At Li Chi’s signal, a dozen riders broke from the column and rode into the mountains to scout ahead. Gouzi’s cries from high above had warned that danger might be near.
With Gouzi among Li Chi’s group, it was as though they had the finest scout in the world.
The dozen men followed the mountain road into the valley and quickly vanished from Li Chi’s sight.
“Look at this road,” Yu Jiuling said, sighing. “This is practically the most remote corner of Dachu, yet somehow it feels peaceful and tranquil. In the dynasty’s days of strength, even a place this out-of-the-way had a proper road. Now there’s no one to tend it.”
He bent down and tried to pull out some of the grass growing up through the road’s surface, but the growth was so deeply rooted that he could only tear off the blades — the roots refused to come free.
Tang Pidi watched him and said, “Try with your mouth.”
Yu Jiuling: “…”
“This road is called the Nairan Thoroughfare,” Tang Pidi explained. “Dachu built it so that Jizhou’s garrison troops could reinforce the frontier with all possible speed. Setting out from Jizhou and following this thoroughfare to the northwestern frontier — traveling day and night — takes only twenty days.”
He looked at Yu Jiuling and said, “The end of this thoroughfare is Liangzhou.”
Just then, one of the scouts returned. He signaled from the mouth of the valley that there was no danger. The column set off again and entered the valley.
“Wolves,” the scout reported. “Some sort of group was attacked up ahead — a wolf pack surrounded them. We drove the wolves off. The group numbers several dozen; they’re a troupe of performers.”
“Performers?”
Li Chi found this curious. Out here in the wilderness, in the middle of nowhere — how had a troupe of street entertainers ended up in a place like this?
He and Tang Pidi exchanged a glance, then rode forward to investigate.
The leader of this performer’s troupe was an elderly man who appeared to be in his fifties or sixties. His hair and beard were streaked with grey, his face heavily lined, his complexion a deep, weathered brown — a man who had clearly spent decades wandering the jianghu roads.
He gave his surname as Luo and his name as Luo Yuanchu. His hometown was in Jizhou as well. He had been traveling the counties and prefectures of Jizhou with his performer’s troupe, eking out a living, until the chaos of warfare spread everywhere. After some discussion among themselves, they decided simply to come to the grassland side. Beyond the Nairan Grassland lay the Great Western Mountains, and outside the mountains lived many minority peoples of various clans.
This, it seemed, was something only this traveling troupe knew. They also respected those peoples’ wishes and kept the information to themselves. It was only because Li Chi’s group had saved them that they spoke of it openly.
After the fall of Youshan, great numbers of minority peoples had left the Central Plains — but they could not return to their original homelands, and the Nairan herders would not take them in. So they went beyond the Great Western Mountains and settled there.
The terrain around the Great Western Mountains formed something like a vast basin. The side nearest the Nairan Grassland was called the Great Western Mountains proper; to the north was a low-lying depression with lush vegetation; and a hundred li beyond that lay an east-west mountain range — a branch of the Yan Mountains, known as the Northern Branch Range.
These various minority clans had established themselves in the land between the Great Western Mountains and the Northern Branch Range, and over several centuries of development had grown into a nation within a nation.
There were dozens of clans there. The smallest numbered seven or eight hundred people; the largest over a hundred thousand. In total, some five or six hundred thousand people lived in this hidden country.
The largest clan was called the Dong people. They were not originally northern — they had come from a region south even of Shuzhou, an area that was nearly primeval.
During the time of Youshan, successive emperors had shared a fondness for acrobatics and street performance. A Dong man who held an official post at the Youshan court one day told the emperor that his clansmen were all masters of such arts, and the emperor issued an order for him to summon the Dong people’s finest performers to the capital.
The truth was that the Dong people, living in their near-primeval jungle home, could all climb and leap like monkeys. Even give one of them a bamboo pole with no base and simply plant one end in the ground — they could scramble to the top without difficulty. And their hunting methods made use of a remarkable variety of implements: blowguns, rope snares, and the like — honed to a frightening precision that was genuinely astonishing to behold.
