After leaving Zhending Prefecture, the terrain grew steadily more rugged, the land more barren. The mountains, though still cloaked in green, had sparse woods, with pine trees growing more common. Sometimes, seen from a distance, the mountains looked as though they wore only a thin coat of lichen. To Lou Shuwan, accustomed to the lush green fields of the south, such scenery felt somewhat desolate and wild — though, in truth, ever since throwing in her lot with Tian Hu, she had never once felt safe or at ease; a tension lodged deep in her heart, an illusion of being betrayed at any moment, never once let up.

“How much further to Ji County?”

“About half a day more.” Lou Shuwan, on horseback, turned to ask, and the burly man beside her brought his horse closer, answering with a respectful expression. This man’s surname was Qiu, given name Guyan — one of Tian Hu’s skilled fighters. After Lou Shuwan had demonstrated her financial and managerial talents and won Tian Hu’s trust, Qiu Guyan had been assigned to her as bodyguard and deputy. Over the past few months, this Qiu Guyan, steady and quiet by nature, had never once disobeyed her orders, and the two of them got along well enough.

“Since it’s not far now, send someone ahead to Ji County to arrange lodging and food. There’s no telling when the Third Prince and General Yu will arrive — we’ll likely have to stay put there for a few days.”

“Yes.” Lou Shuwan gave the order, and Qiu Guyan dispatched men at once. Looking back, the party traveling through the mountains numbered over a hundred, escorting several carts of goods forward. These were all elite soldiers under Tian Hu’s command; as their leader, Lou Shuwan now rode on horseback, wrapped in a gray-yellow cloak. Establishing herself as a woman in Tian Hu’s army had not been easy, but now that she controlled a portion of the financial authority, if she’d wanted the comfort of riding in a carriage, no one would have dared say anything. Yet ever since her position within Tian Hu’s forces had gradually stabilized, she had gradually given up the habit of riding in a carriage — whenever she went out, near or far, she always rode on horseback, and at all times, day and night, she carried a dagger at the spot on her waist most easily reached.

She had no martial skill of her own; even with a certain amount of training, her physical strength still could not match an ordinary man’s. She carried the dagger not to harm others, but so that, if necessary, she could use it to kill herself — whether she would actually have the nerve to do it when the moment came was another matter, but that had indeed been her original reason for carrying it. Occasionally, when making a decision, touching the hilt of that dagger gave her a strange, groundless sense of added strength.

Of course, that was, naturally, an illusion. What truly shielded her from mistreatment within Tian Hu’s army was the influence of Tian Hu himself, the Prince of Jin.

When she had first washed up within the territory controlled by Tian Hu’s forces, she and Lou Shuheng, who had fled alongside her, had already reached the point of utter desperation. Lou Shuheng, as a man, had already collapsed inwardly, but she had gritted her teeth, seized an opportunity to present herself before Tian Hu, and offered up, unbidden, a number of ideas to help him. Tian Hu had originally been a hunter, and had later gone on to seize a fairly large stretch of territory as a bandit — he had ability, but his knowledge and outlook were, in the end, limited. In the transition from a bandit occupying land to actually governing it, talented people were scarce, and so Lou Shuwan came to be valued — much as the Lou family had once been valued by Fang La in Hangzhou.

Alongside her ability, she was also good-looking, having been born and raised a young lady of a good family, with an upbringing and breadth of knowledge that no local bumpkin could match. Tian Hu had originally intended to take her into his harem, which would have set his mind most at ease — but Lou Shuwan had refused him, more than once, firmly. Tian Hu, wishing to appear magnanimous, and also unwilling to lose someone useful to him, had not forced the issue — though in truth, Tian Hu never understood that, in Lou Shuwan’s heart, if there had truly been no way to avoid it, she would have simply gone along with it, half-willing, half-reluctant. After everything she had been through, she had developed an enormous revulsion toward men, found them ugly — but that revulsion did not run so deep that she would have guarded her chastity with her life. After all, whatever chastity meant, whether of body or of mind, she had already lost it.

Though Tian Hu had not forced her, Lou Shuwan found that afterward she enjoyed no small number of conveniences within his army — sometimes, using his name as a shield, she would hint at her status as “Tian Hu’s woman,” and other men who had taken an interest in her would rein themselves in somewhat. And so, it could be said that over this past year and more, her life within Tian Hu’s forces had, on the whole, gone smoothly. Aside from that second brother of hers, forever adrift and dazed in the brothels, the only things she truly cared about were the various matters the Tiger King entrusted to her hands.

