This clash between the Overlord Blade Battalion and Bao Daoyi ended up dragging on through the better part of the night across the city. The Overlord Blade Battalion burned down the White Deer Temple, and over a hundred women of every sort were rescued — though the matter wasn’t publicized for long, it counted as a solid, decisive slap in Bao Daoyi’s face.
That night, after the Overlord Blade Battalion withdrew back to Xiliu Street, Bao Daoyi mobilized a force of no fewer than five thousand men to surround Xiliu Street completely, sealing it off tight. But the Overlord Blade Battalion had prepared well in advance — barricades, spiked barriers, swordsmen, archers — the whole street already bristled with the posture of an army ready for all-out battle. Eight hundred elite fighters, together with the household members of the Overlord Blade Battalion, were enough to make Bao Daoyi wary of overplaying his hand, and he never dared launch a real assault.
Women — or rather, women who refused to play by the rules — had their advantages fully exploited here. It was said in the martial world that the barefoot man fears nothing from the man in shoes; Bao Daoyi himself had once been the barefoot sort, but lately he’d come up in the world. Stepping back, even in his barefoot days, a woman like Liu Xigua would have been the most troublesome opponent imaginable. She wasn’t entirely without attachments — everyone at the top of Fang La’s ranks understood she genuinely valued the people under her within the Overlord Blade Battalion — but it was precisely because of this that, once someone provoked her, she was willing to go all in without holding back. This, perhaps, traced back to the teachings of her father, Liu the Great Blade, back in the day: that there was no happiness to be found in yielding ground, and that in this line of work, no matter the circumstances, one could only ever fight to the death. Liu Xigua was ordinarily sharp-witted, but on this particular point, she was rather single-minded — whatever her father had told her, she had taken to heart.
In the past, the Overlord Blade Battalion had largely kept to itself and avoided trouble; though they’d had a handful of scattered clashes with those around them, even in an affair like the one with Qi Yuankang before, everyone had understood what she was really after. Only this time did Bao Daoyi feel he’d truly run into terrible luck — this sort of thing, killing, burning, and violating women along the way, was hardly the first time he’d done it on this road; why would she suddenly wade into this particular affair?
For over an hour, several thousand men made a great show of surrounding Xiliu Street, all thunder and no rain, exchanging blows several times in what amounted to feigned attacks for show. Bao Daoyi, in the end, was still capable of reason — his men were, indeed, a mixed bag, but he did have real elite fighters among them, and with such vast numbers behind him, if he’d genuinely thrown them onto the battlefield, the Overlord Blade Battalion would have stood no real chance. But taking things this far would have thrown all of Hangzhou into chaos. Yet having been slapped in the face to this degree, Bao Daoyi couldn’t simply swallow the humiliation either. Less than half an hour into the siege, his most elite men had already slipped into Xiliu Street, and several brief but fierce skirmishes broke out in quick succession.
The Overlord Blade Battalion’s reputation had originally been made in the martial underworld, and by now they were essentially a force where every last member could fight. Those who managed to slip in this time were likewise established masters of the martial world. Their targets were key figures within the Overlord Blade Battalion like Liu Tiannan — coordinated assassination strikes, hit and immediately withdraw.
Perhaps because the reputation of the Overlord Blade Battalion loomed so large within the martial world, even Bao Daoyi’s own martial artists had set aside their usual arrogance — over a dozen would move and strike together, and retreat at once if the first blow failed to land. For a while, the Overlord Blade Battalion’s forces found themselves massed at the perimeter, unable to concentrate their strength, and over the course of nearly an hour, these intruders managed to stir Xiliu Street into real turmoil. Liu Tiannan and Du Sha joined forces in pursuit, but the exchanges went back and forth with no clear advantage either way, and two fires broke out along Xiliu Street.
“Like this when we left, and like this again now that we’re back… it does rather resemble the way things were back at Taiping Lane, doesn’t it.”
Voices rose in a clamorous din. The stretch of Xiliu Street — or at least the portion held by the Overlord Blade Battalion — was, in fact, far larger than Taiping Lane had been; the presence of several thousand besiegers carried from a distance, torchlight staining the far reaches of the sky red above the street, shouts, curses, and restless movement filling the air, figures dashing past the courtyard from time to time, calling out to one another. Three months ago, the rebel army had laid siege to the whole of Hangzhou; now, the enemy had encircled a single street instead — but even with the enemy’s presence so clearly felt now, the tension it brought didn’t weigh nearly as heavily as it had three months before, perhaps because everyone had, by now, come to understand just how formidable the Overlord Blade Battalion truly was. Amid the restless glow of the fires, the courtyard here felt, by contrast, all the quieter; the light fell across the surrounding walls, illuminating the paulownia trees that had already shed their leaves, and overhead, the night sky held a fine, clear moon.
