Though Chen Fan had kindly passed along word that Fang Qifo wished to see him, since the imperial army resumed its assault on the city that very afternoon, the matter had no further follow-up.
Tong Guan’s siege of Hangzhou, in dealing with Fang La’s uprising, was the greatest challenge currently facing the newly established Yongle Dynasty. If they could get past this, everything afterward would have some foundation to build on; if they couldn’t clear this hurdle, everything else was mere illusion. With Fang Qifo and the others racking their brains over this very matter, Ning Yi found it somewhat surprising that his name had suddenly come up, though it was surely nothing of great significance. At such a critical juncture, if Fang Qifo had genuinely seen him, a small fish like himself, as some kind of problem, he likely would already have no way out—it was probably just that his name had come up in passing while discussing Liu Xigua, and Chen Fan had simply remembered to mention it.
After the first ten days of October had passed, the weather grew steadily colder. Ning Yi’s assessment matched that of Chen Fan and Fang Qifo—the city likely couldn’t be taken for the time being, but Tong Guan surely wouldn’t give up easily, and the several assaults organized before the snow fell had all been extremely fierce. Twice, it was said, spies within the city had provided support, allowing imperial soldiers to suddenly break through into the city—but each time, the wall was retaken before long.
In both of these engagements, the two vanguard forces that had broken into the city ended up cut off from communication, fighting a desperate battle until nearly wiped out, though a small number of soldiers managed to scatter and blend into various parts of the city. Most of these, however, were eventually ferreted out. Hangzhou at this point was quite different from what it had been four months earlier—back then, with ordinary residents, merchants, wealthy gentry, and officials still in the city and the rule of law still intact, when Fang La’s elite forces had broken in, ferreting out enemy soldiers had actually been somewhat constrained. But now, with so many rebel forces mixed throughout the city, it had truly become a vast sea of a people’s war—soldiers searched without restraint, residents feared trouble, and once an infiltrating soldier was discovered, he could expect no good end.
Ning Yi didn’t know whether Wenren Buer had had any part in these matters. Ever since the Overlord Blade Camp’s open break with Bao Daoyi, he’d had little contact with Wenren Buer—during that period, small-scale clashes and even vendetta killings between the two sides had grown white-hot, and even for Ning Yi to leave Xiliu Street, he needed a group of people accompanying him to ensure his safety. Later, once things shifted into full wartime status, he left Xiliu Street even less often.
Whatever Wenren Buer was doing now, Ning Yi could no longer participate in it, nor was it wise for him to keep trying. With Fang Qifo, Wang Yin, and the others all back, he was now nothing more than a strategist-in-residence for the Overlord Blade Camp—having already stirred up plenty of trouble, continuing to meddle would genuinely be courting death. Hangzhou at this time was hardly a society governed by rule of law; once people truly grew wary of you, killing you required no evidence at all.
Wenlie Academy no longer held formal classes at this point, but the teachers and students remained. Besides organizing that group of literati to discuss the details of capital operations and social mechanisms he’d described, producing essay after essay of far-fetched reasoning dressed up in flowery prose, he was also organizing all sorts of activities for the students still willing to attend. Most basically, he had these students help treat the wounded near the city walls, teaching them basic first-aid techniques; he also began exploring various skills related to field marching, survival, setting traps, and even planting crops and construction.
These students had mostly come from farming backgrounds, and many already had considerable ability to survive—even to kill—out in the wild; their family elders were, after all, military officers, and various battlefield or wilderness techniques had often been passed down privately within their families. What Ning Yi did was have them pool these techniques together and share them with one another, recording everything himself, and as the weather grew colder, he organized round after round of simulated drills for the students. For these youths, all of this proved to be quite an interesting affair.
Chen Fan and An Xifu often came by. Though the two had had some disagreements back when they’d moved against Bao Daoyi, their private friendship remained strong. Regarding Ning Yi’s training of these students, Chen Fan felt somewhat put out in certain respects. “This attitude of yours makes it seem like you think we can’t hold Hangzhou.”
“It’s not that we can’t hold it, but we still have to prepare for the worst outcome. Besides, even if we do manage to hold it, that will only be the beginning of what comes next.”
“That’s more like it. Don’t worry, with me around, the city won’t fall.” Chen Fan always said this, though once, after a pause, he added, “Hey, if the city really does fall, what do you plan to do?”
“I’ll have to find some way to send my wife back home. As for me, I’ll deal with that when it comes…”
“…Fair enough, that makes sense.”
Chen Fan smiled and patted Ning Yi’s shoulder.
So each time he came, he’d teach the group of young men blade techniques and boxing—not for show, but by having them spar directly, bare-handed or with blunt weapons. With him supervising, nothing too serious ever happened, though every time, the academy ended up looking like a chaotic battlefield, with the children ending up bruised and battered, then serving as practice subjects for each other’s bandaging.
After the fighting began, security within the city no longer required An Xifu’s attention, as the Black Feather Guard had instead taken up duty on the walls as military police. Compared to Chen Fan’s warmth, An Xifu maintained his usual detached coolness—perhaps a mood cultivated from frequently having to kill his own people—but paired with his famously handsome face, he remained extremely popular among the city’s unmarried women and even married ones. He’d already learned in vague terms, through Chen Fan, of what the Overlord Blade Camp was up to, and the two were said to have debated and argued over it more than once.
Toward the Overlord Blade Camp’s ideal of establishing a great harmonious society through elections, An Xifu held a pessimistic view, though he still often came by to watch, teaching the group of children various small survival and life-saving bandaging techniques, and sometimes speaking about matters of farming. According to Chen Fan, this man was quite skilled at farm work, throwing himself into it wholeheartedly when it came time to transplant rice seedlings or bring in the harvest.
