Bolao’s short figure appeared in the doorway, someone slung over her shoulder, bound up as tightly as a rice dumpling. She stepped into the room and dropped the person on the floor.

Xiao Nanhui looked and saw that it was the leader of the assassins who had ambushed her during the ceremonial procession.

Bolao pointed at the figure on the ground and said to Hao Bai: “I’ve brought you the person you wanted. The rest I handled on the spot. Don’t forget what you promised me.”

Hao Bai nodded and produced a porcelain bottle about the size of a pear, handing it over. Xiao Nanhui guessed it must contain a dozen or so of the purgative pills. He was certainly generous — though what such a significant outlay was for, she couldn’t quite fathom. Did he have an old grudge with these assassins?

Once the exchange was done, Hao Bai was about to step forward when the assassin abruptly opened his eyes and lurched viciously toward him.

Hao Bai gave a start and hastily retreated behind Xiao Nanhui.

Bolao had bound the man very securely indeed — he could barely move. Xiao Nanhui looked at Hao Bai with some amusement: “You wanted this man kept alive, and yet you’ve frightened yourself like this?”

Hao Bai said nothing. His expression was somewhat different from his usual laughing, carefree manner — he gestured to Xiao Nanhui to remove the black cloth from the man’s face.

Xiao Nanhui stepped forward, pressed a hand to the man’s throat, and tore off the cloth — revealing a face that was somewhat familiar. It was the man who had been at that inn in Yueyuan Town a few days ago, apparently traveling with his whole family, presenting himself as a merchant.

His wife had also just been one of the participants in events tonight, of course — so seeing his face came as no great surprise to Xiao Nanhui.

At this moment the man had shed every trace of a tradesman’s small-minded calculation. Every line of him emanated the chilling air of a seasoned jianghu killer.

Hao Bai, taking in the sight of him, was for a moment at a loss for words.

“So it really is you.”

A voice spoke. Xiao Nanhui turned — Zhong Li Jing had walked forward.

“I had my suspicions about you as early as the ferry landing. An ordinary tea merchant would never come to Mu Er He to sell tea at this time of year. The fourth and fifth months are the most wet and changeable season in Huozhou, and tea spoils quickly in that kind of humidity.”

Now that he said it, Xiao Nanhui remembered — this man had been posing as a tea merchant from the start. Huozhou, being cold and rainy, was poorly suited to growing tea, which meant tea merchants were among the most common travelers passing through all year round.

It had been a reasonable choice — the only thing wrong with it was the timing. Most tea merchants would wait until after the new season’s tea had rested for a full month before transporting it to Mu Er He, rather than risk shipping tea during the rainy season.

The assassin listened to all this with cold, flat eyes, apparently having decided to say nothing at all.

Zhong Li Jing drew something from his sleeve and tossed it open on the floor.

It was an official wanted notice, bearing the likeness of a man with a headband, a forbidding expression. “In truth, up until that point, I had only suspicions. But after we arrived in Mu Er He, I saw a wanted notice posted within the city — the first name on it was a notorious bandit who had been active in the ferry crossing area the month before. And by a striking coincidence, on the night we were at Yueyuan, that very fugitive was there in the same inn.”

The scene inside the inn that night replayed in Xiao Nanhui’s mind — there had indeed been a man with a headband who had looked distinctly dangerous.

Then the ferry boatman’s words from that same morning came back to her: “I remember — someone was robbed at the ferry landing that day. I believe someone died.”

“Yes.” Zhong Li Jing nodded. “Only it wasn’t the person being robbed who died — it was the one doing the robbing.”

That explained it. Even though it had been low tide that morning, the stone beach had shown only signs of a struggle, with no bodies to be found.

If the robber had been after money and murder, why would they take the time to dispose of the body? The natural thing would be to take the money and run. But some people would find it different — even though the dead man was a common thief, any official investigation would mean endless complications, and so they would rush to destroy the evidence before dawn. Even if the authorities then investigated, they would have nothing concrete to pursue.

To think that she had assumed that one group was the only genuine, law-abiding party in the whole inn — and in the end they had been wolves in sheep’s clothing all along. Even now, thinking back made her break into a cold sweat.

