A Single Tie Of Long Hair Seals A Lifelong Commitment - Chapter 70.1

The Marquis’s Residence in Suzhou

It was the old residence in the North bestowed upon the former Marquis Chen Yuanqing by Emperor Xuanyuan, located in Dingbei City, Suzhou. The entrance was still somewhat grand, but the carved beams and painted pillars were old and couldn’t compare to the estate in Yongdu.

In the back kitchen, several large vats were lined up. Servants were carrying buckets to fill them with clear water before covering them with wooden lids.

Chen Liangyu rarely concerned herself with the affairs of the back kitchen. “Are they all full?”

Most of the servants here were old retainers of the Northern Marquis’s Residence, who had watched Chen Liangyu grow up. Unlike outsiders, they didn’t call her “Great General” but still addressed her as “Miss.”

A cloth-clad servant replied, “Miss, two more vats to go until they’re all full.”

The Qiurong tribes, like the sand rats digging holes in the Sand Hills, would retreat into the boundless grasslands and deserts after a few defeats whenever they saw the Zhonglin border guards, refusing to engage in direct battle. Han people were not accustomed to drought. On vast, exposed lands without shade, they risked dying of dehydration. Excessive penetration into the grasslands also carried the danger of supply lines failing to keep up, leading to heavy losses. Therefore, although everyone was angry at the Qidi’s passive stance, they were helpless against them.

This was one of the reasons why the grassland tribes managed to survive. They could not be completely wiped out.

Winter arrived quickly on the grasslands. Before summer was even over in Yongdu, the grasslands would skip autumn and enter early winter. Winter was the hardest season for the tribes. It was midsummer now. If the tribes couldn’t stockpile enough food and fresh water in their granaries in a month and a half, the coming deep winter would be difficult to endure.

If a merchant caravan carrying water and grain passed by, the Qiurong would risk coming out to plunder it, even knowing it might be a trap.

“Jingming, Jinghe, Ping’er, Lin Yin.”

Chen Liangyu called out a list of names. Only Jingming acknowledged her. She looked around and shouted at a sturdy back, “Jinghe, are you deaf?”

Jinghe seemed to snap out of a daze and lumbered over immediately. “Miss, I’m here.”

Chen Liangyu looked around again. “Where are the other two?”

Jingming said, “Didn’t you tell them to go practice formations in the deep mountains and old forests?”

Chen Liangyu then remembered that Lin Yin had been gloomy ever since losing to Pu Ping’er. During formation drills, she had boasted that she would “annihilate the entire army” commanded by Bu Ping’er. Chen Liangyu thought the girl still had the rough energy she brought from the Baogong Stockade. But a few months later, she discovered that Lin Yin could indeed quickly find the core and weakness of ever-changing troop formations and break them without much effort.

Under Chen Liangyu’s approving gaze, Lin Yin sighed helplessly, “My surname is Lin! The Lin of the Great Leader!”

So Chen Liangyu tossed her into the deep mountains and old forests, where troop formations and traps were everywhere.

To gain more experience.

Chen Liangyu said to Jingming, “Gather the troops. This time, we must flush the Qiurong out of their rat holes.”

“Are we still going to fight?”

“Fight! Of course, we have to fight!”

Jingming said, “The Eldest Princess’s carriage will be arriving in the Northern Border soon.”

“Hasn’t the Eldest Princess arrived already!” A man holding a broom came out of the wood shed. After he spoke, he suddenly realized his mouth was letting out air, and quickly covered it. But it was too late.

Chen Liangyu walked over. “What did you say?”

The man covered his mouth and shook his head.

Chen Liangyu said, “Xing Rui! Don’t forget who brought you to Suzhou.”

Xing Rui dropped the broom, covered his head, and squatted to the side. “Great General, your subordinate doesn’t know why the Eldest Princess went to Wuzhou.”

Chen Liangyu said, “She’s in Wuzhou?” Unbelievable. “She went to Wuzhou first?”

She didn’t come to me first? A strange thought suddenly crossed Chen Liangyu’s mind. Why was she so certain? Certain that Xie Wenjun would first come to Suzhou when visiting the Northern Border.

I’m in Suzhou. She roared silently in her heart.

When a person desperately wants to see another, they often mistakenly assume that the other person must also desperately want to see them.

Chen Liangyu lowered her head and pressed her lips together.

Jingming asked, “Are we still fighting?”

“Fighting what? If we fight again, someone will come to reprimand me.” Chen Liangyu then instructed the servants who were fetching water, “Stop fetching water.”

The person hasn’t even arrived, so why bother storing water!

“Prepare my horse.”

