“Blood soaks the Central Plains, ah…”

The third month.

In the Chengdu Plain, south of Jiading, in a small village called Chen Village, the earthworks and construction that had begun the previous winter had already taken on a certain scale.

In a courtyard on the east side of the village, where a two-story building had been completed ahead of schedule, Ning Yi sat in a room on the first floor, working his way through the reports that had come in the day before. Across from him, at the writing desk, Juan’er was busy sorting and filing them one by one.

Though tucked away in the south, this seemingly out-of-the-way village had, for the moment, become one of the best-informed places in the entire realm. News of every kind—from the Jin state, the Central Plains, the Wu dynasty—arrived here every day. Urgent reports tended to be brief, while follow-up updates came with more detail.

The three major battles currently unfolding across the Central Plains were, at present, the focus of close attention. Of course, the siege of Daming Prefecture had already dragged on for some time, and the Battle of Xuzhou was still in its early stalemate, so there wasn’t a great deal of news on those fronts yet. The situation in the land of Jin, however, was truly changing several times a day—the officials responsible there compiled their intelligence reports every three days and sent them over by courier. That day, upon reading news of the internal strife breaking out under Lin Zongwu’s command, Ning Yi frowned, then tossed the report aside.

“What a waste of good resources!” he muttered under his breath.

Ever since the Huaxia Army had settled in the southwest, efforts to open trade routes had, from the very start, been pushing toward the land of Jin as well. Later, after Tian Hu was killed and Tian Shi, Lou Shuwan, and others rose to power there, the Huaxia Army had given priority in supplying many of its more advanced crossbows, cannons, and mechanical devices and principles to that side. Combined with Tian Hu’s decade of groundwork, the resources in the land of Jin had actually become quite substantial.

The fracturing of the land of Jin after Tian Shi’s death was, in effect, a renewed scramble for and redistribution of these very resources. Even toward someone like Lin Zongwu, with whom there had been past friction, Lou Shuwan and even the Huaxia Army side had put in considerable effort to help him rise to power—even sacrificing some of the benefits they themselves could have claimed. And now this fat fool hadn’t even warmed his seat before getting slapped down, which made Ning Yi feel that even the mere mention of his name was unlucky.

“What is it?” Juan’er leaned over to look.

“I’d rather help a dog than help him!” Ning Yi tapped on the report, his mouth twisted in displeasure. Juan’er laughed at that. Having managed the affairs of the Huaxia Army for so long now, buried in duties and growing ever more authoritative, it was only in the presence of a few family members, alone together, that anyone got to see him behave with such unguarded ease.

Of course, it was also possible he did it on purpose.

After the few reports from the land of Jin, there was also news from the south. Toward the Huainan region, Han Shizhong’s army had already begun taking in the refugees streaming down steadily from the north—the remnants of what had once been the “starving mob” that Wang Shitong had led thousands of li southward. Of course, more likely still, most of them were simply refugees from the Central Plains, swept along after losing everything—and after such a long ordeal, their numbers had, in fact, dwindled considerably.

The “starving mob”—this disaster, which had lasted over a year and touched the lives of millions across the Central Plains—had finally come to an end. The number of survivors was estimated at somewhere between fifty and a hundred thousand. And that number was still steadily declining. Because their total numbers had already dropped so sharply, the southern authorities, acting under Crown Prince Junwu’s instructions, had launched an effort to rescue and take in these refugees, now starved down to skin and bone.

What gave Ning Yi some comfort was that Junwu had not blindly allowed these people to simply flow into southern society, but had instead ordered the officials and military to carry out centralized care and treatment—both to guard against the spread of disease, and to prevent these refugees, who had lost everything and, in many cases, had resorted to cannibalism, from dealing a massive shock to society south of the Yangtze.

One could well imagine that if these unfortunate souls were thrown carelessly into ordinary society, having experienced the total collapse of moral order and lost everything they had, there was no telling what they might do just to get a mouthful of food. And having been through the trial of plunder and slaughter, it was inevitable that, in the short term, they would find it far harder than other refugees to reintegrate into society, to join small workshops or settle quietly into other kinds of work.

This was simply a fact—it had nothing to do with sympathy or the lack of it.

Regarding Wang Shitong’s dying request, Fang Chengye had appended it to this batch of reports as well, sending it along together with the rest.

