Tang Pidi unslung the bundle from his back, opened it, and took out several still-warm flatbreads. He asked Li Chi: “Have you eaten?”

Li Chi said: “Not yet.”

Tang Pidi tossed the flatbreads to Li Chi: “Then eat.”

Li Chi caught them, rewrapped them, tucked them inside his robes to keep warm, and smiled: “Finish this quickly. We’ll eat on the road.”

Tang Pidi gave an affirming sound, then turned to face Dantai Qi the elder’s side and gestured with a formal invitation.

“Outrageous!”

One of Dantai Qi the elder’s generals stepped forward, walked up to Tang Pidi, and bellowed: “The Commander hasn’t invoked the law of the land against you — and you have the audacity to carry on like this.”

Tang Pidi said mildly: “Your Commander hasn’t invoked the law against us — that’s his affair. What are you shouting at me for?”

The general froze.

In his heart, Yu Jiuling thought: *As expected, as expected — Old Tang is in a class of his own. Under heaven, the boastful are many, but our Old Tang claims half the sky.* And moreover, he was making a perfectly sound point — couldn’t be sounder.

“Submit!”

The general lunged toward Tang Pidi’s throat with one hand — fingers spread like a claw, coming with force, the sound of the strike already whistling through the air. His martial skill was no trifle.

A soldier’s reach carries its own authority. In an elite army like the Liangzhou forces, no one rose to command rank who was merely an ordinary person.

But the world had no shortage of extraordinary fighters. And Tang Pidi was one of a kind.

Under heaven, above ground, one and only one.

The next instant, Tang Pidi threw a single punch and sent that general flying. The general staggered backward several steps after landing, couldn’t hold his footing, and sat down hard on the ground.

Tang Pidi said: “You wear a general’s armor, which means you’ve earned it in battle. So I won’t make you kneel.”

Helian Lian erupted. He came in long strides — one step covered nearly a zhang of ground, charging like a bull. He arrived in front of Tang Pidi and threw a punch at his chest — a punch that seemed to carry the force of thunder, far more vicious than the last man.

“You spoke disrespectfully to our chief. You kneel.”

Tang Pidi drove his right fist outward, landing squarely on Helian Lian’s fist. A snapping crack — hard to say whether it was the wrist bones or the fingers that broke — and at that single sound, Helian Lian’s entire arm was sent flinging back.

Tang Pidi shifted half a step and drove his shoulder into Helian Lian’s chest. Helian Lian’s upper body was forced backward.

But Tang Pidi didn’t let him fall. He seized the front of his robes and yanked him back upright, released — then clenched his fist and drove it into Helian Lian’s abdomen.

The blow landed hard. Helian Lian’s body folded instantly. The impact was immense — the pain inside his belly was like a clap of thunder trying to detonate outward.

Under the force of the agony, Helian Lian’s body instinctively contracted, his head unable to help but drop forward.

Tang Pidi pressed a hand down onto the crown of Helian Lian’s head and pushed — a hand upon the head is a mountain pressing down — and with a heavy thud, Helian Lian’s knees hit the ground in front of Tang Pidi.

Tang Pidi stepped to the side as he did it, so that Helian Lian’s kneeling direction faced toward Li Chi.

From start to finish, Tang Pidi had used only one hand.

Dantai Qi the elder’s complexion was ashen iron.

Tang Pidi looked at the flushed, terrified, humiliated Helian Lian, and said with the same complete absence of inflection: “I once said that among all the commanders who lead armies in this great Dachu, the three I considered supreme were: first, Prince Wu Yang Jiju; second, Liangzhou’s Dantai Qi; third, Youzhou’s Luo Geng.”

“Precisely because of those words, our chief came here to see for himself. He has long admired General Dantai — said countless times that General Dantai guards the frontier and holds the border, a model of what a soldier should be… It seems it would have been better not to come.”

He turned to Li Chi: “Are we going?”

Li Chi nodded: “Let’s go.”

