Yu Jiuling was startled by Li Chi’s reaction — and it was the enormous kind of startled, the kind where your heart leaps straight into your throat. If his nerves had been any weaker, it might have actually jumped clear out.

Having a strong constitution could be a blessing.

“I’m messing with you.”

Li Chi smiled: “Seems my acting skills are pretty decent.”

Yu Jiuling let out a breath with a puff and looked at Li Chi: “I didn’t bring any spare clothes with me. If you’d actually scared me into wetting myself, I’d have been walking around with bare legs under my robe.”

Li Chi said: “Not necessarily a problem. Walking like that would just make you look rather rakish.”

Yu Jiuling: “…”

Li Chi stretched his body, then looked over at the other version of himself sitting to the side — Su Cha, Zhuang Wudi’s trusted aide.

He asked Yu Jiuling to help remove Su Cha’s disguise. Su Cha had barely dared to say anything the whole time. Right from the start, when they’d been sitting at the very back of the crowd, Yu Jiuling had kept whispering encouragement to him, telling him it would be fine.

Su Cha could only murmur brief responses — he truly didn’t dare speak at normal volume for fear of being found out.

Now that Li Chi was back, he could finally let that breath out.

This kind of disguise technique — without the cover of night, it would be hard to fool anyone. Li Chi’s master, the Long-Browed Daoist, had said: there is no disguise in this world that can truly pass for the real thing. What it deceives is the force of habit in people’s thinking.

People can doubt many things are fake. But they rarely suspect that a person is fake. Yu Jiuling had told Su Cha earnestly to relax — he was speaking from experience, and no one would see through it.

In truth, most disguises work best on people who aren’t very familiar with the disguised person. A close acquaintance who sees someone in disguise might notice right away if the eyes look wrong. To fool someone that familiar, you absolutely cannot let them get too close.

Either pass by quickly, or let them take a brief look — and above all, do not open your mouth and speak, or the disguise will certainly unravel.

So Li Chi had chosen nighttime, and had stationed Yu Jiuling and Su Cha together at the very back of the gathering — the place where the firelight was dimmest.

At first light, Yu Jiuling had gone to tell Yu Chaozong they were exhausted, and the two of them had returned to the guest room and not gone out again.

This was not at all suspicious. They were guests — guests had no obligation to remain in the mourning hall the entire time. And given how much had happened, it was perfectly natural that they wouldn’t want to be seen.

Li Chi and Su Cha swapped their clothing back. The two of them were roughly the same height and build — that had been Li Chi’s specific request to Zhuang Wudi.

When Li Chi had ambushed and killed the leaders who had come down the mountain, he had been wearing ordinary clothing — not the white mourning garments.

The figure hanging in the tree was Wu Xionqi’s actual corpse.

Using the corpse to draw everyone’s attention, and then taking advantage of the confusion — that was when Li Chi had slipped in close to the group and struck. His clothing was no different from those foot soldiers’, and everyone’s attention had been on the swaying corpse. No one noticed an extra person had joined their ranks.

They had barely finished swapping clothing back when Zhuang Wudi pushed open the door from outside and stepped in. He’d been wearing a stern expression before he entered, but the moment he was inside, it broke into a wide grin.

“You should have seen what Bi Datong looked like.”

Zhuang Wudi sat down beside Li Chi: “Putting Wu Xionqi’s body in his quarters — that was a stroke of genius.”

Li Chi looked at Zhuang Wudi with a blank expression: “What body? I never touched Wu Xionqi’s body.”

Yu Jiuling thought: here we go again with this trick.

Sure enough, Zhuang Wudi’s expression immediately changed: “Li Chi, what do you mean by that? Don’t try to fool me — are you saying Wu Xionqi’s body wasn’t you who put it in Bi Datong’s room?”

“I didn’t,” Li Chi said, looking genuinely alarmed. “I disguised myself as him and killed people — that’s all. Big Brother Zhuang, don’t scare me. What’s happened to Wu Xionqi’s body?”

Zhuang Wudi felt a thunderclap go off in his head and immediately felt the blood rush to it. Then his scalp began to tighten, and a wave of cold ran down his back.

“Li Chi… this is no joking matter.”

Zhuang Wudi said: “You truly didn’t touch Wu Xionqi’s body?”

