Wei Měng had enemies.
Not the abstract kind — the names historians list in the losing column after everything is settled. Enemies with a direction and a purpose, moving north along the road from the south. Wei Měng had made it plain what would happen if officials returned. He had said it the way men say things they expect to be remembered: kill the lead horse.
That was before Lü Yueguang arrived inside him.
The elderly woman had watched Yueguang all morning with the particular wariness of someone who has learned to read a man by the set of his shoulders. She had seen Wei Měng in every mood he owned. She had not, until now, seen him hesitate.
Near the dried streambed, a young man crouched alone — lean, careful, built by years of knowing which way trouble moved. He was not the one the officials were coming for. Not yet. But Yueguang had spent twelve years reading records. He knew what happened to young men like that when war needed names.
He also knew what happened to historians who tried to reason with soldiers.
The question was never whether a bargain would be struck.
It was only what would have to be given up to make it.
Chapter Three of Tales of Alive — 纪真然 is now live on WebNovel and Royal Road.
The body had already made promises. The man who intended to collect them was on the road.
About this chapter
A bargain, in the historical sense Yueguang understands it, is not a negotiation between equals. It is what the losing side agrees to when the terms are already set and the alternative is worse than the agreement.
Wei Měng had made promises before Yueguang arrived inside him — spoken the way men speak when they expect to be remembered. The officials approaching from the south are the test of whether those promises still hold. The young man near the dried streambed is not the one being tested. Not yet. Yueguang has read enough records to know what happens to young men who stand near the wrong agreement when it is called in.
The Weight of the Bargain is the third chapter of Book One. It asks what a historian does when the source he is reading is also the situation he is inside — and when the outcome he already knows is still arriving.
About Tales of Alive
Tales of Alive — 纪真然 is a historical novel by 吕恩豪, set between contemporary Shenzhen and Han Dynasty China. Book One follows a man trained to read the past who finds himself forced to live inside it. New chapters publish every Sunday on WebNovel and Royal Road. Every court session, every meal, every execution has a source. What the author cannot prove is marked clearly. The rest, they will stand behind.