Ji Hong could not possibly let it end peacefully.
Yu Jinnian read a letter from the capital at camp. It was thick and heavy in his hands.
The wet nurse and her husband had taken the children back to Jinyouting; the letter reported the journey back to the capital had been peaceful, with soldiers patrolling everywhere, leaving no opportunities for mountain bandits to steal or rob. The wet nurse’s husband had once worked as a long-term servant for a wealthy household; he’d learned a fair bit of reading and arithmetic, and during their months in Tucheng, had taught Sui Sui to write many characters and to use the abacus.
There was mention, too, that little Haitang ate a lot and grew noticeably every day—very lovable, though she cried too often and was particularly hard to comfort.
Sui Sui, in her crooked, bug-like scrawl, wrote two lines at the end of the letter, asking when he would come home.
The little girl had already grown up and could write, but her handwriting was hideous. He’d have to ask Ji Hong to teach her one day. Yu Jinnian smiled, then looked back at the glittering armored soldiers outside the tent and let out a sigh—who knew when he himself would be able to return.
General Min reorganized the thirty thousand troops He Lianzhi had brought from Guanbei; after the two sides got accustomed to each other, they set a date and prepared to attack the bridge again, with great fanfare. Wei He’s injuries were not fully healed, yet he donned armor and went to the battlefield. Min Xuefei didn’t say it outright, but tacitly allowed him to make amends through merit. He Lianzhi, with the forthrightness of a northerner and fresh from a great victory at Beiyan Pass, was full of vigor.
Yu Jinnian served as liaison physician at the Meiqi camp, receiving the seriously wounded soldiers from the front lines. He wanted to go to the front, but Ji Hong wouldn’t allow it.
For two days and nights, the two armies fought fiercely on the General’s Bridge. Grain supplies in Zhongling were nearly exhausted; all the soldiers fought hungry. Yan Chang’s own troops could at least fill their stomachs with bread, but the vassal troops below had only a pot of thin gruel to last two days, or had to dig and boil wild herbs from the riverside. The taxes and grain forced from Jiangnan by the authorities had been carried away into the mountains by rebel militias overnight. The Yuè troops, unfamiliar with the terrain around Huan City, suffered heavy losses. The generals who went out foraging returned to Zhongling in disgrace, hiding in the city garrison, afraid to face Yan Chang.
Yet in the south of Zhongling there was a provincial capital, whose magistrate had a son-in-law who had defected to the rebel party. This high and mighty imperial scholar listened to his son-in-law’s slander and joined the rebels, secretly raising over a dozen carts of grain to send to relieve Zhongling’s famine.
But the next day, when officials went on duty, they were horrified to find a row of heads sitting silently on the yamen desk. The officials of the household, military, and judicial departments, as well as a dozen lower clerks, all stared with wide eyes. The one in the center still wore his bloodstained official’s hat—it was their own chief magistrate.
The floor was littered with blood-soaked fire-tally slips, and a public notice of crimes was nailed up; listed were the crimes of the provincial government’s finance, military, and law officials—signed with bold arrogance by Ji Hong, as if daring all.
Privately transporting grain to rebels warranted execution, as did executing court officials without imperial sanction. Neighboring prefectures watched and waited, eager to see what would become of the cocky young master from the Ji family. But before they saw any charges brought, they learned that in the evening, a decree arrived from the capital, directly appointing him as imperial inspector, giving him the imperial sword seal, with power to rule on all major issues, and make on-the-spot decisions for all matters concerning officials below third rank.
His first act after receiving the seal, Ji Hong immediately accepted the surrender of the peasant general who had led the Huan City uprising. Then he executed dozens of officials who had defected to Yan Chang—without ever showing his face. All over Jiangnan, the courts ran with blood.
A true Ji Shulan—he dared to cleanse the administration with blood!
By now, even the stupidest official should sense what was happening—true merit would be rewarded, regardless of background. Many places in Jiangnan had already fallen to the rebels, and this drama in the provincial capital was a clear message: those who served the country would be pardoned for past misdeeds; those who sided with traitors would be dealt with just as traitorously.
The wind shifted instantly.
