Chapter 641: - Blood-Soaked

“Ai, Yingdu really has not known peace these past few years. Did you hear? The other day, more than a hundred guards from Prince Cheng Residence had their heads chopped off right there on the old imperial road. The Yingdu yamen brought water-pump carts to wash the blood away, but people say the smell still has not faded.”

Inside a teahouse on Yingdu’s Front Street, two traveling merchants sat drinking tea.

“Tch. What do you mean the smell has not faded? It is not a pile of pig offal gone rancid. Human blood is only human blood. How strong could the smell be?”

“Ai, Old Brother, my heart has been uneasy for days.”

“That is strange. You just do your business. Forget everything else. These days, all you need to do is hitch up a team, load people and goods, run from here to Fengxin City, make the circuit back to Yingdu, and distribute the cargo. Maybe the profit is thin, maybe it is thick, but there is no reason to lose money. So what are you panicking about?”

“You know I only just bought a house in Yingdu. But this place seems determined to have some kind of upheaval every single year. How can a man feel settled living here?”

“That makes even less sense. Last year Marquis Pingxi led soldiers into the city. It looked like plenty of families were ruined and plenty of people arrested, but those were all little lords. Now the new Prefect has entered the city. He slapped the Prince in the face, and the people who died belonged to Prince Cheng Residence. Every last one of the people poisoned at that banquet a few days earlier was some great lord. Little lords and great lords are suffering. What does any of that have to do with you? Your business has not reached that scale. You have not piled up that much property. You have not even changed the color of your skin yet, and you are already worrying that life might become unstable after you turn into some grand lord one day? Do you really need to worry that far ahead?”

“When you put it that way... I suppose you are right.”

“What do you mean, suppose? That is exactly how it works. The Yan took this land. How could they possibly leave everything untouched? Yingdu spills some blood this year and some next year because it happened to dodge the blade back then. But you can dodge the first day of the month, not the fifteenth. Blood that needs spilling will be spilled. Debts that need repaying will be repaid.”

“Uh... Brother Li, about that payment I owe you, I will need to delay it a little longer. I am short on cash lately.”

“Damn your mother! How can you be this dense?”

...

The banquet poisoning.

The attempted assassination of an imperial prince.

The confinement imposed at Stone Mountain.

The guards of Prince Cheng Residence being beheaded in the street.

One politically explosive incident followed another.

Yet for this great city that had only recently recovered from war, none of it seemed to have made much difference.

At minimum, the streets remained crowded and lively.

There were still enormous numbers of refugees outside the walls, but the walls separated them from the city.

Inside, it genuinely looked like a “golden age.”

Zheng Fan had returned to Yingdu.

But he did not enter openly at the head of his personal guards.

He entered incognito with the Sword Saint, Hero Chen, and He Chunlai, four men in all.

Keeping the arrival quiet was a way of giving the new Prefect face.

Zheng Fan’s status was different now. Had he announced his entry in advance, there would inevitably have been another round of elaborate receptions. That would only dilute the murderous momentum Xu Wenzu had worked so hard to gather.

Yingdu would, after all, be Xu Wenzu’s stage for the coming period.

The Marquis Residence currently lacked both the ability and the reason to interfere too deeply in Yingdu’s affairs. At most, it could plant a few more nails.

By returning quietly, Zheng Fan was invisibly helping Fatty Xu hold up the stage.

See that?

Even Marquis Pingxi, whose name shakes the realm, has to lower his head before our Prefect.

Friendship was often built exactly like this, one small gesture at a time.

The four found a shop inside the city and ate lunch.

Then Marquis Zheng returned to the wine pavilion where he was staying.

Only afterward did he have his banner hung outside, informing every eye in the city watching the place that he, Zheng Fan, had returned.

He had barely been back long enough for the bathwater to be prepared.

Marquis Zheng had not even taken off his clothes when a message arrived:

Newly appointed Prefect Xu Wenzu requested an audience.

Zheng Fan had given Fatty Xu face.

Fatty Xu immediately returned the favor.

Zheng Fan himself did not care much about these formalities, but he had to admit that Xu Wenzu’s way of handling things made a man feel comfortable.

Tea and pastries were set out.

The moment Xu Wenzu entered, he casually loosened half his official robe.

In most states under Heaven, official robes had probably been designed with more attention paid to beauty than comfort.

More precisely, the more elaborate the clothes, the less comfortable they usually were.

