*Ning Army Camp.*

Yu Jiuling watched Gao Xining where she stood a short distance away. Gao Xining watched Li Chi, standing alone on a far rise.

They had slipped here without being seen. Li Chi had his back to them, too far away to have noticed.

“Eldest, what do you think our lord is thinking about?”

Yu Jiuling asked.

Gao Xining gave a small shake of her head.

Since the last great battle, Li Chi had been spending more and more time drifting off to brood alone like this. As long as he was back among the others he showed no sign of anything wrong — but Gao Xining always seemed to find him in whatever hidden spot he had retreated to, and when she watched him standing there in silence, she knew he was not as calm as he seemed.

“Eldest — how do we make it easier for him?”

“I don’t know.”

Gao Xining had no answer for Yu Jiuling’s question. If she had known, she would have done it already.

“He doesn’t need that.”

Just then, Dean Gao’s voice came from behind her.

He walked to Gao Xining’s side, eyes on Li Chi’s distant silhouette, his tone carrying a low weight. “He was always meant to be a man who could seize the realm. But he sealed away too much of his ruthlessness himself. If he had truly let it go…he would not grieve like this.”

“But a person like Chier — no matter what kind of pass he comes to, he will always find his own way through it. The day before yesterday, I was talking with Elder Changmei about this very matter. Elder Changmei said that many years ago, when he first met Luo Jing, he had spoken a few words that were not entirely auspicious. So when he heard that General Luo Jing had fallen in battle, Elder Changmei was also deeply troubled.”

Dean Gao looked at Gao Xining. “Elder Changmei said: he had only spoken those words offhandedly, and if he had known it would come to this, he never would have said them.”

He paused and asked her: “Do you understand what I mean?”

Gao Xining nodded. “Grandfather, I understand. We do what we ought to do. Regret is the most useless thing in the world. Li Chi will work through it himself.”

“That’s not quite it, child…”

Dean Gao said: “How could regret be the most useless thing in the world? Regret has its use. Every regret, if you hold it in your heart, helps you avoid the same mistake the next time. Making each regret fewer than the last — that is regret’s greatest purpose.”

Gao Xining fell silent, turning his words over carefully in her mind.

“If a person has no more capacity for regret,” Dean Gao continued, “can they still be called a person?”

He raised his face toward the sky. “People always say — *I will never regret anything I’ve done, and whatever choice I make, I stand behind without looking back*… But in saying all that, most likely they’re simply unwilling to admit that they already do regret it.”

He let out a long slow breath. “Regret is not a heartless thing. It is stubbornness that makes one truly heartless.”

He looked at Gao Xining. “Go attend to your duties. You are the Chief廷尉 of the Censorate. There are many things that need your personal attention before the advance on Da Xing City begins.”

Gao Xining nodded. “I understand, Grandfather.”

Dean Gao looked at Yu Jiuling. “You go and do what you ought to do as well. Let Li Chi take this step on his own.”

Yu Jiuling sighed. “But Dean, I have nothing else to do. What I ought to be doing is staying at our lord’s side.”

Dean Gao felt something move in his chest. He nodded. “Child, you have it hard too. Because your heart carries two people’s pain.”

Yu Jiuling’s own grief, and Li Chi’s.

Dean Gao looked again at Li Chi’s figure on the distant rise, and after a moment of silence said: “I’ll go say a few words to him. Don’t follow me, either of you. Let me do what I should do.”

With that, he turned and walked in Li Chi’s direction. The distance was considerable. When the old man bent forward and began to climb the rise, it was clearly an effort.

Li Chi heard the sound, looked back, and saw Dean Gao coming up. He immediately came down to meet him. “Dean, I’ll come down — you don’t need to come up.”

He jogged to the Dean’s side and reached out to support his arm.

Dean Gao gave him a sideways look. “When you need something from me, it’s *Grandfather*. When you don’t, it’s *Dean*?”

Li Chi said: “It’s habit. ‘Dean’ comes out before I think about it. ‘Grandfather’ takes a moment of deliberate effort.”

Walking down together, Dean Gao said: “You see — going downhill, isn’t it fast? Isn’t it effortless?”

Li Chi said yes.

Then without warning, Dean Gao shook free of Li Chi’s supporting hand and quickened his pace. The slope was steep. Li Chi lunged forward in a single stride to catch him — and just barely kept the old man from falling.

The sudden movement startled Gao Xining and Yu Jiuling, who hadn’t yet left. Both of them started forward instinctively.

Dean Gao said: “Effortless, easy going — and yet at my age, without someone to hold onto, I’ll fall.”

He raised his hand and placed it against Li Chi’s chest. “Don’t keep everyone waiting outside this door. That’s not good.”

He kept walking. “Everyone has their weakness. Mine, for instance, is age. If I fall and there’s no one to help me up, I may not be able to get up on my own.”

He turned his head toward Li Chi. “At your age you don’t fear falling — you can get back up yourself. But when someone reaches out a hand to steady you, you’ll be back on your feet faster.”

Li Chi looked down. “I understand everything the Dean is saying…”

“Hmm?”

“Everything Grandfather is saying… I understand it all. But…” He paused. “I’ve always been afraid. When I’m hurting, my Master hurts too. So I’m afraid — when I’m in pain, other people end up in pain because of me.”

