The fighting had only just stopped, and after that brutal clash — the blood, the chaos — no one had expected things to take such a sudden turn, ending up where they now stood.

The conflict had already escalated to a battle involving several thousand men; this was not something that could simply be glossed over or explained away. And yet the reason the Overlord Blade Battalion had suddenly produced left everyone’s feelings genuinely difficult to categorize. If one wanted to call it a small matter — true, at most it concerned one man, one family; why should it spiral out to a situation of this scale? But if one wanted to call it a serious matter — well, everyone present felt that Chen Fan certainly had grounds for what he’d done. When a man’s woman has been violated, however far he takes his revenge, there’s little room to argue.

Even so, Bao Daoyi, used to acting the bully in his daily affairs, knew that he absolutely could not show any sign of being in the wrong now. Someone among his men shouted, “Empty words, no proof!”

“It’s just your side talking…”

“Try and leave if you dare…”

The shouting was loud and chaotic, but compared to their earlier righteous fury, the momentum behind it was clearly much weaker. Liu Xigua let them go on for a while before saying, “Celestial Master Bao, the Old Paulownia Temple is your territory — do you really think you can wash your hands of this so easily? Today’s matter, my Overlord Blade Battalion will see through to the end. I’m taking Chen Fan with me — let’s see who dares to stop me!”

Having said this, she gave the order to return to camp. Bao Daoyi roared, “You wouldn’t dare!”

“General Li, we’ll take our leave.”

“You think you can settle a matter like this just by talking!”

Whether or not the accusation was actually true, there was, as things stood, no proof — Bao Daoyi could not simply accept the accusation as settled fact through silence. The moment he raised his voice, the rest of his underlings began shouting out one after another. One man at the front of the line bellowed, “This is obviously a frame-up!” Beside him, another asked quietly, “Is it not true, then?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me — I bet it’s true.” The man pursed his lips, then went on shouting loudly, “Absolutely not true! Slanderous accusations!”

Li Tianrun planted his war banner firmly into the middle of the road. “No one is to raise a hand!” He asserted himself with force — after all, his word still carried real weight. He had simply needed a sufficiently compelling justification, and now he cupped his hands toward Bao Daoyi. “Celestial Master Bao, no matter what, the Old Paulownia Temple falls under your jurisdiction. If something of this nature truly did happen under your watch, shouldn’t you also discipline your own men? If it truly did not happen, then Chen Fan’s crime can certainly be debated before the throne in due course…”

With this, he was clearly siding with the Overlord Blade Battalion, moving to put the matter to rest. But once Li Tianrun’s stance turned truly firm, Bao Daoyi knew there was no way to keep fighting. He blustered a few more words and said, “I will certainly investigate this thoroughly when I return. If it turns out my men truly committed such a crime, I will show no mercy. But if there is no such thing, and my innocence is ultimately proven — then even if the Buddha Marshal himself returns, he won’t be able to save Chen Fan’s life!”

With that, the Overlord Blade Battalion, along with the children from the wine house and teahouse, and Ning Yi among them, left Pingchang Street together. Bao Daoyi dispersed his men and, once back in his carriage, smashed a chair beside him and roared at his subordinates, “Whose bright idea was this?! I’ve told you before, you can have your fun, but don’t you dare leave a mess like this behind for me to clean up! Now it’s blown up like this — whoever did it, when I find out, I will not let them off—”

As Ning Yi saw it, even if Bao Daoyi averaged one woman a night, in two months’ time, how many could that really add up to? The trouble was that having this habit meant the men under him grew bold and reckless too, often using his name to seize women without a second thought, and he usually turned a blind eye to it. Just now, in front of everyone, he’d sworn it definitely wasn’t his own doing — but now that there were no outsiders present, if you asked him whether it really wasn’t the doing of his own men, he wouldn’t believe that either. None of them were decent sorts. Damn it, this really was an unjust calamity, brought down on him by these beasts…

…

For a man to be so bad that even he himself loses faith in his own innocence — that really is something. But at least this time, poor Bao Daoyi genuinely had been wronged.

