Chapter 630: - Kneel!

Prefect Ma had been stripped naked and hung from the city wall.

Because the weather was cold, and because a man who knew how to cook tended to be more attentive to details, He Chunlai set a large brazier burning below to keep the Prefect warm. His clothes might have been stripped away, but He Chunlai thoughtfully draped straw over him as well.

Whatever else happened, the Marquis had not ordered them to kill the man. If Prefect Ma actually died, that would only prove his subordinates did not know how to carry out orders properly.

But the large brazier beneath the wall was conspicuous after nightfall. It attracted many of the refugees outside the city, who gathered silently to admire the lofty, chilly bearing of Yupan City’s Prefect hanging high above them.

No one dared sing or dance. No one cheered. No one even dared point and whisper.

Their expressions were numb.

At the other end of the wall, Marquis Zheng appeared with Gou Moli beside him. The Sword Saint and Hero Chen stood farther back.

A teasing flame flickered in Gou Moli’s eyes. He enjoyed this sort of spectacle.

Hero Chen was somewhat more inclined to pity the suffering of the world. What he watched was the dense mass of refugees below the walls.

The Sword Saint, who had grown somewhat numb to refugees by now, was instead lamenting the state of the Three Jin lands.

Back when Gou Moli was still imprisoned in the dungeon at Snow Sea Pass, the Sword Saint would occasionally ask the Blind Man to bring him out so the two could talk.

At the time, the Sword Saint had only recently fought that battle before Snow Sea Pass. He had experienced his moment of brilliance, and his spirit had soared with it, but he had not yet had time to settle afterward.

So the Sword Saint had once asked Gou Moli, “Did you truly have to stir up all of that?”

Gou Moli answered, “You only ask me that because you saw me lose.”

That single Savage invasion had thrown more than half the Jin lands into chaos. Countless people had been displaced, killed, or wounded. The Savages themselves had lost more than a hundred thousand able-bodied young men. Almost none of them returned to the snowfield. Most were annihilated, while the survivors were turned into laborers and quite literally worked to death on construction sites.

But what if they had won?

The Savages would have left the snowfield and embraced the warmth of the Jin lands once again.

The Sword Saint asked again, “Looking at things now, was it worth it?”

Gou Moli answered, “If we did nothing, we were dogs. Now we are still dogs. If we were going to be dogs either way, why not struggle once?”

Because Gou Moli did not know only how to flatter and could occasionally speak a few truths, the Sword Saint would seek him out for conversation while recovering from his wounds. Gou Moli, in turn, gained the exceedingly precious chance to see sunlight for a while.

At the end of one such conversation, the Sword Saint had asked, “Did it truly have to be this way?”

Perhaps even the Sword Saint himself had not known exactly what he meant by “this way.”

Gou Moli, however, gave him a long answer.

“Look at His Majesty of Yan. What sort of man is he? Look back across thousands of years and he has all the makings of one of the great enlightened sovereigns. Does he not know how to win himself a glorious reputation? Does he not know that after exhausting the people with constant warfare, even his posthumous title will have to be tempered? Does he not know that when cavalry tramples the aristocratic clans, rivers of blood will flow? Does he not know that every great army advancing at the front is supported by a million laborers behind it? Does he not know that his own people are being driven into misery? Put plainly, no matter how miserable their lives become, all that means is that some people faint from hunger and some starve to death. So long as the state still exists, so long as the court still exists, a famine year can be endured. What is truly terrifying is when an enemy destroys your state. That is when a human life genuinely becomes worthless. If you have no grain, you can eat leaves. You can gnaw bark. You can eat grass. Worst comes to worst, swallow a couple meals of Guanyin clay and stuff your belly half full. But when the saber comes down, can you move your head somewhere else and keep breathing? If the State of Yan does not seize this opportunity while that emperor is still alive, while the situation is this favorable, and strike outward with everything it has until the four directions submit... heh. The common people may curse him. The histories may smear him. But across the endless generations, when a state is shattered and its altars of soil and grain are destroyed, that is when the land is truly covered in white bones. Just like you Jin people.”

...

So as the Sword Saint looked down at the refugees outside Yupan City, there was not much pity in his heart.

First, too many people had invoked the suffering people of Jin against him, using them to question him, threaten him, and condemn him. He had grown tired of it.

Second, he had seen the refugees inside and outside Fengxin City. They had potato gruel to eat. And because he himself lived in an ordinary household, he could see from the expressions of the people around him that they held hope for the future.

Everything would get better.

Sometimes, even the Sword Saint realized that perhaps he himself was willing to let Zheng Fan deceive him.

