The tournament was still in its preliminary rounds, and the number of spectators coming to watch each day wasn’t yet especially large. The burly man produced a competitor’s badge and pointed toward Ning Ji several times, after which the guards nearby let him through.
He’d been wounded just yesterday, and his bandage remained unchanged today. After a great deal of noisy chatter, it turned out he’d come to buy medicine from Ning Ji.
“…Little brother, I tried it yesterday, and this wound medicine and bandage cloth of yours are really something. Too bad a bunch of clumsy oafs knocked the medicine over during the fight. Us folks who live by the sword, we’re always getting hurt one way or another, and it’s rare to come across such good stuff, so I thought I’d come buy a bit more from you, little brother, to keep on hand… Oh, and let’s get properly introduced — I’m Huang Shan, Shan as in mountain peak. And you are, little brother?”
The burly man chattered on and on, and it was plain he hadn’t bathed — he reeked of sweat. Ning Ji glanced at his wound and saw the bandage was filthy; a flash of distaste crossed his mind — he too had been slovenly before studying medicine, only growing particular about cleanliness once he began practicing it — but he treated the man as good as dead already. “Wound medicine’s not for sale.”
“Aw, come on, little brother, don’t say that. We’re all out here making our way in the world, relying on our parents at home and our friends out here — you help me, I help you, and everyone’s better off for it. Look, I’m not asking you to give it away for free, I’ve got silver on me right here… And look at that jacket of yours, all worn and patched — you’re clearly not from some grand family. Your army must use this medicine all the time anyway — sell me some this once, I’ve got three strings of cash here, see how much that’ll get me…”
Ning Ji glanced at the money, turned his head away, then, after a moment’s hesitation, glanced back. “…Three strings isn’t a small amount. Is that just for your own use?”
“Well, no, actually… I’m also buying some for the fellow disciples who came with me — traveling the roads like this, better to be prepared. Given my wound, say, enough for twenty people’s worth — three strings, how about it?”
“…The Huaxia Army’s medicine is strictly accounted for. They only granted me this position because I have no family left. I’m not about to break the rules for three strings of cash.”
Ning Ji shook his head. The burly man was about to speak when Ning Ji spread a hand and added, “You’ll need to add more. Five strings, at least.”
“…You little rascal, that’s quite a mouthful you’re asking…”
“Then go buy it at the pharmacy outside the gate — it’s about the same price there.”
“That pharmacy…” The burly man hesitated for a moment, then said, “…Fine. Five strings, twenty people’s worth. Deal.”
Ning Ji nodded. “That’s a large quantity, not easy to hand over right away. Since you’re competing in the tournament, you’ll be staying here at least until September. Pay one string now as a deposit, and we’ll settle the rest right before you leave in early September.”
At this, the burly man froze for a moment, his eyes darting around several times before he spoke. “…This… this is dragging things out quite a bit. My brothers and I will be here for two or three months, training and sparring — bound to pick up a few injuries along the way. You’re already asking five strings, and now this? That doesn’t seem right. How about this — deliver in three days, cash and goods exchanged in full. You understand, us martial folk, we’re used to a dangerous world — some things feel safer kept close at hand, money’s just an outside thing anyway…”
His expression turned visibly anxious as he said all this, his eyes fixed on Ning Ji. Ning Ji glanced at him again, a flicker of triumph passing briefly through his eyes before he spoke, without saying too much more. “…Three-day delivery, seven strings. Otherwise, September it is.”
The man calling himself Huang Shan fell silent for a moment. “…Fine. Seven strings it is. Twenty people’s worth. I, Huang Shan, will call you a friend for this… Oh, and what’s your name, little brother?”
“Surname’s Long. Given name, Aotian.”
“All right, Brother Long, it’s settled then. Let me… give you one string now as a deposit…” This Huang Shan clearly wanted to close the deal as quickly as possible; his hand moved and slid a single string of cash directly into Ning Ji’s palm. Ning Ji tucked it away calmly, only to hear the man add, “Oh, and my chief will be coming to compete the day after tomorrow, in the afternoon. If it’s convenient, why don’t we meet up then to finish the exchange?”
“Whatever you say.”
“Brother Long, you’re a straightforward one.” The man had clearly come here on a mission, trying his best to appear shrewd throughout the negotiation, but once the deal was settled, he relaxed and started chattering idly again, casually probing “Brother Long’s” background while offering his own running commentary on the matches up on the platform, until Ning Ji grew impatient and the man finally took his leave.