“When I was young, my family was fairly well-off. My father was a pig butcher, and my mother was very beautiful—known as a great beauty for miles around, well-read and refined,” An Xifu once explained roughly about his own background, when everyone was sitting together eating hotpot. “My grandfather’s family had originally produced a scholar, but he was in poor health and died young, so the family fortunes had already declined. My father had money, so he was able to marry my mother. Everyone said it was a flower planted in cow dung, but my father was actually quite decent—good-tempered, easygoing. The family had been poor before, but things gradually improved, and after I was born, he gave me this name, meaning that one should cherish one’s fortune.”
“Later, my mother caught the county magistrate’s eye. My father got dragged into a lawsuit and was beaten with a rod at the county office; my mother gave up nearly everything the family owned, even pawning off land to search everywhere for doctors. When my father died, he said that a person ought to know their place—the family had fallen on hard times, but slowly, things would rise again; one ought to cherish one’s fortune and not act recklessly… But after my mother died, there wasn’t much fortune left to cherish, and then… well, of course that magistrate died too, heh heh…”
Perhaps because so much time had passed, when he spoke of such things he didn’t dress them up with much embellishment, simply laying them out plainly, his expression rather indifferent throughout—though when he finally laughed at the end, there was a faint warmth to it, forming an indescribable contrast. Everyone could only laugh along with him awkwardly; in truth, unless one had suffered to the utmost extreme, who would willingly risk their life like this? In Hangzhou as it stood now, people with pasts like his were hardly rare.
As winter settled in, one of everyone’s best pastimes was naturally gathering together to eat hotpot and chat. Sometimes a table would be set up in the study of the main residence too, with Liu Xigua joining in, accompanied by Ning Yi, Liu Tiannan, Du Sha, and others, eating and chatting a bit as they went. Gathering with Chen Fan and the others made for a much livelier time, with people like Fang Shuchang often coming to join in as well. Most of the time, though, was still spent at home with his wife and Xiao Chan—Lu Hongti, too, now counted as one of their own, sitting with them playing five-in-a-row and chatting idly.
Su Tan’er’s pregnancy had already passed the four-month mark; although not yet to the point of hindering her walking, she generally kept to moving around near the small courtyard. Worried she might grow bored, Ning Yi had her occasionally help bind together various essays, or organize the wilderness survival and medical materials the children had gathered and compiled. Su Tan’er, coming from a merchant background after all, was quite sensitive to the principles of production relations and capital operations woven into these essays, and would occasionally discuss a few points with Ning Yi.
Still, for her part, she probably felt these principles were rather simple matters at heart—her own husband… trying to explain the way of commerce through the words of the sages, was he hoping to become some great merchant in the mold of Tao Zhu or Fan Li, wanting to pass down the way of commerce to later generations? Though no one had really done such a thing before, it did strike her as a bit odd.
The way of merchants, after all, had never been considered a refined or dignified subject—though these principles could be used to explain certain relationships between people, still… it was rather like collecting ten thousand courtesans’ foot-binding cloths; however difficult a feat that might be, if someone actually did it, people would only find it tedious, even perverse. By contrast, the wilderness survival techniques struck her as genuinely valuable.
Su Tan’er, being all too familiar with the ways of commerce, had considerable insight into human nature, but for that very reason wasn’t entirely sure how useful this kind of analysis of human nature really was—after all, “isn’t it all plainly obvious anyway?” Lu Hongti, on the other hand, being likewise a leader of a mountain stronghold, was rather more attuned to the many matters unfolding within the Overlord Blade Camp, especially those earlier elections that had seemed, on the surface, so pointless.
“What exactly are you trying to do here?”
“Implementing a system of democracy.”
Having been asked directly, Ning Yi answered candidly enough, without much concern, throwing in various modern terms to dazzle her. Of course, much of the deeper substance went over her head, but she could naturally grasp the simpler mechanics, and Ning Yi kept his explanation quite simple as well. “Within a mountain stronghold, it’s hard to see much use in it. But suppose an entire nation were run this way… would you all still need to take to the mountains? Anyway, don’t think too much about it for now—over in Lüliang, there’s no need to consider this yet.”
Compared to the turbulent upheaval of autumn, when countless matters had all come crashing together at once, this winter felt as though time itself had frozen along with the sudden drop in temperature. Day followed day; outside the city, the sounds of war still rumbled on, and Su Tan’er and Xiao Chan had secretly prepared themselves for the possibility the city might fall—but in the end, the city was never breached. In these wartime days, all the relationships within the Overlord Blade Camp took on a remarkable simplicity, free of unnecessary social obligations or hollow pleasantries.
By day, teaching the children, exchanging greetings with familiar faces; by night, the courtyard lit with warm, amber lamplight, laughing and chatting with his wife, with Xiao Chan, with Juan’er and the others, listening to the distant sounds carried in from beyond the city walls. The moonlight brightened and dimmed in the sky above; the phoenix tree outside the window, stripped bare of its leaves, stood quietly unmoved by wind or rain. At times, it struck him, almost dreamlike, that these days felt even more like a hidden paradise beyond the world than his time back in Jiangning ever had.
Day after day passed in this abstract sort of work. In early November, the first snow fell, and outside the city Tong Guan finally called off his attempts to take Hangzhou; the whole city grew ever more still and quiet. Perhaps not until after next spring would there be much more to do—Ning Yi had already come to expect as much, and had made certain plans accordingly for what would follow. Yet on the eighth day of the eleventh month, in what might well count as the final unexpected turn of this whole stay in Hangzhou, something came looking for him all the same, quite without warning.
As if arranged by some hidden hand with a beginning and an end already fixed, it was on this very day that he finally killed Bao Daoyi.