Chapter 585: - Count Pingye Rides Alone

“Has the Empress Dowager retired?”

The Regent asked the eunuch beside him.

“Replying to Your Highness, the Empress Dowager has already retired. Earlier she sent someone to ask how many bowls of porridge Your Highness drank tonight. This slave saw that Your Highness was playing Go with Lord Meng, so I took the liberty of having the porridge simmer a little longer.”

The Regent nodded.

Then he said to Meng Shou:

“Beloved minister, keep Us company and have some.”

“This subject thanks Your Highness for your great grace.”

The porridge was served.

It was not plain white porridge.

Several ingredients had been added, and the method of preparation was different, so it smelled wonderfully fragrant and tasted fresh.

Eating porridge could indeed nourish the body and stomach.

But one bowl of porridge was not the same as another.

After the Go board was removed, sovereign and subject sat at the same stone table and ate slowly.

“In the future, it will be difficult to sit down peacefully and eat porridge like this again.”

“Your Highness is the one who chose to live this bitter life.”

“Heh. Is that not because the peaceful life we had before could no longer continue?”

“This subject does not quite see it that way. In my opinion, even thin white porridge with a little salted vegetable can taste excellent. Whether porridge tastes good depends most of all on whether the chopsticks, bowl, and plate are your own. This subject has always owned a few mu of farmland in Chu. The Chen family looks after it. Each year’s harvest is entered into the accounts of my old residence. Back when this subject compiled histories in Yingdu, I often ate millet grown on my own land. When I was in Jin, Qian, or Yan, there was also an old servant back home who brought me one sack of rice from our fields every year. When he grew too old to make the journey, he sent his son. Now it is his grandson who brings the rice each year. To say homesickness is stirred into the bowl is empty poetry. Put plainly, porridge made from grain grown on your own land simply tastes better. It tastes solid. Reassuring.”

“Those words of yours are comforting. They put Us considerably more at ease.”

“Whitewashing faults and wielding the Spring and Autumn brush are things historians claim not to want, yet happen to be best at.”

“Hahahahaha.”

The Regent laughed.

A short while later, he stirred the little spoon in his hand and said:

“Once all of those things are smashed apart, We can finally begin making our own bowls and chopsticks.”

“Since this subject began compiling history, what I have seen most often is rulers muddling along as national power declines. Those above always possess ten thousand excuses for themselves. Every other sentence is about proceeding gradually. They lift their brushes, grind their ink, and speak of governing a great state as one cooks a small fish. What they treasure are delicate porcelain vessels, as though every cup and jar were so precious it could never be moved, constantly invoking the common people beneath Heaven as justification. But what this subject has also seen is that once all those precious jars and vessels they swore could never be disturbed are shattered across the ground, their successors often gather everything back together very quickly. Is all beneath Heaven truly that precious? This subject does not think so. What they truly consider precious is not the realm, but...”

The Regent continued for him.

“The chair beneath their own backsides. The wealth and glory their clan’s descendants will enjoy generation after generation. The power they hold to govern the realm alongside the Son of Heaven. Asking them to hand over everything is impossible. So We can only seize it ourselves. Naturally, the scene will not look pretty.”

Meng Shou bent forward.

“Your Highness, after compiling the histories of the Four States, this subject saw only four words.”

“Beloved minister, speak.”

“The victor becomes king. The loser becomes a bandit.”

“Yes. Yes indeed. That is how this world works. Where does ‘since ancient times’ come from? What ever remains unchanged forever? Mighty Great Xia was magnificent beyond words, yet when it collapsed, it collapsed. Even if history later writes that We were harsh toward the nobility, that We forgot how their ancestors once founded the state beside the ancestors of Our Xiong Clan, that We destroyed the old promise that all beneath Heaven would be shared together, what of it? What of Yan? The Emperor of Yan trampled his aristocratic clans beneath cavalry hooves, and did he not succeed? What of Jin? How did the Yu imperial clan treat its enfeoffed lords, and how did those lords treat the Yu clan in return? The victor becomes king. The loser becomes a bandit. That is all.”

The Regent opened one hand.

“Tea.”

Two cups of fragrant tea were brought.

The Regent lifted his cup.

He did not drink.

Instead, he poured it onto the ground beside him.

“Tea in place of wine. First, a toast to Ying Capital. A toast to the saying: when one general achieves fame, ten thousand bones lie bleaching.”

Meng Shou raised his own teacup.

“It is a pity this subject is old. Otherwise, I truly would have liked to serve beside Your Highness as a court diarist and write your daily record.”

