The twelfth lunar month.

It was noon, but the sky was still gray. A bitter north wind blew, sending flurries of snow howling between the mountain ridges and the plains. Countless trees in the mountains had been broken and crushed under the heavy snow.

Amid weather no longer fit for travel, figures could still be seen moving across the plains beside an unnamed mountain ridge—one shape, two shapes, and as the view drew closer, they multiplied into hundreds, then thousands.

The figures seemed half-melted by the howling wind and snow, a blur of indistinct black against clear white, churning in the storm. From a distance, only the sound of the wind could be heard; only up close could one see the gaunt, starving figures locked in combat with blades, hear the shouting amid the shrieking wind and snow.

Blood splattered as an insignificant decoration on this vast expanse of snow, and once it struck the ground, it was gradually dissolved and buried beneath the white.

Amid the wind and snow, a hopeless battlefield.

Even the center of the battlefield, where commanders held their positions, grew blurred in the heavy snow. At its edges, figures scattered in every direction. These half-black, half-white shapes, upon encountering one another, would resume their slaughter—in the wind and snow neither side had much strength left, yet still they fought with a kind of hysteria when they met. Some fell, drenched in crimson; some staggered away; others rifled through the piles of corpses for anything of use, glancing about in terror as they did.

At the edge of the battlefield, near the mountains, a desolate village had just endured a battle. A few soldiers gathered in the pooling blood, having stripped the dead enemy of their belongings, resting briefly beside a collapsed earthen wall. Their wounds were not yet bandaged when the fighting broke out again.

Some charged out with blades drawn; others grabbed what they could and fled. In the chaos, a white figure, nearly blending into the snow itself, emerged slowly from behind the earthen wall, crawling forward, rummaging for a moment through the pile of goods the soldiers had just gathered. Mostly there were intact clothes and rusted weapons—no food to be found. The white intruder, disdainful, took a few scraps of cloth and slipped back into the snowstorm.

The chaotic fighting continued. This figure in white, not particularly tall, skulked furtively through the snow, digging through the piles of the dead, stealing others’ spoils of war. Along the way, he even knocked out a straggling officer in leather armor and made off with a small bag of dry rations from his pocket. By the time he quietly made his way back up the mountain ridge, his body had grown noticeably bulkier.

He couldn’t afford to push his luck any further.

He bundled the stolen rations and scraps of cloth together, slung them over his shoulder, and as he slipped into the forest, glanced back once more toward the battlefield.

Only the howling snow remained; no trace of the fighting could be seen. Even the spots of blood that had stained the ground seemed to vanish before the bitter winter, as if they had never been there at all.

The young man sighed.

He moved through the forest, walking carefully through the snow, dragging a branch behind him with one hand to sweep away his footprints as he went. He had expected he might run into other deserters and have to fight, but this time luck was with him—he encountered no one.

In a ruined house on the far side of the mountain, the figure with the bundle on his back found the thin, chestnut-colored horse he had tied there earlier, and rode it eastward through the wind and snow.

The gloomy snowfall did not let up. By evening, he had ridden into another desolate mountain area, where the terrain was rugged, and branches bent down by the heavy snow formed what looked like a maze. Leading the horse, he wound his way deeper through the twists and turns. Past the woods, the sky had grown quite dark; ahead lay only a black slope, with no sign of life. The young man drew his blade and slowed his pace.

Pat, pat-pat.

He struck the flat of his blade against a tree in the snow beside him, producing a rhythmic sound. After doing this for a while, from the darkness ahead, he heard a voice call out: “You’re—you’re back…”

The soft crunch of footsteps followed, and a figure came running out of the darkness and snow, stopping only once close by. The girl’s face was hazy in the dark, but her delighted smile was still visible. “Little Flower, and… Little Dragon…”

“You’ve got it wrong. His name is Baldy Donkey.” The young man corrected her name for the horse.

“A—are you all right…”

“…How much trouble could there be.” With one step still between them, the young man gave a soft snort, then said, “I brought food back.”

“Mm.”

The girl nodded, looking him up and down in the dim light, then followed close behind as the young man, leading the horse, walked on ahead.

The young man asked, “You didn’t light a fire?”

