A Single Tie Of Long Hair Seals A Lifelong Commitment - Chapter 76

Gao Guan ordered the Twelve Guards of the Southern Yamen to search along the riverbanks, but after several days of searching, they found nothing.

The news of the flower queen from Yifeng Pavilion falling into the river quickly became a topic of conversation in people’s leisure time.

Not only among the common folk but also in court, it was talked about with great relish.

The romantic affair between Sheng Yu’an, the Vice Minister of the Court of Agriculture, and Miss Qin, whose face was disfigured and who was forced to jump into the river to take her own life, was astonishing. For a time, it completely overshadowed the notoriety of the Imperial Academy scholars’ riot.

Soon, everyone realized that the matter would not be so easily concluded.

They further realized that the deceased flower queen, Qin Sensen, was not an insignificant woman of low status.

Three days had passed since the Imperial Academy scholars’ incident and the flower queen’s fall into the river, and the person was still nowhere to be found. Having no choice, Gao Guan could only order the Yong’an Prefecture to write an official case file and record the disappearance in the missing persons registry.

Upon returning to Yongdu from Wuzhou, the Princess Royal, Xie Wenjun, simply said, “If she is alive, we must see the person; if she is dead, we must see the corpse.”

The Southern Yamen and Yong’an Prefecture once again mobilized men to conduct a rapid search along the riverbanks.

Many days passed, and still, they found nothing.

A living person was neither seen alive nor found dead. The Princess Royal ordered a strict search. If they could not find her, the task was considered incomplete, and the search had to continue indefinitely. The Xuishui River was filled with yamen runners and soldiers, with ropes tied around their waists, their eyes scanning the water surface, and their hands constantly probing the underwater depths with salvage tools.

The leaders of the women who caused the trouble were imprisoned, and those who followed the trend also received caning and were fined.

Initially, everyone thought the Princess Royal was merely upholding the law and enforcing state regulations, believing that even if the deceased was merely an artisan from Yifeng Pavilion, she would never tolerate the unhealthy trend of the law not punishing the majority.

Before long, people gradually sensed that something was amiss.

The Yong’an Prefecture arrested a number of Imperial Academy students and locked them up in the Yong’an Prefecture’s main jail. These pampered white-robed youths were considered future talents with boundless prospects, so Cheng Lingdian (the magistrate) did not dare to easily apply corporal punishment. He merely kept them detained. The cells they occupied were the cleanest and brightest available.

The scholars were confined together with their classmates. At first, they were uneasy, but after a few days, they grasped the court’s lenient attitude and relaxed. They discussed the current political situation and talked about major news, often debating loudly late into the night.

No one took the imprisonment seriously.

They figured that after their release, it would just be a period of experiencing prison life, which they could later brag about to their schoolmates.

It did not go as they wished.

After many days, it should have been time for the Imperial Academy officials and the heads of their respective families to come and collect them.

The students were prepared to go home, receive a slap on the hand, endure a lecture, and kneel for a few hours. When the morning sun rose again, they would once again be spirited, promising young men. However, what awaited them was an imperial decree to transfer the troublesome scholars to the Daili Temple (Court of Judicial Review) prison.

The situation took a sharp turn, starting with the transfer of the Imperial Academy students from the Yong’an Prefecture to the Daili Temple.

First, the Changning Guard successively took away many officials from various government offices. Then, the Princess Royal summoned some minor local officials to Yongdu. Many people who thought they were uninvolved were confused: Why summon these insignificant “shrimp soldiers and crab generals”?

When they finally figured out the hidden meaning, everyone became alarmed.

These officials taken away by the Changning Guard, as well as the “shrimp soldiers and crab generals” summoned from the localities, were all relatives of the Imperial Academy scholars who caused the trouble. Regardless of whether they were close or distant relatives, none were spared. The lighter punishments involved a reprimand, while the heavier ones included demotion and confiscation of family land.

They were like ants strung together, the implications spreading far and wide.

And the straw rope binding all the large and small nests of ants together was the Princess Royal Xie Wenjun’s “Wanliao Lu” (Record of Ten Thousand Officials).

The “Wanliao Lu,” which was supposed to “bless descendants,” had actually become a register of kin more complete than their ancestral clan genealogy. What made people’s backs run cold was that this list, which could implicate more than nine generations, was in the hands of the person who could genuinely take their lives.

