Futile Devices Scans

Li Si had no memories of anything before he was five.

He often heard his grandmother say that back then, he neither cried nor fussed, could speak and laugh, was clever and quick-witted, and was an obedient little darling everyone loved on sight.

When he was five, a young man with a face full of thick beard came back from outside. The moment he entered, he knelt at Grandmother’s feet, crying as he called her Mother. Li Si rushed over and hugged his leg, calling him “Father.”

He thought this was the father he had never met. Only later, after seeing Grandmother and Mother cry day and night, did he learn that this was his second uncle, and that his father was already gone. Not long after that, his mother, who had wept day and night, also fell ill and died.

On the day his mother was buried, he knelt on the ground and watched that crude coffin carry his mother’s remains and his father’s symbolic burial garments into the earth together. Suddenly, an invisible coffin seemed to wrap around him as well.

From then on, everything in the world was separated from him by a layer of wooden planks, blurred and hazy. He could not hear clearly, nor see through it. His small, young self was trapped alone inside that narrow coffin. He could not get out, and no one else could get in.

He was wooden and dull, unable to understand people’s words, and also thin and small, so the older children in the military camp all came to bully him. Coarse mockery and insults—he did not understand them. Shoving and beating—he endured them silently, without any reaction.

Later, his second uncle discovered this and dragged those older children out to beat them all up, so Li Si gained a few peaceful days. But it was not long before his second uncle was transferred to Hedong to suppress bandits. Those older children bore grudges. They poked their heads out and watched for a while, then after a year or two passed and there was still no sign his second uncle would return alive, they began bullying him again.

He was beaten until his whole body was covered in injuries. When he returned home, Grandmother saw his miserable state and went out with a rolling pin to demand an explanation. Most of the older children’s elders had also died on the battlefield. They had no fathers and few mothers, with no adults to discipline them, so they even teased his grandmother. Grandmother came back so angry her eyes were red, then held him at night and wept.

Grandmother’s crying faintly leaked in through the gaps between the coffin boards. He heard it.

That year, he was eight. He began crouching every day beside the fence of the drill ground, watching through the gaps as all sorts of drill instructors led soldiers in martial practice. When he returned home, he forced himself to lift the woodcutter’s blade and began copying their movements. A single chopping motion—he would practice it from morning to night, hundreds and thousands of times. A set of fist techniques—he clumsily imitated them too, also hundreds and thousands of times.

The wounds from being bullied never decreased, and at night his horse stance was also shaky. From time to time, he would fall to the ground.

After countless days and nights, there finally came a day when he pinned the leading older child to the ground and swung his young fists down again and again. No matter how much he was pulled, no matter how much he was beaten, even when his own face was beaten bloody, he did not stop.

From then on, whenever he walked through the military camp, those tyrannical children all avoided him from far away. Because he could not understand pleas for mercy or read people’s expressions. Whenever he saw anyone who had bullied him or others, he beat them fiercely every single time, and unless he beat them until they were covered in blood, he would never stop.

When he was thirteen, his second uncle with the full beard returned, bringing back a small military merit and a meager reward. More importantly, he took Li Si and Grandmother away from the poor, dilapidated lower-class military camp and brought them to the slightly better-off Upper Four Armies camp. The Upper Four Armies had stricter military discipline, and the order in the camp was also more organized. Li Si no longer had to beat people, and he gained the chance to enter the drill ground to practice martial arts.

Author’s Notes: The Upper Four Armies were the four elite forces with the best treatment among the Xuan Imperial Guards: Pengri, Tianwu, Shenwei, and Longwei, collectively known as the Upper Four Armies.

When he was fourteen, his second uncle falsely reported his age, had him inherit his father’s military registration, and he was tattooed and enlisted as a soldier, becoming a Longwei cavalryman. He became skilled in bows, crossbows, sabers, and spears alike.

When he was seventeen, because his archery was outstanding, he was promoted to become the youngest mounted archery drill instructor in the army.

Unfortunately, all his martial skill had never found a chance to be displayed. Back when his second uncle had transferred armies, he had asked someone to “donate” all his savings and carefully chosen the Longwei Army, which guarded the capital year-round. Thus, Li Si could only train on the drill ground. During military reviews, going outside the city for field exercises was already the farthest journey he had ever taken.

