The rumble of carriage wheels, the whinny of horses.

Sometime around the hour of wei, a procession of six large carts and several dozen horses wound its way forward, passing along the road flanking the side of Tongshan county town. Half the group traveled on horseback, with others on foot forming a protective escort. Though they looked travel-worn, each carried weapons, and moving together as they did, the whole procession carried an air one would nowadays only expect from a great escort caravan, or perhaps a great clan’s own traveling retinue.

Yan Yunzhi drew back the curtain of the lead carriage and looked out over Tongshan’s low, dilapidated walls, raising an eyebrow slightly. “They say all across the realm that the Li family of Tongshan lies like a tiger crouched in its valley, a figure of true heroic stature — but you’d never guess it from these walls… Could there be something more to this place than meets the eye?”

The young woman, seventeen this year, had a delicate, oval face, brows like a faint crescent moon, and a clear, bright voice. Though still young, there was already a certain hard-won steadiness in her tone. Through the drawn curtain, one could see her dressed in an elegant, dark ink-colored robe and skirt, with two short swords resting within easy reach — the very image of a spirited woman of the martial world.

“That’s exactly why we’re not entering Tongshan itself.”

The one who answered was a middle-aged man in a blue robe, riding a tall horse alongside the carriage. He looked to be around forty, tall and broad-shouldered, holding the reins in one hand while flipping through a book with the other, his eyes fixed on the pages rather than the road — the very picture of a scholarly advisor employed by some great and powerful clan. Except that, as the horse moved forward, one could occasionally glimpse the title on the book’s cover — Shadow of the Kunlun Sword — revealing it to be one of the popular martial-arts novels currently in vogue among the common people.

“When people in the martial world say the Li family lies like a crouching tiger, there are two layers to that. First, it refers to how Li Yanfeng seized his opportunity and acted with sharp, ruthless methods. The Li family, at bottom, was really nothing more than a single band of local fighters — but riding the wave of this great upheaval, he managed to clear out every great and small clan around Tongshan and rise to power on their ruins. Given how chaotic the realm has become, that’s undeniably the mark of a genuine man of ambition and cunning.”

The middle-aged man in blue kept flipping through his book as he spoke.

“But there’s another layer to it, and that one’s a bit more petty. Yunzhi, everyone in the realm knows what the Li family’s martial tradition is. Calling him a crouching tiger — what do you suppose Li Yanfeng himself would make of that if he heard it?”

Yan Yunzhi blinked, then caught on. “The Large and Small Monkey Fist styles, the White Ape Arm-Extending style…”

“Exactly the point.” The middle-aged man in blue smiled. “When the Jurchens came, most people found them impossible to resist. The Li family insisted on fighting them and refused to surrender — but at the end of the day, all they really did was lead the people around them into hiding in the mountains, and then, one by one, wipe out the great clans nearby. As for actually killing Jurchens, Li Yanfeng himself never did any such thing. A crouching tiger in the valley… in fact, there were originally people who mocked him, saying that with no real tiger in the mountains, even a monkey could crown himself king. When we arrive, you must absolutely not use any language about ‘tigers’ in front of the Li family.”

“Sounds like the Li family prefers to think of itself as monkeys, then.” Yan Yunzhi’s lips curved into a faint, amused smile, which she quickly suppressed.

“Whatever mockery others may intend, the Li family’s martial tradition is nothing to underestimate.” The middle-aged man in blue turned a page. “The White Ape Arm-Extending style excels at generating raw power — worth knowing about, keeping in mind, but that’s all. The Large and Small Monkey Fist styles, though, are unmatched in the whole realm for agile footwork and evasive movement, and complement your family’s inherited Tan Gong Sword technique rather well. The main reason we’ve come this time is to discuss a matter of safe passage, but the second reason is for you to broaden your experience — so when we meet them shortly, you must be sure to set aside any hint of condescension. Remember, in the martial world, gratitude can be earned with a single word, and enmity can be earned with a single word just as easily.”

The young woman in the carriage nodded. “Uncle’s teaching is well taken. Yunzhi understands.”

