A Thousand-Mile Exile, An Encounter with an Old Friend - Chapter 11

Zhu Qinghou was pulled up by him and had no choice but to sit, leaning languidly against Li Zhen like a drowsy cat.

“An explanation?” The words curled around his tongue as he let out a faint smile. “Xianpu, what is it you wish to hear from me?”

What did Li Zhen want him to explain? Did he allow the officials to run rampant with tax hikes just to create a scene big enough to root them out entirely? Or was he merely smoothing the path for the exiled officials of the Zhu clan?

Li Zhen kept his gaze lowered, slowly gathering the silver chain in his hand as if he intended to clench Zhu Qinghou’s very soul in his palm. “Do you truly believe,” he said softly, “that I would not lay a hand on you?”

Before the other could strike, Zhu Qinghou moved first. He wound himself around Li Zhen, arms circling the Prince’s lean waist in a soothing gesture. “Those men were, after all, promoted by you. They hold gratitude for the Prince of Su, not for me, Zhu Qinghou.”

The moment he drew close, Li Zhen abruptly released his grip and pushed him away slightly. Sitting rigid and solitary in the corner, he said coldly, “They have gained the reputation of virtuous officials, while the name of your Zhu clan grows more wretched by the day.”

Rumors swirled outside, that the Emperor acted out of necessity, the Imperial Court was helpless, and the officials were merely following orders. In this grand play of national tax hikes, every high-ranking player was a victim of circumstance; only the fallen Zhu clan was cast as the root of all evil.

The Chancellor Zhu was dead. His surviving son, still lingering in this world, bore the brunt of all that malice.

Zhu Qinghou remained indifferent. “Infamy or fame, at least it is a name.”

Li Zhen turned his head to “look” at him and whispered, “What if I let you leave the manor?”

Without the protection of the Prince of Su’s estate, Zhu Qinghou would not last long.

As expected, Zhu Qinghou stiffened. He seemed to hesitate.

“Could you truly bear to let me go?” Zhu Qinghou whispered. He stared at Li Zhen’s chest, wondering if the Mother Bug resided there, hidden deep within Li Zhen’s lungs, buried in his very flesh and blood.

After all these years, Li Zhen still held feelings for him. It was not surprising; in this world, no one who had ever laid eyes on him could ever truly forget him.

Li Zhen did not answer. After a moment of silence, he shifted the subject. “Do you know what it feels like to be unable to see?”

Darkness. Boundless, never-ending darkness. Everything becomes strange and perilous; tasks that were once effortless become unimaginably complex.

Gazing at the white silk ribbon covering Li Zhen’s eyes, Zhu Qinghou’s heart skipped a beat. An inescapable sense of unease rose within him. He fell silent, lost for words.

“Xiao Yu,” Li Zhen called him by his childhood name, his voice unnervingly gentle. “From now on, I shall blindfold you.” He paused, as if considering how to proceed. Zhu Qinghou chimed in casually, “Xianpu, if it pleases you, I am willing.”

He moved to get closer to Li Zhen, but remembering the Prince’s previous rejection, he stopped. He gently took hold of the white silk hanging over Li Zhen’s shoulder and said no more.

What it felt like to be blindfolded was something Zhu Qinghou had briefly experienced when he went to see Zhu Liujun, but it had been too short to leave an impression.

This time, Li Zhen did it personally. It was a long, thin strip of purple silk, prepared in advance. Zhu Qinghou stared at the fabric between Li Zhen’s fingers for a moment, then withdrew his gaze and slowly closed his eyes, allowing the other to bind them.

A blindfold? What kind of punishment is this?

Zhu Qinghou thought dismissively. He was confined to the palace most of the time anyway; at worst, he would just sleep. If it truly became inconvenient, he could simply take it off when Li Zhen wasn’t around.

Everything turned dark, with only a faint hint of purple visible. Zhu Qinghou blinked curiously, trying to peek through the gaps. “Xianpu, I can’t see…” he said in a dejected tone.

