Chapter 497: - Beacon Smoke

“So this is the Wang River.”

Fifth Prince Ji Chengwen stood on the riverbank and looked out across the water.

The rainy season and flood season had not yet arrived, but even so, the Wang River remained broad and powerful. In years past, Yan soldiers had fought two great battles around this river against the Savages and the Chu.

Counting the slaughter of prisoners as well, the Wang River had been dyed red with blood three times in only the past few years.

And yet now, vegetation and water grasses grew thick along both banks. Unless someone deliberately dug into the soft, muddy ground and searched for broken blades and white bones, it was difficult to connect this peaceful landscape with the horrors of those old battlefields.

Ji Chengwen let out a long breath.

Emperor Yan disliked leaving Yanjing. Since ascending the throne, his imperial carriage had barely ever left the capital. Among the princes, the First Prince had been raised in the army, while Little Sixth had styled himself an idle prince and often used errands as excuses to travel, wander through the countryside, and indulge himself. The rest had almost no opportunities to go out and truly see the world.

Ji Chengwen, meanwhile, loved carpentry and ordinarily could barely be bothered to leave his own residence.

This was the farthest he had ever traveled in his life.

“The rolling Wang River flows north;
its waves wash heroes away.”

Ji Chengwen turned toward Count Pingye standing behind him and smiled.

“I have always heard that Count Pingye is not only a genius in military affairs, but astonishingly accomplished in poetry as well.”

“Poetry is only a minor art. It is enough to use it now and then to cultivate one’s mood or amuse oneself. There is no need to pursue it too obsessively. Look at the State of Qian. Its literary culture is unmatched, but what use are moral classics and splendid essays when iron hooves come crashing down?”

“Count Pingye is right. In the end, strong soldiers and powerful horses are the first foundation of a state. Without wings, a nation is nothing more than a stack of eggs waiting to fall. I have learned something.”

“Your Highness gives me too much credit. In my view, what Your Highness studies can also be of great use to the state.”

Count Pingye was not merely flattering him.

In truth, there was no reason for Zheng Fan to start currying favor with another imperial prince now. He was already bound to Little Sixth. At this point, trying to stand on several boats at once would not be cleverness. It would be stupidity.

The truth was that Zheng Fan had already looked through the drawings Ji Chengwen had brought into Jin.

The Blind Man had looked at them too.

Xue San was not here, and neither were the Tianji Pavilion craftsmen, but with the experience Zheng Fan and the others possessed from another age, they could still recognize several ideas in Ji Chengwen’s drawings that were genuinely ahead of their time.

Building a Gundam had been a joke.

But some of Ji Chengwen’s designs and concepts truly did exceed the technological norms of this age.

And they were not limited to carpentry.

He had ideas about forging.

He had ideas about furnaces and boilers.

The reason everyone had been left with the impression that Fifth Highness only liked woodworking was simple enough.

He lived in an imperial prince’s residence.

He could hardly erect an enormous boiler in the middle of the compound and start conducting experiments.

An imperial prince in the capital setting up furnaces and hammering away at metal day after day with clang after clang after clang— what exactly were you planning to do?

Had rebellion gone so far to your head that molten iron had leaked into your brain?

What interested the Blind Man most was that several of Ji Chengwen’s drawings even showed patterns resembling Western formations.

Snow Sea Pass had its own foundry district, and it was fairly large.

For one thing, Snow Sea Pass had a constant and enormous demand for armor and weapons.

For another, development, construction, and many of its workshops also depended upon the foundries.

Xue San had noticed something long ago.

Whether the craftsmen came from Yan or from Jin, when they built furnaces, they often deliberately carved patterns both inside and outside the furnace walls and embedded certain unusual materials into those patterns.

The materials were not especially precious, but some were certainly rare.

There was one powdered stone, for example, that locals called Gray Crystal. It could only be found within the Tianduan Mountains.

Xue San had once dragged the Blind Man into the foundry and asked him to examine those furnace patterns with Mental Link power.

The Blind Man’s conclusion was that when the furnaces reached high temperatures, the patterns produced an extremely faint energy fluctuation.

To a limited degree, it truly did improve the success rate of smelting.

Snow Sea Pass had craftsmen from Yan whom Little Sixth had collected for them long ago, as well as craftsmen from Jin.