At nineteen, His Majesty issued a secret decree, urgently requiring elite and valiant men whose five phases belonged to fire. The commander selected him from the military registry. From then on, he left the capital for the first time, crossing mountains and ridges, trekking a thousand li…

Only to end up inside a ruined earthen fortress, smacked to the ground by the chest of a tall, bare-chested man.

His ears buzzed.

In the pitch-black darkness, he heard the sound of coffin boards shattering to pieces.

——

He was smacked awake.

And with this awakening, the soothing lullaby his mother hummed softly, the sight of his second uncle standing before him and cursing wicked children, Grandmother’s worried tears, the cruel children and burly thug he had pinned to the ground and beaten, the magnificent flames soaring into the sky, the massive stones rolling down in torrents… all came rushing over like a revolving lantern.

The carefree innocence of childhood, the despair of youth, the anger of boyhood, the pain of growth, the agony of parting by death, all the joy, anger, sorrow, and delight of human life, all its grief and reunion, crashed over his face like a giant wave, drowning him completely.

He finally saw clearly his second uncle’s bloodstained, pale, ruined face, and heard clearly that weak, exhausted sigh.

“People like us… no better than tiny ants… what have we spent our whole lives for…”

His second uncle was dead. The second uncle who had shielded him, taught him martial arts, pulled him away from trouble, taken him to eat sweet fruits, and treated him like both father and mother, was dead. Just like his father and mother, he had died small and hurried as an ant.

Li Si trembled all over, tears pouring out like a spring, endless and unstoppable.

——

In the darkness, an impatient voice suddenly sounded. “Little brat! What exactly are you crying for? You’re not done yet?”

Li Si opened his eyes groggily and looked over. He found himself inside a narrow cavern like an underground cellar. Lamplight flickered, and he had been tied hand and foot with hemp rope and thrown into a corner.

In the center of the cavern sat a bathtub. Amid the rising steam, a man was scooping water with a wooden ladle and scrubbing mud from his hair.

Hearing Li Si sit up, the man put down the wooden ladle and raised his head. Through the mist, a pair of bright, sharp eyes appeared.

This man was in his twenties. His features were handsome and bold, his contours sharp, his gaze blazing. A pair of sword-like brows slanted into his loose, disheveled long hair. Water glistened over his wheat-colored skin, like a wheat field bathed in golden light after autumn rain.

Li Si stared blankly at him, having never seen a person so dazzling as the blazing sun.

The man frowned, his expression turning fierce, and the charm of the sunlit wheat field instantly vanished like smoke. Speaking in a Hedong accent, he cursed, “Whimpering and sniveling—you’ve been crying for a whole incense stick’s worth of time! Shut up for me. Cry again and I’ll punch you flat!”

Only then did Li Si realize his face was covered in tears. Bewildered, he lowered his head and rubbed his face against his lapel.

Seeing that he had finally fallen silent, the man turned back impatiently, scrubbed his hair a few more times, then tossed the wooden ladle aside. A violent splash of water sounded through the room as the man climbed out of the tub. He grabbed a ragged piece of hemp cloth from the stone couch beside him, casually wiped the water from his body, tied it around his waist, and walked barefoot toward Li Si.

Watching the pair of full pectorals draw closer and closer, Li Si finally remembered that this was the tiger bandit who had knocked him unconscious earlier. His face instantly flushed bright red, and he shrank back.

“What are you getting shy for?” the man scolded him in amusement. “Do I have something you don’t?”

He pretended to lift Li Si’s lapel, and Li Si hurriedly twisted aside to avoid him. The man chuckled. His damp, hot hand followed the motion and pinched Li Si’s chin, tilting his face back as if teasing a civilian man.

“Your face is tender, but you’re pretty tall. How old are you, growing this high?”

Li Si opened his mouth. Although he was somewhat more awake than before, he still was not used to speaking much. After a long while, he said, “Nineteen.”

“You’re already nineteen? Why do you still look like a little brat?” the man scoffed, touching the faint stubble on Li Si’s chin. “I thought you didn’t grow a beard.”

Unable to bear it, Li Si turned his face away and tried hard to avoid his fingers, but the man still held him tightly.

