On the twentieth of the eighth month, the weather turned gloomy.

The crowd before Jiangning’s “Million Soldiers Arena” was a sea of people. Lin Zongwu, dressed in his loose monastic robes, had already stepped onto the ring, while the “Heavenly King Gao” side sent out, rather than the usual motley assortment of martial-world men, a single unit of neatly uniformed soldiers.

These soldiers went up one at a time, fighting Lin Zongwu using what looked, to martial-world eyes, like stiff, clumsy combat techniques. Lin Zongwu beat the first man to the point of serious injury; the man was carried off, and the second soldier immediately stepped up to take his place. Once the second was gravely wounded, the third followed…

The whole atmosphere was grim and oppressive, lacking the fevered excitement of the “Five Factions Arena” from before. Each soldier, one after another, went up and fought with everything he had, only to be carried off afterward — every one of them seeming to face death without fear. As for Lin Zongwu, after his initial opening words, he fell silent, fighting one soldier after another as they came up.

By the time three or five men had fought, most of the onlookers had already sensed the cleverness — and the underlying menace — of what Gao Chang’s side was doing. Some quietly praised it; others muttered that Lin Zongwu’s victory was hardly honorable, bullying the weak with his overwhelming strength. But by the tenth, then the dozenth man, an odd sense of respect had begun to settle over the crowd toward both sides.

Lin Zongwu’s massive frame stood there; though he was called the greatest martial artist under heaven, he was, after all, no longer young. The first few soldiers who stepped up could still be said to have been bullied by a much stronger opponent — but as one soldier after another came up, fought, and fell, each engagement lasting almost exactly the same span of time — the crowd would watch the man’s opening move, understand the pattern, and then see him felled with a single strike — this endless cycle began to lend Lin Zongwu an air like that of a great mountain: towering, unshakable, majestic.

Lin Zongwu had spent half his life preaching his teachings, traveling far and wide, and had seen every manner of situation imaginable. Aside from certain unspeakable wretches who might, at the height of some peak confrontation, pull out a couple of coins to humiliate him, there was little else he would ever bother paying mind to. Gao Chang’s approach here, though clever, still couldn’t escape the fact that it relied on brute military force — and in the end, it was still being staged on Lin Zongwu’s own turf.

Neither side spoke a word. If you wanted to send them up one by one to “face death without fear,” then so be it — let them come.

The massive figure stood firm before the ring, his two bare palms meeting one weapon-wielding young soldier after another, cutting down man after man, more than a dozen in all. After felling more than twenty in a row, the onlookers below had begun to feel their hearts pounding with something close to awe. Lin Zongwu showed no sign of fatigue; each time he felled a man, he simply stood with his hands clasped behind his back, watching in silence as the wounded man was carried off.

He offered no further gesture, and Gao Chang’s side had no choice but to keep sending soldiers up, one after another, to take their beating.

Twenty-one, twenty-two… twenty-five, twenty-six… the count continued on up to thirty. When the thirtieth soldier had been struck down, Lin Zongwu finally clasped his hands behind his back and turned to step down from the ring, his deep voice ringing out: “From this day forward, you have my leave to hold your arena.”

The men managing the “Million Soldiers Arena” for Gao Chang had felt rather smug at first, but by this point were already drenched in cold sweat; hearing these words, they finally let out a long breath of relief.

Below the ring, the crowd erupted into wild cheering. Some praised how truly formidable Gao Chang’s response had been, far superior to the reckless overconfidence Zhou Shang had shown at the start; but more of them praised the Holy Teacher Lin’s extraordinary martial prowess — his response here had, after all, done nothing to diminish his commanding stature as “the greatest man under heaven.”

Amid this wild celebration, word soon spread that Lin Zongwu would, in a few days’ time, step onto Shi Baofeng’s “Heavenly Treasure Platform.”

……

……

“Something’s going to happen… something’s going to happen…”

That afternoon, the gloomy sky seemed to press down over the city.

Rumors had already begun circulating through Jiangning’s streets and alleys, and under the overcast sky, some stallholders had begun packing up and closing their shops.

Near the old Su family residence, Xue Jin, who had spent half the day begging without attracting much attention, sensed something was off in the air and, muttering quietly to himself, hurried back toward “home.” He gathered firewood along the way and, upon reaching the bridge underpass near the Five Lakes Inn, finally felt a slight sense of relief settle over him.

