Inside, Hongti held Fu Duanyun’s hand, speaking softly with her like sisters, and more than once the conversation drifted back to the matter of “husband.” Hongti didn’t deny it, going along with whatever she said.

After a while, Ning Yi brought the roasted beggar’s chicken out from the other room; besides the chicken, he’d also packed a few tins of canned fruit for this trip to Lüliang, and brought those out for dinner too. The three of them — two dressed normally, one still giving off a foul odor — sat down at the table together and ate.

Over dinner, Ning Yi noticed that in some respects Fu Duanyun’s mind still worked perfectly well — she never forgot, for instance, what Ning Yi had just told her about marrying Hongti — but when it came to the village and her own present situation, her grasp of things had already come unmoored. She could still recount, in detail, what had happened “yesterday” in every household in the village, as though today everyone had simply gone out visiting over some matter or other; now and then she’d mention something her mother-in-law had asked her to do…

Of her own physical condition — the blind eye, the missing teeth, or the filth and stench from soiling herself — she seemed entirely unaware. Only bodily sensations couldn’t be fooled: she was clearly hungry, and ate quickly, almost choking once, at which she gave the two of them an embarrassed smile and told them it was delicious. She asked where such fine food had come from, and Ning Yi and Hongti told her it had been brought from Jiangning.

By the time they finished eating, the sun still hadn’t set. Fu Duanyun chatted with them a while longer about goings-on in the village, then took her leave. As she left, she held Hongti’s hand and murmured a string of instructions — telling her not to let her new husband suffer any hardship, and that if there was anything missing at home, she should come get it from her. The two of them watched her walk off toward a house at the far end of the village.

Since they hadn’t looked closely before, only now did they notice that of the entire village, only that distant house was still sound — it looked as though it had been patched and maintained over the years. Hongti led him over to take a look; the inside was fairly filthy, but showed clear signs of having been tidied — the ragged quilt on the bed had been neatly folded, presumably by Hongti just now. Beside the bed sat a sack, also Hongti’s — a bag of dry provisions.

“She lives here alone,” Hongti said.

Ning Yi nodded and gave her hand a squeeze.

Because of all this, Hongti’s mood wasn’t especially bright, and as the two of them walked out of the village, they saw, off in the distance by the treeline at the foot of the slope, Fu Duanyun had made her way to the edge of the village and was gazing off toward the east.

Then she sat down there, seeming to wait for someone to come back.

“Sister Duanyun is only four years older than me,” Hongti said after a breath, with a faint smile — though she seemed to sense, a moment later, that smiling didn’t quite suit the occasion. “Liheng, you’ve probably guessed — her husband and her mother-in-law are both dead. Her husband died first. That was the year of the famine, when everyone was fighting over grain everywhere. Her husband died defending the village. Before he died, he told her to take care of her mother-in-law — but by the time my master and I got back from being away, she’d already gone mad.”

“Mm,” Ning Yi murmured softly.

Hongti paused for a long while. “Even after she went mad, she still cared for her mother-in-law devotedly — farming, doing chores, washing, cooking, tending to the old woman. Back then she could still take care of herself, at least — she just believed her husband had gone to Fenyang, left the day before, and sometimes we thought, maybe it was better for her this way… Then over the next couple of years, a great deal happened — the village couldn’t hold on any longer, it finally fell, and everyone moved on to form Green Wood Stronghold. My master died too. I always assumed Sister Duanyun and her mother-in-law had died in all that chaos — until, years later, I came back and found her living here, alone.”

“Why… didn’t you bring her back to the stronghold?”

“Couldn’t.” Hongti sat down on the grass nearby, legs together, watching the distant figure. “If we brought her back, she’d break down — carry on like she was dying, smash her head against pillars, bite her own tongue. She’s never forgotten this place — believes her husband and mother-in-law went out somewhere and told her to wait for them here. So she can only live here. She used to be very pretty, actually. When the bandits came through, her mother-in-law died, but she didn’t. What they did to her afterward — I can imagine well enough. That’s how she ended up this way… ended up like this…”

Hongti’s eyes narrowed, her gaze turning sharp. “She can still do plenty for herself, you know — housework, laundry, farming, she can manage all of it. She’s got a small patch of land there, and it does yield a harvest. Being like this — it’s something she does on purpose, in a way. She’s forgotten a great deal, but some things she remembers without meaning to, because being like this means the bandits don’t touch her… Sometimes her little plot gets trampled by people passing through, and she just plants it over again. I come by sometimes to check on her, bring her a few things — if someone’s ruined her field, I go looking for whoever did it nearby. Sometimes I find them, sometimes I don’t. Once I came by later than usual, and some group passing through had taken even the little food she had, and the field hadn’t yielded anything — Sister Duanyun had gone four or five days without eating. I still don’t know how she was even alive when I got there…”

“…” Ning Yi looked at the madwoman in the distance, bathed in the setting sun.

“There was a good thing too, once — a few years back, three or four years now, a lame man passing through wanted to settle down here. Sister Duanyun’s mad, but he seemed to… take a liking to her. He stayed in the village. I watched quietly for a while — he really did take care of her. But Sister Duanyun, though she’s mad, still recognizes people, and greeting him, talking with him, all that went fine. But when the lame man wanted to get into her bed, she wouldn’t allow it. After a while, he couldn’t hold back anymore and forced himself on her — Sister Duanyun just went limp, like she’d died… and by the next day she’d already forgotten it, greeting him just the same as always. Honestly, I thought — having someone look after her wasn’t such a bad thing…”

Ning Yi almost didn’t want to ask, but he asked anyway, quietly: “What happened to the lame man?”

