Chapter 48

As evening fell, Shen Jie climbed the city walls to find Liu Mao and successfully exchanged for several pots of already-cooked hot porridge.

In the chilly dusk, with the sun dipping westward and the river’s dampness permeating the air, the rare warmth of this humble meal drew all sorts of folk. Thick broth bubbled in the military’s large iron pot, stirred with a long ladle as the grains of un-cooked rice swirled. From this motion wafted a faint, elusive scent—perhaps the lingering aroma of meat from the previous meal—that drifted through the alleyways. Before long, the charitable porridge distribution site drew long, snaking queues.

These survivors, even as they bore the marks of misfortune and most had gone without food that day, starving to the point where ribs pressed against bellies, gathered without intervention from yamen runners or soldiers. Silently and orderly, they formed patient lines.

On the long avenues, countless footprints overlapped on the ground, yet voices remained subdued. No discord broke the peace. Only the soothing sounds of ladles scraping pot sides and porridge pouring into bowls could be heard, mingled with sincere thanks expressed in different tones and timbres.

He Yu had again ascended the battlements to assess the situation. Chen Shu remained to assist at a porridge distribution table alongside Yun Shen. Her imposing strength and steady movements allowed her to accomplish the work of two people. Not infrequently, when she passed bowls to recipients, they not only thanked her but also cast sidelong glances at Yun Shen that held both confusion and disapproval. This left him stranded: assisting would only invite Chen Shu’s unintentionally dismissive look for getting in the way.

Several among the queue were spectators who had watched the event beneath the Swordmasters’ Summit. After Chen Shu handed them their porridge, they studied her face and finally recognized her. “You—you’re Chen Shu, the one who fought today!”

Chen Shu paused, fighting back a proud grin. “I guess so?”

“I definitely recognize you!” the man insisted. “I paid for second-level seats and attended every day. Knew you’d win—” Though the Swordmasters’ Summit had long since dissolved into flood wreckage, only here, covered in mudflats and exhaustion, did anyone still find the heart for such idle chatter.

Yun Shen stepped forward, likely prepared by experience to wave the man away. But before he could speak, someone else in the queue also chimed in. “So you’re this swordswoman? Young Lady, I witnessed you split the city gates wide open, such prowess! I couldn’t fathom who on earth—”

Then, even from a line further over, clamoring erupted:

“Why, it’s Hero Chen! Did you finish your final bout today then?”

“That’s where you’re ignorant! Those two were just sparring when the flood rushed in! They stopped to rescue folk!”

“My aged mother also witnessed Miss Chen saving folk—saw you pull several people from the harbor!”

Suddenly, many paused in the middle of their gradual advancement through the queues, craning their necks to observe. Even someone midway through a line gave up his hard-won spot just to push through and thank Chen Shu. At long last, the quiet, disciplined order dissolved into mild mayhem.

Most of these had been rescued directly by Chen Shu as she searched for Yun Shen before. She stared at their faces, recalling each moment they came into view, then turned her gaze to Yun Shen. A complex emotion stirred within her. Usually bold and unconstrained, she found herself disoriented by stares far more sincere than she could ever hope to return.

Chen Shu had not acted out seeking gratitude. Yet these folk—folk with nothing to their names, who could hardly trust in dawn’s promise—wished with full hearts simply to approach and utter their brief thanks. To her, stemming floods or breaking city gates had been casual acts, scarcely more memorable than tossing spare pennies to beggars on different street corners. But to the small, the defenseless, the suffering… each copper might as well be worth more than all their lives combined.

The piled-whitened bones beneath Tianyu Mountain may not offer any prettier scene than the present chaos suffusing Diancang Pass, yet those bones held no speech. They would never embrace each other and weep softly, nor thank her with such honest, earnest eyes.

As a child, Chen Shu had indeed joined her senior sister in gathering those forgotten skeletons—sometimes stacking them into towers easily toppled by wind; sometimes hurling them at monkeys invading the courtyard in search of food; sometimes grinding them into fine ashes later added to mystery remedies by her sister.

But today, surrounded by these fragmented expressions of gratitude, she finally began to grasp something of the vital human experience that always remained elusive from mountain heights down to foothills. Stunned into silence, she floundered for responses, experiencing for the very first time the sensation of clumsiness.

Fortunately, the Yun Shen by her side wasn’t truly idle. Clearing his throat, he merely raised his voice—a few concise phrases alone sufficed to settle the excited crowd back into order.

Later incidents stirred similar disruptions, each time calmed by Yun Shen’s gentle intervention. One among those who approached the porridge stand late was named. When he arrived, the man greeted Chen Shu with false intimacy. She scrutinized him, failing entirely to place his face. Yun Shen, however, hovered behind her, lightly naming the man: Boatman Tan, then smoothly waved him away.

They worked well past sunset, into the hour when the moon hung high in the center of the heavens. Here and there, several households, showing remarkable resourcefulness in such times, produced lanterns still carrying wicks and oils. These were hung high atop the Swordmasters’ Summit ruin at the city’s center—seemingly stars brought low to earth, gleaming against the boundariless night sky.

