Li Chi walked through the streets in the early morning like a landlord brimming with satisfaction, gazing at the shops on all sides. Though none had yet opened their doors, he felt a deep contentment.

Not all of the shops were his, but all of the subjects were.

In the old days, what he had always thought about was how to provide for his master — how best to have a shop like these, not asking for great business, just enough to make a living, enough that the old man would smile from ear to ear each day over a few coins of income.

Changmei Daoren was a person very easily satisfied. He had no extravagant desires for food, clothing, shelter, or travel — what he had was enough. The one and only thing he had never been satisfied with in his life was the moment he altered Li Chi’s fate.

He could spend his whole life wandering the world, sometimes hungry, sometimes full — but Li Diudiu couldn’t. Li Diudiu had to have a good life.

This old man gave Diudiu a good life, and then Diudiu gave a great many, many people a good life.

So in a certain sense, the old Daoren toiled for ten years and changed the fate of the entire world.

Unless it was necessary, Li Chi still preferred to walk.

He had once told Gao Xining: if the human world is a book, then going slower lets you read it more carefully.

Riding a horse is skimming ten lines at a glance without necessarily retaining a word; riding in a carriage is reading in fragments with only half an understanding; walking is reading slowly, reading carefully.

This world of ours — it is worth reading.

His world, even more so.

An early-rising street vendor caught sight of Li Chi and had seen him at this same hour every day for several days in a row now, and so he was overjoyed. It was the kind of feeling where every day begins filled with hope and contentment.

Every day has a beginning. Every person has a beginning. Every thing has a beginning.

Since Prince Ning had come to Yuzhou, the lives of Yuzhou’s people were visibly improving with each passing day.

The common people had seen with their own eyes the changes in Yuzhou, and so they couldn’t help but feel envious of Jizhou — because Prince Ning had only arrived in Yuzhou a short while ago, and he had been in Jizhou for many years.

Just think — how good must life be over in Jizhou?

Never mind talking of the distant past; six or seven years ago, people all across Yuzhou knew that life in Jizhou was bitter. If someone had asked them to trade places with the people of Jizhou, they would not have been willing.

Now, if you asked them to trade places with Jizhou’s people, they’d be grinning in their sleep.

Jizhou had once been a land of war and strife. To the north lay the sworn enemy, the Black Martial forces; Jizhou was the strategic buffer zone, and it had always been sacrificed to preserve the Central Plains.

Now things were different. Perhaps there was no place in all the Central Plains more at peace than Jizhou.

When the vendor spotted Li Chi, he bowed low from a distance. Li Chi waved back at him from afar.

The smiles of those two people warmed even the chill of the early morning.

The distance from the Tingwei’s office to Songhe Tower was roughly four or five li. Those four or five li of road were the battlefield that Gao Xining had mapped out.

Every Tingwei had set aside all other cases and had their eyes fixed solely on this stretch of street.

Because Li Chi arrived early every day, Cao Lie had no choice but to adjust his own sleeping schedule.

He was used to staying up late and rising late; when there was no mission, on most days he would sleep until before noon.

After changing his schedule these past few days, he had discovered that forming a new habit did not take long, and that many difficulties he had assumed would be hard to overcome were not as difficult as he’d expected.

The most important thing was that after rising early each morning, time somehow seemed more plentiful than before.

He could move about comfortably for a while, then enjoy a comfortable breakfast, and then he would have more time to think.

The front doors of Songhe Tower opened. A young shop boy stretched lazily and stepped outside, broom in hand, to sweep the entrance.

Perhaps sensing something was off, he raised his head to look around — and only then noticed that someone was standing on the side of the road across from him.

When he had stepped out, there had been no one across the way at all, so the figure that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere gave him quite a fright.

The shop boy actually recognized this man. He used to come to Songhe Tower often to eat — he was a merchant of some renown and considerable standing in Yuzhou City, the proprietor of the Yan Freight Transport Company, Yan Beicheng.

“Master Yan, out so early?”