On the matter of Wang Shitong, Fang Chengye offered a self-criticism. In the first half of the previous year, he should have mobilized his forces to kill the man. There were two reasons he had not: first, he had felt a certain sympathy for Wang Shitong, which had weakened his resolve to act; second, Wang Shitong himself was extremely clever—though his overall goals were reckless, his control over the starving mob’s internal affairs, and over those immediately around him, had always been tight. Together, these two factors meant that Fang Chengye had, in the end, never found a good enough opportunity to strike.

By the latter half of the year, the Jurchens had already swept south, and by then the Central Plains had already been reduced to ruin and suffering. The Huaxia Army’s frontline personnel judged that the starving mob might still serve some purpose in slowing down Zongbi’s forces, and so the plan to assassinate Wang Shitong—already a low-probability venture—was shelved for the time being.

Looking back from the present, if Fang Chengye had mobilized his frontline personnel in the first half of the previous year and spared no cost to kill Wang Shitong, that might well have been the better choice.

A million lives, in the end, occupied surprisingly little space in the intelligence reports. Ning Yi read it over twice and sighed. In truth, if he could really have foreseen how everything would unfold, killing Wang Shitong and scattering the starving mob back at Zezhou would have been the smoother path for him to take. One of the preconditions for Fang Chengye’s failure to act on his plan was, in fact, that Wang Shitong himself was no ordinary man—and once the million-strong starving mob had fully formed, the odds of successfully assassinating him from within had, after all, always been too low.

“File the matter of the starving mob away in the archives. Maybe someone down the line can draw a lesson from it.”

Juan’er quietly set the report aside.

The matter of the starving mob was now closed; what had come through could only be considered a summary. After this report came various pieces of news from around the realm—some potentially valuable, some merely idle gossip. The situation in Lin’an, the news most in vogue across the city’s brothels and teahouses, made up one batch, and the matter of Long Qifei was among them. Ning Yi glanced it over and tossed it aside, bringing his first task of the morning to a close.

Next came a meeting concerning the public security system.

Ever since the army had marched out and occupied the Chengdu Plain the previous year, the population under Huaxia Army rule had grown by well over a million. Governing so vast a territory required more than just a few tens of thousands of capable soldiers. During the years spent in the three counties of Hedeng, some administrative officials had been trained up, but in the end, there simply weren’t enough of them to go around.

Under the old Wu dynasty—or indeed within the entire Confucian system—local governance had always operated on the principle that imperial authority did not extend below the county level, a system well suited to the political resources available to a feudal society. But for the Huaxia Army, leaving local affairs entirely in the hands of the local gentry was no longer a wise approach, precisely because the Huaxia Army’s platform incorporated elements of democratic thought, emphasizing popular rights and popular wisdom. At the same time, though, the approach of “toppling the local tyrants and dividing up the land” was equally unsuited to the present circumstances.

In later ages, after a century of humiliation, supported by a rigorous body of theory and program in the Marxist-Leninist tradition, this kind of thoroughgoing transformation had eventually settled into a relatively stable framework. But here and now, the Wu dynasty had enjoyed two hundred years of prosperity and only a decade of humiliation—overly radical methods could easily spiral into an unstoppable frenzy, and even if it didn’t end up following in Fang La’s footsteps, it was unlikely to produce good results in practice. This was something Ning Yi had always been determined to avoid.

At present, the Huaxia Army’s articulation of the idea of “Huaxia” called on people to reform and strengthen themselves, to possess and defend their own rights—but for the moment, this was hard for the common people at the grassroots level to grasp deeply. After all, for the past thousand years and more, it had been deeply ingrained that scholars bore all social responsibility while the toiling masses simply put their heads down and worked—that was the accepted division of labor. One could use military law to make an army “strengthen itself,” but there was no way to force the people to awaken on command. And so, while the idea of “Huaxia” could stir people’s hearts in a desperate time like the Battle of Xiaocang River, it was ill-suited to becoming the central guiding principle for everything in a now-peaceful southwest.

So then, in the southwest at this moment, what could actually serve as the central guiding principle? Ning Yi still chose the spirit of contract.

Retired or wounded veterans were being assigned to villages across the region to serve as representatives of the Huaxia Army, checking the power of local gentry. Basic principles of human rights and law, already put into practice in the three counties of Hedeng, were being written up as simple regulations, to be overseen and enforced by these veterans. Even if this meant enforcement was somewhat mechanical, it served to curb abuses by the wealthy and powerful in various localities, gradually winning over popular support in these areas as well.