There was still no need to warm up the conversation.

Perhaps because both men wanted to demonstrate how close they were, they tacitly skipped that part.

“Little Brother Zheng, I have been checking some accounts lately.”

“Oh? What did you find?”

During the campaign against Chu, Yingdu had served as a major transfer point for supplies.

Every day, enormous quantities of silver, grain, and conscript laborers passed through the city.

Zheng Fan had once helped Tian Wujing handle military logistics for a period.

Truthfully, supply losses inside an army were often a hopeless mess. Even if one completely excluded corruption, the accounts could still become impossible to calculate clearly.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers ate, drank, relieved themselves, consumed equipment, exhausted horses, used medicines, broke weapons, and burned through supplies at the front.

There was simply too much to track.

Often, one unit would report that it lacked something, and Zheng Fan would approve only sixty percent of the amount requested.

The troops below probably understood that he would cut their requests anyway, so they padded the numbers before submitting them.

In any case, whenever he sent sixty percent, no one ever wrote back saying it was insufficient.

For a while, Zheng Fan had even wondered whether he should cut the requests again.

And Yingdu?

With so much grain, so many losses, so many laborers, and so many officials handling everything, if the account books had actually been perfectly clean and clear, that would have been the real miracle.

Still, some things could be seen.

For example, in earlier days, Snow Sea Pass had always received its full allocation of grain and supplies.

And by “full,” one meant that the Ministry of Revenue’s original allotment slips already assigned Snow Sea Pass more than everyone else. Then the Sun family handled the disbursement in Yingdu and sent the supplies onward without cutting anything away.

Ignoring normal transport losses, Snow Sea Pass had once received two or three times as much as an army of comparable size.

It was roughly the difference between other units eating one meal of dry grain followed by one meal of gruel, barely preserving enough strength to hold a saber, while Snow Sea Pass could eat meat every few days.

But Zheng Fan was not worried that Xu Wenzu would use this to attack him.

First, on the Ministry of Revenue side, he had been the number one fighting dog in Sixth Master’s faction. If he did not receive extra, that would have made no sense.

The stupidest kind of leader in the world was the one who kept shouting that you were his man while simultaneously treating you exactly the same as everyone else in order to avoid suspicion.

Little Sixth was obviously not that stupid.

As for the Sun family, Zheng Fan was a Marquis now.

Taking extra and asking for more was practically expected.

Besides, Xu Wenzu had done the same thing for him back in Nanwang City.

Whether dividing military supplies, prisoners of war, or Barbarian troops, Xu Wenzu had always shown Zheng Fan extraordinary favoritism.

“Little Brother Zheng, I understand the principle that water too clear has no fish. But the problem is, there is obviously a thick layer of oil floating across these accounts.”

“Too thick?”

“Far too thick.”

“How thick?”

Xu Wenzu hesitated.

Then he pinched the fat on his belly.

“About two layers of your elder brother’s belly fat.”

“How many layers of fat do you have?”

“Five, if you count the chest.”

“Then that is not so bad.”

Zheng Fan raised his head, somewhat puzzled.

“Doesn’t sound all that serious.”

“But think about it, Little Brother. You people were fighting at the front, and these bastards still had enough energy to stuff something into their own pockets from the rear. What kind of behavior is that? Can we tolerate it?”

“No.”

Zheng Fan smiled.

“But using these account books as the excuse to attack them would be awkward.”

In political struggles, one could topple a man first and then use corruption to convict him.

It was usually a bad idea to use corruption itself as the means of toppling people.

That weapon attacked everyone indiscriminately.

Use it carelessly and the matter could become impossible to contain.

Xu Wenzu smiled.

“Of course not. Once I finish sorting the accounts, I plan to submit them for His Majesty to read.”

Xu Wenzu was an old fox of officialdom.

He did not need Zheng Fan to explain something that basic.

And once the accounts were sorted and presented to the Emperor of Yan, the effect would be direct.

His Majesty could see more clearly just how “wholeheartedly” those surrendered officials and powerful families of Yingdu had served Great Yan.

Combined with Great Yan’s present fiscal deficit and food shortage, the negative impression would become even stronger.

At the end of the day, a Prefect governed the people on behalf of the Son of Heaven.

Once Xu Wenzu had the Son of Heaven’s support, he would be far freer to turn Yingdu upside down.

That was, in truth, Xu Wenzu’s own governing strategy.

