Volume 3, Chapter 100 – Variables (Two-in-One)

Under the night sky, Zhang Xianzhi was in his manor, on a call with someone.

“That won’t do, there’s no way to speed it up.”

“If there’s no supplies, even the best cook can’t make a meal without rice.”

“Unless you hurry up and airlift the goods over. Right now. I’m done talking in circles with you—only when I see the shipment will I give you any guarantees.”

The house itself was rather shabby in scale, a far cry from the places he’d lived in before. But Zhang Xianzhi looked radiant, his voice full and imposing as he spoke, completely unlike the frail scholar persona he’d had before.

“My lord, Bai Shengju, on duty at the Shenming Dojo, has sent a letter.”

Catching the gap while he was sipping his tea, a servant outside brought in a letter and presented it to him with both hands.

“This old Master Bai.” Zhang Xianzhi chuckled. “What can’t he just say over the phone? Why does he have to write a letter?”

“I’d like to see what kind of game he’s playing.”

He drew out the letter paper and glanced over it, and his brows furrowed at once.

There was nothing particularly abstruse in the letter. Purely in terms of information flow, Bai Shengju sitting at home could never compare to him, the Maozhou Governor.

Don’t be fooled by how he’d offended the entire faction headed by Chancellor Liu the moment he took office; in truth, he had gotten quite close with Yao Xing’s side. Plenty of eunuchs and power-holding ministers had come flocking to curry favor with him—he had no shortage of intelligence.

Whatever news Bai Shengju knew, Zhang Xianzhi knew as well.

Things like wind disasters and tsunamis, mountain fires and earthquakes, the resurgence of the Yuhua Sect, the Demon Kingdom stirring awake, the northern frontier in crisis… he knew all of it.

And yet Zhang Xianzhi wasn’t nervous in the least.

He wasn’t like those incompetent officials who turned into ants on a hot wok at the slightest incident—not content with panicking on their own, they had to gather their subordinates at home for little secret meetings and stir everyone up into a state of panic before they’d be satisfied.

What was there to panic about?

In the history of Great Yu, there had been incidents more severe than what they were facing now, and hadn’t they all been weathered in the end?

Worry about the Yuhua Sect? It was just two large counties. Never mind the well-equipped provincial army units—even the small circuit armies under the various Roads Directorates would be enough to suppress it. It didn’t even deserve the time it took to think about.

But in the letter, Bai Shengju pointed out a hidden danger—compared with other states, Maozhou had an extra threat right at its doorstep: the “Blood Abyss.”

[I know the Governor doesn’t care for this sort of news. At most, you’ll strengthen security within the circuit, and that will be that. But I fear the Governor is still underestimating the times. This upheaval is very different from those in the past.]

Old Master Bai actually had such a heavy sense of crisis?

Zhang Xianzhi frowned. The way this was put, it was just short of bluntly telling him to watch out for an assassination.

Bai Shengju wasn’t only trying to persuade him. At the end, he even wrote that if Zhang Xianzhi didn’t believe him, he could try questioning Liu Haoran—“even just asking for more information would be good.”

“The eight circuits of Beique are all being turned into fortresses. Even if we hold, it’s not going to be easy.” Zhang Xianzhi frowned, thought for a moment, then chose to accept the suggestion, pulling out his phone to dial.

But strangely, Liu Haoran’s phone couldn’t be reached.

No matter how many times he tried, the call wouldn’t go through, and that immediately stirred up his vigilance.

Was it passive?

Had Master Liu been cut off and isolated?

Or was it voluntary?

Was Master Liu using this method to send him a warning?

Whichever it was, the situation was highly abnormal. Zhang Xianzhi didn’t dare treat it lightly. He immediately summoned his servants and asked about recent security conditions within the circuit.

“No abnormalities!” the servant answered fluently. “The factory’s under construction, the city’s building resettlement housing to replace the refugee camps. Every few days something dirty crawls out, but the Inspectorate or the disciples of Shenming Sword Dao deal with it. Nothing big has happened.”