The shop boy greeted him with a smile, but behind his back his hand made a small gesture. The people inside immediately understood.

That Yan Beicheng could appear at the entrance of Songhe Tower without a single hidden sentry reporting back inside, without anyone even managing to send a warning — that alone said everything.

“You’re up early yourself.”

Yan Beicheng replied politely, and he remained standing where he was, looking at the front door of Songhe Tower.

After a moment, Yan Beicheng asked the shop boy: “You sweep the entrance every day. So do you know — how far is it from where I’m standing to the front gate of Songhe Tower?”

“Fifty-two steps.”

The shop boy answered: “I sweep every day, I walk it every day, so I know.”

Yan Beicheng gave a soft hum, and then asked another question: “Those fifty-two steps — are they very difficult to walk?”

The shop boy raised the broom in his hands: “With something like this, it’s easy enough to go back and forth. But with something else in hand, it would be very difficult.”

Yan Beicheng nodded, and said with a trace of regret: “And yet what I’m holding is indeed something else.”

He removed the bundle from his back, opened it, and took out two items.

A sword and a whip — the sword three feet long, the whip a full zhang and a half.

Yan Beicheng said: “I want to try just how difficult it will be.”

Walk it right, and it’s fifty-two steps. Walk it wrong, and every step is a new life and death.

The shop boy was already backing away, because he knew he was absolutely no match for whoever this was. A man who could approach the entrance of Songhe Tower without making a sound — he could never defeat such a person.

Yan Beicheng strapped the long sword to his back, gripped the whip in his hand, and began to step forward.

“Master Yan.”

Songhe Tower’s manager, Duan Jishi, stepped out and clasped his fists toward Yan Beicheng: “Why is it you who’s come?”

Master Yan said: “There are no so many whys. If everything in this world were done according to reason, half the people who make mistakes would never have made them.”

Duan Jishi said: “Master Yan still has a jar of wine stored with us — a fine vintage, aged thirty years.”

Master Yan said: “If I walk into Songhe Tower, I’ll drink it myself. If I don’t make it in — I ask that you pour it on the ground on my behalf.”

He stepped out into the main street, walking from one side toward the other. Fifty-two steps.

He took his first step.

That step — his foot had not yet even landed on the road’s surface — and already well over a hundred crossbow bolts came shooting toward him from the direction of Songhe Tower.

Every window had someone stationed at it; every one of them was well-trained.

At that very moment, Cao Lie was sitting in the main hall of the ground floor, waiting for his morning meal. Since Li Chi had not yet arrived, breakfast had not yet been served.

He watched the figure approaching from across the street, and on the unrolled paper spread out on the table, he wrote the character for “Yan.”

He sat in thought for a moment, then added a character after it.

Ji?

The character for ji — meaning “how many,” meaning “how much,” meaning “how many people,” “how great in height.”

Yesterday, Little Zhang Zhenren had come to visit. In the afternoon, as they sat drinking tea and chatting in the tavern, Little Zhang Zhenren had also brought up things he and Yu Jiuling had spoken of before.

About the judgment of how many top fighters were on Prince Ning’s side — and in Little Zhang Zhenren’s view, all of these fighters were at the rank of “One.”

Whether it was One-Low or One-Mid, they were already the kind of people who stood at the very summit of the jianghu.

Little Zhang Zhenren had said: with so many One-Mid and One-Low combined, couldn’t they still overcome a single person who might be One-High?

At the time, Cao Lie had said… how do you know the other side only has one “One”?

Little Zhang Zhenren had been stunned into silence.

Cao Lie had said: you may be a man of the jianghu, but you don’t truly understand what the jianghu is. Most who go to their deaths in the jianghu do so because of two words — sentiment and loyalty.

And you also don’t understand — it isn’t as you assume, that the side of the wicked has no human feeling, that no one there speaks of sentiment and loyalty.

Cao Lie wrote the character ji on the paper, which in other words meant — he wanted to know: what number were they starting from?

If it started from One, then today’s situation — could it really be all that low-level a threat?

He rather hoped it didn’t start from One. That would make things very difficult.