Officials all over the region cowered at home, clutching their heads, terrified the Ji “King of Hell” would take theirs next. When the Yuè army came begging for food, everyone, top to bottom, played dumb. With the example of the bloody massacre in the capital’s government, who would dare send Yan Chang even a single grain?
Yan Chang’s army faced a desperate shortage of supplies. Min Ji was happy to see it, even letting them starve a few more days before attacking. The anti-rebel army brimmed with morale, their bright faces standing in stark contrast to the pale, emaciated men across the river.
In the first month after they took the city, the rebels in Zhongling celebrated wildly overnight, plundering and ravaging without restraint; the local landed gentry and wealthy were nearly stripped bare, as if by bandits. Now, lacking clothes and food, they could extract nothing more from the people, who all cowered behind locked doors, terrified.
Zhou Feng, after riding on patrol, found even the city guards listless. When the chief patrol officer saw him, his sunken cheeks hollow, he forced a bitter smile in greeting, then listlessly resumed patrol. Explosions boomed endlessly on the outskirts, screams of war shaking the sky. The supply camps ceaselessly drove carts and horses out with arrows and ammunition, and returned with wave after wave of wounded.
Zhou Feng thought this couldn’t go on. He whipped his horse and galloped to the temporary palace gates, just as the army doctor Zheng came out, blood-soaked and dishevelled. Zhou Feng seized him, startled: “What’s happened in the palace?”
Doctor Zheng wiped blood from his face and recognized Zhou Feng: “Chief Zhou!” A man already old, his beard gray, he bowed deeply, “My skills are lacking—I cannot treat His Highness’s illness! Please, spare this old man; I cannot take any more! I’ll just go home to plant vegetables and retire…”
“Doctor Zheng, get up! What happened to your head?” Zhou Feng, alarmed, helped him up. “His Highness’s illness isn’t new—if it can be treated, treat it; if not, keep it under control with medicine. Why such panic? Has His Highness ever punished you for this?”
He hadn’t before, but who could say now? With the city on the verge of collapse, who knew if the Twelfth Prince would suddenly take out his anger on the useless old men and sacrifice them. Zheng wiped his bloodied forehead, stammering in terror.
Growing suspicious, Zhou Feng ran into the inner palace. At Qingyan Hall, he found trembling eunuchs and maids kneeling outside, two dead maidservants at the bottom of the stairs, and a young eunuch scrubbing blood from the floor. Zhou Feng asked him what had happened.
The twelve- or thirteen-year-old eunuch, pale and shaking, kowtowed several times and whispered, “A morning maid broke His Highness’s cup, and His Highness got angry and, and…”
When asked about the bloodied Doctor Zheng, he said the Twelfth Prince had smashed an inkstone on his head after suffering a headache all night and finding no relief from two doses of medicine. When Doctor Zheng came to give the third dose at dawn, he was struck purely on impulse.
Zhou Feng had followed Yan Chang for ten years, from Yuezhou to Zhongling. While his prince was stern and decisive, even bloodthirsty, he was never arbitrarily cruel. He’d never punished a servant so harshly for breaking a dish—usually a scolding, a docking of salary, or, at most, a few strokes. Lately, though, something had changed: the prince’s temper was growing wild—even Doctor Zheng had been beaten. Zhou Feng worried he might erupt at any moment.
The war outside was tough, but hardly hopeless. At their worst in Yuezhou, they’d endured and never given up; he still had tens of thousands of men—with good planning, they could still pull off a desperate comeback. But recently, the prince’s behaviour was… truly abnormal.
Zhou Feng waved everyone away and entered the hall alone.
Overhead, it was gloomily dark; a few days before, bright sun had shone, and the city’s Daoists had predicted auspicious snow, urging people to prepare for frost. With the city at risk, only these oblivious priests still cared about such trifles. Truly, if snow fell on the starved, rag-clad city, would it be fortune or disaster?
Equally gloomy was Yan Chang’s bedchamber, as if draped in black gauze. Even at noon, it seemed dusk-dark, shrouded in crow-black. Zhou Feng slipped inside; just then, there was a thud—he rushed in to see Yan Chang fall from the bed. The eunuchs standing at either side shuddered in terror and came to help.
