Night had fallen. The three main east-west thoroughfares and three main north-south thoroughfares at the heart of Mu Er He city had been cleared of traffic. Unlike their usual brilliance of lantern light, the lanterns lining both sides of every road had been extinguished early, and the streets were now packed on all sides with crowds who had come to watch.

The ceremony was about to begin.

Xiao Nanhui took the strange mask from the hands of the elderly priest and turned it over, unable to determine which side was the front. She had no choice but to speak up awkwardly: “Honored sir, I’m not sure how to put this mask on — I’m afraid of wearing it wrong.”

The old priest smiled — though his shriveled mouth held not a single tooth, which made the smile rather unnerving. He shifted his eyelids, and Xiao Nanhui only then noticed that this priest was blind.

“You’re from out of town, aren’t you, young lady? I expect you may not know which deity the Zhuming Festival is actually dedicated to.”

Xiao Nanhui nodded: “I won’t deceive you, honored sir — this is my first time attending this ceremony.”

The old priest extended a withered hand and ran his fingers over the eyes painted in vivid red on the mask. In truth, calling it a mask was somewhat misleading — it was more of a full head covering, with nine faces arranged around its circumference. Each face bore countless eyes, some open, some closed, bringing to mind the rambling roses in full bloom or tightly furled in bud.

“The god worshipped in the Zhuming Festival is named Jima. According to legend, this is a deity with a head like a wreath of flowers and innumerable vivid crimson eyes. He governs discipline and is the most just and impartial of all gods. In order to oversee the good and evil of the mortal world, Jima grew many additional eyes. To avoid the blinding brightness of daylight, he appears only at night. People hold him in awe, and so when the time of the festival ceremony arrives, they of their own accord extinguish all lanterns and candles, lighting only spirit paper to guide his path.”

And so that was why the streets outside were in complete darkness — not a single light, save only the cool and distant moonlight.

Xiao Nanhui lowered her gaze. She felt as though the countless pairs of eyes on the mask were all looking directly at her.

“I understand — so this mask has no front or back?”

The old priest nodded, and reached out to feel for Xiao Nanhui’s head, placing the mask on it himself.

The light around her dimmed. Her field of vision narrowed sharply. She could only see the outside world through two small holes in front of her face.

Through the mask, she heard the old priest’s voice, disembodied and faint.

“The mask may have no front or back — but the road has only one direction. Young lady, do not lose your way.”

??*

The ceremonial procession consisted of nine enormous flower-decorated floats. Each float was adorned in the ancient tradition of ritual, bearing a nine-story soul tower carved from wood, with paper figures arranged between each story to enact a mythological tale.

At the head of the float procession marched a formation of one hundred and nineteen torch-bearers, each holding aloft a spirit-paper banner. Set alight, these became spheres of flame that would burn for exactly half an hour.

This half hour was the time the procession needed to travel from its starting point to its destination. The entire column set out from a street corner in the southeast, first proceeding west along the outermost east-west road, then turning north after passing nine intersections. Moving from the outside inward, they traced three nested squares before arriving at last at the Youyin Altar at the center, where the final offering would be made.

Xiao Nanhui was this year’s chief officiant, and was required to stand — or rather, to be suspended — at the topmost story of the ninth float. The highest wooden story afforded barely enough space for a pair of feet, and that small area was not a solid plank of wood at all, but rather a framework of bamboo poles and timber pieces fitted together. Every step required the utmost care, and as the procession began to move, the already unsteady float began to sway. The topmost story swayed most of all.

She was beginning to understand why the Zhuming Festival involved climbing the pagoda to pick the flower first. Looking at this float alone made it clear — anyone without some measure of skill would not even be able to remain standing on it.

The procession swung their spirit-paper banners in rhythm with the drumbeats. The spheres of flame joined together into something like a great dragon winding its way forward. Both sides of the road were already packed with onlookers. Second only to New Year’s Eve, the Zhuming Festival drew the most people of any night in the year. Even women and children and the elderly who usually stayed home had come out, as had shop assistants and household servants — all of them granted a few hours of leisure and pouring into the streets to be part of the celebration together.

The final destination of the Youyin Altar was already surrounded so densely that ordinary people had no hope of securing a spot, but commoners had their own way of participating — waiting until the procession passed in front of them to toss out the rambling roses they had brought, then bowing their heads to whisper a wish.

Standing high on the decorated float, Xiao Nanhui looked down at the petals of vivid red drifting through the air all around her, and gazed at the faces of the many people below who looked up, pressing their palms together in sincere prayer. Inexplicably, something like a sense of calling rose within her.

These ancient, primitive ceremonies truly did carry a kind of mysterious power, dyeing the emotions of everyone within them. In this moment she felt almost as though she were not herself — as though she truly were the deity called Jima, descending upon the mortal world to observe his people, to punish evil and uphold good, to preserve justice.

They say sincerity reaches the divine. Perhaps only before the gods are all people truly equal.

The procession moved on. Xiao Nanhui gradually adjusted to the rhythm of the lurching and began keeping close watch on her surroundings.

Zhong Li Jing had said the ceremony itself was when the jade seal would appear — and there would certainly be people making a move then.

