Night fell, and heavy rain poured down outside the window, washing away the irritating summer heat. Warm lamplight filled the room as Hongti sat with needle and thread, sewing a set of clothes. The garment was supposed to be a scholar’s robe, but because of Ning Yi’s insistence, it had ended up becoming a “dashing warrior’s outfit” of his own design—his reasoning being that Hongti was a female warrior, and even after marrying, she ought to be sewing warrior’s garb instead.

As for Hongti herself, she didn’t really feel there was much difference between a female warrior and an ordinary person. In her eyes, Ning Yi seemed more like a scholar than some notorious killer with blood on his hands. The two were newly married, and had moved out into a few separate rooms—this was something the elder Liang Bingfu had insisted upon. After marriage, a couple ought to have some space to themselves; having too many people around in the courtyard was, after all, rather awkward. The “awkward” the old man spoke of even included himself; sometimes when the couple came to keep him company for dinner, he would send them back to eat on their own. Liang Bingfu also felt that as the chief of the stronghold, she was entitled to that particular privilege.

For this reason, the two had moved into a few old, relatively quiet houses by the small platform on the hillside, from which one could look out over the whole of Green Wood Stronghold, yet few people could catch a glimpse into their daily life. Once evening came, this place became their own small world.

Half their days they spent having dinner with Liang Bingfu before returning here; the other half they cooked for themselves. Ning Yi was a man who cared a great deal about fine food, while Hongti ate rather plainly—because of this, Ning Yi often took charge of the cooking at dinnertime, personally frying up a couple of dishes, while Hongti handled the rice, the fire, the dishwashing, and so on. Even though she’d taken on most of the household chores, Hongti still felt it was a mark of her own incompetence that Ning Yi had to cook. Still, after so many years in the mountains, even if she wanted to learn, she’d never become much of a cook.

To call them “as respectful to each other as guests” might not be quite right, since Ning Yi’s behavior was often unrestrained, even outrageous—but in daily life, they were as attentive to one another as an old, devoted couple, always by each other’s side. The newlyweds truly did feel content and happy living this way. Compared to the Su family, with their generations of skill in textiles, Hongti’s needlework wasn’t especially fine—but stitching a pair of shoe soles or sewing a garment for her own man was, for a woman of the mountains, its own source of contentment and happiness.

After dinner the two of them would take a short walk nearby, or go down into the stronghold to greet people they knew. When the evening candles were lit, Hongti would sit doing needlework by the lamp, occasionally glancing over at the man beside her reading or writing, sometimes chatting, huddled together talking about old wishes from the past and half-formed murmurs about the future. Sometimes, they would also do things that were a little improper—things that belonged only to a husband and wife.

At heart, Ning Yi was an extremely unrestrained, wild-natured man, though this was concealed beneath a mild, indifferent exterior—that indifference existing only because, having lived through so much once already, many things no longer moved him as they once had. But with the person closest to him, he didn’t need to maintain that face. Sometimes he’d voice ideas that were rather outrageous, even faintly perverse, and Hongti, being gentle by nature, could never help but endure his teasing in silence and quiet submission.

In truth, deep down, she couldn’t really say she found Ning Yi’s excessive demands objectionable—only that she felt shy, so very shy, embarrassed beyond words. When Ning Yi told her “everyone does things like this,” she could only assume that this must be how it was among the great households in the cities, and then simply blush. But since there was no one else around, blushing in front of one’s own husband was, perhaps, only natural for a wife.

In the warmth of the lamplight, on nights filled with whispered words, sometimes even the summer heat would fade away. Such things tended to happen every couple of days, often while she was massaging his meridians and pressure points to help his recovery. Now that the two of them were husband and wife, the massages meant to ease the damage his body had suffered from breaking through the Sixth Path were no longer so purely simple. Sometimes, as she pressed and Ning Yi responded, certain desires stirred in him, and she could only endure, face burning, the “bitter fruit” of being teased.

