When Xiao Nanhui was trying to pacify Hao Bai, she had given not a single thought to what these days ahead might actually look like.
In her early years, she had followed Xiao Zhun in suppressing bandits and capturing fugitives, but she had never seen what a female fortress chief was supposed to be like.
Using her recovery as a pretext, she hid in her room for several more days. With nothing else to occupy herself, she monopolized the high ground of her room and peered furtively out through that shabby window, watching what happened below. After several days of observation, she had gained a rough picture in her mind.
Pan Mei’er’s visit to Sun Taishou’s banquet had presumably brought along a good number of her trusted followers, who had been entirely wiped out along with her. Fortunate, in a way — it meant this cuckoo-taking-the-magpie’s-nest created no great waves.
Over these days, she had quietly committed to memory the permanent residents of the stronghold — no more than a hundred people in total. She found that the Southern Qiang people here actually lived in considerable poverty and numbness, and perhaps did not much care who the Fortress Chief was.
After all, no matter who the Fortress Chief was, their own situation never changed.
The terrain of Bijiang was complex, and rivers often changed course due to uneven rainfall. The Bijiang people, who relied on herding livestock, were forced to follow water sources in their migrations year-round. Conflicts between strongholds over resources erupted constantly, and the unending wars and turmoil had exhausted the vitality of the entire community. If not for this, the Bai Family would never have been able to infiltrate and take hold in the first place. The Southern Qiang people were by nature fiercely combative and deeply resistant to outsiders — under no circumstances would they have willingly accepted settlers from eastern Chizhou.
Right now was Bijiang’s dry season, the most grueling stretch of every year on this land. Yet Xiao Nanhui caught a whiff of opportunity in it.
She was different from the Southern Qiang people who had been born and raised here. She knew a few techniques for digging wells and cultivating crops — skills she had picked up here and there during her time following the army. If she was willing to apply them, she could, to some extent, pull the entire stronghold back from the brink.
In Bijiang, a stronghold chief was in many ways the head of a clan. The Southern Qiang people’s strongholds were known for their matriarchal communities — in a stronghold of several hundred, everyone looked to the matriarch. Men held no power here and could at best serve as fighters.
The stronghold’s male population made up more than half the total and had mostly short-tempered dispositions, but were not difficult to get along with. She had grown up in a crowd of men herself, had spent time wandering about with Bolao outside, and had absorbed something of the roughness of the jianghu. Although she was of regular military background, she lacked the rigid, intimidating formality of an official’s manner. She also spoke the Lingxi local dialect with complete fluency. Gradually, she began to establish a measure of authority.
The first thing Xiao Nanhui did was summon back the young men who had been out on patrol to seize territory, and assign them to break new ground, dig wells, and plant crops. With food secured, everything else would follow.
Everyone forgot their suspicions once their bellies were full, and along with that, their rebellious impulses diminished considerably. The quiet of the stronghold finally began to take on some genuine substance.
After the incident with her, Wu Xiaoliu had become conspicuously well-behaved — his assistance at her side was now practiced and natural. Hao Bai, on the other hand, had caught the affliction of lamenting the passing of spring, and had adopted the mindset of a prisoner, spending his days composing poems and couplets. The acrid, pedantic quality of his language gave Xiao Nanhui frequent bouts of nausea, which indirectly motivated her to rid herself of the wheelchair and get back out of doors as quickly as possible.
The night owl from the Andao Institute found her on the eighth day after she had settled into the stronghold. Bolao conveyed the gist of the recent situation in Tongcheng through the agreed code phrases: mentioning only the broad movement of the three hundred thousand troops of the Suibei and Guangyao battalions pressing westward, and noting that Lu Songping also appeared to be keeping quiet. Beyond that, there was not a single word about the Black Feather Division.
The drumbeat of Xiao Nanhui’s private doubts grew louder and more insistent, but thinking that a few words could not capture the full picture of what she had witnessed, she decided to set it aside for now. She reported only the sentry post situation she had observed in the Sanmu Pass area, then informed him that she had successfully entered Bijiang and confirmed the frequency of future message transmissions.
A day in the mountains, and ten years pass in the world of men.
