Chapter 145: Bluffing

(Here, I hesitated for a moment. I didn't want to switch viewpoints at this point, yet I also felt I ought to switch viewpoints. Perhaps this is simply the difference between the way a web novel updates and the way a television drama presents things. Anyway, I'm writing this book rather willfully.—Xiaolong)

...

A'Ming had asked whether they were missing something.

They were indeed missing something.

His name was Xue San.

Small.

Short.

Long.

The Fourth Lady had answered: No.

It was not that the Fourth Lady had failed to notice Xue San was missing.

Rather, she thought Xue San being missing was what counted as normal.

Either he was already dead, killed during the breakout and shot full of arrows until he looked like a hornet's nest; or he had gone where he ought to go to do what he ought to do.

As an assassin, of course he ought to be hidden.

The last time, at the relay station in Yin City, he had launched a desperate charge at Hero Chen because he had no choice.

But right now:

There was a city.

The people inside were panicked and uncertain.

The people outside had sabers flashing.

It was a complicated and chaotic night.

It was also the kind of backdrop assassins loved most.

Xue San was inside the city.

At first, he had wanted to go to the city gate.

He wanted to look for an opportunity to kill that Qian commander.

Because the man gave off an entirely different sort of feeling.

The only reason this city was still being held the only reason a group of soldiers who had long since fallen into panic could still hold it was that one commander holding everything together by himself.

But there were too many people around that commander.

And the commander was very alert.

He never exposed an opening.

Xue San observed him for a while, but ultimately chose not to strike.

Because there was a certain chance he would fail.

And if he were captured alive and then hung from the city gate, Xue San had no interest in having the Master and the others reenact Li Yunlong's Ping'an County drama with him.

Most importantly, the Master did not have an Italian cannon.

As an assassin, he had patience to spare.

So much patience that he could even leave the city wall and stroll around inside the city for a while.

Just walking.

Just looking.

Moonlight fell over Xue San's body, stretching a three-legged shadow behind him.

In truth, Xue San was not panicked at all.

He rather enjoyed this feeling.

All of you are out there fighting and killing one another, while I'm here taking a leisurely stroll.

There was a special charm to it that could not be put into words.

Xue San first went to the Prefect's yamen.

The Prefect's yamen was already empty.

That was entirely expected.

After all, the last time his Master and that zombie had come here, they had killed people.

A whole group of officials.

Now that Yan troops had once again appeared outside the city, those officials naturally were not going to hide here again.

Moreover, because the trade route had been cut off and the city had already been breached once, many of its "residents" had actually left.

As a result, this frontier military city finally possessed a little of the desolation that ought to have belonged to it all along.

Xue San wanted to find that pillar.

He found it.

But he noticed signs of fresh paint.

Xue San found brush and ink inside the room, and once again wrote on the pillar:

"Zheng Fan, Garrison Commander of Green Willow Fortress, Yinlang Commandery, the Great Yan Dynasty, came here together with his great general Xue San."

Xue San thought the line was rather idiotic.

But he did not dislike that idiotic feeling.

Whether or not the Master and the others managed to break into the city tonight, the words had already been left behind.

It was much like many tourists in later generations.

Sometimes it was difficult to tell whether they actually wanted to travel and relax, or whether they merely wanted to take a photo and post it to social media.

Xue San smacked his lips.

He tossed aside the brush and ink.

Then stepped forward.

His figure slowly disappeared.

...

"Your Highness, are you cold?"

Wen Le was trembling from the cold.

Even so, he took off one of his brocade robes and tried to drape it over Prince Fu.

"Take it away. Your robe's so small, keep it for yourself."

Prince Fu sniffled as he kicked Wen Le.

The two of them were currently hiding inside a stable.

Mianzhou City had once been a transit point along the Silk Road.

Goods from east and west had flowed through the State of Qian, the State of Yan, and the desert.

Mianzhou City had once prospered greatly because of it.

But first the Yan people had broken into the city.

Then the friction along the border between the two states continued escalating.

Naturally, the trade route was severed.

Large merchants probably had other channels and methods that allowed them to keep moving goods even now.

But they would certainly have to use hidden routes.

There was no way they could continue openly passing through the city and staying here.

Thus, the warehouses in the city had long since emptied.

The stable yards that had once been used to feed mules and horses were deserted as well.

The smell inside, however, was still terrible.

The old horse dung had probably already fused with the walls and floor tiles so thoroughly that no one could tell where one ended and the other began.

