“…This time, coming to Jiangning City, there are three delegations that stand out as truly special, because only these three possess the mantle of righteous cause. Whether ‘Heavenly King Gao’ wishes it or not, you’ll eventually have to choose one of them to cooperate with…”
The autumn daylight streamed in through the window; leaves drifted down onto the terrace outside. Within the room, Zuo Xiuquan poured the tea with practiced ease, sliding the cup toward Gao Chang.
“Exactly which three these are shouldn’t come as much surprise. The southwest’s Black Banner defeated the Jurchens fair and square on the battlefield — they hold both righteous cause and real strength. His Majesty in the southeast carries the mantle of the true line of the Wu Dynasty — his strength has suffered, but his claim to righteous cause is the most unimpeachable of all. And third, Dai Mengwei, allied with Liu Guangshi, doesn’t carry the sovereign authority of the true Wu Dynasty line, but instead claims a Confucian righteous cause, built on the so-called old Confucian learning from the southwest, arising in opposition to the Black Banner’s campaign to abolish Confucianism. In the realm today, there are many Confucian scholars who can’t stomach the Black Banner, and who have found no hope for themselves in Fujian either — these are the men who will stand shoulder to shoulder with him.”
“Since ancient times, to accomplish great things, one needs both righteous cause and real strength — neither alone will suffice.”
“The Fair Party itself has always had a righteous cause of its own — your very name, ‘Fairness,’ has always been that cause. It’s the kind of mantle that every rebel throughout history has naturally reached for. Building on the discussion of human rights that the southwest’s Black Banner first raised, the King of Fairness, He Wen, has taken that cause and developed it even further — but on the whole, all of you have simply been drawing on the Black Banner’s own rhetoric to justify yourselves. The unfortunate thing is that, all along, the ones who’ve truly held onto that mantle of righteous cause have been He Wen himself, and the Reading Society. Now that He Wen has drawn the Reading Society to his side, he has nothing left to fear — and the rest of you have lost the use of that particular banner altogether.”
“Without that banner, you’re left having to borrow one from elsewhere. Of these three powers, the one the whole realm favors most, of course, is the Black Banner. If Ning Yi were willing to send someone here to say, ‘Heavenly King Gao, I favor you, let’s work together,’ I imagine ‘Heavenly King Gao’ would find that temptation impossible to resist. Unfortunately, matters aren’t quite so simple.”
Zuo Xiuquan took a sip of tea.
“None of us here are children. General Gao surely understands that cooperation in this world usually comes down to each side getting what it needs from the other. Everyone in the realm wants whatever fine things the Black Banner holds — but how many people actually possess something worth catching the Black Banner’s eye in return? General Gao, you’re skilled at commanding troops within the Fair Party, but how many people in this world can truly match the Jurchens, match the Black Banner, on the battlefield? What you hold in your hands, General Gao — Ning Yi has no use for it.”
Within the room, the old man’s words came calm and measured. Gao Chang gazed out at the smoke beyond the window as he listened, his fingers drumming against the table — and now he turned to look over. “By that logic, does He Wen have something Ning Yi actually wants? Does your little emperor down in the southeast have it? As I understand it, he’s hardly been stingy with you all — just because of some old debt of gratitude from years back?”
Zuo Xiuquan smiled, and answered without much hesitation.
“Over these years, there’s been a great deal Ning Yi has wanted. On one hand, he built the Black Banner, pressing forward with real ambition, putting forward this idea of the ‘Four Peoples’ — opening the minds of the common people, establishing human rights, promoting the study of natural principles, fostering commerce — hoping to open up a new era unlike anything the world has ever seen. But on the other hand, General, as you well know, plenty of outsiders remain skeptical of his methods. Dai Mengwei says he’s too rigid, too brittle, bound to snap eventually; Wu Qimei has been even more vocal in predicting his downfall; and even those of us who admire him, myself included, and you as well, General, can’t help but harbor some doubts.”
