Business more or less settled, Ning Yi left the Qian residence with two additional barrels of explosive powder loaded onto the carriage. Even within the army of this era, explosives and bamboo-tube firearms weren’t standard equipment, so it was hardly something the Qian family kept on hand as a matter of course — these two barrels had come from the last time Ning Yi had sent someone to request gunpowder, when the Qian steward had drawn extra from the military arsenal. Ning Yi simply asked and took them along; he still had a fair amount of the mixing ingredients left over, and it was as good a time as any to process them properly once he got back.
Though a fair number of Fang La’s men had already slipped into the city by now, matters were still, on the whole, under the Wude Battalion’s control — the situation, if one were honest, wasn’t quite as dire or urgent as it might have seemed. From Qian Xiwen’s own words, one could tell that most people still held onto some confidence about the outcome. But one shouldn’t put all one’s eggs in a single basket; what Ning Yi was doing wasn’t really preparation for defending the city itself — it was simply thorough contingency planning, guarding against the worst. Which was precisely why Qian Xiwen had been glad enough to see it happen.
Had this been organized through official government channels — telling everyone to prepare for the possibility of the city falling — it would only have deepened the residents’ panic; the wealthy households, upon being notified, would think first not of banding together against the enemy, but of how to spare themselves alone. But with Ning Yi taking the lead, simply as one wealthy household reaching out to others, it came across instead as everyone looking out for their own affairs — and though there’d surely still be plenty who thought only of their own escape, the overall effort would come across as considerably stronger than if the army had spearheaded it.
Having settled the beginnings of this arrangement with Qian Xiwen, Ning Yi felt somewhat more at ease and set off driving back. By now the fire that had spread through the north should have been brought under control; against the otherwise clear morning sky, black columns of smoke could be seen scattering in the wind in the distance. Just as Xiao Chan had said earlier, with the rain having only just stopped, if not for someone deliberately setting fires in multiple places, the wooden structures — already soaked through by four days of heavy rain — could never have spread into a blaze of that scale that morning.
The carriage moved swiftly along the road; though most residents kept close to their own neighborhoods, there were still a few people out on the streets that remained passable — some running out to gather news, some hauling family and belongings to reunite with relatives, and some, judging by the packs large and small strapped to their backs and their desperate expressions, clearly hoping to push their way to the southern harbor and squeeze onto a departing ship. After a while, the roar of fighting again drifted over from Qiantang Gate in the west.
Even at this distance, the sounds of battle over there had grown indistinct, yet like the surge of a tide rising in the dead of night, or distant thunder rolling far off — never directly before his eyes, yet dense as a downpour — it carried across a heavy sense of shock and the oppressive weight of slaughter. Ning Yi drove on, and the distant killing at the city gate continued unabated, growing steadily fiercer, never once letting up.
Then, somewhere along the way back toward Taiping Lane, real signs of dark chaos began to appear.
There was fighting happening within the city itself now, near and far, and a scattering of wounded soldiers. In the distance, Ning Yi saw a troop charge across a street ahead. It seemed some of the morning’s rioters in the north, scattered by the army, had drifted this way with troops in pursuit. A grim, oppressive atmosphere had begun settling over the surrounding area; the farther he went, the fewer figures he saw on the main roads. Passing a waterway, he heard the sounds of fighting and cries from the streets on the far side — glancing over, he could make out several bandits bursting into a courtyard, cutting down women and children. The courtyard walls and buildings along the waterway here had already collapsed, giving him a clear enough view of the whole scene.
Streets like this one, much like Taiping Lane itself, had organized their own able-bodied men to stand guard, but young men rushed hastily together, having never truly shed blood before, were simply no match for the bandits. The first to step forward was cut down with a single blow, and the rest could do nothing but scatter. Amid the crying, screaming, and the frantic clanging of warning gongs, seven or eight bandits burst out of the courtyard and into the chaotic street, where a burly man wielding a massive wooden club charged in, swinging wildly, his sheer momentum forcing the bandits briefly back — but his club was hacked through by several blows, driving him back toward the water’s edge, where a bandit, half-drenched in blood, finally cut him down.
