The Yang Family Cataclysm Part 2

Yang Shanshan flew into a rage and slapped him across the face. Yang Yan staggered back a few steps, his eyes reddening, and cursed, "You thieving wretch, you dare hit me!" Yang Shanshan swore back, "Hit you I did. So what? Get out!"

Yang Yan turned and walked off. Qin Jiuxian made to chase him, but Yang Shanshan grabbed him. "Chase him for what?" "If he tells about us—" Qin Jiuxian was still staring after Yang Yan.

"He's my brother—I know him! He won't tell." Yang Shanshan scolded, "A few feet of cloth and you carry on like it's cut from your own flesh! Go home and get ready—come to my house tonight and ask for my hand. Stall again and I'll drag you off to the Chongren branch hall!" With that she stormed off too.

Seeing his customers had all scattered, the Baoqing Store owner poked his head out and asked, "Are you wanting to propose, sir? I've fine cloth for wedding clothes—care to look?"

Qin Jiuxian rewarded him with a sour look.

Away from Baoqing Store, Yang Yan, stewing in his anger, turned a corner, sat down on the ground, and brooded, cursing Yang Shanshan and her lover without cease.

He didn't really mean to tell his parents about last night; that had only been bravado. He knew the rules well: to violate a woman was a grave crime all under Heaven would punish, reported to the local sect, the offender seized at once; and if he fled, a warrant would go out, and wherever among the Nine Great Houses he hid, someone would come for him. Qin Jiuxian was as good as his brother-in-law now. Telling his parents would only upset them—at most they'd scold Yang Shanshan a few words, and that was no revenge at all. But once Yang Shanshan was married off, wouldn't all these years of grudges go forever unavenged? No. He had to make her suffer something.

He turned it over and over and could think of nothing good. Yang Shanshan was strong-willed. He'd once tried catching frogs and little snakes to frighten her, and she'd stamped them all dead underfoot; in the end it was he who couldn't bear it and moped for days. He'd thought of wrecking her cosmetics box, of spoiling some of her little things—then remembered how hard his parents worked for their money, and that anything broken would have to be made good.

Was he truly helpless against this thieving wretch? Yang Yan was musing dully when a sudden clamor broke out—someone nearby was putting on an opera to thank the gods. With no notion in his head, Yang Yan got up and followed the crowd to see the fun.

At the stage, he remembered how his parents had taken him to the opera when he was small; back then he hadn't understood the lyrics and had only thought the painted leading ladies pretty in their bright colors. Watching now, he naturally followed it better than he had as a child.

The piece on stage was a reworked excerpt, "Lin Chong's Night Flight." He'd never read Water Margin—this was the first he'd heard of the story—but he gathered the gist: a stout fellow named Lin Chong, brought to ruin by the schemes of the marshal Gao Qiu, from the burning of the forage depot through to Lin Chong learning his wife was dead and resolving to take to Mount Liang.

He heard:

"I had hoped to win a marquisate ten thousand miles off, like Ban Chao— yet they cast me as a Red Turban traitor, made of me a lord-betraying Huang Chao; so now I'm a falcon slipped its jesses, a sly hare loosed from the snare, a dragon tearing through the net. To save a nation in peril, who will cut down the false? To wield the law's just blade—where is a Gao Yao to be found? Only these graying temples, this beggared baggage of mine— yet I'll turn the very stars in their courses, set sea to boiling and mountains to quaking."

The performer's voice and bearing were superb, all fierce passion, and they stirred in Yang Yan a knot of grief he could not smooth away. He cast Lin Chong as himself and his sister as Gao Qiu, and felt Lin Chong wronged exactly as he was.

He heard further:

"My mother, my wife—on whom can they lean now? Here my own fortune, foul or fair, none can foretell; there their lives or deaths are past all reckoning. It frightens me till the sweat pours down, as if scalding water were poured over me; it sears me till my heart within burns like fire! My young wife—where is she now? The old hall stands emptied of its dead, and the toiling love of parents I can never repay. I cry aloud—say, how shall a hero's spirit be quenched? How shall the hero's spirit be quenched?"

Again he felt Lin Chong's grief, and felt it deep.

So Yang Yan listened on, all the way to Lin Chong taking to Mount Liang, and the audience rose, applauding and cheering, and he clapped and cheered along. He wanted to hear more, but found the crowd thinning, and asked in surprise, "That's it? It's over? Isn't he supposed to kill Gao Qiu?"

Someone answered, "That's all. Want to know the rest, go read Water Margin."

