Li Chi and the others ate a hotpot meal on the homeowner’s rooftop. They had taken care to prop the basin up properly so as not to completely block the chimney — otherwise someone would likely have already come up with a stick to chase them off.

When they left, Li Chi tossed a fragment of silver into the courtyard below. Whether or not the family ever found it was their fortune to discover.

Night deepened. Li Chi reached into his sleeve and pulled something out — he thought to himself that it had been a while since he’d last worn the thing, and wasn’t sure if it would still fit properly. Gao Xining was always saying his face was getting wider, though he wasn’t sure whether it was truly getting wider or just truly wide.

“Your wound hasn’t fully healed,” Yu Jiuling said, looking at Li Chi. “Try not to get into a fight.”

Li Chi fitted the Night Demon mask onto his face. “I never planned to.”

Yu Jiuling said, “Aren’t we infiltrating the granary? Given the shape you’re in — I could barely watch you clamber up onto that roof — you think you can get into a secure government depot?”

Li Chi extended a hand. “Here. On your back.”

Yu Jiuling: “Get lost…”

Not long afterward, Yu Jiuling was carrying Li Chi across the streets and up another garden wall, then scaling that homeowner’s roof. They were not far from the granary now.

Zhuang Wudi glanced at Yu Jiuling but said nothing — though his expression conveyed something along the lines of: *mouth said no, but the body was very cooperative.*

“See that over there?” Li Chi pointed toward the granary in the distance. Yu Jiuling nodded and said, “I see it. What about it?”

Li Chi said, “When I went inside with Jiang Ran, I made sure to get a look at the layout. Behind the main storage building there’s a stack of fodder. You’re the fastest on your feet — put me down, slip over the wall, and set the fodder on fire.”

“What?”

Yu Jiuling stared at him blankly.

He reached out and pressed his palm to Li Chi’s forehead. “You’re not running a fever, are you?”

He frowned. “Aren’t we here to prevent the Cui Family from burning the granary? We might not even be able to stop that, given that practically everyone inside works for them — so why are we starting a fire ourselves?”

Li Chi said, “Go on. Trust me. If that fire actually burns the granary down, I’ll cover your tab at the Twin Star Pavilion three times over.”

With a whoosh, Yu Jiuling was already gone.

Zhuang Wudi shot Li Chi a glance. He also wasn’t entirely sure why Li Chi had sent the younger man to start a fire — if the granary actually caught, the entire city of Jizhou would be thrown into chaos.

Noticing Zhuang Wudi’s look, Li Chi smiled. “Something on your mind, Brother Zhuang?”

Zhuang Wudi was quiet for a moment. He sighed. “You have a fever.”

Li Chi shook his head. “I don’t.”

Zhuang Wudi pointed in the direction Yu Jiuling had vanished. “He’s got a different kind of heat.”

Li Chi had been mid-shake — he immediately switched to nodding. “Yes, yes, that is absolutely true.”

It had to be said: Yu Jiuling’s lightness arts had never been formally taught by any master, yet the natural gifts on display defied easy comprehension or imitation. His technique was ugly, but it was genuinely light and fast.

This was, in fact, the exact reason Yu Jiuling had strongly requested that whenever these three descriptors were applied in his vicinity, they be used exclusively for his lightness arts and nothing else. That was his line.

*Ugly. Light. Fast.*

He didn’t seem to do anything dramatic — his body simply floated up onto the wall. The granary’s perimeter wall was tall, yet he scaled it without tools, as effortlessly as a man climbing a few steps. Given a wall corner, he could reach the top of anything.

Atop the wall, Yu Jiuling glanced left and right to confirm no one was watching. He tied the rope he’d brought to the top of the wall and slid down the other side.

His movements were those of a cat leaping through moonlight — utterly silent upon landing. He reached the spot Li Chi had described quickly enough. There was indeed a considerable amount of fodder stacked there.

Yu Jiuling drew out his flint and struck it. The first few sparks had barely jumped when a shout rang out from somewhere in the distance, then more cries followed rapidly, and a number of men came rushing toward him at speed.

Yu Jiuling lit the fodder and ran, sprinting to where he’d left his rope, catching it with one hand, and hauling himself straight up — a moment later he was over the wall and on the other side.

From his vantage point on the neighboring rooftop, Li Chi watched through his spyglass as the granary’s people moved swiftly to stamp out the newly kindled fire. Someone was standing in the middle of the crowd, shouting furious reprimands at everyone around him.

