By late spring, the rains grew more frequent — for the common people, naturally a welcome thing, as it was just the season for wheat to shoot upward. A good rain now meant a plentiful harvest.
Taking advantage of the rain, many villagers had donned straw cloaks to labor in the fields, spreading manure across the soil — after a rainfall, seeds buried in the ground would sprout quickly and push their heads up, and vegetable seedlings would shoot visibly upward.
On the main road, a column of soldiers in black brocade Tingwei Army uniforms passed swiftly, drawing many a sidelong glance from the villagers.
These were the false Tingwei Army forces that had been burning and killing their way through Denglan County, roving back and forth across several nearby counties in a rampage of crimes.
Their brazenness stemmed from their knowledge that Yuzhou’s rear area was actually thinly defended — nearly all of the Prince of Ning’s forces were in General Tang Pidi’s hands.
The constables and garrison troops of a single county put together were no match for them. With no one to stop them, even if actual destruction proved impossible, they could always withdraw without difficulty.
This force impersonating the Tingwei Army numbered between one hundred forty and one hundred fifty men. At their head was a man in his mid-thirties.
This man was one of Yang Xuanji’s retainers — and among Yang Xuanji’s four or five thousand retainers, his standing was considerable.
Yang Xuanji kept so many retainers, each of whom considered himself remarkable. None would easily submit to another without a fight.
And so these men often competed and clashed in secret. Through all the fighting and jostling among four or five thousand retainers, a few individuals would naturally emerge whom no one else dared provoke.
These few were called the Heaven-Ordained Four Champions.
This was merely a flattering title. In practice, among these retainers, the four were more commonly referred to in blunter terms — the Four Demons of Hell.
As for the hidden infighting among Yang Xuanji’s retainers, it was in fact far more brutal than one might imagine.
From the time the doors were first opened to take in guests, Yang Xuanji had welcomed a total of more than six thousand one hundred people into his household. Currently on the active roster were just over five thousand two hundred.
In other words, more than nine hundred had vanished.
Those nine hundred had all died in hidden conflict — either covert fighting or outright murder. Such matters generally fell into two categories.
The first: whoever bore a grudge against someone else, or simply refused to yield — they would arrange to meet outside Yang Xuanji’s estate and have it out in a match, lives at stake.
The second: whoever bore a grudge, or simply refused to yield — they would find means to eliminate the other, whether by poison or assassination, and not stop until it was done.
Of those nine hundred or more, over a third had died at the hands of one man: Cheng Feifan, known as Night Bat — one of the Heaven-Ordained Four Champions.
This man’s character was vicious and volatile. He was the sort who, upon taking a dislike to someone, would simply drag them outside the estate for a fight — and he didn’t care whether the person was at his level or not.
Even a scholar with no martial skill whatsoever — if he took a disliking to them, he would drag them out and kill them.
But he was not the one who had killed the most. Of the remaining six hundred, some five hundred had likely died at the hands of Fu Baiyu.
Fu Baiyu, known as the Ghost Scholar — of all the talented and unusual figures in Yang Xuanji’s household, very few dared to have dealings with Fu Baiyu. Not just fighting; even ordinary social interaction was avoided.
People said Fu Baiyu had ten thousand methods of killing, so one never knew what method he might use on you.
And Fu Baiyu’s most maddening quality was that you never knew when a person standing before you might be him.
His art of disguise was unmatched anywhere in the south of the empire — so refined that flaws were nearly impossible to find.
Yet regardless of how cruel and dominant Cheng Feifan and Fu Baiyu were, in the presence of two other men in Yang Xuanji’s household, even they would go out of their way to avoid — keeping as far as possible from them.
One was the Divine General Gongshu Yong.
This man, they said, could neither be pierced by blade nor spear, nor harmed by fire or water. He never took the initiative to provoke anyone — yet no matter who provoked him, he appeared to have only one means of response: tearing the offender apart.
So many men, and almost none would dare openly attack someone within Yang Xuanji’s estate — yet Gongshu Yong would.