From Shengle City to Snow Sea Pass, and then to Litian City, the Sword Saint had come to understand one thing:

Learning the sword could not save the people of Jin.

What use was it to keep Longyuan forever held high above the earth, to keep his white robes forever unstained, if all that elegance served only himself and brought no benefit to state or people?

The man before him, together with those subordinates whose abilities were so formidable that even the Sword Saint could not help being astonished, genuinely could give ordinary people lives they could rely on.

The sword had to be grounded.

And here, “grounded” meant actual earth qi.

Considering how he had nearly died the last time he forced open the Second Grade, perhaps he could use the power of earth qi as support when drawing down the strength of that realm, lessening the strain and consumption imposed upon his body.

But where was that earth qi?

The Sword Saint’s gaze could not help settling once more on the back of the man before him.

Half a lifetime wandering the jianghu, fighting and killing.

He had cut down heroes of the jianghu.

He had slain the ruler of a state.

Yet among all the people he had seen and all the things he had experienced, the most grounded man of them all was the one standing before him now.

Marquis Zheng had no idea that merely standing here in silence had somehow turned him into the object of the Sword Saint’s enlightenment.

Fortunately, he did not know.

For Marquis Zheng, who was still frustrated by the realm he could not seem to break open, learning that fact would have been an unbearably depressing blow.

And at this very moment, Marquis Zheng was not actually thinking about anything at all.

He had only come up here for some air and to feel the wind.

That was all.

Hero Chen finally could not help speaking.

“How can this Prefect be so stupid?”

For someone to be called “stupid” by Hero Chen was truly...

Gou Moli laughed.

“You think every Yan person is brilliant? Whenever enough people gather in one place, the majority are usually fools. Yan is mostly fools too. Take that Prefect, for example. Do you think he doesn’t know that sending women so blatantly is far too obvious? Do you think he doesn’t know that the person whose official reputation suffers most from doing this is himself? He knows. He still did it because he thought it would let him draw closer to us and become a direct running dog beneath our Marquis. But where he is stupid is that he misjudged one thing.”

Gou Moli deliberately paused.

Hero Chen immediately asked, “What?”

Satisfied, Gou Moli nodded.

“He can throw away his own face. But our Marquis still needs his. Think about it. If he openly sent women like this to Li Liangting or Prince of Jingnan, what kind of end do you think he would meet?”

“Mm.” Hero Chen looked thoughtful. “I think I understand a little.”

Gou Moli glanced down at the Prefect hanging on the wall and snorted with disdain.

“Truly. Don’t look at Great Yan’s iron cavalry being unmatched now, destroying states and winning every campaign, and assume every Yan person is clever. It is only because the few people at the very top have led the way well. Our Marquis included.”

Zheng Fan glanced at Gou Moli.

Gou Moli immediately shut his mouth.

“Go back and rest.”

...

At dawn, Prefect Ma was untied and lowered.

He possessed some martial foundation, so he had not frozen to death, though the night had still taken quite a toll on him.

More importantly, whatever face he had possessed had now been trampled deep into the mud.

After this incident, he probably would not remain Prefect of Yupan City much longer either. Even if he himself felt no shame, the court would.

At daybreak, Marquis Pingxi’s party also left Yupan City and crossed the Wang River.

After so much anxious waiting, Marquis Pingxi was finally about to descend upon Yingdu.

For the city’s powerful families, who had spent so many days frightened and uneasy, the news was enough to make them almost delirious with relief.

In the end, Marquis Zheng had slowly grown into something resembling the Prince of Jingnan.

Wherever he was, people felt safe.

He had never noticed that sort of thing before. Back then, all his attention had been devoted to climbing upward. Only after he truly reached a high platform and looked around and below did he discover that there was scenery everywhere.

But after crossing the Wang River, Marquis Pingxi’s party did not head straight for Yingdu.

Instead, it turned north.

...

“What? Marquis Pingxi went to Stone Mountain?”

Within less than half a day, powerful figures all across Yingdu reacted with nearly identical shock when the news arrived.

An imperial prince in Yingdu still had not regained consciousness.

The Prefect of Yingdu was still bedridden.

The entire city remained frightened and uneasy.

Marquis Pingxi had already crossed the Wang River. Why was he still not coming to take charge?

The people of Yingdu were naturally familiar with Stone Mountain.

Geographically, the Three Jin lands were more like one enormous basin. The Tianduan Mountains lay to the north, the Horsehoof Mountains to the west, while the Mount Meng and Qi Mountain ranges lay to the south.

Within the basin itself, truly large mountains were rare.

Stone Mountain stood a little more than a hundred li from Yingdu. It was not particularly tall, but generations of Situ family patriarchs had been buried there.

