A Single Tie Of Long Hair Seals A Lifelong Commitment - Chapter 16.1

She had taken Princess Jiangning’s words to heart…

The sun was setting, and winter days grew dark especially fast. The procession lit their torches.

A winding river of fire streamed through the long street, horses’ hooves clattering. The vanguard soldiers shouted, “The Sixteen Guards are apprehending criminals! Ordinary people keep clear!”

Walking against the cold wind, her cheeks felt as if they were being sliced by knives. The reins were clenched tightly in her hands, numbing them almost completely.

She dared not rest for a moment.

She had to capture and detain the grave offenders hidden in the Xuanping Marquis’s Residence before the Eastern Palace Guard or the Imperial Guard could arrive!

How could a tie of blood be severed by merely drawing a line of ink on a genealogy chart? In the eyes of the civil officials and under the pen of the historians, they all bore the Chen surname, a single lineage. Unless they turned to dust, their shared glory and disgrace would bind them for generations.

The situation in Cangnan was tragic. Her father and elder brother were imprisoned. The criminals had to be sent to jail by the Xuanping Marquis’s Residence itself to clear the Marquisate of the charge of harboring and complicity.

Only then could her father and elder brother return home safely from the palace.

She would not let her parents and brother bear the infamy of betraying their kin; she would bear it alone. Whatever the historians might write, whatever posterity might judge, she would endure it all.

The Chen kin from Cangnan were stripped of their fine silk robes, forced into prisoner’s garb, and chained in a line, being driven forward by the guards, their faces etched with panic. The corpulent gentry member, who was the first to be seized, thrashed about madly and was slammed to the ground by a soldier. Face pressed to the earth, he screamed incessantly, “Elder sister-in-law, save me! Men, where are the house guards? This is the Xuanping Marquis’s Residence! How dare you arrest the Marquis’s people! Elder sister-in-law, call my brother to save me!”

The house guards, seeing that it was their own Young Miss who had burst into the residence to seize people, were momentarily at a loss whether to stop her or not.

The commotion startled Lady He, who rushed over only to see Chen Liangyu, wearing an iron countenance and wielding a sword, tying up a crowd of her own clan members.

“Li’er, what is this…?”

Chen Liangyu raised her hand, displaying her official token. “The Sixteen Guards are apprehending criminals. Unrelated persons, move away!” She ordered the house guards, “Escort the Lady back to her room!”

Gao Guan grabbed the collar of the fat gentry member and yanked him up. He immediately collapsed again at Chen Liangyu’s feet. “Virtuous niece, virtuous niece, I am your blood uncle! You cannot, you cannot betray your own flesh and blood! Elder sister-in-law, save me…”

Chen Liangyu retreated half a step. She lifted her hand and moved a finger, and the wailing man was dragged swiftly away.

The clan elder was escorted by two junior soldiers. Considering that the man was taken from the Commander’s family, and was advanced in age and unsteady on his feet, the soldiers feared that if they shackled him carelessly, he might be harmed before being interrogated, so they did not apply leg irons.

As he passed Chen Liangyu, the clan elder scoffed bitterly. “Wickedness! Chen Liangyu, you harm your own clan, a great offense against the natural order! The ancestors are blind, and our family is unfortunate. My Chen clan has actually produced a wicked daughter like you!”

“Take him away!”

The Crown Prince used the tragedy in Cangnan to purge the officialdom, with the Yao family bearing the brunt of the crackdown. Yao Chongshan, the Minister of Works, and his official kinsmen were all stripped of their positions and jailed, and Consort De was deposed to the Cold Palace.

Consequently, Consort De’s son, Prince Qi, also fell out of the Emperor’s favor and was demoted and dispatched to a fiefdom outside Yongdu.

Just after the New Year, the Eastern Palace sent out circuit censors to rectify corruption among local officials and gentry.

For a time, brutal officials rose up, and blood flowed like a river.

The clouds dispersed, and the wind tore a patch of blue from the thick, oppressive layer. Golden light reflected off the white marble tiles.

Chen Liangyu, holding a heavy copper desk ruler in both hands, knelt outside the ancestral hall.

The hall’s main doors were tightly sealed and bolted. The wooden door stood like a copper wall and an iron fortress, separating her, who was waiting for punishment, from the interior.

Shortly past noon, the ancestral hall doors opened with a creak from the inside. Chen Yuanqing, steeped in the rich fragrance of incense, stepped down from the platform and stopped before the blue brick where Chen Liangyu knelt, gazing at the copper object in her hands.

Chen Liangyu raised the ruler above her head. “Father, your daughter requests punishment!”

The case had been handled hastily. After Chen Liangyu apprehended the Chen clan members hiding in the Marquis’s Residence, she immediately encountered the Eastern Palace Guards who had also come to seal the house. The prisoners were sent to the imperial prison and immediately brought to the torture chamber. Several could not withstand the torture and died that very night.