Jingming asked, “Where are you going?”

Chen Liangyu said, “Wuzhou.” She cleared her throat and said, “To inspect Wuzhou’s military preparations, and by the way, to visit Yao City.”

Jingming said, “Jinghe will stay to guard Suzhou. I’ll go with you. Jinghe? You’ve been preoccupied ever since we came back, are you possessed?”

Jinghe seemed to wake up from a deep dream. “I heard you. You and Miss are going to Wuzhou to find the Eldest Princess. You two go.”

Chen Liangyu: “…”

Scholars and poets, with their tongues and pens, wrote verses like, “Sheep flocks resemble snow covering the hills, the heart is intoxicated by the boundless green field,” and “Endless green allows the sheep to graze, a swift horse flies with a song intoxicated by the azure sky.”

Beautiful mountains, beautiful water, and beautiful scenery.

Words like “green” and “azure,” which carried the sense of vigorous life, were never the Northern Border in Chen Liangyu’s eyes.

Chen Liangyu and Jingming led a team out of Dingbei City.

Outside the city was the boundless desolate plain. The emphasis in “desolate plain” was on the word desolate: bleak, barren, and desolate land. In many places, grass only grew in the summer. For the rest of the time, as far as the eye could see, there were only endless deserts and Gobi. There were also herdsmen in the Northern Border. Every winter, the herdsmen had to relocate their grazing lands.

They proceeded along the official road toward Wuzhou. On the way, men, women, the elderly, and the young were holding clay pots of various shapes and sizes, gathered around a pitted area. There was no water in the sand. There were wells, but they were earthen wells with a thick layer of dead rats and rabbits on top. People still had to stir the water and drink it, or they would die.

What met their eyes were vast stretches of saline-alkali land where no grain could be grown. The grain yield from normal fields was only four-tenths or five-tenths of that in other places, and this was only in a disaster-free, bumper harvest year.

What was most lacking here was not grain, but water.

Clean water.

Outside the city, Jingming said sternly, “Have you figured out the background of that person named Xing Rui you brought from Yongdu?”

Chen Liangyu sighed out three words, “The Inspection Bureau.”

“You knew?”

“I knew.”

Jingming asked, “Whose spy is he?”

Chen Liangyu said, “He used to be a subordinate of Crown Prince Yizhang. Now the Inspection Bureau is under the Eldest Princess’s control, so he naturally takes orders from her. If it weren’t him, it would be someone else. At least, he won’t harm me.”

Jingming warned, “Don’t let your guard down.”

It took Xie Wenjun nearly half a year to travel from Yongdu to the Northern Border.

She brought civil officials and clerks, inspecting and recording the land acreage, harvests, and customary taxes of the various states, prefectures, and counties along the way. She also brought the Changning Guard.

Compared to her first trip out of Yongdu to inspect the fields, the obstacles this time seemed much fewer. There were almost no assassination attempts or pursuits along the way. Instead, she was revered everywhere she went. Aristocratic family members from all over came to pay their respects. Most were turned away by Rong Jun. A very few insisted on staying and meeting the Eldest Princess to present treasures. Truthfully, the majority of these people did not come with the intention of bribery; they genuinely revered and were grateful to Xie Wenjun.

The Ten Thousand Officials’ Register stipulated, “For all fields bestowed by the imperial court, the children of the family, regardless of whether they are the primary or secondary line, shall divide and inherit equally.”

The aristocratic family members who sought an audience with the Eldest Princess were mostly secondary sons in their families.

Upon arriving in Wuzhou, the person who received Xie Wenjun alongside Du Peixun was named Shi Tan. His family was also a local aristocratic family. He was the third son from a secondary line and currently served as the Wuzhou Chief Clerk, a sixth-rank official. He had an elder brother from the primary line who was an official in Yongdu. His sixth-rank minor official status and secondary son identity originally made him inferior everywhere. But with Xie Wenjun’s “equal division of fields” regulation, he seemed to gain status within his family and in public.

Therefore, when receiving the Eldest Princess, Shi Tan was more zealous and attentive than the Prefect Du Peixun.

Du Peixun arranged for the Eldest Princess to stay at the relay station.

Shi Tan said, “Lord, this is too neglectful.”

So he volunteered to take charge of Xie Wenjun’s lodging arrangements and set her residence in the Qunfang Garden (Garden of A Hundred Flowers). Qunfang, a collection of fragrances. The garden was divided into various flower beds, where a hundred flowers bloomed in competition.

Shi Tan somehow managed to acquire a potted flower whose base color was pinkish-white, densely speckled with deep pink spots, and which was still in bud form. The dense spots resembled the markings on a fawn.