When the sound of the crash reached him, Xue Yong was running along a rooftop through the curtain of rain, curved blade in hand.

The rain was too heavy to see very far, but the direction could still be judged. When the heroes of Liangshan had come to Jiangning this time, military advisor Wu Yong, worried that some of the brothers might let their eagerness for revenge jeopardize the larger operation, hadn’t sent along the particular brothers who had a personal grudge against this Su family—instead, he’d staggered the timing and sent them to carry out other tasks. As for the revenge against the Su family, since Xi Junyu knew the family’s layout so well, he had been the one put in charge of arranging it.

According to Xi Junyu, the Su family’s matrilocal son-in-law had no real fighting skill to speak of, but was said to be fond of tinkering with all sorts of firearms and devices—Ma Lin had once been caught off guard by a fire-lance in the man’s hands, taking a shot straight to the head and face, dead instantly. By everyone’s estimation, this was probably a scholar of somewhat eccentric temperament who liked fiddling with firearms and mechanical contraptions—not much of a threat. But to be safe, military advisor Wu Yong had still assigned Wei Dingguo, the God of Fire General, well-versed in firearms among the Liangshan ranks, to back up the operation and ensure nothing went wrong. Only, with the sudden downpour today, there was no telling whether Wei Dingguo’s own fire weapons would still work properly. And the sound that had just carried over hadn’t sounded like his signature thunderclap bombs, either. Still, the blast had at least revealed roughly where Ning Yi might be, so Xue Yong set off in pursuit.

He moved fast, covering several courtyards in a handful of leaps and bounds; below and further off, he occasionally heard the sounds of fighting, but he didn’t bother getting involved. This man, Xue Yong, nicknamed “Sick Tiger,” had once made his living peddling medicinal plasters in the jianghu. He’d inherited his skills from his father’s generation, but because his family had offended some local gentry, he’d never been able to make a name for himself, which was how he’d earned the nickname “Sick Tiger.” After Song Jiang took him in and he joined Liangshan, though his rank on the mountain wasn’t especially high, his skill was solid, and he wasn’t a man who took pleasure in fighting or killing. Still, scenes like the slaughter and extermination unfolding below were nothing new to him; his heart remained unmoved by it.

He rushed all the way to the courtyard where the gunshot seemed to have come from, then jumped down and immediately noticed signs of a fight. The fiercest of it had clearly happened in the room facing the courtyard. Xue Yong went in cautiously, blade ready, and found the room in complete disarray—tables, chairs, and wooden shelves all hacked to pieces by blade strikes. The room was dim; two bodies lay inside. One lay by the wall, belly and skull both torn open, dressed in black—one of their own. The other turned out to be none other than Wei Dingguo, the God of Fire General himself. Xue Yong covered the distance in three strides and saw that Wei Dingguo’s chest had been blasted open with a gaping hole, the wound full of iron shot and lead pellets.

Firearms had been Wei Dingguo’s specialty—before setting out, everyone had discussed the possibility of the son-in-law using firearms and had planned to guard against it. Yet in the end, it was exactly that which had claimed his life. And this scholar was supposed to have had no fighting skill at all—so how had this situation come about? While Xue Yong was still puzzling over it, he caught sight of another figure in the corner of the room. He raised his curved blade defensively, then looked more closely—it was a naked woman clutching a piece of clothing, a wound on her head, sitting in the corner in a daze, her mind clearly not fully present.

Even among the men of Liangshan, some held themselves to a certain code, but the majority were still lawless mountain bandits. Great cuts of meat, big bowls of wine—and every so often, when they went out to raid and plunder, incidents of women being violated occurred, something not even the relatively principled men on the mountain, like Lu Junyi or Lu Zhishen, could always prevent. One glance told Xue Yong exactly what had happened to this woman. Seeing how badly she was hurt, he had no wish to lay a hand on her; he simply studied the marks of the fight around him more carefully. The weapon that had cut through the surrounding tables, chairs, and shelves would have to be a heavy blade—which meant it was Brother Bao Xu’s weapon. So it seemed that Bao Xu and Brother Wei had teamed up against this Ning Liheng.

