A moment after Li Sanzhou’s wound was bound, the blood flow finally appeared to be slowing somewhat. And his triumphant mood had restored a measure of color to his face.

This time, he had won again.

Just as he had known, ten years ago when he first arrived in Liaoyang City, how to win — how to make everyone in Liaoyang City regard him with nothing but awe and reverence.

He looked toward Mazi Wu and slowly breathed out.

“The people of this world are all so hypocritical. No one will readily reveal their true face, and no one will allow their secrets to be guessed so quickly… Just as I did not know about your relationship with Daochai, and you did not know about my relationship with Ma Qingzhi.”

Ten years ago, it had been right here in the Hongbin Tower. When Mazi Wu had been drinking with his disciples and descendants, he had wanted to give a little taste of what was coming to the newly arrived master of Jingtai, Li Sanzhou.

A man as careful and cautious as Mazi Wu would naturally not have said such things with Ma Qingzhi present.

But his disciples and descendants — after drinking too much, it was inevitable that someone would let something slip. It was inevitable that someone would boast: our old patriarch is going to give Li Sanzhou a little something to see.

However, Ma Qingzhi was a very shrewd man. He would never allow Mazi Wu to suspect it was he who had informed Li Sanzhou.

He arranged for a man who had drunk too much to be sent to Daochai’s gambling hall. There at the gambling hall, that drunk man brought up the matter of Qingyuan planning to move against Jingtai in conversation with yet another person.

That person was Zhang Ting, the manager of Yanzi Tower at the time. Then, one night shortly after, a considerable number of Qingyuan’s disciples were attacked in their own homes, slaughtered in the night — nearly a thousand dead in a single evening.

Because of this, Mazi Wu gave the order to kill the entire family of the man who had drunk too much and let it slip. Not a single one was spared.

A day later, Zhang Ting, the manager of Yanzi Tower, went out on business. For some reason the horse pulling his carriage took fright. The carriage overturned, and a carriage coming from the other direction happened to roll over Zhang Ting’s head. He died on the spot.

Though there were also those who said Zhang Ting had been plied with a great deal of drink before he boarded the carriage, and so had been too slow to react.

Another day later, Daochai brought his people to Qingyuan to demand an explanation. Mazi Wu received him in person. What the two of them said to each other — no one knew.

But later, it was said that the men who had been behind Zhang Ting’s killing were wiped out, and only then did the matter finally pass.

Not a single day in Liaoyang City passed without its crimes.

Xie Jingran looked toward Ma Qingzhi — this man who had held the position of fourth in Liaoyang City for at least twenty years — who had already picked up his blade and was walking toward Mazi Wu.

When Ma Qingzhi had founded the Hongbin Tower, it had been at the direction of the then-master of Jingtai. Ma Qingzhi had always been a man of the Shanhe Seal.

Mazi Wu looked at Ma Qingzhi and asked: “In all these years, none of the terms I offered you ever moved you?”

Ma Qingzhi did not answer. Because he could not say.

The answer was…

They had moved him. But if he had helped Mazi Wu move against Jingtai, knowing Mazi Wu’s character — once Jingtai was eliminated, the next one to be eliminated would be him.

And there was also this: at the time, the Shanhe Seal had been too fearsome.

Clack — a soft sound. Ma Qingzhi felt a tightening at his foot, and looked down.

And so he saw a hand — a hand that had punched up through the floorboards and seized him by the ankle.

Before he could react in any way, he was dragged straight down through the floor. The second-floor boards shattered. Ma Qingzhi vanished into the hole.

The next breath — boom — as though struck by some force, the second-floor boards began collapsing entirely, caving in across a wide expanse.

Gravely wounded as he was, Xiaohu was still the first to dart over and throw his arms around Mazi Wu. The two of them plummeted from the second floor. Xiaohu forced himself through a desperate turn — ending up underneath, he was the one to take the impact. Under the agonizing force, another mouthful of blood sprayed out.

Mazi Wu forced himself to roll clear, and when he looked at Xiaohu, this young man’s eyes were already growing unfocused and distant.

