The night ran deep, and in the courtyard at Moist Pond, Yu Hezhong’s train of thought turned over several times. After finishing his noodles, he finally reached a decision. “My wife and children—they need to be brought back, no matter what.”
Shishi nodded. “If you don’t go out, you’ll be left behind. If you go out, there’s risk. But I’ve thought it through carefully—this really is the only thing you can do right now, so I won’t say any more about it. Take the Zuo family, for example—what they’re doing is really just handling matters as they come. As long as you can hold your ground, there’ll be a place for you wherever the future leads. Brother Yu, you’re a man in his middle years now—going forward, you’ll need to gather your spirit and put in real effort.”
Yu Hezhong nodded, hesitated for a moment, then looked at Shishi. “Would it… would it be alright if I asked what exactly has been happening these past several days? Honestly, I’ve never quite been able to see it clearly…”
Shishi smiled. “Well… why don’t you go first, Brother Yu, and tell me what’s happened on your end.”
“…Yan Daolun, he…”
Yu Hezhong weighed his words, then roughly recounted what he’d witnessed these past few days—Yan Daolun, his two close female companions, even the whole matter of Gao Wenjing and Sun Kang, laid out in full detail. “I imagine you already know about this…” he said, and then went on to share his own thoughts and guesses, how others had mocked him, and so on.
Shishi listened quietly, thinking in silence, and at the end, nodded.
She said, “On the eighth of the twelfth month, news from the Central Plains had already reached Chengdu. The senior figures holding things down here met at once, and that same evening, Number One—that is, Liheng’s recommendation—was sent back. Things had changed, so of course we had to deal with the aftermath, see what could be salvaged, what could be gained. As for the people out there who might be worth winning over, we’d already prepared a basic list beforehand, but honestly, it wasn’t comprehensive, and in an environment like this, with the situation in the Central Plains changing by the minute, a lot of things need people acting on the ground to improvise…”
“…After that was decided, a list of several names was chosen, including Yan Daolun, and private contact and probing began. And you, Hezhong—you weren’t on that list…”
Shishi sat across from him, hands resting on her knees, and paused briefly. “Out of personal feeling… and because I know you, I made a private request, asking them to give you a chance to talk this through. They agreed. To be honest, these past few days, I’d deliberately… avoided seeing you. I’m sorry.”
Her words were gentle, and she reached out a hand as if to comfort him. Yu Hezhong clenched his fists and shook his head, then shook it again. “I… I understand. In the past I was… too useless…”
“It’s not a matter of ability, Brother Yu. I believe you have ability, but you need to take a step forward and actually use it. Back when Liu Guangshi and the Huaxia Army struck their deal, we needed someone like you, in exactly the right position, to make it easier for us to manage Yan Daolun and to buffer the relationship with Liu Guangshi’s side. Whoever occupied that position was going to get certain benefits—if not you, then someone else. You happened to come along, and I simply went along with the current—there’s nothing improper about that. But if… this time you step away from this line, we can still meet afterward, still drink tea and talk, but I won’t be able to support you from behind the scenes, or give you any power or advantage. I won’t be able to help—that would be how things stand between us going forward. You need to understand that clearly…”
“I understand…” Yu Hezhong nodded. “This… after all, you’re his… his… you two… um…”
He trailed off, stammering to indicate he understood, unable to finish the latter half of the sentence. Shishi looked somewhat exasperated hearing this, her face stiffening for a moment, before she suddenly burst out laughing. “Though that’s not quite it, I think there’s some truth to what you’re saying—after all, I suppose… he’d get jealous, yes, heh… there’d definitely be some of that…”
She pressed her lips together and smiled, quietly amused with herself.
Having laughed like this for a moment, she thought it over. “Anyway… I once heard a saying, that in an army, soldiers who’ve never been properly awakened will simply run off the moment they’re separated from formation. Only the soldiers who understand what they’re fighting for can break from formation—even without officers—and still charge forward. Liu Guangshi’s carcass has fallen to the ground and is now scattered in pieces. When we send people out—whether to recruit talent, transport back supplies, or plant hidden connections—it’s not simply a matter of posting a bounty saying the Huaxia Army is recruiting. That’s exactly why you need to work this out for yourself, Brother Yu—you need to genuinely want to do something, and only then can we plan and coordinate properly, and only then can the Huaxia Army work well alongside you. That’s probably the safest path for you as well…”
There was something left unsaid beneath her words here, which she naturally didn’t spell out too clearly. With Liu Guangshi’s great whale carcass sunk, those with real ability could mostly find some advantage to seize—someone like Yan Daolun, even without the Huaxia Army’s coordination, could probably recruit a number of people to come “join up” in the southwest after leaving; and even if the quality of such recruits varied, the Huaxia Army would have to accept them regardless. Wherever Yan Daolun went, he’d ultimately be treated with respect.
