Rain poured down in sheets, striking the eaves. On the rain-soaked street, a middle-aged man wrapped in a straw rain cloak clasped his hands together in greeting toward the approaching column of horses.
“…This brother’s surname is Zhao—Zhao Four. Thanks to the regard shown me by everyone on the road, I’ve been given a bandit name that carries some weight. Anywhere around Lüliang, if there’s trouble, come find me, Zhao Four, and I can usually get a word in. Since you gentlemen have come by way of the Great Chief’s connections, from here on, this brother Zhao will take care of things. May I ask how you gentlemen are addressed?”
“‘Carries some weight’—now that’s no simple name.” The scholar on horseback clasped his hands in return. “This one is Ning Yi. In the martial world, people call me by the bandit name Butcher of the Bloody Hand. Beside me is Zhu Biao, the City-Burning Spear, along with the rest of my brothers here. We pay our respects to you, Sir Zhao.”
The young scholar’s voice was unhurried, yet spoken with a formal, deliberate cadence, carrying a strange, almost theatrical flavor of the martial underworld. Beside him, on another horse, a young man named Zhu Biao gave his own greeting, then lowered his head, eyes gleaming: “City-Burning Spear… now that’s quite the nickname.” The man called “Carries Some Weight” clasped his hands: “I’ve long admired your reputation.”
In his usual dealings around Lüliang, he’d never once heard such a flowery form of address as “Sir Zhao.” Sizing up the two of them, he thought to himself: They look like a couple of green kids…
The web of forces around Mount Lüliang was a complicated one. Though Green Wood Stronghold had opened its doors to legitimate trade and had by now grown to a certain scale, actually traveling the smuggling route through Lüliang remained no simple matter. Ordinary people, lacking connections, had no way to find anyone to broker an introduction and were essentially unable to gain entry. This Zhao Four was one of Green Wood Stronghold’s guides out in the wider world. He looked to be somewhere in his thirties or forties, a somewhat rusted broadsword slung across his back, his eyes darting about with a certain shrewdness—the type of man whose martial skill might not be especially high, but who got along well enough on the roads. That was likely why Green Wood Stronghold had chosen him.
Ning Yi and the others had left all their large carts behind nearby before coming this way, switching to a pack train of horses to carry the goods into the mountains. They were using the contact methods and code phrases that Hongti had once left behind. Though it went through the Great Chief’s connections, there was nothing particularly remarkable about it—it would be hard to trace exactly where the connection had come from.
As Zhao Four sized up the caravan along the way, he soon formed his own judgment: this group clearly came from some well-connected great clan down south. Just looking at how young the leaders were told him they must be scions sent out from a great family to gain experience. This was likely the caravan’s first time coming this way, but the men in the rear of the group all had solid builds and no weak martial skill; the vigor in their gait suggested some connection to military service. At the very least, south of Mount Lüliang, they would count as a formidable force in their own right.
Only, this kind of strength, once past the mountains, often didn’t amount to much. Doing business back and forth, north and south—especially coming out of Lüliang—required not so much sharp edge as the ability to improvise a solution in any environment. Otherwise, once past the mountains, in a place where all manner of men mixed together, even dragons had to coil low and tigers had to crouch down. A group of a hundred or two hundred, no matter how strong, couldn’t be all that strong in the end—what was truly worrying was a young leader at the head, too hard and too easily broken.
So Zhao Four thought to himself, but as their guide, he still had to see his duties properly through. Though Green Wood Stronghold had grown up out of the mountains of Lüliang and still looked, from the outside, like a bandit den, internally it now held to extremely strict rules of reward and punishment. In the eyes of Zhao Four and others like him, these were rules that the Great Chief, “Blood Bodhisattva,” had learned from the armies of the south—though they had no idea that the young man riding in the carriage behind them was the one who had actually laid down those very rules for them.
After the two groups joined up, they traveled another half day through the rain before truly entering the range of Mount Lüliang proper. Here, the mountains stretched on and on, the roads grew rough, and human habitation grew sparse—already a different world from the south.
Sitting on the border, Mount Lüliang suffered not only from years of unending warfare, but also from sheer poverty. Rolling loess slopes, sparse vegetation—crops planted here generally yielded poorly. The potato, which in a later age would prove relatively well-suited to this soil, had not yet been introduced to China. Water wasn’t especially scarce, but heavy rains easily turned into flooding.
