Lou Shuwan’s second encounter with Ning Yi came that same afternoon, in the mountain hollow. But what followed was not something she could have clearly anticipated—or rather, after seeing that figure again in the hollow that afternoon, she had already fallen into a state of complete inner chaos, and had not actively driven any part of what followed. Yet to say she was the cause of it all would not be far from the truth.
Lou Shuwan, Tian Shi, Yu Yulin, and the others had entered Mount Lüliang roughly a day ahead of Ning Yi’s own journey. Once in the mountains, the first person they sought out was Little Raider Qiu Mengtang.
This was a force that Prince of Jin Tian Hu had already made contact with two years earlier. As a rebel leader capable of holding an entire region, though later accounts described Tian Hu as having risen from a hunter’s background, well before his uprising he had already made a name for himself as a formidable underworld figure across the region. In the north, the closer one got to Yanmen Pass, the more chaotic law and order became and the weaker the government’s authority. The army, by contrast, held real strength there, but their status was low, and under the constraints of civil officials, making any money for themselves was no easy task—so they had little interest in bothering with the region’s disorder.
Of course, there were deeper reasons behind it as well—the court’s practice of accepting the surrender of Liao traitors, men like Dong Pang’er, and settling them all along the northern frontier… In any case, amid this kind of chaos, Tian Hu found it easy to extend his reach into various places. Mount Lüliang was a place he had long had his eye on, though it wouldn’t be quite right to say he was especially eager about it.
The situation on Mount Lüliang was, to be honest, simply too chaotic. The land was barren, the local temperament fierce, and desperate outlaws sprang up one after another without end. There would certainly be advantages to controlling the place, but the reality was that it was essentially impossible to control at all. Ning Yi had understood this clearly enough once he’d looked into it.
To say the people of Mount Lüliang were truly powerful would, in fact, be false. This band of men, perpetually worked up into a frenzy, shouting about eating people and killing—terrifying enough against ordinary folk, certainly, but against even a modestly disciplined army, they’d have essentially no ability to resist. When the Liao used to come raiding occasionally, the resistance put up in the mountains was hardly anything to celebrate. Any army Tian Hu might send in could easily crush a great swath of them, putting on an impressive show of force. But then what? They’d simply retreat into the mountains, hiding wherever they could—and refuse to cooperate.
There were plenty of reasons for that refusal to cooperate, of course; xenophobia was only one of them. The bigger issue was simply that there wasn’t enough food to go around. Suppose Tian Hu genuinely wanted to occupy this region—setting aside the difficulty of doing so—he’d first have to consider how to feed all these people. And this was land that couldn’t support such numbers to begin with; smuggling might bring in a little income, but along with it came a great deal of trouble.
Suppose some force did manage to unify Lüliang, and did manage to feed all these people—then the region would become a prize worth fighting over. Rugged as Lüliang’s terrain was, far from as level as Yanmen Pass, once unified, it would effectively be pitting itself against the military forces holding Yanmen Pass. No power with any interest in profit would ever pass up such a region, and Lüliang would inevitably face renewed contest and collapse—and once caught in such a struggle, it would fall right back into chaos. In this cycle, Lüliang simply had no foundation on which unity and peace could ever be built.
It was for exactly this reason that, when Ning Yi had first offered Hongti his counsel, he had specifically stressed that she must never unify the surrounding region—it needed to remain chaotic, however tragic that might be, and there was nothing to do but watch it play out. Only under such conditions, combined with bribing the military authorities at Yanmen Pass, would the other side turn a blind eye to this particular route through Lüliang. And with the surrounding chaos maintained, Green Wood Stronghold could, within that chaos—whether by rescuing people or by handing out charity—demonstrate its own mercy, while at the same time drawing together the strongest fighters in all of Lüliang, becoming, in effect, the true ruler of the region.
