Self-interest did not lie in its magnitude, but in its bottom line
Xuan Chuan Pass was a fortress. Apart from the soldiers who defended the city, no commoners resided there permanently.
Those who obtained an errand in Xuan Chuan Pass were actually connected to the garrison in countless ways.
For example, servants of the Ning Family; the military or craftsman households who had raised horses for the garrison over several generations; the elderly left alone and helpless after their children died in battle; the impoverished parents of fallen soldiers whose other sons were too poor to support themโฆ As Xuan Chuan Pass lacked fresh troops and manpower, the presence of these commoners was all the more essential. One could not let the soldiers fight and kill, then return without a single bowl of hot soup or a warm meal, only to wash clothes, feed horses, and chop firewood on empty stomachs.
Besides, some commoners lived in hardship, especially those families whose men had fallen in battle, leaving only women and children. They might have land but no labor to cultivate it, or their fields could be seized and sold by clansmen or villagers. Clinging to the Xuan Chuan Pass garrison was their only option; even if they did not earn money for their work, they were willingโso long as the widowed mothers and orphans survived.
Therefore, though these people came from different backgrounds, none of them was considered โoutsiders.โ
At worst, someone in the family within three generations had been conscripted and had defended this mighty pass.
Who would have thought that such people would betray others?
That day, chaos reigned within the city, and there was not enough time to interrogate every betrayer. Yet even so, what little they found caused a severe blow to Yan Cen.
โ…Forget those military and craftsman households without civilian registration, or the elders who still had other sons in their home villages. But why did that woman working in the kitchen also choose to betray us? Didnโt you tell me before that she was a widowed mother with nowhere to go? Wasnโt it the Ning Family Army who saved them?โ
Yan Cen, though rendered unable to stand by a pressure-point strike, still seethed with rage.
โIf Xuan Chuan Pass hadnโt taken them in, they would have survived until today!โ
Strictly speaking, it was not truly โtoday,โ because they had died a month earlier.
Nobody bothered to correct his mistake. After a while, a soldier said in a low voice, โAunt Zhang from the kitchen had a son who was fourteen by nominal age this year.โ
Fourteen was half-grown, old enough for marriage and children. The Chu court did not allow males of that age to serve in corvรฉe or military duty, but the Qi court had no such rule. In harsher places, the moment a child was born, people paid a ding tax. At twelve, he counted as half-grown, and the family could pay money to redeem him. If they had no money, it extended another male family memberโs term of labor by half.
Yan Cen had not been at Xuan Chuan Pass for long, so he naturally did not know the small detailsโlike how old someoneโs children were. Hearing this, he glared, still unable to understand.
โ…Perhaps she feared being forced into the military registry.โ
That soldier wiped his face, clenched his fists, suppressed his anger, and rasped those words.
Once registered as a military household, the descendants remained so forever, and the child grew up in Xuan Chuan Pass.
The monk from Baoxiang Temple paused and continued chanting.
The old servant spat heavily. Some were on the verge of tears, others were inconsolable, regretting why they had not detected such a โcrisisโ sooner.
โโNo one had ever imagined it. Once they heard the first reason for betrayal and realized human nature had such a side, the logic behind other betrayals surfaced naturally.
โIf she feared becoming a military household, why didnโt she leave Xuan Chuan Pass? Did someone tie her hands and feet, preventing her from going?โ Yan Cen asked angrily.
โ…They had nothing to live on, so how would they survive elsewhere?โ
It was an elderly man with a face full of wrinkles, bearing the air of a scholar or official, who spoke among the crowd. His foot seemed injured; he had also inhaled smoke on the day the city fell, so he coughed from time to time. โKitchen work was important, so they would not employ complete strangers. All had served there for years, with no kin to rely on and no other livelihood… cough, cough… I suppose the people who wanted her to poison us pulled her in as an accomplice by simply promising that, once the deed was done, they would let her return home and even arrange a wife for her son. She must have wavered.โ
Now, whether that woman intended to betray from the start or was swayed by someone else no longer mattered.
