Rain was falling.

The clouds carried a faint bluish tinge, the sky seeming only half-lit, and the heavy rain churned the yellow mud in the courtyards, along the ruins, and through the lanes into flowing streams of muck. Amid the downpour came the constant clatter of cleanup work—workers in straw rain capes pushing handcarts, dragging wooden baskets, still clearing away the ruins bit by bit, hauling off soil and rubble meant for disposal. The same scene repeated itself throughout every street, lane, and courtyard.

Inside what had once been the Su family’s compound in Taiping Lane, many makeshift shelters had now been erected. In the rain, the water dripping from the eaves formed something like a curtain, and a small figure, holding—or rather brandishing—a bamboo hat overhead, dashed through a short stretch of the downpour before reaching the shelter of a dry eave, where the little figure lowered the hat and peered into a room. It was a girl of four or five, her head injured and wrapped in bandages.

Only a few days had passed since the earthquake, and conditions everywhere were still far from good. The room the little girl was peering into now held a somewhat cluttered assortment of items, but judging from the cabinets, the large bed, and the state of the waterproofing, it was already considered quite well-appointed. She peeked timidly through the doorway for a moment before the man inside noticed her and waved her in.

“Master Uncle…”

The little girl called out and stepped into the room. The man checked the bandage on her head, tapping it lightly. “Still hurts?”

“A little…”

“Then rest in your room, and don’t run around too much.”

“There’s no one in my room, it’s boring. What’s Master Uncle doing? Can Xiaorou help?”

“This is dangerous, you can’t touch it yet. And your head’s still hurt. Here, have a piece of candy, and just sit here and watch.”

The man addressed as “Master Uncle” was, of course, Ning Yi; the little girl was the daughter of one of the Su family’s accountants, named Chen Jirou. She had been struck on the head by falling debris the day of the earthquake and had bled, but on examination the wound had proven minor—she’d been remarkably lucky. It had been barely two or three days, and already she was running around everywhere again.

Though it was raining, the shelter had been built sturdily enough that nothing leaked through, and the floor stayed dry. Several wooden baskets and sieves of various sizes sat scattered on the floor, some propped up on stools. These containers mostly held already-mixed powders; being rainy season and the damp air of early autumn, the powders weren’t especially dry. Ning Yi took some and laid it out in a line on the ground beside him.

“Careful, stand well back now.”

He said this to the little girl, then took up a fire striker and touched it to the powder. With a whoomph, flame surged up at once, then dissolved into dispersing smoke. The girl gave a startled jump, her body seeming to shrink for a moment, but her eyes blinked rapidly before going wide, trying to take in what she’d just seen.

Su Tan’er, coming in through the door just then, jumped in fright too, and behind her came Xiao Chan and Juan’er as well—Xiao Chan poking her head in curiously, while Juan’er shifted her position behind Su Tan’er, seeming to try to make herself smaller and round, aligning herself carefully with her master and mistress, apparently trying to keep herself out of Ning Yi’s line of sight entirely.

“Husband, is this… gunpowder?”

Su Tan’er walked over with a slight frown, scooping up little Jirou and checking her bandage, though her gaze kept returning to Ning Yi. Since marrying him, she had made a habit of asking after and understanding everything he did—that was simply her sense of responsibility—but by now she rarely questioned whatever unexpected thing he chose to do. Even if Ning Yi had gone and blown up a house, burned it down, or torn it apart, so long as she saw it was his doing, she wouldn’t be angry over it—she’d likely join in figuring out how to demolish it faster instead. Still, gunpowder naturally gave her some pause, some curiosity all the same, given how dangerous it seemed.

“Mm, mixed some up while I had a spare moment. This stuff’s dangerous—we’ll move it out back later, have someone watch over it, and make absolutely sure it doesn’t come near fire.”

Ning Yi packed the gunpowder into a series of small wooden barrels, tamping it down firmly with a mallet. Xiao Chan crouched nearby watching, then came over to help. “This is that barrel Master had hauled over from the Qian family a few days back, isn’t it?”

“I added a few things to it.” Ning Yi looked at Su Tan’er and smiled. “Just planning ahead—hopefully we won’t need it. If not, well, this wouldn’t amount to much use anyway.”

