The sun sank away on one side of the sky, while the moon and stars rose on the other. Near Xiaoyingzhou, flames still burned fiercely across the surface of the water.

The earth had stopped shaking now, and everything visible in the gathering dusk seemed to carry an air of devastation. Still ablaze on the lake was a large boat, now empty of all passengers, its whole frame burning apart. The flaming wreckage spread outward from that central inferno, then gradually vanished, swallowed by the water.

The pleasure boats around it scattered in every direction through the darkness, radiating outward from the fire like a flock of wild geese already broken apart, their lanterns scattered points of light.

The Su family’s small pleasure boat drifted slowly along the dark lake as well, not far from the burning great boat and its drifting wreckage. A little farther off, soldiers carrying torches worked at rescue and cleanup across Xiaoyingzhou. Here and there across the water, other boats still searched for survivors, cries carrying between the scattered, uncertain lights. Ning Yi stood at the bow, watching the silhouettes of boats large and small recede into the distance.

The earthquake had subsided now, and after the initial panic, most of the boats had made straight for Hangzhou. West Lake was not, after all, the city center but its outskirts; looking off into the distance, one could still make out the silhouette of Hangzhou itself, its glow reflected faintly against the night sky—though noticeably dimmer than usual. Even without seeing it directly, one could imagine that within the city walls, it must by now be nothing but devastation and cries of suffering.

The crackling of fire, the splash of poling oars pushed into the water—both sounds carried a strange hollowness. There weren’t enough hands to pole the small pleasure boat, so it moved rather slowly; Dongzhu, Su Wending, and Su Wenfang had all gone to help with the poling. The little boat had taken several hard knocks in the earlier chaos, but the hull had proven sturdy enough, and no real harm was done. As the night wind blew in across the water, a soft body pressed against him from behind—Su Tan’er, who wrapped her arms around him and leaned there a while before reaching up to touch the bandage on his head.

“Are you all right?”

“It’s nothing. Good thing everyone’s safe.”

“Mm. I wonder how things are back home—the house has probably collapsed. Uncle Geng and the others…”

“Don’t think too much about it now. They should be all right.” Ning Yi patted her hand. “The house may not have collapsed at all. Try to relax—the night’s still long.”

“How could the earth suddenly turn over like that…”

“No idea. There might be aftershocks tonight, but they shouldn’t be as bad as this one. When we get back tonight we’ll need to clear things out and sleep in the courtyard—we can’t sleep indoors.”

“You know about this too, husband?”

“I do. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.”

Su Tan’er leaned against his back and said, “Mm,” then fell silent a moment. “It’s good to have you here.” It carried something of the same quiet feeling as their old conversations on the balcony back in Jiangning.

“Same here.”

“When I was little, I thought that even as a girl, I could manage everything on my own. It was only after marrying you, husband, that I slowly realized having you beside me feels different from being alone. Being with you, husband—that’s Tan’er’s good fortune.”

“Still the same for me—I’m the one who married in, after all. You’re the one supporting me…”

Su Tan’er bumped the back of his neck lightly, then, after a long pause, said softly, “It’s not the same.” It was only a statement, needing no answer. The two of them stood at the bow a while longer before Su Tan’er said, “I’ll go check in back.” Ning Yi nodded, and she went.

The night wind blew on; the shore was drawing near now. Ning Yi sighed—this sudden earthquake really had been beyond anything he’d anticipated. He had, after all, never lived through one himself, and had no real sense of just how severe this one might have been by magnitude—clearly powerful, though he had no idea whether they were near the epicenter. After an earthquake came the refugees in great numbers, and with this coming right before the autumn harvest, and with Old Qin already gone up to the capital, things would likely prove difficult again. Still, most buildings in this era were single-story, so even where they’d collapsed, the numbers buried and the depths involved were, in the end, easier to manage rescue-wise than in later ages—and since the quake had struck in early evening, most people should have had a chance to get out.

“Well, plagiarizing poetry really does invite divine punishment, doesn’t it…” he muttered idly to himself, though in his heart he was hoping the Hangzhou prefect and his people would respond quickly—his handbook on disaster relief, largely dealing with earthquake response, should have been circulated across the country by now, from the year before.

The only real cause for concern was Fang La’s steadily growing forces to the west. His knowledge of this era’s history wasn’t detailed enough here—he had no idea whether Fang La had ever actually struck Hangzhou. What stuck more firmly in his memory was the Liangshan uprising, mostly because of Water Margin, though he’d never finished either the novel or any TV adaptation of it. Fang La’s uprising had been larger in scale than Liangshan’s, but Hangzhou was an important stronghold, and Fang La had been suppressed fairly quickly—by his reckoning, it shouldn’t come this far. As for the earthquake itself, he had no memory of it at all—otherwise he’d never have agreed to come here with Tan’er in the first place.

Time and space had shifted here regardless; there was no point dwelling on what he didn’t know. The thought merely drifted idly through his mind. Turning his head, he saw a slight figure standing at the side railing—looking over, he found her looking back at him. It was Juan’er.

She was up on her toes just then, retrieving a small lantern hanging from the canopy above. Having gotten it down, she noticed Ning Yi looking at her and gave a sudden start, seeming to shrink in on herself with nervousness. She clutched the little lantern to her chest, took a couple of steps forward, then turned and walked off toward the stern instead. Ning Yi knew she’d been resting in the cabin earlier and had been mildly curious how she was doing—now he found himself a little worried the lantern might catch her clothes on fire.

Still, thinking back to what had happened during the rescue, he did feel he’d rather overstepped—his hand had rested on her chest for a good while without his realizing it, and by the time he came to himself, he found it had been soft, though whether he’d actually squeezed it he honestly couldn’t say.