Li Chi had hoped those people would make their move on him along the road to Songhe Tower, yet these people had clearly decided not to do things as Li Chi hoped.

Cao Lie thought hard about why, and after perhaps a few breaths’ time, he understood.

Because the other side wanted to draw out Prince Ning’s people.

Cao Lie had thought himself the bait; Prince Ning had thought himself the bait — yet as it stood now, Yan Beicheng was.

A hundred-odd crossbow bolts — before that long whip, they were like mud sinking into a great river, without even raising a single ripple.

The whip coiled and spiraled before Yan Beicheng like a massive python. Once it began to spin, the whip was not a single layer of defense, but many.

As many rotations as it made, that many layers there were — and this was precisely why flexible weapons were difficult to master, and precisely why they were so formidable.

One step, two steps, three steps…

Yan Beicheng swept aside over a hundred crossbow bolts and had already moved three steps forward.

Just then, from behind Songhe Tower’s manager Duan Jishi, a person stepped out. This person looked to be around forty years of age, his figure having grown soft and misshapen with fat, his belly protruding — so much so that when he looked down, he likely could not see what lay below it.

This was not a sorrow unique to him; at his age, many men shared this same sorrow.

He came out of Songhe Tower, walking past Duan Jishi.

Duan Jishi said: “You may be somewhat overmatched.”

The middle-aged fat man said: “My son is nineteen years old. He has never liked me, because I work in the shadows — and while half of Yuzhou’s shadow-workers respect me, he is not among them.”

Duan Jishi nodded: “I understand.”

The middle-aged fat man turned back to look at Cao Lie, who sat inside: “Marquis of Dismay, you once said: you were born noble and have always been noble, and so you have few friends. I am not your friend. My name is Jin Mantang.”

Cao Lie said: “Your son’s name is Jin Zhanyi. I know.”

Jin Mantang laughed — a laugh of relief and ease.

He stepped forward again: “Old Duan, the one who steps out first is always easier to remember, isn’t that right?”

Duan Jishi nodded again: “I’ll remember you.”

Jin Mantang leapt into the air. His two great sleeves were like ship sails swollen with wind, and he used those sleeves to forcibly intercept the long whip.

Boom. Both sleeves were shredded to pieces.

At the cost of two sleeves, he bought the whip a moment of stillness in mid-air.

In the next breath, Jin Mantang had already swept to Yan Beicheng’s front, and struck a palm downward toward the center of Yan Beicheng’s chest.

Yan Beicheng held the long whip in his left hand and the sword on his back; his right hand came up, middle finger and index finger pressed together, thrusting forward in a single point.

That single point landed square in the center of Jin Mantang’s palm.

Two fingers drove clean through — the palm was pierced.

In that moment, Jin Mantang’s eyes flew open wide.

Yan Beicheng let out a quiet sigh: “You’re a man who works in the shadows. You shouldn’t be here.”

Jin Mantang said: “I’m a man who works in the shadows. If I cannot be here today, I never will be again.”

Yan Beicheng suddenly felt a pang of sorrow. He let out a gentle breath and said: “I thought you were throwing your life away for money — the Marquis of Dismay is, after all, a wealthy man.”

His sorrow came because he understood: Jin Mantang had also come here to die, had also come to die because of feeling — just like him.

And so he felt something like sorrow.

Jin Mantang laughed: “It is for money — so that the money my child holds in his hands one day will be clean money.”

Having said those words, he suddenly surged with force — using the palm that had been pierced to grip Yan Beicheng’s hand, and with his other hand formed a fist and smashed it down at Yan Beicheng’s face.

The long whip swung back and with a soft pff pierced Jin Mantang’s neck — entering through the back and emerging through the throat.

Yan Beicheng said: “Walk slowly — I’ll likely catch up to you before long.”

Jin Mantang’s body slowly toppled.

Inside the tower, Cao Lie raised his brush and crossed out the character ji he had written after “Yan,” replacing it with another character.

One.

Just as he had feared. It started from One.

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