“Whether We are a dark ruler or an enlightened one has yet to become clear,” the Regent said with a smile.

Meng Shou shook his head.

“In a historian’s eyes, dark and enlightened are not what we fear most. What we fear is mediocrity.”

“Is that not usually how novelists think?”

Meng Shou smiled.

“Anyone who lives by the brush is the same.”

...

Zhao Wentong was currently suffering.

Originally, he had been stationed here to face the Yan force before him.

It should have been Count Pingye’s troops.

For once, Chu troops could actually use their advantage in cavalry to compress a Yan army.

Zhao Wentong treasured this hard-won opportunity.

He might not have eaten pork, but how could he never have seen a pig run?

His cavalry handling might not be as refined as that of Yan commanders.

But after so many years in the army and with such a long military tradition in his family, how could he fail to understand roughly how cavalry ought to be used and what its strengths were?

So he arranged his troops to apply pressure, used cavalry to shrink the enemy’s space, and successfully compressed Count Pingye’s army into a county town.

The county walls were not high.

The town was not large.

It could hardly be called some fortress easy to defend and difficult to attack.

But at first, worried that the Yan might try to break out while he was tightening the siege, Zhao Wentong chose the steadiest possible method.

Like a maid sweeping a floor, he gathered the dust outside inward bit by bit.

After all, Dugu Mu’s old bastard had given him only one order: keep this Yan force pinned down and stop it from running wild through their rear.

In that case, there was no need to hurry.

He could slowly clean things up.

Zhao Wentong also knew that this Yan army contained more than ten thousand Azure Luan soldiers.

Chu soldiers.

Their numbers were nearly equal to the Yan troops themselves.

So

Zhao Wentong intended to keep tightening the pressure every day and use constant stress to split apart this bizarre “Yan-Chu” coalition.

The effect was obvious.

Over the past several days, no small number of the Chu troops opposite had defected back.

Zhao Wentong believed that after a little more time, once morale among Count Pingye’s troops fell farther, he could attempt a true assault on the city.

By then, after losing their edge, the Yan before him would no longer be such a difficult bone to gnaw.

But who could have imagined that a Yan cavalry force would suddenly appear behind him?

More than forty thousand Jingnan cavalry.

One glance at their marching order was enough to know these were absolute Yan elites.

Zhao Wentong’s troops had spread rather widely.

Fortunately, his outer scouts detected the approaching Yan army early and warned the main force.

Zhao Wentong immediately gathered his men and withdrew from the encirclement around Count Pingye.

The Jingnan Army, exhausted by its long-distance rush, did not immediately attack either.

Luo Ling simply had both sides halt more than thirty li apart in mutual confrontation.

No matter what, the appearance of forty thousand Jingnan cavalry completely reversed the situation on this battlefield.

The first day passed without incident.

The second day saw scouts slaughtering one another.

By the third day, the Yan had recovered enough to begin deliberately pressing and compressing the Chu positions.

To avoid being pinched from both inside and outside, Zhao Wentong had no choice but to contract again.

No large-scale clash erupted.

But Count Pingye’s encirclement was completely broken.

The roles reversed.

Now it was Zhao Wentong who had to curl up in one position while the Yan swaggered around outside.

Some Chu soldiers who had previously defected back from Count Pingye’s side now defected again.

And this time, they brought more men with them.

At this stage of the war, wave after wave of Yan troops had appeared in the heartland of Chu.

The morale under the greatest pressure was actually Chu morale.

More importantly, the Azure Luan Army had already surrendered.

The Qu Clan had set the example.

If even one of the great noble houses could surrender, what psychological burden remained for ordinary Chu soldiers?

Still, repeated defections back and forth were only a small and inevitable reaction.

They did not affect the wider situation.

Unless Nian Yao inside Zhennan Pass suddenly slapped the table and defected from Chu to Yan, everyone else amounted only to small bets for amusement.

Finally, after arranging and refining the various detachments beneath him to monitor Zhao Wentong while guarding against Chu forces possibly appearing from other directions, Luo Ling led a group of personal guards to Count Pingye’s camp.

The two men had once had an unpleasant encounter.

But neither had actually taken it to heart.

Private relations were private relations.

War was war.

If Luo Ling lacked even that much understanding, Prince of Jingnan would never have tolerated him as one of the direct senior commanders beneath his princely banner.

Besides, Luo Ling understood exactly how difficult Count Pingye’s campaign had been and how many risks the man had taken.

