The searing pain and the absolute blindness in his eyes sent Chen Yuliang into a panic.

He tilted his head slightly, straining to locate Master Yu by sound alone, to determine where he was and where the next attack might come from.

But Master Yu’s greatest strength had always been his footwork, and the howling gale he stirred up drowned out everything else. Chen Yuliang’s ears were filled with nothing but the roar of wind, burying all other sound beneath it.

"Where is the Secret Classic of Mountains and Seas?" In the darkness, struggling to defend himself with the Black Turtle Art, Chen Yuliang finally heard Master Yu’s cold voice.

A spark of hope flared in his chest. He could use this to bargain.

The thought slowed his hands significantly. He stepped backward on his own accord to open a distance, so as to facilitate a negotiation.

That single moment of hesitation was all it took. A blade of wind sliced between his raised arms and struck his face.

Two warm fingers drove into his eye sockets and sank deep.

A strangled, gurgling sound escaped Chen Yuliang’s throat as he staggered backward.

Master Yu’s voice reached his ears once more, flat and without emotion.

"I’ll find it myself."

Chen Yuliang crashed heavily to the ground. The dark, bloodied hollows of his eyes stared emptily up at the rafters.

Master Yu did not search the body immediately. He turned and walked toward the door.

Inside the martial hall, which clearly had close ties to Chen Yuliang, the disciples had already scattered. A squad of patrol enforcers in black fitted uniforms, starlight and candleflame embroidered at their cuffs, arrived swiftly at the scene, longswords in hand.

Their leader was a young woman of about twenty. Unlike her uniformed companions, she wore a pale green skirt, with only the starlight-and-candleflame insignia at her cuffs to mark her rank.

Her face was clean and lovely, her eyes bright and lively. Her black hair was simply gathered up and bound with a green embroidered silk handkerchief. She was tall and graceful, and moved like a willow swaying in the breeze.

At the sight of her, Master Yu’s expression grew a shade more serious. He said in a low voice, "The conflict between the Four Waters Brotherhood and the Small Boat Gang was registered with the magistrate’s office last month."

The young woman held a longsword in a gold-and-red sheath. She glanced at Chen Yuliang’s body inside the room and assumed a deliberately mature attitude.

"Were any uninvolved parties harmed?

"Was there any martial violence committed in a public space?"

Master Yu shook his head slightly.

"No."

He paused, then added, "The same applies to the other party. It involved only people from the Zhen household and the Small Boat Gang."

The tall, graceful young woman said with a hint of disappointment, "If there is any searching to be done afterward, we will need to observe the entire process."

"Of course, Heroine Zheng." Master Yu clasped his hands, then turned toward Chen Yuliang’s corpse.

The body, whether due to the man’s cultivation method or some other hidden condition, had already begun to show faint signs of decay in the brief time it had taken to exchange those few words. Several flies and moths circled above it.

As Master Yu approached, they scattered.

Seeing this, Master Yu’s brow furrowed slightly.

......

In the blind spot between the alley wall and the luscious tree.

After hearing his brother’s "she probably won’t," Bull smiled good-naturedly.

"Songyan, you’re the one in the family who’s nicest to me."

"Isn’t our little sister nice to you?" Ding Songyan changed the subject. He did not want to discuss killing any further.

Bull seemed unable to find the right words for a moment. He lapsed into visible thought, and it was a while before he spoke.

"She’s a little afraid of me."

So am I, a little... Ding Songyan thought with a kind of helpless exasperation.

Fear was the normal reaction.

He glanced at the blotchy-nosed corpse behind the tree. Remembering that the matter of the Secret Classic truly could not be brought to the attention of the authorities, he drew a breath.

"Bull, what are you planning to do with the body?"

I’ve been standing here far too long. Even if the watchtower sentries don’t suspect anything illegal, they’re going to think I have some kind of incontinence...

"What to do with it..." Bull looked at the corpse with its caved-in face and fell silent.

Ding Songyan fell silent too.

So you hadn’t thought about that at all... 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

I assumed you were an experienced hand at this...

