When Guan Du saw the young man rise with blade in hand, his expression darkened. As he saw it, this young man’s life had been spared purely because of a single word from the Prefect — and yet here he was failing to appreciate it.
But he couldn’t make a reckless move. The one he called Senior Official Yan was the chief steward of Prefect Lian Gongming’s household — not an official of the court, yet he carried far more weight than any fifth- or sixth-rank official.
That Yan Shou had come in person meant Li Chi was someone important. And judging from what Yan Shou had said, the person seeking Li Chi was someone Lian Gongming absolutely could not afford to offend.
Otherwise, why would Lian Gongming first send men to kill, then send men to save?
“Ungrateful?”
Guan Du swept backward to avoid Li Diudiu’s edge, then said: “If not for the Prefect sparing your life, would you even be standing here talking to me?”
The steward Yan Shou urged his horse forward. At close range, he looked down at Li Diudiu from the elevated position of horseback: “Young Master Li, please conduct yourself with dignity. Do you truly think you’re someone important? If someone hadn’t needed to see you by sheer fortune, you’d have died a hundred times over.”
Li Chi paid him no attention. His gaze remained fixed on Guan Du.
Guan Du scowled: “What the hell are you staring at?”
Li Chi drew a slow, deep breath, then turned and looked at Song Feng’s body. The middle-aged man who had fallen there wore no terror on his face, no lingering resentment — only a kind of release.
Li Diudiu let that breath out slowly, then took a step forward.
His long blade thrust at Guan Du’s throat. Guan Du’s brow creased — Lian Gongming’s orders meant he couldn’t go for a kill, but if he didn’t subdue this person, there would only be more trouble. He decided to wound Li Diudiu and take him down.
The blade came for his throat; he leaned his body back, kicked out hard with his right foot aimed at Li Diudiu’s chest. With his strength behind it, that kick would leave Li Diudiu unable to breathe.
But as Li Diudiu turned sideways, his left-hand short blade drove hard into Guan Du’s right leg — all the way through, front to back. Guan Du let out a cry of pain immediately.
Li Diudiu twisted the short blade. He could actually feel the blade’s edge scraping against Guan Du’s shinbone.
Guan Du screamed and lurched back — all restraint gone now — sweeping his long blade in a wide horizontal arc. Li Diudiu pulled back instantly, and the blade passed a finger’s width in front of him. As it went by, the blade severed a few strands of Li Diudiu’s hair.
“Looks like you don’t dare fight without restraint.”
Li Diudiu suddenly spun, and the short blade in his hand flew out like a shooting star — before Yan Shou could react in the slightest, the short blade buried itself in his chest with a dull thud.
Precise. Ruthless.
Nothing like the act of a young boy.
Yan Shou’s body swayed in the saddle several times, then toppled from the horse, crashing down in a cloud of dust.
Li Diudiu looked at Guan Du: “Now you can fight me without holding back, can’t you?”
Guan Du gritted his teeth, tore a strip of cloth, and bound the wound on his leg. He had never anticipated that this young man would dare strike the chief steward of the Prefect’s household — and kill him in a single blow.
“So a half-grown child can be this ruthless,” Guan Du said through clenched teeth, then straightened up and called out loudly: “You all saw it. Senior Official Yan has been killed. If this matter isn’t settled, the Prefect won’t let any of us off — not one.”
He pointed at Li Diudiu: “Take him down!”
His men, along with the mounted riders, all rushed forward.
Li Diudiu found himself less and less able to restrain the killing intent welling up inside him.
He didn’t even understand it himself — how he had come to possess such killing intent.
But when the desire to kill arose, everything seemed to follow as a matter of course.
Li Diudiu thought: perhaps I was never the kind of good person ordinary folk have in mind. In ordinary people’s eyes, a good person tends to carry one particular label — submitting to whatever comes their way.
Li Diudiu was simply not that kind of person.
A warhorse charged toward him. The rider on its back leaned down, swinging the flat of a long blade at his head. Li Diudiu ducked back and then instantly surged forward — the man swung and missed, and Li Diudiu had already seized his arm and yanked down hard.
The rider was thrown from the saddle. Li Diudiu’s long blade immediately drove into his throat, then swept sideways — the blade tip pierced through the neck and into the ground, slid horizontally, carving a straight line in the earth. Slowly, blood filled that straight furrow.
Li Diudiu seized the reins and used the leverage to mount the warhorse in a single motion. This was his first time on a horse, yet astride the warhorse he felt not a moment’s unfamiliarity — as though he had been born to ride at full gallop.
The warhorse surged forward. Li Diudiu swung his blade and cut down another rider charging at him.
The horse continued forward, directly at Guan Du. Guan Du sidestepped by two paces and swept his blade across the horse’s foreleg. The horse gave a pained cry and crashed to the ground.
Li Diudiu flew from the saddle. In midair he fought to adjust his posture, and his two feet drove hard into one of the assassins — the impact of that airborne kick was tremendous, and the assassin was sent flying backward, his chest seeming to cave inward.
Li Diudiu landed, bent down, and pulled the short blade from Yan Shou’s chest.
Dozens of men surrounded him on all sides. That young man stood in the center, holding twin blades.
Roughly four or five li from that location, two horses galloped side by side. The rider on the left, Xiahou Zuo, wore a grim expression. After learning that Lian Gongming had sent men to pursue and kill Li Chi, he and Ye Zhangzhu had set off in chase — Ye Zhangzhu had received orders from the Military Commissioner to bring Li Chi back safely.
The two had left Jizhou City and ridden hard almost without exchanging a word.
