The reception hall.

Luo Jing sat squinting at Li Chi, and at this particular moment, he looked very much like a young woman who had been thoroughly tormented by Li Chi — eyes full of grievance.

Then again, this was his own house, Li Chi had wronged him, and now Li Chi had come to bully him further on his own doorstep.

The more Luo Jing thought about it, the more enraged he became.

And then, thinking back to the matter of Jizhou — that man obviously had no intention of giving it back, and yet he had the nerve to come find him — the rage climbed higher still.

But Li Chi wasn’t bringing up Jizhou, so Luo Jing didn’t want to bring it up either.

The moment he raised it, the whole business of the Battle of Yanzhou would have to come out — and the moment that came up, Luo Jing would feel thoroughly disgruntled. So he could only go on sitting there squinting at Li Chi, hoping that if this man had even the faintest trace of a guilty conscience, he might not push things too far.

“I’ve come about two things.”

Li Chi looked at Luo Jing with an expression of utter sincerity.

Which was precisely why Luo Jing felt uneasy. Whenever Li Chi adopted that look of complete sincerity, it almost always meant he was about to start maneuvering someone into a corner.

“No! You came just to mess around. Don’t give me that nonsense about having things to discuss.”

Luo Jing quickly seized on the words and plastered a reluctant smile onto his face.

“As the host here, of course I should see to my guests properly — you can all rest easy. In a moment, I’ll arrange for capable people to take you on a tour of Youzhou’s finest sights.”

Li Chi smiled and asked Luo Jing: “Are you afraid?”

Luo Jing shot back: “What would I be afraid of?”

Li Chi said: “Then why aren’t you bringing up Jizhou.”

Luo Jing said: “What about Jizhou?”

Li Chi said: “We agreed — once you came back victorious, you’d take Jizhou back. Why haven’t you taken it back?”

Luo Jing thought: *are you out of your mind?*

If he said *I didn’t come back victorious*, Li Chi would absolutely gloat and ask: *oh, so you lost, then?*

There was no man alive more shameless about winning and pretending to lose. And the shamelessness here was on a cosmic scale.

His eyes shifted. He thought: Li Chi has come, which means he’s obviously here to work some angle on him. So he had to cut Li Chi off before he could.

He thought for a moment, and concluded that Li Chi’s ultimate goal absolutely could not be to genuinely return Jizhou to him.

Therefore, Li Chi was getting in the first move — making Luo Jing the one to say the words aloud: *Jizhou? I don’t want it. Consider it a gift.*

Luo Jing thought: you want it, but you also want me to be the one to say it out loud and hand it to you — where in the world does anyone get that kind of benefit for free?

And so Luo Jing had another idea. In a moment, he would say: of course I want Jizhou. But aren’t you homeless at the moment? I’ll let you rent it. You pay me a certain sum each year as rent, however much that might be — there’s room to negotiate.

That way he could turn Li Chi’s words back on him, and still manage to squeeze some silver out of Li Chi’s hands.

Even if it was only a hundred taels, the money had to come out of Li Chi’s pocket.

To pry silver out of Li Chi’s hands — even a single tael of it — would be satisfying.

At the thought, Luo Jing allowed himself a small smile.

And so he looked at Li Chi and opened his mouth: “It’s not that I don’t want Jizhou, naturally…”

Before he could finish the sentence, Li Chi cut him off.

Li Chi said: “Of course you can’t not want it — a place that large, with that many people — we agreed you’d take it back when you returned. And yet you’ve been putting it off all this time.”

“By my calculation, you’ve been back in Youzhou for half a year already. Half a year in which I’ve been managing all of that for you — don’t you feel even a flicker of guilt?”

“To say nothing of the fact that I beat back the Anyang Army for you — Meng Kedi led his forces personally, marched on us with over two million troops, and I drove every last one of them back.”

Luo Jing: “?!?!?!”

Li Chi gave him no opening to speak, but fired on without pause: “That was a brutal engagement. The manpower, resources, and money I expended defy calculation.”

