The General’s residence.

Dantai Qi the elder looked at Helian Lian, whose face was still drawn with guilt. He frowned slightly — for it was Helian Lian alone who had returned. Li Chi and the others had not come back with him.

In that moment, Dantai Qi had already begun to sense, in some dim and unspoken way, that those young people were different from what he had assumed.

“What did they say?”

Dantai Qi asked.

Helian Lian lowered his head. “The one called Li Chi said to tell the Commander: he admires the Commander’s command of his army, and admires the Liangzhou army’s discipline… He thanks the Commander for the gesture, and declines to return.”

Dantai Qi heard the words and sat in silence for a long while without saying anything more. He could feel the pride of those young people.

Pride — the younger you are, the sharper its edge.

They had come along with Dantai Qi to wish this Liangzhou commander a happy birthday. And yet the moment they entered the city they had been locked inside that compound — nominally because it was more spacious, but in truth under surveillance, if not outright confinement.

Even an ordinary commoner would never receive a visitor that way. And the Liangzhou army, which prided itself as the face of this city, had done precisely that.

“Understood.”

Dantai Qi breathed out slowly and said, sounding something like defeat: “Go rest and see to your injuries.”

“I know I was in the wrong.”

Helian Lian bowed his head. “I brought shame on the Commander and shame on the Liangzhou army.”

Dantai Qi looked at him and said: “If you had won that exchange, would you have had this realization?”

Helian Lian went still.

If he had won…

If he had won — would he feel this guilty now? Would he feel this wretched?

Dantai Qi said: “You say you know you were wrong. But that’s only because you lost. If you had won — even knowing your conduct had overstepped, even accepting my discipline for it — you would still feel pleased with yourself deep down. What pains you now isn’t the wrong you committed. It’s the fact that you lost in skill and lost in conduct. A complete and total loss. That’s why you hurt.”

He paused, then added: “If I were them, I wouldn’t go back either. A young man’s pride and backbone — if it bends that easily, that’s the real misfortune.”

Helian Lian said: “But… I did go and offer a sincere apology.”

Dantai Qi said: “That’s enough. Withdraw and rest.”

Helian Lian could only bow and take his leave.

Moments later, Dantai Qi looked toward Dantai Qi the son, standing quietly to one side, and said: “I’ll go myself to invite them back.”

Dantai Qi the son had been maintaining a carefully neutral expression — but at the words *I’ll go myself*, a flash of surprise crossed his eyes despite his efforts to conceal it.

He said nothing, though. He simply stood there and gave a nod.

“Ahhh…”

Dantai Qi the elder sighed. “I’ve thought often about how a son being lectured by his father is no pleasant thing. When I was young, your grandfather looked at me the same way — never satisfied with anything I did. Only after you were born did I understand: it isn’t that he looked down on me. It’s that his hopes were too high.”

He glanced at Dantai Qi the son and said: “Now I’ve come to understand something else — a father being looked down on by his own son hurts even worse.”

With that, Dantai Qi the son let out an involuntary laugh.

“Come then.”

Dantai Qi the elder rose. “The two of us — father and son — will go together and offer your friends an apology. A subordinate lost his composure. I as Commander cannot afford to lose mine as well. And besides, I’m your father.”

—

At the same time, within Liangzhou City.

Several dark shadows converged in the darkness, exchanged a few quick and quiet words, then split apart in different directions and flitted away.

These people varied in height and build. There appeared to be both men and women among them. Their words were few — a brief exchange, then swift dispersal.

All of them wore night-travel garments, and at the collar of each was a small embroidered motif of a drifting cloud. On the men, the motif was on the left collar; on the women, the right.

They moved with exceptional speed, landing without sound, walking without sound.

One man, lean and tall, vaulted to a rooftop and crouched there like a night owl, surveying the scene below.

They were scouting escape routes.

