The evening breeze blew past, the air warm and mild. The white dress churned and billowed in the water.

Ning Ji poked his head out from behind the rockery, reaching up to scratch the back of his head.

He was in good health, in the prime of his youth, and had genuinely lived through life-and-death combat on the battlefield; a clear head and sharp reflexes were, by now, the most basic of his qualities. His mind might wander into all sorts of odd thoughts, but he’d formed a rough sense of what Qu Longjun was doing almost the instant it happened.

That this little scoundrel had grown so despondent as to throw herself into the river wasn’t particularly strange, in itself. This one carried a great deal of pent-up bitterness and stifled breath, which had clearly taken a toll on her health too, leaving her gloomy and melancholic all day, evidently with a great deal of turmoil weighing on her mind. Of course, to a fourteen-year-old boy, what people called “the enemy” ultimately amounted to nothing more than this: if their thinking wasn’t twisted, if their minds weren’t deranged, how could they possibly fail to tell right from wrong, and instead come running onto Huaxia Army territory to stir up trouble?

He’d never worked out exactly why these people ended up the way they did, and he couldn’t be bothered to think it through either. Whenever he heard that some fool of this sort had gone mad, turned on their own allies, blown themselves up, or killed themselves, he found it all perfectly reasonable.

It was only this little scoundrel suddenly dying right in front of him that left him feeling somewhat awkward.

Setting out tonight, he’d imagined there were two separate gangs of villains at play, and had even planned to strike his grand pose and laugh his triumphant “hahahaha” over them. After talking with Hou Yuanyong, he’d concluded that this Huang Shan fellow might not even turn out to be a villain after all — no matter, he’d simply set that one aside for the moment, since there was still this other gang of scoundrels about to do something wicked. And now, who would have guessed that Qu Longjun, the villainess of this particular drama, would go and jump straight into the river the moment he arrived…

If he didn’t save her now, Wen Shoubin’s whole scheme would fall apart. He’d have no choice but to capture the man early and bring in his uncles from the army to interrogate him and dig up the identities of his other “daughters” — but then the fun of it all would no longer be his to enjoy.

And if he ran over to save her, his own identity would be exposed, and Wen Shoubin would sense something was wrong; to avoid complications, he’d have no choice but to move immediately and round up all the scoundrels in the household at once… and his “hahahaha” pose, which he hadn’t even had a chance to properly practice yet, would go entirely to waste.

“…”

I see now — the heavens are conspiring against my true self, the Chosen One, Long Aotian…

He agonized over it for a moment, then walked to the water’s edge; watching the thrashing in the water grow weaker, a great many thoughts flashed through his mind, and at last he pinched his throat and cleared it.

“Help! Someone help — cough, cough — the young lady’s jumped in the water! The young lady’s thrown herself in the river! Someone help, the young lady’s drowned herself in the river—”

His voice, still cracking through puberty, strained to imitate a maidservant’s shrill cry, ringing out sharply. Immediately after, he darted swiftly away.

By the time several flustered servants had dragged Qu Longjun out of the water, she had already lost consciousness from swallowing so much of it. The rescue effort was a complete mess, but they managed, at least, to save her life. Before long, a doctor from nearby had been called in to examine her further.

While the chaos unfolded below, Ning Ji sat atop the roof of the wooden tower, his expression grave, entirely unhappy.

The Huaxia Army’s decade-plus of hardship since the rebellion began had shaped him from the moment his awareness of the world first took form; he had grown up amid exactly that same hardship. His parents and elder brother had, of course, shielded him as best they could — but what lay beyond that shield was, naturally, a reality of unimaginable cruelty.

Some childhood friend would, from a certain point on, simply stop appearing. Some uncles who’d left an impression on him as a child, he’d only realize much later that their names had come to appear on some gravestone marker. As a young child, he hadn’t yet understood the meaning of sacrifice; but as he grew older, these memories tied to sacrifice kept resurfacing from somewhere deep in time, filling him with anger — and, at the same time, hardening his resolve all the more.

He held no sympathy whatsoever for the enemy. Through more than half a year on the battlefield in the great southwestern war, he had saved lives and taken lives with equal resolve; the visible difference between the Jurchens and the southern Han people let him tell the emotion apart with perfect clarity — letting him love clearly, and hate just as clearly.