As for what had happened to the family next door to Chen Fan’s, Ning Yi had heard him mention it a couple of days earlier — someone had gone missing, and it had caused quite a stir. Chen Fan had sighed about it once, and when Ning Yi had asked, he’d said, “She was probably taken by Bao Daoyi’s men, wouldn’t be surprising…” In any case, there was no way that girl Cuihua had actually pledged herself to him in secret.

Back at the Overlord Blade Battalion’s camp, Ning Yi went to see Chen Fan, who was lying in bed adjusting his bandages. He had been through death many times before and had an astonishingly strong constitution. Seeing Ning Yi come in, he grinned. “So? How was it?”

“Brilliant. Whose idea was it?”

“Mine.”

“Bao Daoyi really is eating a bitter pill he can’t spit out… but speaking of which, what does ‘sister-in-law’ actually look like?”

Given their current physical ages, Chen Fan was actually a few years older than Ning Yi. At the question, Chen Fan’s face scrunched up like a steamed bun.

“You mean Cuihua? Tiny frame, tiny head, and a pointy little mouth — looks like a chicken.”

“And someone still took her?”

“Actually, not bad, honestly… but she’s been used by plenty of men already, so there’s no way I’d want her. It’s a righteous excuse, that’s all, heh, don’t you start laughing at me. By the way, what does the Liu family’s eldest want?”

“Hm?”

“I’ve known her a long time. If she needs help, I’d help her. But she said she’d pay for my life with a great price — that’s not a small thing…”

Ning Yi nodded. Even in this state, Chen Fan kept his mind sharp. It was probably precisely because of such outstanding ability that Liu Xigua had been willing to pay such a high price to save him. Of course, Ning Yi wasn’t about to tell Chen Fan what Liu Xigua was really thinking. They chatted a bit more, then someone came to fetch him — Liu Xigua wanted to see him.

With everything that had happened today, it was time to get down to real business. Liu Xigua had made up her mind, and she’d already prepared her initial response. When he reached her study, the girl was sitting by the window, brow furrowed in thought. After a moment she said, “Bao Daoyi must die. Today’s situation wasn’t the moment to kill him, but from now on, there will be an opening.”

That, of course, was only sound reasoning. Even with the Overlord Blade Battalion at its most domineering, killing Bao Daoyi on the spot at Pingchang Street today would have been far too abrupt. But now it had developed into a confrontation between two factions, and if they could bring down the other side, that would finally give them proper justification. Ning Yi nodded. “Mm.” The girl turned her head. “But that’s not the most important matter right now. There’s something more important to think about first.”

This was the real business — she wanted to talk with Ning Yi about “revolution” and the like. Ning Yi pulled out a stack of drafts from inside his robe, and Liu Xigua said, “Tonight, I’m going to a poetry gathering.”

“Oh?”

The girl frowned. “The two poems you gave me are used up. I thought they were quite good — write me a few more good ones later. I feel I should have a few extra on hand. Oh, and weren’t there some others you’d written for me before that I thought weren’t useful at the time? I forget where I put them, but now I think they might be good too — could use them at the poetry gathering. Something about cicadas crying sadly, and a gate that flows without obstruction…”

The corner of Ning Yi’s mouth twitched. “‘The cicadas cry mournfully, facing the pavilion at dusk, as the sudden rain just clears. At the city gate we drink in parting, with no heart for it’?”

“Ah, that’s it, that’s it — write it down, write it down… it’s not about a gate ‘flowing without obstruction’? I thought those other ones you gave me before were good too, they suit me well — write them all down, we can use them tonight. You once said this one was for a woman whose husband had died, right? From now on, whenever I need to kill someone, I’ll send this poem to their family’s lady…”

“Er, the one for a dead husband is a different poem, it’s called ‘Sheng Sheng Man’…”

The two of them spent a rather shameless while in the room going over poetry together. Afterward, the girl tucked the paper full of poems into her robe as though it were a treasure, and quite matter-of-factly said, “These are mine now. You’re not allowed to write them again.” After Ning Yi nodded, she sat there, and a bright smile flickered briefly across her face — gone in an instant, almost like an illusion, but it was indeed the first time Ning Yi had ever seen such an expression on her face. A moment later she sat looking at him, took a deep breath, and after a while, lowered her head and raised it again.

