The old emperor set the vermilion-dipped imperial brush carelessly upon the brush rest, leaning back against the curved back of the dragon throne. He did not look at the ministers kneeling below, but reached for the teacup at the edge of the imperial desk, long gone cold.
The old emperor gently stirred the surface of the tea, skimming the congealed scum to one side. No steam rose from the brew. He did not drink it either, merely cradled the cup in his hands.
"Rise, all of you." His voice was no longer the thunderclap of earlier, but carried the exhaustion of spent force.
The assembled officials, civil and military alike, sighed with relief. They kowtowed in thanks and pushed themselves upright on numbed legs.
"Companion Li." The old emperor's voice was low, yet carried far across the vast hall.
"Your servant is here." Eunuch Li stepped forward.
"Grant seats to Grand Secretary Xu and these ministers of the court."
Eunuch Li swept his horsetail whisk aside. Several young eunuchs hurried in from the side hall, carrying brocade stools cushioned with yellow satin, and placed them softly before the imperial steps.
"Your servants thank Your Majesty for your boundless grace." Xu Jie led the others in gratitude, and the senior ministers took their seats in order.
The Minister of War—who had just been publicly rebuked for proposing retreat to Baoding—found his legs still trembling. He perched on the edge of his stool, half his weight still suspended in the air. Only then did his taut muscles ease slightly. These words of thanks dissipated the murderous tension that had gripped the hall.
The old emperor set down his teacup and looked at the daylight slanting through the doors.
"This court session has run the better part of a day," he said. "You gentlemen must be hungry." He waved a hand. "Serve the meal. Today we will remain in the hall and share some coarse fare."
Before long, a procession of eunuchs from the imperial kitchen filed in, bearing lacquered boxes painted red. The Great Qi court had its custom of granting meals at court, but to grant food at this moment of military crisis was no mere gesture of hospitality.
No long tables were set out. The ministers received simple clay bowls and ate where they stood or squatted in the hall.
Before the old emperor, several dishes were laid on the imperial desk. He lowered his gaze and stopped on two items at the center.
They were not the mutton hotpot and white steamed buns typical of the early winter capital. Instead, there was a bowl of southern red rice, the color of dried blood, and a plate of fermented fish that carried a rich, pungent aroma of pickle and brine.
Xu Jie took the bowl handed to him by the eunuch and saw the red grains within. He kept his gaze lowered, lifted a small clump of rice with his bamboo chopsticks, and chewed slowly and deliberately. Southern red rice was coarse and stubborn on the tongue, difficult to swallow, yet Xu Jie chewed with great patience, great steadiness. In his mind, he was calculating: the emperor granting southern fare at this moment was no accidental act of the imperial kitchen.
Xu Youde held his bowl, composed and unruffled, eating the fermented fish in large mouthfuls, even crushing the bones and swallowing them. He knew perfectly well: the emperor had sent him south with the imperial sword to confiscate households. This bowl of fish was meant to give him a taste of the south's blood and brine.
As for the Minister of War, he gripped his bowl with his chopsticks unmoving. Sweat beaded on his forehead, layer after layer. He stared at the red grains in his bowl, unable to bring himself to take a single bite.
The old emperor picked up his chopsticks, lifted a piece of fermented fish, and swallowed it slowly.
"Last night, after finishing my memorials, I found myself weary," the old emperor said, his tone unhurried, utterly stripped of the murderous pressure from moments before. He now seemed like an ordinary old man, trading small talk with his juniors, setting aside the heavy weight of state affairs for a while.
The ministers immediately set down their chopsticks and held their breath to listen. From the Son of Heaven's mouth, no word was wasted.
"The book recorded a curious matter." The old emperor set down his chopsticks and folded his hands on his knees. "It told of an old farmer in the southern river country. This old farmer owned a waterside ancestral home that had been passed down three generations. The house was old, and every rainy season, it leaked without cease."
Only the old emperor's voice filled the great hall.
"The old farmer was a nostalgic man. He could not bear to part with the ancestral home. So year after year, he spent great sums to buy the finest green tiles to patch the roof. But flooding knows no mercy. Fix the east side, and the west side starts leaking again. Silver flowed away like water, and yet the entire family still suffered through rainy nights, holding basins to catch drips, unable to snatch even a single sound sleep."
Xu Jie stopped chewing the red rice.
He swallowed, his gaze fixed on the pattern on the bottom of his bowl. Useless paths closed off. The ancestral home—that was the capital. The floods—the iron hooves of the Heren cavalry and the lethal poison beyond the northern pass. Year after year of patching—that was the military funds and lives thrown into the northern border without end. This speech stripped the northern crisis of the Qi dynasty naked and bare.
The Minister of War felt the clay bowl in his hands turn impossibly heavy. His earlier proposal to retreat to Baoding had earned him a dog's scolding. Only now, hearing this speech, did he suddenly understand. His Majesty had not been unwilling to retreat—he simply thought Baoding was not far enough. What His Majesty wanted was to shake off this leaking, crumbling mess completely.
Xu Youde swallowed a large piece of preserved fish in one gulp. His mind was as clear as a mirror. The emperor had sent him with the imperial sword to the south of the Yangtze to confiscate estates — on the surface, this was to raise medicinal herbs to rescue the northern frontier garrison, but in truth, it was to sweep away obstacles in the south and pave the way for moving the capital. Raiding the homes of wealthy merchants would free up not just herbs, but also the mansions and grain reserves of Jiangnan!
The old emperor watched the shifting expressions of the officials below the steps, a faint smile curling at the corner of his mouth.
"Yet this old farmer does not have but this one abode," the old emperor said, shifting his tone mid-sentence, his voice still slow and deliberate. "In the hollow of a high-lying mountain, he owns a country retreat that has yet to leak. It may not be as spacious as the ancestral home, but it has the advantage of stability — safe from wind and rain."
The old emperor leaned slightly forward, his gaze sweeping over the senior ministers assembled in the hall.
"He need only move to that retreat, and he can escape the misery of this flooding. His wife and children can sleep soundly at night."
The air in the great hall seemed to stop moving.
The old emperor leaned back into his throne, a sardonic smile playing on his lips as he posed his question: "My esteemed ministers, you are all learned men. Do deliberate on this old farmer's behalf. Should he continue to sink his silver into that leaky roof, living in constant dread day and night…"
The old emperor paused, his voice suddenly dropping low.
"Or should he simply move to that highland retreat and find himself lasting peace?"
The moment these words were spoken, the atmosphere in the hall seemed to freeze solid.
The ministers, who moments ago had felt the pangs of hunger, now stared at the red rice and preserved fish from Jiangnan in their bowls, their stomachs churning violently.
Who was the old farmer?
What was the leaky ancestral home?
And what was that highland retreat?
The old emperor's intentions, at this moment, were laid completely bare — the dagger was out of the bag.
This was no idle talk of household matters!
This was, under the pretext of the pestilence of the Mother of Plagues breaking out at the northern pass, under the guise of an empty imperial treasury and a stretched-thin military, a move to force the entire court to take a stand — to force them to agree to abandon the northern territories and move the capital south to Jiangnan!