This strategy was, in truth, rather dark, but there was no other way—even with Ning Yi personally overseeing things, this was the only approach that would work. Light and openness were certainly preferable, but Mount Lüliang, for the time being, could only survive by living in this kind of darkness. At best, it meant a few fewer deaths than there would otherwise have been.
If even Ning Yi could only manage things this way, how much vision could Tian Hu possibly have brought to bear? Because Lüliang was such loose sand, it was easy enough for Tian Hu to extend a hand in—but once he did, he’d have to provide supplies and support, without getting any output in return. And more often than not, no sooner had he shown some goodwill and propped up a local power in Lüliang than, within half a year, that leader would be cut down by his own men or by rivals, for reasons ranging from the bizarre to the utterly inexplicable. For a man with ambitions of great things, the feeling that came with that was truly indescribable, a mix of every emotion at once. Over time, he’d simply had to settle for keeping an eye on the place, without investing too much further thought into it.
Little Raider Qiu Mengtang was one such figure, propped up somewhat haphazardly under these very circumstances. Given his formidable martial skill, and having remained standing for over two years now, Tian Hu was naturally happy enough to lend him a bit of support, to build a bit of goodwill. This time, Lou Shuwan and the others had come into the mountains to seek out Blood Bodhisattva for business purposes—and made use of the opportunity to visit Qiu Mengtang as well.
Only, although goodwill had indeed been established, and Qiu Mengtang was quite warm toward Lou Shuwan and the others, having spent so long as a mountain bandit in these forests, he didn’t consider himself in any way beneath Tian Hu’s own men. Upon meeting them, this Little Raider carried himself with considerable arrogance, and upon hearing the purpose of their visit, seemed rather dismissive of it all.
“…Green Wood Stronghold’s been doing quite well for itself lately, I’ll grant you, but I’m afraid the Tiger King’s gotten a bit of this wrong. I, Qiu, was born and raised right here in Lüliang—all these years, living off the edge of a blade, risking my neck to fight my way up, I understand better than anyone what Mount Lüliang really is… Let me tell you something: on these roads, whatever advantage you gain is only ever temporary. Blood Bodhisattva? Just wait and see. A woman, no matter how skilled she is here in Lüliang—do you think I, Qiu Mengtang, fear her? Give it two, three years at most, and you’ll never see her again. Either someone will have killed her, or… heh, someone will have crippled her and kept her around for their own amusement… Who knows who might do it—might even be me, Little Raider Qiu Mengtang.”
As he said all this, a sinister, dismissive smile played across his face. Then he added: “Of course, all this talk lately about her holding a martial contest to choose a husband—now that’s a clever move on her part. A woman, after all, always needs to find herself a man. With a man behind her, she’ll have that much more backing. Since everyone seems so interested, I might just go take a look myself. Never had the chance to cross blades with her before—this time… I’d rather like to test her limits myself, ha ha…”
To be fair, Little Raider’s line of thinking wasn’t entirely baseless, though the main thrust of it was really about jockeying for position against Tian Shi and the others—an indirect expression of his own displeasure that Tian Hu wanted to ally with Green Wood Stronghold. As a stronghold chief holding his own territory in Lüliang, he did respect the Tiger King, who held sway over the region—but for the Tiger King to want an alliance with Green Wood Stronghold was, to his mind, a clear sign that he himself wasn’t being taken seriously. His own stronghold couldn’t yet compare to Green Wood’s, sure, but Lüliang was chaotic enough that fortunes could turn—if a woman could rise to such a position, why couldn’t he? With this attitude taking hold, he stopped bothering much with courtesy and grew considerably more overbearing.