“You—you weren’t here… I didn’t dare. I was afraid someone would see…”

“In snow this heavy, who’s going to see anything.”

“…Mm.”

The girl walked alongside him through the snow, sometimes slow, sometimes quick: “How’s the fighting going?”

“Only lunatics fight in weather like this.”

“…Mm.”

The two figures exchanged idle words in the dark and snow, making their way up the slope ahead. After dozens of paces, a small snow-covered hut became faintly visible, tucked into the angle of the mountain terrain.

Beneath the snow, the hut was built of branches and timber, now blanketed in snow so that it blended almost seamlessly with the mountainside—only up close could one make out the door amid the snow. Not far behind the hut, beneath the rocks of the mountainside, a cleverly hidden smoke flue had been built.

This was the home where Ning Yi and Qu Longjun were now living in seclusion.

At the end of September that year, He Wen’s willful actions had set off the collapse of the Fair Party, plunging Jiangnan into chaos. By October, Jiangnan had entered the snowy winter, yet the fighting showed no sign of stopping. Village after village, city after city, was swept through by fighting and slaughter like a great scorching wind, and the once-prosperous land of Jiangnan had almost nowhere left untouched by war.

Ning Yi and Qu Longjun, this young man and woman, sought refuge in the desolate mountains to recover. After parting with the little monk in October, they suffered several encounters with refugees and roaming soldiers, and were forced to retreat deeper into the mountains.

By this point, the hidden injuries Ning Yi had sustained during the chaos in Jiangning had gradually healed. Drawing on the wilderness survival skills he’d learned in the army, he built a concealed shelter in the mountains, and in November even went out and ambushed a few scouts, seizing a thin chestnut-colored horse.

In these lean times, most people lacked clothing and food, and horses fared no better—the chestnut horse was pitifully thin, its neck sparse with fur. Ning Yi named it “Baldy Donkey,” while Qu Longjun, taking pity on it, privately called it “Little Flower.” She helped Ning Yi build a small shed beside the rock wall to house it, and tended to it carefully every day.

And so, as the snows of Jiangnan fell sometimes gently, sometimes fiercely, the two of them built a small shelter from the storm in these mountains. Every day they reinforced the hut, fed the horse, dried firewood, and struggled to cook meals. Ning Yi kept watch around the area, occasionally going out to ambush army scouts or bandits, and even snuck into military camps several times to steal fodder for the horse. Amid these various small incidents, time passed, and it was already the twenty-third day of the twelfth month.

The day before, he had followed some scouts he encountered away from the area, and after that chaotic skirmish had gathered supplies; now, returning to the mountains, night had fully fallen. Amid the howling wind and snow, the two of them settled “Baldy Donkey” in the shed, then lit a fire in the stove inside the hut. Only once the flickering light illuminated the room could one see the girl’s disheveled hair and her lips, pale with cold, looking thoroughly bedraggled.

By now, Jiangnan had become a land of desperation, and the winter that year was unusually cold. Outside, several factions of the Fair Party fought each other bloody, and it was no longer rare to hear of ordinary people trading children to eat, or soldiers resorting to cannibalism. Even hidden away in the mountains, the two of them had encountered outsiders fleeing the famine a few times, and those encounters had rarely ended well.

The young man had gone out the day before after spotting signs of troops nearby, so Qu Longjun hadn’t dared light a fire. During the day she’d likely eaten little more than raw food, and she wasn’t in good shape now. But seeing Ning Yi return, a smile spread naturally across her brow, and her thin, delicate face relaxed.

Ning Yi didn’t say much. Once the fire was going, he set a pot of water over the stove to boil, then reached out and placed his hand on her forehead. The girl, who had been feeding the fire, went still for a moment; only once his hand withdrew did she toss the piece of firewood in, and then let him pull her hand over to take her pulse. She said quietly, “I’m fine.”

“Whether you’re fine or not isn’t for you to decide.”

“…Mm.”

Qu Longjun was two years older than Ning Yi, but since Ning Yi held the status of her “benefactor” and knew martial arts, the girl was never one to talk back when he put on a stern face. Of course, such displays of authority from Ning Yi were rare. After a moment he let go of her hand, and without offering any diagnosis, Qu Longjun glanced at him, then bowed her head to tend the water while Ning Yi sorted through the things he’d stolen. In their third month of living together, even this kind of silence had come to feel rather natural.

