Seeing the Imperial Concubine and Prince Tan displaying a scene of maternal kindness and filial piety, Chun Shisanniang lowered her head with a smile at the corners of her mouth and looked toward Yao Xishui, noting that her expression was calm—she was even more composed than herself.

After Prince Tan accompanied the Imperial Concubine to the garden to speak some intimate words, Chun Shisanniang stood guard in a corner of the courtyard and asked Yao Xishui: “You see the Imperial Concubine and His Highness now have such a harmonious relationship—why are you still keeping such a stern little face?”

Yao Xishui glanced at the Imperial Concubine and Prince Tan speaking in the distance. She thought that besides mother-son affection, Prince Tan and the Imperial Concubine had lived together in seclusion in the deep palace relying on each other for thirteen years. As long as their side wasn’t aggressively pressing, and could use softness to overcome hardness, Prince Tan couldn’t easily escape the Imperial Concubine’s implicit control. But was that person in Xuzhou someone easy to deal with?

Thinking of this, Yao Xishui sighed lightly and said:

“These past two years, all the skilled shipwrights from Yueyang and Tanzhou have been recruited by Han Qian to Xuzhou. To establish the Five Fang Army and build more warships, we still need to purchase ships from Xuzhou. And this time Yuzhou is also purchasing large quantities of war equipment and warships from Xuzhou. We seemingly have Han Qian tied down in Xuzhou, but if these circumstances don’t improve, there’s still no way to sever his tentacles from reaching beyond Yueyang.”

When Zhang Ping went to Xuzhou to serve as Supervisory Commissioner, Yao Xishui and Chun Shisanniang had also lived together in Xuzhou for a period. Although Chun Shisanniang always felt deep disdain that Xuzhou was a place of poor mountains and treacherous waters, wishing to leave Xuzhou a moment sooner, Yao Xishui could still see Xuzhou’s tremendous changes and the enormous vitality it harbored.

Perhaps she was more deeply entangled with Han Qian. Perhaps because of this she understood Han Qian more deeply. She thought the Lady and the Imperial Concubine still underestimated Han Qian too much.

The water battalion originally administered by the Ma family in Tanzhou was once called the Five Fang Army. When Yueyang City was presented in surrender, the Dragon Sparrow Army incorporated a group of surrendered water battalion soldiers and warships. On this foundation, the Yuezhou Regional Commander and Right Dragon Sparrow Army Vice Commander-in-Chief Gao Chengyuan was responsible for establishing a water battalion, with the water battalion’s organization placed under the Right Dragon Sparrow Army.

Even without considering attacking Jinling, the nine Hunan provinces controlled the river and held the lake—there was also a need for the water battalion to become an independent army and expand its forces.

Expanding the Yueyang water battalion into the Five Fang Army required not only conscripting able-bodied military households to train in naval warfare, but also supplementing with a batch of warships.

During the vassal reduction campaign, the shipyards originally built by the Ma family in both Yueyang and Tanzhou were outside the cities. Before the Dragon Sparrow Army arrived at the city gates, the Tanzhou army had first destroyed these facilities outside the city walls. In the short time that had passed since the war, there was no way to restore them to their former state.

More importantly, after capturing Yueyang and Tanzhou cities, a group of shipwright craftsmen and even large quantities of shipbuilding timber stored for many years were all brought by Han Qian to Xuzhou to expand the scale of the Wufeng Mountain and Linjiang shipyards.

At that time, no one had imagined that such an earth-shattering transformation would occur in Jinling. No one had imagined that the shipbuilding capacity of Jinling, Jiangzhou, and even Chaozhou would all fall under the control of the Anning Palace.

Under Zhou Yuan’s direction, the shipyard urgently completed in Yueyang after the new year lacked skilled craftsmen and also lacked dehydrated timber stored in the shade for several years. Currently it could only repair some vessels and fundamentally lacked the capability to build ships.

No matter how displeased they felt, to establish the Five Fang Army this time, the over one hundred warships of various sizes newly added would all need to be purchased from Xuzhou.

Beyond warships, Zhou Yuan who directed the Administration’s Ministry of Works, along with Han Daochang and others, had also taken over the affairs of the Artisan Bureau without separately establishing a Directorate of Imperial Manufactories.

The Artisan Bureau had over ten thousand official slaves under its jurisdiction in Yueyang and Tanzhou, specifically managing iron smelting, bronze smelting and coin minting, armor casting, war equipment and crossbow manufacture and repair, city wall construction and such. Never mind city wall construction—the quality of armor, war equipment, and crossbows produced by the Artisan Bureau was simply far inferior to products from Xuzhou.

Ordinary soldiers had no voice in these matters. Even the opinions of lower-ranking officers didn’t need to be considered. But when choosing between the Artisan Bureau’s products and war equipment from Xuzhou, no one could ignore the sky-full grumbling of battalion commanders and vice commanders.

The Artisan Bureau had no solution. Forcibly demoting the families of rebel generals and officials to hard labor and official slaves—though numerous in number—couldn’t change the severe shortage of master craftsmen, craftsman teachers, and skilled artisans.

