Xuanjia Hollow was a hamlet north of Qingzhou, bordering Bao’an Prefecture, now nearly abandoned.

By the time Luo Ye and the others arrived, it was nearly dusk, the autumn rain still unceasing. Beneath the grey-black sky, the abandoned village looked like an uninhabited ghost town. In fact, they had not encountered any Jurchen forces along this stretch of the way, which had already prepared them somewhat for this. The scattered main force of the Black Banner Army had evidently not come this way — likely having gone southwest instead.

They had come up empty.

The day’s rain had left everyone somewhat listless in spirit; the several captured Jurchen warhorses looked even more wretched, beginning to develop diarrhea, too weak to go on. They would have to find somewhere nearby to spend the night.

Out of caution, the group concealed their movements, first sending scouts ahead to investigate the abandoned village of Xuanjia Hollow. They soon discovered that a few households were still living there.

In this village, which had clearly gone through considerable turmoil before falling to ruin, there now lived six or seven households, a dozen-odd people, all elderly and feeble. When the more than twenty Black Banner soldiers appeared at the village entrance, the first old man to spot them turned to flee, but after a few trembling steps, turned back, his eyes wide with fear and confusion as he stared at them. Luo Ye stepped forward first. “Old sir, don’t be afraid — we’re with the Huaxia Army. The Huaxia Army — you know, the Bamboo Registry, don’t you? There should be those big carts coming through, selling goods. Did no one tell you the Jurchens were coming? We’ve come to resist the Jurchens, to protect you…”

After he finished, he had a local soldier repeat this. More people came out from the dilapidated village, and seeing them caused a small stir.

This small commotion eventually settled down. The dozen or so elderly, weak people in the village lived an extremely hard life here — it seemed their families had no descendants left, and they had no means to relocate elsewhere, so they remained, eking out a bare existence that could fairly be called clinging to life by a thread. Their first instinct on seeing Luo Ye and the others had been to flee, but at this distance, flight would have been useless, so they chose to send forward a gaunt old man who seemed to have seen a bit more of the world, to negotiate.

Luo Ye expressed goodwill and roughly explained the situation. The more than twenty of them then found a few houses that could still keep out the rain and lit fires inside. They slaughtered two of the warhorses outside, gave two other horses that were no longer fit to travel to the villagers, and added some dry rations as well. The village elders accepted with trembling gratitude, and afterward grew rather more friendly.

The gaunt old man explained the situation here clearly to them; even without his telling them, Luo Ye, Qu Qing and the others could largely have guessed.

Since the beginning of the previous year, the Western Xia forces invading from the south had carried out large-scale massacres across this land. First on a massive scale, then in smaller, scattered bouts of killing and friction — hundreds of thousands of people had died during this period. After the Black Banner Army defeated the main Western Xia force, the areas outside the population centers remained in turmoil for some time; fleeing Western Xia routed soldiers brought the first wave of military disaster, followed by bandit troubles, then famine, and amid the famine, even fiercer bandit troubles still. Over the course of that single year, the order and livelihood that the Zhong family’s army had maintained in this land for decades had been completely shattered.

Xuanjia Hollow was too far from any city; those who had originally lived here had either died or fled, and this place was no longer really fit for habitation. The more than a dozen remaining here, too old to leave even by good fortune, had found it difficult to choose to leave, and had planted some fields and wheat nearby. Just recently, after the autumn harvest, bandits had come several times and taken most of the grain. Without grain, this winter, they would have nothing but wild greens and tree bark to survive on — or else freeze and starve to death outright.

The horses and rations Luo Ye and the others had given them would fill their stomachs for a while longer, at least.

The old man, sallow and gaunt, slurring his words by the end, could only offer endless thanks. Luo Ye and the others, moved by the bitterness of it, asked about their future plans, then told them about the Jurchens’ arrival, and about Little Cangriver, about how there might be porridge and rice to be had in Yanzhou and Qingzhou. But the old man only looked blank — they had lived in this place for too long, fearful of the outside world, and had no idea how they might survive anywhere else.

After this exchange, the old man went back, and soon returned with someone else, bringing Luo Ye and the others some dry firewood, a pot for boiling water, and some wild greens. The one who came with the old man was a woman, thin and gaunt, not good-looking, mute and unable to speak, with a slight limp in her leg. She was the old man’s daughter, named Xuan Manniang, the only young person left in this village.