The darkness around her was absolute. That faint thread of moonlight might as well have not existed, consumed as it was by the surrounding night. She felt exposed to countless watching eyes, yet could not see any of those eyes looking back at her from within the dark.

The first nested square completed — still nothing happened. Xiao Nanhui looked ahead and noticed that the roads on both sides had abruptly narrowed.

They had entered the old district of Mu Er He.

Over a hundred years ago, Mu Er He had been struck by a devastating plague. To this day, great walls still stood along the Huozhou border — emergency measures built to prevent the infected from fleeing. When the plague was finally extinguished, people rebuilt Mu Er He in the outer area, establishing the new city centered on the Pinxiao Pagoda, while the old urban areas where the plague had erupted were sealed off and burned. Even after many years had passed and some people came to live there again, the population was sparse — this was the old district.

Of the route the Zhuming Festival procession followed, only this short stretch passed along the edge of the old district.

A tributary of the Hunhe River cut through the old district, and as the floats crossed the bridge, the swaying became markedly more pronounced. The residential buildings on both sides were dark and lifeless, exuding an air of desolation, with the charred remnants of long-ago fires still interspersed among them. Uneven eaves jutted over the road like rows of gaunt, withered hands, frequently coming within a hair’s breadth of scraping the floats as they passed. If anyone were crouching on a rooftop, a single light leap would carry them down onto the floats. Xiao Nanhui could not help but raise all her vigilance, keeping close watch on the darkness to either side.

The wooden wheels clattered over the stone-paved road — somehow even louder than before.

Then, all of a sudden, Xiao Nanhui felt a strange sound from the base of the float beneath her feet.

It was a very faint sound, like a small stone bouncing up and striking the float shaft.

But at precisely this moment—

Xiao Nanhui’s head snapped up. A hand bearing a finely crafted steel fingertip guard punched upward through the floorboards of the topmost story of the float ahead of her, and a figure emerged, slowly turning around.

In the moonlight, Xiao Nanhui narrowed her eyes.

The person wore a mask exactly identical to hers.

This was premeditated.

The ceremony was already dim enough that the onlookers would never notice the subtle difference in the officiant’s build. And since the chief officiant wore a mask throughout the entire procession, all these people needed to do was eliminate her and they could take her place without anyone being the wiser — no one would know who was behind the mask.

The eyes beneath that figure’s mask met Xiao Nanhui’s for a moment, and then the figure leapt like a swallow onto the float where Xiao Nanhui stood. Xiao Nanhui naturally was not going to allow this so easily — she struck first while the figure had not yet fully landed.

But the float afforded almost no room to open up one’s movements in any meaningful way, and this false officiant seemed to be skilled in close-quarters fighting in exactly such cramped spaces. The sleeve-concealed double blades they used were treacherous and lethal. Xiao Nanhui had to temporarily abandon attacks to the lower body, shifting to short seizing techniques to try to disarm the opponent.

The moment her hand made contact, she registered a soft, smooth texture — the person impersonating her was also a woman.

Just that instant of distraction was enough. From behind, a fine thread came snaking in and in the blink of an eye had wrapped around Xiao Nanhui’s ankles and arms, and then a tremendous force yanked her upward — her whole body was pulled sideways off the float.

In the split second of her fall, she managed to snatch the iron staff from the hands of a paper figure on the story below. When she landed on the rooftop of a small building along the side of the road, she drove the staff under the roof tiles with one quick thrust to anchor herself and barely managed to stop her slide.

In that brief exchange, the ceremonial procession had already rounded the corner ahead.

The noise of the crowd and the towering fire blocked the sight lines of the spectators, and with the false “officiant” in her place, no one in the float procession noticed that Xiao Nanhui had been attacked. They continued forward, turned a corner, and passed into the final north-south thoroughfare.

Unease welled up in Xiao Nanhui’s chest — the sense of having stepped carefully all along, only to find herself squarely in someone else’s trap.

The attackers clearly did not want her catching up to the procession. They pressed in again, driving her from rooftop down into another street alongside.

Watching the procession disappear into the distance, Xiao Nanhui finally made the decision to kill. The plain iron staff she had pulled from the float blurred in her hands like a flash of lightning, and in the span of a few moves she had run it through one opponent, then withdrawn it and drove it straight through the tendons at another man’s ankle.

One scream later, those two lay on the ground. With no time to spare on finishing the job, Xiao Nanhui shouldered the staff and ran.

Though only a single street separated her from the procession, this alleyway was utterly deserted. The cold moonlight cast long shadows from the buildings on either side, making the road ahead uneven and treacherous-looking. The noise from the adjacent street reached her in faint murmurs, but on the bluestone pavement there was for now only the sound of Xiao Nanhui’s own footsteps.

She ran, breathing hard, scanning in all directions — convinced that something was about to emerge from that hollow darkness.

At last, faint sounds stirred across the rooftiles all around her. One place, then two — fine and close-set, as though a net were being drawn over her.

In the moonlight, more than a dozen shadows appeared atop the buildings to either side, following Xiao Nanhui like ghosts at her back.