Gao Chang said, “And yet he’s already defeated the Jurchens.”
“Defeating the Jurchens let him show the whole realm his strength,” Zuo Xiuquan said. “But even so, what truly sets Ning Yi apart from every other hero in the realm, leaving them all trailing far behind, is that he remains, even now, deeply wary of himself.”
“Oh?” Gao Chang’s brow furrowed.
Zuo Xiuquan smiled.
“To outsiders, Ning Yi appears decisive and utterly domineering in everything he does. Back when Zhou Zhe went against all reason, Ning Yi marched straight into the imperial court and struck down the emperor with a single blade — and from that moment, the whole realm was turned upside down. But look closely, and you’ll see that ever since regicide, while he has chosen the most extreme path imaginable for himself, he has never once tried to block anyone else’s path — indeed, he seems genuinely pleased to see others exploring different roads of their own.”
“Back when the great battle in the southwest loomed and the Huaxia Army was desperately short on manpower, at Old Oxhead, a faction rose up in rebellion against Ning Yi himself, wanting to redistribute land the same way the Fair Party does. Ning Yi quietly bore the consequences and let them explore that path on their own. Later, when the land redistribution at Old Oxhead failed, it was Ning Yi again who sent people to clean up the aftermath, and who even had the whole failed process documented, point by point, for the record.”
“After Ning Yi killed the emperor, his old friend Li Pin came to assassinate him for it, and Ning Yi, with a single remark about abolishing Confucianism, pushed him into exploring an entirely new strand of Confucian thought — reinterpreting Confucius and Mencius on the basis of reason itself. Ever since, in several exchanges between them, the southwest has even sent several cartloads of books to Li Pin, all of them records of the Huaxia Army’s own discussions on this new Confucianism.”
“Once the Jurchen western army was defeated and the realm settled somewhat, he began selling technology, and ideas, to the other powers as well. To the new sovereign in the southeast, he has offered a great deal of help. To the Jin territory, where the Female Chancellor achieved real success resisting the Jurchens, he has helped a great deal as well. Even toward Dai Mengwei, he has never been stingy about letting technology and ideas flow freely. Why is that? On the surface, the answer given is that someday, once he’s swept across the whole realm, all of it will belong to him regardless. But underneath that, there’s an unspoken second reason…”
“Ning Yi’s uprising was undertaken to save this land of ours. And if, someday, his own uprising should fail — but someone else’s succeeds instead… that, too, would be acceptable to him.”
The fragrance of tea hung in the air. Gao Chang turned to look at Zuo Xiuquan.
“…Does such a man truly exist in this world?”
“This old fool is dull-witted, with little real learning, but my uncle, Lord Zuo Duanyou, has been known, when his temper flares, to break ties even with someone like Qin Siyuan — hardly the sort of man to be won over by mere brute domineering force with a body count to its name.”
Gao Chang took a slow sip of his tea, and, half-laughing, said, “And here I thought Lord Zuo had come today to persuade me to ally myself with the southeast. Speaking so highly of this Ning Liheng of yours — aren’t you afraid you’ll stir up such admiration in me that I’ll simply defect to the southwest, and become their loyal hound instead?”
“If General Gao were willing, this old fool would honestly suggest you join forces with He Wen, throw in with the southwest, and carry out a thorough reform of your own — root out the corruption and dead weight within your ranks, clear out every tangle of favoritism and nepotism. If you succeeded, the realm would gain one more formidable army, and one more road forward besides.”
Gao Chang narrowed his eyes. “Is Lord Zuo speaking from the heart here, or mocking me? I honestly can’t tell anymore.”
“Both from the heart, and with a measure of mockery.” Zuo Xiuquan said frankly. “If an army truly could be thoroughly purged, ruled by military law, made to obey every order without exception, it would naturally become as formidable as the Black Banner itself. But throughout all of history, has such a simple truth as this really never occurred to anyone before? Just as with fairness, equality, land redistribution, the Great Unity — people were already imagining these very things two thousand years ago. Why is Confucius honored as the foremost sage among us? Because he was the first to clearly articulate the vision of the Great Unity. And yet who ever achieved it? Who has ever truly achieved it?”
