Chapter 883: Out of the Mouths of Babes

“He slaughtered Liang?”

“Father, only the capital.”

“If a country’s capital is erased from the map, can that country still continue to exist?”

“Yes. Our Chu can. Qian can too.”

“...” Xie Zhuyang.

The father was badly choked by his son’s answer. After a moment, he stubbornly retorted:

“How can those be the same? Liang is only a small state!”

Xie Yu’an stretched, pulled an orange from his pocket, and began peeling it.

Xie Zhuyang continued:

“A great state can at least be called a centipede that remains twitching even after death. In a small state, more than half the country’s essence is concentrated in its capital. Once that is gone, can the state truly continue? More importantly, breaking a city and destroying a city are two different things. That time in Ying Capital, Old Fourth Xiong was plainly planning to set up a new stove elsewhere. He moved everything he valued out long beforehand. As for Shangjing, heh, the Qian are rich. Losing one Shangjing at most makes the central court stop functioning, but if you ask me, the people down in Jiangnan are probably delighted to see it happen.”

“Father, what exactly are you trying to say?”

“You still don’t understand what your father is saying?”

“You have to give it some structure first so your son can follow along. You ramble all over the place and then insist I force the thread together myself?”

“You’re my son. One day when I’m lying in bed drooling, you’ll still have to wipe my mouth for me. And now you already can’t follow what I’m saying?”

“Fine, I’ll follow. Father, are you afraid?”

Xie Zhuyang, who had been speaking with such swagger only moments earlier, suddenly fell silent.

Then he quietly nodded.

“Mm.”

Xie Yu’an held the freshly peeled orange segment to his own father’s lips.

“Father, open your mouth.”

“I’ve got too much internal heat!”

“If you refuse the orange your son feeds you now, then when you’re old I won’t feed you medicine either.”

Xie Zhuyang opened his mouth and ate the orange.

Xie Yu’an dusted off his hands.

“Father, being afraid is normal.”

As he spoke, Xie Yu’an stretched again. Before him rose the magnificent Qishan Mountains.

“When the late Emperor of Yan was alive, he swallowed the lands of the Three Jin, both suppressed and pacified the snowfields, then fought a full national war against our Chu and took Zhennan Pass. Before he died, he even trampled the Barbarian Royal Court flat. For the State of Yan, he already pulled out the hardest and most painful thorns. His successor may look as though he inherited a shattered board, but so long as he can endure and rebuild it, Yan will dominate the north of all Xia. There is no great threat on its flanks, and the road south will lie wide open. So the hardest part was really that stretch of time. No matter how violently the banner shook, so long as the pole did not snap and the banner remained standing, then standing was enough. Thinking about it now, perhaps all of this truly is fate. We spent so much effort and even committed twenty thousand elite sons of our own clan. The Qian bled heavily too. At last, in Liang, we managed to grind away Li Fusheng and that elite Zhenbei Army force beneath him. We thought we had finally pulled the situation back a little. Who would have guessed Prince Pingxi would charge directly into Qian and break Shangjing? Father, it’s difficult now. Truly difficult. At present, neither Great Chu nor Qian has the strength to go north again and seek trouble with the Yan. Going up there now would simply be volunteering to die. But if we do nothing and merely wait, then once that tiger recovers its strength, it will be a fierce tiger descending the mountain.”

“I understand the situation,” Xie Zhuyang said. “But what can we do now?”

“Nothing. We have done all that human effort can do. Now we listen to Heaven. Looking at things today, the new Yan Emperor truly does have real affection for Prince Pingxi. Perhaps this will become another celebrated tale like the late Yan Emperor and those two Princes. So once we return, we might as well beg Great Chu’s shamans to work harder, then ask Qian’s Qi Refiners to put in some effort too. Everyone can shut their doors, fold paper effigies, and concentrate on seeing whether they can curse one of those two men, either the Emperor or Prince Pingxi, to death.”

“My son, are you serious?”

“If we can no longer ask the people, then I suppose we can only ask ghosts and gods. Thinking about it now, perhaps Master Cang in Qian wasn’t entirely wasting his effort after all.”

“My son, you aren’t ill, are you?”

“No, Father. We’ll just make do and keep living. There are still several years before anything decisive happens. During these years, we do what we should do. When Old Fourth Xiong wants face, we give it to him. There’s no need for the Xie Clan and the Xiong Clan to fight anymore either. Even if we seized that seat, our backsides probably wouldn’t be warm before the histories had to record our downfall. Terrible value. Qian and Chu survived the age of the late Yan Emperor and the two great Princes. At worst, we work hard and endure through the next generation too. If the generation after that still produces the same arrangement... then it’s Heaven’s will. Heaven’s will. We surrender!”