The people who lived in such places either left, or died. What remained behind was less a matter of reluctance to abandon one’s homeland than simply never having had any thought of migrating in the first place. Two hundred years earlier, this region had been relatively peaceful; since then, war and plunder had swept through year after year, combing the land clean. Some people died; some fled deeper into the mountains, searching for new places to survive. The total food supply here was never large to begin with, and with a portion of it seized by raiders, what remained sometimes left people with no choice but to turn on their own kind.
In famine years, in these wild mountains, cannibalism was nothing out of the ordinary. As the Wu dynasty gradually developed, food outside of Lüliang became reasonably sufficient—though it was hard to say this did much to help Mount Lüliang directly. Over these past few decades, famines severe enough to drive people to cannibalism had become fairly rare, but death by starvation remained the norm all the same. With the total supply always limited, feeding one portion of the population necessarily meant another portion would starve. This was the cruelest law of survival, indifferent to any human notion of mercy or preference.
Once a person nears the point of starving to death, there is nothing they will not do. This region was like a pit for raising scorpions—over time, most order had broken down, righteousness had become a matter of little more than a rumor, and morality was something few bothered discussing at all. Only survival itself remained clear and unambiguous. Among the people who survived in such an environment, some were extraordinarily cruel, some extraordinarily simple, and some were both at once… It wasn’t that no one had ever tried to establish order here—but those who made the attempt generally failed, ending in blood and death.
Occasionally they clashed with the outside world; occasionally, when outside armies saw some profit to be had, they would come in, find some way to kill off a batch of people, and hand the bodies over to the state as proof of successful bandit suppression. Beyond the victims themselves, hardly anyone paid such events any mind at all.
To survive under these conditions, there was, in truth, not much difference between a man and a wolf pack in these mountains.
“…No matter where you go in these mountains, nowhere’s really safe. Outsiders basically can’t get in.” The rain had stopped by now, and as they made their way along the mountain trail, Zhao Four gestured at the surroundings, giving his introduction. “West of here, there used to be a horse bandit called Big-Belly Zhang. Had his moment of glory for a while—maybe two years—then he died, killed by his own second-in-command. His body hung on the mountain for months. The second-in-command didn’t even hold his position half a year before the stronghold itself fell apart. These days a few different factions are still fighting it out there, none of them care whether they live or die. There’s a band of hunters camped out that way, real arrogant bunch, won’t give face to anyone, so we have to take the long way around now.”
“…As for who really counts around here—a bit to the northeast, there’s a fairly well-known one, Little Raider Qiu Mengtang. Word is he’s got some connection to the Tiger King, and he’s got quite a few men under him now, quite a bit of standing. Past that, there’s ‘Mountain-Chaos King’ Chen Zhenhai of Chen Family Channel, and ‘Black Skull King’ Luan Sanlang of Skull Stronghold. Past our own Green Wood Stronghold, next in line would probably be the Fang brothers of the Fang family, led by Fang Yiyang… Also, up north there’s a band of Liao people who showed up recently—word is they’re stragglers from after Liao fell, over two thousand strong. We’ve already clashed with them a few times…”
Zhao Four was a local through and through, and he could recite the major forces of Mount Lüliang like the back of his hand. From time to time, a group would appear along the mountain road, and he would go over to negotiate; after exchanging a round of code phrases, the other side would let them pass without a word. In truth, in mountains like these, the real trouble came not from the major powers but from small bands of raiders who followed no rules whatsoever. Once a force grew large enough, there was usually some rule of conduct to be discussed with them—it was only those ravenous wolves, the ones who didn’t know where their next meal was coming from and moved from place to place after every raid, who were truly the headache. Even if Green Wood Stronghold managed to work out an agreement with one such band, a few days later that whole group might already be lying dead on some hilltop, replaced by an entirely different band. And so, to maintain even one crooked, winding road into the mountains, Green Wood Stronghold had expended enormous effort.
