It was noon, and outside one could faintly hear the sound of gongs and drums echoing through the city. The courtyard held a pond and a rockery garden, dusted with winter snow—clearly the home of a wealthy family, yet with a touch of understated elegance to it. In the main hall, a large table had been set with a hollowed-out center holding a blazing charcoal fire; even with the doors open for the feast, no one at the table felt any cold.

But at this moment, every face at the table had gone pale.

Only a few moments had passed since the commotion outside began, and already soldiers and secretarial staff in plain clothes had entered the room—typically a technique used in political circles to control a suspect. And then, Ning Yi’s sudden appearance, at such a moment and in such a place, felt as inexplicable as something out of a supernatural tale.

In the southwest as it now stood, his status was far too high, and Li Rulai’s far too low—by rank alone, even if Li Rulai had intended to rebel, Ning Yi would never have needed to come see him personally. And in terms of location, for someone of his standing to use methods meant for controlling a suspect and walk directly into Li Rulai’s private residence was, under any circumstances, an inappropriate move.

Such a strange departure from the norm meant, no matter how one looked at it, that something serious was underway.

The instant they saw the figure in the dark robe walk in, Li Rulai instinctively reached up to wipe the sweat from his brow, forgetting even to lower his head, while Li Dong took a small step back and straightened into military posture. The others’ expressions varied in their confusion, but their bodies had all frozen in place.

Ning Yi swept his gaze over everyone present, then let it drift toward the courtyard outside and the dishes on the table. His expression appeared calm. He pulled out a chair and sat down, then, looking out at the courtyard, nodded. “Sit.”

No one dared to sit. Everyone hesitated for a moment, and then the hall fell into silence—people glanced at one another, and in that silence, no one dared to be the first to sit.

Ning Yi swept his gaze over them once more, placed both hands on the table, and gave a faint smile. “This is a fine courtyard—clearly a lot of thought went into it. But you can still hear the gongs and drums from here, which means the space isn’t quite large enough—it loses that graceful, spacious feel of a proper Jiangnan garden. You bought this land right when you first arrived in Chengdu, didn’t you, General Li?”

Li Rulai opened his mouth, then lowered his head. “Y-yes, that’s right…”

“That must have been inconvenient for you. When will the new garden be finished?”

“…A-according to the schedule, n-next March.”

“Mm.”

Ning Yi nodded, then reached over and took a set of bowl and chopsticks that had previously been in front of one of the officers—there were still some leftover scraps of food in it. Seeing him pick up the chopsticks as if about to eat with them, Li Dong, sitting nearby, frowned. “Sir… this is…”

“What about it?”

“This… it’s already been used… you…”

“Back at Xiao Cang River, when supplies were so scarce, you’d pass me what you’d eaten from, and I’d pass it to someone else, and today it’s no different. You’re an old-timer from Xiao Cang River—now that you’ve earned some status in other people’s eyes, don’t go getting soft.”

He picked up the chopsticks and casually took a bite of something, seeming genuinely impressed by the flavor of the food. After nodding slightly, he finally looked up at Li Dong, his gaze turning stern for a moment.

“You’re all here in the city on business, I take it.”

“Yes.”

“I told you to sit, and you won’t sit. Are you full already?”

“…Y-yes… yes.”

“If you’re not full, sit down and eat. If you are, go take care of your business. Men commanding troops shouldn’t dither around like this. I’ve come here today because I have some matters to discuss with General Li Rulai—rather important ones. I won’t be keeping you.”

“…Yes, sir.”

Li Dong and the others hesitated only briefly before raising their hands in salute and filing out toward the courtyard.

Ning Yi pulled his chair closer to the round table and picked at a few more dishes. Once Li Dong and the others had disappeared from the courtyard, he waved his hand, and the security and secretarial staff filed out of the room in turn as well. At least within sight, only he and Li Rulai remained. Li Rulai stood there with his head lowered, taking a deep breath, shifting slightly. Ning Yi lifted his head, and this time, his tone was even more even.

“Stand, then.”

Having said this, he set down his chopsticks, and his tone now carried something like the way one might address a man already dead.

The courtyard fell silent for a moment once more.

When he spoke again, it was: “A few years ago, after the Jurchen’s defeat at Wangyuan Bridge, when they sent men to try to convince you to surrender, you asked them a question in return—you said, if I do things this way, when the wall eventually comes down, won’t everyone push it over on me?… Isn’t that right.”