Or sometimes, late at night, Hongti would fill the bathtub for Ning Yi, and as he bathed he often refused to let her leave, so she would have no choice but to undress right there in the room. Ning Yi would undo the ties of her undergarment for her; she would fold her clothes and undergarments neatly to the side, then walk over under his gaze and step into the water.

As time went on, since Ning Yi liked to think of her as a heroine of the martial world, she would sometimes murmur, “You just love bullying a lady swordswoman…” and her cheeks would flush faintly. But that kind of blushing only happened while Ning Yi was watching her; once their bodies were pressed together, skin against skin, she no longer felt shy at all—only that this was simply what was expected of a wife.

Through the summer’s shifting rain and sunshine, the people living and breathing within the stronghold, the settlement quietly changing shape, the mountain roads growing gradually clearer… For the two of them, there was already an understanding quietly held in both their hearts: sooner or later Ning Yi would have to return to Bian Liang, while Hongti would still have to guard her stronghold. Between them, the future would likely still mean more time apart than together. It was for this reason that Hongti so treasured every chance to sew him clothes, to stitch shoe soles, to make him shoes. And it was, perhaps, partly for this reason too that she accepted—shyly, yet without resistance—all of Ning Yi’s various demands, accepted those seemingly excessive, embarrassing intimacies between them.

Sometimes, waking at midnight, Ning Yi would think of all this and feel that he had wronged Hongti. If he could, he sometimes even wished he could stay here forever, in this war-scarred mountain stronghold, by the side of this woman who had endured so much suffering and yet remained strong and gentle. Looking back over the past, he found he held such imaginings for everyone close to him: had he never had his wife Su Tan’er, he might have lived quietly somewhere with Yun Zhu; had there been only Su Tan’er, he might have settled down contentedly to manage their household with her; had he encountered Liu Xigua early enough, he might have stayed by her side running the Overlord Blade Camp, or wandered the world seeking justice with a free heart. And if Hongti had carried him off to Green Wood Stronghold from the very start, he might well have put down roots here by now. And there were others too—Chan’er, Jin’er, and so many more.

Of course, standing amid such imaginings, he might also encounter other women in the future who moved his heart. Men were, after all, prone to fickleness—if he found himself facing the future, he would have to make choices, and then live with the regret and happiness that followed those choices. Or perhaps, swollen with wealth and power, he might come to enjoy only the satisfaction of desire without lingering attachment to feeling. And living in an age such as this, he could indeed openly and rightfully keep company with these women—yet he could only feel, after each of these debts of the heart, the guilt that followed.

As long as one lived in this world, there could never be any so-called absolute perfection. In circumstances like these, whether one called it greed or fickleness, this was, for now, the only path he could walk. And in the meantime, the affairs of the Wu Dynasty, the affairs of the Jin state, even the affairs of that Genghis Khan far off in Mongolia, the small matters of Mount Lüliang, the affairs of the Chancellor’s estate, and the affairs of this half of the realm—all of it had already tangled together, and even he himself could not quite see clearly what the future would hold.

As June drew to a close and July began, Ma Jun, the leader of the remaining Liao forces who had come to recognize the fighting strength of Green Wood Stronghold, sent an envoy to offer submission to the stronghold. What followed was a negotiation conducted under Ning Yi’s direction, while preparations for “beating the big rooster” grew more and more thorough by the day, as stockpiles of elm cannons, land mines, and the like continued to increase. Though it would take some time yet, the eventual outcome only grew clearer with each passing day.

On this rainy night in early July, Hongti—held in Ning Yi’s arms, wearing only her undergarment—opened her eyes from sleep at the sound of a commotion coming from the courtyard in the distance. The two of them dressed quickly and dashed out, arriving at Liang Bingfu’s courtyard to find the old man had already fallen into a deathlike state. It seemed that in his sleep he had tried to sit up for a drink of water, but phlegm had lodged in his throat; after a couple of coughs, he’d startled Xiao Hei, who was keeping watch outside.