Xue Yong had plenty of hard-earned experience in the jianghu, and after a moment’s thought, he had already reasoned it out. Brother Wei’s fighting skill wasn’t especially high, but even with the thunderclap bombs unusable in the rain, his skill with concealed weapons and thrown stones was still quite good. As for Brother Bao, known in the jianghu as the “Doom Star”—he had once taken refuge on Ku’er Mountain and made a fearsome name for himself throughout the Hebei and Shandong regions. He loved killing, had made countless enemies across the jianghu, and his skill was formidable as well. With the two of them working together, killing one lone scholar should have been child’s play—but that this had happened instead probably meant the Su family had another skilled protector on hand, someone who had come here to pin down Brother Wei, which was how he’d taken that gunshot.

Xue Yong’s gaze went immediately to the woman in the corner, but he dismissed the thought at once—no matter how skilled a fighter she might be, no woman would strip herself naked just to lure an enemy in. As he followed the trail of the fight out through the door, he suddenly heard a furious roar break through the rain not far off—Xue Yong recognized it at once as the voice of Bao Xu, the “Doom Star,” full of fury, madness, and pain.

Bao Xu was known for his ferocity; on Liangshan, he was every bit as wild as Li Kui. For him to let out a cry like that was genuinely startling—he must have run into an opponent beyond anything he could have imagined. Xue Yong rushed toward the sound, cutting through two small courtyards along the way; the eaves and rooms in each bore fresh marks of a fight, evidently the trail of a running battle. Bao Xu’s heavy blade seemed to have the upper hand, judging by the occasional drops of blood along the way—but as he ran through the second courtyard, he spotted a net lying torn on the ground. It wasn’t a fishing net; the cords were thicker, hung with all sorts of barbed hooks. The net had been slashed apart, and where it lay on the ground, there were spatters of blood. Bao Xu wasn’t the type to use something like this—which meant whoever had been caught in it was probably him.

That such an unconventional device would show up in the middle of this fight put Xue Yong quietly on guard—though anyone in the jianghu skilled with concealed weapons and mechanisms tended not to have particularly high combat skill, so knowing about it in advance meant there wasn’t much to worry about. Still, the closer he got, the more frenzied and unhinged Bao Xu’s voice became. Xue Yong could hear him shouting, “Come out! Come out, you shameless coward! Come out and die—” or, “I see you!” as if the enemy had hidden himself well. But even with the sky overcast, once you’d fixed your quarry, there was no reason he shouldn’t be found.

It wasn’t until he rounded the corner of the building ahead that he finally got a clear look at the scene.

There, beneath the black curtain of rain, in the small courtyard’s inner well, Bao Xu was wildly swinging his blade in every direction, the upper half of his body covered in fine spatters of blood—likely from that net. To Bao Xu, wounds like these were nothing more than superficial scratches. What was far more serious was the white residue covering his upper body, even his head and face; much of that white powder was already being washed away and diluted in the puddles at his feet, but Xue Yong could tell at a glance that it was lime powder.

That lime powder must have originally been wrapped in oiled paper or leather paper and thrown at his head and face—the instant it struck his skin, it would have seared his eyes on contact. He’d apparently wiped at his face with his hands several times as well, burning much of it badly, and the lime that had worked its way into his wounds must have brought him agony beyond measure, which was clearly why Bao Xu was now swinging his blade and howling like a man half out of his mind.

And in front of him, roughly two zhang away, a figure stood quietly still. The figure wore a scholar’s robe, already wounded in many places—blood seeping from his hands, feet, even his head, only to be washed away again by the rain, a truly wretched sight. But he held a blade in his right hand, standing perfectly still, watching Bao Xu rage like a specter.

“Ning Liheng! You shameless little worm! You coward! Get out here! If you’ve got any guts, come fight your grandfather here another three hundred rounds!”