Prince Fu was currently lying in a pile of straw.

Wen Le huddled beside him.

The two guards who had originally remained with the Prince had both been sent by the Prince to the city gate to check the situation.

"Your Highness, do you think Meng Gong can hold the city?"

"Meng Gong has great talent. He probably can."

With his own life at stake, even Prince Fu could not sound entirely certain.

He was certain that Meng Gong was a capable man.

In truth, the batch of men who had once followed the Tattoo-Faced Chancellor as trusted subordinates had mostly been suppressed and scattered.

But the small portion who remained had performed brilliantly over the years while suppressing rebellions throughout Qian and responding to various other military conflicts.

The Tattoo-Faced Chancellor had been like a banner.

Heaven knew how he had managed, back then, to gather so many outstanding men beneath his command and make them serve him.

Prince Fu had eyes and ears in the imperial court.

That was hardly unusual.

Every household like his had some.

Thus, he knew that as the Yan people grew increasingly aggressive, Chancellor Han had not been having an easy time of things lately.

The Tattoo-Faced Chancellor had fallen because of Chancellor Han.

Back then, that had once been one of Chancellor Han's proudest achievements.

Before that military man had fully transformed into a powerful minister or a great warlord, Chancellor Han had eliminated a hidden danger that might have thrown Qian's court into chaos.

Originally, the direction of the imperial court at the time had been this:

Once the unrest in the southwest was pacified, the Tattoo-Faced Chancellor would be sent to the Three Northern Garrisons.

As for a northern expedition they probably would not have dared.

They truly would not have dared.

As victors, the people of Yan might not feel the weight of it so deeply.

But the people of Qian had never forgotten the disastrous ending of Emperor Taizong's northern expedition with five hundred thousand troops.

It had truly felt as though the heavens had collapsed.

The shadow of that defeat still hung over them even now.

And one had to remember that the expedition had been launched while Yan's main armies were away in the desert fighting the barbarian Royal Court.

Even so, the people of Yan had still beaten them back.

Now, the threat the barbarian Royal Court posed to Yan was growing smaller and smaller.

Civil strife in the State of Jin had further weakened Jin's national strength, while also making it increasingly silent in foreign affairs.

Back then, the other fellow had both hands busy fighting someone else.

You went over to sneak-attack him and still got kicked rolling back home.

Now the fellow was simply sitting there waiting for you.

How would you dare go provoke him on your own initiative?

The West Garden outside Yanjing was the best proof of the State of Qian's attitude toward Yan.

The imperial court's propaganda claimed that the Yan barbarians admired Great Qian's culture so much that they begged Qian to build one for them to see.

But the upper classes all knew perfectly well what the truth actually was.

Originally, Great Qian had intended to simply wait for Yan to slowly weaken on its own.

Yan had plenty of problems.

Great clans.

Regional military commands.

Every one of them was an enormous headache.

But the most troublesome part was that Qian had plenty of problems too.

The Three Redundancies had been discussed for years.

Two rounds of reform had been attempted.

Neither had achieved much.

Wouldn't it have been fine for the two brothers to slowly compete at rotting together?

Hand in hand, rotting leisurely together.

You can't beat me.

I can't beat you.

Who could have known that this generation's Yan Emperor would actually stand together with the two Marquises of the north and south?

After trampling down the great clans, the Yan people had effectively cast off all their shackles.

They were plainly preparing to do something enormous.

Thinking of this, Prince Fu licked his somewhat dry lips.

Only now did the gentlemen of the imperial court and that Son of Heaven seem to remember:

If the Tattoo-Faced Chancellor had not met such a bleak end back then, if the man now sitting in the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Three Frontiers were not that old dog Yang but the Tattoo-Faced Chancellor...

Sigh.

Thinking about their ages, Chancellor Han, who had been roughly the same age as the Tattoo-Faced Chancellor back then, was still hale and vigorous today.

The Tattoo-Faced Chancellor had practiced martial arts.

Had he not been executed, he ought to still be robust now as well.

At that moment, one of the guards ran over from outside.

"Your Highness!"

"How is the battle?" Prince Fu immediately asked.

The guard swallowed and quickly replied, "Your Highness, the Yan troops first broke into the city, but the Wolf Native Troops drove them back outside."

"Good!"

Prince Fu let out a long breath.

Wen Le relaxed as well.

He immediately rose and, together with the guard, "pulled" the Prince out of the straw pile.

