The woman in black stood atop a high rooftop, hands clasped behind her back, watching everything below with a cold, distant gaze. As the wind blew, her robes fluttered and snapped. Save for her relatively gentle, round face, which softened her icy bearing somewhat, at first glance she truly gave the impression of a goddess looking down upon the mortal world.
In the distance, fierce fighting still raged atop the city walls; fire arrows rose like locusts against the night sky, arcing up and falling back down.
Shrill cries occasionally drifted through the air; the chaos was spreading. In some streets, panicked crowds ran screaming; in others, dark and silent alleys held corpses that had died at some unknown hour, isolated severed heads appearing abruptly amid pools of blood and the occasional flash of light.
The streets and alleys near this courtyard had not seen much of the panicked crowds. Shortly after the great chaos broke out, the army had first taken control of this area, forbidding anyone from leaving their homes—so most of the common folk had hidden themselves indoors, and those with cellars had gone even further underground, waiting out this sudden upheaval. Of course, there were more complex reasons behind why the area nearby had grown quiet, not just this alone.
Messengers occasionally passed through the streets and alleys, disappearing at some doorway. Since many things had already been arranged in advance, the woman remained unmoved, simply observing everything happening in the city calmly.
Zezhou’s fragile, precious peace had, in the end, finally come to an end. What lay before her eyes could rightly be called a scene of utter devastation. Every scream, every cry of anguish that rose from the city likely marked some life turned upside down, some existence cut short. Wherever flames rose, there lay some unbearably tragic story unfolding. The woman merely watched, and when another group approached from a distance, she leapt down from the rooftop.
Her light figure touched down briefly on a protruding wooden beam between the buildings, then leapt toward her husband as he entered the courtyard. The man reached out and caught her; by the time the others had entered, she was already standing steadily on the ground, her gaze once more composed and cold. Toward her subordinates, Xigua had always been dignified and aloof, and the others held her in a mixture of respect and awe—for instance, Fang Shuchang and the others who entered behind her always answered obediently and deferentially whenever Xigua gave an order, though the warmth they felt toward her in their hearts was—well, not something easily put into words.
Seeing the traces of soot on her husband and the others’ hands and clothes, she stood in the courtyard, glancing sideways to note how many had returned, and after a moment finally spoke: “What happened?”
“A street caught fire. We happened to be passing by, so we helped save some people. No one was hurt, don’t worry.”
“Mm.” Xigua’s expression showed some displeasure, though she was past the age of saying “I wasn’t worried about something so trivial.” Ning Yi smiled. “Have you had dinner yet?”
“I have.” Her tone had already softened. Ning Yi nodded, then gestured toward Fang Shuchang and the others beside him. “There was a cured-meat shop on the street where the fire broke out—after we saved the owner’s son, since there was no rush, we grabbed some meat and jars of pickled vegetables, and paid for them. It smells pretty good. We’ll have a late-night snack later.” He paused, then asked, “Will you have time later?”
Xigua said, “I’ll cook it.”
Ning Yi smiled. “Let’s do it together.”
Xigua nodded. Her cooking skills weren’t particularly good, and she rarely ate together with her subordinates—though this had nothing to do with looking down on anyone. Her father, Liu Dabiao, had died too early, and as a strong-willed girl, she had taken over the manor at a young age, and her understanding of many things had grown somewhat rigid as a result: imitating her father’s tone of voice, imitating adult mannerisms in how she handled affairs. As the manor’s mistress, she had to ensure the wellbeing of the old and young within the manor while also maintaining her own authority and the proper order of rank.
Much of this, of course, had been sustained in practice by Liu Tiannan, but the young girl’s genuine concern for everyone in the manor had never been in doubt. Within that childlike display of authority and hierarchy, others could see all the more clearly the earnestness of her heart. Over time, many of these rules had become something everyone maintained out of their own sense of duty. Now, as a married woman with children of her own, her horizons had broadened considerably, but these rules remained etched in her heart, unchanged.
Having been together so long, the two of them had long since developed a deep understanding of each other. Regarding the situation in the city, though Ning Yi hadn’t asked, the fact that Xigua said she had time proved that everything was still proceeding according to plan, with no chance of a sudden reversal. He returned to their room with Xigua, and shortly after, they went upstairs, where he told her about the duel between Lin Zongwu and Shi Jin—the outcome, she surely already knew, but perhaps not the details of how it had unfolded.