Ning Yi’s gaze fixed on Li Rulai, carrying something like weariness, and something like a pitying disappointment for a man who could have been so much more. Li Rulai’s body gave a slight tremor. “That… that was… a different time, different circumstances…”

“In your Martial Dynasty, many of the officers who rose to the top were like this—you were, and so was Liu Guangshi. You understood social niceties, understood what people call the way of the world—but you couldn’t win battles. What use is a military commander who can’t fight? After you joined the Huaxia Army, I didn’t give you an important post, and you harbored resentment over it, indulging yourself in food, drink, and pleasure, making friends left and right. Now that you’ve made friends with so many heroes and men of skill—have you learned how to actually fight a war?”

“I…”

“…For you, and for those little brothers of yours, I already had a plan laid out long ago—you would go about destroying yourselves step by step, and I would go about my business step by step, and in a couple of years, everything would resolve itself naturally. But recently I’ve been thinking about a few things. It’s the new year, and I was supposed to head back to Zhang Village, but instead I made a detour to come here. I just wanted to ask you one thing—by your own code of conduct, by the rules of this feudal world you cling to, how many times over should you die for sending women to officers in the army?”

“…”

“…Given how well you understand the rules, you should know—in any dynasty, that’s an offense punishable by the execution of your entire family. So today, I’ve come the way I have, which isn’t exactly proper. But whether we go by my rules or by your worldly ways, it probably doesn’t make much difference—I imagine you can accept that calmly enough.”

Li Rulai raised his head slightly, the last trace of color draining from his face, sweat beading and trickling down. Ning Yi sighed.

“The cook here is quite good. Sit down. Have your last meal.”

A breeze blew in from outside the hall. Li Rulai’s body swayed unsteadily; he was a man in his fifties, ordinarily tall and well-maintained, his hair still black, but in this moment, he seemed as though he might turn transparent and vanish from the scene entirely. Across from him, Ning Yi, nearing forty, carried an air of authority in his gaze that far outweighed his years. He picked up a teacup, looked at it, and set it back down, then suddenly slammed his palm against the wooden table—the whole table, even the floor beneath it, seemed to shudder—and his voice rang out in fury.

“Sit—”

Li Rulai pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, pressing both hands against the round tabletop. “I… I…”

His voice trembled. He wanted to say something, but in the end, no words came. Ning Yi, sitting across from him, also fell silent for a while—for some reason, even he, prepared to have this man’s entire family executed, seemed to have grown weary. After a long moment, watching the shifting expressions on Li Rulai’s face, he asked, “What are you thinking?”

“I… I was thinking… it’s only a guess, just a guess… Chairman… if you truly meant to kill me… to kill my whole family… would you have… come here yourself?”

…

“…Before I came here, I happened to be thinking about a few things myself.”

The room fell silent for a moment before the voice sounded again.

“After your surrender, my decision to leave you sidelined had something to do with my own personal feelings about you—but on the whole, whether that was truly unfair to you is worth considering. Take Lu Qiaoshan, whom you always compare yourself to—he was a defeated commander who, once captured, underwent thorough re-education, and now he’s put to good use. But back after Wangyuan Bridge, we decided to make an example of you, spending a fortune to buy the bones of a dead horse, as it were—to show that even a defector could be valued—and yet we never made proper arrangements for you afterward. That, perhaps, is a mistake we should reflect on in our own work.”

“Of course, that’s the smaller matter… As for the larger issue, the ways of the world, the inertia of these customs—these things do exist, they’re not something we can simply pretend away. In our training sessions in the Huaxia Army, we always say that action requires both a guiding principle and a practical method. When it comes to principle, we must trace things back to their root, always asking about original intent. When it comes to method, we must be realistic and grounded in fact—we cannot pretend the rules that exist in this world don’t exist just because our goal is a lofty one. We say this again and again precisely because, for many people, principle and method are simply impossible to separate in practice. And that’s when I suddenly thought of your case…”

“General Li, you’ve spent so many years steeped in worldly ways—it’s understandable that when you surrendered, you didn’t really grasp the Huaxia Army. In your imagination, conquering the world was nothing more than rallying a bunch of capable soldiers like yourself, sitting together around tables like this one, eating hotpot and singing songs, with promises that once the empire was won, you’d all be granted whatever rank and glory you desired. This kind of thing, from the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors down through Liu Bang, Xiang Yu, and Li Shimin, has always been simple human nature—it’s the norm for founding a new dynasty…”

“Back then, you didn’t think too much beyond that. But what I’m curious about, General Li, is this—all those years you spent scheming to befriend so many people in the Huaxia Army, eating, drinking, and having fun with them, corrupting them in the process—did you, in the midst of all that, come to understand at least a little of what the Huaxia Army proclaims every day, of what we actually intend to accomplish?”

Ning Yi’s fingers traced lightly across the table.