The Swordmasters’ Summit would surely never resume. After a day that arduous, even Shen Jie was worn thin. Liu Mao himself dozed soundly atop the city ramparts.

Yamen runners assigned to the original event were stationed directly below the Swordmasters’ Summit’s platform. When the floodwaters arrived, the impact instantly became most terrible. Several officers were badly injured. Those remaining, fortunate to be whole-bodied, were still entirely occupied elsewhere—utterly unable to manage this crowd of unleashed swordsmen running free.

Regarding the competitors… certainly, plenty had entered harboring dishonorable motives, greedy eyes fixed on riches. Perhaps it was an irony then, that precisely these fortune-seekers—forced by defeat to confront their dashed hopes of winning rewards—dispersed even faster than Yan Ji. Diancang Pass is not your average market town; all routes, whether east, west, south or north, prefer river passages for swiftest movement. By scrambling overland on their panicked escape, they didn’t flee disaster—they marched themselves straight into the ghostworld’s doors.

The Pass, tall and steadfast though it stands, was overwhelmed by rising waters. How much hope existed then for little crafts caught in the flood surges to survive?

—And Boatman Tan? The reason he survived, here among the city, proved a stroke of fortune: only because Granny Painted Face had stolen his own large vessel at the pier!

Could the muddy waters seizing Diancang Pass be now mingled with the blood of Granny Painted Face? One can say this: though fierce-tempered and bloodthirsty, her vessel-handling skill might not have endured the river’s fury.

Those hard-won lamps, apart from the one hung at the Swordmasters’ Summit by the street, were left one for Shen Jie. She not only had to write letters to request grain supplies, report to the imperial court, but also oversee the aftermath efforts for the entire disaster-stricken city. By rights, the general of Diancang Pass was Liu Mao, but perhaps Shen Jie had so fiercely and decisively humiliated him that day that Liu Mao might hold no grudges, but Shen Jie had already taken the reins of authority preemptively.

Of course, this likely aligned perfectly with the scheming nature of Liu Mao, hence this delicate situation emerged where a capital official in charge of penal matters was managing civil administration instead, and doing it with remarkable order. Liu Mao was not only compliant but even somewhat obsequious; he not only handed over the city’s entire roster to her but also dispatched soldiers to assist with significant and minor tasks throughout the city—which structures were temporarily habitable, where injured personnel lay needing care, where piled-up corpses required urgent removal to prevent, with prolonged exposure, an outbreak of epidemic diseases that would cause another major calamity.

When Chen Shu came to give Shen Jie her reply, though the yamen remained dilapidated, bustling with busy yamen runners and soldiers, it felt far “livelier” than during the Swordmasters’ Summit. Walking inside, she spotted a small mound of earth piled outside Shen Jie’s study, atop which lay a plain hempen cloth for tying hair; illuminated by moonlight, it appeared extraordinarily tranquil in that courtyard full of frantic activity, as if this tiny enclave had fallen into a deep sleep or was mutely watching the bent-over, busy Shen Jie inside the study.

Inside the study, only a faint lamp burned, casting light on Shen Jie’s angular face, half-hidden amidst the documents.

“What is Lord Shen busy with?” Chen Shu asked as soon as she entered, peering forward, drawn to the disorderly files on the desk. “Organizing all the tasks that need doing—or not doing—over these days so Liu Mao doesn’t dump them all onto the young clerks,” Shen Jie replied, also reaching to flip through the pile next to her hand, grabbing her dark hair irritably as she added, “Given how this looks, I probably won’t sleep tonight.”

“So many things?” Chen Shu blinked, catching on. “Are you returning to the capital, my lord? Is that why you must finish all this today?” “Not exactly,” Shen Jie paused for a moment, shoving a recently marked register somewhere at random before saying, “Have you worked it out with those martial world figures yet, about the grain delivery letters?”

“All settled!” Chen Shu declared. “Brother He is even heading that way; get him a horse and he can deliver the letter to Mengcheng. Members of the Martial World Alliance volunteered too—for every city you mentioned, someone agreed to take the letter… I just don’t get it, why not use the yamen runners?” “Oh, they could be used,” Shen Jie answered. “But compared to rescue missions, delivering letters isn’t as critical, and their legwork might not be as good as those folks’. Soldiers could work, yet I dare not trust Liu Mao again. It’s better to ask these martial world figures, who are heading home anyway and familiar with the routes, to deliver them along the way.”

“That makes sense,” Chen Shu nodded, then recalled her earlier question. “But why rush to wrap all this up today?” Shen Jie raised her head, a faint grin playing on her lips in the weak light, her tone laden with meaning: “—Because I’m going with you to deliver the letters.” “Huh?”

“That place I mentioned earlier, Yingqiu City, lies at the headwaters of the Yushui River, unlike Mengcheng which is by that great river. Yingqiu City has a steep terrain, its citizens are impoverished, and honestly, they have little surplus grain—but,” there in the deep night, Shen Jie’s eyes gleamed like a tiger’s, “south of Yingqiu City, before that river merges into the Yushui River, there stands a large weir built in the previous dynasty. Logically, even with devastating torrential floods, this embankment should protect the downstream regions!”