That he’d actually run into Fang La’s bandits along the way was, more or less, entirely outside anything Ning Yi had anticipated. Right now in Hangzhou, these men, relying on the earthquake’s aftermath and the momentary advantage of a sudden strike, could run wild for a time — but such a span of time could hardly last long. As time went on, they’d increasingly rely on the city’s rubble for cover, seeking to survive first before considering their next move.
Even as he’d been factoring in how their spree of destruction couldn’t last, Ning Yi had, in truth, been genuinely worried about the situation back at Taiping Lane. Having just witnessed that harrowing scene in the street, then suddenly finding himself facing over a dozen desperate men, he’d frozen for an instant of shock — but in a moment like this, one had to act boldly, and he’d made his decision at once. He ran, blade in hand, and the remaining men behind him gave chase, shouting, only a moment later.
The buildings in this stretch of streets hadn’t been in good condition to begin with, and the earthquake had left them thinner and more scattered than ever — some courtyard walls collapsed, some houses already cracked open by the tremors, further worn down by days of rain, leaving nothing but broken pillars and beams; some places had already been through fire, leaving nothing but charred, blackened ruins. Some households nearby remained intact — some with people still inside, doors shut, too afraid to venture out; others, given how badly this area had been hit, had already fled in the earlier days or amid today’s violence.
The dozen-odd men, blood soaking their bodies from head to toe, split into several groups to chase him through the rubble. Ning Yi, running ahead in his scholar’s robes, blade in one hand — bound to his grip with a strip of cloth, looking altogether absurd — moved with a fierce, driving momentum, the old habit of gripping a blade he’d formed years ago in some past life all but instinctive by now, carrying with it, even in flight, an air of unmistakable authority.
Cutting through the ruins ahead and turning onto the street, those chasing behind him changed direction too, some scrambling over collapsed low walls, others charging through black mud. Ning Yi ran fast, but among his pursuers were some faster still — one particularly tall man wielding a single blade had clearly begun pulling ahead of the others. Just as Ning Yi realized turning had been unwise and cut straight through a stretch of ruins ahead, that man had already halved the distance between them, and as he leapt over a low wall, he snatched up a brick and hurled it with a crack.
Ranged weapons on a battlefield were mostly bows and arrows, but in an ordinary skirmish, stones remained the go-to mid-range weapon anywhere — simple, convenient, and painful for whoever they hit. Anyone with real strength had likely practiced at least a little of this. Just as Ning Yi ran past a wooden pillar, the stone struck it with a crack, splinters of wood and stone stinging his face faintly. Glancing back, he found the gap between them had closed further still.
Running another dozen-odd meters, he cut through what must once have been the main hall of an inn, and the cursing behind him suddenly cut off. Ning Yi spun around and swung his blade with all his strength, just as a heavy shadow leapt up, blotting out the daylight behind him.
Crack — a deafening blast, throwing off sparks even in broad daylight. A great spray of blood surged across Ning Yi’s body, a flash of steel nearly grazing his ear as it flew past, a section of severed blade thudding into a piece of ruined lumber some distance off, followed by a rapid series of cracking sounds.
Ning Yi’s arm rang with pain from the impact, and even he wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened, nor could he say for certain whether the man who’d leapt in from behind, blade descending, had worn an expression of disbelief. This blade of his — a self-defense weapon commissioned back in Jiangning before he left, through Kang Xian, styled somewhat after a later era’s military saber, well suited for pure slashing — was, in terms of raw quality alone, forged from steel that Kang Xian’s people could only source through repeated refinement, practically a treasured blade for this age. Lu Hongti had once said that his own crude, purely brute-force style would be a laughingstock in front of a genuine master, but the man now facing him was hardly any kind of grandmaster, and this single, wholly unadorned clash of blades, driven by the explosive burst of internal energy Lu Hongti had taught him, had unleashed a startlingly fierce force.
In his field of vision, the man who’d leapt in to attack from behind had come down with a savage slash; the scholar ahead had, in the midst of running, wheeled around with a desperate blow of his own — and then came a violent, mingled crash. The leaping man was cut down along with his blade, his chest split nearly in half, the corpse crashing past the scholar in a torrent of crimson like an overturned bucket of ink. Owing to the angle, the scholar who’d delivered that single stroke somehow didn’t take a single drop of blood himself — he only staggered a few steps before turning and continuing to run.
The blow had been simple, brutal, and so clean it left even Ning Yi himself hardly able to believe it. There was no time to dwell on it, though — he kept running as fast as he could. The men behind him, after a brief, stunned pause, resumed their howling pursuit, several stones nearly landing at his heels, though without much force behind them — pure venting, nothing more. As he ran into a crossroads ahead, Ning Yi suddenly stopped, turned, and his pursuers behind him abruptly stopped as well.
In the alley to his side, he spotted, to his surprise, the figures of two soldiers — one of them a man he actually recognized: the bearded officer who’d earlier ordered him to detour. Neither he nor the soldier behind him appeared wounded, which suggested more soldiers were probably nearby too. They raised their blades, aiming at the pursuing bandits, signaling that there were men here — but the bearded man, catching sight of Ning Yi standing at the crossroads, blade raised, froze in evident shock.
