The sky brightened within the pale gray curtain of rain.

In Jiangning, among the ramshackle marketplaces and residential blocks, some people had already risen and begun their day’s work.

A plainly dressed woman carried firewood beneath the dripping eaves, heading toward the kitchen to light the stove; thin smoke drifted up through the chimney and dissolved into the fine rain. The scattered courtyards and shacks nearby, large and small, took on a bit of life.

An old man leaning on a cane asked under the eaves about breakfast; a woman in a kitchen complained about how inconvenient city life had become — there wasn’t even anywhere to go cut firewood; a young man who’d risen early fetched water from a usable well nearby and told everyone which well had had a corpse dumped in it and could no longer be used; a half-grown boy, following old habits, squatted with his bare bottom outside under the eaves to relieve himself, raindrops falling from the eaves onto his ragged straw hat, as he strained forward, watching the rain drip down ahead of him.

After a busy night, Lu Xian came back from outside and stepped right in the mess.

“Damn dog! I told you lot not to shit right outside your own house — told you and told you and you never listen!”

Seeing the boy squatting there ahead of him, he flew into a rage and cursed loudly.

The boy jumped up in fright, hastily pulling up his trousers. “That — that wasn’t me!”

“It’s always one of you little brats anyway! I’ve told you before, living in the city means acting like it, you… don’t you run…”

Before he could finish his lecture, seeing the boy turn and bolt, Lu Xian gave chase. The boy didn’t stop. “Don’t hit me!”

“Who’s hitting you, you incorrigible little idiot!”

Clutching his trousers, the boy hadn’t gotten far before Lu Xian, using his “Eight Steps Chasing the Cicada” lightness footwork, caught up and seized him by the collar. “You idiot! Didn’t even wipe your ass before pulling your pants up — how many pairs of pants does your family even have to wash… damn it…”

Cursing all the while, he yanked the boy’s trousers back down and snapped off a few twigs from beside the road, shoving them into his hand. “Wipe yourself clean, damn it!”

“Okay.” The boy took the twigs, squatted back down, and, seeing the man glaring at him, mumbled, “I… I’ll just finish up…”

“Ugh… let me catch you doing this again and I’ll box your ears.”

Thoroughly exasperated, Lu Xian left the boy with that threat and, preferring not to watch, turned back toward the courtyard.

As he reached the courtyard gate, people began greeting him one after another. “Brother Xian.”

“Xian, you’re back.”

“Lu Xian, out working this late again.”

“Ought to come home at night…”

Lu Xian rinsed the sole of his shoe, still coated in filth, in a puddle by the courtyard, and nodded along as he entered, responding here and there.

What had originally been a two-courtyard residence had by now been converted into a crowded compound shared by many households, everyone inside and out familiar faces. A middle-aged man about his own age teased him. “Lu Xian, we heard you cursing at Doggy just now.”

“Lu Xian, step in some shit?”

“Lu Xian, why don’t you investigate whose shit that was?”

“Looks to me like it was yours,” Lu Xian shot back with a grin. “You smell just like it.”

“Well, I stepped in it too, hah — you’re not thorough enough with your investigations…”

Several households lived in the outer part of the courtyard, and several more inside; on a morning like this, the whole place buzzed with noise and activity. By the time he made it back into his room, his wife came over to nag him about how quickly the grain was being used up lately, and about Second Pillar’s wife, who’d been injured on a job and had come asking for rice again, and then a few more complaints about how life in the city wasn’t as good as in the countryside, how firewood was hard to buy these days, how things outside weren’t safe…

These were all routine complaints, and Lu Xian brushed them off with a few noncommittal replies.

With his wife’s help, he took off his straw raincoat, unbuckled the two short-and-long blades he carried, then untied the pouch holding his various hidden weapons and medicines, took off his outer coat, unbuckled the iron-plated protective vest underneath, untied his leg wrappings and pulled out the iron plates and small knives hidden inside… Piece by piece, he stripped it all off until the items formed a small pile on the table, and his body felt noticeably lighter.

“Go fetch Uncle Duanwu. Prepare two servings of breakfast.”

Having taken off all this gear, he washed his face and sent his wife out to fetch the man. A little while later, a tall man of about fifty entered — his hair half gray and unevenly streaked, but his eyes still sharp and alert. Lu Xian bowed to him in greeting. “Uncle Duanwu, is your injury any better?”

“The wound on my hand has fully healed. I can go out with you tonight,” the man said, nodding. “Xiaoshan told me you two took on a strange job this time. How’s it going? Any trouble?”

