In the past life, Li Gu had first broken the Lu clan, then the Zheng clan. Both were prominent northern families who had crossed south of the river only after being defeated by Li Gu in the north. After breaking these two clans, the Gao clan — the most powerful of the great families in the south — had mounted desperate resistance and became the last great clan to fall.
In this life, due to various circumstances, Li Gu’s military thrust in his very first southern campaign had been aimed directly at the Gao clan, making them the first of the three great southern families to be destroyed.
The terrain of the south was endlessly varied, each place with its own customs, the climate shifting completely from one side of a mountain to the other. This had posed no small difficulty for Li Gu’s southern campaign. Li Gu led three separate imperial campaigns in person before he had pacified all the powerful families of the Yangtze south.
In this life, Li Gu’s second imperial campaign, in the fifth month of the eighth year of Kaiyuan, saw the Lu clan destroyed. Because the Lu clan had propped up a branch of the Prince of Jing’s line and established a false imperial court, Li Gu had shown them no mercy — just as he had with the Gao clan, he exterminated the entire family.
The false emperor killed himself. The Prince of Jing’s line was wiped out entirely.
The Emperor had once again demonstrated his cold ruthlessness to the world.
A close advisor of the Lu clan, seeking to preserve his own life, sold an old and buried secret to the Emperor of Da Mu.
The Emperor’s fury was formidable. He dispatched Marquis of Bei Rong Li Weifeng with a detachment of troops to march north, passing through Yunjing without entering, and heading straight for the northwestern frontier.
Marquis Bei Rong pushed his troops in a forced march all the way, from the deep south to the northern frontier, covering the distance in just two months. He arrived in the seventh month, and the moment he reached the northern frontier, he presented Li Gu’s written command, first stripped Li Da Lang of his military authority, then surrounded Li Da Lang’s residence with soldiers.
He entered himself, and found Li Da Lang waiting inside.
Li Da Lang looked at him and said, “Seventh Brother, you’ve come.”
Li Weifeng had been force-marching for two months. His beard was unkempt and his eyes were sunken. He said sharply, “Do you know why I’ve come?”
Li Da Lang said, “I know. I have been waiting for this day for a long time. From the moment he began the southern campaign, I could neither eat nor sleep properly in Yunjing, never knowing when the blade would fall. Requesting to come to the northern frontier was partly my way of fleeing. Now that you’re here, I feel, strangely, at peace.”
Li Weifeng, furious to the depths of his being, said, “How could you have been so foolish!”
Li Da Lang sighed. “It’s my fault.”
“Back then, the Wang clan did approach me as well. But the old lord was my kinsman of the elder branch, and he had shown me great kindness — I could not bring myself to do so disloyal a thing. In my hesitation, the Wang clan gave up on me and turned instead to support Er Lang through the Huo family. Within a few years, Er Lang was dragged along by those two families to his destruction.”
“But at the time when the chaos broke out, my one moment of hesitation let Shiyi Lang take the Hexi region. I was placed beneath him, and there was always a resentment in my heart that I could not put down.”
“We marched out of Hexi and advanced south. The Lu clan, deeply threatened, secretly sent someone to contact me. They intended to assassinate Shiyi Lang and put me in his place. I am Li family blood, after all — in that moment, I was genuinely tempted. But at the time Shiyi Lang was winning victory after victory, sweeping forward unstoppably, and the hearts of the Hexi army had turned to him. I hesitated once more, and in the end never acted.”
Li Weifeng said sharply, “If you never acted, you should have confessed to Shiyi Lang at the time! Is Shiyi Lang the kind of man without breadth of spirit! He has always placed the greatest weight on brotherhood! When the dynasty was founded, he enfeoffed us brothers first of all. He is a man who values old loyalties — you had not done anything, and if you had confessed honestly, would he truly have killed you for it? How could you have kept silent for all these years!”
Li Da Lang said, “Because I always clung to the hope that it would never come to light. And my situation was different from yours and the others — after the old lord died, I had not managed to join forces with you in time to move against Er Lang. Between Shiyi Lang and me, there was always a barrier. Every time I thought to confess and beg forgiveness, I hesitated, and then another day passed, and another — the longer I left it, the more impossible it became to speak…”
“You put it off day after day until your brother became the Emperor, until you had dragged yourself into a corner with no way out!” Li Weifeng was so enraged he almost laughed. “You hesitate at every turn, yet you harbored ambitions for the Hexi region, could not reconcile yourself to standing beneath Shiyi Lang? Shiyi Lang never hesitated for a single moment! While the rest of us were still wavering, Shiyi Lang had already drawn his blade! That is why it is he who gained the world, he who sits upon the throne! Fifth Brother, Eighth Brother, and I — not one of us has ever felt resentment! A man who drags his feet and cannot make up his mind — what right do you have to feel resentment!”
