Night had not fallen long ago; from the window, scattered lights could be seen dotting the courtyard. Ning Yi leaned against one end of the bed, massaging his wife’s calves while catching up with her on recent events after their half-month apart.
Of course, no matter what mood he’d been in, calling another woman “cute” in front of his own wife was hardly a romantic thing to say. Su Tan’er laughed for a while before saying quietly, “Husband finds her cute — you’re not thinking of taking Miss Lu into the household, are you?”
“Could you handle her?”
Su Tan’er pursed her lips, looking at Ning Yi. “I can’t handle that Miss Liu either.”
These were, of course, just jokes, but talking privately about others could only go so far. Su Tan’er curled up one leg, looking at her husband massaging her with a certain contentment. “Lately, Xing’er hasn’t really been in good spirits.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Those people who pretended to be her parents before… she’d really believed it, after all, there was some feeling there.”
“They were only driven off, but their situation probably isn’t good either… comfort her more. Have Chan’er and Juan’er talk to her.”
“Mm.”
“Or should we find her a husband’s family?”
“That little thing has high standards — no one at home has caught her eye.”
“Is it that no one has caught her eye, or that no one’s noticed her?”
“Of course she’s the one who hasn’t noticed anyone — otherwise the nephew of the steward from the third branch, called He Yu, or the accountant Gu’s son, or the second son of the accountant Cui’s family, have all come to propose, and there’s also…” Su Tan’er counted on her fingers.
“Oh, quite popular, isn’t she.”
“Of course, the three maids from our main branch — Xing’er, Chan’er, Juan’er — everyone’s eyes turn green with envy. Chan’er’s already taken by you, husband, so it’s just Xing’er and Juan’er left to fight over…”
What followed was more household chatter. For Su Tan’er, matters at home had always been arranged in perfect order without needing Ning Yi’s input, but whenever he did offer an opinion, she would nod along — it was simply part of being a family. After a while, Xing’er came to look after Su Tan’er, and Ning Yi casually asked about their recent life in Huzhou. Xing’er didn’t intend to complain, blinking and nodding, saying things had been very, very, very good. Being able to regulate one’s own emotions so as not to burden one’s master with one’s own troubles was, perhaps, the mark of a good maid’s self-cultivation. Ning Yi chatted with her for a while, never getting the chance to offer comfort, and could only respect her choice.
With the Hangzhou affair concluded, they had moved straight on to Zhenjiang, and from there back to Jiangning — but that didn’t mean there was nothing left to do. Lu Hongti, whom he’d been discussing with his wife, was part of that unfinished business. Back in Hangzhou, when he’d asked for her help, he’d promised to work out a five-year plan of sorts for her. Over the following months, bit by bit, most of the necessary planning had been completed. Now that most matters had found their resolution, to keep putting it off any longer would be rather inconsiderate. Over the next few days, he could focus on finishing this smuggling-stockade plan properly.
Thinking this over, he passed through two courtyard gates on his way to Lu Hongti’s quarters, and saw her standing by the well, drawing water, slowly turning the winch with one hand. She seemed lost in thought as she stood there, but she reacted as Ning Yi approached and looked over toward him.
Ning Yi went over and took over the task.
“Let me.”
There probably wasn’t much of a concept of chivalry in this era, but Lu Hongti wasn’t one to be coy about it either — she stepped back and watched as Ning Yi turned the bucket up, peeking down into the well as he cranked.
“This courtyard was never ours to begin with — an old man named Tang Xiuxuan lent it to us — who knows if it’s clean… I’ve had this habit for a while, whenever I pass a well, I like to look down into it.”
“Why is that?” Lu Hongti tilted her head to ask.
“I’ve heard that wealthy families, when they want to kill off a maid or a concubine and dispose of the body, often push them down the well. So I always feel like there might be a corpse down there.”
This made Lu Hongti laugh, but then she took the wooden ladle and drank a few mouthfuls, which left Ning Yi briefly speechless, before he too tried a taste. The well water turned out to be quite sweet, apparently not having soaked anything unpleasant. When Ning Yi asked whether mountain spring water tasted better, Lu Hongti thought they were about the same.