"Water Tiger Margin?" Yang Yan quietly noted the title, puzzled. "Lin Chong's a fierce tiger; if he's gone up the mountain, it ought to be a Mountain Tiger Margin. How's it a Water Tiger? And how would a tiger come to be by the water?" No matter—one day he'd find this book and read it. To see Lin Chong kill Gao Qiu, now that would be deeply satisfying.

Like in plight as he was, he couldn't very well kill his sister. Having heard one excerpt, Yang Yan still had no clear plan for revenge, and could only drift here and there about the streets. As it happened he wandered up to a smithy and peered inside, where sabers and swords were laid out, along with household goods—kitchen cleavers, hatchets, and the like. He halted, struck by a sudden notion, and asked the smith, "Have you any little scissors?"

"I do, all kinds. What are you cutting, lad? Hair? Cloth?"

"Cloth," Yang Yan answered. "Small ones, not too big."

The smith handed him a tailor's shears. Yang Yan looked them over and said, "Still too big. Have you any smaller?" "Smallest I've got is this one," the smith replied.

Yang Yan pouted and asked again, "What about smaller scissors—none at all?" The smith thought a moment, then produced a pair of nail clippers the size of half a palm. "These are for trimming nails. See if they'll do?"

Yang Yan weighed them in his hand and asked, "Can these cut through cloth?"

"Coarse hemp would be a struggle. They won't cut brocade or satin cleanly."

"How much?" Make do with them, Yang Yan thought.

"Fifteen cash," said the smith.

Yang Yan felt in his pocket and found only five cash. His face fell, and he handed the clippers back. "Never mind."

The smith said, "Aren't you the Yang carpenter's boy—Yang Zhengde's son? When Master Tao was building his house I did the ironwork, and I saw you bring your father his meals." Surprised the man knew him, Yang Yan nodded that it was so.

The smith pressed the clippers back into Yang Yan's hand. "My cousin's wife is a widow with a child to raise, and when her eaves fell in, it was your father who patched them up. I've never forgotten that kindness. These nail clippers are a gift to you." He took them back once more. "Let me hone them for you a bit."

Yang Yan accepted the gift, thinking his hope of revenge served. Seeing the light failing toward dusk, he reckoned it was time to head home. He left the city and walked into the woods. Past the woods lay his home, a lone house standing solitary; the rare visitors who came all said it was easy to find.

Yang Yan walked among the trees, the orange daylight on the verge of dimming. As he went, he wondered what besides the radish-and-spare-rib stew there might be for supper.

Musing on it, he caught the scent of radish, and his spirits lifted; he broke into a run and dashed in one breath to his own front door.

The moment he pushed it open, he heard a clash and clamor of blades.

Silver light and blood—that was the first thing Yang Yan saw. Blood on the swords and sabers, on Grandpa, on his father, on his mother, and on the men in green and the men in blue.

Before Yang Yan could grasp what was happening, he heard his father's cry, torn from the depths of him.

"Yan'er—run!"

Yang Yan came to himself in an instant, and everyone's movements seemed to quicken. He saw his father, sword in hand, locked in close combat with a swordsman in green, already cut in many places; Grandpa and his mother had drawn swords too and were pressing another swordsman in blue from both sides. His father's cry to run kept bursting in his head, but it was too late—his body had gone weak and sour as if soaked in vinegar, and he couldn't move at all.

The man in blue threw off Madam Yang and Grandpa and rushed at Yang Yan. Grandpa flung himself forward to bar the way. The man in blue whipped around and swung a level cut—a stroke cunningly aimed, made expressly for an enemy giving chase from behind—and Grandpa, frantic to shield his grandson, had no time to dodge.

A head was sheared clean off, level and smooth, and because the stroke had come so fast it flew on in the direction of his run, rolled along the ground, and rolled to a stop before Yang Yan.

Still wide-eyed, as if urging Yang Yan to run.

Yang Yan thought he would scream, would cry out for Grandpa—but he didn't. It was as though something had clamped down over him, and no sound could get past his heart.

Then a tremendous force struck him in the chest, and his sight went black as he fell backward.

......

He lay senseless he knew not how long, and when Yang Yan opened his eyes again, before him was still his own home, the place he knew better than any, the surroundings he knew better than any.

Only the instant he opened his eyes, he saw his father, mother, and sister lying on the ground, hands and feet bound behind them. He struggled a little and found his own hands bound behind him too; and he saw that little brother's cradle had been set in the hall as well.

