Ye Qinian got into the car at the back door of the Zhengyuan Hotel; the car pulled out of Lai’an Li lane and turned right from Baoshan Road onto Xinmin Road. Anyone unfamiliar with the local layout would find this stretch of road rather odd. It was actually two parallel roads: the northern side was Xinmin Road, in Chinese territory, while the southern side was called the Boundary Road, administered by the foreign Municipal Council. This had originally been a dividing road—foreign merchants in the concession had always been eager to push their roads across the border and encroach on Chinese territory, and disputes had raged endlessly over the years. It was said that the railway station had originally been built along this road specifically to check the foreign merchants’ ambitions to expand across the boundary; later there had even been the Lai’an Li border-road-building incident, which nearly turned into a diplomatic crisis.

Now the two roads were separated by chevaux-de-frise—wooden posts wound with great coils of barbed wire, connected down the middle of the road, stretching out of sight. The car crossed over the dividing barricade and drove into North Zhejiang Road; at the iron gate at the Avenue Road intersection, two constables stepped forward to stop the car, peered in through the window, and let them pass into the concession.

Less than ten minutes’ drive, yet checkpoint after checkpoint—Secretary Ma couldn’t help but curse under his breath. After a moment, from the back seat, Ye Qinian intoned, almost like a chant: “To resist the outside, one must first pacify the interior.”

Once the car entered the concession, the scenery changed entirely. Last year’s “January 28th Incident” had left Zhabei repeatedly bombed by Japanese forces; the area around Xinmin Road and Baoshan Road had been reduced to ruins, and the roof of the railway station was still under repair even now. But within the concession, prosperity grew by the day; the car drove south, passing buildings under construction along the way, storefronts crowded with signboards, the streets thick with people and traffic.

Today was the fourteenth of the first lunar month. Early that morning Ye Qinian had had someone bring him the day’s newspaper, and on page five of Shen Bao he found the advertisement:

Lao Kai raises his painting fees:

Master Lao Kai has increasingly won the esteem of connoisseurs; his landscapes, figures, birds, and beasts are all executed with mastery, his blue-and-green landscapes especially distinguished—rivaling the reincarnation of the great masters Li Sixun and Li Zhaodao. Admirers besiege him faster than he can respond. He hereby raises his previously established fee schedule, that he might continue this cause of ink and brush. Hanging scrolls, three yuan per foot, figures add one. Central hall scrolls, eight yuan per foot, over five feet add three per foot. Fan-face flowers, four yuan; feathered and furred creatures and figures, six yuan; blue-green landscapes, six yuan.

Telephone: 85372.

The evening before, Ye Qinian had gone to the old walled city’s West Gate district; he’d had the driver stop the car on Xueqian Street, directly facing the cross-lane of Puyu Li. Though Lu Zhongde’s painting-and-calligraphy shop was located in Puyu Li, it actually fronted onto Penglai Road. Long after the appointed meeting time had passed, his “Xi Shi” finally emerged, lingered a moment at the mouth of the lane, then suddenly rushed over and climbed into the car.

The car crept forward; though the curtains were drawn over the windows, the streets of the old city were narrow, and few cars ever ventured in. Lu Zhongde said nothing—Ye Qinian understood him; ever since Guangzhou, Lu Zhongde had formed the good habit of letting Ye Qinian speak first. But Ye Qinian too stayed silent, and it was a long while before he finally said: “This area used to be called Huangni Qiang—the Yellow Mud Wall. In the Xianfeng era there were over three hundred peach trees planted here, and the peaches they bore were the color of a blushing cheek, sweeter than anything. Stick a wheat straw in and suck—your whole mouth would fill with fragrant sweetness, leaving nothing on your fingers but a thin peel. A pity the variety went extinct long ago; now only the name remains, and even the peaches from Longhua or Pudong dare to claim that lineage.”

“Teacher is grieving again.”

Ye Qinian ignored him, and after a while said, “This afternoon at Gong He Xiang Wharf—why didn’t you give the signal?”

