Chapter 878: Prince Pingxi Repays Resentment with Virtue

“Mother, eat something.”

Zhao Yuannian brought over a bowl of noodles and placed it before the Princess Consort of Prince Fu.

She shook her head.

“My son should eat first. Mother isn’t hungry.”

“Your son already ate. I had enough today.”

Zhao Yuannian lifted the noodles slightly with his chopsticks. Scallions and cilantro could be seen mixed among them.

The Princess Consort accepted the bowl and began eating.

Zhao Yuannian watched his mother eat, a smile appearing on his face.

After a while, the Princess Consort grew a little embarrassed. Even in later generations, being stared at while eating could make a woman self-conscious, still more so now among the truly respectable official families of Qian who valued ritual propriety.

Even if the household had fallen, even if Prince Fu Residence itself no longer existed, certain habits could not be changed overnight.

Zhao Yuannian immediately shifted his gaze away.

“The Yan sent someone over.”

“Mm?”

The Princess Consort looked curious. A little excited, but more than anything, uneasy.

When Prince Pingxi led his troops in the breakout, Prince Fu Residence had too many women to charge through the formation with him, so they were left behind.

When Qian troops entered the Yan camp afterward, what they found was the entire Prince Fu household dressed in formal robes, waiting.

At present, they had been placed inside a military fort north of the Bian River.

Outside the fort, one could see many displaced civilians. Even though the Imperial Guard had already crossed the Bian River and recovered Shangjing, these people remained nervous and did not dare return immediately.

To say Shangjing had been washed into bare white earth was an exaggeration.

But this was a capital with an enormous population. For several days after the Yan broke in, morality vanished, law vanished, fear vanished.

Nobody needed to push the city into madness. All on its own, the enormous city began raising venomous insects inside a jar.

Arson. Murder. Robbery. Looting. Every evil imaginable.

That had become the true face of human nature during those days.

Zhao Yuannian had overheard the Imperial Guard soldiers responsible for watching them discussing the situation, but exactly what Shangjing looked like now, he himself did not know.

“Mother, are you worried?”

Zhao Yuannian sounded as though he were deliberately teasing her.

It was not ridicule. Nor mockery.

It was simply a mother and son who, even under circumstances like these, still possessed enough spirit to joke with one another and loosen some of the pressure hanging over them.

Zhao Yuannian had genuinely matured a great deal.

Years ago, when Zheng Fan first entered Chuzhou City, Zhao Yuannian had just lost his father. At the time he had resembled a bewildered little milk dog, completely at a loss before Zheng Fan, who was then only a Garrison Commander.

When Zheng Fan entered Chuzhou this time, Zhao Yuannian had become a young wolfhound.

But before Zheng Fan, already Prince Pingxi, young men from the entire “dog family” simply did not amount to much.

Now, trapped as a prisoner, Zhao Yuannian had somehow become considerably more easygoing.

Set aside his practical ability for the moment. In terms of tempering his state of mind, he had already reached a very high level.

And once the latter existed, the former often improved with half the effort.

“Mother isn’t worried he will forget us,” the Princess Consort said. “A man like him doesn’t actually care that much about us. Precisely because he doesn’t care very much, he won’t forget.”

“Mother’s words are very profound.”

“If it were merely affection between a man and woman, then when necessary, anyone can cut it off decisively. Put that among ordinary men and women and people call it ‘since ancient times, the sentimental suffer from parting.’ Put it among the powerful and they say ‘a man who accomplishes great affairs does not fuss over trifles,’ then praise him for having grand vision. Mother doesn’t have the face to claim there is some grand romance between me and him. At most, we are one tiny piece of his face. And a man like him will not willingly let his own face fall to the ground.”

“That’s true enough. The moment the Yan envoy arrived, our food stopped being docked. They even restored the full ration.”

The Princess Consort finished the entire bowl of noodles. Not even the soup remained.

“Mother, want more?”

“Mm. Mother needs to get a little fatter.”

...

“The Emperor has gained weight.”

Han Sui had just returned from Zixia Palace when he said this to Zhao Mugou, who stood before him.

“Gained weight?”

Zhao Mugou froze, then immediately understood.

He meant swelling.

“Yes. The country has suffered such a catastrophe. Shangjing was broken. The central government was devastated. What this old man worried about most was His Majesty’s dragon body. Great Qian is, in the end, His Majesty’s Great Qian. No matter what happens, so long as His Majesty can endure, Great Qian can endure.”

Zhao Mugou nodded.

“His Majesty is Great Qian’s hope now.”

Grandfather and grandson looked at one another.

The corners of both their mouths curved slightly.

This was Zixia Palace, an imperial summer retreat outside Shangjing.