"This Prince will petition for Lady Daxi to be rewarded. Ow, ow, ow—my legs are numb, my legs are numb..."

Prince Fu leaned against the stable railing and sat down.

The railing gave a miserable creak.

This thing had once been used to tether horses, yet it seemed barely capable of supporting Prince Fu's weight.

"Ow, ow. Let me sit a moment. Sit a moment. I'm feeling a little dizzy."

After swinging between great joy and great fear, his blood pressure had risen somewhat.

"From the look of it, the Yan people aren't that impressive after all. At the very least, they aren't as terrifying as we used to think," Wen Le said.

Prince Fu smiled.

"The Yan people's strongest force, the Zhenbei Army, still hasn't moved."

"But Your Highness, our Western Army hasn't come either."

The Zhenbei Army was Yan's pride.

The Western Army was Qian's hope.

"Mm."

Prince Fu nodded.

As a man of Qian, he naturally hoped his own country would prosper.

Prince Fu had no intention of rebelling.

Under that premise, he naturally hoped the State of Qian would endure for ten thousand generations.

"This subordinate must congratulate Your Highness. The moment Your Highness arrived in Mianzhou City, you personally commanded the defense and repelled the Yan troops!"

Wen Le immediately cupped his hands and congratulated Prince Fu.

"Heh heh heh."

Prince Fu laughed aloud.

But he still shook his head.

"Just mention it lightly. Let this Prince borrow a little reputation from it, that's enough. Let those civil officials know that we Zhaos still have a bit of blood in us."

Naturally, he wanted the reputation.

But he could not take too much of it.

After all, there was no possible way Prince Fu could command troops openly as a feudal Prince.

That would be far too sensitive.

He would be courting death.

He kneaded his legs for quite a while.

The group chatted casually and relaxed for a bit.

Then, another guard came running over, panting heavily.

There was panic in his expression.

The quality of the guards from a Prince's residence naturally could not compare with the imperial guards of the palace.

By regulation, Prince Fu should have been permitted two thousand private troops.

But that was only by regulation.

Long ago, Prince Fu had proactively "embezzled" that money.

He dismissed most of the guards from his residence and began drawing their salaries for nonexistent men.

"Has something happened again?"

Prince Fu immediately asked.

"Your Highness, the Wolf Native Troops pursued the Yan soldiers out of the city and were routed by them!"

"Ah!"

Prince Fu was so frightened that he tried to jump up.

He failed.

Instead, his body pressed down even more heavily.

Crack!

The wooden railing split apart.

The Prince fell to the ground.

"Your Highness! Your Highness!"

Wen Le and the other guard hurriedly helped Prince Fu up.

"What about the city gate now?" Prince Fu asked.

At least his mind still remembered what mattered.

"The gate is still in our hands. General Meng led troops out of the city to stop the enemy. The Yan troops didn't dare enter. The gate has already been closed again."

"Huff... huff..."

Prince Fu rubbed his chest.

Today had been far too exciting.

His blood pressure could barely take it.

Prince Fu did not know what high blood pressure was.

But physicians had still told him to avoid excessive joy and anger.

Yet there was nothing to be done about that.

How many people in this world could calmly face something tied directly to their own life and death?

"Lady Daxi has led me astray."

Prince Fu sighed.

Originally, this would have counted as a genuine victory.

He himself could have shared a little of the merit.

It could even have boosted morale along Qian's Three Frontiers.

Who could have known things would once again end up in such an awkward position?

Could this even be called a victory or a defeat?

"Your Highness, as long as the Yan troops failed to enter the city, then we won," Wen Le reminded him.

Prince Fu closed his eyes and nodded.

At the same time, he waved and pointed toward the first guard who had returned.

"Go back to the city gate and keep watching the situation. Report back at any time."

"This subordinate obeys!"

The guard hurried out of the stable.

Wen Le looked at Prince Fu with some concern.

"Your Highness?"

"Get up."

Prince Fu stood and walked back toward the straw pile.

The danger had not yet passed.

This Prince still needed to hide.

Wen Le and the remaining guard naturally came over to help him.

Just then, the guard's body twisted unnaturally.

Thud.

He collapsed to the ground.

Prince Fu, who had already sat back down inside the straw pile, saw this and began trembling again.

His mouth opened wide.

But no words came out.

Wen Le instinctively retreated several steps.

One hand pressed downward.