“Anyway, thank you for everything recently. If it weren’t for you, there’s no way I’d have made it back alive from Hangzhou.”
Having formally offered his thanks, Ning Yi went on to talk with Lu Hongti in more detail about the situation in Lüliang. Over the months, most of what needed saying had already been said, and the advice and views Ning Yi wanted to give her had been written into a thick notebook. The stockade Lu Hongti ran in the Lüliang Mountains, gathering together many mountain bandits, was still being envisioned primarily as a smuggling base outside anyone’s jurisdiction.
When it came to running a stockade, forming alliances, negotiating and dealing with rivals, Ning Yi could only offer ideas modeled loosely on the Overlord Blade Camp. But on matters of economics, he was without equal — what goods could be moved and how, how to control things covertly, how to use profit to guide and entice others, how, in a seemingly fair environment, to watch prices rise and fall, how to steer benefits toward oneself without others noticing, along with various cases and small tricks. All of this he wrote out in the notebook. Of course, how to actually use it would still be up to Lu Hongti’s own judgment.
Usually joking around put people at ease, made them laugh and curse, but once he set his mind to actual work, Ning Yi became utterly serious, capable of moving others through sheer earnestness. They talked like this for a while, and then Ning Yi returned to the side courtyard, to his study, to further refine his ideas, bent over his writing. More than an hour later, Lu Hongti, remembering a few things, went over to discuss them with Ning Yi, and he wrote and discussed the content with her as he went.
They talked like this on into the deep night, the topic drifting away from the stockade and the smuggling business. Ning Yi knew Lu Hongti would probably be leaving in a few days, so he brought up many half-formed thoughts he hadn’t yet shared.
“…Actually I’ve been thinking about something lately, about those battles in the north. You know I don’t understand military affairs, but some things can be explained through human nature, and the results tend to come out the same. So lately I’ve been wondering — why exactly did we lose?”
Lu Hongti wasn’t sure what he was getting at, but nodded along, half-understanding. “Mm.”
“Everyone gives different reasons, and different directions lead to different conclusions. I have a few letters here, sent from Bianjing — not necessarily addressed to me… In this recent great war in the north, at first Wang Bing and Yang Keshi hesitated, and by the time they wanted to fight, many in the middle and lower ranks were working against them, following Tong Guan’s wishes, or the wishes of certain great families with business dealings with the Liao — all sorts of conflicting interests, everyone claiming to be in the right. Later, once they’d worked up the nerve, in the battles that followed, they scattered at the first contact with the enemy, everyone worrying about their own escape, and it turned into a complete rout. Yet, oddly enough, in small clashes of a hundred or so men, they could still win — after all, there isn’t that much difference between one person and another…”
Ning Yi waved a hand. “Honestly, having watched this for a long time, I find it all quite ordinary. People like to look for complicated reasons. But if we approach it from the angle of human nature, we can build a simple model. Small-scale contact can be won because the gap in ability between individuals isn’t really that large. But large-scale engagements are lost for a very simple reason. Suppose we’re in an army of a hundred thousand men, and I’m one of them — that’s enough. However complicated the underlying reasons might be, there’s really only one thought that matters.”
What he said left Lu Hongti a little confused at first, unsure what he was getting at, but she listened anyway. Ning Yi smiled. “In the end, it comes down to this: I don’t trust the people around me. However skilled I am, I can’t fight tens of thousands of men alone. As soon as the battle starts, I think to myself, we’re definitely going to lose — why? Because they, you, everyone, are going to turn and run eventually, so I might as well run too. When tens of thousands of people are all thinking this way, no matter how skilled the commander is, they can’t win. And after losing many times on the battlefield, this mindset only becomes more deeply entrenched. In truth, what people are really thinking isn’t that we can’t beat the Liao — it’s that the people around me will definitely run. That’s the key.”
Lu Hongti thought about it and nodded. “Of course it’s like that, but… what can be done about it?”
