According to Ning Yi’s original plan, there should still have been a few more days before setting out south for Muyuan County to bring his wife back home. But Chen Fan’s sudden arrival, and the news he brought with him, threw the original schedule into disarray, turning the second day, the seventh of February, into a busy one.

From early morning, preparations for the southward journey were already underway, with arrangements for the manor outside the city taking top priority, since much of Ning Yi’s innovative development work was based there. Out of hospitality, and also to keep Chen Fan from wandering loose and causing trouble in the city, Ning Yi even gave him a tour, letting him sample freshly squeezed fruit juice bottled in elegant porcelain vials and salted quail eggs. When asked for his impressions, Chen Fan naturally nodded and said they tasted good, though his eyes were full of bewilderment: This guy’s been up to nothing but this kind of stuff since arriving in the capital!

Ning Yi had never had modest standards when it came to daily life — even in the thick of the chaos in Hangzhou, he’d still tried to eat well whenever conditions allowed. Chen Fan was well aware of this side of him. In truth, fruit juice and quail eggs weren’t unheard of in this era, but Ning Yi had packaged them far more elegantly, and was specifically experimenting with preservation methods for the quail eggs — selling them at Bamboo Records could turn a tidy profit, though calling it “innovation” seemed a bit of a stretch. Ning Yi, for his part, was clearly enjoying himself regardless, and when they parted, he gave everyone a bottle of juice to take along.

Besides the manor outside the city, another matter requiring attention was the branch of the Su family’s cloth business in the capital. Several people whom Ning Yi had arranged to have trained there had originally been scheduled to head south together in a few days’ time; now this had been moved up, with notice given the previous night, and today he came by to check on their preparations.

Chen Fan sat on the steps behind the Su family cloth shop’s warehouse, the corner of his mouth twitching as he watched Ning Yi review the five men.

“Are you ready or not?!”

“We’re ready!”

“Do you have confidence?!”

“We have confidence!”

“How are you all?!”

“We’re the best there is!”

“Good, that’s the spirit… Now go get your things packed up. This time isn’t like selling goods behind the counter — be prepared, everything’s counting on you.”

Shouting such shameless slogans this loudly hardly matched the standards expected of a gentleman scholar in this era. Chen Fan, sharp-eyed as ever, noticed that aside from Ning Yi’s drilling, when these men answered him, they carried themselves with an air of easy confidence — but once they turned away, their expressions and bearing seemed rather more uncertain and hesitant, leaving him wondering what sort of people they’d been before. Before long, the two of them sat on stone benches by the river beside the warehouse, drinking juice, and Chen Fan finally voiced the question on his mind.

“Are you taking these five men south to be your protégé-advisors?”

“No, they’re cloth sellers.”

“Huh?”

Along the road, people came and went, spring sunlight filtering down through the trees’ shade. Ning Yi glanced back at the still-unopened Su family cloth shop nearby, then raised his porcelain juice bottle in a gesture toward it.

“Since our family came north, the cloth business has been managed by my wife, and it’s picked up quite a bit. But a woman running the household seems to have offended someone connected to the Zuo family, and the cloth business hasn’t been getting much cooperation from them — some pushback going on. Truthfully, we could open up right now if we wanted to, but to avoid provoking too strong a backlash from that quarter, we’ve kept delaying it. Because of this, I’ve been training a few people, planning to have them go door to door promoting our goods to wealthy households.”

Ning Yi took a sip of juice and laughed. “Of those five, two used to work at the cloth shop, one’s a young store manager, and the other two I pulled over from Bamboo Records. Since the cloth business needs the help, I’m prioritizing them there for now. This trip south, I’m planning to have them develop business around Muyuan County, visiting some wealthy households in the area.”

Chen Fan caught his meaning and frowned. “What kind of money can traveling salesmen possibly make?”

“That’s not quite how it works.”

Ning Yi shook his head with a smile.

In the Wu Dynasty as it currently stood, sales generally came in two forms: dealing with strangers, or dealing with familiar customers. Traveling merchants of the roads, carrying a small load and wandering from place to place, tended to have a reputation for being sly and unscrupulous, carrying the rough air of the roads — the sort of trade grouped in with carters, boatmen, innkeepers, and porters, considered barely a step above outright criminals. Doing business with wealthy households wasn’t easy for such people. Rich families, as a rule, tended to become regular customers of fixed shops — much like in Jiangning, when wealthy households needed clothes made, they’d summon a familiar shopkeeper and tailor from the Su family to come to them, or when the Su family introduced a new style, a smooth-talking shopkeeper might pay a visit to ask if they were interested.

Between these two approaches, merchants were, in the end, still considered a lowly trade — however skillful and smooth-tongued a shopkeeper might be, there would always be a subtle undertone of inferiority in his manner and bearing.