These people were all elite operatives commissioned by the Kingdom of Maoli. They had come to kill members of the Maoli royal family who had fled the country — specifically, a princess named Dike Huaqing, and a claimant to the throne named Lidun.

The scout from the Drifting Cloud Crossing crouched on the rooftop and spotted, in the distance near the city gate, what appeared to be a party of people. He immediately flattened himself.

At first he assumed it was a Liangzhou patrol, but after watching for some time without seeing the group move, he narrowed his eyes in puzzlement.

He pressed himself low and pulled out a spyglass to observe carefully.

On another street, in the gap between two shops, another group of figures in black had also gone still.

At their head was a woman — even in a night-travel garment, her figure was unmistakably striking, dramatic in its curves.

She crouched there observing for a moment, then said in a very quiet voice: “The rebel envoy is lodged at the official post station. I made sure to ask. The man who has come — it is Sandin, the man who murdered my father.”

Behind her, one of the men couldn’t suppress the urge to counsel her: “Your Highness — should we not inform Prince Lidun of this?”

The woman shook her head: “He will only try to stop me. Tell me not to jeopardize the larger plan… Our kingdom is destroyed, our home is gone — what larger plan is there left to speak of? I want to kill Sandin and avenge my father. If any of you are afraid, there’s no need to follow.”

The guard behind her was the former commander of the palace guard, a man called Yueh Mai. It was he who had cut a bloody path through their enemies and brought this woman to safety.

She was Dike Huaqing, sole surviving child of the old king. Her two sisters had both been killed by the rebels.

And that rebel was her own maternal uncle. Even their mother had not been spared.

When a demon’s eyes and heart are consumed by greed and power, there is no kinship left to speak of.

Yueh Mai said: “Your Highness — let me go in your stead. Stay here with the others and be ready to receive me on the outside.”

“No!”

Dike Huaqing said with absolute certainty: “He is my enemy. Only by killing him with my own hand will I have avenged my father.”

She had practiced martial arts from childhood, under the tutelage of Yueh Mai himself. But a person of her standing learning martial arts — how wholeheartedly could she have devoted herself to it?

“We move,” Dike Huaqing said quietly, and rose first.

The moment she moved, Yueh Mai pressed a hand to her shoulder and held her back. He lowered his voice: “Stay behind me.”

Dike Huaqing was pressed back down, and watched as Yueh Mai moved ahead of her and came out of the alley first.

On the rooftop across the way, the Drifting Cloud Crossing scout hadn’t dared make a move. He had been watching for quite some time now. He had originally come to scout this particular route — but the group that had appeared so inexplicably was blocking his path. After a long observation, he decided to pull back for the time being.

Their mission was to map out every viable route before they acted — so that when it came time to withdraw, they would have more options. They never acted rashly in any assignment, large or small. Every task was preceded by meticulous reconnaissance, every person in the target’s vicinity was carefully studied.

It was precisely because they applied the same caution and thoroughness to every task, no matter the scale, that they made so few mistakes.

The only known failure in the Drifting Cloud Crossing’s history — the only time they had mounted a major assassination and been turned back — was the attempt on the Great Chu Western Campaign Commander Xu Julü.

The Drifting Cloud Crossing had been founded, by all accounts, several centuries ago. Some said that at its inception, the organization’s hidden master was the Emperor of the ancient Moon Kingdom.

The purpose of founding the Drifting Cloud Crossing had not been profit. It had been to eliminate those within the court who did not obey the Emperor’s commands.

But some twenty or thirty years on, the Moon Kingdom itself was overtaken by rebellion. The Emperor’s nephew bribed a favored consort in the imperial harem, who poisoned the ailing old Emperor as he lay ill.

The old Emperor was poisoned to death. The nephew led an army to slaughter the Emperor’s children and seized the throne. The Drifting Cloud Crossing was subjected to sweeping persecution and slaughter.

With no recourse, the Drifting Cloud Crossing withdrew from the palace — withdrew from public sight entirely — and hid itself within the jianghu.