From sweltering heat to the gradual arrival of autumn’s coolness, the days passed without making a sound.
She hadn’t anticipated, when she first thought ahead to settling into the daily rhythms of life here, that Bijiang would turn out to be such a restorative place. Sometimes, if the stronghold’s crowd of rough people didn’t let out one of their sudden, booming shouts, she could almost convince herself she was on a paid leave of rest.
Once the injuries on her feet had healed to about seventy or eighty percent, Xiao Nanhui had Wu Xiaoliu make her a pair of crutches. Under the name of inspecting her territory, she hobbled out on them every day, making her way around the area near the stronghold and relaying the terrain and the distribution of nearby strongholds one by one to Bolao. But it was far from enough. She needed intelligence closer to the heart of Bijiang.
That would have to wait until her legs were fully recovered. After all, startling the grass and alerting the snakes was no small thing.
Another afternoon came — the autumn sun warm and wonderful on the skin. The stronghold was busy preparing food for the winter. This year, thanks to the new Fortress Chief’s methods, the harvest had been considerably better, the cattle and sheep had grown fat alongside it, and smiles had finally begun to appear on people’s faces.
Three half-grown children had gathered up stalks of highland barley left behind after the harvest and were using them to show off, chasing and playing while singing a wandering, off-key children’s song.
One had fallen behind the rest, a face scrawled with painted markings, arms spread wide and teeth bared in pursuit of the other two — clearly playing the role of a ghost trying to catch them.
One of those ahead slowed down, was seized, and the two tumbled to the ground in a heap.
“You’re dead!”
“I am not!” The child pinned underneath struggled mightily. “We haven’t fought yet! We need to fight three hundred rounds!”
“Hmph — even if we fought, you couldn’t beat me! The Qinghuai Marquis has three heads and six arms, born with a skin black as coal, a square gold-steel face, furious brows and red pupils and white tiger eyes, sitting still he’s like a mountain, and walking he’s like, walking like—”
He stopped mid-verse, apparently having forgotten the words. Terrified that the other children would laugh at him, his face turned red.
“How come I never heard that the Qinghuai Marquis had three heads and six arms?”
A lazy female voice floated over the three children’s heads. They looked up, and it was the legendary new Fortress Chief.
At the moment, her crutch was nowhere to be seen. She had her arms hooked over the branches of a tilted poplar tree, both legs swinging against the grass below. The white bandaging from before was now covered in strange drawings and patterns.
“For-Fortress Chief—”
The three little children, noses running, stumbled over their words as they prostrated themselves on the ground, imitating the adults and performing the Southern Qiang floor-obeisance.
Xiao Nanhui clicked her tongue: “Get up. The ground’s dirty. Who taught you that verse you were just reciting?”
The one who had forgotten the words rushed to answer: “Grandma taught us—”
The child standing beside him immediately jabbed him with an elbow.
She saw it all and found it somewhat amusing. “What else did your grandma teach you?”
This time all three children went silent.
Xiao Nanhui didn’t push. She changed her tone: “Your grandma was wrong about that. The Qinghuai Marquis is nowhere near that frightening. It’s all made up to scare children — you shouldn’t believe it so easily. That way you only build up others’ courage while undermining your own.”
The child with the face markings looked a little guilty. The other two were immediately energized.
She let her mind wander and smiled absently, asking out of pure boredom: “We’ve brought up the Qinghuai Marquis — have you heard any rumors about that old Tiancheng Emperor?”
“I know!” One of them sniffed excitedly and rattled off in broken phrases: “The Em-Emperor could recite at five, write poetry at seven, and at nine his zither-playing already produced sounds like the empty valley’s echoes — no court musician could match him—”
What on earth?!
How was it that Xiao Zhun was some sort of black-skinned golden giant, while the Emperor was practically a transcendent immortal? What kind of logic was that?!
“Wait — where did you hear that?” She felt she’d overreacted, and tacked on half a sentence with forced casualness to cover it: “Shouldn’t we Lingxi people dislike him?”
It wasn’t as though the people here would have much love for the Emperor — the Bai Family had taken Bijiang, and Tiancheng had been quietly applying pressure for years.