But in truth, the two of them were at this moment in a complicated and delicate stage of their relationship—everything they felt was still unfamiliar territory.

From the moment of their reunion in Jiangning, there had been real warmth between them. In a chaotic world, meeting an old acquaintance far from home fills anyone’s heart with joy.

They had known each other before, in the southwest. But their memories of that time carried very different meanings for each of them.

As far as Qu Longjun knew, she had no idea the young man had once kept watch over her for a time, nor did she know why he had killed Wen Shoubin to save her. To her, this “little benefactor,” who came from the Huaxia Army, was powerful and handsome, yet also somewhat proud, and often difficult to get close to. And—for reasons she couldn’t quite understand—he seemed to have called her a “little bitch” a few times.

Why he’d use such an insulting term against her, she couldn’t figure out, and why he’d curse her yet still save her remained, to this day, a mystery in her heart.

That night in the small courtyard in the southwest, the decisiveness and coldness with which the young man had killed left an unforgettable impression on her. A person like that—if he truly held ill will toward her—could easily have killed her without a second thought.

After that incident, with Wen Shoubin’s control over her gone, she had left the Huaxia Army because of her father’s death, alone and adrift, starting over from nothing, left with no one to depend on. If she had to name the people who’d left the deepest impression on her, it would be none other than Aunt Gu from the Huaxia Army and this “little benefactor.” When the Fair Party revealed its true, monstrous face in September, and she heard this “little benefactor’s” name—and even ran into him again—her heart suddenly felt as though it had found somewhere to belong.

But was that feeling real? Was it merely her own wishful thinking? That cold face in the southwest, that “little bitch,” how did he actually see her—these were things too difficult to think through clearly.

As for Ning Yi, running into the little bitch again was the most unimaginable thing to happen on this journey away from home. He didn’t even know whether what he felt was warmth or joy. As an iron-blooded straight man—especially one who had recently been wounded by a treacherous woman in the southwest—he wasn’t willing to dwell too much on feeling warmth toward a particular woman, much less say it aloud.

Just as his reaction upon hearing in Zhang Village that the little bitch had left alone had been—she might die, but there was nothing he could do about it, so what was there to say? That he didn’t want her to die? He’d only saved her out of simple humanitarianism, a moment’s mercy; she’d taken to heart the idea that “women hold up half the sky” and decided to stand on her own—if he worried too much about her, what would that make him?

Even “He Wen loves Gao Chang” was embarrassing enough to say—let alone “Dragon Ao Tian worries about the little bitch.”

And after leaving the southwest, he hadn’t dwelled much on why he was so determined to make Dragon Ao Tian’s name known far and wide. The reputation he’d earned in Zhang Village was one factor, certainly, but in truth, after the name Dragon Ao Tian had been smeared as “the Five-Foot Pervert,” he could just as easily have started fresh under some other name, like Eastern Undefeated or Western Defeated.

Chasing after Yu Xiao’er, he had left the southwest and traveled a thousand miles with quite a stir along the way. The moment the little bitch found him, his heart, quite suddenly, had let out a breath of relief.

These were things not easy to put into words—things he himself hadn’t even fully realized. At first, after their reunion, all they could really talk about were the things that had happened since leaving the southwest. Before long, though, there was less and less they could actually discuss.

Ning Yi’s background, his family, and many of the specifics about the Huaxia Army—these weren’t things he could talk about freely with her. On the other hand, Qu Longjun’s father had died at the hands of the Huaxia Army, and she had afterward been sold as a “thin horse” and taken to the southwest to cause trouble—these too weren’t exactly comfortable topics to bring up. With so much of the past off-limits, there wasn’t a great deal left for a fifteen-year-old boy and a sixteen-year-old girl to talk about.

In their first month together, Ning Yi had been injured, and Qu Longjun had nursed her little benefactor back to health—simply what was expected of her. After their reunion, living together hadn’t seemed particularly strange at first.

By the time “Little Baldy Donkey” arrived, they had even ended up holding hands, and it had felt natural enough to both of them.

