Night fell.
Looking out from the watchtower beside the Princess Imperial’s residence, the city under cover of darkness still showed lights flickering here and there, the bustling markets flowing like woven threads, dotted with the scattered wards where people made their homes.
The Princess Imperial lowered the spyglass in her hand and pointed ahead.
“Starting from here, counting outward, you can see five watchtowers within the city… There are forty-six such towers throughout the city in total, relaying messages by flag signal, which can quickly gather changes across the city and report them to the Ministry of Justice or the palace. The flag signals are fairly general, but once you understand the system, you can get a rough sense of the major events unfolding in the city at any given moment—and someone skilled enough can even deduce what’s happening outside the city walls…”
“In truth, it’s all just information. Read the memorials sent up from below carefully enough, think them over a few times, and most matters become clear in your mind… As for reading the flag signals, the army has long had its own method for this, but you might not believe it—back in Jiangning, Master Ning… that Master Ning, in his spare time, once worked out a so-called phonetic system based on Western letters, something like the old fanqie method. I was still young then and had no interest in it—he only mentioned it in passing… It wasn’t until after the regicide and the uprising that I learned this system had already been adopted into the Black Banner Army, and later incorporated into literacy education in the southwest as well… Coming from the southwest yourself, you must know of it. I only learned this method after the Zuo family returned—found it rather difficult, took me seven days to master it…”
“The flag signals in use here now combine one set based on fixed phrases with another using the southwest’s phonetic method. To prevent bandits from deciphering it, the letter numbering shifts by one for every four… though honestly it does little good. Fuzhou is riddled with leaks from top to bottom—any decoding method like this gets passed along within a matter of days, so it can really only be used to relay minor, inconsequential information. You see, what’s coming through right now—sixteen, that’s the ward number. According to the city’s layout, sixteen is Yucheng Ward to the east. Next: there’s been a clash, blades drawn, over twenty people on both sides…”
“Several great households in Yucheng Ward—Si Zhaonan recently pledged loyalty to the court, but he has a feud with Li Dawei of the Hunhe Gang. The two sides have been fighting over the tea trade route heading north. Si Zhaonan’s been paying the court, hoping to use its hand to clear out Li Dawei… A matter like this doesn’t affect the bigger picture—the best move for the Ministry of Justice would be to mediate between them, let both sides share the spoils. But regardless, this Li fellow’s been pushed into striking, and now the court will need to deal with the Hunhe Gang next… Can you follow all this?”
Throughout, Zhou Pei’s words came calm and light, and whenever a flag signal appeared, her fingers moved in counting gestures, reading off the message clearly within moments. Qu Longjun stood beside her, her own fingers following along in the same counting motions, brow furrowed in concentration, memorizing. Only when Zhou Pei finally turned her gaze toward her did she step back slightly.
“This humble girl… can follow some of it…”
“Following some is good enough.” In the night wind, Zhou Pei, dressed in long robes, smiled faintly, gazing out at the city ahead in the darkness. “Power, as outsiders see it, rests on military force, on wealth. I thought the same when I was young—back then the Wu dynasty was still strong, the Son of Heaven’s anger could level a thousand corpses, and whenever the state wanted something done, whether concerning a single city or region, it simply cut through with one stroke, and none dared defy it… But after inheriting this whole mess, I came to realize that the single most important thing about power is information…”
She rested both hands on the edge of the watchtower. “Even as the Son of Heaven, even as the most exalted sovereign, you still can’t know whether the people around you speak truth or lies. In fact, the more power you hold, the more likely those around you are to speak falsely, out of fear. A man’s heart is hidden behind his ribs—you never know who’s truly loyal… Or perhaps loyalty itself stops mattering at all, since everyone has their own private interests, their own agendas. Often, someone tilts the information just slightly in the direction they want, and after passing through ten people, a hundred people, it becomes a lie utterly removed from the truth…”
“Back in Zhou Zhe’s day, he ruled through tyranny and excess—but in the years since I’ve taken up this burden, I’ve slowly come to understand: who could he possibly have trusted? The reason one must weigh and balance, must play at schemes and stratagems, is that when those below you are divided, they become more likely to speak some truths in the course of checking each other. And to keep those below from banding too closely together, this constant balancing gradually becomes second nature…”
She paused here, turning to look at Qu Longjun. “Do you know why I’m telling you all this?”