The alley held both women and children as well as able-bodied men, yet all of them were utterly overwhelmed by the ferocity of the seven or eight bandits. Screams, sobbing — but as another young man who charged forward was cut down as well, for a moment no one could get close enough to save the fallen man. The blood-soaked bandit closed in with his blade; the man on the ground crawled desperately backward, only to take a slash across the chest, then another, and another. A woman clutching a child cowered against a wall some two meters away, sobbing uncontrollably. The man on the ground kept trying to crawl away, blood soon covering his entire body, until he reached the water’s edge and could move no further. The bandit hacked at him several more times before kicking the corpse into the water, cursing in dialect: “Come on, then, come fight me some more!”
By then, the distant sound of approaching soldiers could already be faintly heard. The bandit stood tall as a tower, his lower half stained scarlet, his expression especially savage. A comrade slapped his shoulder, calling for him to move. He turned to leave, then suddenly wheeled back around, catching sight of Ning Yi’s carriage, which had stopped to watch the scene. He glanced left and right, apparently looking for something to throw, then suddenly charged toward the woman and child still sobbing not far off.
The bandit tried to snatch the swaddled infant from the woman’s arms; she clutched it desperately, screaming and shaking her head. He tore at it a few times, ripping a strip of cloth from the swaddling, then abruptly raised his blade and struck down again and again, madly, blood pooling across the ground. The alley erupted into screams and wailing at the sight, and Ning Yi, from where he sat, watched the whole thing unfold without so much as blinking. The bandit took a few more steps, wrenched half a brick loose from a wall, and hurled it at him with sudden force.
The waterway here was narrow, no more than ten-odd meters across, and the man’s aim was true — the brick came whistling straight for Ning Yi’s face. Ning Yi tilted his head aside; the fist-sized brick struck the carriage’s door frame with a crack, sliding down along the cotton curtain. The bandit pointed his blade toward him with a savage grin, then turned and left with his companions.
Ning Yi sat there for a couple of seconds, raised his whip to drive away — then, the next moment, frowned and set the whip down instead, snatched up the fallen brick from the carriage, jumped down, ran a couple of steps, and hurled it back with all his strength. The brick tore through the air with a sharp whistle, crossing the waterway in an instant, and a spray of blood burst open with a crack. The bandit flinched — but it was one of his companions, some two meters further off, who took the brick to the back of the head and pitched forward to the ground, the bloodied brick tumbling further ahead.
He’d missed his real target. Ning Yi stood by the water, drew a breath, and pressed both hands against his face for a moment, squeezing lightly. As the bandits across the way turned to look his way, he glanced left and right at the ground nearby — nothing but dirt and grass, no other brick within reach — then turned, climbed back into the carriage, cracked the whip, and drove off. Behind him came a furious roar, followed by another scream — likely the man venting his anger by cutting down someone else out of spite. Ning Yi didn’t look back.
Not every alley in the city was as defenseless as the one he’d just seen — some great households had guards who’d genuinely seen combat before, or ties to martial arts halls or escort agencies, giving them considerably more capacity to resist. But ordinary able-bodied men, unless overwhelming numbers were on their side, could offer only the most limited resistance. The men Fang La had sent into the city were, for the most part, seasoned fighters — the kind capable of the bloodlust he’d just witnessed, killing without mercy or restraint. An ordinary young man who’d learned some basic technique at a martial arts hall, without ever having truly faced real combat, would likely be cut down with a single blow.
From what he could see now, in the wake of that morning’s chaos in the north, Fang La’s men had scattered widely throughout the city, striking and killing wherever they went. Though the Wude Battalion nominally controlled Hangzhou, the bulk of its strength remained concentrated near the city walls; even with some forces spread out to hunt down the culprits inside, they simply couldn’t gain full control of the situation all at once, which was exactly why scenes like this were still unfolding. Still, it seemed unlikely to persist much beyond this morning.
