Green treetops swayed in the riverside wind, bright sunlight streaming in from behind him. Ning Yi lowered his head and turned a page of the document in his hand. Across the room, fury was already welling up in Lu Junyi’s eyes. “He who begins the wickedness will have no descendants to carry on his line—if you dare do such a thing, how do you know there won’t come a day when someone skins you in turn! Go ahead, try it, and see whether I, Lu, so much as blink!”
“That would be Yan Qing you’re thinking of. You’ll be roasted to death in the sun.” Ning Yi kept his eyes on the documents, tapping the back of his hand with his fingertips, and after a moment spoke on, indifferent. “I told my girlfriend once—in this world, you’ll run into tigers, and being kind to people doesn’t mean they’ll spare you. I’m a simple man. Between people, a great many things are unfair—others might get by on cruelty, viciousness, power, or their parents’ influence, but there’s one thing that always puts us all on the same footing… and that’s being willing to stake your life.”
Ning Yi was still looking down, flipping through the documents. “As long as someone’s willing to bet their life on it, my life is on the line too. There’s nothing more to say about it.”
“Ha! Then go ahead and do it!” Lu Junyi laughed in fury. “Why are you sitting here nagging on and on at me like some old woman—you’re afraid, deep down…”
“Because I’m threatening you.” Ning Yi didn’t look up, cutting him off in that same even tone. “Which is why you’d best listen closely to what I’m about to say… this next part is what we’ve got on you. Squire Lu, you had money and status in Daming Prefecture, remarkable skill in the martial arts, a wish to serve your country with no way to do it. Once Song Jiang heard your name, he wanted to force you up the mountain: ‘A lone skiff amid the reed flowers, a hero now wanders this land. If the righteous man understands this truth, he may yet flee this disaster unharmed.’ That treasonous acrostic poem was written by Wu Yong. Mediocre literary skill, if you ask me.”
“You’re a muddleheaded fool, tricked by Wu Yong, fled to Mount Tai to avoid trouble, ambushed passing by Liangshan—they invited you up the mountain, you refused. When you went home, you were cuckolded—your wife slept with some fellow named Li Gu… oh, interesting, they’d already been at it a long while before that. Li Gu must be better-looking than you…”
Ning Yi’s tone carried a note of mockery. Looking up, he saw Lu Junyi’s eyes bulging wide, his fists already clenched so tight they creaked.
“No need to get so worked up—if there’s anything else bothering you, go ahead and share it, give everyone a laugh. All right, I’ll just read it myself… here, it says they accused you of colluding with bandits, threw you in prison, and tortured a confession out of you… Li Gu must have arranged it all with that Central Secretariat official beforehand—once you were gone, he could seize your property for himself. If there’d been nothing in it for him, that official would have had no reason to torture you into confessing. You were sentenced to exile at Shamen Island; on the road, the escorting officers meant to kill you. Yan Qing saved you, but even so, you were then sentenced to death. Shi Xiu’s attempt to break you out of the execution ground failed, and he was locked up alongside you… ah, this is when you started feeling indebted to Liangshan, isn’t it? After all, there was no other road left open to you.”
He nodded to himself, flipping through a few more pages. “Liangshan attacked Daming Prefecture and rescued you, and Song Jiang offered to hand leadership over to you, and everyone objected—this fellow seems to make a habit of that sort of thing, no surprise there. So you became the second-in-command, and apart from Yan Qing, everyone else on the mountain is Song Jiang’s man. Now, why don’t we talk about how it feels being second-in-command, eh? Oh, and there’s something a little more personal I’ve been wanting to ask—what exactly is the relationship between you and Yan Qing, is it perhaps that sort of thing… and that’s why your wife ended up doing that sort of thing with Li Gu…”
Ning Yi shook his head and spread his hands. Bound in iron chains, Lu Junyi suddenly lunged, struggling against his restraints. “I’ll—your mother, you—”
The moment he moved, Qi Xinyong was already in motion, hand clamping down on his shoulder, and the next instant Qi Xinyong drove a fist hard into his face, knocking him back into place. Lu Junyi’s head snapped to the side, blood clearly welling from his mouth, and he turned to glare at Ning Yi.
“You’re welcome to spit at me.” He said this evenly. “Though you’re a bit far away for it.” The man had evidently intended to spit blood and saliva his way, and this only made him angrier still.
“If I ever get out of here…”
“No chance of that. We’re the imperial court’s hounds, after all—we’ll be heading to the capital shortly. If your people manage to snatch you away, I’ll switch sides on the spot and kneel down calling you brother.”
“…I’ll kill your entire family…”
“And what of it—you’ll be a cripple by tomorrow anyway. Or should I have your hands broken too? Though that wouldn’t work as well for hanging you from the mast, and you’d die too fast besides—better to leave the arms to hang from. I already know what you’re about to say next, about what you’ll do once you’re a ghost…”
“—Even as a ghost I’ll still…”
“See, that’s exactly the kind of man you are—muddleheaded, and stubborn as a rock besides, thinking yourself so formidable when really you can’t even measure up to Yan Qing. After everything that’s happened, you still haven’t seen yourself clearly? Not one flicker of a different idea in your head… With no road left to walk, you had no choice but to go up the mountain and call Song Jiang your brother—whose doing was it that brought you to this? Where’s that backbone you had when you refused to join at first? Let me tell you—if it were me… well, it is me, now—Liangshan doesn’t have twenty thousand lives weighing on my conscience. I don’t need to see every one of you die with your eyes open to lose sleep over it.”
