As the spring rains fell across the northern lands, vast stretches of accumulated snow began to melt. After a winter of dominance, the white began to lose its hold. Upstream along the Yellow River, the ice began breaking with a great rumbling and entering the riverbed; the water level of this mother river began to rise significantly, its roaring current sweeping up the grime that had spread along both banks throughout the winter and carrying it downstream. Along both banks of the Yellow River, the rain-shrouded landscape lay bleak and desolate.
Downstream from the Yellow River, past the surging Yangtze, the southern lands had already stirred to life some time earlier. Once the second day of the second month had passed, spring planting was already well underway. Across the vast fields, farmers drove their oxen, beginning the new year’s labor amid the crisscrossing paddies. On the Yangtze, merchant ships came and went, braving wind and wave, already growing busy once more. Cities and towns of every size, workshops of every scale, and endlessly passing merchant caravans provided the strength sustaining this age of prosperity. If one did not look toward the massed armies, a million strong, already stirring layer upon layer north of the Yangtze, one might well be moved to remark, in all sincerity, what a fine and prosperous year this truly was.
In a certain sense, it truly was a fine year.
Within the city of Lin’an, beggar children gathered to peddle their pitiful stories to passersby. Wandering swordsmen banded together in twos and threes, drawing their blades to head for the frontier. Scholars, too, at last found their moment for impassioned rhetoric. Because of the great calamity in the north, the brothels and pleasure houses were full of girls who had been sold into service; the songs of these courtesans, one after another, often carried a note of sorrow, or of tragic grandeur. Merchants came and went; the court’s affairs kept officials endlessly busy, working overtime, frazzled and overwhelmed. In this spring, everyone seemed to have found their proper place.
The fighting in the north, and Tian Shi’s tragic end, were now the subject of heated discussion throughout the city. The Black Banner’s involvement was, in this context, seen as a matter of little consequence. With Zonghan and Xiyin’s great armies now on the march, the land of Jin was about to face utter annihilation. At the same time, the fighting at Xuzhou had already begun. Crown Prince Junwu, commanding an army a million strong to hold the northern front, was the focus of greatest attention among the scholars of the day.
At the same time, men of insight were also keeping an eye on the situation in the southwest. As the Huaxia Army’s call for a ceasefire and joint resistance against the Jurchens spread, a scandal connected to the southwest surfaced unexpectedly in the capital.
This scandal concerned Long Qifei.
Ever since the Black Banner Army had shown its true intentions and invaded Shu territory last summer, Ning Liheng—that former regicidal madman—had once again entered the awareness of the people of Nanwu. Although the Jurchen threat was now imminent, once the situation had suddenly turned into a three-way standoff, this massive threat from the flank and rear, embodied by the Black Banner Army, had, in many circles, become a focal point that even overshadowed the Jurchens themselves.
After all, whether in casual conversation or as a matter of showing off, talking about how powerful the Jurchens were had come to seem stale and clichéd. Drawing people’s attention to this blind spot on their flank, by contrast, made one’s thinking seem all the more distinctive. The theory of the Black Banner threat rose steadily in prominence for a time, and by around October and November, the eminent scholar Long Qifei, who had arrived in the capital with firsthand information from the southwest, had become the new darling of Lin’an society.
As mentioned before, upon first arriving in Lin’an, Long Qifei, in an effort to salvage the situation, had, even while touting his own single-handed efforts to mend the crumbling sky, also gone around lobbying the powerful and influential, hoping to make people realize both the strength and the wolfish ambitions of the Black Banner—this naturally included stressing the importance to the Wu dynasty of the Chengdu Plain, now occupied by the Black Banner.
Yet circumstances proved stronger than any individual. When it came to a hot potato like the Black Banner Army, few were willing to pick it up head-on. Even Qin Hui, who had once strongly advocated a campaign against the southwest, after being maneuvered into a corner by the Emperor and his colleagues, could only quietly swallow the bitter consequence—not that he didn’t want to fight the southwest, but if he continued pushing for military action, what then, if the Emperor maneuvered him into another trap?
For this reason, Long Qifei’s appeals hit a wall, and in his humiliation and fury, he threw in his lot with Left Chancellor Zhao Ding, digging up a great deal of Qin Hui’s past misdeeds—including how Qin Hui had originally been the one to incite everyone to stir up trouble in the southwest, only to now show no concern whatsoever for the aftermath there.
Around the New Year, Qin Hui found himself under attack from all sides because of this, and only after playing the part of the humble servant countless times did he finally win the Emperor Zhou Yong’s forgiveness. By now, it was already the second month.