Comparing the two revealed that Yan smiths were clearly superior in smelting and forging.

It was one of those cases where one lost something in the east only to gain something from the mulberry tree in the west.

The Yan had founded their state at the eastern gateway and had fought the Barbarians from the very beginning.

The Barbarians, meanwhile, occupied the region between the two great civilizations of East and West. Without intending to, they had played much the same role as the “Arab merchants” Zheng Fan knew from another world.

The Yan favored black armor.

That was not merely because they revered the color black.

There was a deeper reason.

Elite soldiers paired with excellent armor and sharp weapons.

The unstoppable momentum of Great Yan’s iron cavalry over the past several years did, in fact, have objective material foundations behind it.

Snow Sea Pass possessed the foundation Xue San had built, and it had absorbed the Tianji Pavilion group as well.

Even so, building a fully self-sufficient military armaments system in a short time remained difficult.

Every year, when the court shipped money and grain to Snow Sea Pass, there was still a substantial allotment of weapons and armor mixed in.

And Count Pingye was a perfectionist.

He dreamed of the day when every cavalryman under his command wore armor.

Not leather armor.

Real heavy armor.

And carried powerful crossbows as well.

The cost would be horrifying.

But a man had to have dreams.

If Ji Chengwen’s identity had not made it impossible, Zheng Fan genuinely wanted to smash him unconscious with a brick and drag him back to Snow Sea Pass.

Didn’t Fifth Highness like staying at home?

Fine.

Zheng Fan could let him spend the rest of his life as a technical shut-in.

Of course, that was only a thought.

Ji Chengwen, meanwhile, was delighted by Count Pingye’s compliment.

He knew perfectly well that in the Great Yan Dynasty today, there were still people whom Count Pingye might deliberately flatter.

But he himself was certainly not one of them.

“Count, this is where we part.”

“Yes.” Zheng Fan nodded.

They had traveled quickly, so the news from Yanjing had not yet reached this place.

Neither of them knew that a furious demand for revenge against Chu had already begun spreading outward from Yanjing, the heart of Great Yan, and would soon engulf the entire state.

An imperial prince being assassinated by agents of a foreign country was a humiliation the Yan could not tolerate.

Had the Third Prince died on a battlefield rather than at a banquet, the people of Yan might not have become nearly so furious.

In the simple worldview of the Yan, dying in battle was an honor.

If your skill was inferior, your troops were inferior, your position was inferior, and you died fighting— then you died.

A century ago, sons of the Ji Clan had repeatedly campaigned in the desert.

Several emperors had died there.

But using underhanded methods like assassination only ignited the anger buried in Yan hearts.

Besides, Emperor Yan’s cavalry purge of the great clans had indeed destroyed the vested interests of many people.

But after the court confiscated the lands that once belonged to those great clans, much of that land had been redistributed to local commoners and entered again into the tax registers.

This arrangement, somewhat like enormous imperial estates, would inevitably breed corruption, renewed land consolidation, and a long list of other problems in the future.

But those were problems for decades later.

As the Blind Man had once said, when the founding Emperor of Ming established the hereditary military garrison system, it had genuinely worked well at first.

Its decay came only in the middle and later periods of the dynasty.

Whatever flaws might emerge eventually, the policy had won tremendous support among the common people in its early years.

When a country had enjoyed peace for too long, as the State of Yan once had, many commoners actually found it better to become tenants of the great clans than to farm their own land.

The great clans controlled enormous amounts of land and population, which meant the court’s directly taxable base shrank.

The remaining tax burden and labor obligations naturally fell more heavily on everyone still registered directly under the state.

It became a vicious cycle.

A tenant working for a great clan only had to pay rent to the clan.

The rent was certainly not light.

But it could still be less burdensome than the court’s endless taxes and levies.

And such tenants often escaped compulsory labor as well.

Now, however, the newly redistributed land had only been in common hands for a few years.

Anything new was always relatively “clean” at the beginning.

And Little Sixth, when deciding whom to fleece, had not been foolish enough to start shearing the poorest commoners.

So the lower classes had genuinely gained something.

The cavalry purge had unquestionably offended one social class.

But it had won the support of the much larger class beneath it.