“Something’s going to happen… something’s going to happen…”

He huddled in that dim underpass, sitting beside Yue Niang, murmuring quietly. Outside the underpass, the sky hung low and dim, as if night were about to fall early.

In the main hall of the Five Lakes Inn, groups of martial-world travelers were returning from outside, sitting down to talk in low voices about the morning’s events, some exchanging a few words with the usually amiable innkeeper. This particular inn flew the banner of the “Fair King” He Wen, but the owner had already reinforced the doors and windows, bracing for the possibility that something bad might happen.

In a small corner room on the second floor of the inn, Ning Ji was guiding the young monk, who lay sprawled across the table, in practicing his handwriting. The young monk gripped the brush, writing the seven characters “Little Sage Equal to Heaven, Sun Wukong” in crooked, uneven strokes on the paper. The handwriting was truly ugly.

“Master… only taught me to read… I’ve had little… practice writing…”

When the two of them had gone out together on their earlier crusade of chivalry, the young monk had once flushed red over this very issue — his literacy barely stretched to reading, and at most he could scrawl out his own name, which had left him deeply embarrassed in front of his newly adopted “big brother.” Ning Ji had originally thought he’d caught himself a literate laborer, only to discover he now had to help write out the boy’s own title for him besides — much to his own heartache, he found himself saying things like, “you need well-rounded development in morals, wisdom, physical fitness, aesthetics, and labor…” and other such phrases the young monk had no hope of understanding.

Worth noting: in the two days since they’d met, the pair had already knocked over two of the smaller operations belonging to “King Yama” Zhou Shang. The first time, not yet practiced, they’d simply finished the job and left. But this morning, just before dawn, they’d finally left their mark on the wall: “Long Aotian, Alliance Leader of the Martial World” and “Sun Wukong, the Little Sage Equal to Heaven,” with the flourish of “was here” added at the end for good measure. It had been their first truly successful collaboration.

The two of them worked at night and slept soundly through the day on the same bed, having missed Lin Zongwu’s morning arena bout entirely. Upon waking, the young monk was made to practice his writing — thankfully, though his characters were poor, his attitude was sincere, which brought no small comfort to the freshly minted “teacher,” the Alliance Leader.

“Reading more is never a bad thing!”

He struck the very same pose his old auntie had once used to teach him, pacing back and forth beside the young monk as the boy bent over his writing, offering earnest instruction.

“Your master’s outlook is a bit narrow, honestly…”

“You wrote this character wrong, haha…”

The young monk nodded along again and again.

This, they say, is how the flame gets passed on.

Having taught with great seriousness for a while and thoroughly satisfied his teacherly urge, Ning Ji went down to the main hall to eavesdrop on the various pieces of gossip circulating. As evening drew near, he went to the kitchen out back to buy some cheap leftover food and brought it down to the bridge underpass by the small river.

“Cripple, why are you back so early today?”

“Something’s — something’s — something’s going to happen, something’s going to happen…”

Xue Jin, kneeling as he thanked him, looked up at the young man who’d been bringing him food these past several days, seeming to want to say something more.

“Something’s going to happen — why don’t you leave, then?”

“Leave…” Xue Jin’s lips trembled; he fell silent for a moment, then finally turned to glance back at the figure inside the underpass. “Leave… can’t…”

“Well, make sure you hide well, then.”

Ning Ji said no more, rose with a smile, and took the empty bowl back to return it to the innkeeper.

Not long after, night fell over the city. The two young men ate their dinner, chatted quietly in the dark for a while, and then, after waiting about two hours, changed into their night-black clothing, covered their faces and shaved heads, and slipped out of the inn.

Before midnight that night, the fighting had already broken out across the city.

At the sound of whistles and gongs from the “Dragon Sage’s” enforcement squads, the men under “Equality King” Shi Baofeng and “King Yama” Zhou Shang moved out almost simultaneously, striking directly at the territory of “Wheel-Turning King” Xu Zhaonan. But this time, Xu Zhaonan was well prepared — his fervent followers, who had already been pouring into the city in large numbers over the previous two days, launched a counterattack under cries of “divine protection” and “the light shall save all.”

Amid this atmosphere, several of Gao Chang’s commanders, who had been beaten thirty men deep by Lin Zongwu that very morning, also made their move within the city, striking simultaneously against both Xu Zhaonan and Zhou Shang. “Dragon Sage” Fu Pingbo was the first to step forward, trying to rein in this most destructive faction of soldiers — and the whole city, at this point, had erupted into chaos.