Let someone provoke him, even in Yang Xuanji’s very presence, and he would tear them in two on the spot.
Yang Xuanji had once declared that no matter who died at Gongshu Yong’s hands, he would never investigate — because it was certain the victim had provoked Gongshu Yong first.
The most important thing was that this man was simple-minded.
Perhaps this was heaven’s way of balancing gifts: it had given Gongshu Yong incomparable strength and martial ability, but left him with a single track of thought.
Beyond Yang Xuanji’s word, he heeded no one. Whatever Yang Xuanji told him to do, he did — whoever he was told to kill, he killed.
The most outrageous incident: Yang Xuanji had taken his retainers on an outing, and at the edge of a lake, Yang Xuanji remarked that the finest thing about this lake was its four-gilled fish, which differed from those found elsewhere.
Someone promptly caught one — and it turned out to be an ordinary two-gilled fish. The man muttered something to the effect of: this is just a perfectly ordinary two-gilled fish.
Gongshu Yong heard it. He grabbed the man by the collar, held him up, and demanded: “How many gills does it have?”
The man instinctively said two. Gongshu Yong replied: “The Prince said four gills — so it is four gills.”
Then he tore the man apart on the spot.
The only one in Yang Xuanji’s household whom Gongshu Yong was determined to tear apart but could not was the Number Four Under Heaven.
Whether Cheng Feifan or Fu Baiyu — if Gongshu Yong truly set his mind to tearing them apart, he most likely could. But against the Number Four Under Heaven, Gongshu Yong had tried seven times over the years, and not once succeeded — though of course, had he succeeded, there would be no such person as the Number Four Under Heaven.
The Number Four Under Heaven — no one knew where he came from, and no one knew his real name.
He didn’t seem like a person at all. Yang Xuanji’s retainers even suspected he was a malevolent spirit that had seized the body of an honest and simple farming boy.
When you saw him smiling, even knowing full well that he was the Number Four Under Heaven, you would be deceived by that guileless and earnest smile.
Beneath that most honest-looking of faces hid the cruelest and most venomous of hearts.
When anyone in Yang Xuanji’s household committed a serious offense, that person would be handed over to the Number Four Under Heaven for disposal.
The result was that if anyone felt they might end up in the Number Four Under Heaven’s hands, they would exhaust every means to take their own life — it was imperative to die first.
Many people within Yang Xuanji’s estate had witnessed it: someone, upon hearing that the Heaven-Ordained King intended to hand them to the Number Four Under Heaven, would immediately throw themselves headlong at the nearest wall. A first attempt might not kill them outright; staggering and covered in blood, they would still crawl back up and hurl themselves again.
The one now leading this false Tingwei Army on its campaign of killing and burning was Cheng Feifan, Night Bat — one of the Heaven-Ordained Four Champions.
Zhuge Jingzhan had originally arranged for him to travel alongside the Number Four Under Heaven, but he wanted none of it — he kept as far away as he possibly could.
He knew the Number Four Under Heaven all too well…
Other men who killed always had a motive — hatred, jealousy, rage, or some other reason; at the very least there was taking a disliking to someone.
But the Number Four Under Heaven killed because… he was addicted to it.
If he disliked you, he’d kill; if he liked you, he’d also kill — as long as the craving was upon him.
If there was truly no target available, he would select as his target whoever happened to be in his line of sight.
What Cheng Feifan feared most was this: if one day the two of them were working together on something, and before the task was finished the Number Four Under Heaven’s killing craving came on — he himself would not escape either.
The Number Four Under Heaven cared nothing for whether his victim was male or female, old or young.
—
Gang County, county seat.
The garrison troops standing guard at the outer gate spotted a column approaching from a distance, and the unit leader’s expression shifted at once.
“Let everyone through — no inspections.”
The unit leader had seen that the approaching horsemen were clad in black — they had already received an advance warning that someone was impersonating the Tingwei Army and committing murders and arson.
All the civilians waiting outside for entry inspection were swiftly ushered inside. The unit leader ordered the city gates closed.
