Regardless of the Prince’s Manor’s desire to settle matters peacefully, news of the assassin’s nighttime intrusion still spread far and wide.
No matter how low-key the handling of this matter, the Court of Judicial Review ultimately arrested and detained over twenty people from among the Feng family servants and household troops who had suspicious movements or criminal records, subjecting them to rigorous interrogation.
Subsequently, news spread that multiple Feng family servants had conspired to avenge their master. Mixed in were rumors that the assassin’s nighttime intrusion was staged by the Prince’s Manor itself, with implications pointing toward Emperor Tianyou. This made everything appear both clear and confusingly obscure.
Emperor Tianyou ultimately issued a decree to bring final closure to the Imperial Mausoleum collapse case. All Feng clan members, including Feng Liao, Feng Yi, and Kong Xirong, were demoted to commoner status and expelled from Jinling.
The assassin’s nighttime intrusion into the Prince’s Manor implicated over twenty people in suspected conspiracy to assassinate the Third Prince, but the Court of Judicial Review ultimately couldn’t close the case. At this time, Emperor Tianyou didn’t forcibly conscript the Feng family servants and household troops for official use, but rather permitted them to leave the capital together with the Feng clan members—this became logical and natural.
The Feng family (including the Kong family) servants were mainly divided into four categories:
The first category was household troops and their family members and children, totaling two thousand two hundred people. This group mainly resided in Jinling.
The second category was the managers, core workers, and their family members and children who handled the Feng family’s warehouses, pawn shops, taverns and other businesses. Excluding overlap with the first category, this totaled over one thousand eight hundred people.
This group was originally scattered across various regions, but the Three Judicial Offices, in order to verify and confiscate Feng family clan property, had brought all these people under detention to Jinling.
The third category consisted of stewards and farmhands who managed the Feng family’s estates and manors scattered across various regions, totaling over one thousand people, mainly dispersed in different areas. The Feng family’s estates in Jinling were primarily managed by family members and children of the household troops, and were not counted again in the first category.
The fourth category was servants and maids used in the Feng family’s various mansions and estates throughout Jinling, totaling over eight hundred people.
In other words, of the Feng family’s six thousand servants and household troops, five thousand were in Jinling. Adding nearly four hundred Feng clan members, all were ordered to leave Jinling within ten days.
So many people driven from Feng family mansions could only temporarily take shelter at Yandang Promontory, which received them.
It was already late October. Though snow hadn’t fallen yet, when the northern cold wind blew, frost whitened the ground. Five to six thousand people packed the newly built walled manor at Yandang Promontory full to bursting. Most could only spread straw mats in the courtyards to sleep, all as disheveled as startled birds, not knowing where to go.
All the Feng family’s manors and fields had been confiscated. Even if anyone had private savings, who dared bring them out now and wait for government soldiers to pounce like tigers and wolves to take them away and behead them?
Returning to Xuanzhou also meant having no place to shelter. Though the world was vast, there was no place for the Feng clan.
Especially after the assassin’s nighttime intrusion into the Prince’s Manor, those who had previously received Feng clan favors no longer dared touch this trouble.
Han Qian, however, behaved like an anomaly.
After the Feng clan members were expelled from their mansions, with so many servants and household troops—because some very likely harbored resentment like the Feng clan members—they weren’t forcibly conscripted as official servants. Emperor Tianyou wanted to appear not so ruthless toward the Feng family and didn’t exile or conscript these Feng clan members and servants into the army. However, the indenture contracts of these servants obviously couldn’t be taken away by the Feng clan members.
In other words, so many servants and household troops had at this moment become refugees without status.
Refugees were naturally free, but they had grown dependent on the Feng family. With nowhere to rely on and being ordered to leave Jinling within ten days—many without even padded winter clothes—besides continuing to advance and retreat together with the Feng family, what else could they do?
Early on, some had proposed going to Xuzhou, but in most Feng family members’ hearts, Xuzhou was too distant, too desolate—a land of miasma and rampant snakes and insects. For them to go to Xuzhou, what difference was there from exile and conscription?
The northern wind came, blowing faces cold as knife scrapes. Han Qian wore a padded robe over his leather armor against the cold, standing at the mouth where the Qiupu River flowed into the Yangtze, gazing at the glistening water.
Hearing footsteps, Han Qian turned to look back. Seeing it was Feng Liao and Feng Yi approaching, he asked: “What, you still haven’t decided where you’re going? Yang Qin will arrive in Jinling in two days. This time, through His Highness, I’ve additionally selected twenty ships from among those the Feng family is disposing of and bought them. If you can decide where to go in these two days, I can still dispatch ships to take you partway. Otherwise, you’ll have to trek over mountains and rivers yourselves!”
“Still can’t decide. Too many people still fear Xuzhou as a dangerous path,” Feng Liao said with a bitter smile.
Previously, as the eldest son and eldest grandson of the Feng family, he was second to none in the clan except for his father Feng Wenlan and uncle Kong Zhou. But now, more Feng family members blamed him and his father for bringing disaster to the clan—how would they still take his words seriously?
Even his grandmother, mother, and aunt now had no weight when speaking.
“Why not reveal the matter of Li Qilü?” Feng Yi asked in frustration.
“If you reveal this matter, I absolutely won’t send you to Xuzhou!” Han Qian said with a taut face. “Can you be certain that among so many people, there aren’t any informants bought by the Inner Palace Bureau? If you speak of this and it leaks out or someone reports it, and I still send you to Xuzhou, how many mouths do I have to explain clearly?”
“If I tell several uncles that the Han family has ambitions to develop Xuzhou, and that Xuzhou is the Feng clan’s only place to rise again, would that be acceptable?” Feng Liao asked, watching Han Qian’s expression.