Great Yan’s military atmosphere remained energetic and upward-looking.

If you could win battles and accomplish what others could not, you naturally earned respect.

Most importantly, Luo Ling also knew that his own prince treated Count Pingye differently from everyone else.

Before, Luo Ling had sometimes wanted to compete with Count Pingye.

Part of that had genuinely been a desire to compete for favor.

After all, he had arrived first...

But now, thinking that way no longer had much point.

On the second day after Luo Ling’s army arrived, both sides had already sent messengers to exchange information about their respective situations.

Luo Ling did not think it mattered that Count Pingye had not come to see him personally.

Was he not coming over himself now?

But when Luo Ling arrived at Count Pingye’s army camp, he received a piece of news that left him stunned.

On the day after Luo Ling’s army arrived, Count Pingye had handed the army to Jin Shuke.

Then he took only a few dozen personal guards and rode straight south to find Prince of Jingnan.

...

Count Pingye had genuinely gone.

And in truth, he had taken only twenty personal guards.

Apart from them, there was Fourth Lady.

And the Sword Saint.

Perhaps there really was some kind of intuition in the unseen world.

Originally, when Luo Ling’s army appeared, Count Pingye had let out a long breath.

Then he learned that the Prince had led another route of the army directly toward Ying Capital.

That felt exhilarating.

This was the Prince’s style.

This was the Prince’s temper.

So that evening, Count Pingye’s appetite was excellent.

He ate three bowls of noodles and went to sleep early.

Then he had a nightmare.

In the dream, he saw flames.

Then inside the flames, he saw an extremely familiar figure.

Zheng Fan shouted himself hoarse at the man within the fire.

But the man inside did not react.

Again and again, Zheng Fan tried to rush into the flames.

Even when he was willing to endure the pain, he still could not close the distance between himself and that person.

When the nightmare ended, his entire body was soaked in cold sweat.

Demon Pill floated before him.

Clearly, this had not been an ordinary nightmare.

If it were only a normal bad dream, Demon Pill would not have appeared.

More precisely, ever since Demon Pill began remaining beside him, the number of nightmares Count Pingye had experienced could genuinely be counted on one hand.

For one thing, he had seen more than enough killing and large battlefields.

His mental resilience was no longer remotely comparable to what it had once been.

For another, with something as sinister as Demon Pill constantly beside him, it genuinely produced an effect like fighting poison with poison.

If you could withstand Demon Pill’s influence, everything else seemed trivial by comparison.

The last time he had experienced a nightmare like this had been several years earlier, after Prince of Jingnan exterminated his own clan.

When Count Pingye woke, he sat dazed at the edge of his bed.

Fourth Lady brought him water.

He did not drink.

Xue San invited the Sword Saint over to inspect him.

San’er worried that since Chu people knew shamanic arts, perhaps after failing to win on the battlefield they had decided to place some curse on his Master instead.

The Sword Saint knew nothing of such arts, but he still took a look.

He found nothing.

Count Pingye sat there as though his soul had left his body for half the night.

At dawn the next morning, he suddenly stood and made his decision.

He was going to Ying Capital.

He was going to catch up with Tian Wujing’s army.

For the commander of an army, it was an absurd decision.

And the cause was merely one nightmare.

Yet even more absurdly, no one opposed him.

Jin Shuke and the other commanders beneath him had no opportunity to voice an opinion anyway.

They could only obey every instruction Count Pingye gave.

As for the Demon Kings, whether Xue San, Fourth Lady, A’Ming, or Fan Li, none raised any objection to their Master’s decision.

Because they understood what place Tian Wujing occupied in their Master’s heart.

And because the Demon Kings had never viewed the world in quite the same way as ordinary people.

To some extent, Zheng Fan’s own aesthetic as their Master was actually aligned with theirs.

That line they occasionally threw around, “At worst, one day we’ll find somewhere no one knows us and open an inn,” had never been merely a joke.

Besides, the local military situation was already basically settled.

Now it was no longer the Zhao Clan considering whether it could swallow their force.

The Zhao Clan had to worry about whether they might swallow it instead.

Count Pingye had already completed the task of this Chu campaign.

His military merits had long since overflowed the cup.

So long as the wider situation was unaffected, what was wrong with taking a little risk and indulging a little willfulness?

Had they worked this hard to build up their household only so they could live afterward like rigid misers guarding their property?

There was one more point.

Master did not say it.

The Demon Kings did not say it.

The Sword Saint did not say it either.

But everyone tacitly understood.

Once a man reached a certain position, even the meaning of his dreams changed.

