After hearing Yu Chaozong out, Shen Rujian answered him with full seriousness: “Shen Medical Hall saves people. It does not kill them.”

Yu Chaozong startled — and then, to his own apparent surprise, his tone carried a faint trace of plea.

“Saving people cannot be difficult for you. Ending a life ought to be a simpler matter still.”

Shen Rujian replied: “For any physician, ending a life by means of medicine is no great difficulty. But our ancestors did not teach us to kill — they taught us to heal and to save.”

Yu Chaozong made to press further, but Shen Rujian gave him no opening.

“You are underestimating Li Chi,” Shen Rujian said. “I feel embarrassed on your behalf.”

Yu Chaozong did not follow.

“You think doing this will change Li Chi’s path?” she said. “If Li Chi wanted to do something, why would he need you to die to give him leave?”

Then Yu Chaozong understood.

If that were Li Chi’s nature, why would he have bothered rescuing Yu Chaozong in the first place?

“Do not make decisions for him.”

Shen Rujian said this with perfect calm. “And do not interfere with how he chooses to be a person.”

Yu Chaozong was profoundly shaken by these words. People go through their lives interfering with one another’s choices about who to be — those of higher station do it most, and revel in it.

Shen Rujian was not a gentle woman, and she felt no obligation to bear what she found intolerable in silence.

So she added: “He could not make your decisions for you, and so you fell. Now you want to make his decisions for him — is that so he can fall like you?”

The color drained from Yu Chaozong’s face. He gave a rueful laugh: “Now that is truly cutting to the quick.”

The contempt in Shen Rujian’s gaze grew even more pronounced. She looked him in the eyes: “I will not tell Li Chi what you said — not a single word. In what sounds like your final testament, is there truly not some corner of it that still wants to make use of him?”

“Li Chi is the kind of person who repays kindness with kindness. If he knew you sought death to give him a clear way forward, he would exhaust everything he had to go on protecting you. That was probably your thinking.”

Yu Chaozong shook his head: “No.”

Shen Rujian only gave a small shrug, turned, and walked out of the stone chamber, as though she had nothing further to say to him.

She said what she said. And she also hoped Yu Chaozong had not been thinking that at all.

Yu Chaozong sat there in a blank daze for a long while. He questioned himself: when he had arrived at this decision, had there truly been some part of him that harbored the thoughts Shen Rujian had just named?

He had been entirely certain, moments before, that there had been absolutely nothing of the kind — there couldn’t have been, because he was giving Yanshan Camp over to Li Chi with full sincerity.

Then he thought it over with great care, and suddenly laughed.

“I truly had not.”

He murmured this to himself.

Leaning back where he sat, Yu Chaozong let out a long breath. His heart was at ease, settled in a way it had never been. No schemes, no greed, no calculated intentions — only wanting to give something to a young man he cared about, with nothing expected in return. He felt no shame, and for the first time in all these years, he felt this particular pride.

He did not even blame Shen Rujian for the words she had spoken. Instead, he felt a kind of gladness on Li Chi’s behalf.

Having someone like Shen Rujian beside Li Chi was, without question, a good thing rather than a bad one.

Before long, Li Chi came in carrying a large platter of dumplings, still steaming.

Yu Chaozong tried to push himself upright on his own, but could not muster the strength in his hands. Li Chi quickly set the platter down and helped him sit up.

“I’ll feed you.”

Li Chi brooked no argument.

Yu Chaozong made a sound of assent and looked at Li Chi, smiling with greater and greater ease and happiness.

“Wudi told me once,” he said, “that if he had a younger brother in this life, he would want him to be the sort Li Chi was.”

“Now I understand. What I understood before wasn’t this simple. Wudi — he has always been simpler than me.”

Li Chi picked up a dumpling and held it out to Yu Chaozong, then sighed: “Elder Brother, you really aren’t as simple as Second Brother. If it were Second Brother, half the platter would already be gone.”

Yu Chaozong took the whole dumpling into his mouth.

