Chapter 604: - The Young Marquis, the Prince of Yesteryear

Eunuch Huang had come to Fengxin City again.

Over the past year, it seemed as though he was either on the road going somewhere or on the road coming back.

And the worst part was that when he was going, he had to hurry so the imperial decree would reach its destination on time.

When he was returning, he had to hurry even more so he could report back to Yanjing without making His Majesty wait.

Neither direction allowed any delay.

So Eunuch Huang had lost a great deal of weight.

“There’s a saying that has always circulated in Qian: punishments do not extend to scholar-officials. But when the people above truly want to kill you, who gives a damn about that kind of bullshit rule? They say that if someone in power really cannot stand the sight of an official, he demotes him to the southwest. Then, just as the man is almost there, he transfers him to the northeast instead, with a deadline. Back and forth, back and forth. A young man ends up sick for life. An old man simply dies on the road to his new post.”

Because Qian’s military power was weak, a great many “Qian jokes” circulated through the other Three Great States.

“That is only because Qian scholars are weak in body. Eunuch Huang, your health is robust,” one accompanying eunuch flattered.

“Robust? Heh. If I hadn’t spent two years practicing breathing and nourishing-qi exercises, these endless journeys might really have broken me. I understand now. The people above are treating me like a lucky talisman.”

Years ago, when the court issued an edict ordering the Marquis of Jingnan to take command of the campaign in place of the First Prince, two red-robed eunuchs carrying decrees had gone there one after another.

The gates of the Marquis Residence had remained shut.

Each eunuch chose one stone lion.

And each smashed himself to death against it.

When it was Eunuch Huang’s turn, many of his colleagues had invited him to drink beforehand, treating it like an early farewell.

Eunuch Huang reached Litian City and was just gathering strength to throw himself against the steps when the gates of the Marquis Residence opened.

From that day onward, whenever the court issued a palace decree specifically for Prince of Jingnan alone, Eunuch Huang was the one sent to deliver it.

For good luck.

“It’s just that Count Pingye really is something. The Chu campaign only just ended, yet he already ran back to Snow Sea Pass. There’s still a huge pile of business at Zhennan Pass. Hehehe, I’d guess Count Pingye must have missed the Princess. As the saying goes, from ancient times even heroes have had trouble passing the trial of beauty...”

Slap!

Eunuch Huang struck the attendant across the face.

He did not hold back.

One of the man’s front teeth flew out.

“You maggot-hearted bastard, what kind of words are you letting crawl out of that mouth?” Eunuch Huang cursed furiously. “What kind of man is Count Pingye? Once the imperial decree is issued, he’ll be a Marquis. A Marquis! A Marquis, do you understand? And you, a miserable castrated piece of filth, dare make jokes about a Marquis?”

“Eunuch Huang, this slave was wrong. This slave will never dare again. Never again.”

“Drag him out. Ten more lashes.”

“Eunuch Huang! Eunuch Huang...”

After the accompanying eunuch was dragged away, no one else in the room dared speak.

Eunuch Huang slowly swept his gaze over everyone present.

“People say I’m lucky. I listen and let them say it. Because I know perfectly well that no matter how good your luck is, it still won’t save you if you keep rushing headfirst toward death.”

...

“I genuinely do not understand. You are going to Fengxin City to receive an ennoblement, not to fight a battle. Why are you dragging me along?”

The Sword Saint spoke while they were resting to eat along the road.

Like Zheng Fan, he had only just returned home not long ago.

Then Zheng Fan had to go to Fengxin City to receive his investiture, and somehow the Sword Saint had been pulled out again.

No.

Strictly speaking, Zheng Fan had not personally come to summon him.

He had not even visited the Sword Saint’s house.

Instead, on the grounds that he was traveling to Fengxin City to receive his ennoblement, Count Pingye had asked the headmaster of the academy to choose several students of outstanding conduct and learning to accompany him.

They would witness this glorious and magnificent moment.

It was a reward for exceptional students.

After returning, they would describe the investiture ceremony to their classmates.

Liu Dahu was selected.

Then the Sword Saint watched his foolish boy run home in wild excitement, shouting and yelling to vent the joy in his heart.

“I’m going to Fengxin City!”

“I got picked to go with the Count to Fengxin City!”

“Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh!”

The Sword Saint covered his forehead.

That same day, he had no choice but to pack his things, put on a veil, pick up Longyuan before it had even had time to warm the table leg again, and walk into Count Pingye’s procession to Fengxin City.

Now that the Sword Saint had asked, Count Pingye did not bother hiding anything.

“It’s true that when spring winds favor you, the horse’s hooves seem faster. But the brighter and grander the doorway, the higher its threshold. And the easier it is to trip over it. I’m just taking precautions. Precautions.”

