In the ninth year of the Wuchao Jinghan era, early autumn, the eighth month, in Jiangnan — Hangzhou.
The lake shimmered under the light, and the mountains and waters had just begun to settle.
Half a month had passed since Fang La’s army had taken control of Hangzhou, this great city of the southeast. From a distance, the city walls that had collapsed under the earthquake and the fighting were being rebuilt, and here and there among the towers, courtyards, and streets, something of a mood of recovery from ruin had begun to appear.
The bloodshed and chaos half a month earlier had filled the entire city with a terror few could bear to look upon, but in recent days Hangzhou had gradually grown lively again. Gathering from every direction were not only the soldiers who had always been scattered across the region under Fang La’s command, but also travelers who looked like farmers or petty peddlers, one after another, in groups — some in ragged clothes, some dragging whole families along with them. This had become the most common sight along the roads leading into Hangzhou of late.
The finely dressed merchants and officials, the spirited young sons of wealthy families and scholars who had once traveled these post roads to Hangzhou, were of course nowhere to be seen now. Most of the people gathering on these roads now were farming families dragging their households along because a relative served in the army, drawn by the news that the Saintly Duke was soon to declare himself emperor. But among them were also ragged little peddlers, odd-looking burly men in twos and threes, and troupes of performers and street entertainers traveling in large or small groups — and these were somewhat different from what one usually saw.
Some of these people carried themselves with arrogant disdain, others kept a low and furtive profile, but not a few of them carried weapons of one kind or another — metal, wood, iron, stone, every material imaginable. On the road, an ordinary traveler might notice that some of these people, upon meeting one another, would exchange strange greetings, cup their fists, and speak in odd turns of phrase. Someone who truly understood such things would recognize that when this mix of people from every walk of life gathered together, it had a name — the jianghu — and these people were what ordinary folk called “people of the rivers and lakes.”
In truth, in the two years since the Saintly Duke had first raised his banner, no small number of the outlaws and bandit clans of Jiangnan had risen up in response. Some had been inclined that way from the very start and had actively made contact; others waited until the Saintly Duke’s army arrived and, seeing an opportunity, joined the uprising.
Of course, the jianghu and the forest bandits were not necessarily the same thing. Most of those outlaw heroes who rose up in response had originally been mountain bandits and highwaymen; once someone rebelled with enough momentum, they naturally fell in line. But far more numerous among the jianghu were those trained fighters and people with strange skills who lived hidden in the mountains or among the markets — a mix of every trade and background, who under normal circumstances broke no laws, did small business, and lived small lives, perhaps not particularly well. But because they had skills of their own, they were not without dealings with those forest outlaws either.
When Fang La first rose up, he relied on the influence of the Manichaean faith, and his name already carried weight among these people who lived in the gray areas between society. But rebellion was, after all, a matter that cost one’s head, and no matter how hard he called for followers, there was naturally a limit to how many would come flocking to his side of their own accord. But this time, under Fang Qifo’s planning, the Saintly Duke’s army took Hangzhou, and then figures like Shi Sheng, Lu Xing’er, and Lü Shinang — men who already carried considerable reputation — rose in response in various places, shocking the entire southeast in one stroke. Once word spread that Fang La intended to declare himself emperor and was recruiting talented men from across the realm, many who had until then remained cautious and watchful finally felt something stir in their hearts.
These jianghu people had, as a rule, never lived particularly well. This time, though somewhat late, once Fang La became emperor, the coming conflict with the imperial court would naturally require a great many talented people — and if it succeeded, they could all claim the reputation of founding ministers. And so, among those now streaming toward Hangzhou — beyond the many displaced families seeking to benefit from relatives in the army — the largest group by far was made up of every sort of eccentric and skilled individual. Around the time Fang La was to found his new state, all of Hangzhou had taken on something of the flavor of the great gatherings of martial artists one used to read about only in books.
The situation was chaotic, a mix of dragons and fish, the noble and the base all tangled together. Ever since the great purge that followed the fall of the city, most of the land, wealth, and property in Hangzhou had, in effect, become ownerless. Although there had been some prior negotiation over how the spoils of the conquered city would be divided, human greed knows no limit, and a Hangzhou already battered by earthquake was, in truth, not large enough to satisfy everyone. Put another way, ten or fifteen days was far too little time for any new order to take shape.
Gold and silver that had already been swallowed could always be disgorged again; land that had fallen into some people’s hands could just as easily pass into others’. As for order in this Hangzhou, for now it still amounted to little more than a contest of whose fists were bigger. Setting aside for the moment the matter of superiors preying on their subordinates, after the fall of the city, under the self-proclaimed banner of Fang La’s “righteous army,” there remained some surviving residents of Hangzhou who were, in principle, allowed to legally keep what little property they had left.
