Mu Chun was an oddball who treated his daughter like his own father and his real father like an enemy. Constrained by filial duty, he couldn’t physically strike his father, so he devised countless ways to inflict ten thousand points of spiritual damage on his real father Mu Ying, taking pleasure in making his father faint from anger. He felt he was naturally born not knowing how to be a son.
But ever since he began treating his daughter A’Lei like his own father and showing her filial respect, Mu Chun proved through practice that human potential is limitless—he truly could be a model of twenty-four forms of filial piety, as long as the object was his daughter, not his real father.
When summer arrived and his daughter loved watching fireflies, Mu Chun sacrificed himself to feed mosquitoes in order to catch fireflies. Bitten all over his head with mosquito bumps, he caught over fifty fireflies in the chrysanthemum fields, put them in a gauze bag, and hung it above his daughter’s cradle. Watching his daughter’s round eyes show delight, Mu Chun forgot all about the itching on his face.
But Hu Shanwei woke up in the middle of the night and was startled by her husband’s face covered in mosquito bumps that looked like he’d “returned to youth” with acne. She tossed and turned, her sleep completely scared away, feeling quite irritated, so she kicked Mu Chun out of bed with one foot, making him sleep on a floor mat.
Though kicked out of bed, Mu Chun remained incorrigible. The next day he went to catch fireflies again, even refusing help from Captain Shi, insisting he must catch them himself to show paternal love (filial devotion)—truly the fighter jet of foolish filial piety.
Hu Shanwei ultimately felt sorry for her husband. Remembering how Madame She Xiang had applied the juice of certain herbs to her skin to repel insects when they traveled to Guizhou, she asked the Yi people about the name of the medicinal herbs, found them, crushed them up and applied them to Mu Chun. Only then did his face avoid being disfigured by mosquito bumps.
In front of A’Lei, Mu Chun had absolutely no bottom line as a person. He learned to bark like Da Huang (their farm dog) to make his daughter happy. He attached peacock feathers to his lower back, then got down on all fours and spun around madly like a cat chasing its own peacock tail.
Learning to chase his tail like a cat was Mu Chun’s special skill. A’Lei loved watching it most—she lived up to her name, laughing with a booming voice like thunder.
Seeing his daughter happy, Mu Chun spun even more frantically, like a filial son “entertaining his parents in colorful clothes.”
Seeing this scene, Captain Shi shook his head repeatedly, saying over and over: “The dignified Duke of Qian, what kind of behavior is this, what kind of behavior! Madam, His Grace only listens to you—please stop him quickly!”
Ever since having A’Lei, Hu Shanwei had progressed from wanting to beat up Mu Chun once every few days to wanting to beat him up several times a day—truly lightning-fast progress. However, seeing Mu Chun with peacock feathers tied to his waist spinning in circles chasing his tail like a cat, Hu Shanwei didn’t fly into a rage. Instead, her eyes showed compassion: “Let him be. He’s actually… just healing himself.”
Hu Shanwei was truly Mu Chun’s soulmate. Mu Chun had lacked parental love as a child. Even though he received the Emperor and Empress’s favor, the void in his heart still existed. And as he returned to his family at age seven and “smeared feces on the walls” in the ancestral hall, being beaten unconscious by his father, with father and son fighting whenever they met, the void in his heart grew larger and larger, becoming an abyss.
He gazed into the abyss, and the abyss gazed back at him.
This void stopped expanding after meeting Hu Shanwei, but it remained there. When Hu Shanwei entered his life, he no longer stared into the abyss but instead worked hard to embrace happiness, growing his own shell to avoid being dragged into the abyss. But the abyss wouldn’t disappear just because one had happiness—it was there, always there.
Human emotions are both complex and simple like this. Childhood trauma influences one’s behavioral patterns for life.
Whatever one lacked most in childhood, whatever was taken away, one unconsciously seeks to recover as an adult, absolutely must satisfy. Or one goes to the other extreme—depriving children or others of the same things, making children or others taste the same painful loss from their own childhood, creating a vicious cycle passed down generation after generation.
The brave choose the former, giving others happiness. The cowardly or mediocre choose the latter, replicating pain—after all, replicating pain is much simpler than creating happiness.
A’Lei’s laughter was like the five-colored stones that Goddess Nüwa refined, filling up the abyss in Mu Chun’s heart piece by piece. As his daughter grew day by day, the void in Mu Chun’s heart filled at a visibly rapid pace.
