Black hoods were pulled over their heads. Cold blades pressed against their backs.
They were forced forward.
Turn after turn, stumbling over uneven ground.
Then the mountain's belly suddenly opened wide. The biting wind from the dim cave entrance vanished at once, cut off as if by a door. Qishan drove them inside, and their footsteps echoed against the stone walls like blows ringing inside a hollow bell.
A man in black barked from within the cavern.
"Kneel! Heads down!"
His voice was sharp, absolute. The command reverberated through the chamber. They were forced to their knees. Yet the ground beneath them felt strangely soft.
Wei, Li Si, Zhang San and the others waited like that for a full hour before Minnow finally emerged from deeper inside. His eyes were heavy with exhaustion.
He looked at Qishan.
"Let them go. I've secured their lives."
Wei studied him with curiosity. Only years later would he understand the true cost of that sentence—and how lightly Minnow had spoken it.
A guard stepped forward and summoned them inward.
"A lord wishes to see you."
The black cloths were stripped from their heads.
They were led deeper into the cave, and a wave of warm air rushed over them.
Inside, the chamber was astonishingly luxurious—far beyond anything they had imagined. The floor was covered with thick dark-red silk carpets. Several oil lamps cast a mellow golden glow over carved stone pillars and delicate folding screens, their surfaces glinting faintly like tarnished gold. Low tables held orderly arrangements of bronze vessels and fine jade ornaments, as though this cavern were the private chamber of some noble house.
At the sight of it, the men forgot even to breathe.
Across the room, behind a writing desk, an elderly man in gray bent over his brush, writing rapidly.
He wore a plain gray robe, yet the sleeves revealed faint traces of the old court style—cross-collared and right-folding, the fashion of the fallen dynasty. The cloth was worn, but the stitching was exquisitely tight, the kind of work once done by the tailors of Lin'an.
Here in the wilderness of a barren mountain, he still clung to these obsolete refinements of the Song.
As if reminding everyone silently:
We are men of the Southern Song.
We refuse to become part of the Mongol court.
Wei was shoved to the center of the hall. Instinctively he lifted his head—and met the man's gaze.
And then—
His heart clenched.
"How… is it him?"
Wei's mouth fell open in shock.
"Wei. We meet again."
The man's voice was calm, the same tone he had once used while teaching at the village school.
The gray-robed elder across the desk was—
Chun's father.
Xu Yang.
The village schoolteacher.
The one who always smiled gently.
The mild, deferential teacher—
who now seemed capable of deciding everyone's life with a single gesture.
Wei felt a surge of disbelief.
Impossible.
He must have been captured.
He had to be.
And yet—
Xu Yang slowly set down his brush and looked at him with a mild smile.
Zhang San and Li Si glanced at Wei with undisguised envy.
"Young master, you know someone this important? Why didn't you say so earlier?" Zhang San said, his face oily with flattery, tinged with reproach.
Wei's breathing faltered.
It felt unreal. The genial schoolteacher who had always greeted everyone with a smile had been hiding such a secret.
"You needn't worry about Chun," Xu Yang said gently."And you needn't be afraid. Here—it's just like home."
At the mention of Chun, Wei jerked his head up, eyes wide, waiting for more.
"She's strong," Xu Yang continued."That pleases me."
A chill crept through Wei.
When they were children, Chun once scraped her knee badly and cried in pain.
Xu Yang had simply watched from a distance.
"You only learn to walk carefully after you've felt pain once," he had said.
Looking back now—
it felt less like fatherly wisdom
and more like training.
But Chun and her father were utterly different.
Chun was like a flame.
Xu Yang was like a still, dark pool.
Xu Yang lowered his gaze and took a sip of tea.
The lid of the teacup rotated lightly between his fingers.
He used to do that often.
Turning the lid while telling stories.
Stories about the fall of the old dynasty.
About emperors and their mistakes.
About how rules were rewritten by men.
Back then, Wei had listened, fascinated.
He had thought they were merely tales from an elder.
But now, in this cavern glowing with gold and firelight, with the banner of the old dynasty flickering in the flames—
Wei suddenly understood.
Those had never been stories.
They were history.
The record of a deadly game played with real lives.
And Xu Yang had never said—
that he himself was one of the players.
His gaze lingered briefly over the young faces below.
Only for a moment.
Then it moved on, settling on Zhang San and Li Si with the same gentle expression he once wore in the schoolhouse.
"You are all southerners," he said."And this place… is the hope of the South."
His voice was not loud, yet it filled the hall.
"How long have the iron hooves of the barbarian Yuan trampled our heads?"
"Fields taken. Women and children stolen. Strong men dragged away as a disposable pawn.."
"A single village—gone overnight, turned into desert."
His tone grew colder.
"They sit in their golden halls in Dadu, drinking mare's milk wine, laughing at how low we are. They even gave us a name."
"Driven."
"They say southerners are livestock—herded like beasts."
He lifted his head suddenly.
"One day we will overthrow them."
"If not today, then tomorrow."
"If not our generation, then the next."
The guards in the hall answered with a unified growl. The flames flickered violently, like a storm sweeping through the chamber.
Zhang San's face flushed bright red.
Li Si nodded furiously like a pecking chicken.
"That's right! Overthrow them!"
"Damn the lot of them!"
Xu Yang's gaze returned to Wei.
"Join us."
"When the southerners rise again, the heroes will have their places."
"Otherwise—"
He slowly straightened.
"We will remain livestock forever."