The meeting at the Right Chancellor’s residence didn’t run especially long. Much of what was discussed had already been covered before; today’s session was mostly a matter of reiterating things, with the only genuinely new topic being that the Chancellor’s residence would host a grand banquet in three days’ time, inviting guests to celebrate the great victory in the north.

After talking a while longer with Qin Siyuan, Yao Zunian, Monk Juemingm, and the others, Ning Yi’s expression, as he emerged from the courtyard, didn’t carry much in the way of joy. The pleasure of Guo Yaoshi’s great victory had barely settled before new concerns had already come pressing down—the rope of tension binding north and south together was being pulled ever tauter.

Since the start of the northern campaign, Qin Siyuan’s own responsibilities had mostly concerned domestic affairs. But the Secret Investigation Bureau’s earlier groundwork in the north continued to prove enormously useful, and the matter of Zhang Jue, Prefect of Pingzhou, was a case in point. This man had originally served as a Liao general, and had surrendered to the Jin once the Liao’s situation had collapsed. But among his staff of advisors was a Secret Investigation Bureau operative, who, upon discovering Zhang Jue harbored thoughts of surrendering to the Wu dynasty instead, had been quietly working to advance this outcome ever since. Pingzhou held considerable strategic importance among the Sixteen Prefectures, and Zhang Jue commanded tens of thousands of troops of his own—if this could be brought about, it would count as a major achievement.

But before this, with the northern military situation in shambles and the Jin consistently holding the upper hand, though the current emperor, Zhou Zhe, was indeed angry over the Jin’s repeated reneging on the return of the Sixteen Prefectures, and had spoken often enough of taking a firmer stand, Qin Siyuan had never dared provoke conflict lightly. It was only with Guo Yaoshi’s victory now behind them that he finally had a measure of real confidence to work with.

If, from what the common people had seen up to this point, the Wu dynasty’s handling of the situation with the Jin and Liao had appeared rather naive, riddled with mistakes—from the position Ning Yi now occupied, he could see clearly enough that it would be unfair to accuse the Wu dynasty of having taken no precautions whatsoever against the potential for catastrophic outcomes. Over these past several years, even as the northern campaign was being pushed forward on one front, on another, considerable effort had gone into actively strengthening the rear’s defenses as well—including a large-scale buildup of border forces, and, recognizing their own limitations in actual combat, a deliberate effort to absorb as many surrendered soldiers from the former Liao side as possible, offering them favorable treatment, organizing them into military units, ensuring their logistical support, and so on.

Whether Tong Guan, Cai Jing, Li Gang, the emperor himself, or even Tan Zhen, who might soon take over Tong Guan’s position—the great majority of high officials at court were far from fools. Even with the probability of a Jin invasion from the south quite low, they themselves understood the necessity of strengthening rear defenses. Especially for men like Tong Guan, the messy state of the northern campaign had, if anything, only made them more actively engaged in pushing forward and supporting exactly this kind of preparation.

The Jurchen’s own military strength had never been especially large to begin with; having already occupied Liao territory, even if they were somehow foolish enough to actually march south, from Guo Yaoshi’s forces north of Yanmen Pass all the way south of the pass, from Taiyuan down to the banks of the Yellow River—a defensive depth stretching over a thousand li, with several hundred thousand troops in total, however many shoddy, corner-cutting projects might be buried within that number—would still be more than enough to grind down the Jin’s forces to exhaustion.

Within the Right Chancellor’s residence, no small number of people held this same awareness. The old Cheng Zhouhai, Wang Shanyue, and others had all been enthusiastic proponents of the “Jin threat theory.” But by now, even Ning Yi couldn’t reasonably keep harping on it every single day—after all, everyone had already been taking real action on it. Even if some of those measures had, admittedly, been carried out somewhat sloppily, done merely for the sake of appearances or career advancement, the most the Right Chancellor’s residence could do was to try, as best it could, to steer things back on course from within—not a matter of right or wrong, simply the reality of operating within the system as it was.

But regardless, in his own heart, Ning Yi couldn’t help but harbor some measure of concern.

The trajectories of the Wu and Song dynasties bore certain similarities, though, prior to all this, he had never paid particularly close attention to actual history—a trait rooted in the intensely pragmatic personality he’d carried over from his previous life.

