The Ning army took Xiushan without spilling a single drop of blood. What had once been the most dangerous terrain threatening them before Tiger Wall Pass was now an open road.

Had it come to a real battle, Ning’s victory would have been inevitable — but the cost in lives, no one could say.

As the column passed through Xiushan, Shu soldiers who hadn’t yet retreated stood by the roadside, watching them march past. Their expressions were complicated — part reluctance, part relief.

Whatever the case, what should have been a brutal battle had been avoided. That was a good thing for both sides.

Watching formation after formation of Ning soldiers file past, one Shu soldier lowered his voice and said, “Actually… the General didn’t want to fight either, did he.”

Another soldier nodded. “Yeah… who ever wants to fight? Everyone could probably tell.”

The first soldier glanced up toward the mountain and let out a quiet sigh.

“I heard that on just our second day at Xiushan, someone came from the General’s hometown and found him here.”

“I think I heard that too — the General’s cousin, or something. And I heard his hometown is in a village in Qingmian County.”

“Yeah, right there, not far at all… and yet the General has passed by home so many times without ever going back. Because of this cursed war.”

“It’s probably because his family heard he was stationed here, so they came to find him.”

The two soldiers murmured quietly to each other, then spotted the cavalry contingent of the Ning army approaching from behind. The weight of that presence seemed to press in on them, and they chose to move further away.

A few li from Xiushan, General Yao Zhiyuan caught sight of someone waiting by the road and immediately quickened his pace to a run.

“Brother.”

He called out while still at a distance.

The man sitting by the roadside looked to be around fifty, his back already somewhat stooped — bent perhaps by the burdens of a hard life, or perhaps by some ailment of the body. When he saw Yao Zhiyuan coming, the man scrambled to his feet, a smile spreading across his face.

“Slow down, slow down — don’t trip,” he called.

Yao Zhiyuan jogged up and laughed. “I’m not a child anymore. You think it’s still like when you used to carry me across the ditches back home?”

He asked the old man, “Do you have anything to eat? I’m starving.”

The old man looked uncomfortable. “Only the travel rations I brought that haven’t been finished yet. They’ve gone hard — how could you eat something like that now?”

“Is it the flatbread my mother made?”

“How did you know?”

“Quick, give me one.”

The old man opened his pack and pulled out a rough cornmeal flatbread. It had been several days — fortunately the weather wasn’t hot, or it would’ve already gone bad.

Yao Zhiyuan didn’t care. He took the cornbread and bit right into it.

“Slow down,” the old man said, watching him wolf it down, and quickly uncapped the water flask at his side.

Yao Zhiyuan ate in great mouthfuls. That rough, hard, dry cornmeal flatbread — he ate it like it was a feast of rare delicacies.

“It still tastes the same.”

He ate and talked, and as he ate he broke into a foolish grin — and then, somehow, that grin turned to tears.

“My mother…”

“Auntie’s doing fine. Just that her legs and feet aren’t quite as agile as they used to be.”

The old man said, “She’s the one who sent me to find you this time. She just wanted you to know one thing…”

He pointed at the flatbread Yao Zhiyuan was still gnawing on. “There’s not much grain left at home anymore. The people from the jiedushi’s office come to collect grain every year — as few as twice a year, as many as four or five times. There’s nothing left.”

Yao Zhiyuan froze and looked down at the cornbread in his hands. “Then this is…?”

“Distributed by the Ning King’s people.”

The old man watched Yao Zhiyuan carefully, nervous about upsetting him, choosing every word with care. He’d wanted to say this back up on the mountain, but hadn’t found the chance before Yao Zhiyuan had sent him down.

“The Ning King’s people sent men to our county’s villages and towns, going house by house, registering each household, and distributing grain and seed.”

“They said: grain is grain, seed is seed — no strings attached. Just one rule: if there’s not enough to eat, come to the county office and say so. But don’t eat the seed.”

Yao Zhiyuan’s expression shifted visibly.

When his cousin had arrived at Xiushan earlier, it had startled him badly. He’d assumed something terrible had happened at home — in all these years, his family had never come looking for him. When they suddenly showed up, he’d feared the worst: that his mother was already gone.

It turned out his family had heard he was holding Xiushan with his troops, and his mother, afraid this might be their final parting, had sent his nephew to check on him. Her legs weren’t good; if she could have walked there herself, she would have come no matter the distance.

The old woman always told the family that her son had done well for himself — he’d become a General, and they mustn’t hold him back.

Yao Zhiyuan hadn’t imagined those grain collectors would dare come to his family’s home either. Thinking on it later, the collection teams were dispatched from the command office — those men wouldn’t care about such things.

Back on the mountain, his cousin had said that the old woman missed her son terribly, and if Yao Zhiyuan could find a moment, he should come home to see her. But Yao Zhiyuan couldn’t leave — he knew the Ning army was almost upon them, and he’d wanted to send his cousin safely home instead.

His cousin hadn’t dared say much more. As he’d turned to go, he’d looked back and said… that the Ning army had sent medical officers to the villages to treat the sick. That his auntie’s legs had been seen by one of them — someone from the Shen Medical Hall, he’d said, very skilled — and there was a chance they might be healed.

That single sentence had pierced Yao Zhiyuan like a needle.

He’d suddenly run after his cousin and told him to wait at a certain spot a few li away.

If his heart hadn’t truly been wavering — would he really have lacked the iron will to stop his soldiers from fleeing?

He had said on the mountain that he’d executed a few deserters, but in truth it had only been a performance. The man who “killed” and the man who was “killed” were both played by his own personal guards. He couldn’t bring himself to truly put his soldiers to the blade.

