The carriage rolled down the long street, sunlight occasionally slanting in through the window, the murmur of the crowd along the road humming faintly like a swarm of bees.
“…The teams assigned are already moving toward the four surrounding locations. As for personnel, all of them were hand-picked from the core staff of the Bureau of Secret Investigation who came south with the army — over the past three days, we ran another round of vetting to confirm there’s no leak…”
A street map was spread out inside the carriage; Fang Jinghao, deputy envoy of the Bureau of Secret Investigation stationed at the Princess Imperial’s residence, pointed out the arrangements marked on it.
“…The four squad leaders will confirm their positions upon arrival. The signal to move will be relayed from the corner watchtower — Chen Shuangran is already used to our flag signals, so the tower will send out the prearranged warning for a fire in Qingyu Ward. Once the signal’s received, the four squad leaders will each light the short incense fuse they’re carrying — once the fuse burns down, or once they hear noise from inside from your end, they’ll launch the assault from their assigned directions. Per Mister Cheng’s arrangement, squads one and two will strike from front and back, squads three and four will hold the north and south, armed with muskets and crossbows, clearing hidden watchers and shooting down any carrier pigeons trying to escape from the site…”
“Old man Cheng personally arranged this… to stop the pigeons?” Ning Ji asked.
“That’s the single most important thing.” Fang Jinghao traced a few lines on the map. “The location’s right in the middle of a busy market district, so the first wave probably won’t manage to catch everyone inside cleanly. But the moment the commotion starts, the City Patrol Bureau’s forces will begin sealing off the four surrounding streets, until everyone’s been caught.”
“That’ll catch some innocents in the crossfire…”
“There’s no helping it. Chen Shuangran picked a spot in a busy ward — the shops fronting the street outside her courtyard all have watchers of hers stationed in them. Fortunately, we’ve already got a full picture of the situation, and we’ll clear them out the moment things start.”
“Anything else to watch for?”
“You go in, our people come out. If the villains inside surrender, all the better; if they resist, kill them where they stand.” Fang Jinghao said. “But you two should also mind your own safety. The people coming out this time may not be as famous as Fan Zhong or Tunyun, but even so, they’re some of the most vicious criminals in all of Fujian.”
“Same as it was at Yinan Manor.” Ning Ji said, lifting the curtain slightly to peer outside. “I think I’ve been around here before…”
Yue Yun glanced out as well. “Not far from the palace.”
“I…” Ning Ji started to say something, then swallowed it halfway through. “You two — what do you think the little witch actually did, to make old man Cheng, ahem, Master Cheng, that furious?”
“I don’t actually think it’s anger.” Yue Yun said, then turned his gaze toward Fang Jinghao.
Fang Jinghao, who’d worked under Cheng Zhouhai for a long time, smiled.
“My guess… it’s more like he just finds it a bad omen…”
“…A bad omen?”
As they spoke, the carriage turned a corner.
Ahead lay an ordinarily bustling market ward.
They had arrived.
Ning Ji lifted the curtain and stepped down; as he turned his head, he could make out the eaves of the palace not far in the distance.
“I really have been here before…”
He muttered this, then walked alongside Yue Yun and Fang Jinghao along the eaves of the market street. After a while, they spotted a small door already cracked slightly open.
“Send the signal.”
…
The sunlight was dazzling.
The drone of cicadas made everything feel hazy and heavy.
Chen Shuangran sat in the courtyard, gazing through the gaps in the trees at a distant corner of the palace.
Cao Jinlong had to repeat himself twice before he finally roused her from her daze.
“…Master Lu has arrived. Would you like to receive him?”
“…Now?”
“Go right away — it would show good will.”
“Lu Zhengshang… he’s not exactly a figure of any real importance…”
“Still, today’s business does depend on people like them, in the end.”
“…” Chen Shuangran thought it over, then pursed her lips and put on a sweet smile. “Fine.”
She followed Cao Jinlong outside to greet the newly arrived swordsman, doing her best to appear respectful. Plenty of figures moved through the outer courtyard, their glances toward her complicated, full of unspoken doubt.
Once the pleasantries were done, Chen Shuangran returned inside.
She knew everyone was talking about her. Ever since word of Fan Zhong’s and Tunyun’s deaths had been broadcast far and wide by the court, people had begun to lose their trust in her.