“This Chen Qianli doesn’t know what happened in Guangzhou. He never went to Guangzhou.”

Before the Guisheng left Shanghai for Qingdao, Ye Qinian had had someone check the passenger manifest—Chen Qianli and Liang Shichao had boarded the ship in Hong Kong.

“You’re growing more and more confident. When you’re standing in danger, you need to tread carefully, step by step.”

“I understand, Teacher.”

“What exactly happened in Guangzhou? Why did you make an arrest right next to the liaison station?”

Ye Qinian had originally planned to leave the Hong Kong and Guangzhou underground liaison stations alone for the time being, using them as bait. But after Lu Zhongde and his men had made such a commotion in the teahouse and on the street, and once the Guangzhou station’s telegram arrived that afternoon, he had hastily ordered them to take men to raid the liaison station—only to find it already empty, the birds long flown.

“Station Chief Li in Guangzhou is only a deputy squad leader in the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau’s detective squad; the squad leader is one of Chen Jitang’s men. He couldn’t mobilize the squad himself—he said it was hard enough getting this much done.”

“The Guangzhou station’s telegram said you killed two of their own agents?”

“It was a clumsy performance, but without it the liaison officer coming from Ruijin wouldn’t have believed it. I had him find two outsiders to take the fall, but he said he didn’t dare offend his squad leader, so he used his own men instead.”

“And that Liang Shichao—where did he go?”

“Chen Qianli said he slipped off the boat secretly at Shantou and went to Ruijin.”

“You still haven’t told me—why didn’t you kill Chen Qianli?”

“He’s arranging a new mission—says he wants to charter a cargo ship.”

A cargo ship? What devilry was this?

“Carrying what? Weapons? Medicine?” he asked Lu Zhongde.

“Carrying people. He wants to charter out an idle passenger cabin.”

“Is he still hiding at your shop?”

“He’s gone. A few days ago I had Wei Dafu find a place, just ahead on Menghua Street. I just sent him there. He’s staying in the Chinese city, very convenient for Captain You.”

It was a time when he needed his men, so Ye Qinian raised no objection, though doubt still lingered in his heart. Two men had vanished all at once, over the course of several days, and he sensed that Chen Qianli must be quietly arranging something. If Chen Qianli truly knew nothing of what had happened in Guangzhou, then the decision not to kill him the afternoon before hadn’t been wrong either. Today, with the advertisement running to draw in Hao Han, it was best to keep things calm and avoid any mishaps.

He very much wanted to understand the secret behind this cargo ship, but he knew Lu Zhongde’s weakness for glory-seeking. Perhaps he had a bit of that flaw himself, he thought—but it was precisely because he understood himself so well that at moments like this he always told himself: first secure what you’ve already won, then think about pushing for more. Hao Han—no achievement could possibly be greater than that. Ye Qinian had no intention of wagering him too. So that very morning he had made his decision, summoning You Tianxiao and telling him: close the net, bring them all in.

Once You Tianxiao had finished arranging the arrest operation, Ye Qinian himself indulged a sudden fit of leisure and left the Zhengyuan Hotel. Before going, he had Secretary Ma phone the Zhuangyuan Restaurant at Eight Immortals Bridge, asking them to freshly make several Ningbo tangyuan and box them up. Now the car pulled up outside the restaurant; Secretary Ma went upstairs and soon came back down carrying two large boxes, which he set on the front passenger seat.

Ten minutes later, the car stopped by the old city’s Chuanxin River Bridge. The Chuanxin waterway through the walled city had been filled in over the years, leaving now only a few scattered stretches of pond. Ye Qinian got out; Secretary Ma followed behind carrying the boxes. The two men walked one after the other along Songxue Street for a stretch, then turned left into a winding, deep lane. At the end of the lane stood a high wall; before the wall, the crosswise alley was blocked at both ends by the gable walls of houses.