Yu Jiuling came panting back and flattened himself on the rooftop, not daring to move. Some men had clambered out over the granary wall in pursuit, but the black-clad figure who had started the fire had already vanished completely. They patrolled up and down the outer wall for a while, found nothing suspicious, and returned inside.

“It’s not that I’m refusing to cover your tab — you genuinely couldn’t get it to catch,” Li Chi sighed. “That duck was right there, and it flew away.”

“Chicken,” Zhuang Wudi said quietly beside him.

Yu Jiuling: “Ugh…”

He looked at Li Chi. “How did you know they wouldn’t let the fire spread? Shouldn’t they want it to catch? If I hadn’t gone to light it, they’d probably have been planning to start a fire themselves at some point.”

Li Chi explained, “The Cui Family wants to seize Jizhou — not destroy it. Once they take the city, they’ll need it to be intact. This isn’t a game to them. They want the granary standing even more than we do, because those are the provisions for hundreds of thousands of Qingzhou troops outside. If the stores burn, the Qingzhou army has nothing to eat once they enter the city.”

Yu Jiuling said, “You knew that and still sent me…”

Li Chi said, “Mainly I just wanted to get your tab covered.”

Yu Jiuling: “I’d sooner believe a pig could climb a tree than believe Li Chi is trustworthy.”

Zhuang Wudi found himself thinking about how a while back he’d watched the Divine Eagle attempting to climb a tree. It had probably seen its master’s dog perching on branches all the time and decided it wanted to try. Somewhere in that eagle’s heart, it likely held the firm belief that it was in fact a noble, high-born dog, not a lowly eagle.

It had failed.

By the logic of motivational philosophy, failure is not to be feared — what is to be feared is the unwillingness to try. This being the case, the Divine Eagle was clearly an eagle with a bright future, a wild boar capable of generating great wealth.

Li Chi said, “At the very least, we’ve confirmed one thing: there is absolutely no chance they would burn the granary. More than that — they’ll protect it with everything they have.”

“So?” Yu Jiuling asked.

“Sleep.”

Li Chi pointed to a woodpile in the distance that looked, it had to be said, remarkably inviting.

He said earnestly, “Trust me. Sleeping there would be incredibly comfortable.”

Yu Jiuling said, “Right. ‘Incredibly comfortable.’ For a thief.”

Li Chi narrowed his eyes at Yu Jiuling. Yu Jiuling continued, “We’ve been up here working all night, went and lit a fire that could have been anything, and now we’re just going to sleep?”

“Just sleep.”

Li Chi said, “Come morning, there’s nothing else to do.”

Yu Jiuling said, “You go if you want. I’m not going. I can’t settle down.”

Li Chi said, “You have to go.”

Yu Jiuling asked, “On what grounds? Who forces people to sleep?”

Li Chi opened his hands. “Come on. On your back.”

Zhuang Wudi: “……”

Two quarter-hours later, Yu Jiuling discovered that Li Chi had actually fallen asleep. He found this genuinely hard to fathom — in a situation this urgent and tense, how could Li Chi sleep so soundly?

Zhuang Wudi asked softly, “You can’t sleep?”

Yu Jiuling said, “Of course I can’t. To sleep in a situation like this, you’d need to have something wrong with you. I can’t sleep — can you?”

Zhuang Wudi nodded. “I can. You stay up and keep watch.”

Yu Jiuling: “……”

And then, to his astonishment, Zhuang Wudi actually burrowed into the woodpile — and by all appearances, curling up in there did look genuinely comfortable.

The rest of that night was somewhat difficult for Yu Jiuling. He didn’t know how long he’d been keeping watch before he drifted off himself, and when he woke with a start, jerking upright in alarm, he found the sky had not yet lightened. Li Chi was already lying on the woodpile, peering through his spyglass at the granary.

Zhuang Wudi sat nearby, using a straw to pick his teeth. Yu Jiuling felt he must have missed quite a lot — when had Li Chi woken up? And what had Zhuang Wudi eaten?

He sidled over to Zhuang Wudi. “What are you eating?”

Zhuang Wudi answered, “Meat.”

Yu Jiuling said, “Where did you get meat? I didn’t see you bring any.”

Zhuang Wudi: “From last night.”

Yu Jiuling: “……”

“They’re moving. Keep it quiet.”

Li Chi slid off the woodpile and began pulling straw over himself. Zhuang Wudi and Yu Jiuling quickly did the same, burying themselves in the pile. The woodpile was pressed against the outer wall of a house along the roadside.