A crowd of mediocrities.
How could any of them possibly understand her scheme?
But no matter — they were expendable pawns anyway. After tonight, they’d finally understand what she was capable of.
And they’d pay the price for their present indifference and doubt.
After handling Cao Jinlong for a bit more, sending him off to calm the various factions, Chen Yan came in, and she asked him quietly, “Is everyone in good order?”
“Ready to give their lives for you, my lady, at any moment.” Chen Yan said quietly. “Only… without a typhoon, can this still succeed?”
“There’s always been a typhoon in past years — it hasn’t come this year. If heaven itself wants to work against me, what more can I do about it…”
“Heaven, about to place a great burden on someone…”
“I know.” Chen Shuangran frowned. “It’s Fan Zhong and Tunyun’s fault too — such supposedly formidable grandmasters, and they got themselves killed by a mere child. If they hadn’t been so incompetent, the skill that wretched little brat showed at Yinan Manor wouldn’t even matter… We wouldn’t even need the typhoon to make this work.”
“If there’s no certainty of success…”
“When has anything in this world ever come with absolute certainty?… Maybe you’re right, Uncle Yan — heaven is testing me. No typhoon, no Fan Zhong, no Tunyun — our family’s people still have to make this succeed on our own. Honestly, Uncle Yan, once I found that lead, I’ve always been about seventy percent sure it would work — and when the moment comes, you have to be bold enough to gamble. I have to take the risk.”
She went on: “Uncle Yan, I think today, before anyone accomplishes anything great in this world, they must feel something like what I’m feeling now… I know it can succeed, but my heart is still uneasy. Still, I will give it everything I have. As long as it succeeds, everyone will know…”
Her words trailed off there, as blood spattered suddenly down from above.
The body of a watcher fell from the tree, and nearly in the same instant, a sharp flash of blade-light followed it down. Chen Yan turned slightly, pushing her back and away as the blade whirled through the air and struck across his body.
“…My — dread…”
Chen Shuangran was still speaking when she was shoved staggering backward. Chen Yan crossed past her — thud, thud, thud — then collapsed with a thud, blood spraying across the ground. She, too, fell, and for a moment couldn’t quite process what she was seeing: this old man, her steward, who had raised her since childhood, had one arm snapped clean in two, white bone twisted and jutting out, and a slash had opened across his head, throwing his whole face out of alignment.
“Aaah—” someone shouted a warning and rushed forward.
Guarding this inner courtyard were the last, most loyal and most elite of the Chen family’s own people.
She raised her head and saw two figures collide. The guard who had rushed to save her was cut down, sliced apart with a horizontal swing of a blade. Blood sprayed out in every direction from around the young man who had appeared as if from the sky.
This was the third time they had crossed paths, and it left her thoughts in disarray.
She had once, toward this young man, felt a rather strange emotion.
Toward her, it might well have been something like love.
The young man, dropping down from the heavens, coldly cut through everything in his path.
With a boom, another figure came bursting out of the building behind her — a guard’s chest was shattered by his eight-sided hammer, sending him crashing through a wall, spinning to the ground.
“Aaah—”
Chen Shuangran screamed until her voice tore, scrambling up before stumbling and falling again, because the young man had already reached her, gripping a fistful of her hair. “Found you.” His flat, calm words sounded as if he’d simply located some object he’d been looking for.
Agony shot through Chen Shuangran’s scalp; her legs thrashed against the ground. People rushed in around her, weapons clashing, dragging her, by the hair, from one spot to the next. A guard fell to the ground, a blade through his chest. Chen Shuangran wanted to scream, “Help me—” but these useless men were no help at all.
The commotion around her grew louder. She heard the young man call out, “Yue Yun!” and toss something into the courtyard. In an instant, panic erupted, followed by a thunderous explosion, the air shrieking with the blast; amid the buzzing, ringing chaos, someone shouted hysterically: “Let her go—” She realized — that was Cao Jinlong.
“Master Cao, save me—”
Chen Shuangran forced the words out with everything she had. The young man, still gripping her by the hair, was in the middle of dragging her in one direction, but at this he gave a small “Hm?” — though the movements of his hand below never wavered. He released her for a moment to pick something up off the ground; Chen Shuangran, in that instant, threw everything she had into crawling two steps forward, only to be yanked back by the collar in the next moment. He produced a length of hemp rope and looped it around her throat.