After that, war broke out everywhere, with refugees and bandits roaming the land. The two of them retreated into the mountains and built their small shelter, and, oddly enough, it was often while working together that they talked most naturally. Whenever there was a lull, Ning Yi never quite knew what to say—he was proud by nature, his expression as calm as it had been back when he was the little physician in the southwest. Qu Longjun simply assumed this was just his temperament, and though she’d occasionally try to talk with him, she mostly held back. It wasn’t until Ning Yi brought back the “Little Baldy Donkey” that they suddenly had much more to talk about, thanks to the horse. Qu Longjun doted on the little animal, and Ning Yi, in turn, went out and stole several batches of fodder for it. Sometimes he’d grumble at the “donkey” with disdain, and Qu Longjun would correct him, rather endearingly.

As the chaos of the world continued, the land around them grew unbearable to look at—senseless fighting, refugees resorting to trading children for food. Two people of good will, thrown together like this, relying on one another for survival seemed almost beyond question—it was simply an unspoken part of their life together in the mountains.

And yet, in quiet moments, both of them couldn’t help but think that they were, after all, still just a young man and young woman of a certain age. Whatever this closeness meant now needn’t be said aloud—but what would come of it, going forward?

These thoughts drifted in and out, vague and half-formed, the way many people quietly come to feel at a certain age—through closeness with another person, warmth, fondness, ambiguity, a racing heart, uncertainty. Such feelings would rise and fall like shadows of branches and leaves woven across a wooden wall, or like the tide, or fireworks. Years later, they might become someone’s most cherished memory, something occasionally mentioned or never spoken of at all—but in this moment, they were what quietly sustained the two of them through their uncertain days together.

The small hut, hastily built back in October, wasn’t spacious—a stove, and two narrow beds on either side made up nearly all the “furniture” in the room. The beds themselves were just cut logs layered with leaves and dry grass, topped with patched-together scraps of cloth. The stove offered the beds some warmth, and to keep from being choked by smoke at night, a specially built flue ran along the side, plastered with mud—the most carefully made feature of the whole room.

In the quiet stillness, Qu Longjun finished boiling water and wrung out a small piece of coarse cloth for Ning Yi to wipe his face, while Ning Yi sorted the day’s spoils: various bits and pieces of food, a few usable blades and chest guards, scraps of cloth of this and that kind, and among them, even a finely embroidered undergarment pouch—Ning Yi had taken it off a soldier, though where the soldier himself had gotten it was not something worth dwelling on.

Taking the offered cloth to wipe his face, he pointed to a small leather pouch by Qu Longjun’s bed, telling her to fill it with hot water and tuck it into her clothes—this was a pouch he had specifically stolen back in November, when her monthly courses had come. Qu Longjun, murmuring, “I’m fine,” knelt by the stove and filled the pouch with water, tucking it into her clothing, then used the hot water to clean a cloth and wiped her own face with it off to the side.

Sorting things, putting them away, tending the fire, cooking dinner—the once-cold room gradually grew warm. While cooking, Qu Longjun knelt by the bed, and finding the pouch in the way, set it aside. Ning Yi noticed, pressed his lips together, and pointed at it; Qu Longjun stuck out her tongue and tucked it back in. In the flickering firelight, her color slowly began to look less pale.

Not long after, the two of them ate dinner.

After the meal, Qu Longjun tidied up briefly, then sat by the firelight, threading a needle and taking out Ning Yi’s torn clothes to mend. As a martial artist, Ning Yi tended to move with considerable force in daily life, and after more than half a year away from the southwest, encountering heavy snow for the first time since childhood, he’d discovered that his clothes wore out the fastest of anything. His outer garments were forever tearing at the seams, and lately he’d relied a great deal on Qu Longjun mending them for him, again and again.

Outside, the wind and snow howled, and now and then this or that topic of conversation would come up.

“Tomorrow’s the Little New Year, and it’s snowing this hard.” Qu Longjun mended the clothes as she spoke. “Why would they fight a war in weather like this? They’ll freeze to death even without fighting.”

“Because it was never really about fighting in the first place—it’s about people dying…”

“…Hm?”

