Fish Meat – Chapter 64

The Ninth Year of Shenchu

Needle Tip versus Wheat Awning (Part 1)

In the Da Yu capital city, Runing.

As dawn was about to break, the spring rain that had fallen all night just stopped, leaving the bluestone pavement slippery though not waterlogged. A rider on a fast horse was hidden in the thick darkness of the night, galloping along Zhuque Avenue towards the main gate of the Forbidden Garden. The white breath exhaled from the horse’s nostrils continuously merged into the fog, while the main gate of the Forbidden Garden, Yong’an Gate, like a fierce beast crouching in the black night, swallowed the fast horse along with the messenger in an instant.

The messenger on horseback hurried back from the north, his armor seemingly still carrying the cold frost and aura of blood from the north.

According to the laws of Da Yu, galloping on horseback within the Forbidden Garden is a capital offense punishable by beheading, but the messenger, holding the emperor’s document, traveled unimpeded, and no one dared to stop him. Galloping all the way to the front of Taiji Hall, the messenger dismounted, his legs weak, his body swaying but barely avoiding a fall, supporting himself with one hand on the ground while quickly straightening up and running to deliver the urgent letter to the eunuch who was already waiting at the steps. The eunuch received the bamboo tube containing the urgent letter, holding it with both hands, and ran into the hall, presenting it to the emperor.

The hall doors opened, and the warm glow of candlelight spilled out, illuminating the stone steps but not piercing through the fog born of the cold spring night rain.

Emperor Li Ju sat behind the desk, with eunuchs on both sides holding lamps and serving tea. Under the candlelight, Li Ju’s facial features were not clearly visible, except for a pair of eyes, inherited from the late emperor and very similar to Li Yanyi’s, which shone brightly in the shadows. Unlike Li Yanyi, Li Ju’s eyes had less of the sharp edge of determination and more of a somber quality.

Upon seeing the messenger enter, Li Ju immediately said without waiting for a salute, “No need to salute, quickly bring the letter to me.”

“Yes!” responded the eunuch, placing the bamboo tube, still cool to the touch, on the desk.

Li Ju extracted the cloth from inside the bamboo tube, which bore only two lines: “Planted in the first month, harvested in May. After harvesting, its stalks and roots regrow, ripening in September.”

These two lines are from 《Guang Zhi》, and they appear to describe the planting of rice, but they were actually a secret code between him and Xie Fuchen, indicating that Xie Fuchen had already reached the northern frontline stronghold of Mengliang, and the recruitment efforts were beginning to show results. It was believed that soon the mission of deploying twenty thousand troops assigned by Li Ju would be completed.

In Li Ju’s somber eyes, a trace of brightness immediately appeared. He set the cloth on fire, and the eunuch beside him quickly handed over a copper basin, watching the cloth burn into a pile of ashes within the basin, leaving no trace of writing. Only then did Li Ju feel relieved enough to wave his hand for it to be removed.

Xie Fuchen’s secret journey north this time was precisely under his instructions. As the emperor, he could not go to a place suitable for hiding troops without alerting the enemy. Empress Dowager Geng’s and Li Yanyi’s spies were spread throughout Runing and even the entire Da Yu. If he made any move, the spies watching him would certainly report it to Geng and Li Yanyi.

It is truly absurd; everyone says that under heaven, all the land belongs to the ruler, yet I, as the exalted emperor, cannot leave this small place! The Forbidden Garden, true to its name, is a garden of captivity, trapping me firmly within.

Although his every move was watched, he was not alone; he still had trusted confidants. Xie Fuchen, then serving as the Deputy Censor-in-Chief responsible for monitoring and impeaching officials, was like a hand extended from the Forbidden Garden. This hand was extremely powerful and versatile, able to carry out all his retaliations one by one.

The world knew that the current emperor of Da Yu, Li Ju, was not the biological son of the Empress Dowager, and his birth mother was a maid who used to serve the Empress Dowager by combing her hair, who, until her death, was merely a concubine of low rank.

But the world only knows that the late emperor had few offspring, yet not the reason why.

Back then, although Empress Geng gave birth to Princess Li Yanyi, she was unable to become pregnant again due to physical injury during childbirth. Among the concubines, those who became pregnant mostly had difficulty in childbirth, either miscarrying or experiencing difficult labor. On rare occasions when a prince was born, they either died young or had chronic illnesses, bedridden for years, with none growing up healthy. The reason for this was probably known only to Geng.

The childless Geng, to consolidate her position, offered the attractive maid Zhang, who served her, to the late emperor. Zhang, gentle and beautiful, having served beside Geng for years, knew the emperor’s preferences well. After gaining favor a few times, she became pregnant and, after giving birth to a prince, was conferred the title of concubine. This prince was Li Ju.