His attitude toward Qu Longjun and Wen Shoubin had originally been much the same. He could watch all their scheming and plotting from the shadows and mock it freely, because deep down he knew with absolute clarity that once the moment came to act, he could kill every one of these scoundrels without the slightest hesitation.

This should, by rights, have been something purely enjoyable for him.

Having used a roundabout method to save Qu Longjun’s life, now, calming down and thinking it over, he found himself feeling faintly uneasy.

The enemy wasn’t even resolute in her convictions — should he still kill her later, or not, once the time came? If she had some hidden circumstance behind her actions, should he take that into consideration, or not? As a boy, he had no wish to consider it at all — yet the upbringing his parents and brother had given him since childhood left something nagging at his conscience regardless. If striking down the enemy required this much delicacy of method — killing Wen Shoubin but sparing Qu Longjun — then how was that any different from just handing the whole matter over to the intelligence bureau or the ministry of internal affairs to sort out?

Saving Qu Longjun on instinct had been meant to let these villains keep acting recklessly, unaware, so that he could descend on them like fate itself at the critical moment and leave them regretting it forever. But a villain who wasn’t even a fully committed villain drained a great deal of the satisfaction he’d been imagining. He should have thought of this earlier — his head must have been muddled — if she wanted to die, he should have just let her drown. And now look — he’d gone and rescued an enemy.

Qu Longjun’s suicide attempt sat in his subconscious like a lump of filth someone had force-fed him. He sat there in the darkness atop the roof, gazing out at the sprawling lights of distant Chengdu, brooding gloomily over the whole affair. Wen Shoubin had made his connection with this “Lord Shan” character and gone off somewhere; he still hadn’t returned by now — otherwise, Ning Ji thought, he might as well just beat him up the moment he got back and hand him over to the intelligence bureau. Except that wouldn’t work either — the man had only harbored ill intent and conspired privately so far; nothing had actually been done yet, so handing him over wouldn’t result in any charges sticking.

Or maybe he should just go down and throw the woman back in the river, let her drown properly this time — she seemed halfhearted about her villainy anyway, not putting in real effort as a bad guy. And besides, since it was his own voice that had saved her, letting her drown now would just even the score — logically speaking, that reasoning held up perfectly well…

But of course, he couldn’t actually do that.

…Damn it, this has all gotten boring!

The boy sat cross-legged, occasionally running a hand over the knife at his side, occasionally gazing off at the distant lights, thoroughly vexed. By now Chengdu lay wrapped in a haze of shimmering lights, the city’s nightlife entering its most vibrant hour, countless villains going about their business somewhere within this same city. Ning Ji thought of his father, of Aunt Gua, and then of his elder brother — if only he could ask them, surely they’d have some useful perspective to offer?

Then again, maybe not — maybe they’d just think he’d thrown his principles away over some girl.

With less than a month to go before he officially turned fourteen, the boy’s troubles, wrapped in this haze of city lights, only grew more bewildering by the moment…

The warm night wind, carrying scattered points of light, drifted over the city, occasionally sweeping through some old, weathered courtyard, occasionally stirring waves through the canopies of ancient trees.

The night wind made no distinction between good people and bad; as the hour crossed from Xu into Hai, Chengdu’s nightlife was just entering its most bustling stretch — few cities in this era had much of a nightlife to speak of at all, and traveling merchants, scholars, and greenwood fighters alike, so long as they had a little money to spare, rarely passed up the chance to enjoy the city’s pleasures at this hour.

Crowds gathered in the city’s liveliest marketplaces.

Since taking Chengdu, the Huaxia Army hadn’t shut down the city’s existing pleasure houses and brothels, but with so many of their former occupants having fled at the time, this particular trade had yet to fully recover, and remained, for now, a rather overpriced luxury within the city. But with the Bamboo Record’s involvement, the small theaters, restaurants and teahouses, and all manner of night markets of every price range had all grown several notches livelier than before.

For people living rather modest lives these days, even a leisurely stroll or two through the night market already counted as a trip well worth the price of admission, while all sorts of tasty, affordable snacks left out-of-town visitors thoroughly delighted, unable to get enough.

