The moon hung round and full, and the river rippled with silver light beneath it.

A few children were playing at the riverbank, batting at the water with branches for a while, then throwing stones to skip them across, chattering noisily among themselves.

“Right here!”

“That’s right, the current’s fastest here!”

“You scared or something?”

“Who’s scared of who!”

Clothes came off in a rush, and then, one after another, they all leapt in.

A sentry on duty came running over, blowing his bamboo whistle.

“Get out! Get out, all of you! Whose kids are these! Told you not to go in the water at night—”

After a flurry of chasing and shouting, the children were finally hauled out. Looking closely, at least a couple of them had fathers who held the rank of regiment commander or higher, and some were still puffed up with pride. “My swimming was taught by Teacher Jin’er! I won’t die!” said one. Another said, “I’m a real man! I won’t die either!” The sentry, well used to dealing with the children of high officials, gave each of them a swat on the backside before hauling them off by household to find their families. That night, more than a few of them would inevitably be chased down and thoroughly wailed at.

Ning Yi watched from hiding among the trees, then rubbed his forehead and let out a rueful laugh.

He’d handled some business that afternoon and his head still ached a little; laughing now came out as a bitter chuckle. He waved over Du Sha and another guard. “That last one, the one with no pants on — that’s Old Che’s boy, isn’t it? Che Honglin.”

“Mm,” Du Sha said, and the man beside him nodded too, turning to look toward one end of the grove, where the guard they called Old Che was also standing in the dark.

“Have him work overtime tonight, keep him from going home — so his father doesn’t beat the boy black and blue…” Then, after a thought, “Why was he the one with no pants, anyway? Where’d they go?”

“A bunch of them were grabbing at each other’s clothes just now — his must’ve fallen in the water…”

“No, it was Luo Qing who grabbed his pants and put them on by mistake. The ones that fell in the water were Luo Qing’s.”

“Well, they’re all a piece of work…”

Someone snickered.

In the calm of the night, the small commotion stirred up a brief ripple, then settled back into quiet before long. Ning Yi walked to the riverside, picked up a few flat stones, and sent several skipping across the water’s surface. He’d practiced martial arts for over a decade — his grip strength wasn’t small, and the angle of his throws was skillful — the stones skipped beautifully, easily outshining the children’s efforts from before. He then went and sat on a low-lying tree trunk by the river, seeking a moment’s peace.

That stretch of tree trunk by the river, bent low like a chaise longue, was wonderfully comfortable to lean against — a good spot Ning Yi had stumbled on by chance. He’d gotten used to it, so much so that someone had taken to sweeping it clean for him. Sitting there now, looking at the neatly swept ground, he suddenly frowned again, then just as suddenly sat back up, his mood a little restless.

He stood, looked up at the moon, and kept walking along the riverbed. After a while, a figure came up from the side. “Brother-in-law.”

He turned to look — under the moonlight, the young woman was fresh-faced and spirited, with just a faint scar on her cheek. “Xiao Qi,” Ning Yi said with a smile. “Your sister sent you out here.”

“Mm. Sister said you’re sulking and won’t eat.”

“I’m not sulking. She’s an empress dowager who rules the household with an iron hand and ganged up with everyone to shut me out — I just came out to clear my head, is that not allowed? Look, I’ve even walked clear out of her territory, and she still sends you to keep an eye on me.”

“Brother-in-law, Sister’s almost in tears.”

“Let her cry, let her cry. It’s not the first time.”

Ning Yi gave a cold laugh, unleashed the full force of his inner sigma-male nature, and kept walking ahead. Xiao Qi pursed her lips and followed along behind.

After walking a while, Ning Yi spoke. “Xiao Qi, tell me… with the Su Family running such a huge operation here, is it really true there’s never been any bullying or exploitation going on?”

“Brother-in-law, you’ve practically dismantled the Su Family already — most of it’s gone straight into the government, and there’s barely any business left. Sister still clamps down on it hard every few days, just so she won’t embarrass you. And then you come back to Zhang Village and, without asking a single question, take another two swings at it — of course the family’s going to have something to say. They didn’t even get their dividends this year. Sister was just telling you as much…”

“…Ah, right.” Ning Yi fell silent for a moment. “Xiao Qi, look — even with rules several times stricter than anyone else’s, the businesses in your hands still manage to grow faster than everyone else’s. Why is that? Because in reality, the government’s given every single one of your businesses a green light, laid out every resource for you to pick from. If it were really the exact same rules for everyone, would that be acceptable? If I didn’t take a swing at it now and then, before long the Su Family would be flying off into the heavens…”

“So then you admit — the Su Family hasn’t been bullying anyone… If you want to cut down the family’s business, I’ve no complaints, I’m water that’s already been poured out. But taking it out on Sister with this, that’s not fair.”