He had this mute woman do some rough chores for the group. Whenever her gaze fell on them, she seemed to want to say something but held back, and in the end said nothing.

After this exchange, they slaughtered the horses, cooked the meat, and ate; the twenty-odd of them rested here for the night. Zhuo Yongqing had been soaked by rain for two or three days straight; he had undergone intense training at Little Cangriver, and ordinarily this might not have troubled him, but now, because of his chest injury, he woke the next day feeling somewhat dizzy. He forced himself up and listened as Qu Qing and the others discussed continuing their pursuit further to the southeast.

At that moment, the rain outside had finally stopped. Just as everyone was about to set out, a scream suddenly rang out from the far end of the village. Listening closely, they realized someone had arrived — and had already entered the village.

Outside the door, Qu Qing, Luo Ye, Hou Wu and the others exchanged hand signals; the more than twenty men silently took up their weapons. Zhuo Yongqing gritted his teeth and drew his crossbow to string it as he went out. The mute, lame woman came running from ahead, gesturing frantically at them. Luo Ye held up a finger toward her, then waved his hand, taking a squad forward. Qu Qing also waved, leading Zhuo Yongqing and others around along the house walls in the other direction.

The noise from the village ahead remained chaotic — someone had smashed open a door, an old man was screaming, pleading. Someone shouted, “Don’t you recognize us? We’re righteous men from Luofeng Mountain, come down from the hills to fight the Jin! Bring out your food, quick!”

Another voice shouted, “Where’s the grain! Everyone out, where have you hidden the grain!”

“Smash their nests, drag everyone out!”

“Old bastards…”

The bandits had come from the north; Luo Ye and the others crept along the walls, exchanging hand signals with Qu Qing, Hou Wu, and the others through the gaps between the dilapidated mud houses.

—About sixty of them.

—They have horses.

The shouting outside continued: “All of you, out!”

“What’s this—”

“Two horses — how did you people get horses…”

—Move in, kill them.

The Black Banner soldiers behind the walls raised their crossbows. Zhuo Yongqing wiped his nose; Mao Yishan shook out his hands and feet; someone pulled a trigger.

A few sharp clicks, and in different parts of the village, men fell. Luo Ye, blade and shield raised, charged out abruptly; shouts erupted, and the screams and clashes grew more violent. People burst out from different parts of the village, groups of three or five, fiercely cutting into the bandits’ formation.

“Someone—”

“Help…”

“Watch out…”

“Die—”

Luo Ye’s shield sent a man flying; his blade rose and fell, splitting open the wooden-armored chest of a bandit, sending countless armor scales flying; behind him, spears pressed forward, driving several bandits back, blood trailing from their chests as the spears were withdrawn and thrust in again.

“Who are you people, I am a righteous man of Luofeng Mountain, you—”

Zhuo Yongqing, gathering all his strength, drove back a bandit leader who had shouted loudly and seemed to have some martial skill, forcing him back step by step with his long blade. The leader had only just parried Zhuo Yongqing’s cuts for a moment when Mao Yishan, having already dealt with several bandits nearby, stepped forward blade dripping with blood. The leader’s eyes flashed with ferocity. “Don’t think I’m afraid of you—” His blade whirled like a gust of wind. Mao Yishan raised his shield; amid the clashing blows he took several cuts, yet he pressed forward faster still, and closing the distance, drove his blade into the man’s belly — the shield deflected another strike, then thrust again, three times in all, sending the man flying into a pool of blood.

The fight ended quickly. Of the bandits who had entered the village, some twenty-odd fled in panic; most of the rest were cut down by the Black Banner soldiers in pools of blood, some not yet dead. In the village, one elderly man had been killed by the bandits; the Black Banner side suffered essentially no casualties, except for Zhuo Yongqing. As Luo Ye and Qu Qing began ordering the battlefield cleared, he suddenly swayed and collapsed to the ground, retching, and a moment later fainted.

…

Zhuo Yongqing had not actually been wounded in this fight; it was simply that his cracked ribs had held out for two days, and combined with the effects of a chill, his injuries finally caught up with him after the exhaustion of battle.

