On the western side of Mu Er He city stood a broad sacrificial ground called the Youyin Altar.

During the various annual celebrations, the Youyin Altar could accommodate more than a thousand people at once, and the area surrounding the sacred site was lined with upscale restaurants and taverns, offering the wealthy a place to rest after their offerings were made.

The most eye-catching feature within the Youyin Altar was undoubtedly the towering central pagoda. This ancient wooden tower, which had weathered so many dynastic changes that no one could count them all, was called the Pinxiao Pagoda. Constructed entirely of wood, years of wind and rain had eroded and rotted the carved wooden railings on its exterior, which had since fallen away to expose the pagoda’s inner structure. The central pillar was an ancient pine so massive that three people with linked arms could barely encircle it. The pagoda rose seven stories tall, with lofty beams and columns at every level. The topmost tier soared into the clouds, so that when the clouds surged, it seemed to float above the heavens themselves; on clear days one could gaze all the way to where the waters of the Hunhe River flowed eastward into Guantian Gorge. It was, without question, the tallest structure in Huozhou.

And it was within this great pagoda that the Zhuming Festival was held each year.

The name “Zhuming” was taken from the appearance of the rambling rose that bloomed most brilliantly at the cusp of late spring and early summer — vivid crimson and luminous bright. On the day of the ceremony, the officiating priest would gather the finest blooming rambling roses and fashion them into a garland, which would then be hung high at the topmost point of the Pinxiao Pagoda. When the bells within the tower began to ring, whoever was first to pluck the garland and place it upon their head would become that year’s chief officiant, consecrated to personally present the precious offerings to the gods above.

The people of Huozhou held great reverence for this tradition, regarding the act of personally presenting offerings to the divine as the highest of honors. Participants threw themselves into it with fervor unmatched by any other occasion, and the competition was fierce. Every year, people fell from the pagoda’s body, and those who fell were more often than not either killed or left permanently crippled. Even so, this could not dampen the enthusiasm for the following year’s Zhuming Festival.

This year’s Zhuming Festival, however, appeared set to be even more spirited than usual.

That had much to do with the news that the Zou family, the wealthiest clan in the city, had donated a prized piece of jade to the ceremony. The Zou household had already been in quite a commotion recently, and everyone was intensely curious — just what kind of peerless jade could possess such extraordinary power?

The bell had not yet rung, yet the participants vying to pluck the flower had already gathered beneath the wooden pagoda. Many stood with heads bowed in prayer, beseeching the gods to grant them the strength to seize the garland. The prime positions, offering the best vantage for a running start, were already crammed with people. Xiao Nanhui stood among the assembled competitors, many of whom had come well-prepared, and felt distinctly out of place.

Especially after hearing the rules — she felt some regret. In matters of qinggong, Bolao was naturally the superior one, but Bolao had one fatal weakness: she was terrified of heights. Anything higher than the rooftop of a single-story building was, to Bolao, an abyss of ten thousand feet.

Xiao Nanhui, for her part, had never been particularly light on her feet. She had grown up in military encampments, where the most beloved contest was wrestling. As a woman, she had neither the build nor the weight to her advantage, but years of rough-and-tumble had given her an extraordinarily stable and solid foundation — which would, she supposed, be of some help now.

Beyond that, it would come down to the skill level of this year’s participants.

What a pity, what a pity — the Zhuming Festival did not allow participants to carry weapons or any assistive tools. It was bare-handed climbing only. If she could have brought her spear, even if a real fight broke out up in the heights, few could match her.

Then again, how many people in the jianghu used a spear? Most favored swords, blades, and hidden weapons. Bolao’s concern was not entirely without reason. She had not revealed her true identity back on the Hunhe River, and now with so many eyes around her, she could even less afford to stand out.

Never mind, never mind. She was simply being pushed into something she hadn’t planned for. She had been on a battlefield — surely she wasn’t going to be frightened off by this?

At the sound of a sharp whistle, the burly man standing guard over the great bronze bell drew back the striking log.

The bell’s resonant tones rolled outward from the center of the Youyin Altar. The countless figures who had been coiled like springs all leapt upward at once, surging toward the tall pagoda. The crowd of onlookers erupted into a roar.

Right from the start, Xiao Nanhui realized she had underestimated things. It was her first time participating, and though her physical conditioning was solid, she had no practical experience with the tower at all. Many of the people around her were clearly seasoned veterans — they knew which crossbeams could take their weight and which could not bear it, and they had all manner of techniques for climbing the pagoda.

