The next day, once Puning County's assembled martial folk had come, given thanks, left gifts, and gone, Fang Shaobai sat down to breakfast in the inn's main hall with Wang Yu's three — their disguises finally washed away.
"Brother Zhao — you're younger than I am!" Fang Shaobai was seeing Wang Yu's real face for the first time, and somehow it only deepened his respect.
To speak sense like that at this age — to have guided him, pulled him back from what had been, in its way, a crooked path of the heart — that was no common man's work.
Put it this way: in the whole Taihua Sect, the people qualified to guide him could be counted on one hand!
Lin Zhiyuan and Wei Yan were present too, their eyes on the three guests running from astonishment to outright shock. These were the Westguard Prince Zhao Yu and the woman Top Scholar Li Yunxiu of the stories. Their martial arts might be nothing much — their names were something else entirely.
"We saw the Twin Heroes of the Southern Mountains just now, on our way in," Lin Zhiyuan said. "The Jiang brothers wanted to talk Senior Brother into handing Zhao... his Highness and Her Highness over to them. Wei Yan and I turned them back at the door."
"We're all jianghu here," Wang Yu reminded him. "Leave the court titles out of it."
The table laughed.
"Three men make a tiger, truly — rumor is poison," Wei Yan said with feeling. "Brother Zhao is witty and warm in the flesh. How did the stories turn him into some twisted, insufferable tyrant?"
"That depends entirely on who I'm facing." Wang Yu grinned. "Ask that monk Hongzhao of the Great Vajra Temple about me — I doubt you'll hear anything kind."
Lin Zhiyuan and Wei Yan, who by now knew exactly what had happened in the night, laughed all over again.
Fang Shaobai, though, looked at Wang Yu with a shade of real worry. "That Tendon-Transforming Bone-Forging Pill is genuinely the Great Vajra Temple's secret refinement — made solely to pair with the temple's guardian art, the Vajra Dragon-Elephant Art. You swallowed it like a boiled sweet. Are you truly all right?"
"Perfectly!" Wang Yu waved it away. "The monk was selling panic. Since I took it, my meridians feel tougher and my bones feel harder. All gain, no harm — where's the poison in that?"
"Good, then." Fang Shaobai let it go, relieved. "In any case, your Westguard Manor lacks for neither money nor physicians. Even if something did go wrong, you're covered."
Then a grin crept over his face. "The pill's master ingredients are brutal to find — pure-yang bone of bear and tiger, century-old mountain ginseng, aged yellow-essence root. The Great Vajra Temple is lucky to fire one furnace of it in several years. And you just ate one. They must be bleeding."
Taihua and the Great Vajra Temple both sat in the Hexi Circuit — neighbors, in fact. Two great orthodox houses, all courtesy and mutual compliments whenever they met; but to say there was no grit between them would be a lie.
One Tendon-Transforming Bone-Forging Pill gone meant the Great Vajra Temple's strength shaved by exactly that much — and Taihua was quietly delighted to see it. Fang Shaobai had never involved himself in such maneuvering; his heart belonged to the sword. That didn't mean he was ignorant of it.
Lin Zhiyuan put in a reminder. "Whatever road Brother Zhao takes back to the Westguard Manor, it runs through Daxing Prefecture."
Fang Shaobai had ordered a pot of yellow wine warmed first thing that morning; now he took a sip and savored it. "I'll ride with Brother Zhao to Longshan Prefecture myself. Let's see whether the Great Vajra Temple's Master Zongshan cares to block the road in person."
Lin Zhiyuan's mouth twitched. "It would never go that far!"
Master Zongshan was the abbot of the Great Vajra Temple, a grandmaster of the martial way famous under heaven, senior by half a generation even to Taihua's own sect leader. There was no version of events in which he personally barred a prince's road to his own investiture.
***
And so they set out.
His identity restored, Wang Yu sold the ox-cart and bought a horse-drawn carriage — nothing like the old one for space or luxury, but far more comfortable than the ox-cart, and far faster too.
Li Yunxiu and Ziling rode inside; Wang Yu and Fang Shaobai sat up front.
As they left Puning County, Fang Shaobai pointed out two figures skulking at the edge of the trees beyond the walls — Duan Ping the Gold Saber, and Meng Chonghu, the Iron Palm That Splits Mountains.
The moment the two men saw Fang Shaobai pointing them out, they dove into the treeline and were gone.
"So the Westguard Manor and the Great Vajra Temple have friction. I hadn't expected that." Wang Yu thought a moment. "The temple has more masters than the Manor does, surely?"
"The Great Vajra Temple in the west and the Prajna Chan Temple in the east — the two houses of the Buddhist gate. Of course they're deep in masters," Fang Shaobai said, as if reciting the obvious. "But the Manor holds a court mandate over three prefectures, and fifty thousand troops behind it. You think the temple has eaten enough courage to attack a prince's seat?"
Wang Yu's lip curled. "That monk Hongzhao dared try to take me."
Fang Shaobai chuckled. "Because you'd managed to get yourselves caught alone. Kill you they'd never dare — but 'invite' you to the Great Vajra Temple, wring a treaty out of you at the foot of their own wall? The profit in that is enormous. Bear in mind the Westguard Manor doesn't lightly move against the temple either."
The Manor had fifty thousand soldiers; the temple had masters in depth. Neither side cared to spend every night thereafter sleeping with one eye open.
Wang Yu turned to the carriage behind him. "And you still dared bring me down this road before?"
"Before, we traveled with a squad of palace guards," Li Yunxiu said evenly. "The Great Vajra Temple is an orthodox house. It would never strike at a column flying the court's colors."
Wang Yu: "..."