Zuo Xiuquan’s smile carried both helplessness and irony. “This world has never once yielded to a beautiful idea. Even now, Ning Yi continues, again and again, to purge his own ranks; every year, the Huaxia Army still uncovers a considerable number of corrupt men within its ranks. That’s because the Huaxia Army has, from beginning to end, been fighting one uphill battle after another, and Ning Yi has been able to use his own authority to drive this process through. But if, someday, the battles grow fewer and further between, and factions and cliques begin multiplying within the ranks — will Ning Yi’s authority still hold? And the day he dies, how much of this year-after-year purging will still be possible to carry out at all?”
“Even within the southeastern court, there are perfectly capable armies — General Yue’s Beiwei forces, General Han’s Zhenhai forces. Right now, it’s only His Majesty’s own authority, combined with the two generals’ own sense of duty, that forcibly holds things together, keeping the civil officials from meddling, and preserving their fighting strength. None of this can last forever… As for you, General Gao, where does your own authority actually come from? Does it come from military discipline? Does it come from every single soldier under your command trusting you personally?”
The old man shook his head and poured Gao Chang another cup of tea. “Your authority doesn’t come from the million men beneath you — it comes only from the several dozen men directly beneath you. Each of those several dozen generals commands several dozen more men of his own, and so it multiplies outward, until it reaches a million strong. If you wanted to purge the whole lot and rewrite these rules, it would, in fact, be a good thing. Any man with ambition to rise ought to be cheered for it… So tell me, General Gao — will you actually reform?”
Gao Chang gazed out the window and said nothing.
Zuo Xiuquan changed the water and brewed a fresh pot of tea.
After a while, Gao Chang gave a mocking laugh and looked over at Zuo Xiuquan. “Does He Wen genuinely intend to reform, then?”
“That, this old fool truly cannot say for certain.”
Gao Chang thought it over. “I’ve heard that, back in the southwest, there was bad blood between Ning Yi and He Wen. Though the Fair Party rose up under the Black Banner’s name, He Wen’s own wariness of Ning Yi these past two years has been no act. Could the two of them really join forces?”
“…So this is what General Gao has really been worried about.”
“Whatever the case, certain things must be done regardless — but before acting, knowing both oneself and one’s enemy is the surest path to victory in a hundred battles. Understanding things more clearly is always for the best.”
Zuo Xiuquan weighed his words carefully. “Years ago, He Wen went undercover for the Wu Dynasty in the southwest. Charming and eloquent as he was, he won the heart of Ning Yi’s own adopted daughter. When that affair came to light — given how Ning Yi looks after his family — one would expect he’d have no lingering goodwill toward He Wen at all. And yet, on the other hand, when it comes to matters of this scale, Ning Yi’s own perspective tends not to get bogged down by such things. So whether He Wen’s claims are true or false — either remains entirely possible.”
“Given your close ties with the southwest, Lord Zuo — have you, this time, actually laid eyes on anyone sent from there?” Gao Chang fixed his gaze on Zuo Xiuquan.
Zuo Xiuquan laughed. “The matter of an alliance hasn’t even been settled yet, and here you are already fishing for so much information, General.”
Gao Chang laughed as well. “Lord Zuo needn’t answer, if he’d rather not.”
Zuo Xiuquan poured the tea. “This old fool has yet to lay eyes on this legendary envoy from the Black Banner. But as I see it, whichever way General Gao chooses to go doesn’t actually depend on whether the Black Banner has truly sent someone here or not — it depends only on whether you wish to live your life differently going forward… or, perhaps, choose a different way to die.”
“…Without the Black Banner’s involvement, He Wen would already be dead for what he’s done.” Gao Chang’s expression turned cold.
Zuo Xiuquan smiled.