To the imperial princes, their father could appear terrifyingly cold and ruthless.

To ordinary people, he was practically the benevolent Emperor of the age.

At the same time, the repeated victories abroad had not only diverted many of Great Yan’s internal tensions.

They had also driven Emperor Yan’s personal prestige to astonishing heights.

At court, Emperor Yan’s word carried the weight of nine tripods.

Imperial authority stood supreme.

Among the common people, Emperor Yan had almost become a totem.

Had the assassins truly been targeting the Third Prince?

Who even was the Third Prince to the ordinary people?

He had spent years confined in Lakeheart Pavilion.

Like an actor retired behind the curtain, he had long vanished from public memory.

What the common people knew was simple.

Despicable Chu slaves had actually dared send an assassin against their wise Emperor.

How could that possibly be tolerated?

With the help of the Blind Man and the other Demon Kings, Count Pingye had run his own “god-making campaign” first in Shengle and later at Snow Sea Pass.

The results had been quite effective.

But when it came to the true mastery of that art— an emperor was playing on an entirely different level.

The Son of Heaven.

The Son of Heaven.

The child of Heaven.

He tended the people on Heaven’s behalf.

Seen from a certain angle, the office of Son of Heaven was itself a sacred priesthood.

While Zheng Fan and Ji Chengwen were still standing beside the Wang River talking, the fury of Yan had already begun moving from top to bottom, and then from bottom to top again.

One imperial edict after another flowed outward.

Troops throughout the State of Yan began to mobilize.

At the same time, conscription expanded on a far larger scale, and laborers were levied in enormous numbers.

From ancient times, the Yan had possessed a tradition of serving as the spearhead of their sovereign and riding beside the Ji emperors to fight the Barbarians.

The great clans might be gone.

The private soldiers once belonging to them had long since been dispersed and absorbed elsewhere.

But the folk tradition itself had never disappeared.

In any household with an unbroken male line stretching back five generations or more, who did not have some ancestral weapon or suit of armor hidden away somewhere?

Perhaps the blade had rusted and broken long ago.

Perhaps the armor could no longer be worn.

But their very existence reflected what Great Yan had once been.

A state where nearly everyone could become a soldier.

Eight hundred years ago, the Three Marquises had received the Great Xia Son of Heaven’s command to open the frontiers.

But the Savages and mountain tribes were never remotely comparable to the Barbarians.

So Jin and Chu stabilized much earlier.

Chu still faced occasional rebellions among its mountain peoples, but those rebellions could never truly threaten the state.

Yan, by contrast, did not truly suppress its terrifying neighbor until the Marquis of Zhenbei Residence was established a century ago.

For an extraordinarily long span of history, the State of Yan had been fundamentally different from Jin, Chu, and Qian.

Those three became stable state systems.

Yan remained more like a war tribe locked in struggle with the Barbarian Royal Court.

A century of relative peace still had not completely worn away the bloodlust inherited from ancestors who had fought the Barbarians.

The court’s decrees now passed downward with astonishing smoothness.

Under the Emperor’s will, the entire center of the empire and the entire bureaucratic machine began operating at a frantic pace.

Countless sons of respectable households purchased armor, weapons, and horses with their own money and volunteered for military service.

Such men had always been considered the finest recruits.

They came in vast numbers.

First, they gathered at county yamens to be registered.

Then they moved onward to prefectural and commandery centers, where streams gradually merged into rivers before being sent toward the places that needed them.

They would replenish the main armies.

On the battlefield, they would also serve as auxiliary troops.

And their training and integration had already begun under military officers while they were still on the march.

The labor levies were even larger.

A war between states placed immense pressure on logistics and required enormous manpower and material resources to sustain the front.

Taxes increased as well.

Before, the court had merely been spending tomorrow’s grain today.

Now it truly began collecting taxes several years in advance.

The great households and major families all began voluntarily “ruining their households to relieve the national crisis.”

Anyone with a name worth mentioning had to give up at least half his wealth and stored grain.

Fail to do so, and your political position became suspect.

The preparations for war blazed across the state.

It was said that Old Sixth Ji once sat blankly in his signing room at the Ministry of Revenue for an entire afternoon.

No matter who called to him, he did not answer.

Because Ji Chengjue, who understood finances better than almost anyone, already knew exactly what this coming war meant.

