The young man on the rooftop called Wei Xianzhan — the moment he saw the figure in the reception hall step sideways into that particular stance, he understood. Even if he had loosed an arrow, he would not have killed the man across from him. Instead he would have killed Cui Tai with a single shot.

All it had taken was a shift of footing, and Wei Xianzhan had felt compelled to acknowledge what he was looking at. Even more striking: he did not know at what point the young man below had become aware of him.

From the moment he had first raised his bow, he had known: an archer’s place is not in close combat. That is not what a bow is for. A bow demands concealment, precision, a single killing strike from outside the enemy’s awareness.

And yet just now, his concealment had been seen through at a glance.

On the carriage back from Sanyue River Pavilion, Xiahou Zuo looked at Tang Pidi — this person who had just walked out of a dragon’s lair unscathed, and who seemed as calm as though nothing of consequence had happened. Not only had he walked out — he had slapped the tiger’s hindquarters on his way through the door and pulled out two of the dragon’s whiskers.

“Did you get a rough sense of what the Cui family wants?” Xiahou Zuo asked.

Tang Pidi made a sound of assent. “Roughly — they want to bestow their favor on Li Chi. Give him a bowl of rice, so to speak.”

Xiahou Zuo burst into a short laugh. “Why did you say they wanted to give Li Chi a bowl of rice? Why not give all of you a bowl of rice?”

Tang Pidi said, as a matter of plain fact, “His bestowing favor on Li Chi has nothing to do with us. We don’t eat his rice. We eat Li Chi’s.”

Xiahou Zuo said, “That seems to be a direct connection.”

Tang Pidi said, “You’re calling it a connection because you’re thinking about face.”

Xiahou Zuo paused at this, then burst out laughing.

He had never known Tang Pidi very well before this. Now he understood why Li Chi spoke of him with such high regard.

Just as Yu Chaozong believed that without Li Chi he would struggle to win the world, Tang Pidi’s place in Li Chi’s heart actually surpassed Li Chi’s place in Yu Chaozong’s heart.

Because Yu Chaozong still had his own aims. Li Chi had none — he simply recognized this as his brother.

This person was like a peerless weapon walking among the living. In his eyes, there was probably no meaningful difference between people — only that no one quite measured up to him.

Otherwise, he could not have carried off that perfectly natural, effortless commanding presence.

Xiahou Zuo laughed. “The Cui family was probably thinking they’d decided Li Chi barely qualified for a bit of their attention, which is why they sent someone to Sanyue River Pavilion to fetch him.”

He looked at Tang Pidi. “What they didn’t count on was reaching out for someone to hold, and instead getting held themselves. What you said in there — that was a perfect reversal.”

Tang Pidi shook his head. “It wasn’t perfect.”

Xiahou Zuo asked, “You’re actually dissatisfied? Tell me — where was the shortcoming?”

Tang Pidi sat in the carriage, head tilted back, staring at the roof of the cab. After a silence he said, in a tone of great solemnity: “I thought I’d be riding a horse.”

Xiahou Zuo froze.

Then he extended his thumb.

He spoke one sentence from the depths of his heart: “You are genuinely committed to this.”

—

The Carriage Yard.

Li Chi had arranged for Xiahou Zuo’s mother and younger sister to be brought over as well. The back courtyard was more than large enough, and now that the underground palace was being cleared out, it could comfortably house several hundred or even several thousand more people.

Setting aside the granary — just the great hall where the seven suits of armor had been discovered could accommodate hundreds with room to spare.

Everyone understood clearly what was coming. Prince Yu’s army had already begun to move out in stages. The force heading to besiege Jizhou might arrive even earlier than expected — and once the enemy troops arrived, every day would be a fight for survival.

What needed to be done was to survive — through the coming siege, through whatever would follow, even if the city walls were ultimately breached.