Once removed from men, she suddenly discovered that there was something rather satisfying about a woman handling her own affairs. Though men still often looked at her with the kind of gaze that wanted to strip her bare, she paid it no mind — so what if they did strip her bare? It was all the same thrusting, and then eyes rolling back white as though dead, a pitiable creature ruled entirely by what lay below the waist. Just like those few men who had done such things to her and then been killed for it — after they’d spent themselves, she had found the dagger and killed every one of them. To lose one’s life for that one instant of eyes rolling back — men were all foolish pigs. Had she really lost anything of value herself? She sometimes wondered this, and then couldn’t help laughing until tears came.

Only occasionally, in the depths of night, half-dreaming, would a certain figure come back to her like a nightmare — that figure named Ning Liheng. Whatever feelings she’d once had for him, even if there had been some measure of infatuation, it had never run especially deep — but everything that happened afterward had branded itself deep into her memory: her father’s and brother’s deaths, the ruin of her family, the miserable wandering that followed, all of it traced back to that one figure. When she thought of him, though, revenge was not the first thing that came to mind.

She knew he had destroyed Liangshan, but had no idea what he was doing now, and so had no clear sense of how to even go about seeking revenge. Working her way steadily upward under Tian Hu, perhaps one day she would face him directly — but even trying to imagine that moment, she could never picture what it would actually look like. Only certain wild, unspeakable fantasies came to her with any clarity: she would think back on her miserable ordeal, picture that man thrusting into her body, and then imagine herself killing him — imagine gloating over him in triumph if she succeeded, imagine every manner of humiliation at his hands if she failed — and the more she dwelled on it, the wilder and stranger the fantasies grew. She usually woke near dawn, drenched in sweat that soaked through the blankets, desire burning fierce, her body soft and yielding as mire below — and then there was nothing to do but lie curled on her side alone until daybreak.

Perhaps someday she would kill him, or he would kill her. That, surely, was the only fate the two of them could ever truly share.

Of course, this trip to Lüliang Mountain had nothing to do with feelings so complicated as those.

As for the Lüliang region, Tian Hu had, from the very start of his uprising, been intent on extending his reach there. That land, unlike the Central Plains or Hebei, sat on a border long soaked in blood, its people fierce and hardened, its scattered petty powers many; the usual rules of the greenwood held little sway there. After all, rules exist to keep people from tearing each other apart out of unchecked desire — but on this land, most of those who survived were desperate outlaws with nothing to lose, who could die at any moment regardless of whether they kept the rules, making the rules themselves largely meaningless.

The reasons for this were complicated, but the most direct cause lay in the raiding from both sides. The Liao people treated the inhabitants of this land like pigs and dogs; the men of Wu treated the locals as ungovernable savages and troublemakers. Now and then, somewhat larger powers would rise up here, but such powers tended to be hostile to both sides, relatively isolated, and easily broken apart — because no matter how large one’s own power grew, it still could never match the armies of either side. When Tian Hu’s reach extended here, he too had expended some effort trying to win over a large following, and his own power was substantial compared to any single stronghold — but against a place as scattered and fragmented as Lüliang, it was genuinely hard to know where to apply pressure, and so, as for progress, there had never really been much to speak of.

Of course, extending influence northwest into Lüliang had always been, for Tian Hu, something of an icing-on-the-cake matter — even if progress remained slight, it hardly mattered. But over the past year or more, the situation in Lüliang had changed considerably compared to before, enough that Tian Hu couldn’t help but turn his attention back to it.

A stronghold called Green Wood Stronghold had, over the past year or two, grown steadily in strength in Lüliang, even managing to open up a smuggling route between the two sides, reaping enormous profits — which was, indeed, enough to make anyone’s mouth water. Back when Green Wood Stronghold was just starting out, Cao Hong, one of Tian Hu’s men, had already taken notice; he had tried to incite a rebellion within the stronghold to seize it by opportunity, only to be killed himself by that formidably skilled female stronghold master.

Such a thing would normally have been more than enough to create a lasting grudge between the two sides, but Tian Hu, at the time, had felt it too much trouble to push deep into Lüliang for revenge over such a matter. He was, in his own way, a fairly straightforward man — among people in this line of work, if your own side did wrong, you own up to it; if you get beaten, you take it standing straight. Since his own commander had gone to incite a rebellion, failed, and been killed, he had no choice but to swallow the matter. Yet after all this time had passed, Lüliang’s development kept expanding regardless — turning from what had once been a single tasty morsel into an entire potful — and he couldn’t help but start scheming again.

