“…After the great battle in the southwest, every faction in the realm started scheming against the Huaxia Army… Wen Shoubin, egged on by the great scholar Tian Song and others, though he ran a flesh trade, had convinced himself it was all for some greater righteous cause. Back then, he took me and five sisters to the southwest, meaning to accomplish something there… He originally wanted to use me and the other girls to corrupt high officials in the southwest army, but once we got there, in order to make contact with a few of the great scholars, he was forced to send our eldest, second, and third sisters out first to warm their beds—only then did the great scholar Guan Shanhai agree to receive him…”

“…Guan Shanhai… ah, Guan Haoran of Yunan, quite a literary reputation, that one… After he received you, what else did he take?”

“…Our fourth and fifth sisters were given to him too. He preferred the younger ones—he originally wanted me, but Wen Shoubin thought that wasn’t quite right… In the end he decided I’d be easier to control, and said he wanted me to seduce… to seduce the Ning family’s eldest son, Ning Xi…”

“…Mm, Ning Xi… Coming in from outside, once you reached Chengdu, did anything leave a strong impression on you?”

“…My five sisters and I, along with Wen Shoubin, entered Sichuan by water… Actually, the moment we crossed into Sichuan, I could already feel how different it was from outside…”

The morning breeze was turning warm, golden light shaking loose from the banyan tree above as the two women talked, seemingly at ease. Zhou Pei carried herself with cultivated grace, maintaining an amiable manner, and even the most startling information seemed to draw little surprise from her face. Qu Longjun sat with her legs together, head slightly bowed, carrying an appropriate mix of deference and restraint, but whatever question came her way, she answered truthfully, in full.

It was like the calmest of mornings, an idle chat.

“…Did you ever see Ning Xi?”

“…No.”

“…Then how did you come to see him… Ning Ji?”

“…The plan hadn’t even begun before it fell apart… That very night we learned Master Ning had already been on guard. Before Guan Shanhai could give the order, he found himself watched so closely he couldn’t even leave his own door. Word later spread outside that he’d colluded with the Huaxia Army and betrayed everyone… Truthfully, by that point, none of us really understood what Wen… what Wen Shoubin had actually been planning. He wanted to bring the six of us sisters into Chengdu to stir up trouble, but once contact was made, my five sisters were parceled out, and I was to… seduce the Ning family’s eldest son. But before I ever even laid eyes on him, that same night people came dragging us away, saying the plot was exposed and we had to flee quickly, so we fled in a daze… Honestly, thinking back on it, we hadn’t even done anything wrong…”

“…Pfft… So when you got to Chengdu, you ran into… it happened like that…”

Zhou Pei couldn’t help laughing, reaching out to stroke the girl’s hair.

“…After that, everyone scattered in a panic. It was the Huang family’s people who’d caused the trouble, and on the road we ran into two assassins said to be quite formidable. The Huangs said they’d previously made contact with a corrupt doctor in the Huaxia Army who’d take money for anything, so they took us to find him. When we reached the courtyard, we found a boy of about ten-some years, roughly my own age. There were twenty of us at the time, so we took him hostage…”

“…And that was… him?”

“…Mm.”

“…Did anyone come to rescue him afterward?”

“…No one… At the time, the young… mm, Young Master Ning, he looked a bit delicate, and maybe because he didn’t want to be bullied, he always kept a stern face on—like this, quite different from now. That night there were a lot of us, and some people gave him ugly looks, some even wanted to hit him. Then, toward dawn, he couldn’t hold back anymore and struck. All by himself…”

“…All by himself, and he was even younger then than he is now…”

“…Mm, all by himself, against twenty-some people in that courtyard, including skilled martial artists—and it all erupted at once. Two of the assassin masters had been wounded and were recovering with a few others in a room; he threw something in, and it went off with a bang… Then he dragged the Huang family’s man in charge around the courtyard by the ears while beating him, until both ears were gone, and the man screamed so loud. Then someone shoved me in too, and I got knocked to the ground…”

“…He… hit you?”

“…No, it was one of the Huangs, he pushed me in front to block a blade, and I don’t even know what happened, I just collapsed on the ground… I thought I was going to die right then, all twenty-some people died, the whole building collapsed… But he’s a doctor, and in the end he saved me…”

“…Mm, all by himself… against twenty-some…”

“…I found out later he’d been on a battlefield, had killed Golden Dogs before… Later, I stayed for a while at the Huaxia Army’s clinic. The people there said he killed people carelessly and saved people just as carelessly, and made him pay for my medicine out of his own pocket. One day, he even sent me a book, called Women Hold Up Half the Sky… It was from around then that I slowly started to understand what kind of place the Huaxia Army really was…”

Qu Longjun clasped her hands together on her lap, speaking softly of her experiences along the way. Zhou Pei, who had at first interjected now and then, asking about things that interested her, gradually stopped asking questions altogether. She listened as Qu Longjun described what she’d seen in the southwest, then went on to speak of her decision to leave, traveling east, arriving in Jiangnan, seeing everything about the Fair Play Sect, even her time with White Rakshasa.

