The green fields stretched on and on, the setting sun gradually dissolving into orange-red among the foothills. On the hillside, several carriages were stopped not far off the road, with attendants scattered near and far. Ning Yi and Su Tan’er sat down on the grassy slope, watching Xiao Chan, Juan’er, and Xing’er over there playing with Ning Xi.
“You… have you thought it through?”
“Whether I’ve thought it through or not, I never wanted to bring you out here in the first place. I’d already planned it before—after the performances at the two towers, I was going to come.”
“How is Yongping doing?”
“They should be getting ready for the exams by now.”
“I… I thought you wouldn’t come this early. The secret reports said Gao Muen was making trouble.”
“All minor things. Master Ji at the Chancellor’s residence helped settle it. Whatever comes, we’ll deal with it as it comes—it won’t get too out of hand.”
“Who is Xiaopin?”
“Huh?”
“Remember—’At our first meeting, Xiaopin wore a robe embroidered with a double heart…'”
The woman recited the line slowly, word by word. Ning Yi looked utterly puzzled, as though only now recalling the matter.
“That… does Xiaopin refer to a person?”
“Huh?”
“I thought it referred to something else entirely. Out of the whole poem, I always felt those two lines had the least poetic feeling…”
“…Husband, you really are shameless.”
“There really isn’t anyone named Xiaopin…”
The couple bantered over the poem for a while. Su Tan’er squeezed Ning Yi’s palm but in the end never spoke the name Li Pin aloud—otherwise Ning Yi’s face might well have turned green. After a time like this had passed, Ning Yi finally brought up the matter of returning to Jiangning.
“I brought a few people over here to stay in Muyuan for a while—they can help you with things, sort of as a trial run. As for going back to Jiangning, it’s about time to pay respects to your father. Actually, this trip south, there might be another matter as well… A couple of days ago in the capital, Chen Fan came to see me.”
“Chen Fan…” Su Tan’er of course remembered the name. Repeating it now, after a moment her brow furrowed. “He… at a time like this…”
“It’s about Fang Qifo.” Ning Yi gazed at the distant sunset glow and said in a low voice, “He’s hoping I can help…”
Having said this, he looked at his wife’s hesitant, worried expression, then shook his head with a smile. “Of course there’s nothing much I can do.”
Su Tan’er’s worried look eased slightly. She lowered her head to think, brow still furrowed. “But… can it be pushed aside? Do you… want to push it aside?”
“It’s not a question of pushing it aside or not. I owe them a debt of gratitude and I’d like to repay it, but this matter—whoever touches it is more or less doomed. I explained the background clearly to Chen Fan afterward, and he can understand.”
“But… husband, you still intend to do something, don’t you?”
Su Tan’er stared at him. Ning Yi sighed and reached out to put his arm around her shoulders. “What I hope is that even if things don’t work out, they can at least keep their lives—Chen Fan, and also Liu Xigua, who’s come along this time. I won’t consider meeting with them myself. Fang Baihua’s group probably doesn’t think much of me anyway, and I don’t intend to make contact with them either. At most… perhaps I’ll see whether it’s possible to meet Fang Qifo once. If I can manage even that, I’ll have done all that duty requires.”
He looked at the child not far off, clapping his hands and shouting wildly, and paused. “This family is half yours too, so I want you to know about this… We have a child now. I won’t act recklessly.”
“I don’t want to… stop you from repaying a debt of gratitude. If it were me, I’d want to repay it too… but given how serious this matter is, I can’t help worrying a little.” Su Tan’er leaned against Ning Yi’s shoulder, managing a smile. On matters like this, women always thought further ahead than men did—but after a moment she calmed herself. “Aside from talking them out of it, is there anything else that can be done?”
“There are some account books down in Jiangnan that might be worth looking into. I don’t know the details, but I can let Chen Fan and the others know about them.” Ning Yi told his wife about those ledgers, along with the rumors of treasure left behind by Fang La. “These accounts can’t establish guilt right now, but for many purposes, they don’t need to go before the imperial court either. If the person behind all this is one of Fang La’s direct followers, and Chen Fan and the others can manage to find the ledgers, there should be some room to maneuver.”
Su Tan’er nodded.
Not long after, the sunset burned itself out among the foothills, and night fell. Torches were lit by the carriages, and a few points of light slowly made their way from the hillside toward the small county town not far off, merging at last with the scattered lamplight of the town. Because of Ning Yi’s group’s arrival, the little courtyard was no longer able to accommodate everyone comfortably. Tan’er arranged for the women to stay in the courtyard, while she and Ning Yi took a room at an inn in the county town. Reunited husband and wife had much to say to each other, and much to do—matters not fit to be spoken of to outsiders.
Under that same night sky, in the mountains several hundred li south of Muyuan, scattered lamplight also glimmered. This was not a barren region; among the stretching mountains and hills lay towns and villages large and small, threaded through by post roads and rivers, many of the villages fairly prosperous. Recently, with word spreading of the remaining bandits from Fang La’s uprising causing trouble, security in the surrounding towns and villages had tightened somewhat, and inspections of traveling wanderers and martial artists had grown more careful. Still, this was an area that had generally known peace, and even now the atmosphere here was nowhere near as tense as in Shandong—ordinary common folk likely noticed no change at all in the mood of daily life.
