Fourth watch, beside Phoenix Hill, at the Ancient Paulownia Temple.

When the breeze picked up, the faint barking of dogs from the city drifted through the darkness, and within the ancient walls, lantern lights occasionally flickered by like drifting will-o’-the-wisps.

This stretch of hills, which in another age — or another timeline entirely — would one day become the palace grounds of the Southern Song, now sat just at the city’s outskirts, not far from the walls, and carried none of the bustle one might expect. The Ancient Paulownia Temple was no grand Daoist monastery; when the army had taken the city, it had been looted once already — the priests had scattered or been killed — and had since fallen under the control of one faction or another among the rebel forces drawn from every corner of society. As territory was carved up among the various rebel factions, the temple had gained new masters. In appearance and function, it still resembled the Daoist temple it had once been, but of course, no one came to worship there anymore.

The small hillside where the temple stood was separated from any inhabited area by only a small stretch of woods, but it was now forbidden ground that ordinary people dared not approach, regularly guarded by soldiers. After a few unwitting locals who’d wandered too close were killed, no one dared venture near it casually anymore. Those with no particular connection to the place could generally learn that the troops stationed here belonged to a unit called the Quenching Camp, led by a fearsome, dark-skinned giant of a man, his face a mass of scars — occasionally, someone might know that his name was Lu Tuo, the “Vicious Yama.”

And beyond that, even within Fang La’s own ranks, few people could actually trace who truly stood behind the Quenching Camp. It was a newly established unit, and within the tangled, faction-ridden hierarchy of Fang La’s forces, exactly whose command it fell under was very difficult for outsiders to work out. It clearly had connections of some weight, but ordinarily it kept to its own small patch of territory without taking any particularly conspicuous action, so few people took much interest in it.

Only occasionally, when the wind picked up, certain sounds would carry down from the hill — heard from outside, they resembled moaning, or the wailing of ghosts, or perhaps a woman’s cries. Hangzhou had only just been through the trial of war, with countless dead, many of them still barely cold in their graves, and with few people living nearby, no rumors of hauntings had yet taken hold.

It was still only the fourth watch. As the saying goes: the first watch for people abroad, the second for the night watchman’s gong, the third for ghosts, the fourth for thieves, the fifth for the rooster’s crow — this hour marked the darkest stretch before dawn, when even the most alert had grown weary. Few lights burned within the Ancient Paulownia Temple, only faint, hazy points glowing here and there, everything silent, as though the whole place had drifted off to sleep. In the small woods nearby, a lone figure carefully slipped past the various traps the guards had set and stole silently into the temple grounds.

Though the Ancient Paulownia Temple couldn’t compare to the truly great mountain monasteries, its grounds were still considerable by the standards of an ordinary household — eight or nine courtyards front to back, with two- and three-story buildings connected together, forming quite a sizable complex. At this hour, there weren’t many patrolling the grounds. The black-clad intruder, not particularly tall but quick and nimble, deftly slipped past the few patrols and finally reached the largest building at the center of the temple.

Perhaps because so few people in Hangzhou these days would dare set their sights on this place, though the temple’s outer perimeter was patrolled, its interior was left with little guard at all. A martial-world figure in Daoist robes sat dozing by the door, his head bowed; the great door stood open a crack, dim lamplight seeping out from within. The figure in black paused a moment, then crept forward quietly, pushed the door open, and slipped inside. The moment he entered, he froze in place.

The sound of women weeping rolled toward him like a tide. None of the individual voices were loud, but with so many crying at once, the sobs overlapped and merged into a heavy, layered wave of sound — and this was only at the fourth watch; there was no telling what it might sound like during the day. On this side of the door, the lamplight was dim. What had once been a great hall now had both sides converted into something resembling prison cells — some were proper rooms, others nothing more than barred pens.

The figure in black moved forward along the passage. In the cells on either side, straw was strewn across the floor, and young women were held within, chained at the wrists. Some were dressed in tattered rags, hair disheveled; others had blood staining their bodies and hair, having endured who knew what kind of abuse. Most of the women nearer the door had already fallen asleep, though a few lay with eyes open, their gazes vacant. One, despite the deep-autumn cold, lay half-naked, moaning weakly and without direction, her body marked with visible wounds — likely already carrying some sickness or infection, and seemingly near the end. The air hung thick with the stench of blood and depravity. At the far end of the hall stood a statue of the Three Pure Ones, half smashed apart, and from behind it drifted the faint sound of a man’s mocking laughter mingled with a woman’s cries of pain.

