The General’s Estate.
Shang Qingzhu stopped at the entrance, raised his head, and looked up at the plaque above the gate.
In that moment, he ran through all of Guo Ruren’s habits in his mind — his gait, his manner of speaking, even the look in his eyes.
The soldiers standing guard outside the estate did not recognize him. After all, he had once been nothing more than a minor attendant in Lai Yi’s retinue.
“Forgive the intrusion — I beg your pardon. Campaign Secretary Guo Ruren requests an audience with General Meng.”
He spoke politely, doing his best to imitate Guo Ruren’s tone.
“Please wait a moment, Lord Guo.”
Only when the soldiers heard the words *campaign secretary* did their expressions soften into something approaching courtesy.
Before long, the soldier who had gone inside to announce him came back out, and when he looked at Shang Qingzhu, his eyes had taken on a tinge of contempt once more.
Shang Qingzhu could guess what had happened: when the soldier went in to announce him, Meng Kedi had almost certainly cursed under his breath.
The soldier had heard the disdain Meng Kedi bore for Guo Ruren, and so he naturally adopted the same disdain himself.
“The General is occupied with military affairs today and truly has no time to see Lord Guo. Lord Guo, please take your leave.”
“Then…”
Shang Qingzhu considered for a moment, then held out the dossier in his hands. “These are the matters the General asked me to handle. I spent the whole night without sleep compiling them. Please be so good as to present them to the General.”
The soldier reached out, took the dossier with a grunt of acknowledgment, and then paid him no further attention.
Shang Qingzhu felt a pang of disappointment. With disguise, the longer it wore on, the more the materials on one’s face stiffened and the more obvious the flaws became.
Meng Kedi was a battle-hardened general. Any crack in the details, however small, might be enough for him to see through the disguise at a glance.
And so, since there was no meeting with Meng Kedi today, he would have to find another opportunity later.
After a brief pause, he said, “Shortly, I will be going to search Ding Shengjia’s residence. If the General should need me, you may send someone there to find me.”
“Understood.”
The soldier replied with unconcealed impatience, then turned and went back inside.
Shang Qingzhu was unwilling to simply give up. The longer this dragged on, the less favorable the conditions for action would become.
Last night, their people had killed Guo Ruren and those assassins who had been preparing to strike at General Li. On the surface, it looked clean — no loose ends left behind.
But how long could something like this really stay hidden?
He mounted the carriage and gave the order to proceed to Ding Shengjia’s residence.
Seated in the carriage, Shang Qingzhu closed his eyes to rest. He had slept almost not at all the previous night, and truly this was far from an ideal state for what lay ahead.
The carriage swayed gently, and before he knew it, he had drifted off to sleep.
He only slept for a short while, but even so, a dream came.
He dreamed of several months past — of the day when the Chief Magistrate and Master Ye had summoned them all together for a trial on the drill grounds in Jizhou.
He dreamed that he had been defeated by another, eliminated from the Magistrate’s Army, and left to sit crumpled on the ground, his heart overwhelmed with grief.
And then, at that very moment, he jolted awake.
Even knowing it was only a dream — even knowing he was already awake — the grief inside him had not diminished in the slightest.
That grief was his fear of disappointing his mother. And his fear of disappointing himself.
His home lay beneath the Yan Mountains, in a small place called Lean-on-the-Mountain Village — no more than a hundred souls in total.
Shang Qingzhu’s father had succumbed to illness and died when he was still young, leaving mother and son to depend on each other alone.
From the time he was ten or so, he had followed the village’s hunters up into the mountains. At the beginning, he was small and slow, with no experience, and he came back empty-handed time and again.
The hunters would offer him small game — a mountain pheasant, a hare — but he would never accept.
*I don’t want the catch,* he said. *I want to learn the craft.*
The hunter told him: *The gift and the lesson are separate matters. You can take what I give you and still learn from me.*
Shang Qingzhu said: *No. If I get used to being given things, I won’t learn with the same seriousness.*
From that point on, the hunter brought him along every time he went into the mountains. By the time Shang Qingzhu was fourteen or fifteen, he had already become the finest hunter in the village, surpassing the man who had taught him.
