Along the riverbank, row upon row of willow branches were just beginning to put out their first shoots of green. The waves rolled with the tide, washing again and again over the water-worn stones at the edge of the ferry crossing.

In the hazy twilight of this spring evening, the abundant moisture in the air was like indigo poured deep into the river, lending everything a cool and solitary stillness.

Since the Shuang’an Port had been built, the boatmen had gone there to earn their keep, and this wild ferry crossing at the river mouth had gradually grown sparse in boats and people — nearly abandoned. Greedy wild grass had quickly overrun what had once been a busy carriage road.

A mid-sized vessel lay anchored beside the ferry crossing, rocking gently with the water.

On the carriage road, a horse hung its head and plodded slowly, pulling a flatbed cart out of the city. On each cart, men of varying ages sat crowded together, grass hats pulled low over their heads, their faces impossible to make out clearly.

On the lead cart, the driver held a straw whip in hand but did not raise it to urge the horse on — only lifting it from time to time to read the direction of the east wind blowing in. It was not that he feared the straw whip would startle the horse. It was that he feared it would startle his own reluctance to leave.

All their belongings had already been loaded onto the vessel. A man gripped the mooring rope and said: “Big Brother, the wind has come. Time to board.”

Wang Chu looked back one last time — and in that single glance, he caught the sight of a figure in a pale green robe on the small hillock above, standing in the farewell pavilion, the color of the robe blending with the grass.

It was also at this moment that Bao Bantou came hurrying breathlessly to the shore at last, calling from a distance: “Mr. Wang, the Master invites you to the pavilion for a conversation.”

He reached Wang Chu’s side, caught his breath, and added: “The Master is in the pavilion — he has been waiting for you there for several days.”

The moment Wang Chu glimpsed Pei Shaohuai’s figure in the pavilion above, it was as though a straw whip had fallen across him — his heart gave a startled lurch. When he heard Bao Bantou’s words after that, he tilted his head back, pressed his lips together, and his mustache trembled faintly.

The east wind had wetted the river mouth — and wetted his eyes as well. So the Prefect had truly guessed the identity of “Bao Yuzhen.” The Prefect could plainly have sent someone to track down his whereabouts, and yet had chosen instead to come himself and sit quietly in this riverside stone pavilion, keeping watch through several evenings.

Wang Chu walked quickly up to the stone pavilion.

The stove fire burned strong, and the fragrance of wine drifted out — thick for a moment, then dispersing.

“That Wang Chu — a mere doddering old eccentric — how could he be worth this from you, official?”

The more he said it was not worth it, the more it showed how deeply Wang Chu valued this farewell from Pei Shaohuai. Partings in this world often meant a parting for a lifetime, with no word ever again.

In those days beneath the wide window, before the study desk, reading through volumes of Tang and Song poetry — after all that reading of farewell poems, if when the moment of his own departure came there was not a single line, not even half a line, offered in farewell, it would mean that he himself no longer had any standing as a man of letters.

Not to read — that did not mean setting the book down from one’s hand. It meant there was no longer a friend nearby who read.

“Let us not speak of the past. Only of now — the warming stove, a few light cups to mark the parting.” Pei Shaohuai said. “Brother Wang, please sit.”

Pei Shaohuai poured warm wine, steam rising from the cup. Wang Chu, however, poured himself a cup of cold wine and drained it in one draught. With tears in his eyes he said: “To receive a cup of parting wine from you, official — it is all worth it. But I dare not drink this warming wine you have poured. I am afraid that if I do, I will not have the will to board the ship.”

From time immemorial, the east wind has urged the boats away, and willow branches have sent travelers on their journey. Pei Shaohuai looked toward the vessel moored at the ferry crossing and asked: “Brother Wang, what are your plans?”

“The brothers who came back alive — those with homes to return to have already gone back to live ordinary lives.” Wang Chu answered.

The remaining few dozen men had nowhere to go — either they had been solitary and without family before they joined Wang Chu, or something had changed at home and the city no longer held any place for them.

“The rest of them — they may look big and sturdy, but in truth they are still like rough young lads. They followed me, accustomed to living off what they plundered. I worry that once they go ashore, with no one to keep them in line, they might fall back into the old ways after a setback and go back to making trouble for the common people… They are not worth my being called ‘Big Brother’ unless I find them a proper footing.” Wang Chu continued: “I plan to take them up to the Nanjing area and learn some shipbuilding and repair techniques, then let them come back here with a skill to their name — something to build a life and a family on.”

“What I am asking is what Brother Wang himself intends to do.”

Everything he had said just now was all on behalf of his brothers.