Perhaps the Ning Family Army had taken them in, sparing the child from being sold or the widowed mother from a forced remarriage, saving them from slipping into slavery. But gratitude did not feed people forever; maybe someone felt that a military household was even worse than servitude. At least as a slave or servant, one did not necessarily risk oneโs life.
If a family line died out, how would they face their ancestors?
โOld General Ning saved many people, not so that he could rope them into becoming soldiers, and certainly not in hopes that, once their children grew up, they would die for Ningโs cause… truly vile,โ Yan Cen ground his teeth, then let his head hang in defeat.
Old General Ning would not have thought that way. But as the commander of a region, he had limited time to care about the lives of the lowliest soldiers and common folk, and he could not approach matters with their perspective in mind.
In recent years, Xuan Chuan Pass had grown more desperate, from the courtโs procrastination and the local governmentโs neglect, to Tianshou Kingโs relentless assaults. At the most critical moments, soldiers had eaten and slept on the battlements, while the women and children below brought them hot water and food. Short on manpower, whether someone became a military household or notโdid others think Old General Ning had the final say?
No. The wolves and tigers outside decided that.
When Emperor Yongchen took the throne and Baoxiang Temple came to their aid, the soldiers of Xuan Chuan Pass believed the crisis had passed. They did not realize that some โinsidersโ they saw every day had other plans.
It was unsurprising that people had selfish motives.
The danger lay not in how big or small those motives were, but whether there was a bottom line.
Even a tiny bit of self-interest, if it required others to make a huge sacrifice, could produce terrible consequences.
Meng Qi closed his eyes slightly, his many emotions stuck in his chest until he could barely breathe.
Yan Cen said that, after those people poisoned others, they did not open the city gates amid the chaos. The battlements had been blasted apart by the gunpowder from the Thunderclap Hall during the armyโs internal turmoil.
The traitors had acted out of selfishness, so they certainly did not intend to die. They probably never planned on opening the city gatesโonly to run away before Tianshou Kingโs army besieged the city. There were gates on both sides of Xuan Chuan Pass. In the confusion, they could snatch something valuable, then slip out the back with the crowd.
It was not about surrendering the city, nor about remaining. Hence, they did not fear a massacre.
Their hometown was equally poor, no better off than Yizhou, from which Tianshou King came. Everyone knew that once Xuan Chuan Pass fell, the rebel army would flood the Central Plains to plunder and would not linger here. There was nothing to worry about. Even more importantly, the current Xuan Chuan Pass was defended mostly by the Ning Family Army from the northern border, not their own townsmen, so poisoning them caused no remorse.
If Xuan Chuan Pass had not been a fortress but a city, if there had been many commoners living there with their entire clans and relatives, if the commoners had not been regarded as โone of usโ by the soldiers, if the Emperor of Qi had never suppressed the Ning Family Army, if the one sitting upon the throne had been the Chu court rather than the Qi court that only held half the realm, if Tianshou King and the Holy Lotus Sect had not been so notorious, etc.โฆ If any one of these conditions had held, betrayal would have been hard to occur.
However, this was not the case, and upon looking back, one realized that numerous coincidences had come together, causing it all to happen so abruptly and tragically.
Once the fire died down, the monks gathered the remains and placed them into a small jar.
They scattered the rest of the ashes and bones off the broken cliff as they chanted sutras, letting the wind carry them away.
Baoxiang Temple did not enshrine any relics, nor did it build golden-body Buddha pagodas.
Within that jar lay not only Master Yuan Zhiโs remains but also some of the bones of his fellow senior and junior monks retrieved from the ruins afterward. Since that many had set out, they wanted to bring everyone back, then bury them all in the monasteryโs forested mountains.
What Meng Qi sawโthe corpses scattered across the groundโwas already the result of their best efforts at a proper burial.
Including Yan Cen, the poison in most people had not been entirely purged, so they could not do heavy labor.
Added to that, Master Yuan Zhi had been on the verge of death and could not be moved easily, so they had hidden in the stone cave for many days.
This complex underground cavern had a secret passage leading directly inside Xuan Chuan Pass. It was the Ning Familyโs secret contingency, to prevent a day of misfortuneโif the city was breached, the surviving defenders in the pass would still have a place to hide. The cave contained a source of running water, so as long as one stocked oilcloth and easily stored food, it sufficed.
