Luo Jing had finally grasped Li Chi’s purpose in coming. He fixed Li Chi with a look that said: *since you’re treating me like a fool, don’t blame me for treating you like an idiot.*

He said nothing. Just stared.

He expected the gaze to make Li Chi squirm at least a little — yet after holding it for quite a while, he found Li Chi still perfectly composed.

Not a trace of shame.

Then Luo Jing came to his senses. With a person like Li Chi, did you really expect to save him by awakening his sense of shame?

“Jizhou is already yours. And now you want my Youzhou too?”

Luo Jing sighed. “And you come asking for it this brazenly, without even the pretense of disguise.”

“A temporary stewardship,” Li Chi said. “This time I mean it — a temporary stewardship.”

Luo Jing asked, “Care to guess whether I’ll believe you.”

“You will.”

“Guess again.”

Li Chi rose and walked to the window, standing there for a good while with his hands clasped behind his back. The posture, at least, gave him a certain air of gravity.

Luo Jing watched him go quiet — watched him stand there thinking — and wondered to himself: is this fellow actually preparing a serious argument?

Then Li Chi pointed at something outside. “Is that cured pork hanging out there?”

Luo Jing: “……”

Strangely enough, cured pork was not commonly found in the north; it was more a southern taste. Luo Jing had first eaten it during the campaign alongside Prince Yu to take Anyang City, and found it much to his liking. He had since sent for a southern craftsman to come prepare it at his manor — it was hanging at that very moment outside the window of the side room.

“You stood there brooding for half the day,” Luo Jing said, “and that’s what you were thinking about?”

“Clearly you’re quite fond of it.”

“What does that have to do with what you came here to discuss!”

“You first tasted the stuff during the siege of Anyang, didn’t you? Here in Jizhou, hardly anyone makes it.”

“And what does that have to do with you!”

“Take Anyang, and you can eat cured pork every day.”

Luo Jing: “……”

All that brooding, and that was the best he could produce — a lame, pitiful excuse.

Li Chi let out a sigh. “I truly cannot think of anything better to say. You’ll have to work it out yourself. My master once told me: when it comes to persuading someone, three parts fall to the persuader, and seven parts depend on the person finding their own understanding.”

“If I’m not mistaken,” Luo Jing said, “you’ve changed a few words in whatever your master actually said.”

Li Chi sighed. “How can you think that of me? And yet — you’re exactly right.”

The Daoist Changmei’s original words were, of course: *when it comes to deceiving someone, three parts lie with the deceiver, and seven parts depend on the mark’s own imagination running wild.*

Luo Jing shot him a glare.

“Arrange some food,” Li Chi said. “I’m a little hungry.”

Luo Jing nodded. “That much is easy. As for the matter of Anyang — don’t bring it up again.”

He felt quite certain he had no desire to march on Anyang, and so he told himself, again and again: *Luo Jing, you have not the slightest inclination toward such a thing.*

He had just returned from Yanzhou — and though everyone kept saying it wasn’t a defeat, in practice it was no different from one.

When the Yanzhou forces came out and entered Youzhou and Jizhou territory, he could press them however he wished. But when they refused to come out and he went to fight, the enemy vanished into deep mountains and dense forests, and there was nothing to be done. Youzhou was so far from Yanzhou that the supply lines stretched impossibly thin; every extra day spent there consumed enormous quantities of grain, money, and materiel.

Even knowing all this, Luo Jing’s competitive pride had kept him in Yanzhou long past reason. Only when he saw no possible path to victory did he finally withdraw.

Battlefield casualties had been modest, but soldiers who fell ill from exposure to an unfamiliar climate had died in considerable numbers.

Upon returning, Luo Jing had set himself a new objective: large-scale recruitment. He needed to expand his forces as quickly as possible.

His former standards were abandoned. Youzhou’s army had always been selective to the point of strictness — that was no longer the case. He needed strength, and he needed it now.

Life was hard for common folk; joining the Youzhou army at least meant full meals, and the uniform carried its own dignity. Why would anyone refuse?

And so the Youzhou army’s expansion moved quickly. Less than half a year after the withdrawal from Yanzhou, nearly fifty thousand new recruits had been taken in. Counting the veterans already under his command, total strength now exceeded eighty thousand.

Luo Jing had set his sights on one hundred thousand — that was the first target. Then a full year of training, to forge those hundred thousand into soldiers capable of real war. Throughout that year, recruitment would continue without pause, so that when he finally marched south with a hundred thousand troops, more reinforcements would still be following behind.

For half a year he had held to this plan, and he knew it was the right one — the path of lasting strength.

Then Li Chi arrived, and brought temptation with him.

Anyang truly was a land of fortune.

Youzhou had the greater fame — known throughout the realm, spoken of by all. Yet the revenues of a single Anyang City far surpassed those of Youzhou. Whoever held Anyang controlled the Nanping River; controlled the great artery connecting north and south. The military funding a man could extract from Anyang in a single year was more than Youzhou might yield in five.

To say Luo Jing was unmoved would be a lie. How could he be unmoved?

Had Anyang not been so clearly vital, Prince Yu would never have made it his first destination when marching south.

“Let’s eat, let’s eat.”

Li Chi smiled. “After we eat, let’s go out and have a look around. Youzhou in the last days before the new year should be quite lively.”

Gao Xining gave a quiet sound of agreement and nodded. “We should pick up some gifts to bring back for Master and Grandfather.”

Luo Jing smiled too. “Yes, yes — let’s eat…”

But in his mind, all he could think of was Anyang.

