It was past the hour of chou, the night at its very darkest, and the smell of flame near the Wenhan Institute had been mostly suppressed — but rows of lanterns and torches still gathered around the site, layer upon layer, lending the surrounding air a grim, forbidding weight.

The palace guards had already established a tight defensive perimeter along the courtyard walls. Cheng Zhouhai and his deputy stepped down from their carriage and made contact with Tie Tianying, who had arrived just ahead of them.

“…Now that the fire’s mostly out, have every office’s men stand by exactly where they are — no one moves without orders… Your palace guards hold the inner perimeter, I’ll send men to watch the surrounding area. Anyone acting suspiciously, anyone poking around asking questions, we note them all down, and once today is over, we pay them each a visit, one household at a time…”

“…His Majesty will be arriving shortly.”

“…Good.” Cheng Zhouhai nodded. “How are the casualties?”

Tie Tianying glanced at his deputy standing beside him. “Very heavy.”

“Good.” Cheng Zhouhai nodded again, then waved his deputy off. “Go on, keep watch outside. Report back if there’s any news.”

“Yes, sir.” The deputy took his leave.

Before long, a procession of carriages escorted by guards arrived from the north and entered through the side gate outside the Wenhan Institute. Junwu, a long sword at his waist, stepped down from the carriage, followed by Zhou Pei. They sniffed at the smoke-laden air, then, with Tie Tianying and Cheng Zhouhai in attendance, walked into the courtyard.

The Wenhan Institute, made up of three multi-story buildings in all, had lost one building entirely to the fire, and the main building too had burned through most of its structure. With the water-carrying carts having arrived in large numbers, the air was thick with the acrid smell of half-burned wood, mixed faintly with the scent of blood. Li Pin, who didn’t live far away and consulted with Zuo Wenhuai and the others daily, had already arrived and came out to greet them, bowing before Junwu and Zhou Pei.

“How are Minister Zuo and the others — any casualties?” Junwu asked first.

“Your Majesty, Your Highness, please follow me.”

As Li Pin led them toward the third building, still largely intact, they began to see the figures of several young men along the way — some of them still moving about inside the rooms of the burned-out main building, doing something that wasn’t immediately clear.

“Zuo Wenhuai, Xiao Jingyi — are they both alright?” Junwu asked along the way, holding his curiosity in check and not rushing over to inspect the charred building himself. Li Pin nodded and said quietly, “They’re fine. The fighting was fierce, but Zuo and Xiao had both prepared for this. A few were wounded, but fortunately nothing serious happened — no one died. Only two who were seriously injured are still uncertain for now.”

Hearing this, Junwu let out a breath of relief. Looking again at the burned-out building and a half, he then turned aside. “What are they doing in there?”

“During the fighting, several of the bandits rushed into a room in the building, trying to make a last stand. Our men surrounded the room and called for their surrender, but their resistance was too fierce, so… they threw in a few bombs brought from the southwest. What’s left inside now is a mess of shattered bodies. They… went in to look for clues. But the scene is quite gruesome — it isn’t fitting for Your Majesty to go and look.”

“I won’t look.” Junwu gazed at the ruined room, his brow relaxing as he answered quietly, then added, “Truly loyal men of the realm.”

Blowing people to pieces with a bomb was hardly the usual standard for judging someone a “loyal man of the realm” — but seeing the Emperor’s evident delight at this display of ruthlessness, naturally no one raised any objection. After all, ever since his ascension, the Emperor’s whole journey had been one of flight, hardship, and desperate combat, and this particular scene — being targeted by bandits for assassination, only to lure them in and blow them to pieces inside a building — was exactly to his taste.

Good men ought to behave this way, after all!

“Was any of the material brought from the southwest damaged?” Only now, looking over the scorched traces, did he think to ask this.

“The very first thing we did upon arriving in Fuzhou was organize, copy, and back up all these books and materials. So even with what happened tonight, none of the materials were damaged. Ah — as for the fire Your Majesty sees here, we actually let it burn on purpose, afterward…”

“Why is that?”

“Your Majesty wants to accomplish great things, and taking a small loss first serves as a pretext — whether we use it or not, it’s only these two buildings after all. Besides, the moment Lord Tie arrived, he sealed off the inner perimeter completely, and the courtyard was locked down tight. To the outside world, we’re saying tonight’s losses were severe, with many dead, which is why things outside seem a bit chaotic right now…”

“Well done.”

Junwu couldn’t help but offer his praise.

The group had by now reached the front of the intact wooden building, and along the way Junwu had observed a few things. Though the defenses around the courtyard’s outer and inner perimeters were handled by the palace guards, it was clear that the cleanup and investigation of each site of fighting were being managed by this team from the Huaxia Army.