“And the ‘Blood Abyss’?” Zhang Xianzhi asked. “There’s the Jing River blocking it to the north, but to the south it leads straight to Maozhou. How’s the monitoring been recently?”

“No abnormalities there either!” The servant shook his head. “I’ve double-checked—no, triple-checked. The spread rate of the pollution hasn’t changed!”

Is that so.

Zhang Xianzhi frowned, but he still felt uneasy.

Just then, someone else came to report—another letter had arrived from Shenming.

“Bring it, quickly!”

Taking the letter, Zhang Xianzhi tore it open and read. His brows knit the moment he saw the first line.

The contents were simple, just inviting him to the main peak of Shenming for a night discussion.

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Against the backdrop of the current situation, the invitation wasn’t exactly out of place.

The problem was the handwriting.

This wasn’t Old Master Bai’s script.

What was going on?

Picking up the other letter beside him, Zhang Xianzhi compared the two several times and confirmed he wasn’t mistaken.

He loved calligraphy and was quite the expert at distinguishing handwriting. This second letter imitated Bai Shengju’s script almost perfectly; if he didn’t have the genuine article right next to it for comparison at any time, he really might not have spotted it.

Interesting…

After a moment of thought, Zhang Xianzhi kept his face neutral and ordered his servant, “Go invite Master Kong An for me.”

The Kong father and son owed Bai Xiang a favor and had been leeching off Maozhou, unwilling to leave. Kong Tianbao was forever going to drink tea and play chess with Bai Shengju, while Kong An had gone back to his old line of work—his father had packed him off to live in Zhang Xianzhi’s manor specifically to keep him safe.

Kong An arrived quickly. As soon as he entered, he narrowed his eyes and looked toward the table at Zhang Xianzhi’s side.

While the servants had been moving about, Zhang Xianzhi had accidentally knocked over his tea. Even after wiping, the table was still a little damp, with some smudged marks left behind.

An ordinary person wouldn’t notice anything, but Kong An was a Divine Fetus geomancer. At a glance, he could make out a twisted “fraud” character from those smudge marks and immediately went to examine the real thing carefully.

“Master Kong An.” Zhang Xianzhi smiled, squinting as he drew him closer and showed him the two letters. “Look, Old Master Bai is asking me to go over. I’m afraid I’ll have to trouble you to accompany me up the mountain.”

Kong An looked at the letters, then at the table, and a strained smile crept onto his face.

“Very well.”

“You’ve given the word, my lord. Of course I’ll cooperate.”

After a bit of preparation, the two of them got into the waiting car and drove out along the main road. It really was the road up the mountain.

Once the motorcade left, two dark figures appeared by the roadside.

“He took the bait?”

“Those letters were carved from the same mold. There’s no way he noticed anything.”

“And we even had to lure Kong An away. What a hassle.”

“Can’t be helped. The goal isn’t to kill him, it’s to ‘take his place.’ Best if no strong expert interferes in the process.”

“What about the Bai family?”

“Leave them for now. The boss said we’re to focus on dealing with this side first. When the Bai family realizes something’s wrong and rushes to help, we’ll ambush them on the way.”

“We can’t leave them completely unharassed, can we?”

“Feng Lan’s already gone to plant ‘seeds.’ I told her she can start a few fires if the situation allows. It’ll be fine.”

“Then it all comes down to this trip.”

“Mm.”

“First we deal with Zhang Xianzhi, then use his identity to scatter more ‘seeds.’”

……

At the same time, elsewhere, along the only road from the State Chancery to the main peak of Shenming, a block of resettlement housing was dozing in the darkness.

“Yong-ge’er! Yong-ge’er!”

The call in the night startled the dozing youth under the locust tree in the courtyard. Liu Yong jolted awake and saw a blurry figure writhing overhead.

“Dongzi?” he asked in a frightened tone. Seeing that silhouette nod, he patted his chest in relief.

“You little bastard… scared me half to death! There’s no lights in this yard. Haven’t I told you a hundred times not to wander around here after dark?”

“It’s because something’s up!” The boy called Dongzi looked a little embarrassed.

