Around midnight, a light rain began falling over Zizhou, a grey mist shrouding the land.

The group inspecting the defensive works had gone up onto the city wall and, for a time, hadn’t come down. Ning Yi looked out through a window in the gate tower; in the rainy night, only a few small points of light still glowed along the city wall.

Points of light spaced every few dozen meters traced the faint outline of the city. Soldiers changing shifts, wrapped in straw raincoats, walked along the wall into the distance, gradually swallowed by the darkness of the rain, occasional fragments of voices carrying through.

Within the high walls, the city’s buildings extended hazily into the distance; the grey-tiled roofs and grey walls, the large and small courtyards visible by day, now gradually merged into one another in the darkness. For the sake of the city’s defense, no housing was originally supposed to be built within dozens of paces of the wall, but the Wu Dynasty had enjoyed over two hundred years of peace, and Zizhou, located in the southwest, had never experienced the ravages of war; being situated on a major thoroughfare with thriving commerce, residential housing had gradually encroached on all the space in sight—first the homes of the poor, later even the courtyards of the wealthy.

The coming war had already frightened off thirty percent of the city’s population; residents living near the northern wall had been given priority to evacuate, but among the large and small courtyards, scattered points of light could still be seen—whether from owners up in the night or something else, hard to say. Looking closely, some of the nearby courtyards still showed traces of belongings hastily left behind by owners who had fled in haste.

Two night watchmen carrying lanterns huddled beneath the eaves of an abandoned courtyard.

More than ten years had passed since the Jurchens’ first invasion southward. Blood, battle, life and death—scene after scene had played out in succession, but for most people in this world, life continued on ordinarily. Even with war approaching, what troubled people remained, as ever, tomorrow’s firewood, rice, oil, and salt.

Before rushing to Zizhou, Ning Yi had received the news of failure sent from Jiangnan.

Ever since the Huaxia Army fought its way out of Liangshan and into the Chengdu Plain, Jiange had always been the key point in the next phase of strategy, and efforts to win over and persuade Jiange’s defending general, Si Zhongxian, had continued the whole time.

Si Zhongxian was loyal to the Wu Dynasty, a man of wisdom who nevertheless didn’t lack benevolence and flexibility. In the past, most of the Huaxia Army’s dealings with the outside world—trading and selling weapons—had to pass through the Jiange route. For orders supplying the Wu Dynasty’s regular forces, Si Zhongxian had always given his cooperation; for the private goods that certain families, wealthy gentry, and local powers wanted, his crackdowns had been quite severe. His ability to distinguish and sort between these two types of business demonstrated that this general possessed considerable strategic vision.

The Huaxia Army’s general staff held an overall favorable impression of Si Zhongxian, which was why Ning Xi and Ning Ji too believed he was a general worth winning over. But in reality, the division between good and evil was of course never so simple—even whether Si Zhongxian was loyal to the common people of the realm or to Wu Dynasty orthodoxy was itself a matter worth debating.

In any case, in the first half of this year, it had seemed only natural that, by borrowing passage through Si Zhongxian, one could leave the Sichuan Four Circuits to attack the Jurchens—Liu Chengzong’s ten thousand troops had indeed gone to Xuzhou with Si Zhongxian’s cooperation, which aligned with the Wu Dynasty’s fundamental interests. But by the second half of the year, with the Wu Dynasty weakening, Zhou Yong dead, and the legitimate court now split in two, Si Zhongxian’s attitude had clearly begun to waver.

There was an even more complicated situation underlying this.

Si Zhongxian’s ancestral home was Xiuzhou in Zhejiang; his father, Si Wenzhong, had once served as Vice Minister of War over a decade ago, and after retiring, the whole family had lived in Pingjiang Prefecture—known in later ages as Suzhou. When the Jurchens breached the capital, Si Wenzhong took his family back to the countryside of Xiuzhou.

In July, Wanyan Xiyin ordered Jurchen forces to attack Xiuzhou; after the city fell, Si Wenzhong was brought out and granted the position of Minister of Rites, then sent to Jiange to persuade his son to surrender. At the time, the Huaxia Army’s manpower in the Jiangnan region was already thin; Ning Yi had ordered the front line to respond cautiously, investigate carefully, and act as circumstances warranted, repeating in his orders that this matter required great caution—if there was no confidence of success, the operation could even be abandoned. But the personnel on the front line ultimately decided to go ahead and attempt the rescue.

In this operation, the Huaxia Army lost five men, and the Si family also suffered casualties. When the after-action report and review came back, Ning Yi knew that the scales in the Jiange negotiations had already been tipping steadily toward the Jurchens.

At times like this, Ning Yi couldn’t help but reflect on the shortcomings in his own organizational building. In certain broad outlines, the Huaxia Army’s structure was modeled on the military of the China he remembered from his previous life, but in specific details, there were substantial differences.

Fundamentally, the main axis of the Huaxia Army’s structure derived from the management systems of a modern military—strict military law, a rigorous system of oversight from top to bottom, thorough ideological management. It was more akin to a modern American military, or a modern professional military force, rather than that original Red Army—Ning Yi found he couldn’t replicate that unwavering system of belief.