Xie Yu’an folded his arms and, fuming, kicked at a rock in front of him.

Who could have known that the rock was embedded deep in the ground rather than being loose?

“Hiss... that hurts!”

Xie Zhuyang sighed, walked over, and smashed the rock apart with one punch.

“There. Father smashed the bad rock for you. My son doesn’t hurt now. Doesn’t hurt.”

“...” Xie Yu’an.

“...” Xie Zhuyang.

Because this son of his had been astonishingly precocious from childhood, Xie Zhuyang had actually enjoyed very little of the ordinary feeling of being a father.

At this moment, however, Xie Yu’an lowered his head and rested it against his father’s shoulder. His body even trembled faintly with suppressed sobs.

“Father, when I was little, I once had a dream. In the dream, I helped you. I helped the Xie Clan take the Xiong Clan’s imperial throne.”

Xie Zhuyang reached out and gently patted his son’s back.

“My son, dreams have everything.”

“Then Father married a woman from the Xiong Clan. Father, guess who she was?”

Xie Zhuyang continued patting his son’s back and said with great satisfaction:

“My son, you worked hard. Even in your dreams, you still remembered to find your father a woman.”

“Heh. And then that woman somehow gave birth to a younger brother for me. How she managed to give birth to him, your son still can’t understand.”

“Uh...”

Xie Zhuyang pursed his lips.

In truth, it was not as though he had never had doubts about whether he should have more sons.

But his present son was simply too normal.

Normal enough that the moment one began suspecting and investigating, everything might point directly back toward him.

Sometimes Xie Zhuyang felt melancholy over the question:

What was the point of having sons?

To inherit the family foundation?

If inheritance was the goal, one son with a handle was enough.

To make the clan prosper?

If that was the goal, then even if he fathered another hundred sons with handles and bundled them together, they might still not match this one son standing before him.

Whether in affection or reason, this son was already excellent enough.

With one son like this, Xie Zhuyang was entirely capable of understanding everything and pretending he understood nothing.

But this...

“Then somehow, Father suddenly started liking my younger brother more. You began changing this, changing that, trying every way you could think of to push him upward and make me, the elder brother, support him.”

“Was your father really that stupid?”

The hand Xie Zhuyang had been using to pat his son’s back paused slightly.

“It wasn’t about whether Father was that stupid. That woman wanted it. She was extremely capable. Once you married her and had a child with her, our Xie Clan finally possessed proper legitimacy in Great Chu.”

Xie Zhuyang opened his mouth.

“The biggest thing was this: before sitting on the imperial throne, it did not matter much. At worst, you were merely head of the Xie Clan. A local emperor and a true Emperor are still very different things. I think once Father actually sat in that chair, you began finding your own son less pleasing to the eye. Rather than say I was fighting with my younger brother, or that woman was scheming behind my back, it would be more accurate to say it was Father who was competing with me.”

“What belongs to your father doesn’t belong to you? What belongs to the old man doesn’t belong to his son? What would we possibly be competing over?”

“But Father, people change.”

“At my age, your father can still...”

“You changed. You truly changed. In the dream.”

“All right, all right. In the dream. Then what did my son do?”

“Palace coup. Heh-heh.”

“You killed your father in the dream?”

“No. I kept you in comfort. You became Emperor Emeritus for a long time, and later you fathered lots and lots of younger brothers and sisters for me.”

“Oh. That’s not bad. Thank you, my son.”

“But Father, why is reality so different from the dream now? When I had that dream as a child, everything inside it felt exactly like reality.”

“It was a dream, after all.”

“Yes. A dream, after all.”

Xie Yu’an suddenly burst into loud sobs.

“But now I don’t even have the dream anymore!”

Xie Zhuyang comforted his son for a long time.

At last, his lips trembled slightly and curiosity crept onto his face.

“Who was that young woman in your dream?”

“Father really wants to know?”

“I’m a little curious. A woman capable of turning me and my son against one another... just how captivating must she have been?”

“Father, she’s married now.”

“So what if she’s married? Sometimes married is even better. You brat, you don’t understand.”

“Father, it was only a dream.”

“Your father is only curious. It’s making my heart itch. Let’s put grand affairs aside for the moment. The wind is blowing the wrong way right now, just as you said earlier. Let Old Fourth Xiong keep sitting in that position first. But small matters? Father and son can still clink cups over those, can’t we? For example, how about we snatch back a young woman first?”