Yan Chang flung them away: “Water, water—”
“Are you all deaf or blind!” Zhou Feng barked at the useless servants, grabbing a silver ewer from the table. As soon as he passed it over, Yan Chang snatched it, yanked off the lid, and drank deeply. Zhou Feng noticed that even his left hand trembled as he held the jug. When finished, Yan Chang slumped against the bed, breathing heavily, hair dishevelled, eyes red as if he hadn’t slept for days. Yet he’d supposedly slept well on drugged wine.
“Your Highness.” Zhou Feng knelt and murmured, “You cannot go on like this. The tens of thousands outside are waiting for your command.”
Yan Chang’s arm hung limp at his side; his fingers twitched, brow furrowed as if in extreme pain. After a long time, he seemed to realize Zhou Feng was there, looked up at him, and suddenly clutched his hand, asking urgently, “Zhou Feng! Has—has my father summoned me?”
Zhou Feng froze: “Your Highness?”
Before Zhou Feng could reply, Yan Chang gave a bitter laugh: “How could Father summon me? He drove me to Yue on his deathbed, made me Prince of a place eight thousand li away, all to clear the way for Seventh Brother. He was just using me, paving the road for Seven! From the start, he favored Seven, just kept me dangling!” Staring at a floor tile, Yan Chang muttered to himself, “Prince of Yue, Prince of Yue. Sitting day after day facing the sea… would you wish for that?”
Suddenly, his eyes sharpened; he grabbed Zhou Feng’s collar and stared hard: “Would you wish for that?!”
“I would not, and neither would you, Your Highness. With your grand ambition, you are destined for greatness.” Zhou Feng urged, “But Your Highness, at the General’s Bridge, outside Chongtian Gate, our men have fought for two days, the bridgehead is failing, army and people exhausted, morale low—Your Highness must act soon.”
Yan Chang sobered, mask falling again; his head drooped. “The bridgehead? Have all garrison troops from Weng City go as reinforcements. Inner city guards, too! Tell them: whoever brings back the enemy general’s head gets a thousand gold taels; the heads of the rebel Min or Ji, a ten thousand—no, a hereditary duke! Let him sit equal to that wretched Ji family!”
“…Your Highness.”
Zhou Feng wanted to say more, but Yan Chang waved him away, impatient: “My head aches, and I burn with fever. Summon Yu Xu—tell him to bring more calming medicinal wine. Let me take it and rest a while. All military matters, you decide.”
The Weng City garrison was Zhongling’s final defence—moving too many was dangerous. The inner city guards were the prince’s personal elite; in normal times, they would never be deployed. This was cutting the legs from under himself—an all-or-nothing gamble, not something Yan Chang would normally propose.
Zhou Feng rose, looking at the prince he’d followed for ten years, lying dishevelled and defeated by the bed; he’d never seen Yan Chang so decadent. In his eyes, the Twelfth Prince was always the brightest, most decisive leader, not someone sprawled, clutching at his collar, pitifully asking why the late emperor favoured another, why he was sent so far away.
He helped Yan Chang onto the bed, patiently waited till his headache eased and he fell into a muddled sleep, still muttering for Yu Xu’s calming wine… Calming wine, calming wine! Zhou Feng suddenly awakened; once Yan Chang was settled, he turned and hurried straight to the guards’ quarters.
Yan Chang had set up a special peripheral hall in the palace—the Yinghua Hall—for the commander’s convenience, where he could stay overnight rather than run between palace and garrison. The remote location was a great favour, but in truth, after taking the city, he’d only occasionally tidied things up. In reality, only the bedroom was decent; the rest had become Zhou Feng’s storeroom for odd bits and ends.
When Zhou Feng arrived at Yinghua Hall, the two palace eunuchs were slumped, dozing at the door. Upon hearing the heavy, grinding footsteps, they straightened nervously—indicating their usual laziness. He ignored them, kicked the door open, and began rifling through the room. After much searching, he finally dug out a palm-sized porcelain bottle.
