The afternoon sun shone brightly.

In the courtyard where the gathering was held, before the three figures had even finished speaking, they charged at Chen Fan together. Min Chuyi’s sword thrust out swiftly; Ning Xi’s staff work blocked Chen Fan’s path; and Ning Ji’s footwork was the swiftest and most cunning of all, his fist whistling through the air, driving straight for Chen Fan’s left leg.

His fist struck only an afterimage. In the instant he closed the distance, the broken stone and dirt on the ground sprayed outward like blooming lotus flowers, and Chen Fan’s figure had already flashed aside, a rueful, sighing smile seeming to touch his face.

Ning Xi’s long staff swept up in a spinning arc, but Chen Fan’s large frame slipped past its shadow in an instant, using Ning Xi’s own body to block Min Chuyi’s sword. Beside them, Ning Ji’s smaller frame darted forward like a sprinting leopard, charging straight through the spray of dirt and stone, his body low, the wind of his Little Vajra Consecutive Fists lashing at Chen Fan’s lower body like a rainstorm, like a whirlwind.

Meanwhile, Min Chuyi, blocked off by Ning Xi’s body, immediately shifted position, vanishing into the shadow behind Ning Xi’s back — the next instant, she planted one foot on Ning Xi’s thigh, then another on his back, launching herself high into the air from behind him, her sword sweeping down to cover Chen Fan’s upper body.

A slab of blue stone shot up off the ground, blocking Min Chuyi in midair, while at the same moment Chen Fan bent his legs and swung his arms, absorbing three punches from Ning Ji and two staff strikes from Ning Xi in quick succession, before driving one fist forward with a resounding crack, shattering the flying stone slab in a single blow, sending fragments scattering everywhere like a hail of debris.

Ning Ji darted sideways, his smaller frame rolling along the ground to dodge the falling stone shrapnel; Ning Xi used his long staff to pull Min Chuyi back down out of the air, turning to take the brunt of the flying debris on his own back, while flinging Min Chuyi off to the side — as the eldest son of the Ning family, his features were refined and easygoing, his manner steady and moderate, and his weapon of choice, fittingly, was the blunt staff rather than any blade; few would have guessed that his private trump card for staying alive was the Thirteen Guardians’ Iron Bell Body training.

Ning Ji rolled along the ground, still charging back in; Min Chuyi likewise skimmed across the ground with the momentum of her fall, angling toward Chen Fan’s rear flank. Only then did Chen Fan let out a sigh.

“Sigh, you three fight like this… couldn’t you at least learn something from me?”

Ning Xi laughed as he turned to attack again. “Uncle Chen, we’re all family here—”

Chuyi, too, closed in fiercely from the rear flank: “…we’ll show restraint—”

Ning Ji lunged back in as well: “…we just won’t use quicklime—”

Three figures, three directions, converged on a single point once more, all at the same time.

Bodies crossed, fists whipped through the air, and the crowd watching off to the side felt a quiet thrill of alarm. In truth, as the saying went, fists feared youth — both Ning Xi and Chuyi had already turned eighteen, their bodies fully grown, their internal strength beginning to reach fullness; set loose in the martial underworld, they’d already have earned themselves a place of standing.

Among the three, Chuyi, as Hongti’s own disciple, was being groomed both as a daughter-in-law and a bodyguard, and her swordsmanship was the most refined of the three. Ning Xi divided his attention somewhat when it came to martial skill, but had the best overall sense of the battlefield, again and again using his staff to block Chen Fan’s path or cover his two companions’ attacks. And Ning Ji’s body technique was nimble, his offense cunning as a whirlwind, his instinct for dodging danger already woven into his very bones — when it came to combat instinct, he might even have surpassed his elder brother and sister-in-law.

Especially given how seamlessly the three of them coordinated in their joint assault — set loose in the martial world, most of the so-called grandmasters out there would already have fallen before them. In truth, more than a few figures called grandmasters probably couldn’t withstand Chuyi’s swordsmanship alone, let alone the combined force of all three.