All five factions of the Fairness Party had, in this moment, finally risen up together.

Two shadowy figures, skilled in lightness footwork, moved through the dark corners of this uproarious city, and in doing so witnessed no small number of ugly things rarely seen in the light of day.

They saw certain factions gathering and plotting in the darkness before going out to kill and burn;

they saw, too, the aftermath of a looting spree, brothers turning on each other over an uneven split of the spoils;

they saw members of the “Fair King’s” enforcement squads, tasked with keeping order, dragged into alleys and beaten to death with clubs once caught alone;

they saw women and children locked away in dark courtyards, barely clothed;

some who knelt begging for mercy were stuffed into sacks, while others laughed as they tossed the sacks into the river;

some people were even thrown directly into fires…

In this city, it wasn’t only people like Xue Jin who were suffering such tragic fates — with order gone, similar scenes could be found on every side, for anyone who cared to look closely. The two young men felt anger, but beneath that anger, some of the emotion had already begun to be pushed down and suppressed.

“Amitabha. This humble monk, on his journey south, has never seen so much tragedy… This must be, perhaps, what the realm of hell looks like.” This was how the young monk understood what he had witnessed, thinking to himself that this might well be the very reason his master had sent him to see Jiangning. Compared to this, whatever he had once seen back in the Jin region seemed hardly worth mentioning.

“Hmph! None of the Fairness Party are any good!” Ning Ji, for his part, held onto his consistent view. “The worst of them all is Zhou Shang! He absolutely needs to be killed.”

Based on what they’d observed over these three nights of spying, the cruelest and most vicious of the Fairness Party’s five factions was indeed Zhou Shang’s side — their methods of killing were the most brutal, the most bloody, and many among them had gone beyond simply wanting to kill their enemies, already beginning to take pleasure in cruelty and torment for its own sake.

As for the question of how to find Wei Xuwen, after two days of observation, Ning Ji had already worked out a simple plan.

That night, after a bit of careful scouting, the two of them settled on a warehouse near a small dock on the west side of the city and launched their attack.

This warehouse currently belonged to a minor lieutenant under “King Yama” Zhou Shang. After the large-scale fighting had broken out that night, more than ten men still remained on guard there, and according to Ning Ji’s observations, the lieutenant himself was also still inside — which suggested the place did indeed hold some important stockpile of goods.

At midnight, the two shadowy figures descended into the courtyard behind the warehouse.

The chaos of slaughter didn’t last long within this particular warehouse. By the time firelight revealed the two intruders to the men on guard, six of the martial-world men defending the area had already been killed. The figures then flitted like fleas through the firelit darkness — a single swing or thrust of an arm claiming a life each time; some men’s torches were sent spinning through the air, and before they even hit the ground, others were falling with hysterical howls of pain, blood spraying from their throats, waists, and thighs.

In this assault, Ning Ji made no effort to hold back his skills, unleashing killing with almost total abandon. His partner, the young monk, who usually seemed gentle and mild-mannered, wielded a small dagger during this “kill the wicked” operation with an almost surgical precision, striking throat after throat with lethal accuracy — this was the fighting style his master had specifically tailored for someone his age, and Ning Ji thoroughly approved, since when he himself had been two years younger, Aunt Hong had designed much the same approach for him.

The lieutenant guarding the place charged out of a room brandishing a long blade, but in almost a single exchange had his weapon wrested from him and turned back on him, the long blade run straight through his stomach and pinning him to the wall.

The courtyard was awash in blood; men writhed and groaned on the ground. The shorter of the two black-clad figures slipped inside the warehouse and killed the two remaining underlings there, while the taller one walked up to the lieutenant and reached out to feel around his body.

“Hey, this fighting style your master designed — there’s really something to it…”

The lieutenant felt his chest being groped, and heard an unmistakably nasal, honking voice saying something he couldn’t quite make out.

“A-Amitabha…”

The younger of the two black-clad figures stepped out, glancing left and right, searching for any survivors, his tone unexpectedly childish.

“You… you…” the lieutenant managed to say with great difficulty.

“You know your boss, ‘Heaven-Slayer’ Wei Xuwen, don’t you?” asked the young man patting him down.

“You people… damn you…”

“We’re looking for him. Do you know where he is?”

“Damn you… to hell…” Blood trickled from his mouth.