“What’s up? Spit it out already.”

“Yong-ge’er… heh, well… I’m hungry.”

“You useless brat. Come with me!”

The two of them left the yard together, feeling their way into a dim alleyway. Only when they came out of the alley onto the main road did the streetlights shine down on them.

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They were two young men, one tall and one short. The tall one was Liu Yong, in a white shirt and suit trousers, short hair neatly styled. The short one was Dongzi, in coarse gray-black homespun clothes, with a bit of a sneaky look on his face.

Liu Yong was seventeen, Dongzi fifteen—an age where they should’ve been in school. But given the current times… being alive at all was already pretty good.

“Finally, some light!” Dongzi beamed the moment he stepped out. “Being cooped up in there all day is suffocating. I really don’t know how you stand it, Yong-ge’er.”

“Don’t talk nonsense!” Liu Yong snapped back as he glanced up and down the street, muttering under his breath, “This new state and new circuit have only been up for half a year. So what if it’s a bit dark at night? Resources should be used where they’re needed.”

Should they?

Dongzi just curled his lip at that. In his head he was thinking, and who is it who’s cursing the ‘supplies officials’ behind their backs every night, saying they don’t even know how to string a few wires in here?

He thought Liu Yong’s cursing was perfectly justified.

If they weren’t going to run power lines, fine—but even oil lamps and candles were strictly controlled, so much that going to the toilet at night meant walking on eggshells, terrified of stepping wrong. Life really was miserably bleak.

“You can talk nonsense, but I can’t.” Liu Yong jabbed his friend in the waist, warning him, “Next time you want to shoot your mouth off, keep your distance from me… Anyway, what do you want from me?”

Liu Yong was the street’s nominal “night watchman.”

The title sounded nice, but the work was no different from a gate guard at a factory’s security booth—only the scope of his oversight had gone from one factory compound to this entire block of brick-and-concrete resettlement housing. At least it let him play the local boss in front of a few dozen households.

“Something’s up!” Dongzi’s eyes sparkled. “I just came from the city center and saw the patrol teams changing shifts—but they didn’t head straight back. The two teams merged and looked like they were going to sweep the area again!”

“Mm?” Liu Yong frowned. That wasn’t good news.

If they were reinforcing patrols and defenses, something must have gone wrong. Either some criminal had committed a crime and escaped outward, or some demon had slipped in to eat people and cause trouble.

Against those terrifying things, what could the two of them, with their skinny arms and legs, possibly do?

Liu Yong looked at Dongzi like he was crazy, not understanding how he could look so excited.

Yes, the Inspectorate had put out a notice that anyone who took part in operations would be rewarded—Liu Yong had gotten this little job by tripping a thief. If not for that, with no background and no family connections, he wouldn’t even have qualified for a single detached unit in the resettlement housing.

But this stuff was seriously dangerous.

One misstep and you could lose your life.

“Yong-ge, you don’t get it. This time we don’t have to personally go do anything!” Dongzi said, excited. “I saw people crowding around the inspector asking questions, so I squeezed in too. Guess what he said?”

Liu Yong snorted. “Can you just get to the point?”

“They said you can get rewarded just for providing information!” Dongzi slapped his palm. “As long as the news is proven useful afterward, you get a cut! Isn’t that just a matter of asking a few questions around?”

There was really such a good thing?

Liu Yong frowned and had Dongzi lay out the situation in detail.

The two walked and discussed as they went, buying two roasted potatoes from a street vendor to eat as a late-night snack.

There were already more people around.

Wolfing down his potato, Dongzi’s eyes roamed all across the night market. He felt like the place was finally starting to fill with life, unlike the desolate chill when they’d first arrived.

“From how you describe it, this is all before anything even shows up…” Liu Yong was eating very slowly. After listening to Dongzi’s account, he kept his brows half furrowed, feeling a vague unease.

“Yong-ge’er, you think this is bad?” Dongzi didn’t really get it. But he’d always listened to Liu Yong, so when he saw his expression, he stopped chewing too and stared at him anxiously.