Many times, Ning Yi and the others could see wooden stakes planted along the mountain road, some still bearing corpses or skulls. Row upon row of bleached bones, corroded and impaled atop the high loess mounds—the most brutal kind of warning line imaginable. But there weren’t many fresh corpses left, a sign that killing had lessened of late; more of the stakes now stood empty, no telling how long they’d been there.
“That bunch just now, the leader’s called Yellow Ape—a ravenous wolf, that one, but even he has to give us face… All these places, the Great Chief led us through here once before, back when there was a whole row of severed heads, blood running down and turning the whole loess slope red.” After sending off one group of would-be blockers, Zhao Four came back, waving his hand to point things out along the way, sizing up Ning Yi and the others with a look of considerable self-satisfaction on his face. “Now, when it comes to entering the mountains, someone like young Master Ning with his own party, naturally I lead him myself. If it’s a lone trader or two, we make them wait and go in with a larger group—we still have to send a few dozen men along as escort. And that’s how things are now; back when we first started this road, it was even more chaotic…”
What Zhao Four was describing was the state of things back when Green Wood Stronghold had first begun this business. Chaotic as Mount Lüliang was, smuggling through it had always gone on in some form—either by way of a handful of truly skilled and daring couriers running contraband, or by opportunistic merchants willing to gamble on a risky venture. Chaotic as Lüliang was, the land was vast and sparsely populated, and once through, there was a great deal of money to be made. When Green Wood Stronghold’s people had first begun making contact with these merchants, it had been no easy task—even as locals, they’d had to fight their way through more than a few skirmishes on every trip.
Later, as the business grew larger, and Green Wood Stronghold was able to provide income and food, it expanded rapidly. In order to maintain a relatively stable route, Hongti and the others had run themselves ragged across nearly every stronghold in the mountains—negotiating terms, sending word ahead, fighting hand to hand, killing—sometimes a few at a time, sometimes in large clashes wiping out entire bands. In the end, however many wooden stakes now lined that road, that was more or less how many heads had been claimed to secure it.
Naturally, there had been others hoping to take a cut along the way, but in truth, only Green Wood Stronghold had ever managed to genuinely open up relations along the entire route. Ordinary parties attempting to lead a group through often simply became food for the “wolf packs” lurking along the roadside. There had also been those who feared nothing and tried blocking the road outright, or destroying it, hoping to extort Green Wood Stronghold—an extraordinarily foolish move, which was inevitably followed, before long, by a party sent to hunt them down and kill them.
“…And that’s how it’s been, sweeping through again and again, until now—mention the name of our Green Wood Stronghold’s Great Chief, ‘Blood Bodhisattva,’ and who would dare not give way!” As the pack train moved forward, Zhao Four spoke while glancing over at Ning Yi. He had meant to use these grim tales to give the young master a bit of a scare, but after going on at such length, he was starting to find the whole thing rather dull.
Ning Yi, for his part, listened to all of this with great relish. In their usual dealings, Hongti had never spoken to him of such things—the rivers of blood, the various clashes and slaughters. Naturally, she’d never once mentioned the bandit name “Blood Bodhisattva,” which had gradually become something to strike fear into people around Lüliang. Blood Bodhisattva… just how much killing did it take to earn a nickname like that… Compared to a fine nickname like “Iron Sword of River and Mountain,” something like “Blood Bodhisattva” was obviously a rather pedestrian name—he’d absolutely have to tease her about it when they met.
“It’s also because of all this that, from last year up to now, no one in our stronghold has ever had to go hungry. And thanks to Green Wood Stronghold sharing the profits, the neighboring strongholds have been doing quite a bit better too.” Zhao Four, being at heart a simple mountain man, glanced over at Ning Yi at this point. “Young Master Ning, coming from the south, I suppose you’ve never seen people starving to death, have you?”
“There was famine in the south last year too, you know.” Ning Yi smiled faintly. “Speaking of which, there’s been talk on the road lately about your lady chief holding some kind of martial contest to choose a husband…”
Zhao Four’s gaze turned cold. “Does young Master Ning happen to have some interest in that, then?”
“I really just wanted to get a look at it, out of curiosity.”
