The convoy entered the city on the last light of dusk, and in the gathering dimness of nightfall, made its way toward a courtyard on the eastern side of the city, its walls dark blue-gray and its roof tiles gray.
The first batch of people brought in by Old Bull Head numbered fourteen in total — mostly core department staff who had survived by staying close to Chen Shanjun and the others amid the chaos. Among them were eight who had originally held status within the Huaxia Army, and the remaining six were staff who had been promoted after the land-equalization program. There were guards who seemed rough and impulsive by nature, as well as young orderlies who had served tea and run errands for Chen Shanjun and the others — their positions hadn’t necessarily been significant, but they simply happened to be nearby when the rescue took place, and so were brought along together with everyone else.
These fourteen people were housed in this two-courtyard compound, and the soldiers assigned to guard them announced the rules: one room per person, no wandering about for the time being, no idle conversation for the time being… in form, essentially a kind of detention. But having just escaped the chaos of Old Bull Head, none of them were in much of a position to complain.
Not long after they were settled into their rooms, a simple meal was brought to them. After dinner, the night in Chengdu grew quiet. Some of those shut away in their rooms felt confused, others anxious, none of them certain how the Huaxia Army meant to deal with them. Li Ximing went over the layout of his room again and again, listening carefully to whatever sounds came from outside, and, with a sigh, brewed himself a pot of tea. Next door, Chen Shanjun simply sat in silence.
Around the hour of hai, the sound of footsteps was heard approaching from outside — seven or eight people, by the sound of it. The one leading the group walked first to Chen Shanjun’s door and knocked. Chen Shanjun opened it to find Ning Yi standing outside in a black military greatcoat. Ning Yi said something quietly to the people beside him, then waved for them to leave.
“Master Ning…” Chen Shanjun looked at him and slowly offered a salute. Ning Yi returned the military salute. “You look like you’ve aged a great deal.” His gaze was calm — no accusation in it, no judgment, and no smug satisfaction of having been right all along — calm, yet heavy with weight. Chen Shanjun opened his mouth, but no words came out.
“Shall we go in and talk?” Ning Yi said.
Chen Shanjun stepped aside. “Please, please come in…”
The room was simply furnished, but it did have a table and chairs, hot water, a teacup, tea leaves, and the like. Ning Yi walked in and sat down, picked up the teacup, and began brewing tea. Amid the clink of porcelain, he spoke directly.
“Your isolation won’t last too long. I’ve arranged for Chen Zhusheng and the others to come take your initial statements — mainly to rule out anyone among today’s group who committed crimes of abuse or bloodshed. And as for the first assessment of what happened at Old Bull Head, I’d like it to be as objective as possible. All of you came out from the very center of the unrest, so your views on what happened will likely differ. But if we hold a deliberate, conscious discussion of it, that understanding can converge toward something shared…”
As Ning Yi spoke, he set the large porcelain cup down in front of Chen Shanjun. Chen Shanjun listened, still somewhat confused. “Statements…”
“After success, there must be a review. After failure, there must be lessons learned. Only that way can we say we’ve gained something from all this.”
“Old Bull Head…” Chen Shanjun murmured, then slowly pushed the stool beside him aside and knelt down. “I — I am the greatest criminal here…”
Ning Yi laced his fingers together on the table and let out a sigh, making no move to help up the man before him, now nearly white-haired in defeat. “But Old Chen… what good does it do you to kneel before me…”
The sigh drifted through the air, and the room fell silent. Tears began falling from Chen Shanjun’s eyes, dropping one after another onto the floor.
Ning Yi said nothing for a long while, then finally looked out the window and spoke. “Two circuit court teams received orders today and are already on their way to Old Bull Head. As for whoever gets caught among the guilty instigators of the unrest, their statements will be recorded immediately as well — including what they thought of Old Bull Head, and what they thought of you. If you truly did something monstrous out of pure self-interest, we’ll deal with you accordingly, without mercy — so think carefully about how you’re going to speak from here on…”
He paused. “But beyond that — as for the venture you undertook at Old Bull Head… I honestly don’t yet know how to judge it.”
“It was a crime, of course.” Chen Shanjun braced himself on the stool and slowly rose to his feet. His voice, as he said this, was firm. “It was I who urged them all to go to Old Bull Head together. It was I who used the wrong methods. It was I who got so many people killed. Since it was my decision, of course I’m guilty—”
“You used the wrong methods…” Ning Yi looked at him. “Where, exactly, did you go wrong?”
“Old Bull Head… there were too many mistakes. I… if I had…” As he spoke of it, Chen Shanjun shook his head in anguish, seeming to want to put it simply and clearly, but unable, in the moment, to draw any precise conclusion.
