Chapter 648: - Storms Over Yanjing

Today, Wei Zhonghe left the Rear Garden and returned to the imperial palace.

He had come to collect in advance a few things that would be needed once spring arrived.

The Emperor of Yan disliked extravagance and had never been particular about his daily necessities, but that did not mean such things were absent.

And sometimes, people grew attached to old things.

There was a familiarity in something used for many years that could not simply be replaced by buying another.

Even an emperor standing high above everyone else could not entirely escape that kind of sentiment.

There were not many items to pack, but each had to be handled carefully.

Eunuch Wei sent the people below him to do the work first.

He only needed to inspect everything at the end.

So, during the interval, he returned to the room inside the palace where he had once lived.

The door was not locked.

But whether Wei Zhonghe was present or not, no one dared enter his room without permission.

He pushed open the door.

The air inside had grown damp, mixed with a faint smell of mildew.

Eunuch Wei paid it no mind.

He walked into the inner room and pulled aside the curtain covering a set of shelves.

An entire shelving unit was packed full of Mr. Horns.

Long ones and short ones.

Straight ones and curved ones.

Thick ones and thin ones.

Some exquisite enough to carry an almost scholarly elegance.

Others rugged enough to embody a bold and heroic spirit of life itself.

There were even broken ones, damaged ones, defective pieces.

This dazzling collection of Mr. Horns somehow displayed all the varied states of human existence.

It sounded absurd.

But what a man saw in something, what feeling he drew from it, ultimately depended on the observer himself.

When rain fell, a poet might recite:

“Light rain on the capital streets is soft as cream.”

An ordinary man would kick his child in the backside and say:

“Go tell your mother to hurry home and bring in the laundry.”

Eunuch Wei had not returned to the imperial palace for a long time.

This time, he could feel that the guards at the palace gates were more courteous and attentive when they saluted him.

The eunuchs and palace maids he passed were more fearful of him than before as well.

But inside that attentiveness, inside that fear, there was something else.

Distance.

Eunuchs were more sensitive than ordinary people to begin with.

And a eunuch capable of serving the Emperor, capable of surviving the truth behind the saying “being beside the sovereign is like being beside a tiger,” naturally possessed sensitivity and delicacy far beyond most men.

In truth, Wei Zhonghe never cared very much how other people viewed him or treated him.

The problem now was something else.

This time, upon returning, he himself suddenly realized that he no longer seemed to belong here.

This imperial palace where he had spent almost half his life.

He had been castrated and entered the palace as a child.

Later, he was assigned to a princely residence.

Then the Prince became Emperor, and Wei Zhonghe returned to the palace.

The imperial palace was the Emperor’s home.

But to everyone other than the Emperor, it was an oppressive prison.

Yet prisoners did not necessarily hate or resent their prison.

Once something became familiar, once familiarity lasted long enough, attachment could form instead.

Just as a Barbarian, wherever he went, would still miss the wind and sand of the desert.

A Savage, wherever he traveled, would still dream of endless snow.

Eunuch Wei raised one hand and gently rubbed between his brows.

This room was his alone.

It was the one place where he could remove everything he wore before the world and become himself in earnest.

There was no need to hide anything.

Concealment had already become instinct, of course, but at least here, one breath could be held for half an instant longer.

No one understood the Emperor’s physical condition better than Wei Zhonghe.

And yet no one dared ask Wei Zhonghe about the Emperor’s condition.

Standing here, looking at row after row of Mr. Horns in every shape and form, Wei Zhonghe suddenly realized that the peace he once felt in their presence, that quiet and comfort he had always been able to draw from them, was now clearly and steadily disappearing.

Like a jar of wine left under a blazing sun and then exposed to pouring rain, its flavor would soon be washed away.

Roots.

Roots.

The root of a man.

He himself was a rootless man.

What use did he have for so many roots?

Over these years, he, a man without a root, had watched far too many men who still had theirs do things utterly lacking in backbone.

Eunuch Wei himself did not really know what he was thinking now.

Perhaps this was simply melancholy stirred by the sight of old things.

A pity he could not write poetry.

Mm.

Even if he could, what was he supposed to call it?

“Reflections Upon Viewing the Sun, Moon, Vast Sea, and an Entire Shelf of Mr. Horns”?

“Hehehe...”

Eunuch Wei amused himself.

Almost unconsciously, he took out a small bottle and sprinkled some powder around his crotch.

That place had long since stopped producing the odor ordinary eunuchs suffered from.

But the habit remained.

Years ago, when he was still a low-ranking young eunuch in the palace, every time he saw the senior eunuchs powdering and perfuming their crotches, he had thought it so enviable.

So magical.

Unfortunately, His Majesty did not normally like incense and disliked heavy fragrances.

