The night was gentle, and the campfire burning in the valley was slowly growing warm…
The horses were gathered in a great cluster in the darkness a little further off; on this side, tent after tent ringed the campfires, forming a small makeshift camp. By the fire, the Bamboo Trading House’s people had not yet gone to sleep — after the day’s battle, while the feeling of it was still fresh in their minds, they needed to hash it out and reflect on it right away, to make sure they wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes next time. But now and then, in the darkness, someone’s eyes would sneak a glance toward a certain direction in the valley, wearing a look of curious, gossipy interest.
Half the Bamboo Trading House’s fighters had come up through the camp at Dulong Ridge and knew something, at least, of the relationship between Ning Yi and Hongti; the rest were mostly just curious. Take, for instance, Yuwen Feidu, the youngest in the group — a boy raised and trained jointly by the people of Dulong Ridge, gifted and lively by nature, already versed in all eighteen forms of weaponry, and, at only fifteen, already showing signs of becoming a formidable fighter. In the middle of the discussion, he got a glare from one of his masters for sneaking in a question of his own on the matter.
But it was only natural that, behind the scenes, this night would be full of quiet talk and gossip…
Ning Yi carried over a bowl of meat broth, walked to the rocks in front of the tent, and handed it to the woman sitting on the ground, then sat down beside her. Hongti took the bowl and sipped a small mouthful.
The tent had been set up not far from the wooden cabin, with a campfire burning in front of it, its light flickering across both their faces.
“Two questions.” Ning Yi looked over Hongti, dressed in black martial attire with a cloak draped over her shoulders, and smiled. “First — what’s this Blood Bodhisattva business about? Wasn’t ‘Iron Sword of River and Mountain’ a good enough name? You’re a woman, and you go and pick a nickname like that.”
“Your own ‘Bloody-Handed Butcher’ — not many people know that one either, do they,” Hongti said, laughing when she heard Ning Yi’s question. She paused with the small bowl in her hands. “I wanted to be called Iron Sword of River and Mountain too, but a nickname’s something other people give you — what could I do about it…”
The woman smiled, looking up at the sky as if remembering something. “Here in Lüliang, my name’s Hongti. In the beginning, I always wanted to help people. So they called me Bodhisattva — Red Bodhisattva. But that name never scared anyone. Later, after all the fighting in the mountains, I ended up killing a great many people, and the brothers in the stronghold said, why not Blood Bodhisattva instead of Red Bodhisattva… That name’s only really caught on these past year or two. I wanted to change it, but by then it was too late. You’ll just… have to make do with it.”
“Primitive totem worship…” Ning Yi murmured softly.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Ning Yi smiled. For his part, though he hadn’t studied the situation in Lüliang in great detail, he’d certainly heard about how things had gone for Hongti back at the stronghold in the earlier years.
She had taken over the stronghold from her master at a young age and had treated it as the greatest responsibility resting on her shoulders ever since. Hongti had no qualms about killing, but at her core, her temperament actually leaned soft — in truth, she was more suited, in some ways, to being a quiet woman who married and raised a family. Because of this, despite her formidable skill, the people in the stronghold hadn’t necessarily held her in awe. Take, for instance, the time she’d gone all the way to Jiangning to kill Song Xian — technically her responsibility as stronghold master, but in truth it had felt more like something she’d been pushed into by her own people. It wasn’t until, under Ning Yi’s guidance, she reorganized Green Wood Stronghold that the people there came to love and respect her — but fear, hardly at all.
Back then, being called “Red Bodhisattva” hadn’t really been wrong. It wasn’t until later, when she hardened her resolve and let the troublemakers in the stronghold stir things up — killing some, splitting off others — that the stronghold truly began to grow. After that, she deliberately kept some distance from her subordinates, enforced strict rules, and it was this that finally gave Green Wood Stronghold the shape it has today. It was through her killings against outsiders that she finally became the Blood Bodhisattva, whose fearsome name now rang through all of Lüliang. To be fair, the more dangerous a place, the more savage its nicknames tended to be — and savage names carried far more weight here than civilized ones. “Iron Sword of River and Mountain” really wouldn’t have moved many people in a place like this.