To him, so-called history shared something in common with fiction—only, because history had actually happened, it carried greater persuasive weight for others. But at bottom, whether history or story, what truly mattered was the lesson it contained, the process of drawing on those who came before to reflect back on oneself. Yet in the restless, impatient society of later ages, people utterly lacking any capacity for discernment or reflection were everywhere—sometimes awed by the supposed authenticity of history, yet never once using that authentic history to reflect on themselves; most people used that authenticity only to measure others, extracting from it some small sense of superiority, never once noticing that their own conduct mirrored, almost exactly, the very foolishness recorded throughout so much of history.

When people mock the foolishness of those who came before, decry the cruelty of their enemies, yet never once turn that same scrutiny on themselves—never see their own foolishness, their own indifference, even as they themselves engage in the very acts of rule-breaking and hollowing out of the state—then this so-called authentic history becomes utterly worthless. And if that authenticity of history serves only to grant people some sense of “I know so much,” letting them mock others from a position of superiority, then for society as a whole, the value of that authenticity turns, if anything, into something actively negative.

It was precisely because of this understanding that Ning Yi held a deep contempt for the pursuit of historical authenticity for its own sake, always believing that pursuing the educational value of parables and fables was worth more than chasing historical accuracy—at the very least, a fable could clearly tell its reader: this is right, that is wrong. But it was also because of this same habit of thought that, in the present moment, he found it genuinely difficult to be certain how the whole situation might unfold. The Song dynasty had suffered the humiliation of Jingkang. Whether the Wu dynasty might suffer something similar was, truly, hard to say.

Of course, for the present moment, winning over Zhang Jue’s surrender was, without question, a good move for strengthening their own position—no need to dwell on it further. As for the grain-price crisis in the disaster zones, which the others at the Chancellor’s residence found so difficult to resolve, Ning Yi certainly had no intention of treating it lightly—but with preparations already underway more than a month in advance, he had, for now, no intention of concerning himself too closely with the specific details of the matter.

Because… a great many people were, at this very moment, being starved to death, alive and in the flesh, right where they stood…

…

In the summer of the eleventh year of the Jinghan era, flooding and drought struck the Wu dynasty, with more than twenty prefectures and counties across Jingzhao Prefecture, Hedong, Hebei, and Jinghu suffering damage to varying degrees. Thanks to effective relief efforts by the court, the number of deaths directly attributable to the disaster proved far lower than in previous years. But precisely because so many survived, in the disaster zones and the neighboring prefectures and counties, the hidden threat of runaway grain prices had begun quietly brewing.

This phenomenon concentrated in several regions across north and south. In the north, it was most severe in Jingzhao Prefecture and Hedong Circuit—roughly corresponding to what would later become Shaanxi and Shanxi—while in the south, this same problem emerged around the Jinghu region, an area that had originally been a major grain-producing zone, but where the compounding effects of flood and drought had instead triggered even greater panic. For the moment, though, the situation of people starving to death there remained less severe than in the north.

At present, the Right Chancellor’s residence was still doing everything it could to marshal grain supplies, maintaining the distribution of basic relief rations. But the rising grain prices on the open market only meant more and more people were being pulled into the ranks of disaster victims by the day. With the imperial stores of grain the Wu dynasty could currently spare already limited, given the need to sustain the northern campaign, and with corruption siphoning off further amounts at every level, hoping to hold out until next year’s harvest bridged the gap was, in practical terms, simply unrealistic.

In theory, when a crisis like this arose, what the court could do was strictly regulate grain prices, execute a number of corrupt officials, and execute a number of profiteering merchants besides. But this time, the scope of what was involved had grown too vast, and the number of people entangled in it, simply too great.

The great Confucian scholar Zuo Duanyou’s own family, the Zuo clan, was involved in it. The Cai family’s network of influence, headed by Cai Jing, was involved in it too. The Han family of the Jingnan region—related to the imperial family by marriage, kin to the Empress Dowager herself—was involved as well. And the Qi family of Henan Prefecture, a household of scholarly tradition for generations, whose family head, Qi Yan, was himself a leading Confucian scholar of the present court, with close personal ties to a great many officials in the capital, on good terms with both Li Gang and Geng Nanzhong, and on excellent terms besides with the Western Army’s commander, Zhong Shidao.

And this was merely what a cursory investigation could turn up. In truth, the deeply tangled web of relationships and interests at play meant that resolving such matters was never simply a matter of having the will to do so. Even if Li Gang gave the nod, even if Qi Yan gave the nod, even if Cai Jing himself gave the nod, and grain prices were pushed down, the moment cheap grain hit the market, it would vanish as instantly as water poured onto sand—because those hoarding grain were never limited to just these great households; they included, in fact, every single ordinary commoner gripped by panic as well.

