Chapter 351: Offering Himself to the Tiger

The First Prince had actually been living rather well lately.

He had visited six tribal headmen and had also convened a “Council of Chiefs,” inviting even more leaders from savage tribes across the snowfields.

In truth, the meeting itself was mostly for appearances.

And everyone who attended was distracted.

The savages were standing at the very moment when the fortunes of their people appeared to be rising. Under the Savage King’s leadership, they had first uprooted the two cities the Situ Clan maintained in the snowfields, then broken through Snow Sea Pass, and had nearly gone on to capture Yingdu.

Later, the Yan army had arrived.

Yet even then, the savages had dealt Yan a catastrophic defeat along the Wang River.

Many things could be faked.

But the columns upon columns of Jin slaves being driven back from Dacheng territory, the cartloads of treasure and goods, and that enormous flood of grain none of that could be fabricated.

Under momentum like this, the Savage King’s prestige across the snowfields had become almost unrivaled.

But turning a snowfield that had remained loose and fragmented for several hundred years into one genuinely unified whole was nearly impossible in such a short time.

Unless the Savage King returned to the snowfields carrying the prestige of another great victory and enormous quantities of wealth, then used the threat of his direct-line army to reorganize and consolidate every tribe from top to bottom.

The problem was that the Savage King had not yet reached that stage.

Not because he did not want to.

He simply had not had enough time.

There were too many things he wanted to accomplish.

One matter led into another.

One problem dragged another behind it.

The most important reason was that while he was attacking Dacheng, the Yan had proactively sent troops into the snowfields and entered the war, completely denying him the breathing room he needed to arrange matters at leisure.

So the headmen of the old great tribes all possessed private thoughts of their own.

Inside their respective territories, they had always been little emperors in all but name.

Naturally, they did not truly want a “king” or an “emperor” seated above their heads.

Still, circumstances were stronger than men.

These tribal chiefs who had not joined the Savage King in the first wave and had continued putting on airs had, in truth, already prepared themselves to bend the knee.

All they were waiting for was the Savage King’s return.

When he came back, they would inevitably go to pay court, kiss his boots, and declare submission.

But none of that prevented them from meeting the honored First Prince sent here by the State of Yan.

Of course, the most important reason was still that Great Yan’s Black Dragon Banner had suddenly appeared above Snow Sea Pass.

That was the true foundation of their willingness to sit down and listen to the First Prince speak.

Every one of these people was shrewd.

The so-called “honest simplicity” of the savage tribes, the wooden expressions they wore beside a bonfire those were merely natural appearances.

People who grew up dealing with wolves from childhood could hardly remain truly naïve.

The First Prince understood all of this perfectly well.

His mission here had never been to organize the remaining tribes of the snowfields and make them do anything grand.

He only needed to delay them.

Keep them from attacking Snow Sea Pass from the north.

When Zheng Fan first handed him this task, the First Prince had refused.

Because his surname was Ji.

Some things that meant almost nothing to a born “rebel” like Zheng Fan were sacred and inviolable in the First Prince’s eyes.

As the eldest son of this generation of the Ji Clan, and as a prince of Great Yan, preserving the sanctity of imperial authority was almost instinctive to him.

Unfortunately, the catastrophic defeat at the Battle of the Wang River had occurred under his command.

Putting aside the flaws in his actual command for the moment, the guilt inside the First Prince’s heart was enormous.

In that respect, his condition was very similar to the Sword Saint’s.

To atone for his sins, the Sword Saint had been willing to risk death, forcibly break open his realm, and kill Gelimu.

Likewise, to atone for his own sins, the First Prince was willing to come personally into the snowfields and call these savage tribal headmen brothers.

Still, perhaps that fellow surnamed Zheng had long since seen the situation clearly and understood exactly what these headmen were thinking.

So when the First Prince truly arrived carrying blank imperial edicts and great seals carved from radishes, he discovered the task was much easier than he had expected.

The tribes genuinely willing to follow the Savage King—and those whose hearts had been stirred by the opportunity to break Snow Sea Pass and plunder southward—had already sent most of their warriors through the pass to follow him.

The larger tribes that had held back, together with the smaller tribes attached to them, remained in an awkward state of observation.

For one thing, the dignity of being a great tribe made it difficult to shamelessly beg others to take them along and make them rich.

For another, the situation at the front had not yet become clear.

Since they had already missed the first wave of profits, they might as well wait a little longer and see where the wind turned.

In other words, the First Prince had never been dealing with the Savage King’s diehard supporters in the first place.

And because of that, once the First Prince began distributing imperial edicts, the headmen all accepted them with extraordinary respect.

As for how much of that respect was genuine and how much was false heh.

Everyone understood.

Kowtow once.

Perform a salute.

Accept one bright-yellow imperial edict.

Complete the ritual.

For these tribal headmen, none of that was much of a price.

But when the First Prince said that since everyone had now accepted Great Yan’s enfeoffment and become subjects of Great Yan, they must assemble their forces and campaign against the rebellious Savage King these newly created “Princes,” “Dukes,” and “Marquises” suddenly became masters of evasion.

It was as though every one of them had opened the Ren and Du meridians in an instant and become a supreme expert at pushing hands and redirecting force.

Today, one tribe lacked grain.

Tomorrow, another tribe seemed to have suffered an outbreak of plague.

Every day brought a fresh excuse.

That was simply how bargaining worked.

I name a ridiculous opening price.

You slowly haggle me down.

I eventually obtain the price I wanted.

You enjoy the satisfaction of having bargained.

You want to sit here and wait?

Fine.

My mission is to make sure you keep sitting anyway.