The Great Yan Dynasty’s finances, which were only barely being held together now, would collapse outright.

And that was before considering merely the money and grain being poured into the campaign.

Mobilizing such a huge portion of the realm’s young labor force and pulling those men away from ordinary production would create another astronomical loss all by itself.

This war could only be won.

Defeat was not permitted.

If they won, they could not hope to fill the hole.

That hole was simply too large.

The Great Yan Dynasty and the Jin lands together contained too much territory and too many people.

No matter how much wealth the armies seized in Chu, an empire this large could never balance its books through war the way the tiny territory around Snow Sea Pass sometimes could.

Great Yan had already begun total mobilization.

And Emperor Yan’s edicts now began reaching the Jin lands as well.

The Great Yan court, which had previously treated Jin with almost tender restraint, finally revealed the savage face of a conqueror.

Jin military camps across the region were ordered to move.

At the same time, they were authorized to expand their numbers.

Troops from across Jin began marching toward the eastern Jin region.

Every major Jin city and every large clan received its own quota.

The Yan court did not negotiate.

Nor did it care about your particular difficulties.

The quotas for money, grain, manpower, and material supplies had been fixed.

You would meet them.

Fail to do so, and you were resisting an imperial edict.

There was something almost like “Heaven and Earth are not benevolent; they treat the ten thousand things as straw dogs” in the brutality of it.

This was a war between states.

And a war between states meant wagering the fate of the state itself.

I am all in.

Do whatever you like.

As the saying went, the son of a wealthy house did not sit beneath a dangerous eave.

Once a man had shoes on his feet, his mentality naturally changed from that of someone barefoot.

Families with modest wealth cherished stability most.

Great houses wanted to raise the status of their clan and preserve prosperity for generations.

But the imperial house— the Emperor— had already reached the summit.

Why did emperors so often seek immortals, study the Dao, worship Buddhas, and pray to gods?

Even the ruler of Qian liked wandering his heated chambers in a Daoist robe.

Did anyone truly believe those men were devoted wholeheartedly to the Dao, to Buddhism, or to the gods?

Of course not.

They wanted longer lives.

They wanted more years in which to enjoy the position of supreme ruler.

When a man already stood as the supreme Buddha of the mortal world, why search for another temple gate?

There was only one conclusion.

The State of Yan was an aberration.

And that aberration had nothing to do with the fact that Zheng Fan and the Seven Demon Kings happened to awaken in Yan when they came into this world.

Sometimes even Count Pingye could not help wondering— who exactly were the Demon Kings?

Compared with those three men, his own group looked almost too tame to deserve the title.

One Emperor had directly delegated military power, while treating his own flesh-and-blood children and the woman sharing his pillow like weeds beneath his feet.

One southern Marquis had exterminated his own clan on the very night the entire household prepared to celebrate its expected elevation to princely rank.

One northern Marquis had sent away his own daughter while his son’s fate remained unclear, commanded the most powerful and loyal military force in Great Yan, and yet willingly sat in the desert eating sand.

These three men had been born in one state.

They stood together.

Was that country fortunate— or cursed?

From the day Emperor Yan raised his sword at West Straight Gate and swore the oath, edicts poured outward from the central government toward Great Yan and the Jin lands like snow.

Among them, two decrees drew more attention than any others and set the tone for everything that followed.

The first restored Marquis of Jingnan Tian Wujing to the title of Prince of Jingnan.

It appointed Prince of Jingnan Supreme Commander for the Conquest of Chu, placing every army in Jin and every force that would later enter Jin under his authority.

It bestowed upon him the Son of Heaven’s Sword.

Throughout the Jin lands, from Prefects down to commoners, whether Yan or Jin, he was empowered to execute anyone without first seeking permission.

Another decree was even more concise:

During the campaign against Chu, from the Son of Heaven down to the common people, anyone who impeached or criticized Prince of Jingnan would be executed without pardon.

Yes.

This decree plainly violated normal institutions.

Yet Emperor Yan forced it through the central government anyway.

The wording even placed the Son of Heaven himself under the prohibition.

Count Pingye had once told the ruler of Qian to his face that he did not understand warfare.

In truth, Emperor Yan, who had never left Yanjing after ascending the throne and had never personally commanded an army, probably did not understand warfare either.