“Father...”

“What?”

“You really want to go snatch her?”

“Heh-heh. If she’s a Chu woman, even if she’s a Xiong-clan woman, do you really think your father no longer has the standing to demand her?”

“But the man she married is waiting for you too.”

“Waiting for me?”

“Yes. He can hardly wait for Father to show up at his door.”

“Hahahaha! What a joke. Who has such a big mouth? Even Old Fourth Xiong has to curry favor with us now.”

“He’d love nothing more than for you to come knocking and fill the one empty seat in his four-man set.”

“...” Xie Zhuyang.

...

“Your Highness the Crown Prince, Your Highness the Heir, at least put on another layer.”

Eunuch Huang carefully followed behind the two young masters. An outer robe hung over each of his arms.

Tian Tian had just finished running atop the walls of South Gate Pass with Ji Chuanye.

Steam rose from both children’s heads.

Ever since he began living with Tian Tian, Ji Chuanye had followed Tian Tian’s daily routine. He could not become as solidly built as this elder brother of his, but he truly was no longer as frail as before.

As for Eunuch Huang, he had served as Army Supervisor during Prince Pingxi’s expedition.

At first, he followed Prince Pingxi out of South Gate Pass. Later, he accompanied the Blind Man while the latter operated in Zhao. Afterward he was reassigned to South Gate Pass to supervise logistics.

Although Eunuch Huang had once taken up a saber and killed men, he personally still preferred this kind of comfortable rear-area posting where he could quietly accumulate experience and seniority.

Victory reports had been arriving from the front without pause.

Eunuch Huang had spent many happy days over them.

Even now, he sometimes woke laughing from his dreams.

Once the Prince returned in triumph, he could go back to the palace.

After returning, his status would be transcendent.

Even if his formal rank could not compare with Eunuch Wei or Eunuch Zhang, his position would genuinely be special.

Why bother comparing anymore?

No comparison.

No comparison.

“Little brother, here.”

Tian Tian reached into an arrow tower and pulled out two cucumbers.

They were emerald green, with ice crystals still clinging to them.

Ice in summer was not cheap.

At the sight of them, Eunuch Huang unconsciously licked his lips.

The two children each took one cucumber and ate with tremendous enjoyment.

The only problem was that the cucumbers were no longer especially crisp.

“Elder Brother Tian Tian, when do you think we can really go campaigning with Godfather?”

Tian Tian shook his head.

“I don’t know either. When we’re a little older, probably.”

“How much longer do we have to wait?”

“Maybe until we’re about as old as Big Brother Dahu,” Tian Tian analyzed.

“Oh.”

Ji Chuanye looked disappointed.

At that moment, Eunuch Huang spoke ingratiatingly:

“Your Highness the Crown Prince, in the future you will be remaining in the palace and devising strategies from within. Great Yan—”

But Ji Chuanye shook his head.

“I don’t want to hide in the back. In the future I want to go to the front with Elder Brother Tian Tian and kill enemies.”

Tian Tian reached out and, imitating the way Zheng Fan usually patted his head, rubbed the Crown Prince’s head.

“Little brother, you have to be sensible.”

“Like Imperial Grandfather and Father, living in the imperial palace all the time? How boring would that be? Father even held me while sitting on the dragon throne before. Honestly, it’s hard and digs into you. It isn’t comfortable.”

“Does it taste good?”

Tian Tian suddenly asked.

Ji Chuanye thought about it very seriously.

“I’ve never bitten it.”

“Next time you go home, bite it once. Then tell me what it tastes like.”

“It’s made of gold. Probably doesn’t taste good,” Ji Chuanye said.

“Oh.”

Tian Tian responded with faint disappointment.

“Next time Elder Brother Tian Tian comes back to the capital with me, I’ll take Elder Brother to sit on the dragon throne.”

“...” Eunuch Huang.

Tian Tian shook his head.

“No. Father told me you can come to our home, but I can’t go to yours.”

“Why? Mother said when she was little and still lived at home, she loved visiting her friends. When you visit someone, their family brings out all their tasty food for you.”

“Father said that if I go to your house, he’s afraid I won’t be able to come back.”

“...” Eunuch Huang.

“Why? The imperial palace isn’t even as fun as Prince Pingxi Residence.”

Tian Tian turned and looked at Ji Chuanye.

“I don’t want to leave Father.”