Rather than saying he gave his daughter paternal love, it was more accurate to say he gave it to himself. However much paternal love he yearned for in his heart, that’s how much paternal love he gave A’Lei. What was barking like a dog? What was spinning like a cat? What was sacrificing himself to feed mosquitoes? Even cutting off his own flesh would be worth it.
Therefore, Hu Shanwei didn’t stop Mu Chun from treating his daughter like his father. The family pattern of loving father and strict mother was already set.
Their insider in the capital, Chen Xuan, sent word that Emperor Hongwu’s oil was running dry and his lamp burning out—he didn’t seem to be doing well.
Mu Chun quickly sent a secret memorial, saying he had “been ill for three or four years, constantly exhausting his sincerity and thoughts until his qi and blood were ever more depleted”—anyway, he was too weak to govern Yunnan anymore and requested the old Emperor fulfill his promise and finish him off.
With a daughter, all was well. Mu Chun didn’t want to work anymore and only wanted to go home to accompany his wife and child. His heart was set on returning like an arrow.
Emperor Hongwu approved, wanting him to make a perfect final bow and smoothly transfer power.
What could be more perfect than avenging his father?
Mu Ying had died at the surrender ceremony during the pacification of Luchuan’s Si Lunfa. At that time, Si Lunfa handed over surrender documents to Mu Ying, but unexpectedly his subordinate Daogan Meng had set an ambush, bewitching a trusted follower to become a human bomb. At the moment of the explosion, Mu Ying used his body as a shield, holding his son Mu Chun and jumping into the river. His lumbar spine was blown apart, his lower body paralyzed, and he died that day.
Before dying, Mu Ying instructed Mu Chun not to avenge him, to spare Daogan Meng’s life and let Si Lunfa’s son Si Xingfa avenge his father, creating internal strife to consume Luchuan’s strength. They would wait until both sides had fought each other to exhaustion before making their move.
Mu Ying was terrible as Mu Chun’s father, but excellent as a frontier official.
Now six years had passed, and Luchuan had indeed developed as Mu Ying predicted—six years of internal strife had caused Luchuan to fall from being Yunnan’s most powerful local lord to complete decline, no longer capable of rebellion.
So Mu Chun extended an olive branch to Si Xingfa, expressing his willingness to send troops to help Si Xingfa completely eliminate Daogan Meng’s forces and avenge both their fathers.
Si Xingfa naturally agreed. The two joined forces, sending troops to attack Daogan Meng. They successfully captured their fathers’ killer alive and beheaded him on the spot before the battle lines as a sacrifice.
But in this battle, Mu Chun, who had originally been “ill for three or four years, constantly exhausting his sincerity and thoughts until his qi and blood were ever more depleted,” suffered a relapse of his old illness and died on the way back from the campaign.
Upon hearing this shocking news, all of Yunnan was dressed in mourning white, and they sang sorrowful ballads to commemorate Mu Chun:
“Who is my father? Who is my mother? Without mother, where shall I dwell? Without father, to whom shall I cling? Oh Heaven, are you dreaming? Will you not pity my poverty?
In the furrows, in the fields, there is plowing, there is sowing. Only millet, only rice, to make gruel, to make food. I have father and mother, children of the former king.”
This ballad was composed by Mu Chun after his father Mu Ying’s death, and now everyone in Yunnan who could speak knew how to sing it.
Mu Chun had no son, and in his dying words he said his soul was tied to the land of Yunnan. After death, he didn’t want to return to the Mu family cemetery in Nanjing’s Mount Guanyin for burial, but rather to be cremated to ash and scattered in the two landmark projects he had personally supervised: the Yunjin Bridge that connected the great river and linked northern and southern Yunnan, and the Tangchi Canal that irrigated thousands of hectares of fields.
Actually, Mu Chun just didn’t want to return to Mount Guanyin to be neighbors forever with the father he’d fought with his whole life—even a fake cenotaph would disgust him!
The more Mu Chun became a father and was good to A’Lei, the more he felt his father had been too cold-blooded and excessive. His little A’Lei—even if she was bitten by a mosquito and got a small bump, his heart ached terribly. Worried that the wet nurse wouldn’t be attentive enough, whenever he was home, he personally held up a mosquito lamp every night, searching the whole room for mosquitoes.
