On the afternoon of the sixteenth of August, everyone was talking about how the Five Directions Arena had been swept aside by the Great Illumination Sect’s leader. The people around her were seething with righteous anger, thick with bloodlust, and she could feel that things were starting to spiral out of control.

She hadn’t slept well that night.

Toward the early hours of the morning, shouts and howls suddenly rose up. In the broken-down courtyard and crumbling houses, people called out to one another — some picked up long spears and blades, others lit torches. She got up along with them, trembling slightly as she pulled on a few extra layers of ragged clothing, found herself a wooden club, and tried to put on a brave face.

Fortunately, Big Sister Huo waved her off. “You all stay here and hold down the house. Don’t go out. Just look after yourselves.”

The men and women gathered in the courtyard, blades and spears in hand, and someone said, “Little Scholar, you don’t need to come along.”

Big Sister Huo’s name was Huo Qinghua, a tall, sturdy middle-aged woman with a scar across her face. Word was she’d once been quite pretty, but when the Jurchens came, they’d captured her, and to avoid being violated, she’d slashed her own face. She’d later drifted her way into the Fairness Party, becoming part of the “White Rakshasa” branch under the “Seven Killers,” and was now the head of this particular run-down courtyard.

The Fairness Party’s current structure was a mess.

Across all of Jiangnan, virtually every faction with even a hint of a reputation, large or small, flew its own banner — but fully half of them weren’t genuine Fairness Party members at all. Take the “Seven Killers” under “Yama King,” for instance: new recruits were initially all lumped together under the “Mayfly” branch, and only after passing some kind of vetting would they be assigned to one of the six major branches — “Heaven’s Slaughter,” “Impermanence,” “Avici Hell Butcher,” “White Rakshasa,” “Slay the Wicked,” or “Karmic Sin.” But in reality, because the “Yama King” faction had expanded so rapidly, plenty of groups that had simply planted the flag on their own, so long as they had some genuine strength, had been casually absorbed into the ranks as well.

Huo Qinghua’s group belonged to the genuine “White Rakshasa” branch. The run-down courtyard was filthy and cluttered, and the people gathered there weren’t especially numerous amid Jiangning’s current chaos of mixed factions — but the surrounding powers still gave them a certain degree of respect.

The so-called authentic “White Rakshasa” were, properly speaking, “professionals” who worked in tandem with the “Karmic Sin” branch. Generally speaking, whenever the Fairness Party took control of a place, it was the “Karmic Sin” branch, under “Yama King,” that typically handled the arrests and the sentencing of the accused.

Once “Karmic Sin” set up the platform, “White Rakshasa” would supply people to play the role of victims, stirring up the surrounding crowd’s emotions so the accused wealthy households could be beaten to death right there on the platform and their property divided up among the participants. As a result, the “White Rakshasa” branch tended to attract quite a few beggars, women, and disabled people who’d suffered particularly miserable fates — people with vicious tempers and extreme methods, who were not only ruthless when it came to harming others but, when it came down to an actual fight, would throw themselves in without the slightest fear of death, making them extremely difficult to deal with.

“Little Scholar” was the nickname Qu Longjun had earned in this run-down courtyard.

After last year’s Chengdu gathering had ended, the young woman named Qu Longjun had left the southwest.

Though she understood, in a general sense, that the southwest was now the most peaceful place around, she still carried, deep down, a lingering resentment over her father’s death at Xiaocang River. She no longer hated the Black Banner itself, but she couldn’t bring herself to simply hide away and live out a peaceful, comfortable life in Chengdu — after all, if her father’s spirit could see her now, wouldn’t he perhaps be a little unhappy about it?

Throughout her whole upbringing, the place she’d known best, when it came down to it, had always been Jiangnan.

After Wen Shoubin’s death, the property he’d left behind had been claimed on her behalf by that young hero Long, and had come back into her hands — aside from a sum of silver, it included several properties located in Jiangnan. Claiming even just one of them would have been more than enough for a lone young woman to live on for a good half a lifetime.

She had followed a Huaxia Army supply convoy out of the southwest, picking up some skills in managing accounts along the way. Thanks to Aunt Gu’s connections at the time, the Huaxia Army trade caravan she traveled with had also taught her quite a few practical skills for surviving out in the world. She traveled with them for roughly half a year before finally taking her leave and heading toward Jiangnan.