“This humble girl…” Qu Longjun’s brow furrowed. “…doesn’t quite understand…”
“Not understanding is a good thing, in its own way.” Zhou Pei said. “Sooner or later, the two of you will return to the southwest as well… Speaking of the southwest, there are some interesting things there—female officials in government, for instance… In times of chaos, things normally unseen do appear—like the female chancellor of Jin, who, if she’d taken one more step, could have declared herself sovereign. But the southwest doesn’t feel like some expedient measure born of chaos. Master… Master Ning, his thinking has always been worlds apart from everyone else’s. He genuinely seems to want to bring women into government—though putting Li Shishi out front does seem a bit of a jest…”
“By that, does Your Highness mean…”
“Li Shishi is his mistress—how could she possibly be put out front? Granted, coming from being the reigning beauty of Fanlou, she does have some connection to diplomacy and cultural affairs, so to speak, but were she to advance one step further into an actual ministerial post, it would lower the whole office’s standing and invite endless criticism.”
“…” Qu Longjun didn’t dare say anything.
In the darkness, Zhou Pei drew a deep breath, then let her words slow.
“…The younger Ning boy’s very identity means he can never escape politics for the rest of his life. And you’re the one who’ll stand beside him—that brings both good things and bad. The good is that, woman though you are, you’ll get to see a very wide world… Ha, Master Ning has grand ambitions, a heart set on the whole realm… no, he holds in his heart a thousand generations yet to come, wanting to enlighten all the people, spread education to everyone, even make all men equal. If I weren’t of the Wu imperial house myself, hearing all this, I too would feel my blood stirring—might even want to charge into battle at his side…”
She fell silent for a long while after saying this.
“…But the bad side of it, little Qu, is that the world you’ll be seeing is simply too vast. Women, once they touch politics, tend to… lose themselves entirely.”
The night wind blew from every direction, stirring the hair at the woman’s temples on the watchtower, strands drifting across her face. Qu Longjun, raised as a courtesan-in-training, hadn’t yet been touched by anything so complicated as politics, but her greatest skill was precisely this: catching the deeper meaning beneath the surface of words. In this moment, she felt a faint stirring of fear—standing here on this watchtower might well be what remained of a once relatively innocent young noblewoman’s honest impression of the “Princess Imperial” she’d become, now caught in the whirl of power: “lost herself entirely.”
Anyone else who heard such words might well risk death for it.
She hesitated, then looked up, and found the Princess Imperial’s eyes fixed directly on her. After a moment, the older woman’s expression softened into a gentle smile.
“No need to be afraid, little Qu.” She said soothingly. “Here in Fuzhou, I’m constantly guessing who’s good and who’s bad, but you needn’t feel that way… It’s only that I often wonder—how is that Master Ning doing now, out there in the southwest? Is he too, caught in the middle of power like this, slowly losing himself? The Ning Yi I knew back then—was he even real, or was I the one who wasn’t real…”
“If this humble girl may speak boldly…” Qu Longjun hesitated a long while before saying, “Your Highness seems… afraid of yourself.”
“…” Zhou Pei fell silent for a moment, then nodded. “…Mm.”
She looked ahead again, then lifted her head.
“I’ve lived over thirty years now—a failed marriage behind me, no children. I can’t claim to offer you much life experience, except when it comes to power, which I know down to the bone. I know there are things one shouldn’t do, yet has no choice but to do; I know there are paths one shouldn’t walk, yet must walk anyway… You remind me a great deal of myself, which is why I want to tell you this: if you can avoid these matters, a woman stays more herself, more endearing… I wonder which of us will get to see that Ning Yi of the southwest again first…”
She sighed softly as she spoke. The surest way to draw close to another person is through open, honest confession, and the two of them stood there on the watchtower, each imagining in her own mind that “lost himself entirely” Master Ning of the southwest. After a while, more flag signals crossed the sky, bringing new information. Zhou Pei studied it for a moment, brow furrowing.
