Chapter 577: - The Southern Marquis in His Glory (3)

Inside Ying Capital, everything had fallen into chaos.

Yet the chaos was strangely “orderly.”

Putting two opposite descriptions together looked absurd.

But that was precisely reality.

Whenever a state fell, a household was destroyed, or a dynasty collapsed, people expected the process to happen step by step.

Great Chu, after all, was no short-lived regime thrown together in haste. It was not one of those chaotic ages when whoever held the strongest army simply became emperor.

The land now ruled by Qian had once seen absurdities such as a man declaring himself emperor one day only to have one of his own generals cut off his head the next.

Nothing like that had ever happened in Chu.

Yes, Great Chu was presently locked in a tense struggle against the Yan, whose momentum had risen like the midday sun over the past several years.

The situation could hardly be called good.

Everyone carried a heavy pressure in his heart.

The fate of the Three Jin lands stood as a warning.

But even so, what everyone imagined was that if the situation truly collapsed, it would collapse one step at a time.

Even if the Yan really fought their way into Chu, surely they would have to gnaw through one city and one stretch of land after another.

Just as Great Chu itself had spent centuries gradually swallowing the territories of surrounding Shanyue tribes and smaller states.

Who could have imagined that all at once, Yan iron cavalry would suddenly appear outside the capital?

From common people at the bottom to the great nobles of Ying Capital at the top, no one had been mentally prepared for this.

So after the first instant of panic, instinct took over.

Everyone simply continued following the rules and procedures that had governed the city for generations.

The camps outside the capital discovered the enemy first and immediately reported to the City Gate Office.

The City Gate Office sounded the gate drums and reported to the Capital Prefecture Yamen.

The Capital Prefecture Yamen reported to the Ying Capital Garrison Command.

The Garrison Command immediately sent men into the palace to report to the Ministry of War.

The Ministry of War reported to the Mo'ao.

The Mo'ao reported to the Sima.

The Sima reported to the Lingyin.

In Chu, the Lingyin was effectively the Chancellor.

And finally, the Lingyin would report everything to the Regent.

Heh.

One had to admit, the Yan cavalry was already outside the city, yet Ying Capital's bureaucratic machine could still operate in such meticulous order, moving through one layer after another.

It was difficult to decide whether to praise them for remaining calm in crisis or mock them for having become so rigid they no longer knew how to think.

Great Chu also possessed Six Ministries.

But the Chu Minister of War did not wield particularly great authority.

The entire Six Ministries system was more like something Chu had established after looking at its brother states and thinking, “They have one. If we do not, we will look backward.”

In essence, the powers of the court were still divided hereditarily among the great noble houses.

So the Minister of War and the Sima jointly issued a mobilization order, commanding the camps outside the capital to prepare for defense immediately.

Ying Capital was difficult to defend.

But every truly seasoned old noble in the city who knew how to fight was already outside leading troops.

So the order that came down was defensive.

Bring the troops into the city.

Defend from within.

The men issuing that order did not care whether Ying Capital, this great city steeped in romance, was actually suited to urban defense.

All they knew was that, at a moment like this, calling the troops inside the walls felt safer.

Yet after the command went out, the troops in the camps outside Ying Capital did the opposite.

They left their fortifications and began forming battle lines outside the city to face the Yan army directly.

Seeing the result first and reasoning backward from it, someone like Zhao Yuelin naturally assumed the Sima had judged that the Yan were exhausted after a long forced march and that Ying Capital's poor defenses would only tie Chu hands, so it was better to meet the enemy outside.

In truth, the central command and the camps outside the capital had received contradictory orders.

The Lingyin failed to see the Regent.

But an imperial decree from the Regent arrived nonetheless.

Its message was extremely concise:

Ying Capital is the foundation of Great Chu's ancestral temples and state.

It must be defended to the death.

By then, the true senior figures still remaining inside Ying Capital had already begun sensing that something was wrong, just as Zhao Yuelin had.

How had a Yan army reached their own capital before the capital received any warning?

It should not have happened.

It was impossible.

But the Regent had closed the palace gates and refused to come out.

What could the Lingyin and the other representatives of the great noble houses still in Ying Capital do?

Gather their household troops first, storm the palace, and check whether their own Regent was actually still inside?

Most people in this world were fools.

But among men who had climbed above ten thousand others, true fools were genuinely rare.

So there were quite a few people in Ying Capital capable of guessing that something was wrong.

Unfortunately, the Yan had arrived.

They had truly arrived.

There was no longer enough time for anyone to calmly arrange countermeasures, slowly investigate, and leisurely assign blame.

When Yan cavalrymen raised their sabers, when sunlight flashed along the blades with a chilling gleam, that gleam could carve every layer of noble grace and splendor into bloody pieces.

The Yan army attacked.

...

The Chu army had, more or less, formed its lines with the city walls as support.

Only the walls were rather far behind them.