At the very moment Qu Longjun leapt into the river, Wen Shoubin was in the eastern marketplace of the city with several scholars under “Lord Shan,” waiting for their next gathering and audience. While waiting, they naturally sampled some of the local delicacies, and went on to criticize and discuss the culture of extravagance the Huaxia Army had allowed to flourish.

“…Here in the southwest, if you consider the two-pronged approach Ning Yi has enforced within and without the Huaxia Army, it’s genuinely a scheme of the most insidious kind. As far as I know, within his own ranks, he enforces the strictest frugality — his military discipline and legal codes are famously severe, unmatched anywhere in the realm… But out here, it’s his very own Bamboo Record, trained under his own hand, that keeps hunting down these fine delicacies, driving storytellers, actors, even the semi-literate masses to chase after ever more sensual, decadent pleasures. I even heard that some writer promoting the Huaxia Army’s cause added a few extra lines of poetry to his book, only for Ning Yi himself to annotate it — saying the poetry was too difficult to understand and had best be cut out entirely…”

“…Strict with oneself, lenient with others — if applied to one’s own person, that would indeed be a virtue. But for an entire circle to be so severe within, while corrupting and pandering to the outside world with sensual pleasures — such conduct can hardly be called that of a gentleman… This time he claims to be throwing his doors wide open to do business with the outside world, and men like Liu Guangshi flock to him eagerly, batch after batch of people sent his way. I imagine, in the end, they’ll carry home a whole pile of these things — fine food, perfumes, porcelain — sooner or later, they’ll all rot away in this culture of indulgence.”

“…As for Liu Pingshu (Liu Guangshi’s courtesy name) — the man himself is thoroughly rotten already, an absolute mess. But there’s no stopping him from playing every side against the other, cultivating connections wherever he can. The realm is in such disorder now, with factions tangled together so thoroughly, that in the end it’s genuinely hard to say which house will come out ahead.”

“…Regardless, since this is exactly what our enemy desires, we ought to oppose it. The Huaxia Army says it wants to do business, and does business — put plainly, that’s because they see clearly enough that this realm’s people are not of one mind. Men like Liu Pingshu, acting this way — retribution is bound to catch up with them sooner or later!”

“Well said.”

“Spoken with real insight…”

The group ate their snacks as they walked, praising one another all the while. Besides the one “daughter” he’d sent over to Lord Shan the day before, Wen Shoubin had brought along two more today, both gifted in talent and looks, hoping to make a fine impression at the upcoming meeting with these distinguished figures — enough, perhaps, to truly work his way into this circle of orthodox scholars. For a man who made his living trading in destitute young women, yet who had spent half a lifetime immersed in the teachings of the sages, longing for exactly this kind of acceptance, this counted as one of the rare, precious moments of his life. He offered further flattery to the man speaking: “Well said, most insightful… most insightful, well said…”

……

That same evening, Ning Yi, having finally wrapped up his work for the day, found himself with a rare stretch of free time. He’d originally arranged to have dinner with Xigua, but Xigua had some urgent matter come up, pushing their meal back to a late-night snack instead. After eating dinner alone, Ning Yi handled a few odds and ends of minor business, and before long a piece of intelligence arrived that led him to send for Du Sha and ask where Xigua currently was.

“A few people have come from Jiayu — one of them holds fairly high standing, an old acquaintance of Master’s from years back, with some connection to the Sage Duke as well. Seeing how well things are going for us these days, he’s hurried over. We really ought to receive him properly.”

“Oh, a martial world elder?” Ning Yi’s interest was piqued. “Skilled fighter?”

Du Sha narrowed his eyes, smiling with a complicated expression. “That… is hard to say. The old man carries high standing and a few real specialties — quite a show when he performs them, I’d imagine.”

Hearing this, Ning Yi understood at once. “So… what’s his purpose here?”

“Hard to say.”

“Take a guess, then.” Ning Yi said with a smile, already heading to the cabinet to fetch a change of clothes.

Du Sha gave a wry smile. “Master Ning, isn’t it a bit unbecoming of me to go around gossiping like this?”

“I happen to have some free time — let’s change and go take a look, I’ll pretend to be your attendant.” Ning Yi said with a laugh. “By the way, you know him too, don’t you? Won’t give anything away when we get there?”

“Er is heading over there too, so it should be fine for me to show my face. Though — such a small matter, and you’re still interested? It would be rather embarrassing if someone recognized you.”