In time, Dong people began streaming into the Youshan capital, relying on these skills to earn their keep. In truth, life was not especially good for most of them.
The first arrivals had genuinely received generous rewards, and some had even been given official posts on account of their performances. When word of this reached their homeland, more and more people made their way to Jizhou. At the height of it, the city of Baocheng held over thirty thousand Dong people — yet fewer than one percent of them had achieved any real prosperity.
In those early days, the Dong people’s performances before the emperor had earned lavish praise, and the common people were naturally curious to see what all the fuss was about — the stories that circulated were fantastical. A merchant who could hire a Dong performance troupe at great expense would find his venue packed to bursting, and profits poured in.
But then there were simply too many of them. Dong street performers were everywhere, clustered on every corner of every thoroughfare. People stopped watching.
After Youshan fell, they found themselves cut off from the road home to Shuzhou. Afraid of the warfare, they moved northward, intending to settle on the grasslands — but the Nairan drove them out, fearing they would overstay their welcome.
So they settled in the land between the Great Western Mountains and the Northern Branch Range, multiplied over the generations, and grew into the largest clan, with the largest army. Their chieftain styled himself the Carefree King.
Luo Yuanchu told Li Chi that the Carefree King, Shan Huanzhou, would soon be celebrating his birthday, and the troupe was on its way there to earn some money.
Perhaps because of their history, the Dong people had an exceptional fondness for performance. After settling here, the troupe — who had once been the performers — found themselves in an ironic reversal: now that they were the dominant clan, their chieftain had taken to imitating the old Youshan emperors, sitting back and letting others perform for him.
After hearing Luo Yuanchu out, the first question that came to Li Chi’s mind was not about these clans — it was about where the money came from.
Logically, the various minority peoples who had fled the Youshan capital with nothing would have had limited gold and silver in circulation. After several centuries of isolation with minimal contact with the outside world — not even trading with the Nairan herders — where were they getting their silver?
The moment his eyes narrowed, Tang Pidi knew the young man was thinking about money.
Tang Pidi pulled Li Chi aside. “That little squint means mischief is brewing,” he said with a smile.
Li Chi said: “You want fifty thousand warhorses and fifty thousand fighting men — if I don’t think about money, who will? I want to see where the Carefree King’s silver comes from. Old Luo just said the man spends lavishly — if that’s really true…”
Tang Pidi said: “If it is, we should start intensive training for Little Ninth right now — there’s probably still time. Have Little Ninth practice climbing poles and jumping through fire rings and the like. The rewards could be quite substantial.”
Li Chi said: “Relying on Little Ninth alone is still rather limited. And besides, pole-climbing and such aren’t exactly rare skills — plenty of people can do that.”
Tang Pidi said: “Plenty of people can do it. Nobody does it quite like Little Ninth.”
Li Chi: “The main issue is that if we only start training now, the time is too short. Flair alone won’t be enough.”
Tang Pidi said: “We could make the act go on for a long time. We’ll continue on our way, leave Little Ninth here, and come back to collect the money every six months or a year. Little Ninth is so lovable — the Carefree King will adore him.”
Li Chi said: “So Little Ninth is actually Chive Ninth. How many harvests are you planning to cut?”
Tang Pidi waved a hand. “Why count harvests? Just cut until he dies, be done with it.”
Li Chi said: “Old Luo just said the people here have never had any conflict, their army hasn’t fought a battle in hundreds of years — hasn’t even raised a hand — and all the clans get along peacefully, no one bullying outsiders. And with the Carefree King’s birthday coming up, things will be especially lively. Why don’t we all go and see?”
He wanted to bring Gao Xining along.
Tang Pidi said: “Everyone else in those troupes are entertainers. We look like a military force no matter how you look at us. We might be stopped at the entrance. That place has been known to very few people for centuries. If Old Luo’s group hadn’t stumbled into it by accident, Central Plains people might never have known there was a little nation hidden there at all — so their defenses will certainly be tight.”
