The matter of Fang Qifo and Fang Baihua had, for now, come to a close, though its aftermath was far from finished. Over the following two or three days, several chief constables from the Ministry of Justice came by every day to negotiate with Ning Yi, discussing the matter of reclaiming the severed head, sometimes bringing along local officials as well.

Zhu Biao had little interest in this kind of back-and-forth wrangling, but since he was responsible for Ning Yi’s safety, he ended up tagging along in and out, getting a firsthand look at the negotiations between the two sides. Every time, Zhu Biao couldn’t help but admire Ning Yi’s eloquence and patience—whatever tactic the other side tried, whether pressuring him with authority, reasoning with him in principle, throwing around rank, or simply arguing in circles, Ning Yi alone remained calm and composed, methodically countering point by point. In the end, though the chief constables would grow increasingly furious and the two sides would part on bad terms each time, Ning Yi always managed to sit back and watch it all play out with perfect calm.

During this period, the Secret Investigation Bureau also continued gathering all manner of information and leads from the surrounding area, and on the third day, this intelligence-gathering finally paid off—Ning Yi raised a particular matter during his negotiations with Tie Tianying and the others.

“Fang Baihua’s group of several hundred tried, from beginning to end, to rescue Fang Qifo, and never once succeeded. Yet at the very last moment, precisely when they were at their weakest, Fang Qifo was somehow rescued by a traitor within your own ranks. I’ve reviewed your service records over the years at the Ministry, Chief Constable Tie, and you are certainly not the sort of man who lets his guard down the instant before success. I don’t yet have any conclusions about how exactly this traitor emerged, but I would very much like to discuss it with all of you…”

The true details behind this matter weren’t likely to fully surface anytime soon, but once the question had been raised, there was a foundation for discussion. Tie Tianying and the others clearly had little wish to dwell on it, but Ning Yi naturally wasn’t about to let it go. After nearly half a morning of talk, the Ministry finally chose to yield, agreeing to formally acknowledge, in an official report, the assistance the Secret Investigation Bureau had provided in this operation.

With this news set down in a formal document, whatever issues the Bureau might have faced were now essentially cleared away. Ning Yi had, more or less deliberately, steered suspicion toward Sikong Nan, Lin Echan, and the others—not that he expected the Ministry to actually break ties with them over it; in truth, that was never going to happen. Sikong Nan and Lin Echan were, by now, certainly under the protection of some great clan, and even if the three chief constables wanted to sever ties, they lacked the power to do so. All it took was a little provocation to get them to step back.

It would still take several more days for the paperwork to work its way through the process and formally settle the matter. Ning Yi, for the time being, remained in the town near Siping Ridge.

That night, someone came.

…

What happened first, at one side of the courtyard, was a brief skirmish that didn’t last long. The intruder, once discovered, exchanged a few blows and then turned and fled. The Bureau’s manpower was thin, and though they gave chase for some distance, in the end the intruder managed to escape.

Close to midnight, Zhu Biao quietly led a figure inside. Ning Yi was sitting at the round table in his room reading, and after a glance, waved a hand. Once Zhu Biao stepped out and the door closed, he finally rose to his feet.

He walked to the tea table by the window, added water, and brewed tea. The room was silent; the figure who had entered stood by the door without moving. Ning Yi carried his teacup back and only then spoke.

“As you’ve seen, my defenses here are quite good now. If you’re not planning to just cut me down on the spot, try not to make too much noise in a moment.” His tone was even. “Right now, Zhu Biao is the only one here who knows about my connection to your group. If anyone else sees you here, it’ll be very hard for me to explain later.”

The one who had come was, indeed, Chen Fan. “If I meant to kill you, I wouldn’t need a blade.”

“I wouldn’t have let you in if you could kill me. Sit.” Ning Yi spread his hands. “The setup here now is meant to defend against Sikong Nan and Lin Echan—there’s a lot you haven’t seen yet. Whether it works well or not hasn’t really been tested much, but I promise you, you wouldn’t want to find out.”

“Xigua is dead.”

“…”

At those plain words, Ning Yi’s movements froze in place. His gaze fixed on Chen Fan; the two of them stared at each other for a long moment before Ning Yi slowly shook his head, then shook it harder. “She… there’s no reason for her to be dead. Don’t lie to me…”

Chen Fan pointed a finger at Ning Yi, teeth clenched, spitting out each word: “You killed my Master! You know he was like a father to me!”

“I had to kill him.” Ning Yi shook his head, his gaze unyielding. “To save your lives!”

“On this matter! No one asked you to save us!”

“I chose to save people! What business is it of yours!”

“A father’s death cannot go unavenged! I have to kill you!”

“Hmph!”

Ning Yi let out a cold snort, snatched up the teacup on the table, and hurled it at Chen Fan. Chen Fan’s arm snapped forward, his body crossing the two-plus zhang distance in an instant; the teacup was suddenly slammed down onto the table—driven entirely into the wood itself. His hand swept across the tabletop, his gaze savage. Ning Yi looked at the great gouge left in the table, spread his hands, and gave a cold laugh. “Impressive martial skill, isn’t it. Can you beat Sikong Nan? Can you beat Lin Echan? Could you have saved your Master on your own?”

Chen Fan’s hand stopped moving, though the wood still creaked. He held that pose for a good while before his expression finally settled; he took a deep breath and sat down in the chair beside him.

“Do you know—when I got here, Xigua had just woken from unconsciousness, and the first thing she said to me was: go get your revenge, I won’t stop you… She thought I’d come here to kill you.”

Ning Yi nodded, then reached up to rub his eyes, tired from reading. “I could have guessed as much.”

“I want my Master’s head.”

