“What if I have offended the King of Ning?”

The peculiar man spoke those words in a voice of layered complexity, and with them, Master Wu’s brow lifted slightly once more.

Master Wu was silent for a moment, seemingly lost in thought. A subtle shift in his eyes sent the man’s heart lurching with sudden tension.

Master Wu asked, “Is it just you — or all of you?”

The man seemed not to have expected such a question, and his expression changed.

He began to regret it. He regretted having let impulse drive him to appear before the Military Governor so hastily. He had underestimated the strength of one of the King of Ning’s most trusted officials, and underestimated this Governor’s sharpness of mind.

In that brief instant, he also thought — yes, just how grave a mistake had he made, to have overlooked so much?

In a turbulent age like this, to have become one of the King of Ning’s most important Military Governors — how could such a man be anything less than formidable?

In times of peace, reaching a station like Military Governor might require only a single area of exceptional talent. But in times of war and chaos, who among those who had survived to this day and risen to high office was not extraordinary in every respect?

He was regretting his own impatience, while Master Wu waited.

After a long pause, the peculiar man let out a slow breath and answered, “Yes. All of us.”

Master Wu smiled slightly — there was no particular hostility in it.

Then, without pause, Master Wu asked a question that struck straight to the man’s core.

“You have offended the King of Ning. Does the King of Ning know?”

At those words, the man startled visibly, and his expression grew even more complicated than before.

“Why do you ask that, My Lord?”

He answered with a question of his own.

Master Wu smiled. “You said ‘all of us.’ From the way you said it, this doesn’t seem like the business of one or two people. If all of you have offended the King of Ning, yet you’re still standing before me in one piece, then only two conclusions are possible.”

Master Wu held up one finger: “First — you offended the King of Ning, but the King of Ning doesn’t actually know.”

A second finger: “Second — he does know. But you’re all still alive and well, which means whatever you consider an offense, the King of Ning considers it beneath notice. Otherwise you would already be dead.”

The man listened carefully and thought it through at length. The more he considered it, the more it seemed to make undeniable sense.

Given the might of the King of Ning’s armies, the exceptional power of the King himself, and the wealth of extraordinary men serving under him — with all these factors combined, they were still alive, seemingly never having been pursued or investigated. It did indeed seem to confirm this Governor’s deduction.

After a long silence he looked at Master Wu. “The King of Ning should know. Yet we are still alive.”

Master Wu smiled and nodded. “Then what is there to fear?”

He gestured to the interior of the teahouse. “Why not sit down for some proper tea? I just bought you a meal — I wonder if that pot of tea you bought can spare me a cup.”

Shortly after, in the main hall of Rain Sound Teahouse, Master Wu and the peculiar man sat facing each other.

They were the only two customers. The weather cooperated — a light rain began to fall, and its sound, rather than fraying the nerves, lent everything a sense of calm stillness.

The man poured Master Wu a cup of tea. He did not rush to speak, as though composing his words carefully.

“I truly did come from Shu Province. But I am not a native of Shu.”

The man let out a slow breath and began to speak of himself.

“Those of us — we are particular people. From the moment we were born, we shackled ourselves with a vow, telling ourselves: this is our duty, this is our purpose, this is the meaning of our lives.”

Master Wu made no comment, only sipped his tea and listened quietly.

He seemed to sense already that the man before him was a pitiable soul who had long suppressed much and found no one to confide in. That was evident from the very first words out of his mouth. Such repression had likely begun from the time he first understood the world.

And so Master Wu thought: for someone like this, the carefree days that other children knew had probably been far fewer than most. Perhaps from his hazy, half-formed adolescence, the weight called “duty” had already been laid upon his shoulders.

“We are disciples of the Sage.”

The man looked at Master Wu, his voice laden with indescribable complexity. “The one you all know — Zhou the Sage.”

Even Master Wu was briefly stunned. He had not expected the man’s identity to be this.

“My name is Liren,” the man said.

He lifted his cup and took a small sip — perhaps because he was slightly nervous, his throat had gone somewhat dry.

A man like him, who had spent years in hiding in Shu Province while danger lurked constantly around him, had never been as nervous as he was now.

The nervousness was not fear that he couldn’t beat someone, or couldn’t kill someone — it was that this was the first time he had ever opened his heart to a stranger.

“The descendants of the Sage are all pitiable.”

Liren bowed his head, looking at the teacup in his hands as he spoke. It seemed that if he looked even once more at the unfamiliar face before him, he would lose the courage to continue.

“The descendants of the Sage — from the moment they are born, they must shoulder the responsibility of some so-called ‘revival of the great cause,’ must uphold the myth of the Sage…”

He paused here, then answered himself, as though asking a question aloud.

“But is the Sage a myth?”

He shook his head. “The Sage was never a myth. It is only that the people of the world needed one.”

Liren’s gaze drifted, but his words did not — they were steady, like the bedrock beneath all things.

“The Sage was not a myth. The people of the world simply needed a myth.”

Because of those words, one understood: this was not the bedrock of all things — it was the bedrock of the human heart.

Master Wu murmured the words back to himself, and something moved within him.

Yes. What myth was there, really? Every myth is what people hope will appear in the world — the power to set things right when they themselves cannot.

The Sage’s perfection, perhaps, was something crafted by later generations. He was indeed extraordinary in every respect — whatever skill he turned his hand to, none could match him. But the Sage was not perfect. The Sage was a man who loved women, a man who loved wine.