“You’re not going anywhere!”

Helian Lian clawed himself to his feet, bracing against the pain, and leveled a finger at Tang Pidi: “Seize him!”

The Liangzhou soldiers behind him surged forward.

“Enough!”

Dantai Qi the elder bellowed: “Haven’t you made enough of a spectacle already?”

The soldiers halted.

Dantai Qi the elder drew a slow breath and said to Helian Lian: “I’ve told Jing’er countless times, and told all of you countless times: there are people in this world far better than you. Yet you’ve always assumed you had no equal under heaven. Now you’ve been disciplined, and you want to bring in soldiers to do what your own hands couldn’t. Not a shred of your dignity left?”

Helian Lian, moments ago in the grip of shame and fury, heard Dantai Qi’s words and was instantly brought up short. He felt his face burning.

“Commander…”

Helian Lian started to speak, stumbled over his words, couldn’t quite form them, feeling nothing but a suffocating mortification.

“Brash youth. Quite the arrogance.”

Dantai Qi the elder looked at Tang Pidi and said: “In my younger days, I was just as arrogant.”

With those words, the atmosphere shifted considerably.

Tang Pidi clasped his hands in a brief salute — but said nothing in return.

Li Chi took the flatbreads from inside his robes, unwrapped the paper, and held one out to Tang Pidi.

Tang Pidi accepted it — still warm.

He didn’t eat it. Instead he passed it to Dantai Qi the son. “I’d wager you haven’t gotten around to eating either.”

Dantai Qi the son looked at the warm flatbread in his hands, and guilt welled up so sharply that his face flushed as if it had been held over a flame.

“Kindred spirits — what does anyone else matter?”

Tang Pidi pressed the flatbread into Dantai Qi’s hands, then clasped his hands toward him: “The doors of the Ning Camp in Jizhou are open to you, whenever you wish.”

He then turned to Li Chi: “Chief — let’s go.”

Li Chi: “Let’s go.”

Dantai Qi said: “I’m going with you.”

Li Chi shook his head and whispered a single sentence in his ear. Dantai Qi visibly startled at it — his shoulders trembled slightly.

He said nothing more. He looked toward his father.

Li Chi and the others left the compound then and there. They simply walked out.

Dantai Qi’s expression cycled through itself — the grief inside him, only he could know. He had brought his friends home, and this was how his family received them. It was as if someone had carved several wounds across his chest.

Dantai Qi the elder walked to stand before his son. A silence — then: “I thought you were leaving. Why are you still here?”

Dantai Qi didn’t answer. He only looked at his father, steady and direct.

That look made Dantai Qi the elder uneasy. After a moment, he sighed and said: “Helian was in the wrong here. I’ll see to his punishment.”

Dantai Qi shook his head. “Your army, your men — that’s your affair… Father, do you know why I didn’t go with them?”

He looked his father in the eyes, one word at a time: “Because Li Chi said to me: *Look at your father’s temples — they are white. How can you bear to leave him?*”

With those words, Dantai Qi turned and walked away.

Dantai Qi the elder stood where he was for a long while. He felt, suddenly, that he had lost — that before this young man who bore the name of rebel, he had been defeated utterly, by one sentence.

*That young man had character.*

*A rare and expansive character.*

“Helian.”

Dantai Qi the elder turned and looked at Helian Lian — still flushed with shame and fury — and said: “The wrong you committed is yours to repair. This is not how the Liangzhou army conducts itself.”

“Yes, sir!”

Helian Lian answered, turned, and ran.

—

Before long, Helian Lian was riding hard and caught up with the group at the city gate. The hour was late and the gates of Liangzhou City had already been closed for the night.

Li Chi and the others planned to find somewhere near the gate to spend the night and leave when the gates opened at dawn.

Helian Lian caught up with them there, drew several deep breaths, strode up to Li Chi, and clasped his hands: “The fault was mine — it has nothing to do with the Commander and nothing to do with the Young General. If you’re dissatisfied, hit me, curse me — I’ll take it.”

