Wind blew through the leaves, setting off the faint, intermittent chime of wind bells. The afternoon sun had lost the fierce heat of its peak, filtering through the gaps in the trees and falling beneath the eaves.
The window stood open, letting sunlight spill into the room, illuminating its furnishings — a bed, a square table, a wardrobe, chairs… Ning Yi stood by the wooden stand near the window where the washbasin sat, wringing out a towel to wipe away his sweat.
“…So, there’s a girl, her name is Xi’er, black-haired, of course…”
Bare-chested, Ning Yi stood there recounting his story idea to the person in the room. Sunlight fell across his body, revealing scars here and there, but long years of training kept any sign of aging at bay. Not yet forty, his solid frame still carried explosive power; many outside regarded him as a martial grandmaster on par with Zhou Tong or Lin Zongwu, and his long years in high office had also given him a composure far beyond the ordinary man — in any setting, more than enough to bear down on his enemies with overwhelming presence.
Except in front of his own family, where he occasionally let slip some rather absurd sides of himself… And nearly a year after their relationship had deepened, Shishi had by now grown accustomed to some of his stranger, more absurd notions. Like this story he was telling now, called “The White-Haired Girl,” which clearly carried some rather unhinged ideas woven through it.
“Can I meet her?” Shishi asked.
Ning Yi blinked. “…Huh? What?”
“You kept emphasizing her name is Xi’er — it sounds like she’s a real person…”
“…There’s no real person. This is just the story outline.”
“So you’re saying the name could be anything…”
“Er—” Ning Yi, his physique still quite imposing, stood there with his hands on his hips, tilting his head to think. “…True enough, call her whatever. But, just as an example, let’s call her Xi’er. Don’t go messing with it.”
“You’re telling me a story, of course I’m going to listen closely…” The woman, wearing only a stomacher, sat up from the bed, hugging her knees, murmuring softly, though there was clearly amusement in her eyes.
“Xi’er and her father depend on each other for survival. After the Jurchens left, they settled down in Dai Mengwei’s territory. But there wasn’t enough food there — they were on the verge of starving. The local village head, the gentry, the elders, and the troops all colluded together in business, and came up with a way out for these people: sell them to work in our Huaxia Army’s territory…”
As he spoke, he wrung out the towel and handed it over to Shishi at the bedside.
“…At this point, I think — we can find some way to show just how wicked Dai Mengwei’s people are. They lure people into signing thirty-year contracts for a pittance. Xi’er and her father, having been driven to the end of their rope, originally only intended to sell one person — naturally the father volunteered himself. But the money for that alone wasn’t much, and an old man wasn’t worth as much, while Xi’er was pretty… no wait, not pretty — she was sturdy, built like an ox, could work harder than most men. So the local gentry forced father and daughter to sell themselves both…”
Ning Yi paused here, frowning slightly, and walked aside to pour water. Shishi considered this for a moment.
“That doesn’t quite work,” she said. “A lot of the people under Dai Mengwei were driven in from elsewhere — even the locals had mostly had their households wiped out already at the start. Father and daughter relying on each other makes sense so far, but once it comes to leaving, there shouldn’t be much attachment to homeland holding them back. If the father can sell himself for so little money, leaving the daughter behind would mean she’d likely just follow along anyway… If you want to show how wicked the local gentry are, you’ll need to think of something else for this part…”
“…I thought something felt off too.” Ning Yi scratched his head, then waved a hand. “But anyway, that’s roughly the idea — because Dai Mengwei and his people are so wicked, Xi’er and her father are forced to sell themselves off to us here in the southwest. And the southwest… well, the factory owners here are wicked too — signing thirty-year contracts, paying no wages, working them day and night, restricting them in all sorts of ways — like docking their pay, which was already meager, and docking even more for the slightest mistake…”
“It’s not just that,” Shishi said, getting up from the bed in her silk trousers. Ning Yi watched her, riffing along. “This factory owner also keeps hired thugs — the kind of enforcer character who’s always the villain in every story. They don’t let the indentured workers wander off, afraid they’ll run away. Anyone who runs gets dragged back and beaten, strung up in the courtyard and whipped — and privately, surely someone’s been beaten to death before.”
“And there should be dogs too — since he’s got thugs, of course he’d keep vicious dogs as well. Anyone who dares run doesn’t just get chased by people, the dogs chase too, biting them half to death. And to really drive home how thoroughly evil these people are, the dogs eat better than the people — like, Xi’er and her father just get gruel, while the dogs get meat buns.”