“Mm. Good method.”

Zheng Fan lifted his tea and took a sip.

If Xu Wenzu had only come to discuss this, while also acknowledging Zheng Fan’s quiet return to Yingdu, then the visit should already have served its purpose.

But Xu Wenzu immediately lowered his voice.

“There is another matter. This one has something to do with you, Little Brother Zheng.”

“Go ahead, Elder Brother.”

“The accounts were smoothed over. But who am I? There are court records, local records, records from the gates entering the city, records from the gates leaving it, records from the Wang River crossings. No matter how skilled someone is at bookkeeping, goods cannot truly vanish into thin air, can they? Back during the campaigns against Qian and Jin, the Princes of North and South, several hundred thousand Zhenbei and Jingnan troops, all of their logistics were supported by this elder brother alone. Then I worked with the First Prince for another year without a single serious mistake.”

Xu Wenzu did have reason to be proud.

He truly possessed the ability of Xiao He.

In fact, if the campaign against Chu had not required him to guard against possible military adventurism from Qian’s Three Frontiers, Xu Wenzu might have been the most suitable person to hold Yingdu at the time.

Only... the conversation was beginning to sound a little strange.

Marquis Zheng slowly set down his teacup.

Shouldn’t the biggest rat in the granary be him?

Was Fatty Xu actually preparing to settle accounts with him?

Had the man developed a fever?

“Little Brother.”

“Mm?”

“Gong Wang’s command belongs under you, yes?”

Gong Wang?

Zheng Fan immediately understood.

Xu Wenzu had undoubtedly discovered the arrangement between Zheng Fan and the Sun family long ago, but had simply skipped over it.

What he had uncovered instead involved Gong Wang’s troops.

Gong Wang and Gongsun Zhi had been stationed at the westernmost edge of Zheng Fan’s territory.

So the problem lay with Gong Wang?

“Little Brother, we are family. The court may now be deliberately promoting the idea that Yan and Jin are one household, and I know your heart is broad. You have commanded Barbarian troops since very early on. But those not of our kind... Mao Mingcai probably knew that the officials up and down Yingdu had dirty hands to one degree or another. So long as supplies kept reaching the front, he closed one eye for the sake of the greater situation. But what he probably did not know was that right under his nose, someone was feeding one Jin camp a private feast.”

Xu Wenzu patted his belly.

“Look. These people in Yingdu steal a little, eat a little, fine. What household does not have a wife, children, and a few concubines to feed? But do you expect me to believe they would not understand the consequences of reaching into the army, even a Jin camp, if the matter were exposed? Heh. I do not believe that. They knew. And they still did it. They took that enormous risk anyway. So tell me, what were they after? This man Gong Wang... can he be trusted?”

“His son is still with me.”

“Heh. There are plenty of devoted sons in this world willing to send their fathers to the Western Paradise early. And fathers who treat sons like weeds and can throw them away casually certainly are not...”

Zheng Fan abruptly looked at Xu Wenzu.

Xu Wenzu froze.

Then understanding struck him.

He immediately slapped himself across the mouth several times.

That remark had dragged the Emperor of Yan into the insult as well.

A grave taboo.

“Little Brother Zheng, this is the real reason your elder brother came today.”

Zheng Fan nodded.

“I will handle it.”

“Good.”

Xu Wenzu scratched his head.

“What about Prince Cheng Residence? What do you think we should do next?”

“Prince Cheng Residence is a banner. I am not saying we should pull the banner down. That decision belongs to His Majesty. But if you do not want your hands tied here, Elder Brother, then at minimum you need to press that residence flat. Situ Yu is still young. He cannot stir up much trouble himself. The Queen Mother is only an ordinary woman. But unfortunately, there is an entire group of people gathered around that residence. You have already slapped them once. Might as well slap them again.”

“Mm. That is the principle. Little Brother Zheng, what do you suggest?”

“I heard those residence guards were killed on the orders of a City Patrol Office Commandant named Ran Min?”

“Yes. Clever fellow. I will say this much: I can see a little of the old you in him.”

“He seems to have a good reputation among his men too.”

“Yes. He can get things done, and he wants to stand out.”

Zheng Fan nodded.

“Fine. Then let us give him another chance to stand out.”

...

Ran Min’s home stood on Second Street in the Western Ward.

He had purchased a small courtyard house there.