Yu Hezhong, though, was an entirely different case. His abilities were currently too mediocre. If they simply threw him out there as a bounty hunter, pulling in recruits by seeking wealth amid danger, then—setting aside whether the Huaxia Army even needed such “defections”—once he left the southwest, he’d either flee in terror and vanish without a trace, or be captured by Zou Xu and Dai Mengwei’s people and torn apart alive. There was almost no third outcome. Only if he agreed to join the Huaxia Army outright could the Huaxia Army’s people bring him along, let him learn something useful along the way, and let him draw on the connections he’d built up over the past year and more—along with the borrowed authority of the Huaxia Army’s name behind him—to finally have a real chance of accomplishing something.
“…The intelligence and diplomatic departments have made their own arrangements for going out to gather what they can. The Propaganda Ministry’s work is what I’ve already told you. As for a few things you don’t know yet—Brother Yu, I couldn’t say this before, but I can now—the two women beside you, both have rather complicated backgrounds. Behind Wei Rou is Yan Daolun, though not only Yan Daolun. Both she and Gao Wenjing essentially function as your subordinates on the surface—after drawing information out of you, they pass it along, usually to several different buyers. Sometimes when we’ve wanted to leak certain information about Liu Guangshi, we’ve deliberately let it slip to you, knowing it would flow out through their mouths…”
Yu Hezhong opened his mouth but found no words to say.
“On another front… Zou Xu is considered one of the people who received Liheng’s direct teachings. According to Liheng, he has strong overall strategic awareness when it comes to the big picture—that’s because during that period Liheng often drilled into them all sorts of things like, ‘once you’ve learned my methods of strategic calculation, just push it forward from there.’ Now that Zou Xu has betrayed the Huaxia Army, he’ll naturally regard the Huaxia Army as his greatest enemy…”
“These past years in the Central Plains, his development has looked unremarkable on the surface, but in reality he’s been advancing steadily, step by step swallowing up the power of the major landowning families and clans that originally corrupted him, turning the tables on his own patrons. And by our estimate, he’s certainly planted hidden lines in Chengdu long ago as well. Even if he can’t steal anything too valuable in terms of our technical achievements, he’d certainly be interested in knowing how we’re reacting to major events here. And after Liu Guangshi’s fall, the Huaxia Army’s response is exactly the kind of thing he’d be most concerned to learn about.”
Yu Hezhong seemed to realize something and raised his head. Shishi looked at him with a smile and said quietly, “Sun… Kang…”
She continued, “That Sun Kang who came calling and humiliated you—he’s quite possibly exactly this sort of information broker… In the past, both you and Yan Daolun were the most central figures in this deal between Liu Guangshi and the Huaxia Army, so if the Huaxia Army wanted to stir something up today, you two would be the obvious first thought. But since you specifically couldn’t see me at all these past few days, they may well have concluded that the Huaxia Army holds the farce in the Central Plains in contempt, that Ning Yi is too arrogant and proud, only focused on developing his own affairs… Sun Kang approaching Gao Wenjing was most likely, above all, an attempt to gauge your true worth—whether you still had the Huaxia Army standing behind you. Of course, even if the information broker wasn’t Sun Kang, plenty of others in Chengdu will have seen what happened to you and could draw the same conclusion.”
Yu Hezhong gave a complicated smile. “So this whole past year and more, as happy as I’ve been, I was a chess piece from beginning to end…”
Shishi laughed softly. “If you want to put it that way, everyone in this world is a chess piece. Sometimes you know whose hand you’re held in, sometimes you even get to choose—but most people, most of the time, don’t get a choice at all. Of course… if I were to put it in Propaganda Ministry terms, I’d say it’s all just interwoven interests. You have your uses, and those interests pass through you—family cares about you and comes looking for you, good friends drink tea with you, bad people do business with you and test you—it’s all the same underlying thing…”
“…You really do know how to talk.” Yu Hezhong laughed helplessly.
