The convoy continued northwest. The elegantly dressed young man called Dantai Yajing neither spoke to anyone nor sought conversation — he simply followed at the rear of the party, stopping when they stopped and moving when they moved. No one had any complaints, save perhaps his old yellow horse.
The old yellow horse seemed displeased with this regulated rhythm of walking and halting. It was accustomed to wandering as it pleased — going where it wished, stopping where it wished.
After two days of travel, the convoy finally emerged from the mountains into a vast, boundless plain. They could see peasants laboring in the fields; summer was nearly upon them, and the wheat stood knee-high, the harvest almost within reach.
Yet who could say whether that grain, already visible before their eyes, would ever find its way into the peasants’ own hands? Above, officials came to levy taxes; below, bandits came to plunder. The peasants could only pray that the officials would forget them and the bandits would go blind.
By the map, the nearest sizeable settlement suitable for lodging was still a full day and night’s march away. With their numbers, camping in the open held no particular danger, so there was no need to press the pace.
That afternoon, a scout sent ahead to reconnoiter returned with word that roughly twenty-some *li* away there was a site suitable for camping. The village was small, with no proper dwellings available for accommodation, but the scout had already negotiated with the village headman, who was willing to let them spend a night on the open ground at the village entrance.
The village was indeed small — barely a hundred households — and its people were visibly impoverished. Li Chi gave orders to disturb the villagers as little as possible; a crowd of large, armed men would naturally alarm peaceful folk.
Lady Xiahou had a kind manner, and she took it upon herself to speak with the villagers. She borrowed water from their well, examined and treated two of the villagers’ ailments, and left them with some medicine besides.
The soldiers erected their tents outside the village and ringed the camp with the convoy’s wagons, which served as an effective barrier against surprise attack. Whether enemies came with cavalry charges or arrow volleys, the wagons provided considerable protection.
Some distance away, Dantai Yajing watched these people set up camp with practiced, disciplined efficiency, and found himself growing ever more curious about them.
These people were no ordinary merchant escort. The weapons carried by those guards surpassed even those of regular Dachu garrison troops — whatever the garrison troops had, they had too, and what the garrison troops lacked, they had as well.
The quality of their equipment was, frankly, staggering.
From his observations, roughly half the party — around a hundred men — were guards of exceptional caliber: disciplined, coordinated, organized along clear command lines. Their squad leaders rarely needed to speak; a few hand signals and the men moved immediately. Dantai Yajing thought that even the finest veterans among Liangzhou’s hardened soldiers would be hard-pressed to match them.
The other hundred or so were an entirely different matter. They were slovenly and undisciplined, laughing and jostling about, looking nothing like soldiers — clearly men of the jianghu — yet they knew each other with the easy familiarity of old companions.
The disciplined soldiers paid the jianghu men no attention, and the jianghu men paid the soldiers none. Each side kept to itself, the line between them as clear as that between the Jing and Wei rivers.
So Dantai Yajing was genuinely puzzled: how on earth had this group been assembled?
Just then, Tang Pidi came over carrying some dry rations and held them out to Dantai Yajing without a word.
Dantai Yajing shook his head. “Dry rations are too coarse. I couldn’t stomach them.”
He smiled. “I had a look around the village just now and spent fifty taels of silver to buy a chicken from one family — I’ve asked them to braise it for me. There isn’t much worth eating out here, but at least village chickens are plump and tender. This family only had two, so they must have raised them with great care. If the braise turns out well, it’ll go nicely with rice.”
Tang Pidi shook his head, turned, and began to walk away with the rations.
“Are you truly not considering becoming one of my men?” Dantai Yajing called after him.
Tang Pidi didn’t even glance back.
“Why would someone like you be content serving under that fellow?”
Tang Pidi laughed — without a word, just a laugh — and that laughter alone made Dantai Yajing feel he was being mocked. A laugh that said: *how laughable you are, how pitiful, how pathetic.*
It irritated him.
“I’ve spent the past two days thinking about how to break your fist technique,” he called out. “I’ve had some insights. Shall we have another go?”
Tang Pidi had already walked a fair distance. He stopped, seemed to consider briefly, then turned and came back.
The old yellow horse lifted its head to look at Tang Pidi, then lowered it and resumed grazing. In that moment, Tang Pidi noticed something: the horse grazed with what appeared to be casual indifference, but was in fact extremely selective. It ate with precision — only the tender young leaves from each blade of grass, leaving every mature leaf untouched.
Tang Pidi paused. He pointed at the old yellow horse. “Before we begin, I’d like to ask — what makes this horse so unusual?”
“It’s my horse,” Dantai Yajing replied. “Naturally it’s unusual.”
“It doesn’t seem to think much of you,” Tang Pidi said. “Which suggests its distinctiveness has nothing to do with you.”
Dantai Yajing sighed, with something of a resigned air.
“It was my father’s horse. It has never yielded the road for anyone, regardless of who they are — everyone else steps aside for it. Animals are all the same in this regard, not just horses — even a pig is the same. If you were to have a fine warhorse that rode with you through battle after undefeated battle, going and coming as invincible as the wind, if everywhere you rode on that horse men would step aside and bow — the animal would come to believe those gestures were directed at it as well. Over time, it becomes like this: convinced of its own nobility.”
The old yellow horse raised its head, looked at Dantai Yajing, and snorted twice — whether in protest or in reproach was impossible to say.
“Shall we begin.”
Tang Pidi, having understood why this old horse carried itself with such hauteur, was now prepared to spar with Dantai Yajing again.
*Undefeated across the northwest, invincible coming and going — who else could it be?*
This bout lasted considerably longer than the first. After roughly a quarter-hour, Dantai Yajing raised his hand to call it off.