A year after Li Ju’s birth, Geng, near thirty, suddenly became pregnant, but the fetus was unstable, with a risk of miscarriage. Li Ju’s birth mother Zhang, to protect Li Ju’s life, carefully served Geng as she did when she was a maid, personally attending to all medicinal foods and drinks, often accompanying her at night. No matter how irritable Geng was during pregnancy, Zhang endured without a word of complaint.

The following year, in August, on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Geng gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Concubine Zhang stayed awake all night, looking at the sky, seemingly sensing impending disaster, becoming emaciated. She had served Geng for so long because she feared that if Geng gave birth to a legitimate prince, she might kill Li Ju for the throne.

Fortunately, the careful service earned Geng’s trust, saving Li Ju’s life.

The birth of the legitimate son greatly pleased the emperor, and when the young prince was a hundred days old, he issued an edict to crown him as the crown prince, granting amnesty to the entire country to celebrate.

The emperor and empress cherished this hard-won legitimate son. The crown prince’s food and clothing were all personally prepared by Geng, and the wet nurse was selected through rigorous screening without a single mistake. Moreover, when the crown prince began his studies, the emperor invited a great Confucian scholar of the time to serve as the crown prince’s three tutors. The crown prince, young and intelligent with exceptional understanding, was raised with all the emperor and empress’s care, cherishing him as a gift from heaven.

But no one expected that at the age of ten, the crown prince contracted a plague, and, unable to recover, passed away within a month.

The empress dowager was grief-stricken, and the emperor also fell seriously ill, unable to attend court for several months. Geng, a month after the crown prince’s death, brought Li Ju from Concubine Zhang to raise him in her own palace.

With the crown prince’s early death, a plague broke out in Runing city, lasting for half a year, leaving the land desolate and nine out of ten households empty.

The emperor ordered a thorough investigation into the cause of the crown prince’s plague, only to discover that it was due to a maid from the Eastern Palace secretly exchanging love poems with a lover outside the palace, who was one of the first to contract the plague.

In a fit of rage, the emperor ordered all the maids and eunuchs in the crown prince’s Eastern Palace to be executed, and the maid who had the secret liaison and her lover were executed along with their entire families.

Shortly after this investigation, Concubine Zhang also passed away due to illness, leaving Li Ju as the late emperor’s only son. That year, Geng was nearly thirty-seven years old, and despite taking numerous elixirs, she was unable to conceive. Meanwhile, the emperor’s health was gradually declining from the grief of losing his son, making the matter of establishing an heir urgent.

With no other choice, the following year, Li Ju was crowned as the crown prince.

If not for the former crown prince’s early death, it would never have been his turn, a prince who had never received the emperor’s favor, to ascend the throne. This fact Concubine Zhang knew, and Li Ju knew even better.

Li Ju ascended the throne at just 14 years old, with Empress Dowager Geng holding court from behind a curtain, and all state affairs had to pass through her hands before implementation.

He would never forget the piercing gaze from Geng behind the beaded curtain as he attended the morning court. In the early days of his reign, he faced obstacles at every step, restricted everywhere. Every word had to be approved by the Empress Dowager, and he had no standing in the court, serving as a mere figurehead. If anything was done incorrectly, he would be summoned to the Empress Dowager’s chamber after court, where Li Yanyi would harshly criticize him on how things should be done, while the Empress Dowager would continuously lament how much better it would have been if her dead son were still around.

Li Ju knew he was merely a puppet, and Geng and Li Yanyi wanted a compliant puppet emperor. All political and military power was held in the hands of this mother and daughter. To break free from them, the first step he needed to take was to reclaim what should rightfully belong to him.

However, Geng was cunning and experienced, and Li Yanyi was ruthless and cruel, making it extremely difficult to extract even a little power from their grasp.

By the time Li Ju reached the age of maturity, he had already grown a lot of white hair.

Fortunately, he had a good empress, gentle and virtuous, who understood his suffering, staying by his side without complaint to guide and comfort him; and there was his father-in-law, the Grand General of Cavalry Feng Kun, and the Deputy Censor-in-Chief Xie Fuchen, along with other veteran ministers secretly supporting him, allowing him to seize back some power while the Empress Dowager was seriously ill.

Li Ju now deeply regrets not listening to Xie Fuchen’s advice back then to take the Empress Dowager’s life while she was ill; otherwise, he would not have angered her over the power struggle, causing her to want to depose the emperor and establish the eldest princess as the empress.

Thinking of Li Yanyi, Li Ju felt even more anger.

