Chapter 364: Brilliant Red

The agonizing winter was finally drawing to an end.

For the elderly, winter was a threshold. Cross it, and they would live to see another spring, summer, and autumn, another full turn of the four seasons. Fail to cross it, and they would remain forever in winter.

For the common people of the Three Jin, this winter had been especially brutal. It was not only the old who suffered. Men and women, young and old alike, had all endured the plowing of war. Unburied bones lying along the roadside had become the most ordinary scenery of the age.

For the people of Yanjing, this winter had been agonizing as well. But in the end, they had survived it.

The Yan army’s defeat followed by victory finally allowed everyone to turn their attention back toward their own lives. For ordinary people, life amounted to little more than firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar—and, if one wished to add a little flavor, tea.

So the winds blowing through the imperial court did not truly affect them. After all, the higher the place, the stronger the wind.

And wind had indeed begun blowing through the court of the State of Yan. It was not a powerful wind at first, but it still managed to knock down a Minister.

It began when an Imperial Censor caught the scent of something and submitted a memorial impeaching Minister of Revenue Xu Guanghuai, accusing his clan back home of maintaining a poor reputation and behaving improperly.

At first, Xu Guanghuai did not take the impeachment very seriously. He merely submitted a memorial defending himself to the Emperor of Yan.

Strictly speaking, by established custom, when an Imperial Censor impeached you, the standard procedure was to report illness and return home. Then you waited for His Majesty to issue an order asking for your explanation, only after which did you submit a memorial in self-defense.

That was the rule. Everyone understood the ritual. In truth, it was little more than a formality.

But first, the alliance with Chu had already entered its final stage, and Xu Guanghuai did not want any mistakes to appear at this point, so he wanted to remain personally involved and keep watch over the negotiations. Second, compared with the Imperial Censors of Qian, Yan’s censors were obviously several levels weaker when it came to fighting officials. They were not even in the same league.

Rules were dead. People were alive, weren’t they?

Still, Xu Guanghuai found time to send a letter to his family in Xuxian County of Sanshi Commandery, reminding them to mind their conduct, maintain good relations with their neighbors, and avoid giving others cause for criticism.

The matter should have ended there, like nothing more than a mosquito bite.

Then the County Magistrate of Xuxian, Sanshi Commandery—Zhao Chengming, one of the newly successful Presented Scholars sent into local office the previous year—submitted a memorial impeaching Minister of Revenue Xu Guanghuai. He accused Xu’s family in Xuxian of annexing good farmland and bullying the local people. According to Zhao’s memorial, the Xu Clan abused Xu Guanghuai’s status to lord over the county, to the point that the locals had begun saying:

“They don’t treat Xuxian as Xuxian anymore. They treat it as the Xu Clan’s own county!”

This was no longer some censor in the capital repeating rumors. This was an accusation from the local magistrate who governed Xu Guanghuai’s own home county.

The nature of the matter changed instantly.

And the line “They treat it as the Xu Clan’s own county” possessed terrifying killing power.

Xu Guanghuai could no longer remain calm. He immediately reported illness and returned to his residence, stopped attending morning court, and voluntarily submitted a memorial admitting fault while waiting for the Emperor to send someone to hear his defense.

But the matter was not finished.

Only a few days later, the Secret Intelligence Department in Sanshi Commandery captured a group of remnants from the old great clans. During interrogation, it was discovered that some time earlier, this group had been sheltered and concealed in Xuxian.

The man who had harbored them was the eldest son of the Xu family—the eldest son of Xu Guanghuai himself.

Xu Guanghuai served as an official in Yanjing. His second and third sons remained with him in the capital, while his eldest son had stayed behind in their hometown to handle clan affairs, land, and other family property.

The Secret Intelligence Department possessed conclusive evidence.

There was no room for denial.

The cavalry campaign that trampled the great clans had been the Emperor of Yan’s own work. One could even call it a fundamental policy of the state.

The matter had little to do with ordinary right and wrong. Even if the old great clans had been guilty as a class, it did not mean every single family had bullied villagers or plotted rebellion. But politics had rarely cared about such distinctions.

Remnants of the great clans were either exiled into military service or reduced to government slaves.

Perhaps, after the Crown Prince inherited the throne—or perhaps only after the Imperial Grandson inherited it—some remnants might eventually be pardoned.