The tables and chairs had been shoved against one wall, baring an open space in the middle, where the man in green and the man in blue stood. The man in blue was in his mid-twenties, lean and tall, with a garlic-bulb nose that caught the eye; the man in green was past thirty, eyes flashing with hard light, yet half a head shorter even than Yang Shanshan.

Besides these two, there was a third, one Yang Yan hadn't noticed before.

A middle-aged man, past forty, wearing a far-traveler's cap, a small mustache on his lip, a cloak black without and red within over his shoulders, his face cold as frost and wholly without expression—seated in the very chair Grandpa loved best. The tables and chairs of the room had all been heaped about in disorder, yet around this man alone everything stood as neat as ever. His hands were folded, he spoke not a word, and only watched, quietly.

"Who are you? Why are you doing this to us?" Yang Yan roared.

"Yan'er, don't speak!" Yang Zhengde scolded hurriedly, then turned to plead, "Spare them, they've nothing to do with this! They can't take revenge! You know the rules—a feud reaches no further than three generations, and they're the fourth. They can't take revenge!"

Yang Zhengde finished and simply kept kowtowing. Madam Yang, eyes brimming, kowtowed along with him. Yang Shanshan, terrified, sobbed without pause, only murmuring over and over, "You've got the wrong people, you must have the wrong people..."

Yang Yan went on cursing them at the top of his voice. "You killed Grandpa, you killed Grandpa! You butchers, I'll have your lives! Your lives!"

"Shut your mouth, you mongrel!" The man in green kicked Yang Yan sprawling to the floor. Yang Yan kept cursing all the same, and Yang Zhengde couldn't quiet him.

The man in green casually smashed a bowl on the table, grabbed up a handful of shards, jammed them into Yang Yan's mouth, and forced his jaw shut. The shards split his mouth and pierced through his cheeks; unable to open his jaws, his mouth filling with blood, he could only make a strangled huffing sound.

The man in green laughed. "What did you say? I can't quite hear you—speak up!"

The man in blue said, "Since you knew the rules of the martial world, you should've done away with yourselves long ago. Why live on and bring ruin down on your offspring—drag us into hunting you all these years? See what a great face you've got—even the sect master has come for you." As he spoke he glanced back at the middle-aged man in black robes, a question in his eyes.

The man in black robes was still expressionless, neither pity nor the thrill of vengeance in his gaze—if anything, the look of an outsider.

The man in blue lifted his sword. "Which one to start with?" he said, and looked at Madam Yang. Knowing she could not be spared, Madam Yang gave Yang Zhengde a bitter smile. "Zhengde—in the next life let us be husband and wife again."

Yang Zhengde had time only to cry "Wife!" before the man in blue's sword opened Madam Yang's throat; blood sprayed out, spattering the table and floor.

Yang Shanshan shrieked. Seeing his mother die so wretchedly, Yang Yan felt a knot of rage choke his chest, fit to burst, and yet with no way to loose it he could only writhe and strain with all his strength; the ropes cut his wrists and ankles to bleeding, and he never felt it.

The man in blue raised his sword toward Yang Zhengde. "Now it's your turn."

The man in black robes gave a soft cough, and the man in blue's shoulders shot up as if a blade had fallen across his back.

In a low voice the man in green said, "Kill the small ones first."

Only then did the man in blue recollect himself. He said to Yang Zhengde, "Three of them. You keep one; the other two die. Which do you keep?"

Watching his beloved wife die so cruelly, and hearing this question, Yang Zhengde was struck dumb for a moment, then asked in a trembling voice, "What... what did you say?"

The man in blue said, "A feud reaches no further than three generations; the slaughter can't take a whole household. Grandpa here's being good to you—I'll let you choose. Which do you keep to carry on the line?"

Yang Zhengde looked at Yang Yan and Yang Shanshan, then at the infant in the cradle, his gaze wavering, and couldn't help glancing once more at the man in black robes. The man sat as calm as before, seemingly waiting too for him to decide.

The man in blue said, "Or tell me—which to kill first?"

Yang Zhengde said, shaking, "I... I..."

Front of the hand or back, it was all his own flesh; Yang Zhengde's heart was wrung, but how could he ever decide?

The man in blue said, "Can't pick? Then I'll pick for you." He leveled his sword at Yang Yan. Yang Yan was not the least afraid; his mouth full of blood, he could no longer speak, but his eyes stayed wide, as though they would shoot out fire.

The man in blue turned his sword toward Yang Shanshan. "Or this one?"

Yang Shanshan shook her head and screamed, "No—don't kill me!"

