The night held only starlight. At the Second Courtyard on Pingrong Road in southern Chengdu, one figure after another swept quickly past the young army medic who was master of the house. An anxious, agitated energy immediately filled the shabby little courtyard.

“No one inside…”

“Looks all right around here…”

“Keep your voices down…”

“Get in, quick…”

“This kid really does live alone…”

Low, urgent, fragmented voices rose one after another. The several men who came through the door each carried a blade, their bodies bearing marks of recent fighting. They scanned the surroundings, checked the perimeter, and once the most urgent concerns had been confirmed, they finally turned their attention to the face of the young man who owned the house—among them was a martial-underworld swordsman named Huang Shan, also called Huang Jianfei.

The one holding a blade to the young man’s throat was a fierce-looking man known in the underworld by the alias “Sizhou Killing Blade,” surnamed Mao, given name Hai. “Should we just kill him?” he said.

Huang Shan waved a hand off to the side. “Wait, wait—he’s a doctor…”

No lamp was lit in the courtyard; only the glow of stars and moon fell from the sky above, while several men still moved about, taking a closer look at their surroundings. The young man, shoved down onto the ground and lying flat, wore a cold expression on his face. Paying no mind to the blade pointed down at him, he slowly sat up from the ground, staring at Huang Shan with unfriendly eyes. Mao Hai, blade in hand, had a fierce look about him, but not being sure whether the man should be killed, he drew the blade back a little.

The burly man called Huang Shan, blood and no small amount of sweat on him, sat down on a fallen log beside the courtyard, steadying his breath. “Little Brother Long, don’t look at me like that. We go back a ways, you and I. We had no other choice—came here to hide out with you.”

“Go back a ways? I warned you all not to cause trouble. And now you’ve caused this much of a mess… and you come running here to me…” The young man pointed a finger at him, glaring unfriendly around the courtyard, and then it dawned on him. “You tailed me here…”

Under the dim starlight and moonlight, his voice rose slightly with anger. The men in the courtyard were no gentle sorts either—Mao Hai, blade in hand, kicked out, sending him sprawling to the ground, then stepped on his chest, the blade pointing down again. “You’ve still got the nerve to run your mouth here, you little—”

The young man on the ground showed no fear, straining to sit up, but with his chest pinned down he could only struggle a little, snarling fiercely, “This is my house—if you’ve got the guts, go on and kill me!”

Mao Hai’s face twisted, ready to strike, when a hand reached over from the side—it was Huang Jianfei, the most capable fighter of the Huang family. “I told you, this little doctor’s got quite the temper. That’s enough.”

Having confirmed the young man had no martial skill, Mao Hai moved the foot off his chest. The young man sat up in fury, and Huang Jianfei reached down, pulled him up, brushed the dust off his chest, and set him down on the log at the back. Huang Shan sidled over with a grin, while Huang Jianfei pulled over a wooden stump and sat down in front of the young man.

“Little Brother Long, you’re a reasonable sort. Whatever you feel about this, tonight there’s no room for reasoning between life and death. Cooperate, take us in, and we’ll guarantee your life. Refuse, and everyone here will surely kill you. You stole military supplies before, sold medicine to us—broke the Huaxia Army’s military code. If that ever comes out, there’s no way you escape punishment either way. So now…”

Huang Jianfei spread his hands. “One path is certain death; the other, a slim chance of survival. Even if you sold us out, you’d still be punished—the Huaxia Army’s code is strict, I know that much. So, which will it be?”

The young man, called Long Aotian, glared fiercely at him and said nothing for a moment.

Huang Jianfei pulled his stump closer. “Let me offer you two more choices. First: tonight, nothing happens between us. Once it’s near dawn, we find our own way out of the city, and no one will ever know a thing. I have here a gold ingot, ten taels—enough to make it worth the risk for you.”

He paused. “Of course, if you feel this arrangement still isn’t good enough—I’ll be honest, the Huaxia Army’s code is strict, you won’t get much out of staying—come with us instead. Once we’re past Sword Gate Pass, the world opens wide, and there are places everywhere hungry for talent. Brother Long, you’ve got skill, and you’ve spent all these years in the Huaxia Army, so you know all its inner workings. I’ll take you to meet my master. Just my Huang family’s money alone would be enough to set you up for a life of comfort. Better than staying alone in Chengdu, risking your neck for pocket change. Either way, help us out tonight, and this ingot is yours.”

He looked at Ning Ji, holding out the gold ingot in his palm. “Some things you can think over slowly, but whether to help us or not—you’d better decide fast.”

The young man’s fierce face twitched a couple of times.

Then he snatched the ingot. “Well, close the door already—come in, I’ll bandage you up.” He stood, glanced at a knife wound on the man across from him, and frowned. “This needs treating right away.”

