Chapter 516: Chaos (2)

The soldiers’ morale ran sky-high—piercing the heavens.

First, the march road was truly smooth.

People said “over mountains and across rivers,” but on a well-packed imperial highway, what mountain, what river? They strode down a broad avenue laid out for walking, and now and then the command staff—strictly speaking, men angling for a look at the Heavenly Flower Sword’s devastating beauty—passed to and fro, which meant the column occasionally [N O V E L I G H T] got “viewing time.”

But you couldn’t explain the soldiers’ morale with that alone.

Soldierly morale lives or dies on the commander’s name.

They followed the Heavenly Flower Sword—who had stood fearlessly against mighty marshals, broken and rolled and been cut a hundred times without yielding, and in the end took victory. Men who had nothing to do with any of it still found their shoulders lifting.

Thus, an easy road.

The second city: Imgi!

Imgi was the second-largest metropolis after Jinan, capital of Shandong.

If you cast the future the way Qing’s homeland did, its nearness to the coast, its spoke-and-hub roads, and the wide plains would one day make it one of the top ten cities on the whole continent, brushing Jinan aside without a care. But for now, it stood only as second to Jinan—likely because imperial law slighted seafaring and because it lay far from Zhongyuan, the center of the world.

Naturally, this was nothing Qing could know.

She hadn’t even heard the city’s name “Imgi” except from Eon Yeonyeong’s mouth. Qing’s roots were the frontier’s “barbarians.”

In fact, the connoisseurs of Zhongyuan counted Imgi among the scenic sites one must visit once in a lifetime—especially if one cared for letters.

For one, this was the home ground of a giant among the Hundred Schools: Xunzi of the “nature is bad” doctrine, the Confucian who argued that humans were incorrigible trash by nature and must be straightened by education.

And this was also the birthplace of the undisputed head of Zhongyuan—Zhuge Liang.

Not stopping there—heavens!—the pride of all Sinites, the very script of Zhonghua itself, Wang Xizhi, came from this district.

A great teacher. The finest strategist. The finest hand.

A holy ground of the humanities that birthed all three.

So scholars of Zhongyuan—those “men of taste who read a line or two”—came to this city to receive the numinous qi of Letters.

Thus upon arrival in Imgi, soldiers did what soldiers do:

They pitched tents at a garrison ground.

And the commander did what a commander does:

He received the welcome of Imgi County’s Prefect Lord, who had come out to meet them.

This was a commander’s duty, not a pleasure jaunt.

Politics is the work of securing allies and pulling enemies toward neutrality through relationships. A Provincial Commander entering Imgi County must, as a matter of course, keep amicable terms with the prefecture that administered a great city.

The Prefect Lord thought a little differently.

Imgi County’s Prefect, Jang Cheongbaek, was one of the few bits of conscience left in officialdom. He had lived up to the name “Cheongbaek”—“pure white”—that his parents gave him, hoping he would become a clean official.

Of course, that was conscience by bureaucratic standards.

He could hold his head high under heaven that he did not take bribes to ruin the innocent. But receiving tokens of sincerity and granting returns—wasn’t that mutual aid that left everyone happy?

Still, a Prefect Lord ought to live in a palace-like manor; otherwise how could he maintain the minimum majesty? How could one raise such a manor on a mouse-tail stipend? All for the country’s sake—when the Prefect’s dignity lives, the underlings revere and follow. Obviously.

Even so—by the standards of grandees—this alone made him a paragon among the high.

In any case, Jang Cheongbaek was displeased.

Who did this fellow think he was, dropping in out of nowhere? He and the Provincial Commander worked different strings; there was nothing to gain from each other. If the troops garrisoned and trained, the prefecture would have to supply grain and meals besides. Wouldn’t the city be the one depleted?

He thought of the city before his own profit—truly living up to the name of a clean official.

Worse, rumor had it this was a private misuse of troops for the Provincial Commander’s personal advancement. What? Escort a precious “Her Majesty”? Even if so, how was it not tyranny to do this during the harvest season, when soldiers ought to be busy with autumn reaping? Especially soldiers—matters of the state. To injure the state for personal advancement—how could one not find that outrageous?

So how would Jang Cheongbaek show his displeasure?

Showing a sour face and playing wounded was the poorest of poor moves.

Politics begins with making no enemies; however far apart your lines, why grind your teeth and make a mortal foe?

So Jang Cheongbaek led Wang Ssangryong off for tea at none other than Wang Xizhi’s Former Residence.

Wang Xizhi’s Former Residence—the birthplace of the Central Plains’ Greatest Brush—now served as a Confucian holy ground and academy. In Qing’s homeland terms: a school-museum.

Hospitality usually meant top silk and rarities on the table to soften a man and cultivate ties; why bring them instead to a Confucian academy reeking of paper and ink?

As subjects who serve the Son of Heaven, remember the spirit of the Confucian forest. Know shame, and reflect. It was a refined and elegant reproach.

Wang Ssangryong understood him perfectly.

Would a grandee who held the office of Provincial Commander fail to grasp such a trifle of allusion?

But Wang Ssangryong stood firm.

He was escorting a Lady whose own era name could run a thousand years. This was not private aggrandizement but the proper duty of a minister of the military gates.

So Wang Ssangryong kept jabbing the Prefect Lord’s ribs with sharp looks.

Sir Prefect, what are you doing? Present silk and delicacies to Her Majesty at once.