“My father and I are utterly loyal to His Majesty and to Great Chu. My father received the command to govern Xuzhou and harbors absolutely no deviant intentions,” Han Qian said with stern righteousness.
Feng Liao disdained Han Qian’s clumsy performance, but he could understand Han Qian’s caution at this time. He urged: “I’m just finding an excuse to secretly persuade those stubborn uncles and brothers of mine. If word gets out, even if someone subjects me to severe torture, I absolutely won’t implicate Lord Han.”
“My father and I are loyal enough to be witnessed by the sun and moon. We can’t just let you slander us, can we?” Han Qian insisted on refusing.
“When did you become so stubborn?” Feng Yi was extremely anxious, not expecting Han Qian to be completely inflexible.
“Feng Yi, go find Xirong. I have words to say privately with Lord Han,” Feng Liao said to Feng Yi.
“Fine!” Feng Yi said dejectedly, turning to leave the riverside.
Han Qian turned again to face the great river to the north, waves surging, growing ever more crisp under the blowing cold wind.
“Li Qilü was released into the Prince’s Manor by you and then you directed Tian Cheng to kill him, wasn’t he?” Feng Liao said through gritted teeth.
“Why would I do such a superfluous thing?” Han Qian laughed derisively, looking at the river water without turning his head back.
“Your actions were only to make us believe that remaining near Jinling or going to Xuanzhou, we might still suffer persecution. And forcing my Feng family into Xuzhou will be your capital for establishing independent control of Xuzhou,” Feng Liao said through gritted teeth. “I didn’t understand at first—I didn’t expect that in the end there would be so many servants and household troops expelled from Jinling city together with us. All the rumors were released by you, weren’t they?”
“Since you think you’ve glimpsed the secret in my heart, why run over to tell me? Truly not afraid I’ll kill you to silence you?” Han Qian turned around, staring at Feng Liao.
“You won’t kill me, because you and I both know that my Feng family currently has no other choice!” Feng Liao said with certainty.
“If you think you’ve glimpsed my movements, you could expose me to His Highness. How could you have no other choice?” Han Qian said.
“Who in the Prince’s Manor would believe us three? If I reveal this to others, wouldn’t I be seeking my own death? Moreover, for the Feng clan to rise again, we can only shelter under your family’s roof!” Feng Liao’s gloomy and profound eyes fixed on Han Qian, wanting to truly confirm this point.
“You’re too confident. If you said these words before my father, my father would definitely push you out for beheading. Your Feng family suffered this calamity because, plainly speaking, you weren’t careful enough. Today I’ll act as if you never said these words, and in the future absolutely don’t say them before me again!” Han Qian returned Feng Liao’s gaze without evasion.
It wasn’t that Han Qian feared Feng Liao still had other options at this time. Mainly, he feared Feng Liao would run before his father and say all this. And if at that time he was still in Jinling with no way to explain face-to-face with his father, his father might truly bind Feng Liao and the others and deliver them to Jinling to prove their innocence—that would truly be self-defeating cleverness.
“I’ll know proper measure, but there are still people unwilling to all go to Xuzhou together. I wonder what clever strategy Your Lordship has?” Feng Liao said.
Hearing Feng Liao deliberately change his form of address, Han Qian sighed inwardly.
To be honest, didn’t Han Qian’s heart also want to seize the opportunity to carve out Xuzhou, to be a local emperor in that distant mountainous land, not bothering with Jinling’s dangerous killing intent?
But he couldn’t pass his father’s barrier!
Han Qian sighed bitterly in his heart, withdrew a piece of paper from his robe sleeve, and handed it to Feng Liao, saying: “I’ve already thought of an excuse for you to persuade others—this is a promissory note showing I owe your Feng family forty thousand strings of cash. Take it and tell your uncles that I’m doing everything possible to recover this promissory note, which is why I agreed to help you establish yourselves in Xuzhou. After arriving in Xuzhou, I’ll also arrange fields and residences for you, canceling this debt.”
“If this matter gets out, won’t it equally disadvantage Your Lordship?” Feng Liao asked.
“Even if the Crown Prince or Prince Xin have planted informants among your family’s servants and learn of this, they can only accuse me of attempting to embezzle small sums. Whether they’ll ultimately expose this matter is truly debatable. After all, they can’t strike me down with one blow. After all, when I’m useful, will His Majesty care if I’m greedy for small amounts? But if the Crown Prince or Prince Xin pursue shadows and attack me for harboring deviant intentions, matters become troublesome, and I’d have difficulty refuting them,” Han Qian said.
The Feng family was a fat sheep. Han Qian had arranged for Guo Que’er to enter the Feng mansion at the first opportunity, both because of the relationships with Feng Yi and Kong Xirong at that time, and truly because the Feng family’s enterprise could be considered extremely large in this age.
Even though Emperor Tianyou hadn’t mentioned it at all during the Chongwen Hall audience and strategy discussion, Han Qian was ninety-nine percent certain that Emperor Tianyou had long since planted informants among the Feng family servants. These informants would continue hiding among the Feng servants, becoming a covert force monitoring Xuzhou.
Had Prince Chu, Anning Palace, and the Crown Prince’s faction also bought people among the Feng family servants?
This was also what Han Qian needed to guard against.
If talk of establishing independent control of Xuzhou reached the ears of Prince Chu and Anning Palace, and officials from these two factions submitted memorials impeaching him, should Emperor Tianyou play blind or not play blind?
Therefore, to deceive and coax all Feng clan members into agreeing to go to Xuzhou, Han Qian truly had to rack his brains considerably!