Chapter 729: Great Yan, No More Prince of Jingnan

Outside the Barbarian royal city, the Yan soldiers raised a skull mound.

The severed heads of Barbarian nobles were stacked together, some with eyes closed, others still twisted in ferocious expressions. One glance would have been enough to give an ordinary person nightmares, perhaps even frighten them sick.

The Yan soldiers building it, however, wore smiles, as though they had returned to childhood and were stacking stones for fun.

Li Fei joined them and helped carry the heads. No one called him over, but he knew he should be there.

The Zhenbei soldiers around him showed this lame Heir an unusual degree of respect.

Soldiers valued bonds, especially the bonds between comrades. To a certain extent, His Highness the Heir had gone alone into the Royal Court this time, putting his own life and death aside to add one more brick to the foundation of this great victory. That alone was enough to win the soldiers' recognition.

The Zhenbei Army did not fear that its future Prince might be a vicious bastard. No matter how bad a man was, how bad could he really be to his own people?

What they feared was a coward.

And His Highness the Heir... was no coward.

Fortunately, after the bloody lesson of the night before, Li Fei no longer embarrassed himself while helping build the skull mound today.

He remembered how, back in the village, Chen Xianba often used to say that once he won a great victory in the future, he would build a skull mound to display his military achievements.

Who would have thought...

Li Fei would do it first?

Yiguxie had been placed under guard.

Yiguna, on the other hand, was allowed to move freely.

Her husband was here.

Her younger brother was here.

Under circumstances like these, she was actually the most pitiful person of all.

But there was truly no point talking about right or wrong. When Barbarians had been strong in years past, countless Yan women had been equally pitiful.

Between peoples and between states, struggles like this rarely cared about morality or reason.

Only which side you stood on.

...

The sacrificial altar was rebuilt against the skull mound.

Great Yan's Black Dragon Banners stood in ordered rows, beginning atop the low city wall and descending along both sides below.

At this moment... everyone fell silent.

Very few people in this world possessed the kind of keen intuition Marquis Zheng had for sensing when one era was ending and another about to begin.

But every soldier present still felt something.

A sense of farewell.

Li Liangting's armor had been given to Tian Wujing. Wrapped instead in the robes of a Barbarian noble, Prince Zhenbei slowly climbed the altar.

Beside him, the Prince of Jingnan, wearing Prince Zhenbei's armor, ascended step by step as well.

The offerings on the altar were all ready-made, taken directly from the Barbarian rites performed the night before.

There was no need to worry whether they were suitable.

Before this skull mound, every other offering was nothing more than scraps around the edges.

Their ancestors would not care.

Li Liangting took an imperial edict from inside his robes and placed it on the offering table.

A soldier beside him presented wine.

One cup for Prince Zhenbei.

One cup for the Prince of Jingnan.

"One more cup," Li Liangting said.

"Yes, Your Highness."

The third cup...

Li Liangting placed atop the imperial edict.

Three cups of wine.

Three men.

Together once again.

"Hoo..."

Li Liangting let out a long breath. Pointing at the edict before him, he said, "Wujing, take a guess. What do you think Brother Hao wrote in this decree?"

Tian Wujing shook his head.

"I don't know what he wrote. I only know there will be a great deal of it."

Long before the Emperor died, his health had already failed badly, so there had been few occasions when he could speak publicly.

Most people... the closer they came to death, the less they had to say. The more they felt there was nothing left worth saying.

The Emperor of Yan was different.

That Emperor had calculated every step of his life and still wanted to make arrangements for after his death.

There would inevitably be many words.

Especially for a scene like today's.

This was something the three of them had imagined long ago.

They had known this day would come.

All three had been preparing for it.

Naturally, the Emperor must have prepared for it too.

In truth... their decision had been made a very, very long time ago, before the Emperor had even become Emperor.

Li Liangting had sat in Marquis Zhenbei Residence as a regional military lord, looking for all the world as though he intended to separate from Great Yan or even march on Yanjing in rebellion. Even Xu Wenzu had been fooled, spending his days wondering how he might open the gates of Tiger Head City and joyfully welcome the Marquis's army.

Tian Wujing spent ten years training the core Jingnan Army, ensuring Great Yan would possess a field cavalry force no weaker than the Zhenbei Army for the foreign campaigns to come.

And the Emperor of Yan... played along with Li Liangting's performance while quietly arranging what came next at court.

Trampling the aristocratic clans beneath cavalry hooves was the first step.

It was the easiest step.

Easy because once Great Yan's two strongest field armies and its two most powerful military Marquises both chose to stand behind the Emperor, those so-called aristocratic clans could not raise so much as a ripple.

The force in the Emperor's hands was enough to plow through all of Great Yan from top to bottom.

Who dared resist?