When the Marquis abandoned Qiuhu Mountain to withdraw to Runzhou, although over two thousand craftsmen all received priority care and weren’t intercepted by the Anning Palace’s forces, getting over two thousand craftsmen plus tens of thousands of family dependents to bypass regions controlled by the Anning Palace like Jinling, Chizhou, Jiangzhou, and Xuanzhou to migrate into Hunan was still extremely difficult.

In fact, the hundred-plus most excellent craftsman teachers and craftsmen trained by the Qiuhu Mountain workshops over these years had already been brought to Xuzhou by Han Qian when secretly planning the vassal reduction campaign.

Of course, Yao Xishui wouldn’t forget that the Qiuhu Mountain workshops were built by Han Qian’s own hand.

And craftsman teachers and engineering teachers with great training potential like Ji Xiyao and Chen Jitang had been arranged by Han Qian to take root in Xuzhou even earlier.

Even after capturing Tanzhou, among that group of craftsmen originally controlled by the Ma family, the dozens of most excellent craftsman teachers and engineering teachers were also requested by Han Qian.

After capturing Tanzhou, everyone from top to bottom fell into wild celebration, everyone eagerly awaiting official appointments and noble titles from Jinling. Who would carefully distinguish which among the thousands of official slaves previously controlled by the Ma family in Tanzhou were more important than whom?

Although during the mid to late period of the previous dynasty, when separatist military governors competed for supremacy for a hundred years, every family highly valued city wall construction and the manufacture of armor and war equipment, the status of craftsmen hadn’t improved much.

For convenience of use and control, each family even directly demoted large numbers of craftsmen to official slaves for centralized management, or rather, the workshops and handicraft workshops they administered only employed slaves.

When rashly conquering a rival power, who would think to select the capable from among the slaves controlled by the opponent?

Even though Zhou Yuan controlled the Administration’s Ministry of Works and was responsible for manufacturing and repairing armor and war equipment, he could only purchase a portion of superior armor and war equipment from Xuzhou to appease the resentment of commanders at all levels.

They were complacently pleased with themselves, thinking that using the mourning and filial observance to tie down Han Qian in Xuzhou and granting Han Qian the post of Xuzhou Regional Commander made it difficult for Han Qian to directly interfere in Yueyang’s affairs. But besides Feng Liao, Du Qiniang, Lin Haizheng, Feng Xuan and others being right by His Highness’s side, Han Qian was also influencing Yueyang in other more silent, more difficult to refuse ways, making it impossible for anyone to break free from him—never mind that the palace maids and eunuchs of the inner palace all competed to purchase light, fine-textured, breathable, useful, high-quality and inexpensive Qianyang cloth to make robes.

On the day of Prince Tan and Princess Qingyang’s grand wedding, Yao Xishui’s heart carried a faint worry as she served beside the Imperial Concubine together with Chun Shisanniang.

The day quickly passed. The sky had deepened.

At Cishou Palace, inside and out over a hundred bright horn lanterns were lit and hung, illuminating the vast courtyard bright as day.

Hearing news from Changxin Palace that His Highness and Princess Qingyang had already been sent into the bridal chamber, Yao Xishui relaxed with a breath of relief.

Chun Shisanniang at this time walked out from the sleeping hall, stretching with infinite charm, but alas, aside from eunuchs there were only palace maids here—no one would be stirred by her allure.

Although Cishou Palace possessed independent ceremonial guards and garrison forces, the over one thousand selected elite direct troops were led by Li Chong and Han Jun as left and right military supervisors, stationed in barracks at the northeast corner of Cishou Palace.

Besides guarding Cishou Palace, this military force also controlled an inconspicuous side gate through which one could enter and exit the Prince’s city, apart from the four main gates of Chongxin, Chongli, Chongren, and Chongyi.

“This day has finally passed,” Chun Shisanniang said, stretching as she looked toward Yao Xishui. Her charming face carried slight self-mockery as she asked, “Do you think His Highness and Han Qian and them know that little slut Qingyang is actually like us—remnants of the Divine Mausoleum Bureau?”

Yao Xishui shrugged. Over these years, who could truly see through Han Qian?

But then again, whether or not one had connections to the previous dynasty’s Divine Mausoleum Bureau—who would care now?

Even if they were remnants of the Divine Mausoleum Bureau, busily competing for power and profit all day—how many truly never forgot their desire for revenge and national restoration?

Yao Xishui was about to return with Chun Shisanniang and their maidservants to the quarters where they resided when she saw Li Chong bringing Han Jun rushing in urgently, blocking them: “What’s happened?”

“Have the Imperial Concubine and Palace Supervisor retired for the night?” Li Chong asked anxiously.

“The Imperial Concubine has retired. The Lady is in the western quarters—I don’t know if she’s retired yet. What’s happened?” Yao Xishui saw Li Chong clutching a thin paper stained with beeswax and asked, “Is this an urgent secret message from somewhere?”

