The Bargain Between Zuo Shang and Huangxing

Zuo Shang begins by praising Huangxing for holding off the Maskwalkers, then says the Mandate's alliance has abandoned this place and will send no further reinforcements, and that he has already agreed with Yuyin on a joint operation between the Order and Huangxing's sect.

The alliance's decision reaches the room through Zuo Shang; nobody else present confirms it. From beginning to end the passage is his account.

He then puts the question: if Master Yuyin were to disappear during the operation, how would Huangxing feel about that?

In return he asks Huangxing to subdue the Chord-Wielder somewhere out of the way and bring her to a place appointed in advance. He describes her as a master of the pipa, a puppet-creation without equal in the world.

A sect master “disappearing during the operation” needs someone else's nod — that sentence is the real weight of the meeting, heavier than anything said after it.

Huangxing answers that whatever Zuo Shang does to Yuyin is no business of his, and that seizing the puppet for him will leave nothing pointing back to Zuo Shang either.

At the end Zuo Shang says: “Let us uphold justice together, and wipe out the world's stale thinking and its wrongs.” Then he adds — “this Mandate alliance of ours included!”

What can be confirmed here is that the two of them plotted; not that the plan was carried out in full. Who moves, and when, the meeting never says.

Huangxing's Edict reads: Master Yuyin has tragically fallen in battle, and her heroic spirit will endure through the ages; Moji fled the fighting in cowardice and betrayed the alliance, a disgrace to Kunlun; I have now found the “art of Perfect Transcension” and will lead the disciples of the encampment myself to sweep the heretical path clean, and will not rest until it is done.

Read beside the meeting, Yuyin's death and Moji's departure both fall after the terms Zuo Shang offered. But the edict supplies two labels — “died in battle” and “fled in cowardice” — that belong to a different vocabulary from the arrangement discussed in the room. Who is covering for whom, the text does not say.

The book Pillars of Kunlun carries a page of the disciples' opinions. Huangxing's runs: “A man of few words and much action: he once walked alone into a Maskwalker stronghold, was gone for days, and came back carrying several of the enemy's heads.”

The same page says Yuyin “often took orphaned girls into the school, not to sharpen their martial arts but to give them somewhere at peace”, and that Moji “was especially good at settling quarrels”. In the disciples' mouths all three are admirable — which is exactly what makes the bargain so ugly.