“Strange it certainly is — catching two children, one about fourteen or fifteen, the other thirteen or fourteen, not very old, but their skill really is formidable. We crossed paths with them the night before last and nearly came out the worse for it.”

“Skill like that at that age — they’re probably backed by something.”

“Mm, but this is odd more than troublesome. These two children… they’re trying to assassinate Zhou Shang, heh, so there’s not much to worry about on that front. Actually, the reason I asked you here today is I have some concerns and wanted to discuss them with you.”

“Mm.” The man nodded. “Go on.”

“Uncle Duanwu, do you think… maybe we should leave Jiangning?”

Lu Xian finished speaking. The man across from him thought it over for a moment, then, after a silence, raised his head. “You’ve sensed something?”

“I can’t say exactly what.” Lu Xian walked to the door, looked outside for a moment, then closed it and spoke in a low voice. “When the Fairness Party first took Jiangning, they said they wanted to open the city up for business, invite guests from all quarters, and I’d done some service for them, so I called everyone over here with me… At the time we thought the five houses of the Fairness Party were all one body, but after months in Jiangning, once the five factions actually came into contact, we found it’s nothing like that at all…”

“Didn’t they say, once this grand gathering was over, they’d truly become one family?”

“I don’t think it’s that simple.” Lu Xian shook his head. “Before, everyone said they’d talk it through, fight a little, each give some ground, and in the end all eat from the same pot. But looking at it now, the thinking among these five factions is worlds apart. Uncle Duanwu, you know I’ve been running around lately trying to get schooling set up for Doggy, Tiger Head, and the others… When we first entered the city, every household wanted to settle down here, and we did manage to protect a fair number of teachers, but by now, there are fewer and fewer of them.”

“These past couple of days… there really have been a lot of people fleeing the city…”

“It’s not just these past couple of days… these past few months, aside from the Fair King’s territory, which has managed to keep a few schools running, there are fewer and fewer scholars to be found among the rest of us… And the bigger figures up top, they’ve kept some scholars for themselves too, calling them advisors — but privately, they only let the teachers educate their own children, and won’t open the door to the rest of us. I’d originally hoped to persuade that Master Yan down south to teach Doggy and the others their letters, but I got held up with other things, and just a few days ago I heard he was beaten to death.”

The two of them sat at the table, and Lu Xian lowered his voice further. “He Shuangying’s side took a liking to some girl and tried to arrange a match with his own idiot son. Master Yan refused, so He Shuangying brought men to his door and beat him to death. And the word going around is that these bookish types are useless, always looking down on everyone — and now that our Fairness Party preaches that everyone’s equal, well, the educated and the uneducated are equal too, aren’t they? He looked down on people, so he deserved to be killed… and there are even people out there cheering it on.”

“Uncle Duanwu, we’re men who live by the blade ourselves, we know exactly what fighting and killing can accomplish. The world’s gone bad, and sure, we can smash it apart — but I’ve never once heard of anyone getting anything done well without reading, without knowing their letters, without understanding reason. Even if everyone really is equal, even living by the blade, you still have to learn the craft from someone. If the ones who learn a skill and the ones who never bother are supposed to be equal too, then I think this ‘equality’ is going to turn into a joke sooner or later…”

“I know all this too.” Uncle Duanwu across from him thought for a moment, then nodded. “But everyone’s already come here, and now suddenly saying we should leave — can we even manage that? And you’re working under General Wei right now — if you suddenly left, wouldn’t that offend him? Where would we even go? If we ran back home, don’t forget, our village is ‘King Yama’s’ territory too.”

“Sigh, if it hadn’t come to that in the first place, we wouldn’t have ended up following this side. Looking at it now, if we could follow the Fair King instead, maybe things would be better — at least Doggy and the others would have somewhere to go to school…” Lu Xian trailed off, then shook his head again. “Unfortunately, the people who were investigating that ‘reading society’ have also gotten on the Fair King’s bad side by now, so that probably won’t work out either.”

The two of them fell silent for a while after this exchange, and Uncle Duanwu tapped his fingers on the table before speaking again. “I know you’ve always been a man with ideas. If you brought this up with me, you must already have something in mind. Go ahead and tell me what you’re thinking.”