But what Emperor Yan did was simple.

He handed all military authority and all affairs of the front completely to the supreme commander.

Then he willingly remained in the rear.

He suppressed pressure and discordant voices behind that commander.

And he raised the grain, supplies, and soldiers the army required.

...

Count Pingye and Fifth Highness parted beside the Wang River.

Fifth Highness was going to Yingdu.

He intended to take a group of Yingdu officials experienced in river control and personally inspect the river channels.

He already understood that with a war between states about to begin, there was probably no chance he would have the resources to carry out the river works.

But until the imperial decree actually reached Yingdu, he still had to continue doing the job he had been assigned.

Count Pingye, meanwhile, continued traveling day and night, racing back toward Snow Sea Pass at the greatest speed possible.

The Pixiu beneath him was fine.

His personal guards were not.

Because ordinary horses simply could not maintain the same pace, more than half his guards actually fell behind along the road.

That alone showed how determined Count Pingye was to return quickly.

And determination was warranted.

He arrived back at Snow Sea Pass at night.

After sending the exhausted princess to the rear residence to rest, Count Pingye immediately convened a military council.

Every officer in Snow Sea Pass of Assistant General rank or above attended.

Then Zheng Fan issued three orders.

First: every soldier registered under the Standards, inside and outside Snow Sea Pass, was to leave production duties and assemble for war.

Second: internal consumption was to be controlled and wartime reserves established.

Third: every workshop, along with the Tianji Pavilion, was to devote its full strength to building siege equipment.

The moment those three orders were given, shock appeared on the faces of every commander present.

Then came wild delight.

A major war was coming.

Not against the snowfields.

It had to be against Chu.

The reasoning was simple.

Why would anyone build siege engines to fight tribes on the snowfields?

What cities were there on the snowfields to attack?

There were, admittedly, two or three old fortresses beyond Snow Sea Pass that had once been built by Great Cheng.

But the Savage tribes had withdrawn from them long ago.

No one dared occupy them.

And Snow Sea Pass had never bothered garrisoning them because of manpower shortages and various other considerations.

Nor could Count Pingye be preparing to rebel.

For one thing, he had just returned from receiving honors in the capital.

For another, if Count Pingye truly intended rebellion, he should not be rushing to build siege equipment.

He should be preparing defenses against the Marquis of Jingnan bringing an army to smash Snow Sea Pass.

So there could be only one answer.

They were truly going to attack Chu.

A real campaign.

Travel-worn and with the corners of his mouth cracked from the road, Count Pingye sat at the head of the hall.

His gaze swept over the assembled commanders.

Then he said:

“Gentlemen— help me become a Marquis.”

...

Qian’s Jiangnan was famous as a gathering place of literary brilliance.

Poetry, songs, courtesans, and romantic affairs seemed to steep even the southern wind in the fragrance of books.

Ying Capital in Chu, by contrast, was famous for romance and abandon.

Summer had only just begun.

The weather was neither too hot nor too cold.

And this was precisely the season when Chu’s famous men became most carefree and unrestrained.

Outside Ying Capital flowed a body of water called the Mi River.

It was called a “jiang,” though in truth it was closer to an ordinary river.

Legend said that when the first Marquis of Chu was searching for a site for his capital, a Fire Phoenix descended into this river as if seeking some spiritual essence.

That was how the river gained the name Mi—“Seeking.”

One grand gathering after another unfolded along its banks outside Ying Capital.

There were songs and dances.

Strings and pipes.

Men of letters.

Qin, chess, calligraphy, and painting.

There were even wrestling contests and beast fights.

Among the great noble houses of Chu, most had direct-line sons living or serving in Ying Capital.

Naturally, the range of amusements available was extraordinarily broad.

The banks of the Mi River were genuinely crowded and lively.

Ordinarily, even the Emperor of Chu might come here incognito, dressed as an ordinary man, to share the festivities with commoners and nobles alike.

The previous Emperor of Chu had once personally entered the wrestling ring at the Mi River and defeated five strongmen in succession to take first place.

The story had become a celebrated tale.

Those who disliked noise and crowds could still choose quieter forms of indulgence.

Every year around this season, Chu people could be seen walking barefoot along the Mi River.

