The snowflakes drifted down, covering the ground that had been muddy until now. Ning Yi returned to his room and rubbed his hands together; Juan’er brought over the bowl of medicine.

The medicine was as bitter as ever, and Ning Yi’s brow furrowed deeply as he drank it, grimacing. Juan’er then took out a small cloth bundle from inside her robe.

“Young Master, I have some osmanthus candy.”

“No need.” Ning Yi waved his hand. “Where did that come from?”

“One of the shop managers who went out brought it back. I thought, since Young Master finds the medicine bitter, you might want some.”

“Oh?” Ning Yi raised an eyebrow. “Which manager?”

“Manager Kang, from what used to be the seventh branch store — he’s with the Fifth Squad now.” Juan’er said this quite seriously. “Young Master, are you really not going to eat any?”

“Times are hard, it’s only natural the medicine tastes bitter. Kang Zhuming — he’s a solid fellow. Does he have feelings for you?”

“Young Master.” Juan’er narrowed her eyes slightly, like a cat sulking. “If you keep talking like that, I’m going to go give it back to him.”

“No, no, don’t do that — give it to me.” Ning Yi laughed, taking the small cloth bundle from Juan’er’s hand. “The medicine’s too bitter — I’ll take this to give to the wounded brothers. They rarely get the chance to eat sweets, either.”

Ning Yi had been here for five or six years now, and Juan’er, once with the Su family as a young girl, had grown into a young woman. At just past twenty, unmarried, she was already considered getting on in years by others’ standards — though to Ning Yi’s eyes, she was still very much in the bloom of youth. Maidservants like her, kept close by their mistress’s side, often ended up remaining unmarried well into their later years; marriage, in most cases, had to be arranged and approved by the head of the household.

A couple of years back, Tan’er, showing her own open-mindedness, had even considered giving Juan’er to Ning Yi, but in the end he had never touched her, and in these last two years the matter had not come up again — except that he occasionally thought of trying to match her with someone. But perhaps because she was responsible for too many matters, or perhaps because, under Ning Yi’s influence, her own outlook had broadened and she had become a more independent woman, there were not many men who caught her eye.

Of Chan’er’s two fellow maidservants, the outgoing and cheerful Xing’er said she was content to remain unmarried; Juan’er’s temperament, by contrast, was relatively calm and self-possessed, and her looks, too, were of the elegant, cool type. In his work, Ning Yi was naturally skilled at reading people’s minds, but when it came to friends and family like this, he was reluctant to guess carelessly, and he also knew there was little he could say about it.

In a certain sense, if he were to arrange marriages for Juan’er and Xing’er in an outright matchmaking fashion, they would naturally have no choice but to accept — but marriage was the kind of thing that, when simply arranged, could easily go wrong; one misstep, and it could ruin a person’s ability to do anything afterward, leaving them unhappy for the rest of their lives. As for Su Tan’er, she certainly hoped they could find good families to marry into — but if that didn’t happen, and they simply stayed by her side and grew old unmarried, that, too, would be no great tragedy.

Having served under Su Tan’er for all these years, Chan’er, Juan’er, and Xing’er had all become, in truth, quite capable at handling many matters without the slightest confusion. Chan’er, who had already become one of Ning Yi’s concubines, had a real knack for household arrangements and managing detailed accounts; Xing’er, with her expansive personality, often served as Tan’er’s spokeswoman when dealing with the outside world; Juan’er, meanwhile, was meticulous in her thinking, never letting her emotions show on her face, and handled the operation and arrangement of many practical projects quite well.

This time, with Juan’er having come to find him and no one else at Ning Yi’s side, she — who in a later age would already have been a senior white-collar manager with several years of experience — had taken on the work of a maidservant instead: caring for the sick, washing clothes, cleaning, cooking. The shelter was divided into two halves — Ning Yi stayed in the larger inner room, Juan’er in the smaller outer one, ready to come whenever called. More often than not, she was also helping Ning Yi manage all manner of affairs within and outside the camp, to the point that Ning Yi sometimes genuinely felt he was squandering talent, wasting a perfectly capable secretary by treating her as a mere maidservant.