Li Chi watched Zhuang Wudi’s face go white, then let out a soft laugh: “I was messing with you…”

Zhuang Wudi could have raised his hand and struck him. It took him a good long while to recover, and he fixed Li Chi with a fierce glare.

He continued: “The chief still doesn’t know about any of this. But the chief isn’t afraid.”

Yu Jiuling said: “Chief Yu has nothing to be ashamed of, so he’s not afraid of shadows, let alone ghosts. So you see — never do anything with a guilty conscience. It’s not ghosts that frighten people to death; it’s the ghost inside their own heart.”

“I came back ahead of them.”

Zhuang Wudi said: “I came back early because there’s something that needs doing, and I should be the one to do it. If the chief comes back and gets sentimental and indecisive about things again…”

Li Chi immediately understood: “Niu Yongli?”

“Yes.”

Zhuang Wudi said: “Rest, you two. Su Cha, come with me.”

Su Cha acknowledged quietly and made a show of walking naturally out of the room with Zhuang Wudi. The two of them left the guest room and headed toward the rear yard, where a row of empty rooms stood. Soldiers were posted all around outside.

Seeing Zhuang Wudi arrive, the soldiers all bowed in respect.

Zhuang Wudi gave a signal, and the soldier at the door immediately pulled it open. The clinking of chains immediately caused Niu Yongli — bound inside — to flinch with a start.

Zhuang Wudi came striding in, took one look at Niu Yongli, and Niu Yongli’s heart sank the moment he saw it was the Seventh-in-command rather than the chief.

He had been at Yu Chaozong’s side for so many years. He knew Yu Chaozong’s nature — when it came to his old companions, Yu Chaozong simply could not bring himself to act. If he could have, he would have chopped Niu Yongli down with a flurry of blades the night of the day before. But the man had simply been trussed up here.

But it was Zhuang Wudi who had come in. So Niu Yongli was immediately frightened — because what Yu Chaozong couldn’t bring himself to do, Zhuang Wudi was perfectly capable of doing.

“Seventh-in-command, Seventh-in-command — please let me explain. I was coerced into it…”

Before he’d finished speaking, Zhuang Wudi drew his blade and opened Niu Yongli’s throat with a single slash. He gripped Niu Yongli’s hair with one hand and worked the blade back and forth with the other. In a short moment, he had cut the head clean off.

He spat and said: “Killing you this way is still too easy on you.”

Then he turned to Su Cha: “Su Cha, no one’s watching you — wrap this head up and throw it into the back mountain. Don’t let anyone see.”

Zhuang Wudi stepped out the door and looked at the soldiers standing guard outside: “I cut off Niu Yongli’s head. Do you know what to say?”

The head guard nodded: “Don’t worry, Seventh-in-command. We know what to say. We were just about to bring Niu Yongli some food. Who could have expected — we opened the door and his head was gone. We didn’t hear a single sound. It must have been the Fourth-in-command who came back to do it.”

Zhuang Wudi smiled: “Good thinking.”

He wiped his hands clean, handed the short blade to the guard captain, and said: “Wipe it clean. It’s yours.”

From entering to leaving, it had taken only a moment.

This was the way of the mountain outlaws. They had no courtroom proceedings, no formal interrogations. They were more direct, and so ruthless that they didn’t even count this kind of thing as a particularly significant event.

Which was why they were still mountain bandits.

Not long after Zhuang Wudi returned to the front yard, Yu Chaozong came back with Bi Datong and the others. Bi Datong’s face looked as though someone had drained the blood from it — he followed behind Yu Chaozong without saying a word.

In the guest room, Li Chi stood at the window watching Yu Chaozong and the others pass by, and let out a quiet sigh.

Yu Jiuling asked: “What is it?”

Li Chi said: “The person I most wanted to kill was Bi Datong. But this man is too cautious. He’s never left Chief Yu’s side — wherever the chief goes, he goes. And this man has definitely been concealing his martial abilities. He has a kind of acuity for detecting danger that others don’t have — very sharp.”

Li Chi continued: “The first night we arrived, when we were drinking in the main hall — I only glanced at him once, and he immediately looked back. I’d already been very careful, trying to make it look like I was looking at him by accident. But he caught it right away.”

