On the day of Gerrgu’s wedding, the City of Ghost went jubilant, with felicitation gifts arriving from the Sky Gale Summit. Uncle Hwei was working through the inventory of present when he saw Qu Fongning come in. “This is no small feat!” he gestured.
Qu Fongning saw a long redwood case, in it, a dragon tooth golden-bronze saber, the hilt continuous with the blade and make into the shape of a Nvquay blossom. Beside the saber was a pink plum blossom jadeite hairpin, soft and pure, faintly rendering a rich jade. They exchanged a look, knowing full and well: As soon as she has her eyes upon this, Madam Danki would have no reason to dislike such an item. Uncle Hwei closed the lid and looked towards the groom, who was grinning stupidly in the distance. “Quite a marriage of comedy. If Yujien Tianhung didn’t play this hand. Whenever would this pair end up?”
The corner of Qu Fongning’s lips shifted slightly, he also waved at Gerrgu. “If he has a mind to keep me, I can’t really leave. What’s wrong with a great happy ending?” He pulled down the mask on his forehead and went towards Military Affairs.
As soon as the Military Affairs Officer heard his request to withdraw the resignation, how would he have any hesitation? He immediately pulled back the approved papers and picked the application from the most obvious spot on the desk and passed it into his hand. Turning a thought, he still couldn’t put his heart at ease, and thus crumpled it half-up and handed it over with a hard face. Qu Fongning laughed inwardly, waited for him to finish his long talk and lecture while reviewing his papers, and finally said, “This subordinate would also like to collect the appointment paper. I had been wayward in the past, and brought much trouble to you.”
The Military Affairs Officer had a pause before turning it around. At this, he was overjoyed and personally helped him to drape over the junior marshal cloak over his shoulders. And taking a look, the size and lengths were perfect, and he was rushed to tears. What a great honor to have such a young, valiant hero fall under his ranks. When he will be sung in the song of the ages, it would be even better if he himself could fit just a bit along the edges. Because of this, as soon as he watched him departing in orders, he purposely endorsed the name of the young junior marshal across every corner of the City of Ghosts.
Qu Fongning’s affiliation fell under the Li Ignis Military and Confidential Affairs. Because of Yujien’s dislike for heavy bureaucracies, the staffing was especially lean, but the work was very complex. His responsibility as the Spring Sun Battalion’s Centurion Captain also could not be neglected. In the first few days of dealing with military affairs, he had not a single moment of reprieve. Only after the third horn call, he would rush towards the training ground in swift strides. It was the beginning of winter in the Tenth month, the gold-trimmed cloak flung high with his steps, the hailing winds fluttered his robes, drawing everyone’s attention at him.
After a few days, many young soldiers also started clothing grey and blue cloaks, mimicking his fashionable entrance, to loosen the strings at the two sides and nonchalantly tossing it aside on the spear stands. The people who learned after him also know their place, never daring to compete with him in his face. But not being able to compete with the limelight, can’t they compare with others? Because everyone had a heart that refused to admit defeat, they all arrived earlier at the trainings and reviews, with the sleeves rolled up and hemlines raised, all not seeing eye to eye.
Oyghrmuki always liked the hustle and bustle. Seeing this scene, he immediately set up a gazebo for a better look. “General, how come I find their clothes kind of look like Little Syr’s?”
Yujien leaned lazily on the army chair, upon his words, he didn’t lift his eyes. “Mn, this is called Tilt Hat Fashion, you should learn.”
Of course, Oyghrmuki wouldn’t understand a single word, and still craned his neck high for a good long look, feeling very perplexed. “Little Syr isn’t wearing a white hat, hasn’t got a hat on his cloak. Whose hat is he tilting, what fashion is he spinning?”
But the icon of this tilt hat fashioner had no idea about their remarks. He was overwhelmed with work. The Military Affairs Division Chief piled a mountain of name lists in front of his eyes with a kind smile, and patted his shoulders. “These are applying towards your battalion, try to screen some out.”
