After the cold of spring had passed, the faint, nagging ache in his body finally stopped protesting.

Summer in Lin’an was rainy and hot, usually the most comfortable stretch of the year for Li Pin. The old wound from defending Taiyuan no longer flared up, and his daily rounds of receiving guests, teaching and studying benefited a good deal from this weather. In the courtyard of Mingtang Academy, he often discussed matters with a group of students and friends late into the night, sometimes even until dawn. This period in Lin’an might well have been the most settled stretch of his entire life.

Within the literary and even political circles of the Wu Dynasty, Li Pin had become a complicated and strange figure indeed.

In his youth, Li Pin had genuinely been counted a heaven-gifted talent renowned throughout the region; in Jiangning, a place famed for its refinement and wealth, he had been spoken of as the foremost talent of the area, and even set against the capital, he would have counted as an outstanding young man of promise.

Of course, such talk, circulating only among ordinary people, meant little to the true wielders of power of this age, the movers and shakers of the times, for whom “elegant verse” and “foremost talent” were merely a flashy starting title. Though Li Pin had a name for his talent, in that first stretch of his career his official fortunes were poor and he chose the wrong patrons; before long, that reputation became little more than an empty phrase.

He had entered politics through Qin Siyuan’s favor, though during that period he could hardly be said to have entered the inner circle of the Qin faction. Later, he defended Taiyuan alongside Qin Shaohe; when Qin Shaohe died, Li Pin returned home badly wounded. After Qin Siyuan’s death and Ning Yi’s regicide, Li Pin had remained stuck in an awkward position ever since. Regicide was, of course, an unforgivable crime against heaven and earth, but privately, most people felt some sympathy for Qin Siyuan’s death — and as for Taiyuan… those who had chosen silence or mere onlooking at the time could, at the very least, still acknowledge Qin Shaohe’s fierce loyalty.

Trapped deep in Taiyuan, wounded and sick all over, Li Pin had barely managed to protect himself through that first chaotic period, and the court’s attitude toward him, from top to bottom, had turned cold.

In the Jingping Humiliation, tens of millions were left displaced and homeless. Though Li Pin was by nature a civil official, he was secretly given the task of assassinating Ning Yi — the higher-ups’ thinking being, in effect, to make use of an otherwise worthless man by sending him off to a certain death.

In the end, Li Pin broke completely with Ning Yi. Amid the great chaos of the Central Plains, he fled south along with the streams of refugees, a mere scholar among them, and endured the great manhunt of “combing the mountains, searching the seas.” Once Zhou Yong ascended to power and the siblings Zhou Pei and Jun Wu came into their own influence, this should have been precisely the moment for Li Pin to be given real responsibility — but instead he abandoned any thought of returning to court service. He founded Mingtang Academy, opened a printing workshop, put out a daily “newspaper,” published small printed storybooks, and spent his time sitting with others in discussion, explaining the Four Books and Five Classics — but he seldom set foot in officialdom again.

People therefore “understood” that he was cultivating his reputation for the future.

Throughout history, this had always been one path available to scholars of great talent who disdained petty administrative posts: cultivate one’s reputation first, and later rise in a single leap to become prime minister or chancellor. Li Pin had entered officialdom through Qin Siyuan’s patronage, but his fame came instead from his break with Ning Yi — and thanks to Ning Yi’s own attitude that day, and the several books he had handed Li Pin, that fame had, in the end, grown quite genuinely solid. In present-day Southern Wu, having a figure like this — a self-declared “old enemy” of Ning Yi’s — was hardly a bad thing at all; both publicly and privately, the siblings Zhou Pei and Jun Wu regarded him with some favor, and worked quietly behind the scenes to build up his reputation further.

As for Li Pin’s true thoughts and intentions, few cared to look closely, and fewer still were able to understand them at all.

And so, over these past several years, the courtyard of Mingtang, tucked away in a remote spot northwest of Lin’an, had become the true center of the Wu Dynasty’s literary world. Scholars and students came and went, some to contribute their wisdom, others to argue and debate, hoping thereby to make a name for themselves in one stroke. Others came with different purposes: valiant, resourceful men bound for the northwest to slay the great demon, who, seeing their nation in peril, cast aside the writing brush to take up arms. These young scholars, mostly from wealthy families, brought along martial-trained retainers and bold household guards, intending to root out the source of the Wu Dynasty’s troubles and set things right. Before setting off, they would come here to ask Li Pin for information about their great enemy — knowing oneself and one’s foe being the surest path to victory in a hundred battles.