Count Pingye possessed an excellent sense of his own limits.

Especially when it came to his luck.

There was no helping it.

Far too many people around him seemed to be carrying protagonist scripts.

Some could suffer catastrophic injuries and still recover completely, perhaps even becoming stronger.

Others were nearly Dugu Qiubai reborn, so absurdly hard to kill that even the shadow of a totem could not finish them off, despite them actively wanting death.

And Zheng Fan?

Ever since joining the army, he had spent every moment worrying that one careless mistake would earn him a boxed lunch.

Snow Sea Pass was not particularly close to Fengxin City, but it was not truly far either.

Riding hard, the journey would not take long.

Count Pingye was simply afraid some accident might happen and kill him right on the eve of victory.

It would be like an old man finally completing the great wish of his life.

The camera cuts.

He is dead.

A smile still on his face.

Count Pingye believed he was still young.

It was nowhere near his time.

He could not exactly leave home after telling the Blind Man, “I think this is only the beginning,” only for reality to immediately answer:

The end.

“If you are excessively cautious, how do you expect your path as a Martial Artist to advance? A Martial Artist tempers the body and the po. The po is courage. Without vigor and spirit to support it, how can there be a true martial soul?”

Count Pingye rolled his eyes at the Sword Saint.

“If I lose my life, what am I supposed to do with my three hun and seven po? Become a ghost?”

The moment he finished speaking, Demon Pill trembled inside the armor.

Apparently, he thought his father’s suggestion sounded pretty good.

The Sword Saint was helpless.

He could not even be bothered speaking further.

All he could say was that when it came to shamelessness, this soon-to-be Marquis of Great Yan had already advanced far, far beyond his actual Martial Artist grade.

Even after opening the threshold of the Second Grade, the Sword Saint felt he could only gaze at Zheng Fan’s back from afar in this particular field.

Count Pingye drank from his waterskin.

Then he looked at Hero Chen crouching nearby, eating roasted flour.

“Hero Chen, you’re Fourth Grade now?”

Hero Chen nodded.

Then shook his head.

Count Pingye said:

“You mean you did enter Fourth Grade, but whether you entered Fourth Grade or not does not mean much to you?”

Hero Chen’s eyes widened.

He stared at Count Pingye in shock.

“You were waiting for me to ask what the nod and shake meant, then you were going to repeat exactly what I just said in a low, indifferent voice, weren’t you?”

The shock on Hero Chen’s face deepened.

Count Pingye shook his head and sighed.

“Truthfully, I want to advance too.”

Hero Chen felt as though he had suffered internal injuries from being stifled.

He could only shovel roasted flour into his mouth in large bites.

Count Pingye looked at him again.

“How did you advance so quickly?”

Before Hero Chen could answer, Count Pingye continued:

“I don’t know either. I just practiced the sword every day and somehow went up a grade. Right?”

“...” Hero Chen.

Count Pingye then turned to the Sword Saint with a helpless expression.

The Sword Saint began:

“Chen...”

Count Pingye answered before him:

“Hero Chen possesses the heart of an innocent child. I, meanwhile, have too much of my attention dragged away by worldly distractions.”

“Uh...” the Sword Saint said.

“Truthfully, I understand all the principles. Understanding them just doesn’t help. I’ll take it slowly. Life is pretty good right now anyway. Li Liangting’s martial cultivation isn’t anything impressive either, and he still sits securely over the desert. Give us enough time. We won’t be worse than him.”

Count Pingye drank another mouthful of water.

“Finished eating? Let’s move. Advancement in cultivation can wait. Fortunately, I can advance in noble rank first.”

...

With advancement in noble rank waiting ahead, Count Pingye’s enthusiasm for the journey was immense, no less than when he had chased after his elder brother-in-law.

The Qian had always called Yan people “Yan barbarians.”

The “barbarian” here did not refer to bloodline.

In truth, among the Four Eastern States, the imperial Zhao line of Qian possessed the least respectable pedigree.

Eight hundred years ago, the Ji, Yu, and Xiong Clans had already been enfeoffed as marquises by Great Xia. There were historical records that could be cross-checked against one another.

Only the Zhao Clan had somewhat humble origins.

So they mobilized their own scholars and forcibly dug up some minister surnamed Zhao from Great Xia history, then claimed him as their ancestor, proving that their forebear had supposedly served at court alongside the ancestors of the other three clans as an equal.

But regardless, when Qian people mocked Yan people for not understanding proper ritual, they were not entirely wrong.

Yan people had never liked trouble.

In many matters, they disliked endless fussing and preferred simplifying anything that could be simplified.

Still, no matter how simple things became, some basic dignity still had to be preserved.

Especially now.