The man in blue pressed again. "Decided yet? Which one do you keep?"

Knowing pleas were useless, Yang Zhengde set his teeth and made up his mind. "Keep the youngest!" he said, and turned his face aside, not daring to look at Yang Yan or Yang Shanshan.

The man in blue laughed aloud. "Hear that? Your own pa doesn't want you!" With that his sword swept up; Yang Yan saw only a fountain of blood leap from the cradle, heard a single thin wail, "Waah—!"—and then no sound at all.

The man in blue laughed. "Delightful! Delightful!"

Yang Yan's mind went blank, his only thought, Little brother's dead? Little brother too? The little brother he'd hardly held more than a few times—dead, just like that? He couldn't see into the cradle and clung to the hope of some last miracle; heedless of the blood masking his face, he twisted his body to drag himself closer for a look. The man in blue watched him come, and when he'd nearly reached the cradle, drove a kick into his belly. Yang Yan tumbled across the floor, howling with pain, able only to produce a choked sob, two streams of tears bursting forth at once. With his mouth crammed with porcelain shards and his cheeks one mass of wounds, his tears mixed with blood and wet the ground.

Suddenly the courtyard gate creaked open. Everyone looked—and it was Qin Jiuxian. Qin Jiuxian came bearing a live wild goose, and no sooner had he pushed the gate than this ghastly scene met his eyes.

"Jiuxian, save us!" Seeing her beloved arrive, Yang Shanshan cried out for help. For the first time Yang Yan placed such a vast hope in his future brother-in-law, praying Qin Jiuxian would cut these three villains to a thousand pieces.

Qin Jiuxian dropped the goose and made to draw his sword—but the man in green flashed to him in a streak. The man in green's sword was faster; Qin Jiuxian's blade was barely clear of its scabbard when a fierce pain shot through his arm, already opened in a long gash, blood pouring forth, his sword clattering to the ground.

That one wounding, that one sight of blood, and the rash courage of a moment ago vanished without a trace. He dropped to his knees, threw his arms around the man in green's leg, and wept and sniveled, crying, "Master, spare me! I didn't know, I saw nothing!" He was but a newcomer who'd only just received his Hero's Warrant, with next to no real combat behind him and never having taken a life; faced with this life-and-death struggle, he'd lost his nerve before the fighting even started, his legs gone soft beneath him as he knelt and begged.

The man in green looked at Qin Jiuxian with contempt. Yang Shanshan, who had been crying out to her lover, froze where she was, mouth agape, at a loss for words, her eyes sliding from hope to despair and at last, amid Qin Jiuxian's pleading, losing all focus.

Yang Yan's heart turned colder still, as if plunged into an icy well.

The man in green looked to the man in black robes, who gave a slight wave of his hand, and the man in green drew back the sword-tip he'd held at Qin Jiuxian. As if granted a pardon, Qin Jiuxian cried out, "I won't tell, I won't tell a soul!"

He dared not even spare Yang Shanshan a glance, and scrambled out in a panicked, stumbling crawl.

The man in blue smiled at Yang Shanshan. "That's your sweetheart? So useless—you'd be better off with me."

Yang Shanshan suddenly twisted around, knelt on the ground knocking her head down over and over, weeping and pleading: "Master, let me come with you! I beg you, spare me, and I'll serve you! I'll make you feel so good!"

Yang Yan and Yang Zhengde could scarcely believe their ears. Yang Zhengde said, trembling, "Shan'er, you... what are you saying?"

Yang Shanshan said, "You only ever favored little brother! I don't want to die, I don't!" Then she turned to plead with the man in blue. "My father's cast me off. I've always hated that little brother of mine. I don't want to die together with them!"

Shocked and horrified, Yang Yan, who in this moment would sooner die than show weakness before his enemies, could never have imagined that to save her own skin Yang Shanshan would offer such shameless terms. It was as if Yang Shanshan had become a fourth accomplice, joining in the slaughter of his own family.

Yang Zhengde cursed savagely, "To violate a woman, to ruin her honor—all under Heaven would punish it! You can't do this!"

"It's my own will, my own will!" Yang Shanshan begged. "Spare me, and how would I ever dare bring a false charge against you?"

The man in blue swallowed and looked to the man in black robes with a questioning gaze. The man in black robes made no sound, plainly consenting—it seemed there was no act of torment against the Yang family he would oppose.