“In a few more years, Chen Fan won’t stand a chance against them like this…”

“Chen Fan wasn’t this good at fourteen, was he?”

“Give it a few more years and this’ll be something else…”

The crowd watched with delight, chattering amongst themselves. Ning Yi, too, remarked with his hands clasped behind his back, “Skill comes down to the finest of margins — if Chen Fan breaks something, I’d call this round his loss.”

Xigua laughed beside her husband, whispering an explanation to him. “Of the three, Chuyi’s swordsmanship is the hardest to deal with, so Chen Fan keeps using the eldest and second children to block her off. Little Ji’s attacks are cunning, and he’s as slippery as a loach — that’s why Chen Fan keeps throwing in heavy punches every now and then, afraid of getting tangled up in the Little Vajra Consecutive Fists, since that would never end. Ha, he’s really using everything he’s got. You watch — the first one to go down will be Little Ji. What a shame he dragged out that weapons rack and never even got the chance to use it…”

No sooner had she finished speaking than, sure enough, on the fifteenth exchange, Ning Ji seized an opening and drove a double-fisted strike straight at Chen Fan’s temples. The next instant, Chen Fan let out a “Ha!” that shook his eardrums, a fist whistling through the air like thunder, rolling toward him.

Ning Ji had trained and sparred with Chen Fan countless times since childhood, but this time he felt the greatest sense of danger and pressure he’d ever experienced from him. That whistling blow came on like an overturning mountain, arriving in an instant right before him — the instincts he’d honed on the battlefield screamed a warning in his mind, but his body simply couldn’t dodge in time.

There was a heavy thud, like a sack suddenly swelling and shuddering with the impact, and Ning Ji’s body was sent flying several zhang through the air, tumbling across the ground again and again. At the same moment, Chen Fan’s own body staggered awkwardly out of the way of Ning Xi’s and Chuyi’s attacks, retreating a long distance. Ning Xi and Chuyi stopped their assault and looked back; even Ning Yi seemed somewhat moved, though no one else reacted much. Xigua said, “It’s fine — Chen Fan’s true skill just came out.”

Ning Ji lay sprawled on the ground for a long moment before suddenly clutching his chest and sitting up. His hair was disheveled, his eyes vacant, as though he’d just made a round trip between life and death, but there didn’t seem to be any serious injury. Chen Fan waved a hand. “Ah… I lost, I lost, that nearly took my old life, I almost couldn’t hold back in time.”

“See, I told you he couldn’t last thirty moves.”

Fang Shuchang laughed, and the crowd needled Chen Fan a bit more, at which he cursed back, “Let’s see any of you block thirty moves from them!” — before going over to check on Ning Ji, brushing the dust off him. “There now, you all right?… It’s different from the battlefield, this.”

Amid the crowd’s laughter and chatter, Ning Xi and Chuyi came over to thank Chen Fan, and Xigua, though she’d needled him herself, told Ning Ji to say his thanks too.

“…Some people, when they train, often practice their fists on the edge of cliffs, in raging torrents, searching in that space between life and death for the subtlest sense of how to release power — that’s called ‘stealing heaven’s mechanism.’ That punch of your Uncle Chen’s landed just right — it very nearly took his old life too, come to think of it, and in a few more years he won’t be able to teach you like this anymore.”

That single punch of Chen Fan’s had drawn on everything he’d ever learned in his life, extremely dangerous yet leaving no real injury — but the pressure it had put on Ning Ji, the genuine sense of standing between life and death, had been very real. This, of course, was also a matter of seizing the right moment — if he hadn’t grasped that fleeting instant to land the blow, he wouldn’t have found himself dodging so awkwardly in front of Ning Xi and Chuyi either. Ning Ji offered his thanks, still sitting on the ground, face pale, unable to get up. “Heh heh… for a second there I really thought I was going to die…”

Ning Xi cut in with a grin. “Uncle Chen, why don’t you hit me too?”