“I’ve been thinking about some things differently — some things I used to think were useless now seem quite useful after all.” Ning Yi thought for a moment, then began gesturing animatedly as he smiled. “Two things: trust and discipline. There are many small things you can do — little games related to trust. For example, have someone stand on a platform two meters high, spread their arms, and fall backward, and have their comrade behind catch them. Everyone does it once a day — if the comrade doesn’t catch them, they could crack their head open. And then… standing at attention, marching in formation, following military orders and discipline as strictly as possible… ha, that’s probably too much to ask all at once, but these things don’t need to be done every day — but some of it can be done every day. I’ve already written it all in the notebook…”
Ning Yi smiled, as though he’d worked something out. As someone who had come from a thousand years in the future, he too was often misled by certain things — for instance, if you told people in a society a thousand years from now how formidable a certain army was, they might laugh: standing at attention, marching in formation, folding blankets — is that really so impressive? It would give the impression that these were purely superficial formalities, when in fact they contained an extremely deep science of managing human nature.
A hundred thousand against ten thousand — did it really come down to the idea that the people were simply worthless? Did it really come down purely to internal conflict? In fact, even if a hundred thousand men stood perfectly still and let ten thousand men charge in and hack away at random, the ten thousand probably still couldn’t win. So why would the hundred thousand lose? Not because each individual among the hundred thousand was too weak, but because deep in most people’s subconscious lay a single thought: “They’re going to run.” Not simply “I’m not as good as the Liao.”
Small-scale battles had a chance of being won because everyone knew each other — as long as the thought “we can win,” “no one here will run,” was present, the army would fight to the end. But when arranged into a formation of a hundred thousand, what everyone still thought was, “Everyone’s going to run eventually.” Especially with so many past defeats as precedent — once one person grew afraid, the whole group would turn and flee.
Doing the same actions, marching the same steps, jumping off the platform yourself and having your comrade catch you every single time without fail — infusing military discipline into people’s very bones through such small, repeated things — meant that even within a formation of a hundred thousand, a man could know, from one end to the other, that not a single stranger among them would run. As long as people believed that “military orders are unbreakable, no one dares to run,” a hundred thousand men, under any circumstances, could never lose to ten thousand.
Just like the Overlord Blade Camp — they had, to some degree, built that same mutual trust, but it was sustained through personal bonds and emotions, and once the camp tried to expand, that trust would thin out. Throughout Chinese history, any army that could achieve “military orders as unbreakable as mountains” tended to make a name for itself. And once that level was achieved, victory or defeat would then come down to logistics and supply, and strategic planning — because only at that point would an army truly qualify as competent.
Ning Yi had, in the past, cared little for these seemingly ordinary methods of military training — not because he thought them useless, but because he had believed the ancient world had its own circumstances, and he had never made such demands of the Overlord Blade Camp. But now he could see clearly — all these things, the various trust-building games in an army, the strict discipline in formation and marching, were all ways of gradually building up a psychological conviction: “I know what the people around me are like,” and “military orders are unbreakable — running will be punished, running means death.”
He wrote all this down in the notebook he was giving to Lu Hongti.
“You don’t need to drill all day, every day, but you can train for a portion of every day. Those little trust-building games can be done daily too — what to require and how far to push it, you can decide for yourself. It might not turn them into the finest army under heaven, but it will definitely have an effect…”
He explained all of this in great detail, though many of the terms were, naturally, still modern ones. Lu Hongti wasn’t sure whether she had adapted to his particular way of explaining things — she lowered her head, seemingly lost in thought, and only after a long while did she look up at him. “Liheng, what exactly are you trying to turn my stockade into?”
“Er—” Ning Yi paused, then realized what she meant. Hers was a stockade gathering together many mountain bandits, and her plan was for large-scale smuggling operations — the rules there were bound to be rather loose. He couldn’t help laughing. “Ha, well, if you’re going to train them, might as well set the standards high. Whatever you end up doing, martial strength is always the most important thing. Making money isn’t hard — but once you have money, turning it into fighting strength is what matters. Whatever it becomes, we’ll take it one step at a time.”
“Does Liheng know what Lüliang would become, if it really had such an elite force?”
Ning Yi thought about it. “Kill Tian Hu, hold off the Liao invaders, and crown yourself queen? That wouldn’t be bad at all.”