Mu Sheng also knew that the grudge between his big brother and father was a dead knot—they were truly enemies from a previous life. He could only comply with his big brother’s “dying wish,” scooped some wood ash from the stove, divided it in two, and scattered it from Yunjin Bridge into the rushing river waters and into the Tangchi Canal’s waterway.
On the day the ashes were scattered, over a hundred thousand Yunnan people came to see him off. Their cries shook the heavens as they loudly sang that ballad “Who is my father? Who is my mother?”
Mu Chun had really put in serious effort in Yunnan. Not to mention the immigrant troops opening wasteland for cultivation, the road and bridge construction and water conservancy projects had profound effects on the primarily agricultural economy.
Yunnan was called a barbarian land, but before Yunjin Bridge was built, such a vast territory didn’t even have a single solid stone bridge!
Previously, the north-south connection was via the Dade Bridge built during the Yuan Dynasty—made of wood, severely damaged, unable to even support artillery wagons weighing over a thousand jin, tottering on the brink of collapse. Mu Chun ordered bridge construction, with tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians working day and night to “chisel giant stones, cut through river currents, measure dimensions,” building an eight-arch bridge that pioneered stone beam bridges in Yunnan.
Because it connected northern and southern Kunming and was a necessary passage, Mu Chun personally named it “Yunjin Bridge.” This bridge “stood firm as a golden embankment, stretched like a hanging rainbow, allowing travelers to walk as on level ground.”
After “Yunjin Bridge” was completed, the convenient transportation made both banks into commercial centers, suddenly transforming into a central business district. It became one of Kunming’s eight scenic spots, with poems recording the prosperity of both banks:
“Looking out from Yunjin Bridge, lights of ten thousand homes. Night travelers buy wine, lodgers seeking inns moor their boats. The city’s distant, night watch drums exhausted, full moon, market voices clamor. Dawn breaks, wandering interest fades, sparse bells from Mount Taihua.”
This commercial golden age rivaled the banks of Qinhuai River in the capital. The material and spiritual well-being and happiness of Kunming’s people were greatly enhanced.
If Yunjin Bridge made Mu Chun famous among the common folk, then Tangchi Canal made him godlike in farmers’ hearts.
Before Mu Chun built the water conservancy, people here completely depended on heaven for their livelihood. Obviously there was “Tang water nearby, but people didn’t know to use it,” so he ordered canal construction to divert Tang water for field irrigation. “Building embankments following the mountains, chiseling stone and cutting wood,” in just over a month they opened a canal thirty-six li long and two chi wide. The fields benefiting from Tangchi Canal covered a thousand qing.
Common people loved Mu Chun, farmers loved him, and scholars loved him too—if not for Mu Chun fighting for jinshi examination quotas for Yunnan, this place probably wouldn’t have produced a single jinshi for at least ten years. Culture requires accumulation. Not to mention anything else, just talking about stone arch bridges—the Central Plains had a thousand-year history of stone bridges, but here they’d only been building stone arch bridges for a few years. Civilization must come step by step.
Therefore, whether refined or popular culture, everyone was deeply grateful to Mu Chun. After Mu Chun left his will to have his ashes remain forever in Yunnan, people spontaneously built shrines for him, enshrining him like a deity to forever enjoy the incense offerings of Yunnan’s people.
Mu Chun and Hu Shanwei disguised themselves and also attended his own “funeral” ash-scattering ceremony. Seeing the entire city’s people grieving for him, Mu Chun couldn’t help but shed tears. “Actually, I was just doing my duty. Since I was stationed here, I had to do something, right? But just fulfilling my duty, and they’re so grateful. Sigh, it’s just that they suffered too long in the past, isolated here, never seeing the outside world. With my small changes, building a canal, constructing a bridge, they’re so deeply grateful. Watching them cry makes me too embarrassed to die.”
Hu Shanwei said: “It’s too late for regrets now. You insisted on this fancy bone-grinding ash-scattering business. Now you can’t even find an excuse to fake resurrection.”
At thirty-five, still mischievous, more mischievous than his own daughter. Even when dying, he had to be mischievous. Did being a little mischievous make him happy? Look at your sorry state now—too late for regrets.
