The magistrate agrees to take up his post, but the one to whom reports are made, to whom people trust to judge their cases fairly is still the headsmen. Some of the funds previously allocated for future use are now redirected to the government, but both the magistrate and he knows that the amount of taxes paid is being deliberately understated.
The Li have diversified, pooling the money they collect by travelling the country into the reserves of his temple. The town knows not to touch this, but the newcomers do not.
The first is a man named Jia, who had arrived with the magistrate. He is kind-hearted, loyal to his lord, but the thoughts of providing his family with a better life is too tempting, even with the support that the Dong offers.
He steals into the temple.
Jia finds himself deposited on the doorstep of the magistrate's temporary office. He takes it for the warning it is, and leaves the temple alone.
The second is the magistrate's brother-in-law. Having expected to ride on the coat tails of the magistrate into village society, he becomes the village pariah instead, having stalked the women of the town all too frequently. His gambling debts have piled up, courtesy of a vengeful Zhang whose wife he had approached for sexual favours. Now, he sees the easy way out of his problems by stealing from the temple.
He never makes it past the first door. Instead, he is tied up to a tree next to the village headsman's house, with vulgarities splattered in ink all over his face.
His second try amounts to a visit together with his sister. While the sister burns incense, he slinks into the antechamber where he thinks the gold is stored.
This time, not only does the headsman send a warning letter to the magistrate, there is a taboo placed on him by the village. Now, no one in the town would even speak a word to him, only nodding and politely kicking him out of their shops.
He cracks under pressure, and leaves. No man is an island; the rascal is no exception.
The hue and cry brings the magistrate to his temple, ostensibly to investigate the robberies his brother-in-law had attempted. The village headsman meets him there, eyes tense, mouth primed. This is only his first month on the job; yet so much trouble had been caused by his arrival.
"This superstition about the temple—"The magistrate begins, but his mouth closes upon the appearance of Guang emerging from the shadows.
"I'm afraid you do not understand. It's no fairy tale." The village headsman comments with mirth in his eyes.
"I am afraid I do exist. Guang, the caretaker of this temple and town in more ways than one." He introduces himself formally to the magistrate for the first time.
"You, you're the resident god here? Impossible, such do not exist—"the magistrate replies, a fervent Buddhist. Guang tolerated the new religion at best, but this is just plain ridiculous.
"Watch," he utters, and switches from the form he usually holds to his mortal self. The magistrate gasps, unable to control himself.
"Impossible! Who are you?" The magistrate bellows, his frustration at being posted to this desolate area, the conflicts between his first and second wives and the inferiority at being second to the headsman building up to a boiling rage.
"I?" Guang smirks at the magistrate. "Just a immortal gadfly that has shielded this place from harm. We may be small, yet I assure you that I have always put the welfare of this village before my own. Which I cannot say for you, Your Excellency." He mockingly bows, before changing back to his previous image.
"We understand your frustration at your own position." The village headsman attempts to console the rapidly reddening magistrate, "But we have always been on our own. Though we are not at the top of the mountain, we are still reasonably secluded, and thus we have always been inclined to self –rule." He shoots Guang a dirty look, which Guang returns unrepentantly. He cannot stand this foreigner, who knows not of their customs and does not try to assimilate.
They have seen the Tibetan Empire expanding; the capital had noticed it, and thus send their representative over to manage it. Before the year is out, the Tibetan run away, fearful of this strange new force that fights nothing like the Tang Chinese.
The magistrate wants to call for aid when reports from border villages come in, but as the capital is being threatened by former favourites of the emperor, there would be little help expected. The town is left to fend for itself like it always has.
Tao Yuji, the second female head and the twentieth clan head of the Tao is in charge of the rear. Her charisma with the entire village had earned her plenty of suitors during the flower of her youth. Now, it stands her in good stead as her former wooers—clan heads and business owners send her food and clansmen to take part in the war.
Guang remembers the bloodbath of Red Cliffs, and recalls the reports made from Yiling. War is cruel; it has no winners, only losers on both sides. Yet the younger generations, grown soft from years of peace and insulated in the town think that there is glory and fame to be won.
Yuji fails to listen to her elders, too headstrong to believe in anything but her sword and her men.