“Er…” Ning Yi hesitated. “If you really want to talk about what’s fair…”

“You’re the one who said in class, back in the day, that everything should be reasoned through.”

“…Fine, then I’m the one being unreasonable.” Ning Yi laughed and sighed. “But my quarrel with your sister is about something else entirely.”

“What’s that, then?”

“Not telling you. Guess.”

The two of them walked on down the night road. Xiao Qi kicked at a stone on the ground.

“I can’t guess,” she said. “But brother-in-law, ever since we beat the Jurchens — especially since land reform started — you haven’t been happy for a while now. Why is that?”

“…”

Ning Yi was quiet for a long moment.

“…Isn’t it obvious?”

“Is it still about fighting for the realm… versus holding it?”

“That’s about it.” Ning Yi smiled faintly. “Before, everyone faced one huge problem together — some passionate, some calm and collected, but everyone pulling together, even tightening their belts, all for one shared ideal, to bring down that fearsome enemy… Now the enemy has become ourselves, and the further we go, the harder it gets to smile about it. Let me put it this way… Tian Wenqiu is your classmate, isn’t he?”

“He… little glasses?”

“Mm, the one who picked up a pair of glasses at Xiaocang River and wore them every day, and ended up actually ruining his eyesight for real…” Ning Yi looked at Xiao Qi. “He’s about to be dealt with. The list came up today.”

“…” Xiao Qi fell silent.

Ning Yi shook his head. “His problem isn’t that serious, actually. But there’s another name on that list — someone I fought shoulder to shoulder with at Xiaocang River, someone who left a deep impression on me… This past year, I’ve had to have someone I know executed roughly once every other day.”

It was a summer night in the sixth lunar month; even on the Chengdu Plain, there was still a hint of coolness in the wind. Ning Yi walked on slowly, raising a hand. “Of course it’s not always that severe, but…” He never did finish the thought.

Xiao Qi followed quietly behind.

Ning Yi sighed softly. “A few days ago I went to see your Second Brother Qin. He asked me whether it was necessary to push this hard, and I gave him a very high-sounding reason — I told him that if we could hold ourselves to a high standard internally, even sift out everyone who fell short, then the common people of this realm would benefit the most in the end. That’s true enough, as far as it goes. But the names that land on my desk are living, breathing people too. Some of them have done heroic things. Chengdu’s doing well now, and they wanted to live a little better for it. Some of them genuinely don’t understand what they did wrong. ‘Master the arts of war and letters, and sell them to the throne’ — the word is sell, and selling means getting paid. This idea of serving the people — not everyone can grasp it. Xiao Qi, do you understand it?”

“I…” Xiao Qi hesitated. “I’m a merchant’s daughter, but brother-in-law, whatever you say to do, that’s what I do… And I don’t spend that much, either.”

“That’s you making room for me.”

Ning Yi looked at her, smiled, and stroked her head. He looked off into the distance. “I’ve been drawn in by two lofty goals, wanting to push them both into reality, wanting to drive them both forward at once. But now, the goal of developing capital and the goal of equality for all keep colliding with each other now and then… And really there’s a deeper problem underneath it. From the very start, the goal this Huaxia Army of ours was founded on was to resist foreign aggression, to crush the Jurchens. Somewhere along the way we started talking about the Four Peoples, about the investigation of things — but in everyone’s hearts, the final purpose was still to defeat the Jurchens and live a good life. In the end it always comes back to living a good life — and now, with every step forward, I can feel the dust falling off me…”

As they talked, walking on, they found themselves, without quite realizing it, up on the hillside nearby. Ning Yi looked at the twinkling lights of Zhang Village. “And there’s another thing — sometimes I wonder whether I still… understand the hardships of ordinary life in this world.”

He smiled at her. “Xiao Qi, go on back first. This fight with your sister isn’t a big deal, don’t worry about it… When I get back, I’ll take good care of her.”

“…Oh, oh.” Xiao Qi blinked, hesitated a moment, then shrugged and ran off.

Ning Yi smiled, sighed, and found a chair on the platform partway up the hillside to sit down.

Looking down at the lights below, in this moment he could feel with perfect clarity: Zhang Village was a place that had grown up under the shape of his own will.

Sometimes he walked its streets, sometimes he watched the village children run around chasing and playing, but could this place really represent the livelihood of the whole realm? In truth, no. Sometimes, looking at it, it reminded him more of a government compound from the 1980s, before his rebirth.

Because, in his subconscious, he believed this was what development looked like — and so the village had gradually taken on this same shape.

The same feeling sometimes came over him in Chengdu, too.