It was said that the formidably skilled female stronghold master of Green Wood Stronghold was getting on in years, unmarried in her twenties — well then, why not a marriage alliance? This marriage proposal was different from any before; the stake Tian Hu’s side intended to put forward was Tian Shi, known in the army as the Third Prince. Tian Hu’s family had three brothers — Tian Hu, Tian Bao, and Tian Biao — and this Tian Shi was Tian Biao’s son, skilled in martial arts and strikingly handsome besides. Once the marriage alliance was made, the two sides would become one family. And Tian Hu’s side was showing full sincerity in this: Tian Shi would not be marrying a wife over to his side in the usual way — so long as the other party agreed, Tian Shi would marry into Green Wood Stronghold as a matrilocal son-in-law, by no means requiring her to marry out to them.

Beyond that, everyone had also studied the model by which Green Wood Stronghold had risen to prominence. Ordinarily, once a power took shape in the Lüliang region, it tended to be bitterly vengeful and fiercely exclusionary, and so found favor with no one on any side. But once Green Wood Stronghold rose to power, it proved remarkably savvy — the nearby Wu Dynasty military forces regularly received a cut of its profits, and the sweeteners it offered were substantial. For the more insatiably greedy among them, Green Wood Stronghold also knew how to play sides against each other, dividing and weakening them, and quite possibly had a clear grasp of the inner workings of many military officers besides — which was precisely how it had gradually managed to secure its footing.

A stronghold master like this, though a woman, clearly had a formidable grip on matters of profit and interest. Simply sending over a man alone would probably not be enough to satisfy the other side, and so, alongside Tian Shi, Lou Shuwan had been sent to serve as an envoy and negotiator — since both sides had capable women involved, this should make for easier terms.

With the realm in such turmoil at present, and the court preoccupied with pacifying the various mountain bandit forces in the north, it was clear that the Wu Dynasty’s grip on its own internal affairs had already reached its limit. With the Tiger King’s own strength, once joined with Green Wood Stronghold, and with such a source of wealth connecting north and south, he would surely be able to accomplish great things in the future.

Lou Shuwan had already prepared this line of argument in advance, and had spent the past several days continuing to refine it — though, of course, everything would ultimately depend on meeting that stronghold master named Lu Hongti in person.

That evening, she and the convoy escorting the betrothal gifts stopped at Ji County ahead, waiting for the Third Prince Tian Shi and Tian Hu’s great general Yu Yulin to arrive — for although the upper ranks of Tian Hu’s forces had made their decision, Tian Shi himself was a proud man, none too willing to go through with such a matrilocal marriage, and had essentially set off ahead on his own, in something of a runaway-from-home posture, to investigate this Lu Hongti for himself. As for Yu Yulin, he had been sent by Tian Hu specifically to catch Tian Shi and escort him to Lüliang for the marriage alliance.

By now they were close to Lüliang; Ji County was a large county — though to someone from the south like Lou Shuwan, everything here looked desolate, the place was in fact quite populous. This was a fork point on the road heading north: past this stretch, people had to choose whether to head normally out through Yanmen Pass, or smuggle their way out through Lüliang Mountain. Before the smuggling routes through Lüliang had flourished, Ji County had likely been only half its current size — meaning its prosperity had suddenly swelled within just the past year or two.

For this reason, the whole county town was still steeped in an air of raw wildness — passersby of every stripe, most of them armed with blades, none of them looking like decent sorts. Even the passing merchants carried an air of menace and blood about them. The rise of the smuggling routes had enriched the flow of goods, but the guarantee of safety had not improved much to match — anyone showing up here without proper connections and guidance would, more often than not, find no way through at all. The most thriving establishments here tended to be brothels and blade shops; the various local powers each kept to their own territories, and only soldiers dared swagger arrogantly through any part of town, though even they generally avoided crossing the local powers. The reach of the county government was practically nonexistent — few officials would even dare take up a post here; a few years back, a constable had even been killed and hung from a flagpole. The various powers here all shared the same traits: loud, brazen, and reckless, rising up in waves, one after another, plundering the surrounding area, living high and eating well, and then quietly fading away in turn…

Lou Shuwan stayed in Ji County for five days before Tian Shi and Yu Yulin finally arrived with over two hundred soldiers. During that time, she had already gathered a good deal of information about the female stronghold master of Green Wood Stronghold — reportedly, she was highly skilled in martial arts, having already reached the level of a grandmaster, and held an extremely tight grip on the stronghold at present, so any attempt to sow discord and split the stronghold apart was, for now, out of the question. Beyond that, it was said she was quite beautiful, and so, in recent times, a great many suitors had come proposing marriage to Green Wood Stronghold — there were even faint rumors that the other side was considering holding a martial contest to choose a husband. Rumors flew thick outside, but there was no telling which, if any, were true.