Hongti pressed down on the old man’s chest, then struck him twice on the back, and only then did the unconscious old man manage to cough the phlegm from his throat. In recent days, this was not the first time the old man had shown such weakness—sometimes even swallowing porridge, he would choke on it. After this incident, the old man’s body could only manage activity for about two hours a day; sometimes he could still walk a little with his cane, and sometimes he would lie down in his chair and drift into a hazy sleep. By the time he woke, it might already be dusk of the following day.

As for Hongti’s wish to move closer to look after him personally, Liang Bingfu still firmly refused. In his lucid moments, he seemed cheerful about everything—watching the stronghold grow, watching the children run about, sometimes even offering the children mischievous little schemes when they were being chased. There was no longer any trace on him of the dignity and composure he’d once struggled so hard to maintain, nor any of the enormous weight of the responsibilities he’d once carried.

He brought up once more his wish to visit the old village.

From what Hongti had told him, Ning Yi knew that Liang Bingfu had actually spent very little time at the old village. One day, as they sat cooling themselves beneath the eaves, Ning Yi seized the chance to ask, “Old man, were you and Sister Duanyun close?”

The old man thought for a while after hearing this, seemingly lost in thought, then shook his head and smiled. “Not especially close.”

A few days later, with Hongti’s consent, they finally set out in the finest carriage they had, making their way toward the old village. Rising early that morning, the old man seemed quite energetic, dressed in a brand-new, neatly pressed scholar’s robe—though his energy only lasted a short while; after chatting with Ning Yi in the carriage for a bit, he fell into a deep sleep. Hongti stayed beside him, adjusting the flow of his qi and blood. The old man woke occasionally, sometimes jolted awake by the carriage’s jostling, and by that afternoon, they finally arrived back at the old, worn village that had once been the original home of Green Wood Stronghold.

The buildings here had begun to be renovated; some houses were already finished and people had moved in, with fences and defensive structures being built as well. Fu Duanyun still lived here; though she could occasionally greet people she recognized, she still hadn’t recovered—her body was filthy, her house reeked, and the tone of her voice when she spoke with others was heartbreaking to hear.

As the carriage passed by, they saw Fu Duanyun greeting a former neighbor, saying things that seemed, on the surface, perfectly ordinary. The old man had already woken and watched all this with a calm expression, then had the carriage move on. It was at this moment that Ning Yi realized he truly hadn’t been close to Fu Duanyun at all.

“I’ve been in Mount Lüliang so many years now—what haven’t I seen? Duanyun really is unfortunate, but… everyone here has had a hard life, one way or another…”

In all his years in Mount Lüliang, the sort of tragedy that so moved Ning Yi in Fu Duanyun’s life was something the old man had already witnessed many times over, and could no longer be so easily stirred by it.

He only had the carriage stop by the house he’d once lived in. The house had already collapsed and hadn’t yet been rebuilt; it looked as though even in its intact days, it had been nothing more than two simple mud-brick rooms. Leaning on his cane, he walked inside, waving off Hongti’s attempt to support him, closed his eyes and took a breath, then made his way, trembling, to a mound of packed earth, where he sat down, both hands gripping his cane.

“Liheng, Hongti, go take a walk outside. This old man wants to sit here a while.” The old man waved his hand, his gaze drifting to one side. “Hongti, take Liheng around, show him your old home…”

Hongti and Ning Yi went out, leaving Xiao Hei to keep watch nearby, though they didn’t wander far. They sat down not far away, out of the old man’s sight, and no sooner had they sat than Hongti grabbed hold of Ning Yi’s clothes with both hands, buried her face against his chest, and began to weep silently. Ning Yi stroked her hair.

