The sky shifted from dark to light, then dark again; the worn, rattling carriage rolled on down the road, each jolt bringing an unbearable jostling, and the scenery around them changed constantly as they went. Low, scrubby woods, barren fields, poor, muddy flats, a broken bridge, an abandoned village with bones hanging from its eaves… Wanyan Qingjue sat with his hair disheveled, his expression listless, watching all of it appear and then recede into the distance. Whenever the slightest disturbance stirred nearby, he would instinctively, cautiously, cast a glance toward it—only for that glance, each time, to grow hollow again with disappointment.
As the carriage rolled on, his thoughts churned without pause, his mind a chaotic tangle of emotion. Fear made up the greater part of it, followed by confusion, and beneath that confusion, a deeper fear still…
When he’d first left the north, the force under his command had, in all likelihood, ranked among the finest fighting teams in the entire world. What he’d had in mind, back then, was a string of victories fearsome enough to strike terror into the hearts of southerners—ideally, once the team had properly come together, even killing a formidable figure like Lin Zongwu, and finally, journeying to the southwest to bring back the head of that demon lord who might still be alive after all. None of it had seemed beyond reach.
This sudden, crushing blow had been far too heavy—it had shattered every possibility in an instant, without warning. Last night, the moment he had been knocked off his horse and forced to choose whether to surrender, his thoughts had already been too scattered to properly organize. The Black Banner? Who could really say? If it wasn’t them, then who were these people? And if it was them, what did that even mean…
In any case, one thing was, by now, painfully obvious: everything was gone.
Born into a distinguished family, apprenticed under the Valley Spirit himself, he had always carried himself with considerable pride and confidence; even setting out on this journey south, what had been placed in his hands was the very best hand anyone could have hoped for. And yet, who could have known that this first engagement would end in defeat—not merely defeat, but the complete annihilation of his entire force? Even in the most optimistic scenario, this would leave a tremendous mark on his future prospects—but the more pressing question now was whether he would even have a future at all.
That scene replayed itself over and over in Wanyan Qingjue’s mind—that black tide surging forward like dark water, sweeping Lu Tuo up into it, and then, in the next instant, killing him amid a thunderous roar of sound. Those who accomplish great things need not be discouraged by mere setbacks—but everyone, naturally, carries their own private sense of the limits of their own ability. How did he himself compare to Master Lu? The moment that question flickered through his mind, looking at the figures surrounding the carriage, he found himself unable to imagine any hopeful outcome at all.
Beside him, Qiu Tianhai and the others sat with their heads hanging, eyes hollow and empty as well—it wasn’t that no one had tried to resist. Not long ago, there had been one among them who’d proudly declared himself a hero of the martial world, demanding respect and decent treatment—where had he gone, again?
Ah, right. He’d been dragged off and had his head cut off with a single stroke.
Simple killing alone was never quite enough to truly cow martial-world hardliners like Qiu Tianhai—what genuinely silenced them, more than anything, was the way certain figures would occasionally appear beside the carriage. He himself only recognized the one-armed “Sky-Piercing Blade” Du Sha among them; the others, naturally, recognized a good many more. In a brief moment of clarity and resolve, Wanyan Qingjue had once quietly asked Qiu Tianhai whether there was any possibility of escape, only to receive a bleak shake of the head in response. “Don’t even think about it, young prince… the ones leading this group are the Tyrant Blade, Liu Dabiao, and… the Black Banner.” Qiu Tianhai’s words came out low and indistinct, but the name Black Banner alone was more than enough to chill the heart.
These past several years, that name alone had already become a kind of proof of power in itself.
Lu Tuo had died almost instantly; Wanyan Qingjue understood well enough that with only a handful of survivors—a dozen or so at most—plus whatever “masters” had been responsible for maintaining contact, trying to rescue himself from the hands of this Black Banner squad would be more unrealistic than trying to snatch food from a tiger’s mouth. Still, every now and then, he found himself thinking that surely, with his capture, the garrisons around Dengzhou and Xinye would have to mobilize—might they, by some chance, happen to come across them…? And so he kept watching, kept glancing about, until at last, as evening drew near and they had already traveled a very long way, about to enter the mountains, Wanyan Qingjue’s body began to tremble, uncertain what fate and what circumstances awaited him in the days ahead…
…
The carriage rumbled on, horses whinnying softly.
Beneath the gloomy, overcast sky, a fierce wind swept past, tossing up leaves and withered grass, scattering them across the horizon. The traveling group pressed on through the wilderness and the woods, moving batch by batch into the rugged mountains ahead.
The carriage needed its wheels unhitched for the climb. Ning Yi stood atop a large boulder, holding up his spyglass, scanning the distance. Xigua, having gone to fetch water, came walking back, tearing off pieces from a steamed bun as she went.