Ning Yi and Su Tan’er had been back in the small courtyard for a while now. The plans they had made earlier had all been overturned; as for what would come next, both husband and wife carried feelings in their hearts too complicated to put easily into words. Looking back on their earlier life in Jiangning, Su Tan’er, now four months pregnant, had been swept up into all this — for a long stretch of time to come, she would likely be trapped within this rebel band, unable to break free. Still… at least they were together now.
Compared to the uneasy dread of Hangzhou’s earlier siege, the people here on Xiliu Street now, at least, still bore genuine goodwill. Having gone to watch the whole first clash between the Overlord Blade Battalion and Bao Daoyi play out, by the time they’d returned to Xiliu Street, the whole street was already in a state of battle readiness. Liu Xigua’s earlier talk of “throwing a welcome feast for sister-in-law” obviously had to be shelved, but plenty of visitors still trickled in throughout the evening — mostly the usual crowd of neighborly women who liked to drop by and chat, curious to come see Ning Yi’s wife now that word had spread she’d arrived.
At first they came by seemingly just for a casual visit, but as tension mounted along Xiliu Street, these same women, one after another, ended up strapping on blades and spears. Fang Shuchang, Ji Qian’er, and others also came by to check in a few times; Ning Yi understood well enough that they were worried this side might get caught up in the fighting, or worried Su Tan’er might be frightened, and had come specifically to keep an eye on things.
Even having come up through the dangers and violence of war together, these people still carried, toward their own, an enduring warmth and simple decency. Since they’d come, Ning Yi didn’t stand on ceremony, and had a few of them help move things around, rearranging the rooms of the small courtyard. The courtyard itself wasn’t large; the household guards who’d come along with Su Tan’er this time would need to stay next door at the academy — aside from his wife and the maid Juan’er, only Lu Hongti could be accommodated here. With tension mounting just outside, the small courtyard, bustling with the moving of beds and cabinets, gave off a strangely lively, almost amusing atmosphere.
Rearranging a few rooms didn’t take long. Ning Yi had Xiao Chan and Juan’er go prepare some food as a welcome. Now and then, someone would come by with news of the fighting outside — that Liu Tiannan had killed two assassins with his bare hands, or that so-and-so had been badly wounded — people hurrying to and fro. The courtyard, though lively, held few who could truly relax; even with hearts burning with anxiety, there was nothing more to be done about it now. Most of those who came by were women, with a few children tagging along — partly out of concern for Ning Yi’s safety, and partly because this courtyard was already close to the Overlord Blade Battalion’s main residence, where the largest gathering of people now was; being together, in numbers, was itself a kind of strength.
The standoff outside lasted just over an hour, and the one who finally came out to mediate was Fang La himself, rushing from the palace. The band of masters Bao Daoyi had sent had already fought their way back out of Xiliu Street by then; as far as this particular exchange went, neither side had come out clearly ahead. What the negotiations elsewhere would ultimately produce remained unknown, but as the situation gradually settled, the sounds of aftermath cleanup began drifting through the streets and alleys. The small courtyard grew quiet; outside, torches still flickered past now and then, along with the occasional murmur of voices and shuffling footsteps, and finally the husband and wife found some space to themselves.
“Better here than Taiping Lane — the people are decent enough to get along with. Looks like we’ll really be settling in here for a while now…”
Standing beneath the eaves, taking in the sounds outside, Ning Yi held his wife’s hand, feeling a touch of wistfulness. Su Tan’er’s pregnancy was only four months along; her belly had begun to swell just slightly, though wrapped in her dark winter robes, it wasn’t yet very noticeable. She squeezed Ning Yi’s hand and smiled.
“During that stretch in Huzhou, I kept wondering how you were doing now, husband. Looking back, we’re not really important people at all — back in Jiangning, husband, you were a tutor, telling stories, playing chess, and I was thinking about small matters of household business, taking each day as it came. It was just one trip to Hangzhou — why should it have dragged us into all this? Thinking about it now, it all feels like some kind of dream, and yet when I woke from it, I was still alone in Huzhou…”
She swayed Ning Yi’s hand back and forth, seeming to take everything in front of her in stride, though some feelings were simply too private to voice; even as she spoke, a faint blush rose to her cheeks. “You probably don’t know what it felt like back then, husband. But this time, when I decided to come, though it was somewhat impulsive, I did think it through carefully before setting out. I thought over a great many things, but in the end, I still had to come… and as it turns out, this has already become a very good outcome.”
Having said this, she looked at Ning Yi, and after a moment, took a deep breath, lifted her head, and, recovering something of her usual poised, commanding air, turned the arm resting against Ning Yi’s — and from her palm, revealed something. Ning Yi looked down: it was a dagger in a silver sheath.