Even at the height of his career in his previous life, Ning Yi had always kept a clear line between his public and private life; he would never lay a hand on any capable person working under him, and would never let his personal affairs interfere with someone’s work. Letting a matter that should be handled by a secretary get tangled up in something personal — that sounded fine in theory, but in practice was an extremely foolish thing to do. If you had desires, spending money was the answer; the person helping you handle your core affairs, dealing in sums running into the tens or hundreds of millions, was not someone a sensible man mixed up with personal matters. Only a fool would blur that line.

But in this era, for Juan’er, the work of a maidservant had, oddly enough, become the center of her responsibilities, with everything else treated as secondary. Ning Yi could not help but feel somewhat helpless about this.

Having “requisitioned” the osmanthus candy from Juan’er, he took it that afternoon to the wounded soldiers’ camp and handed it out. At this time, though the Wu dynasty was prosperous, sugar remained something of a luxury for many people. Ning Yi naturally had no illusions that a few pieces of candy could win anyone’s heart. Among the wounded in this camp, some had already lost the ability to fight and were being arranged for transport several hundred li away. But those who had been wounded and, once healed, could still fight — those were the ones who often became the backbone of the force.

Take, for instance, the group who had gone with him to burn the grain on the twenty-fifth of the ninth month. Chen Tuozi, who had been gravely wounded at the time, had, by sheer luck, survived, and after recovering, his martial skill was said to have advanced further still — very much in the manner of a certain fictional warrior who only grows stronger the closer he comes to death. And in truth, people could more or less guess at the reason. This Chen Tuozi had originally been a man of the underhanded ways, having done more than his fair share of wrongdoing, but after joining Bamboo Notes, he had truly done some good deeds, and had come to feel deep regret over his former wrongs. What he had said in the early hours of the twenty-fifth, and the near-death experience he had suffered afterward in that severe wounding, amounted to a complete farewell to and break from his past self — put simply, this was a moment of clarity, a breakthrough into a new state of being. Within this cycle of destruction and rebirth, he too had glimpsed once more the path leading upward.

As for Qi Xinyi, one of the three Qi brothers, he had not been so fortunate — his left arm had been severed at the elbow, and the wound had still not fully healed by now. Ning Yi had gone to see him many times, encouraging him with the example of Du Sha, the Overlord Blade — in the incident of rescuing Fang Qifo, Du Sha had likewise lost an arm, yet, given his fierce and resolute character, he had never wavered in the slightest afterward, training with the blade single-handedly instead. According to recent news from the southern frontier, Du Sha’s single-armed swordsmanship had reportedly already surpassed his former skill; in a duel with “Mad Tiger” Wang Nantuo, though he had come out slightly at a disadvantage, he had still managed to withdraw with his life intact.

The Qi family and the Overlord Blade had a history of enmity between them, and though Ning Yi brought this up, it had not really managed to lift Qi Xinyi’s spirits. Bladework could be practiced one-handed, but spearwork required both hands; though the Qi family’s “Soul-Seeking Spear” technique included methods for throwing the weapon, losing one hand meant losing most of his spear skill, and starting over from scratch to learn another weapon instead was no easy matter. It was the youngest of the Qi brothers, Qi Xinhan, who had been training relentlessly these past few days, and there were faint signs that he was rising to a new level.

Among the members of Bamboo Notes, the disciple who had once been the most popular, Yuzhi Feidu, had been severely wounded in that battle, his thigh struck by a warhorse’s kick, nearly shattering the bone; after recovering, he was left with a slight limp in one leg. This young man had always had an open, flamboyant temperament, was handsome, and gifted with natural talent, and the masters who had taught him martial arts had worried that this would leave him broken in spirit for good. Yet after only a few days of initial gloom, even before his wound had fully healed, he had already begun training the skills of his hands — hidden weapons, archery, and so on. When others asked him about it, he said, “That night, fighting the Jin dogs, who among us didn’t get hurt? My fifth master and my seventh master both died, and they never complained. I’ve just got a bit of a limp — what is there to complain about?”

