Night had fallen, and the distinctive chill of autumn crept up from the red earth, eroding the warmth the sun had scorched into it during the day.

Xiao Nanhui had wrapped herself in a coarse wool blanket and curled up in a chair, watching the two men before her — both utterly hopeless with their hands — launch verbal attacks at each other.

“I said long ago that this kind of concealment would never work. Now that people have come knocking at our door, I’d very much like to see what strategy you two have in mind.”

Wu Xiaoliu clutched a sheaf of papyrus paper in his hand, upon which were Hao Bai’s freshly composed, sickeningly sentimental verses from that very day. “Strategy? You have the nerve to ask us for a strategy? What exactly is written on that paper of yours? Is that a strategy?”

Hao Bai pressed down hard with his hand, nearly snapping his fan in two.

He had made it himself over the past few days using paper he’d pilfered from the village children who were making kites — though its appearance couldn’t compare to the masterworks he’d once owned, it still carried perhaps seventy or eighty percent of his former “distinguished air” when held in hand.

“Why should I be the one to produce a strategy?! What does any of this have to do with me? A perfectly ordinary house call turned into a stint in prison — has anyone bothered to ask what I think of that?!”

Wu Xiaoliu still had his coarse cloth apron tied around his belly. These days, not only did he have to attend to Xiao Nanhui’s meals and daily needs, he’d somehow ended up waiting on that painted-face quack doctor as well, and had long since been stewing in a bellyful of resentment. Now, looking at that fan, he found it even more grating than usual, and his words came out sharp as a blade.

“Those of us born into poverty can’t compare to the esteemed Master Hao — fed and pampered every day and still complaining it’s like being thrown in prison. If a real disaster ever comes, I’d wager he’d be the first one to slap his backside and run.”

The one thing Hao Bai couldn’t stand was being spoken to in that snide, backhanded manner, and he was about to unleash a full-blown tirade. “You fat oaf, how dare you talk about me like that? Do you think I don’t know where the injury on her foot came from? I took you for a decent, honest sort, but it turns out you’re rotten to the core. I’d sooner go sleep in a field with the cattle and sheep than spend another day under the same roof as you!”

Since arriving in this godforsaken place, he had erupted in a great rage every three days and a minor one every two — in barely a month’s time, he had thoroughly stamped out every last trace of the Qu family’s refined and lofty bloodline in himself.

Wu Xiaoliu was clearly only just warming up, already rolling up his sleeves and readying himself for three hundred rounds of battle. “Well, those were your own words — no time like the present. I’d ask Master Hao to kindly pack his things right now. I’ll be sure to save you the most comfortable spot in the sheep pen.”

The woman who had been picking at her foot in the corner finally lost patience.

“You two — are you quite finished? Seven or eight people show up, and you’re both scared witless. What am I supposed to count on either of you for in the future?”

The two men fell silent at once, though the quiet only lasted a moment.

Hao Bai, for reasons known only to himself, turned his fire on her. “They were just surveying the territory — at most they’ll take some of your food. Give it to them and be done with it. Why did you go and let them stay in the village? You’ve brought this on yourself.”

Xiao Nanhui gave him a lazy, dismissive glance. “What do you know? This village has changed hands. They won’t go back without getting to the bottom of it. If you rush them away, isn’t that as good as announcing to the whole world that something’s wrong here?”

Wu Xiaoliu still looked reluctant. “Even so, they won’t let this go so easily. Now that they’ve seen we’re accommodating, we’ll only have more trouble from them down the road.”

“Then we put up with it.” She shifted her position, dangling herself upside down over the side of the bed and performing some strange sort of inverted sit-up. “You two need to get more exercise. If something goes wrong later, no one will be able to look out for anyone else. Staying alive is a matter of luck; getting away is a matter of skill. You two should at least be able to run ten miles — only then can I rest easy.”

Hao Bai thought of these endless, uncertain days filled with fear and dread, and his face darkened like the bottom of a pot.

“A complete waste of breath, talking to you — like playing music to a cow!”

With that, he shook his sleeves out in fury and stormed off. His paper fan tore a hole from the force of it, but he paid it no mind and slammed the door behind him as he marched away.

Xiao Nanhui sighed inwardly, though her expression remained unchanged. She turned her attention to picking at the bandaged wrappings on her foot.

The itching on her foot had been quite bad these past few days — she took it as a sign that it was nearly healed, and decided she might as well unwrap it today and have a look.

She had only gotten halfway through when the fat man apparently decided this had nothing to do with him and turned to leave as well.

“Xiaoliu.”

Wu Xiaoliu’s whole body gave a start.

This woman rarely called him by name — usually it was just a shout here and a holler there. The moment she used his name, it couldn’t be anything good.

“Stay a moment. I have something to ask you.”

Hao Bai glanced at Wu Xiaoliu with something unmistakably gleeful in his expression, then strolled out through the door unburdened, and with considerable depravity, pulled it shut behind him.

Silence settled over the room. Xiao Nanhui rose from her chair, and the remaining strips of white cloth scattered on the floor — she kicked them aside.

The wound on her foot was nearly healed, though she still had a slight limp. When no one was around, she had already given up on the crutches.

In this, she had to admit she was quite satisfied with Hao Bai’s skills as a barefoot doctor.

She reached up and trimmed the lamp wick. The oil lamp, which had been about to go out, brightened again, casting shifting light and shadow across her face.

Wu Xiaoliu stood by the door, watching her from the corner of his eye, and suddenly felt that perhaps the months of wind and sand had worn away some of her sharp edges — her brow and gaze seemed far more resolute and keen than when she had first arrived at Suyan.

She seemed to sense his look, and the next instant her eyes were on him.

