The cultural propaganda meeting ran through the entire morning amid the curtain of rain — the first half consisting of remarks from the principal officials in charge, Yong Jinnian, Chen Xiaoxia, Shishi, and others; the latter half given over to Ning Yi.

The meeting carried real weight — some important matters had already been the subject of rumor and speculation beforehand, and this meeting made the direction of things considerably clearer. Below, the attendees kept their heads bowed, taking notes without pause.

For a long time now, the overall shape of the Huaxia Army had been formed of several massive, interlocking systems.

Tracing the causal roots of how these systems had come into being led all the way back to the very beginning of the regicide.

After Ning Yi killed the emperor and rose in rebellion, the training grounds at Qingmu Stronghold and the defection of the Wurui Camp had combined to form the earliest framework of the Huaxia Army, with its military-political system taking initial shape at Small Cangshui River. Alongside this core system, several other already-established networks had, back in those early days, served in supporting, coordinating roles:

The first was the “Zhu Trading Network” — a commercial system that Ning Yi had gradually nurtured into maturity, leveraging the resources of the Secret Investigation Bureau and the Right Chancellor’s household. From the very outset of the rebellion, this network had already encompassed intelligence, propaganda, diplomacy, and entertainment — though it might appear, on the surface, to be nothing more than a loose collection of restaurants, teahouses, and traveling caravans, the operational logic underlying it had already been refined and matured during the famine relief efforts of that earlier era.

The second was the Su clan enterprise, managed all along by Su Tan’er, built up from its foundations in the cloth trade — though the Su family had initially held only a minor position in Jiangning, this system underwent a period of significant expansion after Ning Yi entered the capital. Ning Yi’s various industrial initiatives were, in their earliest form, all situated within the framework of the Su enterprise — this included the papermaking collaboration with the Wang family, the manufacture of telescopes and hot-air balloons, and a whole line of early military-industrial development including the fire-lance and improvements to cannon technology.

The third system was the Baodao network, which had remained stationed in the Miao borderlands all along. Though the two systems maintained ongoing exchange and mutual learning, when the Huaxia Army moved south after the great battle at Small Cangshui River, it was initially the Baodao forces that served as its advance guard in the Liangshan region. Yet this army had never undergone a thorough reorganization along Huaxia Army military lines — it remained, all this time, under the direct control of Xigua, Chen Fan, and others. This wasn’t for lack of willingness to reform it; it was simply that there had genuinely never been the spare capacity to carry out a more far-reaching, modernizing overhaul of this force.

Among these three systems, the Huaxia Army’s own intelligence, propaganda, diplomatic, entertainment, and military-industrial apparatuses, though each possessed a basic framework of its own, tended to overlap substantially with the structures of the Zhu Trading Network and the Su enterprise.

Over the past decade or so, the Huaxia Army had operated under conditions of near-constant tension. After the relocation from Small Cangshui River, Ning Yi had even conducted a “de-Ning-Yi-ification” contingency exercise within the army as a risk-mitigation measure — and throughout all of this, there had simply never been the breathing room to thoroughly integrate the entire apparatus into a single unified whole. Of course, given that the population under Huaxia Army administration had, until now, never exceeded a million, the coordination and operation between the Zhu Trading Network, the Su enterprise, and the army’s own direct chain of command had always functioned reasonably well regardless.

But now, having absorbed the Chengdu Plain and crushed the Jurchen Western Route Army, the population under their control had suddenly ballooned, and even greater challenges likely lay ahead. Merging all of these separate systems into a single, highly unified structure under the banner of “Huaxia” had now become an unavoidable necessity.

The most pressing task after the great battle was the work of the aftermath, and it was in the course of this aftermath work that word had already begun to spread of significant internal reorganization to come. Of course, given how suddenly the Huaxia Army’s territory had expanded, with vacant positions everywhere waiting to be filled, even a large-scale reorganization would, for people already accustomed to working within the Huaxia Army, mean nothing more than being rewarded according to merit — leaving most people invigorated rather than fearful or apprehensive about the changes ahead.

“…As for the future — for now, it looks bright. Our territory has expanded, there are more people to govern and serve, and many of you may well find yourselves assigned to important posts going forward… But don’t forget: in ten years, we’ve only defeated the Jurchen once. Just the once. As Mencius said, one is born in hardship and dies in ease and comfort. Going forward, our task is to guard against outside enemies — those with ulterior motives — while at the same time summing up our past experiences, refining and improving upon the practices that got us here: the hardship, the discipline, the excellence. I intend to crack down hard on any tendency toward complacency.”

Amid the curtain of rain, as Ning Yi neared the end of his remarks, his expression turned grave, his gaze distinctly unfriendly. Though some in attendance had already heard this had become something of a recurring theme these past several days, hearing it delivered in person still sent a chill through the room.