But he was quite fond of the “Spirit-Refreshing Dew” produced in Fengxin City.

In truth, it was simply the Marquis Residence’s version of medicated wind oil.

The Emperor of Yan rarely established tribute items, because such things often evolved into enterprises that exhausted the people and drained wealth.

But when something was genuinely useful, the Emperor did not mind quietly ordering Wei Zhonghe to acquire some for him.

Spirit-Refreshing Dew, for example.

Naturally, the Marquis Residence in Fengxin City treated the matter with extraordinary seriousness.

They sent a great deal.

Not only Spirit-Refreshing Dew, but many varieties of perfume as well, rare goods that sold outside for prices equivalent to their weight in gold.

Lying in bed, the Emperor of Yan had once specifically ordered someone to bring him the Marquis Residence’s gift list.

He glanced over it.

Perhaps the habit had originated years ago, when a certain butcher had once dared flaunt his wealth before him using pig heads and pig trotters.

After reading the gift list, the Emperor said:

“You keep the rest. Give them out as rewards as you see fit.”

Wei Zhonghe knelt and thanked him.

At the same time, he said:

“This slave would never dare use those. I fear the scent might bother Your Majesty.”

A long time passed.

Then the Emperor said:

“It is fine.”

After another pause, he added:

“We cannot smell much of anything anymore.”

Remembering that moment, a trail of tears appeared at the corner of Wei Zhonghe’s eye.

Everyone needed something to anchor himself to.

Wei Zhonghe was duckweed floating on water.

The moment he entered that princely residence years ago, he had understood that the master there would be the anchor for the rest of his life.

So long as his master remained well, Wei Zhonghe would remain well.

Perhaps what Wei Zhonghe cared about had never been this imperial palace at all.

What did a palace matter?

It was only a dead thing.

Wei Zhonghe reached out and drew the curtain closed over the shelves again.

He did not think about moving the collection elsewhere.

Nor did he consider disposing of it, or, more extremely, burning it.

He wanted to leave everything here.

Leave it for whoever became the next owner of this room.

Let that person see his collection.

The affairs of the world, all the endless noise, all the grudges, love, hatred, and entanglements, looked complicated.

In truth, they were simple.

They could almost all be reduced to one question:

Did you have a handle or not?

For some reason, after leaving the room, Eunuch Wei suddenly remembered Marquis Pingxi, who had once rushed frantically into the palace to report news on that distant night.

Ah.

He had become a Marquis now.

Truly an extraordinary talent.

Eunuch Wei raised one hand with the fingers arranged like an orchid.

Then he stepped into the rain curtain outside and hummed:

“What a pity, what a pity indeed~”

...

A pot of warmed yellow wine.

A plate of broad beans.

A dish of cellar-aged pickled vegetables.

And a steaming plain hotpot flavored with nothing more than two slices of ginger and one section of scallion.

That was enough to brew a brief moment of comfort in the cold.

The pot contained no mutton.

Only tender tofu.

Tender tofu was difficult to pick up once it went into the broth.

Getting it back out required even more skill.

Once cooked, it was lifted free, rolled through the dipping sauce, and finally placed into the mouth.

Fragrant and warm, it needed almost no chewing before sliding down the throat and into the stomach, driving cold from the entire body.

Zhao Jiulang invited the other Secretariat Councilors to eat with him.

Great Yan’s Secretariat Councilors differed from the so-called chancellors of Qian’s Privy Council.

They differed even more from the Ming-style Grand Secretariat Zheng Fan knew.

Here in Great Yan, the Secretariat Councilors were, in truth, secretaries.

The Emperor’s secretaries, and at the same time, secretaries to the Chief Minister.

Their official ranks were not especially high, nor were the positions particularly exalted.

Aside from Zhao Jiulang himself, most were relatively young men.

At that moment, a young yellow-robed eunuch entered carrying a stack of memorials and placed them on a public desk nearby.

Seeing the great officials gathered around the pot eating tofu, and having just come in after freezing outside, he could not help sniffing deeply.

Zhao Jiulang handed him a pair of chopsticks and pointed toward the clean bowls stacked nearby.

“Many thanks, my lord.”

The young eunuch did not stand on ceremony.

He took the chopsticks, took a bowl, and squeezed into the group.

Clearly, this was not his first time joining them.

Fresh tender tofu arrived from the imperial kitchens every two hours.

Yellow wine and the other side dishes would be replenished as needed.

In truth, once this hotpot was lit, it tended to remain burning for a very long time.

During winter, anyone who wanted a few pieces could simply come over and cook some for himself.

That was why ministers serving in the outer court had long spread a saying that the men of the Secretariat held an endless tofu banquet every day.