“We want to break the cycle of Confucian tradition, to open the minds of the people, to promote the study of natural science, to advocate for the equality of the four classes. Above, we want to break the cycle of order and chaos; below, we want to dismantle the rule of local gentry, hoping that ordinary people, once educated, might stand up for themselves at least somewhat. We want to bring about a transformation the likes of which hasn’t been seen in thousands of years… A few years ago, all of this must have felt distant to you. Your worldly instincts told you it could never be achieved, and you probably had your own firm convictions about why it couldn’t—convictions that were even fairly coherent, in their own way. But today, several years later, General Li, we’re on the same ship. Even if you still don’t fully agree with it, you should understand, by now, where this ship is headed.”

He paused briefly.

“Generally, faced with a situation like this, there are two choices. First, you can jump ship and die on your own terms. Second, wherever there are rocks or problems along this route, you use your worldly experience to think about how to fix those practical problems. I’ve been wondering whether there might be some pleasant surprise to be found in that. And you can no longer say that I never gave you, Li Rulai, a chance.”

He looked at the man in silence for a moment.

“You’re no good at leading troops. I’ll give you a village instead. You know about the current land reform efforts—essentially, it’s about taking power away from the local gentry. I’ll give you the hundred-and-first experimental village. How you run it is up to you—work with the assigned team, or handle it on your own, whichever you prefer, so long as you break no laws. In a few years, the people in your village need to prosper, need to follow the Huaxia Army’s guidance, need to understand right from wrong. The children need access to schooling; the widowed, orphaned, and childless need to be cared for. If you do well, I’ll give you more. In future political consultations, there will be a seat for you. And history books will have their own judgment of you.”

Ning Yi pushed back the table and stood up.

“Coming to these conclusions over your case was something of an accident. Even if it hadn’t been today, I would have thought this through carefully in the future regardless—but by then, your entire family would already be dead. So the fact that I came here today is your good fortune… Of course, whether you take this path is your own decision. Someone will come in shortly. Give a full account of everything you’ve done in the past—consider it buying back your life, a chance to start anew. As for the rest, we’ll see how things go from here.”

He turned to leave the hall and started walking outward. Just as he was nearing the courtyard gate, he heard Li Rulai’s voice call out from behind him.

“Yes! Chairman!”

The voice, faint as it was, carried a trace of unmistakable excitement—whether from the thrill of surviving a brush with death, or from the stirring prospect of finally having real work to do, it was hard to say.

The security officers lowered the sniper rifles that had been trained on Li Rulai, and the secretarial staff withdrew from the area in turn. Just before reaching the main gate outside, they came to report to Ning Yi: “Colonel Li Dong is still waiting outside.” Ning Yi nodded and had someone summon him.

The two of them rode together in a carriage for a while, during which Ning Yi brought up something. “Back at Xiao Cang River, when I told you about an emperor who’d flay corrupt officials alive for embezzling five taels of silver and stuff their skins with straw, all of you clapped and cheered. Would you still clap for that today?”

Li Dong thought it over. “I would.”

“Good.” Ning Yi looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Go write yourself a self-criticism when you get back. Be more careful about the friends you make from now on.”

After Li Dong saluted and left, the carriage continued on, taking the road back to Zhang Village. After a while, a few more carriages pulled up alongside—also on their way to Zhang Village for Little New Year. Inside sat Juan’er and Li Shishi. It was Su Tan’er who, learning that Li Shishi was living alone in Chengdu, had instructed Juan’er to invite her to stay in Zhang Village for a while and spend the New Year together.

“So mysterious about it…”

Upon learning the full story, Ning Yi gave a laughing scolding, though he didn’t seem particularly pleased.

Shishi, for her part, asked Ning Yi about his plans regarding Li Rulai.

Ning Yi had long had a plan in mind on this front and had even had Shishi involved in the early preparations for the relevant propaganda. But the matter of Li Rulai sending women to army officers had genuinely caused a great deal of damage, and she had reported it to Ning Yi. This time, upon his return, she’d heard he had gone straight to Li Rulai’s home, and had already braced herself for the news that Li Rulai’s household would be seized and his family punished.

When she heard how Ning Yi had actually handled it, Shishi’s eyes went wide—for a moment, she too was quite taken aback.

In Jin territory, it was now afternoon.

Having given Yuan Xiaoqiu the day off and finished with official business, by the time Lou Shuwan left the Azure Palace, the sky had already turned overcast.

The carriage passed through the snow-covered city. The liveliness of the morning was still continuing, but many people had already begun heading home one by one. Little New Year was the time for offering sacrifices to the Kitchen God, and many families would still return home that evening for the ritual. Lifting the curtain slightly, Lou Shuwan could see lights coming on in some of the shops, the bustling sound of voices, and now and then the scent of food drifting by.