The provisions in the cellars began to be moved into the underground palace. The underground palace was more solid and secure, and its cool, dark environment would preserve grain far better. It was, he reflected, a funny thing: they had set out to dig a modest cellar and instead received an underground palace as a gift from heaven. Life was like that — unpredictable. Like intending to raise a wild boar and discovering it was beginning to look more and more like a dog.

The divine eagle, which now tipped the scales at seven or eight hundred jin, had taken to walking with an exaggerated, bouncy dog-like gait every day, and in moments of excitement would even attempt to leap in the bounding manner of a dog.

And in this manner it was still not satisfied — probably because it felt the boar’s way of walking did not resemble a dog’s so much as it resembled… a dog. The dog itself, as Tang Pidi had put it, now served as the carriage yard’s scout unit commander: each day it soared in broad circles above the compound, and if anyone approached the carriage yard under cover, it would raise the alarm immediately.

This placed their adversaries at a considerable disadvantage. How could they have anticipated that the carriage yard had an air force?

Most amusing of all was the situation with the four young women now living in the carriage yard: Gao Xining, Yuan Jiabei, Liu Yingyuan, and Xiahou Yili. All of them were around the same age, and they got along splendidly. They had previously been one short for a proper game — now at last they could sit down every day and play a cheerful round of mahjong.

Xiahou Zuo and Tang Pidi’s carriage pulled up at the carriage yard gate. They had barely stepped out when they found Liu Ge standing outside.

Xiahou Zuo smiled. “Why are you still standing out here?”

Liu Ge said, “I only just arrived myself — I didn’t go in when I saw your carriage coming. I have one thing to say to you: listen to me and come with me to the Military Preparedness General’s residence. I’ve gathered all the officials and commanders who are staying behind — they’re assembled there waiting for you. The Prince has already left the city; if you don’t go meet with them soon, it will look wrong. Even if it’s just going through the motions, you need to show your face.”

Xiahou Zuo looked at Tang Pidi, who gave a small nod. “I’ll tell Li Chi and the others.”

Xiahou Zuo smiled, then followed Liu Ge away.

Inside the carriage yard, Li Chi listened as Tang Pidi walked him through everything that had happened at Sanyue River Pavilion. When the account was finished, Li Chi laughed.

The Cui family had approached the whole thing from a position of lordly condescension — extending a favor from on high. But Tang Pidi had shown them: your face is not one that does you credit.

“Don’t think too much of it,” Li Chi said. “It’s true that Tang Pidi made the trip to the Sanyue River Pavilion stable for nothing, but Shuangxing Stable is worth considering as an alternative…”

Tang Pidi narrowed his eyes at Li Chi, who added: “It can be expensed.”

Tang Pidi’s expression brightened.

He walked alongside Li Chi and said, “There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. Should we be recruiting some people here in Jizhou City? Right now all the workers were sent by Brother Yu from Yanshan Camp — I’m not saying I distrust them, but…”

Li Chi knew what he meant. Tang Pidi was someone who thought through every detail; he would be uneasy about entrusting everything to a single place. And people felt a sense of belonging to something — the Yanshan Camp workers’ loyalty was ultimately to Yu Chaozong.

“That’s fair,” Li Chi said. “You handle it. We’ve never recruited openly for the carriage yard — honestly, that’s a gap. We have over two hundred workers and we’ve never hired a single one openly. Anyone who gives it a moment’s thought will find that strange.”

Tang Pidi nodded. “When I left today I took a careful look at where the slope exit of the underground palace is. The position appears to be over toward where the Surveillance Bureau burned down. Now that Xiahou is the Jizhou holdback commander… what do you think?”

Li Chi’s eyes lit up. “If we acquire the Surveillance Bureau’s land and try to break through from that side, we’d essentially have a hidden stronghold running beneath the whole of Jizhou City. If things get dangerous, we can shift between both sides underground.”

Tang Pidi said, “I can’t guarantee I read the position correctly — it was a rough estimate by compass bearing.”

Li Chi made a sound of assent. “Doesn’t matter. Even if the location’s wrong, we’ve still acquired a piece of land, haven’t we? And that’s a substantial plot.”