These people had no one to rely on, and over the past twenty-odd days had naturally become a prize that anyone could come and take a bite out of. And since everyone wanted a piece, whenever soldiers from one unit came to bully them, soldiers from another unit would show up to “protect” them — for a considerable price, of course. When the interests of different factions collided, it had become a common sight these days for one leader of the righteous army after another to march his troops into the streets, or out beyond the city walls, to face off against a rival.
Hangzhou was to be the site of the enthronement, and it could not be allowed to fall into total disorder — that much had been settled from the very beginning. And so Fang La had given the order, and squads of law-enforcers began moving through the city. Their leader was a disciple of Fang Qifo’s named Chen Fan, formidable on the battlefield but still very young. He would round up groups of offenders and, without so much as an interrogation, beat both sides’ leaders in the street with his own fists — most of them beaten to death outright. Among the dead were a nephew of General Zhang Wei and a cousin of Guo Shiguang, and it was said that a mob of their kin stormed the “imperial palace” and made it all the way before Fang La himself, ready to fight it out then and there. Fang La, already troubled by the ongoing fighting to the north at Jiaxing and busy with preparations for his enthronement, could only feel a headache coming on — half wishing he could roar at them all, “Can’t you see we’re busy trying to become emperor here!” and simply draw his sword and cut down every last one of them. In the end the matter was handled half-heartedly and left to fade away on its own.
The aftershocks of the fighting had not yet settled. Streams of distant relatives poured into the city, followed by crowds of eccentric wandering fighters, all of them looking to carve out a share of the spoils the moment they smelled opportunity. There was nowhere to live — so people simply seized what they wanted. I shed my blood for the Saintly Duke, and now my family has arrived with nowhere to sleep, so we’ll lay bedrolls in the street… and so on. Chen Fan kept leading his squads through the streets, beating to death anyone whose face he didn’t like. And yet, amid all this, some shops in Hangzhou finally began to reopen, and the canal and land transport routes so critical to the city’s function slowly, painfully, began to grind back into motion despite the chaos, keeping the city’s basic functions alive as it prepared for the autumn harvest.
The city was like some hopelessly broken carriage — its canopy gone, its beams rotted, its frame decayed, its rivets fallen out — dragged forward by the last of a herd of gaunt horses, struggling onward one step at a time, waiting for someone to arrive in time to slowly patch it all back together before it fell apart entirely.
Of course, wherever there are people, order always finds a way to re-form eventually…
…
“Now then, this Ning Liheng, the Bloodhanded Butcher, stood eight feet tall, with a waist eight feet around…”
As a rule, whenever a story opened by describing someone as looking suspiciously like a cylinder, most of what followed was pure invention. And yet, even so, whenever someone launched loudly into such a tale, plenty of people around were still willing to listen. Right now, in a teahouse in Hangzhou that had managed to survive more or less intact, one man was lowering his voice in a show of secrecy while recounting to those around him something that had happened not long ago.
“…That day at Shiqiao Ferry in Huzhou, this man rallied an exhausted, broken army, and with the same tactic Xiang Yu once used at Julu — sinking the boats, breaking the cauldrons, putting his own men in a position with no way out but forward — he first placed several thousand of his own troops in a position of certain death, and then… then he made two sweeping passes near Shiqiao Ferry, breaking through the encirclement of three generals — Lu Qiao, Yao Yi, and Xue Dounan — one after another. If not for General An Xifu’s Black Feather Guard stepping in to mediate, I’d wager neither Mi Quan nor Shen Zhucheng would have made it out alive either… Damn it, the man’s practically a monster…”
Speaking of the affairs of the court from a Hangzhou teahouse in this manner was, in some sense, rather treasonous, but in Hangzhou these days there wasn’t much oversight of that kind of thing, and anyone bold enough to speak of it openly clearly had some backing of his own. What the group had first been discussing was actually the ongoing standoff at Jiaxing, and only afterward had they turned to the recent defeat around Huzhou. This man was likely a relative of some officer in the army, and now he was putting on an air of great mystery as he spoke. Of course, most of the listeners didn’t believe a word of it — a “Bloodhanded Butcher Ning Liheng”? No one in the martial world of Jiangnan had ever heard of such a ridiculous name. Some sneered, others argued back, and one man with a pipe just chuckled “heh heh” and went back to counting his almanac.
