Chapter 347: Ennoblement

General Zheng’s face was covered in question marks.

And this time, he was not pretending.

He genuinely had no idea what was happening.

How had a woman this beautiful somehow appeared inside his residence?

Yes.

The saying that clothes made the man was absolutely true.

After bathing, pinning up her hair, changing into proper clothes, and no longer carrying a child in her arms, the woman looked almost like a completely different person.

General Zheng had still not managed to connect her with the pitiful mother carrying a child—the woman to whose little one he had so often brought snacks.

The transformation was honestly even more dramatic than the photo filters and beauty editing of later generations.

Before this, the woman had simply been too miserable.

She had barely possessed clothing capable of covering her body.

Tian Wujing pointed toward Zheng Fan.

“General Zheng, tell this Marquis—was this also done to stabilize army morale?”

“...”

Zheng Fan.

Tian Wujing continued:

“And you left the door open too?”

“...”

Zheng Fan.

Tian Wujing nodded slowly, wearing an expression of sudden understanding.

“No wonder you caught a chill.”

“...”

Zheng Fan.

In truth, this was probably the most Tian Wujing had smiled in more than half a year.

Some people were destined to be lonely.

Perhaps they became accustomed to that loneliness.

But no one truly enjoyed it.

So-called hermits who withdrew from the world were, when stripped of romantic language, often only escaping.

Those who genuinely dared face loneliness directly possessed a loneliness no one else could share.

Tian Wujing laughed for a while.

Then the smile slowly disappeared from his face.

Truthfully, as long as Zheng Fan won his battles, Tian Wujing did not care much what nonsense the man indulged in inside the fortress. He was not going to nitpick over such things.

It was not as though he did not already know some of Zheng Fan’s little flaws.

Quite a few people in the Zhenbei and Jingnan armies still remembered how the Marquis of Zhenbei and Marquis of Jingnan had once competed over Zheng Fan.

The Marquis of Zhenbei had always regretted failing to bring this “Beifeng Commandery man” back into the Zhenbei Army.

But in reality, Li Liangting had once told Tian Wujing:

That brat is genuine uncut jade, but the sharp corners at the back of his skull need to be ground down first.

He is not the same as those ordinary grunts.

How could the Marquis of Zhenbei fail to understand how many Chief Commanders, lower-ranking generals, and ordinary soldiers beneath him had once entertained the thought of taking the imperial throne and putting their own Marquis on it?

But for them to think that way was, in a sense, natural.

It was understandable.

Strip away the treasonous nature of the thought itself, and there was even something rather simple about it.

Zheng Fan was different.

His mind moved too quickly.

As for men like Li Liangting, Tian Wujing, and the Emperor of Yan, their own freedom from restraint came because they already stood so high that very few people remained capable of restraining them.

Yet this brat before he had even climbed to a genuinely high position was already giving off that same air.

It was a kind of contempt for rules, ritual, and everything accepted simply because it had always existed.

If he ever truly reached a high position one day, what then?

So at the beginning, Tian Wujing had indeed intended to suppress Zheng Fan somewhat.

But Zheng Fan had simply been too “outstanding.”

And Tian Wujing himself had gone through certain things.

He was tired.

There were matters he no longer had the energy or desire to control.

Zheng Fan had sensed this change as well.

In the past, the Marquis of Jingnan had genuinely restrained him under the reasoning of an elder doing what was best for a junior.

But beginning with the previous expedition into the snowfields, that relationship had started changing dramatically.

Before then, Tian Wujing’s appreciation had existed mostly in the shadows.

Zheng Fan knew.

Tian Wujing knew.

And the handful of people qualified to understand the situation knew how highly the Marquis regarded General Zheng.

But beginning half a year ago, more and more people had realized something else.

The Marquis of Jingnan intended to raise this general surnamed Zheng.

In truth, whether one spoke of an imperial clan or a fried-dough-stick vendor on the streets of Yanjing, everyone eventually had to think about succession.

Only when a successor existed—and when the surrounding group had already become familiar with that successor and acknowledged his ability—could the eventual transfer of power proceed relatively smoothly.

The foundation of the Jingnan Army was no longer small.

And after the Marquis of Zhenbei’s Residence handed half the Zhenbei Army over to the court, the only military power in Great Yan that could truly still be described as an independent faction standing apart from both court and Emperor was the Jingnan Army.

Of course, Zheng Fan had never thought about any of this.

He certainly liked wandering around “begging alms” from powerful people.

But fundamentally, he had never imagined directly inheriting someone else’s estate and turning himself into a second-generation heir.

He preferred treating everything as a management and development game.

Brick by brick, he wanted to build a world that belonged to him.

His own *Minecraft*.

A’Ming arrived carrying food with several armored soldiers behind him.

The woman also realized she had behaved far too rudely.

When she saw that even this General Zheng—who was practically as lofty as Heaven in her eyes—was kneeling here, she immediately dropped to her knees as well.

A’Ming then led her away.

From beginning to end, A’Ming maintained his usual cold expression.

As though absolutely none of this had anything to do with him.

“Marquis, what happened just now was only an accident. An accident. Heh heh.”

Somewhat embarrassed, Zheng Fan arranged the food upon the small tea table.

There were not many dishes.

Two meat dishes and one vegetable dish.

But on a battlefield, this already counted as rare refinement.

One did not speak while eating.

Zheng Fan accompanied the Marquis of Jingnan through the meal.

Afterward, armored soldiers outside removed the dishes.

Other men brought in tea and a small dessert.

Yes.

Even after being besieged for so long, General Zheng’s standard of living had not fundamentally declined.