The four hundred-odd close kin of the Chen clan remaining in Cangnan had also been imprisoned, and the principal figures were being transported to Yongdu in cages.

Minister Yao Chongshan and the Yao family’s official kinsmen had been stripped of their robes and hats at the imperial banquet itself and dragged out by the Eastern Palace Guard.

Chen Yuanqing commanded the forty thousand-strong Northern Army. The Eastern Palace dared not move against him and his son, Chen Linjun. Yet, indignant censors refused to back down, citing history and pressing their case with long arguments, even taking off their official robes and hats to compel action.

Rong Jun, the Commandant of the Eastern Palace Guard, galloped into the palace and reported before the Emperor that the rebellious Chen kin had already been personally arrested and brought to justice by Chen Liangyu, the eldest daughter of the Xuanping Marquis, leading the Sixteen Guards. Only then did the censors fall silent.

Chen Yuanqing took the heavy, disciplinary ruler from her hands. It was the kind of thing that would leave a swollen, red mark for days. “In public, you eliminated harm for the people and served the country; in private, you saved your father and brother from the hardship of prison, preventing disaster to the Northern Army’s defenses. Publicly and privately, your father has no reason to reproach you.”

“Your daughter harmed her own clan. Though it was for the laws of the state, for the family, it was a filial breach against the ancestors. I must be punished.”

Chen Liangyu bowed her head low.

She wished for the ruler to fall again and again, hoping to dissipate even a fraction of Chen Yuanqing’s pain over his lost kin.

She felt no familial affection or sympathy for the Chen clan of Cangnan, only deep hatred. That hatred peaked when she saw the streets of Yongdu filled with hollow-eyed, numb refugees kneeling to beg for a scrap of rotten vegetable to eat.

They deserved to die!

When a woman in iron chains cried and protested that her young child was innocent, begging her to release the Chen clan’s offspring, she only felt a chill.

The innocent eyes of those children, nurtured by filthy, abundant wealth, their skin flawless beneath silken robes, each one growing up precious as jade and snow.

Innocent?

She did not think so.

They had plundered the very grain others needed to live, hoarding and lavishly consuming it. They wallowed in luxury amid the deafening cries of the destitute and reveled among the frozen corpses whose skin was torn and ragged.

They were the beneficiaries of the Chen clan’s persecution of the populace and accumulation of wealth. How could they be called innocent?

But for Chen Yuanqing, the feelings must be different.

Under the shackles were the brothers and sisters with whom he had grown up. In the wooden prison carts were the esteemed elders who had patiently taught and enlightened him.

Might he not see through those young faces, the image of himself and his clan mates, years ago, frolicking and laughing together?

She waited a long time before she felt a large hand gently caress the back of her head, its warmth seeping through her black hair.

“My child, you have grown up,” Chen Yuanqing said. “This outcome is the deserved punishment for their evil deeds; no one else is to blame.”

A messenger from the Eastern Palace arrived.

Although Chen Yuanqing and Chen Linjun had escaped the imperial banquet unharmed, they were now confined to the residence, awaiting a possible summons.

They followed the Eastern Palace Guard to the palace once more.

A pond was situated beside the ancestral hall. At noon, the ice surface had thawed, and broken shards of ice floated upon the water.

Chen Liangyu walked onto the pavilion in the middle of the lake, letting the cold wind distract her thoughts.

The sound of footsteps behind her was uneven, one deep, one shallow. She knew who it was.

“Uncle Yan,” Chen Liangyu greeted him with the courtesy of a student to a teacher.

A stray arrow at Beiyong had pierced Yan Baizhang’s calf. After returning to Yongdu, he had rushed about to find her second elder brother, and his leg wound was not properly tended, leaving him with a limp.

Yan Baizhang acknowledged her.

His face was the same familiar, stern one.

She and her elder brother were both Yan Baizhang’s students, but perhaps Uncle Yan favored her elder brother; he had always been stricter with her since childhood.

Without any unnecessary pleasantries, Yan Baizhang went straight to the point. “It appears the Eastern Palace has dealt with a Minister of Works and punished a clan of local gentry. Can you discern the swift currents beneath the deep pool of water?”

Chen Liangyu pondered for a moment, then replied, “The Crown Prince used the Cangnan affair to denounce the Yao family. First, to fill the treasury with Cangnan’s wealth to cover the shortfall. Second, to suppress Prince Qi, who challenges him for the throne. Furthermore, since the Chen clan has brought disaster upon itself, how can the Marquis’s Residence remain untouched? I suspect it is because the Crown Prince and His Majesty have a conflict over the Northern Army. The Prince seeks to drag the Marquis’s Residence into the matter to force His Majesty’s compromise.”