The Yan, meanwhile, had indeed become exhausted from their long-distance forced march.

Men could force themselves awake.

They could burn their blood hot, squeeze out the last reserve of strength, and fight once more.

Warhorses could not.

So the Yan did not use their usual method for dealing with infantry formations.

There would be no long circling hunt to blunt the enemy's edge, no patient probing before cutting formations apart.

The Yan horses no longer had the strength for those maneuvers.

Fortunately, one side was exhausted.

The other side was panicked.

That made the scales almost even.

What remained was to see who broke first.

Prince of Jingnan personally led the charge.

The cavalry around him split into three sections and slammed into the Chu formation from the front, west, and east.

From the very first move, they bored straight through.

Either you stabbed holes through me, or I tore you to pieces.

Simple.

Direct.

Clean.

Clear.

Straight to the essence of war.

Li Fusheng had once said the requirements for winning a battle were very simple:

Strong soldiers and sturdy horses.

The statement was a little absolute.

But it covered the overwhelming majority of the truth.

The first collision arrived.

Then the Chu army collapsed.

It collapsed quickly.

Abruptly.

They came.

They formed their ranks.

They collapsed.

Like actors hurrying from one performance to another, arriving only long enough to show their faces, sing two lines for atmosphere, toast an old patron, then rush off impatiently to the next stage.

Or like a bad-tempered courtesan who makes everyone wait forever for her entrance, finally appears, rolls her eyes at you once, then immediately turns around and goes back into her room.

A token gesture.

It was genuinely no more than a token gesture.

And that token gesture caught even the Yan army by surprise.

The Chu collapse had actually begun before the two sides fully made contact.

Faced with the thunder of Yan cavalry bearing down upon them, the Chu front ranks began running backward.

The center saw the front retreat and immediately followed.

The rear had no idea what had happened and assumed the troops ahead had already been defeated.

At that point, even men who did not want to flee had no choice.

The phrase “a heart to kill the enemy but no strength to save the day” described exactly this kind of situation.

Once the greater momentum began moving, one man or one small group could not possibly stop it.

The Yan cavalry, which had been controlling the speed of its charge strictly according to experience, suddenly had to revise the plan midstream.

It was like slamming on the brakes.

Quite a few Yan soldiers were thrown from their saddles.

Some were trampled by their own horses.

Others disappeared beneath the hooves of comrades following behind.

Because the Chu had been so eager to flee, the Yan charge itself actually became congested.

This kind of thing should never have happened to Yan troops famed for their horsemanship and archery.

And the Jingnan Army in particular was the most rigorously disciplined army in all of Yan.

Unfortunately, an opponent behaving like a pig could sometimes force you into behaving like a pig too.

The Chu were already collapsing.

There was no need to keep charging headfirst into the densest mass.

So the Yan front began slowing.

The middle and rear had not expected it.

Everyone simply piled together.

Under Jingnan Army tradition, the front was supposed to advance without fear of death.

The middle followed to rip open whatever breach the front created.

The rear delivered the final violent penetration.

As a whole, the front rode fastest, the middle connected behind it, and the rear struck in the final wave.

Then the Chu ran too quickly.

And everything became a mess.

A mess.

Completely a mess.

Fortunately, the Yan confusion came only from being caught by surprise.

It did not truly damage the larger situation.

Because their opponent had already broken completely.

Prince of Jingnan's gaze darkened slightly.

These were not Great Chu's true elite Imperial Clan Guards.

In the other great states, Jin could be set aside because imperial authority had fallen too early.

In both Qian and Yan, the central Imperial Guards stationed around the capital were often among the weakest major forces in the country.

The capital possessed the richest economy and most luxurious life in the realm.

Amid wine, pleasure, and endless indulgence, even the hardest cavalry saber would eventually rust.

Chu was different.

Great Chu's Imperial Clan Guards were the Xiong Clan's foundation.

They were the military base upon which the imperial clan maintained leadership over the realm.

If the great and small noble houses were a pack of wolves, then the Xiong Clan was the wolf king.

The wolf king had to remain strong enough to command the pack.

Otherwise, the pack would devour him.

In truth, the Barbarian Royal Court in the desert resembled Great Chu in this respect.

The Barbarians merely lacked the Chu talent for wrapping the arrangement in so much tender ceremony.

So this routing force was obviously not the genuine elite of the Imperial Clan Guards.

Its fighting strength did not match.

Its numbers did not match either.

Even so, Tian Wujing still gave the order to pursue.

Pursue the rout.

Slaughter the fugitives.

At the same time, seize the gates.

The Yan soldiers forgot their exhaustion under the stimulation of victory and grew even more excited as they chased down the fleeing Chu.

The formations split off beforehand began attacking the city entrances.

And the gates of Ying Capital were genuinely far too easy to seize.

The Star-Gazing Tower was not the only problem.

There were many other similar places.

