In the forest.

Master Wu unwrapped the boy’s injuries, looked them over in silence, then drew a handkerchief from his sleeve, rolled it up, and held it out to the boy. “Bite down on this.”

In the boy’s dim and lightless eyes, something shifted — a flicker of feeling. Gratitude.

“No need,” the boy said.

He understood what Master Wu intended: to treat his wounds. His body was covered in lacerations, bleeding freely. But when he had carried his mother’s body earlier, he hadn’t wanted his blood to dirty her face, so he had kept his clothes pressed tightly over the wounds. Now those clothes had dried and bonded to every cut. Peeling the fabric away would be agony that most people couldn’t endure even just thinking about, let alone the treatment itself.

But when he said *no need*, he wasn’t refusing the handkerchief.

He didn’t want to be treated at all.

He had been staring at his mother’s body for some time now. Whatever small spark of life had remained in him was draining away with every passing moment of that vigil.

“Do you know who killed your mother?” Master Wu asked.

“I don’t know,” the boy said. “But you’ve already killed him.”

Master Wu shook his head. “The one I killed is only one of your enemies.”

He looked toward the severed head lying nearby. Dawn had come, and by its light one could see something slightly unusual about the man’s eyes — not the black of a Central Plains person, but a touch of blue.

At the time, Han Feibao had also noticed, but Yuan Zhen had explained it away by saying that certain steppe tribes produced people with blue eyes, and Han Feibao hadn’t pressed the matter.

Master Wu turned the head over. On the severed neck, one could still faintly make out tattoo markings.

“This is a Ghost Moon mark, inked at the base of the neck. It would normally be hidden by the hair, which is why no one had noticed it before.”

Master Wu crouched down before the boy. “He killed your mother, and I killed him. But in our Central Plains, there are countless souls like you who have lost their mothers, their fathers, their brothers and sisters and friends — and every one of their killers was Black Wu.”

He laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “If you choose to live, I will heal you. I will teach you martial arts, military strategy, how to fight, how to kill. I will show you how to make war.”

Master Wu raised his other hand and pointed north. “If men of my generation don’t live to lead our Central Plains warriors into Black Wu territory to repay the debt in blood, then I want it to be men of your generation — who one day, when you’ve grown, plant our Central Plains battle standard in Black Wu land.”

“I want you to carry a Central Plains blade, with Black Wu blood dripping from it, and know that the people you’ve killed — their children and grandchildren will hate you for it.”

He paused, and then continued: “Just as you hated your enemy just now.”

The boy raised his head and looked at Master Wu. A faint light had come back into his eyes.

“Prince Ning once said that we Central Plains people — because we are too kind, too hospitable, too devoted to our codes of righteousness and propriety — have been taken advantage of by outsiders since time immemorial.”

“Prince Ning said that what he intends to accomplish is a day when our men walk through any land, and every warrior who sees the armor on their backs trembles with fear.”

“We Central Plains people have been practicing kindness and righteousness for too long. We’ve endured too long. We’ve repaid hatred with virtue for too long. By the time you’ve grown to be a man, it will be time for those who have wronged us to be ground beneath our feet.”

“What is your name?” Master Wu asked.

“My name is Tie Shuhua,” the boy said.

A boy, with the character *hua* — flower — in his name. At first hearing it might seem soft, almost delicate.

But the iron tree blooms only for those who tend it with unwavering, unbroken devotion through the years.

“Tie Shuhua — my name is Wu Naiyu. I serve under Prince Ning, and I am the Military Commissioner of Qingzhou.”

Master Wu held the boy’s gaze. “If you are willing — you are my disciple from this moment.”

A moment passed. Tie Shuhua struggled upright, and knelt before Master Wu and touched his forehead to the ground several times.

Master Wu did not stop him. He received it calmly.

When Tie Shuhua had finished, Master Wu held out the rolled handkerchief again. “Hold on. Then you’ll be a man.”

Tie Shuhua nodded and bit down on the cloth.

When Master Wu peeled away his clothes, the boy’s face contorted visibly. Yet there was a brilliant, blazing light in his eyes.

He convulsed with pain, involuntary tremors running through his body, but he made no sound at all.

Master Wu cleaned every wound carefully, applied medicine, and bandaged each one.

When he was done, he rose and called out: “Someone bring a set of clothes for him.”

A soldier from the Xian Zhen Battalion handed over his own spare uniform.

The boy reached out both hands to receive the battle robe. Master Wu extended his hand and stopped the boy’s.

“Before you decide to wear this, I have some questions.”

“When you face danger, will you shield your comrades from it? When the people face danger, will you shield them from it? When the time comes that you must bleed, suffer, and perhaps die to protect your home — will you face that death willingly?”