The figure in black was, in truth, only a boy of thirteen or fourteen — old enough to grasp, in principle, what all of this meant, but he had never actually witnessed anything like it before, and for a moment he simply stood there, stunned. After a moment, gritting his teeth, trembling faintly, he stopped his advance and slowly began to back away — but after a few steps, he froze again, looking at the locks on the cell doors, at a complete loss for what to do. It was at that exact moment that he heard, from behind him, the sound of the night wind gusting in, carrying a faint, low moan.

He startled — the door had originally been shut, which meant… it was open now.

He spun around, and a blur of motion came slicing through the air toward him. His head rang with a sudden, deafening impact!

“Who’s there.”

The boy, still dressed in his night-black garb, went flying straight out through the doorway, his mask torn apart in midair, blood already spraying from his nose and mouth.

Waiting outside were five men in total, including the one who had originally been dozing at the door as a lookout — led by a minor squad leader who had struck without warning; the most vicious blow had been the scabbard that had come down on the boy’s head. Confident of an easy victory, the squad leader hadn’t bothered shouting his challenge until after he’d struck. The boy’s body hit the ground, already unconscious. Someone drew a blade; another said, “It’s just a kid? Should we sound the alarm?”

“Let’s have a look—”

A dark shape dropped from above!

All five men were capable enough fighters in their own right; the instant they’d sent the boy flying, they had followed him out and now stood in the corridor just outside the main doors. The dark shape landed suddenly in their midst, a right fist lashing out like a furious tide, cutting through the air and slamming into the temple of the man directly in front — in an instant, the man’s entire face began to distort, ripples of impact spreading outward from the point of the blow, blood and shattered bone erupting from his skull.

The shadow’s attacks came like rolling thunder — swinging, striding, spinning in an instant, a devastating “Stele-Toppling Palm,” blade-light flashing, movements as fierce as a raging dragon unleashed. He stamped down on one man’s shin, snapping it and dropping him slightly lower — right into the path of a ferocious palm strike that landed on his head, snapping his neck backward and sending his head, dragging his body along, bouncing across the stone-paved walkway like a ball. Another man beside him had only just drawn his blade when it was wrenched from his grasp and turned back on him — in the blink of an eye, four strokes flashed out, each one devastatingly fierce, slashing across a face, severing a neck, crushing a chest. The squad leader hadn’t even finished saying “let’s have a look” before the figure had already closed the distance, a single palm expanding to fill his entire field of vision.

A dull, heavy sound.

The outer wall of the hall was built from solid gray stone; the squad leader, driven back two full steps by the sheer force of the blow, cracked the back of his skull against it — the bone was very likely shattered. That same hand clamped down over his mouth and nose, lifting his entire body clean off the ground. The last thing that came into focus in the squad leader’s eyes was the young man’s gaze — cold, savage, feral as a beast of prey — and the figure before him, not especially imposing in build, its eyes locked on his own until the very last moment.

Chen Fan drove his blade into the man’s belly, watched his eyes slowly roll back a full hundred and eighty degrees, and then let him drop. Beneath the eaves, two men now lay dead from his fists and palms, two others cut down by swordsmanship so fierce it barely resembled proper technique at all. He had fought at full strength — one man struck in the head and neck, another in the neck and chest, bones shattered clean through in both cases. Aside from the sound of the bodies hitting the ground, there was almost no other noise at all. The instant he released the body in his hand, he turned at once, hoisted the unconscious boy onto his back, pulled out a strip of cloth to bind him in place, glanced back once, and strode off swiftly toward the exit.

Those five men hadn’t managed to cry out loudly, but the initial commotion had already been enough to rouse people nearby. A figure came charging forward with a shout: “Who goes there!” — swinging a steel whip straight down at Chen Fan’s head. This man was short and squat, built like an iron tower, and clearly possessed tremendous strength as well, but Chen Fan simply caught the whip with one hand, never breaking stride. The stout man stumbled backward, switching to a two-handed grip as he tried to wrench the whip back, bellowing “Aaaaahhh—” at the top of his lungs, his face flushed a deep crimson. But with a sharp crack, the flesh at the base of his thumb split open, and Chen Fan kicked him square in the chest, then brought the whip down across his own head.

