Tang Pidi watched the blacksmith beat the glowing iron rod. He said nothing — but standing there as he was, the blacksmith felt that if he slacked off even slightly, someone would hold him down and beat him.

Tang Pidi did not say stop, so he kept hammering, the iron rod clanging back and forth, its tip growing sharper and sharper.

“Wait.”

Tang Pidi suddenly spoke.

The blacksmith’s hammer froze in mid-air. He looked at Tang Pidi. “Sir, is there something else?”

Tang Pidi pointed to the tip of the skewer. “Cut three blood grooves into it — a three-groove, three-edged shape.”

The blacksmith froze, and a trickle of fear began to creep through him.

*Three blood grooves…* If something like this were driven into a person — what kind of wound would that make?

But that large silver ingot was very persuasive, so he gritted his teeth and kept on working. From morning to afternoon, the iron skewer was hammered and reworked many times, and after quenching it came out dark, almost black.

“Just needs polishing and it’s done.”

The blacksmith held it up for a look. He was fairly pleased with this oddly shaped weapon he had never forged before.

“No need to polish it.”

Tang Pidi took the skewer and examined it — somewhat rough still, the tip not quite needle-sharp, but serviceable enough.

He asked the blacksmith, “Do you have any liquor?”

The blacksmith nodded. “I do, but it’s not a fine vintage.”

Tang Pidi took out another silver ingot and placed it on the workbench. Without another word, the blacksmith handed over his flask. Tang Pidi drank a mouthful, then poured the rest over the skewer. A wisp of smoke rose up.

He turned and left, carrying the skewer openly, making no attempt to conceal it. The blacksmith thought it over — the thing really didn’t fall within any category of restricted weapons, because before today, no such thing had existed.

On the street, Tang Pidi walked and wrapped the skewer in cloth as he went. By the roadside, a peddler hawked trinkets and odds-and-ends from a rack. Tang Pidi stopped, picked up a wooden mask and looked it over.

These were things made for children — tiger faces, wolf faces, monkey faces, fox faces, for small children to wear at play.

He picked up a blue-wolf face mask and turned it over. He asked the peddler, “How much?”

Before the peddler could answer, Tang Pidi took out a piece of broken silver and held it out. “Is this enough?”

The peddler nodded vigorously. “More than enough, sir — I owe you quite a bit of change.”

“Keep it.”

Tang Pidi walked on, then came back after a few steps, looked at the candy figurines on the peddler’s rack, and took one.

“Call it my change.”

The blue-wolf mask had a cord, so he measured the right length and tied it, then hung it from the side of his head — not covering his face, but resting off to the side so that a single push would bring it across to cover him entirely.

And so this strange figure went walking down the street — a blue wolf mask hanging at his cheek, an iron skewer on his back, licking a very sweet candy figurine, looking at no one.

As the sun began to lower toward the hills, he followed directions to the outer wall behind Xu Qinglin’s compound. The Xu family’s main residence spread across a wide stretch of the city; Xu Qinglin’s quarters were only a small section of the whole. Even so, it was the kind of place ordinary people couldn’t even dream of.

Tang Pidi stood on the street for a while and looked back. Across the street was a small tavern. Like a wooden post, he stood and thought for a moment, then went in and bought a flask of good liquor, two jin of cold cuts, a roasted chicken, and a dish of peanuts. He sat down in the tavern and ate and drank.

The sky grew darker. The sun eventually sank below the world — or so the common people believed. By day the sun came back to the world of the living; by night it went somewhere unknown, perhaps to the realm of the dead.

“Not a Jizhou man, are you, sir?”

The tavern keeper, with only this one customer, brought over a small complimentary dish of food and took the opportunity to sit down and talk. A single customer, a single day, one day after another.

Business was poor for everyone lately. The wealthy didn’t worry about money; the common people did. The wealthy didn’t come to a little place like his, and he couldn’t tell how much longer he could hold on.

“No.”

Tang Pidi answered.

The keeper looked at the children’s blue-wolf mask hanging off the side of this grown man’s face, and for the first time felt that such a thing was vaguely unnerving on an adult.

“Are you in Jizhou on holiday, then, sir?”

“No.”

Tang Pidi drained the last half cup of liquor, glanced outside at the sky. The main street was already empty of pedestrians — Jizhou’s curfew was about to begin, and any ordinary person still out at this hour would have been hurrying home.

“I’m a great bandit.”

He dipped a finger in the last drops of wine and wrote several characters on the tabletop.

*Massacre bandit.*

He rose, gathered his things, and walked out. At the door he turned back to look at the keeper and said, “You’ll know tomorrow.”

Then he smiled, and his expression made the keeper think he’d had too much to drink.

Out on the street there was only Tang Pidi. He stood in the middle of the road and looked left, then right, as if uncertain which way to turn.

The keeper tidied up and looked out again. The mysterious stranger had already vanished.

And at that same moment, Li Chi knew nothing of any of this — because Auntie Wu had not yet returned to the academy. Not that she hadn’t dared to. She wanted to go. But her husband wouldn’t let her leave.

In this family, it was Auntie Wu who kept the household running. Her husband did odd jobs around the city and earned very little; it was Auntie Wu’s position in the academy dining hall that kept them from hunger. She was, in a practical sense, the one who kept things together. Her husband had no head for crises, and with four corpses suddenly in his house, he had gone limp with fright.

