The room’s lamplight remained warm, and flatbreads had been laid out over the pot; both of them ate a little.

They talked as they felt the night slip away outside. The conversation ranged widely, but largely avoided anything that might touch old wounds — Cheng Min’s “work” in the capital, for instance, or Lu Mingfang.

Tang Minjie told her about life back in Liangshan in the southwest, from the time when the Huaxia Army had just withdrawn there and news of Mr. Ning’s death had just come out. Conditions had been dire, and dealing with the various local factions around Liangshan had been fraught with tension; the Huaxia Army itself had nearly split apart from within. During that hardest of times, everyone had held on through sheer will and hatred, putting down roots in those endless mountains — clearing forest, building homes, laying roads…

“…Once you’ve been staring at the mountains of the southwest for a while, they’re actually rather interesting… At first, when we barely had enough to eat, I had no heart to look at them — just deep forests, snakes and bugs everywhere, nothing but a nuisance. But later, once we could finally breathe a little, I started liking to sit up in the watchtowers on the hills. Look out, and it’s all trees — but countless things hide within, endless variety, sunny days, rainy days… an ever-changing world. People always say the wise delight in water, the humane delight in mountains, because mountains don’t change while water does endlessly — but honestly, the mountains of the southwest change in countless ways too… And there’s plenty of fruit growing up there. Just the ones I’ve eaten…”

Cheng Min was from the Central Plains, taken north as a young girl; she’d never seen the mountains of the southwest, nor the waters of Jiangnan. This night of waiting for change stretched long, and she asked Tang Minjie all about these things. He spoke on scattershot, and she listened with real fascination, though he didn’t know whether she’d shown this same curiosity when she was with Lu Mingfang.

At times she asked about Ning Yi. “Did you ever meet that Mr. Ning?”

Tang Minjie shook his head. “Never met him.”

“You never did? What a shame,” Cheng Min said. “Once we’ve beaten the Jurchen and can go south, I’d like to go see him. He must be an extraordinary man.”

“Did Old Lu tell you about him?”

Cheng Min nodded. “He told me a few things about Mr. Ning — like how he took a handful of men and killed fifty thousand at Liangshan, the affair they call the Heart Demon. And how his martial arts were so high that just hearing his name struck fear into people across the martial world. Lately I’ve sometimes thought, if Mr. Ning were here, he probably wouldn’t be watching this situation helplessly the way we are.”

Tang Minjie smiled faintly. “When Mr. Ning went to Liangshan, he did take a few dozen men with him — but he’d already arranged for insiders beforehand. As for his martial arts…”

He paused, and when Cheng Min turned to look at him, he finally said, “…By all accounts, they really are extraordinarily high.”

“So you see,” Cheng Min said, sweeping her hand like a blade, “if Mr. Ning came here, he might just be able to strike in secret and take out those dogs one by one.” She went on, “Old Lu used to say it was a real shame Hero Zhou died the way he did — if he’d joined our side, we could have brought him north secretly and had him carry out assassinations. Half the Jin nobility would already be dead.”

Though raised in the Central Plains, Cheng Min had lived in the capital for so many years, and in her line of work, where she couldn’t afford too much pretense, her manner had grown closer to that of the northern women — she was beautiful, and when speaking bluntly she carried a certain martial vigor. Tang Minjie found himself nodding along in agreement.

By now it was past midnight; even as they talked, both remained alert to any stir outside. A few more exchanges passed, and then suddenly the night outside shook — somewhere far off, a cannon fired, the sound cutting through the low sky and rolling across the whole of the capital.

Tang Minjie and Cheng Min shot to their feet and rushed outside.

“It’s starting…”

Tang Minjie murmured, his face flushed with color. Cheng Min gripped hard onto his tattered sleeve, shaking it twice. “Something’s happening, something’s happening…”

They stood in the courtyard staring up at that black, heavy sky. The night, which had been quiet, began to stir all around them — countless lamps lighting up, people startled awake in the darkness. It was as though a stone had been dropped into a still pond, and ripples were now spreading outward.