The young man’s hands worked quickly, tying a knot at the back of her neck.
“Aaaaaaaaaah…”
Chen Shuangran shrieked with everything she had. Only now did she truly grasp the severity of what was happening; she twisted around, trying to claw at him, but the instant her hand went up, he swung his in turn — a sharp knife flashed and sliced clean along half her forearm, from elbow straight through her palm.
“Don’t make a fuss.”
He seemed to say something along those lines. Chen Shuangran’s mind went blank; only afterward did the searing pain and the unbearable sense of her own body’s damage begin to rise in her chest. Someone lunged in from the side. Cao Jinlong had come charging in.
“Run—”
Cao Jinlong shouted, shoving her forward with everything he had, and she instinctively bolted, but Cao Jinlong himself fell back faster than she could run. The young man seized him, closed the distance, drove a fist into his face, then reached out and caught an arrow that a fighter had fired at him from a distance, and, gripping it, began stabbing it again and again into Cao Jinlong’s head, face, shoulders, chest. Cao Jinlong tried to shield himself with his arms; every stab and withdrawal sent up great sprays of blood and flesh.
Chen Shuangran had only made it three steps before Cao Jinlong had already overtaken her, collapsing and rolling on the ground. Then the rope around her neck yanked violently tight; the young man, gripping the rope, dragged her right back.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
The sensation of suffocation rose in her; Chen Shuangran clawed at the rope with her one good hand, though of course it did little good. Ahead of her, the summoned fighters were huddled beneath the eaves, dodging; some tried hurling things her way. Only Cao Jinlong, dragging himself up from the pool of blood, kept coming, charging toward them. The young man, dragging the rope, leapt up a tree trunk, then, landing, used the branches to string Chen Shuangran up, hanging her off the ground.
Cao Jinlong, gathering every last bit of strength, hurled a steel blade he’d snatched up off the ground.
The blade whistled through the air and severed the rope, and Chen Shuangran dropped heavily to the ground.
Pain and suffocation wrapped around her; she couldn’t speak. Cao Jinlong was still coming, and a guard broke free from his fight against Yue Yun and rushed over too. But the young man had already stepped over that way as well — three figures crashed together, and a horrifying spray of blood followed.
On the other side of the courtyard, Yue Yun’s chain hammer whirled, having already smashed down more than a few men, and once again he hurled a grenade toward the eaves beside the courtyard.
A thunderous blast.
Over here, the young man, splattered head to toe in blood, walked back. “So mischievous,” he said.
He then dragged the struggling, half-turned Chen Shuangran, who was trying to crawl away, back up off the ground, and began splicing the two broken ends of the rope back together.
Chen Shuangran wept in agony; for a brief moment her gaze rose to meet the young man’s, and amid her suffocation she tried to beg for mercy — but the young man simply glanced at her once and then drove a headbutt straight into her, smashing her nose.
The rope was mended.
Ning Ji held onto the other end and hauled her body upward, then found a nearby low tree and tied off the rope. Cao Jinlong, crawling out of the pool of blood, tried to free the girl now hanging in the air, but in the end could only manage to straighten up and wrap his arms around her legs, crying out but not daring to actually pull.
“You want it?”
Ning Ji walked over, swung his blade once, and severed that leg for him.
Cao Jinlong sat down on the ground, holding onto the severed leg, blood and other matter from beneath the skirts spilling onto him. He stayed frozen for a moment, then a great flash of hatred crossed his eyes; he opened his mouth, meaning to shout, to charge in. Ning Ji threw aside his long blade and drove a fist screaming into his face — Cao Jinlong went flying and tumbling away, his whole mouth and nose crushed.
A few more guards still loyal to the Chen family, willing to sacrifice everything for her, seemed to want to rush in as well, but there was more thunder than rain in what they actually managed. Most of the martial-world fighters here had already begun scattering and fleeing; the Bureau of Secret Investigation’s people had broken in from several directions, and all around the outer perimeter of the courtyard, the fleeing carrier pigeons were being shot down, one after another, without exception.
“…Let’s go.”
Ning Ji called out to Yue Yun.
Yue Yun, equally covered in blood, was still riding the high of the fight; he looked back at Chen Shuangran, hanging from the tree. “We’re just leaving her like this?”