Especially not when his own heart had already begun to tilt. He felt he had no right to use death to bind his men when he couldn’t even hold his own conviction.

More often than not, he’d been full of contradictions himself. When soldiers slipped away in the night, he too had turned a blind eye through his own conflict — pretending not to see.

Now, Yao Zhiyuan stared at the cornmeal flatbread in his hands and stood there in a daze.

“Let’s go quickly,” the old man said. “I know you’re busy with military affairs. Go home, take one look at your mother, then come back…”

“I’m not coming back.”

Yao Zhiyuan let out a heavy breath. “Once I go home, I’m not leaving again. I’ll stay and keep my mother company.”

His cousin stared at him, stunned, and after a long moment asked in astonishment, “You mean it?”

“I mean it.”

Yao Zhiyuan pulled his cousin along. “Let’s go… Are there any more flatbreads? Give me another one.”

—

At the same moment, at the foot of Xiushan.

The column was still advancing. For an army of several hundred thousand, passage took no small amount of time.

Yu Jiuling sat on a high slope watching the troops move forward, then suddenly broke into a foolish grin.

Peng Shiqi, sitting beside him, asked, “What are you laughing at?”

Yu Jiuling laughed. “Who would have thought — you people actually bluffed the enemy into submission.”

Little Zhang Zhenren shook his head. “Bluffed or not, only they can say…”

Yu Jiuling asked, “What do you mean?”

Little Zhang Zhenren said, “Just now when the boss was talking with General Xiahou and the others, did you hear something he said? He said they’d searched the mountain top to bottom and didn’t find a single corpse.”

He exhaled heavily. “Not one corpse. Which means that General never killed a single person over the desertions.”

Yu Jiuling understood now.

“Maybe that Shu General just… didn’t want to see all his men die horribly here.”

Little Zhang Zhenren looked at Yu Jiuling. “If karma truly exists in this world, he’s planted a good seed. He’ll reap a good harvest in time.”

What Little Zhang Zhenren and the others didn’t know was that Yao Zhiyuan wasn’t the one who had planted that seed — it was the Ning army’s people, sent out to comfort the common folk, who had planted it. Yao Zhiyuan was the one who had reaped the harvest.

“Let’s go too.”

Little Zhang Zhenren rose and brushed the dust from his robes.

Yu Jiuling said, “That’s not right though — when he had his men loose arrows at you, those arrows were real. Look at your robes, there are holes all over.”

Little Zhang Zhenren was quiet for a moment, then smiled. “Sparing tens of thousands from death… I won’t hold a grudge. On behalf of Dragon-Tiger Mountain, I forgive him.”

Yu Jiuling burst out laughing. “Listen to you — what a load of bluster.”

As they walked down, they saw Li Chi waving them over from below, and quickened their pace.

Back with the column, Li Chi looked at Little Zhang Zhenren and smiled. “You deserve first credit for this. Go on — what do you want?”

Little Zhang Zhenren said, “No no, for me this counts as accumulating virtue. Virtue brings its own reward — I wouldn’t dare ask for anything more.”

Li Chi said, “Reward from heaven is heaven’s to give. Reward from me is mine to give. They’re not the same thing.”

Yu Jiuling said, “What a rare opportunity this is — you know how stingy our boss is. He’s actually being generous for once…”

He noticed Li Chi looking at him and promptly fell silent.

Little Zhang Zhenren asked, “Is it required?”

Li Chi said, “Required.”

Little Zhang Zhenren thought very carefully for a long time, then broke into a smile. “I’ve grown up never having visited a pleasure house…”

Yu Jiuling: “*Pfft*…”

Li Chi laughed. “If you really want to go, I’ll have Jiujie take you.”

Little Zhang Zhenren hastily shook his head. “No, no — the Daoist rules cannot be broken. I wouldn’t go. What I mean is… I’ve heard the women in pleasure houses are all skilled dancers, very beautiful to watch. Of all of us here, only Jiujie goes regularly — he’d know best…”

He looked at Yu Jiuling. “Jiujie, dance a set for me?”

Yu Jiuling said, with great dignity, “A true man can be killed, but not humiliated.”

Little Zhang Zhenren said, “I’m not trying to make things hard for you. Given the bond between us, how could I ever force you to do something you didn’t want to do… Boss, help me persuade him — in that way where you just tell him you’ll have him castrated if he refuses.”

Li Chi nodded and looked at Yu Jiuling. “Think of it as doing a good deed. You dance one set, and you’ll stamp out Little Zhenren’s desire to ever enter a pleasure house in the future…”

Yu Jiuling thought about it. Actually, that made sense. Never mind a pure-hearted young man like Little Zhang Zhenren — even the most lecherous old roué, after watching Yu Jiuling dance one set, might be cured.

He looked at Li Chi. “So if I dance, that counts as accumulating virtue too, right? I’d get my own reward?”

Li Chi snorted. “Just say what you want.”

Yu Jiuling said, “I’m not like Little Zhang Zhenren, all coy about it. I’ll come right out and say it — I want to visit a pleasure house. And it has to be on the company expense!”

Li Chi: “…”

After a moment, he wore the expression of a man deeply reluctant, yet visibly scheming, as he said: “How about this — you dance a set for Little Zhenren, satisfy him, and I’ll deduct it from Little Zhenren’s wages to pay you. You go to the pleasure house, he gets his show. Everyone’s satisfied.”

Yu Jiuling and Little Zhang Zhenren both froze at the same moment.

—