The autumn wind rustled coldly, and the grassy slope seemed to ripple faintly like waves. As the sunset’s glow faded, the evening chill gradually rose, but for the two men, this was no concern at all. After Ning Yi finished speaking, Qin Shaoqian thought for a moment, then muttered softly, “Though I don’t quite understand it, hasn’t the founding dividend already been squandered long ago…”

“Once it’s squandered, they start eating into the nation’s foundations,” Ning Yi smiled. “Does Second Young Master believe in cause and effect?”

“The women around me believe in it. As for me… I don’t believe in that sort of thing.” Qin Shaoqian picked up the string of beads on his wrist and shook it. “I recall Liheng doesn’t believe in it either?”

“I believe that everything has a cause and thus a result. I don’t believe in karmic retribution.”

“What’s the difference?”

“It’s a matter of arithmetic.” Ning Yi drank some wine and thought for a moment. In the distance, lights were gradually coming on in the military camp and the courtyards, traces of human presence gathering beneath the darkening sky. After a good while, he continued.

“Each of us, in doing something, will necessarily have cause and effect—this is certainly true. On the larger scale, we killed Zhang Jue, which made the Jurchens think us cowardly, think us weak, and so they came to attack us. If you kill a man, his family will seek revenge on you. And on the smaller scale, the things Chancellor Qin has done in the past, the words he’s said in front of you, Second Young Master, the things you’ve seen—these shaped the character you have now. When the Jurchens came, even knowing you likely couldn’t beat them, you still wouldn’t choose to flee…”

“Of course not!” Qin Shaoqian laughed.

Ning Yi smiled as well. “The appearance of each cause and effect is, of course, extremely complex to calculate. But every single thing we do—even a single sentence, a single gesture—will lead to other things, other consequences. Some of these consequences are positive, some negative. The problem is that while the appearance of a cause is fixed for each person, the arrival of its effect is random for each person.”

Qin Shaoqian frowned, clearly growing confused.

Ning Yi then picked up a tree branch and drew several circles on the ground.

“It’s like this—suppose there’s a society of ten people. They do good deeds and bad deeds. In a single day, each person generates one positive point and one negative point, so that makes ten of each, but they exist within one overall society. The descent of each positive or negative point is random. It’s entirely possible that one person receives two positives and not a single negative—he’s lucky. Another person has two negatives fall upon his head—he’s unlucky. Perhaps he’s wrongly accused, perhaps he’s ostracized… and if his foundation isn’t strong enough, he might even receive a negative ten. Someone who can’t bear that weight will die.”

Qin Shaoqian ate as he thought it over. “But that’s not entirely random either—if I kill someone, his family will certainly come seeking revenge against me.”

“But the calculation of cause and effect isn’t simple addition and subtraction. At every moment, the causes of countless people intertwine with one another, and that’s where it gets complicated.” Ning Yi smiled. “You kill this man’s father—he grows up fatherless, gets bullied, suffers people’s contempt, and in order to take revenge, he does many wicked things; to kill you, he might kill quite a few others first just to hone his skills… but it’s also possible that when he was bullied and scorned, someone took pity on him and gave him a good life, dissolving the resentment in his heart… All the causes and effects of everyone converge together, and in the end they descend upon each person’s head. Setting aside natural disasters, the total sum remains essentially constant.”

“That sounds somewhat interesting…” Qin Shaoqian said. “But what does this have to do with dividends and such?”

“The causes we create lead to effects that are, for the nation, sometimes beneficial and sometimes harmful. The nation is a vast system, and through the operation of this system, it absorbs these causes and effects every day, using means like the law to try to distribute them evenly across every single person.”

Nearby guards had lit torches, and a bonfire was kindled off to the side. Ning Yi tapped the small circles on the ground.

“When a nation is first founded, people are all full of drive, and having gone through war, they know how hard-won peace is. They remain vigilant in times of safety and won’t easily create causes that harm the nation—that is, they won’t easily do bad things that damage the state. Because the nation is young, all its institutions are sensitive and will respond quickly to such matters. So in that earliest period, the nation keeps growing stronger. But as time passes, there are always some who accumulate a great deal of positive-direction causes, becoming landlords, becoming great clans, becoming little cliques within the court…”

Ning Yi didn’t finish, but Qin Shaoqian nodded. “I understand now—from here on it starts to decline.”

“Exactly.” Ning Yi nodded as well. “Once an interest group emerges, its first priority is to protect its own interests. It will do small acts of kindness, create some positive numbers, but it will still keep expanding itself. Think about it—a great official’s household takes over the land of a hundred thousand peasant households. Even if he collects somewhat less rent, the positive sum his own family generates is still very small, while those hundred thousand households—to begin with, they had little to their name—who among them would feel this nation has anything to do with them? They might be simple and honest people, but their capacity to withstand risk is insufficient. When a few more negatives fall upon their heads, their families are ruined, and from then on, they become a machine that continuously generates negative numbers. And so it goes—the nation can only decline further and further. This, too, is determined by human nature.”