He had studied under many teachers in the past, and his learning was correspondingly varied; he already had some foundation in archery and hidden weapons, and these past few days he had devoted himself wholly to archery, now able to strike a target accurately from a hundred paces. Though he had not yet achieved legendary precision, he was already quite pleased with himself. He had decided that once he took up a fine bow on the battlefield, he would be known thereafter as “God of the Bow” Yuzhi Feidu — he had originally wanted to be called “God of the Arrow” Yuzhi Feidu, but decided it didn’t sound quite right and changed it. In casual conversation these days, he would occasionally emphasize that from now on he should be called “God of the Bow,” not “God of the Arrow.” Not to be gotten wrong — get it wrong, and there would be trouble, so consider yourselves warned.

As the snow fell, this valley, now crowded with over ten thousand people, had begun to feel somewhat cramped. Most of those gathered here had taken part in that brutal battle in one way or another. Some had fled, some had thrown themselves into the fighting and, in the end, had witnessed the deaths of their comrades and brothers-in-arms, along with the misery and bitterness of defeat. But within this small circle, many acts of courage were still spoken of with pride.

That Ning Yi and the others, even while gravely wounded, had still rushed to Qi County to burn the grain — those who had witnessed that night’s events all felt a certain pride in recounting it. Many had also fought fiercely that night — Qin Shaoqian, for instance, had led his troops through savage fighting and resistance, and after suffering terrible casualties, had finally led part of his force off the battlefield; even now, he still carried wounds that had not fully healed. After the great battle, this force had begun organizing its scorched-earth efforts, gritting its teeth through matter after matter. Afterward, there had even been cases of Bamboo Notes members running into Jurchen scouts and dying to protect the civilians they were relocating. The kind of propaganda that might once have gone unnoticed within an army spread remarkably fast within this particular group.

And after this battle, a reckoning over the conduct of the war had also been taking shape in the opinions circulating among the lower ranks. For instance — it wasn’t that people were unwilling to fight to the death; the real fault lay with the failures of the decision-makers above. Yao Pingzhong of the western army was a treacherous, self-serving man, reckless and eager for glory, who had struck out rashly; the senior officers had lacked resolve, clinging to life out of fear of death, distrustful of one another, and so even the soldiers at the bottom had had no way to put up any resistance. If everyone had been equally resolute, the battle could have been won — this was, of course, empty talk in truth, but Ning Yi was merely guiding people toward the implicit suggestion that on their side, General Qin and the rest were different.

And placing the blame on men like Yao Pingzhong was already enough — pushed any further, it might start to touch on the fundamental flaw of the Wu army, where soldiers did not know their officers and officers did not know their soldiers. Unless Ning Yi meant to raise a rebellion outright, there was a limit to how openly he could speak against the system itself.

Another element of this was spreading, among the soldiers, stories of the suffering of the Han people during the chaos of the Five Barbarians, and the origins of practices such as “exchanging children to eat” and the term “two-legged sheep.” At this time, in the minds of ordinary civilians and even ordinary soldiers, the concept of the nation — let alone the concept of “national ruin” — was not, in truth, a particularly strong one. Even with several hundred thousand men already defeated beneath the walls of Bian Liang, when people thought about it, beyond a sense of helplessness, at most they imagined that after losing to the Jurchen, they would simply go find somewhere else to live — relocate, move south, and so on. What any individual could actually do, and what might happen to them personally — these were things most people could not, and did not wish to, think about.

But it was precisely this that Ning Yi wanted to stir them into thinking about.

The period following the Han dynasty, the chaos of the Five Barbarians, had been, for the Han people, perhaps the darkest period in their entire history. Years of continuous warfare and famine had left almost nothing edible on the lands of the Central Plains, and eating human flesh had become a means of survival. The Han were treated as the lowest of all peoples, and among them, women and children were cooked and eaten by the invading tribes, referred to as “two-legged sheep.” At present, with the Wu dynasty still prosperous, this danger might not yet be apparent — but if Bian Liang were truly to fall, and the Jurchen continued pushing south with no one able to stand against them, then within a few years, it might not be so hard to imagine one’s own wife and children being violated, killed, or even eaten…

The soldiers of this era had, for the most part, not received much education, but they were certainly capable of grasping the basics — all the more so, having just come through the slaughter of the battlefield. Within a group like this, hearing such simple stories and accounts, with some already leading by example through their actions, it was not difficult to whip up a collective fervor in a short span of time. As a result, over this stretch of time, in the crowded valley, the army’s training had gone unusually smoothly.

