Great swaths of cloud drifted across the sky, and in the gaps between them, dense stars peeked through—like the Milky Way, hidden above the cloud layer, spilling silver dust through the breaks. The spring night wind still carried a biting chill. A convoy escorting a prisoner’s cart moved along the ground, followed by a long line of captives with bound hands, surrounded on all sides by several hundred constables and soldiers marching alongside.
Looking out through the bars of the prisoner cart, one by one, the silver-gray night sky held a captivating beauty. The night was always beautiful, no matter what—because it did not belong to the human world. He had always loved looking up at this sky at night, but thinking back now, it had been a long time since he’d last looked at it this way.
But now, body and spirit utterly broken, his hands already useless, his legs already snapped, an iron hook driven through his shoulder blade, his martial skill all but entirely destroyed. He could finally set aside worldly concerns and once more lift his head to gaze upon that which did not belong to the human world—because the path of the human world, for him, might no longer be one he could continue to walk…
His name was Fang Qifo, and in the spring of the eleventh year of the Jinghan era, he was thirty-nine years old. As the second-in-command of this uprising led by the Fang clan against the Martial Dynasty, though the outside world regarded him as an all-knowing mastermind, in truth he had never had any formal schooling as a child.
The Fang clan was a large family in the area around Qingxi, and his household had once gotten by well enough—there was a house, there was land, and his parents worked diligently, providing enough food and clothing for the family. Since childhood, because he and several of his siblings had shown promising talent, they had been taken in by outlaws in the region as disciples and brought away to study martial arts elsewhere. By the time his skills were nearly complete, he went out to make his way in the world, and a year later, when he returned home to visit, he discovered that the family’s fields were already gone.
This had come about because, a few years earlier, his father had fallen ill, and to pay for treatment, the Fang family had mortgaged their land. After his father recovered, his health continued to decline, making farming increasingly difficult; his mother went to work at a nearby workshop run by a local landlord. The landlord had seemed decent enough, often bringing gifts to visit his father, but when the family couldn’t repay the debt, the mortgage turned into an outright sale.
The landlord had seemed so caring toward everyone around, and Fang Qifo himself had felt genuine gratitude toward him—even though his mother had never agreed to sell the land, working herself to the point of collapse at the workshop just to save a bit more money for the family and the children. That his father’s health had improved was, at least, a great blessing. In truth, though, at the time, unable to repay the debt, the pressures of social obligation and reasoning had, like a soft blade, forced the Fang family into selling their land regardless.
It wasn’t until later that he learned the physician had taken money from the landlord’s family, deliberately exaggerating his father’s illness and dragging out the course of treatment, forcing the already struggling Fang family into mortgaging their land. In his youthful hot-bloodedness, he had gone and beaten the landlord’s family—but his martial skill hadn’t yet fully matured at the time. First it was the landlord’s household guards, then the government constables; with no evidence on his side, the words of those around him and the pressure of power forced him to back down.
But young men, driven by hot blood, once they’d set their minds to something, weren’t the type to back off. His cousin Fang La, his cousin Fang Baihua, and a band of brothers rallied together and stormed the great landlord’s estate—but the other side had been prepared, having called in government troops beforehand, and after a fierce clash, they were ultimately forced to retreat.
Just the following day, they were branded as murderous bandits; some of their family members hadn’t even had time to flee… From that point on, they became homeless, fugitives fleeing to the ends of the earth.
Carrying a blood feud on one’s shoulders was, indeed, the finest motivation for advancing one’s martial skill. Before long, Fang La, Fang Baihua, and the others successively made a great name for themselves in the outlaw world. He himself, fond of lying on rooftops at night to gaze at the stars, hadn’t advanced in skill quite as quickly, but he was still an outstanding member among the Fang clan’s brothers, and they joined the Manichaean faith together. A few years later, they returned to Qingxi and stormed that landlord’s household once more. By then, the landlord’s fortune had multiplied several times over; after defeating the skilled fighters he’d hired and wiping out his entire family, walking through the pools of blood afterward, he felt little sense of triumph.
He simply couldn’t understand why his parents’ diligent, fearful toil had only ever resulted in their family’s fortunes shrinking further and further, while these landlords, who did nothing all day but wag their tongues, could command skilled fighters who had trained so hard, driving them about like dogs. His act of revenge was, in his mind, simply justice—so why should it come at such a heavy price?