The two of them stood there beneath the eaves; there were, after all, still others around who might see. Su Tan’er looked at Ning Yi without saying anything more. Ning Yi took the dagger, and after a moment, a faint smile broke across his face, though a hundred different feelings churned beneath it. Su Tan’er’s temperament had always resembled his own in certain ways — but however composed, however calm she might usually be, this woman who had now become his wife was, in the end, still only a girl of nineteen; her loves and her hatreds ran equally deep.
After a long silence, Ning Yi finally said, “Don’t worry.” He said nothing more. In the room not far off, Lu Hongti was studying a kind of grinding mill and windmill contraption; Xiao Chan and Juan’er were whispering together in the kitchen, catching up on old times, no doubt — Juan’er would occasionally poke her head out to glance this way, then turn back nervously to say something to Xiao Chan, who frowned and shook her head. After a while, Liu Tiannan knocked at the courtyard gate, coming by to check on how things stood with Ning Yi. A bit later, Chen Fan came to look in as well — he’d accompanied Liu Xigua to see Fang La, and the standoff outside must have dispersed by now. Recounting the meeting with Fang La, he shrugged.
“Once the boss himself stepped in, what else could happen — today, everyone just had to go their separate ways and lick their wounds. But as for the mediation itself, it didn’t accomplish a damn thing — Bao Daoyi’s gone half mad, and that ‘Great Blade’ girl of his has lost her mind too. One of them’s threatening to poison the water supply in the Overlord Blade Battalion and kill everyone; the other one just started hacking away wildly with her blade — who knows if she was putting it on or if she really meant it. Even after His Holiness took her blade away, she kept charging forward anyway — if General Li hadn’t been there too, we might’ve gotten to see her little tantrum in full swing tonight all over again.”
“How’d it get to this point?” Ning Yi laughed. “Was she putting on an act?”
Chen Fan grinned. “Someone called her ‘big watermelon’ about a hundred times in a row and she just about lost it — who knows if it was real or not, doesn’t really matter either way… Oh, and it’s getting late — you and sister-in-law should get some rest soon. The welcome feast and all that will just have to wait until tomorrow.”
It was, indeed, growing late, though settling down to rest right away was obviously still out of the question. Ning Yi spent a while discussing the state of the Overlord Blade Battalion with Lu Hongti, while Su Tan’er caught up at length with Xiao Chan, whom she hadn’t seen in so long. As the night deepened further, when this small, newly reunited family finally gathered together in the room, Xiao Chan, before a specially lit pair of red candles, offered tea to Su Tan’er. Ning Yi had never much cared for the custom of kneeling and bowing within a household, but Xiao Chan seemed genuinely to enjoy it — she and Su Tan’er had always been close as sisters. Given the late hour, everyone taking part in this simple little ceremony kept their voices soft and low; Xiao Chan, who had originally called her “elder sister,” then tried “Sister Tan’er,” feeling that sounded a touch more natural, before standing back up and reverting to “young mistress” — awkwardly switching back and forth like this. Juan’er was the sole witness to the entire ceremony.
After the concubine-taking ceremony, Xiao Chan had finally become… wife, in a sense, to the young mistress she had so long adored and served.
That night, Xiao Chan and Su Tan’er slept together, while Ning Yi kept a solitary bed to himself. Thinking of the mischievous irony in that, he couldn’t help but find it a little funny.
Waking in the middle of the night, he found torches still making their rounds through the alleys of Xiliu Street outside; moonlight poured down as though meaning to turn everything to daylight, its glow spilling in through the window, illuminating every object in the room with perfect clarity. As he picked up a teacup for a drink of water, he remembered that this particular cup had been a gift from Lou Shuwan not long ago — the brief recollection left him momentarily distracted, but he pushed the thought aside again soon enough…
So much had happened — from the earthquake three months ago, to the rebel army’s later siege of the city, the flight afterward, the fight for a sliver of a chance at survival, being captured, and everything that had unfolded since — and now, on top of it all, the court’s great army was bearing down as well, the atmosphere thick with the tension of a coming storm, swords drawn and bows bent, inside and outside Hangzhou alike. The great tide formed by all these countless converging lives would, in time, likely become part of history itself. Tan’er had come back to him here now, unable to leave — but the problem, in the end, probably wasn’t so serious anymore. Whatever pieces could still be moved had already been set into motion; all that remained now was to wait for the results. Beyond simply getting by, day to day, within the Overlord Blade Battalion, there probably wasn’t much left that truly required his active involvement.
Standing by the window that night, in that brief span of quiet reflection, this was what he thought to himself…