Knowing that her own appearance looked too delicate and easy to take advantage of, she’d disguised herself as a beggar for most of the journey, even applying a patch of fake dead skin to one side of her face to look like an old burn scar, moving forward as inconspicuously as possible. The skills she’d picked up from the Huaxia Army caravan had spared her a fair amount of trouble along the way, though she still occasionally drew the attention of other beggars. Fortunately, during her half year traveling with the caravan, she’d also picked up some basic breathing techniques, and after months of walking every day, she’d become quite fast when it came to running away.

Having made it through two or three thousand li of travel this way, mostly without serious incident and with a fair bit of luck, she found that all of Jiangnan had by now been thoroughly ravaged by the Fairness Party’s killing spree.

By the time she’d arrived in Jiangning more than two months earlier, she already understood that the land deeds and property titles she carried, originally belonging to Wen Shoubin, were by now almost certainly worthless. She’d pressed on a little further, but before reaching Zhenjiang had decided to turn back, and upon returning near Jiangning had had her travel funds stolen from her bundle by a pickpocket, forcing her to go from playing a beggar to becoming one in truth.

During this period, she’d also been chased and beaten by other beggars, and once, cornered in an alley with no way to run, Qu Longjun had drawn the small knife she carried to defend herself — and, later, had been about to use it to end her own life, when Huo Qinghua happened to pass by, saw what was happening, saved her, and brought her into the “run-down courtyard.”

Huo Qinghua said it was mainly her resolve in that moment of attempted suicide that had impressed her.

Most of the people gathered in the run-down courtyard were people of extreme temperament. When Qu Longjun first joined, she’d been utterly terrified, and quite a few people had tried to bully her, but Huo Qinghua had put a stop to it. She’d tried her hand at odd chores around the courtyard, but things really started to turn around once the others discovered she could read and write.

There were five children living in the run-down courtyard, growing up in this environment without much in the way of proper guidance. Qu Longjun had once tried teaching them their letters, and afterward Huo Qinghua had put her in charge of that task, also bringing her newspapers from time to time so that, whenever everyone gathered together, Qu Longjun could read the stories aloud to help pass the time.

In the “White Rakshasa” household, not a single person could read or write. Though the place was filthy and disorderly, and no one made any particular effort on behalf of the children — most of what came out of people’s mouths was bitter, self-defeating talk — once Qu Longjun took on these tasks, she noticed that, even though no one said anything about it, no one ever gave her trouble again, under any circumstances. As she took to reading the newspaper day after day, the others gradually took to calling her “Little Scholar.”

Sometimes, when the group went out to “shake down the wealthy,” they’d bring her along to watch, or on their way back would give her a small share of flattened gold or silver ornaments they’d taken. Qu Longjun secretly hid these away, waiting for the day she might find a good, reliable way to quietly slip away from this place.

Although the people in this courtyard had never harmed her personally, she still felt a deep aversion and revulsion toward what they actually did — killing entire families through lies and deception. Even though the group had all sorts of strange justifications among themselves, such as “even if this particular family didn’t actually do anything wrong, killing them can still serve to make an example, to warn off others who really have done wrong” — reasoning like that could never hold up under the scrutiny of someone as well-read as Qu Longjun.

Of course, while the others discussed such twisted logic with great enthusiasm, she never dared to openly argue against it.

Having spent that period of time in the southwest, exposed to the propaganda that “women hold up half the sky,” Qu Longjun had originally held a fairly favorable impression of the Fairness Party. By now, all that remained was confusion and fear.

Huo Qinghua would sometimes talk about how the Fairness Party had changed over the past year or so.

Although she herself belonged to the most extreme faction within the Fairness Party, she still felt a certain disdain for the chaotic, indiscriminate mess it had become of late.

Take “White Rakshasa,” for instance — originally, back when Zhou Shang first set it up, its purpose had been to stage convincing deceptions, done well enough that the “Fairness King’s” enforcement squads would have nothing to object to, made so airtight that the whole world would have “nothing to say” about it. Their “deceptions” were supposed to be executed to near perfection, so seamless that no one could tell they were staged at all. But over the past year, “Yama King’s” sentencing process had increasingly degenerated into an utterly routine, formulaic act.