Who could resist?

But... it was also the hardest step.

Marquis Jingnan exterminated his own entire clan.

Hard.

Li Liangting almost severed the possibility that Marquis Zhenbei Residence, a military house with a century of foundation, might one day produce a true dragon of its own. His father had already taken to wearing dragon robes at home from time to time just to enjoy the sensation.

Hard.

The Emperor of Yan smashed the aristocratic clans and reshuffled the central government. During those years, the Emperor's authority effectively rested on the unconditional support of the two Marquises.

Since ancient times, Emperors had always suspected ministers, sometimes even killing them on fabricated charges.

Who had ever seen an Emperor trust his ministers to this degree?

Hard.

After trampling the aristocratic clans came the annexation of Jin.

In truth, even without Yu Ciming opening South Gate Pass himself, annexing Jin would not have been particularly difficult for Great Yan. How could a Jin already divided among three houses stop a united Great Yan?

Yu Ciming's act of "opening the gate to invite in thieves" merely accelerated the process.

This second step went very well.

Far better than expected.

But the third step... went wrong.

In the original plan shared by the three men, the third step should have been an invasion of Qian.

Qian was rich.

Qian was densely populated.

Qian was weak because its court was weak.

But among the four great states, Qian possessed the deepest foundation of all.

If they struck Qian, they had to cripple it at minimum.

Simply hurting it might instead wake it up.

And that would leave endless trouble.

The original intention had been to gather the full strength of Great Yan and march south, at least absorbing the entirety of Qian's northern frontier into Yan territory and driving the Qian Emperor and his court south of the Qian River.

For that reason... the Emperor of Yan had been willing to let the Situ family's Great Cheng become a vassal of Great Yan.

Tian Wujing had also led troops from Shengle through the Tianduan Mountains and onto the snowfields to attack the Savages, hoping to ease the pressure on the Situ family.

But there were no gods in this world.

No one could calculate every possibility.

Great Cheng was defeated.

The Savages entered the passes.

That was not the outcome the Emperor of Yan had wanted.

Great Yan was forced to suspend its offensive against Qian.

In the end, it fought twice, smashed the Savages, and absorbed Great Cheng.

The further consequences were worse.

Zhennan Pass fell into Chu hands.

And the Emperor of Chu was directly defined by the Emperor of Yan as a great future threat.

In truth... not a future threat.

A threat already standing before them.

To secure the territory of the Three Jins, Great Yan had no choice but to mobilize the entire state once again for a campaign against Chu.

Destroying Ying Capital was merely one step.

The true objective was to take Zhennan Pass and secure the Three Jins completely.

Think about it.

How many troops had been used against the Savages and Chu?

How many laborers mobilized?

How much manpower, material, and military strength consumed?

All of that... should originally have been used against Qian.

Could the Qian people of that time have stopped an offensive of that scale?

The plan... had gone awry.

Afterward... the Emperor of Yan's body could no longer endure.

And so only one final objective remained.

The Barbarians.

Destroy the Barbarian Royal Court.

Guarantee a century of peace on the western frontier.

Now... the Emperor of Yan was already dead.

The old plan had changed along the way, but Great Yan's present situation was truly the best it had been since the founding of the state.

It dominated the north.

Its power pressed down upon Qian and Chu.

The momentum toward unification had already formed.

The three of them... had done as much as they could.

Had brought matters as close to perfection as humanly possible.

Now... it was time to close this chapter.

Li Liangting removed the cup resting atop the imperial decree.

He picked up the edict.

Untied the sealed scroll.

And opened it.

Then... he smiled.

"Brother Hao really was Brother Hao."

Tian Wujing had said the Emperor's decree would surely contain a thousand words and ten thousand instructions.

An Emperor who had accomplished what he had accomplished... would inevitably leave words that endured through the ages.

Future Ji Emperors, when speaking of their ancestors, would certainly single him out for exceptional reverence.

Li Liangting had thought the same.

He had imagined that Brother Hao, faced with this skull mound, faced with the old Barbarian King's head sitting at the very top... would surely have many things he wanted to say.

But... there was not a single word on the imperial decree.

The Emperor of Yan... had nothing to say.

Everything that needed doing... he had already done.

And he had done it well.

Ji Runhao, Emperor of Great Yan... above, had not failed his ancestors.

Below, had not wronged his descendants.

And in the middle, had lived up to the State of Yan's sacred duty of defending all Xia against the Barbarians.

When a man had already carried everything to its limit... what else was there to say?

Li Liangting held the edict before a torch.

And watched it burn.

"Wujing. Back when my father helped the previous Emperor seize the throne, he once told me his plan. He said that after Marquis Zhenbei Residence helped an imperial prince take the throne this time, another layer of shackles around our house would be broken. He would spend the rest of his life laying foundations for me. Preparing the road for me.