This was hardly ordinary. In theory, Tie Tianying should have been the one handling this firsthand information — the fact that he’d been shut out suggested some kind of disagreement, or even conflict, must have occurred between the two sides. But faced with Zuo Wenhuai and his men, who had just come through a round of killing, Tie Tianying had ultimately chosen not to force the issue.

What this revealed was the true dominance of this forty-some-strong team from the southwest — utterly unlike the respectful, even bashful demeanor Zuo Wenhuai had shown up until now. To anyone holding real power, this was, of course, a troubling sign. But to Junwu, who had long wondered and fantasized about just what kind of formidable force the Huaxia Army truly was, it suddenly clarified a great deal.

Of course — without this kind of bearing, how could his teacher have so thoroughly crushed Zonghan and Xiyin, opponents even more formidable than the Jurchens’ eastern route army, there in the southwest?

As a young Emperor in his early thirties, full of youthful vigor, he had spent countless hours struggling in the shadow of defeat and death, and had fantasized endlessly about just what kind of iron-blooded atmosphere must exist within the Huaxia Army’s ranks in the southwest. When the Huaxia Army had finally defeated Zonghan and Xiyin, thinking of the long string of defeats and the slaughter of the Wu dynasty’s people, he had felt nothing but shame — and had even once said something to the effect of, “A real man ought to be like this.”

Zuo Wenhuai had been placed in the southwest by the Zuo family for grooming, and after arriving in Fuzhou, though candid in his audiences before the throne, he had also come across as somewhat bashful and overly refined — still not quite matching the Huaxia Army Junwu had imagined. He had even felt a touch of disappointment over it at one point, wondering if perhaps the southwest, mindful of how many scholarly types there were in Fuzhou, had deliberately sent over some smooth, worldly military clerks instead. Of course, having useful people was a good thing regardless, and he hadn’t complained about it.

But now, at this very moment, the blade had finally been revealed beneath the map, laid bare before him.

This was exactly how it ought to be!

Walking up to the front of the two-story building, the young Huaxia Army members nearby bowed to him. He reached out with both hands to help up one of them, whose body was still stained with blood, and asked after Zuo Wenhuai’s whereabouts. Learning that Zuo Wenhuai was currently inspecting the bandits’ corpses and someone was about to go call him out, Junwu waved a hand. “No need — I’ll go take a look myself, whatever it is!”

The place where the bandits’ bodies were currently laid out was on the left side of the first floor. Before they’d even reached it, Zuo Wenhuai and the others, hearing that the Emperor had arrived, came out to greet him, bowing. Junwu exchanged a few words with them, then, smiling, headed straight into the room.

“Your Majesty, in there…”

Zuo Wenhuai tried to dissuade him as well, but Junwu said, “It’s fine. I’ve seen dead bodies before.” He particularly relished this feeling of decisive, no-nonsense action.

The room was fairly large, but the smell of blood inside was thick. The bodies had been laid out in three rows, some twenty-odd in all — some on the floor, some laid across tables. Perhaps because word had come that the Emperor was on his way, a few of the bodies on the tables had been hastily covered with a sheet of cloth. Junwu pulled back the cloth on the table to find the bodies beneath already stripped of their clothing, lying there bare, some of the wounds looking especially raw and gruesome.

“…We’ve examined them. Most of these bodies have very dark, weathered skin, and calluses on their hands and feet — from their build, they look like men who’ve spent years at sea. During the fighting we also noticed that some of them moved with agile footwork, but their stances were strange, more like something practiced aboard ship… We cut open the stomachs of a few of them, but haven’t found any particularly obvious clues yet. Of course, having only just arrived, there may be signs we’re missing — we’ll need the coroner to examine them properly…”

Cutting open stomachs… Junwu, putting on a show of examining the grisly corpses, nodded repeatedly. “Has the coroner arrived?”

“…Since we don’t yet know who’s behind this, we discussed it with Minister Li and agreed it was best not to let outsiders in for the time being, so…”

“Quite right. How was the bandits’ skill in combat?”

“All quite capable. If it had come down to a fair one-on-one fight, the outcome would have been uncertain.”

“Then why were our own casualties so light?… Of course, that’s a good thing — I’m just a little curious.”