Qu Fongning had a cold fried naan in his mouth. Hearing this devastating news, he almost couldn’t swallow properly. After a long night of selection, he found a few applications with very simple entries on their specialties, with only “Subdue and capture.” He held these forms for a deep thought, and especially filtered out the strong muscles and ones without the familial ties, and instead picked a few average-sized ones with mediocre abilities. After their initiation, he made efforts to treat them warmly, before long, they were linking arms and shoulders, talking borderline but mild jokes. Wearing the energy to mess with newcomers, he insisted on a few bowls of green wine, and with the delirium of alcohol, it became all the more unruly. And seeing the opportunity coming to fruition, he played the question casually, “The day General Yujien ordered you guys to escort me… on a diplomatic mission to Fanshwar… how did he say it?”
The others were misty eyed with drink, and all the fear towards him were held down from the alcohol, but still grinned and laughed. “The Commander General’s orders is much higher than Captain yours. Us subordinates don’t dare to divulge such classified information.”
Qu Fonging’s thoughts turned, and he smiled as well. “Can’t you tell me some heart-to-heart words as friends?”
The soldiers laughed even drunkenly, falling left and right. “If Captain takes us as friends, then we’ll only pour out some heartfelt words. At that day, the Commander General said, no matter if you turned around halfway, or back out at the frontline, we are to keep you sound and safe. The Commander General naturally planned for the captain, worried about your safety and if others treated you with disrespect, and was ready to receive your return anytime. And to say something I shouldn’t say, the Commander General was overthinking too much, being overly cautious. Look like how strong we are. Who dares to be disrespectful and not courteous to the envoys we sent out? Not to mention Captain yourself, the Old Crown King was nice and polite even to us, the accompanying foot soldiers… Cough, cough, Captain, after you hear this, forget all about it, don’t put it in your heart. Captain?” Finding his expression peculiar, his drunken state instantly recovered by a third, and he dared to speak no more.
Qu Fongning summoned a meager smile. “Did you speak? How come I didn’t hear anything?” He patted his back, and went on his way back to yurt. He flopped down on the ground, feeling his heart a vessel of ceaseless, jarring tremors. So, I had miscalculated, he mused. The Enmeshment Battalion had not been sent to marshal him as a captive. Well then; at least the old man has not yet seen fit to treat me as a prisoner. Yet this realization did little to temper his hatred for Yujien; it remained unblunted. Whenever they saw each other, he feigned a total lack of recognition. Yujien, for his part, also appeared as thus.
During the sterile rituals of the daily roll call and the exchange of ledgers, the General never deigned to grant him so much as a direct glance. Qu Fongning, however, had finally mastered his own restlessness. By drowning himself in the labor of the camps and the hollow levity of company, he managed to sever the threads of his own errant thoughts. Thus, a month drifted by in an uneasy equilibrium, their relationship remained a pool of stagnant water. Only Oyghrmuki had inquired once into his absence; Qu Fongning had offered the pretext of administrative burdens at the Bureau of Military Affairs, and the farce held.
In the heart of the Twelfth month, the Prince of Menglan, an autonomous lord of Khilan, led a contingent of former generals and eight thousand men in a sudden strike against the Chienye garrison on the southern banks of the Lii Waters. Four hundred were slaughtered; two hundred were desecrated in dismemberment. Yujien marched to suppress the insurrection, pursuing the rebels into the Great Merak State. Within three days, the flame of the uprising was extinguished. Qu Fongning was concurrently dispatched to the Oghuz Market to audit the machinery of war. Yet no sooner had his foot touched the banks of the Lii Waters than the local Commander summoned his officers in a state of visible dissolution. His opening words were a cataclysm: “The General has ventured too deep, lured by a malignant ruse. There has been no news for three days!”