He’d said he wanted to observe, not participate, and at that Zhao Four’s expression relaxed somewhat. “Hmph. That’s nothing but rumor going around the roads—no telling who started spreading it, but it’s got a whole bunch of people rushing toward the stronghold lately. Our Great Chief’s martial skill is beyond compare—with a sword in hand, a hundred men couldn’t get near her. How could she possibly be compared to those mediocre types! A martial contest for a husband, a bunch of fools who don’t know they’re courting death…”
He rambled on: “From back then right up to now, our Great Chief has swept across hundreds of li of Lüliang with nothing but her own sword, and there isn’t a tough or ruthless man around who doesn’t blanch at the mention of her name. The year before last, Lü Shang—the most vicious of the vicious, tremendous martial skill, killed without a shred of mercy even for his own kin—came to stir up trouble at our Green Wood Stronghold, and the Chief chased him down for a full day and night before killing him. Last winter, the most powerful figure ranging across the western ridge of Lüliang, the Old Wolf Lord, seeing our Green Wood Stronghold growing too strong, set a trap to ambush the Great Chief. She was pursued all through the mountains—one woman, one sword, one torch—and even ran into the deadliest pack of wolves you’d meet in all of winter. She fought her way out through sheer force, cutting a bloody path clear through. Seven days later, the Old Wolf Lord thought she must be dead—only to have her cut off his head in front of everyone. And there was an even earlier time, when there was a band of horse bandits over by Fenyang…”
Seeing that Ning Yi seemed genuinely interested in this kind of thing, Zhao Four went on telling these tales of the “Great Chief” with no small amount of pride. But after rambling on for a while, he finally noticed that something in the young gentleman’s eyes beside him seemed to have shifted. Ning Yi was still smiling, but he asked, in a gentle voice: “At a time like this, must your Chief still be out there fighting on the front lines herself? What about the rest of you?”
“Of course there are people around the Chief.” Zhao Four waved a hand. “But Mount Lüliang is just too chaotic—some people follow the rules, some don’t. It’s hard to explain all that to you clearly… Besides, as for just how high our Chief’s martial skill really is, let me tell you—I, Zhao Four, only ever learned three killing strokes under her tutelage, and it was only after I went out to make my own way that I earned this name of ‘Carries Some Weight.’ It’s hard to put into words for you all—if some fool without eyes ever came at her, then you’d understand…”
Being called out for letting his Chief handle things out on her own clearly left Zhao Four somewhat uncomfortable, and he added a good deal more to make up for it. Ning Yi smiled and didn’t press the matter further. After riding on for a while longer, ahead lay another mountain hollow, and within it, a group of men in the distance were watching them approach. Zhao Four made a gesture, then dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and rode off again to handle the negotiations.
By now it was afternoon. After traveling a while longer, the group set up camp nearby among the hills. This particular hillside didn’t seem so barren—here and there stood strange rocks and low trees, along with sparse thickets of brush, and a small stream wound its way down through the mountains. As the sun set in the west, the group chose a spot with a clear view; in the distance, the ruined walls of a village could be seen, evidently uninhabited now. Ning Yi stood atop the hill, gazing in the direction the sun was setting.
Zhu Biao came walking over from not far off, spear over his shoulder. “Traded a few moves with that ‘Carries Some Weight’ fellow just now. The martial arts around here are different from the south—all forged in life-and-death struggle, and they rely heavily on sheer force of spirit. An ordinary master who can’t withstand that reckless, desperate ferocity would be cut down in two strokes. But if you can withstand it, then it’s a different story.”
Ning Yi smiled as well. “The blade skills around here aren’t meant for sparring matches. If you hold your ground against them, naturally they turn tail and run, and then come back at you with absolutely everything they’ve got, by any means necessary.”
Zhu Biao’s own martial attainments were far higher than Ning Yi’s, so naturally he understood all this well enough. In truth, though he spoke of Zhao Four’s ferocity, given the actual level of skill among men like Zhao Four, whether or not they had that ferocity made no difference at all to Zhu Biao in a real exchange of blows—the gap between them was simply too vast. He gave a soft chuckle. “Brother Ning, thinking about what happened to Elder Lu, are you?”
“Back when I first considered Mount Lüliang, it was with smuggling in mind.” Ning Yi stood with his hands clasped behind his back, brow furrowing slightly. “Opening the doors to do business, it’s profit that matters most. But building things around profit as the core makes it very hard to cultivate real loyalty. What worries me is when a few chiefs band together purely for profit—things go well enough in ordinary times, but the moment real action is needed, everyone starts holding back, afraid to commit.”
