Chapter 13: - Bootlicking to the Bitter End

It was almost dawn when Blind Man Bei found Zheng Fan.

There was not the slightest trace of fatigue on his face.

The two sat in the courtyard, each on a small stool, with a little table between them. On the table sat four bowls of plain rice porridge, a plate of pickled ginger, a plate of preserved mustard greens, and two salted duck eggs.

Without needing to discuss it, both men first picked up a salted duck egg. Blind Man Bei peeled his entire egg and dropped it into his bowl of porridge. Zheng Fan, meanwhile, cracked a hole in one end, peeled away a little shell, and used his chopsticks to dig the egg out bit by bit.

The inn had been extraordinarily busy the entire night. In fact, that busyness had continued all the way until now.

Yet even after half a year of idleness, once everyone truly began operating again, everything still ran in perfect order.

“Master, this world truly is different from what we imagined before. And I have to say, it is far more interesting.”

“Mm.”

Zheng Fan knew Bei was giving him a report. He was in no hurry and simply waited for the Blind Man to continue at his own pace.

Their information came from the interrogation of the young master the night before, combined with what Blind Man Bei and Xue San had obtained. As for Fan Li, he should still be traveling with the Barbarian caravan and would not be returning anytime soon.

Blind Man Bei had clearly already organized everything in his own mind.

Truthfully, Zheng Fan had been a little afraid Bei would bring over stacks of copied documents and ask him to read them personally.

This method, giving the report over breakfast, suited him perfectly.

“Master, forgive me if I ramble. I’ll start from the details and work outward.”

“Go ahead.”

“The place where we are now is called Tiger Head City. The city itself is not large. Strictly speaking, it is more like a satellite city. The entire northern region of the State of Yan bordering the desert, including Tiger Head City, belongs to Beifeng Commandery, which is roughly equivalent to a province. The State of Yan has seven commanderies. Aside from Beifeng Commandery, there are Lesha, Tiancheng, Xiahu, Sanshi, Huwei, and Yinlang Commanderies. Yan’s capital lies within Tiancheng Commandery, so Tiancheng is somewhat like a capital region.”

Blind Man Bei continued, “Beifeng Commandery is basically Yan’s northern front. A century ago, this entire region was where the State of Yan and the Barbarian tribes fought one another. But first, the Barbarians split among themselves and their Royal Court declined, losing the authority needed to unite the tribes and launch major offensives. Second, the rise of the State of Qian, Great Chu, and the State of Jin forced Yan to shift its strategic focus toward the Central Plains. So over the past century, although there have occasionally been minor clashes between Yan and the Barbarian tribes, there has not been another battle involving more than ten thousand men.”

“Tuman City is the largest city on Yan’s side of the desert frontier. It used to be called Slaughter-the-Barbarians City, but after both sides settled into an unspoken peace, the name was changed. Tuman City is also the capital of Beifeng Commandery and a major city. Tiger Head City is one of the defensive cities built around it. Because Tiger Head City lies closest to the desert, however, trade is relatively prosperous during peacetime.”

“Among the states under Heaven today, Yan, Jin, Chu, and Qian are the four great powers. There are also several smaller states that survive as dependencies of the four. Yan’s official system is somewhat complicated. Politically, it resembles the Eastern and Western Jin periods: the monarch and the great clans rule the realm together. The imperial house is more like the strongest of those great clans, effectively the leader of the aristocratic houses. Qian and Jin, on the other hand, both use the imperial examination system, with the emperor and scholar-officials sharing rule. As for Chu, it follows an older aristocratic system.”

“So by that logic, Qian and Jin are a little more advanced?” Zheng Fan asked.

“Master is wise.”

First came the standard line of flattery.

Then Blind Man Bei continued:

“In theory, aristocratic rule, great-clan rule, and the imperial examination system should represent a progression from backward to advanced. But a country’s development cannot be judged only by its own internal structure. One must also account for the course of history. After Yan was founded, it spent a long time facing the threat of the Barbarian tribes in the desert. To unite enough strength against them, the monarch had no choice but to decentralize part of his authority. That is what eventually produced the current situation, with great clans standing side by side.”

“This sort of system is poorly suited to centralized rule. In particular, it tends to bind a state’s hands during external expansion, rather like Sun ‘Hundred-Thousand’ Quan in the Three Kingdoms. And so, even though Yan has enjoyed nearly a century of peace with the Barbarians, and even though Yan possesses iron cavalry that every neighboring state fears, it has still been unable to follow the familiar historical pattern of unifying the realm from north to south.”