Shortly afterward, wagon after wagon began rolling out of the granary — a great many of them. Clearly this was the supply convoy delivering provisions to the four sections of the city walls.

Yu Jiuling found he couldn’t stop himself from trembling slightly. It was nerves — the convoy out there had so many men, and there were only three of them here. Once things turned violent, who knew if any of them would come out alive.

But he waited a good while longer and Li Chi still didn’t move. If Li Chi wasn’t moving, neither would Zhuang Wudi. And now Yu Jiuling was even more confused. The last time Li Chi and Jiang Ran had visited the granary, Li Chi had sent him on errands to investigate various things partway through — and he had reported back thoroughly. That was enough to confirm something was very wrong with this supply convoy. But Li Chi didn’t seem to have any intention of acting.

He had no choice but to suppress his impulse and stay hidden. He wasn’t sure how much time passed before the sound of wagons faded entirely — the convoy had clearly moved on.

Yu Jiuling peeked cautiously out. Not a soul remained on the street.

“Why didn’t you move?”

Yu Jiuling asked, unable to contain himself.

Li Chi said, “We are going to move — just not against the convoy. Against the granary.”

He looked at the sky. The convoy had all departed, but dawn had only just barely arrived. He weighed the timing and decided it was still a little early, so he lay back down.

Yu Jiuling was nearly beside himself. He pressed up close to Li Chi and pleaded, “What exactly are we going to do and how? Tell me already.”

Li Chi said, “Turn the corner past that intersection up ahead, and there’s an early-morning food stall that should already be open. Go buy some breakfast. By the time you’re back, I’ll tell you.”

Yu Jiuling gave Li Chi a glare, but he was anxious and curious in equal measure, so he scrambled up and ran off.

Not long afterward, Yu Jiuling returned with steaming hot food. The three of them huddled in the gap between the woodpile and the wall and ate their meal.

At long last, when Li Chi had eaten his fill, Yu Jiuling asked, “When do we act? How do we act?”

“Now.”

Li Chi pulled the Night Demon mask back over his face. He drew a signal whistle from inside his robe and flicked it skyward with a snap of his fingers.

A sharp, piercing blast rang out. Li Chi stood and looked toward the granary.

From all directions, people came surging toward it — the two thousand soldiers Li Chi had borrowed from Xiahou Zuo. But following Li Chi’s instructions to the letter, none of them wore military uniforms or armor, and none of them carried proper weapons. They looked like a mob of civilians about to storm a granary, armed with an assortment of iron forks, cudgels, and large iron ladles — and one man, apparently unable to find anything more suitable, had brought a pair of cymbals and was clanging them together as he walked. This was, one might infer, indicative of his family’s occupation.

Very likely, the business of funerals.

“Open the granary!”

“Distribute the grain!”

“Open the granary!”

The crowd gathered before the granary gates, shouting continuously, but stayed carefully just outside the range of the defenders’ bows. At first they only surrounded it — no attack, no charge, just the ongoing chant demanding grain distribution.

Gao Shengda climbed the outer wall and bellowed down at them. “Listen to me, all of you! Storming a military granary is a capital offense! It carries extermination of your entire family! If you don’t fall back right now, I will order my men to shoot!”

Among the crowd, a fifth-rank general glanced back at Li Chi in the distance. Seeing Li Chi standing far off, he reached under his long robe and produced a repeating crossbow, and began pressing slowly forward through the crowd, moving his men ahead in a low-voiced murmur.

Li Chi had instructed them: if Gao Shengda didn’t appear, it meant the men inside might simply open fire to drive them back. If Gao Shengda showed himself, it meant he wasn’t yet prepared to massacre civilians surrounding the granary — which meant they could push forward and apply more pressure.

And so the soldiers began to advance, shouting as they went.

Atop the wall, Gao Shengda watched the crowd close to within roughly thirty paces. He knew they couldn’t be allowed any nearer. He roared:

“Archers!”

The soldiers on the wall raised their bows and drew down on the crowd outside — and the advancing mass halted immediately.

“We have nothing to eat — open the stores and distribute grain!”

“Open the granary and relieve the people!”

“Distribute food!”

The soldiers shouted with considerable dedication. Li Chi had already made it clear: without a signal, they were not to actually storm the granary — that risked real casualties. Wait for the signal.