“…No breaking the rules. No inflated egos. No indulging in comfort and ease. We’ve said before that this attitude needs to hold at all times, everywhere — but today, behind closed doors, I need to remind you: going forward, my heart is going to be especially hard on this. Those of you in leadership positions, or who might become leaders — the moment you make a misstep, I will come down on you harder than ever! This might not seem entirely fair, but you’re all quite skilled at reasoning things through with others — you should know well enough that the period right after a great victory is the most critical of all. The newly established Discipline Inspection Commission will be watching you closely — I’ve already mentally prepared myself to deal with a few people over this… I hope none of you here ends up being one of them…”

By the time this meeting concluded, it was already nearing lunchtime. With heavy rain outside, the dining hall had been set up in the adjacent courtyard. Ning Yi kept his dark expression and did not join the group meal, instead summoning Yong Jinnian, Shishi, and others to a private lunch meeting in a room nearby — also to discuss the reorganization work ahead — though this time, a hint of a smile finally crossed his face. “I’m not going to eat with them out there — let them stew a bit.”

After the lunch meeting concluded, Ning Yi left; some time later, someone came to summon Li Shishi. She made her way from Mingde Hall toward a side door. Amid the drifting curtain of rain stood a row of long buildings, with a small grove and open ground beyond, and within that open ground a pavilion, facing out over Moho Lake, which in the rain looked as vast as an ocean. The trees blocked any prying view; on the lake’s surface, two small boats bobbed — likely security personnel. She walked along beneath the eaves; the row of long buildings beside her housed various displays of books and antiques. The room at the very center had been converted into an office study; a light was on inside, and Ning Yi sat there, bent over his desk, reviewing documents.

Shishi entered and sat down in the guest chair to the side; tea had already been poured on the low table, with a plate of biscuits set out beside it. Shishi sat looking around the room — behind her were several more bookshelves, the books on them looking quite valuable. Since entering Chengdu, the Huaxia Army hadn’t gone out of its way to disturb the local populace, but for various reasons, it had still ended up taking over a number of such properties.

After sitting for a while, Ning Yi, having finished reviewing one document, finally spoke: “Mingde Hall’s suited for meetings, so I had this place cleared out temporarily as well — some meetings work better here, saves me from running back and forth between the two.” He looked over at Shishi and smiled. “The tea’s for you — no need to stand on ceremony.”

Shishi glanced around the room and smiled. “There’s no one around.”

“What we talked about, before Wangyuan Bridge…” Ning Yi paused with a smile. “…I don’t quite dare keep people close by, for that.”

Shishi pressed her legs together, folded her hands in her lap, and gazed quietly at Ning Yi without speaking. Ning Yi looked at her for a moment too, then set down his brush.

“Miss Shishi… how many years have we known each other now?”

“We’ve known each other since childhood.”

“That doesn’t count — I’ve forgotten everything from back then.” Ning Yi tilted his head, thinking back. “But counting from when we ran into each other again in Jiangning, it’s been nearly twenty years now…”

“Spring of the ninth year of Jinghan,” Shishi said. “That makes it nineteen years, as of this year.”

“Right, nineteen years — so much has happened in that time…” Ning Yi said. “That conversation we had before Wangyuan Bridge — I thought it over very carefully afterward, mostly on the road to Hanzhong. After the victory, I found myself thinking about a great many things, almost without meaning to… all those things from Bianliang over a decade ago, you helping with the famine relief, helping with so many other things — Shishi, you always took things so seriously, in a way that made it hard not to… feel a certain admiration for you…”

“Did you, Liheng? Ever?”

“Me, well…” Ning Yi laughed, choosing his words carefully. “…There have certainly been times when I did, yes.”

Shishi looked at him, her gaze clear. “Times when a man, caught up in lust or vanity, wanted to take me into his household as a prize?”

Ning Yi laughed at himself, and looked at her. “There’s certainly been that kind of moment too.”

Shishi folded her hands together and said nothing. Ning Yi’s smile faded. “Later I killed Zhou Zhe and carried you off with me. At Small Cangshui River, we kept quarreling with each other, and eventually you went off to Dali. Twenty years have passed, times have changed, circumstances have changed — we’re both in very complicated positions now, Shishi… There is genuine affection between us, that’s true. But there’s a lot that simply can’t be handled the way it would be in a story…”

He weighed his words carefully as he spoke, and the mood in the room grew somewhat heavy. For two people of a certain age, both holding significant positions of power, matters of the heart could no longer be treated with the simplicity of ordinary people. Ning Yi naturally had a great deal to consider — and even for Shishi, though she’d found the courage to speak her heart before Wangyuan Bridge, facing the reality of it now brought countless concerns of its own.