The man then twisted his face to the side and looked at the hidden row of tattooed characters below his left ear. He read, “Long… What’s this character? You’re from the Long-what Army?”

Li Si pressed his lips together and said nothing. The man was amused. He lifted his wet long hair and showed Li Si his own right cheek. “I’ve got two.”

On the lower side of his cheek was a tattoo far more obvious than Li Si’s: Zhenwu. Then he turned over the back of his left hand for Li Si to see. Beside the webbing between thumb and forefinger was another tattoo: Shengjie.

The Xuan Kingdom valued civil officials over military men. Soldiers held low status and received extremely poor treatment, so deserters were numerous. To prevent soldiers from fleeing, the court tattooed their unit designations onto conspicuous places such as the face and arms as soon as they enlisted. The world contemptuously called them “criminal soldiers.” As far as Li Si knew, his own Longwei was one of the cavalry unit designations, while the Zhenwu on the man’s face was one of the infantry unit designations. Both were common army designations.

But the Shengjie on the back of the man’s hand was quite special.

Li Si had heard of it from his second uncle: this was a newly established army, an elite force organized by Grand Preceptor Tong, who had fled south.

Three months earlier, the Xiao Kingdom had released news that it would invade Great Xuan from the south. Grand Preceptor Tong, commander-in-chief of the Xuan army, was ordered to defend Kuiyuan and negotiate peace with the Xiao Army. His Majesty appointed him Pacification Commissioner of Hebei and Hedong, granting him authority over the two hundred thousand Imperial Guards in Hebei and Hedong. He specially selected twenty thousand fierce and valiant men from Imperial Guard units across the regions to form a new army called Shengjie.

But the Xiao Army advanced with ferocious momentum. Seeing that the situation was bad, Grand Preceptor Tong failed in negotiations and, without fighting a single battle, abandoned Kuiyuan City and led the Shengjie Army south back to the capital. This elite force had now already escorted the Retired Emperor out of the capital and farther south.

His army had gone south, yet this man was here alone. Li Si raised his eyes in surprise and suspicion, opened his mouth, hesitated, then spoke. “You… are a deserter?”

The man instantly flung Li Si’s chin away and slapped him across the face—not too heavily, but not lightly either. “Deserter my ass! That old traitor surnamed Tong is the deserter! The old traitor chose me as his personal guard and wanted me to protect him while he fled south. Halfway there, I came back on my own! That donkey-ass bastard—if I’d found the chance, I would’ve stabbed him a few times!”

Li Si was young, and the skin of his face was tender. One slap left a red mark. Seeing this, the man frowned, then rubbed his thumb over the mark twice, unconsciously trying to rub it away. His tone also unconsciously softened as he explained, “The Shengjie Army didn’t all go south. Three thousand men stayed behind in Kuiyuan. The fact that Kuiyuan has held out until now is entirely because they’re defending it to the death. Don’t mix the Shengjie Army together with that old traitor Tong. We’re not cowards who run away.”

He patted Li Si’s face again. “What about you? What Long-what Army? You speak official speech, so you’re stationed in the capital, right? You little brat whose hair hasn’t even grown in yet—why did you come here?”

Li Si’s face had been pinched, touched, and played with for a long time. His ears were burning red-hot. He gritted his teeth and dodged him, refusing to answer.

Finding his reaction amusing, the man instead drew even closer with greater malice. His warm breath pressed tightly against Li Si, and he reached to Li Si’s waist, took out the Imperial City Directorate token, pulled it free, and pressed it against Li Si’s face. “What kind of identity token is this?”

A fine flash of light streaked past. The man jerked his head back in time, avoiding the dangerous knife, then immediately returned a heavy punch at Li Si. Li Si rolled aside on the spot, shook off the hemp rope he had secretly cut through earlier, clenched the sleeve dagger, and lunged at him again.

——

The two rolled across the ground fighting, and the dust and mud the man had just washed clean smeared all over his head and body again. Hearing the commotion, the ragged men from the other caverns all rushed over to watch.

Seeing the two fight from the ground onto the stone couch, then stack one atop the other, the older brother from the sentry platform, who had just returned from changing shifts, could not help saying, “Aiya! Boss, why are you pinning the little brat down again? Don’t knock him unconscious again!”