Zhou Pei naturally had feelings about Jiangning, and many questions weighed on her mind, but Qu Longjun’s account, well-judged in what it included and left out, painted the current state of that city with an almost effortless ease, seemingly told just as it came to her. Then she moved on to the Fair Play Sect’s great gathering, the chaos there, and the reunion within that chaos. Here she deliberately smoothed over certain details—the rumors of the “five-foot lecher” and “four-foot lecher” she left out entirely—while playing up, instead, the clash between Ning Ji and the world’s foremost martial artist, Lin Zongwu, when they’d reunited, along with the tale of how Ning Ji had single-handedly killed Wang Nantuo.

Zhou Pei had heard of Lin Zongwu but knew little about him, and knew even less of Wang Nantuo’s standing, but from Qu Longjun’s account, she could tell well enough that Ning Ji was truly a hero risen young. In truth, if these same exploits had been recounted before Yin Ping and Yue Yun, the siblings would have been consumed with envy.

After that, the two of them had fled the chaos of war, hidden in the mountains for several months living together, and only then made their way to Fujian to set up their stall, right up until now…

Zhou Pei listened as Qu Longjun told these things at length, and finally, near the end, she suddenly leaned in, eyes fixed on the girl’s. “Do you like him?”

Qu Longjun met the Princess Imperial’s gaze directly, then gave a small nod. “Mm.”

Zhou Pei reached out and stroked her hair. “You’re quite good—you’ll make him a fine helpmeet.”

“Mm.” Qu Longjun’s breathing quickened slightly, and she nodded firmly.

Only then did Zhou Pei rise fully, walking off toward one side of the courtyard. After a few steps, she turned back, looking at the girl who had risen to see her off. “Why is it that the moment I ask you something, you tell me everything?”

Before Qu Longjun could answer, Zhou Pei raised a finger. “I wonder—could it be that, like your father, your heart has always belonged to the Wu dynasty, loyal and righteous?”

Qu Longjun took a breath, hesitating a moment. “This humble girl has heard… that Your Highness was once a disciple of Master Ning as well.”

Zhou Pei gazed at her, lips pressed together, and then, slowly, slowly, a smile spread across her face.

“He… taught me arithmetic.”

Her long skirts swaying, Zhou Pei turned and strode away.

Leaving the courtyard, passing through the long corridor of the Princess Imperial’s residence, Zhou Pei returned to the courtyard where she lived and sat down in the shade of a tree. During this time, Zhou Fuyang came over wanting to be held, chattered at her for a while, then went pattering off again. In her mind, Zhou Pei sketched out the situation in the southwest—she could piece together fragments of this information from many different mouths, but this time, through Qu Longjun’s account, she’d gained an even more interesting perspective.

As noon approached, the Emperor arrived, a slight weariness in his eyes, and sat down in the courtyard as well. His first question was, “Where’s Zhou Fuyang?”

“She ran off to play.”

“Play what, call her over, I’m going to go collect that debt of hard candy from her.”

“What debt? That Ning boy left ages ago.”

“Huh? Why? Who let him go, it’s so dangerous out there…”

“Cheng Zhouhai promised to keep that girl here as a hostage, which meant he could run wherever he wanted. With all the fighting and killing in the city today, how could he possibly hold still? He’s long since gone out to join in the fun. Before he left, he even cursed out the Yue siblings, saying your Wu court and the Yue family are nothing but useless bastards.”

“What… what did he say?”

“That the Wu court is a bunch of useless bastards.”

“…Oh. Well, he does have something of a point.”

Jun Wu lay back in his chair, hands folded over his stomach, cursing along freely.

Zhou Pei glanced over at him. “How’s the palace settling down?”

“Master Li and Master Hu are still virtuous scholars—even knowing they’d be taking the blame, they took pity on the court’s difficulties in the end and agreed to preside over the matter. Old Master Tong… gave me an earful, going on about how when the Way is lost, virtue follows; when virtue is lost, benevolence follows; when benevolence is lost, righteousness follows; when righteousness is lost, ritual follows—and ritual is but a thin veneer of loyalty and good faith, and the beginning of disorder…”

“Old Master Tong studies the Dao De Jing—he means that your constant clamoring for reform is exactly the sign of a world falling into chaos, that the sage governs through non-action, and shouldn’t stir things up so much.”

“Right, and I told him: reversal is the movement of the Dao, weakness is the function of the Dao—we’re weak, so shouldn’t the Dao be put to use? And he scolded me again, said I was engaging in sophistry and had no real learning.”

“And then?”

“I asked him for money.”

“…As long as the message got through.”

The siblings now bore the hopes of the realm on their shoulders, the last face the Wu dynasty had left to show the world—but in truth, there were plenty of petty local conflicts, and no shortage of people muttering behind their backs every single day. With the granaries running dry so often, they’d grown thick-skinned about it. After exchanging this news, they fell quiet for a moment, until Jun Wu suddenly sensed something was off.

“Sister, you seem a little strange today… Ning Ji ran off—did you go see that girl who was with him?”

Sitting beside him, Zhou Pei smiled. “I did.”

“How was she?”

“A rather remarkable girl.”

“How so?”

