In the early summer of the fifth year of the Jinghe reign, the scorching sun arrived early, and a great drought struck north of the Central Plains.
This spring had seen as little rain as the previous year, and after the continuous spring rains in early spring, not a single drop of blessed rain had fallen since.
Yet this stingy rainfall differed somewhat from the previous year — droughts in Jiangnan in spring were common throughout history, and the regions of Jiangzhe, with their well-developed water conservancy and irrigation systems, always managed to endure, waiting for the summer rains to come.
But this great drought in the Central Plains was clearly far more severe than Jiangnan’s.
Though the most scorching summer heat had yet to arrive, riverbeds were already cracked. To say nothing of farming and sericulture, even daily water needs had become insufficient. People seemed already able to foresee the devastating prospect of not a single grain of harvest come autumn. In the border towns, people began abandoning their land and fleeing, following the great river downstream.
Xu Dan had previously written a memorial to the throne precisely to describe all of this.
The northwestern border had always been unsettled. After the late Emperor Ming led the nation’s full strength to decisively defeat the Western Shao, he had reduced levies and lightened taxes, nurturing the people for at least ten years. Now the land reclamation in the northwest had been underway for only two generations, and if people abandoned their land and fled, all previous efforts would be undone. The most pressing matter now was for the court to quickly dispatch people to oversee the construction of water conservancy works.
Moreover, he harbored another grave concern: though Western Shao had been defeated, the northern three-tribe alliance still watched covetously. The previous dynasty had experienced rebellion, depleting its strength through internal strife, and although the Yan Family had gone north from the capital to garrison Youzhou, he still had to worry about those nomadic peoples’ iron hooves sweeping south.
But the fifth year of Jinghe had even more matters than the fourth, and the entire court had sunk into a state of decline and corruption. Everyone was busy scheming against one another and clearly had no time to heed his memorials.
First, Princess Imperial Ningle had died of illness. Then Grand Preceptor Yu, who had wielded power and controlled the government for several years, was imprisoned on charges of treason, and his entire clan was executed. Not long after the Grand Preceptor’s death, the Emperor and Empress went to Guyou Mountain for hunting. The Empress suddenly fell gravely ill and vanished abruptly from the court.
Anyone with discernment could guess the connection, but which of the civil and military officials at court would dare speak of it?
After Grand Preceptor Yu’s death, the border general Jiang Wenyuan, whom he had personally promoted, began stirring on the western frontier. After the incident at Guyou Mountain, Jiang Wenyuan launched a rebellion, seizing five western border cities. The veteran court general Li Feng took command of an expeditionary force and quelled Jiang Wenyuan’s rebellion in just three months. Before the New Year, Li Feng returned triumphant to the capital — and died of illness on the way.
The Emperor expressed the utmost grief and mourning, offering generous condolences and posthumous honors to his descendants.
The rebellion was too distant from the capital, Biandu, and the long-prosperous imperial city was not much affected for the time being.
By year’s end, that old song ‘Imitation Dragon’s Chant’ began circulating through the streets and alleys. Some people claimed they had glimpsed cloud formations resembling a true dragon on East Mountain on the night of the full moon. The authorities investigated the source of the rumor but ran into the Jingqiu Remonstrance and could only let the matter die without resolution.
The Jingqiu Remonstrance, the Shattered Jade Case, the Cicada-Killing Case — such rumors as these, along with earlier folk songs and miraculous signs, spread ever more widely among the common people. The Capital Prefecture finally felt it could no longer be suppressed entirely, and could only privately warn people not to let such talk reach the ears of the nobility.
However, after the Empress left the palace, the Emperor’s self-indulgent, brutal, and dissolute side grew more apparent day by day. Those brave enough to tell him the truth had always been few, and he rarely left the palace. It was unknown whether someone in the inner court had suppressed the reports from the patrolling Imperial Guards and personal bodyguards — the Emperor only knew there were rumors, and had never imagined they had reached such a degree.
On New Year’s Day of the fifth year, Song Lan personally assumed governance after withdrawing the hanging curtain regency. He bestowed grace upon all under heaven and, breaking all precedent, had just begun governing in person when he designated the character ‘Zhao’ as his imperial title.
Throughout the dynasties, it was rare for a ruler to set his own posthumous imperial title while still living under the guise of designating an imperial name. This became extraordinary news among the common people, and since a ruler with the same posthumous title had existed in the previous dynasty, the world mostly called the current Emperor the ‘Little Emperor Zhao.’
On the seventeenth day of the first month, the Remonstrance Court reopened the Thorn-of-Tang Case. Like a spark, it ignited the simmering rumors from before, and throughout the streets and alleys, people sang of the former Crown Prince Chengming’s virtuous deeds.
Some daring individuals speculated whether the Crown Prince had not actually died — for otherwise, why would there be a dispute between ‘true dragon’ and ‘false dragon’?
