Chapter 1012: Tangerine Caramel — Shanghai Love (3)

The Yangtze used the character for “long” right in its name—meaning, a long river. And it really did live up to that name.

The Yangtze’s length was a staggering sixteen thousand li.

From its source in Tibet all the way to the Eastern Sea, it possessed a vast basin that cut straight across the Central Plains.

Because the river was so long, even what people called it changed by region.

Back in the ancient, primeval days—those ancient, primeval times when the Central Plains were chopped up into countless little countries—each country had its own name for it, too...

In the very upper reaches, near its source in Tibet, the locals called it the Tongtian River.

In the Yi Province–Sichuan region, which some big-eared bastard grabbed for a moment and then tossed away, they called it the Heavenly River, and next door in Jingzhou they called it the Jing River, since it cut straight through Jingzhou.

And in some parts around Jiangxi Province—Suzhou and Shanghai included—people also called it the Yangtze River. In the Central Plains’ pronunciation, that was “Yangtze.”

As an aside, in Qing’s homeland, some long-nosed Western bastards came in later and asked, “What river is this?”

And wouldn’t you know it—the person they asked happened to be from Shanghai, so the answer they got was “Yangtze River.”

Then, as an age arrived where the West ended up ruling the world, the Yangtze’s English name got turned into “Yangtze River” by sheer bad luck.

Of course, in this similar half-fake Central Plains, that hadn’t happened yet.

Meaning—not yet.

Anyway, the Yangtze!

Qing’s group headed downstream by boat.

The plan was: take the boat, get off at Zhangjiagang, then rent a carriage and go east to Shanghai.

Since Shanghai sat in an estuary zone that touched both the Eastern Sea and the Yangtze, someone might ask, Why not just keep going by boat?

Unfortunately, Zhangjiagang was the farthest line private ships were allowed to go.

From there, naval ships blocked the river completely, so you couldn’t pass.

Why?

Because that was the national law of the Central Plains.

A Maritime Prohibition Decree—meaning the seas weren’t something just anyone could go out on. Only ships granted permission by the authorities were allowed.

So, while they were on the boat heading for Zhangjiagang...

“Jayeo fishing. Jayeo go fishing.”

Jayeo tugged hard on Qing’s sleeve.

Jayeo had gotten really into fishing—well, of course she had. Wasn’t Jayeo the prodigy fishing kid who hauled up a monster every time she cast?

And kids were like that. You tell them they’re good, tell them they’re amazing, and they puff up and get even more excited.

“Lady Worth-a-Thousand-Gold... you know how to fish as well?”

Gongsun Yoye was a rigid person by nature.

It wasn’t that she’d always been like this around Qing—in front of Qing, for some reason her face heated up, her heart pounded, and her confidence dropped straight through the floor—but fundamentally, she was a martial artist wrapped tight in martial pride.

That stiff formality was also just how Gongsun Yoye spoke, so she used that same tone even with Jayeo.

“Jayeo good at it. What about not-damp mommy?”

“I’ve never tried it. Though... the part where I’m ‘damp’—could we maybe...”

“Then Jayeo teach you.”

Jayeo followed Gongsun Yoye surprisingly well.

No—rather than “follow,” how should Qing put it...

In Qing’s eyes, kids had an instinct for spotting who was easy.

The fact that Gongsun Yoye kept stubbornly insisting on “not-damp mommy” said it all.

In other words?

Young Lady Gongsun.

You got eaten alive....

Jayeo marched out onto the deck like she owned the world. She didn’t say it out loud, but she was basically going ahem, all puffed up, shoulders wiggling with swagger.

Tiny little thing, dead-black eyes and all, yet she still went and rattled off this-and-that, a whole bunch of completely useless explanation like she knew everything—so cute it was absurd.

Then she dropped the line—

“Hm.”

“Not biting....”

“That’s right.”

Of course nothing was going to bite.

Before, fish had been forcibly seized by some gigantic existence and impaled on a hook—no wonder Jayeo had kept hauling in trophy fish like she was running a cosmic horror factory.

If it were sea fishing, some random fish might snap at the bait, but river fishing, by nature, was less about “catching” and more about sitting alone, staring at water, and letting time go quiet.

There were aggressive kinds of river fishing that chased that pull on the line, sure, but generally river fishing didn’t go well in the first place.

“Ah—ah, it bit! It bit! Ah, aah—th-this strength—oooh!”