The Imperial Guard had already recovered Shangjing, but the Emperor’s traveling court had not moved back inside.

Because the city simply could not be looked at.

That magnificent capital, that splendid imperial palace, the solemn Imperial Ancestral Temple—at present, everywhere lay scars and devastation.

Still, Zixia Palace was Zixia Palace.

It was not the military camp where grandfather and grandson had previously been staying.

At a moment this delicate, the slightest movement or whisper could be enough to make the Emperor, whose emotions were already stretched close to the limit, behave in ways completely unlike his normal character.

Without any doubt, Silver-Armored Guard eyes and ears stood outside this room.

“Heir Prince, what do you plan to do next?” Han Sui asked.

“I... I don’t know,” Zhao Mugou replied.

He truly did not know.

This was not deliberate stupidity.

Remain here? Serve the Emperor? Help settle the refugees and restore Shangjing?

What are you plotting!

Go home? Return to Prince Rui Residence?

Shangjing has become like this and you hurry home?

What are you plotting!

Most of the time, the essence of the problem did not lie in what you actually did.

It lay in whether the ruler’s suspicion of you had already crossed a certain line.

“Stay,” Han Sui said. “When this old man saw His Majesty today, His Majesty even mentioned you. He said Prince Rui Residence is loyal to Great Qian.”

As he spoke, Han Sui lifted the lid of his teacup and set it to one side.

“Remain here. Fulfill the duty of a feudal Prince of the imperial clan. Back when Emperor Taizu enfeoffed the feudal Princes, their original purpose was to support and protect the state. Cough, cough, cough...”

Han Sui coughed for a while, then placed the teacup beside its lid.

Zhao Mugou understood.

He himself should seek permission to remain.

At the same time, he needed his father to come to Shangjing.

But Prince Rui had been bedridden with illness for years. How could his body endure that sort of jolting journey?

Still, he had to come.

Prince Rui Residence represented the direct line of Emperor Taizu.

Now the country had fallen into disaster.

It echoed the hardship Emperor Taizu and his brothers had endured when founding the state.

At a moment like this, the two imperial lines ought to stand together and give people political hope and something to yearn toward.

Of course, once his father reached Shangjing after all the exhaustion of the journey, he probably would not survive very long.

For a gravely ill man, nothing was more dangerous than changing surroundings and being put through repeated exertion.

That was common sense.

Zhao Mugou respected his father deeply.

He believed that once his letter arrived, his father would certainly drag his sick body here, and he believed his father would understand the deeper meaning.

This was not “unfilial.”

It was fate.

Besides, the arrangement had been given by Zhao Mugou’s own grandfather.

His father’s biological father.

“This old man proposed to His Majesty that you go to Yao City and bring the Crown Prince back.”

Zhao Mugou’s expression grew solemn.

When the Yan broke into Shangjing, they captured the Empress and many imperial clansmen and great nobles. They also took many imperial Princes and palace maids.

The Seventh Prince died in battle inside Shangjing.

He had tried to reverse the tide. Tried to defend the capital.

Then the Jingnan Army cavalry personally led by Chen Yang charged straight through him and ground him into meat paste.

The Crown Prince, however, had escaped the imperial palace early.

He fled Shangjing, then traveled to Yao City, a satellite city south of Shangjing.

The common people believed the Emperor had died in battle.

Great Qian’s sky had collapsed.

And the Crown Prince, together with many ministers who fled alongside him to Yao City, believed the same thing.

Otherwise, how could anyone explain why Yan troops had somehow reached Shangjing despite the Emperor personally leading an army to block them farther north?

At the time, wind and rain battered every direction. People’s hearts had scattered.

Then came one familiar sentence:

A state cannot go one day without a sovereign.

And so, in Yao City, the Crown Prince ascended the throne.

After ascending, he issued three decrees.

The first proclaimed national mourning for the Emperor. This was necessary to legitimize his own enthronement. He had been Crown Prince. After the Emperor died, he naturally inherited the throne of Great Qian.

The second decree, issued in the name of the new sovereign, sent men to negotiate with the Yan inside Shangjing and demanded that the Yan not harm “Our” people.

The third ordered the commanderies south of the Great River to rescue the throne and defend the state.

The first decree was nonsense.

The second, even more useless than the first.

The third, however, carried an extremely clear political intention.

Ordering the southern commanderies to rescue the throne essentially meant: prepare yourselves.

If the situation worsens, this newly enthroned Emperor will probably make a “southern tour.”

In other words, the new sovereign had already prepared himself to abandon at least the northern territories, which at the time appeared hopelessly ruined, and go south to establish a southern court.

Once everything was arranged, the Crown Prince and his new court waited slowly amid panic and nervous anticipation.

