Only after stopping several passersby in the street and asking again and again did he finally confirm that what stood before him truly was the Su family’s old estate from years past.

The Su family had left this old estate more than a decade ago. After their departure, the regicide had shaken the entire realm, and “Demon in the Heart” Ning Yi had become the most taboo name in the land. Before the Humiliation of Jingping arrived, there had of course been a round of reckoning against anything connected to the Ning and Su families, but it hadn’t lasted very long.

After the Humiliation of Jingping, Prince Kang, Zhou Yong, ascended the throne and changed the era name to Jianshuo. In Jiangning, this so-called land of dragon ascension, the Su family’s old estate had remained sealed off throughout. During this period, the fires of Jurchen invasion had twice reached Jiangning, and even when the city fell, this old estate had always remained quietly untouched, with rumors even circulating at one point that Wanyan Xiyin, or some other Jurchen general, had specifically entered the city to visit the place.

Throughout the entire Jianshuo era, although that “Demon in the Heart” Ning Yi had remained the court’s chief scourge, the foremost leader of the rebels, in certain circles of public opinion there still lingered a vaguely positive impression of his prowess in regicide and resistance against the Jurchen—remarks like “he may be wicked, but he’s undeniably capable” were not, at least in the eyes of Crown Prince Junwu, who oversaw Jiangning and the Yangtze defense line, considered particularly treasonous. Even the Princess Imperial’s estate, which primarily controlled public opinion at the time, hadn’t cracked down too harshly on such talk.

The estate was, of course, destroyed after the Fair Party entered the city. At first there was large-scale looting, killing, and burning, with the mansions and warehouses of every wealthy household in the city bearing the brunt of it. This already-long-sealed estate, which held little wealth beyond some wooden buildings and old furniture, hadn’t suffered much damage in that initial wave, and one faction flying the banner of “Heavenly King Gao” had even occupied it as a stronghold. But gradually, rumors began to spread that this had once been the residence of “Demon in the Heart” Ning Yi.

Several scattered factions then turned their attention this way.

A group of lunatics under Zhou Shang were the first to wave their banners and try to storm the estate, intending to set it ablaze as a symbol of destroying this “Demon in the Heart,” to bolster their own reputation. After being driven out by Heavenly King Gao’s men, people from Shi Baofeng and Xu Zhaonan, even people flying the banner of “Fair King” He Wen, showed up as well. Several rounds of negotiation broke out, followed by violent clashes.

Several bloody massacres occurred. When people looked at it more calmly, they realized that although the factions involved in these clashes flew various banners, in fact none of them represented the main forces of any of the parties—most were random, ragtag little gangs who had simply planted flags of convenience. Even among the Fair Party’s five major powers, not a single major general, not even from the lunatic Zhou Shang’s side, had explicitly declared any intention to claim this place.

Whether there was maneuvering behind the scenes by the five major powers was hard to say, but on the surface, no major figure from any side seemed to explicitly state their position on “Demon in the Heart” Ning Yi—neither protecting nor opposing him—which was, in its own way, a continuation of the ambiguous attitude the Fair Party had long shown toward the Southwestern forces.

Sensing this ambiguity, the various minor factions instead grew bolder, treating this estate as a no-man’s-land testing ground.

In the first month or so, wandering opportunists repeatedly tried to seize the place, hoping to leave a strong impression on the upper echelons of the Fair Party’s five factions. For example, the recently rising “Great Dragon Head” had once sent a group to occupy the place for three days, claiming he wanted to establish a broad foothold there, and though he was eventually driven out, he still gained a few days of notoriety from it.

After that came more scattered fighting between various factions, until things escalated further and nearly erupted into a battle involving over a thousand people. The “Fair King” flew into a rage, and “Dragon Sage,” one of his “Seven Sages,” led a team to seal off the entire area, arresting most of the brawlers regardless of what banner they flew, and publicly executing them in a nearby square—each given twenty strokes of the military cane, with dozens of canes reportedly breaking in the process—before this trend of large-scale brawling was finally suppressed.

After that, the scale of fighting around the Su family’s old estate shrank considerably, and most confrontations now involved only a few dozen people at most. Some groups flying Zhou Shang’s banner came to open gambling dens; some flying Shi Baofeng’s banner came to run black markets; some wandering opportunists would come and occupy a courtyard, holed up for ten days or half a month at a time. Some had torn down brick walls to sell the bricks, and after a while, discovering that Su family wall bricks couldn’t be authenticated or disproven either way, either engaged in outright counterfeiting or brought buyers in to make their selections on-site—all sorts of business had sprung up around it.

“Young fellow, you can’t go in there. It’s terribly chaotic in there.”

When he stopped a kindly-looking old Fair Party grandmother on the street to ask, she kindly tried to talk him out of it.

“I want to go see the old estate of the great demon lord of the Southwest, grandmother.”

“The demon’s old estate, eh? Everyone says it’s the old estate, but which one exactly, no one can quite say…”

The old woman spoke on.

But of course, he still had to go in.