“I still can’t beat you,” he said, studying Tang Pidi, “but I can tell — you’ve put in more force than the first time. Seven parts then, eight parts now.”
Tang Pidi didn’t reply. He turned and left.
About an hour later, those in Li Chi’s group watched as several villagers came out of the village. One carried a clay pot, still steaming — the braised chicken, delivered as promised. The others came carrying a quilt, a washbasin stand, and assorted tools.
After they arrived, they used timber to construct a simple lean-to for Dantai Yajing and assembled a rough wooden bed. Li Chi had assumed the quilt was for sleeping, but it turned out to serve as wind-screening for the shelter walls.
Dantai Yajing pressed some silver into the villagers’ hands, and they withdrew with profuse expressions of gratitude.
Even in surroundings as stark as these, this man was determined to have the finest comfort available circumstances could afford.
He snapped his fingers. The old yellow horse ambled over with obvious reluctance. Dantai Yajing unloaded its saddlebags, placed the long lance beside the bed, and from a separate pouch produced a set of eating utensils — a bowl with a gilded jade rim, chopsticks of gold and jade jointed together.
A flask of wine. A pot of braised chicken. A single steamed bun. When he had eaten, he produced from his baggage what appeared to be an extremely fine woolen blanket — apparently conjured from thin air — and lay down on the bed with it pulled over him.
Yu Jiuling was watching with a dazed expression. He turned to Li Chi. “Am I the sort of person who deserves a beating when I’m not talking?”
“Not particularly,” Li Chi said.
Yu Jiuling pointed at Dantai Yajing. “Does *that* man deserve a beating when *he’s* not talking?”
“Hold nothing back,” Li Chi said.
Yu Jiuling sighed. “I can’t win against him. Old Tang said yesterday that his martial skill is no less than Tang’s own, so I won’t go making a fool of myself.” He paused. “But… I can’t help it. I desperately want to go steal his bowl.”
—
Meanwhile, at Yanshan Camp.
Yu Chaozong had only just returned from Xinzhou, and when he walked through the door he let out a long breath of relief. The journey had been exhausting. He sat down, pulled open his desk drawer, took out a jade vial, shook two pills from it, and swallowed them with water.
Chang Ding-sui, the camp’s current Fifth Chief, asked, “Chief, are you all right?”
Yu Chaozong shook his head. “An old ailment — I forgot to bring my medicine on this trip, so I’ve been a bit out of sorts. But fortunately…”
The present roster of Yanshan Camp’s chiefs: First Chief Yu Chaozong; Second Chief Zhuang Wudi; Third Chief Li Chi; Fourth and Fifth Chiefs were brothers — the elder, Chang Dingzhou, was Fourth Chief, currently commanding troops at the frontier; Sixth Chief was Xili, also at the frontier; Seventh Chief was called Huang Jinjia — he was rarely at the camp, being responsible for all covert sentries and intelligence networks outside Yanshan Camp, and whenever he left to conduct inspections, he was gone for two months at minimum.
Chang Ding-sui said, “On the Seventh Chief’s last inspection circuit, he learned that there’s a divine physician somewhere in the Yunyin Mountains and immediately sent word back. Whether the man is genuine or a fraud, we don’t know, but if genuine, inviting him here to examine you might finally cure this illness.”
Yu Chaozong smiled. “It’s nothing serious — I’ve had it since childhood, and I’ve lived well enough all these years. I was just careless this time and forgot my medicine.”
“I’ve already reprimanded your personal soldiers, Chief,” Chang Ding-sui said. “Neglecting something as important as this.”
“If anyone was careless, it was me,” Yu Chaozong replied. “Don’t scold them for my failings. It’s not to be done again.”
“Yes.”
Chang Ding-sui acknowledged the rebuke, then ventured carefully, “What is the Chief’s assessment of our Eighth?”
“Our Eighth?”
Yu Chaozong paused, then laughed. “That one — the eyes hold a cold viciousness, and when he speaks he can’t meet a person’s gaze. You’ve noticed it yourself, I’m sure: someone who repeatedly looks down when talking is harboring something they’d rather conceal.”
He leaned back and turned his gaze toward the window. “He has ability, but whether his intentions are clean is another matter. I’m the First Chief of this camp — what I said in jest, that whoever could take Daizhou and Xinzhou would become our Eighth Chief, he actually did it, so I can’t go back on my word. But…”
He looked at Chang Ding-sui. “The man’s stratagems and cunning are genuinely formidable. If he has no treachery in mind and simply wants to secure a future for himself, there’s use for him in the camp. With Second and Third away for the foreseeable future, we’re short-handed. Having an Eighth to share some of the burden isn’t a bad thing.”
Chang Ding-sui said with a grin, “Second Brother seems quite content to remain in Jizhou and not come back — and Third Chief is the same…”
Before he could finish, Yu Chaozong shook his head. “Third Chief’s vision reaches farther than mine or yours. We all manage what’s in front of us — even our Eighth is the same. He took Daizhou and Xinzhou because he reads the immediate situation with extraordinary precision, seeing every detail of what’s here and now with pinpoint accuracy. But our Third — he sees what comes *after*. What the rest of us cannot see.”
“Don’t speak of Third Chief’s failings again,” Yu Chaozong added.
Chang Ding-sui bowed his head. “I’ll remember what the Chief has said.”
“They’re both sharp, careful minds,” Yu Chaozong said. “When Third returns and meets our Eighth… that should be quite interesting.”
He smiled. Chang Ding-sui smiled with him.
Yu Chaozong’s gaze fell back upon the jade vial, and for a fleeting instant something passed through his eyes — a shadow of worry, of apprehension — then it was gone.
—