Blood sprayed; the stout man clutched his skull and stumbled backward before collapsing. Chen Fan walked over. Two more figures appeared at the side of the courtyard; he considered for a moment, then turned and struck the fallen man’s head again — and again. Right in front of the two onlookers, he beat the man’s skull with several successive blows until he no longer moved at all, then finally turned and made for the exit.

By now, the temple’s entire defensive force had been roused, but the temple grounds themselves weren’t especially large. Chen Fan cut straight through without deviation — his footsteps looked unhurried, but he was moving faster than a galloping horse. In the blink of an eye, he’d reached the main gate, where two armed soldiers stood guard. Barely slowing at all, Chen Fan charged straight toward the already-battered temple doors.

Off to the side of the woods outside the Ancient Paulownia Temple, two figures — one tall, one small — stood watching the commotion within with visible confusion. The two who had arrived were Ning Yi and Zhuo Xiaofeng, who had come to sound the alarm. As it turned out, the children in the academy who opposed Ning Yi had also been competing to accomplish some great, noble deed of their own, hoping to prove themselves a match for the children he personally taught. Amid this rivalry, both sides had grown less and less careful in their various inquiries and investigations. Hangzhou at this time was hardly short of chaotic goings-on — if anything, there were far too many — and this time, Zhuo Xiaofeng and his group had stumbled, without meaning to, onto a name they had no business provoking, and disagreement had broken out among them. Fearless as only the young can be, a boy named Chen Teng, confident in his own skill, had decided to sneak into the Ancient Paulownia Temple that night despite Zhuo Xiaofeng’s objections. After much agonizing, Zhuo Xiaofeng had finally come to Ning Yi for help, hoping he might find some way to talk Chen Teng out of it.

But Zhuo Xiaofeng had, in the end, come too late. By the time the two of them arrived, they hadn’t been able to catch Chen Teng in time, and shortly after, the temple erupted into chaos. Naturally, it never occurred to either of them that Chen Fan had, from the very start, been keeping a close watch on the goings-on between the academy’s two rival factions of children. As they watched, the temple’s main gate suddenly burst apart, and a figure came charging out through a shower of splintered wood, dragging two guards along with him — one had a steel blade driven straight through his chest and rolled several times across the ground; the other, not yet dead, was held one-handed and spun around several times before the figure tucked his neck under one arm and, mid-stride, snapped it like wringing a chicken’s neck.

Shattered gate, running full tilt, killing without pause, discarding bodies without a second glance — the man’s speed never faltered for an instant, and he seemed, on top of everything else, to be carrying someone on his back. Just then, a flare shot up into the sky.

A single signal arrow, and ten thousand troops would come running.

This was the alarm signal the temple’s men were sending to their allies. The firelight briefly outlined the silhouette of the fleeing figure; the two parties were, in fact, already quite close. Ning Yi glanced over, then reached back and pulled Zhuo Xiaofeng along, likewise trying to flee down the hillside. They’d run perhaps a hundred meters when, out of the gloom, someone suddenly appeared ahead of them, blocking their path. “What bandit dares to—”

“Watch the blade!”

This was likely a soldier returning after spotting the signal flare. Zhuo Xiaofeng had already frozen in terror, but Ning Yi reacted instantly, letting out a low shout and slashing his blade forward — a packet of powder burst open, covering the man’s upper body from head to shoulders. The man began swinging his blade wildly. “Cough… hah… what—”

“Lime powder.”

Ning Yi finished speaking, already closing the distance, and cut the man down into the underbrush with a single stroke.

Chen Fan wasn’t far off at this point, and had already caught the sound of the commotion. As Ning Yi cut the man down, Chen Fan had already recognized the noise; after a brief hesitation, he made a few hand signals in Ning Yi’s direction. Ning Yi pointed to indicate his own position, and Chen Fan nodded, then led the pursuers off down the hillside in a different direction.

“Let’s go.”

