Consciousness drifted in and out of the darkness, sometimes clear, sometimes tangled.

Vaguely, it seemed Lu Hongti had him on her back, rushing through the mountain forest.

A soft touch.

“How did you find me…”

“What do you think — how did I find your house before? I put powder on you; my little bird can track it. If you ever betray me… though this time you went awfully far…”

“If I’d known, I wouldn’t have fought so hard…”

“What?”

Firelight burned, casting yellow light over the shabby, cluttered surroundings — overhead, broken and missing roof tiles, a crumbling, peeling idol statue. Lu Hongti crouched beside him, quickly unwinding the bandage on his left hand, then took out medicine and a water-filled gourd, briskly tending to the burns on his arm, the firelight illuminating her focused profile.

“I… I need paper, brush, ink — I need to write a letter… please have it sent to Jiangning, to my family… otherwise they’ll start searching, better if they don’t…”

“And here you are still thinking about this.”

“There’s a friend, named Nie Yunzhu, living… over there’s a two-story building, she lives there with her maid, the place looks like… someone needs to check on her, make sure she’s alright…”

“Noted.”

“There are two people — two people who need to be killed, at… at a courtyard near Xinlinpu, one of them’s called Xiao Si…”

“Good people or bad people?”

“They were trying to kidnap my friend…”

“You really do have a lot going on.”

His consciousness faded again. When he woke, Lu Hongti had brought some brush and ink, his left hand already bandaged. She seemed reluctant to wake him, only helping him sit up once she saw he was conscious, placing the brush in his right hand.

“Can you still write?”

“Barely… I can manage.”

“I really underestimated you before…”

“Had to be done, that’s all… my left hand — is it ruined?”

“If you hadn’t run into me, it really would be.”

“Oh. Thanks, then…”

“What exactly did you get yourself into…”

“…Ran into a lunatic.”

“Sleep. Wait for me to get back.”

Her figure swept away.

What happened the rest of that night, he had no idea. The matters weighing on his heart had been spoken aloud, and after that, exhaustion crashed over him like a collapsing mountain, sweeping everything else away.

He didn’t wake until the next morning. His body still ached, exhausted to the point where he couldn’t seem to get up at all, birdsong twittering, morning light slanting in through a gap in the roof.

He forced himself up eventually. His chest, shoulder, and left hand had all been rebandaged, his clothes changed — the ones he’d been wearing were something salvaged from the houseboat, not much blood on them, but far too large. This was a ruined temple in the mountains. Stepping outside, Lu Hongti was practicing her forms in the woods ahead, dressed in a black skirted outfit, her sleeves flaring in the morning light — yet every strike she threw carried the iron-blooded, killing intent honed on real battlefields, a beauty blending hardness and softness, fists and palms cutting through the air with a whistling sound. This clearly wasn’t some martial-world technique — this was iron-blooded combat skill forged in actual warfare.

Morning light poured down through the woods as well.

Ning Yi sat quietly on the steps in front of the ruined temple, watching. After a while, Lu Hongti settled her stance, gathering her breath, and turned her gaze his way, studying him for a good while.

“Alright, I’ve changed my mind.”

“Hm?”

“You clearly do have use for martial arts, and your temperament is steady enough for it.”

“Ha.” Ning Yi laughed. “That’s the best news I’ve heard in days.”

“There’s a set I can teach you — won’t make you first-rate, but second-rate is achievable, enough to protect yourself. I interrogated that Xiao Si and his companion, then went and had a look along the path you came by…” She shook her head, breaking into a smile. “Gave me quite a shock.”

“A rabbit pushed too far just bites, that’s all.”

“Everything you asked has been taken care of. Your family was in quite a panic last night — that little maid of yours was jumping up and down with worry, though she held herself together well enough, didn’t cry even while panicking, just had the household servants go out looking. I slipped the note somewhere she’d see it; the moment she picked it up she burst into tears, then ran off crying to tell your wife you were safe, tripping once along the way. That girl, Nie Yunzhu, is fine too — when I went by, she was asleep.”

Ning Yi had written on the note that he’d left home for a few days due to a friend’s urgent matter; with the note delivered, Xiao Chan and the others presumably wouldn’t worry too much. As for Nie Yunzhu being safe, that was good enough — no need to ask further about what had happened to the “Xiao San” and “Xiao Si.” The two of them sat on the steps a while longer, and then Lu Hongti said, “I’ll go make you some porridge.”

It seemed Lu Hongti had lived in this ruined temple for some time before; there was a battered old pot, and she now also had a bundle of belongings with her — apparently stashed somewhere in Jiangning and brought along this time. The two of them sat in the ruined temple eating breakfast, during which Lu Hongti said, “Martial arts — once you truly learn it, there are times you can’t help but reach for it to solve problems. Once it becomes your go-to solution, a kind of violent temper creeps in without your noticing. Where we come from, there’s no other way — no choice about it. But you’re different. Unless you’re facing an enemy, it’s better not to raise your hand at all if you can help it. You’re a learned man, steady in temperament — I want you to promise me you’ll understand when it’s truly necessary to act, and when it isn’t.”

Ning Yi thought it over. “I really don’t like solving problems through personal violence. That much, I can promise you.”

Lu Hongti nodded. “Good. I’ll start teaching you shortly, then.”

Ning Yi raised his left hand. “You can teach me like this? And I’ve got no strength left in my whole body — I’m basically an invalid right now.”

Lu Hongti burst out laughing. “I’ll just teach you the basics for now — commit it to memory, or write it down on paper if you’ve got the strength for that. Either way, you won’t actually be able to start practicing until you’re back home.”