“But that same political structure also means Yan becomes extraordinarily united whenever it faces pressure from Qian or Jin. The great clans inside Yan understand perfectly well that if Jin or Qian ever destroys Yan, their own good days will be over too.”

“At the same time, although Jin and Qian use the imperial examination system, both states have existed long enough for their scholar-official class to become swollen and entrenched, turning into a parasitic stratum no less troublesome than the great clans. It is somewhat like the late Ming. They too have largely lost the desire and the ability to advance outward.”

“As for the nobles of Chu, most of them care only about drunken luxury. They still have vast stretches of undeveloped land inside their own backyard, so unless another state provokes them first, they rarely wage external wars. The four great states have not fought a large-scale war among themselves for nearly fifty years. In effect, the realm has entered an age of four-way balance.”

“Oh. So that’s how it is.”

“Another interesting point, Master. Among the yamen documents Xue San stole, there was one particularly intriguing piece of information. There is a great empire still existing in the West, and its contacts with this side of the world are fairly frequent. Western diplomatic missions often cross the desert into Yan, then travel onward from Yan into the other states. So East-West contact in this world’s ancient era appears much more frequent than it was in the history we knew.”

That concluded the geography lesson.

By the time Blind Man Bei finished, Zheng Fan had also finished his first bowl of porridge.

When Zheng Fan picked up the second bowl, Blind Man Bei began reporting on a different subject: this world’s system of power.

“The interesting thing about this world is that it has cultivators, magic, battle qi, and Martial Artists. There are quite a few systems. That Young Master Wang from last night, by the way, is called Wang Fuqi. He is a collateral descendant of the Wang Clan of Beifeng Commandery. He came to Tiger Head City specifically to travel around and experience the atmosphere of the desert. The Wang Clan is neither a major nor a minor family within Beifeng Commandery.”

“The West mainly cultivates magic and battle qi, while the East has cultivators and Martial Artists. Both use nine Grades. Ninth Grade is the lowest, First Grade the highest. The guard Master and the others killed last night probably did not even qualify as Ninth Grade. More precisely, he was just about to reach Ninth Grade and had begun to use a trace of internal force.”

“The wife of the Patrol Lieutenant Commander I met yesterday told me her husband is still half a step short of entering Ninth Grade as a Martial Artist, but beating a blind man like me to death would still be as easy as crushing an ant beneath his foot.”

“The Wang Clan is a martial family as well. Wang Fuqi truly does possess far higher status than an ordinary person, but in the end he is only a collateral descendant, so even his guard was an ungraded fighter.”

“Oh, right. That strange mount Master saw outside the inn yesterday should have been a Pi Beast. Legend says the founding emperor of Yan rode a Pixiu. After the State of Yan was established, successive generations of the imperial house bred that Pixiu’s bloodline and produced a whole range of mixed descendants. Even the lowest hybrid strain, the Pi Beast, can only be owned by someone of status. Capital officials sent out to provincial posts are probably assigned one, and perhaps some elite cavalry formations have larger numbers of them.”

For ordinary commoners, this world extended little beyond the handful of fields and streets directly in front of them.

Sometimes they did not even know the current reign title. They simply lived one meal at a time, eating the present while worrying about the next.

The inn had operated for half a year without learning anything about this world’s power system. That alone showed how narrow the sky above the common people truly was.

“None of that is especially novel.” Zheng Fan added some preserved mustard greens to his bowl, finished the last of the porridge, and set down his chopsticks.

After stretching, he looked across at Blind Man Bei and continued:

“Magic, battle qi, Martial Artists, cultivation. People have written and drawn those things to death already. But watching news about wars and unrest on television until you’re numb to it is completely different from personally stepping into a war zone. Now that I’m actually here, I really am a little excited.”

Blind Man Bei nodded in agreement.

He was excited too.

So were all his companions.

Blind Man Bei had only just finished his first bowl. As he switched to another, he said:

“Master, there are two matters before us now. First, finding a road back.”

“You can cross the first one out,” Zheng Fan said without hesitation.

Although this unfamiliar world still frightened him somewhere deep inside, Zheng Fan had never seriously considered returning.

He had arrived here through euthanasia.