Shishi seemed to take it as a matter of course. “That’s just how it was at Fan Tower—I made my living smoothing things over. You weren’t meeting me for the first time, after all.”
Hearing her put it this way, Yu Hezhong actually felt considerably better. “So Yan Daolun—has he already agreed to something with you all?”
Shishi shook her head. “Yan Daolun is an old-school man of letters. He’s weighing exactly how much he’s worth, exactly how far to take this. Brother Yu, you were used by him, in a way—he knows you’re acquainted with me, that you can learn the Huaxia Army’s internal thinking through me, so he pushed you to come see me, to gauge my attitude, to see how many connections the Huaxia Army currently controls, so he can figure out how to hold out for the best price… Actually, for a capable and ambitious man like him, this is the hardest decision of all right now—it’s crucial for his future.”
“That’s right, and his family owns land.”
Shishi smiled. “That’s one factor, but he’s a capable man. If there’s any opportunity in the future, you should try your best to stay on good terms with him… As long as his path stays honest, there’s no harm in currying favor with him.”
“True enough. If I end up going out with him next, there’s a lot I’ll need to learn from him.” Yu Hezhong nodded in deep agreement, then suddenly remembered something. “Oh, right—on the very first day we met, Yan Daolun asked me a rather strange, out-of-nowhere question…”
“What was it?”
“He asked whether the Huaxia Army had any senior figures surnamed Long.”
“…Long.”
“Yes. He didn’t go into much detail, and I wasn’t really sure if there was anyone surnamed Long among the Huaxia Army’s leadership. Afterward I wondered if he meant that General Long Hui of Xia Village—your books always write that Xia Village’s awakening owed itself to General Long Hui’s self-sacrifice. I’d heard a few rumors that General Long Hui’s descendants are still in the Huaxia Army to this day, but the details were always vague, unclear, so eventually I just let the matter drop…”
As Yu Hezhong rambled on about this, Shishi seemed to catch onto something, narrowing her eyes. “When he said that… exactly what were the circumstances, exactly what did he say… try to repeat it for me again, as precisely as you can.”
“Alright, it was… during the second round of conversation, right after he’d asked about the matter of finding you, he suddenly brought this up out of nowhere, so I remembered it. He said…”
Yu Hezhong recalled the scene from that day and described it in full detail. Shishi listened for a while, her narrowed eyes and the corners of her mouth curving into something like a crescent moon, a faint, peculiar smile spreading across her face. When Yu Hezhong finished, she nodded, pressed her lips together, and smiled to herself for a good while before finally speaking.
“Mm, he’s holding out for the best price—and he’s genuinely considering joining the Huaxia Army, but he still wants to negotiate the best terms first…”
“What is this about, exactly… someone surnamed Long…”
“There really is a soldier in the army surnamed Long. Due to certain special circumstances, he went to Jiangning in the latter half of this year—nothing to do with any major background, but decent in character and appearance. As for Yan Daolun’s side, there’s someone in his clan named Yan Taiwei—you may have heard Yan Daolun mention him—who’s gathered a small following near Liu Guangshi’s territory, called Yan Family Fort. His daughter, Yan Daolun’s cousin’s niece, also went to Jiangning this time, and something happened between her and this… young soldier surnamed Long…”
“Huh?” Yu Hezhong listened to this melodramatic tale.
Talking about this love story seemed to genuinely delight Shishi. “When this happened, Chen Fan and Old Master Qian were both leading a delegation in Jiangning at the time. Afterward, the young lady made a scene in front of Marshal Chen, and Marshal Chen promised he’d give the Yan family a proper accounting—it became quite a significant affair… Of course, this young soldier surnamed Long was later delayed from returning to his unit due to a mission, and his cousin secretly went chasing after him. Now both of them are somewhere in Jiangnan, and no one knows exactly where—but that young Miss Yan’s feelings for this young Long fellow are genuinely quite moving…”
“…There’s been no resolution to this yet,” Shishi said with a smile, “but Marshal Chen has already given his word, and Old Master Qian has made a promise too, that it’ll be properly handled. Afterward, once he learned of Yan Daolun’s relation to the Yan family, Old Master Qian, back in Chengdu, privately sought Yan Daolun out for a talk, telling him that if things worked out well, the Huaxia Army and the Yan family would essentially become in-laws. Ever since, Yan Daolun has taken quite an interest in the nature of this potential marriage connection.”