By now it was evening. At one of the mansion’s entrances, Ning Ji spent fifteen coppers buying a tattered flag from a man of the martial world, said to grant him passage inside. The flag belonged to the “Undying Army” under the “Wheel-Turning King,” specifically a small faction within the Undying Army called “the Fiends,” who claimed to be extremely formidable.

“With this flag, you can walk the main paths inside, but some courtyards without proper entrances, you can’t go into. You look like a decent sort, so let me give you a word of advice—come out before it gets fully dark. Feel free to pick out a brick you like and take it with you. If you really run into trouble, just shout loudly…”

Ning Ji nodded obediently, tucked the flag into his back, and headed down the road inside. This side of the original Su family estate had no gate tower, but the walls had been torn down, revealing the courtyards and pathways within.

The Su family’s old estate had been built and expanded over nearly a hundred years, made up of more than forty courtyards in total—not as grand as a palace, but certainly not small either. The pathways between courtyards were paved with old, thick gray bricks, still carrying a faint sense of solidity from days gone by, though the air carried the smell of excrement and faint decay. The walls to either side were mostly half-collapsed, some with gaping holes torn through them, and people leaned against these openings, watching him with menacing looks.

Ning Ji paid these things no mind. He looked into the courtyards around him—each occupied by different people, the trees within chopped down, presumably cut up for firewood. The old buildings, bearing traces of the past, had mostly crumbled; some had doorways gaping open into pitch-black, chilling interiors. Some of the martial world types apparently liked to build cooking fires right in the courtyards, leaving debris scattered everywhere. Along the gray-brick pathways, people dumped chamber pot waste into the narrow gutters, the stench lingering in the air, refusing to dissipate.

There were other passersby on these paths too—some pointed and stared at him, others were perhaps, like him, here to “visit” the Demon’s former residence, escorted along by various martial-world figures, shaking their heads at the chaos within. At a crossroads where a gray wall stood half-collapsed, someone claimed that the courtyard beside them was the Demon’s former residence, charging twenty coppers for entry.

Ning Ji paid the fee.

The courtyard inside housed quite a few people; some had set up shelters for washing clothes and cooking. The two main buildings on either side, forming a right angle, were relatively well preserved. Someone pointed out which room had supposedly been Ning Yi’s bedroom back in the day. Ning Ji only looked on in silence for a moment. Someone else approached and asked, “Where are you from, young fellow?” Ning Ji didn’t answer him.

This great estate was now a mixed bag of every sort of person, and under the tacit consent of the five factions, no law was enforced within its walls—anything could happen here. Ning Ji understood the intent behind these questions, and understood too what those people pointing and whispering out in the alley were plotting, but none of it concerned him. He had returned to his ancestral home, and had chosen to show courtesy first, force second.

If that courtesy went unrespected, then within his own family’s old estate, he would give no one any more face, and hold back nothing further.

Perhaps because his silence seemed so inscrutable, the people in the courtyard didn’t try anything with him. After a while, someone else was lured in by the appeal of the “Demon’s former residence,” and Ning Ji turned and left.

The sunlight gradually slanted lower.

Only a few tree leaves and old branches reached over the courtyard walls above the pathway, casting dim shadows below. Ning Ji walked and looked his way along the pathways of this great estate. The several beautiful gardens that had existed in the Su family’s old estate, as his mother remembered it, were now long gone; some rockery had been toppled, leaving only piles of rubble. This dim, sprawling estate extended on, seemingly filled with every kind of person—martial artists with swords slung across their backs brushed past him, people conducted furtive business deals in corners, and from beyond certain walls came strange, unsettling sounds…

There were three separate courtyards inside, each claiming to be where the Demon in the Heart had once lived. Ning Ji looked at all three but couldn’t tell whether any of the claims were true. The small courtyard where his parents had once lived had, in the past, contained two small buildings standing opposite each other; later, one of them had burned down, and the family had all lived together in the remaining two-story building.

He obviously had no way of finding any trace of those two small buildings now, let alone seeing the ground left behind after one of them had burned.

These memories of his mother’s were, it struck him, stories that predated his own birth.

Since then, who knew how many spring rains and autumn frosts had fallen over this estate, how many winter snows had covered the ground. By now, the things of the past had been buried beneath this ruin, nearly impossible to make out clearly.

Still, some faint traces remained.

On an old brick set into one of the courtyard walls, Ning Ji spotted a series of marks that looked like they’d been used to measure a child’s height—the marks only reached up to his shoulder. There was no telling which courtyard, or whose parents, had left them there years ago, marking some child’s growth.

On an old table with only three legs left, someone had left strange scribbles—several lines of writing nearby, one of which read something like “Xiao Qi is a dummy.” Someone else had carved the words “Hello, Teacher.” Among the doodles were suns, little flowers, and oddly shaped little boats and crows.

The sun sank. Its light withdrew from among the courtyards. Bonfires flared up in some of the courtyards; in the darkness, various figures gathered back to their own dwellings. Ning Ji sat on one of the courtyard walls, occasionally hearing a man shout from across the way, “Jin’e, bring me some wine…” This dead estate seemed to take on a faint breath of life once more.

He circled this vast estate twice; the wistfulness that welled up in him was mostly on his mother’s behalf. What he kept thinking was—if his mother ever came back one day, and found that everything from the past was gone without a trace, how sad she would be.

