June, the eighth year of the Jianshuo era of the Wu Dynasty. An exhilarating piece of news was making its way south of the Yangtze.
The matter had its roots in the first half of the seventh year of Jianshuo, when Wu and Qi had fought several great battles in the borderlands between the Central Plains and Jiangnan, north of Xiangyang. By this time, the Black Banner Army had already vanished from the northwest for a full year. Though Liu Yu had moved his capital to Bian Liang, this so-called “Great Qi” was nothing more than a lapdog under Jurchen rule; with the people destitute and the army utterly lacking in fighting spirit, a group of generals led by Li Heng, the pacification commissioner of Xiangyang for the Wu Dynasty, seized the opportunity to launch a northern campaign, recovering more than a dozen prefectures and towns in succession, at one point pushing the front line all the way back to the old capital of Bian Liang. Li Heng issued proclamations to armies everywhere, calling for a joint assault on Bian Liang, and for a time his reputation was unmatched.
Under these circumstances, Liu Yu repeatedly appealed to the north for aid, and at last succeeded in getting the Jin state to send troops. That autumn, Wanyan Zonghan ordered the Fourth Prince, Wushu, to lead an army south, and with the cooperation of Li Cheng, a general under Liu Yu’s command, swept away Li Heng’s forces near Bian Liang. After crushing the various armies, they pushed further south still, successively capturing Xiangyang, Dengzhou, Suizhou, Yingzhou and other strategically vital points in the Jianghan region that had still belonged to the Wu Dynasty, before finally withdrawing.
Such humiliating defeats were, by now, nothing new for the Wu Dynasty. And yet, that several years of recovery had still left them utterly unable to withstand the Jurchen army was a discouraging reality — both the Wu Dynasty and the puppet Qi, even when raising armies hundreds of thousands strong, still looked like children playing at war before the Jurchens.
Compared to the ferocity of the Jin state, and the tenacity the Black Banner Army had once shown in standing firm against Jin in the northwest, the resistance of the vast Wu Dynasty looked, before such forces, almost as helpless as a child’s game. But though such power might be treated as child’s play, the price to be paid for it would never be discounted in the slightest — the soldiers who died in battle would find no comfort in it, the suffering of the common people in occupied territories would not be lessened one bit, and the pressure of the Jurchens’ layered southward advance would not ease in the least. North of the Yangtze, people scattered south bearing their wounds; the tragedies and deaths brought by war, along with the accompanying famine and oppression, even the darkness and hardship of people killing and fighting over food during their flight, or even trading children to eat, had already persisted for years. The bitter fruits left behind once order collapsed seemed likely to go on and on as well…
By the spring of the eighth year of Jianshuo, Yue Fei, styled Pengju, led thirty thousand Beiwei troops on another northern campaign, launching a lightning strike on Yingzhou, heavily garrisoned by Great Qi forces, afterward frightening off Li Cheng’s army and taking Xiangyang without a fight. He then launched a surprise raid near Dengzhou, routing over a hundred thousand combined Qi-Jin forces that had counterattacked, successfully recovering the six commanderies of Xiangyang, and sent word of the victory back to the capital.
In Lin’an in June, the heat was unbearable. In the study of the Crown Prince’s residence, a meeting had just ended, and the advisors filed out one after another. Wenren Buer was asked to remain, watching as Crown Prince Jun Wu paced about the room, throwing open the windows front and back.
But there was no breeze.
The other advisors had already drifted off; the servants had cleared away the bowls of iced sugar water. Only now did this young man — whom we first met at eleven years old, and who now wore a beard and carried himself with a certain hard-won authority — let a look of restless discontent show, gazing out at the sunlight, looking weary.
“These past few days, I keep thinking back to the great famine of the eleventh year of Jinghan… I was in Jiangning at the time, and saw my imperial sister and the merchants of Jiangning transporting grain for disaster relief, so full of passion and fervor. It was only later, when I learned the truth of it, that I began to taste something rather different in the memory. Master Wenren, you lived through it yourself — what do you make of it?”
“…The affairs of this world are indeed hard. There is certainly something similar in it.”
“The affairs of this world are indeed hard…”
Jun Wu’s fingers tapped against the windowsill, repeating the phrase.
In the eleventh year of Jinghan, the Wu Dynasty had suffered grain shortages in many regions; Right Chancellor Qin Siyuan had been in charge of disaster relief at the time, and it was then that Ning Yi, using outside forces of every kind, had broken the local merchants’ and gentry’s monopoly on grain prices, making countless enemies in the process, so that the famine had at last, with great difficulty, been weathered. Recalling it now, Jun Wu’s sentiment had its reasons.