Mu Chun wiped away his tears. “I don’t regret it. I want to spend my remaining years with you and A’Lei. I just feel unworthy of so many people coming to see me off. I feel I could have worked harder during my tenure to make their lives even better. Unfortunately, there’s no medicine for regret in this world. From now on, the responsibility of revitalizing Yunnan falls to Mu Sheng.”
Seeing his genuine emotion, Hu Shanwei comforted him: “Your two younger brothers Mu Sheng and Mu Ang are both excellent and truly treat you as their big brother. When father used to beat you, they always came out to hold father back and beg for mercy. These two have been in Yunnan for years and are capable in both warfare and civil administration. You can rest assured leaving it to them.”
With things as they were, Yunnan’s fate was in the Mu family’s hands, continuing generation after generation. Mu Chun felt somewhat relieved. “You’re right. No one works forever—there must always be a day of succession. I’m just worried the Emperor hasn’t issued an edict for Mu Sheng to inherit the title. Last time when I inherited father’s title, it was after a hundred-day mourning period. I don’t know how long Mu Sheng will have to wait for his investiture.”
Hu Shanwei said with certainty: “Soon, definitely sooner than you think.”
Mu Chun didn’t understand. “How do you know?”
Based on fifteen years of experience as a palace official, Hu Shanwei speculated: “The Emperor wants to deliberately delay the investiture, waiting for the new ruler to ascend and have the new ruler invest the new frontier minister. This is bestowing favor—it’s easiest to win a minister’s heart since the title was given by the new emperor. The Emperor really has thought of everything for the Crown Prince.”
“Moreover, the Emperor’s health must be very poor now. Afraid of complications, he so readily agreed to your fake death and power transfer. Frontier ministers can’t be left vacant too long, so the Emperor must be very weak now and probably already waiting to die. When the Emperor dies and the new ruler ascends, after the general amnesty, Mu Sheng will probably be invested as Duke of Qian.”
Having a wife who was once a Shanggong made all the difference—Mu Chun was instantly enlightened.
However, Hu Shanwei now frowned deeply. “This time you escaped so smoothly, just like when I finished my last task of selecting palace ladies and left the palace. The Emperor was uncharacteristically agreeable—was it really for Empress Xiaoci’s dying words?”
“This Emperor puts power above all else—even Empress Xiaoci has to take second place. I believed it before, but the Emperor’s real reason was to send me away from the capital so he could deal with Mao Qiang and Ji Gang without me getting in the way in the palace. The moment I left the palace, the Emperor had Mao Qiang executed by slow slicing and issued warrants everywhere to capture Ji Gang. Now that the Emperor is letting you escape, what’s his second step? I find it deeply disturbing to think about.”
Once bitten by a snake, one fears ropes for ten years. Accompanying the ruler is like accompanying a tiger. Hu Shanwei understood this monarch too well—he wasn’t the type to worry about lovers finding happiness together. Everything he did had a purpose, everything except love, or protecting love.
Mu Chun also couldn’t figure out why, so he comforted his wife: “Anyway, father-in-law’s family has already been brought to Kunming. I can ensure their safety.”
The day Mu Chun scattered his ashes was the tenth day of the fifth month in the thirty-first year of Hongwu.
In the capital’s imperial palace, Qianqing Palace.
Emperor Hongwu was indeed as Hu Shanwei predicted—his oil was truly running dry and his lamp burning out. Noble Consort Cui read from an intelligence report: “Mu Chun’s dying wish was to have his ashes scattered on Yunnan’s soil, not to be buried at Mount Guanyin in the capital. Mu Sheng built a shrine for him with flourishing incense—Mu Chun has become a god in Yunnan.”
Hearing this, Emperor Hongwu slowly nodded. “I have finally not failed Empress Xiaoci’s instructions, allowing this loving couple to be together. Today, departing for the Yellow Springs to reunite with Empress Xiaoci, I can give her an accounting.”
Noble Consort Cui set down the intelligence report and handed over a bowl of ginseng soup, saying: “Your Majesty shouldn’t think such thoughts. Drink some ginseng soup and rest a while. After you’ve recovered your energy, I’ll read more secret memorials to you.”
It was just a bowl of ginseng soup, but Emperor Hongwu needed several sips to swallow it. Perhaps because of the century-old mountain ginseng’s great restorative properties, Emperor Hongwu’s cheeks flushed red and his eyes became bright, as if he’d suddenly recovered.
Only Emperor Hongwu himself knew this was a final surge before death—his time had come.