Beneath the high wall, however, was a narrow black-lacquered door, and on the plaque above the lintel were written the words “Little Peach Spring.” Inside the gate was a garden, planted with twenty or thirty peach trees. Guests usually only realized upon entering that this vast garden had but this one narrow gate—the owner had long ago walled up every other entrance. In this densely populated old city, to find such a garden, occupying half a mu of ground, felt strangely marvelous.

Within the walls, all was silent. Ye Qinian mounted the three stone steps and gently rapped twice on the bronze door-ring. After a moment, the door opened.

“Old Meng, Happy New Year to you!” Ye Qinian said, cupping his hands in greeting.

Old Meng, standing within, wore an old cotton robe; he showed no surprise, as if he’d already guessed his visitor would be Ye Qinian.

“I knew that at a time like this, a visitor would most likely be you.”

The garden held a few single-story rooms; the brick paving before them was spotless, moss growing here and there in patches. By the wall, a stone water trough held a few floating leaves of water clover; in the front hall stood a small table and two chairs, and a black cat hid beneath the table, paying no attention to the visitor.

“You’ve come at just the right time—I’ve just brewed tea.”

“How have you been?” Ye Qinian asked flatly.

“Thanks to you, old friend, I’ve had a fine place to see out my remaining days,” Old Meng said, by way of pleasantry.

Sunlight fell across the ground before the hall; boiling water was poured into the pot, and the fragrance of tea filled the room.

“Old Meng, still so courteous. This is only me asking you to look after the property.”

Ye Qinian had bought this garden years ago from a retired Sichuan warlord general, and had transplanted several dozen peach trees here from Huangni Qiang. Now these trees, hidden deep within the city, had become something of a lost variety themselves. Though he lived in Nanjing, whenever he had a spare moment over the years, he would slip quietly to Shanghai, come to Little Peach Spring, and find this Old Meng to drink tea and talk.

Old Meng had killed men. Ten, twenty years ago, among certain radical societies, he had been a famous assassin.

The two men exchanged little in the way of pleasantries. After a few rounds of tea, Ye Qinian suddenly spoke: “I’ve never killed a man with my own hands.”

The cup lid clinked; Old Meng set down his tea bowl, faintly startled. This old friend before him, whom he had known for many years—though their exchanges were not frequent, it seemed there was nothing they couldn’t discuss—Old Meng was a man of careful thought, and even when debating history or current affairs, he always stopped short of overstepping. Little Peach Spring was a place to escape the world, their usual visits nothing more than tea and idle talk, a moment’s peace sought—for Ye Qinian to open so bluntly with talk of killing left him rather bewildered.

“This time I’ve made up my mind,” Ye Qinian said, his voice sounding somehow harsh in the silent courtyard.

“A man in your position, brother—why would you need to do the killing yourself?” Old Meng, for a moment, didn’t know how to respond. He had killed men himself, yet he never spoke of killing.

Ye Qinian gazed at the peach trees in the light and shadow of the courtyard, paying no attention to Old Meng’s words. He had kept many men in his employ, yet he never quite understood why he kept this old man before him. Perhaps he needed a pair of ears like this; perhaps he felt only this old man could truly understand what he meant.

“Since I changed my allegiance and threw myself into the national revolution, I’ve had only public enemies, never private grudges. But Chen Qianli—”

“Ah—” So Ye Qinian was bringing up old matters again, Old Meng thought. “The dispute between the two parties was originally one of differing views; it needn’t have come to killing. Within just a few short years, it’s come to the point where each must destroy the other—and much of the reason lies in the Nationalists bullying the weaker party. Once killing starts, in the end public enmity and private grudge become impossible to tell apart.”

Old Meng seemed to recall something from the past; his expression suddenly turned melancholy.

Ye Qinian did not look at him. “I know clearly enough what’s in my own heart. Three years ago, Ye Tao was lured out of Zhanyuan by him. I sent every one of my operatives out searching. When they finally found her, all that was left was a corpse.”

Old Meng looked at his old friend in astonishment; even after all these years he had never fully seen through this chief of secret agents. He could mourn his lost daughter with genuine grief in one breath, and in the next speak of her, coldly, as nothing more than a corpse.