And so they waited.

They waited for a very long time.

The result was two scenes of almost absurd contrast.

South of Snow Sea Pass, the savage army assaulted the fortress day after day, suffering terrible casualties and fighting with mortal hatred.

North of Snow Sea Pass, everyone held bonfire banquets every night.

From the First Prince down to Jin Shuke, each man had several savage women sent over to warm his bed.

The entire scene looked like a harmonious model of eternal Yan–savage friendship.

And yes they genuinely slept with them.

You could not act aloof.

You could not pretend.

You certainly could not show disgust.

Someone sent you women because they regarded you highly.

Especially at such a sensitive moment, there was no room for some fantasy of spiritual cleanliness.

The outwardly friendly relationship between both sides was, in truth, terribly fragile.

So the First Prince lived through night after night of song and pleasure.

Every day, he became a new groom.

Sometimes, after the clouds and rain had passed, the First Prince would fall into a strange melancholy.

Looking at the exhausted savage woman sleeping beside him, he found the whole situation absurd.

Before they departed, that fellow surnamed Zheng had told him:

*I’ll be bleeding on the front line. You’ll be fighting on an invisible battlefield inside the enemy’s territory. You’ll need to bleed too.*

But what the First Prince was spilling was not blood.

It was...

This son of the Ji Clan suffered a kind of inward self-reproach every night after it was over.

A small part of it came from guilt toward his fiancée waiting in Yanjing.

Most of it came from the conflict with his own values as a soldier.

His mind kept comforting him.

He was sacrificing for the overall situation.

Working for the overall situation.

Offering his own body for the overall situation.

But if he truly puffed out his chest and said those words openly who the hell would believe him?

*You ride across the battlefield.*

*I ride too.*

Heh.

Even the First Prince did not possess enough shamelessness to say that aloud.

The more time he had to think about life, the more tangled and embarrassed he became.

When the sun finally rose outside, the First Prince got out of bed, lifted the tent flap, and stepped outside.

Then his gaze sharpened.

More than ten tribal headmen, great and small, were kneeling outside his tent.

Frost and snow clung to the robes of several.

Clearly, they had been kneeling there for quite some time.

The wind outside was loud.

And the headmen had deliberately knelt some distance away from his tent, apparently to avoid accidentally hearing sounds they should not hear.

So the First Prince had not sensed them beforehand.

Of course, part of that was also because his own mind had been so distracted.

At first, the First Prince looked surprised.

Then realization gradually dawned.

Outside, Jin Shuke came walking over while tying his belt.

This barbarian-born man from the desert did not possess nearly as many complicated thoughts as the First Prince.

Sometimes, Jin Shuke could be meticulous to the point of absurdity.

At other times, he was painfully straightforward.

When the only task required of him was sitting here and watching events south of Snow Sea Pass develop, Jin Shuke genuinely ate when he wanted to eat and slept when he wanted to sleep.

He had even gained a noticeable amount of weight.

The moment the First Prince appeared, the tribal headmen who had been kneeling in the wind and frost for so long kowtowed together.

“We pay our respects to First Highness.”

But before that greeting came a string of titles.

This Prince.

That Count.

That Marquis.

And before all of those—

Great Yan.

The formalities and complete style of address came out even more properly than they did from actual Yan officials.

And on their faces, one could see only respect.

Gone was the perfunctory politeness both sides had always understood for what it was.

The woman the First Prince had favored the previous night had already dressed herself.

She poked her head out from inside the tent and looked outside.

When she saw those tribal headmen—men normally so high and mighty—kneeling before the feet of her “husband from last night,” her mouth fell open in shock.

The headmen, meanwhile, had gone completely shameless.

Or perhaps more accurately, at this moment they were desperate beyond reason to grab hold of whatever branch was available and climb.

So they actually shouted toward the woman a tribal slave girl they themselves had sent to serve the First Prince:

“We pay our respects to the Princess Consort!”

“We pay our respects to the Princess Consort!”

The First Prince did not rebuke them.

Nor did he put on false courtesy and hurry to tell them to rise.

Instead, he smiled.

A smile through clenched teeth.

His gaze turned south.

Toward Snow Sea Pass.

The oppressive gloom that had weighed on his heart for so long finally dispersed a little.

The Savage King had lost.

...

Yes.

Snow Sea Pass had released three hundred prisoners.

They came from many different tribes.

Each group had been sent back carrying the totem banner of its own tribe so they could announce to the snowfields exactly what ending had befallen the savage army that entered the pass.

Great Yan’s iron cavalry had not merely washed away the humiliation of their earlier defeat.

Along the Wang River, they shattered the savage main force.

Then they pursued relentlessly all the way east.

Before Snow Sea Pass, they buried the final remaining savage army completely.

The people of Jin had been defeated.

The State of Jin had been destroyed.

Dacheng’s emperor had died.

Dacheng itself was gone.

But what had replaced it was an even stronger empire called Yan.

It would now take up the old duty once carried by the people of Jin.

Beneath the Black Dragon Banner, Great Yan would continue to overawe the entire snowfield.

...

“Achoo!”

Atop the gate tower of Snow Sea Pass’s northern gate, General Zheng sneezed.

He pointed down beneath his feet and said:

“This is the north gate, right?

“Didn’t that Sword Saint say he’d only help me guard the north gate from now on?

“Fine.

“Then when we build the Chief Commander’s Residence, put it right beside the north gate.

“And have the main entrance face this north gate too.

“Heh heh.”

————

Happy birthday to Wang Xiaonan. May you stay eighteen forever.

[End of Chapter 351]