On the whole, in an era where productive capacity remained far from developed, every disaster—whether man-made or natural—inevitably became a fresh opportunity for new nobility to rise and for land to concentrate further into fewer hands. On this side, Ning Yi’s group did indeed have some countermeasures in place for now, and the Right Chancellor’s residence had, of course, shown genuine resolve on the matter. But at the very bottom of society, some people would still die regardless; those with even a modest household and some land would inevitably find themselves selling off fields, selling land, even selling sons and daughters. The only real difference lay in how many—when measures were handled properly, the numbers would be smaller.

As for Ning Yi himself, he could accept the darkness inherent to this world in all its forms, could accept death in whatever numbers it came. But as someone who had come from a later age, it remained genuinely difficult for him to watch, with his own eyes, one woman or child after another being starved to death right in front of him. And so, whether one called it hypocrisy, or simply choosing not to look at what one couldn’t bear to see, when faced with matters of this kind, he much preferred to sit in the capital and handle it all as abstract numbers on a page.

…

The carriage emerged from the side gate of the Chancellor’s residence. Along the road called Wenyuan Street, there weren’t many pedestrians about; it was still afternoon, the leaves along the roadside dissolved into golden light, and two children came running past with a patter of small footsteps.

Turning his gaze back from the window, Ning Yi picked up his charcoal pencil and continued revising and writing in the small booklet he held. The carriage moved on, its wheels occasionally crunching over fallen leaves with a soft rustling sound, the odd pedestrian passing by on the road. After a while, the sound of voices drifted toward them: “…What do you lot know, calling her the reigning beauty—I’m telling you, the Small Candle House is the most boring place around, and the Fan Tower’s no fun either, I… huh? Hmph! What are you doing, blocking the young master’s path! Don’t you know… hey, what do you think you’re doing, if the young master’s walking this way, you walk that way—looking for trouble, is that it? Think the Bamboo House’s such a big deal—”

At this arrogant outburst, the carriage came to a stop. Ning Yi had three carriages traveling with him that day; he sat in the middle one, and upon hearing this voice, he knew at once who it was. Once the carriage stopped, he finished writing out the last few words, then rose and lifted the curtain. Sure enough, ahead on the road, standing with hands on hips blocking the way, was none other than the notorious young rake Gao Muen. Trailing behind him, as usual, was a crowd of spoiled young sons of the capital’s elite—many from official families. Ning Yi, a mere merchant by status, was, in theory, someone he couldn’t afford to provoke; he plastered a smile on his face and stepped forward, hands clasped in greeting.

“Well, if it isn’t a flood sweeping straight into the Dragon King’s temple. Young Master Gao, gentlemen—what a coincidence, running into you all again. It’s my people who lack manners—quick, pull the carriage aside!” Ning Yi barked a quick order at his driver, then added with a smile, “Where are you all headed off to for some fun, then?”

Ning Yi’s smile stayed warm and easy, but he clearly didn’t look like a man easily pushed around either. Seeing that it was him, Gao Muen’s eyes had flickered briefly, but he puffed his chest out further all the same. “What business is it of yours! Mind your own affairs! What are you doing, walking so close! If you’ve got the nerve, come hit me yourself! Don’t think I’m afraid of you just because you took out Lu Qian!”

“Young Master Gao, I’ve said before that was all a misunderstanding. Setting aside that I know nothing whatsoever about what happened to Constable Lu, even if such a thing had happened, given his martial skill, how could I possibly have been a match for him? Look, it’s been nearly a year now… If you’re still holding onto anger over that little misunderstanding, I’ll host a few dozen tables at the Bamboo House tonight, a proper apology feast, and offer you my personal apology myself. How does that sound?”

At this, the crowd behind Gao Muen began jeering, but Gao Muen, chest still puffed out, seemed to be thinking of something else entirely. “Hmph! False kindness! Forget it! Let me tell you—Gao Muen and you are sworn enemies from here on out! Keep your people in line from now on! Hmph… out of my way!”

With that, Gao Muen led his group striding past Ning Yi’s side, a couple of them even calling back over their shoulders: “Just you wait!” “You’d better watch yourself!” Ning Yi, for his part, simply smiled and nodded, hands still clasped politely.

In truth, this feud between the two of them had already dragged on for a full year. By the first half of this year, as Ning Yi expanded the Bamboo House, things had grown considerably more heated—Young Master Gao had first hired thugs to wreck the place, but once the Secret Investigation Bureau got involved, he’d instead banded together with others to open a rival restaurant to compete directly with the Bamboo House, and after that had even tried working through official channels to give the Bamboo House some trouble. Every one of these attempts, though, had ultimately been rebuffed.