The eighty-year-old Mazi Wu gripped Xiaohu by the clothing and dragged him outward. Broken floorboards continued to rain down unceasingly. Old man and young man — they looked so wretched, so desolate.

When Ma Qingzhi fell, he did his best to keep himself balanced. He knew the floor below would certainly be fraught with danger. This was his Hongbin Tower, his territory — yet someone had infiltrated it without his knowledge, and by the time they had reached the first floor, not a single one of his men below had raised any alarm.

The dust was thick — like a dense fog rolling through.

He could dimly make out a figure flicker before him. Without an instant’s hesitation, Ma Qingzhi brought his blade slashing down.

Pfft — the blade landed squarely. It struck the figure’s shoulder and sheared through half of the neck as well.

Only then did he see clearly: the one he had struck was the already-dead Li Chunfeng.

The next breath, Li Chunfeng’s corpse lurched toward him. In that instant, Ma Qingzhi had the uncanny impression that the already-dead Li Chunfeng was smiling at him with a strange, ghastly smile.

In his sudden alarm, Ma Qingzhi kicked the corpse aside — and then he saw a hand.

The hand reached out from behind Li Chunfeng’s body, closed around Ma Qingzhi’s throat, and tightened its five fingers. Back and forth it gave two twists — seemingly without any exertion at all. Yet those two twists sent Ma Qingzhi’s head slamming into each of his own shoulders in turn, left and right.

At such an extreme range of motion, one could easily imagine that the neck was now thoroughly broken.

That hand released its grip. Ma Qingzhi’s body dropped to the floor, and then the blade in his hand fell, producing a sharp, clear sound as it landed.

The dust and haze settled.

Mazi Wu was still crying out Xiaohu’s name, one call after another, hoping this child would not fall into unconsciousness.

“Someone help me — won’t any of you come help me —”

That wicked old man who had committed every crime imaginable was, in this moment, crying out helplessly.

He raised his head, wanting to beg someone to help him save Xiaohu. And so, when the dust had at last fallen and cleared, he saw that group of Tingwei officers in their black brocade robes.

At the head of those Tingwei officers, a middle-aged man in white robes stood with his hands clasped behind his back. Before this man lay the dead body of Ma Qingzhi; behind him lay the unconscious but not-yet-dead Li Sanzhou.

Half an hour later. Qingyuan.

Mazi Wu looked at the person before him, his tone carrying a note of entreaty.

“Xiaohu is clean. Clean through and through.”

The man seated before him, Zhang Tang, gave a slight nod — but said nothing.

Mazi Wu no longer bore the slightest resemblance to that patriarch of the underworld who could set Liaoyang City trembling with a single stamp of his foot. He was more like an utterly ordinary and helpless old man.

He held his teacup with both hands — and yet the cup was still shaking violently, the tea trembling out over the rim.

After a long silence, Zhang Tang asked: “A man like you — why would you allow there to be an Xiaohu, clean and unsullied, at your side? Why would you cultivate him into a man of loyalty and righteousness? And why would you be willing to cast aside so many years of accumulated wealth and standing, to secure a future for him?”

Three questions in a row.

Mazi Wu was silent for a long while, then shook his head.

“I do not know.”

He said.

That old man who had committed every wrong imaginable and who had now lost all his former authority looked toward Zhang Tang with eyes that held both confusion and a measure of fear.

Mazi Wu lowered his head and looked at the steaming tea in his cup. “I truly do not know why I did these things. Perhaps… I came to regard him as my own grandson.”

A man such as himself — how could he dare to have wife and children? It was not that he had never had them. In Liaoyang City, he had quietly fathered children with several women one after another in the past, back when his standing had not yet risen so high. He had understood then that a man like him — if his enemies learned he had wife and children, they would certainly not spare those wife and children.

He had understood it, had even anticipated it — yet had neither been able to avoid it nor escape it.

Several women and children had been killed, one after another. This had left Mazi Wu in despair.

By the time he was nearly sixty, he had at last become the feared patriarch — the one every figure in Liaoyang City’s underworld dreaded. He hoped it was not too late.

He built Qingyuan, gathered many young and beautiful women, and spared no effort seeking medicines, hoping to restore some of his former vigor.

Yet he was incapable.