“Now then… the real business.”

…

As the carriage rolled out of Xiliu Street, Ning Yi looked back at the compound belonging to the Overlord Blade Battalion behind him. Dusk had fallen, the sky darkening, and lights were coming on in every household.

Liu Xigua had finally made up her mind to reform how the Overlord Blade Battalion operated, all for the sake of some never-before-seen, supposedly better spirit and set of principles. As someone who saw herself as a shepherd of sorts, perhaps she had found what might be a better way to herd her flock. Ning Yi could be counted as the one who’d set it all in motion, but even he had no idea what the Overlord Blade Battalion would become in the future. Sooner or later, Hangzhou would fall to the imperial court’s forces — but as for what would become of the Overlord Blade Battalion, there was no way to think about that just yet.

In the drafts he’d given Liu Xigua, he had made his first exploratory forays — some right, some wrong — but broadly speaking, he hadn’t dealt with or interfered in the substantive issues. Principles of fairness, the spirit of contract, mutual oversight, the ultimate vision of separation of powers — what to do first about all this, she needed to figure out for herself. Ning Yi had no intention of laying all the correct answers out from the start. These past few days were still the incubation period of her ideas; what mattered was that she believe these ideas were entirely her own. Ning Yi would just play the role of the idle overseer.

After all, being an advisor was such an easy job.

Right now, he had something far more important and urgent to attend to. Leaving the Overlord Blade Battalion’s grounds behind, he made his way back to Pingchang Street. Because of the day’s fighting, the area was still in disarray, the lights dim. Ning Yi stopped the carriage at the corner of the street, crossed over on foot, then turned into a small alley. He looked around carefully, and just as he raised his hand to knock at a courtyard gate, the door opened.

The woman must have been leaning by the door for who knows how long. Hearing footsteps approach, she turned and opened the door. The two of them looked at each other for two seconds; Ning Yi glanced left and right, and the woman reached out and pulled him inside.

Suppressing the stirring in his chest, the two of them silently and swiftly shut the door, and the woman led him toward the room directly opposite. The courtyard was not large; the two rooms already had a faint glow of lamplight, and beneath the eaves stood another familiar, petite figure. They entered the room, and Ning Yi closed the door behind him. The woman turned around and embraced him. She clenched her teeth, her face streaked with tears, but she made no sound.

Ning Yi took a breath and held the woman close. As he closed his eyes, warmth filled his heart. He had always known the resilience and strength within her character — though in ordinary times that resilience blended into the qualities of a gentle, quiet wife of this era, when truly tested, those qualities would surface, producing acts both astonishing and deeply touching.

Back then, they had made their way from Hangzhou to Huzhou, surviving against all odds to finally find some peace. Yet now, nearly three months after Ning Yi had been taken prisoner, Su Tan’er had actually made her way back into this heavily guarded city of Hangzhou, bringing with her the maid Juan’er and a few others. She had always had this kind of ability, but Wenren Bu’er’s side had received no word of it, and the Overlord Blade Battalion had noticed nothing amiss either — which meant she had somehow deceived heaven itself, avoiding every watching eye around her at the same time. That, even Ning Yi had to admit, was truly astonishing.

Leaning against the door, thinking of all this, he felt Su Tan’er — tall to begin with, now standing slightly on tiptoe — hold him and weep quietly. The crying didn’t feel like a lamb thrown into a tiger’s den, in deep water and scorching fire; it felt more like the ache of a long ordeal finally giving way to sweetness after bitterness. Their two bodies pressed together, and Ning Yi wrapped his arm around her waist, feeling the slight swell of her belly. A realization dawned on him: that’s right, she was pregnant… a pregnant woman truly is the most formidable and fearsome thing there is.

In any case, that assessment applied only to her capabilities. Right now, Su Tan’er seemed only like a sheep returned home, quietly pressed against him. Ning Yi drew her into his arms, sat down on a stool in the room, and let his wife sit on his lap. The two of them held each other in the dark room a while longer before Ning Yi finally spoke, his tone gentle, as if making idle conversation.

“How did you make it here?”