Overjoyed, the man in blue was about to step forward when Yang Zhengde gave a great roar: "Even as a ghost I'll never let you go!"—and sprang up to hurl himself at the man in blue. The man in blue, on the point of taking his pleasure and fearing to be hindered, ran his sword clean through Yang Zhengde's chest. Yang Shanshan cried out. The man in blue kicked Yang Zhengde off the blade, swearing, "Tired of living!" Yang Zhengde collapsed to the floor, his face streaming tears, and though his breath was failing, he never stopped his cursing. Not wanting his sport spoiled, the man in blue stabbed him again and again in the chest and belly; blood ran across the floor, and after a while he fell silent.

A wild rage surged through Yang Yan; his head felt as though it had swelled tenfold all at once, the world spinning in chaos. There was a fire in his chest, yet his stomach clenched tight; he wanted to vomit but could only retch dryly, which jarred the broken shards in his mouth so that they pushed out one by one through his cheeks. But he felt no pain—he felt only heat, hot and hotter, that fire spreading, searing him from inside out. He only gasped in great mouthfuls of air, his eyes flung wide, letting the heat vent through his eyes and his mouth, until threads of blood crawled across both eyes.

The man in blue swore a few times, then turned and asked the man in green, "How about we finish that boy off first?"

The man in green said, "Are you a fool? If the boy's dead, what's she serving you for?"

The man in blue said, "Brother Shi Jiu thinks of everything—ha!"

The man in blue cut the ropes binding Yang Shanshan, and she hurriedly stripped off her clothes, baring a pair of snow-white breasts. The man in blue pulled down his trousers and said in a commanding tone, "Use your mouth." He forced her head down, a satisfied look on his face.

The man in green, Shi Jiu, hauled Yang Yan up and laughed. "Still a virgin, eh? Look now—dead, you'll never get the chance."

Yang Yan didn't want to look, but he didn't turn his head away.

He would remember these three men's faces—he had to remember them! Even if he roasted in hell for ten million years, he would come back and take his revenge!

No—he no longer feared hell, because this place was hell!

He gripped tight the nail clippers he'd carried back from the smithy. He'd hidden them up his sleeve, meaning to snip through that sash when Qin Jiuxian wasn't looking—the sight of Qin Jiuxian had reminded him of the clippers. They had not been taken from him in the search. Soundlessly he worked them from his sleeve, and while Shi Jiu was fixed on the live show before him, he cut through the ropes on his hands, little by little.

He would strike back. Knowing full well these men were masters of martial arts, he would strike back though it killed him—he would drive these nail clippers into every one of his enemies, and into Yang Shanshan too!

What had stood between him and Yang Shanshan before had only been the quarrels of brother and sister. Only in this moment—this moment—did he truly, bitterly hate Yang Shanshan; he could no longer even tell whether he hated these men more, or this shameless sister of his.

The man in black robes seemed not to have noticed Yang Yan's movements either. Just a little more, just a little more, and he'd be free of his bonds and avenge them all!

Yang Shanshan, both hands braced at the man in blue's groin, eyes shut, seemed to be serving him with all she had. The man in blue propped himself on his sword with his left hand while his right kneaded ceaselessly at her chest, saying, "Brother Shi Jiu, come over too—this little slut's wild enough, we'll do her together... oh..." He let out a soft groan, plainly relishing it.

All at once the man in blue screamed in agony, and Yang Shanshan raised her head, her mouth full of blood. She had clearly long since laid her plan: her right hand snatched up the sword from his grip, and her slender neck drove straight into the blade-tip; then she wrenched her head violently aside, and her severed throat sent blood blossoming across the air.

Through the spray of blood, Yang Yan saw Yang Shanshan's falling figure, and her blood-blurred face seemed to be smiling at him.

Yang Yan could not believe it. He didn't understand—couldn't understand why the sister who a moment ago had wanted only to live on in shame had suddenly chosen death. With his feet still bound, he could only kneel on the ground, his mind in utter turmoil. The man in blue rolled about in agony, screaming without cease; Shi Jiu stood stunned at the sudden turn. But all Yang Yan saw was blood.

Blood, everywhere blood—Grandpa's blood, his mother's blood, little brother's blood, his father's blood, and the blood of Yang Shanshan, whom only a moment ago he had hated with all his heart.

The blood of his whole family.

In that same instant, the ropes on Yang Yan's hands came apart. By reflex he clenched the clippers tight, and with all the hatred burning in him, drove them with all his strength into Shi Jiu's belly.

