Though Dachu had long since abandoned the tradition of holding annual ceremonies to venerate Zhou Sheng, every city still had at least one Temple of the Sage — neglected yet standing.
Every Temple of the Sage was steeped in time and hardship, in cold and warmth alike.
The one hundred Espionage Guard soldiers had split into two groups. One group went to link up with Gui Yuanshu, meeting at the entrance of this crumbling temple.
The other group had to hold the city gates — the gates were their only line of retreat, their only lifeline.
Yin Chang’s people had no idea that Gui Yuanshu’s group had backup, or that the bulk of that backup was positioned at the gates.
This battle had required Gui Yuanshu and his handful of brothers to push their courage and audacity to the absolute limit — so that the enemy would misjudge and believe there truly were only a few of them. It was the surest way of securing their escape route, even if it had been a dangerously close thing.
At the entrance of the Temple of the Sage, Gui Yuanshu looked at the soldiers who had come to meet him. “Wait here a while. They think we’re fleeing in a rout — but I’m not done killing yet.”
The Espionage Guard soldiers looked at their new commanding officer. He was different from Yu Jiuling, and every single one of them was already filled with reverence.
They may not yet have known it, but this was exactly the kind of battle Gui Yuanshu had wanted to fight — to make the brothers of the Espionage Guard accept him.
A new leader always has to give more before his subordinates will truly follow.
“The Temple of the Sage is a good place,” Gui Yuanshu said. “Though the Sage surely never imagined that after his death, so many temples would be built in his name, we can think of each one as an eye the Sage left behind in the mortal world. Tonight, let the Sage watch — there is wickedness in this world, and there are those who cleanse it. His eyes have been covered for far too long. Tonight, we wipe them clean.”
He raised his hand. “Brothers of the Espionage Guard — set a clean ambush here. When it’s done, we leave.”
“Hu—!”
The Espionage Guard soldiers’ voices were low but perfectly unified. They moved fast, setting their positions with practiced ease. The tactics for handling enemies like these had long since been drilled into every last one of them.
They led the horses inside the temple, then quickly split into three groups. Two groups scaled the rooftops on either side of the street at speed, lying flat in concealment above.
The third group took cover inside the temple itself, waiting for the enemy.
Before long, it was not the enemy who arrived first — it was Zheng Shunshun and the others, coming to rendezvous as arranged.
All six gathered at the temple, each finding a place to hide.
Less than one quarter-hour later, a crowd came surging down the street — torches raised, gongs and drums clamoring, voices shouting the search.
“These animals are driving the common people out ahead of them,” Zheng Shunshun muttered, voice low with disgust.
Gui Yuanshu said, “Before we set out south, Prince Ning talked with me for a good while. He said something like this: the capacity for goodness in human nature has limits. Evil has none.”
He looked at Zheng Shunshun. “Pass the order: aim for the ones carrying torches. The common folk aren’t holding torches. Fire once and withdraw.”
Nearby, Dong Dongdong glanced at Qi Qiangqi. Qi Qiangqi was clearly tense.
“Something’s off,” Dong Dongdong said to himself, almost below his breath.
Qi Qiangqi asked, “Off how?”
Dong Dongdong said, “Gui Yuanshu’s people — something’s off. Let’s talk after we get through this.”
Qi Qiangqi nodded, then smiled. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘off,’ but I have to say, working alongside Gui Yuanshu is a rather exhilarating affair.”
Dong Dongdong grinned. “Same.”
Not long after, the torchlight grew closer. The constables moved through the street holding their flames aloft, herding commoners along with them as a living search party. Every dark and narrow passage the constables feared to enter, they simply forced the common people to sweep instead.
Gui Yuanshu waited until the crowd was nearly upon them. Then he suddenly stood and called out: “Fire until the bolts run out, then go!”
The Espionage Guard soldiers all rose as one. With crossbows in hand, they began laying down aimed fire at the constables in the torchlight.
Each bolt case held around ten bolts. Their weapons were the standard-issue repeating crossbows of Dachu, with a passable rate of fire.
In a short span of time, dozens of soldiers emptied their bolt cases and immediately broke off. Those on the rooftops dropped down, drove through the crowd, and finished off the constables at close range — whether they’d been hit or not, one cut and move on.