No matter how close Great Yan’s domestic situation looked to “the people having no way to live,” externally it had destroyed Jin, attacked Qian, campaigned against Chu, and intimidated the Barbarians.

The bearing of the foremost state in the East had already been established.

Once a man became rich, naturally he began searching for a few rules to decorate the facade and add grandeur.

So before Zheng Fan’s party could enter Fengxin City, they were stopped.

The people stopping them were a group of civil officials and attendants.

Some had traveled from Yanjing with Eunuch Huang.

Others were Yingdu officials who had joined the party along the route. They had originally served in the Ministry of Rites of the Great Cheng State.

No one could quite explain why the ennoblement of a Great Yan general as Marquis required a Jin ritual official to organize the rules.

But at minimum, this elderly Jin official was extremely capable of making trouble.

He obsessed over details.

He researched everything.

He dug into antiquity at every opportunity.

And he did not even use the rites of Jin.

Every other sentence out of his mouth concerned what had supposedly happened when Great Xia enfeoffed a Marquis in ancient times.

Whether any of it was actually true, no one could say.

Unless someone went to Chu and invited Meng Shou over to advise them.

Still, ritual was ritual.

Point enough here.

Draw enough there.

Pull enough references from east and west.

Quote enough old authorities.

Soon, the sense of ceremony naturally appeared.

And strangely enough, it really began to look convincing.

After the elderly ritual official surnamed Zhu, already past seventy, finished arranging every rule and detail for entering Fengxin City the next day, he looked carefully at Count Pingye.

“Count, where is your golden armor?”

“Oh. It was damaged on the battlefield.”

“What a pity. An imperial gift ought to be worn on such an occasion. And, Count, what of that Barbarian Saber His Majesty bestowed upon you?”

“I exchanged it with the Chu emperor as a token during the peace negotiations. At the time, I truly had nothing else suitable enough to use as a gift.”

The Barbarian Saber had indeed been given to his elder brother-in-law.

But the next day, his elder brother-in-law quietly sent it back.

The meaning was that as half an elder to Zheng Fan, he could give a gift without requiring anything in return.

Yet he feared embarrassing Zheng Fan, so the saber was returned in secret.

When Zheng Fan left Snow Sea Pass, Xiong Liqing had even specifically asked about it.

The Princess understood that at an investiture, especially an investiture as Marquis, every imperially bestowed object should, according to ritual, either be worn or brought along.

But Count Pingye had already become swollen with success.

So he sent the returned Barbarian Saber straight into Sha Tuo Queshi’s secret chamber to keep him company.

“Count, please examine tomorrow’s rituals and procedures one more time in detail. Great Yan has produced very few Marquises through military merit. Every such investiture is a momentous event for the state. Count, you absolutely must not be careless.”

The scene tomorrow would be enormous.

Because the distance was so great, not many officials had come from Yanjing.

There was Eunuch Huang to proclaim the decree, as well as a Marquis surnamed Ji.

This Marquis was the youngest younger brother of the current Emperor.

A member of the imperial clan.

Great Yan’s imperial clan followed a system.

Once an imperial prince reached adulthood, he was generally enfeoffed as a Prince.

When their imperial father died and one brother succeeded to the throne, the remaining princes would immediately submit memorials asking that their princely ranks be removed and changed to Dukes.

Then, after the reigning brother died and a new sovereign ascended, those Ji Clan Dukes would submit memorials again, asking to be reduced from Duke to Marquis.

After Marquis, the title descended one rank with each generation.

By that point, their branch had essentially ceased to matter to the direct imperial line sitting on the Dragon Throne.

When the current Emperor of Yan ascended the throne, he went even further.

His brothers followed the old rule and asked to surrender their princely titles.

The Emperor agreed.

Then skipped an entire step and reduced them directly to Marquises.

From the moment he took power, he suppressed the imperial clan.

And with the Emperor of Yan’s extraordinary achievements throughout his reign, once he died, the rules he changed would naturally become the new ancestral law.

After all, reducing imperial-clan privileges also saved the treasury money.

The state had fewer useless rice buckets to support.

Beyond the decree-bearing party from Yanjing, quite a few officials had come from Yingdu.

Grand Tutor Sun Youdao had personally arrived.

Prince Dingqin had come in person as well.

Several Garrison Commanders who had already led their armies back toward their stations heard the news and simply returned to Fengxin City with only a few personal guards to attend and offer congratulations.

Everyone knew the First Prince at Nanwang City had already been enfeoffed as Marquis of Andong.

But how to put it?

The First Prince had personally killed the so-called Zhong Wenmian, commander of Qian’s Three Frontiers. On paper, that looked like tremendous military merit.

But outsiders watched the excitement.

Insiders understood the doorway.

Men of the army naturally knew that the campaign against Chu had been the truly difficult war.