His mind hazy, in the fragments of consciousness that remained, squad leader Mao Yishan told him something — roughly, that the fighting was still ongoing up ahead, and they could not bring him along, and hoped he would recover well here. By the time his consciousness cleared again, that plain-looking, lame, mute woman was sitting by his bed feeding him herbal medicine. The medicine was extremely bitter, but after drinking it, a faint warmth spread through his chest. It was already afternoon.

Zhuo Yongqing’s spirit relaxed somewhat. Though as a native of Yanzhou he had known something of the region’s fierce local temperament, this was, after all, his first time on a battlefield. Following his comrades through repeated bouts of brutal fighting, witnessing so many deaths, had struck him hard, yet since no one else showed any sign of being affected, he could only press his own tangled emotions down inside.

Now that he had relaxed, though, closing his eyes brought the bloody scenes rushing back. So many comrades he had trained alongside for over a year had died before the enemy’s blade in their very first encounter. The decades those comrades and friends might otherwise have lived had all condensed into a single instant, then abruptly ended. A quiet fear stirred within him — his own life might still have many things ahead of it, yet on the battlefield, all of that could vanish in an instant too.

This feeling stayed with him. In the room, the lame mute woman sat by the door keeping him company; toward evening, she went to brew more medicine and fed it to him again, then fed him a bowl of porridge as well.

As daylight began to fade, the woman’s father, the gaunt old man, also came by and asked after him a few times. He seemed somewhat more at ease than before, but his words came out hesitant, as though there were something he found difficult to say. Zhuo Yongqing sensed the man’s intent but did not press the matter. In a place like this, these old people likely had no hope left; the old man probably hoped Zhuo Yongqing might take his daughter away with him — she was mute, lame, and plain-looking, with no way to leave on her own, which was not unusual in many impoverished places.

The old man never spoke the words, and Zhuo Yongqing, naturally, did not press him on it either. Though he was only a commoner from Yanzhou, his family’s circumstances were decent enough, and especially after joining the Huaxia Army, life in the Little Cangriver valley was one of plenty — should he wish to marry, he could easily match with the daughters of some prominent northwestern families. His family back home had already begun arranging such things. Though he held no great fantasies about his future wife, he naturally felt no particular affection for the lame, mute woman before him either.

His physical condition was good, but with the broken bone compounded by the chill, he could still only rest in bed the next day. On the third day, he still had little strength in his body, but felt his wounds were nearly healed. Around midday, he suddenly heard shouting from outside while lying in bed, followed by more and more screaming. Zhuo Yongqing got out of bed and tried to stand and reach for his blade, but his body was still without strength.

The mute woman came rushing in through the door.

She made no hand signals, only crying out “Aba, aba” several times, then came to support Zhuo Yongqing to help him leave. Zhuo Yongqing struggled to grab his blade, shield, and armor; the mute woman shook her head desperately, but in the end gathered these things up herself and came back to support him.

By now Zhuo Yongqing had no strength left in his body, and half his weight pressed onto her. Fortunately, though slight of frame, the mute woman was remarkably tough and managed to bear his weight. The two of them stumbled out the door together; Zhuo Yongqing’s heart sank as, from not far off, amid the shouts of fighting, he faintly made out the sound of Jurchen speech.

The two of them passed through several ruined houses, making their way toward the village’s dilapidated ancestral hall, stumbling into a small room beside it. The mute woman let go of him and struggled to push aside a stone in the corner, revealing a dark cellar pit beneath. She was about to come support him again when a shadow suddenly blocked the light from the doorway.

Zhuo Yongqing instinctively reached for his blade, but before he could grasp it, someone kicked him, sending him flying. He was dressed only in a single layer of clothing, without armor, which was likely the only reason the man had not killed him outright. Zhuo Yongqing’s head slammed into the base of the wall with a crack, ringing loudly; he struggled to turn over, and saw the mute woman had also been knocked to the ground. The Jurchen soldier at the door was already shouting loudly.

More Jurchen soldiers came; someone spotted his weapons and armor. Zhuo Yongqing was kicked again in the chest, hauled up, thrown back down, and then someone grabbed him by the hair and dragged him out. Zhuo Yongqing tried to resist, only to be beaten further.