“If I don’t pin him down, how am I supposed to control him?” the man snapped furiously between blows. “Look at how stubborn he is! I barely said a few words to him, and he took a knife to my face!”

“You touched me!” Li Si said.

“What are you getting shy for? I’m not into men! Who’d want to touch you!”

The two fought with great liveliness. The man had already embarrassed himself today—falling flat on his face in front of everyone in the alley and knocking someone’s little brat unconscious with his chest. Now he was locked in another fight that looked practically glued together. He clamped Li Si with his long legs, straddled him on the stone couch, and said angrily, “If you dare keep fighting, I’ll burn that wax pellet of yours!”

Li Si’s expression changed. He reached into his loose hair bun. While he had been unconscious, the man had not taken away the Imperial City Directorate token or noticed the small knife hidden in his sleeve, yet he had actually found and taken the wax-pellet secret letter hidden in his hair.

For an instant, Li Si did not want to care about that secret letter at all. If it burned, then it burned. It was the Imperial City Directorate’s assignment, never his to begin with, and it had even cost his second uncle’s life for nothing. But then he remembered the grandmother in the mud house whose eyes were clouded white, and the reward of three thousand strings of cash…

For all the years before this, he had hidden beneath his second uncle’s protection and never thought or weighed matters like these. Now, for the first time, he hesitated.

Seeing his expression loosen and his struggling stop, the man climbed off him resentfully. He scooped a ladle of water and rinsed the dust and mud from himself again, then turned back and saw his men still peeking in from outside. “What are you looking at? All of you, get lost!”

——

After this night of chaos, no one managed to sleep. There was no light in the underground cavern, so Li Si did not know how much time had passed. Suddenly, several listless, yawning subordinates entered the room, drained the water from the bathtub into the drainage ditch before the door, carried the tub away, then set up a small, shabby wooden table and placed two steaming bowls of plain noodle sheets in soup on it.

The man and Li Si sat glaring at each other for a long while, one on the stone couch and the other huddled in the corner, until both their eyes grew tired. Once the noodle sheets in soup were brought in, the man dragged the little table closer to the stone couch, sat at the edge, picked up his chopsticks, and began eating.

After two bites, he noticed Li Si’s straight, dark stare. His throat caught, and he swallowed with difficulty. “What are you staring with those two eyes for? It’s not like I said I’d starve you. Come eat!”

Li Si had never been one to reject food, nor was he good at sulking. With a wooden face, he obediently went over. There was not even a stool in the cave room. He stood opposite the man, hesitating, and the man impatiently slapped the stone couch. “Sit here!”

Li Si found a spot where he could reach the table and still sit as far from him as possible. Of course, the table was only that small, so they were still very close—close enough to hit each other with a raised hand.

A layer of rough grass had been spread over the couch, with a tattered mattress on top. Li Si had grown up poor, but not poor to this extent, and he felt some distaste for the mattress whose original color could no longer be seen. He hesitated with his bottom hovering above it, but for the sake of the bowl of fragrant noodle soup, he finally hardened his heart and sat down.

The bowl had a chipped corner, but it was quite large. Li Si buried his entire face in the bowl, quickly moving his chopsticks. In the blink of an eye, he had eaten almost half the bowl, yet he made no sound at all. The man watched his unusual way of eating and paused his chopsticks. “What’s your name?”

Li Si buried his head in the noodle sheets and did not answer. The man snorted through his nose and stopped paying attention to him. Each of them worked hard on his own bowl, and before long, they had finished the noodle sheets completely, even drinking every drop of soup.

Li Si put down his bowl and chopsticks, stuck out the tip of his tongue slightly, and very carefully licked the corner of his mouth clean. Then he raised the back of his hand and wiped his mouth thoroughly. Only then did he speak. “My name is Li Si.”

The man burst into a laugh. This time, he was truly amused. “Your parents weren’t particular about names at all! What a coincidence! I’m Zhang San!”

Li Si explained seriously, “It’s the si from teahouse, not the si for the number four.”

Zhang San laughed. “Then mine is the shen from ginseng!”

Note: San and shen were interchangeable characters in ancient usage.