In the world Ning Yi had once lived in, modern China possessed too many things that simply couldn’t be replicated: an era of rapid Western scientific and technological development against China’s backward thinking and political system, over a hundred years of humiliation and suffering ingrained to the bone, countless people repeatedly hitting walls and searching for a way forward—only through all this had that army with such unwavering proletarian faith finally been forged.

The Wu Dynasty’s experience of humiliation was still far too little; more than a decade of setbacks was not enough to make people feel the urgency of needing to take a different path, nor enough to let different modes of thinking collide and finally produce a result—there hadn’t even been enough time for even a first stage of consensus to emerge. On the other hand, Ning Yi also couldn’t afford to abandon the industrial revolution and the seeds of capitalism he had been cultivating all along.

For these reasons, the Huaxia Army had broken with Old Bull Head; for these reasons too, the Huaxia Army in certain respects resembled more a large modern corporation. Although Ning Yi also carried out extensive propaganda promoting “Huaxia” ideals, what truly supported everything was a system and methodology of professionalism that transcended the era. After victory after victory, the army’s administrative personnel carried high morale, even a nearly prideful spirit of optimism.

Ning Yi had carried out extensive efforts to correct this mindset, but the effect was of course limited. Without a century of humiliation, without countless failures, without something like the April 12th massacre, without a persistent position of disadvantage and the unwavering conviction born from that hardship, one couldn’t cultivate that kind of deep-seated persistence and gravity. After crushing Lu Qiaoshan and easily taking most of the Chengdu Plain, some Huaxia Army soldiers had even begun to show a certain contempt toward the Jurchens.

This year’s external operations had resulted in a casualty rate higher than Ning Yi had anticipated. Under such circumstances, valor and heroic sacrifice were no longer things worth glorifying. Every ideology had its advantages and disadvantages, and every school of thought led to different directions and contradictions; what had truly troubled Ning Yi’s thinking these past years had always been the connections and turning points between these things.

How to make people understand and deeply accept the necessity of the study of investigating things and of social progress, how to bring about the sprouting of capitalism, how to set aside notions of “democracy” and “equality” even as this sprouting occurred, so that as capitalism moved toward its ruthless, profit-seeking extreme, there could still be some other, relatively gentler order to balance it…

And the matter of Si Zhongxian would also determine the direction of the entire realm’s fate.

The sage shows no favoritism, treating the people as straw dogs. It was only upon arriving in Zizhou this day that Ning Yi realized that what truly troubled and concerned him most was, after all, not entirely these great matters of the realm.

Regarding the news about Ning Ji, what he had originally worried about was that his second son, having seen the chaos of the world, might have begun to turn cruel and bloodthirsty. Ning Xi’s willingness to pass along this news had probably stemmed from that very concern. But after meeting him, the boy’s candid account made Ning Yi understand the truth of the matter.

As a martial artist, having witnessed the confusion of this world, the boy had already keenly sensed the path toward becoming strong; a wildness latent within him was growing beyond the safe boundaries his father and elder brother had built for him. He wanted to experience battle, wanted to become strong, wanted to accept an equal challenge when the other side was willing to stake their own life.

This was a mindset worth commending.

Ning Yi himself had walked this same road of bloodshed all the way here.

He was not truly reckless with his own life. From the shipyards outside Jiangning, to now, after killing the emperor, standing in direct confrontation with the Jurchens—countless brushes with death—none of it was because he was born someone who didn’t value his own life. Quite the opposite: he not only cherished his life, he cherished everything before him.

Yet countless past experiences had taught him that to truly fight to the death in this brutal world was merely the basic condition. Those without this condition would lose more often and win less. He was merely, coldly, maximizing his odds of victory in each situation, using ruthless reason to suppress fear in the face of danger—an instinct repeatedly honed through experience in his previous life. Without staking everything, he would only lose more.

Whether in an age of prosperity or an age of chaos, the fundamental nature of how this world operates has always been a competition focused on ranking. Though in practice it possesses continuity and complexity, its underlying nature never changes.

That there are those born to wealth and privilege in this world is an expression of continuity.

That doing things well in this world requires not only hard thinking and hard action, but also the right direction and the right method—this is the expression of complexity.

To the mediocre, many things in this world seem to depend on luck—so-and-so chose the right direction, so he succeeded, while their own timing and luck must have been off… But in reality, what truly determines a person’s choices is repeated, careful observation of the world and repeated, careful contemplation of its patterns.

At the top of this world, it is all clever people thinking hard, choosing the right direction, then staking their lives to draw out the result. Even in the relatively peaceful world Ning Yi had known before, nearly every successful person, capitalist, or leader displayed certain traits bordering on mental illness: perfectionism, paranoia, unwavering self-confidence, even a degree of misanthropy…

What ordinary people define as mental health is nothing more than the kind of empathy and weakness the masses extend to their pets. In times of peace, order raises the baseline for people, so that even failure doesn’t bring excessive humiliation—correspondingly, the ceiling is lowered and the paths upward become fixed. The masses sell off the “possibility” they don’t urgently need, in exchange for a comprehensible sense of security and stability. The world is strange this way—its essential nature never changes; people merely make this or that adjustment once they understand the rules.