The first casualty is her cousin. The second was one of her suitors. The list goes on and on.
The first skirmish claims five hundred lives. The survivors, a paltry two hundred straggle back to the village. Yuji's eyes are filled with grief. Her hands are shaky as she clutches the incense, tears rolling down her cheeks. Next to her, the Li clan head wails for the loss of his brother.
They have tasted loss and defeat. In Sun Tzu's Art of War, he advises people to learn from their defeats and be humble in victory.
Guang understands this principle, which is why he uses Yuji's stubbornness to his benefit.
"The Shu, lead by your ancestor have always fought from a position of weakness. We can use it to our advantage now." He advises, as he rolls out a map depicting the terrain of the area. The Tibetans wish to control the area, and thus they would try to take over the surrounding villages before attempting to take the fortress at Chengdu. The town's laissez-faire treatment of their merchants makes them believe that the town is a pushover, and Yuji's defeat enforces it.
Let them think so; Guang mutters, we would take the initiative by pretending to sue for peace. The magistrate is alarmed; he did not wish to be a traitor and allow the Tibetan an inroad into Chengdu and forward into Chang'an.
Their objective is Chengdu, so let's create a fake route by leaking out information of a pass through the mountains. We would then ambush them through the outposts that the Li and Jiang had made. Echoes of the failed strategy Zhou Yu had tried to pull.
"There is no pass, they would know it to be false!" Li retorts.
"Exactly, which is why Zhang Lu would be drunk as he exclaims that the path through the Qi Mountains is no longer possible, while your Li; whom are known to be residents of the local area tell a different tale. They would sooner believe your clansmen as compared to Zhang Lu, which they see as being too intertwined with the town." He answers.
Zhang Lu hears the plan and agrees, walking into the Tibetan base camp. The Li, through one of their in-laws within Tibet, assure the invading force that Zhang Lu is lying and that there is a true path throughout the mountains, and that it was used by the Li to move into Chengdu.
The Tibetans move through the mountains, only to be befallen by arrows and falling stones. Yuji stares at the killers of her expeditionary force. Three thousand lay dead in the night; the Li clan head 'looks after' the stragglers.
"I wish to see a Son of Heaven." His lord whispers in his dying breaths. He nods, and proceeds to kidnap the current Tang emperor by rushing into the palace in the form of a dragon.
Reports throughout that autumn vary, but they agree on one spectacular phenomenon: a man wearing a golden yellow robe was clinging onto a dragon for dear life as he roared through the heavens.
His lord quirks up a smile as he lands in front of the hermitage, rolling over such that the emperor could get to his feet.
"My time is past, but I know that you have trouble pacifying the populace. Furthermore, there is unrest with the border lords." The lord breathes out, as the Son of Heaven kowtows before him. "Use my disciple to quell the strife, by showing your mandate of heaven by riding him. Remove the military powers with the border lords by treating them to a banquet, before robbing them of their power by drinking them under. From there, open a new golden age."
He collapses, and Guang watches as his lord dissipates into smoke and dust. The emperor kowtows eight times, before getting up.
His father had lost the trust of the people and now it is his to regain.
Guang, unwilling to play propaganda but knowing the value of a peaceful populace, takes to the sky again.
After the joyride through the heavens, Guang shuts himself into the temple's antechamber. It is not long before he starts to howl.
The regret he feels at not accomplishing his duty to his lord which which is his. Frustration at remaining long after his lords' deaths and the deaths of five hundred of his children overwhelm him.
The village headsman does not know what to do. Like the town, he had never seen Guang in anything but perfection, ready to serve as a sounding board to members of the populace.
The magistrate, now on his second year, walks up to him. He recognizes kinship between two displaced strangers.
"Where was your home?" Was it still Nanyang, home to intellectuals like him? Was it Chengdu, where he dwelled for over twenty years and where his name was made? Or was it here, where he had spent close to four hundred years looking after his refugees-turned-village? He no longer knows.
The magistrate, for the first time, looks at him. Not as the pesky village god, not as the one who enforces the town's rules at the expense of his dignity, but as someone who had lost everything he held dear before. The tense relationship thaws as Guang wails his misery and guilt to the magistrate.
The town hears this, and the magistrate starts to see respect in the eyes of the populace.