Forget everything else.

Just look at the siege battles.

When had Great Yan ever fought city assaults on that scale before?

Besides, the First Prince had suffered the earlier defeat at the Wang River.

Even after earning new merit, from the perspective of imperial clan rank, going from Prince to Marquis somehow still felt like a loss.

And to soldiers, imperial clan was imperial clan.

The First Prince’s Marquis of Andong title did not truly feel like a conventional “Marquis through military merit.”

Count Pingye, by contrast, was the genuine model for every soldier in the army.

Because you did not carry the surname Ji.

Count Pingye yawned.

“I understand.”

The elderly ritual official stepped back two paces.

Then knelt and bowed.

“This subordinate congratulates the Marquis in advance!”

The attendants and officials who had come with him to arrange the ceremony all knelt as well.

Count Pingye smiled.

“I didn’t...”

He had not prepared any congratulatory money.

At that moment, Xiao Yibo stepped forward.

Behind him came several personal guards holding small bags.

Inside each bag were gold beans.

Count Pingye looked at Xiao Yibo.

Xiao Yibo quickly came close and whispered:

“The Princess had this subordinate prepare them.”

Count Pingye nodded.

“Reward them.”

...

The next morning, very early, outside Fengxin City, more than ten thousand Jingnan Army cavalry had already ridden out and formed ranks in a grand formation.

In the eyes of the Jingnan Army, Count Pingye was essentially one of their own.

He was the closed-door disciple of their Prince.

He was raising the Prince’s heir.

If that did not make him family, what did?

And with Prince of Jingnan deliberately nurturing him, even once temporarily entrusting the army’s affairs into Zheng Fan’s hands, the relationship had effectively received an official seal.

If he were not one of their own, how could Zheng Fan have reached the point where he could mobilize stationed Jingnan Army troops without a direct command from the Prince?

It was winter.

Frost covered the ground.

Prince of Jingnan stood atop the city wall in a fur cloak.

Prince of Jingnan was still Prince of Jingnan.

But Prince of Jingnan no longer looked quite like Prince of Jingnan.

Everyone in the Jingnan Army understood clearly that their Prince was very weak right now.

But every one of them believed that after recuperating for a period of time, their Prince would become that same Prince again.

At that moment, a Secret Intelligence Department assistant commissioner who had traveled with the decree-bearing party and handled security along the road slowly walked over.

It was an unimpressive office.

But the fact that he could walk here and stand this close to Prince of Jingnan already proved the man himself was anything but unimpressive.

Lu Bing studied Tian Wujing carefully.

At last, he said quietly:

“Your Highness, take care of your health.”

Tian Wujing did not look at him.

Still gazing outward, he said calmly:

“He told you to say that?”

“Yes. His Majesty means that Great Yan’s future will still need Your Highness as a pillar holding up Heaven. His Majesty heard that Your Highness entered the Chu imperial palace alone and fought the spirit of the Fire Phoenix. His Dragon Countenance was enraged.”

“What was he angry about?”

That question crossed a genuine taboo.

Naturally, His Majesty was angry because Prince of Jingnan, Great Yan’s God of War, had failed to cherish his own safety.

But asking the question deliberately made it sound almost as though the Emperor was angry because even the Fire Phoenix combined with all of Ying Capital had still failed to burn Tian Wujing to death.

Lu Bing did not answer.

His status allowed him only to relay words.

In Great Yan there were three men who could speak directly to one another.

No fourth person possessed the qualification to interpret what one meant to another.

After a moment, Lu Bing spoke.

“Your Highness, Lu Bing would like to say one thing in his own name.”

“You are His Majesty’s milk-brother. Of course you have the right to say what is in your heart.”

Back when they had all still been young, Ji Runhao and Li Liangting walked in front.

Tian Wujing followed behind them.

But farther back, there had always been one more person.

He carried the basket of food.

That man was Lu Bing.

“Your Highness should have been the youngest among you. But now, looking at you... you seem old.”

“This Prince is old?” Tian Wujing asked.

Lu Bing nodded.

“You look it.”

Tian Wujing neither agreed nor denied it.

He raised one hand and pointed outside the city.

Toward the northeast.

There, a young general in the full vigor of his prime rode a Pixiu.

Amid the cheers of thousands of soldiers, he approached slowly.

“What of him?”

Lu Bing looked over.

A long while passed.

Then he said:

“He looks very much like Your Highness did back then.”

Count Pingye truly did resemble Tian Wujing when Tian Wujing had first been enfeoffed as Marquis of Jingnan.

Tian Wujing smiled.

At last, he turned and looked at Lu Bing.

Then, very seriously, he said:

“No. He will not live the way this Prince did. He will not.”

[End of Chapter 604]