And in order to keep the local gentry from corrupting these veterans too quickly, ongoing ideological work was absolutely essential. This model, in fact, bore a certain resemblance to the early American system of local sheriffs.

In practical terms, the Huaxia Army’s current situation had always, in effect, been that of a military government sustained by modern military ideals—amid the Jurchen threat and the corruption of the Wu dynasty, it had, for a certain period, maintained its strength and efficiency through combat record and military discipline. But once that efficiency inevitably began to decline—once, in effect, an entire generation of the Huaxia Army had unavoidably cycled back into ordinary civilian life—if the principles Ning Yi had laid down, whether democracy, human rights, feudalism, or capital, failed to take concrete root, then the Huaxia Army as a whole would also, inevitably, be headed toward disintegration.

Up to now, the two things Ning Yi had invested the most effort in were the spirit of contract and basic human rights. Honoring contracts, respecting rights, doing business—these were, in truth, also laying the groundwork for the first stages of an industrial revolution, even of capitalism. Because regardless of whether any other “ism” ever took shape, the budding stirrings of an industrial revolution driven by natural philosophy were, to Ning Yi, a genuinely tangible and attainable future.

And in the shorter term ahead, getting this public security system running smoothly and solidly, and thoroughly completing control over the Chengdu Plain, carried yet another layer of practical significance. The Huaxia Army had had roughly sixty thousand troops back in the three counties of Hedeng; now, with nearly ten thousand sent off to Xuzhou, just over fifty thousand remained—even accounting for a certain number of militia, that was only barely enough to secure control over the Chengdu Plain. Given the situation with the Jurchens sweeping south, if there was ever going to be real action taken in the future, Ning Yi would need to free up as many fresh reserve troops as possible from what he had, and as quickly as he could.

The security resources drawn from among the veterans were, relatively speaking, sufficient. With this arrival of spring, the one hundred ninety-eight literacy-level instructors that Hedeng had been training up were also already being dispersed across the Chengdu Plain, running rotating classes on a set schedule to teach basic literacy and arithmetic.

Medical resources from within the army had already been distributed out into the field since the previous year. At the same time, the Huaxia Army’s commercial division had, since last year, been actively reaching out to local merchants, encouraging, connecting, and supporting them—based near Liangshan, the Huaxia Army’s past trading activities had already brought it into contact with quite a number of people. The truly troublesome issue at present was the tense situation on the periphery of the Chengdu Plain, but as the Jurchen threat grew more severe and the Huaxia Army issued its ceasefire manifesto, by the third month, that peripheral tension had, in fact, already begun to ease, and commercial activity across the Chengdu Plain was gradually picking back up.

All these various matters had put Ning Yi back into a state of nonstop activity—afternoons, evenings, listening to all sorts of reports, holding meetings, receiving people who needed to be received… By the time he returned home at night, the children were usually already asleep, and the courtyard, too, was no longer so lively. It was at such times that seeing his wives felt quiet and peaceful—sometimes he would sit with Yun Zhu beneath the eaves, telling her the news that had come from Lin’an…

“Ah, apparently the reigning courtesan of the moment there now goes by Shi Daidai—some woman from the Western Regions… tsk, the world really is going downhill, such a careless choice of name…”

Sometimes he would arrange with Tan’er, Xiao Chan, and the others to cook up a bowl of noodles as a late-night snack together. Even though it was already late, he did the cooking himself, and yet never felt particularly tired for it.

Sometimes he’d send for Jin’er to come rub his head; sometimes he’d tease Hongti, or get teased by Xigua in turn… these were the most relaxed moments of his day.

Though, in truth, there weren’t so many of them.

The southwest was peaceful for now, but sometimes, waking deep in the night from a dream, what still filled his nostrils was the smell of gunpowder smoke from that dream.

“What’s wrong?” His lightly sleeping wife would sometimes wake too.

“Nothing… you didn’t turn into a magic trick, and I didn’t finish building the house.”

There was a certain regret in these words, and yet, for the two of them, it was also a very warm memory. His wife would then bring up the children.

“…Once the fighting’s over, let them go build it.”

The conversation would gradually shift elsewhere. As Ning Yi gazed out at the moonlight through the window, the smell of gunpowder smoke had still not quite faded…

…

On the northern bank of the Yellow River, amid a fine, drizzling rain, the dense clash of weapons rang out together—a battle was underway.