Bao Xu howled through the rain. At the sight, Xue Yong’s grip on his blade tightened. If Bao Xu was shouting like this, it meant there was no second person in the fight—the black-clad brother and Wei had both, it seemed, been killed by this same Ning Liheng standing before him.

For this expedition to Jiangning, the operation at the prison had been treated with the utmost seriousness, but the mission of revenge against the Su family had been regarded as something almost trivial. Xi Junyu knew the Su family’s every weakness; with the Hundred Blades Alliance already dealt with, breaking in should have been effortless. And indeed it had been—the killing unfolding throughout the Su estate had met with essentially no serious resistance anywhere, and even the retainers guarding half the Su family members near the main hall would probably crumble before long. No one had expected to suffer such losses here.

Xue Yong wasn’t afraid, exactly—only startled. Whatever means this scholar had used to turn the tables so far, he was clearly badly wounded from Bao Xu’s pursuit, and if he’d had any tricks up his sleeve, he’d surely used them all by now. As long as he was careful, he’d be fine. Watching Bao Xu swing his blade wildly, stumbling with each strike, the figure with the sword began slowly shifting his footing in the rain, closing the distance silently and without haste. Xue Yong tightened his grip on his curved blade and stepped out from where he stood.

To avoid any further tricks from the man, he’d need to time his strike carefully once he made his move—one blow, fatal, no room for a second… As he mulled this over, drawing close, the scholar suddenly seemed to sense something, turning his head. Through the dimness, Xue Yong caught sight of a pair of eyes, ferociously sharp.

In the jianghu, men with eyes like that were exactly the ones hardest to deal with.

The curved blade cut through the air, throwing off a spray of water as it flashed forward. On the other side, the figure spun and stepped back, then suddenly swung a blade of his own in a fierce counterstrike. The clash of weapons rang out sharply through the rain, followed by a rapid series of clangs as the two exchanged blows. Bao Xu, hearing the ring of steel, turned and began moving toward the sound. Ning Yi’s footwork was retreating rapidly—wounded as he already was, he found himself hard-pressed to block Xue Yong’s relentless strikes.

Xue Yong’s skill was formidable to begin with, but even so, he found himself surprised that his opponent could barely keep pace with his speed; and though the forms Ning Liheng used weren’t yet honed to the level of a true master, they were remarkably disciplined and precise. In the small inner courtyard, Bao Xu kept swinging wildly, while the other two circled around him at breakneck speed, sweeping half a loop around his position. It was at this moment that Xue Yong suddenly spotted a small opening in his opponent’s otherwise refined swordwork—his left fist lashed out on instinct, and the blow landed true. Ning Yi’s blade flew from his hand, leaving his center completely exposed; Xue Yong’s curved blade flashed forward straight at his chest. The strike landed dead center on Ning Yi’s chest. But in that same instant, instead of retreating, Ning Yi pressed forward, driving his chest straight into the blow.

Damn it—

What followed was the ringing clang of metal on metal.

There was armor beneath his robe… The instant that realization struck him, a right fist, drawn back with everything it had, came thundering toward his forehead. Water exploded off the fist like a burst of spray.

What Xue Yong had no way of knowing was that Ning Yi, well aware that his window for mastering true martial arts had long passed and that he would likely fall short of others in many respects, had spent much of his time in Hangzhou scheming with Lu Hongti over how to ambush people—working out concealed weapons, tricks, and even entire fighting sequences to leave openings for exactly this kind of surprise. Lu Hongti’s own martial skill had reached a truly transcendent level; while she found this kind of scheming beneath her own dignity, and thought Ning Yi’s whole approach faintly ridiculous, she hadn’t refused him either—in fact, she’d thrown herself into researching a few things with real enthusiasm. The refined technique Ning Yi had just used would have been utterly useless against some common street thug; it would only work against someone like Xue Yong, whose skill had already reached a certain level. It was precisely because Xue Yong had recognized the sophistication of the technique, and been drawn into its rhythm, that he’d instinctively struck at the opening he saw—only to be undone by the ordinary-looking armor beneath.