This was, of course, a joke. Ning Yi did have certain expectations for these methods, but naturally not expectations so grand as that — as long as the purpose of the training was understood, whatever was achieved could produce a passable army. And with a passable army, at least the Lüliang Mountains might no longer be bullied by others. As for anything beyond that, he wasn’t inclined to think much further, for now.
They talked on like this for a while longer, until it was nearly midnight, and as the conversation was drawing to a close, Lu Hongti finally asked a question she had been considering for a long time. “Ning Liheng, what exactly do you want?”
“Hm?”
Lu Hongti looked at him. “You help the Overlord Blade Camp, you help the Wu Dynasty — sometimes you look like a saint, sometimes you look colder than anyone else. Most of the time you seem to have a bigger picture in mind than anyone, and yet most of the time I feel like I have no idea what your bigger picture even is. Before, you looked like you didn’t care at all how the court fared — back in Jiangning, when I talked to you about bringing peace to all under heaven for ten thousand generations, you scoffed at it too. Now you’re heading to the capital. Which side are you really on? What is it you want to do?”
“Haven’t I already told you? The Wu Dynasty is in real danger, and besides, I’m not even entirely sure myself… ha, I think I know what you’re really asking.” Ning Yi said a couple of things, then smiled and shook his head, tidying the things on his desk. “I’m not doing things for the sake of ‘all people under heaven.’ The idea of bringing peace to ten thousand generations means nothing to me at all. But… for example — back when we fled Hangzhou as a group, there was a little girl, her parents probably both dead, following her grandmother, with nothing to eat on the road, very hungry. I gave her a steamed bun, and she ate it in huge bites, and I found that little girl very cute. If it had been possible, for the sake of that feeling, I could have killed the entire Fang La army chasing behind Hangzhou — that is, if I’d had the ability to do so at the time.”
“But to try to scale that feeling up to encompass everyone under heaven is a foolish thing to do. People act for the sake of what falls within the range they can actually see. If someone told me there were a million little girls like that suffering in the north, I would just think — what does that have to do with me? So-called ‘all people under heaven,’ most of them are like pigs and dogs, beyond saving. A person should first save themselves, and then take the initiative to protect the things they personally consider worth protecting — that’s already enough.”
“Honestly, during the flight, or after the fall of the city in Hangzhou, seeing some people’s terrible situations — if possible, I would hope to see less of that kind of thing around me. It’s a simple wish. I’m not noble at all, and I’ve never once thought of dying for such a cause.” He went on, “It’s just — there was a man surnamed Qin who played chess with me once. He wanted to save all under heaven, and I found that thought admirable, even though I don’t want… and there was also that man Qian Xiwen in Hangzhou…”
As he spoke, Lu Hongti kept watching him, listening intently, but for some reason, at this point, her face suddenly seemed to flush red.
“…So, it’s simply that if I feel I can do something, I’ll help where I can, and whatever the outcome, it’s better than standing on the sidelines making cynical remarks. Ha, I’m not doing this to help the court or anything — helping the Overlord Blade Camp, helping Qin Siyuan, helping you with all this — it’s all personal interest. None of it is really aimed at ‘all people under heaven’…”
For some reason, Lu Hongti’s expression grew increasingly strange and complicated.
“Honestly, on that flight, that little girl was really the only one who was particularly cute. Everyone else — all sorts of people, robbing others of their belongings, killing for revenge, refusing to let go of their own broken junk even at the cost of their lives, even thinking of using others as bait — in the end they all just got their own people killed. That’s the character of most people under heaven. To say I’m doing this for the sake of all people under heaven — I’m really not that noble… uh, what’s wrong?”
“N-nothing…” Lu Hongti answered, her expression seeming to return to normal, and she smiled. “Nothing. I’ll head back to my room now.”
“Oh, goodnight.”
Ning Yi watched her retreating figure with some confusion, tilting his head to think for a good while, still somewhat troubled.
“Er… did I say something wrong…”
He supposed he must have sounded too selfish, not noble enough, and been looked down on for it.
In the end, that was the only conclusion he could come to.
Iron Sword, Rivers and Mountains — quite the passionate tale.