Fire roared in the distance, the sounds of battle still echoing far behind, and the scorching heat had already been left in his wake, leaving only exhaustion and agony throughout his body. Burns, blade wounds — blood was still flowing, sapping his strength and blurring his vision. Ahead lay only darkness, and Zhu Wu, gripping the blade in his hand, staggered forward.
Of his original pair of blades, only one remained now. His hand was bleeding, and he trembled even as he fled. The worst pain was not from the wounds inflicted by blade and spear in the fighting, but from the burns across his head and back — after the blisters had burst, what came back was a pain far beyond that of an ordinary wound. At first this pain had sharpened his mind, but after so long enduring it, combined with the exhaustion of fighting and fleeing, his spirit had begun to scatter.
The only thing holding him together was the clear realization, on the very edge of life and death, that if he collapsed now, even if his injuries did not kill him, the soldiers closing in from behind would take his life.
He himself did not know how long he had been fleeing through the mountains. The sky was still dark, and where the view was clearer he could still see the flames on the far side of the ravine. It was only now that he could begin to piece together the battle just past.
Unlike the day before, when over two hundred of them had broken out of an encirclement by two thousand soldiers, this sudden clash had left little room for resistance or breakout at all. When Ning Yi led the soldiers charging out from the trees, the two sides had clashed in the fiercest fighting imaginable in an instant — but the several dozen men from Liangshan were already wounded and exhausted, and the battle had turned one-sided in the blink of an eye.
Zhu Wu and the others had barely taken stock of the situation before they knew there was no hope left, and turned to flee. But as the soldiers closed in around them, within moments they were dragged into a desperate fight. “Little Yuchi” Sun Xin, like Lü Fang before him, was cut down before their very eyes in the first instant.
Before this, Zhu Wu had never imagined something like this could happen.
Facing an enemy skilled at calculation, one had to consider at every step whether the other side had some hidden move — this much he understood. When Lu Junyi and the others had broken free, he had wondered whether there might be a trick to it. But when the enemy had called out Steward Lu’s name, it had eased his suspicions somewhat. And the wary, careful flight and searching that followed had all been to avoid the possibility of being caught up with. Yet in the end, that figure had still appeared before them at the darkest possible moment, and he could not for the life of him work out the reason.
It had not even been a full day since their brothers on this side had been captured in the last engagement. Even if someone had turned traitor, it could not have happened so quickly. How could this possibly be a scheme laid in half a day?
And yet the enemy’s appearance now only proved, plainly and completely, the gap between the two sides in planning and strategy. If the first incident could still be put down to the enemy’s caution, to their having stumbled upon this side’s plotting by chance, this time it was a trap laid entirely on the enemy’s own initiative — while Zhu Wu had still been considering how to trail along, play along, and find some way to rescue their people, the enemy had already turned the tables completely, laying a trap to lure them straight into the jar.
The change had come too fiercely, the events too swiftly, forcing them to simply accept what was happening with no time to think it through.
And there were things that, only now, became clearer to Zhu Wu than ever.
He had originally still harbored a measure of wishful thinking about following along, because this had always been the attitude of both the authorities and the underworld toward Liangshan — of the more than two hundred men, half had been killed and forty or fifty captured; that alone already counted as a great victory. Those who fled afterward would naturally be far more cautious, and catching them further would take twice the effort for half the result. To most enemies, such an accomplishment would already be enough to be proud of, and they would not keep pouring effort into hunting down or killing every last man. Their opponent, though different from the authorities, was still bound by the limits of his station — a scholar who had married into another family, skilled at planning, someone who by all appearances seemed rather weak.
But now that Ning Yi had appeared before them once again, Zhu Wu finally understood that this man was entirely unlike the conservative authorities, and unlike almost all the strongmen of the underworld as well. Even as he achieved a victory worthy of praise, what remained in his mind was still the intent to kill every last one of them, to leave no path of survival. It was only now that Zhu Wu suddenly grasped the meaning of that earlier incident — this man now held a blood feud against their side, one deep enough to wipe out entire families.
Liangshan had blood feuds with countless people; perhaps, having experienced so many, one grew numb to it. But to an ordinary person, such enmity was something laid bare right in front of them, plain to see.
Liangshan numbered over forty thousand. To most people, having already defeated two hundred of them, expending great effort to hunt down the remaining forty or fifty would hardly seem worthwhile. Only this man intended to kill every single enemy who appeared within his sight, down to the last one. The petty grudge over Xi Junyu and the “Su family,” once a matter of no consequence to them, had now, through everything it could bring about, truly pressed down upon them along with that figure.
Xi Junyu might really have kicked a board he should never have touched…
If only they had realized this a little sooner, perhaps things would have turned out far better. But now, everything could only be paid for in blood. Zhu Wu had even tried charging forward at one point, shouting loudly: “If you’ve got the nerve, fight me one on one!” But what answered him, besides Ning Liheng nodding and agreeing, was a rain of arrows loosed with a wave of his hand.
