Chapter 677: Winds Rise in Yanjing

"This minister obeys the decree."

Marquis Zheng rose and walked toward the carriage.

As he did, his gaze happened to sweep across Little Sixth, who was still kneeling to one side.

As though sensing it, Ji Chengjue looked up.

Then... he saw Marquis Zheng very naturally turn his eyes away again, their gazes passing each other with perfect precision.

Heh.

Little Sixth lowered his head once more.

He was not angry.

When Imperial Father had ordered the Crown Prince to drive the carriage, the Prince of Jingnan could say that the Marquis of Pingxi was more suited to the job.

But there was no possible way Marquis Zheng himself could walk over and add:

"The Sixth Prince is better at driving than this minister."

By the time Zheng Fan reached the carriage, the Crown Prince had already stepped back two paces and saluted him.

Zheng Fan returned the salute at the same time.

Neither said another word.

The Crown Prince was already embarrassed enough.

Then the Emperor of Yan and the Prince of Jingnan entered the carriage.

Zheng Fan climbed onto the driver's bench, took up the reins, and began driving.

Driving a carriage did require some skill, but any horses selected to draw the Son of Heaven's carriage had naturally been trained to perfection. A light pull on the reins was enough to make them set off steadily and draw the carriage forward.

The imperial carriage led the way.

The kneeling crowds around it began parting to open a road.

Naturally, no one dared obstruct this carriage.

They entered through Yanjing's eastern gate, followed the official road, then turned onto the Imperial Way.

Imperial Guards stood watch along the entire route.

On both sides, masses of commoners knelt in black waves and shouted ten thousand years.

Ordinary people did not understand what it meant for the Crown Prince to govern as regent.

They only knew that their Emperor had spent a very, very long time recuperating in the Rear Garden.

They were already accustomed to the Emperor of Yan being the Heaven above their heads.

That sense of security was not something a Crown Prince or Sixth Prince could replace.

The same was true among the common people, at court, and in the army.

For thousands of years, Emperors had pursued glorious achievements and the expansion of borders. Those accomplishments were not merely about leaving a name in history. They were also a way of accumulating and consolidating personal prestige.

Because the Emperor himself was the Ninth-Five Supreme, the highest point of a state.

And among all the rulers of all the states in the world today, not one possessed achievements that could compare with those of the Emperor of Yan.

Warmongering.

The people unable to make a living.

"When the realm prospers, the people suffer; when it falls, the people suffer."

Many times, such lines were not truly the voices of ordinary people.

Most commoners could not read.

They certainly could not write neatly balanced phrases like that.

The people of Yanjing ranked among the best-off in all Great Yan, even counting the lands of Jin. Most of them had little connection to the words "unable to make a living" in the first place.

And even if one truly went now to some drought-stricken Yan village where people were starving and families had begun exchanging children to eat, those gaunt old Yan folk might still keep the Emperor's longevity tablet standing in their homes.

At most, they would curse the damned heavens for sending down disaster.

They would not curse the Son of Heaven.

As Marquis Zheng drove, watching the kneeling commoners on either side, understanding gradually accumulated in his heart.

When the position you stood in changed, so did the angle from which you thought.

The Emperor of Yan had indeed launched one foreign war after another, dragging the entire state to the edge of collapse.

But there were some men's deeds that their contemporaries simply had no qualification to judge conclusively.

Leave the verdict to the next generation.

Or the generation after that.

A man condemned in his own time as a tyrant, a traitor to the people, might a thousand years later be praised by ten thousand voices as an Emperor for the ages.

The palace gates opened.

Ranks of eunuchs knelt on both sides and cried out together:

"This slave welcomes His Majesty back to the palace!"

"This slave welcomes His Majesty back to the palace!"

Marquis Zheng tightened the reins slightly.

The carriage quickened just a little as it passed through the palace gates.

This marked the Emperor of Great Yan's return to the true center of power in Great Yan.

Though in truth... he had never actually lost it.

Marquis Zheng instinctively tilted his head and glanced toward the curtain behind him.

This was the final flare before the light went out, wasn't it?

For this Emperor.

For Great Yan's present posture of a tiger pressing down upon the East.

For the three men who had once stood together, that Iron Triangle.

For this age... the same.

Many people knew the Emperor of Yan's body was already tottering at the edge.

It was no secret.

There was no way to keep such a thing secret.

Those years in the Rear Garden had not truly been recuperation.

They had been endurance.

He had endured through that winter.

Endured through this spring.

Endured through the summer just past.

And at last... he had waited until autumn.

He had returned.

He... had returned.

At the center of the empire, the chair remained his.

Below it stood two more seats.

