The newly appointed yamen runners climbed the tower with sullen faces, shoved them aside, and with faces thick with coarse flesh sneered, “A bunch of dismissed things, how dare you wear these clothes!”

Head Constable Wang and the constables beneath him stood with faces a mottled mix of anger and shame.

The leader below, seeing those new yamen runners, showed a look of triumph and yelled, “When have these dog-officials ever treated our lives as lives? Shoot then, shoot me dead! Fellow villagers, don’t forget to avenge me!”

After that shout he stepped forward. The “yamen runners” on the tower seized bows and arrows and loosed a volley at the people below.

Those who had shouted the loudest mostly escaped being struck; instead, ordinary farmers urged forward by the commotion were pierced by an arrow and killed outright.

With people dead, the tumult beneath the tower swelled even louder.

Someone who recognized him cried out, “Er Dan!”

The instigator continued, “Look, everyone — these government lackeys never intended to give us a way to live from start to finish! Let’s storm in and settle with them!”

The man wailing over the shot farmer seemed to be a pair of brothers; he immediately bellowed, “I’ll fight you dog-officials to the death!”

The farmers, driven mad by rage and without reason, were about to recklessly force open the gate tower when suddenly there was a loud thud — a spray of blood at the base of the tower.

The farmers looked at the yamen runner who had fallen to his death beneath the tower, exchanged glances, and halted their advance, then looked up again at the tower.

A man wearing an azure-ghost mask stood on the tower and said coldly, “Who loosed the arrows? Whom do you intend to hold to account?”

That mask had been seen everywhere at the New Year lantern fair; on his face now, it carried an indescribable chill and strangeness.

The leader of the riot felt an inexplicable panic and demanded, “Who are you?”

Xie Zheng replied, “One who kills corrupt officials.”

The fake yamen runners on the tower finally came to their senses. Head Constable Wang and the others were completely at a loss about the situation; the fake yamen runners drew their swords and hacked at him.

Xie Zheng did not even bother to parry. Cold wind filled his wide sleeves; standing on the tower with his garments billowing, he sidestepped the swinging blades and, seizing the collar of one of the yamen runners, tossed him down from the tower — another man smashed to death.

While Head Constable Wang was stunned, Xie Zheng gave a flick of his hand and threw down another fake yamen runner, and turned his head to say to him, “The county magistrate is being held under guard. These are fake yamen runners. Let your men act.”

Wang came to his senses. Though he did not know who the man wearing the azure-ghost mask was, remembering the recent oddities at the yamen he immediately understood in broad strokes. He hastily ordered his squad, “Seize these impostor yamen runners!”

The constables, ignorant of the full truth but seeing their leader charge, could no longer hesitate; they raised their knives and met the fake yamen runners blade for blade.

The farmers below craned their necks and watched the spectacle as if at a play, baffled: “Why are the yamen men fighting their own people?”

A nearby farmer answered, “Looks like it’s Head Constable Wang’s men fighting those who shot arrows.”

“Though the county magistrate’s lot aren’t good men, Head Constable Wang is a decent one. Before, when my ox ran off to the next village and Chen the leper took it, it was Head Constable Wang who got it back for me.”

The agitators, seeing the situation slip out of their control, continued to fan the flames: “Can Head Constable Wang be greater than the county magistrate? These lackeys would even turn on their former comrades to save themselves, our lives are worth less to them! If you want revenge, break open the gate and kill the county magistrate!”

Many of the farmers were clearly uncertain whether to merely enter the city or wait for an official accounting.

After a moment, the fake yamen runners on the tower all called for Xie Zheng to have people thrown down. Those farmers who had not yet killed anyone looked at the heap of corpses before the gate and felt a creeping dread.

Xie Zheng stood with his hands behind his back on the tower and said, “Those willing to take the grain and return home, today’s matter will be forgiven; the government will not pursue it. The stubborn and unrepentant, the Jizhou army is already on the road to Qingping County. If you break open the gate today and stain your hands with even a single life, there will be no way back. Do you want the rest of your life to be spent continuing to farm with your wife and children and parents, or do you want to drag your whole family to death? The choice is yours.”

At the news that the Jizhou army was coming, the peasant farmers who had tilled the fields their whole lives were still filled with fear.