In this second month, in order to support the great battle looming to the north, Qin Hui was kept extremely busy at the Bureau of Military Affairs, barely able to return home each day. As for a minor figure like Long Qifei, Qin Hui now seemed to have no time to spare for him at all.
As for Long Qifei, having already taken the stage, he could hardly step down easily. For several months now, he had presented himself as deeply troubled over the affairs of the southwest, and had, in effect, become something of a leader among the scholars. He would occasionally lead students of the Imperial College to kneel and protest in the streets of the city. In these times, with the fortunes of the realm hanging precariously in the balance, students showing patriotic concern had become something of a celebrated tale. Zhou Yong, too, had by now moved past the early stage of his reign when he’d been caught red-handed indulging himself with women day after day, wishing he could be the emperor forever. Back then, he had had the gossip-mongering Chen Dong beaten to death; but now, toward these students and scholars, he simply turned a blind eye within the privacy of his harem, and would even occasionally offer them praise. The students, receiving such praise, would in turn extol the Emperor’s wisdom, and both sides would part ways in mutual satisfaction and harmony.
The first trouble to strike near Long Qifei involved Lu Guo’er, the top courtesan who had traveled east with him. This woman had, in a moment of crisis, drugged Long Qifei and then accompanied him in his flight from Zizhou, which had been teetering on the brink under the Black Banner’s threat, all the way to the capital—a tale that had circulated as something of a touching story. As Long Qifei grew famous, Lu Guo’er, as the beloved confidante at his side, also began to gain a certain renown of her own. Over the following months, though she kept up the pretense of having already committed herself to Long Qifei and rarely went out, she had gradually built up a small social circle of her own nonetheless.
On Long Qifei’s side, however, what had once been called a “touching tale” actually concealed another story entirely. Long Qifei, with a guilty conscience of his own, harbored a certain wariness toward the woman at his side. He had promised Lu Guo’er the status of a concubine, then set her aside as he busied himself pursuing fame and fortune. It was only in the second month, during the occasional moments they spent together, that Long Qifei began to sense that something was not quite right with the woman.
He was, after all, no fool. He held back for the moment and quietly began investigating on his own, only to discover that this woman, who had come from the far southwestern frontier, had already sunk deep into the glittering world of the capital, unable to pull herself free—and worse still, she had taken up with a young scholar as a lover on the side.
On the seventeenth of the second month, with the war to the north and the southwest’s manifesto both stirring up a great uproar throughout the capital, at midnight, Long Qifei killed Lu Guo’er in his newly purchased residence. Before he could even dispose of the body, officers, alerted by a report from Lu Guo’er’s new lover, burst into the residence and seized him. This new lover of Lu Guo’er’s—a young scholar deeply concerned for the fate of the nation—had come forward to expose Long Qifei’s disgraceful conduct to the authorities. The officers, searching the residence, then found a written account in Lu Guo’er’s own hand, recording in full detail the developments in the southwest, as well as the disgraceful truth of how Long Qifei had enlisted her cooperation and collusion during his flight.
On the third day of his imprisonment, faced with the overwhelming evidence, Long Qifei confessed to everything, one item after another, including the full account of how, fearing exposure, he had killed Lu Guo’er by accident in a moment of panic. This scandal shook the capital for a time. Meanwhile, the officers dispatched to the southwest to bring back another meritorious figure, Li Xiannong, whose grievance had been redressed, were already on their way.
As one act ended and another began, what state Lin’an would be in by the time Li Xiannong, his name cleared, arrived in the capital, none could say. Throughout all of this, Qin Hui, who had remained hard at work in the Bureau of Military Affairs the entire time, had made not the slightest stir—just as he had made none when Long Qifei had attacked him earlier, he made none now either. Whenever people recalled this and spoke of it, they could not help giving him their sincere admiration, calling him a truly selfless official, unmoved by praise or blame, devoted wholly to the nation.
In this rain-swept second month, those who knew the inside story, upon hearing how things had developed, mostly just laughed it off.
Zhou Pei heard about the affair of Long Qifei while riding in a carriage on her way to the palace. The person beside her gave a rough account of what had happened, and she merely sighed and put it out of her mind. By now, the shape of the coming war had already become clear, and the smell of gunpowder smoke seemed almost close enough to sting the eyes. The Princess’s residence, responsible for propaganda, internal affairs, and hunting down Jurchen scouts among other duties, had already become extraordinarily busy. That day, just as she was about to head out of the city, she suddenly received a summons from her father, and had no idea what new idea this father of hers—who had seemed somewhat troubled since the start of the year—might have come up with this time.