“Seventh Brother,” Li Da Lang asked, “why was it you who came? Did he order you to come? Or did you come of your own will?”
Li Weifeng said, “With death at your door, what use is it to ask that! Better me than someone else.”
Li Da Lang’s tears fell. “I have often thought these past two years — if only the old lord were still here. If we had raised him to the throne, our brotherhood, all of us together… could have been as it was before…”
Li Weifeng said, furiously, “Who doesn’t wish the old lord were still alive! But dreaming like that — can it save you?”
The color had gone entirely from Li Da Lang’s face.
“My family — him — can they be saved?” His lips trembled faintly as he spoke.
Li Weifeng said, his voice rough with grief and rage, “Only now do you think of your family? I only pity your wife for marrying a man like you and dragging her whole household down with you.”
Li Da Lang’s face had grown as gray and still as a dead man’s.
Li Weifeng said, “Before I came, Shiyi Lang gave me his word that he would wait until I returned to deal with your family. Take your own life now! If you do, I will stake everything I have to keep your family alive. Wealth and honor — don’t think of those anymore.”
Li Da Lang said, “All right.”
He reached for his sword. But the blade had caught in the scabbard and would not come free no matter how he pulled.
Li Weifeng drew his own sword and threw it at his feet. Li Da Lang picked it up. He turned his wrist so the point of the blade faced his own abdomen.
He had thought he would face death bravely. But his hand would not stop trembling.
Li Weifeng could not bear to watch any longer. He walked over and closed his hand around Li Da Lang’s. “Elder Brother, let me help you on your way.”
Li Weifeng pressed down. The steel blade drove into Li Da Lang’s abdomen.
Li Da Lang said, “Seventh Brother — thank you.”
He finished speaking and went limp, first sinking to his knees, then toppling over. A great rush of blood flooded back up his throat and poured from his mouth. He convulsed several times, then at last lay still.
Li Weifeng stood there for a long while, head tilted back toward the ceiling. In the end, the tears fell.
A lifetime of years, like one great dream. Receding further and further away, until the faces of the young men they had once been had all grown blurred.
The attendants did not dare make a sound. Marquis Bei Rong wiped his tears dry. “Prepare Elder Brother’s body with proper care,” he said. “We will bring him back to Yunjing.”
With that, he walked out in long strides.
When Li Weifeng returned to Yunjing, it was the tenth month. By then, news of a great victory in the south had already arrived — the Zheng clan, too, had been destroyed. All three of the most powerful great families of the south had fallen. The remaining local strongmen and noble clans had one after another submitted and pledged their allegiance.
Li Gu had at last become the sovereign of all under heaven.
Sooner, and faster, than Xie Yuzhang’s past life.
Li Gu and Li Weifeng returned to the capital within half a month of each other.
Xie Yuzhang put on her formal headdress and regalia and waited for him in Danyang Palace. When she saw Li Gu, she could not help but smile first and said, “Your Majesty has grown so dark out there. Your rank on the list of Yunjing’s finest gentlemen is going to drop again.”
Li Gu laughed heartily, walked over, and swept Xie Yuzhang up in his arms, heading straight for the inner chamber.
The palace maids all covered their mouths with their sleeves to hide their smiles.
Sunlight streamed through the window, the bed curtains not yet lowered.
The man’s honed, powerful back — at the hollows of the muscles, drops of sweat had gathered and condensed, flowing along the curves with every rise and fall.
Bronze-dark and snow-white. Strength and softness. Entangled and intertwined, consuming, soaking, exchanging.
Every pore laid bare in the bright light of noon.
Xie Yuzhang opened her eyes and saw Li Gu’s gaze, full of love and desire.
Love and desire, both at their height.
Li Gu looked at her too, and seeing her eyes open, he kissed her lips. The sweetness of those red lips — he would never have enough of it. He drove harder, making her like a leaf in a gale, with no choice but to be tossed along with him.
He loved her murmured, breathless sounds.
He loved her eyes gone glassy, her lips moving in a daze.
He loved when she bit his shoulder, his arm, or when her nails raked across his back, and she cried out his name in desperate abandon.