A mixture of leniency and severity was still effective; after all, compared with the steadiness of life returning to normal, to storm the city and plunder only to have the whole family afterward executed by the soldiers was clearly a choice no fool would make.

The troublemaker sneered, “Words alone aren’t proof, where’s the grain?”

Head Constable Wang was about to chime in when a voice came from the tower: “The grain has arrived!”

It was the men from Yixiang Pavilion carrying the grain up onto the tower.

Under the present circumstances the city gate absolutely could not be opened, so part of the grain was lowered in baskets from the tower.

A few farmers stepped forward, untied the hemp sacks and checked; they grinned broadly, and could not help wiping their eyes with their sleeves: “The grain — it really is our grain!”

At the news that the grain had been returned, most of the rioting farmers felt their hearts settle back into their bellies.

Head Constable Wang stepped forward and whispered to Xie Zheng, “Brave warrior, thank you for resolving Qingping County’s crisis. But to simply return the requisitioned military grain to the farmers like this — the Jizhou commanders… the county yamen won’t be able to explain this!”

Xie Zheng said, “The county magistrate will explain it himself.”

The order to cancel the grain requisition had long since been sent to Jizhou along with the military order sending Wei Xuan back to Huizhou to hold the defenses; Jizhou could not possibly requisition grain again. But to a constable who knew nothing of this, he need not explain so much.

Head Constable Wang, who had been at his wit’s end, upon hearing Xie Zheng’s words steeled himself.

Indeed, soothing these rebellious men and preventing them from entering the county town was all he could do. With his old bones, these were the responsibilities he could bear; what he could not bear, the county magistrate must.

He said, “It was the brave warrior’s quick thinking to use the Jizhou army to frighten these rebels, at least the townsfolk within the walls are spared disaster.”

Xie Zheng said nothing. What he meant was that the Jizhou army’s arrival was truly not merely to scare the farmers below the tower: with such a major incident in Qingping County, Jizhou could not possibly have heard nothing. If those arriving were anyone other than Wei Xuan, the army would not be likely to engage these farmers who had been led by the nose.

The troublemaker, seeing the rioters calmed and thinking his own prospects for high office and rich reward slipping away, continued with a sullen face, “How will the dozens of lives from Ma Family Village be accounted for?”

Head Constable Wang looked to Xie Zheng for help.

The azure-ghost mask covered his entire face so that no one could see his expression; he only said, “Delay for time.”

Wang was somewhat dumbfounded, then quickly understood that the Ma Family Village massacre could not be properly investigated right now, and they could not give the people an answer on the spot. They could only wait until Jizhou’s troops arrived to steady the situation.

He wiped the sweat from his temple and tried to placate the instigators below the tower.

Xie Zheng’s gaze fell, calm and without expression, upon the few who had repeatedly spoken to provoke.

They were not seeking justice — only to stir the peasants’ hatred and make the chaos grow ever larger.

But if the matter grew large, what good would it do them?

The true farmers, who worked the fields with their faces to the soil and backs to the sky, were not eloquent; led by hatred, they were driven by these men’s incitement to commit wrongdoing. The peasants would be unable to escape the consequences. For these instigators to act with such fearless arrogance — their backing must indeed be something worth pondering.

As those agitators seized upon the government’s inability to immediately explain the Ma Family Village massacre, continuing to make trouble and rekindling hatred between peasants and officials, Xie Zheng was just preparing to quietly eliminate them when a voice suddenly rang from the tower:

“The County Magistrate arrives—”

The people below fell silent, their faces filled with resentment as they looked up at the tower.

Xie Zheng’s eyes narrowed; he thought the forces behind the scenes had forced the county magistrate to appear. But when he turned his head, he saw the magistrate himself, belly round with wealth, strutting proudly in front, while a group of servants followed behind, pressing along bound officers and soldiers.

Fan Changyu, dressed in an ill-fitting maid’s garb, also held someone at knifepoint. The boning knife in her hand was pressed against the man’s neck; the sleeves being a little short, half her frost-pale wrist was exposed.

The man she held already bore several shallow cuts across his neck — clearly, he had not been well-behaved along the way.

Xie Zheng’s gaze fell upon the man’s face. He froze for a moment — then beneath the azure-ghost mask, his expression became nothing short of extraordinary.