Such visitors had grown noticeably more numerous since the start of this year.

Li Pin received all of them with as much courtesy as he could manage, and then, with some difficulty… would try to share a few of his own thoughts with them…

“…In the southwest, Ning Yi’s forces today are divided mainly into three groups… The core lies in the Three Counties of Heden and Bulai; there’s also Qin Shaoqian’s garrison stationed in Tibet, which is where the Black Banner’s true elite core resides. And third, the Miao lands of Lanhuandong — the Miao people around there originally belonged to the Overlord Blade lineage, the Overlord Blade Manor of the far south, itself a remnant of Fang La’s uprising. After Fang Baihua and the others died, this Overlord Blade Manor kept gathering in the scattered rebels of Fang La’s cause, and eventually built itself into a real force…”

“Shameless! Before this Ning Yi committed his great treason, he even boasted of the great service he’d rendered in putting down Fang La’s rebellion! Looking back now, what utter shamelessness!”

Sunlight fell through the leaves onto the courtyard, where the well-featured young man sitting there was named Qin Zheng, a member of the Qin clan from around Fuzhou. The Qin family was a great local clan of scholarly heritage; Qin Zheng, not the eldest son of the household, had studied martial arts since childhood and had achieved some real accomplishment in it. This time, he too meant to head southwest to slay the bandit, and had come to Li Pin’s for information.

“Yes.” Li Pin took a sip of tea and nodded. “This man Ning Yi has a mind of great depth, and many things are the product of years of careful planning. As for the Black Banner’s real strength, these three physical bases aren’t even the main thing. Setting aside their elite troops in these three locations, what truly allows the Black Banner to win its battles is the intelligence network it has spread everywhere, penetrating every crack, over all these years. This network first gave him a huge advantage in his contests with the wilderness fighters of the jianghu, just as it had years earlier, back in Bian Liang…”

“Shameless!” As Li Pin recounted the various events of Ning Yi’s earlier conflicts with the wilderness fighters, Qin Zheng listened with mounting agitation and couldn’t help cursing aloud. Li Pin merely nodded and went on.

“Over the years, many among the wilderness fighters have wanted to kill Ning Yi. Even during the two years Ning Yi was missing, righteous men like you, Brother Qin, whether scholars or fighters, kept heading northwest one after another in no small numbers. But at first everyone acted purely out of righteous indignation, without much coordination, and met with much the same fate as those earlier wilderness fighters had. Many groups fell into infighting before they even reached Heden, or arrived only to discover that the other side had already prepared for them, having marked their party from the very start. During that time, some limped back home defeated, some grew disheartened and gave up, and some… died because of it. It’s a long, complicated story…”

“Shameless! The demon deserves death!”

“Indeed.” Li Pin nodded. “But scholars are not, in the end, mere brutes. Over the years, after much painful reflection, some of the finest among them found ways to genuinely oppose the Black Banner. During this time, Long Qifei of the Long clan in Hangzhou, and Li Xiannong of Lingnan, among others, truly did threaten the Black Banner’s very existence. Long Qifei, for instance, once ventured personally into Heden and debated the Black Banner’s people face to face, denouncing their wrongdoing openly. His eloquence was remarkable, and it left the Black Banner people considerably embarrassed. He later traveled from place to place lobbying support, at one point uniting the troops of several prefectures with the aim of wiping out the Black Banner entirely — momentum ran extremely high at the time — but the Black Banner interfered from within, sending suicide operatives into the city to sway the campaign, and in the end it all fell apart at the final step.”

“As for Li Xiannong, his approach was through the Ni people of the southwest. Xiaoliang Mountain is where the Ni people cluster, a fierce and rough-natured folk who have lived for generations along the border between our Wu Dynasty and Dali — outsiders have always found them hard to govern, but on the whole, most of the Ni still lean toward our Wu Dynasty. Li Xiannong lobbied among the various Ni tribes, persuading them to send troops to attack Heden, and privately even attempted to have Ning Yi’s wives and concubines assassinated to force him to reveal his true hand. Later, several Ni tribes in Xiaoliang Mountain turned on each other, and the tribe that had led the charge was nearly wiped out entirely. Publicly this was called internal strife, but in truth it was the Black Banner’s doing. The one responsible was a henchman of Ning Yi’s named Tang Minjie — ruthless, and utterly vicious in his methods. If you go southwest, Brother Qin, you must be wary of this man.”