Zhao Jiulang rose and walked over to the public desk to begin examining the newly delivered memorials.

In earlier days, when His Majesty still lived inside the palace, the Directorate of Ceremonial controlled the power of the vermilion rescript.

In other words, it represented the Emperor’s will by approving, rejecting, or returning for further discussion the conclusions ministers proposed in their memorials.

His Majesty very rarely held a memorial without issuing it.

He had no interest in forcing his ministers to guess at his intentions or waste time interpreting silence.

Nor did he take pleasure in using the memorial process itself to play games of scheming, factional struggle, or balancing authority against his officials.

Ultimately, that was because, as sovereign, his word already carried the full weight of the state.

But now, the Crown Prince was acting as regent.

At the beginning, he personally handled almost everything.

He rose earlier than the ministers.

He left later than whichever officials were on duty.

He treated worthy men with respect and was never ashamed to ask questions.

The result was that quite a few older officials were forced to spread bedding in the palace or inside their duty rooms and simply sleep there, suffering beyond words.

Naturally, some complaints reached Zhao Jiulang.

He only laughed and ignored them.

Fortunately, as the Crown Prince spent more time governing, he gradually learned to extract himself from routine affairs.

He began learning to use people to solve the problems below him.

On the surface, this was merely a change in method.

In truth, it also meant accepting something psychologically: the authority he had only just received from his Imperial Father had to be delegated again.

The Crown Prince was only now learning that lesson.

But Zhao Jiulang knew that another certain lord had understood it long ago.

Otherwise, his business would never have grown so large.

The newly delivered memorials contained no especially serious matters.

The year had been bad.

So there was disaster relief, more disaster relief, reductions in taxes, more reductions, and then the suppression of a rebellion.

The old lands of Yan were doing relatively well.

The old Yan people still possessed the endurance to suffer together with the Ji family.

The Jin lands, by contrast, had small uprisings appearing one after another.

Fortunately, each was suppressed quickly.

At that moment, Li Yinglian, the Crown Prince’s personal attendant, entered.

Looking at everyone gathered around the tofu hotpot, he smiled.

“I thought so. I could smell the fragrance from far away.”

Zhao Jiulang pointed toward the pot.

“Eunuch Li, care for a bite?”

“No, no.”

Li Yinglian stepped back half a pace and saluted Zhao Jiulang.

“My lord, His Highness the Crown Prince asks you to come over. He wishes to discuss the candidate for the new Commandery Governor of Nanwang.”

Li Yinglian had come personally to invite him, and had even stated the matter to be discussed in advance.

That itself was a gesture of respect.

Zhao Jiulang picked up the cloak he had hung beside the charcoal brazier.

Li Yinglian personally stepped forward and draped it over his shoulders.

Zhao Jiulang nodded and walked outside.

Li Yinglian followed half a step behind.

His Majesty was recuperating in the Rear Garden.

In the early period, the Crown Prince had attended him there every day and reported every state matter in minute detail.

Later, the Rear Garden simply issued an order closing its gates.

The Crown Prince could see the Emperor once in the middle of each month and once toward the end.

At all other times, no audience was permitted.

Outside the palace, some said this was His Majesty demonstrating trust in the Crown Prince so power could begin transferring smoothly in advance.

Others suspected that His Majesty’s body had truly deteriorated to the point where even seeing people and discussing affairs every day had become unbearably difficult.

The Emperor of Yan’s withdrawal changed the court’s former pattern of one supreme voice deciding everything.

The Crown Prince acted as regent.

He possessed his own Eastern Palace faction and held the legitimacy of succession.

Naturally, he formed one pole.

The Sixth Prince, or rather the so-called Sixth Master faction, had briefly been suppressed when His Majesty appointed the Crown Prince regent and continuously transferred authority to him.

But once the Sixth Master faction’s number one fighting dog and banner-bearer Zheng Fan was enfeoffed as Marquis, its morale immediately surged again.

Many people believed Zheng Fan’s elevation had indeed been necessary because his achievements were too great to reward otherwise and because a Marquis was needed to secure the frontier.

But perhaps His Majesty had also intended to recreate the old relationship in which he and the Marquis of Zhenbei had worked together in perfect intimacy.

Outside those two poles, there was actually a third.

It consisted of the civil and military officials in court led by Chief Minister Zhao Jiulang.

When the Emperor of Yan was present, Great Yan’s Chief Minister always seemed unobtrusive.

So unobtrusive, in fact, that idle tongues in Yanjing had bestowed a few “elegant titles” upon him.

The Paper Chief Minister.

The Clay Chief Minister.

The Puppet-String Chief Minister.

Throughout history, chief ministers had naturally tended to lead the officials in competition against imperial power.