“…”
“I’ll assume you’re just carrying some resentment in your heart.” The last traces of mockery had already faded from Ning Yi’s face; he leaned back in his chair, hands clasped, eyes cold as he looked at him. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have wasted a single word on you.”
The room fell silent for a moment.
“But whatever grudge you’re carrying is your own business, nothing to do with me. Still, you rank second at Liangshan, and your man Yan Qing makes for a decent spy besides. Now, to the terms.”
Ning Yi drew out a sheet of paper he’d already prepared. “Cooperate with me, persuade Yan Qing, and I’ll clear your name of the whole Daming Prefecture affair, restore you to a clean, respectable status as squire, and secure you an official rank besides. As for all the property you originally had in Daming Prefecture, forget about it—this document here is your letter of intent, stating that once you’re cleared, you’re willing to donate your entire estate to the state’s use; we’ll use your name as a banner to reclaim it. That squire Liang Zhongshu and his lot aren’t necessarily any better than you, either way. We serve under Right Chancellor Qin Siyuan, an organization called the Secret Investigation Bureau—you may not have heard of us, but the war between the Jin and the Liao, that was our doing, stirring the pot. Fang La in Hangzhou, we’re the ones who opened the city gates. The Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, we mean to take them back. If you feel the army’s rotten to the core, you’re welcome to come work with us instead.”
Lu Junyi stared blankly for a long moment, then began to laugh. “Ha ha… ha ha, using my name as a banner, is it—and what if I simply refuse to give it to you, what will you—”
“Already told you—then I’ll skin you alive.” Ning Yi rubbed the bridge of his nose, his cold gaze no longer on him. “Take him away.”
Once Lu Junyi had been led out, Ning Yi stood and looked out the window for a while. After a moment, Wenren Bu’er came in from the next room. “Really going to clear his name? Win him over?”
“We’re going to kill tens of thousands of people—did you really think we’d just take up a blade and hack our way through while they stand united?”
“Heh, truth be told, this Squire Lu is quite something—I’d genuinely like to see him surrender. I just thought… Liheng, I thought you were dead set on wiping out all of Liangshan.”
“Let them turn on each other, scheme against one another, watch as the brothers they trusted most stab them in the back, until in the end no one trusts anyone else—that would make me happier. It’d make our work easier too. Besides, I don’t have all that much time to spend on this band of Liangshan bandits…”
Wenren Bu’er thought this over, looking at him. “So all of that, just now—it was all a lie to him?”
Ning Yi smiled. “Whether he can still be a decent man is up to him—after all, the grudge between him and me isn’t so great. What comes next is your job.”
“Understood.” Wenren Bu’er nodded and turned to leave, then paused and asked, “And if he truly refuses to submit, no matter what?… Mm… heh, never mind, I’m asking too much—break his legs first, I suppose…”
Ning Yi shook his head. “No. If he truly won’t submit, I’ll break the legs of half his men and roast them alive in the sun, then after a while, send him back to Liangshan—and then, perhaps, we can make use of that. Brother Wenren, you can go bring in the next one.”
A short while later, Yan Shun was brought into the room. Seeing the young man across from him writing, the young man rose, went to open the window, then returned to his seat without looking at him, and spoke in that same even tone. “You may already know my name. Let me explain the situation…”
Out in the corridor beyond the room, Qi Xinhan was speaking quietly with Qi Xinyong. “I’m starting to think he’s turning into some kind of vengeful spirit… no wonder Fang La and Liu Xigua both got played for fools by him… tsk, of all the people for this Liangshan lot to provoke…”
Qi Xinyong pursed his lips.
“Guess they didn’t sweep the right graves at Qingming…”
…
Time gradually slipped into the afternoon, the cicadas still singing, the angle of the sun’s light slowly lowering. In the room serving as a makeshift cell, Lu Junyi was bound in iron chains to an iron stool, unable to move.
It wasn’t quiet around him, but the various sounds reaching him felt distant, as though happening in another world altogether, with only a little light seeping in through the window. Gradually, footsteps approached.
The one who opened the door and came in was a tall, slender young man—the one who had appeared beside that Ning Liheng during the battle.
“Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Wenren Bu’er, of the Secret Investigation Bureau… well, for now I’m handing over my post to head to the capital, but it was I who recruited Liheng into the Bureau. The two of you have already spoken.”
Wenren Bu’er pulled up a chair and sat down in front of him, then took out that same sheet of paper Ning Liheng had clearly drawn out earlier. “He’s had a lot on his plate lately, in a bad mood—this time, not being able to kill off all two hundred-plus of you, he lost his temper, said those three thousand-odd Xuzhou soldiers were truly useless. No need to take it personally, but don’t dismiss what he said either.”
“Just as he told you, last month your people went to his home and killed nearly a hundred—old folk, women, children, none of them able to fight, none of them having wronged you in any way. That he didn’t kill you outright on the spot, I have to admire. Xi Junyu was originally raised by the Su family—started out as a hired hand, later became a shop manager. The Su family paid for his education, taught him business. He fell for the Su family’s daughter, and later, simply because the young lady wouldn’t take him in as a live-in husband, he began conspiring with outsiders, even plotting to kill the Su family and seize the young lady and the family’s wealth for himself. The man he conspired with later joined Liangshan—you know him. Don’t you think… he sounds a bit like that Li Gu of yours?”
“That he’s willing to say even a few words to you is probably for that very reason—otherwise… heh, Squire Lu, I’ve said all I have to say. What comes next is entirely your own choice. If you shake your head, you’d best find a way to end your own life quickly. As for that Brother Yan of yours, nine times out of ten, his skin won’t still be on his own body either. A man who’s willing to marry into another family as a live-in husband—what wouldn’t he do?”