“Leave her be — she’s getting off easy.”
Ning Ji waved a hand.
Then added: “I want to see who the bastard is behind all of them.”
…
Naturally, someone else would handle the cleanup for the disturbance near the palace.
Using the city’s messenger relay system, Ning Ji and Yue Yun received their coordinates, mounted horses, and rode across the city toward the western gate of Fuzhou. Not long after leaving through the gate, they caught up with Cheng Zhouhai, who was still on the way himself, and from somewhere far off in the sky came the rumble of what sounded like distant thunder, again and again.
“Cannon fire?” Ning Ji recognized the sound.
“One of the estates under ‘Old Apothecary’ Sun — the one the martial world calls ‘Old Man Yao’ — has already been surrounded. Too much trouble to bother otherwise, so I had Wenren Buer test out the cannons on the walls. Yinping’s already up ahead too; once this bombardment’s done, it’ll be time to charge in and start making arrests.”
Ning Ji, of course, had heard of Wenren Buer’s name before — a man trusted by the Emperor, who had been overseeing the Institute of Natural Philosophy for him this whole time. Apparently he’d been called out here for this operation as well.
Perhaps because the whole affair was finally closing in on its end, there were more soldiers gathered nearby this time than at any point before. By the time Ning Ji and Yue Yun arrived, the estate had already been breached, and a great number of tenant farmers were being driven out, rounded up for arrest and screening. But a soldier came to report that some had broken out through the east side of the estate and were fleeing by the waterway.
“They won’t get away.”
Cheng Zhouhai said.
In the distance, boats and troops were already closing in from that direction as well. He’d been planning this operation for a long time, and had left few gaps for anyone to slip through.
Some of the Bureau of Secret Investigation’s people had already begun screening the captives for ringleaders. After a while, an old man was hauled out from the estate, supported on either side. Cheng Zhouhai narrowed his eyes and rode over, a look of sudden realization crossing his face.
“Lord Mei — it’s been a while.” He greeted him, then, to make sure Ning Ji understood, turned and added, “This is Lord Mei of Lin’an — Wu Qimei. What I mean to say is: when Lin’an fell and Tie Yan died, where did the two of you end up disappearing to?”
“Heh heh heh heh…” At the sight of Cheng Zhouhai, the old man shook all over, his voice quavering, but he gradually forced it into something like laughter. “Ha ha ha ha… this old man… this old man, having roamed the world his whole life, ended up ruined in the end by trusting a nobody, a wretched woman… damn her, she should rot in the eighteenth level of hell—&%$#…”
He broke into a stream of curses. Ning Ji scratched his head and exchanged a glance with Yue Yun.
For some reason, Cheng Zhouhai himself fell silent for a moment as well, then sighed. “Now that I’ve pieced together all the information, I feel the same way you do… But don’t worry.” He glanced back at Ning Ji. “I expect… she’s already dead by now.”
“Heh heh heh heh… ha ha ha ha…” Wu Qimei’s whole body shook. “So she’s dead… good, good riddance, ha ha ha ha… now that she’s dead, you know what she was trying to do, don’t you…”
“…” Cheng Zhouhai fell silent again for a moment before speaking. “A couple of years back, while the old detached palace here in Fuzhou was being expanded and renovated for the imperial residence, a secret tunnel was accidentally discovered underneath it — we never filled it back in. Instead, we quietly let a bit of information slip outside, to see if anyone might walk into the trap on their own… We buried the news so deep that no one took the bait for two whole years… I never imagined that the trump card she was holding would turn out to be exactly this.”
As he said this, Ning Ji, standing off to the side, went momentarily still — he’d thought there was something oddly familiar about the place where Chen Shuangran had been staying. A few days before, when his elder martial brother the Emperor had brought him into the palace to play, and he hadn’t wanted to make a show of leaving after dinner, hadn’t he snuck out through that very tunnel beneath the bridge?
Wu Qimei froze for a moment too, then burst into a wretched, ragged laugh. “Ha ha ha ha… ha ha ha ha… you bastard, you wretched woman… and here I thought that information was worth something… that woman was insane, absolutely insane — for the sake of this one thing, she ran wild, laying trap after trap to muddy the waters, dragging a whole pile of people down with her. At first she made everyone think she had it all under control, and who could have known she’d treat every single one of us as expendable pawns — right up until Fan Zhong died, until Tunyun died, and she was still making excuses, saying the more people who died, the more convincing it would look to the court, that they’d surely be fooled by it… I hate her — such a deranged, arrogant, inhuman piece of trash! I actually saved her once, back then — I should have beaten her to death myself… With Fan Zhong, with Tunyun, with so much help on our side, this should have succeeded — and instead she twisted it into this.”