Then again, while traveling out in the wilderness, with nobody coming or going, you only had to wait for nightfall and toss the bodies into the forest, off a cliff, or into a river...

I need to think of something. Someone could pass by at any moment...

As his thoughts raced, Ding Songyan heard a gust of focused wind carrying Master Yu’s voice.

"Leave on your own. The Four Waters Brotherhood will handle the body."

Ding Songyan exhaled with relief.

It sounded like the Hallmaster Chen situation had been resolved as well.

As for the Secret Classic of Mountains and Seas, he did not care in the slightest whether Master Yu had found it or taken it. If the man did not bring it up, that was good news. If he did, that would be dangerous.

......

Inside the Zhen estate, Cold Water Pavilion.

Surrounded by water-driven fan wheels and huge basins of ice, Master Yu clasped his hands in a bow and offered the book in his hand to the old man seated in the high-backed chair above.

"Patriarch, it is indeed the copy of the Secret Classic of Mountains and Seas that went missing from the estate. All the hidden marks match."

The old man wore a black robe embroidered with numerous characters symbolizing fortune and a melon-skin cap. His broad left palm was holding two heavy iron balls which he spun with effortless ease.

His beard had gone white. His eyes showed signs of bulging outward, and when his lids opened and closed, an uncanny light seemed to spill from them. His complexion was unusually ruddy. His ears had a layered, folded quality, as though each one had split in two.

Patriarch Zhen—Zhen Qianfan—took the indigo-covered book in his right hand, shook it open casually, and glanced at a couple of pages.

"I have no worries when things are left to you.

"The Brightnight Sect and the yamen’s people don’t know this book exists, do they?"

Master Yu maintained his dead, somber expression.

"The book was hidden inside Chen Yuliang’s clothes. Zheng Zhuxi was present at the time, but she is still young and has not yet formally been a part of the jianghu. She was squeamish about examining the corpse too closely. I used the wind-seizing technique to retrieve and conceal it, then made an excuse about needing to handle matters on Ding Songyan’s side and left quickly."

Zhen Qianfan looked at the Secret Classic in his hand and chuckled.

"Lost nine months ago, and now it comes back to us. What a coincidence..."

He leaned back into his chair and closed his eyes.

"The Ding family’s second son truly doesn’t remember where he got this Secret Classic?"

"He has genuinely lost his memory. I’ve been observing him covertly these past two days and found that he can barely recall everyday matters, let alone anything this specific. Physician Shao has confirmed the same, though he cannot determine the cause," Master Yu answered honestly.

Zhen Qianfan sat in silence for a long while, as though asleep. Then he turned his head suddenly and looked at his son standing beside him.

"When did Qin Nuansheng enter the household?"

Zhen Quanwang, the legitimate son of the Zhen family, bowed slightly to answer.

"Nuansheng joined the household a little over two years ago. Father, we did an investigation at the time. The loss of the Secret Classic had nothing to do with her."

Facing the father he had always feared, he mustered the courage to speak on Qin Nuansheng’s behalf.

Zhen Qianfan laughed once, his tone perfectly certain.

"Of course it had nothing to do with her.

"A little over two years ago. That’s fine, then."

He opened his eyes fully, that uncanny light visible in them, and turned his questions to Master Yu.

"How long has the Ding family been in Dingjiang Prefecture? What kind of people are they?"

"Only a little over seven months," Master Yu recalled and answered. "It should have nothing to do with the loss of the Secret Classic."

His deepest impression of the Ding family was that the youngest daughter, not yet fully grown, was already a beauty beyond comparison. He had been about to say so directly, but reconsidered. Patriarch Zhen and the various scions of the household were never restrained when it came to women. Ordinarily, Qin Nuansheng would not even allow Ding Qingyan into the estate. When she missed her sister, she went to Chengyu Lane to visit in person. It was better not to let Patriarch Zhen and the others know too much. The girl from the Ding family was only fourteen or fifteen. Some things were just not right.

And with the Zhen household’s name behind her, no one in Chengyu Lane dared bully Ding Qingyan.

