Jingang Zen Monastery, Yingdu, Western Jin.
Winter twilights always fell exceptionally early. Barely two hours past the midday meal, the sky had already slipped into murky gloom. A massive, pallid sun hung listlessly in an iron-gray sky, casting a thin, feeble glow that offered no warmth whatsoever.
A few winter crows cried out hoarsely as they swept overhead. In the city, some narrow alleys had already grown too dark to see the ground. The Jingang Zen Monastery was steeped in bleak chill. Fallen leaves scraped loudly across the flagstones, and bare, gnarled branches clawed at the horizon like fractures across the firmament.
A bone-chilling cold gripped the temple. The main hall lay pitch-black; any light penetrating an inch past the threshold was swallowed whole by the darkness. Only a faint, amber glow seeped from a side hall—the solitary pocket of warmth in the entire precinct.
Suddenly, a violent fit of coughing erupted from within the hall, sounding as if the sufferer would tear his very lungs out. It was painful just to hear.
A single bronze lamp shed dim light within the room. The King of Jin and Qingtong sat facing each other. Huddled forward, his frame withered and gaunt, the King of Jin coughed hysterically.
Only with great difficulty did he finally regain some composure. He offered a bitter smile. "In my youth, all I sought was cultivation. Little did I imagine that the higher one climbs, the more agonizing it is when the power dissipates."
Without opening her eyes, Qingtong said, "The hour for your practice has not yet passed. Do not allow your mind to stray."
"Practice? What meaning is there in these practices now? Living another day is merely suffering another day of torment."
By now, most of the King of Jin's hair had turned gray. His eyes were sunken deep in their sockets, and the skin of his face was a patchwork of wrinkles and mottled brown age spots. He looked entirely like an old man with one foot in the grave.
Qingtong slowly opened her eyes. "You are acting against Heaven; of course it is agonizing. But it is not too late to turn back."
The King of Jin gasped for breath with great difficulty, every intake seeming as though it might be his last. He spoke in ragged halts. "I know well enough that I am cold and unfeeling, heedless of the people's misery. I have committed plenty of perverse and atrocious acts in my time, but in truth, it was all for this meager bit of cultivation."
Qingtong said, "You have cultivated with me for quite some time now. You should understand that my path is the righteous course of heaven and earth. Your innate bone was never exceptional to begin with, and you were constantly divided in heart along the way. Even so, how much have you improved over all these years? Without my heaven-reaching teachings, would you have ever achieved what you have today?"
The King of Jin sighed. "I understand the Great Dao, and I see through its principles. I grasp all of this. Watching the livelihoods of the people wither and the state's fortunes decline day by day while my bone improved and my cultivation grew—how could I fail to realize how formidable this method is?"
Qingtong replied, "My path concerns karmic affinity; it is never forced. State fortune is merely a shackle upon your ankles, and the myriad common folk are nothing more than blood-sucking parasites clinging to your flesh. When Great Tang's Taizu revived the ancestral institutions and Wuzu enfeoffed the feudal states, their sole purpose was to nail your lineages firmly to their royal thrones, utilizing your bloodlines and karmic luck as the bedrock supporting Great Tang. What I imparted to you is the means to break this bind. Why should you hesitate now? If we speak of merits and transgressions, it was Great Tang's Taizu and Wuzu who set the trap first; any resulting sin is theirs to bear. Heh... do you suppose they foresaw this? If I am not mistaken, the scale of the two ancestors' true tombs must be truly staggering. The arrangements within would leave even immortals awestruck."
The King of Jin looked down at his shriveled hands, then touched the sparse hair falling limp like dead twigs. He spoke softly. "These days, suffering day and night through the torment of losing my cultivation, I have suddenly realized that death is not so terrifying after all. Once I opened my mind to that, many of my thoughts changed."
Qingtong sighed softly, her tone softening. "We have cultivated together for so long that some sentiment inevitably remains. I cannot bear to see you end like this. You could have been... a wise and capable sovereign. So be it. I shall forfeit this pool of golden lotuses to alter the workings of Heaven for you."
"No!" The King of Jin reached out, attempting to stop her.
Qingtong gave a faint smile. "This pool of golden lotuses was derived from you in the first place. Returning it to you now is merely putting things right."
Just then, a roll of winter thunder cracked outside the hall. Heaven and earth shifted, and every golden lotus in the pool withered away!
Though Qingtong was bald, several hairs in her eyebrows quietly faded into an ashen white.
She raised a hand, plucked out the white hairs one by one, and gently placed them into the lamp. The flame danced, casting their shadows in wild flickers like the last two wandering ghosts left between heaven and earth.
The King of Jin sighed. "Why... why must you go to such lengths?"
"It is nothing more than wasting a few decades. Life is short; how could everything go according to plan?"
The King of Jin tilted his head back toward the ceiling, yet he could not keep two cloudy tears from tracking down his cheeks. He sighed. "I have failed you..."
"The workings of Heaven are not yet set. We need only await the turning of the tide." Qingtong suddenly raised her hand, plucked another white brow hair, and flicked it into the flame.
The flame leapt once more.
***
In the Western Regions of Great Jin, military qi was already gathering, towering like mountain peaks and connecting earth to sky.