Afterward, the family carefully packed the gunpowder into small barrels, then called for staff to carry them to a somewhat more remote storage room out back and secure them there. Ning Yi threw on a rain cape and headed outside; Su Tan’er carried the little girl along, while Xiao Chan and Juan’er followed with umbrellas. Along the road outside the compound gate, Xing’er, soaked through, stood holding an umbrella in the rain, directing the household staff as they hauled away debris—items to discard, items to salvage and bring back inside—with even Steward Geng and the others following her instructions. She looked, in that moment, rather like a young woman cut from the same cloth as Su Tan’er, sharing something of the same natural authority.

Seeing Ning Yi and the others approach, she smoothed back her wet hair and hurried over, skirts gathered in hand.

Along the street just then were people from several other households in Taiping Lane, pushing carts or carrying baskets through the rain; seeing Ning Yi, they respectfully addressed him as “the Su family’s son-in-law” or “the Ning family’s son-in-law,” some even calling him “Young Master Ning” or “Master Ning”—the titles a bit of a jumble, but amounting to proper greetings all the same.

All of this could ultimately be traced back to the night of the earthquake and the two or three days that followed. Ning Yi had, strictly speaking, no real hands-on experience managing earthquake relief, but having absorbed so much information simply by living in a later age, he understood the basic measures well enough. He had led the household through sorting out their own affairs, then gone to help other families throughout Taiping Lane as well.

At first, naturally, it had been nothing more than lending a hand where convenient—but in a crisis of this magnitude, there was little room to hide such things. As Ning Yi directed people in digging and rescue efforts, his capacity for coordination, command, and overall control gradually became apparent, and others found themselves, almost without meaning to, falling into line behind his direction. Before long the whole operation was running remarkably smoothly. Having pulled quite a few people to safety, and having averted several disasters that might have resulted from sheer recklessness, everyone naturally came to remember him.

This was nothing that could be achieved through some clever trick—nor was it particularly astonishing in itself, simply the natural bearing cultivated by someone long accustomed to holding a position of authority. Had some ordinary sheltered young man found himself thrust into a position of leadership here, he’d surely have panicked, lacked confidence, and any order he gave would instinctively have struck others as untrustworthy, unreliable. But when Ning Yi gave even the most casually spoken command—”this is how it should be done”—people instinctively felt “this man knows what he’s doing.” Few ever doubted the authority he carried in moments of crisis, and so the whole scene ran smoothly and in good order.

This was, in the end, simply the natural self-assurance that came from long years of shouldering responsibility; once he had also grasped a few basic principles that let him command order among others, everything that followed became straightforward enough.

From there, moving supplies, rescuing survivors, sternly warning those clearing rubble against causing secondary collapses—and, with others’ cooperation, promptly moving bodies out of Taiping Lane for cremation—all proceeded without major resistance. In other parts of the city, this same task had sometimes required soldiers to enforce it by force, nearly sparking serious clashes.

In time, several households throughout the lane found themselves influenced, to one degree or another, by this husband-and-wife pair. In truth, having married into the Su family, Ning Yi should properly have been addressed as the Su family’s son-in-law—but since some knew his surname was Ning, they took to calling him by that name instead, whether as Master Ning, Young Master Ning, or something else entirely. Su Tan’er and her three maids had contributed a great deal of effort as well in that crisis, but being women, strangers naturally hesitated to address them so directly.

On the first day after the earthquake, Ning Yi had already sent for enough grain from the Qian household to stock up properly, and had also asked them to procure two barrels of gunpowder while he was at it. Today, the third day of rain, he’d finally found the time to process that large barrel of gunpowder further. The army’s gunpowder at this time was, in fact, already black powder, though its performance still left something to be desired—in some places, defenders simply threw whole barrels of the stuff down on attackers during sieges. Ning Yi had made some adjustments to the black powder formula, tweaking the proportions here and there; without especially refined conditions to work in, he could still manage to improve its performance somewhat, enough to make it serviceable in a pinch.