The assembly remained unmoved. Knowing the cold precision of Yujien’s intellect, how could he suffer a lapse before so wretched a force as this meager Khilan lineup? They dismissed the report as false alarm. But the Station Commander, his face a pallor, laid bare the particulars: Two days prior, while returning from the Hill of the Falling Goose with the Chienheaven and Genmount Divisions, the General had been ambushed by a force clad in the livery of the former Western Liang. Gunpowder, concealed beneath the path, had been ignited, fracturing the column of eighteen battalions into three isolated segments. The General, along with four battalions of the Chienheaven elite, had been swallowed by the smoke and the mire of the marshes. When the air finally cleared, the earth had surrendered no sign of either friend or foe.
This Station Commander was a fat man, his frame softened by the spoils of his position; he possessed a festive, rounded countenance that worked against him. No matter how sharp his panic, his words lacked the dignity of true gravity. Qu Fongning, already skeptical, found his belief further eroded by this rambling recitation. If Yujien were a man to be undone by so primitive a stratagem, why would Huang Weisong have gone to such lengths to plant spies in his shadow? A few thousand pounds of Southern gunpowder would have sufficed to turn the General into a pyre, bringing peace to the realm in a single night of fire.
Yet, beneath this reasoning, a darker current stirred in Qu Fongning’s mind. Though the month had been tranquil, he could not trust that Yujien was not weaving some new web. The notion of that man’s “love” was a grotesque comedy, and he seemed to hold no true affection for Qu Fongning—yet one had to remain vigilant. Perhaps the thought was merely a vestige of vanity. Since his return from Fanshwar, his habitual arrogance had been humbled; he no longer placed his faith in the shifting sands of human sentiment. To believe that Yujien had constructed so elaborate a snare solely for his benefit seemed a delusion of grandeur. And so, for days, he remained immersed in the ledgers of the warehouse, deaf to the world beyond the crates and tallies.
It was only when Guo Wuliang arrived in force, requisitioning every flare and signal in the armory and casting a net of sentries across the hills, that Qu Fongning’s disdain finally evaporated. Whispers from the Bureau of Military Affairs began to reach him: the garrison had scoured the earth and found nothing. The General and four thousand souls of the Chienheaven Division had simply vanished, as if the world had folded over them.
Such talk, bordering on treason, was spoken only in shadows. But to Qu Fongning, it carried a singular weight. If he truly lies buried by the Lii Waters, he thought, what would happen when he meets Big Brother Herr in the shades of the underworld? He imagined Herr Gen’s reaction: If he knew I had surrendered my heart to my enemy, only to be discarded like a tattered sandal, he would surely laugh until he wept. Or more likely, he would run me through with his spear.
He clutched his thin quilt in the darkness of the warehouse, his eyes wide, the night passing without the mercy of sleep. Before the first light of dawn, the Bureau was ordered to the Hill of the Falling Goose for a survey of the terrain. Tutored in the higher arts of war by Yujien himself, Qu Fongning was no stranger to the language of the earth. Yet, from a high vantage, he was struck by the terrain’s malevolent complexity. Every ridge and gully seemed a defiance of natural law, as if the gods, in a moment of caprice, had fashioned this labyrinth to mock the understanding of men. The captive Khilanians spoke of the place’s name: even the great goose, that sovereign of the air that never errs, becomes a ghost here, losing its way in the silence. He followed the trail to the site of the ambush: three Li of scorched earth and uprooted stone, where the acrid ghost of sulfur still haunted the wind.
Now, he finally believed. Alongside the sappers and craftsmen, he spent days in the grit and soot, unearthing nothing. At night, through eyes burning with exhaustion, he watched the lamp in Guo Wuliang’s tent. Soldiers moved like specters in the frigid air, their low voices carrying the chill of a funeral. After a long internal struggle, he rose and entered the General’s tent. “General Guo,” he began, “I see you scouting the perimeter with signal smoke, yet you gain but ten Li a day. Is the Star Law in error, or has the earth itself shifted?”