The other child blinked with wide eyes and jumped in: “We do really dislike him. But it was Xumi’er who praised him. He’s the zither-player the Southern Qiang people respect most. Fortress Chief, how do you not even know this?”
Xiao Nanhui was caught off guard.
She had done her research before coming to Bijiang, but she had never thought she’d need to study matters of music and arts, still less thought she’d need to study the Emperor himself.
Without meaning to, her mind drifted back to that scene at Sanmu Pass. The zither music seemed to sound once more right beside her ear. Though she didn’t know much about musical matters, she could tell there was nothing of the refined literary man’s sentiment in it — it was all butchery and killing.
One wondered if the Tiancheng Emperor’s zither music bore any resemblance to that person’s.
“Fortress Chief Pan!”
Xiao Nanhui turned her head. Wu Xiaoliu was coming toward her from behind in quick, urgent steps.
By now she could read this fat man’s expression with ease.
That expression right now — well, it wasn’t a good one.
By the time Xiao Nanhui followed Wu Xiaoliu to the entrance of the stronghold, she spotted the unfamiliar group of Southern Qiang people at once.
They were markedly different from the people in her stronghold — in dress, in bearing, in the air of wealth and arrogance they projected.
Among them, only one had his back to her, hands clasped behind him. He was the shortest of them all, yet the aura he carried stood a full twelve feet tall.
There’s a saying: never judge a person by their appearance. It was made for people exactly like this. And small, difficult people were the worst to underestimate.
With these thoughts flowing through her mind, she had already drawn close to the group.
The short figure noticed her and turned around, revealing a face wearing a smiling expression. But the overly thin eyelids gave away a certain sharpness within their owner. Those small, bead-like eyes rolled once and settled on Xiao Nanhui.
“Fortress Chief Pan — long time no see. How did you manage to injure your legs? You’re looking rather thinner too!”
Xiao Nanhui had no intention of playing the slow game of pleasantries. She went straight to the point, adopting a puzzled expression: “And you are?”
The short man feigned surprise: “Barely three months since we last met, and Mei’er has forgotten me already?”
Wu Xiaoliu at the side seized the moment and cleared his throat: “Impudence! This is Fortress Chief Pan Yao’er — not your ‘Mei’er’ or whoever!”
The short man took a few steps forward, seeming to want a closer look. Xiao Nanhui could almost smell the faint, subtle odor coming off him — the distinctive smell that clung to people who ate raw meat. Even by Bijiang standards, the habit of eating raw food was considered quite rare. This man must hail from one of the most primitive of the Southern Qiang tribes.
“Pan Mei’er was my elder sister. I’m in charge here now. If you have something to say, say it.”
The short man blinked, and in the briefest of moments rearranged his expression. He was still wearing that smiling look.
“I see — since this is our first meeting, I’d best explain things clearly, to avoid any unpleasantness or misunderstanding later. After all, I was on very good terms with Mei’er, and as her younger sister you should enjoy the same.”
Xiao Nanhui said nothing. Her eyes moved across the empty sacks the others in the group were carrying, and she had already drawn seven or eight tenths of a conclusion.
“Since Fortress Chief Pan isn’t speaking, I’ll take that as agreement.”
The short man stepped aside and revealed the Southern Qiang burly men standing behind him: “These brothers here are all servants of Lord Bai’s household. They’ve come on a routine inspection visit, and also—” He paused deliberately and rubbed two short, stubby fingers together. “—to collect a small fee for their trouble.”
She had been wondering just this morning why the Bai Family had still not made any moves — and sure enough, no sooner was the thought formed than they appeared. Truly, speak of the devil.
Xiao Nanhui broke into a broad, open smile. Completely ignoring the grimaces Wu Xiaoliu was pulling beside her, she made an expansive gesture of welcome the very next second.
“But of course. I haven’t had the honor of learning your name yet, brother?”
The other man also smiled, baring a set of teeth packed close together — like the man-eating pomfret that filled the rushing rivers. “I’m surnamed Kuang. My full name is Kuang Wuwu. Fortress Chief Pan can just call me A-Kuang, like everyone else does.”