In truth, manner and bearing were highly telling qualities in this era. Back in the pre-Qin period, itinerant political strategists could talk circles around people with just a well-reasoned phrase or two; in the era of the Three Kingdoms, a remark like “this man carries himself with extraordinary bearing” could be enough to determine whether someone was worth entrusting with responsibility, or even to prompt an immediate decision to swear brotherhood with him. At bottom, it all came down to the relationship between knowledge and cultural literacy — in a place where most people never traveled more than a hundred li from home in their entire lives, anyone capable of grasping the broader currents of a region, or offering a reasonably sound analysis of the wider state of the realm, generally possessed decent logical faculties as well.

By the time of the Wu Dynasty, though literary culture flourished, the proportion of educated men within the overall population was still not especially large. Setting aside the dullards who’d read themselves stupid, anyone with genuinely impressive bearing and eloquence essentially already possessed the foundation to climb into the upper ranks of society. Moreover, this kind of bearing, eloquence, and confidence inevitably had to be built upon actual learning and social recognition. In a rigidly Confucian society, there wasn’t much room to cut corners on this front — but this happened to be precisely where Ning Yi’s own strengths lay.

Techniques of persuasive education, sales concepts from a later era — what Ning Yi first set about doing was a crash-course transformation of how these men carried themselves and interacted with others. They didn’t need much formal education, but as long as their intelligence and logical reasoning were sufficient, Ning Yi could equip them with a full set of behaviors projecting confidence, warmth, and professionalism. From there, wherever they went, they’d adopt the air of “having come from the capital,” visiting wealthy landowners in the area — targeting especially those from more isolated, provincial places with a strong streak of vanity — informing them of developments in the wider world, what was fashionable in the capital, and then beginning their pitch. Most importantly, they’d try their utmost to establish long-term trading relationships, so that whatever new goods came out of the capital going forward could continue flowing steadily to these same customers.

Once the salesmen grew more professional and skilled at persuasion, they could then move on to tackle the more enlightened gentry, gradually working their way from the countryside toward the cities. The gap between rich and poor was vast in this era, and there were plenty of landowners sitting on surplus wealth they either hadn’t gotten around to using, or simply had no idea how to put to use. If, in a later era, something like “have you heard of Amway” could fool an enormous number of people, there was no reason it couldn’t work here as well.

Of course, the training these five men had received so far hadn’t run nearly long enough, and each region had its own particular circumstances — how to build a proper sales framework suited to the current times could only mature gradually, over time. But since the investment involved was minimal, even if the effort failed outright, these five men would at least return with enough skill to serve as shop managers, so Ning Yi wasn’t especially worried about it — people, after all, were a resource that could always be recycled and put to use again.

Naturally, none of this could be easily explained to Chen Fan on the spot, nor was there really any need to. Shifting the topic, Ning Yi said, “Once this business with your master is settled, what do you plan to do?”

Chen Fan thought it over, took a sip of juice. “What else could I do? My life’s already been given over to Liu Xigua — after the fall of Hangzhou, I didn’t go, which already counts as breaking my word. I suppose I’ll go take a look at what’s to be done in the Miao borderlands. Maybe when the time’s right, I’ll raise an army with her again and start another rebellion against you lot.”

“You’re still thinking about rebelling…” Ning Yi shook his head, laughing.

Chen Fan sighed. “It’s all the same to me. In the past, following my master, there was nothing to do but rebel — but honestly, I don’t even know what there’d be to do after a rebellion succeeded, either. As a child, following my master, I saw plenty of people who deserved to die, and it was hard to settle the resentment in my heart without killing them. But after actually killing people, I came to realize that killing doesn’t actually solve anything — especially once the original killers themselves gradually became people who deserved killing in turn. After that, I lost much of my enthusiasm for it.”

Ever since meeting Chen Fan in Hangzhou, Ning Yi had genuinely come to admire him quite a bit. Young, formidably skilled in martial arts, and though he often seemed reckless, he in fact possessed remarkable clarity of insight into many matters. Back then, his standing within the rebel forces hadn’t been particularly high — though he was Fang Qifo’s disciple, and among the younger generation he alone could stand up to Liu Xigua’s temper, honestly speaking, he’d rarely been entrusted with any real position of authority.

At the time, there had been rumors that Master Fang Qifo cherished his disciple too much, wanting him to season further before truly taking on great responsibility. In truth, though, Ning Yi could see that all of this actually stemmed from Chen Fan’s own passive attitude. In battle, he could charge to the front as a fierce warrior; when no one else was around to handle things, he could step up and take charge himself — but the moment someone else took over, he’d immediately drop the matter, adopting an attitude of simply getting by. This could be seen most clearly from the time he’d stepped in to assassinate Bao Daoyi on behalf of a group of academy students.

Having grown up with no one to depend on, he’d spent his years running himself ragged for his master’s cause, and now, with the Yongle regime collapsed and Fang Qifo captured, amid all this frantic activity, he genuinely felt rather lost inside. When Ning Yi asked, he gave that answer, then paused and laughed. “As for Xigua, I don’t know what she’s busy with these days — she’s got her own ideas, and she’s hoping that once I go over there, I’ll be able to find some justification for another rebellion.” This was really just an offhand remark on his part — he had little genuine confidence in it himself. After thinking it over, he asked, “What about you, then, Liheng? What are your own plans going forward?”