Even with its performance improved, ordinary gunpowder still fell far short of smokeless powder, which required proper chemical processing. Ning Yi’s interest in gunpowder was really just habit carried over from before—something he could use casually as makeshift landmines or bombs. In truth, sulfuric acid and similar substances already existed in this era; had he been back in Jiangning, where he’d spent over a year tinkering, he could likely have managed to produce something like nitrocellulose, an early precursor to smokeless powder. But early-stage smokeless powder production was genuinely dangerous, which was why he’d always set the idea aside there, unwilling to hand off such processes to anyone else—otherwise Kang Xian’s people would have plenty of workers getting blown up for their trouble. Here in Hangzhou, though, this was purely meant to serve as an emergency measure, and there was no room to manage anything more elaborate.

The economic and social systems of this ancient world simply couldn’t offer Ning Yi much sense of real security—stockpiling grain the moment disaster struck was for exactly this reason, and the gunpowder too was purely a precaution, not because he expected anything in particular to happen. Over these past few days, the Hangzhou prefecture had managed to bring the situation within the city under initial control, but all manner of unrest was still breaking out continuously.

The chaos had driven some among the martial world to desperate acts, fighting over property, and clashes kept arising over the cremation of bodies. The lane’s own headman had died in the earthquake, and his deputy, lacking much backbone, had come to consult Ning Yi these past few days about repairing the walls around Taiping Lane and organizing able-bodied men to patrol.

Throughout the city, incidents of one street’s residents fighting another’s had broken out several times as well, usually sparked by some small personal dispute, or friction arising from groups digging through the rubble together, which then rapidly escalated. There were also homeless beggars and thieves who took advantage of the darkness to search through the ruins for money and valuables.

Before the rain came, everyone had been given a day’s grace period, but a good portion of the city’s households still hadn’t managed to move out their stored grain and valuables in time. Great households like the Qian family had more than enough manpower, so Hangzhou’s overall grain reserves wouldn’t suffer too badly overall—but with so many smaller households suffering losses, grain prices in the city had still spiked sharply these past few days. Even amid disaster, once things had been brought under initial control, there were always those willing to seize the opportunity, opening shops and hiking prices for profit.

Having checked on their own household’s situation in the pouring rain, it wasn’t long before the deputy headman came by, pulling Ning Yi along to pay respects to the families of a few who had died in the lane. Ning Yi went along with him. At the end of the lane, a wealthy merchant surnamed Tang had lost his elderly mother, crushed when their house collapsed—though the son himself had later been rescued by Ning Yi. A simple memorial hall had now been set up, the son dressed in mourning white, weeping even as he clasped Ning Yi’s hands in gratitude. The deputy headman seemed to want to put Ning Yi forward as the one to take charge of matters, going on to mention the various dealings that would need to be handled with the authorities—inevitably bringing up his status as a son-in-law who’d married into the family. Ning Yi deflected with a few vague words, his patience wearing thin, and turned the matter back over to the deputy. Just then Dongzhu, the coachman who’d been sent out to gather news around the city, returned as well, pulling off his rain cape and beginning to report what he’d seen and heard.

“Not sure why, but even with the rain coming down so hard, there seem to be more and more refugees coming in from outside the city. They’re already repairing the collapsed section of the wall, and the Wude Battalion soldiers have sealed off the city—if it weren’t for the pass Master gave me, I probably couldn’t even have gotten back in. The refugees can’t get in, and they’re making trouble outside; the yamen’s people are handing out relief grain, but the people inside the city can’t even eat their fill, and the refugees outside aren’t much better off either…”

Sending Dongzhu out had mainly been to get a sense of conditions beyond the walls. Su Tan’er, hearing this, sighed.

“There was already fighting going on in the west, and refugees were already streaming this way—now with the earthquake on top of it, everyone from ten, twenty villages around who’s been affected must be pouring in all at once.”

Ning Yi thought about this, then said with a smile, “Back in Jiangning, whenever there was some small disaster, the people nearby would flood into the city too, right?”

The remark came out sounding half like confirmation, half like he was testing the idea—after all, he genuinely wasn’t sure exactly how such things had typically played out in the past. Su Tan’er glanced at him, thought it over, then nodded. “That’s right. The city always has more surplus than the countryside, and with the authorities managing things, they always distribute grain, to keep the death toll down at least somewhat… What are you thinking about, husband?”