At the time, with blood running down his forehead, his reaction had come naturally enough; once he’d caught himself, he’d let go without any particular fuss and turned to check on their surroundings. Tan’er and the others had worn odd expressions, but said nothing. There was nothing more to be done about it now—the harm to the girl was probably not insignificant, but the moment had called for expedience, and in any case, sorting this out wasn’t the most urgent matter at hand. Whatever came of it later would have to be dealt with later.

CPR, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation… good grief.

The boat reached shore afterward; the waystation set aside for lake outings was itself in ruins. They found their own carriage, but the horse was nowhere to be seen—no point in tracking it down now. The group made their way along the road toward Hangzhou, and as they neared the city, they could already see a great gap torn open in the western wall. Passing through the gate, they found fires burning in every direction, the wounded and grieving scattered everywhere.

Throughout the city, everywhere one looked, the devastation was shocking—six or seven houses out of ten had collapsed, and cries, screams, and weeping blended together into an unbroken wail. Ning Yi realized his earlier thoughts had, if anything, been too optimistic—or perhaps it was simply that he had never before witnessed destruction and death on this scale. All around, the cries, the rescues, the desperate scrambling to save belongings, the bodies and blood that kept appearing in his field of vision—all of it left him more shaken than he’d expected.

This was, in the end, simply the mindset of someone from a later age, and this was no time to dwell on it either. The group made their way through the city toward home; passing a canal at one point, they found the bridge had collapsed too, and had to take a detour. Everywhere around them was wreckage and ruin—even in the city’s waterways they could see floating bodies—and they passed a few wealthy men they recognized from Xiaoyingzhou, who had already made it back and were now directing efforts to save their possessions and families. Soldiers carrying torches ran through the streets; some of the wounded knelt weeping and calling for help before the ruins of their own homes; some neighbors helped each other, rescuing their own families first before moving on to others—but no matter how one counted it, there simply weren’t enough hands for the work.

It took over an hour to make their way back to Taiping Lane. Most of their own compound had collapsed as well; torches burned around the ruins, with both dead and wounded among them. Steward Geng, at least, was uninjured, and was now directing some of the household staff in digging through the collapsed buildings. The scene throughout Taiping Lane was much the same everywhere—even the few houses still standing had lost most of their roof tiles, and probably no one would dare live in them now. Seeing Su Tan’er, Ning Yi, and the others return, several people rushed to greet them at once; a few women were still crying—family members of the stewards and accountants who had come along. Three people from their own household were still trapped beneath the ruins, and many others outside had been injured, with two already dead.

“Let’s save them.” There was nothing more to say. Ning Yi glanced around once, waved a hand, and walked straight into the ruins, joining the line of people hauling debris and digging. Su Wending and Su Wenfang might have been rather pampered back in Jiangning, but since following their sister and brother-in-law here, they had come to hold Ning Yi in considerable regard, and when he moved, they followed right along.

Half an hour later, the first aftershock arrived, right on schedule, bringing fresh despair to a city already reduced to ruins. Ning Yi’s group managed to pull two more people out alive, but for many others still buried, the chance was now permanently lost.

The night stretched on. Amid the earth’s continued rumbling and shaking, the fires scattered across this ancient city now burned brighter than before, red light flickering against the horizon; birds flew through the darkness, their cries at times sounding like the calls of winter crows. Two more aftershocks struck that night, and in the small hours, looting began breaking out across the city. The soldiers, caught off guard, had not yet managed to respond, and in some areas it felt as lawless as no-man’s-land. In the eastern part of the city, looting by a band of desperate criminals sparked a fire that burned until dawn before it was finally put out.

The next day, the whole city remained focused on digging survivors from the wreckage and salvaging property, with all manner of news trickling in—quarrels and fights breaking out over disputed goods, desperate men and thugs with nothing left to lose seizing the chaos to profit, the authorities beginning to try to restore order, tensions rising, several men seized and executed on the spot. Ning Yi went to inquire about the possibility of leaving Hangzhou, but the canal upstream had collapsed and was blocked, and water transport was, for now, suspended entirely.

In the afternoon, Qian Xiwen sent a steward over to check on their safety. Ning Yi wrote back a reply, then had Steward Geng pick out some household staff to accompany the man back to the Qian residence, bringing back a large quantity of grain by cart to be stored away—Qian Xiwen was the region’s great landowner, with more grain stored than anyone, though the earthquake had likely damaged a good number of his storage facilities as well; asking for a share now was no great imposition. Still, it was a debt of favor owed, and in his letter Ning Yi had included several suggestions for post-earthquake response—though these had already been included in last year’s disaster relief guidelines. If the Hangzhou prefecture handled things well, he would, in the end, still owe them a debt of gratitude for it. But there was no other way to manage things just now.

That night the city sky glowed with fire once more—not the ordinary evening lamps, but the desolate glow of ruins ablaze. Still, the army and prefectural authorities finally managed to forcibly restore some measure of order; large numbers of bodies were carried out of the city and burned. It was still the height of summer heat, and any later, an epidemic would have been a real risk. Then, on the third day, the rain finally came—amid the fierce downpour of this transition from summer into autumn, the city of Hangzhou became a veritable flood plain…

That evening, on the post road near Xuzhou, a lone horse bore an exhausted, half-dead rider still riding for his life, carrying with him an urgent dispatch marked for eight-hundred-li relay, recording the catastrophe that had struck the southeast—drawing ever closer now to the Wu Dynasty’s capital, Bianjing.

The lone horse galloped on; the sun had already sunk, and night was closing in…