“Chuzhou forces suffered a great defeat west of Runzhou by Xu Zhu’s troops!” Li Chong said.

As a member of the Xu clan, Xu Zhu was a direct general of the Anning Palace. Before the Jinling incident he served as Chaozhou Military Commissioner. After the incident occurred, he was the first to lead ten thousand elite troops from Chaozhou across the river into Caishi, then advance east along the river to Jinling. After joining with forces controlled by the Anning Palace and Eastern Palace, he was enfeoffed as Dragon Martial General and Governor of Military Affairs for Runzhou, Yangzhou, Xuanzhou and other provinces—he could be said to be the vanguard general dispatched by the Anning Palace to intercept Chuzhou forces from attacking Jinling via the Runzhou direction.

After reorganizing the submitted Imperial Guards and Palace Guard Army, currently the forces directly controlled by the Anning Palace in Jinling reached one hundred ten thousand, mainly divided into three parts.

First was the Tower Ship Army of twenty thousand naval officers and soldiers led by the Marquis of Zhenyuan Yang Jian. After the Jinling incident, Yang Jian ultimately still chose to preserve the imperial clan and sent his family back into Jinling City. He led the Tower Ship Army stationed at the Jingxian Lake naval camp northeast of Jinling City.

Second was the Palace Guard Army of twenty thousand commanded by Xu Anlan, mainly composed of the Crown Prince’s direct mansion guards, currently primarily responsible for defending the Palace City and Imperial City.

The reorganized Imperial Guards and Palace Guard Army were broken up and mixed into the Chaozhou forces that crossed the river led by Xu Zhu, as well as forces controlled by Wen Muqiao and Wen Bo, reorganized into the Southern Court Imperial Guards. With the most troops, they recorded a total of seventy thousand Imperial Guard officers and soldiers, with Bureau of Military Affairs Vice Commissioner Niu Gengru as Commander-in-Chief of All Armies’ Campaign Cavalry and Infantry Forces, with Xu Zhu and Wen Bo as deputy generals actually commanding the Southern Court Imperial Guards.

When Yao Xishui and they first arrived in Yueyang with Imperial Concubine Wang Chan’er, Zheng Chang and others, Wen Bo led forty thousand Southern Court Imperial Guards defending Jinling City outside the Imperial and Palace Cities, while Xu Zhu led another thirty thousand Southern Court Imperial Guards stationed along the line of Jingshan Hermitage at the southeastern foot of Baohua Mountain.

At that time, the Marquis of Xinchang Li Pu occupied Runzhou City and joined forces with Chuzhou vanguard troops, with a combined force of twenty thousand elite troops.

Although Xu Zhu’s forces had numerical superiority, with unstable morale and widespread panic, they didn’t fear he would dare lead thirty thousand Southern Court Imperial Guards to besiege Runzhou City.

However, after Prince Xin Yang Yuanyan led Chuzhou’s main elite forces across the river, he would inevitably launch a probing attack on Xu Zhu’s forces at the fastest speed and try every means to achieve victory. Only this way could he possibly intimidate the prefectures and counties near Jinling to temporarily remain neutral, not obey the Anning Palace’s orders, and make it difficult for the Anning Palace to extract money, grain, and able-bodied men from nearby prefectures and counties.

While Shouzhou forces moved somewhat slowly, Chuzhou forces from two months ago completely disregarded the Liang forces stationed in the Xuzhou direction—their main force boldly moved south. As long as the forces Prince Xin Yang Yuanyan assembled in Runzhou exceeded thirty thousand, in the first battle against Xu Zhu, it seemed they would certainly gain the advantage no matter how one looked at it.

The key issue still depended on what happened after Xu Mingzhen led Shouzhou forces across the river.

“If Prince Xin leads Chuzhou’s main forces across the river and has the Marquis unite forces with him, heavily defeating Xu Zhu would naturally be expected—it’s also a good thing. Why do you both look so alarmed?” Chun Shisanniang’s beautiful eyes, as if harboring autumn waters with rippling waves, glanced toward Li Chong and Han Jun. She didn’t know why they would appear this way.

“The Tower Ship Army blockaded the waterway of the lower Yangtze River. Chuzhou forces’ main army has been unable to cross the river and move south. Prince Xin Yang Yuanyan only led eight hundred Silver Halberd Guards across the river first to Runzhou to join with Chuzhou army’s forward units and my father and them. Prince Xin urged my father to send troops from Runzhou. My father couldn’t dissuade him and extremely reluctantly marched with him from Runzhou toward the southeast of Baohua Mountain. Xu Zhu led thirty thousand Southern Court Imperial Guards out from Jingshan Hermitage camp and made contact with fierce battle against my father and the Chuzhou vanguard forces southeast of Jingshan Hermitage. When my father and them were about to be unable to withstand it, Prince Xin personally led eight hundred Silver Halberd Guards to strike out from the flank, directly charging into the center formation of the Southern Court Imperial Guards, beheading Xu Zhu within the formation, causing the thirty thousand Southern Court Imperial Guards to completely rout!” Li Chong said.