Arrows filled the air, horses let out long whinnies, shields and spear formations crashed together. The believer-army, yellow cloths bound around their arms, charged into the enemy’s ranks ahead.

“Waaah—!” At the leading edge of the battlefield, a charging figure, drenched head to toe in blood like some blood-soaked Buddha, let out a thunderous, furious roar and crashed into the crowd ahead, a blade in each hand, hacking his way straight toward the enemy commander’s banner. These Han soldiers who had surrendered to the Jurchens had their nerve utterly broken by this blood-soaked giant; they turned and fled. The giant, cutting through their feeble resistance, nearly carved out a path of blood all on his own, sending the slower soldiers rolling helplessly across the ground with every blow.

In this chance encounter, the surrendered troops’ odds had never been high to begin with. One flank of their vanguard was scattered, and defeat quickly became evident. The general beneath the command banner spurred his horse to flee, and the blood-soaked giant surged after him through the crowd, moving faster than a galloping horse.

Amid the curtain of rain, man on foot and man on horseback closed the distance across the chaotic battlefield, one behind the other. The general on horseback turned and loosed an arrow behind him; the figure casually swatted it aside, and the arrow spun off and vanished. Seeing his pursuer draw ever closer, the general’s courage broke entirely, and he cried out at the top of his voice: “I surrender, spare me…”

But the figure came roaring on regardless.

This was the greatest man under heaven—Lin Zongwu.

That massive frame slammed into the horse from the side. There came a thunderous crash, water splashing in every direction, as the warhorse was sent flying bodily through the air by the sheer force of the blow, the general atop it thrown down and sent tumbling through the mud along with it. Dazed and disoriented, the general hadn’t even managed to get back up when Lin Zongwu reached him, seized him by the neck, and with one violent motion, flung him into the air.

The man’s body, well over a hundred jin, flew through the air like a cannonball, slamming into a small squad of fleeing soldiers; by the time it hit the ground, it was twisted beyond recognition. Lin Zongwu charged forward, snatched up a steel blade, and hacked and slashed wildly, leading his men in pursuit, cutting the enemy down as they went…

This small victory and massacre gave a slight boost to morale. The believers picked the battlefield clean and, by the time they returned to their mountain stronghold more than ten li away, the sky had already begun to darken. The stronghold was full of soldiers and their families, all devoted to the Great Brightness Cult; the army’s core members had already begun spreading word of that day’s victory. Lin Zongwu returned to his quarters, washed up, and changed into fresh clothes. Night fell, the rain had stopped, and he left his tent, walking through the stronghold with a smile on his face. But by the time he reached the darkness at its outer edge, that smile faded away.

He walked on into the shadows.

Despite his massive size, as the greatest martial artist under heaven, the rugged mountain terrain posed no obstacle to him, and there was, for him, nowhere in these mountains that could truly be called dangerous. During this time, Lin Zongwu had grown accustomed to standing silently in the darkness, watching over this stronghold, watching over these followers of his.

In a small clearing behind the stronghold, some of the faithful were practicing martial arts, while nearby, a few children babbled and practiced alongside them.

At some point, Lin Zongwu made his way back into the stronghold. He emerged from a dark corner and appeared before a small child who was swinging a wooden stick around; the child jumped, startled.

“…Uncle… Tathagata?”

Once the child had gotten a clear look at him, he finally spoke this name aloud.

The child’s name was Mu Anping—the son of the madman Lin Chong. After learning the truth of things, Lin Zongwu had already made up his mind about what to do regarding the boy. But at the time, he had still been caught up in the affairs of the land of Jin, thinking about securing a place for himself in the wider world, and the matter had been delayed. Now, at last, all that busyness had passed.

Lin Zongwu reached out and patted the boy’s head, sighing.

“From today on, your name is Ping’an—Peace—and you are my disciple… I will teach you martial arts. One day, you will be the greatest under heaven.”

There was no great fanfare in this moment, no grand celebration from the crowd. Even the child before him still blinked in confusion, not quite understanding what was happening. In the stronghold, the bonfire flickered, and all manner of sounds mingled in noisy confusion, just like the world itself, dancing on in the rain…

…

Boom—

Daming Prefecture.

The trebuchets were in motion.

In the third month, the fighting still raged on. The once-sturdy city walls had already been battered full of holes, the defenses atop the walls hanging by a thread. This brutal siege was, at last, drawing toward its close…