“Wrap up what’s left of the flatbread — if the army enters the city and starts killing, there’s no telling what might happen…”

“Best case, the Eastern and Western Bureaus go straight at each other. Even if it’s a bit less than that — if Zonggan and Zongpan clash head-on, the Jin state will still be thrown into real chaos…”

“Even so, full-scale slaughter and looting across the whole capital seems unlikely. What worries me is losing control tonight… but there’s no need to run just yet…”

Tang Minjie rambled on, weighing every possibility, going back and forth between the room and the courtyard outside. Though frostbitten, he didn’t feel any cold at all in this moment. When Cheng Min finally shut the door and said, “Put your hat on before you go out again, and calm down,” his mood settled somewhat.

Still, he couldn’t help muttering, “You know, if the Eastern and Western Bureaus of the Jin state tear each other apart, our Huaxia Army’s conquest of the Jin state could be moved up by five years at least. That’s tens of thousands of lives saved — maybe hundreds of thousands. And with a cannon going off now, he can’t hold it together any longer, ha…”

He laughed, low and clipped, and in the lamplight it looked faintly unsettling. Cheng Min watched him. After a moment, Tang Minjie took a deep breath and gradually calmed down. But not long after, listening to the sounds outside, he still muttered, “It’s starting, it’s starting, let it start…”

“It should be starting,” Cheng Min said, pouring him water, echoing his words.

…

The light of hope seemed buried beneath thick clouds. It flared once, briefly — then slowly sank back into darkness.

That midnight cannon blast did stir up a small commotion within the city, and in some places, tragedy may well have occurred. But for some reason, as time went on, the unrest that should have kept growing failed to expand. By the time the hour of Chou was more than half spent, it had begun, instead, to quiet down, fading away into nothing.

Without solid intelligence, neither Tang Minjie nor Cheng Min could make sense of what had actually happened that night. The night remained still, and by the time dawn approached, nothing further had changed. At some point the curfew in the streets had been lifted; Cheng Min went out to check and confirmed only one thing for certain — the tension of the previous night had entirely dissipated.

Why had there been that cannon shot? And why, after it sounded, had the two sides poised for battle still not clashed? What had happened behind the scenes? There was no way to know for now.

“I’ll head back to the establishment to see what I can learn. With something this big happening last night, everyone will be talking about it today. If there’s anything urgent, I’ll come back here tonight — if you’re not here, I’ll leave a note. If it’s not urgent, let’s plan to meet again tomorrow morning instead… mornings are easier for me to get away.”

Cheng Min said this, then added, “Actually, if you trust me, you could stay here these next few days — it would make it easier for me to find you. The capital doesn’t watch too closely for Black Banner spies, and this place should still be safe, maybe better than wherever you’ve been secretly renting. Your hands and feet can’t take much more of the cold.”

She pulled a key from her clothes and set it on the table. Tang Minjie took it and nodded. As Cheng Min herself had pointed out earlier, if she’d truly betrayed him to the Jurchens, he would already have been captured — even among the more patient Jin agents, none would go to such lengths just to pry information out of him through a single woman.

“I’ll stay here a few days. As for your end — keep to your own pace, protect yourself, don’t draw suspicion.”

Cheng Min nodded and left.

Tang Minjie also went out into the streets to observe his surroundings. Last night’s tension had surely touched everyone in the city, but from their conversations alone, he could pick up nothing telling. After walking a while, snow began falling again, white flakes veiling everything in sight like mist. Tang Minjie knew that something momentous must be unfolding within the Jurchen ranks, but there was nothing he could do about any of it.

He could have woken another intelligence operative to go spend money in the black market gathering information, but given the current situation, that likely wouldn’t move faster than what Cheng Min could learn. Especially without an action team on hand — even with the right intelligence, he had no way to act alone to shift the larger balance of power.

This day was the twenty-second of the tenth month of the first year of Wuzhenxing, the fifteenth year of Jin’s Tianhui era. Perhaps because nothing critical had been learned, Cheng Min never came that whole night.