There were people within Tian Hu’s forces who had met this Lu Hongti before, but this time Lou Shuwan could find none of them. Tian Shi, taking a different route, had clearly asked around among people who knew her, and upon learning that this Lu Hongti was both highly skilled and beautiful, had grown interested. He was twenty-five this year, skilled in martial arts, and handsome besides; ordinary women had long since bored him, and following Tian Hu in occupying territory, he had bedded no small number of tearful young ladies of good family. By now he had developed the idea of conquering this Lu Hongti as well — after all, this was, in the end, a world ruled by men; though he would be going over in the name of a matrilocal marriage, with his own skills, who was to say he couldn’t conquer her regardless? Once he’d gotten her into bed, however formidable a woman might be, wouldn’t she end up utterly compliant toward him…

That night, the two parties met up and were introduced to one another. This Yu Yulin, a great general relied upon heavily by Tian Hu, was also a rather martial and imposing man, in his thirties, highly skilled in combat, steady of temperament. If the other side found Tian Shi unsatisfactory, he too, in all likelihood, had some interest of his own in stepping in. Lou Shuwan had met them both before, this was not their first encounter; the day after they joined forces, the group broke camp and set out, over three hundred strong, marching in grand procession toward Lüliang Mountain.

Meanwhile, after Lou Shuwan’s party had departed, Ning Yi’s convoy of just over a hundred people was also drawing near Ji County.

“Once we’re past that stretch ahead, officials won’t count for much anymore.” At dusk, as the convoy made camp, Zhu Biao pointed toward the mountains to the north and turned to say to Ning Yi and the others, “Things are even more chaotic out here in Lüliang than back at our old Dulong Ridge. Whoever has any say is either army or bandits — there are ordinary folk too, sure, but without backing behind you, you can’t even farm the land. Once we’re through, we’ve got to be careful — no one goes off alone, people out here are ruthless.”

“…Not the nicest thing to say, but honestly, dealing with military men out here is actually easier than dealing with scholars.” Ning Yi stood on a rock, shading his eyes as he looked ahead. “Scholars, you know, so often talk in circles — take your money and then still try to cheat you, turn around and deny everything. Military men are much better. Sure, they’re greedy, but once they take your money, they do the job, straightforward about it — I actually prefer dealing with them.” He finished, then sighed. “Still, it really does look rather desolate out here… Shanxi, huh…”

“Senior Lu’s family’s out here — I’ve always thought… it really can’t have been easy for her.”

Zhu Biao said this with real feeling, and several of the martial artists nearby, each in charge of a small squad, wore similar expressions. Among the fighters accompanying Ning Yi this time, about half were former Liangshan men, all of whom had trained at the camp back on Dulong Ridge. Back when Lu Hongti had still been there, she had sparred with them at the camp, beaten them in practice. By now most of them had repented, their outlook thoroughly changed, and given Lu Hongti’s status as a grandmaster, they held her in great esteem — being beaten by her, if anything, felt like an honor, and they thought of her as something between a boss’s wife and a master. But at their show of sympathy, Ning Yi merely curled his lip, unimpressed.

“What’s not easy about it? Though it sounds like the kind of thing that gets exaggerated in the retelling, even a rumor as absurd as holding a martial contest to choose a husband has apparently come out of it. When I get there, I’m absolutely going to give her an earful about it.”

The sun was setting in the west. Though he spoke this way, thinking of what Lu Hongti looked like, his heart still warmed, much like the sunlight falling on his face — if he really did go and scold her over it, would she still sit on the edge of the bed like some meek little wife and let him say his piece? The thought made even a man as steady as himself feel a flicker of anticipation. And as he’d said, once soldiers took payment, they generally did their jobs conscientiously — so long as it wasn’t a matter of fighting the Liao. And now that Liao had fallen, Lüliang Mountain, going forward, would have a rare few years of breathing room. In those few years, how far might it develop? Everything still lay ahead.