Those myriad lights, of course, were without question a form of progress.

The investigation of things had taken root and sprouted through the strength of the Huaxia Army; capital had gestated within it, and had in turn given the power of the investigation of things a push forward, letting him feel a kind of force, a kind of budding growth, from before his crossing-over. The will and power of what he thought of as progress had put down roots in this world through him; he was driving forward two forms of light at once, like a giant tightening the rope that pulled this world forward. And so the glow of civilization took root in the land of Shu — but as he strained to tighten that windlass, at the edge of his vision, countless contradictions and conflicts, turned into resistance, still reached him clearly, creaking in his ears.

Some of these contradictions had already appeared once before, in the world he’d once lived in. In that modern history of a hundred years of humiliation, in the pursuit of progress, people had carried out far bolder, more sweeping reforms — some radical means and ideas, far fiercer than anything the Huaxia Army was doing now, like the calls, once, to abolish Chinese characters entirely, to overturn the whole of Chinese culture. Such calls were so radical precisely because that humiliation had run so long and so deep — every voice resisting that kind of progress was nearly crushed outright.

But the Wu Dynasty of today had suffered too little hardship; no one could prove that pressing forward without regard for anything else was truly necessary. When Ning Yi pushed forward without regard for anything else, what got crushed in the friction along the way was, one by one, the will of specific, individual people.

Just as it had been back at Xia Village, and just as it had been the day he raised his army and killed the emperor — no one had ever made him a promise that they were rebelling in order to serve the people.

When Ning Yi first prepared to act, every obstacle in his way was only an abstraction. He’d made up his mind with passionate talk of the goal of progress. But once everything was set thundering forward, the friction that came back at him was, one by one, specific people — many of whom he even knew personally. Over the past year, the standards for investigating and handling dereliction of duty and indulgence within the army had gone through several rounds of major debate and adjustment. Faced with list after list of names, of concrete information, Ning Yi felt a pain and a sleeplessness that could not be resolved.

Am I doing this right? Am I striking the right balance? Capital drives greed, and yet I want the officials to stop and become upright — is there some misstep in the process here, or at least, is there something that should be adjusted? Should this era be allowed to develop along a path more suited to its present condition? Or should I simply push through with force, so that the will of the Four Peoples takes root, once and for all, in the hearts of the people through my own sustained persistence? Or again — if I keep being this hard-line, how far could I actually push it?

He did not know how complicated the thinking of the great men of the past had once been, how resolute their will.

In his previous life, he had once been responsible for the livelihoods of many people, had once shouldered pressures and trials that ordinary people could hardly bear.

And yet, having come this far, certain accusations still gave him pause.

Was he truly selfless? Could he even manage it? The house he lived in was already far better than most people’s. His family had Zhu Ji, had a colossus of a business like the Su clan’s holdings. He had eight women. He even had a fondness for good food and drink.

He knew that the windlass in his hands could, in certain respects, still be tightened a turn further — but with every inch forward, hundreds, thousands of people would be turned into names and delivered to his desk. Some who had truly become corrupt certainly needed to be rooted out, but as the reform pushed toward its middle range, many matters could no longer be resolved with a single passionate stroke of the pen.

And beyond that, images from three different eras sometimes rose up before his eyes.

When he’d first arrived in this era, he had watched the Wu Dynasty with the detached feelings of a bystander — in some respects appreciating it from a distance, in others indulging himself carelessly. Later, he had grown involved, entering this world for the sake of the humiliation this era had suffered, setting out to save the whole of society.

But he had never, like the very bottom rung of this world, truly felt the full weight of this age from the inside.

As his reforms transformed the world, Chengdu had gradually taken on something of the look of China’s own modern history, and at times he found this satisfying — even felt this was exactly the direction the world’s progress should take. But as the friction from beyond his sight reached him, he sometimes doubted: did he still know what this world truly looked like?

Some of the people he knew gradually ended up on lists, and were cleared away by his own hand. Some came before him to tell him that the officialdom of Chengdu today was already far more upright than in any past dynasty. He sent these people away, feeling some contempt in his heart, but gradually he found himself thinking, too, about where exactly the ordinary imagination of society actually stood.

Before setting all this in motion, he had thought about these things in the abstract. Now that it had become reality, even though his conviction in progress remained firm, his private feelings were, without question, ones of pain. He sometimes imagined the sages of that other life he’d lived, imagined: if I were more upright, more selfless, if my own desires were purer, would I feel more righteous doing these things, would I feel less pain?

Those people of the past — how had they moved forward? Was it all in a single stretch of passionate resolve, or did they too weigh things carefully day by day, hesitate again and again?