The fifth-rank general among them was a man Prince Yu had left as a resource for Xiahou Zuo — originally a trusted officer under Military Governor Zeng Ling, promoted to his generalship by Prince Yu before departing with the army, at which point he had been moved from the shadows into the light.

His name was Jinzu.

Jinzu took shelter behind his men and measured the distance. Thirty paces — a trivial shot for a repeating crossbow.

Using his men as a screen, he raised the crossbow and fired several bolts in rapid succession at Gao Shengda on the wall.

Several bolts suddenly flew in. Gao Shengda had no warning, and the roaring of the crowd outside swallowed the sound of the crossbow entirely.

Gao Shengda was a civil official, his martial skill nothing to speak of. Caught completely off guard, he was struck by multiple bolts — but fortunately, beneath his outer robes he wore armor with a breastplate over his heart. The bolt that struck him square in the chest hit the breastplate with a sharp metallic ring.

But Gao Shengda was not wearing full armor. A bolt punched into his lower abdomen, and he staggered backward and fell.

“Everyone, charge!”

Jinzu shouted from within the crowd. The men at the rear began lighting the torches they’d prepared and hurling them over the wall into the granary compound, instantly throwing everyone inside into a panic as they scrambled to smother the flames.

Meanwhile, those further back began passing prepared shields forward, using them to ward off arrow fire from the wall.

From their vantage point, Yu Jiuling watched with his heart in his throat.

“Li Diudiu — you’re not actually planning to burn the granary down, are you? With that many torches going in, if something catches properly, the whole city is going to be thrown into chaos.”

Li Chi smiled. “I went into the granary before and examined the layout carefully. The area where the torches are landing genuinely can’t set anything major alight. It’ll only create panic inside — and they should start sending people out for reinforcements.”

Yu Jiuling finally understood. Li Chi’s trip into the granary with Jiang Ran hadn’t only been to gauge Gao Shengda’s reaction.

Li Chi had been studying the terrain. In other words, this man had had his plan worked out from the very beginning.

The moment the men outside produced shields and began passing weapons forward through the crowd, those inside the granary knew this was no ordinary situation.

Gao Shengda, wounded, looked back at Cui Qing. Cui Qing’s expression was murderous — he had absolutely not anticipated this move from his opponent.

The granary was something the Cui Family could not afford to lose. The hundreds of thousands of Qingzhou troops outside the walls depended on its stores. If the granary actually burned, it wasn’t just that the Qingzhou army would have nothing to eat and their provisions would last only so long — even the city’s own people would revolt. Once that happened, Jizhou would be reduced to rubble.

This was what Li Chi was wagering on: that the Cui Family cared more about Jizhou than about anything else.

“Send men out. Recall the supply convoy. Attack these people from outside.”

Cui Qing ordered after brief consideration.

This was not a hasty improvisation — he knew that the supply convoy had never actually intended to attack the city gates. That plan was a feint designed to make the enemy think that was the intention. His men slipped out through other exits to go running after the convoy.

By this point, all four supply columns had reached their respective sections of the city walls and were in the process of offloading grain. The wagons were not yet fully unloaded when the messengers from the granary arrived. Hearing that the granary was under attack, the convoy men didn’t wait for the wall garrison to finish — they told the soldiers to take the grain themselves and came running back.

When they arrived at the granary, however, they found that the crowd that had surrounded it had already withdrawn. The scene was a mess, but nothing had actually been damaged.

All the torches thrown into the compound had been extinguished. It had been a scare, nothing more.

Roughly a li and more from the granary, Li Chi and the others were watching from a height through the spyglass.

“Jinzu’s people have eyes on all four sides — anyone else leaving will be spotted.”

Li Chi watched the granary as he spoke. “The Cui Family may start to lose their nerve. They’ll send someone to summon their leadership to discuss what to do. If no one comes rushing in, it means their leadership is already inside the granary.”

Yu Jiuling said, “Kill the leadership?”

Li Chi nodded. “If someone comes, we kill them before they enter. If no one comes, then whoever is inside won’t be getting out again.”

—

Inside the granary, Cui Qing was pacing back and forth, his face a dark mask. He turned to Gao Shengda. “How bad is the wound?”

Gao Shengda said, “Nothing too serious. The medicine has already been applied.”

Cui Qing made a brief sound of acknowledgment, then said, “Their sudden attack on the granary was designed to force the convoy back. So they still think we’re planning to take the city gates. Whoever thought this up calculated the timing exactly — staged a false siege of the granary, forced the convoy back, and also cost us the wagons, which means we have no way to use them as a defensive barrier if we push on the city gates.”