Shishi, listening to all this, walked to the stand and wrung out the towel, laughing softly. “If we’ve got factories like that in the southwest, doesn’t that make it your fault? Are you trying to say Dai Mengwei’s side is evil, or that our own Huaxia Army is evil?”
“Either way, roughly get the gist of it,” Ning Yi said, waving his hand in the air. “Whether Dai’s evil isn’t really the point, and the Huaxia Army being evil isn’t the point either. Anyway — Xi’er and her father have a miserable time, sold off, worked to the bone with no pay, oppressed in every way. Less than a year in, her father dies. They’d only been paid a tiny bit; with New Year’s coming, girls in the streets were all dressed up beautifully, so her father secretly went out and bought her a red hair ribbon as a New Year’s gift. On his way back, the vicious thugs and dogs caught him, beat him half to death, and he died before the New Year arrived…”
The mood in the room grew a bit heavier at this point, though without any real foundation behind the story, Shishi simply listened quietly.
“So Xi’er, after her father’s death, gets exploited even further — working day and night, exhausted, heartbroken — and after a year her hair turns completely white, hence ‘The White-Haired Girl.’ Then finally they can’t take it anymore — the factory erupts in rebellion, they… rush out, seize the owner, scatter the thugs, kill all the dogs, march into the streets to tell the world this is wrong — and our Huaxia Army shuts the factory down… Anyway, I’ve even got the theme song worked out. North wind blowing, snowflakes drifting, snow drifting down, New Year’s coming… hoo hoo hoo hoo…”
By the latter half of the story, it had clearly devolved into pure nonsense; Ning Yi rattled it off quickly, singing a few lines with a perfectly straight face, until he couldn’t help himself any longer and sat down in the chair facing the door, covering his mouth, laughing. Shishi came over, laughing too, though a thoughtful expression had settled clearly on her face.
“Why write a story like this?” Ning Yi often expressed things in ways that struck others as odd, with a peculiar sense of humor, but he generally didn’t do anything without purpose. Shishi mulled over the elements of the story. “I’ve heard people talking about Dai Mengwei’s situation lately — that they can’t feed everyone, and are secretly selling people over here. And on our side, there are definitely people quietly taking advantage of it too. Like General Li Rulai… though I probably shouldn’t be saying this…”
“Nothing wrong with talking about Li Rulai.” Ning Yi sat there, smiling calmly as he answered. “After last year’s great war ended, as a general who’d surrendered to us, he kept trying to bring the old Wu Dynasty ways over here — first secretly networking and gathering information, hoping to land himself a good command position. When that didn’t seem likely, he started spreading word that the Huaxia Army ought to remember the value of loyalty and reward past service, hoping to buy himself favor. I warned him to drop the old habits, learn to follow orders, wait for assignments, and not scheme for personal gain… He must have thought I was dead set against ever giving him troops again, because once Chengdu opened up to outside investment, he wasted no time and started making money hand over fist.”
“I heard about this — Yu Hezhong mentioned General Li to me, said he was following the old practice of ancient generals deliberately tarnishing their own reputation…”
“Old Yu still hasn’t made much progress.” Ning Yi sighed. “Ancient generals tarnished their own reputations because their achievements threatened to overshadow their ruler, so they signaled upward, ‘I only want money.’ What could Li Rulai possibly do? If I handed all his troops back to him and set up a battle formation, I could defeat him with a single charge. At first he hadn’t shaken his old habits, scheming in private — but later, once he realized the Huaxia Army operated differently, he settled for the next best thing, wanting to signal to me that he didn’t want military authority, just money. He sees it as a fair exchange for his service…”
He shook his head at this point and dropped the subject of Li Rulai. Shishi didn’t press further either, coming over to gently rub his temples. Outside, the wind blew past, the light of approaching dusk shifting and crossing, the sound of wind chimes and rustling leaves lingering for a moment.
“Are you… worried our own factories will turn out like that… or has one already?”
Shishi considered her words carefully before asking.
Ning Yi closed his eyes. “Not yet, for now. But within two or three years, it probably will happen.”
“It’ll really get that bad? There’s no way to stop it?”
“If we let it develop naturally, it might take twenty or thirty years — or even, with good containment, fifty years before this kind of thing reaches any real scale. We’ve only just started developing this, and we don’t yet have enough accumulated technical foundation for large-scale rollout…” Feeling Shishi’s fingers pressing gently at his temples, Ning Yi spoke softly. “But I’m going to arrange for it to happen sooner…”
Shishi frowned, silently chewing over the implication of his words.
