Beijing's summer came hard and fast.
With the heat rose the stench: sweat, medicine, filth—and something worse, something you couldn't scrub from stone. The smell of new rules. It didn't seep up from the drains. It was pasted up on the notice walls.
On the third morning, a fresh set of broadsheets appeared across the city.
The paper was stark white. The ink was pitch-black. The characters were rigid, unforgiving. At the top, four words—WANTED: REBEL TRAITORS—were like nails driven straight into the eye.
Qin Zhao stopped at the mouth of an alley and scanned it from a distance. His stomach dropped.
Below the heading was a crude sketch: a hammer of a nose, two black-bean eyes, and beside it a list of "features":
Young… Shaanxi accent… callus in the web of the left hand… carried a knife, cut down the flag…
Without thinking, Qin Zhao drew his hand deeper into his sleeve.
He hadn't expected that what he cut that day wasn't just a banner—it was the rest of his life into a wanted notice.
Xu Jinghong stood at his side, her conical hat pulled low, her voice squeezed out between her teeth.
"They posted it this fast. That tells you something."
Qin Zhao swallowed. "What?"
"It means the Qing weren't the only ones there that day," Xu Jinghong said coldly. "Those men in Han clothes—they have lists, informants, a dedicated 'rebel-hunting' unit."
Qin Zhao's chest tightened. "There's a mole inside Guiyi?"
Xu Jinghong shook her head. "Not necessarily. But they have plenty of mouths they can buy."
—The chronicler slips in a line:In times like these, you can guard against blades. You can dodge fire. The hardest thing to guard against is a mouth. Sell it once and you buy a sack of rice. Sell it twice and you buy a life. Sell it a third time and you buy a grave—one that may not even carry your name.
Qin Zhao was about to speak when the latch in the back courtyard clicked softly. The scholar stepped out, wearing the same calm as ever—the calm of a man who treats his life like paper and writes on it.
He didn't look at the broadsheet first. He looked at Qin Zhao.
"You're still in the city," he said. "That means you haven't gotten drunk on yourself."
Qin Zhao bared his teeth. "How could I? If I get drunk I'll end up nailed to the wall."
The scholar's mouth twitched. "Good. Then it's time for you to go."
Qin Zhao blinked. "Go? Where?"
The scholar reached into his sleeve and took out a packet wrapped in oil paper. A dab of wax sealed it shut; pressed into the wax was a tiny Gui (归).
He held it out to Qin Zhao as if handing him an invisible blade.
"South," he said. "Along the canal. To Huai'an. Then east… someone will meet you by sea."
Qin Zhao lowered his voice. "Why me?"
"Because you run fast," the scholar said simply. "And because you're on the posters. They'll turn the city inside out looking for you—but they won't always imagine you'd dare to run out."
Xu Jinghong added, almost lazily, "And because you haven't learned fear properly yet."
Qin Zhao bristled. "I know fear."
"Even better," Xu Jinghong said. "Men who know fear live longer."
The scholar tapped the oil-paper packet. "Inside isn't just a letter. It's a copy of what we pulled from the register—names of informants in the city, roadblocks outside, who controls which alley. You deliver this to the south, and the south dies less."
Qin Zhao's palm began to burn, as if he were holding a bar of iron.
"How do I go?" he asked.
The scholar didn't give him speeches. He gave him three lines.
"First: don't go by the gates.""Second: don't take the main roads.""Third: don't believe 'kindhearted strangers.'"
Then he turned to Xu Jinghong. "You take him out."
Xu Jinghong didn't say yes. She said only, "Tonight."
I. Out of the City
That night.
Beijing's night was not truly dark—too many torches, too many patrols, too much suspicion. Every few streets someone barked, "Stop! Search!"
Xu Jinghong didn't lead Qin Zhao down streets. She led him through the seams between houses.
First they slipped through a collapsed courtyard wall, climbed over broken tiles into a back lane. Then she pried up a plank beneath a stack of firewood. Under it lay a narrow drainage channel.
The channel was damp and cold, the water shallow—but foul. Qin Zhao held his breath and crawled forward, and without warning the memory of that other night hit him: the mud under the overturned cart when the city fell. The same sickness, the same pressure—only then he had been hiding to live. Tonight he was crawling to leave.
Xu Jinghong stopped and lifted a hand: wait.
Above them came footsteps and muttered curses.
"Did we search this side?""Yeah. Found jack shit.""Search it again. The order says the brat who cut the flag can't have gone far."
Qin Zhao's teeth ground so hard his jaw ached. He wanted to drive his knife straight up through the floorboards. Xu Jinghong didn't even seem to hear. Only when the steps faded did she move again.