Still, in the space of little more than a year, in the transformation from “Red Bodhisattva” to the image of “Blood Bodhisattva,” Ning Yi could only imagine, in places he had no way of knowing, just how much Hongti had gone through — what she had lived through, he had no way of truly understanding, however he tried.
With that thought, Ning Yi found himself unwilling to dwell on it further. He changed the subject. “So… second question — what’s this business about a martial contest for a husband… how could I possibly beat you…”
At the question about the martial contest, Hongti was about to answer, only to hear Ning Yi’s second half of the question — and she froze for a moment, her face flushing red. After the events at Liangshan, the two of them had shared a brief period of intimacy, but that had been a year ago now, and meeting again so suddenly, she found herself momentarily at a loss. Ning Yi watched this with interest; it was a good while before Hongti recovered her usual composure and glanced back at him.
“That was just something other people made up,” Hongti said quietly. “When I got word you were coming to Lüliang, I mentioned it to Grandfather Liang, and he may have done something behind the scenes… something or other. Then, just around that time, some people came into the mountains, mainly wanting to make contact with Green Wood Stronghold about that pacification decree from Lord Tan in the capital. Plenty of people in Lüliang had heard about it too, so they started gathering toward Green Wood Stronghold. Somehow, in the retelling, it turned into me holding a martial contest to choose a husband. Grandfather Liang said it didn’t really matter — as long as people were willing to come to Green Wood Stronghold to talk business, it would prove our standing, and business would go more smoothly afterward. So whoever came, we received them properly. But as for the pacification decree, I figured you’d understand it better than I would, so I wanted to wait until you got here before deciding anything.”
“The pacification decree…” At the mention of it, Ning Yi’s expression turned serious, and he shook his head with a faint touch of contempt. “This is Tan Zhen’s first move after taking over as Military Affairs Commissioner from Tong Guan — a consequence of Zhang Jue’s death last year. The higher-ups in the capital are getting nervous, so they want to shore up the defensive line from Yanmen Pass to Taiyuan, and from Taiyuan to the capital. Tong Guan may have retired, but he’s still pushing this and involved in it. Officially, they’re saying strict discipline must be enforced after any pacification — but the ones handling the pacification are Tan Zhen’s and Tong Guan’s people, the ones handling oversight are Tong Guan’s and Cai Jing’s people, and the ones overseeing the overseers are the censors and remonstrance officials — most of whom have ties to certain great families up north, and even those without ties… the man at the very top likes nothing more than results on paper, so the Censorate right now is basically a place that only swats flies, never tigers. Expecting anything from them is pointless…”
Ning Yi rambled on about all this; Hongti might not have followed all of it, but she listened attentively all the same. Ning Yi, of course, understood as much, and smiled, treating it as something of a joke. “You don’t need to worry about most of it — since people have already come, I can guess well enough what their attitude will be. Did anyone come from the Zuo family or the Qi family up north?”
Hongti thought for a moment. “I heard… there seems to be a big merchant house backed by a family named Qi, and also some people from General Dong, and some from the frontier’s Wusheng Army. A lot of people have come through these past few days — for the details, Grandfather Liang would know best.”
“Tian Hu must have sent someone too, then?” Ning Yi asked, then suddenly recalled something. “Oh, right — that Little Sparrowhawk fellow, wasn’t he one of Tian Hu’s men? He suddenly lost his mind and came after me — what was that even about… if I get the chance, I’ll make sure he doesn’t live to regret it.”
“But he’s already dead,” Hongti said.
Ning Yi blinked. “I thought… he got away. I saw him run.”
Hongti leaned back against the rock, smiling with lazy ease. “You wrote to tell me you’d arrive earlier than this. When you were late, I got worried something had happened to you, so I left the stronghold. I’ve been out on the road waiting for you this whole time. Tonight, when I saw the fighting, I went to ask around what it was about, then went and killed Qiu Mengtang and a few of his lieutenants, and came back here to the cabin after.”