A city wall was supposed to be a military defensive structure.

Under the Chu, it had become an accessory for art.

One could hardly blame the Chu for neglecting city defense.

Even during the Rebellion of the Princes, the capital region had never experienced warfare on a truly massive scale.

A royal capital that had never once been attacked by an outside army somehow maintaining a perfectly rigorous defensive system would have been the stranger thing.

And regardless of what happened later, at least now, at least at this moment, at least before their eyes, Ying Capital, celebrated for generations in the verse of countless scholars and poets, had stripped away every gauzy skirt symbolizing beauty and romance and lay exposed before the utterly unromantic barbarians of Yan.

Prince of Jingnan sat astride his Pixiu outside the city, in the center of the army.

At that moment, he suddenly remembered something Zheng Fan had once said casually while standing beside him.

Civilization will always be destroyed by barbarism.

Calling Great Yan barbaric was not disrespect.

It was a kind of pride.

Just as Sha Tuo Queshi, Left Guli King of the Barbarian Royal Court, had once roared before the gates of the Marquis of Zhenbei Residence:

“I am but a barbarian of the desert.”

That was an expression of supreme confidence.

A century earlier, when Yan people faced Barbarian cavalry sharpening their blades, they had called them barbarians.

But in that context, “barbarian” had represented strength.

And fear.

The barbarism that destroyed civilization symbolized power.

As for the civilization destroyed by barbarism, that civilization was sick.

Tian Wujing suddenly felt a little regret.

He regretted that Zheng Fan was not standing beside him now.

In a scene like this, if Zheng Fan were also sitting on a Pixiu at his side, he would probably say something Tian Wujing found rather interesting.

Or perhaps even if Zheng Fan said nothing at all and merely stood there, Tian Wujing would still have the feeling that another “himself” was witnessing the moment.

The old Jin capital, that decayed and broken imperial center, had been meaningless.

Quhe City.

Litian City.

Yingdu.

Put plainly, none of them possessed the true atmosphere of a Son of Heaven's capital.

But Ying Capital of Great Chu, still standing after eight hundred years of dynastic inheritance, possessed that flavor.

Do you see it?

Great Chu's capital.

I took it.

In the future, you can too.

...

Pa!

A Go stone clicked crisply against the board.

Meng Shou's skill at Go was not as good as the Regent's.

In truth, Meng Shou had never been particularly good at Go.

For a person to spend one lifetime bringing even a single discipline to its summit was already extraordinarily difficult.

There was rarely enough energy left to become exceptional at many other things.

Not everyone who wore a feather fan and scholar's scarf was automatically good at Go.

Some people were busy writing essays.

Some were busy pursuing scholarship.

Some were busy learning how to govern a state.

Everyone was busy.

The Regent had no intention of winning.

He played merely to play.

Placed stones merely to place them.

Continued the game merely so the game would continue.

Neither man truly possessed any concept of victory or defeat in this match.

“Is Your Highness curious how later histories will record this day?”

Meng Shou asked.

The Regent did not answer.

He lifted the teacup beside him and took a sip.

Meng Shou continued:

“Compiling history is like conducting oneself as a man. Historians like to say that the historian's brush is a blade. But in the end, the stool beneath his backside still belongs to someone else.”

The Regent lowered his teacup.

“Do you know how Great Chu's historians will write for the next sixty years?”

Meng Shou asked:

“This subject requests Your Highness's instruction.”

The Regent smiled slightly.

“We dictate. They transcribe.”

Meng Shou opened his mouth.

Then he gave a bitter smile.

“So they will not even have a stool to sit on.”

The historians would kneel, listen to the dictation, and copy it down.

As the man who had brought the historian's craft to its greatest culmination since Great Xia, Meng Shou could hardly help feeling melancholy at the thought.

The Regent placed another stone.

“Tell Us. Will that disciple of yours enter Ying Capital?”

Meng Shou shook his head and placed a stone of his own.

“This subject only taught that disciple a little in civil matters. Martial arts and military affairs have nothing whatsoever to do with this subject. How could I possibly guess?”

“We think he will definitely enter.”

“This subject thinks my disciple should understand that Your Majesty has already made arrangements. This is an invitation to enter the urn.”

The Regent replied:

“But he will still enter.”

“Your Highness sounds so certain. Could it be you already arranged matters with him beforehand?”

Meng Shou smiled as he teased him.

But although he smiled, the concern in his eyes could not be hidden.

He had spent more than half his life compiling history until he practically lived inside the history books himself.

At this age, he had little interest left in disguising his true emotions.

The Regent picked up a Go stone.

“Just like this board. Even if neither of us says a word, from the pattern of the game alone you can infer what We intend to do, and We can infer what you intend to do. The stones will still continue falling. Because...”

Pa.

The Regent placed the stone on the board.

Then he spoke the final four words.

“Each takes what he needs.”

[End of Chapter 577]