Chapter 354: Little Sixth

News from the front arrived in wave after wave.

First came the great victory at the Wang River. After that came word that, under relentless pursuit, the surviving savage forces had been completely buried outside Snow Sea Pass.

At this point, the main savage army that had entered Jin had effectively been annihilated. There might still be scattered stragglers hiding in corners east of the Wang River, but they could no longer pose any real threat.

Those among the informed elite who understood military affairs had already been mentally prepared for this direction after the first report of victory at the Wang River arrived. So when news came later that the savage main force had been wiped out completely, they were not quite as shocked.

But for the overwhelming majority of ordinary people, the first victory at the Wang River had merely allowed everyone to breathe a sigh of relief.

At last, Yan had won.

The later pursuit and annihilation of the savage main force was the true main course. That was what completely ignited the enthusiasm of the people across the State of Yan.

Yan was currently standing at the height of rising national fortune. In truth, the common people of any normal state would feel a simple, instinctive surge of pride whenever their country kept winning wars abroad.

Inside Nan’an County, Chief Constable Yan came once again to the entrance of the teahouse.

The owner came over personally and invited him inside. This time, Chief Constable Yan did not refuse. He entered and shared a table with a local cloth merchant.

These merchants might not have been especially afraid of the County Magistrate, but they were always courteous toward a Chief Constable they saw on the streets every day. The cloth merchant even ordered a pot of good tea specifically for him.

Chief Constable Yan did not stand on ceremony. He simply cupped his hands in thanks.

Mr. Guo on the stage had only recently returned from a journey to Yanjing. The round-trip expenses, along with the costs of bringing his plump apprentice, had all been paid by the teahouse owner.

The purpose was simple.

The owner wanted Mr. Guo to go to the capital and bring back the newest stories.

As the saying went, all writing under Heaven was copied from somewhere else.

Storytellers worked the same way. Go to Yanjing, listen to what fellow storytellers were saying, then wander around the streets and gather a little gossip.

A good story only needed to be half true and half false.

Too true, and it lost flavor.

Too false, and the flavor became overpowering.

The clapper struck the table.

Mr. Guo began.

His apprentice remained beside him, playing the foil exactly as before.

“What happened then?”

“Oh?”

“You don’t say!”

“Really?”

“Of course!”

Mr. Guo spoke until spit flew from his mouth and his voice seemed capable of piercing the clouds.

Whenever he reached an exciting point, he even added exaggerated gestures, acting out how the Marquis of Jingnan mounted his Pixiu and how one sweep of the Kunwu Saber supposedly severed the Savage King’s head.

His performance was so “authentic” that one might have thought Mr. Guo himself had been that saber.

He began with the hidden struggle and murderous maneuvering along the Wang River, then moved to iron cavalry thundering across the frozen river. From there he told of the General of Shengle’s “thousand-li surprise attack” on Snow Sea Pass, and then of the Sword Saint forcibly opening the Second Grade realm atop Snow Sea Pass and cutting down the savage commander Gelimu!

This war simply contained too many stories worth telling.

There was the clash of steel and cavalry on the battlefield.

There was sword qi sweeping through the jianghu.

Everything was there.

Truthfully, the listeners below were not especially enthusiastic about stories of the Marquis of Jingnan.

Everyone already accepted from the bottom of his heart that the Marquis of Jingnan knew how to fight. No matter who the enemy was, if the Marquis took command, people could practically start preparing the victory banquet in advance.

The problem was that some children became too influenced by these stories. When playing at home with wooden sabers, they would shout:

“I am the Marquis of Jingnan! Who are you, villain?!”

At that point, the child’s father would immediately pull off one shoe and chase him down the street.

*You’re the Marquis of Jingnan? I’ll show you the Marquis of Jingnan! You little bastard, have you decided to rebel against Heaven itself?!*

Unfortunately, the Marquis of Jingnan was still one of the unavoidable protagonists of the war.

Mr. Guo had to tell his part.

And the audience, whether they liked it or not, still had to listen.

But once the story moved from the grand battlefield into the smaller details, the listeners’ enthusiasm began climbing steadily.