“Actually, I don’t want to either.” Ji Chuanye shook his head. “Father isn’t as good to me as Godfather is. Father is always busy. Every time I see him in the palace, he has to squeeze out a little time, and then he goes back to being busy again. Everyone below says Father manages ten thousand affairs a day and is terribly busy. I used to believe them. Then I saw Godfather and started feeling Father was lying to me.”

“But you still have to go back.”

“I’m not going back.”

“If you don’t go back, Eunuch Huang will catch you and take you back.”

“...” Eunuch Huang.

Ji Chuanye turned to look at Eunuch Huang.

A smile instantly blossomed across Eunuch Huang’s face like a chrysanthemum.

“Your Highness the Crown Prince, this slave would not dare. This slave would never dare.”

Ji Chuanye did not make things difficult for him. Instead, he continued talking to himself.

“Actually, I don’t miss Father that much. Mostly I miss Mother. Mother probably misses me a lot too.”

“What about your younger brothers and sisters?”

“They’re too little. I don’t like playing with them.”

“Then that’s easy. Bring your mother here. We can all live together at Prince Pingxi Residence.”

“That’s right! Great idea!”

“...” Eunuch Huang.

Cold sweat had already soaked through Eunuch Huang’s clothes, but he still had to force his expression not to change.

He was genuinely afraid.

Right now the Crown Prince was still young, so perhaps none of this mattered.

But suppose years from now, after His Highness grew up, he woke from a nap and suddenly remembered today?

Remembered the words spoken here?

Then remembered that Eunuch Huang had been standing beside them listening?

That...

Fortunately, the two children changed topics again.

Tian Tian waved the half-eaten cucumber in his hand.

“I’m really worried Father will finish fighting all the wars. Then when I grow up, there won’t be any wars left for me to fight.”

“Elder Brother Tian Tian, don’t worry. If there aren’t any wars left when we grow up, then I’ll play war with you.”

Thud!

Eunuch Huang finally could not endure any more of these words from innocent children and dropped directly to his knees.

The two children looked at him.

Eunuch Huang forced out an agonized smile.

“My two young masters, this slave just remembered there are still matters below that need handling. The Prince will soon return in triumph. This slave needs to go check the preparations. This slave withdraws. This slave withdraws.”

Eunuch Huang practically rolled and crawled his way off the wall.

The moment he reached the bottom, he found a whole crowd of people running around in panic.

The instant they saw him, they hurried over to report.

“Eunuch, disaster! Disaster!”

“Something terrible has happened, Eunuch!”

“What happened?”

“The imperial gifts are gone! They’re gone!”

Imperial gifts?

Eunuch Huang immediately realized what they meant.

Then he remembered the two frozen cucumbers Tian Tian had taken out and eaten together with the Crown Prince.

He waved irritably.

“It’s nothing. Nothing. Go do your work. This eunuch knows what happened.”

The imperial gifts had been bestowed by the Emperor for the triumphant Prince in the first place.

Now one had been eaten by each family’s son.

What did that matter?

Eunuch Huang returned to his quarters, removed his clothes, wiped himself down, then changed into a fresh set.

These two young masters were truly difficult to serve.

If only he had insisted on remaining at the front back then.

Ai.

Being frightened like this day after day had to be shaving years off his life.

At that moment, the two children, having finished their cucumbers, grunted and puffed as they climbed to the highest point of the watchtower while a group of guards protected them from a distance.

Ji Chuanye was a little afraid.

Tian Tian, on the other hand, was completely fearless.

“Elder Brother Tian Tian, it’s really high. I’m scared.”

“Close your eyes and hug Elder Brother. Then you won’t be scared.”

“Oh.”

Ji Chuanye wrapped his arms around Tian Tian’s waist.

Tian Tian tried moving closer to the edge.

The Crown Prince followed step by step while holding on to him.

All around them, the guards nearly exploded from terror.

Some immediately ran down to prepare to catch them below.

Others began scaling the walls of the watchtower directly.

“Little brother, open your eyes. Look!”

The Crown Prince opened his eyes.

From the highest point in South Gate Pass, he could see dark clouds slowly advancing from the south.

It was the triumphant army returning!

“Little brother, in the future the one returning from war will be me.”

“Then I... then I’ll stand here, very, very high, waiting for Elder Brother.”

“Heh-heh. Good.”

“And I’ll bring Elder Brother’s favorite food too.”

“Mm? My favorite food?”

“I’ll go steal Father’s dragon throne and bring it here for Elder Brother to eat.”

[End of Chapter 883]