"Now, you might wonder, dear listeners, how the Celestial Maiden Sect comes to have male disciples.

"The words ’Celestial Maiden’ refer only to the origin of the sect’s arts, not to its current members. It is the same with the Imperial Daughter Sect, which traces its lineage to Nüwa, daughter of the Flame Emperor, yet counts both men and women among its disciples.

"As for Su Yunzhang, he comes from a family of deep martial heritage. His aunt, Su Liudan, was the beauty the jianghu unanimously crowned as peerless thirty years ago.

"Now, dear listeners, as the saying goes, every flower finds an eye to admire it, and spring orchids and autumn chrysanthemums each have their season. When enthusiasts compile their rankings of great beauties and outstanding heroes, there is always argument. Who makes the list, who comes before whom, everyone has their reasons, and those who disagree do not stop at words. Feuds have been started over it, and blood has been spilled. So for a long time now, such lists have carried no strict order. Only those of undisputed renown are included at all.

"Since the imperial court moved south, nearly two hundred and sixty years have passed. In all that time, across the strife and upheaval of the age, only two women have been acclaimed peerless beauties by heroes and heroines of every nation without exception. One is Su Liudan of the Celestial Maiden Sect, thirty years ago. The other is Feng Yining of the Five Saints Sect, ten years past.

"Feng Yining swallowed a phoenix egg in childhood. By the time she stepped into the jianghu at sixteen, she had already reached the Dharma Realm and achieved the rank of Grandmaster. She blazed across four years, dazzling all who saw her, and no small number of heroes pledged themselves to follow wherever she led. In her final battle before returning to the Five Saints Sect, she met Ji Hanyi, the heretic of the Void-Annihilating Way, and broke Ji’s Divine Art of Heaven and Earth Transmutation with her Spear of Righteousness and Fist of Honor, leaving Ji Hanyi with a crack in her spirit from which she has never recovered, shutting her out of the Heaven-Man Realm and the rank of Supreme Master forever.

"Now you might say, dear listeners, losing one battle hardly seems reason for a lifetime of stagnation. But Ji Hanyi is also a woman of breathtaking talent, and she was only nineteen at the time. She cultivates the Sutra of Celestial Heart Wisdom, one of the three great secret scriptures of the Sage-Severing Way, and she had sought Feng Yining out herself, in the pride of her heart, issuing the challenge of her own accord. The loss was not a single exchange. And the root principle of the Sutra of Celestial Heart Wisdom—the Divine Art of Heaven and Earth Transmutation—demands that one’s own heart mirrors the heart of Heaven. If one’s own heart carries a crack, how can it merge with Heaven’s heart and achieve the Heaven-Man Realm?

"Had she managed to defeat Feng Yining in a later encounter, that crack might have healed. But Feng Yining returned to the Five Saints Sect and entered a life-or-death seclusion, seeking the Heaven-Man Realm. Eight years have now passed with no word. By the precedents of old, she has in all likelihood been gone for some time. As they say, how pitiful the devoted souls of the jianghu, who shall never again hear the name of the phoenix.

"Now, none of this is my own invention. The orthodox sects love nothing more than publishing the techniques and weaknesses of the heretical paths, so that their own people may be on guard. But I had best leave it there for today. Otherwise, if some wandering heretic from the Sage-Severing Way passes through Dingjiang Prefecture and catches wind of this, they might come creeping to my door in the night and not even give me a clean death.

"Dear listeners, that is a risk I’d rather not take. So if this has been worth anything to you, reward me with a warm meal. Those with coin, thank you for it. Those without, thank you for your presence. Whatever you give is a kindness, and I am grateful for it!"

Ding Songyan tossed a few copper coins into the bamboo tray being passed around, then stayed to listen as the storyteller moved on to more tales of the jianghu.

By the time he finished, Xu Chang’an was so caught up in it all that he could not help turning to Ding Songyan with a dreamy look.

"Brother Ding, do you think I could become a great thief? The kind who moves through moonlight and takes treasures right from under the noses of a whole array of masters?"

You? Ding Songyan gave him a sideways glance and said mildly, "Stand up straight."

Xu Chang’an looked baffled but did as he was told.

Ding Songyan studied him for a few breaths, and gradually a smile worked its way onto his face.

"Now there’s the bearing of a great thief."

Flattery costs nothing and buys goodwill. Why not?