Even so, it looked like Gongsun Yoye genuinely had talent.

Because masters were usually good at fishing, too.

When your fingertip sensitivity was that sharp, you couldn’t not notice something tapping the line.

For the first time in her life, Gongsun Yoye was doing something that could honestly be called “play,” and when she felt the successful bite, she broke into a bright smile like she’d never shown before.

And just from the look of it, this wasn’t any ordinary catch.

But Jayeo’s shoulders drooped for some reason.

So Qing gave Jayeo’s shoulder a couple of light taps—then slipped the fishing rod, already hooked solidly into whatever had bitten, right into Jayeo’s hands.

“Jayeo, you do it. Something bit, but Dad’s too tired to pull it in.”

“Oh.”

Jayeo’s eyes came back to life—no, they’d been dead to begin with, but still, they got kind of sparkly. Whatever. She looked happy, so that was all that mattered...

Qing also offered a bit of advice to Gongsun Yoye, who was yanking on the line with eyes shining like she was about to tear the river out by its roots.

“Pull slower. You’re supposed to enjoy that flopping, jerking feel. If you just rip it straight out, it’s not fun.”

“Ah! I see!”

Then—SHHHK!

At the final moment, Gongsun Yoye pulled hard, and something huge went flying at the end of the line.

Even stripping out all exaggeration, it was a super-giant trophy catch—big enough to reach from fingertips to shoulder.

Gongsun Yoye held it up on the hook, smiling with pure refreshment, looking so openly pleased it was almost innocent—like she was thinking, I’m glad I brought her here.

But... what was it? A king carp?

Qing didn’t know, Jayeo didn’t know, Gongsun Yoye didn’t know, and of course Seol Iri didn’t know either, but the answer was grass carp.

A fish that ate plants in the first place, meaning it normally didn’t bite bait—so you could interpret this as: some drifting waterweed got snagged on the hook, and by sheer ridiculous luck the grass carp got caught up in it.

But since nobody here actually knew fishing, it didn’t matter.

They spent the day on the boat like that.

And late the next morning, naval ships “guarding” the river came into view in the distance—lined up across the water as if cutting it off.

And so: Zhangjiagang, the Yangtze’s terminus for ordinary travelers!

People said the most beautiful city under heaven was Hangzhou, and the next most beautiful was Suzhou.

And since Suzhou and Hangzhou were bundled together as “Jiangnan,” any traveler heading for Jiangnan passed through Zhangjiagang—by boat or by land.

Thanks to that, it was a fairly thriving city: tall buildings along the waterfront, upscale taverns, upscale restaurants, upscale inns, row after row.

First order of business was finding an upscale restaurant for breakfast.

After they ordered a pile of dishes, Qing sat there holding Gongsun Yoye’s hand tightly—no other reason; it was hot, so she was connecting sleeve to sleeve to funnel cool air in—

when, off to one side, an old musician among a group of performers went ahem! AHEM!! and coughed in an unnatural way.

Of course, only the cough was unnatural. The scene itself was perfectly natural in the Central Plains.

Wandering musicians tended to double as storytellers, and that cough was the signal: I’m about to start a tale.

The old musician turned to the young musician sitting beside him and asked loudly, making sure everyone could hear.

“Boy. Did you hear the news that a barbarian army invaded in late spring this year?”

“Huh!? Barbarians?”

“That’s right. Ten thousand of those Tatar bastards! And what kind of bastards are Tatars? Each bastard leads five horses—so by men and horses, that means an army of fifty thousand came to trample the Central Plains!”

“H—! That’s terrifying. So what happened?”

“Well now. Those ten thousand Tatar barbarian bastards were all slaughtered to the last man—keh, kuh, huh, kuh—good grief, why is my throat so dry.”

When a storyteller said his throat was dry, it meant exactly this:

From here on out, it’s paid.

If you want to hear more, pay up.

A brief silence fell over the restaurant.

Not just that—each table glanced at the others, reading the room.

Curiosity was burning, sure, but the careful wisdom of life was: Is anyone else more curious than me? Will someone else pay instead of me?

But since this was an upscale restaurant, the guests were fairly well-off—so it didn’t take long for someone to bark out a shout.

“Hey! Proprietor! Bring that old man two plates of something dripping with oil, and one bottle of clear rice wine!”