He paused. “So back then, I made a point of telling her that the armed core she held in her own hands was the most important thing—the men who could actually fight needed to be kept under the strictest discipline. And when it came to building loyalty and cohesion, her own personal skill and charisma needed to be put to use. If a martial grandmaster has even a little understanding of management, the chances of being betrayed drop dramatically. But looking at things now… I wonder if her personal charisma has ended up developing a bit too well.”
There was something rather complicated in Ning Yi’s tone as he spoke. When he’d first entered the mountains and heard all these various tales, he’d naturally found them entertaining—Lu Hongti’s nickname of Blood Bodhisattva, he’d taken as little more than a joke. As for all the killing and fighting, Ning Yi certainly longed for a more peaceful kind of life, but he understood the dark side of the world all too well. It was only after listening for so long to Zhao Four’s smug boasting that a genuinely complicated feeling had begun to distill itself out of it all.
“…This ‘Lü Shang’ fellow, this ‘Old Wolf Lord.’ Of course there’s some exaggeration in what that ‘Carries Some Weight’ fellow said, but it’s probably not too far off the mark either. One woman, one sword, one torch, facing down a wolf pack in the middle of a snowy winter, with pursuers behind her as well—Brother Zhu, what do you make of that?” He found himself picturing the scene of that woman facing a wolf pack in the snow and ice, and for a moment felt it had a strange kind of beauty to it—but then, he couldn’t help but sigh.
Zhu Biao shrugged. “Well, I figure… wolves have some sense too. If it was just one or two wolves, I might even be able to scare them off myself. Elder Lu’s skill is so high, an ordinary wolf probably wouldn’t even dare bite her.”
“But that was ice and snow, wolves starving through an entire winter…” Ning Yi waved a hand. “Her martial skill is high enough as it is—as for personal charisma, putting on a show once a year would be plenty. As for the rest… high-pressure tactics, a bit of mystique, none of that’s a bad thing to use, but does she really have to insist on handling everything herself? She’s got a whole group of people to serve her—are they just there to look pretty? This trip, I really need to get a good look at what her stronghold actually looks like…”
Zhu Biao had been working under Ning Yi for quite some time now, and Ning Yi had taught him no small amount. At this, he just curled his lip in a smile, knowing there was no need for him to say anything further. It was at this very moment that he suddenly sensed something. His gaze snapped toward a spot not far off, where, among the sparse poplar trees, birds suddenly burst into flight with a rustle—followed immediately by a soft crack, not loud, and then silence once more.
Like a gust of wind sweeping suddenly across the mountainside, of the hundred-odd people beginning to make camp near and far, fully half were startled in that same instant, their eyes turning toward that spot.
An almost suffocating silence followed. Within the camp, Zhao Four came sprinting out, leaping up onto a large boulder, drawing his steel blade, and waving his other hand behind him: “Don’t panic!” Of course, in truth no one was panicking at all.
A breath in, a breath out—among the poplar trees, another figure flickered suddenly into view, and in the exchange that followed came a short, sharp cry of pain, followed by figures appearing up in the trees, the clash of weapons ringing out. From this side, only simple, spare sounds could be heard.
“Who’s there!”
“Come out—”
“Ahh—”
“Everyone, watch out, there’s a scout—”
Some of these shouts rang out clearly; others cut off abruptly. Blood stained the poplar grove; a severed head rolled across everyone’s field of view, followed by a corpse with its chest split open, flung out after it. It was clear that, just moments before, two small groups had silently crossed paths in this little copse of trees and immediately launched into a swift, lethal skirmish.
Zhao Four still couldn’t quite make sense of what had happened. He looked back over his shoulder. In the light of the setting sun, the men behind him were spreading out across the hillside in loose formation—some holding blades, some spears, some crossbows—silently falling into ranks, hardly a word spoken among them, an air of grim menace hanging over them all. A few of them were still glancing up at him on his boulder with puzzled looks. One young man he’d spoken with earlier, crouched behind a rock, tilted his head and silently signaled to him: you still haven’t come down—what are you doing standing up there?