“Hmph, he deserves to die!” Qin Zheng snorted again.

“The Black Banner’s influence in Xiaoliang Mountain is considerable — some two hundred thousand people gathered there, not something a lone man’s courage alone could overcome. After the Ni infighting, Li Xiannong was hunted by that Tang Minjie, and it’s said his family was nearly caught up in it too, but with the help of many others, he managed to come through unharmed. If you go there, Brother Qin, you might do well to make contact with Li Xiannong, Long Qifei and the others — there’s much experience and many ideas among them worth drawing on.”

“With such righteous men in place, how could I fail to pay them a visit?” Qin Zheng nodded, then, after a moment, said, “Actually, Master Li, sitting here without ever leaving, you already know of such great matters — why not go southwest yourself and join in this great cause? That demon’s outrageous conduct is the very root of our Wu Dynasty’s troubles; if Master Li could go southwest and remove this demon, your name would surely resound across the realm. As I see it, with Master Li’s reputation, if you went, the righteous men of the southwest would surely follow your lead…”

Before Li Pin could reply, he went on, “I know Master Li already once made an attempt on the demon’s life back in the northwest — surely that hasn’t left you discouraged? Forgive my bluntness, Master, but in such a great cause for the nation and its people, what is there to be discouraged about after a single failure? One must simply try again, and again, until it succeeds… ah, forgive my rashness, Master.”

Having listened to this blunt speech, Li Pin smiled and cupped his hands slightly. “My thanks for your words of encouragement, Brother Qin. The matter of the northwest is indeed a lasting knot in my heart. But since then, I’ve thought it over again and again — if we killed Ning Yi, could we actually defeat the Jurchen? Where, exactly, does the real difference between us and the Black Banner Army lie? All told, the Black Banner has grown to no more than two or three hundred thousand people, and yet its name already resounds across the realm — while our Wu Dynasty, rich in all the lands under heaven, has been beaten into a disgraceful retreat south by the Jurchen…”

“Ah, Master Li.” Qin Zheng cut in. “Our Wu Dynasty is only weak for the moment; in times of national crisis, heroes rise up. I have every confidence that with His Present Majesty roused to action, reflecting deeply on our past failures, and the whole Wu Dynasty united in purpose, we will one day defeat the Jurchen and reclaim the Central Plains. But everything follows its proper order — our Wu Dynasty’s decline began with that demon’s regicide, and to revitalize the Wu Dynasty, so long as that demon lives, we’ll forever have a thorn stuck in our throat, unable to truly rise. And so I believe that before we can defeat the Jurchen, we must first capture Ning Yi and offer his death as a sacrifice to the banner, a report to Heaven itself — only then can the Way of Heaven once more protect our Wu Dynasty!”

Li Pin fell silent for a moment, then could only smile and nod. “A fine insight, Brother Qin — I, your humble elder, shall think on it more deeply. But there are also things which, as I see it, could be done right now… Ning Yi, cunning and treacherous as he is, understands human hearts and human nature exceedingly well. He has civilized and shaped those under his command through countless methods; even down to the common soldiers, there are endless meetings and lessons instilling in them… the idea of fighting for themselves. It’s this that stirs up such fighting spirit and produces such impressive battle records. And yet, in truth, there’s a real flaw in this approach — even if it stirs the blood in men’s hearts, it will be difficult, in the future, to govern a nation on such a basis. The idea of making every man self-directed can never be achieved through a few slogans alone; no matter how fervently they seem to shout, or how fiercely they seem to fight, one day it’s bound to crumble apart…”

“That demon goes against the great tide of the world — he can never last!” said Qin Zheng.

“And yet, such methods and means of civilizing the world may not, in themselves, be worthless,” Li Pin said. “Our Confucian Way hopes that one day, every person will understand principle and become a noble man. The sage’s subtle words of profound meaning have civilized some people — but such subtlety is, after all, difficult to grasp. If we forever seek only the beauty of these subtle profundities, there will always be many who can never reach the great Way. In the northwest, I saw the soldiers of the Black Banner, and later, following the mass of drifting refugees, I truly saw the likes of these people — ignorant men and women, peasants, men of the lowest classes, blunt and tongue-tied fellows who couldn’t utter a word in front of others. And I found myself wondering — might there be some way to make these people understand at least a little of the underlying principles?”