Li Chi looked at him. He was neither angry nor harboring any particular ill will. He simply nodded and said: “Go back.”

Helian Lian shook his head. “The Commander said I lost in skill and I lost the dignity of the Liangzhou army. That is not acceptable.”

He bent into a deep bow — low and lower still.

“I ask all of you to come back. I am willing, before the Young General, to offer my apology in person. The Commander said: when a man of the Liangzhou army loses a fair fight, he concedes defeat but does not concede his pride. What I did just now was truly shameful — I lost and couldn’t accept it and couldn’t concede it. That’s not acting like a man.”

Tang Pidi looked at Li Chi: “What do you say?”

Li Chi shook his head. “We’re not going back.”

Tang Pidi immediately smiled.

Arrogance — who among men doesn’t have a little of it?

—

A short while later, a mounted party came riding out from the city. The one at the head called out: “By the Commander’s order — General Feiyuan Helian Lian: you have violated military discipline and disgraced the army’s conduct. Remove your armor, surrender your blade. Effective immediately, demoted to platoon commander. Twenty strokes of the military rod — to be administered at once.”

Helian Lian turned immediately: “This soldier submits and accepts the punishment!”

He reached up and lifted off his iron helmet. Both hands were trembling — but there was not the slightest hesitation.

Two of his finger bones were likely broken. The pain was already sharp.

His soldiers’ faces went pale with the helpless mingling of heartache and grief — standing there, not knowing what to do.

“What are you waiting for? Help me off with the armor.”

Helian Lian spread his arms wide.

His personal guard stepped forward and helped remove the iron plating. He tore a strip from his garment, rolled it, and clenched it between his teeth, then lay face down on the ground.

The newly arrived soldiers dismounted. One man took up the military rod and brought it down across Helian Lian’s back.

The twenty strokes were administered without any mercy. After only a few blows, the cloth across his back was showing bloodstains. When all twenty were done, his entire back was a bloody mess.

“Punishment complete — report to the Commander.”

The soldier who had administered the rod bore an expression of regret and reluctance. Clearly he too felt it keenly for Helian Lian — yet even so, his hand had not eased for a single blow. That was what military discipline meant.

Helian Lian spat out the cloth, face twisted with pain. He struggled upright, turned, and clasped his hands toward the messenger in a bow: “Tell the Commander — Helian Lian has accepted his punishment.”

The messenger acknowledged, told someone: “Leave the medicine the Commander sent. We return.”

Someone set down the wound medicine. Then they mounted and rode off — they had come swift as wind and left the same way. They had come only for their own business. Nothing else was their concern.

Helian Lian’s guard rushed to him, opened the wound medicine and made to apply it to his back. Just as the soldier’s hand was raised to do so, someone else’s hand closed around his wrist.

The soldier looked up. The one gripping his wrist was the young man who had defeated General Helian so effortlessly moments before.

“What are you doing?!”

The soldier demanded.

Tang Pidi said: “Better to use our medicine. It’ll be better than yours.”

The soldier stood there, thrown off, uncertain what to say.

A moment later, Tang Pidi personally applied the medicine to Helian Lian’s back, then wrapped the wound with bandages.

Helian Lian stood up. Though the pain left sweat on his face, his back was held straight as an arrow — nothing about him resembled a man who had just taken twenty strokes of the military rod.

He stood fully upright, clasped his hands, and said: “Thank you.”

Tang Pidi gave a nod, gathered the medicine kit and returned it to Helian Lian’s men, then said: “Did all of you see that? This is Liangzhou army discipline. See it and learn from it.”

“Ho!”

All the soldiers answered in a single voice.

In that moment, Helian Lian was moved. What he saw in those men was a bearing and spirit no less than anything the Liangzhou army had to offer.

He recalled the Young General’s words. And despite himself, something in his mind began to waver — a quiet questioning of the judgments he had held until now.

—