Having made his rounds, he exited through a side path on the other side of the estate and came out onto the road outside. By now, a great, round moon hung in the sky, seeming to look down upon the world with more intimacy than usual. The flag still tucked into his back, Ning Ji made his way slowly through the crowded road. Perhaps because of the “God of Wealth” rumors, some stalls had sprung up along the nearby streets, lanterns and torches lit, drawing in customers.

Ning Ji had gone a little way when, amid the noisy commotion ahead, a voice caught his attention.

“I… back in the day, I struck that Demon in the Heart, Ning Yi, on the head… I struck the Demon’s head…”

By the flickering torchlight, a ragged beggar knelt by the roadside, rambling on to passersby with this story. One passing group seemed quite interested; the elder leading them crouched down in front of him.

“You’re saying… you once struck the Demon on the head?”

“Please, my lord… spare some food… spare some food…” The beggar stretched out his hand.

The old man took out a few coppers from his robe and handed him one first. “Tell it well, and I’ll give you more.”

“I… I struck Demon in the Heart Ning Yi on the head, heh heh, I… my name is Xue Jin. In Jiangning… everyone knew my name, everyone… my family’s ‘Dachuan Cloth House’ was, back then… on equal footing with the Su family… a great cloth business…”

The beggar wore a tattered felt hat and seemed to have suffered some kind of injury, his speech coming out in fragments. But Ning Ji had heard the name Xue Jin before. He sat down at a nearby stall, and the group led by the old man also found seats nearby, even ordering some snacks as they listened to the beggar talk. The stall owner selling snacks chuckled. “This madman always comes around saying he struck that Demon on the head. If you ask me, he’s the one who got struck on the head—don’t let him fool you all.”

The old man only smiled. “Just here for the entertainment, that’s all.”

“Back then… I… struck Demon in the Heart Ning Yi on the head… why did I hit him… Back then, that young lady of the Su family… Su Tan’er, she was so beautiful, and so capable too, she was going to inherit the Su family business one day… I, heh heh, I wanted to marry her, who would’ve thought… that bookish fool ended up marrying into the family instead…”

“That Demon… Demon in the Heart Ning Yi, back then, he was just a bookish fool… it was only because I hit him that he suddenly became sharp… I remember… that year, on their wedding day, the Su family’s young lady, heh heh, ran off instead…”

The beggar rambled on about those old days, in fragments—how beautiful and captivating Su Tan’er had been, how dull and foolish Ning Yi had been, occasionally throwing in the names and identities of their old friends, how they had known each other back then, how they had interacted… Even though he’d struck Ning Yi, it seemed he and Su Tan’er hadn’t truly fallen out. He went on to talk about the extravagant, dissolute days of the past—how, as the young master of the Dachuan Cloth House, he had lived such and such a life, eaten such fine foods…

The people gathered around listened, some sneering that he’d gone mad. If Ning Yi had really been a fool, how could he have gotten to where he was today?

Someone mocked, “Ning Yi ought to thank you for making him smart, then…”

Someone else said, “This fellow really was wealthy back then, but the times have changed! It’s the Fair Party’s era now!”

These remarks didn’t interrupt the beggar’s reminiscing. He rambled on with plenty of detail about the night he’d beaten the Demon in the Heart—what kind of brick he’d used, how he’d snuck up behind him, how he’d struck him with the brick, how dazed the man had looked afterward… The old man at the stall even had the owner bring him a bowl of food. The beggar held the bowl, muttering nonsense in a daze, setting it down and picking it up again, over and over…

“The Demon…” he said, “they say that Demon was called the foremost talent of Jiangning… The first poem he ever wrote, it was I who asked him for it, you know… That year, the moon… look, it was just as big as this, just as round, I remember… it was the six-boat pleasure barge of the Puyang family, Puyang Yi… where did Puyang Yi go… it was his family’s boat. Ning Yi… Ning Yi didn’t come, so I asked his little maidservant…”

“I asked her… why didn’t Ning Yi come, was it because… he was too ashamed to show his face… And I asked that Su Tan’er too… you have no idea, Su Tan’er was so beautiful, but she was the one who was going to inherit the Su family, that’s why she had that bookish fool marry into the family… I asked her, you chose such a fool—surely someone so remarkable can write a good poem, so why didn’t he come, saying he was sick, what a liar… And then that little maidservant, she took out the lyrics her master had written…”

“I still remember that poem… it was about the moon, that poem was…”

The beggar knelt before his bowl of food, staring blankly up at the moon. After a long while, his hoarse voice slowly began to sing out the verses—perhaps something that had once been commonly sung in the pleasure houses of Jiangning, which was why it had stuck in his memory so deeply. Even now, in his raspy voice, the melody of the verse remained intact.

“When will there be a bright moon…” he sang slowly.

“…I raise my cup and ask the azure sky.”

“…I wonder, in the palaces above, what year it is tonight…”

“I wish to ride the wind and return there.”

“Yet I fear the jade towers, the halls of crystal…”

“Too cold up so high to bear, I rise and dance with my shadow…”

“How could it compare… to the world of men…”