Ning Yi understood all this clearly, which was why he had staked everything.

And now, it was his child’s turn.

Thirteen-year-old little Ning Ji wanted to choose “possibility,” to give up security and stability—this thinking wasn’t reflected in reckless self-destruction, but it would inevitably determine his choices countless times in the future when facing danger, just as he had already chosen to fight the enemy rather than be protected. Ning Yi knew he could choose to stamp out this inclination in his son right here—that option, of course, existed too.

That night, beneath the ginkgo tree at the clinic, he talked at length with Ning Ji, speaking of Zhou Tong, of Hongti’s master, of Xigua’s father, of this and that. But in the end, Ning Yi didn’t try to stamp out his son’s resolve. He simply made a three-point agreement with the boy, asking him to consider his mother back home, to study medicine until he turned sixteen—before then, to hold back a little when facing danger, and after that, he would support whatever decision Ning Ji made.

“I hope that in two years, your brother realizes that practicing martial arts won’t save China, and goes off to become a doctor or write novels instead.”

After talking with Ning Ji that night, Ning Yi later made this joke to his eldest son. But in truth, even if Ning Ji became a doctor or a writer, the dangers they would face in the future would be no less numerous. As Ning Yi’s children and family, they had faced the greatest risks from the very beginning.

Years ago, Ning Xi too had felt some restless stirring in his heart, but as the eldest son, the public opinion and atmosphere set by his parents and those around him from childhood had charted his direction, and Ning Xi had accepted that path.

Ultimately, under the guidance of Chen Tuozi and others, Ning Xi had become a relatively safe strategist behind the scenes. Though he never faced the danger and bloodshed on the front lines the way Ning Yi did—which meant his abilities weren’t as well-rounded—there would eventually be ways to make up for that. On the other hand, one day, when he faced the greatest danger, he too might pay a price for it.

Over these years, when speaking of such matters to people like Li Pin and Song Yongping, Ning Yi always appeared composed and matter-of-fact. But in truth, whenever such thoughts arose, he couldn’t help but feel a pang of anguish. If something truly happened to these children, how devastated would their mother be?

Tan’er had always been strong—perhaps she would even collapse because of it. And the ever-gentle Xiao Chan, how would she react? Even now, Ning Yi could still clearly remember, more than ten years ago when he’d first arrived, the little maidservant bouncing along beside him through the streets of Jiangning…

In a few more years, children like Wenwen and Ning Ke would probably start giving him headaches too.

No matter how much the world might turn upside down, the children would still walk their own paths, gradually growing up, slowly experiencing life’s storms. That night, Ning Yi stood on the gate tower, gazing at Zizhou in the darkness, silent for a long while.

Turning around, beyond the open ground outside Zizhou’s walls, far off on the mountains, the faintest lights still glowed from watchtowers; one construction site after another for defensive works lay crouched in the night rain…

No matter how much the world might turn upside down, the children would still walk their own paths, gradually growing up, slowly experiencing life’s storms…

At the moment the young man named Ning Ji in the southwest was making his decision to face the storm head-on, thousands of miles away elsewhere in the realm, another child had already long since been swept up by the storm, walking a path of hardship and displacement.

Mu Anping, born in the third year of Wu Jianshuo, was eight and a half this year. More than two years had passed since the night he lost his parents. Renamed Ping’an by Lin Zongwu, his head shaved, he had been making his way alone through the chaos of Jin territory for over a year now.

In September of the eleventh year of Jianshuo, Ping’an, dressed in rags, returned to Wozhou, the place where he had once lived for years, only to find that his parents’ old house was nowhere to be found. Amid the Jurchen invasion, the fragmentation of Jin territory, and the endless ravages of war, Wozhou had utterly transformed—half the city had been burned down, and its people, skeletal as beggars, eked out a living within its walls. In spring and summer, there had even been a horrific episode of people trading children to eat; by autumn, things had eased somewhat, but the pall of death still hung over the city, inside and out.

The ragged little monk searched the city for two days but couldn’t recover any memory of where his parents had once lived. His food ran out; he wept quietly in a dilapidated house within the city, slept for a full day, and then, feeling lost, wandered the streets again. At this point, he wanted to see the only person in this world he could rely on—his monk master—but his master never appeared.

Several dozen paces away on another street, Lin Zongwu, in his wide monk’s robe, was handing a small bag of coarse grain buns to a gaunt martial artist standing before him.

Not long after, the martial artist followed behind the little monk, and once they reached an empty spot, drew the blade at his side.

Ping’an turned around, tears still on his face; the flash of the blade caught his eye. The gaunt, wicked man’s steps faltered for a moment as the bag at his side suddenly burst open, some of the food inside spilling to the ground. Both the man and the child froze for a moment…

In the corner of the street, Lin Zongwu pressed his palms together and smiled.

Tigers and leopards, to hunt, must grow claws and fangs; crocodiles, to protect themselves, must grow scales; monkeys, leaving the forest, built clubs and staves…

In the wind and rain, human blood will fall; before dying, people can only strive to make themselves stronger.

Survival of the fittest, natural selection.