The inn was small, the doors and windows sealed, and the air poorly ventilated—so the hot pot fumes were especially thick.

The spicy broth the people of Shuzhou favored: when the pot came to a boil, the red liquid roiled and heaved, and watching it gave one a strange, intoxicating pleasure—as though snatching food from the heart of fire.

Yu Hongyi was a Shuzhou native. Whatever other memories he had of Shuzhou, only the red broth hot pot remained. Or perhaps more accurately, that was a memory of his parents.

His father was from Yangzhu in Shuzhou—a first-rank scholar in Dachu’s imperial examinations, the third-place *tanhua*—and had afterward remained in the capital, waiting for the Ministry of Personnel to assign him a post.

But because he had no money to smooth things over at the Ministry, he remained a candidate official indefinitely.

A first-rank *tanhua* from the palace examination—by any normal accounting, a posting to the regions should have placed him no lower than a county magistrate at minimum.

Yet the Ministry kept saying there were no vacancies, and told him to await news.

A man of great talent, languishing without opportunity. Still, the time he spent in the capital did earn him a somewhat greater reputation.

Three years of waiting in the capital, with no appointment ever forthcoming, he returned in helpless bitterness to his home in Shuzhou.

He married and had a child, and ten more years passed in modest hardship. Wanting to earn a living, yet unable to let it be known. His status as a degree-holder forbade him from engaging in commerce—or even farming.

Though he had never held office, if someone who bore a grudge discovered him in trade or agriculture and reported him, the authorities would come for him with considerable speed. Money to smooth it over: no trouble. No money: wait for the court’s judgment.

Those ten years were genuinely difficult for the family of three. Had his wife’s family not provided regular support, they might not have been able to keep food on the table.

Ten years after returning to Shuzhou, fortune suddenly turned.

Prince Yu, Yang Jixing, was granted Jizhou as his fief. Before departing, for reasons no one could quite explain, he thought of Yu Hongyi’s father.

Whatever his motivations, Prince Yu needed a great many talented people for Jizhou, so he sent someone to Shuzhou to invite him out of retirement.

Prince Yu might have been an utter failure in the capital, might have been looked at with contempt by his own father, but he was still a prince of the first rank.

One word from him, and the Ministry of Personnel made arrangements at once, appointing Yu Hongyi’s father to a post in Jizhou—promoted to associate prefect, fifth rank from the lower side, effectively the deputy of the Jizhou prefectural administration.

The whole family was overjoyed—a single day had transformed their fortunes.

But his father did not know how to be an official. More accurately, he did not know how to be a corrupt, law-breaking, collusive official.

So in Jizhou, he was marginalized nearly to the point of having no place to stand.

Then, later—when Yu Hongyi was sixteen—a great crisis erupted in Jizhou. The conflict between Prefect Lian Gongming and Commissioner Zeng Ling broke out into the open.

Yu Hongyi’s father was caught up in that disaster. Inside the prefectural offices, he offended Lian Gongming, who ordered him beaten to death on the spot.

His mother took Yu Hongyi to Prince Yu’s residence to beg for help. Prince Yu’s gates never opened.

Yu Hongyi resolved to take revenge himself. But at that very moment, Lian Gongming fell from power and was killed.

Now, sitting across from Du Yan, watching the rolling red broth—Yu Hongyi, for no reason he could name, found himself thinking of all those years past.

Scene after scene flickered through his mind.

Perhaps it was because his father had suffered such great injustices. And he himself—had suffered the same.

Du Yan said, “I genuinely do hate your name—same as I hate this red broth you love.”

Yu Hongyi let out a slow breath.

He looked at Du Yan and asked, earnestly: “I have never hated the copper-pot sesame broth you love. Why do you hate my red broth with oil?”

Du Yan said, “Why don’t you understand yet—what I have always hated, from beginning to end, is not what you eat, but you.”

Yu Hongyi said, “I understand. But I’m unwilling to accept it—because I have always believed that the people under Prince Ning, the people in the Tingwei Army, are different from all the officials I knew growing up.”

Du Yan said, “Then you’re truly naive. Naive people don’t live well, and they should blame themselves rather than resent others.”

Du Yan leaned back. “Don’t you think you’re a pitiable person?”

He sat back with an air of complete unconcern. He looked at Yu Hongyi, and his gaze carried that high, superior detachment—his words laced with a condescension the listener could not help but despise.

“You really are a pitiable person—whether or not you choose to see it.”

Then he shifted his manner—calm, and seemingly sincere, but each word landing like a blade.

“You’ve served under me. With your abilities, you had every opportunity to rise far—but because I despise you, I suppressed you at every turn: no merit recorded for you, no assignments arranged, and as a hundred-officer, I never even allocated you a single subordinate.”

Yu Hongyi looked up at him briefly, and said nothing.

Du Yan continued: “And even so—because you serve under me, you have been caught in my shadow.”

“Why were you the only one sent here to intercept me? Why couldn’t you refuse? Simply because that pretty Deputy Tingwei of yours doesn’t trust you.”

“These past years, I gave you no one. And she? She doesn’t trust you—so she sends you to intercept me, to prove your own innocence, and still gave you no one at all.”

Du Yan smiled. “If only there were wine right now—I’d almost raise a glass to you.”

Yu Hongyi replied, “No need. Thank you.”

Du Yan heard those two words—*thank you*—and couldn’t help but let out a laugh. “You really are something strange… you actually thank me?”

His fingers tapped on the tabletop. “Yu Hongyi—don’t you see? Gao Xining doesn’t trust you. She sent you here to cut me down, but she hoped we would destroy each other—no, more precisely: that we would both die.”