He reached out openly to feel his way toward Li Zhen, intending to tease him. Despite his blindness, Li Zhen avoided him as if he had eyes in the back of his head. “Come any closer,” Li Zhen said calmly, “and I will gouge your eyes out.”

The Li Zhen of their youth had been more fun; the current Prince of Su was far too difficult to provoke.

Zhu Qinghou took the hint and backed away, collapsing back onto the low couch to sleep.

Reckless, easy-going.

It seemed as though nothing could truly unsettle him.

Li Zhen lowered his gaze toward his own heart. There, hidden within the rhythm of his heartbeat, lay a tiny Mother Bug.

On the couch by the window lay a slender figure in purple. The youth was blindfolded, a stray strand of the silk falling across his raven-black hair.

A picture of indolent grace, a fallen beauty in a chaotic world.

When Zhu Xueting entered, he instinctively held his breath, fearing he might disturb the person on the couch.

“Xianpu?” Zhu Qinghou nudged the silk aside slightly to peek. Seeing it was Xueting, he breathed a sigh of relief. He untied the silk and tossed it aside. “Xueting, let us continue with the poetry.”

Zhu Xueting nodded slightly and sat in his usual spot. Holding the silk scroll and lifting his brush, he kept his head down, but the scene from a moment ago flickered in his mind.

The scroll remained blank; he could not compose a single word.

The imperial petitions were crowded with dense script, every line an accusation against the officials of Yangzhou for their extortionate taxation.

Emperor Jinshun threw a petition to the floor. “The court only increased taxes by twenty percent. Why did Yangzhou increase them by thirty? Deceiving the throne and taking bribes, is this not a revival of the Zhu clan’s corrupt legacy?”

The Emperor’s personal eunuch, Bai He, carefully picked up the scroll and stood back.

Prince Li Jue, the Crown Prince standing nearby, said warmly, “Father, please calm your anger. Perhaps Fourth Brother was unaware and was simply deceived by those officials.”

Emperor Jinshun glanced at him coldly without a word, then pulled another petition from the desk. “This was sent by your Fourth Brother. See for yourself.”

Bai He respectfully handed it to Li Jue. Upon reading it, Li Jue’s expression remained unchanged. “Fourth Brother is clear-sighted; he was not fooled by those audacious ministers.”

On the paper, every bribe received by the officials was listed with surgical precision—names, titles, dates, and locations nothing was missing.

The Head of the Secretariat, who had been watching the exchange in silence, finally spoke: “In my humble opinion, this culture of deceiving the Sovereign must be severed. Execute one to warn a hundred, thereby purifying the administration.”

“Lord Lin speaks sense,” Emperor Jinshun looked at Lin Hanyi. “The Prince of Su has sent three consecutive petitions stating the people’s hardships, requesting light taxes and low levies to show mercy to the populace. What do you all think?”

A roar of debate erupted in the hall. Some argued the treasury was empty and tax cuts would lead to a deficit; others agreed with the Prince of Su, citing the suffering of the commoners.

Emperor Jinshun lidded his eyes slightly and glanced at Bai He. The eunuch whispered cautiously, “If Your Majesty orders a reduction in taxes and labor now, the people will surely be moved to gratitude.”

The Emperor studied him for a moment, then turned back to the officials. “Very well. I leave the arrangements to you.”

With that, he closed his eyes, dismissing the gathered court.

Zhu Qinghou opened his eyes to the dim light of dawn. Looking through the screen at the outer hall where Li Zhen slept, he saw it was empty. Li Zhen had already risen.

Li Zhen always woke early, usually before three in the morning, while Zhu Qinghou often slept until mid-morning.

Zhu Qinghou yawned, picked up the purple silk, and tied it lazily over his eyes. Since Li Zhen couldn’t see, it didn’t matter if the knot was sloppy.

After breakfast, he walked barefoot to the desk and took up a brush, intending to practice his calligraphy.

