Chapter 608: - Deep Winter

The carriage swayed gently along the road.

Ji Chengjue sat inside wrapped in silver marten fur, a small hand-warmer cradled between his palms.

Across from him sat Fan Shaoliang in a long robe, a sword at his side.

Fan Shaoliang was Fan Zhengwen’s son. Long ago, Fan Zhengwen had sent both him and his mother out of Chu and into Yanjing.

After arriving in Yanjing, they had taken up residence next door to the Sixth Prince’s manor.

Ji Chengjue looked at the thinly dressed young swordsman before him and shook his head.

“Young men never know how precious inner fire is. When they’re old, they can only weep beside the heated kang.”

Fan Shaoliang instinctively felt somewhat restrained before this cousin of his.

His cousin had always been approachable and fond of jokes, especially around family, where he was gentle and carried almost no airs.

Even so, Fan Shaoliang was still afraid of this Sixth Prince of the current dynasty.

“I truly don’t feel cold.”

“That bastard Zheng wrote to me saying eastern Jin is freezing and told me to send him more cotton and furs so he can survive the winter.”

Fan Shaoliang said:

“Eastern Jin should indeed be colder than where my family lives during winter.”

“Heh. The problem is, the snowfield is right across the road from him. Those Savages there have already been kneaded round when he wants round and flattened square when he wants square, and he still has the nerve to ask me for furs?”

“This...”

Fan Shaoliang had met Marquis Zheng before.

His father had also warned him about certain things concerning Marquis Zheng.

So he had no idea how to answer now.

They might be relatives, but Fan Shaoliang did not believe he had the standing to comment on Great Yan’s newly enfeoffed Marquis of military merit.

Ji Chengjue sighed irritably.

“Still, that fellow really is afraid of the cold. He wears quite a lot in winter. Unlike you, burning with so much inner heat it’s ridiculous.”

“Cousin, mine is only because my cultivation still lacks refinement. I can’t fully control the circulation of my blood and qi. I imagine Marquis Zheng must be...”

“He’s half-baked at cultivation too. Just a little better than me.”

“Marquis Zheng...”

Prince of Jingnan had already set the example.

He had defeated the Sword Saint, led armies to war, and gone undefeated.

Naturally, Marquis Zheng, who was now vaguely regarded as Great Yan’s next generation God of War, had also been saddled with the reputation of being a Third Grade expert.

Ordinary people probably thought that a Marquis of Pingxi so terrifyingly capable could not possibly have weak personal cultivation.

Fan Shaoliang was among them.

After all, he had personally seen Marquis Zheng enter Chu to steal away the Princess. Without terrifying personal strength, how could he possibly have possessed that courage?

All one could say was that once a person’s status rose high enough, those looking up from below saw him wrapped in sunlight.

A halo appeared around everything.

“You read your father’s letter?”

“I did. Father wants me to study in Yanjing.”

After a pause, Fan Shaoliang added:

“And serve beside you, Cousin.”

Ji Chengjue nodded.

“That is only proper, whether by kinship or reason. Your Fan Clan contributed greatly in the campaign against Chu. The later rewards probably will not come down until before the New Year. When they do, your Fan Clan will almost certainly receive a hereditary prefectship.”

A hereditary prefectship was essentially a miniature version of being granted a territorial fief.

The Qian had actually developed the practice first.

Back when the Tattoo-Faced Chancellor was still alive, in order to govern and pacify the southwestern native tribes more effectively, the Qian court granted hereditary native-official titles to tribal chiefs willing to submit.

In practice, they became hereditary County Magistrates and Prefects.

Externally, they were officials of the court.

Internally, they remained “kings” over their own territories.

“My father actually does not want rewards like that.” Fan Shaoliang pressed his lips together. “I understand him. What he wants is for the Fan Clan to live like an ordinary family, to multiply and prosper, and no longer be slaves.”

Ji Chengjue automatically ignored those words.

When people of unequal levels spoke to one another, innocent statements often emerged.

That Fan Zhengwen no longer wished the Fan Clan to remain slaves, Ji Chengjue believed.

That this was all Fan Zhengwen wanted, Ji Chengjue did not believe at all.

A slave who overturned his status did not necessarily want to abolish slavery.

Nor did he necessarily want to break the entire system.

More often, it was because while serving as a slave, he had seen the benefits of being the master.

He wanted to become the master himself.

There was no need to explain that to the boy before him.

Fan Shaoliang was still a piece of uncarved jade, and Ji Chengjue appreciated him greatly.

Perhaps ten years from now, the Fan Clan might finally move away from the Mount Meng region, provided Fan Shaoliang managed to establish himself firmly in Yanjing.