No era had ever lacked passion for the lone hero.

Ten thousand cavalrymen of the Shengle Army crossed the river under cover of night.

The Sword Saint, carrying a single sword, seized the gate of Fengxin City and opened the way for Yan iron cavalry to pour inside.

What magnificent heroism!

Several jianghu men in the teahouse could not stop themselves from shouting approval when they heard this part.

The jianghu of Great Yan had always lacked a certain flavor.

Li Liangshen, one of the Four Great Swordsmen, served in the army as a Chief Commander. That alone made Yan’s jianghu feel somewhat less romantic.

And over these past several years, once wars between states began erupting one after another, the so-called jianghu seemed like paper before iron cavalry and armored armies.

There had been almost nothing worth talking about.

But the Sword Saint’s performance during this Eastern Expedition truly attracted attention.

Besides, the Emperor of Jin had gone to Yan, and the Situ Clan had been enfeoffed as Princes of Cheng. As for the so-called Sword Saint of Jin well.

To Yan ears, Yu Huaping now sounded almost like half one of their own.

People could finally project themselves into the story.

At this very moment, the Sword Saint still lying on a sickbed inside Snow Sea Pass had no idea that his admirers had already spread from the lands of the Three Jin into the State of Yan.

Some wandering swordsmen even stuck out their necks and argued loudly:

“Sword Saint? Which Sword Saint are you talking about?

“The State of Jin is gone. Yu Huaping is obviously the Sword Saint of Great Yan now!

“Didn’t you see him serving in our Yan army?!”

When the story reached the part where Zheng Fan drowned Situ Yi and Situ Jiong in filth, the entire teahouse erupted into cheers.

The people of Yan had always possessed a simple sense of who belonged inside and outside the family. It was a worldview formed through several centuries of resisting the immensely powerful desert barbarians.

And after the current Emperor of Yan ascended the throne, he had continually reinforced that idea.

The principle was simple:

However we fight among ourselves, that is a family matter.

The moment you drag outsiders into it, you become a traitor eating from inside while helping outsiders.

This was, in fact, part of the Emperor of Yan’s political program.

He was deliberately blurring the ethnic divisions among the four great eastern states, laying ideological groundwork for the unification he dreamed of one day achieving.

So the people of Yan truly hated Situ Yi and Situ Jiong for colluding with the savages.

General Zheng’s method of killing them?

Delightful!

That had been one reason General Zheng chose such a method in the first place.

If you wanted to build reputation, you needed to understand what kind of story the common people wanted to hear.

Then you supplied the market.

After that came the surprise attack on Snow Sea Pass.

That part was genuine military art, executed with exquisite skill.

General Zheng also benefited somewhat from being compared with the Marquis of Jingnan.

The Marquis had exterminated his own clan. That black stain made it nearly impossible for his reputation among the common people to become truly warm.

No father wanted his own son to grow up into the next Tian Wujing.

General Zheng, however, had been born in Beifeng Commandery. Although everyone now regarded him as one of the Marquis of Jingnan’s direct-line officers, his background was still “clean.”

He lacked the Marquis’s infamous stain.

When the people needed a hero, choosing Zheng Fan came naturally.

A common-born man rising from nothing.

Three hundred barbarian cavalrymen taking Mianzhou City.

A second descent upon Mianzhou, taking several thousand heads.

Recovering Prince Fu’s head.

From the moment General Zheng first appeared, he had been the brightest star among men of his rank and station.

Most importantly in this campaign, General Zheng truly had earned the foremost merit!

Then came the Sword Saint forcibly entering Second Grade, killing the enemy commander, and annihilating a thousand cavalrymen.

In an instant, the jianghu once again became mysterious and intoxicating.

Yan men normally preferred sabers.

But once the Sword Saint’s story spread, quite a few children began pestering their fathers to replace the wooden sabers in their hands with wooden swords.

Its influence upon the younger generation was probably even stronger than *Young and Dangerous* would be in later generations.

After that came the bitter defense beneath Snow Sea Pass, where corpses piled up like mountains.