Guo Wuliang, seeing the boy’s bloodshot eyes, offered him a seat and a bowl of hot Goat milk. He gestured to the map with a heavy sigh. “The Sun-Star Law is in my keeping, but these forty miles…” he traced a narrow finger across the Hill of the Falling Goose, “…require the Moon-Star Law. Bi’ro has hungered for these secrets for an age. To ensure they remained inviolate, Tian-ge kept the only complete record for himself. He was too thorough; his own foresight has become….”
Seeing the General’s genuine grief, Qu Fongning’s last doubts perished. “The Moon-Star Law… is it that which I wrested from the captives of the Star Observatory?”
Guo Wuliang stood, a flash of hope igniting in his eyes. “Precisely!” Then, the light faded. “But it has been so long… surely the details have slipped from your mind.”
Qu Fongning looked down at the earth. “…I shall endeavor to recall.” In truth, those laws had been etched into the very marrow of his memory since Herr Gen had carved them upon the jade vats. He had recited them daily for over a year; they were more intimate to him than the lines of his own palm. Yet, to avoid the suspicion of such a perfect memory, he labored through the night, appearing to struggle as he reconstructed the map. When the ink was barely dry, he surrendered the Moon-Star Law to Guo Wuliang. The General did not pause for verification. “General,” Qu Fongning muttered, “will you not test its truth? If I have erred, the burden of the consequence is more than I can bear.” Guo Wuliang gave him with a quiet, profound look. “I believe you.” He sent the boy to rest and marched the army into the heart of the labyrinth.
The zenith of his fatigue had passed, leaving Qu Fongning in a state of brittle wakefulness. He had barely succumbed to a shallow doze when the rhythmic crunch of boots and the low murmur of voices pulled him back. He felt the shift in the atmosphere—a sudden, heavy descent of gloom. He answered Guo Wuliang’s summons with his tunic in disarray. The tent was crowded with the elite of the Ghost Army, their faces obscured by shadows and doubt. Guo Wuliang placed a hand upon his shoulder and stepped aside, revealing a white felt cloth stained with the rust of blood.
Upon it lay a longbow, black as a funeral shroud. Its elegant, crescent limbs had been snapped asunder.
The sight struck Qu Fongning like a blow. A tempest of thoughts collided in his mind: Is he dead? No, it is a ruse, another one of his infinite deceptions. I shall not be a fool twice. And yet, if he is truly gone, would it not be a mercy? I could return to Little Ting’yu. I wonder what Lio Whu will do now… But each thought was a mere flicker, extinguished before it could catch fire.
Seeing him frozen like a votive statue, Guo Wuliang said softly, “A broken bow is not a corpse. It may yet be a feint to draw the enemy…” Even he realized the consolation rang hollow, and he said no more.
Qu Fongning stood in the silence for a moment. “I wish to go have a look,” he said.
Guo Wuliang attempted to dissuade him, citing the fatigue and the cordoned roads.
Qu Fongning merely repeated the words, his voice a flat echo: “I wish to see the place.”
Wrapped in the General’s own heavy cloak, he rode forty Li west. He found a mass of carnage: the earth churned by panicked hooves, the white scars of blades upon the rocks, the black-feathered arrows still rooted in the dead. He crouched within the ash-marked line of the survey, sifting the blood-darkened soil through his fingers, deaf to the voices around him. He remained there until the sun surrendered to the horizon.
He rode Wind Chaser back to the camp, lingering at the rear of the column, lost in a trance. Only when a roar of ecstatic, primal cheering erupted at the gates did he startle awake. He looked up, and the breath died in his throat.
Emerging from the Eleventh month frost stood Yujien Tianhung. He had shed half of his heavy plate and leaned against his mount by the camp entrance. Flowing Fire was dark with gore, and his great cloak was heavy with the dust of the road. He stood with his back turned, speaking to his men. Then, hearing the approach of hooves, he turned. He looked across the distance at Qu Fongning, and his eyes were bright with a smile.