“Still chasing him…”
She turned and called down below. “Yin Ping… is Yin Ping still down there?”
After a moment, Yue Yinping came up from below. Zhou Pei said, “Toward Yueqiao—skilled fighters chasing each other… nearly an hour now. Is that Sun boy still chasing down Tunyun?”
Yin Ping’s brow furrowed. “It looks that way… yes.”
“They’ve nearly run the length of the whole city, and he’s still going?”
“According to earlier reports, that monk Tunyun has always had formidable internal strength and is renowned for his lightness skill, while that Sun boy…” Yin Ping glanced instinctively at Qu Longjun. “He did come up as a scout in the southwest, after all, though… this really is rather extraordinary.”
“Are the two of them evenly matched?”
“It seems Master Cheng and Miss Qu’s scheme is working.” Yin Ping said. “This monk is very likely trying to win over that Sun boy, that mon—er, monkey.”
“What about support from the Ministry of Justice?”
“The Ministry’s constables can’t keep pace with the two of them. With Chief Constable Tie away, they’ve only managed to cast a wide net at a distance. But Yue Yun has already gone over there.”
“Well, it would be strange if you two didn’t go at all.” Zhou Pei nodded.
At that moment, Qu Longjun spoke up from the side. “Miss Yue, how is young Xiaodie doing?”
Yin Ping hesitated, then smiled. “The doctor’s already treated her. Her injuries are serious, but her life isn’t in danger. It seems that degenerate monk Tunyun’s true intentions matched what he shouted about afterward.”
Zhou Pei gave a knowing half-smile. “…You’re taking this rather philosophically.”
Qu Longjun laughed, a bit oddly herself. “When he had his stall in Yinqiao Ward, he argued every single day with the plump auntie next door too, and there was a bad-tempered fish vendor he bickered with constantly as well… Coming from the southwest, he thinks differently from most people—he genuinely believes in equality among all people. If someone wants to fight him, he fights; if someone wants to argue with him, he won’t back down either. Tunyun… that filthy monk assumed his bickering with Xiaodie meant he liked her, which was quite a mistaken read on things. Poor Xiaodie.”
Yue Yinping considered this thoughtfully, then said, “Then I’d say, best not to tell him you won’t back down from an argument either, in front of him.”
Qu Longjun nodded, laughing. “Right, wouldn’t dare say that in front of him.”
Zhou Pei watched the two of them laughing together and, as an elder, thought it over. “He really did raise a fine son…” After a moment, she turned to Qu Longjun. “But if this Xiaodie girl can bicker with him like that, and you’re not worried at all—does she like him?”
“Mm.” Qu Longjun nodded. “Xiaodie does like him.”
“Oh?”
“Who could help but like him?”
Qu Longjun laughed, saying it as though it were simply self-evident.
The watchtower fell quiet for a moment. Yin Ping cupped her hands. “I’ll take my leave now.” She then made a show of not wanting to watch, patting her forehead, and turned to head back down. The night wind picked up again, and Zhou Pei stood there a while before Qu Longjun spoke up.
“Your Highness, this humble girl has something she’d like to dare say…”
“…Mm?”
“During my time in the southwest, the people and things I saw were unlike anything I’d known before. Later I met Little Long, and traveled with him for so long a stretch of time… So, Your Highness, if the Ning family in the southwest could produce such an unusual child, might it be… that the Master Ning you knew back then was also, unlike everyone else in this world?”
“…”
“This humble girl thinks… perhaps… it really could be so…”
…
The night wind gradually carried off the day’s fierce heat, yet in the southeast of the city, two figures moved swiftly among rooftops and trees, both seeming to carry a heat even more searing than the day’s had been.
Churning breath cycled through his body countless times over. Tunyun, his cassock trailing behind him, crossed a narrow stretch of river ahead, slipping through the tight passage like a phantom. Glancing back, at the far edge of his vision, a figure still seemed to cling to him like a maggot burrowed into bone, biting relentlessly at his heels.
What fine material! —He’d already lost count of how many times he’d marveled at this thought tonight.