Before this, the two of them had both been people of Chilong Circuit. They’d lost all their blood kin in the demon disaster and only met halfway through, getting by with each other’s support; Dongzi had received no small amount of care from Liu Yong.

“Stuff like this breaks down into two kinds.” Liu Yong started analyzing for him. “First kind: something’s already happened, and the people up top are trying to put it out. Orders move down layer by layer, and what we see is the patrol teams and such running around more.”

“That I get.” Dongzi nodded. “Human trouble, demon disasters… they all work like that, right?”

“Right.” Liu Yong nodded. “The second kind is what we’ve got now: clearly nothing’s happened yet—no human trouble, no demon disaster—but the people up top are already moving in advance.”

His frown deepened. “That’s really not good… It means the people up top have heard something bad. This isn’t ‘putting things out,’ it’s ‘prevention.’ It sounds like some big upheaval is coming.”

“Another big upheaval?” Dongzi’s eyes flew wide open, his face twisting with anger. “Damn demons! Do they not want people to live or what?!”

He didn’t understand much, but from his point of view, whoever was coming to cause trouble again had to be demons.

Those damned demons. Eating his grandma wasn’t enough, wrecking half of Chilong Circuit wasn’t enough—now they had to come to the new state as well!

They really wouldn’t stop until they wiped everyone out?

“If they push me too far, I’ll just enlist!” Dongzi clenched his fists. “Even if I die, I’ll drag a few down with me!”

“Assuming they even want you.” Liu Yong said coolly.

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Dongzi deflated at once.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t asked before. Whether it was joining the provincial army or the circuit army—even just joining the Inspectorate as a contract hand—would mean secure food and board. The problem was, they’d taken one look at him and didn’t want him.

He was too skinny.

Wire-thin, like a monkey.

He couldn’t even swing a thicker iron rod properly. There really was no hope for him ever enlisting.

“Alright.” Seeing him wilt, Liu Yong smoothly comforted him. “You’ve still got me, don’t you?”

“Don’t worry. As long as we can still scrape by here, I’ll always split half my bun with you!”

Liu Yong had lost more relatives than Dongzi—that was only because Dongzi had never had any blood relatives to begin with.

Dongzi was an abandoned child, picked up and raised by his granny. Back when Liu Yong was in middle school, Dongzi had been following his granny around, surviving on trash-picking. His scrawny frame came from chronic malnutrition.

“If only I could enlist, or get into Shenming Sword Dao!” Longing flickered in Dongzi’s eyes. “I want to learn swordsmanship too. I want to be a swordsman and kill demons for revenge!”

Easier said than done.

Liu Yong curled his lip.

Shenming Sword Dao, the new Mountains-and-Rivers-ranked dojo—unquestioned leader in the new state… Getting into that was even harder than passing the military exams. Dongzi had no chance whatsoever.

Demon disaster…

With a sigh in his heart, Liu Yong reminded Dongzi again, “Don’t repeat what I just said.”

“Why not?” Dongzi didn’t understand.

If some big upheaval was coming, wasn’t that exactly what should be spread around?

“Coward.” Liu Yong flicked him on the head.

“When it’s time to say something, the people up top will say it.”

“Besides…”

Liu Yong pulled out half a pack of cigarettes and took one, but couldn’t bear to light it. He only held it under his nose, breathing in the fresh smell and trying to clear his head.

Besides, this really was an opportunity.

The Inspectorate’s notice said: “Report any and all abnormal situations you see.” Under those conditions, the earlier the news hadn’t spread, the better the chance.

Just like Dongzi said—even if you hadn’t heard anything yourself, you could ask.

Ask other people. Ask people who didn’t know there was such a chance.

Once you got something, you put your own name on it and reported it. That’s where the credit came from.

It wasn’t some sinister scheme. If you didn’t bother asking around, that was on you.

Besides, in terms of misery and misfortune, there was no one in this whole block of resettlement housing who had it worse than the two of them. So what if they grabbed a bit of credit?

At least he actually did the work.

Not like some people who just sat in offices pretending to be big shots.