For example, the mothers of ancient emperors always seemed to have some dream before giving birth to one.

An immortal elder descended.

Or a dragon.

Or a giant serpent crawled into her belly.

Count Pingye was now effectively a reserve regional lord.

At that level, people often treated a dream as an omen, whether accurate or not.

And there was another factor.

If Tian Tian had grown up “on top of a grave mound,” then Zheng Fan himself lived with a whole crowd of evil beings pressed close around him every day.

Someone like Count Pingye, even if he never cultivated, would have his destiny forcibly hardened by constant exposure after the fact.

Otherwise, he could never withstand such an “unhealthy” environment at all.

Most importantly, in Count Pingye’s mind, Tian Wujing was nearly invincible.

Dreaming that Prince of Jingnan had crushed the Chu army, even smashed Ying Capital, would be normal.

Dreaming a scene with such an obviously ominous implication was therefore clearly abnormal.

Ever since awakening in this world, there had been two people who were genuinely good to him.

One was Sha Tuo Queshi.

But Sha Tuo Queshi had remained asleep most of the time, lying inside a coffin year after year.

His protection had been real.

It came from that extra kowtow Zheng Fan had given him back then.

But it lacked warmth.

As for Tian Wujing...

That relationship was genuinely difficult to describe.

He had been in this world for several years.

Yet the feeling of “a stranger alone in a foreign land” had never completely disappeared.

Toward the common people of this world, toward its states and nations, there remained a kind of distance.

A kind of separation.

Only with Tian Wujing did he truly feel as though he had an elder brother.

Once the decision was made, they left immediately.

But this was still Chu territory.

Although the Yan had gained the local advantage, this was ultimately still the Chu home field.

So this ride, almost literally “one man and one horse charging through the passes,” sounded carefree.

In reality, it was dancing on a saber’s edge.

If they happened to run into one Chu army and were discovered, they could very easily be surrounded and swallowed whole.

They did encounter attempts to block them.

Chu troops even pursued them more than once.

But Zheng Fan’s group managed to shake them off every time.

A small cavalry group genuinely possessed advantages in mobility.

And besides, the Sword Saint was beside Count Pingye.

No matter what, Count Pingye, who had always joked that his battlefield luck was terrible and therefore kept A’Ming near him, was actually quite lucky this time.

This commander’s near-naked sprint somehow genuinely succeeded.

Ying Capital was just ahead.

Only now did the Sword Saint finally speak.

“If something really has happened to Tian Wujing, what will you do?”

The Sword Saint knew the question was inappropriate at a time like this.

But first, he knew Zheng Fan was not some ordinary fragile person.

There was no need to deliberately shield or coddle him.

And second, he genuinely wanted to ask.

Desperately.

Experts were lonely.

Experts were aloof.

But that did not mean experts were saints who had abandoned every desire.

It merely meant their threshold for becoming interested in something was a little higher.

Clearly, this question had now crossed the Sword Saint’s threshold.

If Count Pingye was willing to answer, the Sword Saint would even agree that next campaign, he might come along again and earn some extra allowance so he could renovate his family house one more time.

Count Pingye did not cry.

He did not make a scene.

His eyes did not redden.

After all, no bad news had arrived.

This was still only one dream.

It was entirely possible that after galloping all the way over, he would see Tian Wujing and immediately receive a kick.

We’re fighting a war.

Why the hell are you running around blindly?

Or perhaps Tian Wujing would settle an account with him.

I heard you and your elder brother-in-law got along rather well beneath Juyang City?

Escorting food and drink back and forth?

That was the scene Zheng Fan wanted most.

Even if Tian Wujing kicked him hard enough to leave him seriously injured, he would gladly accept it.

But now, faced with the Sword Saint’s question, Zheng Fan answered without the slightest hesitation.

Clearly, even while repeatedly telling himself he was overthinking things, he had still considered the consequences countless times.

“Then I’ll build ten corpse mounds in Chu and hold a grand rite for Tian Wujing! I’ll investigate Du Juan’s death too. I’ll find out whether that man had anything to do with it! I’ll become a fucking mad dog. Anyone involved, anyone who owes a debt, can wait for me to bite them! And then... I’ll do whatever it takes to put my godson on the Dragon Throne, no matter who happens to be sitting there at the time!”

His words had barely fallen when the group crested a hill.

Everyone immediately fell silent.

Ahead, the vast expanse of Ying Capital appeared.

And at this moment, Ying Capital was blazing to the heavens.

[End of Chapter 585]