Li Diudiu and Xiahou Zuo sat on the rooftop for more than a shichen. Since someone like Twin Stars in Moonlit Company’s proprietor was involved, the idea of anyone daring to cause trouble there was absurd — which made for a decidedly dull and uneventful watch.

Xiahou Zuo reckoned it was about time. Since Li Diudiu still had lectures the next day, he patted him on the shoulder and said, “Let’s head back.”

Li Diudiu gave a quiet hum and asked Xiahou Zuo, “You’re staying longer?”

Xiahou Zuo pointed toward Twin Stars Tower. “I’ve got an important matter to attend to over in that building.”

Li Diudiu was taken aback. Being his age, he was precisely at the stage where Xiahou Zuo’s more indecent jests tended to go completely over his head. Li Diudiu naturally assumed “important matter” meant exactly that — something genuinely important — rather than something that was important in the least dignified sense of the word.

When Xiahou Zuo said these three words to Ruan Chen and the others, they all understood instantly. But Li Diudiu was too guileless — he truly believed Xiahou Zuo was going to Twin Stars Tower to attend to serious business, not to attend to “business.”

Xiahou Zuo found this even less fun, so he waved his hand and said, “When you’re at lectures tomorrow, don’t act with the same attitude you had toward Teacher Yan. Many of the instructors at the academy have rather quirky temperaments. If you treat other instructors the way you treated Teacher Yan, you’ll likely get an earful.”

Li Diudiu gave a quiet hum. “Go take care of your important matter. I’m heading back.”

Xiahou Zuo said, “The carriage is downstairs. Take it back — you won’t be stopped at checkpoints.”

Li Diudiu nodded and agreed, then slid off the rooftop. For a wooden building of several stories, it was like level ground to him. Once he was down, Ruan Chen spotted him and said a word to the driver: “Take Brother Li Chi back to the Four Pages Academy.”

Li Diudiu rarely rode in carriages. In Jizhou City, a carriage was a luxury — a very different thing from the kind that hauled manure in the countryside.

Once inside, Li Diudiu felt a little out of place. The carriage was comfortable enough, but he thought riding a horse would probably be better — he’d never actually been on one.

His mind wandered aimlessly. Before long, the carriage had been moving through the streets for more than a quarter of an hour, with roughly half the distance to the Four Pages Academy still to go.

Then the carriage suddenly stopped. An instant later came a muffled grunt from outside — the driver had likely been seized, or simply killed outright.

Li Diudiu didn’t get out immediately. In that split second, he pushed off with both feet, lunged upward, and as his body rose, he flattened himself horizontally, spreading his hands and feet to brace against the inner walls of the carriage roof, suspending himself in midair.

Bang!

The carriage door was blown open by some tremendous force — the shattered wood flew like debris caught in a whirlwind, a terrifying sight.

The force behind that blow was staggering.

After that impact, someone outside used a sharpened wooden stake to stab wildly into the carriage interior. Had Li Diudiu still been seated, he would have been hit even if he’d dodged the first strike. As it was, he hung braced against the ceiling and avoided it entirely.

Li Diudiu carried only a small dagger — a gift from his master when he was six or seven years old, given to him for self-defense.

He was still deciding whether to cut through the felt covering the roof and burst out that way when the carriage suddenly jolted sideways under a tremendous force and toppled over.

As it tipped, Li Diudiu immediately slashed an opening in the roof, and as the carriage rolled he shot out through the gap, hit the ground, and rolled several times. Even in that split second, he was taking stock of the terrain.

Pressing his back against what appeared to be some shop’s door, Li Diudiu held the dagger in front of his face, crouching in a half-bent posture — like a young leopard ready to spring at prey.

The carriage had been overturned by someone with their bare hands. The attacker wore a mask, but from that build alone, Li Diudiu knew immediately who it was.

A man this enormous — and one he’d just made a point of studying carefully — was unmistakable.

Wang Heita frowned as he looked at Li Diudiu, a flash of puzzlement crossing his eyes.

“Why is it a kid?”

He raised a hand and pointed at Li Diudiu. “Who are you!”