Chen Fan crouched down, narrowing his eyes. “That Iron Bell Body training of yours exists specifically to take a beating — one punch won’t do anything. I’d have to keep hitting you until you genuinely felt like you were dying before it would mean anything. Want to start now?”

“Oh, never mind then,” Ning Xi laughed. “Let’s go eat instead.”

The crowd laughed and chatted a while longer. Ning Ji sat on the ground, still turning over that feeling from a moment ago in his mind. After a while, Xigua, Du Sha, Fang Shuchang and the others exchanged a few moves with Chen Fan and Ji Qian’er as well — they’d all been familiar with each other’s skill and cultivation in the past, but with two years having passed since they’d last crossed paths, this let them quickly get a sense of how far each had progressed.

Over these years everyone had been tempering themselves in the army, training others while training themselves, and whatever reluctance to fully reveal their skills they might once have held onto had been entirely worn away by the backdrop of war. Having trained elite squads in coordinated combat and killing, and having thoroughly refined and streamlined their own martial abilities, everyone’s cultivation had leaped forward considerably over the years — the Chen Fan and Xigua of today, compared to the Fang Qifo or Liu Dabiao of years past, were perhaps no longer inferior, and might even have surpassed them.

As the adults discussed martial arts among themselves, Ning Xi and the others listened in, mixed among them, and having grown up in this kind of environment since childhood, none of it struck them as especially remarkable.

Time passed like this for a while, and the sun began to set. Ning Ji, still turning over his newfound insight, ran through a few sets of forms off to the side, before everyone finally settled down noisily to eat. As they did, the conversation drifted casually to the situation within the city of Chengdu, mentioning names that Ning Ji, for the most part, had never heard before.

“Are the people who’ve come to Chengdu this time really all that impressive? If those old scholars really had any real ability, why couldn’t they manage to be impressive in front of the Jurchens… And the ones who’ve come to enter the tournament are all crooked melons and split dates, nothing good among them.”

Thinking of how the two mongrels and their whole gang of villains had been dragging their feet all this time, Ning Ji quietly asked his elder brother in a break in the conversation, and Chen Fan glanced over. “Little Ji, the dogs that bite don’t bark. The loudest ones you notice most easily might just be the ones who make the most noise for a reason.”

Xigua, eyes glinting with amusement, said, “This child’s been harboring something on his mind lately. I bet he’s got his eye on a few villains and is keeping it to himself, wanting to keep all the fun for himself.”

“Really?” Chen Fan looked at Ning Ji, suddenly interested.

“No, no, nothing like that… I’m just a doctor at the tournament grounds these days, of course I see all sorts of people like that all the time…” Ning Ji widened his eyes.

The whole group gave him a knowing, half-smiling look, and after a moment, let the matter drop without pressing further.

Fang Shuchang said, “The Wu Dynasty may have rotted through, but there are still a few old-timers who can genuinely get things done and dare to act — Dai Mengwei counts as one of them. This gathering in Chengdu has certainly drawn its share of mediocre hands, but our intelligence reports do confirm there are a handful of real experts mixed in as well, ones who haven’t even shown their faces yet. One of them, originally from Hankou, is a man named Xu Yuanzong — word is he answered Dai Mengwei’s personal invitation to come here, but hasn’t appeared publicly at all. There’s also Chen Wei, and Wang Xiangfo from Fujian… Little Ji, if you run into any of these people, don’t get close.”

Ning Ji perked up with interest. “Are they that formidable?”

“All I can say is each has his own particular skill. And there may be others we haven’t gotten wind of at all — that’s part of why your Uncle Chen came ahead of schedule, to help guard against exactly this sort of thing. I hear quite a few people have even tried to invite Lin Echan here — the invitation was certainly sent, but whether he’s actually come, no one knows.”

Ning Ji frowned. “Where were all these people when we were fighting the Jurchens?”

Fang Shuchang said, “Some of them did take part in resisting the Jurchens; others kept their heads down in the mountains from start to finish, minding their own safety. But you know, all these martial artists share one particular weak point — can you guess what it is?”