“What Bloodhanded Butcher… If it’s the martial world you want to talk about, no one knows it better than I, Yan Qi. Here in Jiangnan, the Saintly Duke stands foremost, of course, and after him there’s Liu Dabiaozi of the old Overlord Blade Manor, the ever solitary ‘Sorrowless Sword’ Bai Moyan, General Wang Yin whose Soul-Locking Spear has an almost supernatural touch, and Marshal Fo — he can wield all eighteen kinds of weapons but is chiefly known for his fistwork — and his disciple Chen Fan, who I hear can pull up a weeping willow by the roots! There’s also Deng Yuanjue, called ‘Deng the Buddha-Come,’ the madman Shi Bao, and men like Li Tianrun and Si Xingfang, every one of them a true master, and most of them now serve under the Saintly Duke’s banner. As for strategy, apart from Marshal Fo, An Xifu is also a formidable mind, and up north at Liangshan there’s apparently a man called Wu Yong, the ‘Resourceful Star.’ As for this so-called Bloodhanded Butcher — and they say he’s some scholar barely into his twenties — young man, you’re talking nonsense…”
The teahouse buzzed with noise and confusion, thick with a rough, low atmosphere — quite unlike the leisurely calm the place had once had, before Fang La’s army arrived. Even as the man told his tale with such supposed authority, everything about the scene reeked of the marketplace. At that moment, at the edge of the teahouse, a man dressed as a young noble stood up, muttered under his breath, “A pack of nonsense,” and walked out.
This young noble hadn’t spoken loudly, but plenty of people in the main hall had heard him all the same. Most of them were men of the jianghu, the sort who always kept their eyes and ears open no matter where they went, and this young noble, though he’d been sitting off in a corner, had stood out from the start. A few faces creased with the beginnings of anger — but then, as the young noble rose, several other men at the surrounding tables rose with him, clearly trained fighters, closing in around him protectively as they left together. It was plain this young noble carried some standing of his own, and the anger was swallowed back down.
Once the young noble had left, someone on the other side of the hall finally spoke casually of who he was: “That fellow’s called Lou Shuweng. Heh — that’s the old Lou family of Hangzhou. Since they threw in with the Saintly Duke, they’ve been living quite well. He’s got Marshal Fo backing him, and no small number of people eat off the Lou family’s table these days. A little while back he was still trembling in his boots, but these last few days he’s already learned how to throw his weight around. Word is he’s snatched himself a few women too… best not go crossing him…”
The man who had just left the teahouse was, indeed, Lou Shuweng. Since the fall of Hangzhou, in order to keep the city functioning, the Lou family had become one of the households Fang Qifo and his men relied on most. In barely twenty days, they had taken on ever-heavier burdens — and, along with them, ever-greater power. Dealing with these rebel forces was, in truth, quite easy — at least while Fang Qifo himself wasn’t present, all they really needed was for things not to collapse entirely. One could line one’s own pockets shamelessly and still not be required to be perfect; they had no choice but to rely on you, and so they handed you power of every kind. Lou Shuweng had understood this almost from the very start.
Whether forced into it or by his own choice, the Lou family now had little room left to retreat. There was no going back — they were already too entangled with Fang La to cut ties, and if Fang La fell, the Lou family would likely have no path left but death. Lou Shuweng was a clever man. At first, watching soldiers in the city killing people, dragging officials and wealthy merchants out to be buried alive or disemboweled, he had been terrified. But the same fate never came for his own family — instead, on Fang Qifo’s orders, people began coming to pledge themselves to the Lou family, to protect them, to work for them.
In those days he had watched the killings while being escorted freely about the city. A little over ten days ago he saw a group of soldiers raping a woman in her twenties; he only happened to be passing by, and when the soldiers cursed at him, the guards at his side beat them into a bloody pulp. The woman, half-naked, knelt on the ground and thanked him over and over. For days afterward he couldn’t stop thinking about it. A few days later, he and his guards went out secretly at night and dragged a woman back to his house…
At first he told himself it was only to test just how much privilege Fang Qifo had actually granted his family. But the whole thing was, in truth, deeply exhilarating. He kept the woman locked away, and a few days later she died at his hands by accident… the first time was never very skillful. But that is how people are — once certain things are unlocked, they can never be locked away again. Back in the old Wu dynasty, he had never once tasted this kind of raw, naked power — even though his family had held wealth and status there too, this feeling now was something else entirely. A few more days passed, and he went looking specifically for that woman who had nearly been raped by the soldiers… and finished what those soldiers hadn’t managed to…
That was all it ever came to, really…
He had immersed himself in this new feeling; Hangzhou these days was, to him, endlessly fascinating. But today, out on the street, he’d suddenly heard a name he did not care for at all, and it left him thoroughly displeased. It gave him a sudden, sinking sense of disparity — while he had been busy doing all this in the streets of Hangzhou, that man had apparently beaten several of Fang La’s generals half to death over in Huzhou.
Then what, exactly, did all of this that he now held amount to?
The distance between them opened up in an instant.
If that man were still in Hangzhou, he would have to die — just like all those officials and wealthy merchants who had been killed in this hell of a city twenty days ago, dying in the most miserable way imaginable.
Walking through the now-desolate streets of Hangzhou with a handful of guards, that was what he was thinking.
And then, a few days later, he truly did meet Ning Liheng.