“Reporting to Your Majesty — fighting in formation on a battlefield is, after all, quite different from a duel picked in the streets. Here at the Wenhan Institute, the outer perimeter was guarded by troops, but we had already carefully planned out beforehand what methods might be used if someone tried to take this place, and had a few contingencies ready. When the bandits arrived, our hidden sentries spotted them first, and we quickly organized a few men to patrol with lanterns, deliberately guiding them toward a certain spot. By the time they got inside and tried to fight back, it was already too late… Still, these men were quite resolute, fighting to the death without fear. We only managed to capture two seriously wounded, whom we’ve since bandaged and will hand over to Lord Tie shortly…”

“Mm, I see…” Junwu nodded, listening with evident interest, then his expression turned grave. “Men with this kind of resolve are likely private retainers kept by some great clan. Search carefully, and it should be possible to trace them.”

“Judging by how these men infiltrated, they were quite familiar with the guard rotations around the perimeter — they timed it precisely to a shift change, slipping in without alerting anyone, which suggests whoever sent them has deep connections here in Fuzhou. Beyond that, we’ve been here less than a month and haven’t actually begun any real work yet — we don’t know who would go to such lengths to try and eliminate us… These matters, for now, remain unclear…”

Junwu, however, smiled. “These things can be looked into slowly. The decision you and Minister Li made on the spot was a good one — sealing off the news, deliberately letting the building burn, showing weakness to the enemy. Once word gets out about your losses, I expect those with guilty consciences will eventually show themselves. Don’t worry — I will see to it that you’re avenged for tonight. Now, where are the wounded? Take me to see them first. And you can let the imperial physicians in — after treating their wounds, keep them under close guard, and make absolutely sure not a word of this leaks out.”

The group then went to look in on several of the wounded in another part of the building. Junwu reflected aloud, “Truth be told, since arriving in Fuzhou, there have been a few earlier attempts on my own life, but with the main army stationed nearby and Lord Tie’s diligent protection, few in the city have dared to attempt outright assassination. You’ve only just arrived in Fuzhou, and already you’ve run into something like this — that’s my own oversight. These snakes turning on their own house, if they truly cared this much about the greater cause of our Wu dynasty, they were nowhere to be seen when it came to fighting the Jurchens—”

He cursed sharply.

This team from the southwest had, after all, not yet begun taking part in any large-scale reforms. In everyone’s first round of speculation, the most likely suspects were still those old Confucian scholars who had never let go of their grudge over the killing of the previous Emperor. To mobilize dozens of men for an assassination of this scale was truly no small undertaking. Had Zuo Wenhuai and the others let their guard down even slightly upon arriving in Fuzhou, it might well have been their own people lying dead on the ground floor tonight instead.

But looking at the bloodstains on these young men, and the wire-mesh armor worn carefully beneath their outer clothes, Junwu understood — these young people’s vigilance toward this kind of danger was far more serious than that of anyone else in Fuzhou.

Under ordinary circumstances, this might have suggested a lack of trust in their own side. But right now, it had, in fact, proven their judgment entirely correct.

“I owe you an apology,” Junwu said. “But I also promise you — something like this will not happen again.”

“There’s no need for that, Your Majesty,” Zuo Wenhuai said, bowing his head, then paused briefly. “In truth… if I may say something rather bold — before we set out, Master Ning in the southwest warned us that wherever interests are entangled, internal struggles are often more dangerous than external ones, because so often we won’t even know where the enemy is coming from. Since Your Majesty is committed to sweeping reform, we are simply your foot soldiers. Foot soldiers do not shy from blade or arrow — Your Majesty need not treat us so delicately.”

Junwu looked at him, silent for a long while, and then let out one long, long breath. In that moment he suddenly recalled a meeting he’d had with a member of the Huaxia Army before his coronation in Jiangning — the first time he had come face to face with one of the Huaxia Army’s operatives, at a time when the city was under siege and supplies were desperately short. He had asked the man whether there was enough food. The man had answered: there’s enough, because there aren’t many people left to feed…

Now, looking at Zuo Wenhuai before him, that figure from the past seemed, faintly, to overlap with the man standing here…

This — this was the Huaxia Army.

This was truly the Huaxia Army!

If, back then, the soldiers around him had all been like this, how could the mere Jurchens have run so rampant, slaughtering their way across Jiangnan…

He nodded.

The group then discussed for a while longer how to mislead the outside world going forward and how to track down whoever was behind tonight’s attack. By the time they left the room, the Huaxia Army members had already begun handing over some of the wounded to Tie Tianying’s guards — their bodies streaked with blood, and even those still able to walk on their own looked severely wounded, a rather pitiful sight. But beneath that pitiful surface, these survivors of the killing fields against the Jurchens had already begun, in this unfamiliar place, to take up the challenge posed by unfamiliar men who considered themselves the local powers that be…

Dawn had not yet broken. Stars still glimmered in the night sky, the smell of the fire still lingering in the air, and the night remained restless and uneasy. Wave after wave of new forces were about to reveal themselves…