A storm was gathering.

At Shibin Gorge Village, near Zezhou city, villagers had gathered at the threshing ground, watching soldiers march into the large estate on the hillside. The noise hadn’t yet died down—it was the wife of the great landowner, wailing.

“…You’re framing good people… you’re framing—”

“…The Shen family, Shen Ling, spoke up for the Black Banner rebels in his private school, secretly kept forbidden books—clearly he’s connected to the rebels! This whole family is under suspicion. Take them all, we’ll sort it out afterward—”

The soldiers’ actions set off a wave of wailing and crying; over these past few days, this was hardly the first such incident near Zezhou. The villagers at the threshing ground grew uneasy, but since it was a wealthy household involved, for the moment it didn’t stir too much panic.

“The situation in Zezhou is unstable! Bad elements have been gathering, and there may be trouble in the coming days. Fellow villagers, don’t be afraid—we’re only arresting people and rooting out traitors to stabilize the situation. There may be major events in the near future that cause you some inconvenience, but General Sun assures you all: once the rebel Wang Shitong’s head has been taken, this situation will settle down!”

The soldier in charge of announcements spoke loudly to the crowd at the threshing ground, then went on to list out the Shen family’s supposed crimes. The Shen family’s son, Shen Ling, had run the village’s private school and liked to discuss current affairs, occasionally speaking well of the Black Banner army; the villagers hadn’t thought much of it at the time. But recently, the peace of Zezhou had been shattered by the Hungry Ghosts, whose forces were said to have ties to the Black Banner, and so the soldiers’ campaign to arrest Black Banner members was, for that reason, accepted by most. Though people had generally thought well of Shen Ling before, well—who told him to consort with rebels.

The villagers’ hearts remained simple, in the end. Fighting the Jurchens was one thing, but they only wanted to live their own lives in peace; if the Black Banner army was going to bring the fire this way, then naturally that made them the very worst of villains.

The soldiers pushed and shoved the Shen family down the road toward Zezhou city. The villagers watched this scene unfold, yet not one of them realized that these people might never come back.

In two days would come the beheading of the Ghost King; once those two days passed, everything would be fine again…

Inside the Zezhou government offices, Lu Anmin walked down the long corridor, his expression tangled with anxiety, nearly stumbling as he came down the steps.

He held a scroll of documents in his hand, his heart in knots. All the way to the outer hall where Sun Qi held office, he found the place—once the main hall of the prefectural government—crowded with officials waiting: some military commanders, some civil officials of the prefecture, all clamoring to be received by the general. Seeing Lu Anmin approach, the civil officials swarmed toward him, explaining the current state of affairs in Zezhou.

Sun Qi now sat in command of the prefecture, controlling every development, and gave priority to admitting military commanders, leaving the civil officials blocked outside the door for long stretches. Many urgent matters they carried—including numerous cases requesting a review of wrongful arrests, pleas on people’s behalf—went unattended this way; often, before they could even see Sun Qi, the military had already handled matters on their own—sending people to prison, or already beginning torture near the army camp. Many of these people were to be executed within two days.

In the days when the Wu dynasty had still held the Central Plains, civil officials had traditionally held precedence in matters of governance. Lu Anmin, governing this territory, was now the highest-ranking civil official here, yet at this moment he still found himself blocked at the gate. These past few days, going back and forth, he had met with cold treatment more than once or twice, and though circumstances were stronger than any man, the resentment building in his heart had long since accumulated. After a while, watching one group of commanders after another go in and out, he abruptly rose and strode forward; when the soldiers tried to stop him, he shoved them aside.

“Don’t block my way! This official is still the prefect of Zezhou—even to see the Tiger King himself, I would not be treated with such contempt—”

Inside the hall, Sun Qi was discussing matters with several commanders. Hearing the commotion, he stopped speaking, his face turning to ice. Tall and gaunt, with long, powerful arms, his eyes narrow and sinister, this general’s long years in the military had left him looking exceedingly dangerous—ordinary people didn’t dare approach him. The moment he saw Lu Anmin, he slammed his hand on the table.

“Insolence! With the army already mobilized, this place is now the central command post! Lord Lu, you fail to grasp the gravity of the situation!”

“General Sun, this official has not yet been removed from office. As of now, I remain the head of Zezhou. I have urgent matters to discuss with you—I’ve sent word three, five times over. It is you who fails to grasp the gravity of things, not me!”