He could have lived in the City Patrol Office yamen instead, but too many people stayed there. In later generations it would have been called employee dormitory housing, so naturally the living conditions were not especially good.

Whenever he finished work and had nothing else to do, he returned to this house.

Ran Min pushed open the door.

A young woman was arranging bowls and chopsticks inside.

“Master, you are back. I will bring out the dishes.”

“Mm.”

Ran Min sat at the table.

The young woman’s surname was Liu.

She had originally been a refugee who sold herself in order to bury her father.

Ran Min paid for the burial.

Naturally, she then followed him and became one of his concubines.

She was clever with her hands, excellent at needlework, and an equally good cook.

“Master, try this dish.”

“Mm.”

Ran Min took the chopsticks and began eating.

Lady Liu sat beside him, smiling as she watched.

She genuinely liked him.

This man gave her an immense sense of security.

In her heart, he was the person her father had pointed out for her before his death, someone she could entrust the rest of her life to.

After the meal, Lady Liu said:

“Master, this concubine will fetch water and wash your feet.”

“Good.”

“Wait here, Master.”

Lady Liu went to the kitchen stove to fetch hot water.

At that moment, faint footsteps sounded in the courtyard.

Ran Min was a martial practitioner himself.

Naturally, he heard them.

He immediately drew his saber and pushed the door open, stepping into the courtyard.

As a Commandant of the City Patrol Office, he had offended no shortage of people over the past two years.

He had plenty of enemies.

And after personally entering Prince Cheng Residence a few days earlier, smashing its prestige and humiliating its dignity, Ran Min had become especially cautious.

A man in black stood in the courtyard.

There was a sword in his hand.

“Who are you? Can you give me a name?”

The black-clad man pointed west.

Then, apparently realizing the place he meant lay to the east, he pointed in the other direction instead.

Very seriously, he said:

“I came from the Prefectural Yamen.”

“The Prefect? The Prefect sent you to find Ran Min? For what matter?”

“The Prefect told me to stab you once.”

“The Prefect wants Ran Min dead?”

Ran Min could hardly believe it.

Was he really going to kill the donkey the instant the grinding was done?

That made no sense.

“No. Not kill you. Wound you. Then you blow that signal whistle and call your men. They chase me, and I lead them toward Prince Cheng Residence. It is called redirecting the disaster eastward.”

“So that is the arrangement?”

Ran Min suddenly understood.

Then he asked:

“But how is Ran Min supposed to trust you?”

The newcomer released a trace of his aura.

The pressure of a swordsman approaching Fourth Grade immediately spread through the courtyard.

The black-clad man said:

“Because if I wanted to kill you, I would not need to waste words.”

A bitter smile appeared on Ran Min’s face.

“Ran Min understands. I understand completely. Please draw your sword.”

“After I stab you, I will wait in the alley on Front Street for your men to chase me.”

“Good. I will remember.”

“It will hurt a little.”

“Ran Min has been on battlefields. If this can help the Prefect accomplish his purpose, I would not hesitate even if I had to throw away this life. What is one small injury compared with that?”

“That sounded fake.”

“...” Ran Min.

“The way you said it was much worse than him.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Watch the sword.”

A spark of cold light arrived first.

The sword pierced Ran Min in the chest.

Then it withdrew and cut across his right arm.

The wound in his chest was controlled perfectly.

It touched no organs.

After all, if he were left completely unwounded there, the scene would look unprofessional.

The wound on his arm avoided the major sinews and vessels, but opened a broad enough gash to produce plenty of blood for appearances.

Ran Min staggered backward two steps.

The black-clad man nodded, apparently satisfied with his work.

“I will wait in the Front Street alley. Call your men.”

With that, the black-clad man flashed over the courtyard wall and disappeared.

...

Shrill whistling split the air.

Two patrol squads from the City Patrol Office, both working the nearby streets, immediately rushed toward the sound.

They all knew their Commandant’s private residence stood here.

Many of them had even visited before and eaten food cooked by the young woman in his household.

Bang!

The courtyard gate was kicked open from outside.

Armored soldiers of the City Patrol Office poured in.

“The assassin just fled! Front Street! Aaaaah!”

Their Commandant’s voice came from inside.

The soldiers rushed forward.

Then they saw him.

Ran Min sat on the threshold.

His body was drenched in blood.

His injuries looked severe.

And in his arms, he held the already dead Lady Liu, wailing in grief.

[End of Chapter 641]