In darkness, sight was limited, but hearing grew keenly sensitive. She had no need to look back — from the sound of those footsteps alone, she could roughly judge how many there were and where each one was positioned.

The cross-street intersection ahead was still more than a hundred steps away. The river of fire was rushing past on the parallel boulevard, and Xiao Nanhui ran with everything she had. She had to find a way to shake the people behind her and get back onto the ceremonial float.

But—

Weren’t there only supposed to be a few people at most? How was she supposed to shake off such a crowd?

Whoosh.

A sound broke the air from behind.

Xiao Nanhui did not look back, did not break her stride — she swung her arm back.

A metallic ring. Staff met arrow in the darkness, striking a shower of sparks.

The cold arrow lost its true line and buried itself in a door pillar under a nearby eave. The shaft glowed with a pale, eerie green — obviously poisoned.

That light probe passed, and then came a sudden assault like a driving rain. A dozen cold arrows flew out together, aimed straight for the center of Xiao Nanhui’s back.

With no room to dodge, Xiao Nanhui had no choice but to stop, whirling the iron staff into an impenetrable spinning barrier. A rapid succession of metallic clangs rang out as the arrows were struck away, but a blade-bearing shadow had already used the moment to close the distance, and in an instant the two were locked in combat.

Both sides threw their full strength into it. Every move from the opponent was a killing strike, while Xiao Nanhui matched attack with attack, going straight for the throats of the first three — the iron staff left a trail of bloody punctures wherever it passed.

One wave fell and the next surged forward. The iron staff in Xiao Nanhui’s hands was ordinary black iron and could not match their weapons of tempered steel — when they clashed with full force, a section of it was sheared away, until there was almost nothing left to wield.

Every one of those masked, uninvited guests moved with an assassin’s training, seeking only to kill as quickly as possible. The weapon of their leader was particularly vicious — a chain with a gold hook at the end, which at range kept opponents from coming near, and every time Xiao Nanhui tried to close in and seize the weapon, she was thwarted.

They were wearing her down in rotation, trading off the fighting in shifts. The cunning cruelty of it spoke for itself.

The circle was tightening. Xiao Nanhui’s back found a stone wall, and she stood there, catching her breath.

“Hey.”

A voice cut through the din of fighting, abrupt and casual.

The lead assassin tensed, spinning sharply around. He prided himself on being alert above all else — and yet someone had come this close without his detecting them at all, which meant the person’s qinggong far exceeded his own.

Looking, he saw a small figure crouched atop the head of a stone lion by the side of the road. A round head with a single topknot, a silhouette that looked remarkably like a gourd — who else could it be but Bolao?

“Hey. Aren’t you going to ask me for help?”

That round head gave no sign of registering the knives and blood all around, sitting comfortably astride the stone lion’s head, two short legs swinging back and forth.

Xiao Nanhui threw down what remained of the iron staff — barely an inch of it left — and brushed off her hands. She pointed at the assembled assassins, all staring at each other in confusion: “I’ll give these to you as a gift. No need to thank me.”

Without waiting for Bolao to respond, she darted to the stone lion, placed a foot squarely on Bolao’s sturdy head, pushed off and launched herself up onto the rooftop — never mind the roof tiles she shattered on the way — and in great sweeping strides made her exit from the battle.

Bolao quickly reached up to pat the crushed topknot on her head, glaring furiously at the figure rapidly vanishing across the rooftops. Then she spun sharply to fix her gaze on the men behind her. Her expression shifted — the fury slightly redirected.

“What are you all staring at?! Never seen someone get ambushed before?”

As their quarry made her escape, the lead assassin let out a cold laugh. His wrist moved slightly, and the chain bearing its steel hook rose like a venomous snake baring its fangs, lunging at Bolao.

A flash of white — something cold reflected the moonlight for an instant and was gone.

Then a ringing crack, like metal severing metal.

The gold hook at the end of the chain dropped to the ground. The entire iron chain collapsed with a heavy crash, like a giant serpent whose head had been cut clean off.

The lead assassin stared at the chain still in his hand, his eyes filled with disbelief.

“So this is the Jin She Jun that the jianghu has been talking up in recent years.” The small figure’s tone was overbearing, seasoned, and entirely unimpressed. She was still standing steady on the stone lion’s head, and two short blades had appeared in her hands at some point. “I have been away from jianghu affairs for a long time — yet I didn’t know things had fallen so low. Is there truly no one left anymore? Even a limp-footed shrimp can have a title.”

Those two blades were no longer than an inch, with slender, slightly upturned tips and not a single decorative flourish. They looked completely unremarkable.

And yet it was precisely these two utterly unremarkable blades that had cut through a chain of refined steel in a single instant. One must understand — the chain held the advantage of reach, and being a chain rather than a rigid blade, it carried the additional benefit of softness overcoming hardness. And yet it had been defeated utterly in a single exchange.

The principle that technique overcomes technique, that weapon overcomes weapon — these things existed in the world. But when the gap in true ability was too great, no advantage of type could compensate.

The jianghu was always and only a ruthless place that recognized skill, nothing more.

“One at a time, or all at once?”