His eyes were bloodshot; days of anguish had left him half out of his mind with anger, momentarily forgetting the plain fact that the army now held all the real power here. Seeing that Lu Anmin had thrown caution to the wind, Sun Qi waved a hand sharply: “The rest of you, out!” Before the others had even left, he turned to face Lu Anmin. “Lord Lu, this operation proceeds on the Tiger King’s own direct order. You need only cooperate with me—I owe you no further explanation!”

“But after this is over, will there even be a Zezhou left!”

“Lu Anmin, do you understand what this general is doing here!”

“There’s no need to go this far!”

“You think this general is waiting for what, exactly? Seventy thousand troops! You think it’s all just for that one wretched band of ten thousand outside the city waiting to die!?”

“There’s no need to go this far!” Lu Anmin raised his voice. “The vast majority of them—over ninety percent—are innocent! They have families, kin behind them—their families will be destroyed!”

“This general crushed four hundred thousand Hungry Ghosts with only fifty thousand troops! But here in Zezhou now we have seventy thousand men! Lord! Lu! Do you or do you not understand who we’re waiting for—”

Lu Anmin stared blankly at him, then said, word by word: “Families! Destroyed!”

“We’ve been fighting this war for ten years! Families destroyed!” Lu Anmin pointed outward. “How many families have already been destroyed, General Sun—I know you’re capable, the ten thousand refugees outside the city, you beat them down, suppressed them, killed them, and they had no way to resist, so the people inside the city feel safe. I’m just a civil official, but I know this—once this is all finished, Zezhou will collapse, will fall into chaos. Ten years, and we finally had a place like this, and you’re about to wreck it.”

“I know you have things you need to do, I don’t think you’re careless about priorities, but there’s no need to take it this far.” Lu Anmin waved his hand. “Fewer deaths—you could allow fewer deaths. You want to enrich yourself, you want power, but if you push it this far, afterward there’ll be nothing left for you to take either…”

“What did you say!” Sun Qi slammed his hand on the table with a crack, his eyes fixed on Lu Anmin like a cobra about to strike. “Say that again—what did you call it, enriching yourself! Grabbing power!”

Lu Anmin, having said it, already felt a chill of fear himself. He had summoned his courage to face Sun Qi head-on, his mind clouded, and in the heat of it had spoken words he shouldn’t have. Sun Qi extended a hand:

“Ninety percent innocent? You say innocent and it’s innocent? Will you vouch for them? Guarantee they’re not Black Banner!? If you let them go and you’re wrong, can you bear the responsibility!? I thought I’d made myself clear to you, that you’d understand, but you’re treating this like child’s play—I see you’ve lost your senses. Ninety percent innocent? When I set out, the Tiger King himself said it: for the Black Banner, better to kill wrongly than let one slip through!”

“Hmph! A man like you isn’t even fit to be a parent to a single prefecture! You think you’re just some petty official? Meeting with you has been a waste of this general’s energy. Someone! Take him out—anyone else who dares make a scene before this general again will be killed without mercy!”

With those words from Sun Qi, his deputy brought men in and seized Lu Anmin by both arms, dragging him toward the door. Lu Anmin, looking at Sun Qi, finally couldn’t help but struggle. “You’re all making a mountain out of a molehill! General Sun! You—”

By now he’d been dragged to the doorway; struggling, the two soldiers, not wanting to hurt him too badly, simply held his arms and pushed him back. Then came a sharp slap, and Lu Anmin staggered backward violently, tumbling to the ground outside the hall.

The sudden sound drew the eyes of many people nearby who hadn’t had time to react; the corridors and courtyards around them fell silent all at once. Only after a moment did people realize that, just then, the deputy commander had actually struck Lu Anmin across the face, hard enough to nearly send him flying.

Lu Anmin himself was stunned in that instant. He sat up from the ground, only then feeling the burning pain across his face—more humiliating still, no doubt, was being watched by so many onlookers.

At a time when all order was collapsing, such a thing was, in truth, hardly out of the ordinary. The area around Zezhou had once, briefly, experienced and felt something of that kind of period before, only these past few years of peace had dulled everyone’s memory of it—it took this one slap to make people remember again.