He would not let Auntie Wu go back to the academy with her warning. She had no choice but to stay with her husband, tear open the bedding, wrap the bodies, load them onto the cart, pile dry firewood on top to cover them, and drive out of the city together. This absurdly obvious disguise somehow passed the gate guards without a question — not even a search — all because of a Xu family waist token.

After burying the bodies outside the city and driving back in, the sky was already growing dark. Tang Pidi was still drinking in his little tavern. Auntie Wu rushed back to the academy — but Li Chi had already gone. Not knowing that Li Chi was no longer earning money at the Yun Studio teahouse, she made her way there looking for him, only to find he wasn’t there either. This good-hearted woman who had spent most of her life quietly doing good, stood in the middle of the street, lost and helpless, her eyes full of fear.

She wanted to go home and hide and pretend none of it had ever happened — but she could not get over the obstacle in her own heart. If she failed to warn young Master Li, she would never know a moment of peace again.

So she turned and went back into the Yun Studio teahouse. She asked Lady Sun if she knew where Li Chi was, and said that someone was trying to harm him and she had to find him.

Lady Sun did know. She had simply not said so at first — she was not in the habit of telling strangers where Li Chi could be found. Even for someone she did know, she wouldn’t casually give out that kind of information.

But hearing Auntie Wu say that someone was after Li Chi, Lady Sun’s eyes went wide.

“Who?”

“Take me to him first. I can’t tell you here.”

Auntie Wu’s tone was firm.

Lady Sun thought for a moment, then passed the baby in her arms to the proprietor and seized Auntie Wu’s hand. “Come on, I’ll take you.”

The proprietor trotted after them with the baby. “Where are you going?”

Lady Sun called back, “Stay home and watch the house!”

The proprietor: “Right then…”

Another short while later — the Yun Studio’s Lady Sun, finding her way for the first time to the carriage depot, feeling her way through streets she barely knew. Li Chi had told her once; though she looked like a woman of bold temperament, she was only a woman who managed a household. The boundaries of her life were narrow: home, teahouse, home, teahouse, day after day, year after year.

By the time she found the carriage depot, the sky was on the verge of going fully dark. This was the moment Tang Pidi was telling the tavern keeper he was a massacre bandit.

When Auntie Wu saw Li Chi, the tears came rushing down before she could stop them. She fell to her knees with a thud, saying over and over that she wasn’t fit to call herself a decent person. This gave Li Chi quite a fright, and he quickly helped her up.

Auntie Wu, after all, was only a woman who worked in the academy dining hall. She had never been through anything like this, and she could not get the story out in a few tidy sentences. By the time she had finished telling it, Tang Pidi had already jumped over the rear wall of Xu Qinglin’s compound.

Li Chi heard it all and his face changed. He called out, “Don’t go home — curfew has already started. Wait for me here.”

He was out the door of the carriage depot before the words had fully left his mouth. Zhuang Wudi, not yet recovered from his injuries, grabbed his long blade and followed without a word. Yu Jiuling ran back to his room first for a face cover, then followed as well.

The three of them ran at full speed to the outer wall behind Xu Qinglin’s compound. They looked at each other. Li Chi said in a very low voice, “Find the person. Try not to get tangled in a fight.”

“Understood.”

Yu Jiuling and Zhuang Wudi acknowledged together. The three pulled on their face covers at the same time, then turned to face the wall and moved to jump over.

With a *swoosh*, a dark shape leapt over the wall from inside, landed, and found itself face to face with all three of them.

Three people in large white-toothed masks looked at one person in a blue-wolf mask. All four of them startled.

Li Chi looked down. The man in the blue-wolf mask was holding a rod-like weapon in his hand, and a droplet of something was sliding down its length to fall on the ground — likely blood, though in the moonlight he could only make it out dimly.

“Move.”

Tang Pidi said two flat words, and the iron skewer tilted upward slightly.

“Tang Pidi?”

Li Chi asked.

“Li Chi?”

Tang Pidi pushed the blue-wolf mask to the side of his face. Li Chi had already taken off his face cover. Tang Pidi was quiet for a moment, and his first words were: “Your mask is ugly.”

Li Chi said, “Yours isn’t any better.”

Tang Pidi said, “Mine is wood. It looks more refined.”

Li Chi: “…”

In the courtyard behind Tang Pidi, along the whole path he had walked, there were bodies. Each one had a small triangular wound at the throat. Every strike had found a certain-death point.

The next day, toward midday, the keeper of the tavern across from the Xu family’s rear court heard a commotion outside and went to look. Quite a crowd had gathered, along with men in official dress who appeared to be conducting some kind of inspection.

He was curious, and went out to ask. “What happened?”

A man turned to look at him, then answered: “I hear the Xu family has been wiped out — some kind of massacre. Every able-bodied man in the house, they say, is dead. And that’s not all — the mistress and the young master too.”

The tavern keeper went pale.

The man muttered as if to himself, “I heard a bit just now when the officers were asking questions up front — there was a maidservant who had been scared out of her wits, and she said the killer wasn’t a person at all. Said it was a wolf-headed demon.”

*Thud.* The tavern keeper sat straight down on the ground, the blood draining from his face.

Not far away, Yu Jiuling’s own expression had shifted. He had come to gather news, and it turned out to be an actual massacre. He had not imagined that this person called Tang Pidi could be so ferocious — not in the least like a young man.