“The girl from Taiyuan, they slit her throat, but they did it badly, cutting her flesh but not her windpipe. They left her for dead under the swinging feet of her own bodyguard, a famed martial artist of the Zhou sect, and she had just enough strength to crawl away in the woods, clinging to life with her fingernails. That was how the Shaking Earth Master found her, in her final gasping breaths and with her throat savaged, and he was so stricken by her plight that he rose up from his own indolence and pride to take a terrible revenge on the Hollow Hand. He went to their lair and challenged them all to battle, the first time he had done a single thing in the martial world for almost a hundred years.”

She would have continued but Lao Bingyi called for her, making her straighten guiltily.

“Wei Jintai, Sang says that your mother married into the Wei clan from the northern Shou, and that her teacher was the Scarlet Tern. Come here, tell me, did your mother know Shou Wulai? He would be a tall man, terrible gambler, but he defeated the five Jin Brothers at Port Du…”

“Ah, coming, auntie,” Wei Jintai said, hurrying forward, and Sang dropped back to walk by Chih in her place.

“So are you two related after all?”

Sang smiled a little wryly.

“Well, my grandfather might have sold one of his relatives some pottery a while ago. It’s a little fuzzy, but you know. My family makes good pottery, so I’m hardly in any trouble there. What were you and Wei Jintai whispering about back here while I was trotting out my family tree?”

“Wei Jintai was telling us the story of the girl from Taiyuan and the Shaking Earth Master,” Almost Brilliant said. “She was at the part where the Shaking Earth Master went to the Hollow Hand camp to avenge the girl from Taiyuan.”

“Hopefully she gets to come back and to tell us what happened next,” Chih said, because it looked like Wei Jintai was going to be discussing her cousins on her mother’s side for some time.

Sang snorted, shaking her head scornfully.

“Oh, anyone in the riverlands can tell you what came next. Moved by the girl from Taiyuan’s beauty, he went and wreaked a terrible revenge on the Hollow Hand, crushing them under the weight of a mountain. Now the area is flattened from his strength, and all the Hollow Hand lie buried under it, nevermore to trouble good people who walk the long roads.”

“You like the story less than Wei Jintai does,” Chih observed.

“Well, why should I like it? Should a murdered girl only get revenge if she’s beautiful? What a cock the Shaking Earth Master must be if he’s going to sit on his ass in his fortress, refusing to move until he sees a lovely face and a trim pair of legs.”