Birdsong trilled through the clear afternoon air. Walking through the grove between the farmstead and Xiaoye Village, Peng Yueyun brought up the matter of his upcoming marriage with Tang Minjie.

“…A while back, we held a big conference over in Chengdu, and things were so busy I couldn’t come see you. Once I’d gotten things settled a bit, I went and proposed. Jingmei and I… the Director nodded his approval. We’ll probably hold the wedding next spring.”

“Jingmei?” Tang Minjie frowned at him.

“Heh, she’s only half a year older than me.” Peng Yueyun clasped his hands behind his back. In the autumn light, though he was already a tall, upright soldier in stern military uniform, he seemed at this moment to show a touch of youthful innocence. “I can’t very well keep calling her ‘Sister’ forever, can I.”

“…All good things.” Tang Minjie smiled too.

Time flew by — back when he’d been transferred north, Peng Yueyun had been roughly his current age, and back then Peng Yueyun and Lin Jingmei had been mere teenagers of seventeen or eighteen. The young Peng Yueyun of those days had carried a heavy grudge, forever wearing a defiant, unyielding expression; among his peers, only Lin Jingmei had ever dared scold or discipline him. Who would have guessed the two would end up together.

As they walked, Peng Yueyun said, “The wedding won’t be a big affair — probably at Zhang Village, inviting the elders to sit together for a while. Come by then, Brother. Jingmei and I would really love for you to be there.”

Tang Minjie shook his head. “It’s not convenient for me.”

“How’s it not convenient? You saved my life.”

“I’m a man carrying guilt…”

“That’s not it at all — even if you made mistakes, you’ve already been punished for them. And this is a private matter, aside from everything else — you’re my senior classmate, my senior brother. Put more simply, I owe you my life. There’s nothing wrong with you coming to my wedding.”

His footsteps rustled over the fallen leaves piled on the ground. Peng Yueyun’s words were sincere and heartfelt, quite persuasive. But Tang Minjie smiled at him, seeming somewhat approving, then shook his head and patted his shoulder. “Let’s not talk about this… I’ll have someone bring a gift over.”

“You’re really…”

Now twenty-five, Peng Yueyun came from a distinguished family and had been through the most intense trials since coming of age; he now held a fairly senior position, and his manner of speaking carried both persuasiveness and an authoritative, formidable edge. His wedding banquet, though modest in scale by his own account, symbolized the union between the Ning family’s main line within the Huaxia Army and the West Army lineage. Tang Minjie had saved his life — even if his teacher’s side refused to forgive him, or declined to make use of him in the future, having the support of the West Army circle would still be enough to secure him a place in the world going forward.

This was exactly the plan Peng Yueyun had in mind, however it came together — to drag him before the assembled elders for at least one appearance. He’d expected the man to refuse and had thought up various excuses in advance, but Tang Minjie had simply turned him down flatly, and neither his authority nor his standing had made the slightest difference.

He let out a faint sigh, and had no choice but to jog to catch up.

“Alright, alright, if you won’t come, you won’t come,” he said, choosing to concede. “How about this instead — let’s find a time, and I’ll set you up on a blind date. What do you say?”

“…Huh?”

“Here’s the thing — I have a cousin, came from the same northwest as I did, from a family of scholars, good with the arts, but she can also handle a sword and spear. She’s seventeen this year, quite good-looking too. My family said if I had the time, I should help find her a match — someone reliable. This is… about the best I can offer from my side. I think you two would suit each other well, so let’s find a time and I’ll bring you both together for a look.”

Tang Minjie laughed. “I really don’t think you’re cut out to be a good elder brother figure. What happened to you, Little Peng? You used to look so serious, and now you’re acting so flippant…”

“It’s not like that.” Peng Yueyun’s expression stayed calm and natural. “She’s a good one, really — she told me she wants to find one of the Huaxia Army’s great heroes. I told her these great heroes might not necessarily make good husbands, and she said that’s fine, she’ll be understanding, she’ll definitely make a good, supportive wife… You know how it is with us from the northwest, we carry a certain resentment in our hearts — she’s not that kind of shallow woman. So I think you two would be a good match.”

“…Do you know I carry resentment in my heart too?” As if some faint sound came drifting from deep within the grove, Tang Minjie rubbed his forehead.

“…So your plan is to introduce her to an old man who collects night soil for a living. One who’s carrying a whole body of injuries besides.”