This eldest princess is now increasingly reckless; the secret report received yesterday stated that she was openly recruiting grain and silver from prominent families in Nanya County, blatantly committing treason in the name of the emperor! Many families in Nanya actually flattered and fawned over her, and the Wang family even presented all fifty thousand carts of grain intended for the court to Li Yanyi.

A group of sycophants without a shred of shame! As soon as Li Ju finished reading this memorial, he angrily threw it out, hitting a little eunuch’s forehead, causing it to redden.

Li Ju pulled the little eunuch back into the room, hitting and kicking him, and after venting, he rearranged his attire and calmed down.

Fortunately, Deputy Censor Xie still had backup plans, so even if these fifty thousand carts of grain were seized, it was not a cause for fear.

Li Ju knew that once the timing was ripe, the Empress Dowager and Li Yanyi would not let him live on, fearing he might die of illness on the bed like his birth mother, Zhang, leaving behind a forged edict transferring the throne to Li Yanyi.

He needed to prepare early, which is why he secretly ordered Xie Fuchen to station troops in Mengliang. Mengliang is very close to the northern front line, serving to use the chaos of war as cover, so that the recruitment would go unnoticed. Once Li Yanyi rebels, even if it means perishing together, he absolutely cannot let the empire fall into the hands of such wicked women as the Empress Dowager and the eldest princess.

Now, the matter of Xie Fuchen stationing troops is proceeding very smoothly. As long as the arranged marriage becomes a done deal, Da Yu and Chongjin will become allied nations, and the war can be resolved. Even if Li Yanyi gets hold of those fifty thousand carts of grain, they will be of no use. At that time, pressing down from the north with two hundred thousand troops will surely catch the Empress Dowager and Li Yanyi by surprise. When the swords clash, it will be the death day for this demonic mother and daughter!

Li Ju picked up the brush and wrote a line from 《Short Song Style》: “The mountains are not too high, nor the sea too deep. When the Duke of Zhou tosses food, the world returns to him.”

After writing, he placed it in a bamboo tube and threw it to the eunuch, saying, “Go quickly, do not delay.”

“Yes!”

The eunuch handed it to the messenger waiting outside the hall, and the messenger’s figure once again blended into the night, the sound of horse hooves echoing within the palace walls for a long time.

Zhen Wenjun’s wound healed for a few days and started to itch. Even though there was still some pain, it did not prevent her from getting out of bed and moving around. Wei Tingxu saw that she was indeed unharmed, so she had Lingbi pack up and head northwest.

Zhen Wenjun openly looked at Wei Tingxu’s travel documents, and indeed, they were going back to Suichuan.

The Wang family’s main branch’s fifty thousand carts of grain had already been taken by Li Yanyi, but the fifty thousand carts picked up for free from Wang Jin were still in Zhen Wenjun’s hands. Wei Tingxu seemed not to have told Li Yanyi about the whereabouts of this batch of grain, and she instructed Zhen Wenjun to consolidate the fifty thousand carts into as few large carts as possible, as fewer vehicles would make the journey easier. Zhen Wenjun spent half a day organizing and ended up with over nineteen hundred carts. Wei Tingxu instructed her to split the more than a thousand carts into three routes, each heading towards Suichuan.

“This journey is long, so do not put all your eggs in one basket,” Wei Tingxu said.

“Is my sister worried that there will still be trouble from the Xie family along the way?”

“It’s not just the Xie family. Along this journey, we traverse mountains and rivers, and even good citizens have been forced by famine into banditry. Seeing grain carts, how could they not rob?”

Wei Tingxu was right. Everywhere they passed, there were corpses of the starved, from eighty-year-old elders to infants in swaddling clothes, and many beggars. Nanya is considered a prosperous land in Da Yu, but the further northwest they went, the colder and more desolate it became, and more disaster victims appeared.

Wei Tingxu had Zhen Wenjun and Lingbi keep ten carts of grain with them, distributing it along the way.

“Though I cannot help all of Da Yu’s people, at least I am doing what little I can.”

Zhen Wenjun rode on Baiyun Feixue and saw Wei Tingxu sitting outside the carriage, insisting on seeing the suffering landscape of the famine years.

Most of the time, Zhen Wenjun could not understand Wei Tingxu’s thoughts, feeling that the emotion revealed in her eyes seemed deceptive. But at this moment, Wei Tingxu was so genuine; she was truly feeling the country and its people, feeling the pain that disasters brought them. This bitterness reflected in her pupils, genuine and sincere.

Zhen Wenjun slowed down her horse, quietly following alongside Wei Tingxu, walking shoulder to shoulder with her.

Wei Tingxu had the coachman drive the carriage towards an area with many refugees. These starving refugees wanted to rush up to grab the grain cart, but Wei Tingxu’s tough guards stopped them, killing the three most frenzied and unruly ones, finally calming the situation.