Looking out over the boundless ranks, Wei Yuan remarked with utmost sincerity, "I am only taking a hundred thousand men to the capital for an imperial audience. I truly am a paragon of loyalty across all of Great Jin's history."
Xu Yi covered her mouth to stifle a laugh, while Cui Yu could not help rolling his eyes. Wei Yuan had indeed brought only a hundred thousand regular troops, but the auxiliary force of one hundred and fifty thousand trailing behind them could only be described as armed laborers.
Whenever the Qingming host mobilized now, it was no longer possible to travel light and fast as in the past, declaring arbitrary numbers. If Qingming wanted to deploy ten thousand soldiers, at least thirty thousand porters had to trail behind to haul supplies and materiel.
Since this march was taking place within Western Jin, Wei Yuan had leafed through the statutes of Jin and Tang. According to the law, when an army marched to the capital for an audience with the sovereign, the commanderies and counties along the route were obligated to provide reception and provisions.
Consequently, Wei Yuan had not packed excessive grain and fodder, devoting the bulk of his transport capacity to ammunition instead. The route wound its way through seven commanderies, making two turns before finally arriving at Yingdu, the capital of Jin.
Every one of these seven commanderies was governed by a trusted confidant of the Crown Prince.
The appointed hour arrived. Amid the blare of horns, the army set out in succession.
Wei Yuan suddenly remembered something and turned hastily to his aides. "Has the letter to the Xiao family been sent?"
"A dedicated courier was dispatched first thing this morning."
Only then did Wei Yuan feel at ease.
Cui Yu could not resist saying, "Could you write fewer letters to him? If this keeps up, I'm afraid Junior Brother Xiaoyu's dharma body might run into trouble."
Wei Yuan looked rather surprised. "When one achieves something new, shouldn't he share it with his fellow disciples?"
Cui Yu was left utterly speechless.
The deployment of several hundred thousand troops sent shockwaves through both Jin and Zhao.
When Li Chengfeng received the intelligence, his ambition flared, and he marshaled an army toward the Qingming border. But after advancing merely a few hundred li beyond his frontier, he was intercepted by Bao Yun's First Army.
Confronted by Qingming's First Army of only twenty thousand men, Li Chengfeng, despite commanding seventy thousand, hesitated for an entire day. In the end, he did not dare make a move and withdrew to Bishui.
Meanwhile, Wei Yuan had already dispatched over a dozen squads of light cavalry, each comprising several hundred riders, to ride ahead to the commanderies and counties along the way and notify local officials to prepare to receive the army marching for an imperial audience. However, though Wei Yuan intended to pass through only seven commanderies, these cavalry detachments fanned out across more than twenty, covering almost every commandery between the Western Regions and the royal capital.
Qingming's light cavalry was exceptionally overbearing and unreasonable. Wherever they arrived, they scouted critical terrain and surveyed city defenses. Whenever local garrisons attempted to intervene, skirmishes inevitably broke out, frequently resulting in scenes where a hundred-odd riders chased over a thousand local garrison troops through the city streets, thrashing them mercilessly.
These riders were careful with their measure; they took no lives, merely breaking limbs before calling it a day.
Wei Yuan's vast army advanced with formidable momentum, bypassing Hanyang Pass and proceeding steadily northward.
Inside the pass, a grand ten-day auction was underway, bustling with excitement. Many had even made a special trip outside the pass to observe Wei Yuan's army from afar. The terrifying aura of military qi left them awestruck beyond words.
No sooner had Wei Yuan's army passed than a mounted bandit force of over ten thousand suddenly materialized, charging straight into Hanyang Pass. Its three-thousand-strong vanguard possessed terrifying combat prowess and unfathomably fierce firepower. Tens of thousands of garrison troops collapsed at the first clash, surrendering in the blink of an eye alongside more than two hundred thousand New Army soldiers.
Many of the veteran soldiers were thoroughly experienced by now. Being captured by bandits was no different from being captured by Qingming: as long as one did nothing foolish, a modest ransom would secure one's release. Among the fifty thousand regular garrison troops, plenty had already paid ransom two or three times.
Even if one was so destitute as to be unable to scrape together a ransom, it hardly mattered—life in Qingming actually seemed far better anyway.
As a result, the garrison surrendered with such dizzying speed that even the bandits were left amazed, scarcely able to take over the territory fast enough.
A bandit force this elite was, of course, none other than the Heaven-Destroying Gang. Their objective this time was not the Xu family. Instead, they ransacked every merchant guild within the pass, rounding up the prominent figures from various merchant houses and clans who had come to attend the auction.
After a round of screening, the Heaven-Destroying Gang carried off half of them and departed Hanyang Pass, thoroughly plundering their merchant houses in the process.
Several days later, when the merchant guilds and noble clans rushed over bearing massive ransoms upon hearing the news, what greeted them was devastating grief: the bandits had already sent back the severed heads of every single captive.
Among the dead were dissolute scions, beloved youngest grandsons of clan patriarchs, influential elders, core pillars of authority, and even three clan heads themselves.
Their identities varied widely, but they all shared one thing in common: the clans or merchant houses to which they belonged were all, to varying degrees, tied to the plundering of Qingming's trade caravan.
Chapter 684