Ning Yi murmured on. “Within two to three years, some of the factories around Chengdu will develop this way — the workers will be exploited, some will die, and resentment will build up in their hearts… But overall, these people went through separation, death, famine, and worse just two years ago — being able to come to the southwest and eat a full meal already satisfies them. Two or three years isn’t enough time for their resentment to build up sufficiently. By then, you all need to be ready — have stories like ‘The White-Haired Girl’ prepared, ones that can criticize Dai Mengwei, criticize the southwest itself if needed — the important thing is to make clear that contracts treating people like beasts of burden for thirty years are wrong, that the people under Huaxia Army rule have certain basic rights, which need to be rooted in the highest law. Then, building on that shared understanding, we can start amending some of these unreasonable absolute contracts…”
“…At that point we’ll have some people take to the streets. Those workers — even if their resentment isn’t quite strong enough yet — once properly stirred up, will still respond. From top to bottom, we’ll establish this channel of communication, let the people understand that their opinions can be heard, will be taken seriously, and will lead to change. Once that channel of communication opens, we can gradually adjust things going forward…”
Shishi thought about it. “If people really get a taste of success from this, I imagine some bad things will follow too — there are always a few muddled troublemakers who don’t know when to stop…”
“Rioters get executed, and the ringleaders get flagged for watching too — causing trouble for no reason isn’t worth entertaining,” Ning Yi answered calmly. “Overall, the symbolic significance of this matters more than the practical significance. But that symbolic significance still needs to exist. Compared to us simply recognizing a problem and having some just official set things right on their behalf, it’s far more valuable for them to fight for it themselves and see it pay off — that kind of symbolism benefits them more, and might even make it into the history books someday.”
Shishi gently massaged his head, falling silent for a moment. “I have a thought…”
“Mm.”
“If… if, as you said just now, we’ve already foreseen this happening, and we could take measures to keep it from becoming a real concern for twenty, thirty, even fifty or a hundred years — that’s possible too, isn’t it? So why deliberately bring it forward? Two or three years, if you’re going to force people into rebellion, force their hair to turn white — some people will die. And even if people die, the symbolic significance still outweighs the practical significance. If they succeed in taking to the streets, it’s because of you — someday, with a different person in charge, they take to the streets again and it doesn’t work, and they’ll be bleeding all over again…”
“Success in taking to the streets isn’t about proving that taking to the streets truly works — it’s about telling them there’s a path here, that they have the right to fight for themselves,” Ning Yi said, eyes closed. “Same principle as before — society at its core runs on survival of the fittest. Every dynasty throughout history, every so-called social reform, has really just been one interest group defeating another. Maybe some people within the new interest group are more conscientious, but once a group forms, it will always seek to extract benefit for itself — and whatever benefit it extracts, it divides among its own members, not with the common people… Fundamentally, since the new group was able to defeat the old one, that proves the new group is stronger, which means it will inevitably claim a larger share for itself. So those at the top always want more, and the common people are left with less and less. No dynasty survives two or three hundred years under that pattern…”
“The meaning of democracy lies in this: people capable of discernment can recognize who genuinely serves their interests, and they’ll lend their strength upward to support the good ones. Once ordinary people are folded into the interest group, when the division of benefits happens again, the common people won’t be entirely excluded. Ordinary people capable of taking responsibility for themselves actively join the interest group and claim what’s rightfully theirs… To put it plainly, it’s still survival of the fittest — but this way, the two-or-three-hundred-year cycle of order collapsing into chaos might just be broken.”
“In its early stages, democracy has no practical effect at all,” Ning Yi opened his eyes and sighed. “Even if we taught everyone to read and write, only a small number would ever develop into people capable of taking responsibility for themselves. Most people think simply, are easily deceived, lack a complete worldview, and have no rational logic of their own — letting them participate in decision-making would be a disaster…”
“But regardless, this process has its own necessary trajectory. When people don’t even have the concept of rights in their heads, showing them through some event is progress. When they remain silently afraid to speak up as a group, getting them to speak up is progress. When they start speaking up — even babbling nonsense — teaching them to speak rationally is progress… Only once these increments of progress accumulate to a certain point, once democracy’s overall efficiency exceeds that of a small elite, can that cycle of order and chaos truly be broken.”
“Right now they don’t yet know that taking to the streets works. So give them something symbolic. Someday, when I’m gone, if they find that taking to the streets no longer works, at least they’ll understand — that relying on themselves is the only real path forward…”
He murmured on, rambling. Only in front of family did he ever ramble like this — these murmurings carried a certain restless, even fierce edge, something he’d only begun showing in front of her over this past year. She could only do her best to help him relax his mind.