Ning Ji paid him little further mind, and only once the day’s matches wrapped up did he head to the back of the arena to look up this “Huang Shan” fellow’s records. Medicine that was already badly overpriced at three strings, driven up to five, and finally settled at a wasteful seven — utterly reckless. This blunt fellow calling himself Huang Shan clearly had no experience negotiating; for anyone who actually valued money, doubling three strings to six would be the natural sticking point, and when Ning Ji had casually asked for seven, expecting him to haggle it down, the man hadn’t even tried. There was no explanation for that besides either sheer stupidity or genuine desperation.
These people coming to Chengdu for the tournament couldn’t possibly have provided very detailed information when registering, and what they had provided might well be false anyway. Ning Ji only flipped through the records to get a general sense of things, satisfied enough. That day, wearing his white coat and carrying his medicine box home, he became aware, partway along the road, that he was being followed.
Having grown up in places like Xiaocang River and the greater and lesser Liang Mountains, he hadn’t had much training in spotting a tail within a crowd. With the streets busy, it was hard to be certain, but once he reached a more secluded, empty stretch, the suspicion grew clear. The afternoon sun still hung golden in the sky; he walked on, closing his eyes and drawing a deep breath.
— Bad guys, at last…
His face betrayed no expression, though his body trembled with excitement. As he walked on, his steps grew unsteady, his left foot tripping over his right, and he went sprawling with a thud in the shade of a tree by the riverside path.
The thin man tailing him from behind, hidden at a corner of a nearby wall, watched as the little doctor with his medicine box got up from the ground, kicked several stones one by one into the river to vent his frustration, and then limped his way home. In the slanting afternoon sunlight, he confirmed to his own satisfaction that this cold-faced little doctor had no martial skill to speak of.
Having come to Chengdu entirely alone, settled into a small courtyard in a corner of the city, the arrangements surrounding Ning Ji’s cover identity had not been handled carelessly by the Huaxia Army’s internal affairs department. If anyone with an interest in the matter went asking around nearby, they’d likely piece together a story: a boy with no family left, who had bought an old courtyard house in Chengdu using his father’s military pension.
Of course, if someone did manage to dig this deep, then whoever came asking would soon find themselves face to face with whoever within the Huaxia Army was watching — a rather uncertain prospect for them. Ning Ji himself didn’t spend much time worrying about this; he only hoped the man wouldn’t go poking around too recklessly. The people responsible for security around his parents were cut from the same cloth as old Grandpa Chen the Hunchback back in the day, and lacked anything like his own tender-hearted patience.
The outward arrangements shouldn’t reveal any major flaws, and Ning Ji couldn’t guess how far this fellow intended to push things. Back at his solitary courtyard, he quickly set about clearing away any traces of his martial arts practice.
He usually went through a great many practice logs for blade strikes; it took him nearly two hours of grunting effort to clean up, after which he lit a fire and cooked himself a simple meal. During this time, the skilled tracker snuck back into the courtyard, carefully surveying its layout — Ning Ji only scared him off by carrying his rice bowl over just as the man was about to enter his bedroom.
As the sun set in the west, and Ning Ji finally sat down under the eaves outside his bedroom to slowly finish his dinner, the tracker at last climbed back over the wall and left — evidently he needed to eat as well. Ning Ji leaned over the wall to peek out for a moment, and once he was certain the man had gone and wasn’t coming back, he further concealed anything in his bedroom that might expose his identity, then changed into clothing suited for nighttime movement, slung a small bundle containing his waterproof gear over his shoulder, and set off to meet Hou Yuanyong, as they had arranged earlier that day.
Things over at Qu Longjun and Wen Shoubin’s place were entering a critical stage, and he had no intention of missing it.
Leaving the small courtyard, the city near and far sank into a haze of shimmering lights, and Ning Ji’s spirits soared. This was what life was all about — he’d once considered signing up for the tournament ring, charging in to sweep away all comers, but nothing about that could possibly match the thrill of today: uncovering the schemes of a bunch of scoundrels, being targeted by another gang of villains, and then, once their plots finally came to a head and they made their move, striking them down himself and standing there in the darkness, hands on hips, laughing triumphantly in their faces — just thinking about it made him happy.