“Mm.” The middle-aged man in blue nodded as well, then glanced over at the walls beside them. “As for these walls… the Li family has only held Tongshan for a little over a year now, having to conscript men for Liu Guangshi on one hand and extract every valuable good to ship off to the southwest on the other — how much could they really have left over for themselves? Whatever’s left, naturally, gets funneled back into their own estate to build a grand manor of their own. As for Tongshan’s city walls, the sections burned earlier that still haven’t been repaired for lack of funds — that’s only to be expected, nothing surprising about it at all.”

By the time the two had finished this exchange, the winding road ahead had already begun to diverge from Tongshan county town, turning off to the west instead. It was now the middle to latter part of the seventh month; the trees lining the road had begun turning yellow, and the villages and farmland looked correspondingly bleak. Occasionally they passed ragged travelers on the road, who, seeing this grand procession of carriages and horses, mostly hurried to get out of the way.

Traveling on a while further, they came to a small market town at the foot of a mountain. Not long after passing through it, the road leading up into the mountains widened considerably, and further ahead one could even make out great banners waving and red silk streamers fluttering in the wind. From the distance, a party of riders came out to greet them.

This, naturally, was the Li family’s welcoming party. The two groups met on the road, exchanged the appropriate greetings, and gathered together. Yan Yunzhi fastened her sword at her waist and stepped down from the carriage, following the blue-robed middle-aged man as they went to greet the Li family’s people, bowing to each in turn.

Before setting out on this trip, they’d already learned that Li Yanfeng himself had taken a party to Jiangning, while two of the Li family’s most trusted generals had gone with their own men to the front lines north of the Jiang River. But having been long established in Tongshan and having made a name for themselves throughout the martial world, plenty of skilled outlaws had come to pledge themselves to the Li family over the years, and the welcoming party that came out this time included, besides Li Ruoyao — the Li family elder of the same generation as Li Ruoque who now oversaw Tongshan in Li Yanfeng’s absence — several accomplished figures from the martial world as well: “Miao Blade” Shi Shuifang, “Great Compassion Palm” the monk Cixin, “Lightning Whip” Wu Cheng, and others, some serving as honored guests, others as stewards within the Li household — all had come out together to greet them today.

“Second Master Yan of the Yan family, and the heroine Yunshui, have traveled a long way to grace us with your presence. The Li family’s humble abode is honored, and I apologize for the poor welcome — forgive us, forgive us.”

The one who came out to greet them on the Li family’s behalf was the elderly Li Ruoyao, who was in fact an elder cousin of “Monkey King” Li Ruoque, advanced in years and of considerable standing. At these words, the blue-robed middle-aged man hurried forward. “Not at all, not at all — Third Master Li is a towering figure of the martial world, held in the highest esteem. Our Yan family, passing through Tongshan, had already intended to pay our respects to Third Master up the mountain — how could we possibly let Third Master come out to meet us instead? We’re the ones at fault here, truly…”

The two sides exchanged pleasantries back and forth, with all the elaborate formality and decorum one might expect — in truth, if this had happened ten-odd years earlier, meetings among the martial world’s outlaws wouldn’t have been nearly so formal. But in recent years, all manner of martial-arts novels had grown popular, and the two sides had naturally begun speaking to one another in that same elevated style. After a round of formalities, both host and guest were well pleased, and together they made their way up the mountain, hand in hand.

Yan Yunzhi had already learned a bit about the Li family’s situation before setting out, and as they walked up the mountain together, her second uncle, nicknamed “Wind-Chasing Sword” Yan Tiehe, filled her in with further details along the way.

For instance, the man nicknamed “Miao Blade,” Shi Shuifang, was a master of the circular blade techniques of the Miao borderlands, his swordsmanship vicious and unpredictable — apparently, back in Miao territory, he’d once offended the Overlord Blade clan and lived to tell the tale, which alone spoke to the level of his skill.

The monk Cixin, “Great Compassion Palm,” had once been notorious throughout the Jiangnan region — his palm technique was formidable indeed. It was said he could kill with a single strike of his palm, shattering every internal organ while leaving barely a mark on the skin. As Yan Tiehe put it in flattering terms: “That’s internal palm power trained to the level of ‘striking the ox through the mountain’ — true mastery.”