She listened to him speak, her eyes reddening slightly. She lowered her head, closed her eyes, curled forward slightly, seeming to sit in silence, clearly troubled. The room fell quiet for a long while. Ning Yi clasped his hands together, feeling a pang of guilt, and was about to say something to lighten the mood and smooth things over — when he heard Shishi laugh.

“…You really don’t know how to say the right thing… At a time like this, with no one else around, just the two of us… can’t you just do something?”

She said this laughing, her voice carrying a faint catch of tears. She raised her head and glanced at Ning Yi. He spread his hands and looked around the room. “Well, that’s not entirely fair to say — look around, all we’ve got here is a table.”

They both burst out laughing. After a moment, Shishi tilted her head, straightened her posture, and took a deep breath. “Liheng, I just want to ask you two things: is it that you don’t like me, that you think I’m already too old…”

“That’s not it at all…” Ning Yi said.

“Then, is it that you think I just want to marry into your family, to become some kind of noble lady…”

Ning Yi shook his head. “If that were the case, you wouldn’t have needed to fight with me all those years ago…”

Shishi looked at him; Ning Yi spread his hands. After a moment, Shishi spoke slowly. “Over a decade ago, when I first thought about leaving the Fanlou, I did think, from the very start, about marrying you. I’m not even sure whether it was because you’d make a good husband, or simply because you were so capable, so formidable in everything you did. I misjudged you more than once… When you ran the Secret Investigation Bureau in the capital, you killed no shortage of people — some genuinely vicious sorts wanted you dead too — and I honestly wasn’t sure whether you were a hero or a villain. During the famine relief efforts, I misjudged you again, and then came to think you truly were a rare kind of great hero…”

“…Then you killed the emperor, and I couldn’t make sense of it — you’d gone from a good man back to a bad one, it seemed. I fled to Dali, became a nun, and a few years later heard that you’d died — the news left me so distraught I couldn’t sit still, and I had to go find out the truth for myself. That’s when I saw a great many things, and gradually came around to agreeing with you again — you went from a bad man back to a good one…”

“But good or bad, in the end, that’s got nothing to do with feelings,” Ning Yi cut in.

Shishi ignored him. “It really has been a winding road — over a decade has passed in the blink of an eye. Looking back now, these past ten-odd years, all I’ve really done is keep trying to work out whether you were a good man or a bad one… Perhaps, at first, I thought I’d first settle that question, and then decide whether to marry you. It’s almost laughable, really — at the start, all I wanted was to find a husband, the way any fortunate courtesan hopes to eventually find somewhere to belong. If it wasn’t going to be you, it should have been someone else entirely. And yet, here we are, almost twenty years later, and it turns out my eyes have only ever really seen you…”

The corner of her mouth curved into a cool, faintly self-mocking smile.

“…Almost twenty years… Slowly, slowly, I’ve seen more and more of the world, and for some reason, the matter of marriage has always seemed to shrink smaller and smaller in comparison, always something I never quite got around to. And slowly, you too seemed to have… passed the age where such things are easily said… Sometimes I’ve thought — well, that’s fine, let it just pass by like this. Back in February, when you suddenly found the courage to say what you said — was it impulsive? Of course it was, in part. But after hesitating for so many years, I finally said it too. And these past few months, I’ve been genuinely glad for that moment of impulse…”

Shishi fell silent for a moment, picked up a biscuit, bit off a small corner, then simply held the rest in her hand, looking down at her own fingers. “Liheng, I feel like I’m already growing old — I probably won’t stay pretty for more than a few more years. Whatever fate exists between us has taken so many turns over the years — the moments we’ve missed have already been missed, and I can’t really say whose fault it was. If it had been back then, I’m not sure I could even find a reason why we’d definitely end up together — would you have married me, back in those days? I don’t know…”

Her tears began to fall. “But now… Liheng, I’ve seen countless people die — within the Huaxia Army, outside it, so many young people, dying with regrets still unresolved. Someday, you and I might die too. I’ve spent nearly twenty years watching you, and it might well go on like this from here. And now that we’re both in the positions we’re in — I don’t want to keep worrying about things anymore… I don’t want to die, when I’m truly old, still carrying regrets.”

She fell silent for a while, then shook her head. “I don’t want to say anything more about the rest…”

Outside the room, the curtain of rain still fell. Shishi looked out at it — of course there was more she could have said, but amid the emotions of nearly twenty years, such practical concerns no longer seemed to matter much. Ning Yi picked up his teacup to drink, only to find it empty; he set it back down. “In all these years, this is the first time I’ve ever seen you speak so fiercely…”

Shishi stood up, took the kettle, and refilled his cup.