What they eventually received was news that the Emperor had returned at the head of the Imperial Guard and recovered Shangjing.

“...” The Crown Prince.

“...” The ministers who had followed the dragon.

This joke had become a little too large.

When the Crown Prince heard the news, the first sentence that escaped his mouth was:

“How is Imperial Father not dead?”

As for the Emperor, after suffering one blow after another and seeing the condition of Shangjing with his own eyes, he had already been holding a mass of depression inside his chest.

Then he learned the Crown Prince had actually ascended the throne.

Not only had the living Emperor failed to become Emperor Emeritus, he had skipped straight past that stage and become the “late Emperor.”

His Majesty fainted on the spot.

This was no longer something any enlightened ruler could simply endure with calm composure.

Any Emperor in the world, faced with this situation after suffering such a chain of blows, would have found it impossible to remain serene.

Han Sui picked up the lid of his teacup.

He tapped it lightly against the cup itself, from top to bottom, one small tap after another.

Then he placed the lid on the table.

Zhao Mugou watched and understood.

Han Sui was telling him that this trip to Yao City would not be especially dangerous.

The main point was to provide the people around the Crown Prince with a stairway down.

The Crown Prince’s faction in Yao City possessed only officials and guards who had fled Shangjing, together with a few scattered routed troops and refugees.

From the beginning, they had been prepared to flee south the instant the Yan showed any sign of paying attention to them.

Their actual strength right now was extremely thin.

The Emperor, by contrast, still controlled two hundred thousand troops.

The elite Qian force in Liang should also be returning before long.

The Three Frontiers remained loyal to His Majesty.

Legitimacy remained with the Emperor.

Because so long as the Emperor had not died, the Crown Prince’s enthronement was genuine usurpation and rebellion.

If the Crown Prince possessed the Emperor’s military strength and the Emperor had only the Crown Prince’s little collection of men, then everyone might simply pinch their noses and accept the new situation.

After all, the Emperor had suffered the catastrophic disgrace of losing the capital.

Abdicating in responsibility for the disaster might even sound reasonable.

But the problem was, the Crown Prince was isolated and weak.

What game could he possibly play?

Even if father and son publicly performed a reconciliation, embraced one another, wept over the state’s catastrophe, and claimed everything had been a misunderstanding, what happened afterward?

Who born into an imperial family was truly stupid?

Still, this mission of pacification was not actually aimed at the Crown Prince.

The Crown Prince’s political life was finished.

But the people around him still had a chance.

They could explain.

And there were even two Chancellors among them.

Zhao Mugou’s identity was perfectly suited to the job.

Once he reached Yao City and offered them a stairway down, the Crown Prince’s own wishes could effectively be ignored.

The moment the people around him decided to follow that stairway, the farce of the “new Emperor” would inevitably end.

And Zhao Mugou himself would gain enormous political prestige.

To outsiders, this journey would appear unbelievably dangerous.

In reality, the risk was low.

And hidden inside it was an extraordinarily profitable political gamble.

Then, if Prince Rui came to Shangjing and died, sympathy for Emperor Taizu’s line, respect for Prince Rui Residence’s public loyalty and sacrifice for the state, all the goodwill from the common people and scholar-official families, would gather around Zhao Mugou.

“I’ll go,” Zhao Mugou said.

Han Sui nodded in satisfaction.

Then Zhao Mugou asked:

“Those imperial relatives and nobles captured in Shangjing, will the Yan return them?”

Han Sui smiled.

“If you come back alive from Yao City, then that mission will also be yours.”

Han Sui spoke openly and without embarrassment.

If someone had to be sent on a mission that might get him killed, send this heir of a feudal Prince.

If he survived once, surely his luck would not remain that good a second time?

Even if these words reached the Emperor’s ears, Han Sui could still stand perfectly upright and justify himself.

After all, in this world, the only people who knew the true relationship across these three generations were the grandfather, father, and grandson themselves.

“Fine. For Great Qian, I am willing.”

Han Sui’s gaze flicked twice toward the window.

Then he said calmly:

“The Yan demand appears very simple. That Prince Pingxi seems quite the sentimental man. He specifically named only Prince Fu Residence in exchange. Most likely, what he truly wants is merely the Princess Consort of Prince Fu.”

“They go too far,” Zhao Mugou said. “Using women for exchange... it is shameful...”

The words were half genuine and half performance.

They could be understood as Zhao Mugou’s frustration at the present national humiliation.

And they could also display the youthful impulsiveness expected of a “child.”

A small complaint.

A little defiance toward one’s elders.

Sometimes that made those above feel safer because it looked more real.

“Endure humiliation for the state,” Han Sui said.