The crowd below erupted into chaos — like a great stone thrown into still water, the ripples surging outward in every direction.
The Espionage Guard cut back through the crowd and returned to the temple in a single surge, plunging straight through to the rear courtyard.
From the front, Gui Yuanshu’s group led the charge. Each of them drew back and drove a foot into the rear wall.
The temple’s outer wall had long since fallen into disrepair. Under the combined force of their kicks, it gave way with a thunderous crash.
They mounted their horses and burst through the gap.
The ambush had been executed fast, and the withdrawal was faster still.
On the ground: at least sixty or seventy constable corpses.
They drove hard for the city gates. The soldiers left to hold the gates had already seized control long before, and at the moment of rendezvous, they poured out of the city together.
Constable Captain Yin Xincheng had never imagined those people would have this many reinforcements in reserve — or that they would have made provisions for the gates. His men were all scattered through the city on the search; the soldiers guarding the gates were no match whatsoever for the Espionage Guard’s elite fighters.
Under cover of night, a force of over a hundred rode away into the darkness.
Outside the county seat, atop a ridge, a dense crowd of figures stood in silence. The night gave them perfect concealment — even from a few dozen feet away, only a shifting mass of shadows was visible.
At their head stood a man whose bearing radiated cold, and whose expression was colder still. He held a long-range spyglass trained on the city gate, watching. When he saw a force come charging out through the torchlit gate, he raised a hand and pointed in the direction Gui Yuanshu’s group was retreating. Below the ridge, a mounted force immediately swept out with a roar.
At the same moment, less than a hundred li from Shang’an County, there was a city older than Shang’an by some margin — Maoyang.
Maoyang County in Yuzhou was not without reputation. It was Yuzhou’s largest producer of medicinal herbs; in its time, a significant portion of the herbs purchased by the Cao family’s medicine trade had come from here.
Beyond the herb trade, sericulture in Maoyang was considerable in scale — likely because it sat not terribly far from Anyang, and mulberry cultivation and silkworm rearing along both banks of the Nanping River were fairly well developed throughout the region.
But Maoyang’s greatest fame was neither its herbs nor its silk — it was its unusual stones.
Maoyang County was built at the foot of Fuyan Mountain, a range rich in remarkable stone formations. Each year, a fair number of buyers came to trade.
Within the walls of the great Shiyuan Palace in Dachu’s capital, more than a hundred of the ornamental stones had come from Maoyang’s Fuyan Mountain.
The most celebrated of these was the Ten-Thousand-Li Rivers and Mountains Screen, which stood before the palace’s main hall — over five zhang tall, more than nine zhang long, and nearly seven chi thick.
This enormous stone slab was naturally smooth on both faces, as if polished to a mirror finish by a master craftsman.
But that was not the most extraordinary thing about it. The reason it was called the Ten-Thousand-Li Rivers and Mountains Screen was that its natural markings resembled a landscape panorama of such sweeping grandeur that even the finest painters could scarcely have matched it.
Distant peaks and near waters, a vision of the realm in all its beauty — a thing fashioned by heaven rather than by human hands, more awe-inspiring than any painting could be.
Thanks to that screen, the name of Maoyang’s extraordinary stones had grown only greater with time.
In the county seat of Maoyang, the most common shops were those selling stones. The vast majority of what they sold was artisan-crafted work, stones chiseled and shaped into striking forms. Truly natural stones of perfect form and magnificent pattern, and of any impressive size — those could never be that plentiful.
But over the years, the stonecutters here had refined their craft to something approaching perfection. Their counterfeits had reached a level where ordinary buyers simply could not tell the difference.
At this moment, in the residence of Maoyang County’s magistrate, lamps still burned. The courtyard was alive with movement — guards on alert, the premises strictly watched.
Maoyang County’s magistrate was named Yin Xinping — by the Yin family’s reckoning, a young man of considerable learning and standing.
But however outstanding he was, he was not first among the younger generation. The brightest light among the young was, of course, Yin Xin’an — now Dengzhou’s prefect.