At this point she smiled. “Actually, we’ve all been saying lately — if natural philosophy keeps developing, by the time we’ve unified the realm, we really should be able to get every child under heaven into school. The reasonable, understanding people you’re picturing should emerge quite soon — and then it really will be the Great Harmony Confucius spoke of. You really should be happier about it.”
“I’m not exactly unhappy…” Ning Yi laughed. “…Oh, right, let’s talk about something more fun. I thought of something recently.”
“Mm?”
“When I was very young, one day I was playing at a friend’s house…”
“Back in Jiangning? Who was it? Do I know them?”
“Don’t interrupt,” Ning Yi laughed. “That day I played at their house until noon, having so much fun I didn’t go home. The friend’s parents fed me lunch… When I got back home that afternoon, my father beat me.”
“…”
“My father told me I shouldn’t have stayed at someone else’s house until midday. Why? Because their family wasn’t well-off either — they might not have had the means to feed me, and if I didn’t leave, it was a real breach of manners.”
He paused here. Shishi thought about it. “Some rural households really do say that — though back in Jiangning… hmm, your family really wasn’t well-off at the time…”
“Listen to what I’m saying. From that incident I learned that not troubling others was a kind of upbringing, and good upbringing meant doing the right thing. Of course, once the family’s circumstances improved, that particular rule gradually disappeared. Well, you can just say that after I married into money, everyone I dealt with after that was wealthy.”
Ning Yi waved his hand with a laugh.
“People, in the course of living, come to conclude certain things are right and certain things are wrong — what’s the underlying nature of that? Really it comes down to keeping your own life from falling into chaos. When resources are scarce, when material goods aren’t abundant, when natural philosophy hasn’t developed far — these rights and wrongs matter enormously. One small misstep, one moment of carelessness, and you might not eat. In times like that you desperately need the help of knowledge, the guidance of the wise, because the experience they’ve accumulated matters enormously to you.”
“…Once natural philosophy starts developing, once everyone can go to school, once food and goods become abundant, what happens? At first, people will still respect this knowledge. But as the surrounding knowledge keeps growing, once it reaches a certain threshold, their first tier of survival needs gets satisfied, and the authority of knowledge will gradually decline. Right and wrong stop mapping so strictly onto their daily lives. Like — even if you don’t go out and farm today, even if you slack off a bit, you can still get by…”
“How could that be!” Shishi’s eyes went wide.
“It really could happen,” Ning Yi said. “If the fertilizers we’re researching become powerful enough, one person farming could feed ten, and the rest could just lie around, or go do other things — and even without working that hard, they could still survive. Of course, what I’m really talking about here is people’s attitude toward knowledge. Once they’ve satisfied that first layer of need, they’ll gradually shift from pursuing what’s correct to pursuing recognition and belonging.”
“…” Shishi looked at him.
“In the past, you’d go ask some teacher, some great scholar, how to live rightly. He’d tell you some principle, you’d follow it, your life would improve, and you’d feel you’d become a good person — others would recognize you as such too. But once life isn’t so desperate anymore, you’ll find you don’t need such lofty principles, don’t need to set so many rules for yourself. You can find a group of equally shallow people, praise each other, and get the same sense of validation. And on the other hand, even without living by any moral standard, you’re still eating fine, still doing all right… That’s pursuing recognition.”
“…”
“And it gets more interesting still, because people move on from pursuing recognition to manufacturing recognition. Your ideas get a little bizarre, you find some like-minded people, huddle together for warmth — but you know outsiders look at you strangely. Eventually you’ll stop being satisfied with that, you’ll want to go further. That’s when you’ll tell people: this is our culture. We’re a bit eccentric, sure, but it’s a niche subculture, all our own. Say, for example, you enjoy cursing people out, cursing their whole family, constantly asking ‘how’s your ancestors doing?’ — you’d call this ‘Ancestor-peace culture,’ and if people don’t get it, you can even look down on them for it. Go further still — hide at home eating filth, and call yourself ‘Golden culture’…”
“You—you’re just—” Shishi swatted Ning Yi on the shoulder. “Don’t talk nonsense like that, how could that possibly happen…”
“Hahaha,” Ning Yi laughed. “Just speculating… Our development isn’t necessarily going to be a straight line upward — in fact, I’d say it definitely won’t be. A spiral ascent is probably closer to reality. We train ourselves, make ourselves better, ultimately to satisfy our own needs. Once material needs are met, we’ll naturally slacken on the spiritual front — we don’t need to be moral paragons, we can invent things like ‘ancestor-peace culture.’ Overall, it’s still because our capacity for survival has increased…”
“But excessive optimism will inevitably create problems of its own. Once living space expands, people will inevitably run into inertia, then suffer real setbacks and wake up for a while afterward… After ten or twenty rounds of accumulated experience, maybe we can slowly climb another step. So no, the Great Harmony won’t arrive quickly just because everyone can read — that’s only a beginning…”
“Fine, telling you to be more optimistic was apparently the wrong move too.” Shishi wrapped her arms around him from behind.