He waved a hand. “But that’s beside the point — who told me to agree to it? I promised to hold it for you, so I held it for you and fought your battles for you. Let’s set all of that aside.”

“But this half year after you’ve returned, when you’ve done nothing about it — I do need to charge you for that. Management fees for keeping Jizhou running on your behalf.”

He looked at Luo Jing with utmost sincerity. “You know me. Do you think I’m saying this because I covet your silver?”

Luo Jing finally got a word in, and immediately replied: “You do!”

Li Chi said: “Mm — sharp of you. So, the management fee for these past six months: how much do you plan to give me?”

Luo Jing thought — wasn’t his plan about the rent exactly this? Was the plan not good enough? Why had it suddenly become useless?

Could it really be called getting the first strike in? Was it simply that he wasn’t as shameless as Li Chi?

He sighed and said: “Let’s approach this differently.”

He asked Li Chi: “Suppose Jizhou were a shop — as you say, you’ve been managing it on my behalf. The premise is that you have to make money for me, correct?”

Li Chi nodded: “Correct.”

Luo Jing organized his reasoning and continued: “Then you’ve been managing it for all this time. Where is the money you’ve made?”

Li Chi answered as a matter of obvious fact: “It’s been reinvested into the shop.”

He counted it out on his fingers for Luo Jing: “If Jizhou is a shop, then the people of Jizhou are your staff, your household, the people in your care — that’s fair enough, yes? I took what was earned — the grain and whatnot — and distributed it to the people, and on top of that, I reinforced the city walls, built up a great deal of equipment.”

He asked Luo Jing: “Doesn’t that count as expanding the strength of the shop?”

Luo Jing ignored him.

Li Chi continued: “When the shop grows larger, the security force needs to expand as well, so the guard contingent has been tripled — that too counts naturally as part of growing the business, does it not?”

Luo Jing’s eyes narrowed again. He stared at Li Chi’s expression and thought: I’ve underestimated him.

Li Chi carried blithely on: “Using the shop’s earnings to grow the shop — reasonable or not?”

Luo Jing said: “Pretend I never said anything.”

Li Chi said: “That won’t do. A man’s word is his word. You asked — so I’m obliged to explain. Explaining what I did with Jizhou while managing it for you is my responsibility as your steward. The employer asks, and the steward doesn’t answer — how does that work?”

Luo Jing said: “Truly, you don’t need to answer. The more you explain, the more I owe you.”

Li Chi said: “Then let’s come back to what I was saying earlier — the management fee.”

He looked directly into Luo Jing’s eyes and said with complete sincerity: “I took the money the shop earned and spent it on the shop’s behalf. But that has nothing to do with you paying me a management fee.”

Luo Jing immediately said: “I can’t afford to pay. As of this very moment, I’m formally converting the shop into payment. The shop is yours now.”

Then Luo Jing stopped.

*This* was what he had spent all that time guarding against. *This* was the one thing he had told himself not to say.

But it was already too late. The words were out of his mouth.

Li Chi said: “You know what kind of person I am. Money is the only thing I deal in.”

Luo Jing: “…”

Li Chi said: “A shop isn’t hard cash — naturally I’d feel like I’m getting the short end of it.”

Luo Jing was just about to say: *if you think you’re getting the short end, then the deal’s off.*

Before he could get a word out, Li Chi put on an expression of someone taking a loss for the sake of friendship and said: “But we are friends, after all, and friends can’t pick over every little detail, so I’ll reluctantly agree.”

Luo Jing: “Can I curse?”

Li Chi said: “We’re in your house. The host cursing his guests — that’s not a good look.”

Luo Jing breathed out slowly. “You’ve gotten your advantage. Jizhou is yours. Can we change the subject?”

Li Chi shifted without a pause, looking at Luo Jing and saying: “I’ve gotten engaged.”

Luo Jing stopped.

He glanced over at Gao Xining, and only then noticed that her hairstyle had changed.

He smiled and said: “Congratulations.”