Through the meal Li Chi, true to his word, made no further mention of it — as though he genuinely intended to let Luo Jing reach his own conclusions.

The atmosphere was warm and cheerful. Afterward, Li Chi and Gao Xining did exactly as promised and went out to walk the streets. To avoid alarming anyone, the divine eagle and Big Dog were both left behind at Luo Jing’s manor.

Luo Jing sat on the low wall of the courtyard terrace, watching Big Dog sprawled there in lazy indifference, then glancing over at the divine eagle rooting about across the ground.

Something suddenly occurred to him.

If Li Chi had come without these two creatures, it would have been a visit with one clear purpose: to persuade Luo Jing to attack Anyang. But he had brought them along — which meant more than half of Li Chi’s reason for coming was genuine leisure.

If he were in a hurry, why haul two such nuisances along?

With that thought, Luo Jing understood: Li Chi was actually not as fixated on the matter of Anyang as Luo Jing had assumed. Whether or not Luo Jing took Anyang, it made little difference to Li Chi at present. In the future, it would matter — but in a different way.

If Anyang remained in someone else’s hands, Li Chi could take it himself when the time came. If Anyang sat in Luo Jing’s hands — well, it became rather inconvenient to take.

A man as canny as Li Chi — how could he not have thought of this?

Luo Jing shot to his feet, his mind growing brighter by the moment.

He saw it now: Li Chi was urging him to take Anyang as a gift — handing him an opportunity.

He stepped down from the low wall and began to pace across the terrace, working through it as he walked.

If he took Anyang — and given the nature of their friendship, even if things went wrong, Li Chi would never shut the door on him. Even at the absolute worst, if he needed to fall back to Youzhou, could Li Chi really stop him?

Li Chi was greedy, yes — but not the sort of man who threw aside everything for profit. Of that, Luo Jing had not the slightest doubt.

The more he turned it over, the more it seemed Li Chi’s urging was, in large part, genuine goodwill. Even if Anyang proved impossible to hold, a single year of revenue from the city would still yield an enormous sum in military funding.

Luo Jing grew more excited the more he thought about it. This was starting to look like something that could actually be done.

Out on the street.

Li Chi spotted a jade shop not far ahead and tugged Gao Xining toward it, but she shook her head.

“I don’t care for jade.”

“Why not? From what I’ve seen, most women wear jade.”

“Spending money on something with an inflated price serves no purpose,” she said. “Better to save the silver for something useful.”

“So it isn’t that you don’t like it — it’s that you find it pointless.”

“The things I don’t like are all pointless.”

Li Chi thought about this. The twisted logic somehow made a certain kind of sense.

Gao Xining smiled. “Think about it — a man who needs jade accessories to demonstrate his standing: is that not a common, ordinary man? And a woman who needs them: is she not just another vapid creature?”

Li Chi looked at her, bracing himself for more of her perverse reasoning.

“Take a man like you,” she continued, “already the lord of Jizhou. Do you need your clothes and ornaments to prove your position?”

Li Chi sighed. “Did my master secretly teach you how to flatter people? How have you gotten so terribly good at it?”

“Hehe… then think about it from my side — you are the lord of Jizhou, and I am your woman. Do *I* need ornaments to prove my position?”

“But other women have them—”

She cut him off before he could finish. “Other women have jade. I don’t. But we are the great landlords of Jizhou — are they?”

Li Chi burst out laughing.

“Instead of thinking about all that,” she said, “think about this: how long before Luo Jing comes around?”

“What do you think?”

She smiled. “Didn’t you say it yourself? When you want to persuade someone, three parts fall to the persuader, and seven parts depend on the person finding their own understanding.”

“I’m just afraid he won’t find it.”

“That’s exactly why I brought the divine eagle and Big Dog along,” she said with a grin.

Li Chi paused, turned it over in his mind, then burst out laughing again. He raised his hand and ruffled her hair.

“So it turns out you’re more devious than I am.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “You’re the great thief of Jizhou, which makes me the great thief’s wife. The wife came after the thief — and haven’t I learned everything from you?”

“Look at you,” he said, laughing, “choosing to learn all the wrong things, and learning them so well too — hahahaha!”

“But whatever the case,” she said, “whether for Luo Jing or for us, his marching south on Anyang works in everyone’s favor.”

Li Chi nodded.

“He wants to kill Prince Wu and avenge his father — he can only get that chance by taking Anyang. And once he takes it, Prince Wu’s position becomes very uncomfortable indeed.”

Li Chi nodded again, watching her with the eyes one might use to regard a small, extraordinary creature — though only half of that gaze was wonder.

The other half was love. All of it was love. The wonder itself was love.

“There’s something else I’ve been thinking,” Gao Xining continued. “We actually have the strength to take Anyang ourselves right now, don’t we?”

Another nod. “We do.”

“Because you took Jizhou,” she said, smiling, “you’ve always felt you owe Luo Jing something — even after everything you’ve put him through. You want to let him have this one.”

Li Chi raised his hand and ruffled her hair again. “What do you keep in that little head of yours — nothing but cleverness and charm?”

“What do you mean, ‘little’?”

“Little, as in young and soft. A little soft head.”

Gao Xining glanced left and right to check that no one was watching, then reached up and pinched a certain part of his chest.

“Yours isn’t bad either.”

Li Chi let out a yelp of pain.

“Serves you right,” she huffed. “That’ll teach you to talk nonsense.”

Li Chi thought to himself: *now, between the two of us, who exactly is the one behaving outrageously?*

—