Huang Jianfei, sitting across from him, smiled and stood as well. “No rush—there are more of us.”

While the little doctor’s brow was still furrowed, Huang Jianfei made a gesture, and someone went back out the door; before long, more people began filing in one after another. The group that had entered the courtyard was originally the seven led by Huang Jianfei, but now more than seven more came through, including two or three severely wounded men. The young doctor went over to look, frowning. “Get them into the room quick, onto the bed—someone go boil water to help—these are gunshot wounds, you’re lucky they’re not dead already…”

While directing his own men outside to cover the smell of blood and erase their tracks, Huang Jianfei reported the entire course of events to the family head, Huang Nanzhong, who had just come through the door. He then turned back. “Little Brother Long, can you handle these wounded brothers?”

The young doctor, face dark, gritted his teeth for a moment before speaking. “This is my courtyard. No one dies here without my say-so.”

He said it with a certain bravado, and Huang Shan beside him gave a thumbs-up. “Little Brother Long’s got some spine on him… Look, that’s our family head over there. If you come out with us and put on a good showing tonight, you’ll have everything you could want.”

“Hmph.” The young army medic, raised within the Huaxia Army, clearly wasn’t accustomed to fawning over anyone or putting on a show for someone’s benefit. He gave a cold snort and turned toward the room. By now there were fourteen people in the courtyard, yet more figures kept coming in through the gate. The young doctor counted under his breath—fifteen, sixteen, seventeen… and then his expression suddenly shifted, for a girl in black was helping along an elderly scholar who limped with each step. Only once the twentieth person had entered did they finally shut the gate.

Huang Shan had been watching the young man’s face the whole while, and seeing it shift again, was about to speak when the young man beat him to it. “So many people, and still more coming? How many more? You think this is an inn?”

“That’s all of them.” Huang Jianfei walked over and draped an arm around his shoulders to stop him from saying more, laughing as he spoke. “Little Brother Long, let’s tend to the wounded first—I’ll help, be your assistant. Huang Shan, go help boil water. And that young lady there, surnamed Qu—Qu Longjun, is it? If you’d be so kind as to help too, tend to people a bit…”

“My father’s ankle is twisted…” said the girl in the black dress, called Qu Longjun—clearly having fled in haste, unadorned, though her natural beauty still showed through. But her careworn father beside her gave her a nudge, and she nodded. “All right. I’ll help.”

The careworn father, named Wen Shoubin, was helped by his daughter to sit on the steps at the edge of the courtyard. “Such an undeserved calamity… it’s all over…” he muttered, covering his face with his hands, sighing. “It’s all over, such an undeserved calamity…” Not far off, Huang Nanzhong and another scholar went over to comfort him.

Candles were lit inside the room, water began boiling in the kitchen, someone kept watch from the dark rooftop, someone outside cleared away the traces of their flight, using a special powder to mask the smell of blood. The courtyard grew lively with activity, though seen from a distance, it still looked like a quiet, unremarkable corner…

The twentieth day of the seventh month, in the first year of the Wu Zhenxing reign—in certain later accounts, this would be seen as the moment when the Huaxia Army, as a tightly organized ruling system, first truly exchanged blows with the fragmented remnants of the Martial Dynasty’s outside forces.

Certain great clans and warlord factions splintered off from the Martial Dynasty made their first organized, large-scale probe against the Huaxia Army—much like when rival factions of the martial world first meet and test each other’s hands, only then can each side gauge the other’s true measure. That night of the twentieth in Chengdu was, in fact, exactly such a “testing of hands.” Though the outcome of the encounter itself was hardly worth mentioning, the significance of that first contact, that first greeting, still held—it was the first moment countless people finally glimpsed, mountain-like, the true outline of this colossus called Huaxia.

From nightfall on the twentieth to the small hours of the twenty-first, chaos both great and small broke out across the city, and in ages to come, countless stories would be spun using this single night as their template—the passing of the martial underworld, the elegy of ideals, the tragic heroism of clashing forces… But if one returned to that moment itself, it was nothing more than one bloody skirmish after another.

In this world, whether a transformation is right or wrong, it will always come soaked in blood.

On the night of the twentieth, as the hour of Hai drew to a close, Huang Nanzhong made up his mind to shed his own blood.

For him, this night’s long crouching wait had been drawn out and agonizing, but once the decision was made, his heart, oddly, felt lighter.

In the original plan, they were to strike that night just before dawn—whatever they attempted would stand a better chance of success then. Since the Huaxia Army was purely on the defensive while the attackers came fresh and rested, by the time night gave way to daybreak, the Huaxia Army, having been on edge the whole night through, might finally show a crack.