“I really do have some aversion to optimism… oh, right, have you gone to see Director Lin yet?” He was referring to Lin Jingwei, the head of the Institute of Natural Philosophy, who’d been injured last month.
“I heard about his injuries, met with his family, but haven’t had time to go to Leshan lately. How’s he doing?”
“His life was saved, but the burns were severe — hard to say whether he’ll ever return to his post…” Ning Yi paused. “I held several meetings in Leshan, went back and forth analyzing it thoroughly. Their research work… at this current stage, they’ve gotten overambitious, chasing grand achievements. Some of what they’re researching now has indicators pushing recklessly ahead, entirely unnecessary. After defeating the western army, they got too optimistic, tried to bite off two meals in one sitting…”
“Though something went wrong… it was probably unavoidable, just human nature, really. You held the meeting, and hadn’t you already anticipated something like this before?… Like you said, optimism causes trouble, but overall, it’s probably still a spiral ascent. Other areas have definitely improved a lot.” Shishi tried to comfort him.
“That’s true enough to say, but if we’re too optimistic, we lose the stones to feel our way across the river…”
He murmured this, sighed, and gave a helpless laugh. For all these years building this army, he’d modeled everything around conditions of adversity — constantly pushing people’s potential, constantly tempering their spirit and discipline through hardship. Who could have known the problems would find a path to resolution this quickly — moving forward now in relatively smooth conditions, he found himself somewhat unused to it.
Shishi hadn’t quite caught his murmured words. “…Hmm?”
“Nothing,” Ning Yi smiled, patted Shishi’s hand, and stood up.
“Let’s go get something to eat… oh, right, I’ve got some documents here, take a look at them tonight. Old Dai is quite an interesting character — on one hand he lets his people traffic humans, splitting the profits evenly, while on the other hand he has people lure unconnected, unbacked caravans into his territory, then arrests them, kills them, confiscates their goods — profiting in both fame and fortune at once. They’re about to go to war soon, so they’re not being too particular about their methods…”
Evening had settled in, golden sunlight scattering across the lakeside courtyard. Ning Yi smiled as he pulled out a document, set it on the table, and walked out with her.
“…Outsiders can’t see clearly — their picture of Old Dai is ambiguous. We’ve gathered some evidence, though we’re not planning to release it for now — give it a year or two. On your end, you can have someone write some stories based on this, and release them alongside coordinated news coverage, along with the main piece condemning the unscrupulous merchants, ‘The White-Haired Girl’… ah, well, call it whatever you like, doesn’t matter if it’s Xi’er or not — either way, it’s this type of drama. Three years to reach its peak, and once the unscrupulous-merchant matter is resolved, I’ll go straight for Dai Mengwei’s heart.”
Sunlight fell, voices carried on the air, wind chimes swayed gently. In and around Chengdu, countless lives were being lived, countless things were happening. Black, white, and grey images intertwined, defying clear sight. With the great war just settled, so many people were embarking on new lives. Even those bound by harsh contracts, once they arrived in Chengdu and ate a warm bowl of soup, would be moved to tears; throughout the Huaxia Army, top to bottom, an air of optimistic zeal prevailed — and for that, they too would taste bitterness beyond words someday. This day, after long deliberation, Ning Yi had actively set in motion a scheme that defied convention. Some would die because of it; others would live because of it. No one could know for certain what shape the future would take.
This was just one item among the countless things happening every single day within the Huaxia Army. And it was on this same day, after Ning Yi and Shishi finished their evening meal, that word arrived from the north…
The soldier — and, at the same time, the criminal — named Tang Minjie, was coming home.
At that very same hour, Ning Ji, his heart full of confusion, was making his way toward the great city of Ankang under Dai Mengwei’s rule, intending to take a boat from there, all the way to Jiangning, to attend that Hero Gathering, which, for now, still made no sense to him at all.