Even in what had been, these past few years, the most stable and peaceful place in the Central Plains—the Tiger King, Tian Hu, had himself once been nothing more than a rebel hunter. This was an age of chaos, not the Wu dynasty anymore…

Lu Anmin sat there, his mind churning with who-knew-what thoughts. Only after a long while did he manage to struggle up from the ground, humiliation and fury making his whole body tremble. But he did not turn back to press the matter further. In this most chaotic time across the land, even the grandest official mansions had been stormed by mobs before; even the family members of prefects and governors had been gang-raped to death by rioting crowds—what was this, compared to that? Even the imperial family of this nation had endured such things—those women captured and taken north, among them empresses, noble consorts, princesses, daughters of great ministers…

In truth, nothing had really changed at all…

The deputy commander returned to the hall. Sun Qi looked outward and ground his teeth as he nodded: “If he can still do his job, let him do it. If not, strip him of his post—”

Within the city of Zezhou, most people’s moods remained fairly settled. They believed all this was simply the disturbance caused by the coming execution of Wang Shitong, and Sun Qi’s firm grip on the situation outside the city gave the common people a temporary sense of security and even a certain smug satisfaction. Some, whose families had been swept up in the affair, ran back and forth seeking help, but in these early days, found little sympathy from others—at a moment like this, best not to make more trouble. Once Wang Shitong was killed, things would be fine.

Outside the city, in the camps and checkpoints; inside, along the streets and high walls—seventy thousand troops kept tight watch over everything, while internally, they continued purging any possible dissidents, waiting for an enemy that might or might not come. In fact, by now, most of the cities under the Tiger King’s control had fallen into this same tense atmosphere; the purges had already begun everywhere, though the most critical points remained Zezhou, where Wang Shitong was to be executed, and Weisheng, where the Tiger King himself was stationed.

In the prison, You Hongzhuo sat in the straw, quietly sensing the chaos around him, the ever-increasing number of “cellmates.” He found it hard to guess much about what would come next, and he knew little about the situation outside the prison walls either. He only kept wondering, in the back of his mind: that night before—had he truly seen Mr. Zhao? And why would he have come into this prison disguised as a physician? Could he be one of the Tiger King’s men? And if he really had come in, why hadn’t he saved him?

Maybe it was fake, after all…

That was, in the end, what he settled on believing. If, in this very prison, his fourth brother Kuang Wenbo could reach in with his tendrils of influence, and Mr. Zhao and the others could just as easily come and go as they pleased, wouldn’t that make the whole thing seem far too much like child’s play…

These past days’ experiences, the tragedies he’d witnessed, had left him rather disheartened; had it not been so, his mind might have worked faster and grasped some other things.

In the increasingly tense city of Zezhou, people of the martial world were gathering in all sorts of ways too. Some of these outsiders from the surrounding regions had already found an organization to join; others drifted about on their own; and no small number had, over these past several days of clashes, been surrounded and killed by government troops or thrown into prison. Still, over the past several days, more and more efforts had also been quietly made, in secret, circling around the prison itself.

It was now evening, the sky overcast, with wind stirring but no sign yet of rain. In the alley behind the prison’s rear gate, several figures emerged from the prison door, supporting one another. A number of carriages were waiting there; seeing the group emerge, a monk leading a dozen or so men came forward to meet them.

Those who had been released included both young and old, but all of them carried the bearing of martial artists, and quite a few of them had clearly been tortured, bearing wounds. The monk and those with him greeted them with the customary gestures of the martial world—they had also brought several physicians along.

“Hero Tang, Hero Zheng, elders, brothers, you have suffered greatly. This affair came about too suddenly; the government was too cunning, and our efforts to rescue you fell short—that is truly our great fault…”

The monk’s words were deeply respectful. Among the rescued martial artists, an elder waved his hand. “No need, no need to say it—there will come a time to settle this. The Great Light Sect’s benevolence and virtue, we hold in our hearts. Friends, this is not entirely a bad thing either—inside that prison, we’ve now got a sense of the lay of the land, scouted things out a bit…”

“What Elder Tang says is exactly right…” the others murmured in agreement.

“Let’s discuss this once we’ve left…”

“Indeed, let’s leave first…”

Amid the discussion, everyone climbed into the carriages and rode off into the distance. The alley grew empty and quiet again, and before long, more carriages arrived to collect another group of martial artists.