But right now, even saying a few sympathetic words for those remnants was absolute political incorrectness.

And the Xu Clan had dared shelter them?

What exactly were they trying to do?

When Xu Guanghuai heard the news, his mind went blank.

At this point, if he still could not tell that someone was deliberately targeting him, then his entire lifetime in officialdom would truly have been wasted.

What he could not understand was this:

Why now?

And who?

Who had chosen this exact moment to strike at him—and had done so with such a seamless chain of attacks?

First, a rumor released into the wind.

Then groundwork.

Then the knife.

Each blow connected to the next, leaving him almost no room to defend himself.

Xu Guanghuai knew what kind of man his eldest son was. The boy was decent in most respects, but he loved pretending to be refined, adored literary gatherings, and in his younger years had often socialized with sons of the great clans, drinking and composing poetry with them.

Xu Guanghuai did not immediately assume the Secret Intelligence Department had fabricated the evidence.

His eldest son genuinely was exactly the kind of sentimental fool who might fail to resist the tearful pleas of old friends and secretly shelter one or two of them.

That unfilial bastard had truly ruined his own father this time.

And then, several more days later, another memorial arrived.

A Vice Director from the Sanshi Commandery Fiscal Division—one of the seven principal fiscal divisions under the Ministry of Revenue—submitted records concerning the Ministry’s distribution of money and grain when the First Prince’s Eastern Expedition Army was originally assembled and sent out.

According to the accounts, the forces of every other regional military chief had received only half of their required military pay.

But the Deng Clan of Sanshi had received eighty percent.

Normally, an official at the level of Vice Director would not even possess the right to submit a memorial directly to the imperial desk.

However, after opening the imperial examinations the previous year, the Emperor of Yan had issued a special order:

Any official who had entered office through the Presented Scholar degree, whether serving in the capital or outside it, possessed the right to submit memorials directly to the Emperor.

And this particular Ministry of Revenue Vice Director happened to be one of last year’s Presented Scholars.

This became the final straw that broke Xu Guanghuai.

Under normal Great Yan practice, when armies were mobilized it was rarely possible to issue full military pay immediately. Regional commanders were expected to raise part of their own supplies, and the court had also assumed the Eastern Expedition Army could rely upon the State of Cheng for further support once it entered Cheng territory.

That was why the commander of the Left-Wing Army had later reached out to Zheng Fan, then still General of Shengle, demanding money and grain.

This was an unspoken rule.

Everyone understood it.

Great Yan had spent the past several years fighting one war after another. Where could the treasury possibly find enough surplus to support every army in full?

The real problem was simple:

If everyone else received fifty percent, why did the Deng Clan of Sanshi receive eighty?

There was an explanation.

Unfortunately, that explanation could never be spoken aloud.

The Deng Clan of Sanshi was the maternal clan of the Fourth Prince. At the same time, it possessed tremendous influence among the regional military chiefs. The old clan head, General Deng, had carried enormous weight. If he personally stretched out a hand asking for support, then it was hardly strange for Xu Guanghuai, as Minister of Revenue, to approve a larger allocation.

But precisely because of that, the explanation could never truly be used as a defense.

What would Xu Guanghuai say?

That he had given preferential treatment to the maternal clan of an imperial prince?

Was he trying to drag a prince into the case with him?

Worse still, during the first disastrous Battle of the Wang River, the formation that had suffered the greatest losses was precisely the Left-Wing Army led by the head of the Deng Clan.

General Deng himself had already died at the Wang River.

But death did not erase a defeated commander’s responsibility.

And now old accounts had suddenly been dragged out into the light:

The Minister of Revenue had secretly opened a larger stream of military funding to the strongest regional military faction.

What exactly had Xu Guanghuai been trying to do?

One case after another.

One matter after another.

One step after another.

Xu Guanghuai was finished.

There was no longer any room for him to maneuver.

Unless the Emperor of Yan personally forced the entire matter to reverse course.

His Majesty possessed that power.

Among all the rulers of Yan over the past century, the current Emperor’s authority unquestionably stood first.

But if Xu Guanghuai, the accused, were forcibly declared innocent, then all the officials who had impeached him would necessarily become guilty of false accusation.

And the truth was the Emperor could not possibly choose that path.