But in Great Yan, whatever the Emperor said, Zhao Jiulang did.

Whatever the Emperor wanted, Zhao Jiulang provided.

The Emperor’s will was Zhao Jiulang’s will.

And Zhao Jiulang would then find ways to “whip” the entire bureaucracy into keeping pace.

Under Zhao Jiulang, ministerial power had completely submitted to imperial authority.

Only after the Emperor entered the Rear Garden did the Chief Minister’s actual ability and influence truly rise to the surface.

This was a man whom the Emperor had elevated from humble origins to the position of Chief Minister during an age when Great Yan was crowded with powerful aristocratic clans.

He had weathered all those storms.

Served a sovereign like this one.

And through all those years, remained standing.

How could he possibly have been an ordinary man?

At present, after the campaign against Chu, Great Yan was struggling.

The Jin lands were struggling.

Once the joy of victory in the foreign war finally faded, the entire state began paying the bill for years of “militarism and exhausting the people.”

Open struggles for power had not yet appeared.

Neither the Crown Prince nor the Sixth Prince allowed their respective factions to collide.

Both concentrated on affairs of state.

First, because both brothers were surnamed Ji.

No one could yet say which of them would ultimately sit upon the throne, but neither could deny that this realm was the inheritance of their ancestors.

Second, because their father was still alive.

As long as the old man had not died, neither brother dared ignore the greater situation and start tearing at the other beneath his eyes.

And yet sometimes, argument, confrontation, even the first faint outlines of factional struggle, were unavoidable.

Not because of competition for fame and profit.

But because their political views genuinely differed.

Nanwang City had originally belonged to Yinlang Commandery.

Now it was to be reorganized into a commandery seat with its own Commandery Governor, making it easier to respond to threats from Qian’s Three Frontiers.

And that was where the disagreement lay.

The Crown Prince wanted to appoint a man who had come from the army but followed the path of civil administration, another Xu Wenzu, in effect.

Someone who could take over Xu Wenzu’s former responsibilities, continue working with the First Prince, and stabilize the situation there.

The Sixth Prince, however, wanted to appoint a man skilled at local governance, someone who could restore the prosperity Nanwang City had once enjoyed as Great Yan’s “Little Jiangnan” before war interrupted it.

Both factions had already chosen their candidates.

That was what made the affair so interesting.

On the surface, Ji Chengjue controlled the Ministry of Revenue.

With Great Yan’s finances now in desperate condition, it seemed perfectly natural that he would want to open new sources of revenue and expand trade as much as possible.

But Zhao Jiulang understood that the Crown Prince was actually the more conservative of the two.

His governing philosophy should naturally have leaned toward stopping the wars and allowing the people and state to recover.

The Sixth Prince was the one most like the Emperor of Yan.

He would never be satisfied merely to preserve what he inherited.

Expansion beyond the borders, trying to measure his achievements against his father’s, should have been his true instinct, whether he admitted it or not.

Because no one would believe that a “young Ji Runhao” could ever content himself with the present borders.

Yet in this dispute over the appointment, the two sides had each moved toward the opposite of what should have been their natural policy.

There was far too much inside that reversal worth considering.

Much like this pot of tofu.

Eat it in summer, and it made the body feel overheated.

Eat it in winter, and it was genuine comfort.

When the season changed, everything changed with it.

His Majesty was old.

Their Imperial Father was old.

The Crown Prince wanted to prove to His Majesty that even if he would be a sovereign of preservation, he would not diminish his father’s name as a conqueror.

The Sixth Prince wanted to prove to His Majesty that even though he desired expansion, he would not act without purpose.

Zhao Jiulang had been walking when he suddenly stopped.

Sparse drops of rain had begun to fall.

Tiny crystals of ice were mixed into the water.

The chill seemed capable of seeping all the way into a man’s bones.

Zhao Jiulang smiled.

It truly answered the old saying.

Whether the sky was clear or dark depended entirely upon Heaven’s will.

At that moment, Zhao Jiulang saw Eunuch Wei walking toward them.

“This lowly one greets Eunuch Wei. May Eunuch Wei enjoy health and good fortune.”

Li Yinglian immediately dropped to his knees before Wei Zhonghe.

An aged emperor was the thing most capable of making ministers tremble.

And a chief eunuch who looked ready to be sent to guard the imperial tomb could make his fellow servants equally uneasy.

Eunuch Wei nodded to Li Yinglian.

He did not exchange pleasantries with him.

Instead, he smiled at Zhao Jiulang.

“Chief Minister, look at this weather. One moment it is one thing, the next it changes completely. Makes a man feel rather uneasy.”

Zhao Jiulang stood on the steps.

He shook his head.

“Rest easy. The sky will not fall.”

[End of Chapter 648]