Then he added:

“This old man suspects that particular Princess Consort of Prince Fu is rather eager to go herself.”

...

“She can’t wait to go, can she?”

The Emperor lay on his bed.

Faced with the report from his subordinate, his swollen face twitched slightly.

Not from anger.

After the entire situation had collapsed again and again, this little matter between the Princess Consort of Prince Fu and Prince Pingxi barely counted as an appetizer.

“Your Majesty, please take care of your dragon body,” Li Xundao said.

“We understand. Do not worry, beloved minister. We do not possess many strengths. But in one respect, We are at least superior to that old opponent Yan once had. Our body is stronger than his. Heh-heh-heh.”

The Emperor raised a hand and touched his own face, then lowered it again.

“Xundao, you handle the affairs outside for Us. We need to properly nurture this body and recover.”

As he spoke, the Emperor glanced toward the attendant beside him.

The attendant stepped forward and presented an imperial decree to Li Xundao.

Li Xundao opened it.

It was a decree of posthumous vindication.

“Do not think Us petty. We decided upon this decree long ago. It was absolutely not written now merely to win your gratitude. Look at the date yourself.”

Li Xundao looked at the inscription.

“This decree was personally written by Us soon after We first ascended the throne,” the Emperor said. Then he sighed. “How should We put this? The world says Emperor Renzong was unmatched in benevolence. But seven or eight tenths of the chronic sicknesses afflicting Great Qian today originated during Renzong’s reign.

“If We too had been able to sit with folded hands, govern like a clay idol, pursue personal ease, and leave behind a beautiful reputation in the histories, perhaps that would have been fine. But he enjoyed the blessings, and the hardships his descendants had to bear.

“The truth of what happened to the Tattooed-Face Chancellor, both court and countryside already understand. We originally intended to vindicate the Tattooed-Face Chancellor immediately after ascending the throne. But at that time, Chancellor Han and the other righteous worthies from Renzong’s reign were still standing in court. We still needed to move cautiously around them. How could We dare produce this decree?

“Later, once We had somewhat stabilized Ourselves upon the dragon throne, We discovered that vindicating the Tattooed-Face Chancellor did not merely mean confronting a few Chancellors. It meant confronting Great Qian’s century-old tradition of elevating civil officials and suppressing military men.

“Then, after great difficulty, We finally drove Chancellor Han and the others back to their hometowns. After great difficulty, we finally waited until you came down from the mountain. We thought this great victory could be used to straighten out everything that needed straightening. But who could have known...”

“Your Majesty’s intentions, this subject understands.”

“Xundao, We are too tired to pretend before you anymore. With the situation as it is now, We fear We can no longer clean up this mess alone. We can only rely upon you. The court, the military, this shattered northern country—you must put it all back together for Us. We will hide from the wind for a while and recover Our health.”

“Many thanks for Your Majesty’s trust. This subject is willing to exhaust every ounce of strength and die only after the task is done.”

“Fine. But We’ll say the ugly words first. If the day truly comes when the situation stabilizes, the country settles, and the Yan ultimately fail to march south, once We think the time is right, We will still slaughter the donkey after it finishes grinding.”

Li Xundao nodded.

“As it should be.”

“But We won’t kill you. Once worldly affairs are pacified, go back up the mountain. If We need you again, come down again. That way, ruler and minister can still part and meet in harmony.”

“Good.”

At that moment, an attendant entered from outside and reported:

“Your Majesty, the Yan have sent another envoy.”

...

“Yan envoy, that height of yours really is something. Have you Yan run out of men?”

Xue San stood there.

He watched a Qian official use personal mockery with the fearless spirit of a martyr, desperately trying to recover some tiny shred of dignity for Great Qian.

To be frank, it was a little funny.

And a little pitiful.

“Oh? Prince Pingxi Residence has a rule. Everything has to match the status of the other side. When we send an envoy to a great state, we pick someone tall. When we send one to a small state, we pick someone short. With Qian the way it is now, sending me already counts as choosing someone tall.”

“You...”

Xue San rolled his eyes.

Your father here was standing perfectly peacefully.

Yet you insisted on building me a stage so I could perform “Yan Zi’s Mission to Chu.”

“What message does Prince Pingxi have?” the official asked.

Li Xundao walked in.

The other officials stepped back.

Xue San clasped both hands behind himself.

“Our Prince has a message. He likes the Princess Consort of Prince Fu nice and full. If you Qian people fail to feed and serve her properly, and when you send her back, she’s lost even a few liang of flesh... heh-heh. Our Prince is benevolent. He likes repaying resentment with virtue. So when we send your Empress back, we’ll hang a few extra liang of meat on her. For free.”

[End of Chapter 878]