It had been Fengzhou’s Xu Ji who, with a single letter, had drawn Yin Xin’an out of retirement. From that, the Yin family’s power had expanded at extraordinary speed over the past two-plus years.
And Yin Xin’an was here.
He sat in the seat of honor, teacup in hand, eyes slightly narrowed — one could not tell whether he had drifted into a half-doze or was absorbed in thought.
Before long, Maoyang’s magistrate Yin Xinping came striding in from outside, his expression carrying traces of unease.
“Third Brother.”
Yin Xinping said with some urgency as he entered, “All the men we sent out have come back. No trace of anything on the road.”
He looked at Yin Xin’an. “Is it possible Xu Ji has deceived Third Brother?”
Yin Xin’an opened his eyes slowly and shook his head. “He has no reason to deceive me. This man simply loves to be theatrical — he always has to look as though his station is a cut above everyone else’s. I know him too well. He’s deliberately coming late so that I have to wait for him, rather than arriving early to wait for me.”
Yin Xin’an set his teacup down and began pacing the room as he spoke. “His current official rank is the same as mine, and I’m someone he personally recommended — so he always has to perform as though he’s a notch above me in standing. Coming late deliberately, making me wait rather than waiting himself.”
Yin Xinping said, “Third Brother, how confident are you of drawing this man into our side?”
“Not at all,” Yin Xin’an said.
Yin Xinping froze. “Then why did Third Brother invite him to meet on our own territory? With not a shred of confidence, if he sees through any part of this, our entire plan…”
Before he could finish, Yin Xin’an shook his head. “It’s precisely because I know he cannot be drawn to our side that I invited him here.”
He walked to the doorway and looked out at the vast dark night. “It’s time we made our move. Things have diverged somewhat from what we anticipated — the plan must be moved forward.”
After a pause, he continued. “Xu Ji comes — and then he won’t be going back easily. Xu Ji won’t be persuaded, but he fears death. He may not be lured by gold and silver, but to save his life he’ll comply. Capture him. Then select someone to lead ten thousand troops against Fengzhou. With Xu Ji in hand, taking Fengzhou will not be difficult.”
Yin Xinping was alarmed. “Ten thousand men against Fengzhou — that’s not part of the plan at all. Third Brother, even if we split off ten thousand men and take Fengzhou, we can’t hold it.”
Yin Xin’an smiled. “Who said anything about holding it? Once Fengzhou is taken, will Tang Pidi — locked in a standoff with Yang Xuanji on the southern front — not come back?”
The moment he said it, Yin Xinping understood completely.
His voice rose with excitement. “Third Brother invited Xu Ji here, takes him captive, compels him to trick open Fengzhou’s gates, then sends word south to Tang Pidi — Tang Pidi will have no choice but to pull back. With the rear in flames, how can he keep his mind on fighting Yang Xuanji? If we arrange in advance with Yang Xuanji, his forces push north — and he could potentially take all of Yuzhou in one stroke!”
Yin Xin’an nodded. “If my calculations are correct, Prince Ning Li Chi will come to Yuzhou no later than next summer, and no earlier than the summer after that — which means we have perhaps half a year at most.”
He looked out into the night, his voice full of confidence. “If Yang Xuanji seizes all of Yuzhou while the opening is there, we will be his greatest meritorious contributors. The family’s standing will no longer be in question. And if he fails to hold it — no matter. We will already be gone.”
He turned to Yin Xinping. “Which is why I said: we select someone to lead ten thousand men to take Fengzhou. Yang Xuanji succeeds — we stay in Yuzhou and don’t move. He fails — those ten thousand will absorb every last drop of Tang Pidi’s fury, and we use the chaos to slip out of Yuzhou.”
Only now did Yin Xinping understand what his Third Brother had meant by *selecting someone* — it meant selecting someone to die in their place.
On that note, Yin Xin’an turned back into the room. “Sleep. Xu Ji will not come tonight — he’s doing this deliberately. He sent word early saying he’d arrive today without fail, then made us wait the whole night, unable to sleep. He’ll come tomorrow instead. This man’s heart — it has never been kind.”
Yin Xinping smiled. “However many schemes he has, he’s still been calculated down to the last detail by Third Brother.”
Yin Xin’an heard this and broke into laughter.
—