“All I ever heard you say was that he led Ye Tao astray, that she ran off following the Communists,” Old Meng said quietly.

Ye Qinian seemed not to register Old Meng’s words at all; he was still gazing at the peach trees. “These trees ought to be pruned soon, shouldn’t they?”

He had bought this garden for Ye Tao, had planted peach trees within it. Every year, on Ye Tao’s birthday, he came to prune the branches, waiting for them to slowly bud in early spring. Every May he came to drink tea and watch the peach blossoms. By July, when the branches hung heavy with sweet fruit, he would come pick a basketful and take it to Ye Tao. On days like these, he always found himself telling Old Meng the old stories, stories Old Meng had heard countless times before.

“These are candied kumquat cakes from Laodafang,” Old Meng said, pushing the plate on the table toward him and taking one for himself.

Ye Qinian glanced at the plate. “They found her in the old city wall’s soldier tunnel in Nanjing. When I went to the confidential office to gather her belongings, there were two packages of candied kumquat cakes on the desk too. She liked those little snacks—just like her mother.”

Perhaps—if her mother hadn’t died, none of what followed would have happened. If her mother had lived, Ye Tao might not have followed Chen Qianli so single-mindedly. And he himself might not have grown so bitter and perverse. For just a moment, this thought flickered through Ye Qinian’s mind.

In just a few short years, both he and Ye Tao had changed. Ye Tao had gone to study in Beiping; he regretted having let her go, though who could have known? At the time, he’d thought a change of environment would do her good. Even if she’d later been influenced somewhat at the Women’s Normal University, joining student movements—who hadn’t rebelled a little in their youth? Hadn’t he himself only later come to realize his past errors and changed his stance and views? The year Ye Tao went to Beiping, he’d even had someone find him books by Marx, by Lenin, Bukharin’s ABC of Communism. Just as many people had begun to believe communism might save China, he himself had come to change his view. When the Nationalists and Communists first began cooperating, he had believed he’d detected the Communists’ “conspiracy”; he and a number of others within the Nationalist Party had seen it too—he, along with Mr. Jitao and Mr. Guofu, had recognized it early on.

During the unrest at the Women’s Normal University, Duan Qirui had shut down the school. That summer Ye Tao came home, and he hadn’t worried at all. Once home, he thought, she’d gradually forget that momentary fervor and impulsiveness. But it was around that time he began to grow busy. On the surface he was still a professor, still involved in societies and running literary journals with like-minded friends; but privately he had thrown himself into the Nationalist Party’s embrace, attending right-wing meetings, learning of something called fascism. He selected certain students, cultivated them, and quietly built up his own secret organization. He sent them out to various places, planning that at some future moment he would offer this organization up to a strongman within the Nationalist Party. Lu Zhongde was one of them—this piece placed on the board well in advance would later prove enormously useful.

In the sixteenth year of the Republic, during the “Purge of the Communists,” he had grown busier still. The Nationalist Party was fractured—one faction in Guangzhou, another in Wuhan—and he had settled firmly on Commander-in-Chief Chiang in Nanjing. He was busy maneuvering, trying to transform his small secret organization into a formal special-services agency. He had broken up quite a few underground Communist organizations, and gradually won greater trust.

He had originally intended to draw the precocious young Chen Qianli into that organization as well; at the time, he had felt Chen Qianli was exactly the man he needed, a youth of real promise. Then one afternoon he came home and saw the door to the side room ajar, voices coming from within. He pushed the door open and, for the first time, discovered that in his absence Chen Qianli had entered Ye Tao’s room. On the table sat a teacup, and beside it a stack of newspapers—The Guide, the Chinese Communist Party’s official organ. He had studied the Communists for years and could recognize these publications at a glance. He even recognized it as the discontinuation issue from July of that year, which carried the Central Committee’s declaration on current affairs. He felt a pang of disappointment then, but said nothing more, only telling Chen Qianli: don’t go into Ye Tao’s room again.