Calling back to Zhuo Xiaofeng, Ning Yi continued along their original path. Zhuo Xiaofeng, having just witnessed his teacher’s swift, merciless method of dispatching a man, stood momentarily stunned. Whatever grievances the children held against Ning Yi over the earlier business with his escape, his image at the academy had always been that of a scholar — and a thoroughly proper, bookish one at that: learned, physically unassuming, on good terms with officialdom. Whatever people said about a “Bloody-Handed Butcher,” it had always, eventually, been taken as nothing more than a joke. Only now had he finally glimpsed this other, bloodier side of the man — but the moment of hesitation passed quickly, and he hurried to catch up.

Still… carrying a pouch of lime powder around to throw at people did seem rather underhanded, and yet, given the casual, unbothered way this Mr. Ning had just used it, it somehow came across as entirely aboveboard as well… Recalling bits and pieces of martial-world lore he’d picked up, this small confusion flickered through Zhuo Xiaofeng’s mind for a moment, but with survival taking priority, the thought was quickly cast aside…

The commotion and the firelight gradually drew closer, then gradually receded again, before finally stirring up only a small, localized disturbance on one edge of the city. Dawn was drawing near, stirring the still waters of the night…

…

At the hour of the Rabbit, the sun had already risen. Squad after squad of soldiers had gathered outside the Ancient Paulownia Temple, while inside, a number of rather more formally dressed Daoist priests and priestesses had appeared as well. The scene of the fighting remained untouched, exactly as it had been left. A middle-aged Daoist priest in yellow robes, carrying an air of otherworldly refinement, was walking through the grounds, inspecting the aftermath as he went. His expression was mild, touched with a faint smile — he didn’t seem particularly angry. Following behind him were several martial-world figures of varied appearance, the most striking among them a hulking, dark-skinned giant standing to his left, his face and visible skin marked all over with scars — this was Lu Tuo, the “Vicious Yama.” He had originally been entrusted with guarding this place, but had been called away the night before to attend a banquet — and some rather more indulgent entertainment besides — and hadn’t returned in time. Who could have guessed something like this would happen while he was away.

“Ah… good, good… disarmed the man, killed him… clean work all the way through… good, good, good… that Stele-Toppling Palm, not bad at all… let’s see, now, the swordsmanship’s a bit lacking, though… any decent kitchen cook could probably cut cleaner than this… strong, but with nowhere proper to put it…”

The middle-aged Daoist leading the group seemed to be evaluating the entire course of the fight, alternating between admiration and mockery, clearly enjoying himself, as he made his way toward the five bodies lying beneath the eaves of the main hall. Coming to a stop, the Daoist turned his back on the others, stepped back a few paces, and stood gazing at the half-open main doors, apparently lost in thought. He reached out and gave the wooden pillar to his right a light slap, then withdrew his hand, clenched it into a fist, and blew a short breath across his knuckles, as though warding off a sudden chill.

Behind him, Lu Tuo, who had been holding his tongue for some time, finally spoke up. “Celestial Master, do you happen to know who came through here last night? This place was under my watch — I wasn’t here, that was my failure. Just tell me who he is, and I’ll go kill him myself!”

The Daoist turned around, gave his fly-whisk a light flick, and smiled again. “Who it actually was, I couldn’t say — words and actions need evidence, need proper order behind them. Still…” He reached out and patted the man’s shoulder. “…there will be another opportunity.”

Having said this, he lifted his head, standing there beneath the eaves, eyes narrowed faintly, seemingly lost in thought — beneath that air of otherworldly grace lay something worn, something faintly weary, perhaps even faintly troubled. After a moment, he gave a small, bitter smile and shook his head.

Had Ning Yi been present, he would have recognized this man at once — they had crossed paths once before, at the banquet of the hundred officials.

In Hangzhou now, this was a man reputed to have the deepest coffers, the largest following of hired blades, the most brothers-in-arms of any faction — a man who welcomed anyone regardless of background, drawing men from every walk of life into his ranks, however uneven in quality, and whom no one in the city could afford to overlook.

The Protector-of-the-State Celestial Master — Bao Daoyi.

A moment later, he frowned.

“Still… who was that bastard outside throwing lime powder around? Hm?”