Of course, establishing a vassal domain and immediately thinking about cutting it down was the same as taking off your trousers just to fart.

At that moment, a unit of armored soldiers blocked the carriage ahead.

Eunuch Zhang, driving the carriage, presented the prince’s manor token.

The guards of the imperial mausoleum immediately saluted in unison.

“Greetings, Sixth Highness. May Your Highness enjoy peace and health.”

Ji Chengjue did not show himself.

A short while later, the carriage continued forward and entered the imperial mausoleum grounds.

From the day each emperor ascended the throne, whether he was an elderly crown prince finally inheriting the seat or a child emperor placed upon it, construction of his mausoleum would be placed on the agenda.

It was an enormous undertaking.

And since ancient times, it had been conventional for rulers.

The splendor of life could not satisfy an emperor.

Even after death, he still wanted to preserve his grandeur.

When the state was powerful, the mausoleum could be built magnificently.

When the state was weak... then it had to be built even more magnificently.

Call it swelling one’s face to look fat if you wished.

Call it arranging good feng shui for oneself if you preferred.

Either way, it was a supreme matter of state.

The earlier rulers of Yan had been no exception.

Until his own imperial father ascended the throne.

The first thing his father did was strictly limit the size of his own mausoleum.

It was only around one tenth the scale of the previous emperor’s.

Truly, small enough to look almost embarrassing.

At the time, court and country might have believed the Emperor of Yan was deliberately sweeping away the previous sovereign’s obsession with heterodox arts and extravagant luxury.

But only the imperial princes who possessed any qualification to succeed the Dragon Throne understood the real consequence.

No matter which brother eventually inherited the throne, when the time came to build his own mausoleum, there was absolutely no possibility he could exceed his father’s scale.

To show respect, he would even have to reduce it further.

Unless he possessed extraordinary talent and achieved greater accomplishments than his father, he simply would not have the face to change the rule.

By the same logic, once the Emperor himself had reduced the scale of his tomb, how could living nobles dare violate propriety and build mausoleums larger than his?

Naturally, they would shrink theirs too.

Ji Chengjue believed this was what it meant to establish a foundation and set a rule.

On matters like this, his imperial father had quietly done many things long ago.

He had never erected some grand stone stele beside the imperial road outside Yanjing and carved line after line of new law into it.

That would have been useless.

What truly worked was turning oneself into the monument.

Then whenever later generations encountered the same question, they would naturally use you as their example.

Use you as the standard.

The Xia peoples possessed a tradition.

They were not particularly reverent toward rules.

But they were deeply reverent toward ancestors.

And ancestors came in different grades too.

Looking back from later generations, which ancestor had been brilliant and mighty and which had muddled through life was usually obvious at a glance.

Ji Chengjue slowly closed his eyes.

When he had been young, many people had said it.

Even his imperial father had said it.

That he resembled him greatly.

After sinking into obscurity for so many years, once Ji Chengjue took control of the Ministry of Revenue and then held his grand wedding, that comparison began appearing again.

Those with intent.

Those without.

Those with ulterior motives.

Each for their own reasons, all began building momentum around him.

At a wine shop in the capital, after Ji Chengjue brought the Tu Clan woman home, he had once spoken in high spirits:

Today, Ji Chengjue enters the game again.

Why had he and Zheng Fan gotten along so well?

At the beginning, there had genuinely been no major interests between them.

Back then, he himself had still been pretending to be a pig, before the cooked tiger had appeared.

And the bastard Zheng had been nothing more than a grassroots, miscellaneous Commandant.

So they had truly clicked by temperament.

That self-loving, affected streak which Zheng possessed also existed in Ji Chengjue.

For a time, he had believed that if not for his imperial father deliberately suppressing him, then forget legitimate or concubine-born status.

He, Old Sixth Ji, could absolutely have done better than Situ Lei had.

More decisively too.

But then, one day, you raised your head and suddenly discovered that the old lion, already sinking into sickness and the final flicker of a dying candle, was displaying something utterly different from yourself.

Conspiracies.

Schemes.

Calculations.

Arrangements.

No matter how many men you planted, how much influence you amassed, how densely you spread your pieces across the board, before something righteous and overwhelming, all of it looked pathetically fragile.

He himself had once become obsessed and trapped himself inside a dead end.

Meanwhile, that bastard Zheng had once said something.

At the time, the words had not felt especially profound.

But now, with a different state of mind, tasting them again, there was a clarity to them that cut directly through all surface chaos and struck the essence:

Political power grows from the barrel of a gun.

“He saw it clearly long ago.”

“Huh?” Fan Shaoliang did not understand.