“Never mind.” The young man shook his head, pulled some silver coins off his body and tucked them into his own robes, then produced some signal fireworks meant for raising alarms. “If we set these off, someone will come looking, won’t they… you’ve lost a lot of blood. Wukong, torch.”

Pinned to the wall, growing weaker by the moment, the lieutenant saw the young monk who kept saying “Amitabha” bring over a torch. The young man beside him, meanwhile, dug around in his own robes and pulled out a… a large calligraphy brush.

Even believing he was about to die, the lieutenant watched, his face a mask of disbelief, as they pressed the brush against his mouth and against his own wound, soaking it thick with blood, then had the young monk hold the torch aloft while the other wrote something on the wall nearby. When he finished, he had the young monk take the brush and write as well. He had no idea what they were writing…

“Long Aotian, Alliance Leader of the Martial World; Sun Wukong, the Little Sage Equal to Heaven — was here.”

After finishing this line, Long Aotian thought for a moment, then decided to add his purpose beneath it — he wrote out the two characters for “Heaven-Slayer,” had the young monk copy them alongside, and in the end, the message on the wall read:

“Long Aotian, Alliance Leader of the Martial World; Sun Wukong, the Little Sage Equal to Heaven — was here. Heaven-Slayer, die die die!”

They then searched the warehouse thoroughly, freed eight women who had been locked inside, barely clothed, for who knows how long, and did a bit of looting and rearranging before finally pulling out the fireworks they’d taken off the pile of corpses and setting them off, one by one.

Plenty of killing had already gone on across the city that night, and signal flares had gone up more than once already — but seeing this sudden burst of fireworks all at once, the men who belonged to this particular warehouse were the first to rush back. Seeing the severity of the situation, they hastily called for reinforcements, and soon fifty or sixty men with blades, escorting a man on a tall, imposing horse, arrived and entered the warehouse together, taking in the scene of bodies strewn everywhere and the message written on the wall.

The handwriting on the wall was clearly done by two different hands.

The two scripts didn’t match at all — one crooked and jagged, the other childish and soft — and at first glance, seeing it written so boldly, it looked almost comical. But this handwriting had been written in blood, and their own lieutenant lay pinned to the wall right beside it, run through with a single blade. Many of the bodies scattered around the courtyard had had their throats cut with a single stroke. This lent the whole scene an eerie, almost otherworldly atmosphere.

The leader on horseback went in to inspect the scene, then directed his men to search the surrounding area.

Not far off, near a dark bend in the river, two figures lay flat against the riverbank, watching everything in secret. Not far from them, hidden in the grass, was even a wooden barrel filled with black powder that they’d stolen from the warehouse in their haste.

“See, I told you — once one boss dies, the ones above him will come looking.”

Long Aotian was quite pleased with himself, passing on his life wisdom to his little companion beside him. “And we wrote ‘Heaven-Slayer’ on the wall too, so these bosses will definitely have to report it up the chain. Whether we follow him back or catch him ourselves, either way we’re bound to pick up some useful information.”

“Big Brother Long is really something. I never would’ve thought of that,” the young monk said with genuine admiration, staring intently in the dark, studying the caliber of the figure atop the tall horse. “This man — his martial skill looks pretty decent.”

“Mm, just don’t know what rank he is… there are quite a few men with him, but that’s fine. Once they head back, we’ll follow. I’ll blow these bastards up and grab him in the confusion…”

“Mm-hm.” The young monk nodded repeatedly, then after a moment, “Big Brother Long, he — he’s coming this way, what do we do?”

“Oh?” Long Aotian, who had just turned back to check the quality of the gunpowder in the barrel, turned his head again.

Both figures now stared at the man approaching on horseback with an air of arrogance.

“Big brother, he doesn’t have many men with him…” the young monk said.

“I know…”

“Should we make our move?”

“When you’re out in the martial world, you have to stay composed…”

“Oh, okay…”

Both of them settled themselves, staying calm.

A moment passed…

“Hmm, there’s an opening…”

“This guy’s got a huge opening…”

The two rookies of the martial world, hidden in the dark, wavered back and forth, unable to decide.

……

Not long after, near the river bend not far from the warehouse, the mounted subordinate of King Yama was making his rounds when a rope came flying out from the side, catching him squarely around the body. The two small dark figures, holding onto the rope, suddenly burst out of the darkness and sprinted forward with all their might.