The alliance with Green Wood Stronghold was, at this point, Lou Shuwan’s responsibility to manage, and Tian Shi had already prepared himself, psychologically, to marry into Green Wood Stronghold as a resident son-in-law. Amid all this, the group both laughed along and accepted Qiu Mengtang’s hospitality, while privately feeling that this fellow was genuinely too unruly and needed to be put in his place. And in the course of their idle conversation, Qiu Mengtang found himself rather curious about Lou Shuwan as well. This woman, after all, had come from a genteel background, yet moved among a band of ruthless men with a strong will of her own, and after all she’d been through, the shifts in her temperament had naturally lent her a certain cold, aloof allure. Qiu Mengtang, a man of the mountains who plundered wherever he went, had little chance of ever seizing a young lady of such refined breeding in Lüliang, let alone one of Lou Shuwan’s standing from a great southern household. In short, he found himself rather taken with the idea of having her.
The two sides appeared to get along amicably enough through the following day, with Lou Shuwan and the others learning a good deal more about the inner workings of Mount Lüliang from Qiu Mengtang. Shortly after noon, a scout reported that some men from Green Wood Stronghold were passing through by right of way, and she naturally wanted to go see for herself.
That was when she saw Ning Yi.
At the time, the group was standing at the mouth of the mountain hollow as Bamboo Records’ pack train passed by on the far side; given the angle of the light, it was hard to make out the people within the hollow clearly. Lou Shuwan had never once expected to see that figure here, and for a moment thought she must be mistaken. She stared in that direction for a long while, even dismounting unsteadily and following along for a stretch. Once she’d confirmed that this nightmarish image had become flesh and blood before her, her expression turned distant and dazed. Qiu Mengtang, Tian Shi, and Yu Yulin all noticed, of course, and asked with some confusion what was going on. Lou Shuwan’s emotions were beyond her control at that point; once they’d returned to the stronghold, Qiu Mengtang and the others guessed and asked: “Some history with that group?”
Lou Shuwan, still in something of a daze, shook her head and answered through gritted teeth: “A blood feud.”
At the time, she sat in a chair in the stronghold’s main hall, her head tilted slightly, sunlight falling across her face and lending her profile a cold, breathtaking beauty—though beneath the surface, her eyes churned with turmoil. Qiu Mengtang, unable to resist such a sight, spread his hands with an air of nonchalance: “Then I’ll just take care of him for you.”
Tian Shi, something of a philandering playboy himself, had likewise harbored some interest in Lou Shuwan, and asked: “Can you really do that?”
“It’s just one caravan. I’ve already given Green Wood plenty of face as it is, but a little accident here and there is hardly unusual. Once it’s done, I’ll go pay a personal visit to Blood Bodhisattva and explain myself—what more could she do about it.” Qiu Mengtang said. “Besides, matters of the martial world are settled within the martial world—repaying a debt of gratitude or a blood feud, that’s the rule of the road. And you’re all guests come from far away—we can’t have Miss Lou left unhappy, can we?”
Lou Shuwan tilted her head. She’d done everything she could to steady her thoughts, but the first words out of her mouth came almost hoarse: “This… this isn’t quite right, Chief Qiu. We haven’t even confirmed his true strength, and besides… besides, you already have an alliance with Green Wood Stronghold—it wouldn’t do to act so recklessly on my account, over something like this…”
Yu Yulin, the true decision-maker among Tian Hu’s people present, smiled at this. “That’s true enough, but Chief Qiu isn’t wrong either—repaying a debt of gratitude or a blood feud, that is the rule of the road. Chief Qiu, perhaps it would be better if we handled this ourselves.”
“…True strength?” Qiu Mengtang pursed his lips, and in response to Yu Yulin’s words simply gave a dismissive wave, unwilling to bother debating the point further. “It’s only a hundred-odd men!”
He turned and walked out. “Boys, muster the men—we’re going out to do a job.”
And that was how the whole affair began.
As Qiu Mengtang set out, Lou Shuwan, who went along, found herself likewise swept up in that frenzied atmosphere, unable to hold back her own thoughts any longer. She couldn’t quite make sense of what this sudden turn of the day meant for her—the composure she usually maintained while handling matters under Tian Hu’s command was hard to hold onto now. Images of capturing him rose unbidden in her mind, along with all manner of ways she might deal with him once caught, surfacing uncontrollably—feelings both exhilarating and painful all at once. She couldn’t decide what she ought to say the moment she first laid eyes on him, yet certain images kept forcing their way into her mind regardless: the sight of him captured, the sight of everyone around him slaughtered, the various ways she might humiliate him, how he might react when she cursed him, how he might look begging for mercy.
