The drummer and his two companions stood outside the cell in dumbfounded silence. Then, a moment later, the drummer let out a hoarse roar, wrenched the door open, and charged toward Li Chi to snatch back the silver.

Li Chi sat atop that cowhide drum and watched the man rush in, thinking: *people really are fragile.*

Fragile to the point that they can turn vicious at any moment.

He tossed the pouch of silver out of the cell. The drummer, who had already closed half the distance, saw the silver fly past—and spun on his heel and bolted after it.

“The silver is yours. Don’t bother me anymore.”

Li Chi exhaled quietly.

He felt he had been a little excessive.

Perhaps it was from all those years walking the jianghu with his master—he had seen too many faces of human nature. This face, and that face.

Was every person different?

No—every person had many faces.

Perhaps every person had a thousand faces.

The three men were overjoyed at having the silver returned to them—a recovery of something lost. If Li Chi tried to gamble with them again now, they likely wouldn’t dare take the bait. Their joy in this moment far surpassed what they had felt when Li Chi first handed them the silver.

Even though it was the same pouch of silver—and they had also lost the drum.

And Li Chi? He had the drum.

“No wonder you can make so much money in business.”

Young lord Cao Lie walked to the cell door and leaned against the wall. He looked at Li Chi the way one might try to peer inside and see exactly what manner of spirit was hiding within.

What sort of creature could be concealed beneath such a fine-looking exterior? Surely some thousand-year demon.

Li Chi glanced at him, but said nothing.

Cao Lie kept looking at Li Chi for quite some time. Then he smiled faintly. “If someone like you ever came to hold power, that would be truly terrifying.”

Those words gave Li Chi a small inward jolt. There seemed to be some deeper meaning there.

*If someone like me came to hold power, that would be terrifying?*

He slowly let out a breath. *Maybe,* he thought, *that would be exactly right.*

Cao Lie looked at the snapped chain, then at the closed cell door.

“Why haven’t you left?” he asked.

“Better not to stir up trouble,” Li Chi said.

Cao Lie didn’t quite understand—and even if he had, he would have taken it for timidity. *Better not to stir up trouble—isn’t that just running from things if you can?*

He wasn’t one of Li Chi’s companions. He had no way of knowing what those words meant to Li Chi.

In Li Chi’s understanding, the proper reading of *better not to stir up trouble* was: *resolve one matter, and there is one fewer matter remaining.*

Cao Lie pushed the door open and walked into the cell. He circled Li Chi once.

He glanced at the cowhide drum and suddenly laughed. “You went to all that trouble to win this drum. It wasn’t because you didn’t want them disturbing you, was it?”

Li Chi nodded. “Correct.”

“Just because the floor was cold?”

Li Chi nodded again. “Correct.”

Cao Lie thought: *you are absolutely unhinged.*

Li Chi read the look on his face, and so asked: “Have you ever gambled?”

“I have.”

“Have you ever gambled on farts?”

Cao Lie frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Every bet you place,” Li Chi said, “is a fart.”

Cao Lie considered this. He suddenly felt the statement was profoundly—*profoundly*—correct, and his lips began to tremble with the effort of not laughing.

*Is that why Li Chi never dared to lose?*

Put that way, going to all the trouble of winning a drum to sit on seemed entirely justified.

He turned toward the drummer and called out: “All of you, get out.”

The three men needed no second telling. They turned and left at a brisk pace.

Cao Lie shouted toward the corridor outside: “I’m hungry. Food and wine.”

Before long, a procession of servants filed in. Tables and chairs were set up in the cell. Dish after dish arrived, steaming and fragrant.

Li Chi was perfectly comfortable—he sat down across from Cao Lie, poured a cup for Cao Lie, and then poured one for himself.

Cao Lie smiled again. “You really have no sense of ceremony.”

“Should I have said thank you first?” Li Chi asked.

“Don’t bother,” Cao Lie said.

And so, with no particular explanation, the two of them sat down across from each other—cup for cup.

Cao Lie was a person who found everything tedious, and believed there was no food in the world capable of moving him.

And yet, for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, this particular round of wine went down very comfortably.

Li Chi hadn’t urged him to drink. Hadn’t offered a single pleasantry. But whenever Li Chi drank, Cao Lie drank. Whenever Li Chi ate, Cao Lie ate.

After about two quarters of an hour, both of them had eaten and drunk their fill.

Cao Lie leaned back, unable to suppress a remark: “I haven’t eaten this well in a long time.”

“Don’t mention it,” Li Chi said.

Those were Cao Lie’s own words from earlier.

“Your father…” Cao Lie began, then paused. “He must be a good father.”

“Everything about him is ordinary,” Li Chi said. “The only thing he excels at is being a father.”

He paused, then added three more words:

“*Incomparably* good.”

Cao Lie felt a pang of envy.

His own father was good too—whatever he wanted, his father provided. From the time he was small, he had never lacked for anything. The only thing he had lacked was his father’s presence.

But he was never self-pitying about it. He knew well enough that everything was relative—he had the extraordinarily privileged life conditions that ninety-nine out of a hundred people would never have, and this was precisely what his father had exchanged for the time he never spent with him.

There was no perfection in this world. A man couldn’t both earn a fortune and be present in his child’s life.

He wasn’t self-pitying. But he envied.

“When you were small,” he asked Li Chi, “did your father spend much time with you?”

“You may not believe it,” Li Chi said. “But I grew up on his shoulders.”

Back then, Changmei the Daoist would always carry him around on his shoulders. Young Li Diudiu grew up riding on Changmei’s neck—that was no exaggeration.

Cao Lie gave a long sigh. “No wonder your rear end doesn’t tolerate cold.”