They believed that since the river’s waters had once attracted the Fire Phoenix, those waters had to be pure enough to wash away dust and ill fortune.

This year had been different.

During the first half of the year, the Yan army in Jin had suddenly pressed against Zhennan Pass, leaving Ying Capital tense for months.

Now the danger had receded.

As a result, a kind of retaliatory revelry had broken out.

The people of Ying Capital seemed determined to make up for the pleasures they had missed earlier in the year.

A flower boat drifted along the Mi River.

Four people sat aboard.

At the head sat a very young man, at the age where childhood had only just begun falling away and a trace of boyishness still remained.

His status, however, was exalted.

He was the Eighth Prince of Great Chu.

He was also the Regent’s most beloved younger brother.

On his left sat Zhao Cha, a son of the Zhao Clan.

On his right sat Si Kang.

During the previous Emperor’s reign, Si Kang’s father, Si Jian, had risen from the status of a household slave and established the family’s fortune.

Because General Nian Yao had now achieved such astonishing rank and merit, whenever people discussed men of slave origin rising to power, Nian Yao was the example everyone mentioned first.

Before Nian Yao, however, the Si Clan had filled that role.

Opposite the Eighth Prince sat Jing Renli.

The Zhao Clan, the Jing Clan, and the Qu Clan were the three oldest and most prestigious noble houses in Chu.

Their ancestors had attended the Marquis of Chu when he first opened the southern frontier.

Chu even possessed an office called the Grandee of the Three Clans.

The holder presided over ancestral rites and was also responsible for the education of the younger generations of the Qu, Jing, and Zhao clans.

That alone showed how exalted those three houses were in Great Chu.

“Brother Renli, you didn’t see Elder Sister Liqing at Snow Sea Pass?”

The Eighth Prince asked with a smile.

Jing Renli had been recommended by Nian Yao.

It was said that he had once gone alone in the dead of night to face the infamous southern Marquis of Yan.

On the strength of that achievement, the Regent had granted him an audience and later sent him, in a private capacity, to Snow Sea Pass with the princess’s dowry.

In truth, Great Chu’s imperial house sending dowry to Snow Sea Pass carried much the same meaning as Emperor Yan treating the Princess of Great Chu with grand ceremony and having her stay in the palace.

Yan and Chu might be enemies.

But in the eyes of the Ji Clan, only two houses in the world possessed histories and status truly comparable with their own.

The Yu Clan no longer counted.

That left only the Xiong Clan.

Great Chu sending a dowry was therefore not bowing its head or admitting inferiority.

It was simply proper ceremony.

Proper dignity.

Jing Renli immediately answered with care.

“Answering Your Highness, Zheng Fan and the princess were not at Snow Sea Pass. They had gone to Yanjing.”

“Oh, Yanjing.” The Eighth Prince chuckled. “So he took my imperial sister there to parade his achievement. Ah.”

Zhao Cha smiled.

“The Yan are crude northern barbarians, soaked in the stink of blood. They love doing this sort of thing.”

He was essentially comparing the Yan to poor relatives from the countryside who acquired one decent object and could not wait to carry it outside for everyone to admire.

Then Zhao Cha added, “Still, the matter with the princess truly is difficult to judge.”

Everyone present knew the truth.

They knew that during the Qu Clan wedding, the princess had chosen of her own accord to leave with Yan’s Count Pingye.

It had not happened the way the outside world claimed, with Count Pingye abducting her.

The Eighth Prince shook his head.

“Enough. Don’t mention that matter again.”

Mocking the Qu Clan in private was one thing.

But four different houses were represented here today.

There was no need to leave anyone with words that could later be used against them.

At that moment, a larger flower boat appeared ahead.

Because platforms had been constructed along both sides of the Mi River for the festivities, the waterway, never especially broad to begin with, had become rather narrow.

The Eighth Prince’s flower boat therefore had to stop.

A burly man appeared on the deck of the other vessel.

He shouted arrogantly:

“Why haven’t you moved aside yet?”

The Eighth Prince chuckled.

Zhao Cha calmly took a sip of wine.

Si Kang and Jing Renli, meanwhile, immediately stood.

The Eighth Prince and Zhao Cha came from exalted backgrounds and could afford to remain reserved.