He looked straight into Yu Hongyi’s eyes. “If Du Yan dies, and everyone connected to Du Yan dies, she can rest easy. So why haven’t you considered that you’d actually be better off coming with me?”

He adjusted his tone, made himself sound all the more sincere.

*Rhetoric* was another thing Master Changmei had taught them all. What to say in what moment to strike at the heart of a listener—and when to shift tone and word choice to win trust.

All of this Du Yan had mastered thoroughly. He had been especially attentive as a student, because he found these things genuinely useful.

As a man originally planted as a mole inside the Yanshan Camp, and later risen step by step to Lead Officer of the Tingwei Army—wasn’t it precisely because he kept learning and kept improving himself?

Seeing Yu Hongyi stay silent, Du Yan pressed on: “Though I never cared for you before—the moment you agree to leave with me, we become brothers in life and death.”

“Without the hundred-officer’s uniform of the Tingwei Army, you can still live in silk and eat the finest food—and compared to life in the Tingwei Army, it would be ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times more comfortable…”

His fingers tapped the table once more.

Another thing the Daoist Master had taught: in certain specific moments, tapping with one’s finger was a way of signaling to the person across from you—*what comes next is important; take note.*

“Endless wealth. A hand that can turn the world upside down. Are these not better than what you have in the Tingwei Army?”

Du Yan said, “Even if you stop me, do you think Gao Xining will ever trust you? She’ll find an opportunity to be rid of you. Stay in the Tingwei Army, and you have no future—you don’t even have a life.”

Du Yan could tell that Yu Hongyi was being moved.

To handle a man with a wretched history, nothing worked better than acknowledgment and sympathy.

“I treated you badly before—the truth is, I was jealous of you. I felt you were better than me in every way, and I feared you’d overshadow me.”

Du Yan said, “I apologize to you. From now on, I entrust you with my life, and will never let you down.”

Yu Hongyi exhaled heavily once more.

Du Yan watched Yu Hongyi’s reaction closely—trying to read better judgment from his eyes.

Yu Hongyi picked up the cloth from the table, wiped his hands, then unclipped an iron plaque from his waist and set it on the table.

Seeing this, Du Yan’s eyes lit up.

Yu Hongyi had removed the iron plaque that marked his rank as a Tingwei Army hundred-officer. That gesture meant he was genuinely wavering—and about to decide.

In the next instant, Yu Hongyi pushed the plaque forward.

Du Yan let out a quiet breath. *At last.*

He glanced down at the plaque—and his eyes flew wide, his heartbeat seeming to stop for a moment.

The characters engraved on the plaque read: *Lead Officer.*

Yu Hongyi said, very seriously: “I didn’t come wearing the Lead Officer’s uniform because I find it hideous.”

He gestured at his own collar. “The hundred-officer’s uniform has silver thread woven into its pattern. Very beautiful. But the Lead Officer’s uniform uses gold thread—and gold looks vulgar. Not just a little vulgar. Very vulgar.”

He looked at the Lead Officer’s plaque, somewhat regretful, somewhat displeased. “Having to wear such an ugly uniform every day—that’s something I’ll have trouble accepting. But… the Lead Officer’s plaque does look nicer than the hundred-officer’s.”

He extended a finger and tapped the table, exactly as Du Yan had done.

“That’s the main point. Take note.”

Du Yan shot to his feet.

At that moment he heard sounds of commotion outside the inn.

Du Yan stepped back instantly, hand on his blade hilt.

The inn door creaked open, and Lead Officer Fang Xidao entered, dragging someone by the hair.

The person being dragged was one of Du Yan’s hundred-officers—a man of considerable ability.

And yet now his breath barely flickered, hauled in like a rag doll.

Fang Xidao entered without looking at Du Yan. He looked at Yu Hongyi and smiled. “First day as Lead Officer and I’ve already caught you in an infraction. I can see your days ahead are going to be interesting.”

Yu Hongyi sighed. “Did I say too much?”

And smiled while sighing.

Fang Xidao smiled back. “When I get back, I’m going straight to the Deputy Tingwei to report on you—to tell her you said the Lead Officer’s uniform is hideous.”

Yu Hongyi said, “It really is hideous…”

He looked back at Fang Xidao. “And besides, if it comes to filing reports, Lead Officer Fang seems to need to take a number.”

He looked up at the ceiling.

On the ceiling beam above, Lead Officer Shang Qingzhu sat with his legs dangling, grinning. “Yu Hongyi has a point—I’ve already written it all down in my little notebook.”

Yu Hongyi smiled back. “Writing it down in a notebook—that’s going too far.”

Shang Qingzhu glared at him. “Too far? You’re down here eating hot pot while I’m up there breathing the fumes. And you’re telling *me* I’ve gone too far?”

Yu Hongyi said, “Would one hot pot meal settle the notebook business?”

Shang Qingzhu said, “One meal to close this account? Dream on. Two servings, minimum.”

He dropped from the beam, drifting down to land just behind Du Yan’s flank.

He still didn’t look at Du Yan. He looked very seriously at Yu Hongyi and said, “Lucky for me—of all my skills, breath suppression is my strongest. As for the hot pot—you have to understand, sitting up there smelling it from above…it was absolutely maddening…”

Yu Hongyi broke into a laugh—utterly, completely at ease. The laugh wasn’t loud. But it was lighter and freer than any laugh he had ever laughed before.

Three Lead Officers, arranged in a perfect triangle, with Du Yan at the center.

Du Yan looked at one, then the other.

After a moment, he drew his longsword, and smiled too. “I suddenly find I’d rather like to try that red broth myself.”

Yu Hongyi shook his head, rose, and drew the broadsword strapped across his back.

“You don’t deserve it.”

—