Yu Hezhong understood. “I see… so if this young fellow surnamed Long has some senior Huaxia Army figure behind him…”
“Then naturally Yan Daolun would seize this golden opportunity and throw himself wholeheartedly, without reservation, into joining the Huaxia Army.”
“Then… this young fellow surnamed Long…” Yu Hezhong looked at Shishi.
Shishi laughed for a moment, then tilted her head helplessly. “We have no way of telling him… young Long is just a soldier from an ordinary family.”
“…”
Shishi took a sip of water. “But now, at the very least, we know Yan Daolun is genuinely tempted, seriously weighing this matter. That should make it easier when we need his help going forward… Of course, that’s no longer my concern—Hou Yuanyu will be in touch with you shortly to follow up…”
For Yu Hezhong, there were still many more things to worry about going forward. He sat there and talked with Shishi about this and that for a while longer. He spoke of himself, of his dissatisfaction with his own past, and his uncertainty about the future he’d just agreed to step into. Before long, he brought up Gao Wenjing and Wei Rou again—in the past he’d rarely mentioned his two “close female companions” in front of Shishi, but now he found himself wanting to pour it all out. Thinking of the two of them now felt oddly distant, perhaps because he understood that those dissolute, indulgent days were now gone from him forever.
Having expended a great deal of effort, Shishi had at least, for the time being, managed to reignite something in his heart—a desire to move forward and accomplish what he could.
She patiently discussed all of this with him, even offering thoughtful advice regarding some of the figures he knew who had once held positions of influence within Liu Guangshi’s forces, teaching him how to make the most of the Huaxia Army’s borrowed authority in his dealings with them.
As the hour approached midnight, according to Shishi, Hou Yuanyu would come by after finishing work to go through the detailed handover with him. Before deciding to discuss this matter with him, Shishi had already prepared for the possibility that he’d agree to it—whether from her understanding of him, or her trust in his fundamental character, Yu Hezhong didn’t want to dwell on it too closely. Even if he could never win her favor in matters of the heart, he truly was, among her friends, someone both singular and fortunate.
As things were finally winding down, he remembered one more thing, and after weighing it for a moment, finally spoke up.
“There’s actually one thing—I’m not sure if you already know, or… whether you’d think it’s serious…”
“Well, go ahead and say it,” Shishi said with a smile.
“Gao Wenjing—she was, I believe… arranged for me by Li Ruilai,” Yu Hezhong said. “Of course, after what you told me today, I understand now that she’s been secretly selling information to many people. But… what Li Ruilai’s been doing lately isn’t exactly good business. You know he bought a lot of people from outside, set up factories, seized land here in Chengdu—but there’s another side to his business that others probably wouldn’t be comfortable telling you. Honestly, I wasn’t comfortable saying it before either…”
Shishi looked at him.
“You know how the Huaxia Army forbids forcing good women into prostitution. The brothel trade in the southwest now is entirely made up of people brought in from outside—it’s a lucrative business, and a few major operators run it. Li Ruilai, using his channels for bringing people in from outside, doesn’t just arrange for renowned courtesans and ‘thin horses,’ hosting banquets and feasts—I’ve also heard that, to cultivate connections, he’s taken advantage of his position within the military to regularly find ways to secretly gift renowned courtesans and ‘thin horses’ to officers within the army. This practice… has proven quite popular…”
As Yu Hezhong’s words trailed off, in the quiet room, Shishi’s right hand came down—there was a sharp crack as the teacup in her hand struck the low table. Yu Hezhong looked up with a start, and saw that Shishi’s face had, in an instant, seemed to be veiled in a layer of cold frost, sharp and biting as a blade.
In all his years in Bian Liang, and in his year and more in the southwest, Yu Hezhong had never once seen the look on Shishi’s face when she was truly angry. But in this moment, a killing aura she had cultivated over years of moving through the military and the upper echelons of power suddenly burst forth.
The frost released, then withdrew just as quickly. Shishi reached out and pushed the cup on the low table aside, drew a breath, then rose and moved behind her desk.
Her voice remained gentle.
“Do you have any specific details about this, anything concrete?”
“I… I’ve heard some things, but I have no way to confirm them.”
“I’ll confirm them.”
Shishi drew out paper and brush.
“Tell me. I’ll write it down.”