The small unexpected episode outside Xiangyang had certainly been something of a surprise, but it hadn’t done anything to slow their journey homeward. Killing, capturing, rescuing—for the team under Ning Yi’s command, a single night’s work like this hardly counted as any real pressure. Just months earlier, they had already clashed several times with Mongol cavalry out on the Ningxia grasslands; though the tactics involved in fighting the martial world were quite different, honestly, going up against martial-world fighters had, if anything, become the more familiar and comfortable exercise for them by now.
After handing Yue Yun over to Gao Chong and Yinping, Ning Yi had also taken a moment, from a distance, to look over Yue Fei’s two children, before gathering up the prisoners and beginning the withdrawal—it was only afterward, once unusual troop movements were reported near Dengzhou, and after a brief interrogation of the prisoners, that Ning Yi realized this little bit of opportunistic hunting had, in fact, thrown up an unexpected complication, one that left the whole situation feeling rather awkward.
The young prince had gone missing, and the troops around Dengzhou had gone into an absolute frenzy, cavalry units scattering out in every direction like men possessed. And so the group had picked up their pace, hoping to avoid a direct clash with the army.
“We’re already well clear of them by now. Once we’re deep in the mountains, the Dengzhou cavalry shouldn’t be able to follow any further.”
Up ahead, the column had already made contact with the two Zhu Ji members stationed here for reconnaissance and to serve as guides. As Xigua spoke, she held out a piece of steamed bun with pickled vegetable tucked inside toward Ning Yi’s mouth; Ning Yi opened his mouth and took a bite, then lowered his spyglass.
“The son of Wanyan Shemu… what a headache this is turning out to be.” As Ning Yi said this, he couldn’t help but laugh a little despite himself.
“If you’re getting cold feet, we can just let him go back.”
“Fighting the Jurchens is one thing to say, sure—but honestly, I was hoping for a few more peaceful years, and now we’ve gone and captured their young prince on top of everything. Wanyan Shemu did the Jurchens a great service in his day—what if this sets them off and they actually send troops over it? What then, hm?”
“That would indeed be rather bad.” Xigua agreed.
“But we’ve already captured him—if we get cold feet and back down now, they’ll just think we’re easy to push around, and come after us all the sooner.”
“You shouldn’t blink when staring down a tiger.” She said, chewing on her bun, nodding along.
“Well, since we’ve already grabbed him, look at the people around us—some of them have probably already roughed him up a bit, so the bad impression’s already made anyway.” Ning Yi said with a laugh, gesturing at the people nearby, then waved a hand. “How about this, then—we just stab him dead right now, and under cover of night, string him up on the walls of Xiangyang. Let it become Yue Fei’s problem to deal with, heh heh… Oh, right, Fang Shuchang, someone’s looking for you. Tell me—was it you who roughed up the young prince? Go apologize to him.”
“Apologize for what?” Fang Shuchang was just then walking briskly over from a distance; he blinked in mild surprise at this, then laughed. “That young prince, well, he’s the one who led the charge straight at us—of course I had to stop him. He got off his horse to surrender, and I hit him in the neck to knock him out. How was I supposed to know he’d hit his head on the ground when he fell? He’s not even dead, so why would I need to apologize… And if he had died, I wouldn’t need to apologize either, would I?”
“He’s the Jurchens’ young prince, and you roughed him up and won’t even apologize—well, in that case, there’s only one thing left to do. Take that blade from the cart, the one we picked up from the Yue family’s army along the way, and go stab the young prince dead, then find someone to sneak him up onto the walls of Xiangyang tonight, and let Yue Fei take the blame for it.” Ning Yi clapped his hands together, looking thoroughly delighted with himself. “That’s it—Xigua and I both agree, this is a great idea.”
Fang Shuchang let out a helpless laugh, glancing over at Xigua’s expression too. “That’s going a bit far. We do know General Yue, after all—this wouldn’t be right.”
“What’s not right about it? We saved his son and daughter, and now we’re letting him take the blame for something—what’s wrong with that?”
Last night’s battle had, in the end, gone smoothly; the tactics for dealing with martial-world grandmasters had been put to a practical test here as well, and on top of that, they’d rescued Yue Fei’s children—everyone was feeling fairly relaxed about it all, in truth. Fang Shuchang understood, of course, that Ning Yi was simply joking around on purpose, and cleared his throat. “I actually came to report some news. Originally, both sides were being fairly cautious and restrained after Yue Fei’s children were captured, but now, with the young prince missing instead, the whole of Dengzhou has gone into a frenzy—tens of thousands of cavalry, split into dozens of groups, searching everywhere. Around midday they ran into the Beiwei Army directly. By now, I’d guess things have already blown up into something quite large.”