“The rice should be nearly ripe by now, right? A month or a month and a half at most, and this season’s crop will be ready for harvest. An earthquake sounds like a huge disaster in the telling, but setting aside those crushed outright when their houses collapsed, the rest should generally be able to scrape by on whatever grain reserves they have left for a while yet. So why would this many people suddenly show up all at once…”

“You think something’s wrong, husband?”

Xing’er’s eyes went wide as well. “F-Fang La? Does Master mean…”

Ning Yi shook his head with a smile. “No, I’m probably just overthinking it. There were already plenty of refugees coming from the west to begin with; we’ve only been here two months, and I have no real sense of how many refugees there usually were before—there’s no baseline to compare against, so it’s irresponsible of me to call this excessive. I think it’s probably just that, being outsiders ourselves, everything feels more sensitive to us than it would to a local. Hangzhou prefecture certainly isn’t short on capable people—they’ll have considered and prepared for this sort of thing already. Still… what a shame the waterway’s collapsed, or I’d rather just get a boat and be back in Jiangning within a few days—we’d planned on leaving eventually anyway. If we had to go overland now, with refugees scattered everywhere, there wouldn’t be much point in it. By the way, anything else happening in the city?”

Dongzhu thought for a moment. “Oh, the Qian family, the Mu family, and a few others started selling grain this morning—the price is triple what it used to be, though still much cheaper than everyone else’s. Also, it’s been raining for days now, and the urgency around burning the bodies from the digging has eased off compared to the first few days. This morning up in the north of the city, some people got into a fight with the soldiers hauling away corpses—a real brawl, apparently someone was killed on the spot, and now they’ve taken it up with the prefectural office…”

Ning Yi frowned. That the great landowners would start stabilizing grain prices was to be expected—though most people viewed merchants and landlords as thoroughly wicked, a chaotic, lawless Hangzhou hardly served their interests either. The most sensible approach, for them, was naturally to pursue a fresh round of consolidation and absorption once the recovery process was properly underway. But this business with the bodies, now…

“With this much rain coming down, delaying the burials a bit longer probably won’t matter much.” Su Tan’er said this with a slight smile, thinking it over; though she understood the necessity of cremating the bodies, as someone of this era she still felt a certain instinctive resistance to the idea of simply burning the dead outright. In a way, this heavy rain had given everyone a bit of breathing room. Still, seeing Ning Yi frowning, she asked softly, “Husband?”

Ning Yi smiled and said nothing.

That night, the rain seemed to be easing somewhat. The couple stood together by the window of their shelter, looking out; candles burned inside the room, and though the space was simple, to Su Tan’er the light felt genuinely warm and comforting. Outside, occasional footsteps passed by, along with snatches of idle conversation. She too had grown tired after the long day; having bathed and changed into simple sleeping clothes, she took Ning Yi’s hand. “What are you thinking about, husband?”

“If the rain stops tomorrow, I want to go take a look at the city gates, see what things actually look like out there. Dongzhu says there are a lot of people, but I still don’t really know how many.”

Su Tan’er rested her chin on his shoulder. “We’ll go together… Do you still think it’s dangerous here, husband?”

“Not exactly.” Ning Yi put his arm around her shoulders. “I keep thinking—if I were Fang La, I’d consider taking advantage of the situation to make a move on Hangzhou. But I have no real idea of the Wude Battalion’s actual strength, deployment, how firm the prefecture’s grip on the city really is, or what shape Fang La’s own forces are in right now—so there’s really no basis for that thought at all. Rationally speaking, a peasant army’s command, mobility, and combat strength are all bound to be questionable, and Hangzhou prefecture isn’t lacking in capable people either—men like Lu Tuizhi aren’t fools, and they’ve held off Fang La before, so they’ll surely be on guard now too. On that basis, I actually lean toward thinking Hangzhou should be fine—I just want to go see for myself, really… Then again, if Fang La really were planning to take this place, I’d expect the response to have come faster than this…”