He sighed. "Ten years shut up in the capital — I know nothing about the northwest that matters. Besides the Great Vajra Temple and Taihua, what other powers are out here?"
"Now you're asking the right question." Fang Shaobai clapped his hands, pleased. "The Great Vajra Temple is orthodox; it still wants face. The great bandits of the Qishan Mountains want none at all."
"The Qishan Bandits?"
"The Qishan Bandits and the Qiang of the northern desert are the Westguard Manor's two largest threats," Li Yunxiu said. "The Qiang sit beyond the desert, walled off by ranges and fortified passes — entering the Central Plains is no easy thing for them. The Qishan Bandits nest inside the Qishan range itself and prey on the northwest trade road. Of the two, they do the greater damage by far."
Northwest of the Capital Circuit lay the Hexi Circuit; northwest again lay the Anxi Circuit.
The Westguard Manor sat on the seam between the two, governing three prefectures: Longshan in the Anxi Circuit, Qing'an and Fengming in the Hexi. Longshan and Qing'an faced north toward the desert Qiang; Fengming lay in the south, hard against Qishan Prefecture of the Anxi Circuit — against a mountain range that ran a thousand li and more, and everything hiding in it.
Wang Yu nodded slowly. He knew perfectly well that mountain bandits in a wuxia world were nothing like mountain bandits in real history. The hiding-in-deep-mountains part was the same; the difference was the martial masters leading them, which multiplied the danger several times over.
In the novels of his last life, hadn't Sha Tongtian dined at a Jin prince's table? Hadn't Xiao Shiyilang ranked among the top three under heaven? Lang Fanyun had simply been the number one blade alive.
"And the Thirty-Six Kingdoms of the Western Regions?" Wang Yu asked.
Even in the capital he'd seen curiosities carried in from the west, and heard of the Thirty-Six Kingdoms' foreign beauties — their fame ran far ahead of any Qishan bandit or desert Qiang.
West beyond the Anxi Circuit, past the court's writ, the Thirty-Six Kingdoms lay scattered through desert, steppe, and oasis, threading the roads to the great nations further west still.
"Ten thousand li of yellow sand, and thin people scattered over too much land. The Thirty-Six Kingdoms are a plate of loose sand — not worth a thought." Li Yunxiu shook her head.
Fang Shaobai stuck up a thumb. "Spoken like the Top Scholar!"
Small and sparse the Thirty-Six Kingdoms might be, but bandits lurked there too, and horse-raiders, and sword-masters wandering in from the far west alongside saber-men gone out through the passes from the Central Plains. The Western Regions did not lack for experts.
Li Yunxiu knew all that, of course. Her point was different: the Western Regions had no designs on the Central Plains, and its martial world had no debts with the Westguard Manor.
That being so — not worth a thought.
"Compared to the Western Regions' martial world, the Manor has two enemies who matter far more — and those grudges are personal," Li Yunxiu said.
"Who?" Wang Yu asked.
"Why, the disciples of the Xingxiu Elder of the Xingxiu Sea, of course — Star-Plucker and Star-Chaser."
Fang Shaobai grinned as he took the story over, needling Wang Yu as he went. "Your father fought the two of them at once on the Xingxiu Sea, took Star-Plucker's arm off at the shoulder and Star-Chaser's leg at the knee — turned the Twin Stars of the Xingxiu Sea into 'Heaven-Crippled and Earth-Lamed.' It shook the whole martial world. Don't tell me you've forgotten?"
Wang Yu: Forgotten? I never knew!
"I just hadn't expected the score to still be open," he recovered, "with my father already gone."
"That's not yours to decide. It's Heaven-Crippled and Earth-Lamed's," Fang Shaobai said cheerfully. "While your father lived, they dared not come north. Now that he's gone — I'd wager their hearts are getting restless."
Wang Yu turned a wounded look on Li Yunxiu. And you never mentioned this before?
Li Yunxiu's face was serene. I did consider it. And what if it had frightened you?
Neither Fang Shaobai nor Li Yunxiu was actually much worried about those two, formidable though the Manor's enemies were. First: their descriptions could not be more distinctive — the moment a one-armed man and a one-legged man entered the Manor's territory, word would run ahead of them. Second: as long as Wang Yu stayed inside the Westguard Manor, even a pair of Innate experts could not stand against the endless heavy bows and crossbows of a prince's guard.
A little basic caution, and the danger was small.
***
Clip-clop, clip-clop — the carriage crossed out of Hangu Prefecture and into Daxing.
There were watchers on this road, true enough — half-glimpsed figures at the edges of things. But they showed themselves only in flickers, and none ever came within ten zhang, for fear of being misunderstood.
Even after the party entered the Great Vajra Temple's own sphere, no monk appeared — much less blocked the road.
Say what you like: the deterrent value of an Innate expert was real. All the more so when the Innate expert was young, bottomlessly promising, and backed by a great sect.
Li Yunxiu found herself looking at Wang Yu with new eyes yet again. Who could have guessed he'd strike up a genuine friendship with Fang Shaobai? With Fang Shaobai riding escort, this road was safer than anything the three of them could have managed alone.
With no one left barring the way, Wang Yu could finally relax and taste the world — mountains and rivers rolling by, and between them, the true daily life of the common people under the court's rule.
The party rode west across Daxing Prefecture, turned north in Fengming, and entered Longshan Prefecture.
Very soon after, the walls of Longshan's prefectural city rose ahead of them.
In the next moment, dust boiled up at the city gate. A column of riders came on at the gallop, and at their head a horseman carried a great banner — red field, gold border.
On the banner, one huge character caught the wind and spread wide.
Zhao.