In the earliest days, when the Situ family had still been vassals beneath the Yu royal house, its ancestral territory had lain around Stone Mountain. As the Situ family grew stronger, its center shifted from Stone Mountain to Yingdu. Then came the established division of the Jin lands among the three great houses, and finally Situ Lei’s proclamation as emperor.

No matter how the Situ family developed, expanded, or changed, Stone Mountain had remained the site of its ancestral graves.

Situ Lei’s imperial mausoleum was there as well.

So why was Marquis Pingxi’s party going to Stone Mountain?

While most people were still hesitating, someone finally reacted first.

A carriage from Prince Cheng Residence departed the residence. Once the guards, banners, ceremonial placards, and other trappings had all been properly arranged, the procession left Yingdu and headed directly toward Stone Mountain.

They tried deliberately to maintain an air of composure.

But the hurried urgency in their movements could not be hidden.

At once, the powerful families of Yingdu more or less understood.

Large carriages and small carriages, large entourages and small ones, began leaving the southern gate one after another. The procession from Prince Cheng Residence remained at the front, while every other household followed behind.

It could not quite be called a mighty column, but it was certainly an extraordinarily noisy stream of people making for Stone Mountain.

Some were Yan people.

Some were Jin people.

But now they all shared a single designation: frightened people.

They desperately needed reassurance.

They desperately needed protection.

To a certain extent, what Gou Moli had said that night had not been entirely self-serving.

The Yan people who had once fought from horseback could still decay after becoming officials.

As for the old Yingdu elite of the Situ family, who had once resisted the snowfield in the north and Chu in the south, they had long since been castrated.

Yan’s rule over the region had not yet been fully consolidated, but they had already bent over of their own accord.

If Sun Youdao’s eldest son had not caused such trouble, he genuinely would never have wanted to return to public life. The Yingdu that had once belonged to Situ Lei had vanished long ago.

The walls of Yingdu still stood, but the people of Yingdu, especially its upper strata, had long since begun exuding a rotten stench that made Sun Youdao sick.

Of course, Grand Tutor Sun could disdain them all he liked.

He still brought his second son, Sun Liang, climbed into his family carriage beneath his family banner, and followed the great procession toward Stone Mountain.

Everyone else was going.

Not going would itself have been a political error.

The last time, a single imperial-examination fraud case had allowed that Marquis to stir up a storm of blood across Yingdu.

This time something far more serious had happened.

Heaven alone knew how many heads would fall by the end.

At this point, it no longer even mattered precisely whose responsibility the matter had been, who had committed crimes, or who was innocent.

The nature of the situation had shifted.

What mattered now was not the result.

It was the attitude.

If you did not come, you were refusing to give Marquis Pingxi face.

And if you refused to give Marquis Pingxi face, his saber might just fall on your neck.

After all, if he needed to cut off a head, whose head did it matter?

The various groups had left the city at different times, but the procession from Prince Cheng Residence did not move particularly fast. At minimum, it did not look like a terrified baby quail desperately flapping toward the breast of a mother hen.

That gave everyone behind them the opportunity to catch up.

Once they did, they tacitly remained behind Prince Cheng Residence.

To a certain extent, the procession was even orderly.

At last, they reached the Stone Mountain region.

According to reports passed back from those at the front, Marquis Pingxi’s party had climbed the northern side of Stone Mountain.

That was where Situ Lei’s mausoleum stood.

In truth, even before Situ Lei, back when the Situ family had been little less than local emperors, the tombs of its patriarchs had already overstepped convention and differed little from imperial mausoleums.

When Situ Lei first became head of the clan, long before he proclaimed himself emperor, he had already followed the traditions of ordinary dynasties and begun construction of his own mausoleum from the moment he took his seat.

That was why, even though the situation had been chaotic when Situ Lei died, with rebels and Savages outside, followed immediately by Yan’s eastern expedition and the Prince of Jingnan taking command again, Situ Lei could still be buried without difficulty.

Most of the mausoleum had already been built.

It was ready to use.

At the mountain gate, several old eunuchs from the former Great Cheng palace maintained the mausoleum. There was also a unit of mausoleum guards.

They had once been Situ Lei’s personal guards.

Unwilling to seek employment from the Yan people, they had simply come here to guard the late Emperor’s tomb.

But when Marquis Pingxi’s men arrived and displayed his token, even those guards did not dare obstruct them. They properly handed over all defenses.

The Marquis Residence gave them some dignity in return.

They were not disarmed.

They were merely sent down the mountain.

The eunuchs and caretakers, meanwhile, were gathered together.