At present, news of Yue Fei’s recovery of Xiangyang and his great victory over the combined Jin-Qi forces had already reached Lin’an. Public opinion, naturally, was full of enthusiasm, but at court, opinions differed sharply, and the arguing had gone on unabated for days.
Ever since the Wu Dynasty had lost the Central Plains and moved south, the peace faction had held the majority voice at court. As the war between Jin and Wu had developed to this point, much of the current reality lay plainly before everyone’s eyes, beyond dispute: against the Jurchens at the height of their power, the Wu Dynasty had no strength to oppose them. Years of war had already proven this beyond question. Some felt that after years of painful reflection, the time must eventually come to recover lost territory and march north into the Central Plains — yet the events of the seventh year of Jianshuo, when Li Heng and the others had pushed all the way to Bian Liang, had only proven that such a moment had still not yet arrived.
Even though they might hold their own against the puppet Qi’s forces, even sweep all the way to the gates of Bian Liang like an unstoppable force — the moment the main Jin army arrived, hadn’t the several hundred thousand troops simply been driven back, even losing Xiangyang and other territory in the process? So now, how could Yue Fei’s victory over the puppet Qi prove that it would not simply be the prelude to an even greater Jin retaliation? Back then, pushing to Bian Liang had cost them Xiangyang and other key points in the Jianghan region — now that Xiangyang had been recovered, would the next step be getting pushed back across the Yangtze once more?
Such doubts and worries were not without reason, and they had rendered this victory of Yue Fei’s rather flavorless at court, even risking a degree of reprimand. Jun Wu, naturally, stood on Yue Fei’s side; the war faction, too, had several arguments for this great battle.
First, whether or not they could win now, training the army was essential if there was ever to be a chance of defeating the Jurchens in the future.
Second, the Jin had already taken the six commanderies of Xiangyang, a springboard for further Jin-Qi invasion southward; if they were allowed to consolidate their defenses there, the next time they came south, the Wu Dynasty would only lose more ground. Recovering Xiangyang now, even if the Jin brought their main force south, would at least delay the pace of their advance.
Third, the Jin’s southward campaigns required stretching their supply lines a great distance, a far greater effort for them than for the Wu Dynasty. If they waited until the Jin had rested and recovered before launching an offensive, the Wu Dynasty would surely be unable to withstand it; it was therefore better to disrupt the enemy’s rhythm, take the initiative, and wear down Jin’s national strength through this back-and-forth grinding — this was the best strategy for self-preservation.
Holding to these arguments, the war faction and the peace faction clashed head-on at court. As the commanding general on one side of these events, if this had been all there was to it, Jun Wu might not have felt moved to such a sigh — but beyond this, an even greater burden of troubles was piling onto the young Crown Prince’s shoulders.
Several years had now passed since the Wu Dynasty’s move south, and after the initial prosperity and solidarity, many troubles had begun to show themselves. One was the growing opposition between the civil and military factions. In peaceful times, the Wu Dynasty had traditionally favored civil officials over military men; after the Jurchen invasion shattered the nation and scattered its families, though the system had been slow to change, various expedient measures had at least given military men somewhat improved standing.
By the time Jun Wu became Crown Prince, the young man, with his fiery temperament, having come to understand the tangled complexities within the court, took it upon himself with rough and sweeping methods to shelter promising generals like Han Shizhong and Yue Fei under his own protection, letting them build up their power and consolidate their strength north of the Yangtze, waiting for the chance to launch a northern campaign. At first no one dared say anything about this, but by now the conflict between the two sides had finally begun to show clear signs of strain. Over the past year, memorials impeaching the generals of the northern armies had come continuously at court, most alleging that they were recruiting private troops and refusing to obey civil officials — and that, left unchecked, this would surely lead to great disaster.
This latest suppression of Yue Fei’s military achievements was simply a continuation of this year-long dispute between the two sides.
On another front, as northerners came south in great numbers, after the initial economic windfall had passed, conflict and friction between southerners and northerners had also begun brewing and erupting.
By now the Central Plains had fallen completely; refugees from the north fled south with nothing but the clothes on their backs. On one hand, their cheap labor spurred economic development; on the other, they also took away a great many job opportunities from southerners. And once the situation in Jiangnan had stabilized, a form of regional discrimination between the two areas had taken shape.