Ning Ji furrowed his brow for a long while, unable to come up with an answer, until Ning Yi laughed. “Ning Xi, why don’t you tell him.”

Ning Xi hesitated. “Flattery from scholars, maybe?”

Fang Shuchang laughed and patted his shoulder, and Ning Yi nodded, saying, “The custom of valuing scholars over warriors has persisted for over two hundred years now. Martial folk in the underworld may have their own set of rules, so to speak, but deep down they’ve never thought highly of their own standing. Zhou Tong was said to be the greatest under heaven within the martial underworld, and back when he wanted an official post, even old Qin couldn’t be bothered to grant him an audience — later, though he resigned his position at the Imperial Boxing Hall, the Grand Marshal’s office could still order him about however it pleased. No matter how formidable a great hero might be, he never quite believes he could surpass a learned scholar — and yet, ironically, this is exactly the trade that cares most about face and reputation…”

“In the past, when martial folk from the underworld came to carry out assassinations, it was often after hearing nothing more than a rumor or two, coming purely to make a name for themselves — an unruly mob, using nothing but old tricks from the underworld. But this time, people like Dai Mengwei and Wu Qimei are genuinely frightened. On one hand, they’ve been appealing to the whole realm; on the other, they’ve also been humbling themselves to court a number of well-known figures from the martial underworld. Take this Xu Yuanzong, for instance — he’s always bragged about being a carefree recluse, but the moment Dai Mengwei personally came calling, moving him with sincere appeals to both reason and emotion, I hear he caved almost immediately. No one knows exactly which corner of Chengdu he’s hiding in now.”

As Ning Yi spoke, the whole group broke into laughter. Ning Ji nodded thoughtfully — he knew he wasn’t yet part of this circle of uncles’ activities, and so he said no more.

That evening, once dinner had finished, the group sat together in the courtyard a while longer. Ning Ji spent much of the time chatting with his elder brother and sister-in-law; Chuyi, having only just arrived from Zhang Village that day, had come mainly for two reasons. First, tomorrow was the Qixi Festival, and she’d come ahead of time to celebrate it together with Ning Xi.

Second, Ning Ji’s fourteenth birthday, falling precisely on the thirteenth of the seventh month, was now only a few days away, and she’d brought along gifts sent by his mother, several of the household’s concubines, his younger siblings, and a few of his childhood friends, all asking to be passed along.

“I can’t give it to you today, though — I’ll save it for the day itself,” Chuyi said with a smile.

Naturally everyone was well aware of Ning Ji’s birthday. As the group sat together on chairs in the courtyard, Ning Yi recalled the events surrounding his birth:

“Come to think of it, the second boy was born on the thirteenth of the seventh month that year. We hadn’t even settled on a name for him yet when, on the twentieth of the seventh month, news arrived that Wuqimai’s troops had marched south. After that we headed north, all the way through the fighting at Bianliang, one thing piling onto another — it wasn’t until after the emperor had been killed that I finally had time to choose a name for him. Ji — regicide, rebellion, a thing the whole world should be wary of, that’s the meaning. Of course, it was also meant to express the hope that such foolish tragedies wouldn’t happen again.”

As he reminisced over the past, Ning Ji did the careful arithmetic and discussed it with his brother and sister-in-law. “The thirteenth of the seventh month, the twentieth of the seventh month… hmm, so that means the Jurchens attacked just as I’d finished my first week of life.”

In the courtyard, the warm yellow lamplight flickered. Everyone present, Ning Yi included, fell silent all at once, the sudden quiet descending like a cold front sweeping through.

A moment later, several hands came down with a series of light smacks on Ning Ji’s head. “What kind of thing is that to say…”

“No sense of tact at all…”

“You were the one only a week old, a week old…”

“…Twenty minus thirteen is seven — that is my first week, isn’t it.”

Ning Ji answered, a little hesitant, thoroughly puzzled, not quite understanding why he’d been smacked for it.

— He hadn’t gotten the math wrong, after all.