No matter how poorly the accusations and performances on stage were carried out, the crowd below no longer believed any of it — they’d simply pick up bricks and beat the accused to death anyway, then move straight to looting whatever they could grab. As a result, “White Rakshasa’s” carefully staged performances had become essentially pointless — worse still, after people carried out their looting and destruction under the “Yama King’s” banner, they’d turn around and pin the blame squarely back on this branch, saying that “Yama King” was simply an indiscriminate murderer of innocents by nature — which only made the faction’s reputation grow steadily worse.

This trend had only intensified over time, and Huo Qinghua and the others weren’t entirely sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, though every so often she’d sigh about how “the world was declining” and “people’s hearts weren’t what they used to be” — if only every single “White Rakshasa” performance were done properly, flawlessly, with no room for anyone to find fault, then why would so many people be badmouthing them like this?

They considered themselves “craftsmen” plying an honest trade, and had even tried teaching some of their techniques to Qu Longjun to learn alongside them — but once they noticed her clear reluctance to perform on stage, they’d finally let the matter drop.

Tensions in Jiangning had been escalating recently, but the wealthy households had already been more or less wiped out, and Huo Qinghua and the others had, in fact, been considering leaving. That resolve, however, still hadn’t fully taken shape by the time signs of this looming, large-scale clash first appeared in the early hours of the seventeenth of August. Following the order given by “Heaven’s Slaughter” Wei Xuwen, over a thousand blade-wielding men launched an assault on the “Wheel-Turning King’s” territory, while all sorts of large and small groups flying the “Yama King’s” banner across the city began seizing the opportunity to grab territory of their own.

As the authentic branch of “White Rakshasa,” the run-down courtyard, though its numbers were few, couldn’t afford to lag behind in a matter like this.

The group assembled and, shouting and hollering, headed out into the fray, leaving behind mostly the old, weak, sick, and disabled in the courtyard. Qu Longjun crouched with her club in the dark corner of the wall, tense and on edge, keeping watch for a long while. She knew full well the price such brawls exacted — if you go out to attack others, others will come after you just as recklessly.

Fortunately, that night’s events turned out to be entirely the “Yama King” faction’s own retaliatory strike, and the “Wheel-Turning King” side hadn’t yet counterattacked. After roughly two hours or so, Huo Qinghua returned with her people, shouting and hollering as usual. A few had been injured and needed bandaging; one woman’s injury was fairly serious — she’d lost a hand — and she wailed endlessly, crying without pause.

Qu Longjun, having learned some basic first aid, dutifully tended to the wounded while listening in on everyone’s conversation. It turned out the brawl had barely gotten underway when “Dragon Sage” Fu Pingbo’s enforcement squad had shown up nearby and driven them back. The group, having been chased off before they could gain any ground, grumbled and cursed, wishing a terrible death on Fu Pingbo. Qu Longjun, however, felt a slight sense of relief — at least now her group had some kind of excuse to offer their superiors.

By now dawn was drawing near, at the very darkest hour of the night, and the sounds of fighting outside had begun to fade somewhat, likely a sign that the “Fairness King’s” enforcement squad was gradually bringing the situation under control.

Among the Fairness Party’s five great factions, it had to be said that the “Fairness King’s” side was, relatively speaking, in slightly better shape. They had claimed a small area in the city’s northwest, where the destruction was somewhat less severe and outright brawling was less common — standing at a distance across from the “Equality King’s” territory in the southeast, the two areas together counted as the most prosperous parts of the city. But to people from the other factions, the “Fairness King’s” side had too many rules, was too “high and mighty,” too “condescending,” constantly sending its enforcement squads around to lecture everyone else — and worst of all, offered far fewer opportunities for “seeking fortune amid danger” than the other factions. As a result, unless someone had a whole family to support, few people these days were particularly eager to join that side.

If someone wanted quick, short-term profit, an ordinary person would follow “Yama King” Zhou Shang and simply loot and pillage their way through life. If they were religiously inclined, they could choose Xu Zhaonan instead — his faction carried great momentum and offered the protection of faith. And for those thinking long-term, “Equality King” Shi Baofeng had the broadest network of connections and the greatest resources; he himself was widely regarded as a rival to the southwest’s “Demon of the Heart,” and in most people’s eyes, held enormous promise for the future. As for “Heavenly King Gao,” his forces maintained strict military discipline and formidable strength — in this chaotic age now upon them, that represented the most immediate, dependable power one could rely on over the long term.