“If I hadn’t come… he might have held on a little longer…”

As a grandmaster of the martial path, Hongti—like Lin Echan, like Zhou Tong—understood the human body as well as anyone alive. The old man had exhausted himself utterly over these past ten-odd years; he wasn’t a particularly gifted man, but he had carried the weight of responsibility on the strength of his own life, step by step. All these years, Hongti had been able to look after his health, but she could do nothing about the guttering of a life whose oil had finally run dry.

He wasn’t suffering from some physical mishap—he had simply reached the end of his life.

Of course, just as Ning Yi had said, if he hadn’t arrived when he did, Liang Bingfu, holding on by sheer will, might have lasted a few more months, even half a year or a year. But once Ning Yi had come, whatever had weighed on the old man’s heart had finally been set down. He had lived out the calmest, most fulfilling stretch of days he’d known, and was now about to complete a full and contented life.

The sunset began to take on a fiery glow, and no warning call came from Xiao Hei’s direction. When Ning Yi and Hongti returned, the old man lay in his chair amid the ruins, as though asleep, or perhaps lost in some memory. But at the sound of footsteps, he opened his eyes again, waking once more. He smiled at the two of them, lying there, and took both their hands, clasping them together.

He reminisced about the days gone by, speaking a little of the past.

“…Truly, your master and I—we weren’t all that close either… I was just an outsider, a scholar. Your master… she respected me, but the two of us were never really close. Thinking back on it now, aside from official business, we didn’t talk much of anything personal…”

“…But I believe she trusted me. I think that feeling of mine must be right… Sometimes she’d come by to check on how I was living. Hongti, do you know—even when people in the stronghold went hungry, I never went hungry, not while your master was alive…”

“…She didn’t come by all that often—for personal matters, for official ones… I lived in my room, the door was over there… She’d come in through that door, sometimes sit a while, drink a bit of water, sometimes leave again in a hurry. I… I wanted to talk with her more…”

“…My talents were so poor… studying, sitting for the exams, wanting to become an official… none of it ever came to anything. Hongti, your master… your master handed me such a heavy burden. Did she… did she pick the wrong man? She… she died so foolishly…”

“…Ah… you two, take good care of each other… live well, live a good life… seeing you two together, I… I’m truly happy…”

The old man’s words came haltingly, sometimes with his eyes closed as though about to slip into sleep, then opening again. At first he gazed at the sunset glow, but gradually his eyes grew distant, unfocused, as if he could no longer tell what he was looking at. After urging the two of them to live well, the old man fell quiet for a long while in his hazy state, then suddenly stirred, as though trying to sit up, before lying back down again.

“Ah, do you see it…” he murmured, his gaze fixed on some distant point, staring as though trying to trace his way back to the very end of memory and time. “That kind of sky… we—we ran into bandits, I was going to die… but then she just came out like that, she was holding a sword, ah, ah… she… she was so beautiful… I… I… always…”

The old man’s voice trailed off there. The sunset glow hung like a tide across the heavens. In that moment, life had left him for good.

Hongti’s weeping rang out.

In our lives, sometimes we meet someone who appears just like that, like a flash of lightning, and yet changes the whole course of our life.

Not long after this day, on another day likewise in July, far to the north, in a great hall lit with burning candles, another old man was speaking to the many people gathered by his bedside.

Since falling from his horse two months earlier, this old man’s body, too, had been approaching its end.

Before the founding of the Jin dynasty, the Jurchen people had been nothing more than a scattering of weak, loosely connected tribes in the bitter cold of the northeast, struggling to survive between the White Mountains and Black Waters, living under the oppression of the Liao as though they were slaves. In the second year of the Tianqing era of the Liao dynasty, Emperor Tianzuo summoned the Jurchen chieftains to court and, at a banquet, ordered each of them to dance for entertainment—only one chieftain, a man named Aguda of the Wanyan clan, refused. Two years later, Aguda rose up with twenty-five hundred Jurchen soldiers; after the battle of Ningjiang Prefecture, his forces grew to thirty-seven hundred, and then at Chuhedian, with these same thirty-seven hundred men, he met and defeated a Liao army of a hundred thousand, giving birth to the true legend that “ten thousand Jurchen soldiers cannot be defeated,” and sounding the opening notes of the fall of the Liao dynasty.