Perhaps having his actions exposed made the man feel some measure of contempt — because a disdainful look appeared on his face.

“And if I am? I’m different from the lot of you — I came to Mu Er He at the Zou family’s invitation. I took every precaution to conceal my identity along the way. I couldn’t allow some petty thief to ruin everything.”

Xiao Nanhui looked at the man’s expression, and nearly had the impression that it wasn’t him trussed up neatly on the floor in this room — she felt simultaneously irritated and amused.

“So what you’re saying is — the Zou family specifically invited you here? You were a buyer?”

“A buyer? I came to appraise the jade! Zou Sifang, that treacherous old snake, had promised me from the very beginning that once the appraisal was completed, whatever price the jade fetched, he would give me three-tenths. But when I arrived, he started playing dead. Then a few days later he suddenly announced he would offer the jade as a ceremonial tribute. He had broken his word after all. In the jianghu, there is no trade conducted in such a manner. If I pressed him for what he owed me, I was only recovering what was rightfully mine.”

Xiao Nanhui glanced at Zhong Li Jing beside her. The party responsible for making Zou Sifang “break his word” was watching the drama playing out before him with perfect contentment, looking entirely disinclined to involve himself.

She simply could not believe it. No matter how far the Qu clan had fallen, they had once been a name of great repute — how could they have sunk to producing someone who sniped from cover and then had the brazenness to stand here without a shred of shame?

“You claim to be from the Qu family? What proof do you have?”

The man actually nodded.

“What? You don’t believe me? The jade seal isn’t in your hands right now? Untie me, and I can appraise it on the spot. I know many secrets—”

“Ptui!”

A furious shout erupted from behind the two of them. Xiao Nanhui spun around in surprise, to find Hao Bai rolling up his sleeve with great energy, marching forward with a look of thunderous purpose — his courage considerably expanded now, it seemed, for he grabbed the man by the collar without hesitation.

“You dare call yourself a descendant of the Qu clan? What sort of Qu descendant are you? You can’t even be called a distant connection, and yet you’d pin that name on yourself? My eyes have truly been opened today!”

The assassin glared back at Hao Bai with equal venom: “I am an adopted son of the Qu family — trained in their full tradition of medicine, divination, and prophecy. And who are you, what gutter did you crawl out of, spitting filth at me with your empty mouth?”

Hao Bai rolled his eyes so dramatically the motion could have cleared several additional notes of the musical scale, his disdain expressed in a single long hum through the nose: “If I don’t have the standing to end your life here and now on the spot, then no one does.”

With that, he produced something from inside his robe and snapped it open — the same row of acupuncture needles he had shown before, the ones used for medical examination.

Xiao Nanhui had always assumed these were little more than a quack’s props. But at the sight of them, the assassin’s expression changed in an instant.

Hao Bai stood with his hands on his hips in a posture somewhat reminiscent of a brothel madam scolding the staff, though the words that came out of his mouth were entirely serious.

“Li Jingsheng — on the eighth day of the twelfth month, thirty-seven years ago, you collapsed outside a charity gruel distribution point at an abandoned temple ten li from the outskirts of Wancheng. My maternal great-grandfather happened to be passing through on his way to pay his respects at a temple, and he saw you lying there and came to your aid. When you came around, you refused to leave. You wept that your family had been ruined and wiped out entirely. My great-grandfather felt a connection between your fate and the fate of our own clan, and it was that compassion that moved him to make an exception and take you in as an outsider to be trained as a medicine apprentice. You spent twenty years with the Qu family. The Qu family never wronged you in any way. And what did you do?”

Li Jingsheng watched his identity stripped away, first glowering at Hao Bai, and then seemed to break all pretense, letting out a strange, reckless laugh.

“And what if I did? That Qu old eccentric made his own decision — I never forced his hand. After all this, there’s no settling those accounts anyway. What are you going to do about it?”

Hao Bai looked at that arrogant face, and suddenly smiled as well. Then from that unassuming bundle of needles, he drew a single needle — fine as an ox hair, but unusually long.

“I don’t intend to do anything. I simply want to reclaim what was originally the Qu family’s property.”

