By the time he stepped out of the alley, the sky wasn’t too late yet, but it was time for him to head back. Su Tan’er walked with him to the corner of the street.

Far off on a rooftop, Lu Hongti stood in the darkness, watching that retreating figure grow smaller.

If it were true that the man was already living comfortably in Jiangning, then dragging him off to suffer in Lüliang would be a rather unkind thing to do. But survival came first as a principle — seeing a capable person and using coercion, temptation, or scheming to bring them into the fold in order to strengthen one’s own side was common enough among the various rebel or bandit factions of the present day, be it Fang La here, Song Jiang of Liangshan, Tian Hu in Hebei, or Wang Qing in Huaixi — all of them had done such things. The stronghold in the Lüliang Mountains had originally been too small, but at this point, it had reached the stage where expansion was worth considering.

Even so, when Lu Hongti had left Lüliang, she hadn’t seriously weighed the feasibility of such a thing. By nature, when it came to those who showed her goodwill, she still leaned toward honesty and openness. Life in Lüliang was better now than before, but compared to Jiangning, it was still just a poor, hardscrabble mountain hollow, barely scraping by. Dragging someone there against their will would be doing them real harm — too much to ask. Still, before she’d come down the mountain, Grandfather Liang had said some things to her, some direct, some roundabout, and she understood what he meant well enough — though she wouldn’t admit it outwardly, there were times, in the depths of night, when the thought would surface, deliberately or not.

“…Here in the Lüliang Mountains, everyone has a hard time of it. Your master passed away early, and you have no family of your own, and with the stronghold to look after, so many things have been put off, time and again…”

“…You’ve been clever since you were young, you followed your master and saw something of the world, so your standards are high. These past years there haven’t been any good families nearby — I know you look down on them — like when the neighboring strongholds came to propose marriage, you turned them all away… They’re not really good matches, that’s true. But a woman needs a man to protect her through life, no matter how skilled she is in martial arts, that’s still true.”

“…Originally, I thought, well, you’re getting on in years, you should just settle for someone. But this time you’re going down the mountain, there’s something I want to ask your thoughts on, and I want you to consider it yourself… these past few years, up in the mountains and down, there haven’t been many men who’ve earned your praise — only that scholar surnamed Ning. I can tell — even though he seems to lack sense in a lot of ways, you still respect him quite a bit. You… are you…”

Grandfather Liang always grew a little hesitant when it came to this topic, but his meaning was clear enough. You’re getting on in years, you need to find yourself a man — even though he’s already married on that side, he only married in as a matrilocal son-in-law, so if he too were willing to come to Lüliang, breaking with his household, why shouldn’t you marry him? At the time, hearing these words, she had only blushed and hadn’t argued back, though she hadn’t necessarily taken them to heart either — on the road, thinking back on it, it had only seemed rather absurd, and in a fluster she’d pushed the thought deep down into the recesses of her mind. But as the journey south went on, as time passed, what most flustered her was how these thoughts, like weeds’ seeds, had settled and even begun to take root and sprout — every time she thought of it, her face would flush red, and she’d hurriedly try to gather herself up again.

Or… perhaps it wasn’t entirely impossible. She was, in fact, one or two years older than Ning Yi — most women reaching this age would already be considered, by common talk, past marrying age. And a woman living the life of the martial world truly had trouble finding a place to settle down — in her youth she’d already been moving through blades and spears, mountains of corpses and seas of blood, and before she knew it, the years had slipped by. Her master, too, had died unmarried, and perhaps she herself had simply followed in her master’s example. But honestly, as a woman, that longing to have a husband of her own — she had it too. Thinking on it now, perhaps her master had felt the same, only life had left her too breathless to pursue it, and she’d never met anyone who moved her heart, so those feelings had simply been buried.

Up in Lüliang, the nearby strongholds had proposed marriage to her a few times too. Her own men didn’t dare bring it up, but there had been indirect hints. She had turned them all down — she was, after all, a female chief of her own stronghold; did she really need to find herself another chief? Someone from within her own stronghold — well, there might be one or two she could imagine settling for — but in the end, she’d never agreed to any of them. If Ning Liheng were to leave his household and come settle in Lüliang, she thought she could marry him — after all, she was already older, wasn’t she? And fortunately, all these years moving through blade and sword, her face hadn’t been scarred or ruined — she still looked presentable. If he were willing, she could give herself to him.

The thought was a little sudden, enough to make her blush, but for her, over the course of the journey, it had mostly remained a calm undercurrent. It was only after seeing Su Tan’er’s situation in Huzhou that some of her thinking began to shift. By the time she reached Hangzhou, she understood in her heart that certain possibilities no longer existed.

Regardless, these thoughts had, at least, passed through her mind. Now, standing on the rooftop watching Ning Yi’s figure recede into the distance, as she slowly let it go, the ripples of those lingering thoughts spread out like a leaf falling onto still water, stirring faint, wistful circles across the surface of the new lake. Forget it, don’t think about it anymore. It’s not as though no one else would have her, and she didn’t necessarily need to marry at all. She’d protect him here in Hangzhou a while longer, discuss things with him as thoroughly as she could, note down his thoughts, and once back in Lüliang, focus wholeheartedly on working out that five-year plan of theirs. As long as the people in the stronghold lived well, she’d… be happy enough, wouldn’t she…

…

Over the following two days, Ning Yi found himself growing busy.