“If you want food, line up here.” Wei Tingxu’s voice was not loud, but it was powerful and quickly took effect. Hundreds of refugees, so starved they were barely human, immediately formed a single line. Zhen Wenjun had them prepare their bags and come one by one to receive rice. Xiaohua and Lingbi opened the slot at the bottom of the rice barrel, and rice flowed out. The refugees, seeing rice they hadn’t seen in a long time, had tears streaming down, carving two muddy tracks on their dirty faces, kneeling on the ground, gratefully thanking Wei Tingxu.

A woman in her forties, in tattered clothes, holding her grandson, came over to kowtow to Wei Tingxu, thanking her for saving their lives.

Wei Tingxu saw the baby crying and asked the woman to give her the baby to soothe.

Who knew that the baby cried even harder in her arms, making both Wei Tingxu and the woman a bit embarrassed.

“Lingbi, do you know how to soothe a child?” Wei Tingxu asked Lingbi beside her over the baby’s cries.

Lingbi was dumbfounded: “This, truly I don’t know.”

Wei Tingxu’s gaze turned around, directly bypassed Xiaohua, and asked Zhen Wenjun: “Sister, do you have a way to stop him from crying?”

The fifteen-year-old Zhen Wenjun really couldn’t believe that Wei Tingxu would ask such a naive question: “Sister, I’ve never given birth, I have no way.”

“Want to try?”

Zhen Wenjun had no choice, took the child, imitating the way the wet nurses from the Xie family in Suichuan used to hold the baby in her arms and gently rocked. Unexpectedly, the child really stopped crying and smiled at Zhen Wenjun.

“He smiled.” Zhen Wenjun excitedly said to Wei Tingxu.

Wei Tingxu “hmmed” and actually said: “It seems my sister Wenjun will be a good mother in the future.”

Zhen Wenjun heard this and almost threw the child away on the spot.

Returning the child to the woman, Wei Tingxu’s smile still lingered on her face when suddenly a burst of barking made her face change drastically.

At first, Zhen Wenjun hadn’t noticed that there were three or five stray dogs gathering nearby, their eyes showing fierce light. They were so starved that their skin clung to their bones, constantly searching for food. Seeing the commotion of distributing rice, they couldn’t help but stop and take a few more glances, seemingly plotting something.

Wei Tingxu looked at the dog pack in terror, her fear obvious.

Those few dogs, receiving her gaze, quickly trotted over, and Wei Tingxu suddenly shouted: “Wenjun!”

Zhen Wenjun did not know what was happening, thought there were assassins, and wanted to ride to investigate, but saw Wei Tingxu sitting on the carriage eagerly opening her arms to her. Zhen Wenjun felt warm in her heart, quickly dismounted, and took Wei Tingxu into her embrace.

Wei Tingxu, as usual, wrapped her arms around her neck, but this time it was somewhat different. Wei Tingxu buried her entire face into her embrace, the arms encircling her neck were very forceful, even trembling slightly. Zhen Wenjun, being squeezed a bit breathless, hoarsely comforted her:

“Sis-sister, don’t be afraid, I’m here.”

But Zhen Wenjun didn’t know what she was afraid of; could it be those few stray dogs?

The guards quickly ran forward and killed the stray dogs thoroughly, then returned and knelt in front of Wei Tingxu, saying in unison: “The lowly slaves deserve to die! To have overlooked these few! Please, my lady, punish us!”

Sure enough, it was the dogs. Zhen Wenjun really didn’t expect Wei Tingxu to be so afraid of dogs. Only after saying this did she notice that it was the first time she saw dogs along the way; could it be that they were cleared by the guards who went ahead? She keenly remembered the bite marks on Wei Tingxu’s back, could it be related to dogs?

Hearing the guards’ report, Wei Tingxu slowly moved her face away from Zhen Wenjun’s embrace, with a few traces of undisguisable panic on her pale face. Only after confirming that those dogs were indeed all dead did she breathe a sigh of relief, her shoulders slightly sinking, still very uncomfortably closing her eyes, continuing to linger in Zhen Wenjun’s embrace, and muffledly said:

“Have them buried.”

The guards said: “Yes!”

It turns out that Wei Tingxu was not as invulnerable as she appeared; she also had the fears that ordinary people possess.

Zhen Wenjun saw her trying hard to maintain a calm demeanor despite being very scared, which really evoked pity. She placed her on the coachman’s seat, gently stroked her head, brushed aside the strands of hair sticking to her lips, and whispered beside her ear: “Wenjun is here, nothing can harm sister. Let me take sister into the carriage.”

Wei Tingxu rubbed her forehead in her embrace, like a nodding motion. Zhen Wenjun carefully carried her into the carriage.