From that day on, Yu Chaozong never again spoke of dying to anyone, and seemed to harbor no further wish for death.

He asked for great quantities of paper and spent each day sitting up in bed writing and sketching — when Li Chi was away, he wrote without pause. When Li Chi was there, he became cheerful, as though returned to his boyhood, with endless things to say.

He and Li Chi talked of everything — his own half-lifetime of experience, the failings of the court, from governance to the will of the people, from the people’s will to local customs and ways, from local customs to the stars and the shape of the land. Every road he had walked, every person he had known, every thing he had done, every understanding he had arrived at — all of it was in the words, all of it was on the paper.

He wrote about Yanshan Camp, and drew maps of it too. Li Chi might not be thinking so far ahead, but as his elder brother, Yu Chaozong intended to do that thinking for him.

Even if Li Chi had no wish to take the chieftain’s seat of Yanshan Camp, the mere fact of his returning there would be enough to make Golden Armor and Xilizi regard him with hostility.

And one could not entirely blame those two. They would likely assume that Li Chi had been nowhere to be found during the desperate last stand, only to reappear when there was a chieftain’s position to claim.

If only those two thought this way, it would be manageable — but if all the brothers of Yanshan Camp thought the same, it would be impossible for Li Chi to take hold of the camp.

Yu Chaozong, once calmed, realized how rash his earlier arrangements had been. A single token was not going to be enough for Li Chi to walk in and take over the stronghold.

So he began to write. He began to speak.

He put everything about Yanshan Camp onto paper — and not only Yanshan Camp. The state of the world as well.

In this way, he spent each day absorbed in the work, so intent that he seemed to forget he was ill. His spirits and his health both appeared, if not improved, at least somewhat steadier.

They remained hidden in the underground vault day after day, while outside, the days in Jizhou City gradually returned to a kind of calm.

Yet among certain parties, things were growing less calm by the day.

Yuzhou army general Yu Weiyin had come to think of himself as the foremost meritorious figure, and backed by the Emperor, he was conducting himself with arrogance and contempt. He was high-handed toward everyone except Prince Wu Yang Jiju and the Emperor himself — including Luo Geng.

On the third day after Jizhou was taken, the Emperor issued a decree rewarding the three armies — though it was a reward in words only.

Large amounts of gold and silver had been found in Zeng Ling’s residence, and the storehouses had yielded still more. The sum was more than sufficient to fund the distribution of rewards, but the Emperor had no intention of distributing it.

All funds recovered — whether seized by the Youzhou army or the Yuzhou army — were, by imperial decree, turned over to Prince Wu’s forces for taking inventory.

This left Yu Weiyin with no one to blame except Luo Geng. The way Yu Weiyin saw it, had Luo Geng not competed with him and made a spectacle of it all, with Youzhou and Yuzhou soldiers brawling in the streets more than once, the Emperor would not have confiscated everything.

The Emperor’s meaning was: you all want to fight over it, do you? Then I’ll give it to none of you.

What Yu Weiyin failed to see was that this situation had been allowed to develop deliberately — the Emperor had even had men encourage it. The Emperor had wanted precisely this: Luo Geng and Yu Weiyin at each other’s throats, stirred up, at war, irreconcilable.

Otherwise, on what pretext could the Emperor collect all the money for himself? The Emperor wanted to take every last coin of it. And from the very beginning, the Emperor had wished for Luo Geng and Yu Weiyin to remain at odds — constantly at odds was what suited the court best.

The surrendered Qingzhou soldiers, some sixty or seventy thousand, were all absorbed into Prince Wu’s forces. The Yanshan Camp auxiliary troops were even more numerous — no fewer than seventy or eighty thousand — and these too were incorporated by Prince Wu.

In the end, Luo Geng and Yu Weiyin had both gained nothing whatsoever.

Yu Weiyin was naturally displeased — profoundly displeased. The Yuzhou army had charged at the vanguard, and in the end they had come away empty-handed. How could he be pleased?