"And when I eventually took the seat of Marquis Zhenbei, with strong troops and powerful horses beneath me, I should first pacify the Barbarians. Then lead the army east. Let the Li family replace the Ji family and seize the imperial throne for ourselves."

Those were words the old Marquis Zhenbei had truly spoken.

And really... if a man was willing to wear dragon robes at home, who would believe he had never dreamed of sitting on the Dragon Throne?

So no one could blame the aristocratic clans of that era for being fooled before the cavalry purge.

Marquis Zhenbei Residence had genuinely been moving in the direction of rebellion.

Perhaps... they had even privately communicated with some aristocratic clans long beforehand.

"But I submitted to Brother Hao.

"Truthfully... if the man sitting on the Dragon Throne had not been Brother Hao, but some other Emperor, I would've rebelled a long time ago.

"At least once in this life, I would've wanted to openly put on a dragon robe and sit on the Dragon Throne for myself.

"Ah.

"I disappointed my father's hopes.

"Before he died, he had even thought up the temple name he wanted me to grant him after I became Emperor.

"Hahahahahaha!"

Li Liangting burst out laughing.

Whenever a new dynasty was established, the founding Emperor would traditionally bestow posthumous imperial honors upon his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.

Even if the new sovereign came from the black-haired common people.

Even if his father and grandfather had merely driven carts or fed horses.

They would still receive imperial titles.

Then the court would find some ancient sage with the same surname and pretend he was the family's distant ancestor to decorate the new dynasty's lineage.

"What do you think my father would feel if he suddenly climbed out of his coffin today and saw this?"

Tian Wujing answered:

"He would die of anger again."

"I think so too. Ah, what a beautiful opportunity. What a beautiful opportunity to rebel and become Emperor. And in my hands, I dismantled it piece by piece.

"After I'm gone...

"Li Fusheng, Li Liangshen, Li Bao's son, and Li Bao's son-in-law will no longer call themselves Zhenbei Army men.

"And among the adopted sons still left here... none will remain truly, absolutely loyal either.

"It really will become nothing more than one regional military stronghold.

"Just one regional military stronghold."

Li Liangting drew in a deep breath and clenched one fist.

"But I think it was worth it. Looking at this skull mound before us, I think it was very damned worth it.

"When I go below in a few days, if my father chases me around beating and cursing me...

"I can take it with a smile.

"If worst comes to worst...

"I'll go find our founding ancestor.

"I refuse to believe that when our ancestor rendered great service, established the Marquis residence, and began guarding against the Barbarians, he was already dreaming about rebelling one day.

"My father may not have been quite so pure.

"But our founding ancestor... must have been a loyal and righteous man.

"Fine.

"That's settled.

"If my father keeps nagging after I get down there, I'll find an ancestor even higher up and let him argue the case."

Tian Wujing asked:

"Do you regret it?"

"Wujing. That's the question I should be asking you."

"You can ask now."

"No. I won't.

"I still want to live a few more days, go home, and arrange my affairs properly.

"If I don't even make it back home, believe me, that old sister-in-law of yours will visit my grave every New Year and festival and spend year after year cursing 'old beast this, old beast that' without end."

That question... even Marquis Pingxi, who was closest to Tian Wujing... had never dared ask him.

For one simple reason.

He was afraid of getting beaten.

"But Wujing... whether we regret it or not doesn't really mean much.

"Who had time to sit around thinking about regret?

"We never had that leisure.

"Ah.

"Perhaps that's exactly why the three of us made it this far.

"None of us had time for regret.

"We simply lowered our heads and kept walking forward.

"At last... we managed to make something of it.

"Now... all we can ask is that our descendants amount to something too.

"Best if they can unify the realm within three generations.

"I have confidence in Little Sixth.

"That child resembles Brother Hao far too much.

"Give him time as Emperor and he won't be any worse than Brother Hao.

"My son survived too, didn't he?

"He's obedient.

"He's no match for Little Sixth.

"Not even with that old sister-in-law of yours and my daughter helping him.

"Ah. Don't be fooled because my daughter is formidable.

"Back then, Little Sixth wasn't Emperor.

"Now he is.

"The methods available to him are completely different.

"This little family property of Prince Zhenbei Residence... sooner or later that Sixth will scheme away more than half of it.

"If he leaves us the outer frame of a regional military power, that'll already count as giving his Uncle Li plenty of face."

Destroying the Royal Court.

Severing the Barbarian people's destiny of resurgence.

That in itself reduced the Li family's future status and usefulness.

"I'm only worried about Zheng Fan.

"Wujing, have you really thought this through?

"Brother Hao died early.

"I'm clearly almost done too.