Of course, brainwashing and incitement were no cure-all — even run in the manner of a pyramid scheme, the true test would still come the moment they stepped onto the battlefield. Fortunately, in this recent period, after making an example of several senior officers, Qin Shaoqian’s grip over the lower ranks of this army had grown enormously stronger, and the military discipline units had finally begun to function in earnest. When the time came, applying the ruthlessness of executing retreating soldiers and retreating officers without mercy should still be able to draw out a fair measure of combat effectiveness. In the past, the Wu Rui Camp had also been riddled with factions and cliques, and there would have been no way at all for him to enforce military law by executing anyone.

Because of all this work, walking out of the wounded soldiers’ camp, one could see large numbers of soldiers throughout the valley practicing their monotonous drills — drawing blades, thrusting spears. The uniform shouts shook the entire valley; patrol units, the horse teams of Bamboo Notes coming and going on business, teams going up the mountain to gather firewood, teams building shelters and fortifications nearby — the whole mountainside was covered in labor. Yuzhi Feidu was practicing archery not far off; amid the falling snow, his arrows sliced through the sky with a whistling sound.

A quartermaster from the army came over to report that heating supplies might soon run short, and just then Juan’er came trotting over from not far away, a letter in her hand. “Some of our people ran into a cavalry column that came from the Lüliang Mountains.”

“A cavalry column?” Ning Yi blinked in mild surprise, took the letter, pulled it out and glanced over it, and after a moment burst out laughing. “Send someone at once — bring them here.”

“Mm.” Juan’er nodded and ran off to see to it.

The news brought Ning Yi’s mood soaring; by evening, he could hardly sit still through dinner, and at times, thinking of what the letter had said, a smile would spread across his face without his noticing. Juan’er, well aware of how steady and composed her young master usually was — how he kept his calm even in the face of great matters — had never seen him behave quite like this before. As she ate, she asked, somewhat cautiously, “Young Master, is it that Miss Lu, from the Lüliang Mountains?”

“Mm.” Ning Yi made no attempt to hide it, nodding with a smile. “And she’s brought quite a few good things with her, too.”

After night fell, the snow grew heavier and heavier; in the valley, the wind blew flurries of snowflakes across a mountainside dotted with campfires. Ning Yi, together with Qin Shaoqian and several other important figures managing the camp at the time, went to the entrance of the valley to wait. Qin Shaoqian had heard the name Lu Hongti before, and he asked Ning Yi with a sly grin, “That Miss Lu from Lüliang — she’s your sweetheart, isn’t she?”

Ning Yi nodded. “Mm. She’s my woman.”

“You’re quite a lot like me.” Qin Shaoqian was himself something of a romantic figure, with no shortage of women in his own life, though the code he lived by was more along the lines of “brothers are as close as one’s own limbs, women come and go like clothing.” At this, he regarded Ning Yi with no small measure of approval. Before long, the outline of the approaching cavalry column began to emerge in the darkness, growing clearer by the moment.

Qin Shaoqian, still nursing his own wounds, stood there waiting, leaning against a nearby post. Once he could make out the column clearly, he straightened, his expression turning solemn, standing firmly upright. At the front of the column, the figure draped in the black cloak carried with it, unmistakably, an air of iron and blood. He — or rather, of course, she — sat steady and composed atop the horse, and the soldiers behind her seemed almost carried along by this force of presence, projecting a sense of unwavering resolve.

Ning Yi went forward smiling to meet them, walking up to Hongti’s warhorse and reaching out his hand. Hongti looked down at him from the saddle, reached out and placed her hand in his, and swung herself down from the horse; behind her, stretching back in an unbroken line, the two thousand men dismounted all at once.

At this time, the training of Wu dynasty armies naturally placed some demand on formation and orderliness, but surely no army was drilled to the almost obsessive standard that Ning Yi insisted on. The army from the Lüliang Mountains, shaped under Ning Yi’s influence, had been drilled toward the kind of uniform precision one might associate with a modern, disciplined military force from a later age — and now, in the darkness, as the two thousand men dismounted as one, a single thunderous sound rolled out across the front of the valley.

Snow and wind filled the sky.

Qin Shaoqian’s mouth opened slightly, and he blinked in astonishment before stepping forward to greet them…