Li Diudiu slowly straightened up, still pressing his back against the shop’s door. Hulking men with weapons were closing in from three directions around him. Directly ahead stood the bull-like Wang Heita. Li Diudiu felt there was no way out.

So he gripped the dagger tighter.

“Someone tipped me off that Lian Gongming had hired the Azure Formation to kill me. I never imagined it would be a child they sent. Has the Azure Formation really fallen this low?”

Wang Heita walked forward as he spoke, his voice deep and muffled — like thunder rumbling behind thick storm clouds, resonant and hollow.

Li Diudiu still said nothing. He was still scanning his surroundings. This was his first time in a situation like this — surrounded, with a man in front of him who could seemingly crush him into a ball without effort.

“Not talking?!”

Wang Heita let out a grunt. “Then I’ll beat you until you talk.”

He kicked toward Li Diudiu’s chest.

Li Diudiu immediately dodged. The kick slammed into the heavy door behind him with a bang, splitting the thick planks clean apart. Seeing Li Diudiu evade, Wang Heita was mildly surprised, and he swung a sweeping kick sideways.

Li Diudiu dodged again, dropping low in a crouch. Wang Heita’s roundhouse swept just above his head.

In that same instant, Li Diudiu thrust his dagger upward. With a small sound, the blade sank into Wang Heita’s calf. If Li Diudiu had followed through with a sideways drag, Wang Heita’s leg would likely have been ruined — all the muscle along the calf sliced open sideways, with no surgeon skilled enough to repair that kind of damage.

But Li Diudiu didn’t. He stabbed in and immediately withdrew. Not because he couldn’t — but because he chose not to.

Wang Heita hissed in pain and stepped back two paces. He looked down at the blood already running down his leg and pooling in his shoe, making a wet squelching sound.

“Hmph.”

Wang Heita clearly found this hard to believe.

“Seems I underestimated you.”

But even wounded, he didn’t retreat. He reached down, grabbed the torn trouser leg, ripped off a strip of fabric, and cinched it tightly around his leg.

“A child out doing a killer’s work — I can’t let you leave. No telling what you’d grow into.”

With those words, Wang Heita surged forward again, one enormous hand — like a palm-leaf fan — reaching down to grab Li Diudiu by the head. Li Diudiu immediately thrust his right hand upward with the dagger; had Wang Heita not pulled his hand back, the blade would have punched straight through his palm.

But Wang Heita, for all that his technique wasn’t refined, was born with extraordinary strength — and his experience in real combat far exceeded Li Diudiu’s.

In the very instant Li Diudiu drove the dagger upward, Wang Heita’s palm flipped and plunged downward, clamping around Li Diudiu’s wrist.

That hand was no hand at all — it was a great iron vice capable of grinding bones to powder. Li Diudiu’s expression shifted sharply. Just as Wang Heita moved to hoist him straight into the air, Li Diudiu pushed off the ground with both feet, jumping upward. Pulling against the grip would likely have cost him the use of his hand — but by springing up with Wang Heita’s force, he moved before Wang Heita could even react.

Launched into the air, Li Diudiu twisted sideways and drove four or five rapid kicks into Wang Heita’s chest, using the force to wrench his wrist free.

Against an ordinary brute, those four or five kicks would have dealt real injury. Against Wang Heita, they pushed him back two steps — and the look he turned on Li Diudiu grew stranger still.

Breaking Formation Strike.

Three words surfaced in Li Diudiu’s mind at that instant.

As Wang Heita stumbled back, Li Diudiu didn’t retreat — he pressed forward, reversing his grip on the dagger and drawing a sweeping slash across Wang Heita’s lower abdomen. Wang Heita’s expression changed dramatically.

Li Diudiu’s blade followed the slash upward to his chest and drove in three rapid stabs.

Hit.

Hit. Hit.

Li Diudiu stepped back and slowly exhaled.

Wang Heita stared in complete disbelief at his own abdomen. Not a scratch. He looked at his chest — also undamaged. Because the slash across his abdomen had been with the dagger’s spine, and the three stabs at his chest with the dagger’s handle.