For the past six months, even a blade of grass or a patch of dirt to write on had been a luxury.

Having grown used to clutching rough grass, the brush felt foreign in his hand. As he attempted his first character, a sharp, cord-like pain shot through his fingers, as if the tendons beneath his skin had turned into thin wires that throbbed at the slightest movement.

He pretended not to notice, enduring the pain to continue writing.

Zhu Xueting, now a servant in the Prince of Su’s manor, was permitted to enter the inner hall for two hours each day.

When he walked in, he saw the tall, slender figure leaning over the desk. Beneath the rolled-up purple sleeves, the man’s hands were trembling violently.

His heart filled with a complex mix of emotions, but in the end, he simply sat down in silence and watched.

Seeing him, Zhu Qinghou tossed the brush aside and asked with a smile, “Guess how many of those exiled Zhu officials will get a promotion?”

Xueting, unfamiliar with politics, thought for a moment and gestured: Two or three?

“One,” Zhu Qinghou smiled, slowly folding the ink-stained paper so the crooked, trembling characters wouldn’t be seen. “And even that one isn’t certain.”

The only one with a chance was the minor official who had drawn his blade in the market to protect the weak. As for the others, without power or reputation, their path would be grueling.

Slowly, he thought. He had plenty of patience.

Zhu Qinghou held the paper over a candle and watched it turn to ash, his face expressionless.

Imperial decrees from the capital arrived like snowflakes. After deliberation by the Three Departments and Six Ministries, the seasonal tax was increased by only ten percent. As for the local affairs of Yangzhou, some officials were demoted, while others were promoted.

Regarding the Prince of Su’s “sting operation,” Emperor Jinshun had only one comment: “In a territory of a thousand miles, what does ten miles of sand matter?”

In a vast fiefdom, what was a little corruption and filth?

When Zhu Qinghou heard this, he couldn’t help but laugh. “That ‘ten miles of sand’ was placed there by his own hand to be his eyes and ears. Of course he can endure it.”

The newly appointed officials still came from the capital, handpicked by the court. However, after this reshuffling, the power structure in Yangzhou had changed completely.

When Li Zhen first arrived at his fief at the age of twenty, suffering from his eye ailment, he should have found it impossible to move an inch. Yet, somehow, in just a few years, he had balanced the foreign threats and local officials, hanging over Yangzhou like a sharpened sword, keeping those unruly ministers in check.

Zhu Qinghou thought idly; he used to never consider things from another’s perspective, but now he found himself wondering: Li Zhen, how exactly have you lived these past years?

The question haunted him, surfacing repeatedly only to be brushed aside.

Zhu Qinghou looked at Li Zhen, hesitated for a moment, and finally asked.

Li Zhen, who was tallying the register of officials, paused. He said tonelessly, “I survived. That is all.”

The answer was so unexpected that Zhu Qinghou was momentarily speechless. He decided to drop the subject and asked instead, “Of those officials, who was promoted?”

Li Zhen kept his head down, his thumb brushing over the official seal. “One person.”

Of all the exiled officials, only one had risen.

Zhu Qinghou turned his head and asked casually, “Is it Lou Changqing?”

Lou Changqing, the minor official who had drawn his short blade on the long street to stop the soldiers that day, stood alone in his small guest room. He looked up at the appointment letter hanging on the wall.

An imperial appointment: Sixth-rank County Magistrate.

It was a small post, but infinitely better than the microscopic position he had held before.

Having accepted the favor of the Prince of Su’s manor, he felt he should pay a visit before departing for his new post.

Lou Changqing counted his meager savings from the capital and bought a small calf at the market, ordering it to be delivered to the Prince of Su’s manor first.

The market sellers were baffled, who sends a cow to a Prince’s estate? But since he had paid the silver, they said nothing.

The calf was delivered to the side gate. When the gatekeeper opened it and saw the young ox peacefully chewing grass, he almost thought he was dreaming.

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