Since perfecting his lightness skill, it had been many years since he’d had to run for so long a stretch—at first he’d meant only to test the boy’s limits, but gradually he realized the young man, holding his breath in grim determination, had become nearly impossible to shake, like stubborn gum stuck to his heel. Several times he’d thought he’d finally lost him, only to circle back nearby and find the boy biting at his heels again.
They’d traded blows several times along the way too. The young man, still so young after all, found his internal strength growing weaker and weaker, with only sheer stubbornness sustaining this endless chase. Watching this display, Tunyun could only sigh, “The fist fears youth’s vigor.” Yet he himself, in his own youth, had never shown anything like this kind of tenacity.
By the end of the chase, he knew perfectly well he could turn and drive the boy off without much difficulty. It was precisely for this reason that he wanted to draw out the chase a while longer, to get a better sense of the young man’s true potential—as for that girl Xiaodie, there was no possibility of him going back to save her now anyway.
The impression he’d left on the boy that afternoon had been a truly splendid one—or so, at least, Tunyun understood it.
His original plan had been to capture either the Fish King or Pu Xingui and kill them right in front of the young man, letting him feel the full weight of Tunyun’s power and his own helplessness, thereby winning him over. But the Fish King wasn’t home, and Pu Xingui couldn’t be tracked down on short notice either—finding people wasn’t exactly his strong suit. Fortunately, Xiao San and the other lackeys had picked up on the boy’s habit of bickering with a girl in Yinqiao Ward, which was how the whole scene later had come together.
That moment of vanishing and then dropping down from the sky again had, he felt, been more than sufficient to make the boy recognize his own helplessness.
And after that one strike, Tunyun’s real intention had been to let the young man take the girl off to tend her wounds—one thing leading to another, and wouldn’t the girl end up settled, one way or another? That way, he could establish his dominance and grant a kindness both at once—such a masterful, domineering stroke, such an elegant scheme. He’d turned it over in his mind again and again, unable to help applauding himself for it.
Unfortunately, the young man hadn’t grasped the latter half of his careful intentions at all, chasing him down the whole way, forcing Tunyun to finally spell it out plainly along the road: “Hahahaha, this one is teaching you a lesson—there’s still time to go save that girl…”
But the young man had cursed back furiously: “I’m being hunted by the fucking court, where the hell am I supposed to take her to safely tend her wounds…” This left Tunyun silent for a good while.
After a moment, he could only say, “You young people, always so afraid of a little hardship…”
“Fuck your grandfather——”
The young man, driven half-mad with rage, kept up his relentless pursuit.
They’d run and fought through the city for a full two hours, trading a few simple blows with passing constables along the way. Tunyun thoroughly enjoyed the pleasure of disciplining a promising student—his martial skill was, after all, formidable, and he thought to himself that a fight like this in the martial world would surely leave the boy in awe. He kept up the chase until they reached a small stretch of woods ahead, where his pace finally began to slow.
In the shadows of the trees, “Golden-Eyed Thousand Plumes” Fan Zhong was waiting.
Tunyun turned back; not far off, atop a rooftop, the young man’s figure had come to a stop.
Fan Zhong had been hiding there, originally intending to launch an ambush, but Tunyun’s behavior had put the young man on guard, and seeing the ambush plan fall through, Fan Zhong wasn’t troubled by it. He said to Tunyun, “The city’s been in an uproar for so long now, word spreading everywhere, and Miss Chen was worried something had happened, so she asked me to come.”
Tunyun raised a hand, then called back over his shoulder: “That you’ve managed to keep up with me through tonight’s chase is quite impressive—that’s enough for now. As the saying goes, the green mountains remain, the emerald waters flow on—we’ll surely meet again someday, and you may strike then. This one will be waiting, whenever you’re ready.”
Having said this, he clasped his hands behind his back and strode forward, moving like a phantom, every inch the bearing of a true grandmaster.
The young man leapt up on the rooftop. “Fuck your grandfather——”
“Why are young people these days so lacking in manners!” Tunyun frowned.
“The great master really does have a leisurely disposition.” Fan Zhong laughed, then added, “If you don’t leave now, the government troops’ net will close in.”