Ning Yi sighed. “The Huaxia Army’s grown so large now — having the top leadership all be one family, in the future, is honestly a bit of a headache. There’s already the Zhu Trading Network, the Su enterprise — people are already joking that I’m running a harem government as it is. And you’re set to be in charge of cultural propaganda going forward…”

“You needn’t pity me, thinking that by now no one else would want me, that you don’t want me left with regrets. It’s really not so regrettable — I’ve come this far already. If you don’t like me, you don’t need to comfort me over it.”

“Who could possibly not like Li Shishi…”

“Is there a kind of liking that wants to be together — the kind that’s different from how you feel about everyone else?”

“There is.”

“Then that’s enough.”

Shishi pushed the teacup back toward him, then walked around behind him and gently kneaded his shoulders, laughing. “I know what you’re worried about. At this point, if you married me, it would bring you nothing but trouble — there’s plenty I could still do, but at this point, I’m not willing to just let it go, either. I can’t very well go sit at home embroidering at your household. Really, all it would do is stir up some minor headaches with Tan’er, Yun Zhu, Jin’er, and General Liu’s daughter. But you — a man about to become emperor — and here you are, still fretting over something like this…”

“I really would prefer you find someone with a better path ahead of you…” Ning Yi said, reaching out to take her right hand.

“Wasn’t I supposed to be the picky one? And here I’ve gone and ruined my whole life over one glance at you.”

Shishi laughed. She’d been writing a good number of scripts lately, and had discussed plenty of them with Ning Yi before. He often found it strange — his mind always seemed to be full of odd notions about “love,” always feeling as though he owed someone something. Their relationship, too, was a peculiar one — by Liheng’s own reckoning, it could hardly be called perfect. Over a decade ago, had they tried to be together, something had always seemed to be missing between them; and now, all manner of emotions — even regrets — had mixed together, and with time slipping so easily away, the reasons for finally coming together seemed, only now, to have gradually become sufficient.

And for her part, there was more still that felt, in her own eyes, complete. Her life had been one of constant displacement; though she’d been treated well once she fell into Li Yun’s hands, she had lost every member of her family since childhood. Her closeness to Yu Hezhong, to Chen Sifeng — was that not, in its own way, an attempt to hold onto something “fixed,” to find some symbolic harbor? She too longed for something whole and complete — why else would she have spent over a decade turning Ning Yi over and over in her mind? Fortunately, in the end, she’d come to the certainty that he was the only one she could choose — a little late, perhaps, but at least it was a certainty she held with complete conviction.

The fear of being rootless, adrift, had accompanied her for years on end — it was only after truly integrating herself into the Huaxia Army that this fear had eased somewhat. And now, at last, she could be certain that someday, she would be able to walk toward her final harbor with genuine peace of mind — as a member of the family of someone she truly, wholeheartedly recognized as her own. As for everything else beyond that, there really wasn’t much left to find fault with…

She wasn’t ready to share these particular feelings with Ning Yi just yet. She planned to save them for some future day, when she wanted to bring him joy.

To ease Ning Yi’s still-tangled emotions for the moment, she tried embracing him from behind. Having never done such a thing before, her body trembled slightly, and she covered it with a playful remark: “Actually… everything I learned at the Fanlou all those years ago, I’ve almost forgotten by now…”

“You might not believe me if I told you, but I happen to still be quite skilled in all of that,” Ning Yi said with a laugh, rubbing his nose, looking somewhat regretful. “Though today, unfortunately, all we’ve got is a table…”

…

Since all they had was a table, and since there was, in truth, still a great deal for the two of them to discuss, they mostly just talked for the rest of that time.

The rain grew lighter, though it hadn’t stopped entirely. The two of them shared an umbrella and made their way to the small pavilion up ahead, where Shishi told Ning Yi the story of Qu Qing, and Ning Yi sighed over how Zhuo Yongqing had nearly missed out on love. Afterward, Shishi brought up her meeting with Yu Hezhong.

“…Hezhong’s still as ordinary as ever, same as over a decade ago — not capable of great things, but not capable of great harm either… The man who came with him, this Yan Daolun fellow, is an advisor under Liu Guangshi. This time, Liu Guangshi sent envoys here, and Yan Daolun is secretly the one really running things behind the scenes. He came to see me without even bothering to use a false name — his intentions were quite plain. Naturally, I told him the Huaxia Army has its doors wide open for business, and we welcome cooperation. I expect he’ll come knocking again soon enough, with a clearer agenda in mind…”

They talked for a long while in the pavilion amid the falling rain. Ning Yi still had other appointments to keep, though, so they had to part for the time being. The following day, they met again in this same spot and talked for a long while once more, and in between, they did some other things as well. It was only by their third meeting that they finally found a place with more to offer than just a table. The way grown adults conduct themselves together tends to be dull and unremarkable, so we’ll refrain from going into further detail on that front for now…