“An elder of the greenwood — from what you’re describing, sounds like the sort who’s practically on death’s doorstep already, a rare sight indeed. All right, enough chatter, go change into something a bit more formal-looking.”

The two of them changed into disguise clothing, Ning Yi applying a bit of makeup, and after summoning a few guards, they set off by carriage. As the carriage passed over a rise, Ning Yi lifted the curtain to look out at the bustling crowds gathered not far off — all sorts of people going about their business, this or that kind of enemy, this or that kind of friend — the affairs of the greenwood had genuinely become nothing more than an insignificant little footnote by comparison.

“Coming from Jiayu — could this have something to do with Xiao Zheng?”

Ning Yi recalled the connection. Jiayu wasn’t far from Wuhan, and the largest Han army faction in that region was led by Xiao Zheng.

“Hard to say on that front.” Du Sha said. “The elder who’s come is named Lu Liutong. His skills are a family inheritance, mostly hands-on techniques — Yellow Mud Palm, Collapsing Fist, bone-and-tendon manipulation, a bit of everything. In his younger years people called him Lu Liutong — meaning ‘six mastered arts’ — though within the greenwood, his reputation was never more than middling. He had no part in the Sage Duke’s uprising, nor did he join in resisting the Jurchens; though he’s something of a local strongman around Jiayu, he never stirred up trouble, generally enjoyed a decent reputation, though not a particularly grand one either… With the Jurchens running rampant these past years, we’d rather assumed he must have met some misfortune, but it turns out he’s still in good health after all.”

Since they’d already decided to go meet the man, Du Sha saw no reason to hold back the details. Ning Yi laughed after hearing all this. “Sounds like nothing more than some local country squire.”

Du Sha said, “He’s been in Chengdu about eight or nine days now. At first he only spread word among the greenwood folk, claiming he’d once given the old sect master some pointers, and that two of the moves in the Hegemon Blade style were inspired by his own guidance. Greenwood folk love to boast — hardly a serious fault in itself — and so, having built up this reputation first, he’s only now sending over his formal letter of introduction. Xigua received the letter and headed over there tonight along with Er.”

“Is that really true? Which two moves?” Ning Yi asked, curious.

“The old sect master traveled the realm extensively in his younger years, fighting his way through one household after another — whose strengths did he not pick up something from along the way? That was forty or fifty years ago; I couldn’t say which two moves it might be.” Du Sha said with a wry smile.

“My old father-in-law really was a legendary figure…” Ning Yi, recalling what he’d occasionally heard of his hairy-chested old father-in-law’s exploits in years past, clicked his tongue in admiration, filled with genuine longing.

As they talked, the carriage arrived at the place Xigua and Lu Liutong had agreed to meet. It was a side courtyard of an inn in the southern part of the city, in an area with plenty of ordinary residents nearby; the Bamboo Record had long since placed informants in the area, and Xigua, Luo Bingren, and the others had come with a substantial escort of guards, so there was little real security risk. The reason the other side had chosen a place like this for the meeting was precisely to broadcast to the wider world that “I truly do have a connection to the Hegemon Blade” — a bit of vanity Ning Yi, having occupied a position of power for so long, found utterly unremarkable by now.

After a brief announcement, Ning Yi followed Du Sha into the courtyard. The inn’s courtyard wasn’t especially grand, simply open and spacious — likely used for banquets along with the hall inside on ordinary occasions. A number of female soldiers stood guard nearby. Inside, a group of people sat around a round table in the hall; when Du Sha arrived, Luo Bingren came out to greet him with a smile. Around the round table, apart from Xigua and one gaunt old man, everyone else had already risen to their feet — the gaunt old man was presumably Lu Liutong.

The old man, seated in the place of honor, let out a hearty laugh and reached out toward Du Sha. “Ah, here comes our ‘Palace Guard.’ Several worthy nephews of the Hegemon Blade gathered together — the old man’s in high spirits today, good, good, hahahaha, sit, sit—”

“Old Master Lu, gentlemen, your reputations precede you.” Du Sha, having only one hand, offered a brief bow before leading Ning Yi toward Xigua. Ning Yi and Xigua’s eyes met briefly, both silently amused.

Every family had its share of eccentric relatives fond of pulling rank on account of their age — nothing out of the ordinary here, really. The only question was what might happen next…