Si Kang’s family had only recently risen, while Jing Renli himself was the promising young figure of his branch.

Naturally, those two had to step forward and handle the unpleasantness.

Si Kang shouted back:

“What blind slave crawled out today without checking the almanac?”

Jing Renli said:

“Slap your own mouth thirty times. Otherwise, before this day is over, I’ll have your tongue twisted off.”

The burly man on the opposite boat immediately roared:

“Insolence! Do you know who my lord is? Keep acting blind and I’ll ram your boat over this instant. Let the waters of the Mi River wash some of that filth off you!”

Then another young man emerged behind the brute.

He looked down at the men below and said:

“I was wondering who had the guts to block my brother-in-law’s boat. But now that I look at you, every one of you is rather pretty. Fine. This lord likes what he sees. Today I’ll give you a chance. Wash your back doors nice and clean and let this lord pluck you. Do that, and I’ll give you a splendid future!”

The moment those filthy words came out, the Eighth Prince’s face darkened.

Even Zhao Cha, who had been sitting there calmly all this time, shot to his feet.

The Eighth Prince lifted his cup and took a sip, looking genuinely puzzled.

“What family are these people from? How can they have so little understanding of the rules?”

Ying Capital was the capital of Great Chu.

Naturally, crouching tigers and hidden dragons filled it.

The sons of powerful officials and great noble families were everywhere.

But even among spoiled aristocratic wastrels, the kind of person who knew only how to cause trouble for his family in public was rare.

And the sort of idiot who started a quarrel over some trivial matter, immediately announced his family background, then tried to compare pedigrees face-to-face like drums on opposing sides— that was the sort of thing only the stupidest fool would do.

When sons of noble families went out, they first looked at one another’s clothing.

Chu people favored long robes with flowing sashes.

They loved jade and all kinds of ornaments.

From details like those, you could usually estimate the depth of the other person’s household.

Then you looked at the attendants.

Then at bearing.

If a conflict seemed likely, both sides would normally suppress their tempers first.

Either they or their servants would probe the other side indirectly.

If the families were of comparable status, then there was nothing to discuss.

Both sides withdrew.

Each gave the other an avenue to retreat.

They had gone out to amuse themselves.

No one wanted to return home after creating a new enemy equal to his own family.

If the difference in status was enormous and you had kicked an iron plate, then you immediately admitted defeat and gave the other side full face.

The man above you, meanwhile, generally would not keep pressing the matter, because noble restraint was considered a mark of cultivated aristocratic behavior in Chu.

That was why the people on the opposite flower boat were so unusual.

From the beginning they had behaved as though no one else existed.

Then they started spewing obscenities.

It was genuinely rare.

The Eighth Prince was the Regent’s “imperial younger brother.”

Once the Regent formally ascended the throne, it would only be a matter of time before the Eighth Prince received a princely title.

Add in sons of the Zhao and Jing clans sitting beside him— within all of Great Chu, what family still dared act so arrogantly before this group?

Zhao Cha asked coldly:

“May I ask what family you come from?”

The young man slapped his chest.

“The Liao family.”

“The Liao family?”

The men on the Eighth Prince’s boat looked at one another.

None of them knew where this Liao family had come from.

As far as they knew, there was no major Chu noble house by that surname.

Could this be some rustic little aristocratic family from the remote provinces visiting Ying Capital for the first time?

The young man seemed neither surprised nor angry at their reaction.

Instead, he raised his chin even higher.

“My brother-in-law is the current General-in-Chief!”

General-in-Chief was a formal office in Chu.

Zhao Cha’s anger actually faded.

He sat back down and lifted his wine cup.

As a son of the Zhao Clan, he had no reason to fear Nian Yao.

Nian Yao certainly held a far higher position than Si Jian had in his day.

But the Si Clan had been established for years and still lived cautiously, as though walking over thin ice.

Nian Yao had only risen a few years ago.

And already his relatives were this arrogant?

Still, Zhao Cha did not say anything.

Nian Yao had originally been a household slave of the Regent.

In other words, a slave of the Xiong imperial clan.

It was not Zhao Cha’s place to criticize him.

If a dog needed beating, its master should beat it.

Coldness entered the Eighth Prince’s eyes.

“Tell that dog-slave Nian Yao to roll down here and see me.”