Li Chi looked back at his own column. It truly could not be mistaken for any kind of performance troupe.
He looked at Tang Pidi. Tang Pidi said: “In the end, this will all come down to Little Ninth.”
Li Chi said: “You’re right. There’s still time to start training.”
He turned and went to ask Luo Yuanchu how long it would take to reach the Carefree Kingdom. Luo Yuanchu told him roughly five days.
Li Chi came back and told Tang Pidi: “Only five days — I’m not sure that’s enough…”
Tang Pidi waved his large hand. “We’ll just increase the intensity!”
Li Chi: “As long as Little Ninth can take it, I’ll give you all the intensity you want.”
A moment later, Yu Jiuling looked at the two stern faces sitting across from him and thought: these two have dug a pit and are waiting for me to walk into it. If I refuse to walk in, they’ll probably just shove me.
Yu Jiuling said nervously: “You two, stop looking so serious — it’s scaring me.”
Tang Pidi said: “There’s a big opportunity here to get rich. But we’re both too dignified for it. The bigger the fortune, the more you need someone completely undignified to grab it. Ideally someone who’s a complete lunatic. We’ve looked over the whole group, and there are only three people capable of bearing this great responsibility.”
Yu Jiuling asked: “Me — and who else?”
Li Chi said: “The eagle and the dog.”
Yu Jiuling: “Go to hell!”
Tang Pidi said patiently: “If you refuse, we’ll beat you.”
Li Chi said patiently: “We’ll have the eagle and the dog do it.”
Yu Jiuling sighed. “Fine. What exactly is the plan?”
Li Chi laid out the full situation from beginning to end. Yu Jiuling thought it over. If there was genuinely a large amount of money to be made, it was worth doing — but one person alone could not possibly earn that much.
Thinking of the words *not dignified*, Yu Jiuling looked back over his shoulder, and his eyes lit up. He pointed at the figures behind them and said: “Is there a single normal person among those Blade-Hangmen?”
Li Chi and Tang Pidi looked at each other. Both of them broke into wide grins.
A moment later, senior brother Jia Ruan of the Blade-Hangmen looked at the three stern faces sitting across from him. He had the feeling these three had dug a pit and were waiting for him to walk into it. If he didn’t, the one called Yu Jiuling off to the side would probably be shoved in.
“Acrobatics and street performance?”
After listening to Li Chi’s explanation, senior brother Jia Ruan fell deep in thought. He mentally ran through everything his brothers could do, and concluded that the only thing genuinely worth presenting was one of the Blade-Hangmen’s three signature arts.
When he mentioned the Blade-Hangmen’s three signature arts, Yu Jiuling asked curiously: “Which three?”
Jia Ruan explained: “The blade techniques practiced by the Blade-Hangmen are different from other schools. We use large blades — very large, picture a guillotine blade, that size. This is the first signature art, called the Blade-Hangmen’s Great Blade.”
Yu Jiuling said: “Where are your guillotines?”
Jia Ruan said: “Gone. The rebel soldiers seized them all.”
He continued: “The second signature art is called the Middle Blade — slightly shorter than your standard crosswise saber, with a chain attached to the hilt. It can be deployed without warning to wound an opponent.”
Yu Jiuling said: “Where are the Middle Blades?”
Jia Ruan said: “Are you not paying attention? I just told you they were all seized.”
Yu Jiuling: “…”
Jia Ruan said: “The third art is the throwing knife.”
Yu Jiuling said: “Wasn’t that what you just described?”
Jia Ruan said: “That was the chain knife. This is the throwing knife.”
He produced a handful of small knives as if from nowhere and waved them in front of Yu Jiuling. “The throwing knife — one of the three supreme arts of the Blade-Hangmen. Every one of our brothers is proficient in it.”
Yu Jiuling asked: “Why weren’t those knives seized as well?”
Jia Ruan said: “Are you not listening? These knives are small — you can hide them on your person.”
Yu Jiuling sighed, then turned to look at Li Chi and Tang Pidi. “You see? I told you they were all lunatics. Even more lunatic than me.”
—