The boy’s mind filled with the images from moments ago: those Ning Army scouts, protecting him and his mother’s body, standing in the path of the bolts with nothing but their own flesh.

In that moment, the blood in the boy’s chest ran hot.

“I will!”

He shouted it with everything in his lungs, and the force of it set his wounds burning with pain.

But it was exactly that pain that kept him clear-headed. That pain made him understand the weight of what it meant to take this uniform into his hands.

“Remember this: Ning Army soldiers live for glory, and fight for glory,” Master Wu said, each word carefully placed.

“Now let me tell you what glory means for a Ning Army warrior — it is the people at our backs. It is the earth beneath our feet. It is the unity of our Central Plains people.”

“I will remember it!”

The boy nodded hard.

From that day, the young Tie Shuhua — barely in his teens — became the most unusual figure in Master Wu’s Xian Zhen Battalion.

He had no martial foundation. He could not read. His body was still slight and thin.

But he was unshakeable.

“Prepare to receive battle.”

Master Wu stood and called out to his soldiers.

Dawn had come. Now that the Yong Province army had been exposed, they would waste no more time. The attack on Dragon Head Pass would begin shortly — not because they wished to advance, but because it was the only way out alive.

So even though the battle hadn’t yet started, everyone already knew how brutal it would be.

“Commander — do we return to Dragon Head Pass?”

Shu Ou, the young general of the Xian Zhen Battalion, asked.

Master Wu said, “We don’t go back. The brothers holding Dragon Head Pass have the strength to hold it themselves. If we stay on the outside, we can inflict far greater losses on the enemy than fighting from within the walls.”

Shu Ou straightened immediately and rendered the military salute. “Military Commissioner! Xian Zhen Battalion General Shu Ou, on behalf of the eight hundred cavalry of the Xian Zhen Battalion, requests permission to go to battle!”

Master Wu nodded. “I’ll send you in at the critical moment.”

At the same time, Han Feibao’s forces were already moving toward Dragon Head Pass.

Han Feibao had barely slept, yet he was unnervingly alert. He couldn’t quite explain it to himself.

The entire flight from the northwest — thousands of li of hard travel — he had felt weary almost every step of the way. Most of the time he rode in a litter or a cart whenever one was available, and only mounted his horse when he had no other choice.

Yet that weariness never fully left him. He had gone the whole night without sleep, expecting to feel even worse — and instead felt a kind of strange, electric alertness.

He was riding his horse — a warhorse that had been with him for years, with the imperious name *Typhoon*, a name that suited the northwest wind: gritty enough to make you spit when you thought of it, as though you could taste the dust.

Yuan Zhen rode at his side, somber and silent.

“Yuan Zhen,” Han Feibao said, turning his head.

Yuan Zhen seemed to surface from somewhere distant, and quickly answered: “My lord — what is it?”

“Have you ever been to the Bohai Kingdom?”

Yuan Zhen shook his head. “Never, but I’ve heard of it.”

“I’ve had a question that’s bothered me for a long time,” Han Feibao said. “I’ve asked the people around me and none of them have been able to answer it. So I’d like to ask you.”

“What is my lord’s question?”

“I’ve heard that the Bohai people have been treated by the Black Wu like livestock for generations. Every few years, the Black Wu forces the Bohai to give up large numbers of young men and young women — the women are enslaved, the men are killed. With hatred that deep, why is it that instead of thinking about revenge, the Bohai people submit to the Black Wu with complete obedience and dare not resist in any way?”

Yuan Zhen was quiet for a moment. “Allow me to give my lord an analogy.”

“Please.”

Yuan Zhen gathered his thoughts and said, “My lord has a neighbor. That neighbor has a child of about thirteen or fourteen. At first the child is a bit unruly, and my lord gives him a severe beating. After the first beating, the child is a little afraid — but he also starts thinking about how to get back at you.”

“But then, from that day on, my lord beats him again every single day, without cause or reason, and each time a little harder. The second day you tear off his ear. The third day you cut off a finger.”

“Every day, a beating. Whether light or heavy doesn’t matter — what matters is that it comes every day. After about two weeks of this, you begin giving him orders. If he doesn’t comply, the beatings continue.”

Han Feibao was quiet for a moment, then nodded. “I understand.”

He looked at Yuan Zhen. “But don’t the Black Wu fear what happens when they grow old and weak someday? The thing they’ve beaten into something barely human — won’t it be the first to bite them?”

Yuan Zhen said, “My lord, that child is not necessarily always going to be the same child. And the Black Wu Empire’s strength is unlikely to age into powerlessness.”

“*Not necessarily always the same child…*” Han Feibao murmured.

He turned abruptly to look at Yuan Zhen. “Could I be that child?”

—