He spoke as they walked. “I learned, no matter how much it hurt, to smile at my Master.”

Dean Gao asked: “And did your Master believe your smile meant you weren’t hurting?”

Li Chi shook his head. “Of course Master knew I was hurting. I just… wanted Master to feel like it wasn’t so bad.”

Dean Gao was quiet.

How carefully must a person guard their heart, to be so frightened that when they are suffering, they will cause others to suffer too.

The strength he showed to the world — all of it had been hard-won. And yet, in the end, he was only a young man.

Dean Gao found himself thinking of Li Chi as a child — how early he must have understood that his Master was his only anchor in the world.

How terrified he must have been of being abandoned. Of making his Master unhappy. Of being a burden.

After a quiet moment, Dean Gao said: “You’re not wrong either, in what you said. People often say it’s the old who are prone to obsession, who find it hardest to let go. That’s not true.”

“It’s the young who find it hardest to let go. Take the girl you loved most — even decades later, the memory still aches. Is that the inability to let go in old age? No. It’s that you never let go in the first place, when you were young…”

“Take a brother — after parting, a year, two years, five or ten years may pass without a thought. But when he comes to mind by chance, the grief of that parting is as fresh as ever. That too is the young holding on.”

Dean Gao said: “None of us ever truly let go of anything. We only learn to pretend that we have…”

He looked at Li Chi. “We only get better at pretending, the older we grow.”

When Li Chi looked at him, a shadow of sorrow passed briefly through the old man’s eyes.

“Ning’er’s parents left early… so I have been pretending for a very long time, and I have become rather good at it.”

Dean Gao let out a long slow breath. “The pretending you need at your age requires an empty place where no one can see you. The pretending I need at mine… darkness is enough.”

He reached up and placed his hand on Li Chi’s shoulder. “When Chu Taizu was fighting for the realm, the brothers and companions closest to him — seven or eight out of ten were gone before the end.”

“When Zhou Taizu was fighting for the realm, of the thirty-six sworn brothers who rose with him at the beginning, only one remained when the Great Zhou dynasty was founded.”

Dean Gao said: “Child, this is the road you are on.”

There was a sentence that almost came out — he could feel it at the back of his throat. In the end he said nothing, because it was too stark, too brutal.

What he had nearly said was: *a single general achieves renown, ten thousand soldiers rot.* And what of every founding emperor in history?

He held it back, because he knew his own grief for General Luo Jing was closer to lamentation than to mourning — sorrow at a loss, not a wound at the core.

For Li Chi and those closest to him, it was only the wound.

—

*Meanwhile, in Yang Province.*

The Marquis of Guanting had been standing on the city wall, gazing into the distance, for quite some time. It was only a few days ago — given the distance — that word had reached him of the Wu Prince’s death.

When he heard it, his reaction had been mild, because it was something he had already foreseen.

The Wu Prince had grown old. No matter how formidable a man, he cannot escape the turning of history, nor the erosion of years.

One generation gives way to the next — this is a truth that has held since the beginning of time. The rise of Tang Pidi had begun at the very moment the Wu Prince started to decline.

But when he heard that Luo Jing had fallen together with the Wu Prince — taken down in mutual destruction — his reaction was far more pronounced than it had been when he heard of the Wu Prince’s death.

“My lord.”

One of his advisors lowered his voice. “Now that the Wu King is dead, the court has lost its pillar. It is at its weakest. And spies report that Han Feibao’s army is already outside Da Xing City. My lord — is it not time for us to raise our own banner?”

The Marquis glanced at the advisor and turned the question back on him: “Raise our banner? To what end?”

The advisor bowed. “My lord, if we do not enter the contest now, Han Feibao may seize the advantage. The Ning army is still recuperating, the Chu forces are in decline, and the grain stores in Da Xing City cannot hold out much longer. If Han Feibao takes the city first, then…”

The words framed it as counsel — but the real aim was to get the Marquis to move quickly and join forces with Han Feibao.

But before he could finish, the Marquis cut him off, his voice perfectly level: “Then let him take it.”

At that, not only the advisor but everyone standing behind the Marquis was left with nothing to say.

Speak up and risk the Marquis’s anger. Stay silent and watch a perfect opportunity slip away — and fighting for it later would be far harder.

Once Han Feibao took Da Xing City, he would declare himself Emperor. When the Ning army finished regrouping, it would clamp down around Da Xing City like a vice.

By then, when the Marquis sent his own forces in, the Ning army would only need to hold him off.

But if they entered now — with the secret ties already in place between the Marquis and Han Feibao — joining forces, they could defeat the Ning King Li Chi first, and then it would come down to just the two of them. Whether the Marquis took the realm or Han Feibao took it, the one thing they both agreed on was that Li Chi must not be the one to take it.

Right now, the most advantageous move was to ally with Han Feibao.

That the Ning army was formidable was true. That Tang Pidi was a peerless commander was also true. But after all the battles they had fought in succession — was the Ning army truly still invincible?

The Marquis said nothing more. His men fell into silence as well.

After a very long pause, the Marquis turned away. “I’m hungry. Let’s go eat.”

One of his advisors could not help himself: “My lord — why won’t you fight?”

The Marquis kept walking. “Luo Jing is dead,” he said over his shoulder. “Whoever wants to go fight Li Chi right now is welcome to. I won’t.”

—