“Back in the southwest, when the Huaxia Army fought, it was for victory. When the Jurchen fought, it was for victory too. But sometimes, when the granaries run empty and there isn’t enough food to go around—say there are ten million people but only enough grain for five million—no matter what happens, at least five million are going to die one way or another. Better to die fighting outside than to starve at home; the dead won’t blame anyone, and at least the living get some food out of it… Back in the southwest, some people in the army used to explain this logic. It wasn’t until I came here that I actually saw it for myself…”

Though he was only fifteen, and his temperament was rather restless, having grown up among the well-informed higher ranks of the Huaxia Army, he’d absorbed a great many things he hadn’t understood at the time. On this journey, having witnessed so much complexity firsthand, some of those lessons were finally clicking into place. As the young man spoke now, leaning against the stove, his tone wasn’t particularly heated, yet there was a certain gravity to it, a concern for the state of the world—quite unlike the air he usually had around the “little baldy donkey.”

“Back in Jiangning, He Wen made it all sound so righteous—consolidating power, enforcing discipline—but in truth, this was part of the reason too. The Fair Party spent two years looting and rampaging through Jiangnan, and the granaries and reserves of this water-rich land had already run dry. If he actually called a meeting and tried to whip that pack of fools into order, plenty of people would still starve to death by year’s end anyway. Better to lay all the cards on the table and have it out—kill off however many can’t be fed, and keep more grain for himself, so he could pull the strongest survivors over to his own side… It was his mess to begin with, and since he couldn’t clean it up, he simply pinned the blame on others, letting Xu Zhaonan, Shi Baofeng, and Zhou Shang take the fall and die for it. Hmph. He’s far too calculating… none of them are any good.”

“My father was a general who led troops too, back in his day, but I never heard him talk about things like this…”

“My father…”

Ning Yi answered without thinking, then paused for a moment. “…My father, back in Hedeng, used to sweep the floors in Mr. Ning’s office.”

“…Huh?” Qu Longjun blinked.

“So he wouldn’t talk about things like this either. But all the children in the Huaxia Army have to go to school, and there are plenty of kids in the army. Everyone talks, and talks, and eventually you pick things up.”

“Mm, they say the Huaxia Army reformed papermaking and promoted the study of natural principles, and that every child under them gets to study, to understand things properly—even the girls are treated the same. That’s a great virtue,真正 the gift of education… Mr. Ning is truly remarkable…”

“Not really—I think it depends on the person. I could never really get into studying, and neither could my younger brother. I just didn’t want to learn; he wanted to but just wasn’t good at it. When it comes to reading and writing, out of everyone I know, you might actually be better than me.”

In their three months together, the two of them hadn’t had all that many topics to talk about, but in their occasional lively chats, Qu Longjun often quoted from the classics, bringing those old references vividly to life—quite an effective way to lighten the mood when talking with a hopeless straight man like him. And as someone who’d never taken to books, Ning Yi had always held a certain admiration for people like her. If he thought about it honestly, part of why he’d been drawn in by Yu Xiao’er back in the southwest, falling for her scheme, was probably because she, too, had been a teacher.

Outside the snow hut, the wind and snow howled on; inside, the fire crackled. Qu Longjun finished mending the clothes and bit off the thread. Perhaps because the new year was approaching, the two of them kept talking quietly, back and forth. Qu Longjun sat on her bed, arms wrapped around her knees—a posture she often took, sometimes burying her chin into her folded arms—her voice soft and gentle, while Ning Yi lay stretched out on his own bed.

Ning Yi talked about the lively festivals in the Huaxia Army, told a few embarrassing stories about carousing with his rowdy friends, even mentioned blowing up latrines and having his own latrine blown up in return. After a while, seeing that Qu Longjun didn’t seem to mind, he finally began to speak, a little, about his family.

“My family… I have a few concubine-mothers, an older brother and sister-in-law, younger brothers and sisters. Now that I’ve been away like this, my little sisters probably miss me. My brother and sister-in-law too, and my father and mother…”

“Your mother will cry…”

“My father… I don’t know if he’ll even think about me. He probably won’t cry. But if something happened to me out here, he’d probably be sad too, I think…”

“A man without feeling is no true hero; only one who loves his children is truly a man.” At this point in the conversation—she wasn’t even sure what hour it was by now—Qu Longjun listened, her eyes carrying something complicated. “You’re so good. Of course they’d miss you.”