The refugees who had come from the north had once themselves been subjects of a prosperous Wu Dynasty, yet here, they had suddenly become second-class. And as the southerners’ initial patriotic fervor faded, they too had gradually come to find these poor northern “relatives” distasteful. Most of those with nothing left were law-abiding, but no small number turned to banditry out of desperation, or to begging, or to swindling — when there was no food to eat, there was no telling what people might do. These people complained endlessly, disrupted public order, and their constant talk of a northern campaign risked breaking the stalemate between Jin and Wu once more, potentially provoking another Jurchen invasion southward — all of this combined to spark friction and conflict across every level of society.
At the level of the common people, mutual discrimination between north and south had already begun to form something of a trend, and within officialdom, a degree of opposition had also formed between southern officials, once removed from the political center, and northern officials. Beginning the year before, several major uprisings of refugee bands had broken out south of the Yangtze; in a few prefectures and counties, northern refugees, banding together and armed with blades and clubs, had surrounded and beaten to death local bullies, tyrants, and even officials. Conflicts between local underworld factions and struggles over territory had grown ever more intense. Southerners were, after all, the entrenched locals, with powerful clans and extensive local ties, while the northern refugees who had fled here had nothing left, having endured war and become fearless of death. Several large-scale incidents were but the culmination of countless smaller frictions, and the court, too, had been forced to take these problems ever more seriously.
By last year, some at court had already begun proposing that “southerners belong in the south, northerners in the north” — that they should stop accepting northern refugees altogether. This proposal, once raised, met with widespread condemnation; Jun Wu too, young and hot-blooded, argued forcefully against it in open court — the nation was already shattered, its people scattered, the Central Plains already lost, these refugees had nowhere else to live, and now they were to be pushed away even here? What, then, was the point of this nation’s existence at all? He argued indignantly, denouncing the proposal before the whole court — and from then on, the question of how to receive the fleeing northern refugees fell onto his shoulders as well.
By this year, the consequence of all this was that the gentry and wealthy merchants who had once maintained close ties with the Grand Princess’s residence had begun putting pressure on his side. No one dared openly disobey the various orders issued by the Crown Prince’s residence, but in the course of implementing them, friction never ceased, and the profits collected by the treasury — even by the Crown Prince’s and Grand Princess’s own residences — had dropped by a full thirty percent.
The southern gentry and powerful clans, too, had their own interests to protect. If you took their money and spoke up for them, even helped exploit these northern refugees a little on their behalf, then everyone was happy. If you refused to help, who would willingly serve you? People need not openly oppose you — they could simply refuse to cooperate, or cooperate half-heartedly, and there was nothing to be done about it.
But on Jun Wu’s side, the refugees who had come from the north had already lost everything; if he tilted even further toward the interests of the southern powers, these people might well be unable to survive as human beings at all.
Originally, ever since Zhou Yong had proclaimed himself emperor, Jun Wu, as the sole Crown Prince, had held a secure position. If he had simply spent his money running some scientific workshops, then no matter how he chose to amuse himself, the funds in his hands would likely have been inexhaustible. But having lived through the chaos of war, and having witnessed the tragedy of countless commoners driven into the river to their deaths along the Yangtze, the young man’s heart could no longer remain untouched by it all. He could, of course, follow his father’s example and live as an idle Crown Prince, content to tend his workshops in Jiangning — but his father, Zhou Yong, was himself a muddled emperor, and with problems everywhere at court, if he himself did not step forward for men like Yue Fei and Han Shizhong, to weather the storm and bear the blame on their behalf, they would most likely end up just like those Wu Dynasty generals of old who could not fight.
And once he had stepped forward, there was no stepping back.
Petty, endless troubles and unrelenting pressure pressed in from every direction. Over these past two years, living in Lin’an, Jun Wu had not even managed to find time to visit the workshops in Jiangning more than a few times, so that although his hot air balloon could already fly, it had made no major breakthrough in carrying passengers or cargo, and it was difficult for it to form any strategic advantage comparable to what had been achieved in the great war in the northwest. And even so, he had no way to resolve the many other problems either — at court, he could not stand the cowardice of the peace faction, and yet, could war truly succeed? As for reform, he had no idea how best to carry it out, nor could he find the best point of balance. The northern refugees certainly had to be taken in, but could he actually resolve the conflicts that arose from taking them in? He still had no answer to that either.