The encirclement on the mountain this time numbered perhaps two or three hundred men, but when they charged in, even Zhu Wu and the others had no real chance to break out. They fought their way along, split apart by the arrow rain, surrounded by blades and spears. And in the end, what gave Zhu Wu his narrow chance was, of all things, the fire arrows that had been loosed from the very start.
Those fire arrows inflicted some casualties among the Liangshan men, but in the fighting that followed, they also lit up the surroundings. The soldiers closing in from the darkness found it harder to quickly determine the direction of the breakout, and the forty or fifty exhausted, wounded Liangshan men were cut down more than half in the chaos within moments.
Then the flames began to spread, growing larger and larger, until at last they caused equal trouble for both sides — perhaps the one miscalculation Ning Liheng had made. As Zhu Wu braved the roaring fire to break out in what was almost an act of suicide, he heard the man shouting on the other side: “Who told you to fire the flame arrows… catch those bastards!”
Amid those flames, everyone had been scattered. Zhu Wu saw Chen Da’s figure swallowed up by the soldiers; Lu Junyi and Yan Qing were pinned down on another side, holding off dozens of men, already covered head to toe in blood, still shouting: “Run!” But in the last glimpse Zhu Wu caught, he saw a blade driven into Lu Junyi’s chest, Yan Qing fighting on with all his strength, the roar of a cornered beast carrying faintly through the air…
Only Zhang Shun, likewise gravely wounded, and one subordinate were still fleeing alongside him. They had run into each other after breaking free of the encirclement in different directions — Zhang Shun’s skill in combat was formidable, and it was he who had found Zhu Wu. The subordinate, clutching his stomach, leaned on Zhang Shun as they pressed on.
The hope they had once seen, the bright future they had once imagined, had been utterly extinguished this time…
Since climbing Shaohua Mountain, he had never suffered wounds like these, never known a defeat and darkness like this. Just days ago, everything had seemed all but certain. Longer ago still, when he had met that young man Xi Junyu on Liangshan and heard him speak of the injustice he had suffered — such things had been so common that he had never taken it to heart. Some things, misfortune among them, were like an invisible thread that could not be severed, one that had already appeared years earlier, only to come crashing down without warning at some unguarded moment.
His mind was hazy and confused, but his body kept moving on instinct, following as best it could the safest possible path. They walked out of the trees and climbed a ridge, and for the first time the darkness before them began to recede; far off at the edge of the sky, the first pale light of dawn appeared, and the light in the air ahead slowly turned with the drifting dust. The subordinate following Zhang Shun finally bled out and collapsed. Zhang Shun dragged him up, and before long threw the body from the cliff edge.
“We have to go back…” Zhu Wu said weakly. Zhang Shun patted his shoulder; he nearly collapsed then and there.
“We have to go back… back to Liangshan… tell them what happened…”
The sun gradually rose. They walked along the ridge, not knowing how many had survived, not knowing what lay ahead. It was not until two days later, on their way back, that they encountered Yan Qing, looking almost like a corpse himself…
But that is a story for later.
Morning light pierced through the gaps in the trees, shining down on a forest still smoldering with small fires and hazy with smoke. The morning mist, ash, and lingering flame mingled together to give the scene a faintly sticky feel. The forest was littered more than anything with blood and corpses; the fighting was over, and soldiers cleaning up the aftermath were counting heads and finishing off the wounded as they went.
Ning Yi and the others walked past the edge of the clearing, left the trees behind, and climbed a small rise. “About how many got away?”
“Four or five, I’d guess.”
“That’ll do,” Ning Yi said with a nod. “We should still have the wanted notices sent around to the checkpoints to help watch for them. But they should manage to make it back — I trust their abilities. They’ll be fine.”
“There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” Wenren Buer said, walking over. “That Zhu Wu is no ordinary man. Why didn’t we finish him off?”
“Sometimes,” Ning Yi answered, “a clever man’s actions are easier to guess than a fool’s.” He tilted his head. “Let’s go. I still have to go pay someone a visit to say thank you.”
They walked through the woods, down the mountain, to where several carriages had stopped along a rough mountain road. Ning Yi climbed into one of them, and as he lifted the curtain, the light spilled in to reveal the figure inside — the man Zhu Wu believed already “dead,” Lu Junyi. He had seemed lost in thought, head lowered, but on seeing Ning Yi he straightened his posture, his gaze anything but friendly.
This was their first proper meeting, or conversation, since the previous day, when Ning Yi had threatened him in the cabin of the ship. Ning Yi’s expression, though, was mild — almost excessively so.
“You’ve had a hard time of it. You played your part well. And — thank you.” Ning Yi stepped forward and took his hand, then patted the back of it. “Brother.”
His manner was sincere, not the least bit mocking, and this “brother,” while not exactly fawning, clearly startled Lu Junyi all the same — he had likely never encountered such shamelessly casual behavior before. Ning Yi then sat down on the side of the compartment and rapped on the wooden panel beside him to signal the driver to set off. “Let’s talk as we ride, Steward Lu. Whatever doubts are on your mind, feel free to voice them — I’ll answer plainly here.”
Lu Junyi studied him for a moment, then straightened his back. “Very well. As it happens, I do have something I’m curious about.”
“Go on.”