Not a single one of those women conceived his child. He told himself: perhaps this was heaven’s will.

And so he resolved: he would take in a child of his own. He would raise this child to be his successor — to become the greatest villain in all of Liaoyang City.

And yet, when someone placed the infant Xiaohu before him, still in his swaddling clothes, Mazi Wu was afraid.

Looking at this child, inexplicably, his mind was flooded with the image of the first person he had ever killed.

That boy of fourteen or fifteen, kneeling before him, begging — please don’t kill me. I swear I won’t come looking for revenge.

“How could I spare you? I dare not watch you grow up. I dare not watch you become stronger than me. I am terrified that one day you too would slice off all my fingers and stuff them into my mouth, and force me to swallow them all before you killed me.”

Holding Xiaohu in his arms, Mazi Wu shook his head violently, trying to drive those words out from inside it.

Those words vanished for a moment — only for another set of words to surface in their place, equally loud, equally harsh against the ear.

“I spent my first thirty years trading my life for money. I spent the next twenty bowing and scraping to anyone I met, nodding and deferring to all. Only that way did I earn the right to have others sell their lives for me — to have others bow and scrape and nod and defer to me in turn. I began walking the martial world at age ten. These people represent forty years of accumulated connections. What right do you have to any of it?”

In that moment, ashen-faced, holding Xiaohu in his arms — those words he had once spoken were playing over and over in his mind.

He even seemed to see, with a kind of half-vision, the most villainous Xiaohu he had raised, cutting off his fingers one by one, stuffing them into his mouth, and grinning at him with a savage leer: “You old thing… you should have stepped aside long ago. Why wouldn’t you do it willingly?”

That image left Mazi Wu drenched in cold sweat.

In the end, he kept Xiaohu. He found the finest teacher to instruct him in the saber — and that finest teacher was naturally Daochai.

Few people knew that a man like Mazi Wu had ever had a friend who shared a bond of life and death — even though Daochai was forty years his junior.

Perhaps it could not quite be called a life-and-death bond. Perhaps it was simply the most solid working partnership.

That year, Mazi Wu — nearly sixty — had left Liaoyang City on business. Midway along the road, he encountered a very short young man.

The young man blocked his carriage and asked: are you a man of wealth?

Mazi Wu replied: I am.

The young man asked: then may I sell my service to you? I am very capable in a fight. My blade is fast. Very few people can withstand it.

Mazi Wu asked: if that is so, why would you need to sell your service to another?

The young man said: I am terrified of poverty.

After watching his blade work, Mazi Wu said to him: I have a proposal. If you agree to it, I will raise you up — raise you very high. High enough that you and I can stand as equals in Liaoyang City.

And so, the following day, Liaoyang City received a man who went by the name Quick Blade — who killed his way from the west gate to the east gate of the city, unmatched by any.

More than ten years later, one day while watching Xiaohu practice his saber work, Daochai could not help but ask Mazi Wu: “Why did you raise a child so clean as this?”

Mazi Wu smiled and said nothing — instead turning the question back: “Why did you teach a child so clean as this with such genuine care?”

These two men who had committed every wickedness, who had killed without number, looked at each other and smiled.

Now, in this moment, Mazi Wu looked toward Zhang Tang and pleaded: “Please, sir. Give him a path.”

Zhang Tang was silent for a long while, then rose to his feet. “I will consider it. But I do not know how heavy his hatred will be. A person too clean — when something darkens them, it happens very quickly.”

Mazi Wu also rose. “He will carry no hatred.”

He took out a small medicine vial, pulled out the stopper, tilted the vial to his lips, and tipped all the poison inside it into his mouth.

“I die by my own hand. It has nothing to do with you, sir. Nothing to do with the Tingwei Army.”

Mazi Wu said.

Zhang Tang was silent for a moment, then turned and walked out the door. At the threshold he turned back and looked once more — and then, with some regret: “Truly… you are getting off far too lightly.”

In another room, Cao Lie sat looking at the two people hung on the wall before him, and suddenly smiled.

“Fortunately… I was truly lazy back then.”

Cao Lie let out a long breath. “Otherwise — would I have become someone like the two of you?”

—