“Me?” Wang Chu fell silent for a long moment. He had clearly not given any thought to his own future — taking things one step at a time. After a good while, he finally said: “The world has never been short of a few humble roofs to shelter under. There is no need for you to worry on my behalf, official.”

There would always be somewhere to call home.

Pei Shaohuai nudged the cup of warm wine a little in Wang Chu’s direction and said: “If Brother Wang will not drink this cup of warm wine today, then Pei Mou will keep this cup forever waiting for Brother Wang.”

The world is never short of humble roofs. Warm wine, however, is not so easily come by.

The sky at the horizon was about to darken — the hour was growing late. Pei Shaohuai did not want the farewell to remain so heavy, and so he said in a teasing tone: “The first time we met, Brother Wang laughed and said my letters were nothing but plain talk from beginning to end. If I do not demonstrate my abilities today and recover some small measure of my reputation, it would hardly do.”

“It was Wang Mou who had poor eyes back on Ceng Island, and failed to recognize your true talent, official.” Wang Chu said. “The learning you carry is something that commands admiration — and makes me feel the shame of my own years wasted.”

Chang Zhou, seated nearby, had already begun laying out paper and grinding ink with practiced ease.

The ferry crossing wind was strong — and from the hilltop stone pavilion, it was fiercer still by several degrees. Pei Shaohuai raised his wide sleeve and brought the brush down with steadiness, the brush moving like a swimming dragon, words taking shape beneath the ink.

Among the lines was this passage: Reed grass takes root where rivers run and lakes spread wide — when autumn comes, the reed seeds scatter and the pollen drifts. Why grieve that the golden wind should scatter them? Each blade of spring grass finds its own distinct color on the open plain.

It was written of the reed grass stretching in continuous swaths outside the ferry crossing.

Reed grass is born already planted on the banks of rivers and lakes, dwelling always within the rivers and lakes of the world. When the golden wind comes, the reed seeds scatter and drift, each to its own far place.

All the living souls of this teeming world — were Wang Chu and those brothers of his not just the same? There would always come a day when the wind arrived and the seeds scattered.

The consolation lay in this: when the east wind came again, the grasses would return to a stretch of vivid, flourishing green.

This passage was not only a farewell to Wang Chu — it was also a word of comfort to him. After the brothers came ashore, they would certainly, each in their own way, put out new growth and find their own distinct color.

When Wang Chu read this passage, he could no longer hold back — tears fell in a steady stream. A man past forty, standing quietly like that, reading in silence, utterly unprepared — and the tears arrived in a rush, hurried and unguarded.

Pei Shaohuai had intended it as words of comfort for Wang Chu. He had not expected to strike so precisely at the place where Wang Chu’s grief lived.

When Pei Shaohuai finished writing and was about to set the brush down, Wang Chu reached out and took it. Drawing on the ink still left in the bristles, he wrote in his lean, vigorous running script:

Long spears and broken arrows, blood blown through the air — on the surging waves we seized the island, leaving bodies in our wake. My heart had already let go of the world below — then I heard your words, and the will to live came back.

“This sea before us — the bandit troubles are settled now. It was not by Wang Mou and his brothers coming ashore that this was made possible.”

The long scroll of paper was carefully torn by Wang Chu into two halves. He rolled up the portion Pei Shaohuai had written, bowed three times toward Pei Shaohuai, then turned and walked quickly down the hillside, descending the stone steps and moving into the distance.

From that moment until he reached the ferry crossing and boarded the vessel, he never once turned around or looked back — leaving behind him an unbroken trail of his receding figure.

The rolled scroll of paper was held pressed tightly to his chest.

With southern Fujian cleared of its many dangers, all things were turning toward the better.

In the days following the county examination, Pei Shaohuai had not been idle. Having gone a long while without presenting memorials to the Emperor, he finally remembered the sovereign far away in the capital who reportedly called out “Boyuan” day after day.

The blank memorials in the study, their paper grown old and heavy with time, sat waiting in the shadows.

The favorable situation in Fujian was not yet stable enough. If the coastal defenses elsewhere were to fall, and the Japanese pirates came again, the prosperous wharves built with such effort would become a tempting prize in the pirates’ eyes.

The battle at Fengwei Gorge had addressed the symptoms. Now it was time to address the root.

Pei Shaohuai went to Jiahe Island to find Yan Chengzhao, explained his purpose, and said: “I ask Commander Yan to assist me in jointly submitting a memorial requesting a change to the coastal defense strategy.”

“What does Pei Zhizhou have in mind?”