“…From the result, it looks like the monk’s martial arts have reached the realm of true mastery—perhaps even surpassing what Zhou Tong once achieved. He’s probably genuinely the greatest under heaven now. Tsk…” Ning Yi said, with a mixture of admiration and longing. “What a beautiful fight… Shi Jin too—it’s a bit of a shame.”
Xigua’s expression remained calm. “Compared to Sister Lu, though, it’s not necessarily so.”
“I would never let Hongti fight him again. Hongti has a child now, someone she has to think of—in the end, she has to hold back a level.”
“You second-rate fool, what do you know of the realm of a first-rate master.” Xigua scolded him lightly, then smiled warmly. “Sister Lu grew up killing on the battlefield—she understands the cruelty of this world better than anyone. Ordinary people hesitate; Sister Lu only grows stronger.”
“I remember that lately, every time you two spar, it ends in a draw. Hongti told me she was giving it her all…”
Xigua’s eyes had already narrowed dangerously. She held back for a moment, then finally raised her fists to the sky and shook them a few times. “If you weren’t my husband, I—I—I’d beat you to death.” Then her expression shifted into something caught between laughter and tears. “I’m a first-rate master too! But… Sister Lu holds back more and more when sparring with people close to her. If it were a real fight to the death, though, I’d be afraid of her.”
If this had been the Xigua from back when she’d first reunited with Ning Yi at Xiaocang River, she likely would have challenged him to a duel over a joke like this, using it as an excuse to give him a beating. But by now, she no longer took such jokes seriously, and her response had likewise become more playful. After a while, the cooks downstairs had already begun preparing the late-night snack—there were, after all, many people who would be up all night—and the two of them lit a small fire up on the rooftop, preparing to fry two bowls of rice with pickled vegetables and diced cured meat. Amid the bustle, they occasionally exchanged words, while the chaos in the city shifted and changed in the firelight below. After a while, Xigua stood at the edge of the earthen tower, rising onto her toes to look out. “The western granary has been taken.”
“There might not be as much grain as expected. Lou Shuwan is going to have a headache over this—people are going to die on this side too.”
“Zezhou is a major city; whoever takes over will manage to stabilize it eventually. But there isn’t enough grain in the Central Plains, so there’s bound to be war—the only question is whether it’s aimed at Li Xizhi or at Liu Yu.”
“Prince Jin’s territory has joined forces with Wang Juyun, so it’s more likely they’ll go after Li Xizhi. That being the case, Zhu Biao’s side can make a move while the opportunity lasts, and that pair, Wang Shanyue and Hu Sanniang, probably won’t pass up the chance either. If the Jurchens don’t make any big moves, Yue Fei won’t pass up the opportunity either—there will be fighting in the south too. Ah, Tian Hu—sacrificing just one man, for the benefit of the whole realm.”
“…It’s the common people of the realm who suffer for it,” Xigua said.
“Yes.” Ning Yi smiled faintly, though his face carried a trace of bitterness. Xigua frowned and tried to comfort him. “That’s the suffering they were always going to face anyway. There’s nothing else to be done about it—better sooner than later.”
“Mm.” Ning Yi added more rice to his bowl, nodding with growing melancholy. Xigua offered a few more words of comfort. Deep down, a woman’s heart isn’t always so strong—but when the person beside her is feeling low, she becomes truly strong.
This was how the couple leaned on each other. Xigua understood this in her heart too. After a few more words, Ning Yi passed her the fried rice, and only then did she say, “I heard you talked to Fang Chengye about that whole ‘heaven and earth are not benevolent’ business.”
The two of them sat down on a low wall at the edge of the earthen tower. Ning Yi nodded. “For ordinary people, seeking right and wrong is, at its core, a way of shirking responsibility. Fang Chengye has already begun leading operations in one region—it’s fine to talk to him about this now.”
“You’ve been much more careful about it ever since what happened with Tang Minjie.”
These were all idle words, nothing that needed to be taken too seriously. Ning Yi took a couple bites of fried rice, looking off into the distance before speaking again. “Existentialism itself… is a truth meant for pragmatic, forward-looking action, but it does a lot of damage. For a lot of people, once they truly understand it, it’s easy for it to shatter their entire outlook on life. This should really be something people are only exposed to after they’ve built up a solid foundation, but we don’t have that luxury. Those who lead and make decisions can’t afford to be naive—one mistake, and someone dies. We just have to let the waves sort the sand from the gold.”