“Mine’s fairly simple.” Ning Yi sat there and spread his hands. “Like I said before, the Jurchens are powerful and the Wu Dynasty is weak — once the Liao falls, they’ll turn their armies southward. I suppose I’ll be doing something about that…”

“You mean… this?” Chen Fan raised the porcelain bottle to indicate what he meant.

Ning Yi laughed. “Exactly this… To get anything done, you need influence. To have influence, you need people. To have people, you absolutely need money to support them. It’s the same everywhere.”

“Isn’t power enough? What can mere money accomplish?”

“It’s the same principle. Any official, however high or low — from the prime minister down to a lowly seventh-rank clerk — will always have a group of people around him relying on him for their livelihood. Anyone truly with no one currying favor with them, or genuinely, absolutely incorruptible, can’t actually get anything done. At bottom, whether it’s a nation, a gang, or a faction, all of them come together for the sake of shared interest — some of that interest abstract, some quite concrete. An organization without any abstract, higher purpose can never truly grow strong; an organization without any concrete benefit to offer doesn’t even have a foundation to stand on.”

After a moment, Chen Fan nodded. “But I don’t think this sort of thing can make you all that much money.”

“That’s precisely my area of expertise.”

“Then… setting aside whether the Jurchens will actually come south or not — if you did stop it from happening, then what?”

“Then… I’d become a landed gentleman, settle into a quiet corner somewhere with my wife and children, build myself an estate, hire a bunch of tenant farmers to manage it… maybe do a bit of teaching here and there. Something along those lines, I suppose.”

Chen Fan froze for a moment, then frowned and drained the rest of his juice bottle in one gulp. “Ha.”

Ning Yi shrugged. The two of them sat there by the tree-shaded riverside path, each lost in his own thoughts, until after a while, Chen Fan remembered something and said, “Xigua’s not going to want to go live in seclusion with you, though.”

Ning Yi nodded. “That’s exactly the problem, isn’t it…”

By now it was already midday, and the two chatted a bit more. Regarding the southward trip, Ning Yi wouldn’t be personally involved in the rescue of Fang Qifo — the two of them had already reached agreement on this point. After all, given his current standing, if he really did show up in front of Fang Baihua and the others, not only would plenty of people on the court’s side want him dead, but even Fang Baihua’s own attitude toward him would likely be far from favorable. Because of this, Ning Yi had only written a letter for Chen Fan to deliver to Liu Xigua. As for himself, on the surface he would first head to Muyuan to fetch his wife, then travel south to Jiangning for some business dealings — everything else he’d play by ear.

Since Ning Yi wasn’t going to personally meet with Liu Xigua, Chen Fan, whose time was now precious, saw no need to wait until the next day to set off with him — he intended to leave right after noon. The two of them had lunch at a nearby restaurant, and midway through the meal, Su Yanping came hurrying over. “Brother-in-law, I’ve heard something.”

Seeing Chen Fan sitting across the table, he leaned in close to Ning Yi’s ear and spoke quietly. “I heard that this morning, Young Master Gao made a move — they’ve gathered a number of prominent martial artists here in Bianliang, saying they intend to make trouble for you, brother-in-law. Among them are Chen Yuanwang, the earth-rank instructor from the Imperial Bow Hall, Ma Jinfu of the ‘Thousand-Li Escort Bureau,’ Peng Xianyu of the Divine Fist School…”

Su Yanping kept his voice low, but as for who Chen Fan was — among those close to Ning Yi, aside from Lu Hongti, he was likely the most formidable martial artist of them all, possibly even a shade above Liu Xigua. Once Su Yanping finished speaking, Ning Yi nodded to show he understood. “Have you eaten yet? If not, sit down and join us.”

“Already eaten. I’ve got things to attend to elsewhere — you just needed to know about this, brother-in-law… Brother Chen, I’ll take my leave.”

Chen Fan rose and cupped his hands in farewell. Once Su Yanping had gone, his eyes gleamed with interest. “The capital’s Young Master Gao? Gao Qiu’s son? Liheng, why not let me help you…”

Ning Yi hastily cupped his hands with a wry smile. “Brother, please, I’m terrified of you already — whatever you do, don’t get involved.”

“Ha ha ha ha.” Chen Fan laughed happily.

By rights, the two of them now stood on opposite sides of things — if Chen Fan really went and killed Gao Mu’en, Ning Yi would never be able to wash the suspicion off himself, no matter how he tried. But Chen Fan was, after all, an honest and forthright man; the thought had simply struck him as amusing, and he’d said it out loud as a joke. After finishing the meal, he rose to take his leave.

“I don’t know the details of what you’re up to, so I won’t say anything more. Once things are settled, I hope we’ll get the chance to share a drink together again.”

“No rush.” Ning Yi waved a hand. “Before you leave the city, stop by my house first.”

“Oh?”

“Come meet my son. In the future, if the opportunity ever arises, I’d like him to call you master, and learn a thing or two from you.”

Chen Fan tilted his head, looking at him for a moment, then slowly clapped Ning Yi on the shoulder, laughing. “Well then, what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”