“On Ning Yi’s side, at least one thing is right: the method of investigating things can make all the world’s resources abundant. Study its underlying principles carefully, and there is great potential in papermaking and printing. So the very first step ought to be making it possible for everyone in the realm to read and write…”

“That’s a fine thing indeed, though I doubt that demon invented it himself.”

“…If people can read and write, and paper is plentiful, the next problem arises: the sage’s subtle words carry profound meaning, but ordinary people, even literate, can’t grasp the meaning within. Is there perhaps some more convenient method that could help people understand the principles inside? This is also something the Black Banner Army uses — Ning Yi calls it ‘vernacular writing,’ where what’s written on the page is expressed the same way we speak with our mouths. With this, everyone should be able to understand it easily… The storybooks I print at the Mingtang printing house use exactly the same tone as a storyteller speaking aloud. In the future, this could be used to annotate the classics and explain their principles in detail.”

“How could that possibly work!” Qin Zheng’s eyes went wide. “Storybooks are nothing but… nothing but playthings! The sage’s words, their subtle profundity — that is something that… that cannot bear even the slightest deviation! To explain and elaborate it down to the level of ordinary speech… no, this cannot be done!”

“Why not?”

Qin Zheng did, after all, have some real ability, and after a moment’s confused thought, said, “Take, for instance, our speaking here today, at this place, about this matter — such things can all be pinned down specifically. When we cite the sage’s words in this context, the sage’s words then correspond to whatever specific meaning we intend. But the sage’s words carry a great, universal meaning, applicable everywhere — if you explain them too specifically today, ordinary people, unable to tell the difference, will assume that great, subtle meaning applies only to this one instance, and the greater meaning is thereby diminished. How can such a thing be done!”

“What you say makes perfect sense, Brother Qin — and yet I think there’s nothing wrong with approaching it this way either…”

“No, of course it can’t be done…”

“As I see it, we might first use stories to explain the meaning as best we can, making use of many analogies and illustrations… Brother Qin, this is something that must be done in the end, and urgently so — it cannot be avoided…”

Qin Zheng only shook his head. Teaching and learning at the time relied mainly on reading and recitation; when students had questions, there were few teachers capable of directly explaining the sage’s words in plain, detailed language, simply because the principles set out in works like the Four Books were often weighty, and after grasping the basic meaning, one still had to understand the reasoning behind it — genuinely getting children or young people to understand it was often impossible. More often, children were simply made to memorize, and understanding would come one day, matched against life’s own lessons. There were plenty of teachers who had students memorize, but not a single one who simply said, “This means such-and-such — now recite it for me.”

Qin Zheng had been raised on this kind of education since childhood, and when teaching younger family members at home, he too approached it with reverence. His debating skills were not strong, and now he simply felt that Li Pin had strayed from orthodoxy into heresy, beyond all reason. He had originally assumed Li Pin lived here to build up his reputation, but never expected to hear him say such things today; his thoughts fell into confusion, and he no longer knew what to make of this “great Confucian scholar” before him.

Li Pin had laid out everything on his mind, one thing after another. He had once witnessed the Black Banner Army’s system of instruction, the way they proclaimed “everyone has a duty,” shouted slogans, and stirred up passionate fervor — primarily as a tool for waging war, still far from truly making everyone take up genuine responsibility, but not a bad start, at that. After his break with Ning Yi, Li Pin had thought long and hard, and in the end had come to see that the true Confucian Way, in the final reckoning, demanded a genuine, practical effort to make every single person understand principle — beyond that, there was nothing else at all. Everything else was mere illusion.

And so he had taken up Ning Yi’s method of investigating things, in order to let everyone in the world read; once literate, the question of how to help people truly understand principle led him to simplify explanation, weaving reason into people’s hearts through stories and analogies. Ning Yi’s method was mere agitation; his own task was to teach the true, great Way — only he meant to teach it so that everyone could understand it. Even if this couldn’t be fully achieved for now, so long as one could advance a single step, that too was progress.

These things could be resolved one step at a time. Once books were widespread and expression simplified, more vivid ways of speaking and better stories would naturally follow. As long as the principle of transmitting reason was upheld, and one kept pushing forward, one day the Confucian Way would be realized because of it.