Though on the surface this sort of thing might not seem entirely aboveboard, and carried a bit of a sneaky, underhanded flavor, still — as his father had taught him — when dealing with scum like this, there was no need to observe any code of honor among fighters.
“Hahahahaha—”
He put his hands on his hips and practiced the pose in an empty alley, then glanced left and right and felt a twinge of embarrassment. He resolved to find time to practice it further, some other day.
The meeting place they’d agreed on sat between his own courtyard and Wen Shoubin’s estate. Once he met up with Hou Yuanyong, the man relayed the basic intelligence on “Lord Shan,” Guan Shanhai, going over his connections and associates as well, and roughly describing several information brokers within the city whose backgrounds were known. This gathered intelligence wasn’t allowed to leave the room, so Ning Ji could only take it all in and commit it to memory on the spot — fortunately, the man’s methods weren’t especially brutal, and Ning Ji only needed to strike once, when Qu Longjun formally made her move.
On the other hand, these intelligence division people were all sharp operators. Even though he’d gone through Hou Yuanyong privately, the man was bound to quietly dig into Guan Shanhai down to the roots regardless of whether he reported it upward or not. That was fine, though — Guan Shanhai could be his to handle; Ning Ji only needed… Qu… only needed to deal with the scoundrels on Wen Shoubin’s side. With this many targets to go around, sharing the fun a little was only fair, sooner or later.
“Oh, right, Brother Yong.” Having gone over the intelligence, and recalling Huang Shan and the man who’d tailed him earlier that day, Ning Ji brought it up casually in conversation with Hou Yuanyong. “There’ve been a lot of people coming into the city with bad intentions lately, haven’t there?”
“Plenty of targets, more than we can keep watch on. The most troublesome part, Xiao Ji, is that their thinking keeps shifting all the time.” Hou Yuanyong said, frowning. “These outsiders come in, and at first most of them just want to look around. Halfway through, they start probing, and if they really find some weakness to exploit, they’ll want to act on it. If there’s any chance of tearing our Huaxia Army apart from within, they’ll take it — but we can’t go around killing people just because of that possibility. So for now it’s all outward relaxation, inward vigilance — guarding against thieves every single day.”
He paused, then shook his head. “There’s no way around it. What the higher-ups say makes sense — if we’ve taken on this much territory and don’t have the ability to hold it, we’re doomed sooner or later anyway. Whatever hurdles are coming, we’ll just have to get through them one by one.”
Ning Ji nodded. “With this tournament bringing in so many greenwood types — in the past, plenty of them would’ve come here to try assassination or sabotage. There must be some of that going on this time too, right?”
Hearing this question, Hou Yuanyong actually laughed. “Not so much of that these days, actually. Back when we were still rebels, most of the assassins who came after us were disorganized hotheads, and we already had ways of dealing with that. The method — you already know it — is that whenever greenwood folk try to band together in numbers, they never manage to get anywhere…”
Ning Ji naturally knew the method Hou Yuanyong was referring to: whenever a group of hot-blooded greenwood fighters wanted to band together for an assassination attempt, the Huaxia Army’s planted informants nearby would disguise themselves as fellow travelers and join the group. Thanks to the Bamboo Record’s influence, the Huaxia Army’s surveillance of the greenwood world had always run deep — a gathering of several dozen or even a hundred sworn brothers, however grand, trying to sneak in and assassinate their target, only needed a single grain of sand mixed in, and the rest of the group would be swept up in one clean sweep.
There were even several senior “demon-hunting heroes” within the greenwood, celebrated for opposing the “Black” faction, who were, in reality, undercover Huaxia Army plants. This had been exposed twice over the years, and eventually, any group organizing together to assassinate the “demon king” in hopes of making a name for themselves simply couldn’t come together anymore. Later, all manner of wild rumors began circulating, and the greenwood’s grand crusade against the “demon” fell into a thoroughly awkward state.
Amid all this, even Lin Zongwu — supposedly “number one under heaven” and known to hold a deep grudge against the Huaxia Army — had, according to rumor, been suspected of being a mole already recruited by Ning Yi.
Lin Zongwu himself had no way of explaining this away. Privately, he might well suspect the Bamboo Record of deliberately smearing him, but there was no way to say so out loud — anything he said would only make him look worse. On the surface, of course, he simply refused to dignify it with a response. He’d spent these past years roaming the Central Plains with a single disciple, and no one dared actually ask him the question to his face — or if anyone had, they’d certainly already met their end.