The burly man on the opposite boat froze.

So did the young noble.

No matter how stupid they were, they understood that anyone who could hear the name of the General-in-Chief and still speak like this was either a lunatic or someone with genuine backing.

The former seemed unlikely.

The young man immediately turned and ran to call his brother-in-law.

A short while later, Nian Yao, dressed in ordinary clothes, stepped onto the deck.

When he saw the people aboard the lower flower boat—and especially the Eighth Prince—his lips tightened.

Then he bent over directly.

Thump!

Nian Yao’s flower boat stood higher than the Eighth Prince’s.

So he literally rolled down from it.

Then he continued rolling forward until he reached the Eighth Prince.

Only then did he stop, raise his face with a fawning smile, and say:

“This slave pays respects to Eighth Highness.”

He had genuinely carried out the Eighth Prince’s order.

The Eighth Prince had told Nian Yao to roll over.

So Nian Yao rolled.

After Nian Yao gave him this much face, the Eighth Prince found it difficult to continue pressing the issue.

He knew Fourth Brother valued this household slave greatly.

Admittedly, Nian Yao had temporarily been transferred away from Zhennan Pass.

But he clearly still had important uses in the future.

The Eighth Prince had only spoken so harshly before because he was furious.

Now that Nian Yao had given his master full face, the Eighth Prince said:

“So it was General Nian after all. Come. Rise and drink a cup.”

“This slave would not dare. The masters are enjoying themselves here, and this slave has already disturbed your pleasure. This slave is lowly by birth. How could I dare sit at the same table and drink with the masters?”

Zhao Cha chuckled.

A smile appeared on Si Kang’s face too.

His family and Nian Yao’s had both risen from household slavery.

The Si Clan had always remained cautious.

Seeing the Nian family act so arrogantly and then receive a lesson today naturally made him feel rather pleased.

“General Nian, please rise. Have a cup...”

Before the Eighth Prince could finish, a man in a Fire-Phoenix-and-Burning-Cloud robe suddenly flew over from the opposite bank of the Mi River.

Each time the tip of his foot touched the water, he immediately sprang forward again.

His movement technique was genuinely excellent.

And his identity was obvious from his clothing.

A Phoenix Nest Inner Guard.

Like Qian’s Silver-Armored Guard, Phoenix Nest had once been part of the Chu imperial clan’s guard forces.

Later, it had been separated out and turned into an intelligence and secret-police yamen.

Its men therefore possessed formal uniforms and an official yamen of their own.

The newcomer landed on the flower boat.

His gaze swept rapidly across everyone present.

When he saw the Eighth Prince, he paused for an instant.

But he still immediately knelt on one knee before Nian Yao, who remained bowed with his backside sticking high in the air.

“General-in-Chief, the Regent has issued an order. You are summoned into the palace immediately for an audience!”

The Eighth Prince recognized the messenger.

He was a Phoenix Nest Inner Guard who served closely beside Fourth Brother.

If Fourth Brother had sent one of his personal men out to summon Nian Yao, then something serious had clearly happened.

So the Eighth Prince immediately asked:

“Has something happened?”

The Phoenix Nest Inner Guard did not conceal it.

“Answering Your Highness, our Phoenix Nest men in Yan rode through the night and have just sent word. The Emperor of Yan has issued an open decree. The entire State of Yan is mobilizing to campaign against Great Chu.”

The Eighth Prince froze.

Yan.

The Emperor.

The whole state campaigning against Chu?

This was not the same as the southern Marquis of Yan posturing outside Zhennan Pass earlier in the year.

This was the whole state.

The Eighth Prince drew a deep breath.

Memories of Yupan City surged back into his mind.

That day, if the Swordsmith had not taken him away quickly enough, perhaps he too would have become a lonely ghost beside the Wang River.

There would have been no escaping it.

He licked his lips and tried to preserve his composure.

At the same time, he raised his wine cup toward Nian Yao.

“Since this concerns state affairs, General Nian, drink this cup and hurry to see—”

Before the Eighth Prince could finish speaking, Nian Yao had already risen.

He reached out, took the cup directly from the Eighth Prince’s hand, and drained it in one swallow.

Then he said:

“Mm. I’m going now.”

[End of Chapter 497]