The Kaifeng Prefecture couldn’t afford to offend the Right Chancellor’s residence, nor did it dare provoke Gao Muen either, and with so much commotion stirred up, various complaints inevitably found their way back to Gao Qiu. People from official circles, the business world, and literary circles alike all reached out to Gao Qiu, hoping he’d rein in his son before things went too far. Though Gao Qiu himself was something of a court toady, he too understood the basic economics of making enemies—the other party had good connections, sure, but was, in the end, just a merchant; if his son couldn’t manage to bring him down with all that meddling, that alone signaled there was little point continuing the fight. So he’d scolded Gao Muen thoroughly, more than once. As a result, every move Gao Muen made from then on seemed to land like a punch thrown into cotton, his various schemes to steal business losing money spectacularly each time, until finally, discouraged, he’d given it up.

Of course, giving up in action didn’t necessarily mean the resentment in his heart had faded—every subsequent encounter still inevitably ended in a war of words. It was only that Ning Yi’s business kept growing bigger and bigger, and even certain things Gao Qiu had let slip to try to get his son to back off had left Gao Muen feeling rather deflated about it all. As they parted ways this time, one of the young rakes at his side remarked, “Since Big Brother Gao can’t stand that guy, why don’t we just give him a beating? Even with his connections, if we beat him up, what’s he going to do about it? He can only file a complaint after the fact, right? I bet those goons of his wouldn’t even dare fight back—”

This particular young rake also came from an official family, and what he said actually made a fair amount of sense. All of their families were connected in officialdom, and however many connections the other side had, he was still, at the end of the day, just a merchant. If their whole group rushed him at once and gave him a beating, the worst that would come of it afterward would be a simple apology. Unfortunately, no sooner had he finished speaking than Gao Muen’s temper flared, and he began cuffing the back of the boy’s head, slap after slap.

“Beat your ass! Beat your ass! Beat your ass! If you could actually win, wouldn’t I already have done it?! Don’t you know Zhou Tong himself couldn’t kill that man?! Don’t you know Sikong Nan and Lin Zongwu both got humiliated by him?! You idiot! Do you even know who Zhou Tong is? Do you even know who Sikong Nan and Lin Zongwu are? They’re more formidable than Lin Chong ever was—your mother! That guy looks all refined and scholarly, but he’s actually a madman underneath—if he ever snaps, you think I and these… these useless amateurs around me could hold him back?!” With that, he kicked out at the boy, though the kick landed slightly off-target, sending the boy stumbling forward while Gao Muen himself lurched a step too far and nearly fell over.

“You know why I was standing in front just now? I was blocking that mad dog for the lot of you! Hmph!” He gave a cold snort, brushed off his clothes. “Learn something from this, all of you, from now on!”

Even as he said all this, though, he still couldn’t shake a certain lingering resentment. Lu Qian was already dead, and there was no one left who could keep him entertained quite the same way; the few fellows around him now botched everything they touched, hardly trustworthy at all. Thinking on this, he suddenly felt the capital had lost a good deal of its charm, and the autumn scenery, too, seemed to grow all the more desolate around him…

Ning Yi, of course, had no way of knowing what was going through the other man’s mind. Once Gao Muen had gone, he shook his head with a smile; since his destination wasn’t far off, he decided not to get back into the carriage. He pulled out the booklet he’d just been revising from inside the carriage and handed it to Zhu Biao. “I’ve revised this record of martial-world figures once more. Take it to the Wang family, and while you’re there, check on how the printing preparations are coming along. No need to rush back tonight.”

At this, Zhu Biao couldn’t help but flush with a bashful smile. After the events at Dulong Ridge, Hu Sanniang and Wang Shanyue had developed a certain fondness for each other; some time after returning to the capital, Wang Shanyue, having never gotten along with a particular group of capital rakes, had gotten into a confrontation with them, and in the ensuing fight, Hu Sanniang had jumped in, thoroughly thrashing a whole group of the other side’s household guards. Wang Shanyue himself, having spent years fighting out in the world, had grown considerably more fierce, and had scored a mark of his own in the brawl—pinning down one of the opposing side’s household guards, a skilled fighter known as “Eight-Armed Blade King,” and tearing open half his arm, biting off several pounds of flesh.