As for the democratic ideals of equality among all people, and how to establish and institutionalize them — that remained still in its incubation stage, requiring only that he keep answering Liu Xigua’s questions as she mulled it over. But the more practical work — Liu Xigua had thrown the preliminary preparations for dealing with Bao Daoyi onto his shoulders. In this, Chen Fan and Liu Tiannan and the others alike trusted that Ning Yi had the talent for such matters, and for his part, Ning Yi, at this juncture, was more than willing to see the Overlord Blade Battalion and Bao Daoyi actually come to blows.

Now established in Hangzhou, both the Overlord Blade Battalion and Bao Daoyi’s faction counted among the major powers within the rebel forces. A rebel army was not like an imperial court — at this stage, everyone within it knew one another, and personal relationships mattered more than principle. Any move that threatened to break the internal balance of power would draw plenty of people out to urge restraint, so preparation on two fronts was necessary before making a move.

First, everyone needed to understand that there was genuinely no room left for reconciliation between him and Bao Daoyi — it had to be one or the other, kill or be killed. Only once that atmosphere had been built up to a certain point would people truly accept what was coming. If, the very day the break happened, they simply went and cut the man down without a word, without consulting anyone above them — that would be unthinkable to those higher up. Killing a major figure like that, without rhyme or reason, without consensus — that wasn’t a private feud anymore, that would look like open rebellion, a bid for power.

This part was simple enough to arrange — just leave it to Liu Tiannan, Du Sha, and the others to keep picking fights and finding fault. The second point was the truly critical one: you might be able to accept that Bao Daoyi has to die, but you can’t let the city fall into chaos after he’s gone — someone needs to be ready to take over his businesses, someone needs to fill the gap in his territory, and his men need to be pacified. Only by satisfying this second condition could Liu Xigua, after eliminating Bao Daoyi, avoid triggering too great a backlash — and only then would she likely be willing to actually go through with it. This, therefore, was the most practical and pressing task of all.

Investigating the state of Bao Daoyi’s men, the various businesses under his control, all the different powers in his hands, large and small — every single one needed a plan in place for who would take it over. Investigating how many of his subordinates could be divided and won over, how many were diehard loyalists, how many could be persuaded and how many would need to be controlled by force. Every item needed a contingency plan — these plans didn’t all need to work perfectly, but the effective portion had to reach a certain threshold to ensure the situation wouldn’t collapse afterward, and to make people feel that the Overlord Blade Battalion, after eliminating Bao Daoyi, wouldn’t cause too much upheaval. That way, the various factions weighing the situation around them would only need to consider their own feelings toward Bao Daoyi.

In the past, handling a matter like this would have meant, at most, a few sweeping orders passed down from above, with the actual outcome left largely uncontrollable. But this time, what emerged within the Overlord Blade Battalion turned out to be something genuinely different. Within half a day of receiving Liu Xigua’s assignment, Ning Yi had already assembled a strategic team from various people within the Battalion, and every task — how to go about it, how to divide it up, how much information needed to be gathered, and so on — was already being organized systematically.

This sort of work didn’t require men of Liu Tiannan or Du Sha’s caliber — it only needed the Battalion’s own well-informed gossips and information gatherers to collect the details. As for Bao Daoyi’s affairs, the Overlord Blade Battalion already had a fair amount of knowledge; whatever remained unclear, people were sent out to ask around, and results would come back the same day — none of it was any great secret. Things like who managed the salt trade, who managed weapons, who was in charge of collecting protection money and overseeing a band of thugs — every piece of information related to stability began to be gathered and filed, and then people with relevant connections nearby were considered as potential replacements to step in and stabilize things afterward. Where there were ideas, plans were drawn up; where there were problems, they were raised immediately for discussion.

The group of women rescued from the Old Paulownia Temple were merely from the bottom rung of society, and making an issue out of them wouldn’t accomplish much — stirring up public sentiment through them had only limited value. But the group of children at the academy held considerable leverage, as their families were mid-level figures within Fang La’s camp — some close to the Overlord Blade Battalion, some more distant. But within the very first day, Ning Yi had already sorted through them, drafted letters, and sent people to make contact with these families, with a message simple enough: your child has had a falling-out with Bao Daoyi; we don’t need much from you, only that if the day comes when the two sides openly break, we hope you’ll stand with us, in exchange for taking over some of Bao Daoyi’s territory…

One small matter after another, organized and filed away — and once the sheer volume reached a certain point, the scale of the whole operation became genuinely formidable.

An assembly-line model, a mechanized process — this was the first time since Ning Yi had come to the Wu Dynasty that he had truly exerted his talents on a practical matter of strategic maneuvering. Especially after arriving in Hangzhou, where circumstances had outmatched him and left his abilities with nowhere to be applied, only now had he finally found the opportunity to pull the great lever in his hands and begin stirring up the wind and rain.

This Wu Dynasty was not lacking in clerks capable of managing vast accounts in perfect order, nor was it short on practical-minded officials handling countless affairs at once. And yet, to break down a problem as intricate as a “seizure of power” to this degree of detail, organizing a dozen, dozens, even up to a hundred people underneath him, each finding their own task to do, achieving this level of efficiency across so many parallel lines at once — there was likely no one else who could manage it. In this regard, neither Liu Xigua nor Liu Tiannan, nor even the practically minded Qin Siyuan far off in the capital, could likely handle more than one thread, or a handful, as their focus at any given time — the rest would simply have to be set aside.

Like a spider, he had begun spinning threads within the Overlord Blade Battalion, and through connection after connection between person and person, the web rapidly expanded outward. Within just a few days, across the entire city of Hangzhou, a vast net had been woven, continuing to spread ever wider…