Entering the palace, she found Zhou Yong pacing beneath the eaves in front of the imperial study, hands clasped behind his back, deep in thought over something. After Zhou Pei announced herself and paid her respects, the Emperor came over, all smiles, to help her up. “My good girl, you’ve come. No need for such formality, no need…” he said. “Come, come, it’s cold out here, let’s go inside first.”
Zhou Pei entered the study and stood before a chair. Zhou Yong, still smiling broadly, pressed both hands onto her shoulders. “Have you eaten?”
“Father, whatever it is, please just say it…”
“Nothing much, nothing important, really. I just missed you, ha ha, so I called you in to see you, ha ha. What about it? Is something the matter on your end?”
Zhou Pei fixed her sharp gaze on this unreliable father of hers for a moment, then, out of respect, lowered her eyes first. “Nothing important.”
“You look thinner,” Zhou Yong said earnestly.
“I’m touched that Father is concerned for his daughter’s health,” Zhou Pei said with a gentle smile. “But whatever the reason Father summoned me into the palace, it would be best to simply say it outright.”
“Ahem, well… it’s not really anything important either, it’s just…” Zhou Yong looked somewhat troubled. “There’s a certain matter, ah. I’ve been turning it over in my mind these past few days, and honestly I still haven’t quite worked it out. I just thought… I’d bring you in to think it over together, since you, my daughter, are so resourceful and clever, of course, uh…”
“…”
Zhou Yong hemmed and hawed for quite a while. “It’s just… the matter of the southwest…”
“What matter of the southwest?”
“That fellow surnamed Ning says he wants to sue for peace…” Zhou Yong stared at his daughter. “My child, what do you think of this?”
Zhou Pei understood at once. Ever since the shadow of the Jurchens had fallen over them, this unreliable father of hers, though he said nothing of it on the surface, had in truth been worried day and night. His wisdom had its limits; ordinarily he indulged himself freely in pleasure, and now that the time had come to actually put his mind to use, it seemed to strain him somewhat. After Tian Shi’s death in the land of Jin, the southwest had issued a manifesto, halting its assault on Zizhou and calling on the Wu dynasty to end its hostility toward the southwest, so that the greatest possible strength could be brought to bear against the Jurchens.
The Black Banner had already seized most of the Chengdu Plain, but had halted at Zizhou. When this manifesto reached Lin’an, opinions at court were divided, but among the upper echelons of the government, negotiating with a regicidal fiend remained an absolutely uncrossable line—none of the court’s high officials were willing to step anywhere near it.
From the Wu dynasty’s standpoint, this sort of manifesto, however righteous it might appear on the surface, was in reality nothing more than an attempt to poison the well against the dynasty—offering two impossible choices while pretending to be magnanimous. These past days, Zhou Pei had been working against the Black Banner’s covert agents who were spreading word of this manifesto, trying as best she could to erase its influence. Who could have known that while the court ministers hadn’t taken the bait, her own father had swallowed it whole.
Zhou Pei suppressed her anger. “Father knows full well that negotiating with a man who murdered his own emperor would be impossible for the Wu dynasty’s legitimacy to survive—this is simply not something that can be done. Ning Yi is nothing more than a smooth talker full of glib words; he knows perfectly well the Wu dynasty has no choice in the matter…”
“Ah, do you think your father doesn’t know how difficult this is? If word of this got out, those old pedants at court would probably point their fingers right in your father’s face and curse him… But my child, circumstances are stronger than any of us. Sometimes you can afford to be stubborn, but sometimes you simply can’t win, and you have to admit defeat. The Jurchens are coming, and your younger brother—he’s right there at the front…”
Zhou Yong sighed as he said this. “When your father first became emperor, it was thrust upon him unwillingly. I wanted to be a good emperor, to leave behind a good name, but in truth I never really had a clear sense of direction. But I still remember what it was like the year the Jurchens came sweeping down—drifting at sea for half a year, the whole of Jiangnan turned into a wasteland of slaughter, so many people dead. Your father feels he’s failed them all, but the one I’ve failed most of all is your brother. I abandoned him and fled—he nearly got caught by the Jurchens…”
“Junwu—he’s fierce-tempered, upright, clever. Your father can see it: he’ll make a good emperor one day. But our Wu dynasty right now is still such a mess. The Jurchens have smashed everything we had, and we’ll have nothing left. These past days, your father has questioned the court ministers closely, and I’m afraid we still won’t be able to hold them off. If Junwu’s temperament gets him killed out there, what then? We need a fallback…”
Zhou Yong spoke with such sincerity, in such a low, humble tone, that Zhou Pei listened quietly, and felt herself somewhat moved despite herself. In truth, over these years on the throne, Zhou Yong, though he had indulged his children a great deal, had also become, in practice, a man rather fond of putting on airs, more often than not referring to himself with the grand pronouns of a sovereign. That he could speak to her now in such a humble, self-effacing way was, in its own fashion, a genuine baring of his heart—and it was, moreover, for the sake of her brother.