Not far away, in a quiet little building, the finest fighters of the Great Light Sect had gathered. Tan Zheng, the “Heavenly Blade of Heshuo,” whom You Hongzhuo had once waited days for without ever seeing, was among them. Well-informed and sharp-eyed, he stood watch by the window, quietly observing everything through a crack in the shutters, then turned and, in a low voice, relayed information to the portly, Maitreya-like man in the room. “‘Soul-Summoning Blade’ Tang Jian, ‘Dragon Fist’ Zheng Wu, some friends from the Chaimen Fist school… have been rescued. In a moment there should also be good men from the Five Phoenix Blade school, heroes from the Thunder Gate…”

Because of the arrival of this Maitreya-like distinguished guest, this sort of work had already been underway for some time—originally there had been other lesser subordinates keeping the records here. After listening to Tan Zheng’s report several times, Lin Zongwu set down his teacup, nodded, and gestured outward: “Go on, then.” Only moments after he spoke, someone came knocking at the door.

Tan Zheng went to open it, listened to his subordinate’s report, and then returned. “Sect Leader, we’ve traced where those people came from.”

“Mm.” Lin Zongwu nodded.

“It seems they belong to the ‘Eight-Armed Dragon King’ faction. He couldn’t hold his ground on Chifeng Mountain anymore, and yet, unexpectedly, he’s turned up here in Zezhou, trying to make trouble for us. Word is that at tomorrow’s Heroes’ Gathering, he plans to go up directly against us.”

“Earlier he was building up his position on Chifeng Mountain, and this one actually thought he’d amounted to something. Who would have guessed he’d come crawling back to the rivers and lakes again—his vision really is limited.”

Lin Zongwu said this lightly, sipping his tea. These past several days, the Great Light Sect had been playing a grand game within Zezhou, drawing in no shortage of heroes and worthies from the martial world—but naturally there were plenty unwilling to join them as well. Over the last two days, in particular, a group had emerged who were secretly lobbying various parties, disrupting a good many of the Great Light Sect’s schemes. Once Tan Zheng noticed and had it investigated, they’d finally learned it was this very Eight-Armed Dragon King behind it.

This Eight-Armed Dragon King had, in recent years, ranked among the most formidable figures across the Central Plains—when the heroes of Chifeng Mountain had been at their peak, they’d gathered a hundred thousand strong. But over the past half year, news of internal strife on Chifeng Mountain had grown frequent; apparently, not long before Sun Qi crushed the Hungry Ghosts, the forces under General Li Xizhi, Pacifier of the East, had broken Chifeng Mountain apart, and the Eight-Armed Dragon King had drifted out into the martial world—unexpectedly turning up here.

Tan Zheng looked over the gathered information: “This ‘Eight-Armed Dragon King,’ Shi Jin, was said originally to be one of the bandits of Mount Liang, once known by the title ‘Nine-Patterned Dragon.’ After Mount Liang fell, he vanished from sight, and only in these recent years has he made a name for himself as the Eight-Armed Dragon King. He’s spared no effort in secretly killing Jurchens. His martial skill is said to be quite formidable—there’s word that when Iron Arm Zhou Tong assassinated Nian Han, Shi Jin traveled with him, and was even given personal instruction by Zhou Tong, receiving part of his teachings…”

“Ha ha…” Listening to Tan Zheng, Lin Zongwu laughed. He rose and walked to the window, hands clasped behind his back. “Eight-Armed Dragon King, Nine-Patterned Dragon, whatever he calls himself—I heard of his skill long ago. Back when I tested my fists against all comers under heaven, I once considered meeting him, but held back out of concern that as a leading figure of his own faction, defeating him might damage his standing among his followers. So this works out well too—the last teachings of Zhou Tong… ha ha ha ha…”

Lin Zongwu laughed with real delight. Tan Zheng stepped closer. “Shall we pay him a visit tonight?”

“Why bother? We’ve come to Zezhou—for what purpose? If we can’t even face down a mere Shi Jin head-on, how are we to face the great enemy behind this whole murky business? Just proceed as planned. Tomorrow at the Heroes’ Gathering, I myself will meet his eight-cornered mixed-bronze staff with my two fists, and strip the dragon’s hide and sinew from him. Consider it—”

“—the appetizer for this whole affair!”

The wind blew through the city, countless different wills converging together.

The eighth year of Wujianshuo, the twenty-eighth day of the sixth month. Night fell.