Li Chi extended his hand. “The gift money?”

Luo Jing: “Oh for—!”

Li Chi said: “See? I thought we said no cursing.”

Luo Jing stared at Li Chi, trying to find somewhere on this face where there might be some slight weakness.

He looked and looked, and found that this face was itself a natural fortress — the greatest stronghold under heaven, impregnable, unassailable.

With the expression of a man who had been defeated by life and could do nothing about it, Luo Jing said: “With my strength, one arrow from me can split a willow leaf at a hundred paces. With my strength, one arrow from me cannot pierce your skin.”

Li Chi said: “What talk.”

He sighed and said: “Some people — when you call them shameless, they feel mortified. Others — when you call them shameless, they say thank you.”

Li Chi said: “Thank you.”

Luo Jing felt that in a past life he must have done more wrongs than he could count. How else to explain Li Chi becoming his friend?

Had he done even a single good deed in that past life — even once helped an old grandmother across a road — he could not possibly be suffering this kind of retribution now.

He breathed out slowly. “I… the two of you wait here. I’m going right now to pick out a gift for my new sister-in-law.”

Li Chi said: “There’s no hurry.”

Luo Jing said: “There is. There’s a very great hurry. If you say another word I’ll really be in a hurry.”

Li Chi laughed heartily. “All right, all right. Look at you — you got the better end of things and you’re still acting put-upon.”

Luo Jing: “Oh, go to—!”

Li Chi said: “All right, all right — let’s talk about something else. Actually, none of what I said before was really the important matter. I said I came about two things, didn’t I? Let me talk about the other one now.”

Luo Jing looked at Li Chi with wariness. He asked very carefully: “Another thing? Is it big?”

Li Chi nodded. “Certainly big.”

Luo Jing asked: “How big?”

Li Chi answered: “Is all of Jizhou big?”

Luo Jing curled his lip slightly. “So-so.”

Li Chi smiled. “And Anyang?”

Luo Jing’s expression changed. His eyes narrowed again.

He looked at Li Chi for a moment, and his first instinct was that this particular pit might be even deeper than the last one.

Li Chi said: “My people have already killed Meng Kedi. Ding Shengjia, Meng Kedi’s foremost battle general, has also come to Jizhou and surrendered.”

Luo Jing’s eyes flew wide. “That’s impossible!”

Li Chi said: “And yet it is. Meng Kedi is dead. Right now, several of the more capable generals in his Anyang Army are fighting over the succession. This is the best opportunity to take Anyang.”

Luo Jing looked into Li Chi’s eyes for a long moment, then gave a small snort. “If Anyang were truly there for the taking, someone like you would never have left it to others.”

Li Chi sighed. “I may be greedy, but I am not without limit.”

He explained with complete sincerity: “I have barely over thirty thousand troops. I’d have to leave at least half of them to garrison Jizhou — which leaves me with just over ten thousand to march on Anyang. Even with their internal strife as bad as it is, ten thousand men is not enough to take that city.”

Luo Jing said: “Since coming back, I’ve been raising troops — but I still only have seven or eight thousand men, and half of them are new recruits.”

Li Chi said: “Oh? And why did you need to raise more troops? Where had your numbers gone down? And why might your numbers have gone down, one wonders.”

Luo Jing: “If you can’t speak properly, keep your mouth shut.”

Li Chi: “Hmm…”

Luo Jing thought for a moment, then asked: “Are you certain now is the best time to take Anyang? Are you certain Meng Kedi is dead? Are you certain—”

Li Chi said: “I am certain of all of it. If I had a hundred thousand troops myself, I wouldn’t be here asking you.”

Luo Jing thought: *absolutely cannot fall for this.* And so he shrugged his shoulders and said: “You’re not going, and I’m not going either. My forces aren’t enough. If I march to Anyang, what happens to Youzhou?”

Li Chi smiled gently and said: “Suppose Youzhou were a shop — have you ever thought about… hiring someone to mind the store for you?”

—