A life spent scheming across the realm, forever on horseback—at a time when his people were weak and enslaved, he had propped up the rise of an entire nation through sheer will and strength, lifting up its very backbone. To the Jurchen people, he was without question a great hero; to the entire era, he was its brightest star, a peerless hero of his generation!

His road came to its end here, and by his side were the sons and clansmen who made him proud—Wanyan Zonggan, Wanyan Zongwang, Wanyan Zongbi, Wanyan Zongyao, Wanyan Zongjun… Wanyan Shemu, Wanyan Loushi, Wanyan Xiyin, Wanyan Wolu, Yinshuke, Cibushi, Balishu… They stood at this hero’s side, having weathered every trial, carrying forward the flame he’d lit—the most brilliant generals and aides making up the Wanyan clan of this age.

He had led them clawing their way out of the ice and snow, and now the wolf king who had ridden roughshod across the realm was about to lie down to rest—yet wherever these men remained, the fierce spirit of the wolf smoke still rose to the heavens, a true tiger’s might that could swallow up ten thousand miles!

In the solemn hush that filled the great hall, the old man on the bed spoke a great deal to those gathered around him; even in a moment such as this, his mind remained clear, though he would occasionally slip into silence or brief bouts of sleep. As the night deepened toward its blackest hour, people could hear the roar of the flames outside the hall. At one point, the old man opened his eyes again, gazing upward, thinking quietly to himself, and in the dreadful silence, his sons and ministers gathered close by the bed and caught a low, weak, yet simple voice.

“…Liao is conquered… the Wu Dynasty can be taken next…”

In the darkness, this was one simple item among the many instructions he’d given; those at his bedside nodded, then continued listening to what else he had to say.

In the small hours of that morning, Aguda of the Wanyan clan passed away. He was succeeded by his fourth younger brother, Wanyan Wuqimai, who became the second emperor of the Jin state, ruling over all under heaven.

A long wind blew across ten thousand miles.

Upon learning that Aguda of the Wanyan clan had finally died, the court of the Wu Dynasty, from top to bottom, privately celebrated—an opponent they had regarded as their most fearsome had at last left this world.

Two months later, deep autumn swept golden leaves across Mount Lüliang. That morning, in that once-worn old village, Fu Duanyun woke from sleep and looked over the house she lived in.

She walked out of her door and wandered about the newly rebuilt village as she always did; people greeted her as usual, and she smiled back, a little lost, nodding in response.

She tidied her room, washed her clothes, and bathed herself as well. For the first time in years—setting aside her most tragic memories—she was clean once more. That afternoon, seeing her like this, the villagers, sensing something was not quite right, finally decided to ride to Green Wood Stronghold to inform Hongti. That evening, before Hongti arrived, the villagers saw her sitting at the village entrance on the earthen slope, arms wrapped around her knees, just as she always did, eyes wide open, watching the yellow leaves fall, watching travelers return from the distant mountains, an occasional smile crossing her face.

At one moment, she seemed to see something, and an indescribable smile spread across her face. She stood up and took two steps forward. She reached out her hand toward the direction the yellow leaves were drifting.

She fell onto the earthen slope, and never opened her eyes again.

…

Youcheng, Grandmother… I’m home…

…

The heavenly wind swept through the splendor of spring, swept through the thunderstorms of summer, swept through the yellow leaves of autumn, swept through the ice and snow of winter, rolling on and on, rolling ever away.

An old era was about to pass, and before the new era arrived, people still had to endure countless wars and conflicts, countless sorrows and desolations.

For heaven and earth are but a furnace.

And all things within it are bronze.