Cheng Zhouhai looked at him quietly. Beside him, Ning Ji fell silent too, his gaze cold as the depths of an abyss. Only now did he understand, more or less, the outline of the whole affair, and more or less grasp the source of the anger he’d sensed in Cheng Zhouhai earlier.
A woman of no real consequence, chasing some absurd goal, driven by her own deranged reasoning, playing at endless so-called schemes. In the end, over the course of a few short months, she had squandered vast resources and inflicted suffering on everyone caught up in the affair.
From Zhong Ergui, framed from the start, to Zuo Xingzhou; from the many officials assassinated, to the little girl sent flying when Yue Yun was framed; to countless figures across the martial world, even her own subordinates — all of them had been dragged into this by one self-important woman. No wonder Cheng Zhouhai found the whole thing such a foul omen.
The old man tried to sink back down to the ground amid his wails and curses, but the soldiers beside him kept his arms pinned, not letting him move. Cheng Zhouhai let him curse for a while, then fixed him with a cold stare.
“…Enough with the act. It was you who took her in back in Lin’an, you who trained her, you who sent her here to do this work — as for Fan Zhong and Tunyun, without your direction, why would they ever have taken orders from her?… You’ve been quite hard to catch, actually. For months now I’ve been wondering how the various great families of Fujian, already battered down several times over, could suddenly be stirring again — men like Lord Fei, Old Ai, and Old Apothecary Sun. What promises could possibly make them dare to rise up in open rebellion again? I never expected it would be you.”
The old man named Wu Qimei was still trembling on the ground, his gaze shifting — sometimes filled with fear, sometimes with panic, and sometimes, faintly, with a hard and stubborn defiance.
“…But is it really just you?” Cheng Zhouhai said. “Before Lin’an fell, I suspected you. But it’s been more than ten days since news of Lin’an’s fall reached us, and yet Lord Fei and the others still haven’t come forward to sell you out — which tells me it’s not just you behind this. Care to come clean?”
“I…” Wu Qimei said. “Cheng Zhouhai…”
“Down in the Southwest, Ning Yi is soft-hearted — I hear he’s abolished the death of a thousand cuts. But Lord Mei… here, you are absolutely going to face it.”
At these words, Wu Qimei’s face went instantly pale, and his whole body seemed to go even more slack, as if the last of his strength had left him. His lips trembled; he seemed to want to say something.
Cheng Zhouhai sighed. “You already know everything hinges on this — biting your own tongue off isn’t something you have the resolve for either.” He walked off to the side and asked someone whether the executioner had arrived yet, then said, “He won’t talk. Drag him off. Strip a layer of skin off him for me.”
Wu Qimei was hauled off to one side. The old man finally found some strength left in his body, trying to scrape his feet against the ground to slow them down, but as he was dragged further and further away, he finally cried out: “Cheng Zhouhai—”
“Lord Cheng—” he cried out again, and only then did Cheng Zhouhai raise a hand to signal a stop.
“Spare… spare my life…”
“You’ll talk eventually.”
Cheng Zhouhai waved him off.
“Ah…”
“Aaaaaaaaaah…”
The old man refused to go, screaming and wailing.
Cheng Zhouhai paid him no mind, turning away.
At last, a shout came from that direction.
“Cheng Zhouhai… ha ha ha ha ha ha… it’s the Southwest—”
Both Cheng Zhouhai and Ning Ji frowned.
Then they heard the old man cry out, his voice cracking into a strange, twisted wail:
“It’s Zou — Xu — ha ha ha ha ha ha — do you think you can escape? Do you really think you’ve broken free of this… aaaaaaaaaah—”
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah—”
On the sixteenth of the sixth month, high summer, evening drawing near, the sun still blazed fiercely. But in that moment, carried along with the old man’s alternating wails and laughter, the heat in the sunlight finally seemed to fade away.
Not long after, they learned—
The typhoon had arrived.