Over these two years, his sister Zhou Pei, wielding the power of the Grand Princess’s residence, had grown ever more formidable. She had built an enormous web of connections in both politics and commerce, quietly accumulating influence, while behind the scenes, all manner of schemes and power struggles never ceased. The Crown Prince’s residence stood in the open; the Grand Princess’s residence worked in the shadows. Many things Jun Wu had never explicitly discussed with her, yet in his heart he understood that the Grand Princess’s residence had always been feeding resources to his side — even the several times that officials opposing Jun Wu at court had been impeached, smeared, or even slandered, these too had been the extreme measures quietly employed by Zhou Pei and her advisor Cheng Zhouhai.
In public, Zhou Pei, the Grand Princess, had become widely sociable, gentle and dignified — yet in the few private meetings between the siblings, his sister was always stern and cold. In her eyes there was selfless support and a sense of urgency — a sense of urgency they both shared, something they each understood quietly in their hearts, yet had never spoken of aloud.
They both knew what it was.
Two years ago, Ning Yi had died.
The three years of the great war in the northwest — they in the south had shut their eyes and pretended not to see it. But when it finally ended, the shock of it still turned their hearts upside down. Faced with this crisis of a world turned upside down, a sea overflowing its banks, even so powerful a man, after standing firm at the front for three years, had in the end still died. Before that, brother and sister seemed never to have considered such a possibility.
Yet when it finally happened, the two siblings seemed to suddenly understand — in this world, they could rely on no one else.
A few years from now, if the Jin state came south again, what would they do?
They could no longer retreat; they had no choice but to step forward. Yet once they had stepped forward, the world only grew more complicated and more hopeless still.
It was one deadlock after another, tangled beyond any hope of unraveling. Everyone wanted what was good for the Wu Dynasty — why, then, had it all become the very cause of its decline? Everyone was full of fervor and passion — why, in the end, had it all proven so helpless? Taking in the Wu Dynasty’s homeless subjects was something that had to be done — why, then, when it came down to it, did everyone still only look after their own immediate interests? Everyone knew there had to be an army capable of fighting — yet how could one guarantee such armies would not become warlords? Defeating the Jurchens was necessary — yet were the members of the peace faction truly all treacherous villains, without a shred of reason on their side?
The grown eagle had left; the fledgling could only learn to fly on its own. Qin Siyuan of old had perhaps taken up the burden called responsibility from an even greater figure’s shadow before him; after Qin Siyuan’s departure, the younger generation had taken up the weight of the realm in their own new ways. Fourteen years had passed; the young man who had first appeared before us as a mere child could now only try, with still-young shoulders, to bear the weight bearing down upon him.
Their shoulders would, of course, break beneath it. People could only hope that once broken, they would grow back sturdier and stronger still.
“These past few years, I’ve finally come to understand — I’m not a clever man…” Standing by the study window, Jun Wu tapped his fingers lightly, sunlight pouring in from outside; the state of the realm, too, felt as stifling as this windless summer afternoon, leaving one thoroughly exhausted. “Master Wenren, if my teacher were still here, what do you think he would do?”
The Crown Prince offered this sigh as a kind of tribute to a figure he had once revered, though he did not let it stop him for long. In the room, Wenren Buer clasped his hands in a bow and offered a few words of comfort; before long, a breeze passed through the courtyard, bringing a touch of coolness, scattering these fragmentary words into the wind.
The young had inevitably stepped onto the stage; and in certain corners of this world, perhaps the old, too, were emerging once more from retirement. One morning north of the Yellow River, You Hongzhuo, having escaped with his life from pursuers of the Great Brightness Sect, was practicing his family’s blade technique among the hills for someone to see. The steel blade whistled and cut through the morning air, while not far off, on a slope, one of the men who had saved his life was slowly performing a strange set of forms — slow, graceful, yet somehow impossible to make sense of. You Hongzhuo could not fathom how such movements could possibly be used to strike a man.
While he was still puzzling over this, the woman who had also saved him, standing not far away, frowned and suddenly snapped: “What kind of blade technique is that?!” Before the shout had even faded, You Hongzhuo felt a chill of murderous intent sweep past him; the hair on the back of his neck stood on end as the woman swung out with a strike.
The blow seemed fast yet was actually slow; You Hongzhuo instinctively raised his blade to block, only to be sent flying backward with a thud, his shoulder and chest aching sharply. Rising from the ground, he realized only then that what the woman held in her hand was a wooden staff. Though veiled, her almond eyes were wide open, clearly rather angry. Proud as You Hongzhuo was, for some reason he did not dare act rashly before these two; he stood up and apologized, somewhat embarrassed.
