In the grove, Zhou Qixi came running up. He glanced at Lü Wuman’s blood-soaked face, but paused only a moment before continuing to pursue Fang Xidao.

The blade had struck Lü Wuman in one eye, and blood was pouring without stop. He staggered back the way he’d come, clutching his face.

The pain was nearly unbearable.

As he neared the gambling house, two of the establishment’s guards came running over. Lü Wuman asked: “What’s going on inside?”

“Still playing.”

One guard answered, trembling slightly: “There were people seen rushing out, but it didn’t affect things — the gambling continues. These players, if it doesn’t concern them directly, they have no interest in looking up. They care about the cards in their hands more than anyone or anything else.”

Lü Wuman gave a sound of acknowledgment: “Go get the medicine chest.”

The guard hurried off, and before long returned with the chest.

Lü Wuman drew several deep breaths, then raised his hand, gripped the blade, and wrenched it out — making the two guards flinch and shudder.

Enduring the pain, he tipped a bottle of medicinal liquor over his own face. Blood and liquor ran down his body and pooled on the ground.

After flushing the wound for a while, he grabbed a fistful of medicinal powder, drew another deep breath, then pressed the powder hard into his eye socket.

“Bind it!”

He rasped the order, his voice rough as though split open with a blade.

One of the guards bound the eye with shaking hands, the color drained almost entirely from his face.

Lü Wuman gritted his teeth against the pain. His lips twitched involuntarily, over and over.

He sat like that for roughly a quarter of an hour. Then Lü Wuman reached out his hand: “Give me the blade.”

The guard hastily unbuckled his sword and handed it over. Lü Wuman rose, drew a long breath — deep, repeated breaths, pulling in great lungfuls.

The pain made him pace in circles where he stood, toes curled hard inside his shoes.

Then he spun around, and with a single stroke of the blade cut the guard down.

The other let out a yelp and had no time to run — he too was cut down.

Lü Wuman walked into the gambling house gripping that long blade.

About half a quarter-hour later, Lü Wuman came back out, drenched in blood, and sat back down where he’d been before.

He breathed in great heaving gasps. Blood dripped steadily from the hem of his robe, soaking a small patch of earth dark.

He waited perhaps a little less than half a watch, and then Zhou Qixi returned from outside, his expression grim.

One look at his face was enough to understand. Lü Wuman demanded furiously: “You didn’t catch him?”

Zhou Qixi nodded: “I didn’t.”

Lü Wuman shot to his feet: “You deserve death!”

Zhou Qixi looked at him, started to say something, then held it back.

“Old Lü, do you still not understand why I came back?”

He pulled Lü Wuman by the arm into the gambling house. The moment they entered, the thick, sharp stench of blood made Zhou Qixi pause.

Bodies were everywhere — each killed with a single stroke.

“You are ruthless.”

Zhou Qixi looked back at Lü Wuman: “Right now I imagine you want to kill me as well.”

Lü Wuman, barely containing his fury, said: “You’re not wrong. You’ve ruined the master’s great plan. I genuinely should kill you now.”

“To hell with the master.”

Zhou Qixi helped Lü Wuman through the door. The two walked through the gambling house, then through the chicken yard, and returned to the elegant small courtyards at the back.

They stepped into one at random. Zhou Qixi found a medicine chest, opened it, and took out a jade vial.

Inside the jade vial were baoxianzi — an extremely costly healing medicine.

He took out two pellets and handed them to Lü Wuman. Lü Wuman stared at him, but ultimately only let out a long sigh, took the medicine, and swallowed it.

“Although the plan succeeded and I’ve earned Li Chi’s trust, it won’t hold for long.”

Zhou Qixi sighed: “My identity may not be as secure as you and the master assumed.”

Lü Wuman asked: “Why?”

Zhou Qixi unwound the cloth covering from his face and tossed it aside carelessly.

From this moment on, he was no longer the prefectural governor of Jinzhou, nor the Three-Province Inspector. He was Mei Wujiu.