“I merely gave a nod and pressed my seal to an agreement, and you let me go on that basis alone. If I had refused to cooperate, and simply treated everything you said as nonsense, what could you possibly have done to me?” This, it turned out, was what puzzled him most — the previous night, after he had nodded to Wenren Buer, Wenren Buer had told him what he needed to do without imposing any restraint on him whatsoever.
“Don’t put it like that. When you employ someone, you shouldn’t doubt them — I trust your character, Steward Lu.” Ning Yi smiled, quite sincerely, but Lu Junyi, watching him, clearly did not believe it — not that anyone would, in a matter like this. Ning Yi kept up the easy smile for a while longer before letting it fade, and looked at him with a level gaze.
“First, I believe you truly had no other choice, that there was resentment in your heart, and that you were willing to take the gamble — that’s the honest truth; if it weren’t so, I would never have approached you in the first place. Second, once you come over to our side, I can topple all of Liangshan that much more easily. If you don’t intend to burn your bridges with Liangshan, I’d rather you show your hand plainly today than have you sabotage my plans from behind once I actually move against them. Think of it as your letter of allegiance. What you choose to do today, Steward Lu, doesn’t matter much to me either way — only if you turn against me after you’re already part of my plans will it actually affect them.”
“And if I’d simply taken my men and fled today, you truly wouldn’t have minded? Where does this confidence of yours come from…”
“It’s not a matter of confidence or not. Some things simply have to be done.” Ning Yi looked at him with a smile. “My aim, since I’ve decided to act, is Liangshan’s forty thousand men. This time it was only some two hundred — do you really think you mattered so much to me? Whether I kill them today or tomorrow, they’re all going to die regardless. If you’d changed your mind today, Steward Lu, and led them back to Liangshan, at least I’d have known for certain you’d never truly help me — and to me, certainty, even bad news, is still good news.”
“Ha!” Lu Junyi laughed. “It can’t be that simple. How many others among us have you turned? If I hadn’t offered this letter of allegiance, could you still have found where everyone was hiding? Who’s your man — Chen Da? Zheng Tianshou? I wouldn’t have guessed it was Yan Shun, though…”
“Shh.” Ning Yi raised a finger. “Those are secrets, after all — there’s not much good in speaking of such things, they only hurt feelings between friends. Let’s talk about something you’d rather hear, Steward Lu. You’re already ‘dead’ on Liangshan. With this voyage north, we can’t clear your identity right away, but don’t worry — I’ll arrange for you to meet Chancellor Qin and recommend you to him personally. When the time comes, he may test your martial skill and your grasp of strategy — seize that chance and everything will be secure. As for whatever charges hang over you, once Liangshan falls, we’ll see to clearing them ourselves. I’m generally someone who remembers a grudge, but I also know how to draw a clear line between debts owed and debts repaid. Now that you’ve come over to our side, I won’t hold anything against you. You’ll see all this play out in time — and best of all, we likely won’t even be working together directly, so you needn’t concern yourself with me too much.”
For a steward like Lu Junyi, once possessed of standing and influence in Daming Prefecture but without real status, the chance to meet Right Chancellor Qin Siyuan in person was an opportunity almost too rare to imagine. Ning Yi had tossed it out now as though it were nothing at all, and his expression shifted slightly despite himself. He was a capable man, and if he could win Qin Siyuan’s favor, then even if Ning Yi truly meant to go back on their agreement later, he would have to think twice before doing so. And before Liangshan was brought down, Ning Yi naturally had no reason to kill him — the promise of an audience with the Right Chancellor would still have to be honored before then.
He thought it over for a moment, then, restraining his emotions, said, “Not holding it against me — that remains to be seen. If you truly trusted me, why make me fake my death? Wouldn’t it have been better for me to go back to Liangshan?” Though phrased as a rebuttal, there was little real edge to it — more like a passing grumble.
Ning Yi shook his head. “That’s not about holding a grudge — it’s about ability. Honestly, Steward Lu, you’re simply not suited to being a spy. Little Yi is the true talent there — you could barely finish telling him on the battlefield before he was already playing along with your ‘death,’ and the way he cried out — in many respects, you can’t match him. Since he’s your trusted man, you can rely on him completely from now on, whatever comes up. I’m only saying this to you now — a person needs to recognize where their own strengths lie. You’d do well to think back on everything that’s happened. With you dead, Little Yi will surely be given greater trust when he returns to Liangshan — working with him serves me far better than working with you, whether or not you’re willing to admit it.”
Lu Junyi was by nature an extremely proud man, and in the past he might well have struck Ning Yi for such words. But after everything that had happened, he was in no position to raise a hand against him now, though his face still showed clear displeasure. Ning Yi brushed off his sleeve and rose to his feet.
“Well then, I’ll be off. If anything comes up, you can speak to me or to Wenren. You’re all set now… and welcome to the side of light.”
Ning Yi rapped on the compartment; when the carriage stopped, he lifted the curtain and climbed down. Lu Junyi sat there, turning over everything that had happened these past days, glancing at the light seeping in past the curtain’s edge. Among all he had experienced before, he had never once come across such a strange man, one who conducted himself in quite this way.