Ji Chengjue did not explain.

He stood just as the carriage came to a halt.

They had arrived at the mausoleum of the current Emperor of Yan.

Of course, his father was still alive in the Rear Garden.

Ji Chengjue had not come here to mourn a living emperor.

After Third Brother died, their father ordered that he be buried inside the imperial mausoleum itself.

Father and son would lie together.

Quite a few ministers had submitted memorials praising it as the highest honor a son and subject could receive: accompanying the imperial mausoleum in death.

In Old Sixth Ji’s eyes, his father had simply wanted to save some money.

After stepping down from the carriage, the winter bleakness felt especially stark inside the mausoleum grounds.

Even though his father’s tomb had been greatly reduced in size compared with the old system, the grounds remained enormous.

Behind him, Fan Shaoliang could not resist speaking.

“Cousin, coming here at a time like this... isn’t it inappropriate?”

Strictly speaking, it was not his place to ask.

But he thought that as family, he ought to say what needed saying.

Even if his cousin probably would not answer.

In fact, Ji Chengjue truly did not answer.

Because he himself did not understand why, yesterday, some sudden impulse had made him want to come here and see Third Brother.

He also knew his visit to the imperial mausoleum could not be concealed.

Nor had he tried to conceal it.

His imperial father was gravely ill.

And he, as a son, had come to the imperial mausoleum.

Even if he publicly explained that he was merely mourning Third Brother, who would believe him?

It was like having a relative deathly ill at home and going to a coffin shop to buy joss paper in advance.

Still, for Old Sixth Ji, this was already an extremely sensitive period.

When there were enough lice, one stopped worrying about the bites.

Some genuinely capable ministers might only feel puzzled.

How could the Sixth Prince, whose political methods were so sophisticated, commit such a low-level mistake at a moment like this?

“Greetings, Sixth Highness.”

An old eunuch approached carrying a broom.

His surname was Qin.

He had once ranked ahead of Wei Zhonghe, but after committing some offense, his imperial father had banished him here to guard the mausoleum early.

Ji Chengjue nodded.

“The weather is cold. Wear more layers.”

Then

Ji Chengjue covered his nose and added:

“And drink less.”

“Hehe.” Old Eunuch Qin laughed and pointed behind him. “Your Highness came to see Third Highness?”

Ji Chengjue nodded.

“What a coincidence.”

Old Eunuch Qin silently withdrew.

As he did, his hand made the sign for “two.”

The Crown Prince was here too?

Ji Chengjue continued inward.

Sure enough, ahead of him stood the Crown Prince in a white brocade robe.

When Li Yinglian saw Ji Chengjue arrive, he froze in surprise.

Then he silently withdrew.

He and Eunuch Zhang moved to opposite sides, one north and one south, guarding the area.

Both men possessed some skill as Qi Refiners.

They were not true grandmaster-level fighters.

But they had certain methods capable of blocking eavesdropping.

Under circumstances like these, whatever the two princes said next would almost certainly never leak.

Unless dead Third Brother climbed out of his coffin and personally went to inform their imperial father.

Both were imperial princes.

One was the Crown Prince.

The other was Great Yan’s celebrated God of Wealth, master of the Ministry of Revenue.

If they could not even guarantee the loyalty of the attendants closest to them, they might as well find a block of tofu and kill themselves with it.

“Second Brother, you’ve lost weight.”

Ji Chengjue spoke first.

The Crown Prince smiled.

“Every time we meet, you say I’ve lost weight. You’ve said it several times already. Am I only skin and bone now? Or maybe Third Brother buried under us has more flesh left than I do?”

The dead should be respected.

Making jokes about them was generally inappropriate.

But the man lying below was their own brother.

So it did not matter much.

Ordinary people feared ghosts and corpses and instinctively recoiled from mourning halls because the dead were not close to them.

If the dead man were someone truly dear, you might instead wish he could suddenly sit back up and drink a few more cups with you.

“No festival. No memorial day. Why did you think of coming here?” the Crown Prince asked.

“If I only came on festivals or death anniversaries, it would feel like going through the motions.”

The Crown Prince nodded.

“That’s true.”

Then he sat down on a nearby step.

“What a coincidence.”

Ji Chengjue bowed toward the memorial stele.

Then he turned, walked over, and sat beside the Crown Prince.

“It really is a coincidence. Second Brother, when you go back, there’s no need to investigate who leaked your route to me. Save yourself the trouble.”

“I had no interest in investigating anyway.” The Crown Prince shook his head. “You think I don’t know? Your people have already turned everyone around me into a sieve.”

“The Eastern Palace stands in the light. Naturally, it attracts moths more easily.”