Because anyone with eyes could see it clearly:

The officials stepping forward one after another—from here, from there, from every direction—to push Xu Guanghuai down were, almost without exception, men who had entered office as Presented Scholars in the previous year’s examination.

Only a few years had passed since the Emperor’s cavalry crushed the great clans.

How could he possibly carry out a mass reprisal against this group now?

The imperial examination system had to continue.

It had to be protected.

That was part of the Emperor’s grand strategy.

Otherwise, everything he had accomplished by trampling the great clans would eventually become meaningless.

And so the Emperor of Yan issued a decree.

Xu Guanghuai was stripped of office and placed under investigation. The relevant authorities were ordered to conduct a joint trial and determine his crimes.

The tone had already been set.

The coming trial would not determine whether Xu Guanghuai was guilty.

It would determine how guilty he was.

The ordinary people of Yanjing might not have felt anything unusual.

But officials throughout the court were left stunned.

At first the wind had seemed so light it barely tickled.

Who could have imagined it would suddenly become a violent storm and blow the Minister of Revenue clean off his feet?

No.

Not merely knock him down.

Smash him apart.

...

“It isn’t that I’m impatient. It’s that if I wait any longer, there won’t even be cold tofu left to eat.”

Ji Chengjue personally poured a cup of wine for Wen Yin, who sat opposite him.

Wen Yin immediately rose halfway from his seat and respectfully held both hands around the edge of the cup.

“These officials who came through the Presented Scholar examination were indeed among those we deliberately selected for good character in earlier years. But officialdom is a giant dye vat. Once they’ve been thoroughly dyed by it, even I—their Benefactor—will find them much harder to use.”

Wen Yin nodded quickly.

“Master is wise. This was also the perfect opportunity to bind them completely to Master’s ship.”

“What?

“Is my ship so broken that people have to be tied onto it?”

“Heh heh.”

Wen Yin smiled.

“This subordinate misspoke. Misspoke.”

Ji Chengjue took a small sip of wine.

Wen Yin immediately followed by draining his own cup. Then he rose again to refill the Sixth Prince’s wine while saying:

“Now that Xu Guanghuai has fallen, the Crown Prince has effectively lost one arm.”

“I dealt with Xu Guanghuai not because he and the Crown Prince had been exchanging meaningful glances. Imperial Father ordered me to Observe Affairs at the Ministry of Revenue and find ways to raise money and grain for Great Yan.

“In that case, it was simply inappropriate to have some old bastard sitting over my head, pointing fingers at everything I did.

“Annoying.”

“Still, this subordinate worries that this time, perhaps...”

“There’s nothing left to worry about.

“There’s no road backward anymore.

“From the day I rode into Yanjing in my brother-in-law’s carriage, I never intended to leave again with my tail between my legs.

“Also, I summoned you back today because there is one matter I want to tell you face-to-face.

“Over the years, some of the nails buried around my Second Brother were planted on my orders. Others you arranged on your own initiative.

“Withdraw all of them for now.

“Clean away as much of your connection to those people as possible.

“You can step back and enjoy retirement for a while.”

“Master, this subordinate still wishes to continue serving—”

“I’m telling you to avoid the wind for a while.

“When I need you again later, if this old thing of yours still has breath in him, I’ll drag you back out and keep using you.”

Wen Yin’s expression changed instantly.

“Master— is something about to happen?”

Ji Chengjue looked at Wen Yin.

Wen Yin waited for the answer.

Ji Chengjue said nothing.

Wen Yin immediately paled, left his seat, and dropped to his knees.

“This subordinate deserves death.”

Ji Chengjue yawned.

“I am tired.”

“This subordinate takes his leave.”

After Wen Yin departed, Ji Chengjue did not immediately leave the wine table and go to bed.

Instead, he grabbed a handful of peanuts and began tossing them into his mouth one by one.

His gaze slowly sank into thought.

Then a little sorrow appeared.

After that came numbness.

And, at last calm indifference.

“Heh.

“Heaven wants to rain.

Mother wants to remarry.

Let them do as they please.”

Then Ji Chengjue pinched his throat into a singing voice and began humming in the style of a folk tune:

“On the third day of the third month,
the young bride climbs into her wedding sedan her blazing-red bridal veil,
so bright, so brilliant red...”

————

[End of Chapter 364]