In all the world now, she alone still dared to call his name.
Li Gu was not offended. He was only glad.
Endlessly glad.
When the storm had passed several times over, and he had carried her into the bath and washed her carefully, then set her back on the bed, the sky outside had already darkened.
“Your endurance isn’t what it used to be,” he said, stroking her back, his eyes curved with laughter. “You’re spent already.”
“I practice archery and riding at the palace training grounds every single day and keep my body stretched and limber — my endurance hasn’t changed at all,” Xie Yuzhang said, with no small amount of indignation. “Look at yourself today — your eyes were practically ravenous. It’s only because I have good stamina that you didn’t shake me to pieces.”
“Indeed, still quite resilient,” Li Gu said approvingly. “Very supple.”
Xie Yuzhang kicked him, though her hands and feet were so boneless and soft at this point it was no more effective than a tickle.
Li Gu laughed, pinned her limbs down, and kissed her, slowly and thoroughly.
“By the way, I’ve brought someone back from the south — a woman of the Zheng clan, exceptionally skilled in song and dance,” he said. “I’ll have her perform for you sometime.”
This Zheng clan woman had been displaced during the chaos of war and later offered to Li Gu as a dancer. She was also said to be an incomparable beauty.
Li Gu had said of her, she cannot compare to Princess Baohua of former years. Yet she had still entered Li Gu’s inner palace.
In this life, she had come as well — and come this early. By Xie Yuzhang’s reckoning, she must be no more than fifteen or sixteen at this point — a tender, barely-opened age, like a bud not yet in bloom.
“Oh, good,” Xie Yuzhang said. “What rank do you intend to give her?”
Li Gu looked at her calm, untroubled expression and thought: why is she this composed? Why does she not seem the least bit unhappy or pained?
On the second day of their wedding she had already advised him to select imperial consorts — was she trying to be a virtuous and celebrated Empress for the ages?
Every sovereign dreamed of such an Empress — magnanimous and broad-spirited, dignified and worthy of all under heaven. To have such an Empress was a sovereign’s great fortune. Li Gu understood this clearly, and he knew such a thing would be best. Xie Yuzhang had read both the inner palace and the outer court with clear eyes, and her advice was sound.
And yet there was always a small knot somewhere in Li Gu’s heart, always there, refusing to dissolve.
He knew it. He was being greedy again.
But whenever it came to Xie Yuzhang, he always became greedy.
“What rank,” he said, “will she need. Let her perform two dances for you to see — Fifth Brother has been waiting for her. I said I didn’t want her, and Fifth Brother and Eighth Brother had an arm-wrestling match over her. Fifth Brother won, and on the way back he already took her under his keeping.”
Xie Yuzhang looked at Li Gu in astonishment.
Li Gu’s gaze was deep, carrying within it what seemed like many unspoken words.
Xie Yuzhang’s heart gave a sudden lurch. Her lips parted slightly.
Li Gu stopped them with his own lips, not letting her say anything more in that moment.
He knew that many things were right to say. He knew that many things were what ought to be done. He simply did not want to hear them, and did not want to do them.
Li Da Lang had taken his own life in atonement, and Marquis Bei Rong, before the Emperor, had begged in anguish — striking his head against the floor until his forehead was mottled with bruises — willing to forfeit all the military merit he had earned in the south in exchange for the lives of Li Da Lang’s family.
Li Gu had stridden down from the imperial desk and pulled him to his feet, saying furiously, “What are we to each other, that you would have me become utterly alone in this world?”
Li Weifeng wept, and said, “Da Lang said he often dreamed the old lord was still alive, that we brothers were as we used to be — competing on the training grounds, vying for glory on the frontier. Yes, there would have been rivalry. But we all shared the same family name of Li.”
In the end, the Emperor’s punishment fell only upon Li Da Lang’s household: the title stripped, the estate confiscated, the family exiled to the Hexi northern frontier.
And he extended a measure of mercy — the men were conscripted into the army rather than enslaved, and the women were exiled rather than made into servants or forced into prostitution, sparing them from that particular humiliation.
Li Da Lang’s wife, before departing for the north, led the entire household, young and old, outside the walls of Yunjing. They turned to face the imperial city in the distance and kowtowed in gratitude to the Emperor for his grace.
Li Weifeng saw her off and said, “Everyone escorting you is one of my own people, and I’ve made arrangements on the other end as well. If anything happens, send word to me.”
He said, “Go ahead, Sister-in-law. I’ll follow after.”