“Old Chen, you don’t need to tell me today,” Ning Yi said. “I’ll have Chen Zhusheng and the others record your testimony right away, to document exactly what happened at Old Bull Head. Besides the fourteen of you, a great many other testimonies will be recorded as well — from the guilty and the innocent alike. I want someone, eventually, to be able to piece together exactly what happened at Old Bull Head, and exactly what you did wrong. As for you, Old Chen — you’ll have a long time yet to think it over slowly, to draw your own conclusions…”
“I shouldn’t be alive…”
“You may not get to be! Chen Shanjun, do you really think I care whether you live or die?!” Ning Yi stared at him.
Chen Shanjun froze.
Ning Yi said, “If you really did something unforgivable at Old Bull Head out of pure self-interest, then the moment you deserve to be shot, I’ll have you shot without hesitation! But at the same time, Chen Shanjun — is the Great Harmony wrong? Is the equality of all people wrong? Just because you failed once, do you think these ideas themselves are wrong?”
“…” Chen Shanjun shook his head. “No. These ideas aren’t wrong.”
“That’s right. These ideas aren’t wrong. So what exactly went wrong at Old Bull Head? You failed to make it work — naturally, what went wrong was the method.” Ning Yi said. “Before you even started, I warned you about the tension between long-term and short-term interests. The driving force behind every action anyone takes in this world is need. Need produces interest. A person wants to eat today, wants to go out and enjoy himself tomorrow, wants to satisfy certain goals within the year — and at the broadest level, everyone wants the Great Harmony…”
“But long-term interest and short-term interest can never be perfectly unified. Someone living by a river wants to eat and enjoy himself today — but half a year from now, a flood might sweep his home away, so he sets aside his time today to repair the levee instead. If the realm is unstable and the administration corrupt, his daily life will suffer for it too, and so some people go and study to become officials instead. To pursue something with long-term benefit inevitably costs you something in the short term, and so everyone is constantly balancing what they’re willing to spend on any given thing…”
“At Old Bull Head, you started by striking down the landlords and dividing up their land evenly — you called it achieving fairness in the means of production. But in doing so, every single person’s short-term interests were massively satisfied all at once. A few months later, no matter what they did, they could never again get that same level of satisfaction — and that enormous drop-off is exactly the kind of thing that corrupts people. Either they turn lazy, or they start racking their brains trying to find some way to recreate that same enormous short-term gain for themselves — abusing power for personal gain, for instance. When short-term gain can’t be sustained, the mid-term is left empty, and all you’re left offering is a long-term promise that might take a hundred-odd years to ever come true — that’s exactly why it all collapsed…”
Ning Yi looked at him. “I understood this principle. I also saw that everyone is driven by their own needs. That’s why I decided to develop natural studies first — to try to expand productive capacity first, so that one person could do the work of several, even dozens, of others. Once material goods became abundant enough, people would have enough to eat and wear, and only then would they begin to know shame and honor… Just like those landlords we’ve seen — there’s an old saying, poverty breeds cunning, wealth nurtures conscience. Once people are satisfied, whatever surplus they have left, their conscience grows along with it, just a little.”
Chen Shanjun shook his head. “But people like that…”
“You want to say they aren’t truly kind.” Ning Yi gave a cold laugh. “But where is there any truly kind person, Chen Shanjun? Human beings are, after all, a kind of animal! People have their own nature, and take on different forms depending on the environment and rules around them. Perhaps under certain conditions a person can become a little better — and what we’re pursuing is exactly that, a little better. Under certain rules, under certain preconditions, people can become a little more equal — and so we pursue greater equality. All things have their nature, but heaven and earth show no mercy, Old Chen. No one can ever truly escape their own disposition. The very reason you chose to pursue the greater self and set aside the smaller self is only because you came to regard the greater self as a higher need of your own.”
The room fell silent. Ning Yi tapped his fingers on the table a few times. “So then, Chen Shanjun — is my thinking correct? Can my path… actually be walked to its end?”
Chen Shanjun raised his head. “You…” What he saw was a calm face, one with no answer written on it.
Ning Yi stood up and set the lid on the teacup. “Your idea took over a thousand people from the Huaxia Army down with it. In Jiangnan, He Wen’s Fairness Party, flying the banner of equalizing rich and poor, has already raised an army of several hundred thousand. Before this there was Fang La’s rebellion, which spoke of equality under the law with no distinction of high or low; and before that, countless uprisings, one after another, all shouting this very same slogan… If, time after time, no one ever draws conclusions or summarizes the lessons learned, then the word ‘equality’ will remain forever an intangible castle in the air, never within reach. Chen Shanjun, I don’t care about this life of yours…”
Ning Yi’s gaze bore into him, seeming to hold both a raging fire and a merciless, freezing cold at once.