Everyone called this absurd, yet more and more people heard these rumors.
In the second month of the fifth year, Princess Imperial Shu Kang left the country to go to her fiefdom.
In the third month, General of Peace Yan Lang shattered the northern barbarians who attacked by night at Wan City, and the court awarded him a thousand gold and appointed him General of Nation’s Peace. Yan Lang returned to garrison Youzhou and, after submitting a memorial, began overseeing the repair of the city’s passes and fortifications.
In mid-third month, while the Thorn-of-Tang Case had not yet concluded, the Noble Consort Yu — exclusively favored since entering the palace three years ago, having escaped even the Grand Preceptor’s purge — died along with the death of her beloved son. In a single night, Little Emperor Zhao lost both son and beloved consort, and canceled morning court for consecutive days.
On the third day of suspended court, the Empress’s elder brother Su Shiyu — who had always enjoyed an excellent reputation among the scholars and students of the Academy — was sentenced to decapitation on the inexplicable charge of ‘treason.’
The day of execution came just as continuous spring rains were ending. A great fire suddenly broke out at the Ministry of Justice, and after a cloud ladder made its way through the city, Su Shiyu was rescued before everyone’s eyes by someone. The Academy’s students were highly displeased that Su Shiyu was being executed with incomplete evidence of guilt, and upon hearing of the prison break, assumed it was some righteous person acting heroically. Privately, they could not help but applaud.
Ye Tingyan, who had long enjoyed the Emperor’s favor and was a trusted confidant, also quietly disappeared amid this storm. Some said the prison break had been his doing, while others said he had been framed by political enemy Chang Zhao and died unexpectedly — with many accounts and no definitive conclusion.
Song Lan sent Chang Zhao to search Ye Tingyan’s residence in Biandu, but as expected, the place was deserted, with even several trees dug up from the garden and not a single leaf left behind.
Later, the court recovered Su Shiyu’s corpse from the waters of the Bianhe River. The next day, Xu Dan was invited to give a lecture at the Imperial Academy. When this matter came up, everyone was outraged, their words conveying considerable discontent at the Emperor’s arbitrarily imposed charges. Xu Dan hastily stopped them — at present, even the Censorate dared not speak out, and the Academy, representing all voices under heaven, could easily provoke a deadly calamity if not careful.
So all the students fell silent.
Within a few months, disasters and misfortunes erupted one after another inside and outside the court, each incident without a clear ending, inspiring unlimited speculation. The court historians had no time to grind their ink, yet did not know how to put brush to paper.
Yet the turmoil of the fifth year of Jinghe was far from over.
On a certain day at the end of the third month, a great clap of thunder shook Biandu, yet the dry sky brought lightning without rain, and not a single drop fell. After a night passed, news suddenly spread everywhere through the streets and alleys — the previous day, divine fire had fallen on the Chong Mausoleum and the Imperial Ancestral Temple on Guyou Mountain, and the Empress, long confined to her sickbed, had passed away in the flames, at only twenty-three years of age.
This news was too extraordinary, yet Little Emperor Zhao personally donned hemp mourning garments and went to Guyou Mountain to escort the Empress’s ‘coffin’ back, making it plain to all that they had no choice but to believe.
When the Empress’s funeral cortege departed, a geomancer in Biandu claimed to have seen in the eastern night sky the celestial omen of a phoenix undergoing nirvana. Someone went to Xiuqing Temple to draw a divination lot and obtained a phrase with profound meaning: ‘Where the phoenix perches, the paulownia tree shall flourish.’
In the fourth month, the long-ailing Empress Dowager Chenghui died of illness.
Within a single short spring season, the empire was draped in mourning.
Civil and military officials and noble families from every region submitted memorials expressing grief and sent condolence offerings to Biandu. Little did they know Song Lan would use the charge of ‘disrespecting the Empress and the Empress Dowager’ to stir up trouble. He first killed a group of inner court officials, then dispatched people to conduct thorough investigations, picking out forty-two textual errors from the grief memorials and censuring the assembled officials.
The accumulated tensions of years finally erupted like a wildfire spreading across a plain. Court politics were turned upside down, the Chancellery Prison was packed to capacity, and the sound of arguments and furious curses was incessant at morning court.
Speculation had it that this was the Emperor’s way of testing everyone — after all, his succession had been overly hasty, without nobles submitting their allegiance or officials rallying to support him, so he was taking the opportunity to sift through and remove those of divided loyalty.
Others speculated that this was simply the current Emperor’s governing style — in the past it had merely been suppressed by the Grand Preceptor’s and Empress’s overwhelming influence and could not be expressed. From now on, those serving him should be solemn and circumspect, speaking only with their eyes on the road — such a situation seemed unavoidable.