“…These past few years, the Bamboo Record’s public messaging has been so thorough that even if Lin Zongwu himself wanted to come assassinate someone, I doubt anyone would answer the call. The rest of the greenwood’s rabble stand even less of a chance.” On the dim street, Hou Yuanyong laughed as he shared this piece of insider gossip — one that could get him beaten to death by the number one fighter under heaven if word ever got out. “But this time in Chengdu, some other forces have joined the mix, and those are a bit trickier.”
“What kind?”
“The great clans.” Hou Yuanyong said. “In the past, even though the Huaxia Army stood against the whole realm, we held our ground in one corner. The Wu Dynasty would send armies to wipe us out, greenwood fighters would come for fame through assassination — but the great clans always preferred doing business with us, taking their cut, and then watching from the sidelines when trouble came our way. But after the great southwestern battle, things are different now. Dai Mengwei and Wu Qimei have already declared themselves our mortal enemies, and plenty of other powers have sent their people to Chengdu as well.”
“Just like I said before, they themselves aren’t even sure what they’re planning to do here this time. Look first, probe second — and if they genuinely find an opening, or if a group of them gets worked up enough together to actually strike, that’s not impossible either. These great clans all keep their own house guards and private retainers — the greenwood rabble can’t be relied on, but these people can. As far as we know, quite a few house guards and combat instructors from major clans have signed up for this tournament. Next month, plenty of our own top fighters will step into the ring one after another and beat them down — the point is to make it clear we’re not to be trifled with, so that they’ll think twice and hold back a little, out of fear of what they might lose.”
“Hmph!” A flash of hostility crossed Ning Ji’s brow. “If they’ve got the nerve, let them make their move — best if we just kill them all!”
“Ah, I’d like that too.” Hou Yuanyong patted Ning Ji on the shoulder. “But the higher-ups have said, they came in whole and in one piece, and as far as possible, we should let them leave whole and in one piece too — that way there’s still business to be done down the road. At most, we make an example of a few, to scare the rest — if we go too far, that counts as a failure on our part too. If it bothers you, Xiao Ji, at most you can go sign up for the ring yourself — but you can’t kill them either.”
“…No fun at all.” Ning Ji shook his head, then gave Hou Yuanyong a smile. “I’ll just stick to being a doctor, then. Thanks, Brother Yong. I’ll head off now.”
“Don’t make too much of a mess, all right?” Hou Yuanyong laughed and waved him off.
After this conversation with Hou Yuanyong, Ning Ji had a rough sense that this Huang Shan fellow was most likely some great clan’s house guard or family retainer — while he might well have hostile intentions toward his own side, for now the situation probably remained uncertain. Bad people wanted to come make trouble, and his own side hadn’t done anything wrong, and yet they still had to worry about what these bad people might be thinking — couldn’t even kill too many of them. His father had once explained the reasoning behind all this, the same reasoning Hou Yuanyong had just echoed, no doubt passed down originally from his father as well — but no matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t bring himself to actually like any of it.
The world of adults left no room to really let loose. There was no fun in it at all. So instead he made his way, with more enthusiasm, toward the more interesting business of… those scoundrels Wen Shoubin and his lot.
It was still relatively early, and he hadn’t gone for his swim that evening; he made his way straight to the vicinity of that courtyard and changed into his night-operation clothes. Climbing in over the side of the courtyard wall, he found only a single figure in the rear courtyard by the small river — the white-robed Qu Longjun, standing outside a lakeside pavilion by the riverbank, facing the night waters, apparently reciting poetry.
Inside the pavilion, an amber lantern cast a soft, gentle glow over the ground; her white skirts billowed gently in the night breeze, and beyond the river, the hazy night lights of Chengdu glimmered in the distance. Qu Longjun murmured something under her breath. This little scoundrel’s got some flair, I’ll give her that… Ning Ji quietly climbed down from the courtyard wall, hid himself behind a rockery below, and, extending a finger, flicked a toad on a nearby rock straight ahead.
The toad went flying, and, right in his line of sight, the little scoundrel let out a splash and jumped straight into the river.
Ning Ji froze.
Swimming in a dress? That doesn’t seem practical…
Take it off and swim…
That doesn’t seem right either…
His cheeks grew faintly warm.
……
Only then did real confusion set in — he had no idea how he was supposed to go about saving her.