Pei Shaohuai analyzed the situation: “The Japanese are like poisonous ants — they come when they smell food. The Jiahe Guard has won victory after victory of late, inflicting heavy losses on the Japanese pirates — and yet it has only managed to defend the southern Fujian region alone. It is like exterminating ants while blocking only one nest: the ants will simply find another way around.”

“You want to destroy the anthill directly?” Yan Chengzhao asked.

Pei Shaohuai shook his head. “Da Qing and the Japanese nests are separated by the vast Eastern Sea. Even relying on powerful ships and strong soldiers to attack and seize them, they would not be easy to hold afterward — it would exhaust our people’s strength and finances in Da Qing for little visible return. That is not the best of strategies.”

He added: “Moreover, Japan is surrounded by sea to the east and west, with complex waters below the surface. Without first charting the sea routes and mapping the waters, how could one dare send ships and troops so rashly?”

Military campaigns were costly in both people and wealth — Pei Shaohuai did not much favor that path, at least not yet. The time was not right.

Pei Shaohuai brought out the coastal defense map of Fujian and hung it on the wall. Pointing to several islands marked on it, he said: “When the Japanese pirates attack Da Qing, they frequently use these several islands as stopover points to rest and replenish. In my view, a memorial could be presented to His Majesty requesting that additional naval forces be deployed to bring each of these islands under control one by one. That is the first matter.”

“Second: in the area around the capital region, there have been cases where only a few dozen Japanese pirates cut through hundreds of li of territory, looting every place they passed through, while the garrisoned guard posts were completely at a loss for what to do. Why? Because the soldiers were poorly drilled, and the assignment of duties was unclear.”

Da Qing, in order to guard against military unrest, imposed very strict limits on the movement of garrison soldiers — each guard post was responsible for a clearly delineated stretch of territory, and any soldier who stepped even half a pace outside was committing a capital offense.

This military policy left the Japanese pirates with a gap to exploit.

When the pirates came ashore to raid, they invariably chose to act along the boundary edges of different guard posts. When Da Qing soldiers came to suppress the pirates, the pirates would nimbly slip across to another area — relying on their constant movement along the edges to keep themselves safe.

This was how a few dozen men had been able to run rampant through hundreds of li — an almost unimaginable circumstance.

Pei Shaohuai proposed: “In my view, whichever guard post the Japanese pirates come ashore under should bear primary responsibility for pursuing and eliminating them, with the neighboring guard posts on either side placed on alert and providing assistance. If there are any failures, all will be held accountable together — in this way, there will be fewer cases of ‘no one minding the ledger’.”

Having heard Pei Shaohuai’s combined offensive and defensive proposals, Yan Chengzhao gave a slight nod and said: “Then we shall do as you say — you present the lead memorial, and I will add my endorsement.”

The two were in accord and worked efficiently — the matter was settled quickly.

As for how to further constrain Japan itself, Pei Shaohuai naturally had other plans. But matters had to be taken one step at a time. For instance, Yan Chengzhao had already been putting pressure on the imprisoned Mori Shiro, extracting a good deal of credible information from him in the process.

It was precisely because the Toyotomi clan was growing steadily stronger, step by step consolidating its power with a clear tendency toward unifying both north and south, that the Mori clan had resorted to taking desperate risks — dispatching more men outward to plunder wealth, in order to fill the clan’s coffers and draw more retainers to their side.

Seen in this light, Mori Shiro — who now spent his days in prison yanking at his own hair, his mind growing increasingly unhinged — was in no particular hurry to be executed.

Pei Shaohuai had only just dispatched his memorial through confidential channels when, the very next day, word came from the Fujian Regional Commissioner’s Office bearing the imperial will: the new Prefect of Quanzhou was unable to take up the post for the time being, and since the prefectural examination for selecting talent could not be delayed, the Emperor had directly appointed Pei Shaohuai as the chief examiner for the Quanzhou prefectural examination.

Pei Shaohuai was still puzzling over why the Emperor would suddenly assign him such a task when Yan Chengzhao, sitting to one side with his tea, said with unhurried ease: “I told you before — in your idle hours, write a few more memorials to the Emperor.”

Pei Shaohuai looked at Yan Chengzhao in bewilderment — what connection did these two things have?

Yan Chengzhao said, with neither haste nor agitation: “The fact that you cannot work out why the Emperor would place such a matter in your hands — that is precisely as it should be.” This was genuinely not something that required Pei Shaohuai in particular — it would have been more appropriate to transfer a fourth-rank official from the Regional Commissioner’s Office.

“Perhaps the Emperor simply needed an excuse to send you an imperial edict.”