After the time it took to drink a cup of tea, Xiao Nanhui had fallen well behind, though she was gradually picking up on some of the key tricks, climbing faster and faster. After roughly another half stick of incense’s worth of time, those who had charged ahead in the beginning were beginning to flag, their pace visibly slowing, while Xiao Nanhui, whose endurance was exceptional, steadily gained on them.

Yet the closer one drew to the top, the stronger the winds became. The horizontal beams encircling the central column grew sparser and sparser, and the climbers without exception slowed their pace, choosing each foothold with great care, for from the fifth story onward, a single misstep meant almost certain death.

The sweat on Xiao Nanhui’s face was driven into her eyes by the wind. She paused a moment to catch her breath, taking the opportunity to study those around her who, like herself, were nearing the top. Not far to her upper left, a figure caught her attention — the person was not particularly tall but moved with extraordinary agility. Yet this was not what drew Xiao Nanhui’s eye. What caught her attention was the cloth covering the person’s face.

Most people who came to compete in the Zhuming Festival did so in order to make a name for themselves. If someone risked their life to participate yet deliberately concealed their identity, that was deeply suspicious. This person’s purpose was likely the same as her own — afraid of being recognized afterward, they had already begun their preparations.

The person had their hair bound in a ponytail, exposing their forehead and temples. Watching from a distance, Xiao Nanhui guessed the figure might not be very old, yet those eyes held the cool sharpness of a seasoned, ruthless person. The hands, with their well-defined knuckles, gripped a mortise-pin firmly, and the moment a clear opening presented itself, one foot shot out and kicked a nearby competitor off to the side. The force was vicious — Xiao Nanhui thought she could hear the crack of that person’s ribs shattering.

Though this was clearly not the moment to stand around gawking, Xiao Nanhui was still shaken by the first act of brutality she had witnessed.

This Zhuming Festival was far more violent and bloody than she had imagined. She was genuinely beginning to regret agreeing to those scoundrels waiting below — and now she was neither able to press forward nor retreat.

As the screams of the fallen mingled with the sound of bodies striking the ground far below, the watching crowd burst into shouts — some cheering, some groaning in dismay. Xiao Nanhui swallowed hard. When she looked up, she found that sharp-eyed figure was watching her in return. She held the gaze for a few seconds, then looked away and drove herself upward.

Starting a fight in the open air at these heights was the worst possible strategy. The key was figuring out how to avoid crossing paths with that person at all.

Weaving past several competitors who had stalled, Xiao Nanhui drew on a well-timed burst of momentum and pulled herself up to the sixth story of the Pinxiao Pagoda. The wind shrieked past her ears; the noise of the crowd below was barely audible anymore. The pagoda’s continuing ascent had vanished into cloud and mist. The rapidly billowing clouds moved like a thin, light curtain draped over Xiao Nanhui’s head, obscuring whatever lay above.

She had been quietly tallying the number of people ahead of her. If her count was right, there should be no more than four or five. The seventh story would be the most treacherous level of all — no one would make it to the top in a short span of time — and she still had a chance.

Xiao Nanhui thought through her situation on the spot, then tucked and tied down every loose strip of fabric on her person that might be grabbed, re-secured the wrappings at her wrists and ankles, and pushed on toward the final story.

The moment she entered the layer of flowing cloud, everything around her was swallowed in billowing white mist. She could see no further than ten feet ahead. Xiao Nanhui could only do her best to judge her direction and feel her way toward the top of the pagoda.

Suddenly, a human hand punched through the fog from diagonally above, reaching for her elbow. Reading the wind to gauge its position, Xiao Nanhui released her grip and threw herself aside, hooking the back of her knee around a beam as she went, and flipped to land on another broken crossbeam nearby.

The attacker failed to connect and did not strike again. Xiao Nanhui had barely drawn a breath when someone came for her right leg from behind. So there was an accomplice.

One side of the broken beam had already rotted and could not hold a jump. With nowhere to retreat, she had no choice but to engage.

After several exchanges, Xiao Nanhui got a clear look at her opponent — a middle-aged man in a close-fitted outfit. He wielded the Grand Seizing Hand technique with masterful fluency, targeting her upper arms and the backs of her knees, his strikes steady and precise. She deflected several moves and was about to counter when the first person who had ambushed her dropped from a beam above and joined the fight. Worse still, a third figure burst upward from the cloud layer below almost immediately after, and in an instant the odds tilted sharply against her.