Hearing her say “you’re so good,” Ning Yi’s face grew faintly warm, and he said, “…A man without feeling is no true hero, lotus seed—what… mm, you really know your poetry…”

“Isn’t this one of Mr. Ning’s poems…”

“Ah, Ning—my father just swept floors. He never taught me this… You really have read a lot.”

He glanced at Qu Longjun, not quite sure what had crossed his mind, and the girl’s gaze dimmed slightly. She hugged her knees and leaned back a little, her complicated expression slipping into the shadows.

The room fell quiet for a moment.

And then the silence continued.

Ning Yi wanted to find some natural way to change the subject, but nothing came to him right away.

Just as the silence seemed like it might stretch on forever, he heard Qu Longjun speak from across the room.

“L-Little Dragon Brother…”

“…Hm?”

Her voice was as steady as she could manage, but there was a faint tremor beneath it:

“…You… when you left the southwest, was it for some kind of mission?”

“Uh…”

“I know you probably can’t say, but…”

…

“But… if, come next spring, when the snow melts, could you… could you…”

…

“Could you…”

…

“…take me with you?”

…

The sound of the wind and snow seemed to grow louder, howling in their ears. In the stove, the warm golden firelight flickered across their faces and bodies. Ning Yi opened his mouth, and his voice caught for a moment.

“That, um… cough, yes… yes, there’s a mission… mm…”

He paused, then looked toward her.

“It’ll be fine.”

The meaning of these words wasn’t entirely clear, but from the firmness in his tone, the girl seemed to understand. Her body relaxed, and she nodded, stretching her legs out as she sat there.

The motion was graceful. Ning Yi looked away, his heart pounding, though he felt, strangely, a certain lightness settle over him.

In the warm snowy night, the two of them went on talking about all sorts of nonsense in this easier mood. The girl talked about things from books, told him stories, and eventually told him about how Wen Shoubin had forced her to study, play the zither, and dance—as if explaining to him the origins of these skills.

Ning Yi wasn’t slow-witted. He could hear the meaning behind her words, and the caution in her tone. She had learned her father’s poetry, and though Wen Shoubin and the others had once had impure motives in encouraging it, by now Wen Shoubin’s grave had long since grown over with weeds, and even the grass in Jiangnan had nearly all been burned away. None of that mattered anymore.

Besides, he had no intention of going back to the southwest just yet. Yu Xiao’er still hadn’t been dealt with, and the slander of “Five-Foot Pervert” hadn’t yet been washed clean into “Greatest Under Heaven.” Going back to get beaten up would be far too humiliating, and running into Qin Weiwen again would only invite more mockery.

After a while, when Qu Longjun asked again about his plans for the future, he thought it over carefully and made a decision.

“I think I’ll head to Fuzhou first.”

He said.

“Take a look at that little emperor, and the little princess… see what they look like.”

With the Fair Party’s chaos, Jiangnan had descended into cannibalism; the little monk had gone to Jin territory; Zou Xu and Liu Guangshi were bashing each other’s brains out in the Central Plains. The only peaceful place left nearby was Fuzhou—and Yu Xiao’er might well have gone there too.

Besides, going somewhere peaceful would also mean finding a proper place to settle the “little bitch” who’d been following him around—or, well, maybe it wasn’t quite right to call her that anymore. What should he call her instead? Little bitch dragon?—His martial skill still wasn’t unmatched under heaven, after all, and with someone by his side, he shouldn’t take too many risks.

Thinking it over, he realized he wasn’t really the reckless type to begin with. Now that he had a little bitch by his side, along with the little “baldy donkey” that could carry their things, once spring came and the flowers bloomed, they could bring pots and pans along, pack a couple more bundles—it would hardly be any different from a spring outing.

Going to see the ocean—now that would be nice…

The firelight in the stove gradually dimmed, blocked by the partition, though it still gave off some warmth. Ning Yi mumbled through his plans, talking about the legendary ocean, and drowsily, he fell asleep…