“You’ve got your reasons for everything, don’t you…”

“How would I even explain this to her?”

“Uh, I’ll just give her a hint, and she’ll understand right away… Brother…”

Peng Yueyun reached over as he spoke, poking at him a few times. Tang Minjie laughed and swung a fist at him. “It’s a wonder Teacher trusted you with intelligence work, poking people like that… alright, forget all that nonsense — how are things outside lately, anything you can tell me? How’s Zou Xu doing?”

“Liu Guangshi’s army has crossed the river in force. On the Central Plains front, Zou Xu has pulled his main line back to Bianliang, deploying several decoy units to harass Liu Guangshi’s allied forces on the periphery. From what we can tell, it looks a bit like luring the enemy in deep, drawing them into a trap — though some think he might actually want to concentrate his elite troops at Bianliang for a decisive battle, stretching Liu Guangshi’s supply lines thin, then finishing him off in one stroke, engineering something like a second Huburuo Gang…”

Once he got onto outside affairs, Peng Yueyun grew quite talkative: “Also, He Wen’s Jiangning conference has collapsed, and the Fairness Party’s five factions are now fully embroiled in internal strife across Jiangnan — which might buy Wu Qimei and Tie Yan’s people a few more days of life… What’s less clear right now is the situation in the Southeast. The little court in Fujian wants to control the narrative, pushing this whole ‘revere the ruler, expel the barbarians’ line — partly to centralize power and contest authority with the Confucian scholars, partly to develop maritime trade and compete with the merchants for profit. Even though Yue Fei’s and Han Shizhong’s forces are stationed thick in that region, looking strong and well-equipped enough to keep the troublemakers from moving, we suspect something’s bound to go wrong there sooner or later…”

“None of this is exactly classified,” Peng Yueyun laughed. “Though lately what’s been weighing on me isn’t really outside affairs anymore. After the conference, our biggest task here is the new land policy — honestly, the work pressure is intense, we’re short on manpower, that’s why I got transferred over here. Turning the blade inward, so to speak. Oh, has word of the land policy reached out here yet?”

“Things in the village aren’t very clear to me — I go back there every morning and then head over to Wenpu in the evening. I’ve caught some rumors in the county town — the wealthy families seem uneasy.” Speaking of the new land policy, Tang Minjie frowned. “Are we really ready for this?”

“Teacher’s already made up his mind. In the second half of this year — around the time you came back — the Seventh Army carried out a rectification campaign; during the conference period, the Seventh Army and the Fifth Army rotated over six thousand troops between garrisons. That’s the military guarantee behind this. As for the Fairness Party’s side, all this talk about killing the rich and wiping out entire families has been given constant coverage in the big and small newspapers, and mainly it’s being pushed down to the grassroots through Bamboo Records’ newspaper-reading days, held every three days… By the way, is the three-day newspaper reading cycle here at Xiaoye Village still happening as scheduled? Are old veterans delivering it, or is Bamboo Records sending people?”

“Should be Bamboo Records here — I ran into their people on the road, though… they looked pretty exhausted,” Tang Minjie said.

Within the Huaxia Army, Bamboo Records’ traveling peddler model had always been the basic channel through which the grassroots population came into contact with the Huaxia Army. From the moment the Huaxia Army broke out of Mount Liangshan, the initial forces hadn’t had the manpower to fully take over administration at the grassroots level, so they’d relied on Bamboo Records’ small carts selling daily necessities, traveling from village to village on a rotating circuit. Along the way, each cart would typically be accompanied by a storyteller, who’d gather the crowds and, amid the storytelling, promote the Huaxia Army’s policies — sometimes paired with a doctor for medical consultations, sometimes with a traveling court or enforcement officers, handling complaints and disputes raised by the people during these rounds.

By now, the Huaxia Army had fully taken over administration of all the major towns and cities within its territory. For the many rural villages, it had, as much as possible, arranged for discharged veterans to be stationed at the grassroots level, first taking over public security and jurisdiction over serious crimes. Meanwhile, Bamboo Records’ peddlers continued their circuits, and the storytelling model, following the popularization of newspapers, had evolved into a newspaper-reading system — introducing villagers to outside events or policies the Huaxia Army wished to implement, woven into the telling of certain fictional stories.