“Do I need to kowtow and formally become your disciple?”

“No need. It’s only second-rate skill I’m teaching you, after all.” Lu Hongti thought for a moment. “This afternoon, let’s get back to Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils — best if we can finish it up in the days we’ve got left.”

“Ha, sure.”

In the days that followed, the two of them settled into staying at the ruined temple.

…

In the mornings, Lu Hongti would walk him through the training methods for the second-rate technique, occasionally demonstrating a move, explaining various scenarios; in the afternoons and evenings, Ning Yi would tell her more of the story, or they’d just chat, talking about all sorts of odds and ends. The season was creeping toward the hottest stretch of summer, hot day and night, mosquitoes thick in the air; at night Lu Hongti would burn some strange leaves in the temple to drive off the mosquitoes, chasing Ning Yi around in the process, scolding him with a laugh here and there.

Put in more suggestive terms, it might have looked like some penniless young couple who’d made their home in this ruined temple — they truly had nothing much; that battered pot served for cooking rice, vegetables, and boiling water alike. Fortunately, Lu Hongti went out once the second day and came back with bowls and dishes, but beyond that and a single bundle, there was nothing else to speak of. At night, Lu Hongti would change his dressings — the one on his left hand, and the ones on his chest and shoulder that he couldn’t manage one-handed. Lu Hongti didn’t seem to think anything of it.

“I’ve seen plenty of men from the mountains. You’re not particularly good-looking — just a bit sturdier than the average scholar.” She always said this with a faintly dismissive air.

A year of training had given Ning Yi a somewhat sturdier build, though still without much muscle — naturally no match for men truly forged by battle, though he privately felt himself decently proportioned all the same. He’d wanted to ask whether she meant she’d seen just the upper half or the lower half too, but given the times, that wasn’t a joke he could risk — he’d probably get beaten for it — so he simply acknowledged, privately, her evidently extensive experience, given how flustered she always seemed whenever the topic came up.

Bandaging wounds on a battlefield, and bandaging them under circumstances like these, were, after all, somewhat different matters. Though, thinking about it for a moment, Ning Yi let the thought drop.

Not far behind the ruined temple was a mountain spring; during the day they’d fetch clear water using a gourd or bamboo tube. Lu Hongti kept a small green bird that liked a particular kind of fruit with an unusual scent; she’d grind that fruit into powder, and if sprinkled on someone, the scent would linger on them for days — otherwise, there was no way she could have found him outside the city that night.

On the third day, a thunderstorm rolled in; the little ruined temple, in the pouring rain, looked like a ship about to sink at any moment. Lu Hongti gathered some thick branches and leaves to reinforce the roof, then sat with Ning Yi in the one dry corner of the temple, chatting, listening to him tell his stories — it felt, in a way, like the last two people left in a collapsing world.

Occasionally Lu Hongti would talk to Ning Yi about the Lüliang Mountains — not in a complaining tone, but from what she said, Ning Yi could guess well enough just how hard life had been whenever the Liao army came raiding. Lu Hongti now seemingly led one faction of the Lüliang bandits, though perhaps not a very large one. Her master had also been a woman — clever, formidable — but had taken the risk of assassinating a Liao general; after succeeding, she’d been surrounded, fought until her strength gave out, and finally taken her own life rather than be captured.

This was likely why Lu Hongti was so reluctant to teach martial arts carelessly.

“My master was clever, and skilled. If her martial arts hadn’t been so strong, she probably wouldn’t have even considered the assassination — if she’d relied on strategy instead, she might still have succeeded, or if not, at least she wouldn’t have died. If my master hadn’t died, and had gone on leading us afterward, we probably could have kept more people alive… So don’t put too much faith in martial arts either. You say it’s more important to study things, to understand them clearly — that’s enough. Clever people… shouldn’t risk their own lives needlessly. Staying alive is more useful.”

Someone who’d walked the edge of life and death tended, if anything, to value life all the more. Perhaps it was also because, after her master’s death, the burden had fallen onto her shoulders, and she’d come to feel its full weight — leading even a small group took more than just martial skill. The difficulty of organizing and coordinating people was something the more perceptive one was, the more keenly one might feel it. Lu Hongti, though unlettered, was sharp by nature; her master had likely told her things like this before, so it wasn’t surprising she’d come to say them herself now.

By the seventh day, Lu Hongti had more or less finished teaching him the fundamentals of the technique, while Ning Yi still hadn’t finished telling her the story. When she voiced her complaint about it, Ning Yi said, “I want to teach you something too, actually — might be useful to you. I’d originally meant to trade it for the martial arts.”

“Hm?” Lu Hongti’s eyes lit up. “More of those strange methods of yours?”

She’d always called Ning Yi’s various pursuits sorcery and trickery, but she also knew his character well enough by now — in some respects, at least, he seemed reliable. If he was offering this up with such confidence, it was probably worth something to her. Ning Yi nodded. “Maybe partly, yes. There’s a lot of it, pretty scattered — I wasn’t entirely clear on your situation before, and I still haven’t fully worked out how to organize it into a system you could use. So, first — I do know a few martial techniques myself; you might find them worth a look.”

Lu Hongti frowned, thinking he must be joking. Ning Yi laughed. “No harm in at least looking, right? Maybe borrowing a stone from another mountain can help polish your own jade — whether it’s useful is up to you to judge. Some of it, like vital points, joint locks and the like, should be fairly systematic.”

Lu Hongti let out a breath. “…I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Still, she was used to this by now — much like all his talk of molecules and atoms and chemistry and physics and whatever other nonsense, she often had no idea what had gotten into him. That he wanted to teach her martial arts himself… well, clearly, that tracked too.