“I, I saw you practicing your forms and felt puzzled, I’m… I’m sorry…”
“Sorry for what? Practicing your blade like that — if you die from it, you’ll have failed yourself, failed the parents who raised you!” The woman paused after saying this. “Besides, I wasn’t scolding you for losing focus. I’m asking you — was your blade technique passed down through your family exactly like this?”
“I… I…”
“Hmph! Changing it however you please, and you call yourself skilled! Practice it exactly as it was, ten times over!”
Only once You Hongzhuo nodded and began obediently practicing did the woman gather up an armful of firewood and walk off nearby.
As You Hongzhuo practiced his blade, his heart was in some turmoil. Since childhood he had drilled diligently in the forms of his family’s blade technique, but after that brush with death, he had come to understand that in real combat, a blade technique’s worth was not judged by rigid forms, but had to be applied with flexibility. In the months of practice since, doubts had lingered in his mind — he often felt this move could be slightly modified, that move made faster. After being sworn brothers and sisters with the six others, he had sought their guidance on martial arts, and the six of them had marveled at his insight, saying he was bound for great achievement in the future. Yet this time, practicing his blade, he had said nothing at all, and still the woman had known at a glance that he had modified his technique — yet told him to practice it exactly as it originally was. He could not understand why.
Still, ever since yesterday morning, when the woman had killed the eight members of the Great Brightness Sect, including Tan Yan, with such effortless ease, a day’s travel together had made You Hongzhuo understand — these two people before him might well be truly unparalleled masters of a bygone generation in the martial world. The male benefactor was mild in temperament, yet possessed of vast learning and depth of knowledge like the sea; the female benefactor was his wife, usually a woman of few words, but it had been her idea to save him in the first place, because she found his blade technique “interesting” — which was why she had given him pointers the previous night and this morning.
You Hongzhuo had learned a little about the two benefactors’ identities the night before. When he had asked, the male benefactor had said this: “My surname is Zhao. Twenty years ago, my humble wife and I made our way through the martial world together, and earned something of a reputation, I suppose. People of the martial world gave us the outlaw name of ‘Twin Fiends of the Black Wind.’ Did your master ever mention that name to you?”
You Hongzhuo, having only ever studied martial arts under his father, had heard little of the legends and tales of the martial world, and felt rather ashamed for a moment. The other man did not blame him for it, only remarking with some feeling: “The young people of today… well, never mind. Since you and I have had the chance to meet, that too counts as fate. In the future, if you ever run into some difficulty in the martial world that you cannot resolve, you may invoke our names — it might prove useful.”
You Hongzhuo only nodded, though in his heart he thought — however weak his own martial skill, he owed these two benefactors an enormous debt for saving his life, and could not carelessly tarnish their reputation by invoking their names. From then on, even when he later encountered life-and-death struggles in the martial world, he never once spoke their names, and in the end managed to fight his way through on his own, becoming a great hero of his generation.
Of course, at this point, these were still only thoughts in his heart. He practiced the blade technique properly, ten times over, on the hillside; by then, Master Zhao had finished his forms and called him over for porridge. You Hongzhuo heard him remark offhandedly: “Taiji — born of the formless, the mechanism of motion and stillness, the mother of yin and yang. What I practice is called Taiji Boxing. It’s only natural that you don’t understand it now, no need to force it…” A short while later, over the meal, he explained to him the reason his wife had made him practice the blade so rigidly.
“In actual combat, a blade technique should indeed be fluid and adaptive — that much is true. But a blade form refined through countless trials has its own logic; why a certain move is executed a certain way takes into account the opponent’s moves, the opponent’s responses — one often has to exhaust every possible variation before truly mastering even a single move… Of course, the most important thing is that you’re only in your teens. Whatever principles you draw from your blade technique now will inevitably shape how you conduct yourself in the future. If a blade technique goes too long without restraint, at first you may not notice, but over time, you’ll inevitably start to feel that life, too, should be without restraint. In truth, young people should first learn discipline, understand where discipline comes from, and only later learn to break it. If from the very start you believe the world has no rules at all, you’re bound to turn out badly…”
On the hillside, the martial arts elder who had returned to the world after long seclusion spoke on and on. You Hongzhuo, who had been taught martial arts since childhood by his clumsy father, had never before felt the principles of the world explained so clearly, and listened with reverent, respectful attention. Not far off, Madam Zhao of the Twin Fiends of the Black Wind sat quietly on a rock, sipping her porridge, an occasional trace of amusement flickering in her eyes…