After this fight, that fighter was left permanently crippled—Eight-Armed Blade King became One-Armed Blade instead—but Wang Shanyue, too, had stirred up quite the mess. Qin Siyuan, feeling this kind of temperament wasn’t ideal to let develop further, and worried that keeping him in the capital would invite further attacks from his critics, arranged for him to fill a vacant magistrate’s post in Yuyao County, Zhejiang. Wang Shanyue’s own temperament leaned toward the scholarly side; it was only that, having suffered such a severe trauma in his youth, his behavior had grown somewhat extreme. Yuyao, a region known for its literary refinement, meant that once he arrived, his more predatory instincts would have little use—something of a tempering experience for him, in its own way.

Before Wang Shanyue left the capital, he and Hu Sanniang formally became engaged. The Wang family’s Old Madam Qian had originally hoped the two would simply marry outright, letting the formidably skilled Hu Sanniang accompany her grandson to his new post; Wang Shanyue, for his part, thought it best for Hu Sanniang to return to Dulong Ridge first, to avoid idle gossip—but Hu Sanniang chose, of her own accord, to stay on with the Wang family instead. In truth, this had likely been Wang Shanyue’s own unspoken hope all along—the Wang household, being made up largely of women, however strong-willed a few of them might be, still couldn’t match others in sheer physical strength; with a heroine like Hu Sanniang holding the fort, Wang Shanyue could set off for his new post with a somewhat easier mind.

As for Zhu Biao, his tastes ran less toward a formidable woman like Hu Sanniang. After several visits to the Wang household, he’d developed some fondness for the Wang family’s ninth younger sister instead. The Wang family was happy enough to see this develop, and Ning Yi had made a point of encouraging the match as well. Since then, his collaboration with the Wang family on papermaking and printing workshops, and his push to develop movable-type printing, had all been carried out through Zhu Biao as the go-between for the two sides.

At this point, Zhu Biao took his orders and rode off on horseback. Ning Yi, meanwhile, had already reached the courtyard where Yun Zhu and Jin’er lived. It was no wonder Li Pin had come away with the impression of a great and powerful household—this courtyard, too, had no shortage of attendants arranged to serve within it, carrying something of the air of a treasured beauty kept in a gilded cage—though, in truth, most of the effort had gone into security. Even around Yun Zhu and Jin’er, two rather plain-looking but genuinely capable female martial artists had been stationed as guards.

As he made his way in, various people greeted him along the way, but once he passed the two connected small towers ahead and entered the rear courtyard, no one followed further. Behind this courtyard lay a small garden, made up of rockery, a pavilion, and a pond. A woman in white sat beside the pond, humming softly some tune or other, holding a book and a brush, absorbed in writing something for her own quiet pleasure.

The afternoon light was warm and golden; a great phoenix tree stretched its canopy out over the pond. The woman sitting beside the water wore a white skirt, her long black hair hanging down to her waist; she’d removed her shoes and stockings, setting them aside, her pale, slender feet gently stirring the water’s surface in time with the melody she hummed, as though her whole being had melted into the warmth of the autumn day. After a moment, she set her brush aside, resting the book on her lap, and turned a page. As Ning Yi approached and sat down beside her, she instinctively drew her feet back out of the water, then smiled and leaned her body against him.

A moment later, she was lying back with her head in his lap, still holding the book up to read. Ning Yi, taking in the quiet peace of this autumn afternoon, glanced around to make sure no one was nearby, then slipped one hand inside the front of her robe. The woman didn’t resist, only reaching up to lightly cover his hand with her own, continuing to read all the while.

“I keep thinking, honestly, this space is still a bit too small… wouldn’t it be nice if there were a lake out front…”

Ning Yi said this, gazing toward the garden wall at the far end of the grounds.

“I’m already by a lake… it’s just Liheng’s heart that hasn’t settled yet.”

“Is that so…” Ning Yi pressed his lips together. “Oh, right—where’s that little troublemaker, Yuan Jin’er?”

“Out.”

“Oh?”

“Ah… um…” As though suddenly realizing something, Yun Zhu’s face broke into a sudden, bashful smile. After a moment, eyes narrowing, she draped the book over her face and murmured softly, “No reason…”

“So is there a reason, or isn’t there.” By the pond, amid the colors of autumn, Ning Yi laughed. After a moment, he gathered Yun Zhu up in his arms and rose to his feet, walking toward the small house nearby. Beneath her white skirt, Yun Zhu curled her feet gently inward, resting her face quietly against him.

From the time the two of them had first come to know and understand each other, through to the first time Yun Zhu had given herself to him in her purity, up to this very moment—intimacy of this kind had, by now, long since ceased to be anything out of the ordinary between them. After all, in this particular era, there weren’t, in truth, all that many ways for people to find real pleasure in life…