“I know.”
With two grandmasters present, the young man behind them finally had the sense not to press the chase further, and as the two figures vanished, Ning Ji leapt down from the rooftop, seeking out a hidden route to slip away into the distance.
The blood in his chest burned like fire, his lungs felt like an overworked bellows, every breath carrying a scorched taste—but he still forced himself through several rounds of counter-surveillance before finally slowing his pace by a riverside.
He didn’t stop, still walking, then said to one side, “Come on out.”
Yue Yun, wearing a black headscarf and dressed up as a suspicious masked figure, leapt out from beside the road.
“Well, look at you, you really do have guts—chasing Tunyun for a full hour, truly a fit of rage for a fair maiden’s sake, impressive.”
“What nonsense are you spouting?”
“I’m here to tell you, that girl isn’t dead—badly hurt, but alive.” Yue Yun clapped him on the shoulder. “I understand you, let me tell you—when I saw your girl Xiaodie’s situation, I’d just come from another girl myself, the one those people framed me over, who got hit by a horse… whether she’ll wake up at all is still in question. Everyone else only talks about fighting and killing, but I’m the only one who understands you, those bastards——”
Yue Yun’s eyes were bloodshot, sharing in righteous fury.
“You understand shit!” Ning Ji leapt up and knocked Yue Yun’s arm away with a slap. “You don’t understand how many die on the battlefield in a single day! You don’t spare a thought for the men of the Beiwei Army wrongly framed and killed! You don’t understand Zuo Xingzhou’s death! What do you understand about one badly hurt girl, what the hell do you understand! I’ve watched hundreds of brothers die on the southwestern battlefield in a single day—whose feelings weren’t worth more than one girl’s! Compassion is a virtue, but we are goddamn soldiers——”
“…Huh?”
Ning Ji kept walking, his bloodshot eyes fixed on him. “The enemy will kill our brothers, kill our sisters, kill our cats and dogs—it’s all the same, what’s there to cry about! I want him dead, I just want him dead——”
“…”
Yue Yun scratched his head, watching Ning Ji still walking ahead, his voice like a broken bellows.
“…That stinking old monk wants to take on a disciple, dragging his feet about it—kept me on his tail for a whole hour, I’ve got a decent read on his kung fu now, maybe fifty percent of it… His lightness skill really is formidable—if he shed that cassock, he’d move even faster. A man like that isn’t easy to kill. I’ve never killed one before, but everything has a first time… There’s a way, heh, there’s definitely a way…”
Yue Yun watched him walking on, and though he’d felt annoyed a moment ago, his eyes now lit up. He walked over and gave the young man’s shoulder—now nearly drained of strength, his steps growing unsteady—a squeeze. “Makes sense. Count me in, I’ll help you.”
“Of course you’re in. And another thing—if we get a new weapon, this is practically guaranteed.”
“Explosives? Or a firearm.”
“A spear won’t do—it has to be that one of Cheng Zhouhai’s, the only thing that could catch him off guard… Let me tell you, back in the southwest we ran simulations on exactly this kind of thing…”
“Excellent! Let’s do it!”
In the dim light, Ning Ji’s figure moved along the path by the small riverbank, walking slowly forward. Having spent himself completely chasing down a grandmaster like Tunyun, he found new strength returning after a moment’s rest, and the two figures moved through the summer night, growing faster and faster in the wind…
Only in the back courtyard of the Princess Imperial’s residence, the Emperor was playing a game of striking a wooden fish-block with his little daughter—idly holding a storybook, reading Zhou Fuyang fables from within, striking the wooden block before him once with each chapter read.
Thud, thud, thud.
Zhou Fuyang, listening to the story, fell asleep.
Jun Wu frowned, glancing irritably toward the door. He’d instructed the steward eunuch to report the moment that Sun Wukong returned to the residence, but now Zhou Fuyang had already fallen asleep, and the boy still hadn’t come back. He’d wanted to impart a bit of life wisdom to him, but now that his little tool, Zhou Fuyang, had fallen asleep, if he didn’t get back to the palace soon, tomorrow’s work would only pile up further…
Truly, what a damned nuisance…