In the third year of the Wu Zhenxing era, twenty years into this world, past forty years of age, Ning Yi — Ning Liheng — had become teacher to many, and in this moment, he too could feel his own pressure and helplessness.

There was simply too much.

He walked on along the moonlit hillside, and after a while returned to the small courtyard behind, the place he could call “home.” Su Tan’er sat on the crossbeam outside the back door, waiting for him. The two of them had quarreled at dinner over the Su Family’s business, and he had stormed out in a fit of anger to clear his head — but there was a deeper reason beneath it, too.

He’d have to coax her out of it.

He waved a hand toward the back, sighed, and walked over. Su Tan’er sat there with her chin propped on her hand, her eyes a little red.

“Is the Empress Dowager still angry?”

“What Empress Dowager.” Tan’er wiped at her eyes and sniffled. “Word’s already gotten out about how you tore into me at dinner. I’ll probably be thrown into the cold palace by tomorrow, and the whole Su Family will be wiped out to the ninth degree, I bet.”

“Ha, Pigsy, blaming the victim — here in Zhang Village, whose ninth degree could I possibly wipe out? Everyone knows this is your territory, and the second you get into a fight with me, you shut me right out…”

“You’re the one who wouldn’t eat, and threw down your bowl and stormed off! No one dared eat once you’d gone!”

“You were the one deliberately picking a fight.”

“I’ll pick a fight if I want! I’m worried I won’t have any fights left to pick soon enough!”

“I see you’re just asking to be taught a lesson…”

Ning Yi pursed his lips, took hold of Su Tan’er’s hand, and pulled her toward the courtyard. Tan’er tried to twist free but was hauled along regardless. “You’re getting a proper lesson today!”

“Don’t act like some kind of child…”

“That’s how it’s going today, or else who’s really in charge of this house won’t be clear…”

“Don’t think you can fool me like that…”

There was quite a difference in their builds; Su Tan’er was nearly swept up with one arm. She bit down hard on his shoulder, couldn’t get through the fabric, cheeks puffed with frustration, and was carried into the courtyard and up the steps that way.

“Don’t, someone might see…”

“Let them see, even better…”

The two of them pushed and shoved their way into the room; the cats and dogs about the place watched quietly from a distance. After a while, the woman was tossed onto the bed, her clothes torn away. The two of them were an old married couple by now, but every so often moments like this still carried a certain thrill. Only Tan’er’s mood wasn’t really in it — she curled up into a ball, her eyes full of grievance, and by the time she’d been handled every which way, she was nearly in tears from the teasing.

It was a good while before the commotion in the room finally settled down. Tan’er lay sprawled there, pinned beneath a thoroughly spent Ning Yi. She shook her head and murmured, “I still don’t agree with you going. This time is different from before. You can’t go.”

Ning Yi lay there and sighed. “It’s still just an idea, I only mentioned it once, and you’re already like this with me…”

“I know you want to go out and see the world… You’ve been like this for the past two years, feeling hemmed in and boxed in by everyone around you. You don’t like the secretariat editing your newspapers, you don’t like people following you everywhere, you feel like you’re not even an ordinary person anymore — I know what’s in your heart. But this time isn’t like the last time, when you faked your death. If you leave the Southwest, Zou Xu will do everything in his power to kill you, and there are people in the army opposed to you as well… You being unhappy, you cutting into the Su Family’s business, you picking on me — none of that matters. But I simply do not agree with you leading troops out of the Southwest.”

Pinned beneath him, not a stitch of clothing left on her, Tan’er couldn’t move — but in that moment, it was Ning Yi who felt he was the one who couldn’t move. He sighed softly.

“Old Qin’s injuries have flared up again, he can’t go. Old He can lead troops, but he can’t shoulder the weight of land reform — from Sichuan up through to Bianliang, every locality has its own situation, different from here. Only I can go and be sure things are carried out to the fullest extent. And only by securing land reform can we possibly complete the logistics chain all the way through to Jin territory. This trouble Zou Xu has stirred up is too big — there’s no other way to handle it properly… You know what’s in my heart. Or else, why don’t you go carry out the land reform for me, and I’ll just sit at home and be the local emperor…”

“If you want me to go, I can go too!”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Ning Yi mumbled, holding her close. “I’m the one pinning you down.”

The night was hazy; a thread of summer breeze slipped in through the gap in the window. Su Tan’er struggled a little and murmured, “I want to turn over…”

Ning Yi shifted, letting her body turn over, and then pinned her down again.

Held fast beneath him, she studied him carefully in the faint light of the dark room, reached out a hand to touch the temples where a few white hairs had begun to show, and after a while, said, choked with emotion, “Ning Liheng, you’re being completely unreasonable…”