Gao Shengda thought it through as he spoke. “That appears to be it. They couldn’t determine whether we actually intended to take the gates, and couldn’t determine which gate we’d strike — so they used this method to drive our people back. One: to prevent us from seizing any gate. Two: to trap our people inside the granary. And they’ve already worked out that we won’t burn the food.”

Cui Qing nodded. “A clever man. But not quite clever enough. They think we’re going for the gates? Then let them keep thinking they’ve outmaneuvered us.”

He continued, “Pass the word — tighten security. Let the outside see that we’ve already prepared to make a last stand. And furthermore: send no more men out…”

He paused, then swept his eyes over the people around him. His voice became heavy. “I said it last night: no great cause is achieved without sacrifice. Today is the day we offer that sacrifice for the family’s future.”

“We may all die here. The enemy knows who we are — they will commit heavy forces to storm this granary. What we must do is hold this position until dawn tomorrow.”

“If any of us is fortunate enough to survive until then, we will see our great army enter Jizhou. We will see the Cui Family banner raised over this city’s walls.”

Cui Qing raised his voice. “Today I stand and die alongside every one of you. I have already decided: I will not send for reinforcements. If any among you is unwilling to fight and die by my side, you may leave now.”

“Fight to the death!”

A roar of raised fists from the assembled Cui Family men.

“Our family has worked toward this day for more than a decade. It cannot be lost.”

Cui Qing picked up a long saber and strode toward the door. “When our family sees that we have sent no one to beg for aid, they will understand our resolve. And they will fight with everything they have to take Jizhou. So if we die today, let me die before all of you.”

He stepped up onto the wall. The Cui Family men seized their weapons and followed. For them, this battle was not merely a matter of personal survival — it was the survival of the family itself.

—

Two hours later.

An emissary from Jinzu came to find Li Chi with a report: not a single person had broken out of the granary, confirming that the people inside had prepared for a fight to the death.

Li Chi listened, then nodded. “Tell General Jinzu: maintain the appearance of attack, but don’t sacrifice too many of our brothers’ lives. A show of assault — nothing more. The outcome doesn’t hinge on the granary.”

“Yes!”

The soldier acknowledged the order and ran off.

By now Yu Jiuling had also grasped what Li Chi’s plan was, and he finally understood the connection between what Li Chi had sent him to investigate and the granary situation.

“So tonight is when the Qingzhou army launches its full assault.”

Yu Jiuling looked at Li Chi. “Should we go tell Xiahou and Pidi now?”

Li Chi said, “They already know. They’re already prepared. Tonight will be a brutal fight — but the one who wins won’t be the Qingzhou army. It won’t be the Cui Family.”

Yu Jiuling was still uneasy. He hesitated a moment before asking, “And if something unexpected happens?”

“Nothing can.”

Li Chi said, “The Cui Family has been plotting to take Jizhou for years. But I want Jizhou too. It’s true I’ve only wanted it for a short while — but since I want it, it can only be mine. The difference is: the Cui Family is impatient, and I am not.”

Li Chi turned to go downstairs. “Time to eat. After we eat, we wait for dark. The elders always say that demons and monsters only reveal their true forms after nightfall. I’d like to see whether the one who’s truly in charge will show his real face once the sun goes down.”

Yu Jiuling was quiet for a moment, then suddenly laughed. “But if nightfall makes everyone reveal their true form, what happens when you reveal yours? I’ve always suspected you’re some kind of monster yourself.”

Li Chi shrugged and smiled. “If I revealed my true form, I’d definitely be the biggest, most fearsome kind of monster there is.”

He said it casually, in passing — but Yu Jiuling actually took it seriously and began to ponder what the biggest, most fearsome monster in the world might be.

His eyes went slightly unfocused. Li Chi noticed and smiled. “You’re thinking about what the most fearsome monster would be, aren’t you? So — what do you think it is?”

Zhuang Wudi’s mind, without his bidding, supplied the image of a dragon. Exalted beyond all other creatures — and yet, when you thought about it, a dragon was still a monster.

At that very moment, Yu Jiuling delivered his verdict with absolute conviction.

“The Great Mountain Ape!”

He said, “It has to be the Great Mountain Ape. Whenever the old people wanted to frighten children, the Great Mountain Ape was always the most terrifying thing they could name.”

Li Chi: “……”

Zhuang Wudi paused, then clasped his hands in a respectful salute. “Magnificent.”

—