A Single Tie Of Long Hair Seals A Lifelong Commitment - Chapter 53.1

Suddenly startled, Chen Liangyu released the person in her arms and hastily wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

She retreated step by step, as if she had done something wrong.

Xie Wenjun turned her back to straighten her clothes. When she turned around again, Chen Liangyu was several feet away at the tea table, pouring water from the teapot and nearly fumbling it.

The more silence there was, the more awkward it became.

Chen Liangyu wanted to ask Xie Wenjun if she was thirsty, but she noticed Xie Wenjun had already smoothed her clothes, sat up straight, and had tea in front of her. Still, Chen Liangyu offered a fresh cup of tea and quickly lowered her head.

Xie Wenjun also deliberately avoided her gaze. After a long silence, she said, “What are your plans once you return to Yongdu?”

She was just looking for a topic to ease the embarrassing atmosphere in the main hall.

Chen Liangyu’s hand, holding the teacup, paused. “To bury my parents.”

“And after that?”

“After that, I want to return to the Northern Frontier, to Dingbei City.” Chen Liangyu thought of Jing Rong. Counting the days since she left the Northern Frontier, it had been eight years. “It’s been so many years. I left her there, and I haven’t gone back to see her all this time. She must not be very happy.”

Xie Wenjun asked, “Who is she?”

“Her name is Jing Rong.”

Jing Rong…

Xie Wenjun remembered her. “I know her.”

“You know her?”

Xie Wenjun said, “Her name is on the military merit roll from the 16th year of Xuanyuan.”

The list of merits submitted by the Marquis of Xuanping after the Battle of Dingbei contained many names of people who were no longer alive. The court would confer titles based on merit and then distribute corresponding relief funds to their families according to the granted rank. There were a very few names marked specially, indicating that they had no living relatives.

Jing Rong was not a soldier.

With so many names on the roll, she shouldn’t have been particularly noteworthy. So many people died at Dingbei; no one would have thought to check the background of every person on the merit roll. The matter would have simply passed with a stroke of the vermilion brush.

Yet, Xie Yu noticed the name. “Why is there a woman?”

Xie Wenjun had always known that Chen Linjun had two trusted deputy generals, one named Jing Ming and the other Jing He. She naturally assumed this person with the same surname, Jing, was a sibling of Chen Linjun’s two deputies. At that time, she asked her imperial brother about it, and Xie Yu replied, “She was Chen Liangyu’s maidservant, an orphan. A valiant woman. What a pity.”

The Forbidden Palace had placed a group of people, called ‘Inspectors,’ among the common folk, the court, and even in the residences of various officials. In Xie Wenjun’s opinion, these people were like the court’s muckrakers, mainly focused on what officials ate, where they went, who they met, and finding out the details of their wives, concubines, servants, guards, and maidservants. Although these people had no rank, not even a minor official title, and could not reveal their identities, they were inexplicably dedicated and self-important.

After the Crown Prince began assisting in governing the nation, Emperor Xuanyuan handed the Inspection Office to Rong Jun, which is why Xie Yu knew all about the personnel in the homes of court officials. For a family like the Marquis of Xuanping, which guarded the frontier, even a single fly had to be investigated and its file recorded in a memorial to the throne.

Xie Yu hesitated briefly when he wrote the official reply.

It wasn’t because Jing Rong, not being a soldier, was receiving military merit and court relief funds—her military contribution was beyond doubt—but because she was a woman. Not having enlisted in the army, and being a woman, was a sufficient reason for the heavenly-born Crown Prince to pause briefly in his busy schedule.

But only for a moment.

“Is the Marquis of Xuanping confused? What is he thinking?”

Since the person was dead, Xie Yu did not dwell on this trivial matter for too long. He wrote his vermilion approval, granting the request.

This was Xie Wenjun’s first encounter with the name Jing Rong, yet she was intimately familiar with Chen Liangyu’s. Throughout the year, she would hear her name mentioned several times in others’ descriptions—mostly by Emperor Xuanyuan, who particularly loved to talk about her with Xie Yu, lavishly praising her.