Wang Heita stood frozen for a good while. His men started to move forward but he waved them off.

“Nice technique, kid.”

Wang Heita grinned. His face was rather dark, which made his teeth look rather white. When he smiled it made Li Diudiu think of the mask he’d made for himself — the one he hadn’t used yet. He’d been thinking that if he ever went out at night to punish evildoers, the mask would come in handy.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

Wang Heita asked.

Li Diudiu shrugged and replied with his own question, “Why would I kill you?”

Wang Heita raised his hand. Li Diudiu noticed then that Wang Heita was holding a piece of paper.

Wang Heita shook it open and looked at it with clear contempt. “Government artists are a useless lot — they draw people so badly not even a ghost would recognize them. Only the eyes here are drawn with any spark — those turned out decent.”

Li Diudiu instinctively reached for his chest, and to his surprise found nothing there. He’d had no idea when Wang Heita had taken the portrait.

“You didn’t kill me, and I didn’t kill you.”

Wang Heita said with a smile, “Call it even… but I’m still curious — why would someone as young as you be mixed up in something like this? If you’re not afraid of me, I’m heading over to that eating place. Come along.”

Li Diudiu followed without a moment’s hesitation.

Wang Heita was genuinely taken aback — he truly hadn’t expected a kid like Li Diudiu to dare follow.

Wang Heita asked, “Why did you actually dare to follow?”

Li Diudiu replied, “Because you said food.”

Wang Heita: “Huh?”

Did that really need explaining?

At a roadside stall, a great basin sat glowing faintly under the lamplight, filled with giant bones braised for a full two and a half hours — nothing but meat, the aroma filling the air.

Wang Heita realized he may have made a mistake. He really should not have invited this kid to eat with him. The boy looked small enough — so how was he eating like this?

No wine, no rice. Just meat.

That entire basin of meaty bones — one for Wang Heita, one for Li Diudiu, their speed neck and neck, the quantities evenly matched.

A grand pile of stripped bones had accumulated in front of both of them. Quite the sight.

“Not bad.”

Wang Heita burst into laughter, slapped Li Diudiu on the shoulder with his greasy hand. “I like people like you.”

Li Diudiu looked at him with distaste. “You got my clothes dirty.”

Wang Heita laughed even harder — a kind of laughter that hadn’t come to him in years. When it had run its course, he asked Li Diudiu, “You had the chance to kill me. Why didn’t you?”

Li Diudiu shot back, “You had the chance to kill me. Why didn’t you?”

Wang Heita was quiet a moment, then said, “Because you’re a child.”

Li Diudiu pointed at the pile of bones on the table. “Next time, don’t be so quick to dismiss a kid. It’s not like you’re automatically better.”

Wang Heita laughed. “Lesson learned.”

He asked, “And you?”

Li Diudiu said, “A man Lian Gongming wants dead — I don’t want to kill him… When I first accepted that portrait I had a thought I didn’t share with anyone else. I’ll tell you now. Taking that portrait was smarter for me than for anyone else — anyone else would really have tried to kill you.”

He glanced at the basin — just one meaty bone left inside. Wang Heita smiled. “Eat it, eat it. Consider us square.”

Li Diudiu wasted no words, gnawed the last bone clean, then wiped his greasy hand on Wang Heita’s clothes.

“Now we’re square.”

He stood on his toes and wiped the oil from his mouth on Wang Heita’s shoulder, perfectly satisfied.

Wang Heita let out a hearty chuckle.

Li Diudiu walked toward the door, muttering disdainfully as he went, “Idiot…”

“Little brother!”

Wang Heita called after him. “If you ever need help with anything, come find me at the Changxing Gambling Den.”

Li Diudiu turned to look at him, was quiet for a moment, then asked, “You’re not planning to leave? Lian Gongming wants you dead.”

Wang Heita kept that same easy, thick-witted smile and shook his head. “The Magistrate isn’t out yet. I promised to watch over his affairs for him, keep his family safe. Now his family’s been thrown in prison too — how could I just abandon his business?”

—