Xu Chang’an was delighted beyond measure. He decided that Brother Ding was the finest friend he had ever had in his life.

He kept his back straight and paced back and forth with great self-satisfaction.

Ding Songyan listened for a while longer, then decided to head over to the storyteller who covered historical accounts, to learn what he could from that quarter.

Throughout, he had been quietly watching the crowd around him, looking for anyone whose expression might betray surprise at his reappearance.

He had taken seven or eight steps when someone sidled up to him and produced a thin booklet, speaking in a lowered voice.

"Interested? Portraits of the Peerless Beauties of the Jianghu. With illustrations. The artist has excellent brushwork. Only three silver, or twenty-four copper coins."

Ding Songyan glanced at the bookseller without speaking.

The bookseller, young-faced but with the world-weary eyes of someone twice his age, looked left and right.

"Not interested in that one? What about this? Outstanding Heroes of the Jianghu."

He produced another volume.

Ding Songyan pointed at the Portraits of Peerless Beauties with some amusement.

"Are these authentic?"

The bookseller had a rough idea what was meant, and was about to launch into his pitch, when he caught Xu Chang’an beside Ding Songyan giving him a hard stare, and noticed the man who’d asked was smiling without quite smiling, his intentions unclear.

He stumbled slightly.

"The artist never saw them in person. He could only imagine based on what circulates in the jianghu. If you two gentlemen want something closer to the real thing, you might commission someone to go to Flame Capital and buy a copy by Master Xiaozhang. He has met two or three of the subjects himself."

Ding Songyan let it drop and asked in thought, "Do you have anything relating to the Brightnight Sect?"

He had made up his mind to learn martial arts. The most prominent local option appeared to be the Brightnight Sect. Joining it would certainly be difficult, the odds vanishingly small, but Ding Songyan had always believed that aiming for the highest gives you a chance at the middle, while aiming low from the start guarantees an outcome worse still. So all his early preparations, he decided, ought to be set to the standard of seeking admittance to the Brightnight Sect.

For that, he needed information.

At the question, the bookseller took a sharp step back and shook his head firmly.

"Nothing!"

Ding Songyan raised an eyebrow.

The bookseller glanced quickly in both directions and said in a rapid undertone, "They are actually here in Dingjiang Prefecture!"

Taking liberties with the masters on the Rankings and the Portraits is all very well, since they’re not in the area to come looking for you, isn’t it? Ding Songyan clicked his tongue and moved on with Xu Chang’an to the next storyteller’s pitch.

He listened for a long while. Piecing together what he’d heard with the earlier tales of the martial world and what his sister had told him about the Zhen household, he began to form a first picture of this world.

This place was called the Great Wilderness, or the Mountains-and-Seas Realm.

After Yu the Great’s son, Qi, founded Xia, history seemed to diverge from the world Ding Songyan had come from. The mythology was familiar in outline but skewed in its particulars.

There had been a Qin, and a First Emperor, who unified the Great Wilderness and brought the hundred ethnic groups to heel, but the dynasty had endured for over two hundred years.

Several lines of poetry Ding Songyan knew from his old world had appeared here as well, though their origins were unclear. The storyteller in question had been covering the history of the current dynasty and had only touched on earlier periods briefly.

The current dynasty bore the name Great Zhao. The imperial family claimed descent from Zhurong, god of fire, and took Hong as their surname. They had once held the whole realm, but nearly two hundred and sixty years ago, a great upheaval tore everything apart: the Daren, people of immense stature; the Zhourao, small but swift; the Sanshen, each bearing three bodies; the Sanshou, each crowned with three heads; the Jingren, the quiet people of the southern reaches; the Junzi, a people renowned for their virtue; the Shouma, wanderers of the far western wastes; and the Quanrong, the canine-headed of the north—all rose in rebellion at once, and the realm fell into chaos and disorder.

A scion of the Hong line reestablished the dynasty south of the great river, at Flame Capital, and held back the tide of collapse through alliances and diplomacy. The north fell into prolonged conflict among the rebel peoples, and eventually coalesced into three nations:

Xu, founded by the Sanshen claiming descent from Emperor Shun, in alliance with the Shouma and Jingren, referred to by the storyteller as New Xu;

Gan, dominated by the Daren, Junzi, and Zhourao;

Feng, established by the Sanshou, the Quanrong, and the Rong.