Later, she achieved repeated military successes until the Battle of Dingbei City, when her name became the subject of conversation among the palace women, with endless words of praise showered upon one person.

What kind of dazzling person was she?

“Imperial Brother.”

Xie Yu had just finished his brushwork and gave her a moment of his attention. “Yes, what is it?”

“I want to go out of the palace to see the army return on the day they march back to the capital.”

A surge of bitterness rose in Chen Liangyu’s nose. She had not expected that someone she had never met would remember Jing Rong. This was not a huge matter, yet it instantly brought tears to Chen Liangyu’s eyes. The meaning of this was extraordinary to her.

Jing Rong was the one who had grown up with her, inseparable for over ten years.

Her spirit is gone, but her voice remains, yet she never enters my dreams.

Naturally, Chen Liangyu did not wish for Jing Rong’s eighteen years of life to end as mere yellow earth and a bit of ink on a military merit roll. If her name was remembered, she would no longer be just an anonymous dry bone among the thousands who died on the battlefield at Dingbei.

Chen Liangyu also pulled up a chair and sat down, spontaneously speaking to Xie Wenjun about various minor incidents from the past. “Since I can remember, my father and elder brother would constantly trick me into drinking, and they would be amused to see me grimacing from the spice. Later, I refused to drink anything they offered.”

“The officers in the camp would mock me, calling me ‘Little General.’ Back then, at every banquet, someone would always say, ‘What kind of person who fights on the battlefield doesn’t drink heartily and eat meat heartily? How can you be a general without drinking three jars of wine?'”

“But actually, many people in the army have low alcohol tolerance. Drinking is strictly prohibited in the main camp; only when there is a great victory or a holiday will my father host a banquet at the residence and drink heartily with the officers. They barely drink once a year, so how could they have any tolerance? They’d be disoriented after half a jar of wine, yet they still had the nerve to laugh at me.”

“Jing Rong was good at brewing wine, and she resented others talking about me that way, so she brewed fruit wine. The wine she gave me was different from what she gave others; I could drink a lot of my jar without getting drunk—at most, my face would get a little red. Later, I managed to drink ten-plus generals under the table. After that, they probably found it boring, and no one ever forced me to drink again. Jing Rong’s fruit wine was sweet.”

Xie Wenjun listened silently. When Chen Liangyu finished, she said, “If there is a chance, take me to see her. To see Jing Rong.”

Chen Liangyu agreed, “Yes, absolutely.”

“Do you absolutely have to return to the Northern Frontier?”

Chen Liangyu fell silent at the question.

But she remained convinced that she would return to the Northern Frontier. When she followed her parents back to Yongdu in the 16th year of Xuanyuan, she saw herself as merely a transient visitor to this prosperous and noisy capital. She would have to go back sooner or later.

The Northern Frontier was desolate. Outside the city gates was a boundless wilderness—broken stones, rubble, and not a blade of grass. When the wind blew, the sky turned yellow. On that most primal land, both humans and animals, to varying degrees, retained the primitive cruelty and savagery of life. The army stationed in the Northern Frontier, besides defending against foreign enemies, often had to divide their forces for peacekeeping. Malicious assault and murder occurred almost daily. During the deep winter when food was scarce, wolves from the wilderness would also enter the city to attack and prey on people.

Life was constantly under threat, and violence became a means of survival.

Thus, when she stepped into Shangyong City, with thousands of people cheering the streets, Chen Liangyu was momentarily unable to adjust. If a crowd gathered in a Northern Frontier city to shout and make noise, it could only mean a civil uprising.

How could a noisy, clamoring crowd be compatible with the word peace?

At that time, she struggled to find the words to describe her feelings. It wasn’t until later, when Zhang Jialing resurrected and spoke of coming from a thousand years later, that Chen Liangyu finally found the word that explained everything from his unreliable ramblings.

Civilization.

She finally understood the art of governing and stabilizing the nation that Elder Yan spoke of: ruling the country by Confucian principles and selecting scholars through the Eight-Part Essay examination. She also understood why scholars were revered in this era.

She had to return to the Northern Frontier to try to drive out the foreign enemies and the savagery from that land.