Yu Jiuling said: “Bad people like him are afraid to die. People who are afraid to die become more sensitive.”

Li Chi thought about it — that seemed quite true.

Yu Jiuling said: “You’re also very sharp.”

Li Chi said: “Because I’m also very afraid to die.”

Yu Jiuling: “Hmph… bah! Looking at what you’ve done in the year and more that I’ve known you — which of it looked like you were afraid to die?”

Li Chi said: “Because I was afraid, I did all of those things. Only so that I would stay alive.”

Yu Jiuling turned that over in his mind and felt like what Li Chi had said actually made a strange kind of sense.

“Li Chi, are you really not yet fifteen?”

He asked.

Li Chi nodded and said: “How old do you think I look?”

Yu Jiuling said: “By face and build, eighteen or nineteen. By the way you plan and act… it would take nine hundred years of cultivation to be this unnaturally gifted.”

Li Chi smiled faintly and said: “I’m not unnaturally gifted. I’ve seen someone who truly was — outwardly appearing foolish while inwardly brilliant, returning to the pure and simple. With a talent that could seize the very fortune of heaven and earth — and yet he willingly chose the life of an ordinary person. He even wanted to raise pigs.”

Li Chi said: “In the place where he used to live, there were two lines of poetry written in his own hand, hanging beside the bookcase… ‘The idle clouds cast eastward and westward shadows without being tethered; the wild crane does not know the heart of coming and going.'”

Li Chi thought for a moment, then shook his head gently: “He had the heart of an idle cloud and wild crane. Only, I never understood the meaning of the character hanging in the most prominent place.”

Yu Jiuling asked: “What character?”

Li Chi replied: “Gou.” (Endure/muddle through/just get by)

Yu Jiuling said: “That must have been contempt for the world… but then why did he still pursue the talent to seize the fortune of heaven and earth?”

Li Chi shook his head: “I don’t understand that either.”

Yu Jiuling said: “You two are from different worlds.”

He looked at Li Chi and asked: “When are we leaving? If we don’t go soon, we won’t make it back to Jizhou for the New Year. I’m not worried about much else — but I’m worried that a certain person, not being able to see you return in time, will be unable to resist coming to look for you.”

Li Chi said: “Do you remember what I said to you over a year ago? Among the five of us, I’m the only one who can hold himself back from finishing you off.”

Yu Jiuling gave a sly grin: “Don’t try to be all tough about it. You act like you’re not in a hurry to get back yourself.”

He asked Li Chi: “The way you scheme at things, throw yourself into things — worrying about the realm and its people before you’ve even turned fifteen — is it all just because you want to be worthy of her?”

Li Chi started. He glanced sideways at Yu Jiuling, then smiled, and didn’t answer.

Yu Jiuling sighed: “A person must never let themselves be entangled by feelings. Looking at you now, I think about my own future and feel like it’ll be quite exhausting. I’ll just live out my days in solitude. Isn’t solitary old age the proud tradition of our little outfit? You’re the only exception.”

Li Chi suddenly felt like these words actually had a grain of truth to them.

His master. Yan Xiansheng. Zhuang Wudi…

Yu Jiuling noticed the look on Li Chi’s face and realized he’d only just caught on. He asked, puzzled: “If you didn’t mean it that way, then why did you name our organization ‘Hand’?”

Li Chi said: “Turn over a hand and it’s clouds; flip it back and it’s rain.” (a phrase meaning capable of doing anything, exercising total control)

Yu Jiuling froze. Then his face went red.

He muttered to himself: “Over a year… over a year, and I’m only now learning that’s what it means. I thought… I thought it meant…”

He looked thoroughly embarrassed: “I just made myself sound so inappropriate. That was… that was way too hasty of me.”

Li Chi thought carefully about it and still couldn’t figure out what Yu Jiuling meant.

He asked: “So what did you think it meant?”

Yu Jiuling said: “I thought it was five single men, and then… never mind. You’re barely fifteen. We can talk about it later.”

He patted Li Chi on the shoulder with a solemn and heartfelt air: “Maybe someday without my even saying anything, you’ll figure it out?”

Li Chi looked at him, and the longer he looked, the more inappropriate it seemed.

—