Having decided to go all in once more, Liu Yong was already thinking, on the way back, about whether he should start knocking on doors that very night and tell everyone the street office was running a survey.

“Yong-ge’er.”

They slipped back into the pitch-black alley. As he finished his potato, Dongzi whispered, “If we still don’t manage to get a shot at this… maybe we could hand over those ‘metal plates’?”

Rustle—

A faint sound came from behind, like pebbles and grit sliding down to the ground.

“Who’s there?”

Liu Yong shouted, scared stiff, but no further sound followed.

Probably just a cat…

“Don’t talk about that.”

Letting out a breath, Liu Yong clapped a hand over Dongzi’s mouth, his movements and expression both very tense.

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Those “metal plates” were his most treasured secret—his key to maybe getting ahead someday.

Only Dongzi knew about them. There was no way he was going to hand such a treasure over.

“But… they’re no use to us, are they?” Dongzi muttered, unhappy, still mumbling through the hand over his mouth.

“We’ve studied them for days and days, but they don’t do anything!”

“Maybe we got it wrong and they really are just metal plates?”

“Leave this alone.” Liu Yong threatened, “If you dare talk, don’t blame me for not being your brother anymore.”

“Fine, keep my mouth shut.” Dongzi said sullenly. “You really look down on me… Am I the gossiping type?”

“Alright, alright… you little bastard.” Liu Yong scolded him with a half-smile.

“Didn’t you say you want to get into Shenming Sword Dao?”

“As long as we hang onto those things, it’s not like we have no chance at all.”

After a lot of coaxing, he finally calmed Dongzi down. When Liu Yong got home, he shut the door first, looked left and right to make sure no one was around, then tiptoed into the house. Lifting his bed slightly, he revealed the two “metal plates” hidden under the mattress.

They still vaguely retained their original shape—it was the outline of a longsword. Blade, guard, and hilt were all forged from the same gray-black metal, perfectly seamless, no joint to be seen.

Looking at the two sword-shaped plates, Liu Yong felt a heat stir in his chest.

That day had been a coincidence. He’d gone out to the outskirts with Dongzi to scavenge in the wilds and had seen that midair battle in a crack between mountain cliffs.

That was an immortal’s sword…

Even though it had been sliced in two by that even stronger female cultivator, he’d still crawled and scrambled to pick the pieces up, wondering if he could glean even a little immortal method from them.

It was just as Dongzi had said, though—over the past days, he hadn’t figured out much of anything.

“I don’t believe that.”

Gritting his teeth, Liu Yong grabbed a sword-piece in each hand and jumped out into the courtyard, swinging them about with a clumsy, self-invented sword routine.

When he finished, he wiped off his sweat. As always, he felt a faint warmth in his body, and a smile crept over his face.

At least it wasn’t completely fruitless.

He just hoped it wasn’t his imagination…

“I thought it might be something special… turns out it’s just a broken sword cut clean in half.”

“Who’s there?”

A woman’s voice came from above. Liu Yong jolted and looked up, just in time to see a long-haired woman in a tight suit and mask perched on the wall, her figure limned by moonlight.

“You’re useless now.”

Her voice was cold. With a metallic “shring,” she drew her sword.

Liu Yong went rigid, unable to move. He felt a qi presence lock onto his whole body, as if a streak of white light were cleaving straight for his skull.

Just then, the sword-pieces in his hands suddenly heated up. From his palms, two streams of scorching qi poured into his body.

That surge of qi shattered the constraint at once. Instinctively, Liu Yong crossed the two swords in front of him and blocked the white streak.

Clang—

Boom!

With a muffled grunt, it sounded like someone was blown away.

And not only that.

The two swords tore themselves from Liu Yong’s grip, hovering in midair as they merged into one. They turned into a purple-red rainbow of sword Qi that chopped down on the woman from above, dissolving her entire body in an instant.

“Mm?”

On Mingyu Peak, Xiang Xian suddenly turned her gaze toward the city below, catching the moment that rainbow streaked out and faded.

Her eyes turned cold. She rose into the air, stepping into the sky, and dove straight toward that spot.