In his old world, he no longer had any relatives, and illness had tortured him for years. When he left, there had already been nothing tying him down.

There was no “road home” left to search for.

Blind Man Bei did not appear surprised by Zheng Fan’s answer at all.

But the choice belonged to Zheng Fan, so it still had to be offered.

He continued:

“The second matter is the plan Master chose earlier. We need to expand our own strength.”

At present, everything they possessed amounted to one inn.

Only one inn.

During the previous half year, the inn had developed from nothing into its current form, but after reaching this scale, its growth had effectively stopped.

“At this size, the money we earn is enough to live decently. We can pay off the appropriate yamen officials and local gangs, which buys us a certain amount of protection. In other words, we have been occupying a relatively safe position.”

It was not that Feng Siniang and the others lacked the ability to expand the inn farther.

There simply had been no reason.

As illegal immigrants to this world, they possessed neither backing nor roots. Reaching this scale had already been enough. If they expanded much farther, wolves would probably begin watching them.

The reason that no longer frightened them now was partly because Zheng Fan’s awakening had given them a direction, and partly because they themselves were beginning to show signs of becoming wolves.

“The first things we need are money and influence,” Blind Man Bei said unhurriedly. “This is still the initial stage, and at this stage money and influence are two separate things. Because possessing money without influence right now would simply be too dangerous.”

“Be more specific,” Zheng Fan reminded him.

He already understood that among the Seven Demon Kings, Blind Man Bei was probably the closest thing they had to a strategist.

“Then we’ll start small and move outward. Since we are currently in Tiger Head City, our next plan should center on Tiger Head City. First, we build a force that belongs to us inside the city. Since the conditions for rebellion are not yet mature, our expansion can only proceed through the shadows, which is exactly the sort of thing our group is good at.”

“The first stage is to control several of Tiger Head City’s smaller gangs, then gradually become the largest gang force in the city. We need to recruit people who can run errands and handle routine work for us. At the very least, we should not need to personally handle every little matter as we did last night. At the same time, we must deepen our relationship with the city’s official powers. That will complete the first stage of the Tiger Head City strategy.”

“In the second stage, we can organize our own bandit cavalry in the desert. Robbery, protection fees, primitive accumulation. At the same time, it would be ideal if we could collude openly with Tiger Head City’s officials and establish a stable channel for dividing the spoils.”

“In the third stage, using the wealth accumulated earlier and the relationships built with larger powers during that process, we form our own merchant caravan and wash ourselves clean.”

“If all three stages succeed, then the Tiger Head City strategy succeeds as well. At that point, at least within Tiger Head City, we will have established a real foothold in this world. Any further development can be planned from there.”

At the end, Blind Man Bei added:

“Master, please correct anything improper.”

Zheng Fan shook his head and answered with unusual honesty:

“I don’t have anything to add. I think your plan is excellent. You have to eat a meal one bite at a time. Mm. That principle makes sense.”

“Master is wise.”

“...” Zheng Fan.

That flattery was painfully stiff.

“If there’s anything I can help with, just tell me directly. Although I...”

“What this subordinate requires is Master’s trust!”

“Uh... I trust you very much!”

Zheng Fan said it with great seriousness.

Blind Man Bei shook his head.

“No. Master, you do not.”

“I really, really trust you!”

“No. Master, you do not.”

“You’re extremely intelligent. I believe in you!”

“No. Master, not yet.”

“I truly trust you!”

“No. Master, you still do not.”

“I... I trust you!!!”

“Still... no.”

“I’m perfectly comfortable leaving these matters to you.”

“No. Master, you are not.”

“I’m begging you! I trust you!”

Zheng Fan had shouted until his throat was nearly hoarse.

Then, in the next instant, three strips of preserved mustard greens on the little plate floated up by themselves and drifted into the bowl of porridge in Blind Man Bei’s hands.

Blind Man Bei smiled.

He shoveled down a mouthful of porridge together with the pickles.

Then, deeply satisfied, he said:

“This subordinate thanks Master for his trust.”

“Mm.”

Zheng Fan nodded politely.

He felt that perhaps he should maintain a little distance from this somewhat peculiar blind man from now on.

Blind Man Bei set down his bowl, took a handkerchief from his sleeve, and wiped his mouth.

Then he said softly:

“I’m done licking. The rest of you can continue.”

[End of Chapter 13]