Low, she said, "Remember: Guiyi's blade cuts the road first, then the man. Right now you're cutting only one thing—the road out."
At the end of the channel stood an abandoned well. The cover had been pried loose; moonlight spilled down, ringed around the opening like a silver nail.
Xu Jinghong rose first, checked the ground, then pulled herself up. Qin Zhao followed. When he lifted his head, he found they were already outside the city—on a strip of scrubland, two alleys away from the nearest patrol torch.
Qin Zhao couldn't help it. "This route… when did you dig it?"
Xu Jinghong gave him one sentence. "We didn't dig it. We left it."
He understood.
This city had always held countless ways to live—hidden, unseen. Once a blade touched the throat, the living roads rose from underground.
II. The Checkpoint
Getting out was only the first step.
What killed you next was the roadblock.
The Qing had thrown up checkpoints around the capital region—officially to stop "bandits," in truth to catch "rebels." At every junction stood a cluster of Han-clothed "rebel-hunters," eyes sharper than knives.
Xu Jinghong brought Qin Zhao to a side road. At the end squatted a broken shed. Beside it stood a pole with a lantern—unlit—bearing a wooden placard:
HERBS PASS HERE — INSPECTION
Inside sat a Han-clothed soldier, flipping a copper coin across his fingers, the coin spinning fast as a thought. He glanced up and smiled in a way that wasn't really a smile.
"Herbs, this late?"
Xu Jinghong set down a medicine basket. It truly held herbs—angelica root, astragalus, licorice—sharp enough to sting the eyes.
"The city's a mess," she said lightly. "The shop needs stock."
The soldier's hand went into the basket. He turned the herbs slowly.
Slowly, like he was turning your heartbeat.
Qin Zhao lowered his head. His throat felt like sand. He felt the man's gaze pause on him—like the back of a blade tapping bone.
The soldier asked casually, "Where are you from?"
Qin Zhao's chest tightened.
Xu Jinghong didn't look at him. "My cousin," she said. "Hebei. Mute."
Qin Zhao nearly choked on his own breath. Mute?
The soldier laughed softly. "A mute, huh. Pity. The boy who cut the flag wasn't mute."
Qin Zhao's scalp went numb. He forced his breathing down, down, until it barely moved.
The soldier set the herbs back and held out his hand. "Toll."
Xu Jinghong laid down two small pieces of silver.
The soldier didn't take them. With one fingertip he nudged the silver back—millimeter by millimeter. His eyes went colder.
"Not enough."
Xu Jinghong added another piece.
Only then did the soldier sweep the silver into his sleeve and wave them through. "Go."
Qin Zhao took two steps, his back slick with sweat. He thought they were clear.
Then behind him came the soldier's voice again, lazy as a yawn.
"Mute or not—""lift your head. Let me see your eyes."
Qin Zhao's feet locked.
For a heartbeat he wanted to turn and run.
But Xu Jinghong's fingers tugged his sleeve—barely. Not to hold him. To remind him: don't.
Qin Zhao raised his head slowly.
Moonlight fell into his eyes like splinters of ice.
The soldier stared for three full breaths.
Then he smiled.
"Fine," he said. "Go."
Qin Zhao didn't dare look back. He followed Xu Jinghong away at a brisk walk. Only when the shed was far behind did he whisper,
"He recognized me?"
Xu Jinghong didn't turn. "He has no proof."
Cold spread through Qin Zhao. "Then why let us pass?"
Xu Jinghong's voice turned even colder.
"Because he wants a long line."
Qin Zhao clenched the oil-paper packet until his knuckles hurt.
—The chronicler's judgment:Some doors let you through not because you're safe, but because you've become more dangerous.
III. The Chase
By the time they reached the canal, dawn was paling the sky.
The Grand Canal lay like a silent black belt pressed against the earth, running on and on. Along the bank sat a few battered boats. Boatmen dozed in their coats, hollowed out by years, as if time itself had scooped them clean.
Xu Jinghong led Qin Zhao onto a medicine boat. Under the canopy were stacked sacks marked with herb names. The boatman opened one eye, saw Xu Jinghong, and didn't ask questions. He only clicked his tongue.
"You're late."
Xu Jinghong set a copper coin on the planks. The coin bore the carved character Gui.
The boatman's eyelid twitched. He palmed the coin into his sleeve at once and lowered his voice.
"Beijing's sealed tight?"
Xu Jinghong nodded.
The boatman asked nothing more. He said only, "Hide well."
Qin Zhao slipped behind the sacks. But his heart only raced harder.
Because he heard hooves on the bank.
Not one horse. Several.Hooves striking the hard earth with a clean, vicious rhythm—and the faint thrill of found you in the sound.