Had Emperor Yongchen not ascended the throne and slightly eased Old General Ningโs resources, he would not even have found extra dried meat and rations to store here.
What was meant to feed a remnant army for three days naturally sufficed for just a dozen or so people now.
Yan Cen still searched the ruins from time to time to gather any usable supplies, such as pots, bowls, ladles, and various odds and ends not destroyed by fire.
โNational Preceptor Meng, had you come a few days later, we would likely have departed.โ
The monks of Baoxiang Temple pressed their palms together and spoke.
โWhere would you gentlemen go?โ
โTo investigate the movements of Tianshou Kingโs army, or perhaps return to Yongzhou.โ
The leading monk glanced at Yan Cen with evident concern in his eyes.
Meng Qi reached out and pressed Yan Cenโs wrist at the Mingmen point. Not proficient in medicine, he could only sense the flow of internal energy. He pondered and said, โThe true qi Master Yuan Zhi instilled in him was too pure. Fortunately, his martial foundation was sound, so by sealing the key acupoints and resting for three days without using his internal energy, letting the internal breath circulate several great cycles, he would recover.โ
โAmitabha.โ The monks all breathed sighs of relief.
The leading monk forced a bitter smile. โOur skills were lacking, even worse than Brother Yanโs. Even if we wished to help, we could not.โ
Meng Qi shook his head. He really had not been able to help at all.
Master Yuan Zhi still passed away, and the Thunderclap Hall had not used any new gunpowder.
โโAside from learning how Xuan Chuan Pass fell, this trip gained almost nothing.
โNational Preceptor Meng, from where did you come? Did the rebel army go to Jingzhou or Yongzhou?โ
โThey went to Jingzhou, burning, killing, and lootingโcommitting all sorts of evilโฆโ
Hearing this, the monks wore mournful expressions. One with a hot temper immediately said, โWhy return to Yongzhou? We might as well head to Jiangnan.โ
โCould it be that King Jing, defeated across a thousand li, failed to stop the rebels?โ The old adviser asked in alarm. He did not understand where the title of National Preceptor Meng came from, but seeing Yan Cen and the monks of Baoxiang Temple hold Meng Qi in high esteem, he grew more respectful.
โThe Jingzhou army was too careless and did not take the rebels seriously. They lost the initiative. By the time they regrouped, Tianshou King had already hastened on to Nanping County.โ
Meng Qi did not explain in detail; even with a few words, the old adviser went pale as paper.
More people knew nothing of military tactics or maps. They only grasped vaguely that King Jing was useless, and in barely a month, Tianshou King had reached his doorstep.
The crowd raged and cursed.
Yan Cen held silent, clenching his fists tightly.
Seeing how some were old, some were ill, Meng Qi thought for a moment and turned to help them search through the ruins.
Once he left the crowd, his mind slowly steadied. Whenever he thought he had seen the worldโs misfortunes, something even more upsetting happened.
Meng Qi looked at the vine-covered precipice, wondering how Mo Li fared now. Once matters here were settled, he needed to hurry back to Nanping County.
โHmm?โ
Meng Qi suddenly raised his head. He seemed to hear the sound of hoofbeats.
Standing atop the charred remains of walls, he saw a group of riders galloping in from afar. Leading them was a man of imposing bearing. Meng Qi could never forget that face, even with amnesia.
โโIt immediately brought to mind the eight raccoon cats that once sprawled atop that manโs chest and head.
โGong Jun?โ
Author had something to say:
There once was a saying, which meant that believing in gods, in cause and effect, and in an afterlife made people feel fear, while those who did not believe in gods felt no fear and had no bottom line. ใThis mainly referred to atheismใ
In fact, atheists indicated that everything had two sides. For instance, in ancient times, some commoners believed in an afterlife. They thought that they would repay kindness by becoming cattle or horses in the next life, and that burning incense for a benefactor in this life was enough, so they felt at ease. ใThey were not merely being perfunctory; they genuinely believed soใ