From inside his belt, he actually drew a flexible sword.

At the same time, a streak of red light flashed across his body.

Where was there even half a trace left of a weak scholar!

Yet a black dagger appeared behind him.

It swept across his throat.

Pfft!

Wen Le's eyes opened wide.

He had never imagined the enemy had actually been hidden directly behind him.

Thud!

Wen Le fell to the ground.

This scholar who had hidden beside a feudal Prince always timid, always afraid of trouble, seemingly interested only in boasting and empty talk had only just revealed his true identity and was about to reveal his martial arts as well.

He had not even truly managed to display them.

He had not had time to explain himself to Prince Fu.

He had not yet faced Prince Fu's confusion and shock.

He had not yet thrown out his Silver-Armored Guard token.

He had not yet told Prince Fu about his own helplessness.

He had not yet made Prince Fu nervously and reverently face him.

He had not yet sat with Prince Fu and sighed over the twists of fate and the changes of the world.

In short, there were still so many, so very many plot points left unfinished.

And then he died.

Xue San's figure emerged from behind Wen Le's corpse.

"Heh heh. That guy was poisoned by me on his way back. I didn't stab him with a blade."

Prince Fu's shocked gaze moved from the guard who had collapsed first, to Wen Le, and finally to Xue San.

Xue San toyed with the dagger in his hand.

He smiled at the Prince sitting in the pile of straw.

"Your Highness? What kind of Prince are you?"

"This Prince... this Prince... this Prince..."

"Are you the Qian Emperor's younger brother?"

"N-no..."

"Then his older brother?"

A bitter smile appeared on Prince Fu's face.

"The relation... is much more distant than that."

"Oh. Descendant of an old feudal Prince?"

"Mm. Yes... yes..."

"Tch. Then you aren't worth much."

Xue San scratched his back with the dagger.

"N-no... not... worth much... not... worth... worth something..."

Prince Fu had already been frightened nearly senseless.

He could barely answer coherently.

"Tch, tch. You're still a Prince, aren't you? You can't possibly be completely worthless."

"Mm... right... right..."

"Oh. Good."

Xue San walked over to the straw pile opposite Prince Fu.

Imitating the Prince, he sat down inside it too.

Clang!

Xue San stabbed both daggers into the ground in front of himself.

Looking at Prince Fu, whose face had already gone deathly pale, he smiled.

"How about you and I make a deal?"

"You are... where are you from?"

"I'm with the people outside."

"Yan... Yan?"

"Mm. I'm from Yan."

Despair appeared in Prince Fu's eyes.

"Come on. Let's talk about our deal. We'll just sit here like this and chat for a while. How about it?"

"Chat...?"

"Mm. You're too fat. I can't move you.

"So let's just sit here, talk for a while, boast a little.

"If our people outside fail to break into the city, I'll cut off your head and take it with me.

"If our people outside do break in, I'll capture you alive."

"This... this Prince..."

"You know, my Master is also very good at acting.

"Ever since he awakened in this world, he's been acting constantly.

"And the people acting opposite him have gradually become higher and higher level.

"A couple months ago, he even went to Yanjing and traded performances with several Best Actors. He learned a great deal from it.

"So after Master came back, he shared some of his insights with us.

"He said acting requires a sense of immersion.

"Seven parts false.

"Three parts true.

"Only then does the performance become convincing.

"Only then can people truly believe it.

"Only then is it difficult for them to spot the flaw.

"Do you know what that means?"

"I... don't... this Prince... doesn't know..."

Xue San shook his head.

"Stop pretending. You can't fool me.

"You know martial arts.

"Can we just talk properly instead of deliberately stammering? It's painful to listen to.

"I'm from Yan.

"You're a Prince of Qian.

"At the very least, shouldn't you put on a little dignity and bearing in front of me?"

The despair, panic, and fear in Prince Fu's eyes suddenly became calm.

It was as though he had transformed into a different person.

His thick hands slapped lightly against either side of his body.

A wave of qi surged outward, blowing away the bits of straw around him.

Prince Fu leaned back slightly.

The corner of his mouth curled into a meaningful smile.

He looked at Xue San and said, "Fine. This Prince will chat with you."

A startled expression suddenly appeared on Xue San's face.

He pointed at Prince Fu.

"Holy crap! I just saw that Silver-Armored Guard spy and thought I'd casually bluff you a little. You actually know martial arts?"

"............" Prince Fu.

(End of Chapter)