As for the “Fairness King,” he was widely disliked — at least in the eyes of the people in this run-down courtyard, he seemed to be on his way out, and it was only a matter of time before someone found a way to smash open his little enclave and drag out those arrogant, unjust hoarders of wealth inside for another round of “fairness.”

Amid all this grumbling and cursing, those who had stayed behind wandered about tending to the wounded and cleaning up the aftermath; someone had cooked a pot of meat congee to treat those who’d gone out to fight. The woman who’d lost her hand had been laid in a room on the side of the courtyard; though her wound had been treated, the outcome likely wasn’t good, and she kept wailing without pause. The others sat around the courtyard listening to her cries, chatting idly about this and that, as the sky gradually grew brighter.

“Little Scholar,” said Wanyun — the prettiest and most composed-looking of the group, though in truth the most ruthless of them all — “bring out yesterday’s newspapers and read us something exciting to pass the time.”

“Oh, all right.” Qu Longjun nodded.

She usually read the newspaper aloud in the afternoon, before dinner, but the day before, everyone had spent half the day cursing and shouting about revenge after the Five Directions Arena had been smashed, so the newly arrived papers had gone unread. Now Qu Longjun took them out, sat down in front of the group, and began to read.

The newspapers that circulated within Fairness Party territory carried little actual news — mostly various stories and tales of the martial world brought in from elsewhere, along with reprints of storybooks originally published in the southwest, plus a fair number of crude jokes — in short, exactly the kind of thing ordinary folk most loved to read. Qu Longjun read on for a while, and the group burst out laughing; someone said, “Read louder, we can’t hear you.”

So Qu Longjun raised her voice a little.

The reason people felt they “couldn’t hear” wasn’t that she wasn’t reading loudly enough — it was that the wailing from the woman with the severed hand, off to the side of the courtyard, simply never stopped. There was nothing anyone could do about it, so they all just pretended not to notice, laughing uproariously at the stories as they listened.

She read through two papers this way, and had moved on to a third when the wailing from the side room gradually grew fainter, occasionally slipping into half-conscious mumbling that drifted through the morning breeze.

“Mother…”

“It hurts…”

“My baby, my darling… ah…”

“I was wrong…”

“It hurts so much… Mother… Father…”

The woman who’d lost her hand was already in her forties, her own parents long dead. Her cries came out hoarse, each one ending with a drawn-out “ah” that would stretch on and on until the breath ran out of her throat before finally stopping. Listening to it, Qu Longjun felt a deep sorrow well up inside her — she knew she needed to get out of this place soon. “Yama King” had attacked “Wheel-Turning King’s” territory tonight; surely “Wheel-Turning King” would strike back the very next day.

Thinking this over, she happened to be reading a piece of news about Tongshan.

“…This fiend, said to possess formidable martial skill, managed to abduct the young mistress of the Yan family manor despite being surrounded on all sides… and afterward even left behind his own name…”

“…This fiend is known by the name… the Five-Foot Lecher… Long… Long…”

Reading this, she paused briefly, not yet quite registering what she’d read — but a moment later, she glanced back at the paper a second time.

The others were chattering away.

“…What lecher?”

“…Shameless — what a shameless, despicable lecher…”

“…This so-called young mistress of the Yan family manor, doesn’t sound like much either…”

“…If you ask me, when you run into a man like that, you ought to grab him right when he’s doing the deed and just—”

“…It hurts so much… Mother… Father…”

“…Hahahahahaha…”

The group burst into laughter, and then began discussing all sorts of ways to deal with such a lecherous villain…

The morning light gradually grew brighter, and the group, having heard the news, gradually dispersed, returning to their own corners to rest. Huo Qinghua arranged for a round of patrols, then went to rest herself. The wailing woman off to the side of the courtyard gradually fell silent — she was close to death now, lying on a broken straw mat, only the faintest breath left in her. If anyone had leaned close to her ear, they would still have heard that same solitary, drawn-out wail.

“It hurts… Mother…”

“I’m going now… going…”

Qu Longjun sat in the courtyard holding the newspaper, and finally, walking over to that side room, went in and gently closed the woman’s still-open eyes. The name that kept flashing through her mind was still the same one.

