It was long past midnight, and a waning moon hung in the western sky, quietly casting down its pale light.

The thin silver glow didn’t offer much visibility. Six figures moved along one side of the highway under cover of night, all dressed in black, though their pace seemed rather bold and unconcerned. Since so few people walked this road at this hour, Ning Ji took a longer look, and something about two of the figures’ builds and gaits struck him as familiar. He ducked behind a tree by the roadside and watched for a while, hidden.

Two of them — or at least one — had followed that Steward Wu to the inn during the day. Since he’d already been in a fighting mood at that point, Ning Ji’s first instinct had been to assess how solid these men’s stances were, how much raw power they carried. There wasn’t much he could judge in the brief moment he’d had, but he’d more or less committed one or two people’s gaits and physical characteristics to memory.

At this hour… heading in this direction?

The moment a certain possibility dawned on him, his mood swung to something close to shock. As the six of them walked past, talking among themselves, he shook his head slightly and followed along.

The six men traveling together all carried long blades, bows and arrows, and other weapons. Their clothes were black, but the cut wasn’t the sneaking, night-operative style — it was the kind of short, practical dress a person could just as easily wear during the day. The road outside the city wasn’t suited to galloping horses at night, and perhaps that was why the six had chosen to go on foot. As they walked, they chatted in the local dialect about petty gossip involving young girls and young widows. Ning Ji could follow some of it — the content was crude and rustic enough that it didn’t sound like something out of a tale of chivalrous outlaws, but more like the vulgar chatter of farmhands with no one else around.

On the night wind, he could faintly catch the smell of alcohol on their breath.

Ning Ji’s emotions churned somewhat — his anger flared up, then subsided again.

The past day had left him feeling angry the whole way through. Just as he’d said to Steward Wu’s face, that chief constable surnamed Xu had abused and mistreated people, and rather than admit any fault, had dared to threaten them, saying “I’ll remember your faces.” The man’s wife had been furious that her husband had taken up with another woman, but seeing the wretched state Sister Xiuniang and Uncle Wang were in, she hadn’t shown a shred of sympathy — if anything, she seemed to feel that their cries of injustice were ruining her mood, and had shouted for them to be driven off.

At the time, it might have been chalked up to blind rage. But then that man surnamed Wu had come along afterward… Facing Sister Xiuniang and the rest of them, whose lives might well be ruined, he’d still had the nerve to say, arrogantly, “You’re leaving today.”

Couldn’t they at least apologize for what they’d done wrong?

Of course, it was wartime now, and people like this with a bit of power could get away with anything — no arguing with that. Even within the Huaxia Army, there were people who were unreasonable, who twisted the truth even when they had none of it on their side. But… to beat someone half to death, to nearly rape a woman, and then to drive them out of town, only to send killers out again in the dead of night — what was the point of that?

Wipe them out completely?

Did these people… actually think they were the Emperor himself?

He followed along carrying this anger with him, but gradually it began to cool. One of the men walking toward the back had clearly once been a hunter, talking on and on about petty family matters. Another, in the middle, looked simple and honest, powerfully built but with no real martial foundation — his gait was the kind formed by years of working the fields, and his voice sounded plain and dull. The six of them had apparently drilled together in some basic military formation; three had some martial training, and one showed faint traces of internal-style training, his footwork slightly steadier — but going by his voice alone, he still sounded like nothing more than a simple country farmer.

And most importantly… you shouldn’t be drinking before doing something like this!

Ning Ji cried out inwardly.

Since none of the six had mentioned the actual purpose of their trip, Ning Ji found it hard, for the moment, to determine whether they were out to silence witnesses through murder — after all, that would be an especially vicious thing to do, something even a person with a shred of conscience would struggle to bring themselves to do. His own group of powerless scholars hadn’t offended anyone in the county town, and Wang Jiang and his daughter certainly hadn’t offended anyone either. Having already been reduced to this state and driven out of town, what more could they possibly do to provoke further action?

Stories like this existed in popular fiction, but nothing about what he was seeing right now matched up with the villains or the heroes of those tales.

Walking along like this for a while, Ning Ji thought it over, then picked up a few stones and tossed them into the forest along the roadside to make some noise.

The six men on the road heard the faint rustling and all stopped.

“Who’s there—”

The one in the lead shouted toward the roadside. Though they’d been walking with a swagger before, they now turned unusually wary at the possibility of someone lurking nearby.

Naturally, no answer came from the forest. Then came a strange, moaning gust of wind, like the howl of a wolf — but it sounded oddly distant, and somehow off, unreal.

“Wh-who’s there…”

“Go take a look…”

“Get out here!”

The men exchanged glances, then made a great deal of noise. Someone charged into the forest to check it out, but the woods were small, and after circling through it a couple of times, he found nothing at all. The wind gradually died down. The moon hung high in the sky, the shadows of the trees swaying faintly, and everything fell utterly silent.

Having searched several times without result, the six regrouped at the roadside to discuss it. Someone said, “Couldn’t be a ghost, could it?”

“Nonsense — there’s no such thing as ghosts in this world!” the leader snapped. “Just the wind. Look at the state of you lot.”

After all that commotion, none of them seemed to feel much like gossiping about girls and widows anymore, and they turned and continued on their way. One of them said, “You think those scholars are really still staying in Tangjiaji?”