The two eunuchs crept up anxiously outside. Zhou Feng called, “You, in here.”
One tiptoed in, only for Zhou Feng to seize him by the jaw and pour a tongueful of powder down his throat, clapping his mouth shut and forcing him to swallow: “What does it taste like?”
The eunuch, trembling, thought he’d just been poisoned and nearly pissed himself. Yet after smacking his lips, finding his guts intact, he realized it tasted only too familiar. Puzzling a moment—surely the famed commander wouldn’t make such a joke?
Just as he pondered the meaning, Zhou Feng shouted, making him jump. Hastily, through tears, he confessed, “Chief Zhou, it’s… fried flour! A bit burnt…”
Zhou Feng demanded, “Has any outsider been in Yinghua Hall?”
The two eunuchs exchanged bewildered looks. Usually, only familiar staff visited, but after thinking back… there was one!
The eunuch who had eaten the “fried flour” wiped his mouth: “The little Magistrate Yu came—said he brought word from His Highness, asking you to come. But that was quite a while ago, back when you’d just entered the city. Since then, just the usual people.”
Zhou Feng’s face darkened.
The two started to panic: “Chief Zhou… is there something wrong?”
“Get out.” Zhou Feng flung both the eunuchs and the medicine bottle out together.
—Yu Xu! He’d really underestimated that parasitic weed! That venom-hearted whelp!
From the shattered bottle, the savoury “fried flour powder” scattered away on the wind, leaving only scraps in the cracks. The bottle was supposed to contain a “celestial elixir” presented by foreign envoys—supposedly making the body light and healthy with prolonged use. Yan Chang had never trusted it, so he rarely used any himself. Instead, he’d given some to the little miracle doctor kept in the cell, then stopped.
Zhou Feng never knew the full effects; he only noticed something was wrong after seeing how the miracle doctor Yu’s condition changed after taking it, so he’d stored it away himself, lest the prince take it by mistake. If he hadn’t thought of it now, he might have forgotten it altogether.
He should have known—from the start—when Yu Xu’s medicinal wine could stop pain even master physicians failed to ease; from the prince sleeping more and more, from daily dependence on Yu Xu… At the very least, when he noticed the prince’s temperament change, he should have realized!
Now, with the city about to fall, Yan Chang’s nature had twisted, dazed and unconcerned, collapsed on his bed.
For ten years, Yan Chang had calculated every detail, down to the finest hair, walking the knife’s edge, breaking ties if necessary. Yet would Yan Chang ever have imagined that someday, he wouldn’t be brought down by his seventh imperial brother, nor by the Ji or Min clans, but by an obscure street rat?
A vagabond picked up from the beggars, a hooligan beaten out of his master’s house—using these crooked means, he nearly ruined the Prince of Yue’s lifelong efforts. On further thought, perhaps it was karma. Yan Chang had once fed strange medicines to the little doctor, wrought retribution, and now paid the price to the Yu family.
Truly, retribution could not be escaped.
It was also Zhou Feng’s own failure. He knew what kind of person Yu Xu was—a scoundrel thrown out of the Ji house for his rogue behaviour, yet still let his master keep the wretch around. Yu Xu was a thankless wolf, impossible to tame, neither in Ji’s house nor here.
What he’d never expected, though, was that Yu Xu—who always seemed too timid to even raise his voice—could be so heartless, as ruthless as any assassin.
A eunuch came scrambling from outside—the chief of Qingyan Hall, a new appointment after the old chief, stubborn and upright, chose death over serving Yan Chang and was executed. But the new one, though promoted, was still young and easily panicked.
He said anxiously, “Chief Zhou, His Highness is awake—breaking things and beating people again, please come quickly!”
Zhou Feng hurried back: “Wasn’t he asleep?”
The eunuch lowered his head: “He was woken by people coming and going. Now he keeps shouting about head and body pain, and asking when Magistrate Yu is coming.”
Zhou Feng’s eyes narrowed: “From now on, no one named Yu is allowed in the hall! No matter how furious His Highness gets—not a single step! And nothing—food, medicine, anything—may be given to His Highness by him or through him—not even a grain. Pass it on. And, from now on, His Highness will eat and live in the hall. Keep everyone tight-lipped—anyone who leaks a word is to be executed at once!”