Gao Chang looked at him. “Since you’re here to have me choose the southeast, old man, what exactly can you offer me? Aside from that overblown mantle of righteous cause, I mean.”
“Isn’t having the mantle of righteous cause enough on its own? General Gao, don’t let others underestimate its worth.”
“As you yourself said, Dai Mengwei carries a righteous cause of his own as well — and he’s on the verge of taking Bianliang, no less.”
Zuo Xiuquan smiled. “General Gao, where does your own life’s ambition truly lie?”
“Hm?”
“This old fool has spent nearly a month in the city now, here on behalf of the southeast, and I’ve studied the Fair Party’s five branches carefully. In the end, I chose to hold formal talks specifically with you, General — and naturally, I have my reasons for that…” Zuo Xiuquan said with a smile. “Years ago, He Wen went undercover for the Wu Dynasty. When he returned from the southwest, he ran afoul of a corrupt official, and while he sat in prison, his family was destroyed. After his release, it happened that His Majesty had just ascended the throne and was making his way through Jiangnan, so he fell in among the displaced refugees, initially seeking shelter under His Majesty’s own army — only for His Majesty to take to the fleet and divert toward the southeast, abandoning that whole mass of refugees behind. It was from that abandonment that the Fair Party itself was first born.”
“Hmph.” Gao Chang gave a cold laugh. “You know full well what your little emperor did back then!”
“His Majesty has carried the guilt of that decision to this very day, which is why, on several occasions, he’s proposed sending grain relief to the Fair Party — but He Wen has never accepted it.” Zuo Xiuquan sighed. “Of course, going over every angle of that old affair serves little purpose today. His Majesty had his reasons for fleeing; He Wen has his reasons for his resentment. But whatever the case, He Wen simply cannot bring himself to accept the southeastern court. He and Zhou Shang are, without doubt, the two most likely to choose an alliance with the southwest instead…”
“Zhou Shang?” Gao Chang frowned. “Zhou Shang is a madman.”
“So is Ning Yi.”
“…”
Gao Chang tilted his head.
Zuo Xiuquan’s tone remained calm.
“Set aside He Wen and Zhou Shang, and that leaves Xu Zhaonan, Shi Baofeng, and you, General Gao. But honestly speaking, Xu Zhaonan and Shi Baofeng both harbor ambitions toward the throne itself — whatever one thinks of such notions, they are, without question, men of great ambition, and would likely be a better match for Dai Mengwei’s cause than any other.”
“Why would ambitious men naturally gravitate toward Dai Mengwei?”
“Because as for Liu Guangshi, you could conceivably replace him outright. But allying with the southeast, if you wanted to replace His Majesty himself — that would be far harder.”
Gao Chang fell silent.
“As for you, General Gao — you’re a man who enjoys great bowls of wine and great cuts of meat, running with dozens of sworn brothers, carving out your own legacy across the realm. When it comes to killing for plunder and the like, your own record is markedly cleaner, and even where such things have happened, it’s mostly been on the battlefield — matters people throughout history have always been willing to forgive. So, in truth, you and His Majesty of the southeast are a far more fitting match. If an alliance were struck, you’d stand in the future as a Grand Marshal on equal footing with Marshal Yue and Marshal Han. In the southeast’s darkest hour, if you were the one to bring hundreds of thousands of Jiangnan’s own men back to rejoin the Wu Dynasty, it would carry the same tremendous symbolic weight as buying the bones of a legendary horse to prove one’s sincerity to the living. So long as you never sought to usurp the throne yourself, General Gao, your future would surely be a good one.”