She made her way to a residence on the far side of the city.

It had been a long time since she had last visited this particular courtyard.

The one who opened the gate for her was a plainly dressed, unremarkable middle-aged woman who, perhaps because they saw each other so rarely, looked somewhat anxious upon seeing Lou Shuwan. Lou Shuwan exchanged a few words with her, then had her attendant hand over some cloth and food, before walking further into the courtyard.

It was a two-courtyard residence: the outer part a nominal sitting room, the inner part where someone actually lived. In the inner courtyard, a few chickens and ducks could be seen, along with the smell of their droppings. In front of the bedroom at the front of the courtyard, a middle-aged man with drool at the corners of his mouth, looking rather simple-minded, sat wrapped in a thick quilt, staring blankly up at the sky.

This was her second elder brother, Lou Shuweng.

His mind and body had both been ruined over the past three years.

For a long stretch of time, Lou Shuwan had kept this last surviving family member she had left in the world much like livestock in a pen—feeding him, clothing him, even finding him a woman, hoping that this one remaining older brother of hers, useless as his life had become, might at least leave behind some descendant for the Lou family. But Lou Shuweng had never taken up that responsibility. During the upheaval surrounding Tian Hu, his already weak body had been tortured, and his spirit broken from fear.

Then, when the Jurchen invaded the south again and the situation in Jin territory grew dire, Lou Shuwan had once gone without eating properly for so long that her own body swelled up from hunger, leaving her no time or energy to spare for this useless brother of hers she kept at home. During that period, Lou Shuweng too went through repeated bouts of hunger, was displaced again and again amid the chaos, and was terrified out of his wits. During one of these relocations, he had fallen and cracked his head open. After that, he clung to a fragile existence, and even after Lou Shuwan had all but given up on him, he had somehow, in his dazed and simple-minded state, managed to survive.

Later, as the situation in Jin territory gradually eased, every time Lou Shuwan saw her simple-minded brother, it left her troubled, and she eventually decided it was better simply not to see him at all. She found a trustworthy countrywoman, paid her a sum of money, and had her keep her brother—whether as his caretaker or his wife, it no longer mattered to her—and after that, she would only come by to visit on her rare free moments.

Perhaps because the woman took proper care of him, Lou Shuweng’s health did not deteriorate further. Most of the time, perhaps due to his frail constitution, he liked to sit beneath the eaves and watch the sun—and this habit had persisted even into winter. It had to be admitted, too, that her brother, now simple-minded, seemed somehow more pleasant to look at than he had been in his old, restless, ill-tempered days.

After watching him for a moment, Lou Shuwan sat down beside him, poured a bowl of warm water, and fed it to him spoonful by spoonful.

Lou Shuweng made a few incoherent sounds, and something like a smile appeared on his face.

Seeing that smile, Lou Shuwan’s eyes grew warm.

It had been so many years since she had seen her brother smile like that—it was the kind of smile he’d had as a child. Every smile she had seen from him since he’d grown up had been touched with something manic.

“…If only you’d become like this sooner, if only you’d smiled like this sooner… maybe even Su Tan’er would have liked you…”

“…Do you still remember Su Tan’er, and her man… Ah, remember how sharp-eyed I was back then? Neither you nor our eldest brother could match me. We were quite a family, weren’t we—I always had such good judgment… our whole family, eldest brother, father…”

“…You were so useless, so useless… If only you’d left behind even one child, I could have raised it for you… Today’s the twenty-fourth, when the Kitchen God ascends to heaven, and there’s no man in this household—I can’t even properly offer the sacrifice on my own… You were so useless…”

She looked at Lou Shuweng, murmuring on and on, her eyes reddening slightly, but having lived through so much, even as she said these things, no tears came. Lou Shuweng, too, made his incoherent sounds as he watched her, like a child—he had become the happiest person in the family, while she remained forever unhappy.

Outside, the snow-covered city glowed with festive lights reflected against the ground and the sky, and everyone was caught up in the celebratory mood. But she remained forever unhappy.

“…It’s all your fault… all your fault… turning into a simpleton, the least responsible one of us all… forgetting you even have a little sister…”

“Ha… ha…”

Lou Shuweng blew bubbles of saliva, which burst apart—like some fragment of a life slipping suddenly away, reflected in countless laughs, in fireworks, and in eyes brimming with bitterness and regret…

PS: A note—some readers pointed out that in the north, Little New Year falls on the twenty-third. That’s actually a change made within the Qing court; before the Qing dynasty, it was always the twenty-fourth of the twelfth month.