Then, more rumors began to circulate in Yongdu: The celebrity in the midst of this flower, poetry, and wine scandal, Sheng Yu’an, was planning to divorce his wife. This led to much speculation. Could it be that the person behind intercepting the Liuguang boat, disfiguring the woman, and forcing Qin Sensen to commit suicide by jumping into the river, was actually Sheng Yu’an’s wife, Lady Guo?

Some even said that the Princess Royal had ordered the Sheng family to handle the matter.

Lady Guo came from a prominent family. Would the Princess Royal actually offend both the Sheng and Guo families for the sake of a courtesan from a brothel?

It was entirely possible.

Soon after, Sheng’s wife, Lady Guo, was sent back to her hometown for house arrest. When she left Yongdu, she rode only in a simple carriage, unaccompanied and without even a single maid to serve her.

Subsequently, two more events occurred.

Yifeng Pavilion was a royal brothel, unlike common civilian establishments. The madam in the pavilion merely managed the performers, while the real manager was the person behind the scenes, the Yifeng Pavilion Steward. One of the events was that, shortly after the death of the flower queen Miss Qin, the Yifeng Pavilion Steward committed suicide at home. His posture was bizarre: his forehead and the tip of his nose touched the ground, and his hands were clenched into fists, held upright against his chest.

This was a posture popular in the North to express repentance to the deceased.

The second event was that, amid public outcry, Yao Jifeng was arrested in Cangnan and escorted to Yongdu for trial. Gu Xie, the headmaster of Lingjiu Academy, was also imprisoned for harboring a fugitive.

The court and the public were gripped by fear. It was only when they connected the two events that they understood the root cause of the Princess Royal’s thunderous rage. It was not in the trouble-making, the assault, or even the flower queen’s fall into the river.

It lay in the shockwave that swept the court: The ban on women’s schools.

This had touched her inverse scale (i.e., her most sensitive spot).

The trend of women’s schooling had appeared even earlier than Lingjiu Academy, and this trend was initially spearheaded by the talented flower queen of Yifeng Pavilion, Qin Sensen.

Everything then made sense.

Such a move was something no one had ever anticipated.

Suzhou.

The official news bulletins (Dibaos) for the past few months had been arriving earlier than usual. The speed of the post relay was still the same, but Chen Liangyu had people ride fast horses to intercept them sometime before they were due to arrive.

“She’s something, isn’t she? A single ‘Wanliao Lu’ can actually keep a lid on the hundred officials in court.” Chen Liangyu stood outside the cloud fir forest of a mountain on Qilian Road, flipping through the dozens of pages of the bulletin in her hand. The pages of the Dibao were not bound, so they were separate and had to be flipped through one by one.

Jing Ming said, “Is the Princess Royal really going to punish the Imperial Academy students?”

“How should I know? She hasn’t told me.”

Chen Liangyu rolled the bulletin up in her hand. “Jing Ming, doesn’t the Princess Royal know how to use the iron-plated dispatch tube? Why haven’t I received a single letter from her?”

Jing Ming replied, “How should I know? The Princess Royal hasn’t told me.”

“Consider the question unasked,” Chen Liangyu said.

Chen Liangyu had been waiting at the mountain pass for a long time, and finally, a team of people walked out with seemingly leaden legs. Lin Yin walked at the very front, tightly gripping a long spear, the tip of which touched the ground, serving as a crutch to support her body.

As she got closer, she leaned forward and collapsed at the leg of the horse Chen Liangyu was sitting on, her voice faint. “Let, let me go back to Bogong Ridge.”

Chen Liangyu dismounted, picked her up off the ground, and helped her lean against a rock. “There is no such precedent. Where is Bo Ping’er?”

Lin Yin’s lips were dry and chapped, and she gasped heavily. “If she hasn’t come out, she’s ‘dead’ in there.”

The “death” she spoke of was, of course, not a real death.

Thirty military formations had been set up in the cloud fir forest. Even among the most elite Eagle Head Army, few could successfully navigate all of them. If one was captured inside the formation, they were considered “dead.”

Chen Liangyu asked, “Which checkpoint did she ‘die’ in?”

Pu Ping’er was a general who had followed her from Linxia to Yongdu. She should be familiar with common military formations and shouldn’t have been captured so early. That would be truly embarrassing.

Lin Yin said, “The last formation. Her spear technique is better than mine. She covered me so I could escape but was left behind in the formation herself.”