Near a large estate tucked away in a remote mountain range, a travel-worn Chen Fan, led by former comrades from the uprising army, passed through several hidden sentry posts before finally seeing Fang Baihua, whose face was worn with injury but whose eyes still held their sharpness. The two exchanged few words; after a brief greeting, Fang Baihua looked at him, and Chen Fan shook his head. The middle-aged woman nodded indifferently—for her, this outcome had always been expected. There was no meaning left in dwelling on it.
She had heard something of Ning Yi’s affairs, and had once met the man herself. Chen Fan’s, Xigua’s, and the others’ entanglement with him was one thing, but to suppose he could actually resolve the matter of Fang Qifo would be crediting the man with more than was reasonable. And at this point, she had no wish to hold anything against Ning Yi over past matters—there was no point in it any longer.
“…I made inquiries. As for this matter concerning my Master, the backgrounds of those involved are far from simple. Wang Fu wants his life above all, and beyond him there are several great clans in the capital and elsewhere—”
Chen Fan began speaking of it in a low voice, but Fang Baihua lightly raised a hand to cut him off. “I know.”
“Then what about now—” Chen Fan himself was prepared to die trying to save Fang Qifo, but he did not wish too many others to die with him. The words came out with difficulty, his lips trembling, a hint of red rimming his eyes. Fang Baihua looked at him and shook her head.
“Chen Fan, your Master… actually does not wish for you to be drawn into matters of this kind. Your thinking is correct. If you were to take your people and leave now, no one would blame you…”
Chen Fan stared at her, eyes wide.
Though he was Fang Qifo’s disciple, there had always been a clear hierarchy within Fang La’s army in the old days, and Chen Fan had never held a position of great importance—his relationship with Fang Baihua was not nearly as close as Liu Xigua’s. So her gaze toward him now was cold, indifferent—the indifference of someone who had already set her own life and death aside, needing no one’s understanding.
“Go on down. Go see Xigua. These past days her temper has run rather high—you young people can talk more easily with each other. As for the rest, there’s no need to say more.”
Chen Fan nodded, then cupped his hands and took his leave.
These past days, Xigua had been facing, on one side, the man who had killed her father, and on the other, the fact that her comrades might not fully understand why the Hegemon Blade Camp had withdrawn when Hangzhou fell. Her temper had reason enough to run high. When Chen Fan found her, she was sitting on a large rock on the hillside outside the estate, lost in thought, cradling in her arms that great blade of hers. Seeing him approach, her gaze flickered briefly, then turned even colder.
“I saw him,” Chen Fan said. “But there’s nothing he can do.”
Xigua’s gaze had wavered for a moment, then returned to its indifference. Chen Fan continued, “He couldn’t come to see you himself, but he hopes you’ll keep the bigger picture in mind and leave this place.”
The girl cradling the great blade tilted her head, gazing sidelong at the moonlight above. After a moment, she said, “He knows that even if he came himself, he couldn’t talk me out of it.”
“He asked me to give you a letter.” Chen Fan drew a sealed letter from inside his robe. He’d meant to hand it to her, but seeing her expression, in the end he only set it down on the rock beside her. In truth, neither of them found the present situation easy to bear—Chen Fan had gone to the capital hoping to find Ning Yi, and had returned only to be forced to relay words urging Fang Baihua, Xigua, and the others to leave. And in Chen Fan’s going, perhaps Xigua too had carried a thread of hope in her heart. Now there was nothing to be done about it; though she’d surely been prepared for this, the disappointment and sorrow were real all the same.
After Chen Fan left, the girl sat there, paying no mind to the letter beside her. She held the great blade, pressing her cheek against its hilt. Only when the mountain wind rose, and the letter was about to be blown away, did she reach out and catch it.
Moonlight lay clear over the hillside, but not clear enough to read by. The girl sat a while, then slung the blade across her back and walked toward a small, run-down house not far outside the estate. These past days, among the many gathered to save Fang Qifo, most did not think much of her, and she thought no better of them. Today, when Fang Baihua had used her authority to have everyone housed within the estate, Xigua hadn’t bothered to go; she and Du Sha and a few others had chosen to lodge nearby instead.
She walked up to the door of that run-down little room, took out a half-burned torch, and lit it. Cradling the great blade, she sat casually on the ground beneath the eaves. When she drew the letter from its envelope, the paper was covered densely with characters, which made her a little irritated.
She had trained in martial arts since childhood, and while she could read, her grasp of written language was not deep. She sometimes found the flowery, elaborate letters of scholars and literati a headache to read. Ning Yi’s command of writing was formidable—what was the point of composing something so ornate just to show off, if she couldn’t even understand it? But after reading a few lines, that irritation vanished without a trace.
“A’Gua, seeing this letter is like seeing your face. It’s been nearly a year since we parted south of the river. I don’t know what your family looks like now, don’t know if you’re still as willful as before… I very much wanted to come see you, but circumstances didn’t allow it…”
The salutation at the start was one she had never much liked, but the displeasure rose and passed in an instant, because the sentences that followed were ones she could read with ease—even strange, colloquial phrasing she’d never seen before. In the torchlight, the girl, holding the great blade, looking somewhat slight of frame, felt the corners of her lips curl upward, and before she knew it, a smile spread across her face. Through the paper, it was as if she could see the man from last year’s parting, over there, speaking to her easily and gently—a feeling that brought her a warmth she hadn’t felt in many days. She kept reading, following the lines of the page…