Two more years passed, and he returned to Qingxi once again. The land that had once been seized from the landlord had not returned, even in the smallest part, to the original villagers—others had simply divided up the landlord’s fields among themselves and expanded further still. Those who, like his own parents, had diligently worked the land and believed most firmly in justice, had never, in this whole game, had any right to speak at all.
His cousin Fang La was a decisive man, and had long since recognized this truth. Having already become an outlaw, he wanted to rebel outright, and he was, by nature, a born leader—a great crowd of people gathered around him, willing to follow his lead. Fang Qifo, on the other hand, preferred to observe things, to ponder the reasoning behind them; he began learning to read and study texts, and came to understand more clearly that, had he not been so hot-tempered years earlier, his parents might not have died. Life flowed like a current—one should follow where it led.
A few years later, they forced Sikong Nan into retreat. In that battle, many of the Manichaean faith’s protectors and elders had still not sided with them, and his cousin’s own martial skill at the time was no match for Sikong Nan’s—yet in that battle, originally expected to end in defeat, it was Fang Qifo, throwing himself fully into the fight, who defeated several skilled opponents in succession, tipping the balance of victory.
After coming to terms with certain truths in his mind, his martial skill had, without his even realizing it, come to match his cousin’s own.
Later, the slogan “all faiths are equal, none above another” was something he and Fang La had come up with together. Over more than a decade, he had planned the growth of the Manichaean faith, guiding streams of followers as though channeling rivers, and through the combined efforts of everyone, had finally brought it all together into a raging tide across the Jiangnan region. Those who had lost their livelihoods rose up and killed the landlords, and people from every corner responded to the call.
And then, everything had come to a stop… That river’s waters had died, and they could no longer stir it to flow again…
Perhaps, as that fellow named Ning Yi had once said, without ambition, this was as far as things could go.
After they had taken Hangzhou, the unstoppable momentum of the Yongle Army had begun to falter, and having watched it all unfold, he understood this better than anyone. Leaders who had once been mere farmers or mountain bandits began seizing gold and silver, dividing up fields among themselves. Tactics that had once worked when everyone charged forward together lost their effectiveness against large cities and standing armies. Everyone knew this wouldn’t do, yet everyone believed that everyone else was doing the same thing.
Clinging to life, shortsighted—once they’d taken Hangzhou, these desperate men no longer had it in them to go all in. People whose families had been ruined by the wealthy had, in truth, only ever wanted to become wealthy men themselves… In that sense, truly, there was no difference between one person and another.
He had walked this road a long way, watched it unfold for a long time, thought about it a great deal—but as for what step to take next, he could no longer see clearly.
In truth, those who thought too much were never happy. He reflected that he had once been disillusioned with the world, and after thinking and observing too much, that disillusionment had turned toward people themselves. In the stretch of time between the fall of Hangzhou and his cousin’s death in battle, he had kept wondering—did what they had accomplished truly mean anything? People were all the same—when they worked the land, they toiled fearfully, just as his own parents had; once they had money and land, they too became as ruthless and cunning as those landlords; once they became officials, they too oppressed the innocent just like those corrupt officials. Even if they truly overthrew the Martial Dynasty, would they end up changing nothing at all?
Fortunately, in this period, he had stopped dwelling on such thoughts. Finally having some leisure, he could lift his head and gaze at that sky, at the place he might someday go. And in his idle moments, looking back over the people and events of his past, two people occasionally flickered through his mind—two who were somehow different from all the rest.
His disciple, Chen Fan. As his own personally trained student, this child possessed remarkable natural talent, and was exceptionally clever. But perhaps precisely because he was so clever, he had come to see the contradictions of the world far too early. There was a knot in his heart he could never quite untie.
He had once placed great hopes in him, but in time, he no longer expected the boy to accomplish great things. Clever people tended toward either cynicism or naivety—and though Chen Fan understood the ways of the world well enough, at heart he remained too idealistic. And idealistic people could never accomplish great things.
Just as, after the defeat at Hangzhou, when his cousin retreated to hold Qingxi, anyone with sense could already see that the tide had turned irreversibly against the Yongle regime. To kill Bao Daoyi, Chen Fan had already sold his life, in effect, to the Overlord Blade Camp—yet when the chance to leave came, he had run back instead, secretly urging himself and a small group of others to leave, to the point that Fang Baihua had nearly killed him for it. And later, when Qingxi fell, he hadn’t evacuated either; this time, when he himself had been captured, among the outlaws who had attempted the rescue and fallen into an ambush, there had been traces of his involvement as well.