Over these years, Li Pin had had people record his repeated discussions at Mingtang and publish them in vernacular editions, alongside a separate literary edition meant for the eyes of scholars. Seeing the vernacular writing was just like ordinary spoken language, people simply assumed Li Pin had learned some practical, agitational technique from Ning Yi, seeking fame and reputation among the common folk — some even secretly sneered at it, thinking he had racked his brains purely for the sake of his name. Little did they know, this version was Li Pin’s true Way after all.

Having said all this, Li Pin went on to share some of what he had seen and known over the years. Qin Zheng grew increasingly uneasy in his heart, more and more displeased as he listened, and after a while rose to take his leave. His own reputation being modest, and his views now opposed to Li Pin’s, he found it hard to press his criticism too far, and feared besides that his own debating skill wasn’t up to the task, that he might become a laughingstock if he lost the argument. As he was leaving, he said only, “And do you suppose, Master Li, that acting like this could actually defeat this Ning Yi?” Li Pin said nothing, and merely shook his head.

“Then could it defeat the Jurchen?” “It would take years of accumulated effort… and yet it is a Way meant for centuries, for millennia…” However one listened to it, Li Pin’s words sounded like nothing more than sophistry.

Disdain filled Qin Zheng’s heart. Once he had left Mingtang, he spat into the street. “That so-called Li Dexin — chasing fame under a false name. If you ask me, he simply got scared of that demon Ning back in the northwest, and now he’s mumbling excuses about some ‘great Way.’ Pah… a disgrace to scholars! A true disgrace!”

He said this to the retainer beside him, then went on. “Hmph, the way he goes on and on about what the Black Banner does — could he be some counter-agent sent by that demon Ning himself? No wonder the Black Banner Army’s intelligence has been so sharp all these years. No — once we get to the southwest, we can’t act as we originally planned. We’ll need to warn the righteous men of the southwest too, that there might be some trickery involved…”

Muttering along like this, he was suddenly struck by a figure passing by — Qin Zheng, taken entirely by surprise, staggered back several steps from the collision, nearly falling into the stinking gutter by the roadside. Steadying himself and looking up, he saw before him a group of over a dozen jianghu men, dressed in short tunics and wearing bamboo hats — clearly not people to be trifled with. The big man who had bumped into him glanced back. “What are you looking at? Pretty boy looking for a beating?” he said, and walked straight on.

From that single collision, Qin Zheng could already tell the man’s martial skill was formidable. Though young and full of spirited energy, he understood full well how vicious the fighting could get among the wilderness men — he wanted to make his name by killing Ning Yi, not by getting himself carelessly killed in a street brawl against some brute. He hesitated a moment and, in the end, backed down.

He knew well enough that he and his retainers likely couldn’t beat this bunch — but he wasn’t worried about killing that demon Ning. For one thing, it was a task that simply had to be done; for another, killing a man for real depended first on strategy, not raw martial skill. In his heart he cursed the wilderness men several times over for their crude, uncivil manners — no wonder the Heart Demon had cut them down like grass. He returned to the inn to prepare for his departure.

Back at Mingtang, having seen Qin Zheng off, Li Pin returned to his study to write more explanatory stories annotating the Analects. Over the years, many scholars had come to Mingtang, and he had said these same things over and over. Some listened uncomprehending, some left in righteous anger, and some flew into a rage and broke with him on the spot — all quite ordinary occurrences by now. People living within the glow of Confucian tradition could not see how truly formidable what Ning Yi had accomplished was, nor could they grasp the despair in Li Pin’s own heart. Learning perched so high above could never reach into every person’s heart, and now that Ning Yi had mastered the means of communicating with ordinary people, if this learning could not come down to their level, it truly would be smashed to pieces.

Ever since Cangjie invented writing, the very purpose of language and script has been to transmit human experience. And so, every obstacle that hinders this transmission is a flaw, and every innovation that aids it is progress.

Li Dexin knew he had already set out on a path that strayed from orthodoxy into heresy, and every single day, this was all he could do to convince himself to keep going.

I may not be able to beat Ning Liheng, but this path of straying from orthodoxy… may be the right one after all.

No sooner had he convinced himself once again in his heart than a servant came to announce that Chief Tie Tianying of the gang had arrived.

Ever since their several collaborations in the northwest, the friendship between Li Pin and Tie Tianying had never once been broken.