What was most perfect about the Sage was that he knew moderation.

The world holds too much suffering, too much injustice, and ordinary people have no power to change it. So they place their hope in the strongest, and thus the Sage became a myth.

The common people used the myth to tell those in power: Look carefully. That is what a man of power ought to be.

Yet though such a myth was spoken and written of and spread by ordinary people, they did not, in their hearts, truly believe it.

The Sage’s descendants believed it. Through relentless self-deception, they had succeeded in deceiving themselves.

They came to believe the Sage was a god, and that they were the god’s descendants.

The sorrow in Liren’s eyes arose from exactly that — the self-importance of those who called themselves children of a god.

“I left the Sacred Blade Sect many years ago. I am not of the Sage’s direct lineage, so within the Sacred Blade Sect I was only a minor figure.”

Liren spoke slowly. “The reason I left was that the Sacred Blade Sect had no room for me.”

At this, Master Wu finally couldn’t resist interjecting.

“Because you were a threat?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Liren still spoke with his head bowed, his eyes misting over — his steam and the teacup’s steam seemed to merge into one.

“I came from a collateral branch. How could my talent be allowed to surpass those of the direct lineage?” Liren said. “I was young and didn’t know my place. I thought: we are all descendants of the Sage — why must there be an inside and an outside? Was the blood of the Sage that ran in my veins a lie?”

He raised his head and looked at Master Wu, word by word: “It was those of the direct lineage who made the rule that those of collateral branches must serve and protect the direct lineage as servants. The Sage himself never decreed this. Since it was not the Sage who said it — why couldn’t it be wrong?”

“So I decided to challenge that rule. I wanted to show those of the direct lineage: the blood of the Sage that runs in my bones is not false.”

“I won. Again and again. Every member of the direct lineage close to my age — none was a match for me. They fell to me one by one, and each wore a darker expression than the last. The darkest of all was the Sect Master’s.”

Master Wu let out a long, heavy sigh. “But you didn’t die.”

“No. I didn’t die.”

A flicker of regret crossed Liren’s eyes — there and gone in an instant, yet so dense it seemed to smolder.

“My father died. My mother died. My elder brother and my younger brother both died.”

Liren loosened his grip on the teacup — that was his self-control. Had he not released it, the cup would have shattered in his palm within the next breath.

This was perhaps the restraint a man develops after years of exile from home, years spent hiding in a place he did not know.

“When I fled the Sacred Blade Sect, I swore an oath: when I returned, I would kill every member of the direct lineage…”

He raised his head a second time to look at Master Wu.

“Last month, I returned from Shu Province to the Sacred Blade Sect. I went to see them. Only then did I learn that the Sect Master was dead — that many among the direct lineage had died. All those who had killed my family were dead. And all of them had died because of the King of Ning.”

Liren said, “When I went back, I was thinking: I’ve already killed people, already crossed that line — so I should feel nothing about killing a few more.”

“But what I did not expect was this: when I returned, the looks they gave me held no hatred, no hostility, no rejection…”

Liren exhaled heavily.

“When they saw me, their eyes only showed… a stranger had returned. When I told them who I was, the look in their eyes was… You’re back. Can you save us?”

Liren’s hand clutched the teacup again, this time without thinking.

Crack. The cup shattered in his grip.

“I went back to kill them!” Liren’s voice leapt suddenly — there was something almost keening in it.

“I went back to kill them!”

He said the same thing twice.

“And now I have to save them… Those old men, those children, those women… all of them terrified, living in dread from morning to night.”

Liren looked at Master Wu. “I am not the Sage. I cannot bear that weight of responsibility. So I chose to flee.”

“When I walked out the door, a crowd of people filed out after me. They just followed, quietly, without a word.”

Liren glanced down at the cut on his hand and shook the blood away carelessly.

“I asked them why they were following me. They said they were looking for a way to survive. They said: you’re the one who came back from the outside — you should know where the road is.”

“They had been cut off from the world too long. Without the Sect Master’s orders, none of them could leave the Sacred Blade Sect freely.”

“Most of them, in truth, had no idea how to live. They believed I was the only one among them who had seen the world.”

Liren said, “I went soft. I said: then let me take you to Qing Province. I’ve heard Qing Province borders the sea, and there are islands off the coast. We could go live quietly on one. That way, perhaps the King of Ning will never find us.”

Master Wu shook his head gently, but said nothing.

Liren understood what Master Wu meant. If the King of Ning truly wished to find them — did he really need to wait until they’d settled on some island?

Liren looked at Master Wu and couldn’t help asking what had puzzled him. “Why has the King of Ning not destroyed the Sacred Blade Sect?”

Master Wu sighed, then said, in all seriousness, “Because the Sage truly is a myth… Because the people of the world truly do need a myth.”

Liren asked, “Does My Lord mean that even the King of Ning must protect a myth that is not really a myth?”

Master Wu shook his head. “No… the King of Ning is not protecting it — he is inheriting it. Have you never heard those words?”

Master Wu looked into Liren’s eyes: “To carry forward the learning of the sages past; to open enduring peace for all the world.”

Liren said, “Of course I’ve heard them. Because those words were spoken by the Sage himself.”

Master Wu said, “Now — the King of Ning is that myth.”

—