“…Still not enough hands,” Peng Yueyun said. “After taking the Chengdu plain and then pushing further out, we’ve got nineteen major cities, over a hundred county towns, and as of the last count, thirty-seven thousand two hundred and sixty-eight villages under our jurisdiction. But between soldiers and officials, the entire Huaxia Army numbers barely a hundred thousand. Spread evenly across all that, we don’t even have three people per village. The newspaper readers try to make their rounds every three or four days — even if it’s just selling goods and reading the news, two people covering ten villages means we’d need seven thousand people for that alone… Bamboo Records doesn’t have nearly that many people. How many can actually tell a proper story? But if you skip the storytelling and just have someone read straight through, hardly anyone wants to come listen.”

Peng Yueyun rambled on, and Tang Minjie laughed. “If there were people who could both read and recite the news well, wouldn’t you all end up poaching them away too?”

“Haha, that’s true too.” Peng Yueyun laughed. “There’s a shortage of people everywhere. After defeating the Jurchens, we’ve been recruiting everywhere — the old hands training the new ones — but in just over a year, how many capable people can you really train up? Brother, take me, for instance — I come from a family of scholars, been reading books since I was a kid, but at seventeen, eighteen, what did I actually understand about getting things done? Back then, they had me distributing land, killing people — that was about the extent of it, just killing people.”

The young man in military uniform shook his head. “We can’t recruit people, but we also can’t recruit endlessly, without limit… Honestly, the ones who can actually be put to work right away, who can hit the ground running and get things done properly, are mostly the old Confucian scholars who’ve read books, even served as officials before — ah, the private secretaries, the advisors. Some of the merchants are decent too, but a lot of these people carry some outdated ideas, and even those without particular ideas often have stale habits. We can’t just recruit them wholesale either — I’ve investigated several batches already, it’s a real headache, absolutely exhausting…”

“…Sometimes, when I complain to Teacher about it, I ask him what exactly the Huaxia Army’s standard for recruiting people even is — he can’t quite say either. Back when we used the term ‘Huaxia,’ it was mainly aimed at the Jurchens — we needed to unite, stay clean, act selflessly, prove that the people of Huaxia wouldn’t lose to barbarians… But now that the Southwest War is over, the standard has suddenly gotten a bit blurry. We can’t just keep recruiting endlessly on a massive scale — recruit too many, and ideology gets muddled — but we can’t stop recruiting either. You bring in one old scholar, someone honest and upright, who occasionally raises some objections — can he be used? How much can he be used? Where’s the line? What’s the standard? If he’s corrupt, I can deal with him — but is there no corruption among our own ranks either? Sometimes, when they privately form factions among themselves, that might actually be even more dangerous… We can’t just keep our eyes fixed on them alone either…”

The two of them walked toward the edge of the grove, the sound of rustling leaves accompanying the early-winter sunlight as it slanted down. Amid Peng Yueyun’s words, Tang Minjie sighed. “So it’s finally come to that time, then…”

“Yes… Teacher says the term ‘Huaxia’ carries our hatred toward the Jurchens within it — it’s what carried everyone this far, but there’s no way to push further along that path anymore. The Four Peoples doctrine — mainly centered on the idea of ‘the people’ — has reached the critical point where it must shift from the abstract to the concrete. Once we actually carry this through, we’ll be able to say that anything genuinely good for the people, in practice, is what we’re meant to do; and anyone who can help further that cause is the comrade we need. This standard becomes much more concrete this way — and how exactly to be good for the people, the path of realizing the Four Peoples in practice, that itself becomes the answer… This way, everything connects together…”

As Peng Yueyun spoke, the two gradually emerged from the grove, arriving at the pond where Tang Minjie often sat sunning himself. The young soldier laughed. “That’s also why recruiting isn’t easy — those who truly understand Teacher’s thinking are scarce even among the mid-to-upper ranks. At this critical moment, Brother, why don’t you…”

“Stop right there… You’ve really mastered the art of shameless persistence, haven’t you…”

“It’s all for the sake of the work, Brother, you know how it is — there’s no fixed rules or method on the intelligence front, as long as you get results, anything goes; if you fail, a thousand excuses are all wrong anyway,” Peng Yueyun said. “What you did up north — if it were me, I’d have done the same.”

Tang Minjie shook his head. “You don’t know the actual situation up there — thinking that way is dangerous… but you’re still young, you’ll come to understand eventually.”

“If you hadn’t had the resolve back then, I’d probably already be dead.”