They walked on for a moment, and no one answered right away. After a brief silence, someone finally spoke, as if to break the awkwardness. “There’s only the one road heading south out of the mountains — where else would they be but Tangjiaji?”

Another moment of silence.

“They’ve offended people, and they didn’t even bother going further away? That thoughtless?”

Silence.

“Don’t forget, they’ve got a wounded man in their cart — they can’t move fast. What, are you getting cold feet?”

“Who’s got cold feet? I’ve never backed down from a job in my life. I just think these bookish types with their thick skulls really don’t understand how the world works…”

“That’s what happens when you read too many books — turns you soft in the head.”

“…Come to think of it, that kick Master Wu landed in the shop today really was something.”

“That’s right — you young ones wouldn’t understand. Kicking a stool into the air, that’s simple enough. But kicking it up and then following through with a sweeping kick in front to snap it in half — now that takes real skill… Let me tell you, that’s because with the stool in the air, there’s nothing to push off of for leverage… not to mention that stool was solid wood to begin with…”

“Ha, the look on those scholars’ faces went pale as paper…”

“They talked about going to file a complaint with the authorities too, but in the end they never did.”

“Knew better than that, I suppose.”

“…Come to think of it, Master Wu’s always looked down on these scholarly types the most, you know. Take a look — making them leave before nightfall, that was deliberate too… Leave the city heading south before dark, and you’re bound to end up staying in Tangjiaji, at Tang Niu’er’s place — and who is Tang Niu’er, if we just have a word with him, is there anything that can’t be worked out? Ha, these scholars — even their route out of town has been figured out for them in advance, so dealing with them turns out to be simple enough.”

“And if they’re not there…”

“If they’re not there, then even if they’re clever enough to have moved on, we chase them a bit further, and if we don’t catch up, we head back. If they are there, once they leave Tangjiaji, we do the job, split the silver, and that’ll be the end of it. Master Wu’s got it right — these scholars have already made an enemy of us, so rather than let them run around out there causing trouble, better to just finish it and be done with it once and for all… They’re carrying money on them, and some of them look like they come from good families too — leaving a grudge unsettled without cutting it off at the root, that’s the biggest taboo in this business.”

“How much silver do they have?”

“Quite a bit, I’d say. Split it up after the job’s done, and you could take a concubine for yourself and still have some left over — Master Xu might even throw in a little extra reward on top…”

“But the young master and the young lady have had a falling out already…”

“One night as husband and wife means a hundred nights of affection — you fight at the head of the bed and make up at the foot, that’s how it always goes. You’re still young, haven’t seen much of the world. Don’t let Master Xu’s little quirks fool you — when it comes to getting things done, that man’s ruthless as they come… you don’t want to end up on his bad side…”

As if trying to push back against the silence of the night, these men talked on and on, their tone rising and falling with practiced ease. Their gait was coarse, their speech was coarse, their clothes were coarse — and yet what came out of their mouths was, quite literally, talk of murder.

Truly, the affairs of this world were strange indeed.

Back in the Huaxia Army, Ning Ji had seen people talk about killing before too — back then, the talk had been of how to kill the enemy, how to kill the Jurchens, drawing on every means at their disposal, and even in that calm manner of speaking there had always been an undertone of caution, because killing the enemy also meant being mindful of the harm that might come to one’s own side.

But there were also people in this world like these six — men who might, on the surface, live perfectly ordinary lives, who had never received much real training, who had once farmed fields and hunted game, who gathered together to trade crude jokes about women, some of them looking simple and honest enough. And yet in this moment, they talked about killing with just as much casual indifference, as if certain no one would be hurt at all, practically cheerful about it.

Ning Ji’s expression darkened. He caught up from behind, no longer bothering to hide his presence, standing upright now, stepping out from behind the tree and through the grass. The moon crept across the sky above; faint shadows of the men fell across the ground; the night wind moaned softly. The man walking at the very back seemed to sense something was wrong — he glanced to the side and caught sight of the young figure with a pack on his back.

“Hey…”

Before he could react, the hunter walking second-to-last heard his voice, and at that same moment the boy’s figure came rushing forward. A sharp crack rang out through the night sky, and the man at the very back crumpled to the ground, one leg stomped out from under him by the boy from the side — the blow had snapped his shin, and he collapsed without even managing to cry out in pain.

The hunter walking second-to-last, a bow slung across his back and a blade at his waist, had no time to react either — because the boy, having just broken the first man’s leg, was already closing in on him. His left hand shot out and seized the hunter’s neck from behind, though the man stood a full head taller than him, and a savage punch landed square in the man’s stomach as the boy pressed forward. In that instant, the hunter felt as though he’d been punched clean through, front to back; something surged up and out of his mouth, and it felt as though every organ inside him had either shattered or been churned into a single mass.

“Who’s there…”

Only now did the shouting and screaming erupt. The figure that had come charging out of the darkness moved like a tank — one fist had already slammed into the hunter’s chest and stomach, and even as it drove forward, both hands seized the sheathed long blade at the hunter’s waist.

The third-to-last man turned around and reached for his own blade, but by then the dark figure had already ripped the sheathed blade free from the hunter’s belt and swung it through the air. Just as the man drew his own weapon, the sheathed blade came down like a mountain-splitting strike, driven by the full force of the boy’s forward momentum, and smashed directly into his knee.

His kneecap shattered instantly, and he staggered backward, still gripping his blade.

The boy pushed through the group, closing in on every one of them with brutal, unrelenting force.