Tang Pidi: “Hmph…”

“What pretext do we use?”

He asked.

“An escort bureau.” Li Chi walked as he spoke. “An escort bureau is the only thing that makes sense — if Brother Yu sends more people and they show up armed, it won’t look suspicious. Besides, we just made several tens of thousands of taels from selling calligraphy, so we have reasonable grounds to buy the land.”

Tang Pidi asked, “Are you actually going to pay Xiahou Zuo the money?”

Li Chi said, with complete gravity, “Of course — that’s a matter of principle. But it can be paid in installments…”

Tang Pidi narrowed his eyes again.

Xiahou Zuo was the Jizhou holdback commander with authority over the entire city — this would be no difficult thing to arrange. The Surveillance Bureau, having burned to the ground, still stood in its ruined state; no one in this climate was going to bother with restoring the place. And with so many having died there, no one else would want to touch it either.

Tang Pidi asked Li Chi, “Why are you so interested in acquiring land?”

Li Chi thought about this for a moment. “Probably because I was so poor as a child. The world was so vast, and my shifu and I had nowhere to call our own — every night when we were looking for somewhere to sleep, I would think: this is borrowing a small space from heaven and earth, and when morning comes we owe them rent.”

Tang Pidi asked, “Paying heaven and earth rent? What would that be?”

Li Chi said, seriously: “Every morning, my shifu and I would get up and piss to nourish the earth…”

Tang Pidi: “…”

Li Chi continued, “When I first arrived in Jizhou, my greatest wish was to have a small house to live in. If you think about it — wasn’t that just wanting to have my own small piece of this world? Not borrowed. Mine.”

Tang Pidi said, “Understood. But borrowing a small piece is too modest. You can borrow the whole world. If it won’t lend itself, take it.”

Li Chi nodded, then turned to Tang Pidi. “And you? What are you most interested in?”

Tang Pidi walked on as he answered: “Commanding troops. Waging war.”

Li Chi looked at him. “Always?”

Tang Pidi nodded. “Always.”

Li Chi said, “But commanding troops and waging war has to end eventually. When the Central Plains are finally at peace, there won’t be any more battles to fight.”

“There will be,” Tang Pidi said. “When there’s no more fighting in the Central Plains, we take it outside. Why should the Central Plains have spent thousands of years enduring foreign enemies attacking us — why can’t we push outward? Someone like me, if I’m leading troops, I’ll have battles to fight for a lifetime.”

He looked at Li Chi. “Keep fighting.”

Li Chi asked, “Until you can no longer fight?”

Tang Pidi made a sound of assent. “Either until I can no longer fight, or until I want to fight when I want to, and when I don’t want to, no one dares to come to us.”

He let out a long, slow breath. “For thousands of years we’ve only ever defended against foreign enemies. It makes me furious just to think about it. I want the armies of the Central Plains to march outward. And when they do — let the foreign peoples spend their own generations defending against us. Let them get used to being invaded, and then be told that their resistance was brave and moving.”

He looked at Li Chi. “Every step my army takes beyond our borders becomes our land. Every place I stand becomes the soil of the Central Plains.”

Li Chi murmured, echoing the words back to himself: “Every place I stand becomes mine. However many steps I walk, everything I’ve walked through — all of it mine.”

“Yes,” Tang Pidi said. “Exactly.”

Li Chi repeated it to himself once more — Tang Pidi’s words from a moment before.

“I want to fight when I want to, and when I don’t want to, no one dares to come.”

He looked at Tang Pidi, something kindling in his eyes — the look of someone imagining a future not yet real. “A nation like that — that would be a hegemon.”

Tang Pidi said, “My wish is to make it so that people of the Central Plains, wherever they walk in the world, are first-rank.”

Li Chi drew a long breath in, then exhaled it fully.

“The people of the Central Plains — wherever they walk, first-rank.”

He extended his hand. “For that — let’s do it.”

Tang Pidi laughed, and clasped his hand.

“Let’s do it.”

—