And yet, moved as she was, this matter simply could not be allowed to stand, in any public sense. Zhou Pei sat up straight, her fists clenched tight on her knees. “Father…”
“So then, well, I’ve thought it over—just idle thinking, mind you, not sure if it makes any sense, you just listen and see…” Zhou Yong cut her off, speaking cautiously and carefully. “There’s no relying on the court ministers for this—but you, my child, you might have a way. What if you were to make contact with them first, just to test the waters…”
“Father!” Zhou Pei’s temper flared instantly.
But Zhou Yong did not stop. He said, “Your father isn’t saying you should actually make contact—what I mean is, the two of you had some acquaintance back in the day, didn’t you? Last time Junwu came by, he even mentioned that you actually held him in rather high regard. These past two days it suddenly occurred to your father—well, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. That man surnamed Ning did commit his greatest crime back then in killing Zhou Zhe, but the emperor now is our own family. If you, my child, were to… well, we’d simply force the matter—once we’re all one family, what would those old fools matter… You have no one at your side right now anyway, and that Qu Zonghui ought to be put to death… Truthfully, your father has felt guilty about your marriage prospects for years now…”
The emperor lowered his voice, gesturing animatedly with his hands, which made the whole scene seem all the more dramatic. Zhou Pei, at first, hadn’t quite grasped what he meant, until at some point a roar went off in her head, as if all the blood in her body had rushed straight to her skull—mixed in with it was also an intense, mortified anger at having some deeply hidden part of herself suddenly laid bare and seen. She wanted to stand up but couldn’t manage it; her arm swung up and struck something without her realizing what.
The emperor, in his dragon robe, kept talking. Then, with a sharp crack against the side table, the Princess’s left hand had smashed a teacup with brute force; the shards scattered, and blood began to flow—a vivid, viscous red, shocking to see. In the next instant, Zhou Pei seemed to register something and dropped abruptly to her knees, utterly unaware of the blood on her hand. Zhou Yong rushed toward her and began shouting loudly toward the hall outside…
This small episode within the palace ended, in the end, with the Eldest Princess, her left hand wrapped in bandages, returning home in a daze. The Emperor set aside this fanciful notion of his—one that, for the time being, no third person yet knew of. This was the end of the second month of the tenth year of Jianshuo; in the south, many things still seemed calm.
The brutal fighting at Daming Prefecture and Xuzhou had both already begun. At the same time, the fracturing of the land of Jin had, in effect, already been completed. Although, thanks to that victory won by the Huaxia Army, Lou Shuwan had boldly seized a great deal of the resulting gains for herself, with the Jurchens now breaking camp and advancing, an immense, crushing pressure had settled over the region in earnest.
In time, the various factions of Lou Shuwan, Yu Yulin, Lin Zongwu, Ji Qingli, and others came to hold a number of large and small cities to the west and south of Weisheng, while the surrender faction, led by Liao Yiren, split off the many regions to the east and north that faced the brunt of the Jurchen pressure—in effect turning nearly half the land of Jin into occupied territory.
Even as they declared their surrender to the Jurchens, Liao Yiren and the other clans, acting on Jurchen instruction, mobilized and gathered their forces, beginning to advance west and south, launching their first wave of attacks on the cities there. At the same time, the Black Banner Army, having won its victory at Linzhou, pushed east on a rapid advance, while Wang Juyun led the Prince Ming army on its own march south.
Against this backdrop, Lin Zongwu, Patriarch of the Great Brightness Cult, working with Lou Shuwan and others, secured control over three cities to the east and south of Gaizhou together with a group of his followers, and in the process also acquired a substantial stock of supplies and military equipment.
In the third month, the great army bore down first upon Weisheng. Yu Yulin and Lou Shuwan held the city in defense, but no one had anticipated that before Weisheng could be broken, Xiyin’s hidden forces would already strike—Gaizhou’s garrison commander Chen Wei defected overnight, the situation turning upside down amid sudden internal betrayal, and Yinshuke immediately led his cavalry south, making Lin Zongwu’s Great Brightness Cult the first of the Jin resistance forces to be knocked out of the fight.