“I don’t care about this life of yours,” he repeated. “For the fire you people lit at Old Bull Head, the Huaxia Army — stretched thin as we already were — gave you a way out, gave you resources. A thousand-odd people is neither a great many nor a small number — with those thousand-odd people, quite a few of the heroes who died in the southwestern campaign might still be alive today… I paid all of that out, to let you explore this path for us, and I intend to draw out the lessons from it, for those who explore such paths after you.”
He paused. “Old Chen, every change this world goes through will cost blood. Getting from today to the Great Harmony will never happen in a single leap — from this day forward, there will still be countless more times blood is shed. A failed change lets that blood be spilled for nothing. Do we stop changing, just because it costs blood? Or does the need for change mean we simply stop caring about the blood it costs? We have to treasure every drop of blood that’s shed — we have to make sure it teaches us something, that it produces real experience. If you want to atone, if you happen to survive this, then leave me genuine reflection, genuine lessons learned.”
“Think it over carefully these next few days.” With that, Ning Yi turned and walked toward the door.
…
The autumn wind rustled, blowing through the courtyard in the darkness of night.
Leaving Chen Shanjun’s room, Ning Yi went next door to see Li Ximing. As for this particular double agent who had originally been captured, Ning Yi didn’t need to explain much by way of preamble — he laid out the overall arrangement in broad strokes and asked Li Ximing to spend the coming days recalling and recounting, in as much detail as possible, everything he had seen and experienced at Old Bull Head over the past two years, including the reasons things had gone wrong there and why it had ultimately failed. Since Li Ximing had always been a thoughtful, educated man, summarizing all this wasn’t difficult for him.
Only, once everything had been explained, Li Ximing unexpectedly spoke up — hesitant at first, but then gathering his courage to make a decision. “Master… Master Ning, I have an idea. I’d be so bold as to… ask Master Ning to grant it.”
“Hm?” Ning Yi looked at him.
Having begun to speak, Li Ximing’s expression gradually grew more composed. “I… came to the Huaxia Army originally because of a conversation with Li Dexin — I only meant to act as an inside man, to sabotage things from within the Huaxia Army. But over these past two years, under Master Chen’s influence at Old Bull Head, I’ve slowly come to understand certain things… Master Ning, you separated Old Bull Head out on its own, and now you’ve sent people to record everything, seeking out the lessons to be learned from the very beginning — that’s no small breadth of vision…”
“Get to the point. No need to flatter me.”
“…I will set down everything about Old Bull Head, truthfully and in full detail. Once the record is complete, I’d like to go to Fuzhou, find Li Dexin, and tell him everything about the southwest, point by point. I’ve heard the new sovereign has already ascended the throne in Fuzhou, and that He Wen and the others have raised the Fairness Party in Jiangnan. What we witnessed and experienced at Old Bull Head might be of some use to them…”
Li Ximing was no longer young, and having been forced for so long to serve as a mole under threat, he’d found it difficult, at first, to hold himself upright. But once he’d finished laying out his thoughts, his gaze grew steady and resolute. Ning Yi regarded him coldly for a long while before finally letting his gaze drop. He pressed a hand against the table and stood up.
“I’ll give you two months. Leave behind everything you need to leave behind, then go back to Fuzhou and tell Li Pin everything… So long as you don’t try anything clever in the meantime, your family and even your dog will remain safe.”
Ning Yi’s voice was cold and distant as he left the room. Behind him, Li Ximing, his temples touched with gray, cupped his hands together and bowed deeply toward Ning Yi’s retreating back.
Ning Yi left this unremarkable courtyard behind. Inside it, a group of people, worn out in body and spirit, waited for whatever review was to come. Before long, whatever they carried with them would scatter in different directions across the world. Beneath the dark curtain of the sky, a dream had taken its first stumbling steps, and fallen to the ground. Ning Yi knew that countless people would grow old within this dream — that people would suffer, bleed, and give their lives for it, that people would grow weary within it, lost and silent, looking about themselves with nothing left to say.
But short of moving forward, what other road was there to take?
…
Lit by lantern-light, the carriage passed through the city streets, heading off into the hazy distance, while overhead, the Milky Way flowed across the sky.
To all the small and insignificant things beneath that vast canopy of sky, the river of stars never lingers, and in the blink of an eye, the night had passed. On the morning of the twenty-fourth day of the seventh month, in one corner of the vast earth, Wanyan Qingjue heard the order to assemble.
He and a number of other Jurchen generals and elite soldiers were driven out of the barracks by the Huaxia Army and made to gather on the parade ground, where the Huaxia Army fastened shackles onto them.
“Time to set out on the road.”
The Huaxia Army officer said.
Wanyan Qingjue knew: they were about to become part of the captives paraded in Chengdu by the Huaxia Army…