Mr. Guo described how General Zheng always led from the front.

How he fought the enemy with reckless courage.

How he inspired the soldiers.

How, even after several arrows struck his body and blood poured without end, he still held his head high, raised his saber, and roared:

“KILL THE ENEMY!”

Truthfully if Chief Constable Yan had not known exactly what kind of man that General Zheng actually was, he might genuinely have believed it.

Mr. Guo grew more excited as he spoke.

The listeners became more excited as they listened.

The reward money in the great winnowing basket before the stage became very excited as well.

And the teahouse owner became so excited that, from behind the counter, he pinched his wife’s bottom several extra times.

Chief Constable Yan quietly left the teahouse and stepped onto the street.

Without realizing it, he had listened until the sky turned dark.

Somewhat dazed, he raised his head and looked toward the moon.

Then, inside his mind, he suddenly remembered the first time he had met Zheng Fan in the desert.

“Given your relationship with the Marquis of Jingnan, they can’t possibly deny you a Chief Commander post now, can they?”

Chief Constable Yan rubbed his lower back and stretched.

Then he muttered to himself:

“Chief Commander of Snow Sea Pass?”

After a moment, he added:

“Probably about right.”

Then Chief Constable Yan smiled.

“If they really make you Chief Commander of Snow Sea Pass... what exactly is the Marquis of Jingnan thinking?”

There were things other people did not know.

Chief Constable Yan did.

Back then, that bastard Zheng had spent day after day in front of him doing almost nothing except encouraging him to rebel, seize the throne, rebel again, then rebel some more.

One fallen leaf revealed the coming autumn.

What kind of creature was Zheng Fan, really?

Chief Constable Yan felt he probably understood that better than the current Emperor did.

It was the same principle by which subjects looking upward at an emperor saw only a distant, blurry figure.

His Majesty sat too high.

When he looked down at the people below, there were times when he could not see them clearly either.

But as Chief Constable Yan continued smiling, his expression slowly became lonely again.

The man who had once promised to help him rebel and seize the throne was already about to become a Chief Commander guarding an entire region.

Given that brat’s ability to develop and manage territory, after enough time Snow Sea Pass might genuinely acquire the shape of another powerful frontier command.

And himself?

Chief Constable Yan lowered his head.

He looked at the constable’s uniform on his body.

Then at the saber hanging from his waist.

He shook himself once.

Then again.

Then a third time.

At last, a small piece of broken silver fell out.

Chief Constable Yan picked up the silver and walked toward a nearby stall that specialized in braised pig’s-head meat.

The stall owner was already past fifty. He was short, fat, and round, with an oily face. Yet somehow he had fathered a daughter late in life who was genuinely beautiful.

So beautiful, in fact, that she barely looked like his biological child.

“Oh, Chief Constable Yan! Looking to cut some meat to go with your wine?”

The stall owner greeted him warmly, with the practiced flattery of a small merchant.

Tea did not intoxicate people.

People intoxicated themselves.

Chief Constable Yan’s cheeks were flushed. His steps swayed. He looked exactly like a man who had drunk himself pleasantly numb.

*Slap!*

Chief Constable Yan grandly smacked the little piece of broken silver onto the chopping board.

Then, leaning sideways, he pointed toward the young woman standing behind the stall owner.

The girl was looking at him shyly too.

There was nothing wrong with Chief Constable Yan’s bloodline.

Even dressed in the coarse uniform of a county constable, a handsome elegance impossible to hide still leaked from him.

Naturally, girls liked looking at him.

And to the eyes of ordinary market vendors, a Chief Constable was hardly some insignificant person.

“Take the money.

“Cut the meat.”

“Oh, no, no, that won’t do! Chief Constable Yan, if you need something to go with your wine, this old man will personally send it over. How could I possibly accept your silver?”

Chief Constable Yan turned slightly and continued staring at the young woman.

His body swayed faintly, as though he were so drunk he could barely remain standing.

Then he said:

“If you dare personally deliver this meat to my room tonight...

“I’ll make you Empress one day.

“Believe me?”

[End of Chapter 354]