In the village center, the elderly were being dragged out one by one. By the time Zhuo Yongqing had been kicked and dragged all the way there, his face was already mostly covered in blood. This was a small Jurchen unit of about a dozen men, possibly also separated from their main force. They shouted loudly to one another; someone led out the Jurchen warhorses that the Black Banner Army had left behind here. Enraged, the Jurchens hacked one old man down where he stood; someone came over and punched Zhuo Yongqing, who could barely stand, square in the face.

He crashed to the ground, a tooth knocked loose. But this small pain meant nothing to Zhuo Yongqing now. Strangely enough, though he had felt fear thinking back on the earlier battle, at this moment, knowing he would not survive, he found himself no longer afraid at all. Zhuo Yongqing struggled to crawl toward the weapons the Jurchens had set aside; seeing this, a Jurchen kicked him again.

Zhuo Yongqing kept crawling. Nearby, the mute woman, crying “Aba, aba,” was struggling as well, seemingly trying to plead on Zhuo Yongqing’s behalf. Zhuo Yongqing only caught this from the corner of his eye; he kept reaching for the weapons. One of the Jurchens said something, then drew a long, thin blade from his belt and suddenly drove it down into the ground. Zhuo Yongqing cried out in pain — the blade had pierced through the back of his left hand, pinning it to the earth.

Amid Zhuo Yongqing’s cries, the surrounding Jurchens laughed. Zhuo Yongqing, his body without strength, reached with his right hand for the hilt, but had no strength to pull it free. The group of Jurchens watched him; one raised a whip and struck him across the back. The mute woman was also knocked down; a Jurchen stepped on her, saying something to Zhuo Yongqing, apparently assuming she was something to him. Someone tore open her clothing with a rip.

From among the elderly behind them, the mute woman’s father rushed forward, took two steps, and fell to his knees, about to plead — a Jurchen cut him down with a single stroke, and the old man collapsed to the ground. Zhuo Yongqing let out a cry. Nearby, the Jurchens tore off the mute woman’s upper garment, revealing a gaunt, bony torso underneath. The Jurchens exchanged a few words, seemingly disgusted, and dragged the mute woman in front of Zhuo Yongqing. The one holding her down gripped his long blade with both hands and drove it into her back.

“A… ba… aba…”

Zhuo Yongqing watched blood gush from the mute woman’s mouth, the faint light in her eyes slowly fading. Zhuo Yongqing tried with all his strength to pull the blade pinning his left hand free, but still lacked the strength. The Jurchens laughed and began killing others; someone kicked him again, and he took another lash of the whip. The stench of blood filled the air, and Zhuo Yongqing heard a strange thudding sound.

A Jurchen fell.

Then came a burst of chaotic noise — someone had rushed in, blades suddenly clashing. Zhuo Yongqing only kept stubbornly pulling at the blade; at some point, someone rushed over, yanked the blade free with a single motion, and amid the clanging chaos of blades around him, drove it into a Jurchen soldier’s chest.

“Zhuo Yongqing, Zhuo Yongqing…”

The call came faintly. Zhuo Yongqing staggered to his feet; in his blurred field of vision, the village’s elderly all lay fallen, and the Jurchens too were falling one by one. It was Qu Qing, Luo Ye, Hou Wu, Mao Yishan and the others who had returned, cutting down this group of Jurchens in the fighting. Zhuo Yongqing grabbed a long blade with his right hand, wanting to strike, but there was no one left for him to strike.

He sat down on the ground; before him lay the half-naked body of the mute woman, dead in shame and violation. Luo Ye and the others searched the whole village and returned. Mao Yishan came to bandage Zhuo Yongqing, telling him some of what had happened — the great battle outside had descended into total chaos; heading south, they had spotted the Jurchen vanguard hurrying north, and during the time they had been separated from the group, the Black Banner main force had clashed again heavily with Loushi, with reportedly heavy casualties on both sides.

Before long, the Jurchens might well come this way — what they had once merely suspected, that Xuanjia Hollow might be the direction the Jurchens would shift toward, was now confirmed.

A small force could not stand against the main Jurchen army; Luo Ye and the others discussed retreating quickly, or waiting somewhere to rejoin the main force — they could, in fact, simply skirt around the Jurchens along the way and rejoin the main force that way. But Luo Ye, Qu Qing and the others were determined to act, feeling it was always better to get ahead of the Jurchens. As they discussed for a while, likely deciding to head north as much as possible, Zhuo Yongqing, wrapped nearly head to toe in bandages and looking on the verge of death, suddenly spoke up, his voice hoarse. “There’s a… there’s a place…”

Not long after, Zhuo Yongqing led them to the small ruined building beside the ancestral hall, and showed them the dark cellar pit.