A ruler everyone knew was already approaching the end of his life had, in this fashion, once again taken hold of the reins while leaving the machinery of the Great Yan court almost entirely intact.

Look at those ministers kneeling there.

Who among them would still dare oppose this Emperor's will in the days to come?

What was authority?

What was the art of power?

What did it truly mean to reach the summit?

Last night, Zheng Fan had told Sun Ying to watch carefully today.

Yet in the end, the man who saw most directly and understood most deeply... was Marquis Zheng himself.

This carriage had not been driven for nothing.

After entering the palace, Eunuch Wei came to lead the way and guided Zheng Fan as he drove the carriage to the Imperial Study.

Everything inside had already been prepared.

The heated room was warm.

When the Emperor of Yan stepped down from the carriage, Zheng Fan noticed that cold sweat clearly covered his forehead.

The Emperor was afraid of heat.

And yet he still walked into the Imperial Study, which had been heated until the air was almost oppressively dry, and sat in his accustomed place.

From beginning to end...

Tian Wujing did not exchange another word with the Emperor of Yan.

They had not spoken inside the carriage earlier either.

Yes.

Marquis Zheng had been the driver.

He could testify.

The Emperor entered the Imperial Study.

The Prince of Jingnan remained standing at the door.

If he was not going in...

Zheng Fan naturally could not go in either.

The Emperor of Yan did not order anyone to summon him.

After standing there for a while...

Tian Wujing turned and walked away.

Zheng Fan followed behind him.

At this very moment, inside and outside the palace and throughout Yanjing, Heaven only knew how many people were racking their brains trying to imagine what the Emperor and the Prince of Jingnan would discuss inside the Imperial Study.

Probably very few would ever know... that they had not exchanged a single idle word.

"Your Majesty, the Prince of Jingnan and Marquis Pingxi have gone to Fengzheng Palace."

Fengzheng Palace had once been the residence of the Empress while she was alive.

After the Empress passed away, it had remained empty.

The Emperor of Yan never established another Empress.

Seated in his chair, the Emperor braced both arms against the armrests.

His gaze was so deep no one dared look directly into it.

After a while... he closed his eyes.

The energy holding his entire body together seemed to loosen all at once, and he leaned back into the chair.

Without that force of spirit filling it... the broad dragon robe suddenly looked far too large.

Wei Zhonghe's heart lurched.

Only when he saw His Majesty still breathing steadily did he finally relax.

His Majesty... had fallen asleep.

But at the same time...

Wei Zhonghe no longer knew when he had first begun preparing himself inwardly for the possibility that His Majesty might die at any moment.

The Son of Heaven... would grow old too.

The Son of Heaven... could not truly live ten thousand years, ten thousand years, ten thousand ten thousand years.

Wei Zhonghe carefully withdrew.

From the corner of his eye, he glanced around the corners of the Imperial Study, but did not linger there for long.

He walked to the doorway.

Bent slightly at the waist.

Hands hanging before him.

He stood there.

He waited.

Just as he always had.

Whenever His Majesty took a brief nap...

Wei Zhonghe waited at the door for him to wake.

He had once waited this way outside the study of an imperial prince's residence.

He had once waited this way outside the council hall of the Eastern Palace.

And he had waited this way outside the Imperial Study for many years.

He was already used to it.

Used to His Majesty, who never allowed himself more than a short rest, calling for him soon afterward to serve tea so they could continue dealing with the seemingly endless affairs of state.

A withered yellow leaf drifted down.

It landed squarely on the toe of Wei Zhonghe's boot.

The leaf had long since lost every trace of green.

Only its veins remained distinct.

Dry.

Brittle.

Like...

Wei Zhonghe straightened his body slightly.

Like himself.

...

The doors of Fengzheng Palace were not locked, though several eunuchs were always stationed outside to watch over the place.

People were also assigned to clean inside, so it had never fallen into ruin.

After all... the late Empress was the Crown Prince's birth mother.

While the Crown Prince governed as regent, he could hardly neglect Fengzheng Palace.

By propriety, outside men were not permitted to enter the inner palace.

Clearly, that rule held no binding force whatsoever for the Prince of Jingnan.

Along the way, the Imperial Guards who saw him merely knelt and saluted.

No one dared stop him.

Occasionally, palace maids and eunuchs of the rear palace caught sight of the Prince of Jingnan and Marquis Pingxi walking one behind the other.

They immediately dropped to their knees on both sides of the path, scarcely daring to breathe.

The doors opened.

They entered the palace.

Everything inside was clean and orderly.

But a palace without its mistress was like a person who had lost his soul.

No matter how fine the building or how beautiful the courtyard... a house was ultimately made for people to live in.

The Prince of Jingnan stood in the courtyard and looked at the clusters of chrysanthemums blooming in the flower beds.