Mei Wujiu said: “This Li Chi is far more difficult to deal with than we imagined. His methods for winning loyalty are formidable.”

“After this affair, Guo Hui and the other local Jinzhou merchants will be absolutely devoted to Li Chi. In every matter large and small in Jinzhou, they will likely report to Li Chi in secret.”

“Because Li Chi gave them the right to pass messages covertly at any time — under the jurisdiction of the Tingwei Army. How am I supposed to use them after this?”

Mei Wujiu stood and opened a nearby cabinet, producing two flasks of wine. He handed one to Lü Wuman.

He took a swig himself and said: “After Li Chi left, the more I thought about it, the more wrong things seemed.”

“I suspect Li Chi was never truly at ease with me. He must have also given Guo Hui and the others some private instructions in the shadows.”

“If I try to continue in the role of Three-Province Inspector, I’ll be surrounded entirely by Li Chi’s eyes and ears — no room to hide at all.”

Mei Wujiu gave a long sigh: “So on the surface it looks like success, yet because Li Chi mobilized a swarm of ant-like merchants, my identity could be called into question at any moment.”

“Guo Hui and the others — people I could once have used — have now become people Li Chi can use.”

Mei Wujiu said: “But that isn’t even the most critical thing… If it were only that, I’d still have the heart to fight for it.”

Lü Wuman asked: “What is the most critical thing?”

Mei Wujiu said: “Do you know why Li Chi came north? He came specifically to purge the local officials of the northern Jizhou region!”

He raised his eyes to Lü Wuman and said: “Everything you’ve built across the prefectures and counties of northern Jizhou over the past year and more — it may all be undone by this northern tour of Li Chi’s. I truly didn’t dare stay there any longer.”

Lü Wuman sat in silence for a long while, then lifted the wine flask and gulped from it repeatedly.

After another long pause, Lü Wuman said: “If you do this — how do you face the master when you return? He’ll certainly kill you.”

“Why would I go back?”

Mei Wujiu said: “You, me, all the others included — four nothings, four somethings, all full, all empty… we are nothing more than pieces in his hand.”

“There he sits in a secluded mountain estate in Bowan Mountain, Yuzhou — what does he do every day? Drinks wine, fishes, composes verses…”

“And us? Nothing we do ever satisfies him. We’re always scolded. Even if I had succeeded — stopped being Mei Wujiu, become Zhou Qixi—”

“Five years from now, ten years from now — even if I rose to chief minister of the court, held the position of the realm’s most powerful official — I’d still be laboring away not for myself…”

“None of it would have anything to do with us. Everything profits only the master. Better to seize this chance and break free.”

Mei Wujiu leaned in closer, speaking with some urgency: “With the abilities you and I have, we can advance and start something on our own, or retreat and serve someone else.”

“Everything you’ve built over this past year and more, all the groundwork I’ve laid over these several years — if we use it ourselves, wouldn’t that be better than having Li Chi use it?”

Lü Wuman snapped his head up to look at Mei Wujiu, opened his mouth to rebuke him, then held himself back.

“With the strength we already have in hand, we could go to Yanzhou, Qingzhou, Xuzhou… and then return to Jizhou later, with inside support in every direction and reception waiting in every city.”

Lü Wuman shook his head: “If the master finds out, he won’t let us go. You know how ruthless he is.”

Mei Wujiu waved his hand: “Ruthless? Who can’t be ruthless?!”

Lü Wuman said: “Honestly, the way things have fallen apart, there’s no path back anyway. Go back — we’re dead. Don’t go back—”

Before he finished, Mei Wujiu cut in: “Don’t go back and we still have a fighting chance.”

He leaned back, drew a deep breath.

“Old Lü — you should know our odds of succeeding on our own are quite good.”

Lü Wuman said bitterly: “Just how good?”

Mei Wujiu said: “Have you forgotten why I chose to lose to Yu Chaozong back then?”

Lü Wuman went still.