In the northwest campaign, Li Pin had broken with Ning Yi at Xiaocang River, while Tie Tianying had come away from Ning Yi’s methods feeling utterly despairing; he no longer wished to oppose the Black Banner Army, but in Li Pin’s cry that “the common people of the world must be given a way to live,” he had felt some flicker of compassion nonetheless. After leaving the northwest, the two men had gone their separate ways, and Tie Tianying had left the Ministry of Justice for good. By the time Li Pin had established himself in Lin’an, and Tie Tianying appeared before him once more, he had already become chief of the Grand Canal Gang among the wilderness fighters.

In short, he now led a band of refugees along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, running an underworld operation — helping refugees from the north move south on one hand, and gathering intelligence from the north to pass along southward on the other.

By now the Central Plains had become territory of the Great Qi, and warlords everywhere were trying to block refugees from heading south, sealing off the north from the south — but even so, every locality was still made up, in the end, of the same Han people as before, and wherever there were people, there were both open and hidden channels of movement. Having served for years as chief constable of Bian Liang, Tie Tianying found it no great trouble at all to raise a network of his own and infiltrate both north and south.

Having served for years as an official in the Ministry of Justice, he had grown accustomed to every kind of ugliness, and had long since grown weary of the Wu Dynasty’s officialdom. With the realm thrown into chaos and having left the Six Doors of the law behind, he had no wish to submit again to the court’s control — but toward Li Pin, he still held genuine respect.

After Zhou Pei and Jun Wu came to power, they revived the Secret Investigation Bureau, placing it under Cheng Zhouhai, Wenren Buer and others, tasked with gathering all manner of intelligence from the north. Meanwhile, thanks to Tie Tianying’s presence at its helm, the Grand Canal Gang standing behind Li Pin had become an equally well-informed source of intelligence.

Though over these years the shadow of despair had never left Li Pin’s heart, in the contest over learning and the great Way, beyond that struggle, the reputation of having once opposed Ning Yi had brought him more than mere renown. Standing behind Li Pin, in fact, was the wholehearted backing of several great clans. The last great Confucian scholar to have founded the Secret Investigation Bureau, Zuo Duanyou, before his death, had had many dealings with Li Pin, and had openly and unequivocally lent his support to him. Though the old man had, before he died, already begun to understand Ning Yi in his own way, he had nonetheless converted a lifetime of reputation into nourishment and passed it on to a younger man he deemed worth cultivating. Without this backing, however legendary the story of Li Pin’s break with Ning Yi might sound, he would already have been devoured whole by the entire Confucian establishment by now.

Of course, against the absolute strength of the Black Banner Army, none of this influence amounted to very much at all.

“The people you associate with aren’t good ones!” Tie Tianying had already come striding into the courtyard. “The moment he stepped out of here, he was in the street running his mouth, badmouthing you! I couldn’t stand it, so I taught him a lesson!”

“A common enough occurrence, Chief Tie — no need to make such a fuss.” Li Pin greeted him with a smile.

“What was he here for?” “Off to the southwest to kill that demon Ning — there’ve been a great many righteous men like him lately.” Li Pin smiled. “You’ve had a hard journey coming and going. How are things in the Central Plains?”

“Not even a cup of tea offered, and already you’re asking me for a report? Is this how you treat a friend, Li Dexin?”

“My mistake, my mistake — sit down, Chief Tie, and have some tea.” Li Pin readily complied, apologizing repeatedly.

Tie Tianying sat down, took up his tea, and his expression slowly turned serious. “The Hungry Ghosts are running wild.”

Having said this, he took a sip of tea. “Gongzhou, Huazhou, Caozhou — places like that have all been turned upside down. It wasn’t this bad in spring; only after the spring planting did Wang Shitong send the Hungry Ghosts on the offensive. Wherever they pass, towns go up in flames, fine farmland is destroyed, nearby grain stores are eaten bare, and any surviving people are inevitably swept up into the Hungry Ghost ranks themselves. Great numbers of starving refugees scattered every which way, and at one point it even reached as far as Bian Liang… but Liu Yu has no surplus grain for disaster relief, and so these people simply turn into Hungry Ghosts themselves in turn.”

Li Pin opened his mouth. “What about the Great Qi… army? Have they been massacring the starving?”

Tie Tianying shook his head, lowering his voice. “It’s not even that kind of situation anymore. Troops came out of Gongzhou and elsewhere; Wang Shitong sent starving people out to charge into battle, every one of them with empty stomachs, no possessions to speak of, barely a weapon to carry… Last year up north of the river, the Hungry Ghost army was scattered by Tian Hu’s forces, dragging along their families, and they broke at the first contact. But this year… facing down the charging Great Qi army, you know what happens, Dexin… the bastards don’t fear death.”