“You and I met in the midst of danger and have supported each other to get this far. I already know your identity — and can you honestly say you’re not curious about mine?”

Wu Xiaoliu shook his head so fast it was like a rattle drum. “Not curious at all, not at all.”

Xiao Nanhui leaned in close to that round face, close enough to bore two holes in it. “Truly?”

Wu Xiaoliu’s calves began to tremble again, quite beyond his control. “Truly, truly.”

What sins had he committed, he wondered, to deserve this? Just when things had been going so smoothly, one night had brought them right back to the way things were when they’d first met.

The woman stepped back and nodded with satisfaction. “Good. Then since you yourself have no wish to know, you can hardly say I’ve been less than honest with you.”

Wu Xiaoliu quietly inched half a step toward the door. “It’s getting late — why don’t we talk tomorrow—”

Without so much as lifting her eyelids, the woman suddenly spoke. “The night we first took shelter at the Sun family’s residence, I asked you a question. Do you remember?”

Wu Xiaoliu’s restless foot froze in place. He said nothing, but his silence was all the confirmation needed.

“I asked you whether you had ever heard of a group of people — people with identical faces, who killed using wire.”

Xiao Nanhui’s words struck Wu Xiaoliu like a hammer blow to the chest. There was nowhere left to hide whatever his face was doing.

“You can’t pretend to be asleep this time. If your skin is thick enough, you’re welcome to try playing dead.”

This wasn’t a matter of thick skin. This was a matter of nerve.

Wu Xiaoliu collapsed back into a chair with a thud, head bowed, not daring to meet her eyes. “I know you’re someone with a serious background. But those people — you’d do better not to cross their path.”

“What if I already have?”

He looked up with those small mung-bean eyes, wide with shock, and looked her up and down. “Then how are you still alive — still in one piece?”

Well, she was in one piece — after all, between herself, Bolao, and that fellow surnamed Ding, it would be hard to find anyone in the whole martial world capable of leaving them short a limb.

But it hadn’t exactly gone well either.

She thought back to that wretched scene at the Xiong family’s old residence in Huozhou, and almost felt like laughing — the curve just barely reached her lips before it fell away again. “So you did know something all along. Why didn’t you say so when I asked before?!”

Wu Xiaoliu showed that timid, aggrieved expression of his once more. “It’s an unlucky subject, and you didn’t press me for an answer—”

Xiao Nanhui had no patience for that cowering look of his. She picked up the teapot and poured two cups. “So it’s my fault now, is it? As it happens, there’s time today — we’ll make up for the last conversation and this one all at once. Tell me everything you know, and don’t leave out a single word.”

Wu Xiaoliu let out a long sigh and drained his teacup in one go.

“I was born in Hat Town, thirty miles south of Wancheng. In better days, the town had a few hundred households. As far back as I can remember, I used to go into the hills with the other children looking for food—”

“Surely you’re not planning to go from when you were three or four years old all the way to the present?”

“Wasn’t it you who said not to leave out a single word?”

“Get to the point.”

“The people you mentioned — they came to town when I was small. They took many children away. I nearly got taken too.”

Xiao Nanhui’s eyes finally lit up, and she leaned forward. “They were abducting children? How old? Did any of them make it back?”

“Half-grown children — mostly around seven or eight. I was always bigger than other children my age, so at five or six I already looked seven or eight. Except for me, none of the other children ever came back to town. I was the only one. But most of those who were taken had no parents to miss them anyway, so no one would have asked questions.”

“And how did you escape?”

Wu Xiaoliu shifted uncomfortably. Xiao Nanhui brought her palm down hard on the table — the teapot, both teacups, and a candlestick all leaped a few inches off the surface before crashing back down. Wu Xiaoliu blurted out at once: “I — I think I — I think I wet myself, and they found it disgusting, so they threw me away.”

Xiao Nanhui’s mouth twitched.

The people in that organization were unsavory in every respect, and yet they apparently had a thing about cleanliness.

“While you were with them, do you remember anything they said or did?”

Wu Xiaoliu’s body didn’t tremble, but his eyes revealed genuine terror. “I was so young, and so frightened — all I remember is… there were so many wild dogs, raving and frenzied, and there were thorned brambles, and red-hot branding irons—”

She lowered her eyes, concealing the complicated emotions beneath. “All right, that’s enough.”

She thought she probably understood now how those people had come by their disfigured faces.

The candleflame flickered and dimmed. She made no move to tend to it. Instead, she found herself doing something entirely out of character — pressing a few dried jujubes into Wu Xiaoliu’s hand.

Wu Xiaoliu chewed, and gradually his thoughts settled.

A few autumn insects circled the flame, their wings making soft, fluttering sounds that set the teeth on edge.

After a long silence, Xiao Nanhui spoke again. “You said this happened when you were young — meaning those people never appeared again after that?”

“A few years after it happened, I left Hat Town. But in all my years of wandering through the western reaches, I never heard word of them again.”

“Did those people have a name? Any kind of title?”

Wu Xiaoliu shook his head. “They didn’t even want their faces recognized — why would they have a name? But in my home region, everyone called them Pu Huna.”

Xiao Nanhui frowned. “Pu Huna — what does that mean?”

“I only ever heard it from the elders. They said that long ago, when those people first began operating in the Jizhou region, a monk from the south tried to convert them to compassion. He was killed for it. His dying words were only three — Pu Huna — and the villagers couldn’t make sense of them, only passed them down by word of mouth. After that, whenever those people were spoken of, people would say: Pu Huna is coming.”

A gust of night wind lifted the cloth curtain from the window, and the candle on the table finally dissolved into a wisp of pale smoke and went dark.

Pu Huna.

Xiao Nanhui flexed her ten newly liberated toes and silently mouthed those three syllables into the darkness.

Who, in the end, were they?