RIDING THE LONG WIND - CHAPTER 1

In the dream, the night was pitch black.

She felt her way along the road, holding a lantern, walking in urgent haste.

Moonlight fell across the narrow winding path, casting the shadow of her slender figure alongside the swaying lamplight, like a messenger from the underworld, walking by night with a light in hand.

Not far ahead, at the end of the alley, everything was ablaze with torchlight. Many people stood gathered there, their murmuring voices tangled with cries. Men's furious roars and women's screams wound together, as though hell itself had been dragged into the human world. It made the skin crawl just to hear it.

She walked out of the alley and melted into the crowd, her heart beating fast and hard. She caught the words of those around her:

"What crime did the Gù family commit to deserve this?"

"Crime?" someone scoffed. "Minister Wáng simply needed grain and silver. He's just slaughtering a fat sheep."

She glanced sideways. The speaker was a storyteller from the east side of the city, a man with ears everywhere. He let out a long sigh and said:

"After Prince Liáng rebelled, Fàn Xuān led his troops into the Eastern Capital under the banner of 'purging the Emperor's inner circle,' and then slaughtered every last member of the Lǐ imperial bloodline in a single night. He then held the Empress Dowager and all the court officials hostage and had himself proclaimed Emperor. But he was nothing more than a military governor of Yōuzhōu. Who among the other heroes of the realm would ever accept that? So every regional governor raised his own flag in the name of 'eliminating the rebels,' each declaring himself king. Now that the age of chaos has come, our Minister Wáng is simply going with the tide."

"Though you have to say," the storyteller tapped his folding fan, and all eyes followed its direction toward the great vermillion gates ahead, where a woman was being dragged out by her hair by soldiers, shrieking herself hoarse while the crowd watched with cold indifference, "the Gù family brought some of this on themselves. They were always wealthy, and for years they threw their weight around Yangzhou on the strength of their ties to Prince Liáng. That son of theirs, Gù Jiūsī, always been a useless sort, gambling and stirring up trouble every day. If he hadn't broken Minister Wáng's eldest son's leg back then, perhaps this disaster wouldn't have found its way to their door today."

"That's right," someone chimed in the moment Gù Jiūsī's name was mentioned, the rest of the crowd quick to agree. "He didn't just break the Minister's son's leg. I heard he was galloping his horse through the streets and nearly trampled Jiūshēng's mother to death."

Once that thread was pulled, everyone began talking at once. In the space of a moment, Liú Yùrú listened as a young man who had done nothing worse than fight and gamble was transformed, in the mouths of the crowd, into a demon who murdered and set fires, a monster without a single redeeming quality.

She found it hard to breathe.

She couldn't quite explain why she felt this way. She only knew, with quiet certainty, that Jiūshēng's mother had always made her living through false accusations and petty extortion. Everyone in the neighborhood had cursed her name on a daily basis. And yet now, in the telling, she had become a pure-hearted, pitiable old widow.

And as for Minister Wáng's son, he was a true predator, the kind who had ruined more good girls than anyone could count, sheltered all the while by his family's wealth and power, untouchable by anyone.

She stood still and watched it all, her grip tightening around the lantern handle.

Then she saw a nobly dressed woman being dragged out by a man in his mid-twenties, and a moment later, a young man came bursting after them with a roar:

"Mother!"

The young man who came running looked to be under twenty. His jade crown had been knocked askew, his ink-black hair, smooth as silk, scattered in wild disarray. His clothes were stained with blood. His face was streaked with tears and fury.

And yet even so, none of it diminished his looks by even a fraction.

His eyes were like peach blossoms, his brows like distant mountains. His entire bearing was one of refined elegance. But because he was so tall and lean, and carried such an air of unrestrained openness about him, his delicate features never read as soft or weak. Instead, they gave the impression of something clean and noble.

Like a pine. Like bamboo.

The moment he appeared, the murmuring crowd fell silent. Every eye turned toward him. The man holding his mother turned around, rested a hand on her shoulder, and smiled:

"Gù Jiūsī. Weren't you always so capable? And now look, you're just crying?"

At those words, Gù Jiūsī trembled, but he still said, his voice low and steady:

"A man answers for his own deeds. Let go of my mother."

"What kind of talk is that?" Wáng Róng laughed, idly flicking his whip. "Your Gù family followed Prince Liáng in treason. Is that a crime one man can answer for alone? Don't worry, your mother won't die. My father has always been magnanimous. The children, the women of your household, we'll keep them all. Oh, that's right," he tilted his head, "you don't have a son yet, do you?"

As he spoke, Wáng Róng seemed to feel a twinge of regret. He sighed and said: "What a shame. You never took a wife or concubine, so all that's left in your household are your mother and your father's few concubines to sell off. But they're old and past their prime, so they'll only fetch a price at the lowest backstreet houses. What a waste."

"Wáng Róng!"

Gù Jiūsī roared. Wáng Róng took one look at his face and burst out laughing. "Isn't this for the best? Someone to look after your mother properly, and you and your father can leave without a care in the world."

Gù Jiūsī said nothing more.

He clenched his fists. Rain began to fall, thin and unsteady. All around him came the screams of women. Every man in the Gù household was going to die regardless, so one by one they had drawn their swords and planted themselves in front of their wives and children, as if they could still shield them.

Gù Jiūsī stood still and watched Wáng Róng. His gaze was desperate and grief-stricken, like a solitary crane caged in a place with no escape, proud even in its resolve.

At last he said: "Wáng Róng. What would it take for you to let my mother go?"

"What would it take?" Wáng Róng laughed, rubbing his chin, thinking it over. "How about this: kowtow to me three times and become my sworn son from this day forward. If you're my son, you're practically my father's grandson. He might just spare your Gù family after all."

At those words, Gù Jiūsī's lashes gave the faintest tremble.

Liú Yùrú watched in silence. The rain was growing heavier, soaking through the lantern she held. The onlookers, driven off by the downpour, drifted away one by one, until only Liú Yùrú remained standing there, her expression calm, neither sorrowful nor glad.

After a long moment, she heard Gù Jiūsī say quietly: "All right."

His body trembling, he lowered his head and bent his knees.

At that very instant, the woman beside Wáng Róng suddenly drew a blade from her sleeve and drove it hard into his abdomen. The guards reacted in a heartbeat, slashing toward her the moment the knife came out. Gù Jiūsī cried out and lunged to throw himself over her, but swords and blades came from every direction, and mother and son were pierced through by more than a dozen weapons where they stood.

"My son..."

The woman trembled faintly. She raised her blood-soaked hand and pressed it against Gù Jiūsī's face, whispering between labored breaths: "Better to be a dog in peacetime... than a person in a time of chaos... On the road through reincarnation, do not lose your way..."

Gù Jiūsī did not move. Blood poured from his mouth in great surges. The woman slowly closed her eyes. He knelt on one knee, and answered in a low voice: "Your son... obeys."

Then he pulled the blade from his own body and slowly rose to his feet. Rainwater carried his blood across the ground and pooled at her feet. He turned, blade in hand. In the flash of lightning and crash of thunder, the young man stood drenched in blood, like a revenant from the edge of death.

Everyone around took an involuntary step back.

But he raised his blade and walked toward her, one step at a time.

"Save me..."

His voice came out hoarse. His gaze locked onto her, unyielding: "Liú Yùrú," he called her name, "save me!"