He had never read a book, and so naturally he had never encountered the old saying that it is better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish.
He simply wanted to master the skill — to use that skill to put meat on the table for his mother.
Even then, his natural gifts were already making themselves plain.
His master said that when he ran through the mountains in pursuit of prey, he was nearly indistinguishable from a wild beast — not in the way he moved, but in the ferocity of the hunt itself.
In those days, the village still enjoyed a measure of peace. With the Yanshan Camp nearby, no other rebel forces dared to trouble them, and though life was poor, it was stable.
Then disaster struck the Yanshan Camp.
The White Mountain bandits came, and they broke through the Yanshan Camp. Yu Chaozong — the Green-Browed Heavenly King, revered by all the common people — died in battle.
The White Mountain bandits swept into the village too. He killed more than a dozen of them, but he could not protect everyone.
He carried his mother up into the mountains to take refuge. Six or seven out of every ten people in the village were killed or wounded. He himself was gravely injured, with no way to treat his wounds as he hid in the mountains — left to wait for death.
Then Li Chi returned.
Ningning soldiers swept through the mountains searching for survivors and rescued them.
Li Chi sent people to bring all who had survived to the mountain stronghold to live, found a physician for his mother, and had his own wounds treated.
By that point, Shang Qingzhu had already made his peace with dying. He had even dreamed more than once that he could see the wheel of reincarnation turning.
And yet he was saved, and recovered against all odds — like waking from a long dream.
When spring came, Li Chi distributed farmland to them in the valley below, and the entire first harvest was left entirely to the villagers.
His mother’s illness improved greatly, and her spirits along with it.
His mother said that she had never read a book either and couldn’t speak in grand principles — but she knew what it meant to repay a kindness.
She told Shang Qingzhu to go and join the Ning Army. And she said: *If the day ever comes when you must step in front of a blade for General Li, then step in front of it.*
He went to the Yanshan Camp and told them: I want to join the Ning Army.
The Ning Army men knew him, and they said: You still have your mother to care for. The General has given word — only sons, or those whose parents are in poor health, are not accepted.
He knelt at the gates of the camp and refused to rise.
As chance would have it, Master Ye happened by. Master Ye asked what was going on, and his first thought was to test the young man in some small way, then tell him he had not qualified and send him home to care for his mother.
But when Master Ye observed his abilities, he was struck with something like surprise. The potential this young man displayed was simply impossible to dismiss.
And so Master Ye went to find Gao Xining. A young man this exceptional — with the natural instincts of a hunter — joining the Magistrate’s Army was clearly the best path for him.
What happened next moved Shang Qingzhu once again.
After Gao Xining had seen what he could do, the very first thing she said to him was: *Your mother — I will arrange for people to look after her. Food, clothing, shelter, everything will be taken care of.*
The second thing she said was: *If you join the Magistrate’s Army, you may face a great deal of danger, because the purpose of the Magistrate’s Army is to protect Li Chi.*
Only later did Shang Qingzhu come to understand precisely what the Magistrate’s Army was.
Gao Xining told him: As a guard, the role is almost entirely reactive — waiting for something to happen and then responding. Even the Imperial Palace guards of Great Chu are no different. They respond when something occurs.
But the Magistrate’s Army is different. The Magistrate’s Army seeks to act before something happens — to prevent it from happening at all.
The difference between the two is immense, because the latter approach, acting first, requires a great deal of investigation and reasoning. That is not something a straightforward warrior can do alone — it also demands a sharp mind.
And so Shang Qingzhu hesitated at the time. He said: *I am just a hunter. I have never read a book. I am not clever.*
Gao Xining replied: *Whether a person is clever or dull has nothing to do with whether they have read books.*
She also said: *A person who thinks themselves incapable before even trying is not dull — they are cowardly.*
And so Shang Qingzhu decided to try. He had never thought of himself as a coward.