Naturally, such a person could never accomplish great things. But in these final moments, he hoped only that the boy might find some place beyond the court’s reach and simply live out this life in peace. Most important of all was that he not end up like himself—ultimately disillusioned with humanity itself.
The other person was that young niece from Overlord Blade Manor.
He had always felt she was a truly guileless person—even more naive, even more fearless than Chen Fan. After Liu Dabiao’s death, she had led Overlord Blade Manor, and always did things in her own peculiar way. That everyone tolerated her was partly because of the deep debt of gratitude owed to Liu Dabiao, and partly because Overlord Blade Manor genuinely possessed formidable fighting strength.
She was naive, headstrong, always charging to the front in battle and lagging behind during retreats. Overlord Blade Manor had paid a heavy price in this uprising, and she, who had always treated her people as family, must have suffered deeply for it in her heart. After the fall of Hangzhou, because of that man named Ning Yi, she had done some rather strange things within the city; at the time, he himself had felt that as long as she was happy, that was enough. But by the time Hangzhou fell and he and the others retreated to Qingxi, his thoughts on the matter had shifted somewhat.
After leaving Hangzhou, she had led the remaining few members of Overlord Blade Manor down a different path entirely. He had known at the time that she’d gone to the Miao territories. Later, when Chen Fan had returned, he had told him the whole story. That man named Ning Yi—he could never quite see through him—but during the collapse at Qingxi, he had more than once thought that, had he understood things sooner, he might have left more of Overlord Blade Manor’s fighting strength intact.
After Qingxi fell, everything descended into chaos. He had once thought about diverting some of his people to flee toward the Miao territories, to bolster the strength Overlord Blade Manor could still draw upon. But in truth, most of his own remaining people wouldn’t have been of much use to that young niece anyway. In the end, in the process of scattering everyone, all he had managed to do was select a group of children—some who had once studied at Overlord Blade Manor’s academy, others simply younger still—several dozen in total, and send them secretly to seek refuge in the Miao territories. This, perhaps, was the last thing he was able to do.
During the chaos at Qingxi, Chen Fan had come back, yet Overlord Blade Manor had made no move at all. Shi Bao and others had once remarked that they lacked loyalty—but he, along with Fang La and Shao Xianying, knew full well just how difficult it must have been for that naive, deeply devoted young niece to hold back the people of her stronghold at the very end, to keep them safe.
But that was, in the end, a good thing.
As the sounds of the ambush and killing along the roadside reached him, Fang Qifo looked up at the night sky, thinking these thoughts.
Perhaps, someday, on the path he himself had been unable to walk to its end, these guileless children might be able to carry it forward…
…
People fought and killed on the ground below; clouds drifted on above.
Tie Tianying, Chief Constable of the Ministry of Justice, wielding his great Juque blade, led a group of constables and soldiers in repelling an ambush attempt by outlaws. Behind the prisoner cart, the captives grew restless, and the soldiers on either side raised their weapons to suppress them. This time, to ensure that the leader of the Fang clan could be brought to the capital for trial in proper fashion, publicly displayed and executed to reaffirm the court’s authority, more than enough manpower had been arranged for the surrounding area.
Fang Qifo sat quietly in the prisoner cart, gazing up at the clouded sky above. If it were at all possible, he hoped no one would come to rescue him—but by now, matters were no longer within his control. The Ministry of Justice clearly intended to use him as bait, hoping to sweep up all these rebels in one net. He could only remain silent, no longer dwelling on such thoughts.
And just beyond the range of sight, amid mountain ridges shrouded by nearby forest, several figures were moving through the terrain. Even as the fighting continued below, they appeared on a nearby hillside, gazing down from a distance.
There were more than ten figures in all, led by a woman dressed in blue floral Miao attire. Her face carried a slight baby fat, her gaze clear and touched with a certain fearlessness. She stood in a gap along the mountainside, looking down below, a long wooden case slung across her back. Beside her were “Heaven-Piercing Blade” Du Sha, “Ash-Consuming Blade” Luo Bingren, “Deep-Ming Blade” Fang Shuchang, “Nine Deaths Blade” Zheng Qiming, and others.
They glanced down once, then made their way toward the scene below…