The next day was the twenty-third. In the early morning, Tang Minjie heard cannon fire.

This time it wasn’t the sound of conflict. A series of rhythmic cannon blasts rang out across the dawn sky like drumbeats. He pushed open the door — heavy snow was still falling outside, but a festive mood was beginning to take hold. He walked the streets of the capital for a while, and among the crowds, gradually pieced together the whole story.

The previous afternoon, following deliberation among all the clan elders of the Wanyan lineage and the various bojile chieftains in the palace, Wanyan Dan — son of Wanyan Zongjun and adopted son of Wanyan Zonggan — had finally been selected as the third emperor of the Jin state, to rule over all under heaven. The new era name would be Tianjuan.

Tang Minjie stood in the wind and snow, silently listening as the announcement was read aloud, while countless people around him cheered amid the storm. The struggle among the three princes for the throne had troubled them for so long; with Wanyan Dan’s ascension, it meant the great princes and marshals who served as the pillars of the state no longer had to fight one another, and the new emperor’s succession wouldn’t bring sweeping purges. The Jin state’s prosperity could be counted on — a shared celebration across the realm.

That night, Cheng Min still didn’t come. She finally arrived at the small courtyard on the morning of the twenty-fourth, looking exhausted, with bruises on her face from being struck. When Tang Minjie noticed, she gave a slight shake of her head.

“That pack of animals got carried away drinking last night, got a bit rough. But thanks to them, at least I’ve got the whole story now.”

Tang Minjie held out a jar of ointment; Cheng Min glanced at it and waved it off. “A woman’s face can’t use that kind of thing. I have something better.” Then she began recounting everything she’d learned.

With Wanyan Dan’s ascension, the capital had erupted in nearly a full night of raucous celebration. The group of nobles who’d gone to see Cheng Min had let slip virtually every detail of the whole inner workings of the affair, holding nothing back. Over the past half year, the entire situation in the capital had been shaped first by the late Wuqimai’s design, and then by Zonghan and Xiyin’s maneuvering behind the scenes. On the night of the twenty-second, it was Zonghan and Xiyin who had personally gone around lobbying every faction, proposing that the younger Wanyan Dan be installed as emperor to defuse the deadlock in the capital that had threatened to erupt into bloodshed at any moment.

Zonggan and Zongpan had, of course, initially refused as well — but the great nobles standing on both sides had already begun to move. What had begun as a struggle between Zonggan and Zongpan, seemingly destined to end in a great massacre no matter what, had instead been unraveled through the deep cunning of Zonghan and Gushen, who had turned the tide entirely and resolved this enormous impasse with a mere flick of the wrist. A group of young nobles, retelling the story, spoke of Zonghan and Xiyin almost as though they were gods.

At the same time, they couldn’t help but feel that if figures this formidable had still been driven back defeated in the southwestern campaign, then the Black Banner in the south really might be as terrifying as the two men described — destined, sooner or later, to become the Jin state’s greatest threat. And so a crowd of young nobles, even as they drank and celebrated in the pleasure houses, shouted loudly that they would one day defeat the Black Banner and wipe out the Han people. The “Black Banner threat theory” that Zonghan and Xiyin had promoted seemed, through all this, to have taken firm root.

“…What was that cannon that night about?” Tang Minjie asked.

“Word is Zonghan had someone fire a shot outside the city on purpose, to stir up unrest,” Cheng Min said. “Then use it to pressure everyone into compromise.”

Tang Minjie sat quietly on the stool in the room. That night, seeing the Jin state on the verge of chaos, he’d been visibly excited, barely able to contain his emotions — but now, in this moment, the look in his eyes had gone cold, countless thoughts churning behind them.

“My foe’s hero, my own enemy,” Cheng Min said, watching him. “Is there anything left to be done now?”

Tang Minjie looked back at her calmly, and it was a long while before he finally spoke, his voice somewhat dry.

“…No. Nothing.”