Later, as the Party Affairs Investigation Section gradually took shape, Ye Tao went with him to Nanjing. Keeping Ye Tao by his own side put his mind at ease—this way, she wouldn’t be influenced by Chen Qianli. He hadn’t wanted his daughter working in the secret service permanently; that life full of intrigue and scheming didn’t suit her. Perhaps, at some suitable moment, the right man would appear in her life, and then he could finally set his mind fully at rest. It was only a year later that he discovered Chen Qianli, too, had followed them to Nanjing.

A breeze passed through the hall; Ye Qinian grabbed a handful of kumquat cakes and put them in his mouth, chewing fiercely.

“She lay in that soldier tunnel in the old city wall, a bullet in her back, and she died never knowing who fired the shot—”

“You never found out who fired it?”

“Who else could it have been but Chen Qianli?”

“If he was the one who lured Ye Tao out, why would he shoot her?” Old Meng seemed not to accept Ye Qinian’s theory.

“To achieve their aims, is there anything they wouldn’t do?”

“Then what exactly was their aim?” Old Meng lowered his head, sensing Ye Qinian growing agitated. He half-closed his eyes, long accustomed to conversing with Ye Qinian in this manner—giving only a small fraction of his attention, listening, occasionally offering a response, while the greater part of his mind seemed to slip into a kind of dormancy.

“After Ye Tao came to Nanjing, she gradually grew obedient again. At Zhanyuan we often ran study sessions, having those whose thinking had changed, who had broken from the Chinese Communist Party, come forward to lecture. Every so often we’d also hold debates—gather two or three people, have them spend months studying various Communist documents. When the meeting came, we’d seat them on the left side of the podium and everyone else on the right. Those on the left would use Communist theory to debate those on the right. We didn’t require those on the right to win—those seated on the left, so long as they were capable, were free to press hard and leave their opponents speechless.”

Old Meng smiled faintly, as if amused that Ye Qinian had brought the style of student societies into the special services headquarters.

“For these meetings, anyone from headquarters who happened to be in Nanjing had to sit in the audience and listen. Every single time, Ye Tao attended—never once absent. I thought she’d forgotten Chen Qianli. I thought she’d left those dangerous ideas behind along with him.” Ye Qinian couldn’t help but look stricken.

“But they never forgot. A year later, Chen Qianli also came to Nanjing—they came looking for her. They deliberately waited a year before coming, wanting me to lower my guard, and indeed I did let it slip. I even thought that after all this time, perhaps Ye Tao might instead have a positive influence on Chen Qianli. It’s only now that I understand—whatever influence I might have had on Ye Tao was probably no match for a single word from Chen Qianli. A girl that age…”

“If you truly only wanted to keep Ye Tao from Communist influence, why not simply forbid contact between them outright? I suspect you still harbored some private hope of your own,” Old Meng said flatly.

“They were working on Ye Tao, but their real target was me,” Ye Qinian said, changing tack. “I only came to see it clearly later—they wanted to use Ye Tao to extend their reach into Zhanyuan. By the time I realized it, it was already too late. Within just a few months, Chen Qianli was coming and going through Zhanyuan as if it were his own courtyard. My daughter, her boyfriend—no one at Zhanyuan dared offend him.”

“With your usual thoroughness and caution, how could you have discovered it so late?” Old Meng said, based on his understanding of Ye Qinian, he did not believe for a moment that he could have been so careless.

Ye Qinian said he had been too busy. The Party Affairs Investigation Section had grown rapidly, eager to extend its reach across the country. He’d had to personally oversee operations, establish branch stations, select cadres, arrange personnel, check communication links, and negotiate with regional power holders. Every waking moment he was waiting for telegrams from across the country; he took trains to Shanghai, and later, once airports existed, he often flew to Guangzhou as well.

The work he truly cared about all concerned the Communists. The students he’d dispatched years earlier were now proving enormously useful. Every month, the Party Affairs Investigation Section managed to break up one or two more Communist underground organizations. The more his superiors trusted him, the heavier the pressure he felt.