“She told me her whole background, told me the story of her journey with young Ning Ji. I meant to probe and see what she was really made of, but from start to finish, everything she said was exactly what I wanted to hear. According to… what our teacher used to say, quick-witted, clear-headed—I hadn’t even talked with her long before I no longer wanted to interrupt her. That girl’s been trained well.”

“Trained…” Jun Wu sat up, brow furrowing.

“No need to jump to conclusions. She told me herself, she came up as a courtesan-in-training. Ah well, that’s a sin our own Wu dynasty helped create too, everyone born into troubled times has their own fated path… But you—do you want to hear a story about our little Ning Ji here?”

Jun Wu had occupied a high position for years now, and for a moment, suspecting something was wrong with Qu Longjun, his brow had knit with real killing intent. Now it relaxed, and he lay back down slowly.

“Well go on then, tell me…”

He put on a lazy expression, but before long, that expression began to grow rather more animated…

Now this was good material…

Outside the Princess Imperial’s residence, within the city of Fuzhou, chaos both large and small continued to unfold.

With the court’s reserves running dry and the Emperor still needing to provide relief for disaster victims, the treasury’s exhaustion meant, on one hand, that the court’s very lifeblood was running out, and on the other, that things were growing ever more dangerous. Men like Huang Shengyuan, pushed along by Chen Shuangran, had begun striking within the city, assassinating rivals, while several great clans who sensed their own precarious position had begun unleashing more of their hidden strength to further destabilize Fuzhou.

Some of these assassinations succeeded; others ended in failure. The breakdown in public order remained localized, but the real problem was that many of Fuzhou’s mid-tier gentry families now felt keenly the pressure from both sides, and how precarious their own safety had become.

In the city’s southeast, near a waterway called Yinfu Bridge, a man in a bamboo hat rose up from beside a stand of trees, watching several men fleeing in a panic being met and helped aboard two black-canopied boats moored by the water.

His eyes narrowed in confusion, but then he gave chase.

He studied the figures on the boat carefully, then shouted out: “Nian Tong, Hero Nian, over here! Over here! I’m the one Miss Chen sent to meet you—”

The boatman had already poled the vessel away from the shore. A bloodied man inside the black-canopied boat poked his head out, gazing back in confusion. The boatman cursed. “You bastards, so this is what sending Hero Nian and the others off to die looks like!”

“If it were sending them to die, why would I be here to meet you… Who are you…”

“More like silencing witnesses, I’d say,” the boatman said, turning back to say something to the “heroes” in the boat. The “heroes” were evidently swayed and shrank back inside.

The man on the shore looked confused, but then he reached out and shouted: “I recognize you! I recognize you!” As he spoke, he snatched up a wooden pole from the ground and hurled it out over the water with a whoosh. His skill was no small thing—the pole shot toward the cabin with the force of tearing wind, but the boatman parried it aside with a bamboo pole.

“You’re one of the Fish King’s men, you’re one of the Fish King’s men—that half-dead old fool Gao Xingzong dares get himself tangled up in this, is he not afraid of dying? Tell him I, Wei, will remember him—Miss Chen will remember him—”

The man on the boat gave another fierce shove with his bamboo pole, gritting his teeth. “Don’t think you’re the only ones not to be trifled with. The Fish King told me to tell you—he’s got a King of Hell above him too, one who won’t hesitate to take a life. You want to know who that is? Better hope you live long enough—”

“You—”

The man on shore made to curse further, but suddenly caught the meaning behind those words. He spun around at once, drew his blade, and there, in his line of sight, he saw the very “King of Hell” the other had spoken of.

The figure had already stepped forward, an overwhelming, soul-crushing killing intent radiating from his eyes.

“You’re still not dead…”

The two of them had crossed paths just the day before, during the ambush laid at the foot of Jiuxian Mountain to kill Tie Tianying. The man called “Axe-Wielding Tiger” Wei Sanhua had been one of the skilled men under Tunyun’s command that day, and this young man in the flower-patterned cloth mask should have been an ally—yet partway through the fight, he’d begun attacking indiscriminately, inflicting heavy casualties on his own side. When they fled up into the mountains, one of Wei Sanhua’s friends had meant to teach the boy a lesson, only to discover the youth was ruthless and merciless beyond belief—it was the friend who ended up taught a lesson, leaving a deep impression on everyone present.

Wei Sanhua had encountered plenty of eccentric, difficult characters in the martial world, but rarely one so brutally, indiscriminately murderous. By rights, the young man ought to feel some guilt over it—but for some reason, in this single meeting of eyes, Wei Sanhua could feel that the cold, killing intent radiating from him now seemed to have multiplied several times over from that day, an utterly naked, unconcealed, overwhelming flame of murderous intent.

With no way to retreat, two flashes of blade-light erupted at once. The man screamed hysterically, and on that sunlit road, a stunning burst of light and sparks flared—only for one flash of blade-light to slam forcibly into the other. As Wei Sanhua’s footwork carried him backward, the long blade cleaved through muscle, shattered bone, and exploded across his body in a wild, unrelenting arc.

His upper body was hacked apart, and the momentum carried him tumbling across the road…