“Was it a bit of a shame, what happened with Tang Minjie?”
“Back when I was teaching that whole group of them, he was the sharpest—the first one to bring up right and wrong. He said that right and wrong might just come down to who you are, went on about it at length. When I heard him out, I told him, that’s just ‘position determines stance’—not quite right. But he figured it all out on his own. Later, when I taught them about existentialism—using ‘heaven and earth are not benevolent, all things have spirit’ as the guiding principle for action—he might have… also been the first one to truly understand it. And then, he grew even more protective of his own people, while anyone unrelated to him simply stopped being human to him at all.”
“So I thought it over carefully, and sent him off to the Jurchen state.” Ning Yi paused. “As for Fang Chengye, I’m considering pairing him up with Wang Shitong… or maybe having him go meet Shi Jin…”
The night was still long; shadows shifted across the city below. The husband and wife sat atop the rooftop, watching it all, speaking of very cruel things. And yet, this cruel world of ours—if one cannot come to understand all of it, how can it ever truly be made better? Along their journey together, they had passed through the Western Xia, gone to the northwest, and seen true wastelands of death—pitiful people starved to skin and bone, nothing but skeletons left standing. And yet war came, and enemies came. How could any of this ever be changed by one person’s kindness, anger, or even madness?
People could only search carefully for a way forward, and to keep themselves from going mad in the process, they could only lean on one another, supporting each other through it all.
The night deepened, and the chaos in Zezhou finally began to settle, though the sound of weeping continued unbroken through the dark. The two of them huddled together atop the rooftop, dozing for a while. In the dim light, Xigua murmured softly, “I thought at first you might kill Evil Monk Lin. When you went there yourself this afternoon, I was a little worried.”
Ning Yi gently patted her shoulder. “He’s a coward, but he’s genuinely formidable. In that situation, if I’d tried to kill him outright, the chances of him escaping were too high, and it would have caused no end of trouble afterward.”
After a moment, he added, “What I really thought was, if he actually came to kill me, I’d hold nothing back to take him down. Since he didn’t come, that’s a good thing too, I suppose… I’m wary of casualties for now, it’s not worth it, and I’m also worried that if he dies, the Manichaean sect will just replace him with someone else.”
Xigua nuzzled against his chest. “Mm. Uncle Wang Yin.”
“Uh… hahaha.” Ning Yi laughed softly, looking up at the deep night sky where only a few stars flickered. “Ah, greatest under heaven… honestly, I really do envy him a bit…”
The sky slowly turned, and the night gradually passed. Toward dawn, the moisture rising from the burning city condensed into a mist hanging in the air. As the first pale light of dawn appeared on the horizon, wisps of white fog drifted about, and Ning Yi walked down into the courtyard, making his way along the streets and slopes below. Along the road, there were first intact courtyards, then soon the ruins left by fire and war—walls broken, buildings collapsed. Those who had spent the whole night in chaos and rescue efforts were, some of them, only now lying down to sleep, while others could no longer sleep at all. Rows of corpses lined the roadside, some burned to death, some struck down by blade or sword, lying there covered with cloths of grey-white or scorched yellow. The men and women keeping vigil beside them had mostly cried themselves dry of tears; a few still managed a hoarse wail now and then, and an even smaller number, dragging their exhausted bodies, were still moving about, negotiating, comforting others—these were mostly self-organized, more capable residents, some of whom had likely also lost family members, yet still struggled on for the sake of some uncertain future.
Children who had lost their families, with no one left to care for them, stood alone by the roadside, staring blankly at everything around them.
Soldiers used blades and spears to suppress the emotions of any city residents who might, in their grief, turn desperate and violent, moving forward along the road. Occasionally, small outbreaks of chaos could be seen—soldiers knocking to the ground husbands who had lost their wives and children, or women driven half-mad by the loss of their families, then gagging their mouths and binding them with rope off to the side, the victims struggling and letting out hoarse, wordless cries.
On one side of the city, the nearly ten thousand starving refugees who had flooded into Zezhou had originally caused a great deal of chaos, but by now had been calmed under the dual restraint of the army and the Demon King’s forces. Wang Shitong, escorted by others, made his way through the streets of Zezhou, and before long, beside a stretch of ruins, came face to face with the legendary Heart Demon.