But this chaos had already momentarily engulfed him, and for now there was no way to avoid it or turn back. Trying to make his way toward Taiping Lane, Ning Yi took several detours; at one intersection, some twenty-odd soldiers came charging out, chasing down two bandits and hacking them to death right at the corner. The soldier leading them was a burly man with a thick beard, who leveled his blade at Ning Yi and shouted, “Who are you!”
Ning Yi produced his token, along with a document issued by the Qian family stating his business of returning to Taiping Lane. The bearded officer, out of breath from the chase and looking every bit the fierce warrior, examined the credentials, glanced at Ning Yi’s scholarly attire, and after a brief inspection bellowed, “There’s bandits causing trouble here, we’re hunting them down — you can’t drive through with your carriage. Go around! Go around!” Though there was gunpowder aboard the carriage, the credentials Ning Yi carried, combined with Commander Du’s token, granted considerable authority, and the bearded officer had little further to say.
These men had their own reasons for what they were doing. Ning Yi didn’t think himself entitled to simply force his way through, and had no choice but to detour again. He circled around once more, and at a fork in the road came upon a stretch of street where the killing had been especially thorough — over a hundred bodies stretched out along the road into the distance, though he had no idea what battle had unfolded there. Some soldiers among the dead, a few bandits as well, and even some civilians caught in the crossfire. The surrounding streets and lanes were eerily silent, as though everything nearby had died along with them; the city’s low, buzzing hum still drifted over from a distance, along with the sound of fighting still ongoing far off near Qiantang Gate.
Ning Yi turned his carriage the other way. Two streets later, he heard a commotion coming from what looked like a wealthy household’s compound — a low, buzzing noise. This household, too, had clearly lost several buildings in the earthquake; a long stretch of the street-facing wall still stood, though it had gaps in places, and he couldn’t see inside. He listened for a moment; the noise inside was growing louder, as though someone were charging this way.
Just as Ning Yi was about to speed up, eight or nine blood-soaked bandits burst through a gap in the wall ahead and onto the street, their eyes falling on him at once. He tried to turn the carriage around, but glancing behind him found several more men had climbed over the wall from that direction too; one of them, wielding a steel whip, bellowed, “That coachman there! Leave the carriage! Brothers! Take his carriage, torch it, and run it straight into those dog soldiers!”
As he shouted, the men ahead were already charging toward him, one in front swinging a heavy hammer, especially fierce. In his scholar’s robes, Ning Yi looked ahead and behind for a long moment, the carriage lurching almost beyond control, and tumbled off, scrambling up in a panic to run for a gap in a nearby wall. Some twenty-odd meters on, in a small collapsed courtyard, he glanced back to see one of the men leap agilely onto the carriage, seize the reins, and with a single hand haul the panicked horses to a stop with a shout — a striking, blood-red figure of a man.
Ning Yi backed away a few more steps, frowning at the sight, and pressed his sleeve to his mouth.
“You mother—”
Inside the carriage curtain, a small flame burned down to its end. Someone lifted the curtain, and light bloomed outward.
A deafening blast tore through the air, a pillar of light swallowing up twisted faces and the horses’ frantic screams whole; a human body was hurled skyward, flame and shockwave whipping through Ning Yi’s robes as fragments of flesh dropped in front of him. Seconds later, he turned and started running, and through ears still ringing furiously, he heard someone screaming madly: “Kill him, kill him, kill him — kill that son of a bitch for me—”
Those left unscathed came charging after him.
With a crash, Ning Yi burst through a rickety wooden door, wood splinters flying, and drew a steel blade from beneath his robe as he ran, using his teeth and hands to bind the hilt fast against his grip with a strip of cloth…