Long Aotian…

Why on earth had he ended up in Tongshan?

Tongshan… where even was that…

That morning, “Dragon Sage” Fu Pingbo, currently in charge of security and law enforcement for the Fairness Party in Jiangning, summoned representatives from various factions, including “Heaven’s Slaughter” Wei Xuwen and “Wheel-Turning King” Xu Zhaonan, to begin an inquiry and negotiation over the previous night’s events. Wei Xuwen claimed he had known nothing about what happened in the early hours of the morning — that it had been an act of spontaneous retaliation carried out by a handful of hot-tempered Fairness Party members who held a grudge against the so-called “Great Illumination Sect Leader” Lin Zongwu. He said he was willing to arrest these men, but that they had already fled the city, and added that if Fu Pingbo had any evidence of their crimes, he was welcome to hunt them down and punish them himself.

For his part, Xu Zhaonan stated that Lin Zongwu was a deeply respected sect leader whose martial skill was unmatched in the realm — a man of such stature and formidable power that his own side had no way of stopping him from doing as he pleased. If Fu Pingbo had any complaints about the man’s conduct, he was welcome to raise the matter with the venerable leader directly. As far as he was concerned, this simply wasn’t his problem to manage.

“Heavenly King Gao” and “Equality King,” for their part, offered no particular opinion on the previous night’s clash, expressing support for Fu Pingbo’s efforts to arrest and punish the guilty, while indirectly warning Lin Zongwu’s side not to continue stirring up trouble. But Xu Zhaonan’s standing far outranked either of theirs, and he simply brushed such warnings aside.

That same morning, once the fruitless negotiations had concluded, Lin Zongwu put out word that within three days, he would step onto Gao Chang’s “Million Troops Arena.”

The atmosphere within the city grew instantly more tense and grim — a tangible storm was already gathering.

But it was, after all, nothing more than factional bloodshed — everyone had braced themselves for it, and no one was particularly afraid.

Having worked hard through the night, Ning Ji slept at his inn until noon.

For reasons he himself preferred not to examine or admit too closely, he had, in any case, no intention of giving up the name “Long Aotian.” And so, the night before, he had gone ahead and beaten up quite a few more people.

…

Thousands of li away in the southwest, having just finished celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival at Zhang Village, father and son Ning Yi and Ning Xi were riding in a carriage on their way to work in Chengdu.

“Dad, where do you think Little Brother’s gotten to by now?”

“Who knows, with something like this — as long as he hasn’t died out there, that’s good enough…” Ning Yi sighed.

“We all figured he must have gone to Jiangning. With Little Ji’s skill, he’s not likely to come to any real harm — don’t worry, Dad.” Ning Xi sounded more optimistic. “Who knows, he might already be making a name for himself out there. Honestly, I’m a little jealous…”

“Knowing him, he’s probably burning through the whole family’s reputation instead.” Ning Yi rolled his eyes. Of course, this was really just the old father’s habitual, offhand teasing — deep down, he still had plenty of confidence in his second son’s skill and character.

As for the fact that he’d also quietly sent people of his own to Jiangning, that wasn’t something he particularly needed to mention to his eldest son.

“So that means Little Brother’s going to be the first one in the family to return to Jiangning. Actually, over the years, Mom and several of the uncles from the Su family have always said they’d like to go back and see the old house someday.”

Ning Xi let out a wistful sigh. Ning Yi thought it over but didn’t answer — in his own heart, he often found himself thinking fondly of Jiangning, and according to past intelligence reports, though the old family house had endured several bouts of war and turmoil, it had, in fact, survived each time.

After a moment, Ning Xi shifted away from the sentimental topic. “…Dad, about this trip back — Mom said that last time you left Zhang Village, she had you bring back a roast chicken.”

“Did she?” Ning Yi asked, frowning.

“She did.” Ning Xi propped his chin on both hands from across the carriage, staring straight into his father’s eyes.

“I honestly don’t remember these little details all that well,” Ning Yi replied calmly, holding a document in his hand. “…Never mind that — there’s a problem with this report of yours…”

“Dad, you can’t just—”

“Hear me out first, and whether it makes sense or not, you can think it over carefully afterward… Look at the first point here…”

Bright sunlight fell across the newly paved road, and the carriage rolled onward, kicking up trailing dust as it went.