But gradually, strange things began to happen. Intelligence would arrive in time, plans would be thorough, yet the operatives sent to make the arrest would come up empty. In Shanghai, several important Communist figures who had clearly been brought to the police station would, the next day, be released on some pretext. Communist armed elements had even hijacked a prisoner transport in transit—how could they have known the exact escort route? Several agents who had infiltrated the Communist ranks were eliminated by them. Two Communist defectors, whom he had handled swiftly enough that they’d never been exposed, had been sent back to continue pretending to work for their old employer—but before they could produce results, they were discovered by the other side. He began to sense something was wrong internally—

“In the spring of the eighteenth year of the Republic, we began to notice a leak from within. I gradually began to focus my attention on Chen Qianli. It was obvious—Ye Tao worked in the confidential office; every incoming telegram, report, and interrogation record, she had access to. Whenever I wasn’t at Zhanyuan, Chen Qianli could come and go freely. I had people watch, and gradually a pattern emerged—every internal leak occurred the day after his visit, or the day after that.”

Thinking of this, Ye Qinian couldn’t help but grow angry. “That year, before the Dragon Boat Festival, the most serious leak of all finally happened. We’d made a major breakthrough in our work in Guangzhou—we captured the Communist special committee secretary, Ouyang Min. But the very next day, just as we were arranging a full-scale sweep to roll up the entire Guangdong underground party apparatus in one stroke, we discovered that most of the Communist personnel and organizations connected to Ouyang Min had already withdrawn.

“By this time I’d already begun to grow suspicious of them. I went to Guangdong myself, but I didn’t tell Ye Tao. The arrest of Ouyang Min in Guangzhou was carried out with the utmost secrecy. I forbade them from using the telegraph to report to Nanjing—I intended to delay word of this victory, and no telegraph use would be permitted without my authorization. And yet the news still leaked.

“Afterward it was discovered that someone, in the name of the Party Affairs Investigation Section, had gone to the airport and checked the confidential passenger manifest, and had also sent a telegram to the Guangzhou Garrison Command to confirm my whereabouts. Shortly after, the Guangzhou station’s radio received a strange telegram, sent in my name, using my personal encryption code, demanding that the Guangzhou station report on what had happened the night before.” As he spoke, Ye Qinian’s teeth clenched with fury.

Old Meng rose to his feet, perhaps thinking to step out into the courtyard for air, or perhaps unwilling to hear more of the Party Affairs Investigation Section’s secrets—but he turned back before reaching the door.

“So it was Ye Tao who used your encryption code, who used the radio, without the slightest worry that a leak investigation might follow afterward. Looking at it this way, Ye Tao must have believed you would never truly have her arrested.”

“That order certainly did not come from me—I myself was in Guangzhou at the time. Whoever sent that telegram seemed to know my habits perfectly—that I dislike staying in the various local station offices. They knew that in the small hours I would certainly be asleep somewhere, and used that moment to send the telegram to the Guangzhou station. The one receiving it at the Guangzhou station assumed I had already slipped quietly back to Nanjing, and so dutifully reported back, informing them that after capturing the Communist leader they were interrogating him through the night at the station, and that the interrogation had already begun to show signs of a breakthrough. The station chief probably thought adding that last detail would please me. When it all came out, I was of course furious—so many people, so many years of work. But because it involved Ye Tao, I had no choice but to handle it quietly. I gave no sign of what I knew, guessing that Chen Qianli would come again. The next time he showed up at Zhanyuan, I planned to have him quietly killed. That way Ye Tao would be safe, and no one would ever know what she’d done.”

“And no one would know that Ye Qinian’s daughter was a Communist,” Old Meng said, half-closing his eyes, seeming almost drowsy.