But news occasionally trickled in from within the city: the Huaxia Army’s immediate counterstrike had inflicted heavy losses on the righteous fighters within the city—in particular, men like Wang Xiangfo and Xu Yuanzong had been struck down one after another within the very first two-hour period, leaving more and more people in the city taking a wait-and-see stance.

Though occasional bursts of unrest could still be heard—gongs and drums, shouts of “catch the thief”—Huang Nanzhong understood in his heart that going forward, those with the genuine courage to actually act would likely be few. Compared to the grand, sweeping show of “taking action” they’d originally envisioned, the real momentum now would barely be worth mentioning, with no hope of placing any real burden on the Huaxia Army.

So he had no choice but to move before midnight, and no longer aim merely to stir up unrest, but to head straight for Mohe Lake and Yingbin Road, striking at the Huaxia Army’s very core—the place Ning Yi was most likely to be found.

At roughly the same time, Guan Shanhai within the city had also finally gritted his teeth and made his decision, ordering his subordinate Yan Ying and others to take a desperate gamble.

Neither of the two groups reached Yingbin Road, but their strike happened to coincide with a disturbance that erupted near Mohe Lake—this was the assassin Chen Wei, under the planning of the so-called “Ghost Strategist” Ren Jingzhu, who together with several companions staged a large-scale feint near Mohe Lake, at one point breaking into the lake’s inner perimeter and even setting an open fire.

Huang Nanzhong and several dozen family retainers had crept along for two streets when someone came to report this exciting development. They were promptly discovered, but several other groups, emboldened by the news Ren Jingzhu had spread, began to move as well—including the group led by Yan Ying. They found themselves briefly facing off against a Huaxia Army unit of twenty, and sensing they had an overwhelming advantage, Huang Nanzhong and Yan Ying ordered their men into the fight.

Nearly a hundred elite fighters charged the twenty Huaxia Army soldiers, and chaos followed.

Gunfire cracked through the night, blood and screams filled the air without pause. Huang Nanzhong, though he kept trying to rally spirits amid the crowd, was soon dragged back and away by Huang Jianfei and the others—the fighting in the street was brutal to witness, someone’s skull burst open before his eyes. As a mere scholar, he had no way of making sense of the chaos at ground level, his mind only baffled: how could they be losing, how could it be happening so fast? But the screams tearing through the crowd were bone-chilling, and after stumbling and falling once more, he could do nothing but scatter and flee along with everyone else in the confusion.

By the time he came to his senses, no more than twenty-odd men remained around him—among them even Yan Ying, one of Guan Shanhai’s own men, and various martial-underworld figures from who knew where. Led by Huang Jianfei, he fled on and on; fortunately, the great commotion at Mohe Lake seemed to have emboldened the rebels elsewhere in the city, adding to the general chaos and letting them put more distance behind them. Along the way they lost a few more men, then ran into two wounded fighters, and after a quick exchange of names, learned these two were Chen Wei and his junior martial brother Qin Gang.

Both men were badly wounded, and meeting these two righteous fighters brought tears to the eyes of Huang Nanzhong and Yan Ying, who swore that no matter what, they would get them out safely. After a quick discussion, Yan Ying mentioned a nearby residence—the home of a scholar named Wen Shoubin who had recently thrown in his lot with Lord Shan. He shouldn’t have taken part in tonight’s uprising, so with no better option, they decided to take refuge there.

The group made their way to the residence of this scholar Wen Shoubin, and once there, the Huang family’s retainer Ye Zi went out to erase their tracks—only to find it was already too late. Two constables had already noticed something amiss about the residence and were bringing reinforcements.

The group had no choice but to drag Wen Shoubin and his daughter Qu Longjun along and flee at once. It was only then that Huang Nanzhong and Huang Shan recalled that they weren’t far from the residence of that young Huaxia Army medic they’d taken note of over a month before. The young medic was an internal member of the Huaxia Army with a clean family background, yet his hands weren’t entirely clean—and having something to hold over him, this hidden lead had originally been set aside precisely for use at a critical moment, and wasn’t this exactly such a moment?

The group headed there at once. The young medic’s residence wasn’t in a busy part of town; on the contrary, it was quite secluded—troublemakers in the city wouldn’t think to come this way first, meaning the Huaxia Army likely hadn’t posted many men here either. With this reasoning, it felt like grabbing at a lifeline, and along the way Huang Shan, Huang Nanzhong, and Yan Ying discussed the young man’s known traits—a bad temper, greedy for money, but skilled in medicine—exactly the sort of person who could be won over.

If only they could get these two righteous fighters, Chen Wei and Qin Gang, properly treated, then in the future, when people spoke of the sacrifices made by these two groups tonight, it wouldn’t have been for nothing—after all, these were assassins who had once brought their blade within reach of the Huaxia Army’s great demon lord himself!