Choosing his words carefully, Master Yu began with Ding Shengyi, describing the middle-aged scholar in detail along with Liu Yuzao, Bull, and Ding Songyan. At the end he added, "There is also a young daughter, not yet of age. Notably pretty."

Only notably pretty.

Zhen Qianfan listened with full attention, the two iron balls turning steadily in his palm.

After a long pause, he gave a slight nod.

"It doesn’t seem like it..."

Without explanation, Patriarch Zhen issued his instructions to Master Yu.

"The Small Boat Gang’s rapid rise these past few years has not been entirely normal. Someone may be backing them. If it’s a major sect, that’s manageable. This is Ning Province, which belongs to the Self-Revering Sect and the Yi clan. We have connections to both. Once any outsider is exposed, they’ll withdraw on their own. What I fear is that the Small Boat Gang has gotten involved with one of the Twenty-One Heretical Ways. Those heretics don’t follow jianghu rules. There’s nothing they won’t do.

"When you and the Brightnight Sect and the yamen’s people search Chen Yuliang’s hall-altar, pay close attention to any sign of such involvement. Don’t let your guard down. Heh. It’s easy to accomplish things by colluding with heretics, and just as easy to be uprooted by the court."

"Yes, Patriarch." Master Yu clasped his hands in reply.

......

After spending eight coins on a bowl of noodles with bits of pork and a few vegetables, Ding Songyan returned to Chengyu Lane feeling much lighter now that the immediate crisis had passed. He pushed at the courtyard door.

It did not budge.

Knock! Knock! Knock! He knocked.

"Who is it?" Ding Qingyan’s voice came from inside.

"Your second brother." Ding Songyan smiled.

Only then did Qingyan lift the door latch. She asked, happy and puzzled at once, "Back so early?"

Her hands were wet, and there was a wooden basin beside the water jar. She had obviously been washing clothes.

"The problem is more or less resolved." Ding Songyan pulled the door shut behind him and gave his sister a rough account of what had happened.

He did not specify the Secret Classic of Mountains and Seas, referring to it only as "something worth a great deal of money." Nor did he mention that Bull had killed another man.

Qingyan paid no attention to those details. Her eyes lit up with sudden, fierce delight.

"Second Brother, we don’t have to live in fear anymore!"

She began pacing in circles, murmuring excitedly to herself.

"We need to celebrate. We need to celebrate! When Father gets off duty, I’ll have him go to Peony House and buy a crispy fragrant duck, and also..."

Mid-murmur, she swallowed.

Ding Songyan watched with a smile. When his sister had calmed down, he asked, "Do we have paper and brush at home?"

He intended to sketch out tomorrow’s installment of The Legend of the White Snake. He could not afford to leave out as many details as today, when Xiaoqing had barely gotten any scenes at all.

The Wushou cavalry lieutenant would be unreachable if he returned to barracks. The girl in the white dress was Ding Songyan’s most valuable personal connection at the moment, and they had gotten off to a good start. He had to maintain it.

"Isn’t there some in your trunk?" Qingyan pointed at the west wing.

Right, my original occupation was storyteller... Ding Songyan nodded, went back to his room, and opened the small wooden chest beside his bed.

The chest held paper, brushes, an inkstone, ink sticks, and several books.

Ding Songyan flipped through them casually. They were the scripts a storyteller would keep: some purchased from the storytellers’ guild, others apparently copied out by the original Ding Songyan himself. The handwriting was clearly different between the two types, and the latter were far more crudely bound.

"Primarily historical material... If I’d known, I wouldn’t have bothered listening to the old tales at the market. These would have been enough. Wasted all that copper..." He muttered as he inspected his collection.

After a while, Ding Songyan picked up an unbound, coverless manuscript from near the bottom of the chest. His eyes scanned across it and suddenly caught on a single line:

"Feiyi, the Two-Tailed Snake: the result of consuming it? Insects and parasites are subdued, the spirit is fortified, a hundred ailments find no purchase."

Wh— Ding Songyan’s expression froze.

The Secret Classic of Mountains and Seas?