The eunuch stared, his gaze sweeping across Zhou Feng’s sword at his waist, and bowed quickly, thinking anxiously—was Chief Zhou about to stage a coup?
Passing the kitchens, Zhou Feng took some cakes and simple dishes, and a plain jug of wine, and proceeded to Qingyan Hall. Hearing clanging from inside, he entered to see broken porcelain everywhere, and the eunuchs stiff-necked and ready to die.
He too felt chills—how had His Highness come to this?
“Send people to find that Yu—when you do, say nothing, just deliver him straight to the garrison,” Zhou Feng ordered quietly.
Yan Chang, head in hand, sprawled wide across the couch—his agitation came from an ever harsher pain, now that there was no drugged wine, gnawing like rats from the bone. He looked up at Zhou Feng, his voice hoarse: “Where is he?”
Zhou Feng knew whom he meant, but ignored the question, instead setting the food and wine out: “This is a local vintage, Your Highness—please try it.”
Yan Chang looked at the wine and resisted flipping the table. He vaguely sensed he had a problem, but always helplessly slid into apathy. The faces in the hall were all unfamiliar—his old staff were gone, and the maids and eunuchs watched Zhou Feng for his reaction.
He looked up, staring at Zhou Feng: “What do you want to say?”
“I do have something to say, Your Highness.” Zhou Feng lowered his eyes, finger pressing the hilt at his waist. “I have always said—I am Your Highness’s battle-axe and sword. Wherever Your Highness wished, there I would follow you to carve out a world.”
Yan Chang: “And now? Your sword is no longer mine?”
Zhou Feng knelt. “My sword will always be yours. But traitors must be punished—whether Your Highness allows it or not, whether or not you hold me responsible later, I must act!”
He kneeled as before the emperor, then rose. At that moment, the new chief eunuch rushed in, mouth open, unable to decide whom to report to.
Yan Chang murmured weakly, “Speak.”
The eunuch stammered, “Your Highness, Chief Zhou—th-the, the bridgehead… has fallen!”
Zhou Feng shot upright: “So quickly?”
With current troop strengths, even disadvantaged, they should at least have held the bridge for seven days; in seven days, much could change, there was still hope—how could it have fallen so fast!?
The eunuch, shivering: “It was Magistrate Yu—he brought more than ten people onto the city wall, all of them upright officials and famous scholars from the city. He said he’d exchange them for body parts from across the river—a doctor’s finger, I think? When he got the finger, he demanded eyes, then ears, finally even wanted the tongue…”
“This infuriated the Ji ‘King of Hell’—he’s ruthless. He immediately ordered an all-out assault, regardless of cost, regardless of the consequences—just for Magistrate Yu’s head.”
Zhou Feng said, “Even so, it shouldn’t have fallen instantly.”
The eunuch wailed, “Maybe not, but then enemy reinforcements appeared—men with red scarves and a general in red armor carrying a red-tasselled spear—he was unstoppable!”
Red armor and red spear—He Lianzhi of the Northern Conquest, famed for his courage and fearlessness.
Yan Chang staggered.
“That useless wretch!” Zhou Feng cursed, sword in hand. Suddenly, he remembered something and had to confirm: “He wanted a finger, eyes, and ears from someone across the way—and got them?”
If Yu Xu wanted anyone’s eyes or ears, Zhou Feng could guess—it could only be the young miracle doctor, his own cousin in name. But Ji Hong was so fiercely protective—would he really give up a loved one’s eyes and ears to save some officials on the wall? Whether he did or not spelled two different fates for Zhongling.
The eunuch recalled the scene and shivered: “Who could doubt it? To save a group of imperial officials for a mere physician—anyone would choose that. People on the wall witnessed it; the screams from the tent carried right up. The blood-soaked eyes and ears are still in Magistrate Yu’s hand—who would lie about that?”
Zhou Feng, too, stumbled in shock.
It was finished now—Yu Xu had harmed Yu Jinnian. Never would Ji Hong let it slide—Zhongling was doomed!