“That’s not possible.” Ning Yi shook his head. “It’s already been handed to the Ministry of Justice… Your Master is dead, gone like a snuffed-out lamp! Let this matter pass peacefully, will you? If your uprising had succeeded, that would be one thing—but it failed, and hundreds of thousands, even millions, are dead. The court needs someone to answer for it, and there’s no way you’re getting that head back! Are you determined to die here!?”

The paperwork hadn’t been finalized yet, and the head was, in truth, still in Ning Yi’s own possession—but he had no qualms about lying. Having said all this through gritted teeth, he glared at Chen Fan, and Chen Fan glared right back. After a long while, Chen Fan finally spoke: “Fine. I want something else instead…”

“Name it.”

“Those cannons—the ones that shot out fireballs, that exploded.”

Ning Yi’s gaze fixed on Chen Fan once more, but this time his expression shifted. After a moment, he walked to the writing desk on one side of the room and dug something out from among the papers there. “Not possible. I can’t give you the elm-wood cannons right now. But I can give you something else.”

The instant Chen Fan voiced this request, Ning Yi understood at once—in some sense, Chen Fan had redirected his hatred toward the entire Wu dynasty as a whole, a way of letting Ning Yi off the hook. Whether it was the code of the martial world or the bonds of human morality, Chen Fan had no choice but to avenge his father’s death; to displace that hatred, the only option was to redirect it toward something larger. Unfortunately, Ning Yi still had to refuse. Chen Fan frowned.

“Why?”

“The elm-wood cannons have already been shown in public—I can’t just hand them over to you, I’d have no way to explain it. And besides, they were originally meant to eventually be equipped to the imperial army… hold on, don’t move yet. The wooden cannon barrels aren’t precise, they’re not particularly safe, and loading them is a hassle. They have some power, sure, but they’re only a half-finished product. A true finished cannon still needs further research—including a great deal of data measurement, firing formulas, all of which require extensive practical testing.”

Ning Yi tossed a small booklet from his hand onto the table. Chen Fan picked it up and flipped through it idly. “A few years from now, the Wu dynasty and the Jin people are certainly going to have a major war. We won’t win it—but I don’t want to lose either. That’s my reason for going to the capital. Equipping the army with elm-wood cannons could make a real difference. Once this matter is settled, I’ll consider giving you the new cannons. Whatever you do with them after that is out of my hands.”

He looked somewhat tired, and paused. “What’s in this booklet is called a mud-clay blast furnace. The iron available now is too hard, prone to bursting the barrel—not suited for cannon-making. Only once it’s been softened can its safety be guaranteed. The steel yield from a mud-clay furnace isn’t high, but you can find some craftsmen to look into it… There’s a copy of this same booklet at Mount Lüliang as well. If there’s any progress, the two groups can actually share information—by the time a real cannon is developed, you’ll be among the first to have the materials to make one. I’ve written it all down in there, one way or another…”

Chen Fan closed the booklet, which he couldn’t fully make sense of.

“Do you know? I can’t figure out what you’re trying to do…”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what we’re going to do in the future. You say you’re heading to the capital to resist the Jin, to protect the Wu dynasty—but one day, we’re going to rise up against it. If you save the Wu dynasty, and we tear it apart afterward, what exactly have you accomplished?”

Ning Yi smiled. “A clever hare keeps three burrows. I’m a businessman—it’s only natural to invest in more than one place.”

Chen Fan said nothing. After a moment, Ning Yi shook his head. “You don’t know this, but my original goal, from the start, was simply to find some peaceful corner of the world where my wife—at most, along with a concubine and children—could settle down and live out a quiet, stable life together. And that’s still what I want now. But people are strange creatures—some things, within reach, are worth doing. I don’t much like the Wu dynasty, but I don’t want to see it fall into Jin hands either—that would bring far too much trouble… You and Xigua and the rest of you are determined to rebel, and I can’t stop you. If you win, everything’s fine. If you lose, I hope you’ll let it go, and manage, one way or another, to stay alive.”

He let out a sigh and walked to the writing desk, straightening the stack of papers on it.

“I wasn’t originally the fussy, long-winded type, but that’s exactly what I’ve become now, and I don’t much like it either. Some troublesome matters, I used to try to avoid, and I’m truly tired of it—but this is just how the world works, everything, in the end, snowballs bigger and bigger. Right now I’ve got over twenty men guarding the place outside, having to watch for vendettas, for assassins, and a bunch of fools who spend all day here scheming against each other. There’s probably even more trouble ahead, worse than doing business ever was—advancing or retreating, neither one’s easy. This morning I had a bowl of tofu pudding, and of all things, it turned out to be sweet. Tch… tofu pudding, how can it possibly be sweet…”

He kept tidying things as he spoke, his tone remaining calm throughout, a faint smile still on his face, as if mocking himself. Once he’d stacked the papers neatly to one side, he paused a moment, nodded, and made a joking remark with a smile.

“Damn it all, one of these days I’m going to get sick of this and just kill every last bastard who rubs me the wrong way…” He thought about it, then shrugged and shook his head. “Tch, sweet tofu pudding…”

The room fell quiet for a good while. Half of what Ning Yi had said was true, half was not—at least part of it carried a chill that ran down the spine, though his overly casual manner made it hard to tell which was which. After a long silence, Chen Fan finally spoke, somewhat hesitant: “Actually…”

Holding the booklet on crude steel-smelting methods, he hesitated over whether to say it, but finally did: “Actually, sweet tofu pudding… isn’t really that bad, is it…”

Ning Yi leaned against the desk, frowning at him, tilting his head slightly.

After a moment’s standoff, Chen Fan shook his head and let out a sigh. “You madman…”