Soldiers quickly mounted the walls, drawing their bows and aiming downward.
Cheng Feifan led his men to a short distance from the gate, looked up, and frowned.
It seemed the tactic of posing as the Tingwei Army was no longer working.
What he couldn’t understand was why the civilians here hadn’t been fooled. They had been going around impersonating the Tingwei Army and committing killings and arson everywhere — yet no one believed they were actually the Tingwei Army.
Cheng Feifan decided to test them. He ordered his subordinates to advance.
One of his men rode forward a stretch and called up to the wall: “We are the Tingwei Army, dispatched by the Prince of Ning’s order to investigate the case of persons impersonating the Tingwei Army — have you seen any false Tingwei Army forces come through?”
Unit leader Zhang Yong turned and instructed his men: “Quickly, go report to the county magistrate.”
Then he called down from the wall: “No Tingwei Army has come through. But Yuzhou City sent us word with a code phrase — if the real Tingwei Army arrives, they’ll know what the code phrase is. Say the phrase, and I’ll open the gate.”
Cheng Feifan’s subordinate was momentarily stumped, then called back: “Only our commander knows the phrase — let me go ask him.”
Zhang Yong immediately called out: “It’s a fake — loose arrows!”
There was no code phrase at all.
The garrison troops released their arrows. Their weapons and equipment were inferior to the Prince of Ning’s main army soldiers, and their individual skill was lesser — but there were still one or two hundred of them.
A rain of arrows drove the false Tingwei Army back.
Cheng Feifan cursed and wheeled his horse: “We’re leaving.”
The hundred-odd false Tingwei Army troops immediately turned and withdrew — decisively, and quickly. And from the look of it, Cheng Feifan was only mildly annoyed.
Even as he turned away, there was a vicious little smile at the corner of his mouth.
—
Inside the gate, a number of civilians who had been admitted without inspection were all directed to wait in the open space just inside the gatehouse. They were not permitted to leave freely.
After driving off the false Tingwei Army, Zhang Yong led his men down from the wall. Walking and issuing orders at the same time, he said, “Don’t open the gate yet — I’ll go report to the county magistrate. He’ll decide when it opens.”
He passed through the waiting civilians and gave another instruction: “Continue inspecting their travel permits and passes.”
Then he noticed, among the crowd, a lean young man smiling at him. The young man wore plain cloth clothing. Strapped to his back was a long, narrow bundle — but from its shape, it didn’t look like a weapon. It was longer than a sword by quite a bit, and thicker, resembling more an umbrella stuffed into a cloth bag.
But an umbrella that large, in itself, seemed odd.
In the earlier rush, with the garrison troops worried the civilians might be killed, they had let people in without paying close attention, and hadn’t noticed this young man.
Zhang Yong walked toward him. The young man’s smile grew warmer. His complexion was slightly dark — he looked exactly like a country boy who had left his village for the first time, come to the county seat to broaden his horizons.
Zhang Yong stepped up briskly. “What are you smiling at?”
The young man answered with a guileless sincerity that would put anyone’s suspicions to rest.
“This commoner has never seen a great official as great as you, sir — I think your uniform is really, truly magnificent.”
Hearing this, Zhang Yong couldn’t help but smile too. He extended his hand. “Show me your travel pass.”
The young man gave a sound of acknowledgment and reached a hand into his breast.
A moment later, he pulled his hand back out and held it open, spreading his fingers with a grin. “Heh heh… have I fooled you? I actually don’t have a travel pass. Could you issue me one, sir?”
Zhang Yong froze.
The young man suddenly reached out and gripped Zhang Yong’s hand. With his fingertip, he began to trace characters in Zhang Yong’s palm.
“Can you feel it? What am I writing?”
Zhang Yong frowned. “No. What exactly do you mean by this?”
The young man sighed. “Such simple characters — why can’t you feel them?”
He looked at Zhang Yong with the same warm, guileless, earnest smile and said: “These four characters are… Number Four Under Heaven. Make sure you remember that in your next life.”
—