“…Well, that’s bound to be splitting some skulls open.” Ning Yi nodded and fell silent for a moment, then let out a breath. “Let’s move quickly and not worry about the rest of them.”
“Understood.”
Fang Shuchang waved a hand, and someone brought the horses over. Ning Yi and Xigua mounted up in turn, and the group set off, making their way into the mountains. Just before they were fully swallowed up by the surrounding peaks, Ning Yi glanced back once—the mountain ridge was already swallowing up that once-open stretch of land beneath the overcast sky.
“Well, this time, we’ve done that General Yue quite a favor, all things considered.”
Having spent years living in the mountains, and possessing formidable skill besides, Xigua rode her horse through the mountain paths as easily as walking on level ground, closing the distance beside him with effortless ease. Ning Yi nodded. “Indeed. There’s no escaping it now—it’s a major victory for him. Two straight months of unbroken success like this will make things a good deal easier for him and Jun Wu’s people at court too. And now that we’ve captured this young prince, we’ll be able to learn a good deal more about the inner workings of the Jurchens, about Wanyan Xiyin and his circle. All in all, this turned out to be quite a worthwhile haul.”
“When the time comes, we can use this young prince as leverage too—negotiate a few terms with the Jin side, maybe do some business.” Xigua clenched a fist.
Ning Yi laughed. “We’ll see when the time comes. Anyway…” he said, “…let’s just get home first.”
Wanyan Qingjue held far too high a standing among the Jurchens for the puppet Qi’s regime around Dengzhou and Xinye to simply absorb a loss like this without consequence; it was entirely possible that search parties were still tracking them from behind even now. As for Ning Yi, what lay ahead now was simply an easy journey home. The weather, in this transition from late summer into early autumn, had turned gloomy and overcast, with no telling when the rain might come; after trekking through the mountains for an hour or two, this group of nearly two hundred people finally stopped to make camp for the night.
Among these two hundred people were both the special unit that had traveled north with Ning Yi, and a group of Black Banner operatives who had been the first to withdraw from Tian Hu’s territory—and, of course, the small handful of prisoners they’d captured as well. Ning Yi never once showed himself before Wanyan Qingjue and the others, though he often spent time talking with those operatives who had withdrawn from the north. These men and women had spent two or three years operating undercover within Tian Hu’s court, many of them even rising to become officials of no small rank, and it was they who had helped stir up this recent rebellion; they carried with them a wealth of practical experience and leadership skill, and could rightly be counted among the elite even within Zhu Ji itself. Ning Yi, naturally, took a genuine interest in how they were faring.
The journey south had gone smoothly the whole way, and everyone was in fairly good spirits; their conversation ranged from the situation in Tian Hu’s former territory, to the strength of the Jurchens, to the state of affairs in Southern Wu, and even touched on the current situation at Xiangyang, ranging freely across every topic under heaven until well past midnight before finally breaking up. Ning Yi returned to his tent; Xigua, not out on night patrol this time, was sitting by the tent’s dim lamplight, using her rather clumsy needlework to mend a torn sock. Ning Yi watched her, frowning slightly, and was about to go over and help when, entirely unexpected, a voice suddenly rang out through the night.
First came the faint sounds of a scuffle in the distance, and then a single, ringing voice echoed through the mountain woods.
“Mister Ning! An old friend has come from afar to seek an audience—might I be granted a moment of your time—”
The voice was projected through internal power; after it faded, the surrounding mountains still echoed faintly with “a moment of your time… your time…” Xigua frowned. “That’s quite something… an old friend, is it?” She looked over at Ning Yi.
This was, entirely, something no one had anticipated—something that had no business happening here, that shouldn’t even have been possible. Ning Yi fell silent for a moment.
“…Yue Fei.” He spoke the name, then thought about it further. “How reckless of him!”
“He shouldn’t know you’re here. He’s bluffing.” Xigua said.
Ning Yi understood this well enough himself; his expression darkened, his fingers tapping against his knee. After a moment, he drew a deep breath.
Slowly, he shook his head.
“Never mind…”
…
The night wind moaned overhead, and ahead, wary martial-world fighters stood watch. Rain seemed close now. Yue Fei stood there, both hands gripping his spear, quietly waiting for a response from across the way.
Coming here at all had been something of an impulsive act—one that, to anyone else, would seem a decision he had no business making.
And yet, those who accomplish great things need not follow the same path as everyone else, at every turn.
Much as Zhou Tong had once taken up his spear to go and assassinate Nian Han. In this moment, Yue Pengju, having raced several hundred li to get here, closed his eyes, and waited to see whether some particular possibility might yet come to pass.
If… Mister Ning were still alive after all…
Apart from the sound of the wind, the woods, near and far, remained utterly silent.