Mei Wujiu said: “When the master sent me to Jizhou, I raised an army under a false banner — ostensibly starting a rebellion of my own, when in truth the goal was to gain control of Yu Chaozong.”

“I spent three years building up forces, deliberately allowing my subordinates to mismanage everything and squander gains.”

“Then I deliberately lost to Yu Chaozong in battle, with the goal of sending a large number of people into Yu Chaozong’s Yanshan Camp. It was the method least likely to arouse Yu Chaozong’s suspicion.”

“Even if Yu Chaozong suspected something, he could only suspect they were my people — Mei Wujiu’s people. He would never suspect they were members of Shanhe Seal.”

“Not to mention that the people I intentionally sent in were all ordinary soldiers at the time — not a single leader among them. Would Yu Chaozong suspect common soldiers?”

Mei Wujiu said with rising excitement: “Old Lü — with those people there, we have a real chance to defeat Li Chi someday.”

Lü Wuman said: “But Yanshan Camp took a devastating defeat. The people you sent in can’t have many left.”

Mei Wujiu smiled: “Then you’re underestimating the men we trained ourselves. Who is better at staying alive than them?”

“These people, right now within Li Chi’s Ning Army, some have already risen to the rank of company commander, some even to colonel. Will they not become generals someday?”

Mei Wujiu said: “Any one of them, at a critical moment, could make a decisive difference. At the moment of final battle, they are the ants tunneling through the dam of the Ning Army — hollowing it out from within.”

Lü Wuman fell silent again.

After a full quarter-hour had passed, Lü Wuman asked: “Have you been thinking about going independent for a long time?”

Mei Wujiu nodded: “This northern Jizhou land holds enormous wealth — and we’ve been handing it all to someone else. I’m not content with that.”

He asked: “Old Lü — are you content with it?”

Lü Wuman said: “Then you have a detailed plan for this?”

“I do.”

Mei Wujiu said: “You and I leave Jizhou for now. Before Li Chi has any chance to move on us, we travel east and enter Yanzhou.”

“When Li Chi eventually moves south, we take Jizhou at that time… when we are lords of a territory in our own right, even the master will have to reckon with us.”

He seized Lü Wuman’s hand and said: “To break free from Shanhe Seal, to be beyond the master’s reach — the only chance is to become someone he doesn’t dare act against lightly.”

Lü Wuman considered this for a while longer, then nodded: “For now, I’ll follow your lead. Things being what they are — what other choice is there?”

He stood and sighed: “A perfectly good scheme, ruined just like that.”

Mei Wujiu smiled: “Let that scheme go. We’ll build a greater one ourselves — one large enough to contain all the rivers and mountains.”

He reached out to steady Lü Wuman: “You and I have known each other for twenty years. You know me and I know you. The two of us working together — there is much that can be accomplished.”

Lü Wuman gave a helpless sigh: “Let’s go. First get out of here, then figure out the rest.”

As they walked out the door, they looked over the elegant courtyard. Lü Wuman said with some pang of regret: “What a waste.”

Mei Wujiu consoled him: “What’s there to regret — burn it all down. We’ll build something bigger later.”

He had Lü Wuman rest for a moment while he went and gathered torches and oil, then set the buildings alight one by one.

Once they were out of the back courtyard, he torched the chicken yard and gambling house as well.

Before long, great roaring flames were rising. From the direction of the chicken yard came a series of sharp, wailing cries.

“Let’s go.”

Mei Wujiu helped Lü Wuman along: “Don’t bother going back into Guan County. We head east directly toward Qishi County, reorganize there, then enter Yanzhou.”

“Agreed.”

Lü Wuman said: “But one thing — the people I’ve cultivated, those in the open can be lost, but the hidden lines must be preserved.”

He said with great seriousness: “The people you sent into Yanshan Camp may prove invaluable. My hidden lines may prove invaluable too.”

Mei Wujiu nodded: “I know.”

The two of them left the gambling house and disappeared into the distance.

—