Ning Yi continued, “In the later period of a dynasty, negative numbers keep increasing while the positive numbers that benefit the nation keep decreasing. And when the nation’s functions are impaired, the digestion of these negatives can no longer be even. Sometimes a great pile of negative cause and effect suddenly falls on your head—a wrongful conviction, or some upheaval you can’t withstand—and those who can’t bear it simply have to die.”

“And when the nation collapses, at the level of the whole country, an enormous negative debt has already accumulated. This is a debt owed by history, one that someone must repay. How much can one person repay? Even encountering the smallest fraction of it requires paying with human lives to fill the gap. The negative sum created by an entire nation’s people must be filled with the lives of hundreds of thousands, millions, even tens of millions. This… is the cause and effect that I understand.”

Qin Shaoqian looked at the circles Ning Yi had drawn, flickering in the firelight. “And yet Liheng still says he doesn’t believe in cause and effect?”

“I believe in cause and effect. I don’t believe in karmic retribution.” Ning Yi tapped the circles representing the ten people. “Every negative value that falls upon a person—the probability is equal for everyone, you and I alike. It’s only the capacity to bear risk and misfortune that differs. In the Wu Dynasty, among a hundred million people, the chance of receiving good or bad fortune is equal for all. Exactly how much you’ll receive, you won’t know until it descends—but if you can’t bear it, you die… Each of us only has one life to live. If there were ten thousand lifetimes of reincarnation, then we’d truly have complete equality. But if there’s no reincarnation, then all that’s left is luck and accepting one’s fate.”

“Where there is reincarnation, there is karmic retribution. You create good causes, and good results will eventually return to you. But as for me…” Ning Yi paused noticeably at this point. Then he continued, “But I don’t believe in reincarnation, so I don’t believe in karmic retribution.”

The wind blew past overhead, and night birds flew by. The two fell silent for a long while at this point, then drank in turn. Though Qin Shaoqian was a military man and rather straightforward in his conduct, that didn’t mean he lacked wisdom. He thought carefully over what Ning Yi had said, and in the end he could understand it—but the conclusion was simply too heavy to bear.

“Does Liheng think our Wu Dynasty… has already reached this point?”

“I’m not certain,” Ning Yi said. “Perhaps it hasn’t reached collapse, but it’s clear the emergence of good and evil causes is no longer balanced. The nation is no longer strong enough, and so foreign enemies have invaded. At this point, a great many lives will be poured in to fill the gap. There are also some people who are like this nation’s… immunity, I suppose. They’ll rush forward on their own initiative to digest a great mass of evil consequence, but they can’t bear it, and so they die. Such people are what we call heroes.”

Qin Shaoqian’s eyes brightened, and he drank a cup of wine. “Then how many lives does Liheng think would be enough?”

“I know you want to fill that gap, but it’s not enough just to have lives to spend,” Ning Yi said, patting his shoulder. “Don’t forget, this nation is in debt. What matters is that before people die, the debt can actually be repaid. If the debt isn’t repaid and everyone dies, at most you turn the negative into zero, and start over from scratch.”

He paused. “So theoretically speaking, to repay the debt, the only way is to have many people still alive who can continuously generate that positive sum—find a way to produce positive numbers, and continuously offset those negatives. One person can’t offset it. Ten thousand people, a hundred thousand, a million—when a million people act as a whole, they can evenly digest a great sum.”

“Throughout every dynasty, so-called reformers have all been building a new system, letting the people of an era generate more positive numbers through new methods. But… although a system can, in theory, evenly digest those great negatives, in reality there’s always more or less imbalance. So some reformers failed, and their families were ruined. Some reformers succeeded, and extended a nation’s lifespan—but all the same, their families were ruined too. Because that’s a cause and effect no single person can bear.”

Ning Yi smiled. “So, in the end, though I certainly admire the great chivalrous heroes before me, and I’ll have the storytellers sing of them too, at heart I don’t actually like this sort of thing. A nation is like an embankment stretching a thousand miles. The people within it, creating good and evil causes, are like ants—some repair it, some hollow it out, but most people, most of the time, are damaging the nation. When Wuqimai rallied his troops, Xu Zerun cursed him furiously and is said to have died very valiantly—yet back home he owned a thousand qing of fine land, bullied men and violated women, and several wrongful cases could be traced back to him. Many people, when foreign peoples invade, declare they’d rather die than live under the same sky as the enemy, as if this were great integrity, as if this were patriotism. In truth it is not. Those who say ‘at least my greater integrity is intact’ are not to be trusted. If people, in ordinary times, would simply be good, not become corrupt officials—that is true patriotism. If the nation hadn’t been brought down by these negative values, if it still had real strength, would foreign peoples ever have invaded? Would there ever have been a need for these heroes to appear…?”