Counting it up: the Yuzhou army had lost at least twenty thousand men in the fighting outside the city against Yanshan Camp. Later, the Emperor had ordered Yu Weiyin to lead an assault on the city, where there were still seven or eight thousand Jizhou soldiers and a similar number of Yanshan Camp fighters. In that desperate last stand, the Yuzhou army had wiped out these remnant forces, but had also suffered losses of another twenty thousand or so. The Jizhou and Yanshan Camp remnants, knowing themselves in a hopeless position, had fought with savage fury.

And before all that, the Yuzhou army had already been caught between Yanshan Camp and the Qingzhou army, losing over twenty thousand men in that exchange. Taken together, the Yuzhou army now had fewer than fifty thousand effective troops remaining, and of those, a great number were wounded.

This was the situation the Emperor had wanted to see. No money, no grain, no reinforcements — nothing. Just leave Yu Weiyin to hold Jizhou with these forty or fifty thousand broken troops.

In truth, the Emperor didn’t even want him holding Jizhou.

The plaque had already been taken down from the gates of Zeng Ling’s regional governor’s residence. The Emperor was now residing there himself, and planned to remain another three to five days before heading south and returning to the capital. Once he had tidied up Jizhou’s affairs to his satisfaction, returning to the capital would set his mind at ease.

Prince Wu sat beside the Emperor, thanked him for the tea he had been offered, and said: “Yesterday Luo Geng came to see me. He said he wishes to lead his forces back to Youzhou — a report has come in that the Black Wu are massing troops along the border again. But in all likelihood it is a feint. If the Black Wu were truly massing, I would have received a military report as well.”

The Emperor nodded: “He simply doesn’t want to go attack the Yanshan stronghold, and doesn’t want to waste any more time in Jizhou.”

The Emperor smiled: “Did he say anything else?”

Prince Wu said: “Luo Geng also said that his men arrived in summer at the end of the season, dressed only in light summer clothing, and it is now nearly the beginning of winter. The soldiers are suffering from the cold. He asked me to arrange for winter garments to be distributed to his men. I looked into it yesterday — the Jizhou storehouses have more than enough military winter gear in stock.”

The Emperor said: “If we issue them to his men, we would have to issue them to Yu Weiyin’s men too. And if we issue them to Yu Weiyin’s men, we would have to issue them to all those surrendered soldiers as well. Of all these forces, only your Royal Uncle’s army came with their own winter gear already.”

Prince Wu said: “There is more than enough to issue to all of them. It is remarkable that Zeng Ling stockpiled supplies on this scale — even several hundred thousand sets of winter gear could be distributed.”

The Emperor smiled: “But Luo Geng and Yu Weiyin don’t know how large the stockpile is.”

He made a quick calculation: “Luo Geng’s forces, after the great battle, still number over forty thousand. Yu Weiyin’s forces as well, around forty thousand. Very well — have Luo Geng come to collect winter gear, and inform Yu Weiyin that there is a share for him too, and have him wait his turn. Once Luo Geng’s forces have collected theirs, Yu Weiyin’s people can come.”

Prince Wu bowed: “Your servant obeys.”

The Emperor continued: “Issue sixty thousand sets of winter gear to Luo Geng’s forces — don’t say anything, just give more than is owed. Then issue thirty thousand sets to Yu Weiyin’s people. Whatever remains — however many tens of thousands are left — load it all onto wagons and take it away immediately. Issue it all to the new soldiers in your Royal Uncle’s command. Issue to the veterans too. Give it all out.”

Prince Wu’s eyes brightened: “Then the great army will march south and take all the funds and supplies. When Yu Weiyin realizes his winter gear is short, he will certainly send men to ask. We need only tell him that Luo Geng took too many.”

The Emperor smiled and nodded, then slowly let out a breath: “In truth, I have no wish to do this. This is guile — not the kingly way. I, as Emperor of Dachu, should not be resorting to such stratagems. But I have no choice. Whether by guile or by the kingly way, by whatever path — if it is useful, I will use it.”

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