The Moon Kingdom Emperor who had founded the Drifting Cloud Crossing was killed. Yet the Drifting Cloud Crossing lived on and passed down through the ages.

According to legend, three years after the Moon Kingdom Emperor was poisoned and killed, the new Emperor was also slain in a surprise attack — his throat cut with a single stroke.

The hand that did it belonged to a favored consort from the inner palace. That consort was a female assassin trained by the Drifting Cloud Crossing.

They had avenged the old Emperor. But the Moon Kingdom shattered as a result — decades of internal strife — and eventually split into three separate states.

The Moon Kingdom had once held ten thousand li of territory, the greatest empire in the Western Regions, with armies of a million and virtually no rival.

After the split, three kingdoms had formed — one of which, itself also born of rebellion and usurpation, was the Maoli Kingdom of the present day.

The Drifting Cloud Crossing’s killers had no names — only code designations. The men were all called *Shenshe*, divided into three tiers.

The first tier of Shenshe, the strongest, numbered only a few dozen. The second tier were several hundred. The third tier were beyond easy counting, scattered throughout all walks of life.

The women were all called *Guimu*, also ranked in three tiers. The first tier had only four. The second tier had sixteen. The third tier numbered in the hundreds.

The reason women were far fewer in number was, to put it honestly, that training a competent female assassin was considerably more difficult than training a competent male one.

So in the Western Regions, a saying circulated widely: *”Better to provoke a Shenshe than a Guimu — provoke a Shenshe and one man dies; provoke a Guimu and your whole family perishes.”*

The figure crouched on the rooftop watching Li Chi’s group was a Shenshe of the third tier. In large-scale operations, people of his rank handled mostly minor work — scouting routes and the like.

Finding no opportunity to scout that particular route, he moved to withdraw. He had just turned to go when his body froze completely.

Because in that instant, his eyes snapped wide.

Not three zhang away from him, also on the rooftop, someone was sitting there — wearing a mask that inspired profound dread — apparently observing him with something like idle curiosity.

That person had appeared without a sound. And for some reason had not made a move — only sat there watching him in perfect silence.

“Friend — we have no quarrel. Let’s leave each other in peace.”

The Shenshe spoke in the Central Plains tongue — from childhood they were required to learn many languages, and it came out without the slightest awkwardness.

He spoke, and watched the masked figure. The masked figure appeared to give a slight nod, and said nothing.

The Shenshe cautiously began to edge backward, looking for a way to disengage. The masked figure suddenly spoke.

“You’ve been lying prone on that rooftop this whole time. Aren’t things getting cold?”

The Shenshe blinked.

Li Chi rose slowly to his feet: “I’ve been sitting here and my backside went cold a while ago. You really can hold a position.”

The Shenshe said: “Neither of us should make a move — best if we each go our own way. If this comes to blows, neither of us can be sure of the outcome.”

While Li Chi was speaking with the man, Yu Jiuling had silently materialized behind the Shenshe.

In terms of lightness arts and footwork — setting aside questions of orthodox versus unorthodox style — how many people could truly surpass Yu Jiuling?

Li Chi spoke; Yu Jiuling arrived at the man’s back; she brought the flat stone in her hand down onto the back of his head with a solid crack.

One brick, one man down.

A moment later, Li Chi and Yu Jiuling climbed back down toward their group. Yu Jiuling was dragging the Shenshe by one ankle.

Right at that moment, several people burst out of a nearby alley — and they walked straight into each other’s paths.

The one at the head stopped dead. But the person right behind hadn’t managed to stop in time and crashed directly into Yu Jiuling.

The two of them were practically nose to nose in the collision. And in that instant, Yu Jiuling felt something extraordinarily complicated transmit itself through his chest.

Soft. Yet apparently possessed of tremendous force.

And it was in registering that tremendous force of softness that Yu Jiuling’s sharp instincts told him, with absolute certainty, that things were not simple here.