She had just been lying on the dusty ground, and her face was covered in more mud, which mixed with her sweat, leaving streaks. She looked truly pitiful.

Chen Liangyu nodded. “Not bad.”

“You came specifically to wait for me?” Lin Yin’s shoulders drooped slightly, and her arms hung limply.

Chen Liangyu neither confirmed nor denied it: “Tell Pu Ping’er to come out and return to the Suzhou main camp.”

From the battlements of Dingbei City, looking north, one could see the wavy military formations and hear the soldiers’ neat and earth-shattering shouts. They were naturally not the soldiers of the Great Lin.

Chen Liangyu said, “Northern Yong has deployed some kind of ‘Flood Dragon Energy Formation’ (Jiaolong Qi Zhen). It looks irritating. Go break it for me.”

Although that area was indeed Northern Yong’s territory, practicing drills so close to the gates of Dingbei City was an open provocation.

Lin Yin stared intently for a long time. “Isn’t this just a slightly modified version of the formations in the Yin-Yang Three Scrolls?”

The formations in the Yin-Yang Three Scrolls looked simple, but in reality, the formation’s eye could subtly shift, making them troublesome and difficult to break. With slight modifications, they could become vastly different.

“That’s why I’m sending you.”

Chen Liangyu had someone give her three small flags. Two Wufang flags were for her to use for flag signaling, and the other was a triangular flag, half-white and half-red, called the Zhenyan (Formation Exercise) flag.

Going into battle with a Zhenyan flag inserted on one’s back was equivalent to an agreement between the two sides that regardless of victory or defeat, the encounter would not count afterward. All captured personnel and seized weapons were to be returned.

It sounded quite cowardly. Didn’t it clearly show a fear of losing?

War was war. Who would treat such a serious matter as a game? But it did happen.

Before the Great Lin and Northern Yong entered into full-scale war, conflicts were common. Both sides wanted to probe the other’s strength, so they would enter the field with the Zhenyan flag on their backs, all holding their breath, wishing they could completely wipe out the enemy’s troops.

Therefore, although it was named a “Formation Exercise,” there were always casualties.

“Your order!” Lin Yin said. “General Bo, Vice General Jing, you two assist me.”

Pu Ping’er and Jing He immediately gathered their troops and marched toward the Flood Dragon Energy Formation. Chen Liangyu stood on the wall of Dingbei City, watching the two armies approach each other. Just before reaching the formation, a small team quietly bypassed the main army and then quickly galloped up a high cliff on horseback.

Lin Yin waved the flags on the cliff, and the soldiers below would follow the flag signals to attack or retreat. One wave, two waves, three waves… the offensive grew sharper. Lin Yin stayed on the cliff for two days. After two days, she came down from the cliff and served as the vanguard general, leading the army to charge into the energy formation and strike directly at the formation’s eye.

Once the eye of the formation was broken, the military formation quickly collapsed, as expected.

Just as Lin Yin jumped onto her horse and cheered, a person rode out of the Flood Dragon Energy Formation. He wore a gold crown with a red tassel hanging down, and the breastplate of his armor gleamed with golden light. At first glance, this person truly possessed the demeanor of a flood dragon.

Lin Yin couldn’t help but look at him twice, her smile as bright as peach blossoms. “Second Prince, after many years, I’ve missed you so much. I think about you morning and night.”

Zhai Ji, the Second Prince, furrowed his thick eyebrows, forming two deep lines. “Are you from Bogong Ridge?”

Lin Yin shouted, “Good memory. After so many years, I’m still very fond of you upon seeing you today, Second Prince. If I had known this, I should have broken your leg back then and kept you at Bogong Ridge.”

Zhai Ji sneered, “It takes some skill for you to break this Prince’s formation.”

Lin Yin said, “The Yin-Yang military formations are constantly changing but fundamentally remain the same. The principles were not taught only to you by the Great Chieftain. Second Prince, please don’t be so conceited as to think you are invincible just because you obtained the Yin-Yang Three Scrolls. The Zongheng (Vertical and Horizontal) and Yin-Yang are mutually opposing forces. Even I can break your formation. If my Commander were to come in person, what do you think would happen?”

“Do you think this Prince fears her, Chen Liangyu?”

“I certainly do.” Lin Yin left with strings of bright, silver-bell-like laughter. “I’m leaving. See you again.”