His elder sister had loved chrysanthemums most.

Zheng Fan stood beside him and merely watched.

He said nothing.

They remained in the courtyard for a long time.

Then the Prince of Jingnan opened the inner door and entered the sleeping chamber.

The furnishings were just as they had always been.

Only the bed was covered by hanging curtains.

Beside the bed stood a low couch.

The mistress slept on the bed.

A maid slept below so she could serve her at any moment.

Tian Wujing walked over to that couch and sat.

Zheng Fan moved behind him, careful not to block his line of sight.

Among the common people, the Prince of Jingnan of Great Yan was rumored to be a devil who denied all bonds of kinship.

In earlier years, people had even claimed he sold out his entire clan in exchange for rank and glory.

That version did not actually hold water.

At the time, the great aristocratic clans had been acting together, trying to have both the Southern and Northern Marquises raised to princely rank.

But that had not stopped enormous numbers of people from believing the rumor.

In the eyes of ordinary people, a man who cast aside all kinship had to be evil.

He had to be someone obsessed with wealth and honor.

As for the Tian Clan already possessing wealth and honor beyond ordinary imagination... most people had no concept of that.

Later, as the Southern Marquis took command and won one earth-shaking victory after another, that rumor gradually stopped being mentioned.

Yet plenty of people still worried.

This demon king who denied all kinship... please don't rebel.

If he did... who beneath Heaven could stop him?

Zheng Fan deliberately watched Old Tian closely.

Old Tian did not cry.

Nor did he close his eyes to sink into remembrance.

He seemed merely to have returned for a look.

A look at his elder sister.

The mystery surrounding Du Juan's death had never been completely solved.

But besides Du Juan... there was another death shrouded in the same uncertainty.

The Empress's.

Little Sixth had once written that if the Empress had not died that night, causing the Crown Prince's wedding to be delayed indefinitely and nearly making it impossible for the Crown Prince and the Commandery Princess to remain together because their birth characters were supposedly incompatible... then Ji Chengjue would have been the one taking an early spring outing underground.

He had not explained the matter explicitly.

But it was difficult not to suspect there had been something wrong with it.

Because that night, when Little Sixth faced Seventh Uncle, he had asked Seventh Uncle to wait until nearly dawn before striking him with the sword.

He... had been waiting for something.

Marquis Zheng drew in a slow breath and let it out again.

Today, he felt as though he were personally witnessing true history.

Think about it.

He stood here in person, right beside the three people at the very center of this empire's innermost circle... and still everything remained wrapped in layer after layer of fog.

How laughable were the people of later generations who read a few history books and imagined they understood everything.

They did not sit there long.

Tian Wujing rose.

Zheng Fan followed again.

The two left Fengzheng Palace.

Then... they left the imperial palace altogether.

The bulk of the troops they had brought had been settled in the camp outside the city, but their personal guards had naturally entered with them.

At the palace gates, guards from both households waited.

The two Pixiu lay there as well.

Tian Wujing mounted his Pixiu.

Zheng Fan climbed onto his own.

Suddenly...

Tian Wujing looked at Zheng Fan and said:

"Lead the way. This Prince does not know the road."

"Where are we going, Your Highness?"

"To my Tian Clan's graves."

"..." Zheng Fan.

That night, the Prince of Jingnan had exterminated his own household.

Afterward... the man ordered to remain behind and collect the bodies... had been Zheng Fan.

In the more than four years since then, Tian Wujing had never returned to Yanjing.

Naturally, he had never visited his family's graves.

Ask someone the road.

Find where the family tombs lay.

"Your Highness, follow me."

The Tian Clan had originally possessed ancestral tombs.

But after that night... burying every dead member of the clan inside the ancestral grounds had clearly been impossible.

They had been interred beneath a small hill not far from the Tian family's old residence.

To Zheng Fan's surprise... the Prince of Jingnan did not actually enter.

He stopped at a distance, looked once toward the graves, and went no farther.

Then... the Pixiu beneath him turned around.

They were leaving.

He had come.

He had not gone in to look.

It was almost as though he had come for only one reason... to learn the road.

Marquis Zheng followed the Prince of Jingnan back.

They did not reenter the city.

Instead, they rode toward the camp outside Yanjing.

Before entering the camp...

Tian Wujing looked at Zheng Fan and asked:

"Are you going back into the capital?"

Zheng Fan shook his head.

"Wherever Your Highness is, that's where I'll be."

Then Zheng Fan accompanied the Prince of Jingnan back into camp.

After the two entered the command tent, personal guards came forward and helped remove their armor.

"Are you hungry?" Tian Wujing asked.

Zheng Fan nodded.

"I am."

"Then eat."