Ye Qinian shot him a glance, a flash of anger crossing his face, but he continued nonetheless. “Two days later, sure enough, he came. I’d already instructed the guardhouse at the gate to let him in. As he was leaving again, the killer hidden behind the rockery garden followed him out. I thought that would settle the matter. That was Zhanyuan’s finest killer, a master with both pistol and dagger. Sending him to kill Chen Qianli should have been as easy as crushing an ant. That day it was pouring rain; I sat alone in my office waiting for the good news from my killer, but I waited half the day and no word came back. Two hours later I went to the confidential office; they said Ye Tao had gone out, that Chen Qianli had called, but never actually entered the office. I knew something was wrong then—the two of them must have already planned to run. Chen Qianli had come to fetch her; they must have sensed the Guangzhou leak was about to be discovered by me. I immediately sent people out to search, and on the street we found the killer’s body—it had rained, and the corpse had gone unnoticed, lying in a corner against a wall. I had men search the whole night through, and it wasn’t until the next morning that we found Ye Tao, lying in the old city wall’s soldier tunnel at Shenze Gate.”

Old Meng couldn’t help but ask him: “What was the final conclusion?”

“They discovered the killer, realized their trick had been seen through, and to cover the truth, to cut off the trail, they shot her from behind and killed her.”

“And the official account?”

“Party Affairs Investigation Section confidential office staffer Ye Tao, kidnapped by the Communist underground, refused to reveal party and national secrets, and was killed—heroically sacrificed.”

“Such a commotion, and yet it was covered up so completely. In the depths of your grief, you still managed to handle the aftermath with such composure—”

Ye Qinian’s face turned ashen; he raised his eyes and fixed them on Old Meng, and for an instant murderous intent flickered through him. This old man had long since stopped wanting to live—perhaps he ought to grant him his wish.

Why did he keep this old man around—there were times even he himself couldn’t quite say. They had never truly been friends; in his heart of hearts, he didn’t believe he needed a friend at all. Perhaps he simply treated Old Meng as another version of himself, telling him the secrets in his heart the way one might talk to oneself. If not for this, he might well have gone mad. This old man knew too many of his secrets; perhaps one day he would kill him too, the way one might kill another self. He knew that Old Meng often deliberately provoked him with his words, as if he were tired not only of the world outside Little Peach Spring, but of Little Peach Spring itself, and so kept needling him, pressing on his sore spots, hoping to give him a reason to finally strike.

“What else was I to do—sink into numb grief over my dead daughter? Or hide away like you, deceiving myself into thinking I could escape the mortal world and forget everything?”

“What use is revenge fueled by poisoned resentment?”

“I want to kill them—not for private revenge, but so they can no longer lure young people astray.”

“Young people—do you think they’re so easily fooled? Perhaps Ye Tao and Chen Qianli chose that other path precisely because they didn’t want to be fooled.”

“They brought it on themselves!” Ye Qinian was nearly screaming now. “There are only two roads before them—one leads to life, the other to death. China’s fate, the fate of these young people, Ye Tao’s fate too—there is no third road. But they killed Ye Tao—the Communists killed Ye Tao, and they will pay for it.”

Old Meng cut him off: “Young people, given time, even if they take a wrong turn for a while, will still find their way back to the right path eventually. It’s people like you and me who, wielding grand and righteous banners, fight and scheme against each other only for the sake of power. To kill their ideals, you go and kill the young people themselves—you kill Ye Tao. Those consumed by burning ambition, who take pleasure in cunning and scheming, will in the end be devoured by it themselves. All these years you’ve lost your wife, lost your daughter—perhaps it’s time you reflected on yourself.”

“Shut up!” Ye Qinian roared, then lowered his voice again. “A man cultivates himself in order to live well, not to seek death. You went and joined the Third Party’s activities afterward, and out of old friendship, I pulled you out of it. I thought that living here in Little Peach Spring, you’d gradually mellow, but instead you’re still just as rebellious, still working against us. You call it a hunger for power—I call it caring for the world. What’s the difference? Who makes the laws? Who commands the armies? Who is master of this land? What do you think those people are? What do you think the people outside Little Peach Spring are? Heaven and earth are without benevolence, treating all things as straw dogs. The strong show no mercy—whoever pities themselves becomes the straw dog!”

Ye Qinian grew calm again. He thought to himself that he would soon have Secretary Ma send someone to keep watch on Little Peach Spring.