Zuo Xiuquan poured the tea. “You see, that’s how things go in this world — some paths sound wonderful in the telling, but what a person ought to take hold of depends on what genuinely suits him. The southwest’s path sounds extraordinary, awe-inspiring even, but even Ning Yi himself knows the risks involved are enormous… As for Dai Mengwei’s path, if you brought down Liu Guangshi, you might indeed become emperor yourself — but every warlord and every ambitious schemer in the realm is gathering on that same side. As for His Majesty’s own path, it’s the safest of all — His Majesty is young, vigorous, and full of ambition, no mediocre ruler by any means. You hold a great army, and offering timely aid in his darkest hour is exactly the kind of gesture that would serve you well now. And through this very opportunity, even without a complete overhaul, you could still give your own military discipline a thorough scrubbing. In this old fool’s many years of experience, those who truly accomplish something in this world are rarely the most extreme, nor the most conservative — but rather, precisely, those who strike the perfect balance, the ones who hold the middle course.”
He slid the teacup toward Gao Chang. “This is the path that suits the two of us best. Consider it carefully.”
Far off in the distance, smoke and dust drifted through the air.
Gao Chang held his cup, gazing off in that direction. He said nothing.
The unrest triggered by the hunt for Reading Society members had spread thick through the city.
It was now approaching noon. Near the arena at the center of the city where the martial arts tournament was held, crowds of spectators streamed out and gathered on the surrounding streets.
In the space of just two or three short days, the mood in Jiangning had already turned chaotic and restless.
On one hand, the lively martial arts tournament continued on schedule throughout the city, already having reached the semifinal round. On the other, more than a hundred separate outbreaks of violence connected to the hunt for Reading Society members had already erupted across the city — some of them even briefly spilling into the tournament arena itself, momentarily interrupting the matches.
In this sudden wave of chaos, those first captured and killed were, for the most part, members of the Fair Party’s own ranks; the merchant travelers and jianghu wanderers who’d come from outside the party were, for the time being, largely spared from the worst of it. And so, watching one outbreak of chaos after another unfold, so long as it hadn’t touched them personally, some people found themselves feeling an oddly detached sense of enjoying the spectacle at the Fair Party’s expense.
As the morning matches concluded, spectators streamed out of the arena — merchant travelers and blade-bearing jianghu wanderers alike, chatting as they made their way toward the largest street corner nearby — only to find that a scaffold had already been erected in the square.
Countless mournful cries rose into the air.
Before everyone’s eyes, one prisoner cart after another was being escorted in, the prisoners inside sobbing and crying out without pause. It took the crowd only a moment to understand what was happening.
Under “King Yama” Zhou Shang, the purge of Reading Society members was already underway, enforcing what was called the “one-in-a-hundred cull” — for every hundred members under “King Yama’s” own command, at least one confirmed Reading Society traitor had to be produced, with people free to inform on and denounce one another as needed. And from the start of the mass arrests to the executions themselves, less than two full days had passed.
Literate men were already rare within “King Yama’s” own ranks, and most of those swept up in this particular purge were, in fact, exactly that — the literate ones. Among the prisoners in the carts, a small number kept crying out, over and over, that they’d been wrongly accused — and in truth, this small handful couldn’t even read at all.
The merchants and jianghu wanderers gathered at the street corner stared, dumbstruck, at the execution about to unfold before them.
In one corner of the street, a girl named Qu Longjun, wrapped in her filthy clothing, watched the scene unfold from a distance as well, searching among the prisoners for any sign of her companions from the “little courtyard,” anxiously stamping her feet.
Up on the platform, a proclamation officer loudly announced the crimes of those about to be executed:
“…These literate, book-reading types have always carried themselves with arrogance, strutting about, looking down on us who can’t read a single word… They even formed this so-called ‘Reading Society,’ secretly banding together to badmouth our Fair Party, to say our Fair Party has problems… They simply think that we, the illiterate, aren’t fit to be their equals — they want to become men above other men, to become officials, to become landlords, to hoard private land, to keep hired thugs, to marry many wives… You’ve all seen men like this before. But today, we’re going to show them — we are equals—”
Murmurs rippled through the crowd.
A little further off, up in a pavilion, “Heaven’s Slaughter” Wei Xuwen watched the scene unfold with keen interest. After a while, someone reported something to him privately, and shortly after, “Sky-Measuring Ruler” Meng Zhutao appeared at the pavilion’s window.
