Li Chi fell into a long silence after hearing Jinzu out, because there are some people in this world worthy of respect — worthy of it always.

Jinzu was not a man without principles. He understood the difference between right and wrong, between good and bad. He simply had no choice.

Some men earn respect by recognizing they’ve taken a wrong path and finding their way back. Others earn it by recognizing the same thing, yet refusing to turn back out of loyalty and obligation. Both deserve the same regard.

“If the day ever comes,” Jinzu said.

He drank his last cup of wine and smiled with easy grace.

“—that I stand before you with a weapon in hand… I ask that you fight me without holding back. That would be a kindness.”

With that, Jinzu rose and left.

Perhaps even he hadn’t anticipated where the conversation would go tonight. His original intention had truly been nothing more than to probe Li Chi’s or Tang Pidi’s sentiments on behalf of the Military Commissioner.

But there are some people you simply cannot bring yourself to deceive.

Jinzu respected Tang Pidi. He respected Li Chi. To stand before two men he respected and do nothing but lie — he couldn’t manage it. And even if he could, he would despise himself for it.

“I am a soldier.”

Jinzu turned back to look at Li Chi and Tang Pidi, doing his best to smile lightly — yet those four words carried a weight that belied the ease of his expression.

Li Chi and Tang Pidi clasped their fists simultaneously. When Jinzu saw the gesture, he smiled again — a smile of satisfaction, carrying a faint thread of quiet pride.

—

The Military Commissioner’s Residence.

Zeng Ling had not slept. He couldn’t close his eyes until Jinzu returned with word of what he’d learned.

Just as Jinzu had anticipated, the options Zeng Ling had for dealing with Li Chi were essentially two: kill or expel.

Cultivating a good relationship with Li Chi — and through him with the Yanshan Camp — was not a way to deal with Li Chi. It was a way to deal with the problem.

When Jinzu entered, he could already see from Zeng Ling’s expression that something was weighing on him, so he was careful with his words.

“My lord?”

Jinzu called softly.

“Mm?”

Zeng Ling came back to himself, looked at Jinzu, and let out a long breath.

“You’re back… I was lost in thought just now, and so deep in it I didn’t even hear you come in.”

Zeng Ling rose and moved to the side of the room, where he personally prepared tea.

“How did it go?” he asked.

Jinzu lowered his head. “I tested the waters as best I could without being too obvious about it. From what Li Chi said, his intent seems to be that he wants to leave.”

“Wants to leave?”

Zeng Ling’s hands stilled over the tea. He looked at Jinzu. “He wants to leave?”

Jinzu nodded. “That was the impression he gave — quite clearly, actually, which is why I wasn’t certain whether it was genuine or calculated.”

Zeng Ling poured Jinzu a cup of tea and sat down, sinking into thought once more.

After a long silence, Zeng Ling raised his cup — then stopped it at his lips. His eyes shifted to Jinzu with a puzzled look.

“Are you saying that Li Chi deliberately used you to let me know he intends to leave?”

“That would seem to be the case,” Jinzu said.

Zeng Ling fell silent again.

He had begun to find Li Chi difficult to read. He’d underestimated some of Li Chi’s earlier schemes, but in the end he’d worked them out. Now Li Chi wanted to use Jinzu to relay a message about leaving — and that left Zeng Ling baffled all over again.

Because regardless of whether the city came to be surrounded on three sides or four, Li Chi staying put was the most advantageous choice for Li Chi. Choosing to leave now was either a trap of some kind, or it wasn’t.

Zeng Ling rose and paced back and forth across the room. He didn’t know how much time had passed before he finally remembered Jinzu was still standing there.

He smiled apologetically. “I forgot you were here. I got to thinking — and the more I thought, the more there was to think about.”

Jinzu offered what comfort he could. “My lord, hasn’t the worst already passed? Prince Yu is dead. Most of his partisans have been eliminated. The men who hold power and command the troops inside and outside Jizhou City are now all your people, all your trusted subordinates.”

Zeng Ling sat down across from Jinzu and drew several slow, involuntary breaths.

“Jinzu — everything you’ve said is true. That’s how I thought about it before as well. However bad things got, could they really be worse than the moment Prince Yu’s attitude shifted after we lost the battle?”

Zeng Ling continued: “At the time I told myself — this is as bad as it gets, and even this I don’t fear.”

“But…”

His tone shifted.

“Jinzu, do you know when I came to realize that Prince Yu turning against me wasn’t actually the worst of it?”

Jinzu shook his head.

Even now, he still thought that had been the worst. No matter how formidable the enemy outside, they still had troops, still had Jizhou City — the worst it could come to was fighting to the last.

“It was after I witnessed what Li Chi is capable of.”

Zeng Ling let out a long, long breath — as though trying to expel something lodged deep inside him.

When a person is under pressure, burdened, dejected, when they feel helpless — they will often exhale in great unconscious gusts without realizing it themselves.

Li Chi had put pressure on him.

Zeng Ling sighed. “The worst thing is not Prince Yu turning on me. It’s not Liu Li and Cui Yan camped outside the city, nor the not-yet-arrived Luo Geng. It’s the young…”

He went on: “It’s the feeling, at my age — when I believed I had finally reached that high place and could survey the whole of human affairs — having weathered hardship, learned right from wrong, mastered the balance of things, my faculties of strategy and nerve both at their peak — that I should still fear a man barely past twenty? I told myself: I know the will of Heaven now. Why should I fear a boy?”

“And yet I do fear. More and more.”

Zeng Ling looked at Jinzu. “They are the ones who fear nothing.”

Jinzu stood frozen, at a loss for words to offer as comfort — and then it came to him that perhaps no words could.