Marquis Pingxi intended to personally pay respects to Great Cheng’s Founding Emperor and wanted silence.

All of Situ Lei’s posthumous honors as Great Cheng’s Founding Emperor had been preserved by direct order of the Emperor of Yan.

To a certain extent, the Emperor of Yan had regarded Situ Lei as a kindred spirit.

A kindred spirit among emperors.

When Great Yan’s iron cavalry had destroyed the Wenren and Helian families and its spearpoint aimed directly at the Situ lands, Situ Lei had still dared gather the elite forces of his state and send them onto the snowfield to fight the Savages, leaving his rear completely exposed to Yan.

That alone deserved respect.

And before his death, Situ Lei had launched one final desperate strike, repelling the surging rebel and Savage armies, preserving Yingdu, and laying the foundation for the Yan army’s later entry into the city.

That too had been an extraordinarily heroic achievement.

Before the altar, Marquis Zheng offered incense with complete seriousness.

The Sword Saint offered incense as well.

Hero Chen heard that Situ Lei had been a hero, so he too offered incense.

Gou Moli hesitated for a long while.

Finally, he muttered:

“Damn it. Now I have to pay respects to you too.”

He stepped forward and became the last person to offer incense.

Afterward, the former Savage King looked somewhat melancholy.

His old opponent now lay beneath the earth.

Would Situ Lei laugh at him for having become another man’s hawk and hound?

No.

Situ Lei was dead.

He was still alive.

You dead bastard, what right do you have to laugh at me?

So Gou Moli stood there, his expression changing again and again.

If he had taken Yingdu back then, the Yan would have lost an orderly, organized logistical hub.

The combined Savage-Chu army would not have fallen into its desperate shortage of food and labor.

The entire course of the war would have changed.

“Marquis, Prince Cheng and the others have arrived,” He Chunlai came forward to report.

“Let them come up.”

“Yes, Marquis.”

Marquis Zheng walked to the steps before the sacrificial altar and sat down.

Wuyai rested beside him.

Today, he wore the Black Qilin Battle Armor that had been bestowed upon him on the day he was made Marquis.

He simply sat there, watching the procession climbing the steps toward him.

...

“Heh. Even at the late Emperor’s birthday memorial, we never saw such complete attendance.”

The Queen Mother was supported up the mountain by Situ Yu.

She glanced back at the dense crowd behind them and could not help speaking resentfully.

This was the resting place of her husband.

Here, she was inevitably more sentimental and more sensitive.

Situ Yu had grown older and already carried the appearance of a young man.

He said nothing.

He simply continued supporting his mother up the mountain.

Along both sides of the imperial path leading to the mausoleum stood guards from the Marquis Residence, dressed in Flying Fish Robes and carrying Embroidered Spring Sabers.

The sight exerted tremendous pressure on everyone climbing the mountain.

These guards were elite soldiers who had followed Marquis Zheng through genuine battlefields and slaughter.

Combined with their uniforms, it would have been difficult for them not to inspire fear.

More importantly, not a single person climbing the mountain understood what this newly ennobled Marquis of military merit actually intended to do.

Naturally, their hearts were uneasy.

At last, Situ Yu raised his head and saw Marquis Pingxi seated above.

This was not the first time he had seen Zheng Fan.

He had first met him years ago.

But now, for one hazy instant, he felt as though the man seated there was not Marquis Pingxi at all.

It was the former Marquis of Jingnan, who had once kicked the First Prince over directly in front of him.

Situ Yu was not the only person who felt it.

His mother, a woman inside Prince Cheng Residence who had always understood when to advance and when to retreat, had already begun trembling faintly.

Situ Yu, holding her hand, felt it.

And behind them, the powerful figures of Yingdu climbing the mountain in order of rank and status almost simultaneously slowed their steps.

What did it mean to be a Marquis of military merit?

This.

This was the presence of a Great Yan Marquis of military merit.

A status carved out from mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

Situ Yu released his mother’s hand.

He was the current Prince Cheng.

He was Situ Lei’s legitimate son.

And this was his father’s mausoleum.

There were some things and some people he had to face himself.

So he moved to the front.

He climbed.

And climbed.

And climbed.

When the distance had closed enough for him to clearly see Marquis Pingxi’s face, Situ Yu began hesitating over whether to greet him with formal court etiquette or with a slightly warmer, more familiar manner.

The Marquis Pingxi seated above merely lifted his eyelids a fraction.

His gaze swept lightly over Situ Yu.

Then he spoke two words.

Those words stunned not only Situ Yu, but sent a chill through the Queen Mother behind him and every powerful figure who had made the exhausting trip from Yingdu.

“Kneel down.”

[End of Chapter 630]