The latter was separated from Great Zhao by Xu and Gan and shared no common border with it.

Beyond the four main nations lay others, Ba and Tiandu among them, all on the outer edges of the wilderness.

Since the southward crossing, the dynasty had seen prosperity give way to decline, with sects and noble clans fighting over influence and the heretical paths stirring chaos, until the late Emperor Chengzu Wen brought peace through reconciliation with the great sects, reformed the system, and restored a measure of flourishing. The current emperor pressed further still, building military strength under the reign name Jianwu, with hopes of reclaiming the northern territories in his lifetime.

As for the martial arts: nothing had yet pointed to the existence of gods, spirits, or immortals as a distinct class of power. The Dharma Realm marked the threshold of Grandmaster. The Heaven-Man Realm was Supreme Master. The Spirit Platform Realm was Sage. Common parlance held that a Grandmaster could anchor a prefecture, a Supreme Master guard a province, and a Sage protect a nation. At present, the world held no more than fourteen Sages: ten of the orthodox paths and four of the heretical paths.

The divide between orthodox and heretic had nothing to do with national allegiance. Those who embraced chaos as their purpose, who took pleasure in spreading catastrophe, whose arts were brutal and bloody, these were the heretical paths, hunted in every nation, though some states were not above making use of them to destabilize their enemies.

Only those with a Supreme Master counted among the truly great sects or noble clans. In Great Zhao, these presently included the Six Sects and Four Schools, the Two Faiths and Three Clans, the Two Sacred Grounds, the Two Reclusive Orders, the Dangkang Agrarian Order, the Body-and-Will Heterodox Sect, and the Clan of Xingtian. Gan, Xu, and Feng nations had their equivalents. The Everlasting Sect and the Celestial Maiden Sect were among Gan’s foremost powers.

The heretical paths had their own hierarchy. Those ranked at the top were collectively known as the Twenty-One Heretical Ways, nine above and twelve below. The Sage-Severing Way was one of the upper nine.

The local Brightnight Sect had once been a great power, but suffered devastating losses in the upheaval of two hundred years ago and lost parts of its core heritage. A handful of surviving disciples had kept it alive through difficult years, eventually reestablishing it south of the great river in Ning Province’s Dingjiang Prefecture. Generations later, it had recovered some of its former strength and now counted several Grandmasters among its ranks.

The patriarch of the Zhen household, Zhen Qianfan, was the Grand Elder of the Four Waters Brotherhood, a gang whose influence ran through Ning Province’s waterways. The Brotherhood had weakened in recent years and now had only two Grandmasters left. Patriarch Zhen was one of them, and carried significant standing within Dingjiang Prefecture.

Every year, Great Zhao published the Orchid Rankings, assigning brief evaluative comments to heroes of all quarters. This was unrelated to cultivation realm or official rank, being based purely on demonstrated ability. The storyteller had so far mentioned only that Grandmasters were divided into two grades: the lower, called Subtlety Attuned, and the higher, called Spirit Resonated. Sages and Supreme Masters were too few and too rare to be ranked at all.

Ding Songyan was still ruminating over all of this when he prepared to move to the next storyteller’s pitch.

He had just turned to one side when he found himself looking directly at a pair of eyes.

They were dark-irised and set wide, positioned on the left and right of a bronze-skinned chest. Below them, a very large navel opened and closed as a mouth. The lips slanted upward, marked by a conspicuous black mole, apparently intended to indicate where a nose might once have been.

Uh... Ding Songyan’s gaze traveled upward, slowly, across the raw edge of flesh at the neck, to the space where a head should have been, and found it entirely empty.

A living person with no head. Wait. The Clan of Xingtian?

The headless figure in the open blue-black jacket, muscles knotted beneath, standing well over nine feet, who had apparently already been on his way, glanced back at Ding Songyan, then turned and walked toward Dangkang Temple.

"That’s one of the Wushou from Qian Province," Xu Chang’an murmured beside him. "The current emperor wants to strengthen the troops by combining Xingtian martial arts with military strategy. He’s sent this cavalry lieutenant here to Dingjiang Prefecture to drill the garrison." He paused. "The Wushou dream every night of fighting their way back north."

Xingtian martial arts. Worth considering... The thought struck Ding Songyan with unexpected force.

One-sided force, for the moment.

But where interest leads, action should follow. He decided he would find a way to make the acquaintance of that Wushou cavalry lieutenant.