Su Tan’er nodded. She was feeling rather drowsy just then, content simply to be beside Ning Yi without dwelling on things too much. Then she heard him add, “It’s the bodies that really trouble me, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I were Lu Tuizhi, I’d move today to seize some people and make an example of them—haul a group out and execute them publicly. Announce that they’d conspired with Fang La, deliberately leaving bodies unburied to stir up unrest, plotting to seize the city amid the chaos. Once that’s announced, no one in the city would dare object to how the bodies are handled anymore—it would head off a great deal of trouble down the road…”

“But that would cause chaos in the city…”

“It wouldn’t, really. No one believes Fang La has given up on taking Hangzhou anyway. Using the momentum from an execution like that, they could openly tighten control both inside and outside the city, treating it as war preparation—first, it lets them bring the current chaos under control faster; second, it heads off any real uprising before it starts. In a situation like this, high centralization and swift, decisive action really are the wisest course…”

He laughed again after that. “Of course, actually doing something like that would land the prefect in plenty of trouble too—court politics being what they are, such an extreme concentration of power would meet with serious resistance… I’m just thinking out loud, really.”

His wife made a small sound of acknowledgment, then said softly, “Speaking of which, Xiao Chan’s matter has been put off again—and that poem you wrote at the gathering, husband, such a fine one, and then the earthquake struck right after…”

On this point, his wife—who took no small pride in her husband’s reputation as a talented poet—had remained rather put out ever since.

…

That same night, elsewhere in the city, others too stood gazing out into the rain-swept darkness. Beyond that curtain of rain, a light glowed—amid the ruins, a hastily assembled memorial shed, its structure already half-collapsed.

Two men were speaking.

“Looks like the rain’s about to let up. Once it stops tomorrow, Hangzhou prefecture surely won’t be able to ignore those bodies still unrecovered any longer… ha ha, the stench alone should be enough by then…”

“If the weather had stayed hot, the bodies would probably already be mostly dug up by now—this heavy rain’s actually done us a favor. What with the rush and then the lull, they’ve let their guard down… Though it won’t stop tomorrow, it should keep raining another day at least.”

“All the better, then—gives us more time to prepare. Give it one more day, and Commander Fo, Xin Xingzong, Liu Dabiao, and the rest should be arriving too. Stone-Chiseler, didn’t you once say something about ‘Heaven gives, and if you don’t take it, you’ll suffer for it instead’? Isn’t that what this is? Way I see it, Hangzhou’s practically a gift from heaven for us… Pity it’s been shaken up so badly, though.”

“‘Heaven gives, and if you don’t take it, you’ll suffer for it; the time comes, and if you don’t act, you’ll suffer for it instead’… We were already heading this way, and then an earthquake strikes—must be fate, truly. Once we take this place, with Brother Shinang and Brother Dao’an rising up in response elsewhere, the whole southeast will be settled.”

“Ha ha, always so bookish, you. Old Stone-Chiseler, with all that learning of yours, why’d you waste your years chiseling rock up in the mountains anyway? You’d have made a fine schoolteacher.”

“‘When the Way does not prevail, I shall take to a raft and put out to sea’—I’d rather hide in the mountains chiseling my stone than come out to teach a bunch of boys their letters…”

“Learned talk, don’t understand a word of it. No matter, though—I’m Shi Bao, a simple man. Whatever you say to do, I’ll do; whoever you say to kill, I’ll kill. Ha ha, and when the time comes… just like you said, once the southeast’s settled, the Sacred Duke becomes emperor, gives you a chancellorship, and I’ll be a general. Then it’s off to the brothels, whoever I want, whenever I want—tsk, I hear there are plenty of pretty girls in Hangzhou. Hope they all survive—I won’t force myself on them, mind you, I’ll pay, ha ha ha ha…”

The laughter faded away into the distance, tinged with arrogance. The dark figure standing at the window watched the rain-swept scene a moment longer, then laughed softly. “Heh. If chiseling stone paid better than teaching, who the hell would chisel stone?” He sighed, gazing farther into the distance, where the tremors amid the rain seemed almost like a muttered incantation.

“I’ve been waiting for this day…”

…

The next day, the rain was still falling, though somewhat lighter now. After breakfast, Ning Yi, Su Tan’er, and Xiao Chan had their carriage brought round and set out from Taiping Lane toward the city gates, intending to see the conditions outside the walls for themselves…