On level ground, facing these three alone, she would have dispatched them without difficulty. But to be bare-handed and fighting three opponents in open air at ten thousand feet of height was another matter entirely. Moreover, the three worked with the seamless coordination of those who had fought together many times before, making it nearly impossible for her to single any one of them out. This reminded her of the three men she had encountered several days ago at that dark inn in Yueyuan Town — they had all carried the same short-handled, straight-edged blades.

“Word has it that when the Zhongshan bandits were wiped out, three of the ringleaders were never found. I see now — they ended up with Shen Huo.”

The moment Xiao Nanhui spoke those words, all three attackers paused in their assault.

She knew she had guessed right.

It had been no more than a deduction. The three men’s martial technique appeared orthodox at first glance, yet was riddled throughout with unorthodox elements — the kind of style that only developed from years of sparring with all manner of jianghu fighters, and nothing like the methods of government yamen runners. Yet the weapons they had carried previously were the straight-bladed swords unique to the guards of the Shen clan of Huozhou.

She had spoken just now in the regional dialect of the area south of Zhongshan, and all three of them had understood without difficulty — further confirming her suspicion.

She had heard Xiao Zhun mention that when the Zhongshan bandits were exterminated, the three ringleaders had escaped. The Tiancheng court had placed a bounty of a thousand taels of gold on their heads, yet no one in Chizhou had reported seeing them. In such a situation, they had either retreated deep into the mountains, or had pledged themselves to some power that would shelter them. In the current era, the number of factions bold enough to take in fugitives from the court was small — and the Shen clan of Huozhou was chief among them.

“Today’s climb hasn’t been a waste after all. The three of you together are worth a thousand taels — why not come along with me?”

Once things were out in the open, there was no walking it back. Xiao Nanhui decided she might as well seize the moment and rid the world of these three festering sores.

Then, the next second, a flash of cold light — and her heart lurched.

One of the men had drawn a dagger from a concealed sheath along his inner forearm. He had clearly moved in for the kill.

This man had broken the rules and brought a hidden weapon. Granted, it was only a concealed dagger, but at a critical moment it was absolutely capable of ending a life. If she took a wound and fell, she would be nothing but a smear of flesh far below — and no one would ever know what had really happened up here.

Yet this man’s hot-blooded haste to end her life had broken the three’s original formation. Xiao Nanhui spotted the flaw, closed in to seize the blade and immobilize him, and the two of them instantly locked together. The man was considerably taller and heavier, with a clear advantage in raw strength — but Xiao Nanhui used that to her advantage, stomping down and snapping the plank beneath his feet.

The dagger cut a line down her right arm. The man let out a shriek and tumbled into the cloud layer below.

The remaining two grew more cautious at the sight of this, but seeing the wound on Xiao Nanhui’s arm, they wasted no more time — both lunged at once, every move targeting her footing, trying to force her off the beams.

Xiao Nanhui kept her feet off the planking entirely, relying on her light frame. With one hand she wrapped around a pillar and used it to launch herself outward, then swung back in a full arc and returned, driving a kick into one man’s back. He lost his balance and fell from the beam.

Three against one had become one against one in the blink of an eye. Only then did the remaining bandit realize, belatedly, that he had made the catastrophic mistake of underestimating her. Cold sweat appeared on his forehead.

Xiao Nanhui’s own situation was not ideal. The dagger earlier had opened a wound on her arm, and blood was now seeping down her sleeve — a rather sorry sight.

Even so, what he had just witnessed had clearly given him pause. The standoff lasted only a few seconds before he suddenly abandoned the confrontation, turned, and began climbing toward the topmost story of the pagoda.

Xiao Nanhui knew this was the final decisive moment. If anyone got ahead of her now, all this effort — all those stories she had climbed — would count for nothing, no different from being eliminated at the very beginning. She immediately tore off a strip of fabric and bound her lower forearm tight, then scrambled upward with both hands and feet, in close pursuit.

The closer to the top of the pagoda, the more violent the wind.

The tie binding Xiao Nanhui’s hair whipped across her face, stinging her cheeks sharply.

Her right hand hauled itself up over the last crossbeam. She felt entirely spent. Not far ahead, the bandit had also just pulled himself onto the roof platform and was moving toward the towering central pillar at its center — when without warning, a figure dropped on him from behind. He wheeled around to face the newcomer, exchanged three or four blows — and then, without making so much as a sound, swayed, and like a collapsed empty sack, plummeted past Xiao Nanhui’s side at tremendous speed.

The sudden turn of events happened in an instant. She scrambled up onto the platform immediately, found a solid foothold, steadied herself, and looked toward the figure whose hands had moved like lightning.