Sun Jian's army rode south three days. In the deepest pocket of his bosom lay a vermilion box. It weighed no more than a heavy set of armor. Yet this morning, that small thing had begun to drag countless shadows upon the back of his horse. The people of the villages he passed stared at his horse. The wind of the hills he crossed grew a little heavier upon his shoulder.

On the evening of the third day, Sun Jian's army reached the border of Jingzhou (荊州). Liu Biao (劉表), the governor, had already come out with ten thousand soldiers to wait at the border. Two captains stood before him: Kuai Yue (蒯越) and Cai Mao (蔡瑁). Beyond the hills behind them lay two more columns of ambush. Yuan Shao's letter had already reached Liu Biao's desk.

Sun Jian raised his head upon his horse and asked. "Kuai Yingdu. Why do you bring soldiers to block my road?"

Kuai Yue bowed upon his horse. "You are a subject of the Han; how can you privately hide the Imperial Hereditary Seal? Lay it here and go, and I will open the road."

Sun Jian's anger flared. He sent Huang Gai (黃蓋) forward. The horses of Huang Gai and Cai Mao met. Before a few exchanges had passed, Huang Gai's iron whip struck heavily upon the mirror of Cai Mao's breastplate. Cai Mao turned his horse and fled. Sun Jian rode the momentum and crossed the border.

Yet beyond the ridge, gongs and drums rang all at once. Liu Biao himself led soldiers from behind, and Sun Jian's army was surrounded. At that moment the three captains — Cheng Pu (程普), Huang Gai (黃蓋), and Han Dang (韓當) — moved at the risk of their lives. The three placed Sun Jian at the center and drew circles with their blades in three directions. A corner of Kuai Yue's line split open. Sun Jian broke through. Yet half of his main force was left behind, and most of them did not return from this road today.

Upon Sun Jian's armor, for the first time this day, blood that was not his own but his subordinates' mingled into a single grain. He spoke upon his horse. "Liu Jingsheng. I shall not forget this grudge." That line carved, from this year on, a long enmity between Sun Jian's name and Liu Biao's name. Within less than a year, this enmity would claim back a grain of Sun Jian's own life upon a mountain within Liu Biao's border.

That night, upon a ridge on the road back to Jiangdong, Sun Jian halted his horse. He touched the box inside his bosom. It was still there. He drew a great breath of relief. Yet at the end of that relief, the shadow of his own hand lifted toward Heaven this morning in front of Yuan Shao's tent came back to the back of his ear. "May I not die well in days to come, but die beneath a blade's edge and an arrow." That line he had spoken from his own mouth this morning.

He looked up at the stars. The white aura on one side of the Ziwei (紫微) constellation was now a grain dimmer. His horse drew a long breath. He stroked the horse's neck lightly and turned the reins south again. Behind him, the half of the main force lost at the border followed only inside his memory. His memory was made so that not one of their names could be forgotten.

That night, upon the road back to Jiangdong, the single point of light inside Sun Jian's bosom had begun to shine quietly upon the short remainder of his life.

Among those who followed Sun Jian over the ridge that night were two who did not yet carry their full names into this book: his young sons. Sun Ce (孫策), the elder, was still a boy with an unbroken grip on a short spear; Sun Quan (孫權), the younger, was still small enough to ride pressed against his father's belt. Neither of them knew, this night, what lay at their father's chest. Yet a single grain passed from the weight of that chest into the weight of the belt against the small back pressed there. Years afterward, the elder son would take up the weight in his own bosom; and the younger son, in his own time, would take up again the same weight first laid in the bosom beyond this ridge.

The twenty-eighth night of Book 1 deepened quietly upon a ridge beyond the border of Jingzhou. The three characters Jangsaeshin (藏璽身, the body that hid the jade) were planted as a seed: the breath in which the one who hid the jade was to live the remainder of his life beneath the shadow of that jade. The light of Day 27's Jeongjunggwang had, this night, become a lamp upon the ridge beyond the border, shining upon the remainder of one life.

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