"And you... you plan to leave.

"Once all three of us are gone... heh-heh.

"Won't that bastard surnamed Zheng turn the whole sky upside down?"

"He promised."

"Promised what?"

Tian Wujing lifted one hand and pointed toward the Black Dragon Banner snapping in the wind before them.

"This banner... will not fall."

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

"Wujing, once I return, I'll force myself to linger a few more days.

"I absolutely must live long enough for news from the capital to arrive.

"If Zhao Jiulang really is dead...

"I'll be jealous of you to death.

"Zheng Fan... is a native of my Beifeng Commandery!"

From the perspective of Prince Zhenbei... men of immense ability were not especially remarkable.

Men of immense ability who still preserved a pure, sincere heart... those were truly rare.

If a clan could support such a person as he rose... that person could become the guarantee of the clan's continuation.

Otherwise, what was the point of backing some political bureaucrat who, after gaining power, simply turned around and sold you for a good price?

Tian Wujing looked at Li Liangting.

"Regret it?"

"Of course I regret it. Qian'er regrets it too.

"Heh-heh.

"Damn it.

"If I'd known, I would've grabbed Zheng Fan early and made him my son-in-law.

"I had the chance, didn't I?

"Tsk.

"In truth, there's one thing I've always regretted more.

"Sending Qian'er into the capital.

"Back then I thought Second might really have a chance.

"I thought if I did nothing and said nothing, while you, Tian Wujing, gave him a little support... wouldn't his position as Crown Prince have become completely unshakable?"

"You were his father-in-law. And didn't you also say nothing and do nothing?"

"I was embarrassed.

"Truly embarrassed.

"Ah.

"Most of all...

"I trusted Brother Hao.

"I trusted His Majesty.

"I trusted him to choose the Emperor who would be best for Great Yan's future.

"Otherwise, after the three of us struggled for most of our lives... if no one capable had taken over afterward... wouldn't everything have ended like drawing water with a bamboo basket?"

If either of these two men had possessed even a little more selfishness...

Ji Chenglang's position as Crown Prince would have been stable as a mountain.

This... was actually the fundamental reason the Crown Prince eventually failed.

He had possessed everything.

The Dragon Throne had practically been within reach.

Yet not one of the supports he should have possessed... ever truly stretched out a hand to steady him.

Yes.

The Min Clan's inheritance had been immense.

Yes.

Ji Old Sixth's intelligence bordered on the monstrous.

But before Great Yan's two Princes... he had still been nothing more than a quail.

"Perform the rites," Tian Wujing said. "We've delayed too long. Chasing Zhidu will become troublesome."

"You should've said that earlier. I wanted to delay a little longer and let that poor Young Prince run farther away. Heh-heh."

Li Liangting raised one hand.

And shouted:

"Kneel!"

Shing!

Shing!

Below the altar... every soldier of the Zhenbei Army dropped to one knee.

There was no master of ceremonies calling the rites.

No eunuch proclaiming the edict.

No impassioned speech.

Only the wind across the desert... passing through the gaps between the heads of the skull mound... playing a sound that was, in the truest sense, the wailing of ghosts and howling of wolves.

But... it was enough.

The rite ended.

Tian Wujing descended from the altar.

His Pixiu came to him on its own.

It knew where it was about to follow its master.

It had one small regret.

It had never received armor as handsome as the magnificent barding worn by Marquis Pingxi's Pixiu.

Tian Wujing mounted.

Then... eight hundred Zhenbei riders stepped from the ranks.

Every one of them was a free, unattached man with no elderly parents to support and no children waiting at home.

The sort people described as: one mouth fed, the whole household full.

Seated on his Pixiu, Tian Wujing kept his back toward Li Liangting and raised one hand in farewell.

Then... the Pixiu began to run.

Eight hundred riders followed close behind.

Westward.

Li Liangting's face held no grief at parting.

Only a smile.

He was genuinely happy.

Because he knew that if Tian Wujing returned east... he would either lock himself once more inside the deep courtyards of his residence and endure endless solitude... or kill himself.

Death was not frightening.

Li Liangting believed Tian Wujing had never feared death.

But living when one wished for death... that was the true torture of the human world.

Now... this was already the best possible ending.

And the most fitting time to leave.

What needed its curtain lowered... had lowered it.

What needed ending... had ended.

And those who needed to leave... could finally leave without restraint.

From this day onward...

Great Yan would have no Prince of Jingnan.

Prince Zhenbei tucked both hands into his sleeves.

Like some wealthy old gentleman of Beifeng Commandery, he leaned against the flagpole of the Black Dragon Banner.

He watched the flying dust in the west recede farther and farther.

Then, in a voice that was not loud... he called softly:

"Wujing.

"Farewell."

[End of Chapter 729]