forest. In a place like Shu, how would you ever find them?

The butcher had once told Fang Biehen: *When I was young, I had my chance too. If I’d seized it, I’d be a general by now, wearing helmet and armor.*

Now, in Da Xing City, Fang Biehen sat in his study and looked at the set of general’s armor hanging on the rack. He thought of the butcher’s words, and it all felt like something from a previous life.

The Wolf Ape Camp’s general was a young man named Gao Zhen. After the losses at Luo Jing, Gao Zhen seemed to change overnight — the brash and arrogant youth he had once been fell silent. Gao Zhen didn’t like Fang Biehen, perhaps simply because Fang Biehen had come from Shu.

Fang Biehen didn’t mind. He had never been the sort of man who lived his life trying to please others.

Then one night, he saw Gao Zhen sitting alone in the training ground drinking, so he walked over.

Gao Zhen asked: *Why aren’t you sleeping?* Fang Biehen said he’d been thinking of the past and couldn’t sleep. Gao Zhen gave a bitter laugh and said: *So you’re someone who’s lost something too.*

Fang Biehen didn’t ask what Gao Zhen had lost. He understood well enough — every time you revisit it, the grief comes back just as sharp.

Two men who didn’t much like each other drank a great deal and said very little.

The next morning, when Gao Zhen assembled the men for training and found Fang Biehen already the first to arrive — as always — his view of the man shifted somewhat.

Fang Biehen was also a man of few words. Once he returned to his room, if there was no military business, he did not leave.

Gao Zhen seemed to grow curious about him, and eventually knocked on Fang Biehen’s door with a jug of wine.

*”I don’t have… anything here.”*

Fang Biehen was a little embarrassed — his quarters truly had nothing in them.

*”A man who drinks for the food isn’t really drinking.”*

Gao Zhen sat down and poured Fang Biehen a cup. *”You’re my deputy general. I need to understand you — at the very least, I need to know you won’t sell us out when we march into Shu.”*

Fang Biehen nodded. *”Fair enough.”*

Gao Zhen laughed. *”Why don’t you even try to defend yourself?”*

Fang Biehen said: *”Because there’s nothing to defend.”*

Gao Zhen asked: *”What did you lose?”*

Fang Biehen startled slightly. He lifted his cup and drank — a reflex, nothing more.

*”Everything.”*

That was Fang Biehen’s answer.

Gao Zhen asked: *”Is there any chance of getting it back?”*

Fang Biehen shook his head. *”No.”*

Gao Zhen said quietly: *”Neither do I.”*

Fang Biehen asked: *”What did you lose?”*

Gao Zhen answered: *”Everything.”*

In Gao Zhen’s heart, Luo Jing had been everything — because everything he had came from Luo Jing. If he hadn’t pushed forward recklessly at the battle of Cang Man Mountain, Luo Jing and Prince Wu would not have perished together. The Grand General had already calculated everything perfectly — had they followed the plan, Prince Wu would have been completely trapped.

*”The Grand General once said something to me.”*

Gao Zhen looked at Fang Biehen. *”A man who has lost everything cannot reclaim it. But if that man is wearing the uniform of the Ning Army, he can stop others from losing everything.”*

He asked: *”Do you still have anyone you care about in Shu?”*

Fang Biehen answered: *”Yes. I don’t know if they’re alive.”*

Gao Zhen said: *”Once we reach Shu, the men wearing these uniforms will make sure the people of Shu don’t have to lose anything more.”*

He raised his cup and drained it. *”That is what I’m living for now.”*

Fang Biehen sat with Gao Zhen until the wine was finished. This young man before him was not yet twenty, yet seemed to have lived through more than most men see in three lifetimes.

*”Let me help you find them.”*

Gao Zhen poured another cup. *”My lord says you’re a man who can be trusted. If my lord says it, I believe it — but I think trust has to go both ways.”*

He looked at Fang Biechen. *”I’ll help you find the people you care most about. You help me win the battles we need to win — and help keep our Wolf Ape brothers from dying.”*

He lifted the cup with both hands and held it out to Fang Biehen. *”I can make Wolf Ape kill more enemies. But you — you’re the one who can make Wolf Ape lose fewer men.”*

Fang Biehen took the cup and drained it. *”Done!”*

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