Cui Tang slowly turned around and saw someone standing behind him, hands clasped behind his back, facing the wind without the slightest disarray. It was none other than Zhang Shizhao, the drunkard who had insisted on sleeping in his quarters that day.
Quite apart from the fact that "Lord Cui" could never have underestimated this man, even if his drunkenness had prompted a little contempt earlier, those words now swept it all away, leaving nothing but shock and incomprehension filling his heart and eyes:
"You really set this fire?"
"What do you think, Lord Cui?" Zhang Shizhao glanced at the distant sparks already beginning to spread, a faint, ambiguous smile on his face.
"But... but didn't you only enter the Eastern Royal Court three or four days ago?" Cui Tang found it hard to accept. "Has warfare come to this now?"
"To be honest, Dragonhead Li only said he would be about a day behind me. Even I didn't expect the vanguard to set the fires half a night early..." Zhang Shizhao finally laughed. "Well, Lord Cui? A new year has dawned, and you have grown old. Must you still wander from place to place, dying without returning home?"
Cui Tang stood there without a word. Zhang Shizhao did not press him, either. They simply stood facing each other, letting the flames behind Cui Tang grow higher and the voices grow louder.
While the two were still facing off, Cui Twenty-Qilang suddenly woke at the commotion outside and scrambled out, hastily asking as he pulled on his clothes, "Where's the fire? How did it start? How has so much burned?!"
Two more steps brought him within sight of his granduncle facing a man whose back was turned to him. He received such a fright that he froze on the spot