Xu Jinghong lifted the canopy a finger's width and glanced out. Her face didn't change. She only pulled her hat brim lower.
"They're here," she said.
Qin Zhao's throat clenched. "What do we do?"
Xu Jinghong pressed the road-marker into his hand. "Remember what I taught you—cut the road."
The hooves stopped not far away.
A voice called, "Where's this boat headed?"
The boatman answered lazily, "Huai'an. Delivering herbs."
"Delivering herbs?" The man laughed once. "Last night someone cut down a flag in the city. Word is he ran south. Your boat—aren't you delivering 'medicine' straight into rebel mouths?"
The boatman yawned. "Sir, medicine saves lives. Lives are cheap. If you want it, take it—just don't ruin my livelihood."
The man on shore snorted. "Search it."
Footsteps approached. Qin Zhao held his breath, sweat pooling in his palms.
A sack was kicked once.Kicked again.
Just as the third kick was about to land, Xu Jinghong suddenly jumped down from the bow as if she'd tripped, deliberately falling hard.
"Aiyo!" she cried—small, but loud enough to drag every eye.
The man on shore barked, "What are you doing, fooling around!"
Xu Jinghong braced a hand on her knee and looked up, and in that instant her gaze went soft—soft as any ordinary woman's.
Low, she said, "Sir, if you split those sacks… there's a powder inside—duanchangcao—get it on your hands and you'll have trouble."
The man hesitated.So did the soldiers searching, glancing down at the herb dust on their boots.
Just that hesitation—
was all they needed.
Qin Zhao moved.
He slid out from the back of the canopy, flattened himself along the boat's edge, and dropped soundlessly into the reeds—more shadow than man. He didn't run the road. He tore along the muddy track beneath the embankment.
After several dozen steps he slammed the road-marker into a fork in the path—the Guiyi sign: I went this way.
Behind him the roar finally broke loose:
"There!""After him!"
Hooves thundered again.
Qin Zhao ran until the world narrowed to wind and heartbeat.
And in the middle of that running, he realized something with a shock: he was no longer fleeing only for himself. He was running for that packet—for the list—for Xu Jinghong—for all the heads that had not yet learned to lift.
He tore over a small bridge. Below it, a man was carrying water. The man looked up, saw the Guiyi cloth on Qin Zhao's wrist—and without hesitation tipped the buckets.
Water crashed across the mud track.
The ground turned slick as oil.
The pursuing horses stumbled, their speed breaking.
Heat surged in Qin Zhao's chest. Guiyi wasn't a "society." It was a net.
He didn't stop. He ran on.
At a stand of willows, Xu Jinghong appeared ahead—she had circled and arrived before him, as if she had already known which road he would choose.
"This way!" she snapped.
Qin Zhao surged toward her. Xu Jinghong seized his arm and dragged him into the trees. There, tucked in shadow, waited a small boat with a low canopy—built for hiding lives.
She shoved him under the canopy. But she didn't board immediately. She looked back once, toward the distant torchlight and the blur of horse-shapes.
Qin Zhao panted, "How did you keep up?"
Xu Jinghong didn't explain. She gave him one line.
"Guiyi roads aren't run by one pair of legs. They're laid by many hands."
She stepped aboard. The boatman pushed off with his pole. The hull rocked softly, drifting away from the bank. Torches wavered in the distance, but the riders couldn't follow onto water.
Qin Zhao collapsed beneath the canopy like a man hauled out of fire.
He gripped the oil-paper packet against his chest and whispered,
"Are we really going to the sea?"
Xu Jinghong looked at the canal water. Her voice was calm—hard as iron.
"There's fire on the sea. Fire needs wind. The wind comes from the south."
Qin Zhao swallowed. "Will the south be better than the north?"
Xu Jinghong didn't answer right away. She tipped her hat back just enough for daylight to touch her eyes.
"Better?" she said. "I don't know.""But people down there haven't had their heads forced into the mud yet."
Then, after a pause, she added—
"And the south is about to see something big."
Qin Zhao's heart jumped. "What?"
Xu Jinghong did not say the word Yangzhou. She said only, lightly:
"The blade north of the river will be sharper.""Sharp enough to wake everyone."
The boat slipped downstream. Shadows of trees on both banks slid past like walls falling away. Qin Zhao stared toward the direction Beijing lay, already fading behind them—and discovered he did not miss the city at all.
He only felt the wanted poster on his back like a red-hot nail, driving him forward.
South.Toward the sea.Toward a future he still didn't dare to imagine.
—The chronicler's judgment:The boy's first departure from the capital is not for rank or fame, but for a larger blade.And the true edge of a blade is never its metal—it is whether you dare to place it in the hands it must reach.
(End of this chapter)