The Prefect snorted.

So this “precious Her Majesty” was merely a martial artist? He’d wondered how beautiful she could be with all this fuss about the World’s Greatest Beauty; even with a swollen, wrapped cheek she could not conceal the beauty of an absolute peerless—and that was true beauty. But still—a martial artist.

Would a martial artist know loyalty?

They knew nothing of Confucianism or the lofty aims of the Hundred Schools—just roughs rampaging on strength. Would a martial artist know the immortality of letters? A sword flaunts force for the hour; once it is sheathed and buried, it rusts away. But writing endures forever, passed down as insight that raises people; the brush is stronger than the sword and is the very logic that makes the world.

So what did Qing do?

She looked up at the great hanging scroll in the old house.

“Ritual is the largest part of law and the root of all.”

“Oh. Xunzi.”

“You know Xunzi?”

“Know? How could I presume to say I know a giant’s words? That would be absurd. It’s shameful, but I studied a little under Scholar Cheon, so I can at least recognize a line.”

Jang Cheongbaek’s bent back slowly straightened.

“By ‘Scholar Cheon’—do you mean the Hanlin Academy’s Lecturing Scholar, the giant, Elder Cheon?”

“Yes. I am an unworthy disciple, but I serve my master.”

To have “studied under” and to “serve one’s master” were entirely different sayings. Many who learned at the Hanlin Academy claimed to have studied under a great teacher, but it simply meant they received instruction at the Academy.

But to “serve one’s master”?

That meant she had formed a true master-disciple bond with a Lecturing Scholar—what one calls the master’s foremost disciple.

“Oh—does the giant enjoy good health?”

Jang Cheongbaek himself had studied at the Hanlin Academy.

The Confucian forest had lost power, but many sons of great houses studied there and entered office. Precisely because the Confucian line was said to be precarious, the alumni bundled tight, exchanging letters about what ministers ought to do—then lamented that everyone only filled his own belly.

How special, then, to meet a junior of that fold.

Do peach trees still fruit so thickly by the Hanlin stream? Is the widow at the kiosk still in trade out front? Is the tavern on the east side still rowdy with scholars? When I think of those days, my eyes still brim—and on and on...

Wang Ssangryong’s brows twitched at Jang Cheongbaek’s sudden turn to honeyed courtesy.

So—pulling the Academy-alumni card here? The prim cat is first to the stove; all that lofty pose, and he’s weaving ties?

“Ah. Since you’ve come to Wang Xizhi’s former home, you really ought to leave a piece of calligraphy.”

“Calligraphy?”

“A commemoration. Having set foot in the house of a divine brush, any who hold a brush should, in reverence, offer a line.”

“Oh. A guestbook.”

“You there—are our juniors about? A noble guest would leave writing; prepare top-of-top paper!”

—“Top-of-top, sir?”

“A Hanlin-taught scholar.”

—“Ah! Understood! At once!”

Qing thought of it like any tourist spot—scribbling “So-and-so was here.”

Which, honestly, it was.

Visitors to Wang Xizhi’s home left one line and enjoyed the taste of culture; that was the usual course. (Rumor said they charged a wicked price for the paper and made a fortune.)

The paper’s cost scaled wildly by quality and size. The biggest and best, they called top-of-top.

When they said the paper was ready and she stepped out, the great hall was oddly crawling with students.

Naturally.

The World’s Greatest Beauty had arrived; how could would-be scholars not peek in? And now a Hanlin scholar was going to write? How could they possibly hold back.

So, with every scholar gathered, Qing looked down at a sheet so large a person could sprawl on it.

Huh. The guestbook is...big.

Well, then—write big.

She hesitated a breath.

Xunzi was from here, right?

She lifted the great brush, dunked it full, and cut the air in one unbroken stroke. Four door-sized characters soaked into the paper.

「麻中之蓬」

“Wormwood Among Hemp.”

A four-character maxim: even limp wormwood, planted among straight-growing hemp, would follow the rest and shoot up straight. Xunzi’s teaching that if one keeps good company, one naturally becomes good.

And the hall exploded.

“What greatness is this hand!”

“Each stroke bears a thousand-catty weight—like a sea whose might cannot be trespassed!”

“That such writing exists!”

“By heaven!” “Oh-ho!” “Hooo...”

“Wait! Don’t move! Dust will settle! Bring paste! Hurry! We must preserve and mount it as is!”

Prefect Lord Jang Cheongbaek was torn.

Couldn’t I take this? Hang it in the office and, when bored, gaze at it—play becomes vain, and even staring without end one never tires; it is ultimate writing. Every visitor would gasp; with this one piece I would have awe greater than ten thousand troops. And since the Prefect’s awe is the government’s awe, would keeping it not, in fact, be the path to true patriotism?

At the same time, he thought he understood why a Hanlin Lecturing Scholar would take the trouble to make a woman his foremost disciple. With such a hand, even a Grand Academician would race to claim her.

“You are already a great giant.”

“Pardon?”

“I am overcome with shame.”

With one such as this, no wonder even that greedy Provincial Commander accorded her the highest courtesies and mobilized troops. And here he had presumed to lecture her—how could there be such shame.

“You have not yet eaten, have you? Having come to Imgi, you must be taken to Nangya Pavilion to view the dreamlike vista.”

At that, a soft smile spread over Qing’s face.

Wow—they’re feeding me!