Hao Bai held the needle between two fingers, and the other hand moved slowly to feel along the back of Li Jingsheng’s neck.

Li Jingsheng finally showed some unease. He struggled frantically, but Bolao’s binding was so thorough that even exerting every last ounce of strength he could barely get his sleeve hem to tremble.

Hao Bai was in no hurry. Unhurried and methodical, he pressed and probed along the spine, and then suddenly curled two fingers and bore down firmly on the most prominent vertebrae on both sides of the neck. Li Jingsheng’s eyes bulged open wide, and half his tongue protruded from his mouth. A terrible gurgling sound rose from deep in his throat, alarming to witness.

Hao Bai appeared not to notice, shifted the position of his fingers, pressed again, and with the other hand inserted the needle. The skin over the vertebrae seemed to bulge slightly, and the next moment a short, sharp needle tip pushed through from the other side — it had been inside this man’s body for a very long time.

Hao Bai pinched the tip of the needle and pulled it out in one smooth motion. It was a gold needle, roughly two inches in length — longer than the gold needles used for ordinary medical treatment.

What followed was something no one watching could quite believe. Before their eyes, Li Jingsheng’s body appeared to deflate like a raft with the air let out of it. He crumpled rapidly inward — starting from the neck, bending and caving in, shoulders and collarbones collapsing — and in a matter of moments the man who had appeared no older than his forties looked like a man in his seventh decade. Even the ropes that had been tied so tightly around him loosened and fell away in a tangle on the floor.

Li Jingsheng already understood what was happening to him. He raised his twisted, deformed hands and reached up trembling to feel his own body. “What — what have you done to me?!”

Hao Bai still had not spared him another glance, moving slightly farther away with an expression of mild revulsion, and bent his head to wipe the gold needle carefully with a piece of fine white silk. “As I just said — I am only taking back what originally belonged to our Qu family. You were suffering from bone disease when you were found, so severely that you could not stand upright or walk. My great-grandfather took pity on you and inserted the bone-anchoring needle to reposition the tendons and meridians, allowing you to move freely like any healthy person — even to train in martial arts. The bone-anchoring needle is of extraordinary value. My clan, even with all our efforts, has only preserved seven of them altogether. The one inside you was lent to you from the beginning. Well — now that you’ve grown accustomed to this body you obtained at no cost, you simply didn’t want to give it back?”

Li Jingsheng’s eyes were about to pop from his head, fixed with desperate intensity on the needle in the other man’s hand. “No — no! Give it back to me! Give me back the needle!”

He flailed his arms, trying to reach for the needle in Hao Bai’s hand.

But he had forgotten that he was no longer in that able, capable body. Even lifting his head, even maintaining the balance of his body, was beyond him. He writhed on the floor like some grotesque creature, his bones and joints twisting in pain that came flooding back into his body, and his expression shifted from fury to despair by degrees, while the shouting from his lips gradually dwindled to a murmur.

The cascade of reversals left Xiao Nanhui struggling to take it all in. But the fact she found most impossible to absorb was this: that jianghu traveling physician was actually a true descendant of the Qu family?!

She snuck a glance at Zhong Li Jing’s reaction. He was perfectly composed — and even said to his attendant: “Weixiang, help Young Master Hao find a place to keep this person secured. Young Master Hao will no doubt need to bring a living witness back to his clan to give an account.”

Hao Bai, for his part, accepted the assistance without ceremony: “In that case, I’ll leave it to Brother Ding.”

Ding Weixiang received the order without a word, picked up the man from the floor, and walked out the door.

But at that moment something stirred in Xiao Nanhui’s mind. She thought, for reasons she could not quite explain, of the slender figure on the topmost story of the Pinxiao Pagoda. She reached out and grabbed hold of Li Jingsheng, and asked urgently:

“The person who fought me for the garland on the Pinxiao Pagoda — were they one of your people?”

Li Jingsheng turned his eyes up to look at Xiao Nanhui. They held nothing but numbness. Seeing his state, Xiao Nanhui could tell there was nothing more to be gotten from him, and gestured to Ding Weixiang to take him away for now.

Only — if the person who had fought her on the seventh story of the Pinxiao Pagoda had not been one of Li Jingsheng’s people, then who had they been?