Occasionally, he would go onto the walls, wave to the armored soldiers, and eat some fried flour with them.

Most of the time, however, he still ate from his own little kitchen.

When conditions did not allow luxury, there was no point demanding it.

When the conditions existed, there was equally no reason to mistreat yourself.

Snow Sea Pass had indeed been short on grain before, but one General Zheng was hardly enough to change the overall calculation.

There was, however, one thing Zheng Fan found slightly strange.

While recounting the campaign earlier, he had already mentioned what happened to the Sword Saint.

Yet even after the meal ended, Tian Wujing never suggested going to see the Sword Saint, who still lay unconscious on a sickbed.

Then again compared with the fact that Tian Wujing had not even asked a single question about his own son, ignoring the Sword Saint seemed perfectly normal.

Zheng Fan did not know why, but he had not dared bring up the child on his own.

It was as though the boy he had casually named Tian Tian had become a taboo between them.

The white hair of the man sitting before him seemed almost like a warning.

The feeling was difficult to describe.

Zheng Fan understood that Tian Wujing avoided mentioning the child not because he was afraid.

It was because he did not want to risk losing control of the rage buried inside him.

“This war ends here for now,” the Marquis of Jingnan said. “We need time to breathe.”

That meant the Yan would not launch a northern expedition into the snowfields in the short term.

Nor would they immediately seek another war with the State of Chu.

In truth, after the Three-State War, Yan had destroyed the Helian and Wenren clans and taken half the State of Jin.

That alone had consumed an enormous amount of strength.

The sensible national policy should originally have been several years of recuperation while gradually digesting the Jin territories already under Yan control.

But almost immediately, another great Eastern Expedition had begun.

And this campaign had not ended in a single clean victory.

It had twisted and turned repeatedly.

The final gains were enormous.

Yan had indeed swallowed the entire lands of the Three Jin.

But those lands had been ravaged by war over the past two years.

Dacheng in particular had been nearly destroyed.

Its entire eastern half was practically turning into an uninhabited wasteland.

Now the soldiers were exhausted.

The people’s strength was drained.

If Great Yan refused to recuperate even after this, it would truly be marching down the road of exhausting the state through endless war.

Of course, not starting another war was one thing.

The tens of thousands of little Chu darlings still sitting inside Yupan City?

There was no possibility they would simply be allowed to leave.

Tian Wujing pointed toward the ground beneath them.

“You and Snow Sea Pass seem to have quite a connection.”

“Marquis, no.

“I don’t want it.”

Zheng Fan immediately heard the implication.

Snow Sea Pass was certainly an excellent place.

But he did not want it.

To the north lay the savages.

They might not be attacking them now, but sooner or later Great Yan would fight them again.

At that point, the task would inevitably fall onto Zheng Fan’s head.

And if Great Yan went to war with Chu in the future, troops from his position would just as inevitably be transferred south.

War was something Zheng Fan fought for the sake of doing business.

He did not fight wars because he loved war.

More importantly, Shengle City’s entire industrial layout had already been established.

All Zheng Fan needed to do was return home and begin the next round of development.

If he moved his base now, would all the groundwork already laid in Shengle not be wasted?

Yes.

Shengle City was not especially rich land.

But Shenzhen had once been only a little fishing village too.

Most importantly, Shengle City stood in the central part of the Three Jin lands, at the northern edge of that central zone.

In the future, no matter where war broke out, as long as Zheng Fan secured the road through the Tianduan Mountains, flames of war would never reach him first.

It was the same reason children afraid of ghosts at night liked sleeping between their parents.

“Chief Commander of Snow Sea Pass?” Tian Wujing asked.

“Marquis, the responsibility of such an office is far too great. This subordinate possesses shallow learning and little talent. I’m genuinely afraid of failing the Marquis’s trust.”

*I do not want this place.*

*Absolutely not.*

“Then ennoblement as a Count?”

Great Yan was extraordinarily stingy with noble titles.

Being made a Count was already an exceptionally high honor.

Of course, the titles Marquis of Zhenbei and Marquis of Jingnan could no longer really be judged by ordinary noble precedence.

Even the Prince of Cheng had to kneel before the Marquis of Jingnan despite his own princely status.

“Marquis, this subordinate’s tiny contribution is hardly worth mentioning. I would never dare hope for ennoblement!”

Tian Wujing extended one finger and pointed at Zheng Fan.

“Look at you.”

In the past, Zheng Fan had once refused to rescue friendly troops because he wanted to preserve his own strength, and Tian Wujing had scolded him for it.

Now Zheng Fan was once again reluctant to abandon the foundation he had built with his own hands.

At the root of it, that miserly streak in the man had not changed at all.

But Zheng Fan remained stubborn on this point because he firmly believed in two principles.

First: political power grew from the cavalry saber.

Second: he needed territory that belonged specifically to himself.

His goal was not to bring honor to his wife and privilege to his descendants.

Nor was it to climb to the pinnacle of life within Great Yan’s existing system.

What he wanted was to rely upon his own strength until he could achieve genuine freedom.

Still, for Tian Wujing to discuss these things with him immediately after the battle—before the Emperor of Yan had even received news from the front the intention to support him, the attitude of pushing him toward a higher position, could not have been clearer.

And yet Zheng Fan stubbornly continued refusing the face being offered to him.

“Actually...”

Zheng Fan looked at Tian Wujing with enormous expectation.

There should be a turn after those words.

Surely this meant the matter was about to pass.

Tian Wujing paused.

Then, as though suddenly realizing something, he said:

“Actually, no one cares whether you’re willing.”

“...”

Zheng Fan.

[End of Chapter 347]