“They were together for two years,” Hongti said evenly. “Then one day, when I came by, the lame man had already been killed — some fellow who’d fled here from the Liao, staying here temporarily, maybe already for several days. Sister Duanyun didn’t look as old back then as she does now. I saw… I saw him dragging Sister Duanyun toward the stream, trying to wash her clean. She kept struggling, so he tied her up, and she started smashing her head against the ground — that’s how her teeth got knocked out, how she went blind in that eye… And yet when the lame man had forced himself on her, she’d never reacted like that.”

She didn’t go on with the story, didn’t say what became of the man. After a moment, she let out a breath. “But I can only come by here occasionally, bring her a few things… it’s too chaotic here now, not really safe to settle anyone. If I sent someone to look after Sister Duanyun, other people might end up dying because of her too. She… probably doesn’t have much longer left. I don’t even know anymore whether I want to see her die, as a release, or want her to just keep on living like this. Looking at her, we might think she’s pitiable, but who’s to say she isn’t happier now than she’d be lucid? Whatever terrible thing happens, by the next day, she’s forgotten it…”

“Liheng…” She smiled, turning to Ning Yi beside her. “I didn’t want to tell you all this. Lüliang is like this — I told you before, and you already knew it, but I didn’t want to say too much. Knowing too much only makes people unhappy. And besides… you’ll… hm…”

She hesitated, not finishing the thought, then after a moment said instead: “The truth is, I grew up here. People in the mountains have all lived through things like this — nothing about it is strange to me, none of it…” She said, “Ning Liheng, I taught you your martial arts — I’m your master. Just this once, think of me as your master, all right?”

As she said this, her expression turned faintly stern. When Ning Yi had first met her, she’d often carried that same stern, cold bearing — but as they’d grown closer over time, she’d become warm instead, and even when she tried to put on a stern face, it rarely held. Only in this moment did Ning Yi once again glimpse that guarded Lu Hongti from their first days together in the small courtyard, holding her ancient sword, gazing off into the distance.

And yet, she wasn’t truly resisting Ning Yi either — in the mountains, over all those years, this was simply how people lived, and she herself had genuinely seen it all, so thoroughly that the very ordinariness of it had become deeply strange, creating a sense of distance that felt out of place. The coldness on her face wasn’t even quite defiance — not sorrow, not resolve, unwilling to refuse him yet unable to be tender either. Only in this moment did she seem, truly, like an awkward mountain girl.

…

“Mm.” Ning Yi nodded. “You’re my master.” As he said this, he reached his hand out toward her.

…

“I’m your master…”

Hongti said this softly, eyes closed, but Ning Yi wrapped his arms around her, drawing her body to lean against his chest.

“Mm, you’re my master,” he repeated.

“Ah…” The woman-master, holding her ancient sword, let out a soft sigh, her face still wearing that protective coldness, yet with no way to break free of his embrace — she simply let him hold her there on the grass, and after a long while, fell quiet, as though asleep.

…

“Let’s go back and get things done,” Ning Yi finally said, after a long while.

“Hm?”

“We’ve seen what needed seeing. Though… this isn’t really what I wanted to see, being able to see it is still a good thing. Now that we have, it’s time to go back to work.” He let out a sigh.

After a while, as Ning Yi and Hongti rode off on their horses, the figure on the slope stood up and waved to them. The gesture looked, strangely, so ordinary — as though she had never lived through any misfortune at all.

The two of them rode on, hand in hand, their horses moving slowly across the hillside.

The sun set in the west, and even Lüliang Mountain, in that light, took on a gentle, magnificent glow.

And one step further ahead lay iron horses and golden spears, and the long road to the great pass.

This day was the summer of the twelfth year of Jinghan, the nineteenth of the fourth month. On an unremarkable day, unremarkable people and things came into view…

…

Waking up this morning, the breeze felt nice. After the wind woke me up properly, I went to fetch water and do the wash. The village felt a bit quiet — probably because of the market day, a lot of people were out. I heard Runxing’s family dog barking, that mad dog, always barking for no reason — one of these days I’m going to throw a rock and lame it. But I waited a good while at the gate with a rock in hand, and never did figure out where the dog had gone.

In the morning, Uncle Shunyi came by to borrow our plane — probably fixing a door at home. I didn’t much feel like talking to him. He’s a loudmouth, over forty years old, and spends all day talking nonsense with the old women in the village. The night I got married, the ones teasing the newlyweds embarrassed me so much I cried, though Youcheng says he’s a good man. Well, give it a while and I suppose I’ll be out there talking nonsense with the rest of the women too. I found the plane at home and gave it to Uncle Shunyi, and he left. He didn’t say anything this time, thankfully — otherwise I wouldn’t have known how to answer.

In the afternoon, something good happened — Hongti came home. Seems like she’s off learning skills from her master or something; sometimes she comes back, and this time she even brought her husband along. Her husband’s from Jiangning, brought all sorts of nice things — a shame everyone was out, so she couldn’t visit more than a few houses. I told her Youcheng and Mother-in-law had gone to Fenyang, and everyone else was out at the market — maybe she can come by again tomorrow and see everyone then. Youcheng and Mother-in-law will be so happy too, seeing her and her husband.

After eating, I walked them out to the edge of the village to see them off. The evening sun was nice too, close to nightfall — this should be a good year. Actually, come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve really gone hungry since I was little. Now Hongti’s married into a good family too — the harvests in Lüliang keep getting better, year after year, I think.

Actually, I went out to the village edge partly to watch for the ones coming back into the village. Strange that they’re still not back this late today. Walking at night in the mountains, there are wolves — better not be caught out alone. Youcheng and Mother-in-law must be staying somewhere out there for the night.

It’s just a little lonely, being home alone.

Youcheng, Mother-in-law, when are you coming home…