The guards acknowledged the order and went to prepare the meal.

Very soon... a table of refined dishes was brought in.

They were camped right outside the capital, and the city had already sent out wine and meat to reward the troops.

Eating well was perfectly normal.

Not only inside the command tent either.

Today, the Prince had lifted the prohibition on alcohol.

The soldiers were allowed to drink.

Zheng Fan picked up his chopsticks.

Just as he was about to reach for food... he saw Old Tian lift the wine pot and begin pouring for him.

Marquis Zheng immediately set down his chopsticks and lifted his cup.

Once Zheng Fan's cup was full...

Old Tian poured one for himself.

Marquis Zheng rose, preparing to toast him.

Old Tian lifted his own cup.

Zheng Fan touched the rim of his cup against the bottom of Old Tian's.

Then... he drained it.

Old Tian drank his as well.

Zheng Fan rose again, took the wine pot himself, and filled both cups.

Then... he sat.

Picked up his chopsticks.

Prepared to reach for food.

And saw that after Old Tian picked up his own chopsticks... he planted both of them upright in the bowl of rice before him.

Marquis Zheng froze.

He did not take any food.

Instead, he laid his own chopsticks horizontally across the rim of his bowl.

Tian Wujing pointed at Zheng Fan's bowl and chopsticks.

"You eat."

"Yes, Your Highness."

Zheng Fan picked them up again.

Without hesitation, he began eating like a whirlwind.

He ate a great deal.

Enough to leave himself painfully stuffed.

But in the end... he managed to finish almost everything on the little table.

Finally... he even pulled over the bowl of rice with the chopsticks stuck upright in it... and ate that too.

Now his stomach was so swollen he could barely endure it.

Old Tian had no appetite.

But Old Tian's habit was never to allow himself to display weakness or grief.

For example... if too much of this table of food remained... that itself would be showing weakness.

"Men," Zheng Fan called.

A personal guard entered and cleared the little table away.

Tian Wujing looked at Zheng Fan, who was so overfull he was plainly uncomfortable, and shook his head.

"You could have left some."

"It's fine. I don't like wasting food."

Some things between them required no explanation.

They understood each other perfectly.

You saved my life so many times.

I'll stuff my stomach once for you.

Tian Wujing placed a waist token before him.

It was the Prince of Jingnan's command token.

"Keep it."

Zheng Fan shook his head and smiled.

"You know I don't need this."

"Depends who you're standing before."

Zheng Fan fell silent.

At last... he reached out and closed his hand around the princely command token.

"Go rest," Tian Wujing said.

Zheng Fan stood and walked to the tent entrance.

Then he stopped.

Turned around.

Walked back to Tian Wujing.

And said:

"Brother, I've felt wrong all day. Are you making your final arrangements?"

Tian Wujing shook his head.

"Don't forget what you promised me. If you're truly going to seek release, you have to tell me in advance. Whether we choose sunset or sunrise, whether you wear a black cloak or a red one, I get to make the decisions. I'm not bragging. If I hadn't joined the army and fought wars, I could've earned a living as a painter. Compared with those great painting masters inside the palace, maybe I couldn't match their artistic conception, but when it comes to fine detail and making a scene feel vivid, I really wouldn't be afraid to compete with them. You have to give me time to prepare myself. You must give me time to prepare myself. That's all I'm asking now. If you want me to swear that so long as the Black Dragon Banner still flies, I'll keep my promise, then fine. But you also have to keep yours."

"If I had wanted to die, I could have died in that inferno in Ying Capital. With Fire Phoenix flames as the furnace, where in this world could I have found a more presentable cremation?"

"Then..."

"This Prince does not care how the world judges him. Not in the slightest."

Tian Wujing extended one hand.

Looking at his palm, he slowly said:

"This Prince has never intended to deliberately seek death. Never."

Zheng Fan dropped to one knee and saluted.

Then... he withdrew from the command tent.

Inside the tent...

Tian Wujing's gaze remained on the lines of his palm.

Death... was a kind of escape.

It was also a kind of release.

He, Tian Wujing... had committed monstrous sins.

His crimes reached Heaven.

He did not deserve escape.

Did not deserve release.

Did not deserve redemption.

Death?

Of course he could die.

Every person must die eventually.

But he... did not deserve... to seek death on purpose.

Right now... the man inside the Imperial Study... probably wanted more than anyone else to lie down inside the mausoleum he had built long ago.

...

"Wei Zhonghe..."

"This slave is here."

Wei Zhonghe, who had been standing outside the Imperial Study, immediately hurried back in and looked toward the Emperor of Yan, whose eyes had opened.

The Emperor's eyes... were filled with exhaustion.

He murmured:

"Sigh... I woke up again."

[End of Chapter 677]