Zhang San—of course, that was not actually the case. Zhang San pushed the two big bowls aside and placed the Imperial City Directorate token on the table. “Daoxie-daoxie.”

A hint of confusion appeared in Li Si’s eyes, and his head tilted slightly. He had not understood the dialect. Zhang San said again, “Let’s talk.”

Since one’s mouth softened after eating another person’s food, and since his face was no longer being touched and his ears were no longer so hot and uncomfortable, Li Si took the initiative to say, “Longwei.”

“What did you say?”

Li Si pointed at the tattoo by his ear. “Longwei. I’m Longwei cavalry.”

Seeing that Li Si had become so obedient after filling his stomach, Zhang San immediately regretted fighting him again in front of everyone last night. If he had known one bowl of noodle soup could smooth this little brat out, why lose so much face?

“Little cavalryman, what did you come here for?” Zhang San asked as gently as he could, as if coaxing a child.

Li Si pressed his lips tightly together and stopped speaking again. He was honest, not stupid. He knew some things could not be said.

“It’s a secret mission, right? You’re carrying a wax pellet for sending a message, and you have a token too.” Zhang San coaxed him. “What characters are on the token? Even if you don’t tell me, I can go outside and call someone literate to recognize them. Say it yourself.”

Li Si hesitated for a while, then said, “Imperial City Directorate Envoy.”

“Aren’t you cavalry? What does that have to do with the Imperial City Directorate? This token isn’t yours.”

Li Si stopped speaking again.

Zhang San could guess the rest. “You’re young and simple-minded. They wouldn’t send only you. You were a group, and the leader had something to do with the Imperial City Directorate. Last night there was a landslide, and everyone else was buried. Only you survived. You didn’t know the road, so you barged into my place.”

Li Si lowered his eyes and said nothing. Inwardly, he only wanted to dig his second uncle out and shake him alive so he could quickly deal with this troublesome and clever great tiger bandit. All these years, aside from riding and shooting on horseback, practicing fists after dismounting, and reading military books at home in his free time like armchair strategy, he understood nothing. He had never handled any important matter alone. In just a few sentences, his origins had been drawn out of him.

His face was wooden, but somehow Zhang San saw his frustration. Finding it funny, Zhang San smacked his forehead. Li Si swiftly returned a punch, which Zhang San caught with an open palm.

Zhang San laughed and flung his fist back. He felt that this little brat was not like a living person full of hidden thoughts, but more like a muddled little beast. For a moment, he could not say what kind of little beast.

In front of such a guileless little thing, if Zhang San used deceptive tricks, it would make him seem despicable and low. So he said directly, “Little cavalryman, I’m not interested in your assignment. You know now that I’m from the Shengjie Army and not a real bandit, and those idiots outside are only refugees who fled here. No one here wants your life. Let’s make a deal. Help me do two things, and I’ll return the wax pellet to you. Agree?”

Li Si raised his eyes and looked steadily at him. An ordinary person would have been startled by that dark, deep gaze, but Zhang San only felt as if he were being observed by a little beast hiding in the forest. After watching for a while, the little thing seemed to detect no hostility or malice, and obediently nodded.

Zhang San pushed the Imperial City Directorate token toward him. “First thing: I want you to take this Imperial City Directorate token and bring me into Ant County. I need to go in and handle something. I don’t speak official speech, and the tattoo on my face is too obvious, so I can’t get in by myself.”

Li Si had originally wanted to enter Ant County as well, so he nodded.

“Second thing: I also want to borrow this token of yours to enter Kuiyuan and join the army. Don’t worry. Once I’m inside, I’ll throw it back to you from the city wall.”

After Zhang San finished speaking, he saw Li Si’s eyes widen, looking rather surprised. “What? Scared? Although the Xiao Army has surrounded the city, they can’t possibly surround a full twenty li with no gaps. There’ll always be an opening. Your skills aren’t bad. You can’t be that timid, right?”

Li Si shook his head. Zhang San thought he was about to refuse, but heard him say, “I… also need to go to Kuiyuan.”

Ha! Zhang San was delighted. He slapped Li Si’s back with tiger-like force, almost knocking Li Si’s lungs out.

“See? Zhang San and Li Si—what a coincidence!”

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