The officer was yanked down from his horse with a thud and sent sliding along the ground ahead. The startled horse let out a long whinny and bolted, and as several of his men gave chase but couldn’t keep up, watching the horse charge on ahead, the taller of the two dark figures holding the rope vaulted up onto its back mid-run, cheering, “Got him!”

The smaller figure shouted too: “We got him!”

The horse charged onward as the King Yama subordinate, still tied to the rope, was thrown down onto the riverbank one moment and dragged clattering back up the next, hauled off into the distant night in this manner, while behind them the cries of pursuit finally erupted, a great crowd rushing after them in a chaotic mass…

……

At that same moment, unaware that he had been targeted by a pair of martial-world rookies, the great villain Wei Xuwen was, on the other side of the city, moving forward with a major undertaking of his own.

That night, the large-scale assault he had once again launched — “King Yama’s” faction against the “Wheel-Turning King’s” side — was a grand, thunderous affair, but to him, all this noise and spectacle had never had anything to do with whether the real business would succeed or fail.

He sat in a dark attic, watching the thin, solitary figure in the run-down courtyard below. That figure’s name was Miao Zheng — he had fallen into Wei Xuwen’s hands one night several days earlier, and by now, Wei Xuwen had fully worked out how to make use of him.

Miao Zheng’s only two remaining family members — his younger brother and his son — were at this moment up in the attic, sharing the same space as Wei Xuwen, whose manner toward them had been amiable from start to finish.

“Don’t worry. As long as he does what needs doing, all of you can go on living, safe and sound.”

After a while, the thing he’d been waiting for finally appeared.

A dark figure appeared out on the street outside, gradually approaching. Through a gap in the run-down courtyard’s wall, Miao Zheng below could also see this happening, and his body trembled slightly.

“Didn’t they say… it would be a woman coming?”

Up in the attic, Wei Xuwen asked in a low voice.

As if also afraid that a face-to-face meeting might cause complications, the figure in the darkness called out from some distance away: “I am An Xifu, here on Siyi’s behalf to see you.”

Up in the attic, Wei Xuwen’s eyes lit up. He pressed his hands lightly together and murmured, “Good.”

Far off in the city, signal arrows and fireworks rose into the sky as the fighting continued all around. In the darkness surrounding this stretch of street, dozens, even a hundred or more figures were now converging on this spot like a silent tide of malice.

An Xifu advanced slowly. The darkness was about to close in.

“AH—”

Miao Zheng cried out.

In an instant, amid the dim gloom, An Xifu’s figure shot backward like a raven in retreat. Up in the attic, Wei Xuwen let out a sharp curse and waved his hand, drawing with a flash the long blade at the hip of the guard beside him. All along the street, near and far, the ambushers surged forward from cover, pouring out like an overwhelming tide…

……

Elsewhere, a horse galloped on through the dark streets for a while.

Behind it, the young monk ran wildly, calling out to the one ahead who was clearly enjoying himself immensely on horseback: “Big brother, big brother, stop, stop…”

Long Aotian looked back from up ahead. “What is it?”

The pursuers behind hadn’t fallen too far back yet; he’d been planning to find a quiet spot to interrogate his captive.

The young monk, still running alongside the horse, pointed down at the man on the ground. “He — he’s been killed in the crash…”

“What?” Long Aotian reined in the horse and jumped down, walking over to take a look. The man had indeed cracked his head open and was bleeding badly — apparently having struck a rock somewhere along the way without either of them noticing.

The two of them stood by the roadside, rubbing their chins, falling silent for a moment. Behind them, in the darkness, the sound of pursuit was growing louder.

“What do we do now…”

“Whose fault is it he was on a horse…” Long Aotian said gloomily, then waved a hand. “Forget it, let’s just give him back to them.”

“So what do we do next, then?”

“Next? We started this by killing their boss — this one here is his boss’s boss. Hmm, next, the boss of the boss of the boss might show up. Could be Wei Xuwen himself, who knows.”

“Should we wait a bit longer?”

“Right, but this time we need to be more careful — no more acting rashly…”

In the darkness, the two of them summed up their experience and drew their lessons. Long Aotian gave the dead man a kick with his foot and sighed, still feeling a bit of regret.

Of course, by the time the pursuers arrived, both figures had already vanished into the night.

That night, Wei Xuwen never showed up. It wasn’t until the next morning that he learned what had happened here.

The entire affair had descended into total chaos — an absolute mess.