Her body trembled beneath her cloak.
Not until roughly the time it takes to drink a cup of tea had passed, under the setting sun, did reason finally begin returning to her, cold and clear, amid her own side’s growing agitation…
…
Lou Shuwan had no real grasp of a complex battlefield, but Qiu Mengtang had already sent men to call for reinforcements, and Yu Yulin and Tian Shi had likewise recognized that something was amiss, mobilizing their own three hundred-plus elite troops. Looking toward that stretch of mountainside, corpses and blood lay scattered across the slopes without end. Qiu Mengtang’s men—even to her untrained eye—seemed to have been cut down by roughly half. And that man named Ning Yi was, meanwhile, calmly and methodically withdrawing.
Serving under Tian Hu for as long as she had, Lou Shuwan had heard rumors concerning Ning Yi before—of a cloth shop opened in the capital, of Liangshan later broken, of a name earned as the “Demon of the Heart.” The martial world seemed to regard the matter with great weight; upon hearing of it, Lou Shuwang had apparently given up entirely on the idea of revenge, mocking her for even thinking she could stand a chance. But Lou Shuwan herself still had her wits about her—breaking Liangshan with a mere forty men was, in her view, nothing more than leveraging the court’s own power, playing one side off against another, using leverage to strike. Toppling all of Liangshan was impressive enough, granted, but to anyone with real insight, it wasn’t something beyond comprehension either.
Human strength always has its limits; the Tiger King, certainly, had risen with the tide of the times, but even men of extraordinary gifts like Fang La and Fang Qifo could still perish at the very height of their power. Perhaps it was simply the composure of a woman that kept Lou Shuwan from feeling any real fear over what Ning Yi might do. More complicated still, though she’d heard scattered fragments of Ning Yi’s story circulating in the martial world, she had, to some degree, avoided confronting the truth of it. What good would knowing do, after all—there was nothing she could do to take her revenge now regardless.
And so, even knowing in her heart that Ning Yi was a formidably dangerous man, amid her own churning emotions, she hadn’t fully registered what Qiu Mengtang’s decision to attack really meant. What truly frightened her about Ning Yi, in truth, was something that had cut into her heart. “We haven’t confirmed his true strength” had been little more than an unconscious protest; Qiu Mengtang’s “it’s only a hundred-odd men” had been the more sensible view. However formidable he might be, it was only a hundred-odd men, after all.
But now, a chill crept quietly through her heart as she watched the scene unfold, and a single thought rose in her mind: he really is formidable.
He seemed… to have always been this formidable.
Memories of Hangzhou stirred in her mind, and an impossible thought surfaced: could she possibly have… bitten off more than she could chew? Facing this man, could his hundred-odd men actually turn the tables and strike back?
Of course, even she found such a thought rather absurd. Because the fighting across the mountainside continued to spread, and Qiu Mengtang’s men kept arriving in wave after wave, their numbers gradually swelling to five hundred, six hundred, seven hundred… As the sun sank toward the west, Ning Yi led his group back over the ridge on the far side, beginning a full retreat, and Yu Yulin’s side had by now gathered its own three hundred-plus elites, a force of over a thousand strong spreading out in pursuit along the way. Even recognizing that the enemy had real skill, no one could possibly believe they might still turn the tables now—and this was all the more true for Yu Yulin and Tian Shi, both of whom had a deep understanding of battlefield dynamics.
The sun was about to set. Lou Shuwan, astride her large horse, rode on with the others, hooves clattering as they pressed forward in difficult pursuit.
She wanted to capture him—wanted it so badly.
Gritting her teeth, chasing after the fading sunlight, this was what she found herself hoping for.