“Uh… what?” Hongti said it so lightly that Ning Yi couldn’t help but be taken aback, and then, after a moment, let out a helpless laugh. Once he’d steadied himself, he shook his head with a smile and gently took her hand. The two of them sat side by side by the rock; Hongti didn’t pull away, only gazed at the firelight, her eyes growing ever more calm and at peace.
“Ah, whatever. The pacification decree isn’t such a big deal either way. Having some official standing makes a lot of things easier to manage — it’s the logistics side that’s the real headache. Most of these people, even with a pacification title, can’t really be commanded by anyone, but with official status, they’ll demand pay and equipment. When we were drawing up the budget this time, everyone spent half a month cursing up a storm about it — the Chancellor’s household can claw back most of it for where it’s actually needed, but there’s always a small share that gets carved off by someone. Still, how it gets carved up is, for the most part, up to the Chancellor’s household to decide…”
The firelight flickered, and Hongti simply listened in silence.
“Now that I’m here, you don’t need to worry too much about the negotiations and all that. It probably wouldn’t do for me to appear formally, but… whether it’s the Zuo family, the Qi family, Dong Pang’er, or whatever general or Tiger King wants to talk business — I’ll peel every last one of them down to the bone…”
Ning Yi spoke softly, rambling on for a while longer, and Hongti closed her eyes, falling quietly asleep beside him…
After a while, Ning Yi drew a deep breath, looked up at the sky, then glanced at the sleeping woman beside him, and then toward the distant figures who were, quite likely, brimming with curiosity… A woman raised in an environment like Lüliang should, by all rights, remain wary under any circumstance, ready to wake at the slightest sound — and yet she slept so peacefully, so at ease, to the sound of his voice…
“Tomorrow, let’s not travel with the group — just the two of us… yeah, that’s settled.”
Carrying the woman back into the cabin, he murmured this quietly to himself, and so it was decided.
The enchanting midnight hour had long since passed, but in another stretch of mountains, the summer night wind had not yet settled. In a stronghold atop the peak, lit by firelight, unrest was sweeping through in waves — in the courtyards that had once belonged to the great stronghold master’s residence, small-scale clashes were breaking out without warning. Across a wider area, people wandered in fear and confusion, while at the outer gates, some had already begun gathering their bundles and slipping down the mountain in secret.
Word of Little Sparrowhawk’s death — especially the fact that it was the Blood Bodhisattva who had killed him — had spread back through the stronghold, and this was the panicked spectacle that had suddenly erupted in its wake. Some stood by in bewildered watching, some fled in unease, and others seized the chance to make a bold move of their own. Amid this chaos, a column of troops was advancing up the mountain path — over two hundred men, led by Tian Shi and Yu Yulin, charging straight back through the stronghold’s front gate. From there they fanned out, sweeping into every corner of the stronghold.
This party, which had originally come as guests within the stronghold, now moved through the night’s chaos as though they owned the place. Lou Shuwan walked among the troops, her face pale but resolute, watching as her men beheaded a resisting minor chieftain, and then, invoking the might of the Tiger King, Tian Hu, moved to put down the unrest within the stronghold.
The smell of blood, in a certain sense, was wearing down her body even as it hardened her spirit further. The gilded cage that had once sheltered her, canary-like, had already been shattered the moment Hangzhou fell — though at the time, she had still been too dazed to realize it. Among the Lou family back then, only her father and elder brother had fully grasped what was happening. Now, at last, she understood why it was her father and elder brother whom Ning Yi had rushed into the Lou household to kill — because in the mind of a man like that, a tiger among men, only they, on the scales of victory and defeat, had been worthy opponents, capable of causing him real trouble.
There was no question she had paid a price for it. Her experiences since then — on the road as a fugitive, under the Tiger King’s command — had taught her to understand this kind of ruthlessness that answered to no reasoning at all. And with her second brother, Lou Shuheng, already utterly broken, unable to recover, she had no way back left to her at all.
In the dark of night, with neither star nor moon, amid the firelight and blood-soaked confusion of the mountains, there was no path left but forward.