Tie Tianying paused. “Damn it all — they have nothing… nothing except no fear of death.”

“So…” Li Pin’s mouth had gone dry; his mind was already beginning to picture what came next.

“So five thousand of them charge straight at fifty thousand, and then… they get eaten…”

Li Pin had once traveled among these refugees himself. Most of the time, these people were silent and meek, not daring to resist even when being slaughtered, simply falling and dying where they fell. And yet he also understood that, under certain extreme circumstances, these same people could undergo some transformation, driven by despair and hunger past the point of reason, capable of any manner of madness.

“Last year, north of the river, Wang Shitong wanted to move south. Everyone was attacking him then, and all he wanted was to run. Now, he’s probably realized there’s nowhere left to run. Judging from how the Hungry Ghosts have been positioned lately, he wants… to spread out first.” Tie Tianying lifted both hands, making a complicated, hard-to-describe outward-pushing gesture. “This whole business has only just begun.”

“Spread out… spread out how…”

“Turn everyone into Hungry Ghosts.” Tie Tianying raised his teacup and drank a large mouthful with a loud gulp, then repeated himself. “It’s only just begun… this year is going to be a hard one.”

The sunlight was bright, and an indescribable silence settled over the courtyard. Here in peaceful Lin’an, it was hard to imagine the true state of the Central Plains, and yet imagine it they could only try to do. Li Pin fell silent, and after a while, clenched his fist and struck it down hard against the stone table, then struck it again. His lips pressed tight together, his eyes flickering with fierce emotion. Tie Tianying pressed his own lips together too, then said, “There’s something else — the Black Banner in Bian Liang has been making some strange moves.”

“What?”

“Their dealings have always been kept tightly secret, and I haven’t dug too deeply, but from what I’m hearing… Black Banner people have arrived, and they may be up to something.” Tie Tianying thought it over. “It could be something major. My gut feeling about this is very bad.”

Tie Tianying, a veteran chief constable of many years in the Ministry of Justice, had sharp instincts. The Black Banner naturally had its own people in Bian Liang; ever since the northwest incident, Tie Tianying no longer confronted the Black Banner directly, but he could still pick up on faint traces beneath the surface. His words now were vague. Li Pin shook his head. “Have they come because of the Hungry Ghosts? Ning Yi has been in Tian Hu’s territory — he must have had some contact with Wang Shitong.”

Then he added, “What else would they be going to Bian Liang for… to kill another emperor?”

Whenever he spoke of Ning Yi’s affairs, a smile rarely came easily to him; now too he only gave a faint, wry laugh — but as the words left his mouth, something suddenly occurred to him, and that smile slowly froze on his face. Tie Tianying, in the middle of drinking his tea, glanced over and immediately sensed what the other man was thinking too. Silence fell over the courtyard. After a long while, Li Pin’s voice broke it. “It couldn’t be, could it?”

“…Dexin, didn’t you just say a moment ago that many people have been heading southwest lately?”

“Is there some connection here?”

“I don’t know.” Tie Tianying spread his hands, his own gaze somewhat lost, his mind still trying to piece these things together.

Li Pin had already risen to his feet. “I’m going to request an audience with Her Highness the Princess Imperial.”

Not long after, he learned of the just-arrived news that Zongfu and Zongbi intended to invade the south.

A vast calamity had already begun to brew — Wang Shitong’s Hungry Ghosts were about to run rampant through the Central Plains, and everyone had assumed this to be the greatest trouble of all. Yet certain signs had already sounded the alarm bell for the entire realm. This was merely the prelude to a coming great upheaval; deep beneath the surface, two rivals separated by a thousand miles had, without any coordination between them, already begun to make their first moves.

That very night, Tie Tianying left the city in a hurry, heading north. Three days later, he reached Bian Liang, which still seemed, on the surface, entirely calm. The former chief constable of the Six Doors began secretly searching for traces of Black Banner activity — but just as in that city years before, his moves once again came a step too slow.

Three more days later, a chaos that would shake the entire realm erupted within the city of Bian Liang.

No one had ever expected that the Black Banner Army, having retreated in defeat from the northwest years before and lain low in silent dormancy in the southwest for three years, would suddenly spring into action so soon after Ning Yi’s return. It delivered a stinging slap across the face of the already invincible Jin state.

And then pinned the blame squarely on the Wu Dynasty’s head…