Later, at the great Magistrate’s Army trials, he and several other young men stood out from the rest. After that trial, Li Chi specifically called them over for a talk.
Li Chi said: *You are all exceptional — but you are each missing just a little something.*
Li Chi said: *What you are missing is rank. Your military titles should be higher.*
And so, not long after, he and Fang Xidao and Du Yan became the Three Centurion Officers of the Magistrate’s Army. In terms of the Great Chu court’s military rankings, Centurion Officer corresponded to a Regional Infantry Captain — Senior Sixth Grade.
Not long after that, Gao Xining summoned him alone.
She told him she suspected that Anyang’s General Meng Kedi might seek to harm Li Chi, and asked him to take men to Anyang and lie low, to investigate whether Meng Kedi truly intended to make a move.
She asked him: “Is there anything you are reluctant to leave behind?”
Shang Qingzhu answered: “My mother is well taken care of. So there is nothing.”
Gao Xining nodded.
That day, he led fifty handpicked Magistrate soldiers out of Jizhou and went to ground once they entered Anyang.
When Meng Kedi sent men to recruit martial artists from the jianghu, he guessed this move was aimed at General Li.
And so he and his people talked it over, and they posed as members of the Mohe tribe from north of the steppe. With their skills, getting themselves recruited was no difficult matter.
Shang Qingzhu kept the words Gao Xining had spoken close to him at every moment: *People of the Magistrate’s Army should not passively wait for things to happen.*
“Sir, we’ve arrived.”
At that moment, the carriage came to a stop.
The driver — one of the Magistrate soldiers in disguise — saw Shang Qingzhu climb down from the carriage and lowered his voice: “Sir, you don’t look well. Would you like to go back and rest?”
Shang Qingzhu shook his head. “No need. I need to wait here for word.”
The Magistrate soldier said: “We’ve already dealt with all the assassins. There’s no real need to kill Meng Kedi.”
“You’re wrong about that.”
Shang Qingzhu said slowly. “Those assassins are not what matters. If we don’t kill Meng Kedi, there will be a second attempt, and a third — without end. The Chief Magistrate said to resolve the problem, meaning the root of the problem. Those assassins were never the problem. Meng Kedi is the root.”
He stepped through the gate of Ding Shengjia’s residence, issuing instructions as he walked: “If Meng Kedi sends no one for me today, and I cannot get inside his estate, then we must consider how to act tonight. In that case, it will not be my life alone at stake — it will be all of ours. I am Centurion Officer. When we must face a matter of life and death, I go first. If I alone cannot resolve it, then we face it together.”
The Magistrate soldier acknowledged this, and the look in his eyes as he watched Shang Qingzhu was one of pure reverence.
“How old are you?”
Shang Qingzhu asked suddenly.
The soldier answered promptly: “Nineteen.”
Shang Qingzhu asked again: “How long have you been in the Magistrate’s Army?”
“Two years.”
Shang Qingzhu said: “Then you must know that Master Ye once said — when something happens, the whole of the Magistrate’s Army faces it together. But when you go out in advance to resolve something before it happens, every squad that is sent out is a lone unit.”
The soldier nodded. “I know. I remember.”
Shang Qingzhu said: “We came here with fifty-one people. Do you think it’s worth trading fifty-one lives for one Meng Kedi?”
The soldier drew himself up and answered: “The Magistrate’s Army doesn’t ask whether it’s worth it. Only whether to do it.”
Shang Qingzhu smiled and nodded. “Exactly. There is no task the Magistrate’s Army undertakes that is not worth undertaking.”
He strode through the courtyard gate.
“The Chief Magistrate once said — if the Magistrate’s Army is to be remembered by history, it will be the honor of every single one of us, because we are all founders.”
He turned back to look at the young soldier, and smiled. “And if we are destined to be the first of the Magistrate’s Army to fall in battle, then we will be remembered by the Magistrate’s Army — it will be the honor of those who came before, because we are the pioneers.”
—