“Oooh! Since you’ve shown such kindness, this humble Yeom is deeply moved!”

“Enough. Continue the story. Ten thousand barbarians invaded?”

“Heh heh. Then this old man will lay out, in detail, whatever scraps I happened to pick up. This happened in late spring of this year—at Shanhai Pass. That barbarian rabble didn’t know their place and trespassed on the Central Plains, so their purpose was surely to race to Beijing and dare to violate the precious jade body—such a blasphemous purpose, wasn’t it?”

After that, the old man launched into his tale with gusto.

Do you know barbarians?

They’re nasty sons of bitches.

They ride horses and shoot arrows—no, ride horses and shoot arrows—and each one has outstanding martial skill, so each and every one is a master. They even say a proper Mongol warrior has internal power on par with a peak martial artist, and there were ten thousand of those northern barbarians!

“H—what do we do? If a bandit horde like that sweeps through the provinces, so many people will die and get hurt.”

“Ha ha. Don’t worry. Those northern barbarians were all wiped out without even managing to loot once—wiped out in one stroke by wondrous stratagems and valor. It was a defeat so clean it was called divine.”

As you’d expect from someone who made his living on stories, he laid it out in vivid detail, full of hooks and thrills.

Heroes who rose up against ten thousand Mongol warriors: Son Seungjong, the Shanhai commander, and his disciple, Yuan Chonghuan, Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Direct-Subordinate Capital Guard. And Li Zicheng, the young Han hero, a thousand-commander of the northern army. And even Nurhaci—Jurchen, yet granted the title of Northern Grand General!

So those four heroes rose up for the protection of the nation and fought fiercely against ten thousand mighty Mongol warriors.

And after a fierce, tragic decisive battle, they slaughtered the entire Mongol force, and the whole earth was soaked in the blood the barbarians spilled.

It was completely different from the real battlefield.

All that tragic talk—countless soldiers nobly stepping forward, offering themselves up, shedding tears of blood as they agreed to sacrifice and staked their lives—

That glorious battle didn’t actually happen.

But that was what storytellers did.

Anyway, the only thing that mattered was: they won.

As for the process, you keep making it more dramatic, and by the time the story travels far enough, you’ve got a stirring war epic of tragic patriots ready-made, capable of yanking a man’s heartstrings clean out.

“My god! That can’t be!”

“Damn it, I can’t stand it! Proprietor, bring everyone a drink! Let’s toast the heroes of Shanhai Pass!”

“General Son Seungjong, General Yuan Chonghuan, the young hero Li Zicheng, and the northern grand general Nurhaci—our four great men who struggled for the Central Plains—let us toast the heroes of the Central Plains!”

“To the four great men!”

If Qing had known the “original Central Plains” history from her homeland, she might have panicked.

Who’s siding with who to defend the Central Plains?

The ones who shouldn’t be on the same side are on the same side, and the ones who shouldn’t be “defending” the Central Plains are the ones who defended it—what?

But Qing didn’t know.

She didn’t know anything in the first place.

What mattered was that a free drink had also landed in front of Qing with a solid thunk.

Still—Li Zicheng...

Wasn’t that the guy from back then?

Northern troops—back then, that... what was it, the ones firing the crossbows.

Huh. Looks like he’s doing fine.

So while the Central Plains diners, having heard a blood-boiling war tale—and a victory report at that—kept piling praise on those four heroes...

“Ahem. And that story... isn’t over yet.”

Was the old man really pulling out another story?

As coins poured in and the young musician scrambled to pick them up, the old man wore a satisfied smile and brought out his next tale.

“Those Tatar bastards dared to invade the Central Plains. Naturally, shouldn’t punishment be delivered for such arrogant crimes?”

More than that, ten thousand elite warriors of those northern barbarians—old enemies—had died.

Meaning: the enemy’s strength was badly damaged.

Now, at this very moment, was the perfect opportunity to drive those evil barbarian bastards out completely.

So what came next?

“Ooo!” “No way!” “Is that... true?!”

Expectant gasps burst out from every direction.

And the old storyteller sprang to his feet and shouted.

“That’s right! His Majesty has permitted the Northern Campaign. Now our armies will advance into the northern steppes, burn those barbarian bastards to the ground, and fulfill our long-held wish—settle our old grudges!”

Then the old man howled until his throat nearly split, flinging both arms high.

“Long live the Son of Heaven! Long live the Son of Heaven!”