Ye Zhangzhu glanced sideways at Xiahou Zuo’s expression, and ultimately couldn’t help offering a few words: “No need to worry too much about Li Chi. With pressure from Prince Wu on Lian Gongming, he would certainly send men to stop the assassins he sent earlier.”
Xiahou Zuo frowned: “What if his earlier men already got to him?”
Ye Zhangzhu said: “If they already got to him, we would have heard.”
But those words did nothing to comfort Xiahou Zuo. He truly regretted it — and was frightened. He should never have let Li Diudiu go alone. That fellow, young as he was, was too stubborn: once he had decided on something, he wouldn’t change it, no matter who tried to persuade him.
Ye Zhangzhu said: “If… if Li Chi has truly met with misfortune, rest assured — Prince Wu is looking for reasons to remove Lian Gongming. If Li Chi is dead, Lian Gongming will surely face Prince Wu’s judgment.”
Xiahou Zuo flared up: “Rubbish!”
He turned to Ye Zhangzhu and shouted: “Li Chi is just supposed to be a sacrifice?!”
Ye Zhangzhu fell silent, bowed his head, and spurred his horse on without another word.
After a long silence, Xiahou Zuo said: “I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. This has nothing to do with you.”
Ye Zhangzhu shook his head: “Don’t. Don’t I know you by now?”
Xiahou Zuo said: “If Li Chi has truly come to harm, I will avenge him.”
Ye Zhangzhu said: “This is the first time I’ve seen you look like you want to kill someone. Even when people provoked you, the killing intent was never this strong.”
Xiahou Zuo fell silent again.
Those who provoke me — I can choose to ignore. Those who provoke him — I will not let a single one go.
The two warhorses ran with extraordinary speed, their hoofbeats merging into a continuous sound like rain hammering banana leaves.
Four or five li is not far when traveling at that pace, and the two of them covered it quickly. They hadn’t yet reached the small food stall — they had only just entered the street — when the wind ahead carried the scent of blood to their noses.
Ye Zhangzhu and Xiahou Zuo exchanged a glance, and both spurred their horses at the same moment.
Racing forward, two warhorses came to a sudden stop in the middle of the street, both rearing up on their hind legs simultaneously.
Xiahou Zuo waited for his horse to settle, then looked forward with desperate urgency. In the sunlight, a young man covered in blood stood at the center of the street. The clothes on his body had lost their original color entirely — the whole person was red.
All around the young man, bodies covered the ground.
The young man had one hand gripping a man by the hair. That man was kneeling before him, also smeared with blood, looking as though he had nearly lost consciousness.
“Li Chi!”
Xiahou Zuo called out in a hoarse voice, then leapt from the saddle and broke into a run toward Li Diudiu.
Li Diudiu, his face smeared with blood, looked back at Xiahou Zuo, then parted his lips into a grin. A blood-red face split by two rows of gleaming white teeth — the contrast was stark.
While still running, Xiahou Zuo watched as the young man, with one hand still gripping the kneeling man’s hair, gave a sideways pull — exposing the neck — and then the long blade in his right hand crashed down—
“Ah!”
Xiahou Zuo let out a terrified shout, his feet skidding to a stop, at a complete loss for what to do.
Li Diudiu released his grip and turned to face Xiahou Zuo. Behind him, the headless corpse toppled over, and blood from the severed neck pumped out in surges like a fountain, spreading swiftly across the ground.
Li Diudiu carried the severed head back to Song Feng’s side. He first set the head down beside Song Feng, then knelt on one knee. After a moment of silence, he drove the long blade into the ground and hung the head from the hilt.
Xiahou Zuo, watching this, went pale as paper. Was this young man who killed without blinking the same warm and gentle Li Chi he knew?
A heartbeat later, Xiahou Zuo strode forward, threw both arms open, and pulled Li Diudiu tightly into his embrace.
“It’s over, it’s over… I’m here to bring you home.”
Li Chi, looking like someone drenched in blood, tilted his head up and looked at Xiahou Zuo’s ashen face. He parted his lips into another small grin.
“Alright,” he said.
A short while later, beside a well. Li Diudiu stood there as Xiahou Zuo hauled up a bucket of water, raised it high, and poured it down over Li Diudiu’s body. The water cascaded over him, washing the blood away — the red-tinted water running from his hair made one’s heart crawl to look at.
Bucket after bucket, several rounds, before the bloodstains on Li Diudiu’s body were at last washed away.
Xiahou Zuo looked at this young man who had just killed without restraint, and for a long while couldn’t think of what to say to comfort him.
“Want to say something?”
Li Diudiu asked.
Xiahou Zuo was quiet for a moment, then pulled a face and said: “Not a child anymore.”
Li Diudiu didn’t follow: “Hm?”
Xiahou Zuo turned and walked away.
Li Diudiu looked down at himself, then muttered: “Shameless.”
His clean clothes were in his bundle — after changing into them, he felt as though he’d stepped into a different world entirely.
“Li Chi.”
“Hm.”
“You…”
Xiahou Zuo glanced at him, was silent a moment, then said: “When you were killing people just now — it scared me.”
Li Diudiu made another sound of acknowledgement, fished a lollipop from his bundle, unwrapped it, put it in his own mouth, then held one out to Xiahou Zuo.
“Have some candy. Nothing to fear.”
He said.
Xiahou Zuo looked at the lollipop, pulled a face: “Who do you think I am — a child? One piece of candy and I stop crying and stop being afraid?”
He snatched the lollipop, and while peeling the wrapper said: “For a child, one piece isn’t enough. You only gave me one — you think that’s fair? Two minimum…”
Before he could finish, Li Diudiu grabbed all the lollipops he had and shoved the whole fistful into Xiahou Zuo’s hand — a full, generous handful.
He said: “All yours.”
—