Li Chi blinked at him, then laughed. “You’re the unhinged one.”

Cao Lie went still.

Who had ever called him unhinged?

But Li Chi had said it—and somehow it didn’t feel like an insult. This must be how friends talked to each other, he thought.

Cao Lie realized he didn’t have a single friend he could talk to like this.

Every single one was mealy-mouthed. Every one was treading carefully. Every one was flattering. Every one was fawning.

“You have many friends, I imagine,” he said.

Li Chi nodded. “A fair number, yes.”

“You know what I mean by friends,” Cao Lie said. “Real ones. As for superficial friends, I probably have more of those than you.”

“None of my friends are superficial,” Li Chi said.

Cao Lie fell into thought again.

“Why is that?”

He wasn’t asking Li Chi—it was a murmur to himself.

“Because the place you were born stands too high,” Li Chi said. “The great majority of people have had to look up at you. From the moment you were born, they had no choice but to look up.”

“Is that my fault?” Cao Lie asked.

“Of course not,” Li Chi said. “It’s no one’s fault.”

“I’ve never been self-pitying, actually,” Cao Lie said. “I’ve always known that the kind of family you’re born into determines the kind of life you have to live. I’ve already had what ninety-nine out of a hundred people will never have. Which means I was always going to be cut off from being friends with those ninety-nine out of a hundred.”

Something in those words gave Li Chi a new sense of the man.

“Do you believe,” Cao Lie said, “that if someone like me committed the greatest possible crime, even the Emperor would not punish me?”

“I believe it,” Li Chi said.

“And even among the imperial family, they look to me for their cues.”

Li Chi nodded again.

“But that’s not because of me,” Cao Lie said. “It’s because of my aunt. Because of Prince Wu. There is, after all, only one Prince Wu in this world.”

Then his tone shifted. He looked directly at Li Chi. “So if I had you killed, it would mean absolutely nothing.”

“It’s precisely because I know people like you exist in this world,” Li Chi said, “—people for whom having me killed would mean absolutely nothing—that I’ve made myself a little stronger.”

“How strong, approximately?”

Li Chi stood and walked to the rear wall of the cell. He stood there in silence for a moment. Then he exploded into motion, driving a kick into the iron-barred window. The window shattered. The iron bars flew outward.

In an instant, shouts erupted outside.

Before long, armored soldiers poured in from every direction, filling the entire corridor. Crossbows leveled at Li Chi, ready to loose at any moment.

But Li Chi had already settled back on his seat and lifted his wine cup for a sip.

“Understood.”

Cao Lie nodded and rose to leave.

That expressionless attendant and bodyguard, Xu Wenjun, glanced once at Li Chi, then once at the shattered rear window.

Without a word, he turned and followed Cao Lie out. He had given no more than those two glances.

“You’re not going to ask whether I’m all right?” Cao Lie said as he walked.

Xu Wenjun replied without turning: “I looked. The young lord is unharmed.”

Cao Lie shook his head with resignation and kept walking.

“He was telling me,” Cao Lie said, as if to the air, “that even though killing him is no more difficult for someone like me than crushing an ant, every person only has one life—and every person can fight to the last. Though the vast majority of people, when they fight to the last, are still only ants… it just so happens that, unfortunately for me, he is not an ant.”

He looked at Xu Wenjun. “If he had decided to kill me, could you have stopped him?”

Xu Wenjun replied: “I don’t know.”

Cao Lie sighed inwardly. *Don’t know?*

*Don’t know* is just another way of saying *no.*

From behind them came the sound of drumming—unhurried, measured. The tune was one Cao Lie had never heard before. He stopped to listen.

He listened carefully. The drum piece was neither fierce nor tumultuous—yet listening to it stirred something in the chest, some dim, smoldering fire beginning to kindle.

“What is that piece?” Cao Lie murmured to himself.

“The Hunting Drum,” Xu Wenjun said, his expression shifting slightly. “Also called the Marching Drum.”

Cao Lie looked at him. “How do you know it?”

“Because this is what the hunters of my northern homeland play before entering the mountains in winter. My home is on the shore of Lake Erlun—on the other side is the Great White Mountain.”

“The people of my home are very poor,” Xu Wenjun said. “We live by fishing and hunting. Every winter, after the heavy snows seal the mountain paths, the hunters enter the mountains. After the snows come, the paths are treacherous—one misstep and you die in there. Yet they go anyway, because winter hunting is easiest, and the yields are greatest.”

“I don’t know how he knows this drum piece,” Xu Wenjun said, “because the people of my home rarely venture out into the world.”

“Knowing the danger, yet having no choice but to go.”

Cao Lie murmured these nine words to himself.

“Interesting.”

He smiled and walked on with long strides.

—

Back in the cell.

Li Chi beat the cowhide drum lightly, each stroke gentle.

In time with the drumming, his lips moved quietly.

*On the mountain there are wolves—I have my hunting fork.*

*On the mountain there are black bears—I have my hunting fork.*

*On the mountain there are tigers—I have my hunting fork…*

*I have my hunting fork—I fear nothing.*

Cao Lie and his party had long since gone. The entire cell block held no one but Li Chi, and so there was no one to clap along.

Only the wind rising outside—at some point it had begun to blow—and the wind and the drum together seemed perfectly matched.

Drum and wind in unison: the breath of steel and war.

The night passed. The wind blew all night. The drum sounded only for a while.

Li Chi naturally went without sleep through all of it. He knew these people had no intention of killing him yet—but a hunter in the mountains knows that at any moment, from any direction, wolves and bears and tigers may come.

He dared not sleep. He could not sleep.

—