As for “Lightning Whip” Wu Cheng, his real skill wasn’t actually with a whip at all, but with extraordinarily fast legwork. It was said that during training, he’d have five or six people throw wooden stakes at him from different directions all at once, and with a single swinging kick of one leg, he could snap all five or six stakes cleanly, one after another, without a miss. This showed that his legwork wasn’t merely fast, but devastatingly powerful as well — a truly terrifying level of skill.

Yan Yunzhi committed all this to memory, nodding along.

As they walked on, though the group did offer a round of flattering remarks toward her, the “Cloud-Water Sword” heroine, for the most part their attention and conversation didn’t linger on her for long.

Over the past two-plus years, the Jurchens had run rampant and the realm had fallen into chaos; now, with the Wu dynasty itself splintering apart, it had become an age of heroes rising on every side. The Yan family, too, was one of the martial factions that had taken part in resisting the Jurchens in the past — their inherited Tan Gong Sword technique excelled at stealth and assassination, and when the Jurchens had come, Yan Yunzhi’s father, Yan Taiwei, had reportedly assassinated two Jurchen commanders, earning great renown throughout the martial world. As for Yan Yunzhi herself, having killed two Jurchen soldiers at a young age, she’d earned the flattering title of “Cloud-Water Sword” — though of course, no one present would dare question the truth of such tales.

The main reason the Li family was giving the Yan family’s party such a grand reception came down to two things. First, the Yan clan currently had a member, Yan Daolun, serving under Liu Guangshi, said to hold a fairly high position among his advisors. Second, Yan Taiwei had once had ties with a great figure of the martial underworld named Shi Baofeng, and the two sides had once agreed to a marriage alliance between their families. This trip, with Yan Tiehe bringing Yan Yunzhi eastward, was meant to travel on to Jiangning to finalize that very engagement.

And this Shi Baofeng was, as it happened, one of the most powerful figures currently sweeping across Jiangnan as a leader of the Fairness Party. Together with He Wen, Gao Chang, Xu Zhaonan, and Zhou Shang, he was known as one of the “Five Tigers of the Fairness Party.”

Once this marriage alliance was secured, the Yan family’s standing would rise sharply overnight, becoming a family with direct access to the very top tier of the Fairness Party’s power structure. Though the state of the realm, and the future of the Fairness Party, remained far from clear — and some might hesitate to align themselves too readily with the Fairness Party — on the other hand, naturally, no one would dare look down on such a powerful faction either.

Whenever the others brought up the marriage in passing, Yan Yunzhi felt a certain measure of displeasure, but having grown used to keeping a composed, expressionless face over these past two years, and surrounded as she was by her elders, she simply kept walking without saying much.

Before long, the group arrived at the sizable fortified compound of the Li family. The square and roads in front of the stronghold had already been swept clean, with a good many tenant farmers gathered around to watch the spectacle, pointing and murmuring among themselves. Colorful silk streamers fluttered from the flagpoles all around, giving the place a rather extravagant air. As Yan Yunzhi’s gaze swept over the people nearby, she noticed the local tenant farmers’ clothing was actually considerably neater than what she’d seen along the road so far, and she seemed to catch a few genuine smiles here and there — evidence, it seemed, that the Li family did take reasonably good care of the people living under them, a trait not unlike the Yan family’s own approach. It seemed Li Yanfeng was, after all, a decent enough head of household.

The Yan family’s mastery of the Tan Gong Sword technique, with its emphasis on assassination, had given them their own particular method for reading their surroundings and noticing small telling details, and having lived through war and brushed against death, Yan Yunzhi’s instincts in this regard were especially sharp and mature. As her gaze swept across the scene, just as they were about to enter, her brow twitched slightly — among the onlooking crowd, a certain gaze had suddenly caught her attention and held it, if only for a moment.

It came from the back of the crowd — a rather good-looking young man, it seemed, craning his neck and standing on tiptoe, watching this way with obvious curiosity.

She frowned slightly, and when she looked again, that gaze had already vanished.

Why had it caught her attention at all…

It couldn’t have been… malicious, could it…

…

Her steps paused for a brief moment. Then her uncle waved her forward, gesturing for her to follow inside, where they’d soon get to watch the Li family’s welcoming demonstration of their monkey-fist techniques.

Her cheeks warmed faintly beneath the surface. Frowning slightly, her gaze turned somewhat fierce as she walked in through the grand entrance of the Li family compound.