This was where the elderly of Xuanjia Hollow had secretly hidden their food. Once discovered, the Jurchens had already taken most of it out, leaving only a pitiful few sacks of grain. The space below was not small, and the entrance was extremely well hidden. Before long, everyone had gathered there, looking down into the dark pit, hard-pressed to imagine what use it could serve…

…

Toward evening, the more than twenty men all went down into the cellar. Luo Ye and the others staged the scene outside to look as though the fighting had ended and all survivors had left, even leaving a few men to “die” along the road heading north.

Whether this would work, whether they could catch anything, would depend on luck. If a small Jurchen unit passed through, they could stage an ambush amid the confusion, adding some strength to the main force. They had originally wanted to send Zhuo Yongqing off to recover somewhere in the nearby wild hills, but in the end, because he refused, they brought him down into the cellar with them.

“If a large group comes and we’re discovered, we’ll be trapped like turtles in a jar…”

“I checked outside — it’s quite well hidden once closed up.”

The Jurchens had not yet arrived, so they left the pit’s entrance open for the time being, but as daylight gradually faded, the whole cellar grew pitch dark. Occasionally someone spoke in a low voice. Zhuo Yongqing sat in a corner of the cellar; squad leader Mao Yishan asked after his condition nearby, and Zhuo Yongqing only weakly answered that he was not dead yet.

That was all anyone expected of him now — with wounds all over his body, simply not having died outright already counted as good fortune. The cellar’s air was stifling, tinged with a faint rot; Zhuo Yongqing sat there, his mind circling endlessly around the deaths in the village, the mute woman’s death.

That woman had not been beautiful — mute, lame, born into such a family; likely nothing good had ever happened to her in her life. When outsiders had come, her father had hoped they might take her away, so she wouldn’t wait for death here, but in the end he had never spoken the words. What had she herself thought, in her heart? Had she held that hope? Such a life… right until the moment she died before his eyes, it seemed not a single good thing had ever come her way.

His mind kept circling around this. Outside, more Jurchens gradually arrived; the group quietly closed the cellar door. Footsteps rumbled past overhead. Zhuo Yongqing recalled the mute woman’s name, turning it over for a long while — it seemed to be Xuan Manniang. What came to mind was still the way she had looked as she died. At that time he had still been getting beaten, his left hand pierced through with a blade, still bleeding even now — yet looking back on it, he felt not the slightest pain at all.

Mao Yishan sat in the darkness; at one point, he heard Zhuo Yongqing speak weakly. “Squad leader…”

“Mm.”

“I want…” Zhuo Yongqing said, “…I want to kill people.”

“Mm.” Mao Yishan nodded. He didn’t think much of the remark — on the battlefield, who didn’t want to kill? Mao Yishan wasn’t a particularly sensitive man either, and besides, given how badly wounded Zhuo Yongqing was, he took it merely as an idle remark born of emotion.

In the darkness, nothing could be seen.

There, in that darkness, Zhuo Yongqing sat, his whole body covered in wounds. The blood from his left hand had already soaked through the bandages, still not fully stopped even now; his back was covered in welts from the Jurchen’s whip, the skin split open; the corner of his eye, struck and swollen, had puffed up; several teeth had been knocked from his mouth, his lips split. Yet despite such severe injuries, he sat there, blood froth at his mouth, and with his one good hand, his right, gripped the hilt of his blade tightly.

He seemed to have somehow recovered. His body burned with fever; the last of his strength gathered together, concentrating in his hand and on the blade. This was his first true experience of battle — he had killed a man once before, outside Yanzhou city, but until now he had never truly, urgently wanted to take a particular person’s life. This feeling, which had never come to him before at any moment, had come now.

Above the cellar, the Jurchens’ movements stirred. Zhuo Yongqing gave no thought to his own wounds; he knew only that if there was one last moment, one last ounce of strength, he wanted only to swing his blade down onto their bodies…

—I want to kill people.

That night, they lifted the cellar cover and charged out toward the countless Jurchen figures ahead…