“That’s not actually what the Reading Society’s crimes were, is it?” Meng Zhutao said, after listening for a while.
“Who cares?” Wei Xuwen said, with a faint, knowing smile.
“I happened to be passing by, so I thought I’d come see the excitement.” Meng Zhutao smiled faintly as well. “Still, killing people this way is bound to cause trouble.”
“And your side hasn’t been killing people?”
“We’ve killed plenty. And I know full well we’ve wrongly killed plenty as well… but your side takes the cake for absurdity. What exactly is the benefit of killing people this way?”
“With a one-in-a-hundred cull, under that kind of pressure, someone’s bound to turn up.” Wei Xuwen smiled, looking down below, tilting his head. “As for this whole Reading Society business, Little Brother’s had a thought recently — not sure if it’s right or wrong. Would Brother Meng care to hear it?”
“Go on.”
“With a one-in-a-hundred cull, I have no idea how many I’ve wrongly killed. But under circumstances like these, if anyone still has the nerve to come to me and speak up in defense of the Reading Society — no matter how reasonable their argument sounds — I’d say, more likely than not, that’s exactly the kind of person who really is a Reading Society member.” Wei Xuwen’s gaze slid slowly over to Meng Zhutao beside him. “Brother Meng… does that sound reasonable to you?”
“…I gave my heart wholly to the bright moon, only for the moon to shine on a muddy ditch instead.” Meng Zhutao’s eyes turned cold, and he too turned to face Wei Xuwen. “Go ahead and bite me, then.”
“Hahahahaha…” Wei Xuwen laughed. “A joke, just a joke. How would I ever dare turn my blade on Brother Meng? Though… six people did come to try to talk me out of this earlier. They’re all down there now, as it happens.”
Meng Zhutao looked down at the scene below — the executioners already had their great blades in hand, and the first batch of prisoners was being marched onto the platform, crying and cursing without pause. He turned. “I’ll be taking my leave.”
Wei Xuwen looked over at him. “Brother Meng, we’re all on the same side in this, aren’t we?”
“You and your boss are both sick in the head.”
“This world we live in is sick.” Wei Xuwen said with a smile, murmuring softly.
Meng Zhutao turned to go, but out of the corner of his eye caught sight of banners belonging to “the King of Fairness” and “the Dragon Sage” surging into view on a nearby street.
“Looks like we’re about to have a war.” Wei Xuwen said, unsurprised, then added, “Call the men.”
A massive standoff was about to unfold right there in the square.
Within the Fair Party, “Heavenly King Gao” Gao Chang, “the Wheel-Turning King” Xu Zhaonan, “the King of Equality” Shi Baofeng, and “King Yama” Zhou Shang had all now issued their own purge orders against the Reading Society. At noon on the twelfth of the ninth month, He Wen, in his capacity as “the King of Fairness,” began issuing orders across the entirety of the Fair Party’s territory, forbidding the wanton slaughter of Fair Party members without cause — particularly those known as Reading Society members. This order went out across the whole of Jiangnan, directly and forcibly interfering in the internal affairs of the other four factions — something that had never before been done.
That afternoon, on the northern side of the city, at He Wen’s own residence, countless lobbyists and would-be persuaders came surging in as well.
Many still couldn’t fathom what He Wen was truly after. In terms of political maneuvering, this latest move was far too blunt, far too abrupt — to many, it looked more like the setup for some further reversal yet to come. But even allowing for such a reversal, this course of action had already pushed right up against the limits of what the other four factions could tolerate.
This simply could not be allowed to stand.
That same afternoon, Xu Zhaonan called on He Wen.
That night, Shi Baofeng called on He Wen.
The following day, Zhou Shang called on He Wen.
Several further rounds of conversation, among various parties, followed after that.
All the while, across the city, the sun rose and the moon set in turn.
And beneath that unremarkable bridge, a woman’s life was, little by little, slipping away from her, even as the two young men made round after round through the chaos-ridden city on her behalf…