“You’ll see…”

Zeng Ling murmured, as if to himself. “Those who know no fear — and men like me who believed that at our age we had come to know the will of Heaven — in the end, we are the ones who will suffer for it.”

—

Shen Medical Hall.

It was deep in the night, yet Shen Rujian, the proprietress of Shen Medical Hall, had no desire to sleep. She had been sitting in the courtyard gazing up at the bright moon in a daze for some time.

But a woman like her — how could she really afford to sit idle?

She was a pragmatist through and through. Whatever she did, she pursued utility. Things that were beautiful but served no purpose she dismissed without a second glance — and that extended to how she dressed.

In her view, the most valuable thing of all was time. A person who wasted time was more contemptible than someone who wasted anything else.

Her subordinate, Lü Qingluan, was a middle-aged man who appeared to be somewhere in his thirties or forties. He possessed a peculiar quality — he was easy to overlook. He and Shen Rujian were complete opposites: when Shen Rujian stood somewhere, everyone noticed her first; when Lü Qingluan stood somewhere, no one noticed him at all. So when he stood behind her, he might as well have been invisible.

“Mistress.”

Lü Qingluan called softly — the only thing that made his presence register at all.

“It’s time to rest,” he reminded her.

Shen Rujian nodded, but made no move to go inside.

After a moment, she asked him: “What do you think we came to Jizhou City to do?”

Lü Qingluan found the question difficult. From the original reason — they had accepted a request from Li Chi and the others — the decision had been made by the master of Yun Yin Mountain, Shen Rujuan’s elder sister, Shen Rujun. Her intention had been to send disciples out to help Li Chi, to give them experience in the world, and to let Yun Yin Mountain play a part when someone was trying to save it.

But since arriving in Jizhou, Shen Rujian had shown not the slightest inclination to help Li Chi in any way. The arrangement resembled the most transactional of dealings between strangers: I use your land, I pay you silver; you use my medicine, you pay me silver too — and it wasn’t as though they were even close to being kin.

Whatever money came in would be divided exactly according to the agreed terms — not one copper more, not one copper less. This was business, not assistance.

So Lü Qingluan found his mistress’s question genuinely hard to answer, because what they were doing now seemed to bear no relationship to why they had come to do it in the first place.

Shen Rujian saw him hesitate, recognized his difficulty, and smiled slightly. “Say what’s on your mind.”

Lü Qingluan lowered his head. “I’ve been wondering, mistress, whether we’ve been deliberately keeping our distance from Li Chi’s side — perhaps more than necessary.”

Shen Rujian made a soft sound of acknowledgment. “If even you think so, then Li Chi and his people certainly think so.”

Lü Qingluan nodded. “They must. Ever since you said you didn’t want anyone interfering with our business, no one from Li Chi’s side has come by — until today, when the young woman named Gao Xining paid us a visit.”

“I’m asking you this because of Gao Xining’s visit,” Shen Rujian said.

She paused, then said with a trace of self-mockery: “I am a merchant. Even though what I do is save lives, I am a merchant first. A merchant’s primary goal is to make money — everything else comes second.”

Lü Qingluan sighed. “Others might believe that, mistress. I never have.”

Shen Rujian looked at him in surprise. “Why not?”

“Every person under your care,” Lü Qingluan said, “has been someone barely clinging to life — someone you snatched back from the edge through sheer determination. If you truly cared only about money, as you’re always saying, why would you bother saving us? These past ten years, you’ve appeared to do nothing but make money — and yet every coin has gone toward saving people.”

“I’m still a merchant,” Shen Rujian said.

“Yes, yes you are,” Lü Qingluan replied. “A merchant — and not just any merchant, but very likely the finest merchant in the world today.”

Shen Rujian laughed despite herself.

After a pause, she continued: “I just told you all that because I wanted to ask you something. The reason I’ve been so deliberate about drawing a clear line — keeping distance from Li Chi’s side, making it plain that they are they and I am I — is also a calculation a merchant would make. So I want to know: can you see what I’m actually after?”

Lü Qingluan shook his head. “Honestly, mistress, I’ve never been able to figure that out. I’ve thought about it many times and still couldn’t work it out.”

Shen Rujian let out a long sigh.

“Gao Xining saw it,” she said.

Lü Qingluan stared. “She… what did she see?”

“By keeping my distance,” Shen Rujian said, “by appearing cold and indifferent, I lower Li Chi’s expectations of me as far as they’ll go. Only when expectations are at their lowest will the impact be greatest when I act. From lowest expectation to greatest gain — the standing of Shen Medical Hall in Li Chi’s eyes will rise sharply, rather than remaining that of a group of physicians who can do nothing but treat illness and compound medicines.”

“The way I see it, what Li Chi wants is a group of healers — people to provide a basic measure of protection for his people. If I had gone along with that idea from the start, our position would have been set very low indeed.”

“I am a merchant,” she concluded. “I do what maximizes returns.”

Lü Qingluan understood.

Curious now, he asked: “What did Gao Xining say when she came today?”

Shen Rujian glanced at him, then sighed again — one of those long, drawn-out sighs.

When a person is under pressure, burdened, dejected, when they feel helpless — they will often exhale in great unconscious gusts without realizing it themselves.

In that moment, Lü Qingluan could see it plainly: someone had put pressure on his mistress.

Between women, it had always been Shen Rujian who made others feel the weight of her presence. But tonight, he watched his mistress feel it herself.

“I asked her what had brought her to Shen Medical Hall today,” Shen Rujian said. “She told me… ‘Come late, but come at the right moment, and you’ve come beautifully. But if you’ve deliberately come late and come too late — better not to have come at all.'”

She looked at Lü Qingluan and asked: “How old is she?”

Before Lü Qingluan could answer, Shen Rujian murmured to herself: “Why can she see so clearly?”

—