Farther off, the two young men leading the group had already shifted position slightly, watching everything below in silence, their expressions showing scarcely a trace of surprise. In truth, given Ning Yi’s temperament, in a place as chaotic as Mount Lüliang, there was no way he would have entrusted their safety entirely to a single guide from Green Wood Stronghold. A sudden mishap, someone acting rashly—troublesome as it might look, it wasn’t enough to truly alarm him.
Looking back again, at the edge of the poplar grove, as that corpse was flung out, a figure slowly emerged from within. It was a tall, burly man—Zhao Four had seen him earlier among the horsemen that day. This man had a scarred face, a powerful build, and a steady stride; his bearing alone suggested formidable skill, and combined with his silent, grim expression, he was, even by the standards of Mount Lüliang, clearly not a man to be trifled with. Within Ning Yi’s party, he held the role of a squad leader. At that moment, the steel blade in this man’s hand was stained with blood; he made a few hand signals upward, then moved behind a jumble of rocks, concealing his position. Shortly after, several more men emerged from the trees in succession—members of the sentry squad under his command.
“Three to four hundred men, coming from the southeast…” Zhu Biao relayed the signal from the other side, reporting it to Ning Yi. Ning Yi nodded: “Bring Nie Shan and the others up.”
The Nie Shan he referred to was the name of the man down below. This Nie Shan had originally been a minor squad leader on Liangshan, vicious by nature and responsible for a great many killings. Later, at the Dulong Ridge camp, he’d received guidance in martial arts from Lu Hongti—which mostly meant taking a beating, after which, through remorse, his skill had advanced considerably. In truth, in most disciplines—whether martial arts or any art—once a practitioner hits a plateau, what pushes them past it is often a philosophical breakthrough, a kind of tempering of the spirit. The forced repentance at Dulong Ridge had certainly had its twisted side, but it had also instilled a certain extreme, fanatical devotion in these men. Combined with the small-squad training they underwent afterward, their style of ambush combat, sentry-post style, within the confines of a forest, made them something close to a nightmare in practice—the enemy’s sneak advance party, infiltrating the woods, was wiped out almost the instant contact was made.
Movement across the hillside proceeded quietly and in good order—some keeping watch, others packing up gear. Nie Shan and his men were already coming up from below. In the distance, as the first wave of enemies came into view, Zhao Four saw two men here draw bows and nock arrows, loosing a rapid series of shots that dropped several figures in quick succession. The enemy fell back hastily, but soon their numbers began to swell again, encircling from the southeast.
“Sir Zhao Four.” Ning Yi drew near. “For three or four hundred men to show up at a time like this—who do you think it might be?”
“God damn it.” Zhao Four ground his teeth. “This is still Little Raider’s territory—we exchanged greetings with his men just now, passing through that hollow. Has that Qiu Mengtang gone and lost his mind, attacking us? What the hell is he thinking, damn it!”
Even as he said this, Zhao Four glanced around, watching the hundred-odd men gathering and moving into position, every single one of them showing not the slightest trace of disorder, and he finally confirmed for certain that this group’s background was no simple matter. Gritting his teeth, he charged off toward where the figures had appeared.
“Qiu Mengtang! Chief Qiu!” he bellowed toward the figures across the way. “I am Zhao Four of Green Wood! Today I bring my brothers through on the Great Chief’s own word! You’ve already taken the toll money—what is the meaning of this! Have you all lost your minds! Daring to break faith with Green Wood Stronghold—”
That a mere underling of a stronghold would dare call out an opposing chief like this spoke to the blood-soaked authority Green Wood Stronghold had carved out for itself. In the warm glow of the setting sun, a voice rang out from the other side—none other than the Little Raider himself, who had ranged far and wide across Lüliang.
“Zhao Four. That group you’re leading—I intend to keep them here today. As for what comes after, I, Little Raider, will explain myself directly to Blood Bodhisattva.” The tone was somewhat languid, yet driven by internal force and amplified by the grim, silent atmosphere, it rang out across the entire mountainside, trailing off into a cold, chilling echo. “I’ll say this only once. You may go.”
On the hillside, Ning Yi frowned. “Trouble finds us wherever we go—truly baffling…”