Peng Yueyun wasn’t ordinarily a humorous, lighthearted person by nature — he generally only showed his gentler side in front of Lin Jingmei, and had only briefly displayed a touch of youthful innocence in front of Tang Minjie. Now, standing side by side, looking across the pond at the run-down village opposite, his face once again took on a cold, calm air. Tang Minjie glanced at him — most within the Huaxia Army carried deep grievances of their own, and he wasn’t unfamiliar with the occasional severity and extremism of the young. As long as one wasn’t placed in as extreme an environment as he himself had been, most people wouldn’t stray too far off course.

“You’ll understand,” he said with a smile. “Once you’re married, you probably will.”

At the mention of marriage, Peng Yueyun laughed again.

The two stood side by side, looking ahead for a moment, before Tang Minjie said, “This new land policy — with manpower this short, how are you going to manage it going forward?”

“Same old approach — start with a point, then spread across the whole.” Peng Yueyun said. “In the major areas, the first wave of public sentiment groundwork has already been laid; now with all of Jiangnan in chaos, we’ve got our cautionary examples too… Among the thirty-seven thousand-odd villages, we’ll first identify those with larger populations and significant landlord presence. On the landlord side, we’ll negotiate first — this time, refusal isn’t an option; the main sticking point will be price negotiations. On the mass side, work teams will move in to begin publicity and instruction — about ten lessons total. After finishing the lessons, there’s an exam, then the land gets distributed — that’s the general process.”

“Finish the lessons… an exam?”

Peng Yueyun tilted his head, smiling. “Write your own name, and the two characters for ‘Huaxia’ — that’s enough to pass. The exam isn’t hard, but by setting a threshold and offering a reward, they’ll come to identify more with the Four Peoples doctrine — nationhood, livelihood, civil rights, popular wisdom — even if it’s just to get the land they’ll receive. It’ll also form a kind of check against landlord resistance. And during these ten lessons, we’ll also identify and recruit capable activists — compared to those recruited from outside, this group is larger in number and purer in composition; they might become the backbone of the future…”

As Peng Yueyun continued discussing these matters, Tang Minjie listened quietly. They talked about a great many other things afterward, even touching on the details of Tang Minjie’s current work, including the lives of the night-soil women — Peng Yueyun listened to all of it calmly as well. As evening approached, the two shared a simple dinner together, and Tang Minjie hitched up his mule cart to return to Wenpu Town, ready for the next day’s night-soil collection, while Peng Yueyun was scheduled to head off elsewhere — having previously handled foreign intelligence work, this time turning his attention inward, much of his work still required discretion.

“…I have a good friend over in Wenpu, works in the county seat. When I came, I mentioned your situation to him — if there’s ever something you can’t handle right away, Brother, you can look him up. His name is…”

As they parted, Peng Yueyun mentioned this arrangement, but Tang Minjie shook his head with a smile. “No need for that, don’t go setting that up.” He said, “I’m already home. What major trouble could there possibly be?”

“It’d just be easier if you ever want to reach me,” Peng Yueyun said.

After the two waved goodbye, Tang Minjie hitched up his mule cart and, as usual, headed toward Wenpu Town. By then, the setting sun was gradually sinking, casting a magnificent pale glow across heaven and earth. He could make out traces of villages scattered along the winding mountain road — most of them lonely and dilapidated, their ragged inhabitants living out quiet lives. These lives hadn’t changed all that dramatically with the Huaxia Army’s arrival; even with the occasional traveling cart passing through, the occasional person coming to read the news or offer medical care, life itself remained ordinary and monotonous.

The sweeping transformations in Chengdu, Zizhou, and elsewhere had not yet reached down into the administrative extremities of this land.

Halfway along the road, his waste cart passed by a simple little cart bearing the Bamboo Records banner. The peddler and newspaper reader on the cart looked just as weary and worn out as ever, day after day making their way through these run-down villages along this same road, the storyteller offering up a few simple, engaging tales, reading through some rote pieces of news — occasionally, when in good spirits, chatting idly with a wealthy household or old scholar in the village.

The setting sun sank into the horizon as if into the sea, and back where his teacher was, that sharp scalpel of his was already descending upon the finest tissues of this land — soon, many people would be crying out. And so, in his own heart too, something like hot blood seemed to stir and churn.

The mule cart moved forward, and he hummed a tune to himself, imagining all of it in the fading light of the sunset.

What was Teacher up to right now, he wondered?

Being able to do all this — it must feel exhilarating.

He wanted to be part of it.

But alas…

His life had already been spent, elsewhere.