With this plan settled, they sent Huang Jianfei and a few others ahead to take the lead—one playing the villain, one playing the peacemaker, promising whatever benefits it took, no harm in that… And sure enough, before long, Huang Jianfei lived up to expectations, winning the little doctor over to their side—of the twenty taels of gold he’d been authorized to offer, he’d only needed to use ten.

The group filed one by one into the quiet courtyard. Chen Wei and the others were carried into the room, where the young doctor began treating them. Huang Nanzhong also had Huang Jianfei and the others stand watch nearby, to make sure the young doctor didn’t try anything underhanded that might get the wounded killed. Outside in the courtyard, the group settled down one by one to wait; after a while, when Huang Shan came out to dump a basin of bloody water, he confirmed to Huang Nanzhong that the little doctor’s skill was indeed excellent, and that he did seem to be treating the wounded with genuine care—only then did Huang Nanzhong’s heart settle somewhat.

Only Wen Shoubin, who had spent so long preparing, who had finally, with such difficulty, secured a connection to Guan Shanhai this trip to Chengdu—planning to bide his time until things eased up in Chengdu and then find a way to place Qu Longjun among the Huaxia Army’s upper ranks—now found himself, before his plan had even begun, already caught up in disaster, uncertain whether he’d even make it out of Chengdu alive. He sighed and moaned to himself, weeping without end.

Huang Nanzhong went over to console him. “So long as you get out of the southwest, Brother Wen, whatever you’ve lost tonight, I’ll take full responsibility for it myself. Ah, truth be told, if circumstances weren’t so extraordinary, we’d never have dragged you into this either. The two assassins in that room are righteous, valiant men—amid all of tonight’s chaos, they alone very nearly succeeded in striking down that demon lord. I couldn’t bear to see men of such honor left to flee about the city with nowhere to go…”

Yan Ying then chimed in as well, saying that Lord Shan would surely remember Wen Shoubin’s losses tonight someday and see that he was repaid. Only then did Wen Shoubin stop his sighing and moaning, and Yan Ying went on to bring up the matter of his daughter, Qu Longjun—he was one of Guan Shanhai’s trusted men, skilled in some martial arts as well as being a man of letters, and for this reason had been put in charge of managing the family’s retainers. On the day Guan Shanhai first went to meet Qu Longjun, Yan Ying had been among the attendants, and having already seen her looks and talent that day, his heart had been stirred ever since—only, since Wen Shoubin meant to use the girl as a spy, he hadn’t dared show his feelings too plainly. Now that Wen Shoubin and Qu Longjun had no choice but to flee, the spy plan was clearly off the table, and certain things could, for the moment, be hinted at a little more openly…

Wen Shoubin, careworn as ever, could only murmur vague assent, hinting evasively that if they managed to get away, he would certainly arrange for his daughter to spend some time with him.

Elsewhere in the city, more disturbances could be heard in the distance. This particular corner had settled into a temporary quiet; for the moment, danger had moved on from them.

Inside the room, the highly skilled young army medic worked on the wounded, cursing all the while, having already scolded Huang Jianfei, Qu Longjun, and the other helpers until they felt like fools—yet his hands moved with practiced skill, giving the wounded the best possible care achievable in so short a time.

At one point, one of the wounded men stirred from unconsciousness, and suddenly reached out to grab the stranger’s shadow before him, his other hand seeming to reach for a weapon to defend himself. The young medic was pulled down and forward by the grip; Qu Longjun, startled, reached out to help, only to be waved off by the ill-tempered young doctor.

The wounded man blinked, and the young medic before him gave a reassuring smile. “It’s all right now. Your injury’s under control. Just rest. You’re safe…” He patted the man’s hand gently, repeating, “You’re safe.”

“S-safe?”

The wounded man looked blank for a moment, then finally caught sight of the familiar face of Huang Jianfei nearby; Huang Jianfei nodded, and only then did he settle down. “Safe…”

“Safe.” The young medic smiled reassuringly, placing the man’s hand back down on the blanket. Eight or nine candles burned inside the room, and thick sheets hung over the windows; outside beneath the eaves, someone briefly closed their eyes to rest. In that moment, this originally shabby little courtyard truly did seem like the safest patch of ground anywhere—they wouldn’t find anywhere safer within the city.

“Heh heh…”

Having finished bandaging one of the wounded, Qu Longjun thought she saw the ill-tempered young doctor curl his fingers and smile to himself in secret…

As if he were counting how many people he’d saved.

This young doctor cursed a great deal, but his heart, she thought, was truly kind after all.

…she thought to herself.