“That probably is the reason.”

“So Second Brother truly doesn’t care anymore.”

“Caring would be useless. In winning people’s hearts, planting agents, arranging pieces, and political struggle, I was never your equal. Since I cannot beat you, I may as well stop competing. If we keep fighting, what gets worn away is still Great Yan’s own strength.”

“So all this time, I’ve been performing a one-man show?”

“Sixth Brother.”

“Mm?”

“You are formidable. More formidable than me. And I won’t deliberately pretend to be broad-minded and claim I have been governing through non-action. Truthfully, I have simply grown disheartened.”

Ji Chengjue nodded.

The Crown Prince sighed.

“Zheng Fan has been made Marquis.”

“His wings are hard now.” Ji Chengjue took out his snuff bottle, inhaled once, and pinched his nose. “Second Brother, you don’t seriously think I can still order him around, do you?”

He was not being modest.

Nor was he disguising the truth.

The fact was exactly that.

Old Sixth Ji could already clearly feel the bastard Zheng beginning to behave like a man leaving a brothel who pulls himself free and then tries to persuade the girl to reform and become virtuous.

The Crown Prince suddenly reached out.

He hesitated.

Then wrapped an arm around Ji Chengjue’s shoulders.

Ji Chengjue stiffened slightly.

He turned and glanced at the hand resting across his far shoulder.

The wind blew.

A few fallen leaves spiraled past.

The Crown Prince smiled and pointed ahead.

“Remember? Back then.”

Back then, the Crown Prince had also put an arm around Ji Chengjue like this.

Third Prince had stood not far away, passionately reciting poetry.

The Crown Prince had frowned, thinking the whole thing humiliated Yan martial spirit.

He had said Third Brother was learning to act as pedantic as the Qian and that one day he might become too weak even to lift a saber.

Back then Ji Chengjue had been young and clever, and favored by the Emperor of Yan.

He had curled his lip in disdain and thought Third Brother had water in his skull.

The idiot was actually practicing how to recite poetry emotionally so he could show off before their father.

“That night, I didn’t come. The brothers all blamed me, didn’t they?”

“Whether you came or not changed nothing. But you should have come.”

“Yes. I should have. If I had come, at least it would have proved I still had some human feeling left. Eldest Brother, Old Fourth, Old Fifth, even Little Seventh would have had an explanation.”

“A favor that costs nothing.”

“Exactly.”

A faint smile appeared at the Crown Prince’s lips.

“Truthfully, I genuinely felt there was no need to come. Third Brother only went ahead first. It won’t be long before we meet again down there. Then he’ll show off whatever new poem he has written and recite it to me over and over.”

Ji Chengjue neither agreed nor disagreed.

At their level, trying to move him with genuine feeling was too difficult.

At most, he might sigh over the past.

He would not be shaken.

“It was uncomfortable, wasn’t it?” the Crown Prince asked. “You did so much. Arranged so much. If Father had not repeatedly tilted the scale in my favor, I would have been thrown out of the Eastern Palace long ago.”

Ji Chengjue shook his head.

“With Second Brother standing in front and taking the pressure, I’m more relaxed. Our father is not an easy man to serve.”

“I can tell that is sincere.” The Crown Prince paused. “But you had many ways to take that position. Now the wind has changed. Father’s meaning is that the two Princes of North and South should enter the capital. Great Yan’s present order began with them, so naturally it should be they who close the coffin on it.”

The Princes of North and South entering Yanjing.

That represented a force capable of suppressing everything.

Politically.

Militarily.

In the hearts of the people.

Enough to drive any ambitious man into despair and force him to kneel obediently.

“Father has not given you the chance to decide it yourself,” the Crown Prince said.

“Mm.”

Ji Chengjue nodded.

“Who do you think they will choose?”

“You’re the Crown Prince, and you’re asking me?”

“I think Little Seventh is the most suitable.”

“When the sovereign is young, the state becomes unstable.”

“But it gives every side an explanation. Perhaps Great Yan truly does need ten or so years with a young ruler and doubtful state.”

“Second Brother, what are you trying to say?”

“If I ask to resign from the Eastern Palace and then build momentum for Little Seventh, will you hate me to death?”

“Do whatever you want. In the end, we cannot decide anything ourselves anyway.”

Ji Chengjue reached down, picked up a dry leaf, and crushed it slowly in his palm.

The Crown Prince nodded.

“That statement needs one condition.”

Ji Chengjue turned and looked at him.

“What condition?”

A cold, almost wintry chill appeared in the Crown Prince’s eyes.

“Before the old bastard dies.”

[End of Chapter 608]