For a moment all three parties fell silent. Ning Yi stood dead center of the intersection; the soldiers and bandits couldn’t see each other directly, but from the standoff, it was easy enough to guess what was happening. Two of the bandits who’d arrived just then scrambled up a nearby mound of rubble and looked out toward the alley in the harsh sunlight, and at last they too saw what was there.
Ning Yi glanced sidelong at the bearded officer and his soldier in the alley. The two of them stood frozen for a moment, then turned and ran.
The bandits atop the rubble turned their gaze back toward Ning Yi. Ning Yi opened his mouth, let out a sigh, turned, and continued running at full speed.
He made for a residential courtyard at the end of the street, its gate standing open. By now he’d more or less realized that while the internal training Lu Hongti had taught him certainly helped strengthen the body and assist with sustained running, its real strength lay in sudden, explosive bursts of power — small wonder Lu Hongti had said it counted for nothing as a truly refined internal art, and that overusing it took a toll on the body. By comparison, several of the men chasing him were, if anything, faster than he was; apart from the one man he’d cut down earlier, the rest were steadily gaining ground. In a chase like this, needless turning had already become a rather foolish thing to do.
Charging through the empty courtyard, Ning Yi kicked off some scattered debris beside the wall and vaulted over the back wall — and the instant he landed, he spotted two people standing across the street just ahead, watching him. There was no one else on this stretch of road — just the two of them, a man and a woman. The woman standing in front looked slight of build, wearing a bamboo hat and a veil, dressed in the sort of brightly patterned skirt worn by certain minority peoples, standing there like some elegant, delicate figure on a clothes rack, her eyes evidently fixed, through the veil, on Ning Yi as he’d suddenly appeared over the wall. Behind her stood a tall, rough-featured middle-aged man, apparently her attendant, a long wooden case slung across his back — its contents unclear.
Ning Yi landed hard, staggered a few steps before steadying himself, and instinctively waved a hand toward the two of them, shouting, “Get out of here, quick!” This wasn’t quite an instinctive urge to save them, though — it came instead from some ominous feeling rising in him. The moment he’d said it, he ran off in another direction. In that fleeting glimpse, the girl seemed to tilt her head slightly toward him, and beneath that ethnic-style skirt trailing almost to the ground, an embroidered slipper peeking out from underneath drew back slightly, disappearing into the folds. Her skirt was mainly blue, green, and yellow, and only the embroidered slipper beneath it bore a trace of fresh blood.
By the time he’d run some distance, the bandits chasing him had caught up as well, their voices tinged with something like astonishment. Ning Yi caught fragments of what they were saying: “Liu… Boss, Boss…”
“Liu Dabiao…”
For some reason, that name struck Ning Yi as strangely off, though he couldn’t quite say why. Glancing back briefly, he saw the girl and the middle-aged man now standing amid the bandits, looking his way as well. By then he’d reached the corner of the street, and glancing sideways, finally let out a real breath of relief.
Over a hundred soldiers, led by a young officer, were sweeping toward this area.
The group looked this way for a moment, and then the girl in the ethnic-style skirt was the first to turn, walking away down a side path…
…
By the time he returned to Taiping Lane, it was already afternoon; the unrest throughout the city had, for the moment, been suppressed. Ning Yi had, in fact, taken a graze from a flying blade fragment on his shoulder — a minor wound, nothing serious. Taiping Lane hadn’t been struck by any bandits that day; everything there was fine. After having Juan’er bandage him up briefly, Ning Yi set out again, accompanied by Steward Geng and the others, going household by household to call on the truly powerful merchants, wealthy families, escort agencies, and martial arts halls nearby.
With chaos still raging outside the city and the situation inside like a small boat tossed in a storm, even the great households were anxious, and the smaller ones had it far worse still. What Ning Yi was doing wasn’t meant to save this city — that was well beyond anything he could hope to accomplish. Even as prudent forward planning went, it served only the interests of his own family and a small handful of others; that was, after all, the limit of what he could actually manage. Persuasive speech, backed by a read on the larger situation, had always been one of his strengths, and within two days he’d already reached out to a great many people nearby, forging something like an informal pact: if the city held, then all would be well regardless; if it didn’t, then this pact would have its use.
Over these past few days, those directing the fighting both inside and outside the city hadn’t had a moment’s rest either. On the second day of the fighting, alongside the battle at Qiantang Gate in the southwest, fighting had also suddenly broken out near the north gate, which had originally been the least heavily guarded. Inside the city, whoever it was who’d been directing the infiltrators from the shadows kept fomenting unrest continuously; by the third day, an official near the southern docks had tried to flee by boat, sparking unrest in the crowd, and word that an official had tried to escape had begun spreading through the city — proof enough of just how formidable this hidden mastermind orchestrating events truly was.
Meanwhile, more and more of Fang La’s refugees and troops, driven forward or mobilized, continued gathering toward Hangzhou…