Historians called this incident the ‘Dual Phoenix Grand Sacrifice Case.’ Yet regardless of which speculation one believed, everyone tacitly acknowledged that Little Emperor Zhao’s persistent obsession with censuring the high officials was not driven by grief for his mother or his wife, but by the surging, irrepressible suspicion in his heart — he sought to use this case to make everyone utterly submit to him.
So Xu Dan and others’ submitted memorials went unread, piling up and gathering dust in Qianfang Hall. After the Censorate fell silent, those at court became engrossed in the scheming and maneuvering to demonstrate their loyalty to the Emperor. Pull out anyone at random, and in the wine shops they would be talking of conspiracies, betrayals, schemes, and sowing discord.
In early summer, the foremost Daoist master under heaven, the Purple Tenuity Old Daoist who had once performed rituals and prayers for Crown Prince Chengming, suddenly appeared on Yingri Mountain in Jinling City. He claimed that after observing celestial phenomena at night, he had seen the Emperor’s star grow dim and its brilliance gradually fading.
He performed a ritual to dispel the obfuscating barriers and discovered that a star of solitary misfortune was borrowing the purple aura coming from the east to masquerade as the Emperor’s star. Now with winds and rains battering and the great edifice about to collapse, it seemed not long before a star bearing fire would fall to earth, and the true Emperor’s star would return to its rightful place in the nine heavens.
Word reached the Emperor in the imperial capital, and he was furious. He dispatched many soldiers and generals to the Yingtian Prefecture one after another, yet found no trace of the old Daoist’s whereabouts.
But even before the pursuit of this old Daoist, Jinling City had been seeing more and more troops day by day. The common folk had no idea why Biandu was continuously sending troops to Jinling — they seemed to be searching for someone, but from beginning to end found nothing.
In the sixth month, refugees from north of the Guanzhong region arrived at the walls of Biandu. The capital’s inhabitants, long sunk too deeply into peaceful comfort, only now belatedly sensed that troubled times were coming.
Luowei sat at the window of a small boat and took a sip of the tea in her hand: ‘Song Lan has already taken the bait, diverting the garrison troops to cities along the great river’s banks to search for the two of us. The Jiangnan army in our hands has finally been fully assembled around Biandu. In principle, we only need Song Lan to have one moment of carelessness, and we can move quickly, directly capturing the inner palace without harming the city’s populace — but…’
Ye Tingyan smiled bitterly: ‘I too never anticipated that Chang Zhao could instigate Song Lan to this extent. This year the Central Plains suffers a great drought, and if we don’t act, I fear that in his rage Song Lan will commit even more extreme actions. I understand what you want to say — the rumors and the star-gazing matter were indeed our doing, but it has gone far more smoothly than we imagined. So smoothly that I feel somewhat uneasy.’
The small boat rocked once, and he reached out to protect the chess pieces on the board before him. Luowei let out a long ‘hmm’: ‘There must be Chang Zhao’s hand behind this, fanning the flames. Though he has thrown Song Lan’s court into this state of chaos, would he really be willing to help us without seeking any reward?’
Ye Tingyan placed a piece on the board, his eyes covered by a white gauze bandage: ‘The twentieth day of the sixth month. We are weary of battle, and though I dislike taking risks, we cannot wait any longer — we deal with whatever he throws at us as it comes. If we wait further, the Central Plains will fall into chaos, and that will be hard to manage.’
Before his words had even faded, Zhou Chuyin pushed open the door and entered, her face grave, setting the letter in her hand on the table before them.
Luowei picked it up and took a look, and could not help but change color.
‘On the third day of the sixth month, the news of Senior General Yan’s death suddenly leaked. The northern three tribes mobilized an army of three hundred thousand overnight, massing at the Tianmen Pass before Youzhou. Though the Yan Army is elite, their numbers are far inferior. General of Nation’s Peace Yan Lang has sent three consecutive military reports requesting reinforcements from Biandu.’
After Zhou Chuyin finished reading, she added: ‘Upon hearing the news, Song Lan recalled the army from up and down the great river, mobilized a hundred thousand troops from the Biandu camp, and rushed them to Youzhou as relief. Today he issued an imperial decree commanding the noble families and marquises of every region to provision grain and military supplies and jointly meet the enemy.’
Ye Tingyan immediately asked: ‘Who is leading the troops?’
Zhou Chuyin answered: ‘The veteran Biandu general Sui Xiao and the eldest son of the late General Li Feng are jointly commanding the force.’
‘That is…’
‘However,’ Zhou Chuyin said word by word, ‘Chang Zhao has volunteered to serve as military advisor and has gone with them to the northern border.’
Luowei’s expression changed drastically. She raised her hand and struck — the chess game was ruined, the pieces scattering to the floor like fragments of shattered jade entering a vessel.
‘So… that is how it is!’