Shi Jiu never dreamed the boy could break free and strike back; with a wet thud the clippers sank into Shi Jiu's stomach. Unhappily, the clippers were no proper killing blade—the point sank an inch and then was stopped by the muscle. Yang Yan wrenched at them with all his might, churning the blade in the flesh, and Shi Jiu let out a yell; the agony robbed him of reason, and in a fury he roared, "Let go!" and slashed his sword at Yang Yan.

Yang Yan's eyes flew wide, braced to die—but the sword halted dead before his brow.

At some point unmarked, the man in black robes had come to stand between him and Shi Jiu, the index and middle fingers of his right hand pinching Shi Jiu's blade, his other hand pressed to Yang Yan's shoulder.

Yang Yan felt in that palm a boundless force, crushing down so that he couldn't budge a single finger, until he could barely keep his grip on the clippers. He would not give up his one weapon and held on tight, but in the end he could not resist; his hands went slack and he slumped to the floor.

The man in black robes glanced at Shi Jiu, one eyebrow giving a faint twitch, as if in question. Shi Jiu said hastily, "I'm sorry, sect master, I... I lost my temper for a moment... I didn't mean to... I broke the rules." Then, clutching his belly, he retreated to one side.

The man in black robes looked at Yang Yan and said mildly, "You have a good sister."

It was the only thing Yang Yan heard him say all that day, in a northern accent. The man in black robes then gave a light push, and Yang Yan slid back several feet until he struck the wall hard, his sight went black, and he passed out.

......

That faint lasted he knew not how long, and when Yang Yan opened his eyes again, before him there was only red.

Red like blood.

He remembered everything that had happened before he lost consciousness, but for some reason he felt calm—unexpectedly calm—as if none of it had happened at all.

Grandpa's body without its head, his sister's body bared, his little brother in a cradle steeped in blood, no longer crying, and his father and mother lying on the ground.

He saw it all, and yet felt so calm; he felt that all the grief and pain of his life had been poured out empty.

Heedless of the pain in his mouth and through his whole body, he writhed and struggled, picked up the nail clippers, and cut the ropes from his feet.

He stood up. He didn't fall weeping over his parents' bodies, nor try to bury them, nor even fetch a cloth to cover his sister's nakedness. He didn't take a single step nearer the dead—only, little by little, little by little, picked the broken bowl-shards from his mouth where they had pierced through his cheeks, and washed the wounds with water.

It hurt, but Yang Yan felt no hurt. He wanted to wash the blood from his eyes, but that redness would not wash away. He did not know that his eyes had filled with bloodshot threads that would never fade; what he had witnessed the day before had not only changed his mind but injured his eyes.

From that day on, Yang Yan saw the whole world in red.

He thought of the hidden compartment his father had left him, so he went to his father's room to search, and at last, beneath the desk, found a compartment exactly like his own. From inside it he drew out a wooden drawer, and in the drawer lay a golden token, weighty when he lifted it—a good three or four taels—the front cast with four characters, "Xianxia Sect Leader's Token," the back a design of rosy light and drifting clouds, quite finely wrought.

How had his father come by something so precious? And why had he hidden it here?

Besides the token, the compartment held a sheet of paper, old and yellowed, almost crumbling at a touch, on which was written "Yuefeng Gambling House"; at the lower right was drawn a gaunt, withered face, and beside it, scrawled crookedly, the character for "old." The downstroke of that character was thick at the upper right and thin at the lower left, and the dagger-shaped element beneath it ran a vertical line straight through—looking, all told, like a knife.

He went back to his own room and took out the ball of embroidery needles he kept in his own compartment.

He did not know who those men were, nor why they had spared his life.

He did not know those so-called "rules."

Still less did he know why Yang Shanshan, who had bullied him since he was small, would in the end be willing to die for him.

And that faint smile of hers before she died...

But he knew what he had to do, and he would remember this for the rest of his days!

He bundled up his clothes, tucked the ball of needles and the token safely against his chest, and splashed the kitchen's cooking oil across the floor.

He lifted a torch and turned for one last look at this home.

"My mother, my wife—on whom can they lean now? Here my own fortune, foul or fair, none can foretell; there their lives or deaths are past all reckoning. It frightens me till the sweat pours down, as if scalding water were poured over me; it sears me till my heart within burns like fire. My young wife—where is she now? The old hall stands emptied of its dead, and the toiling love of parents I can never repay..."

Yang Yan flung down the torch, let the flames swallow the little house, and under cover of dusk left the home he had once had.

"I cry aloud—say, how shall a hero's spirit be quenched? How shall the hero's spirit be quenched?"