The night grew hazy, stars scattered across the heavens, and their voices fell silent. Qin Shaoqian drank, laughed a couple of times, and as the bonfire burned, in his line of sight lay the brightly lit courtyards, the brightly lit military camp, the brightly lit city of Dongping, and the fields, villages, and waterways stretching far and near. Before long, they changed the subject, speaking instead of the matter of the scorched-earth strategy, the empty talk of the various court officials, and other idle things. Only when the two of them rose from the slope, preparing to head back down, did Ning Yi sigh and pat Qin Shaoqian on the shoulder.

“Second Young Master, I’ve rambled on about so much, but when it comes to the fighting, I know you have it well in hand. How the Wu Dynasty will fare is still hard to say, but for those of us who do real work, sometimes we mustn’t be too obsessive about outcomes.”

Qin Shaoqian, reeking of wine, gave a long belch, and after a moment looked toward Ning Yi as well. “I understand what you mean, Liheng. And yet, if I retreat now, what difference would there be between me and those men I look down upon? Liheng, I am a son of the Qin family. My father stands in the court with so many eyes watching him—if I don’t go meet the enemy head-on, how much more attack will my father have to endure? Liheng, you’re a man of broad learning—if there truly is a correct path, why not go ahead and tell me?”

There was a note of irony in these last words of his. The Jurchens were already bearing down at such speed—if he went to meet them and claimed he could win, that would be laughable. He commanded fifty thousand soldiers, against the enemy’s hundred thousand. He had led the Wurui Battalion for only a year, and the highest-ranking officer above him was a civil official. And then there was Guo Yaoshi alone, who had managed the Yanjing region for years, whom the court had not only failed to restrain but had poured the full resources of the Six Prefectures of Yanyun into supporting. Add to that the Jurchens’ record in destroying the Liao state, and compared to what the Wurui Battalion once was, this kind of battle—even if the Hegemon-King Xiang Yu, the War God Lü Bu, or Chen Qingzhi reborn in the flesh were to fight it—would scarcely have any chance of victory. And yet, how much choice did he really have?

These matters, those within the circle could all see to some degree, more or less.

“Things have come to this point—whatever you do will be wrong. If you don’t go, you’re no different from that lot. If you go, you lose soldiers and generals, and give the enemy the chance to pick you off piece by piece. My scorched-earth strategy is the same—it’s quite possible that, because of this forced migration, more people will starve to death because of me than will be killed by the Jurchens. But what must be done still has to be done. As for you, Second Young Master—if you ask me what the right thing to do is, I’ll only say two things. If you can manage even one of them, then whatever you do is fine.”

Ning Yi waved his hand, somewhat drunk himself. “First! You take out half their forces. Second! You hold the Jurchen army back here for ten days, half a month. If you can accomplish either one of these two things, Second Young Master, then by all means, go ahead and die out there. If you can’t manage it, and you die anyway—then I’ll consider you a coward!”

He sighed. “In Hangzhou there’s Old Qian, and now there’s Zhou Tong—I hold them both in great respect. But Old Qian pursues scholarship; he’s a man of empty pursuits. Zhou Tong is a man alone. You, Second Young Master, are a general. You must endure humiliation and bear heavy burdens, and you must also live. Like I said, what matters isn’t lives, isn’t reducing things to zero—it’s that you must generate positive numbers, so that you can help repay the debt.”

Qin Shaoqian’s expression turned solemn. He looked toward the distant camp, then up at the sky, and said nothing. These words of Ning Yi’s were, perhaps, quite different from what he had originally intended.

Then, at dawn the next day, the Wurui Army broke camp and turned toward Shouzhang County, preparing to intercept Wanyan Zongwang’s western route army.

Ning Yi stood on the grassy slope, watching the more than fifty thousand men march past in great numbers, not knowing how many of them would return.

And at this moment, before him lay a problem serious enough in its own right—one concerning the formal implementation of the scorched-earth policy.

As the Jurchens invaded the south, some fled from them in panic, some pressed forward against the tide—but before long, these people all discovered that they were about to be swept up, engulfed, by that roaring flood bearing down upon them…

Not long after this conversation between Ning Yi and Qin Shaoqian took place, the greatest chaos yet erupted across the heartland of the Central Plains, in a violent, unstoppable frenzy that no one could withstand.