Lu Xian nodded. “Our Great King Zhou may have gone a bit too far, but by this point he’s accumulated a fair amount of silver and gold. The situation in the city lately hasn’t felt right to me. I think we need to find somewhere to fall back to, give everyone a way out…”

Uncle Duanwu sighed. “Look at everyone who’s come to join Great King Zhou lately — who among them isn’t just here to grab a fortune and then find somewhere quiet to enjoy it? The problem is, the whole world’s in chaos right now — where is there even to go? And besides, working under General Wei, you always need people under you. If our able-bodied men go with you, the women and children can’t easily leave. If we tried to have everyone escort their families out of the city, whether back home or somewhere else, it would surely get in the way of your work here…”

Lu Xian waved a hand. “Uncle Duanwu, all that can be figured out slowly. But ever since Master Yan was beaten to death, I just can’t shake this uneasy feeling. Let’s at least start thinking about where else we could go… Uncle Duanwu, what do you think of General Liu Guangshi’s side? I hear they treat the common people well, and General Liu comes from a scholarly background…”

In the misty morning autumn rain, the two of them discussed these matters at length, then talked over some contingency plans in case the city descended into chaos. The two of them were more or less the backbone of the village folk within the city, and once these matters were settled, Uncle Duanwu finally asked for the details of the current assignment.

“…Two children, quite reckless about it — one calls himself ‘Alliance Leader of the Martial World’ Long Aotian, the other calls himself ‘Little Sage Equal to Heaven’ Sun Wukong. But the slightly older one actually has another nickname too — ‘Five-Foot Pervert Demon.’ He got into some trouble back in Tongshan, and now several factions are after him…”

Lu Xian laid out the whole situation, including the dozens of men the two of them had already injured recently. Uncle Duanwu frowned. “They’ve had access to gunpowder — this isn’t a simple matter at all…”

“From how they talk, they must have come from the southwest, but people from the southwest usually follow strict rules and discipline. Kids like these — most likely their elders serve in the southwestern army, and once out on their own with no one watching, they’ve run wild. We’re guessing they’re orphans.”

“So their elders were probably martyrs who died resisting the Jurchens…”

“Wanting to kill General Wei, and Great King Zhou too…” Lu Xian sighed. “This isn’t a matter to be handled gently. But I have a plan. They’re both young — when we crossed paths with them the other day, I didn’t catch much of a scent on them, so they must have a fixed hideout somewhere in the city. I’ll spend the next few days finding it, then let the Equality King or the Wheel-Turning King’s people know so they can move in and kill them. That should satisfy General Wei too. Of course, since the two of them mostly move around at night causing trouble, I’ll still need to keep up appearances with the nightly patrols.”

“Mm, that sounds like a sensible way to handle it.” Uncle Duanwu nodded. “I’ll go with you on tonight’s patrol.”

“No, Uncle Duanwu, you should—”

“My wound’s already healed. Quietly asking around about our options and outlets won’t slow anything down. As for your matter — if these two children really are orphans, then catching and killing them is simple enough. But if there really is someone big behind them, having me along can help back you up. It’s fine, it was just a minor injury — I’ve been resting for over a month now and I’m about to go stir-crazy. A man needs something to do.”

Under the intermittent drizzle, the city beneath the pale blue-gray sky seemed to have settled permanently into dusk. Having worked through the night, Lu Xian finally rested. People came and went around the compound, and in the afternoon some able-bodied men brought over a large cartload of firewood, along with some meat, vegetables, and grain — a small perk Lu Xian had arranged for himself through his work under Wei Xuwen.

Toward evening, a group of able-bodied men gathered in the courtyard. When Li Duanwu, his hair streaked with gray, appeared dressed in black with a long blade slung across his back, everyone bowed respectfully to him, and some even cheered.

He was an old-school man of the martial world, once known in Jiangnan by the formidable name “River-Breaking Dragon.” Though age had caught up with him over the years, he had trained Lu Xian to surpass even his own skill. It was also because he’d gathered the village’s able-bodied men together when chaos first descended that they’d managed to fight their way through and secure a foothold in the city. Though the place they’d settled now looked rather shabby, in truth everyone under him had managed to save up some silver and gold, and lived considerably better than most.

They stuck together, each with their own thoughts, positions, desires… and joys and sorrows.

At this moment, they were about to go hunt down two young men who didn’t know their place in the world. It was, among the many tasks they’d carried out over the past year and more, an utterly unremarkable one.

Under Wei Xuwen, it was always the ones who could get things done who survived — and survived well. They all understood this. And so, after Lu Xian and Li Duanwu finished their arrangements, everyone scattered off in different directions beneath the drizzling rain.

The city darkened, and then, amid the fine rain, lights gradually began to glow — lanterns in the drizzle, hazy and indistinct, like a painting in oils…