Every technique Lu Hongti had worked out was built around concealed weapons, lime powder, firearms—there probably wasn’t a second master-level fighter anywhere in the world willing to indulge in this kind of foolishness to such a degree. The sequences were neither too long nor too short, calibrated precisely to the instinctive itch that made skilled fighters want to strike—and once drawn into the rhythm, they would fall straight into a chain of traps. Each of these little sequences was, in effect, Lu Hongti’s own martial insight fighting through Ning Yi against men like Xue Yong; it was through exactly this kind of underhanded trick that Bao Xu had already been struck several times before. And now, the fist thundering toward Xue Yong’s forehead carried the full force of the sixth level of Po Liu Dao, driven to its absolute limit.

There came a heavy crack, and Xue Yong’s body spun through the air, flying through the rain—but his skill was formidable too; his curved blade flashed around and drew a line of blood across Ning Yi’s shoulder, and in the same instant he landed two rapid flying kicks square against the armor on Ning Yi’s chest. The two figures went flying in opposite directions, crashing to the ground; Bao Xu’s long sword swept down and struck a nearby pillar with a clang.

“Who’s there! Get out here! Ning Liheng! Come out and die, you coward—”

Bao Xu was still howling like a wounded beast. Xue Yong spat out a mouthful of blood, his head ringing with a continuous buzz, his vision blurred and swimming. That fist had struck his temple, a truly serious blow. He tried to get up but failed after two attempts; forcing his eyes to focus, he saw, not far away, the scholar called Ning Liheng struggling to push himself upright, then leaning back against a nearby step, swaying as he steadied himself.

Ning Yi looked over toward him, stood there for a while, then reached back with both hands, sat down on the steps beneath the eaves, and said nothing—only breathed in great heaving gasps, watching, ghost-like, as Bao Xu raged on and Xue Yong lay coughing up blood on the ground. It was in that very moment that something clicked in Xue Yong’s mind—he suddenly understood what it meant for a single misstep to become an eternal regret. In the jianghu, so many things came down to exactly that: one wrong step, and everything was lost. He’d imagined similar scenarios many times before, but for it to happen to him now, of all times, felt uncannily strange—in a situation where nothing like this should have happened at all, it had unfolded so quickly, so simply. The scholar before him looked, for all the world, as though he had rehearsed this near-chaotic fight a thousand times over, simply waiting for this evening to come so he could run through it once more.

The distant sounds of fighting still carried on—probably the Liangshan men pressing their assault against the Su family’s defenses near the main hall, though there was no telling how much longer that would hold. Xue Yong watched the scholar turn his head toward that sound, listening, his expression carrying a mix of pain and helplessness. But finally, gritting his teeth, his whole body trembling once, Ning Yi took a deep breath and stood up. He picked up the fallen blade from the ground and, step by step, began walking toward Xue Yong.

Halfway there, he swapped the blade for a wooden club instead. Reaching Xue Yong’s side, he swung it hard down onto the man’s head and neck—once, then again, and again. His thoughts, in truth, were somewhat scattered, flashing with everything that had just happened: the moment Wei Dingguo had burst in and been struck down, the cousin’s wife who had suddenly leapt up and thrown herself around the man’s body; the bodies, one after another; whether Yun Zhu had made it out; Tan’er, Xiao Chan, and the newborn child still barely into the world…

Not until he’d finally beaten Xue Yong down into a pool of blood did he turn and, dragging the club behind him, stagger unsteadily toward Bao Xu, who was still swinging his greatsword nearby, screaming himself hoarse…

Maybe there was still a chance. There was always still a chance…

He brought the club down hard on Bao Xu’s head, knocking him to the ground, then dodged the weak, sweeping swing of the greatsword and struck him again.

It was at this moment that someone came running into the courtyard…