Where's My Junior Brother?

Su Luo Yan gave a soft laugh and said, "How would I know? Little brother Wang Chong is the Prince of Yan, and His Highness the Prince of Yan is none other than little brother Wang Chong." "Yu Zao has been at his side all this time, yet she won't send back a single word of real news. I've raised that little maid for nothing." Both Lu Yaoniang and Li Qingge knew that Su Luo Yan didn't truly believe the maid Yu Zao had been raised for nothing—she was showing off that her investment had paid off. The struggles at court had nothing to do with womenfolk like them. Those great clans might all want the Prince of Yan dead, but if the Heavenly Empress herself decreed a marriage, not one of them would refuse. Lu Yaoniang said, "Sister Li has finally wrapped up the White Chrysanthemum case and sought justice for the innocent sisters who fell victim this time. It truly is a great deed." Li Qingge shook her head and said, "It can't be counted as my doing. The Prince of Yan put in a great deal of the effort." The two women, Su Luo Yan and Lu Yaoniang, though they were hiding away in a Taoist abbey, were no ordinary jianghu swordswomen; each had countless servants at her side, and their lines of information ran far and wide. They had long known everything that had happened in Tongzhou Prefecture, and knew just how great a thing Wang Chong had done. Su Luo Yan had come to avenge her own younger brother, and so she had to thank him in person; Lu Yaoniang, too, had come down the mountain over the White Chrysanthemum matter and wished to thank him as well. It was just that the two of them couldn't go straight over—they needed a proper pretext. Sun Mingke, though, was itching to be off. Seeing the three women chatting on and on, he said, "Senior Sister, Sister Li, Sister Su, you all take your time. I'm going to go find Brother Wang Chong and play." Lu Yaoniang smiled and said, "Go on, then!" Sun Mingke set out eagerly from Li Qingge's residence. He had long known that Wang Chong was staying at the Prefectural Office, and after asking around on the streets a while, he headed straight for the Prefect's residence. That Tongzhou Prefect had long since oiled his heels and flown off beyond all trace. When he left, he had indeed kept his word, taking a great many of Tongzhou's officials along with him and leaving behind a power vacuum that let Wang Chong fill the posts as he pleased. Drawing on the prestige of having crushed the allied forces of the eighteen grassland tribes, and on his standing as Prince of Yan, Wang Chong had already gained effective control of an entire prefecture. When Wang Chong learned that Sun Mingke had come to visit, he was overjoyed. He came out to welcome him in person, threw his arms around him, and said, "You're only to call me Brother Wang Chong—none of this 'His Highness the Prince of Yan.'" By now, most everyone in Tongzhou knew that this Prince of Yan liked to be called Wang Chong, and disliked being addressed as the Prince of Yan. Sun Mingke was quick to oblige, and at once cried, "Brother Wang Chong, I've missed you so much! If Senior Sister hadn't kept me on such a short leash, I'd have come down the mountain long ago to fight at your side." Wang Chong chuckled and said, "There are still a few fights left for your brother here. If you're willing to lend a hand, I guarantee you'll enjoy them." By now, the few highest-ranking young lords of the Chrysanthemum-Killing Alliance had already left, and Wang Chong wasn't close with those who remained, so he called only Xuan Gang, Gan Ci, and Qin Gao to come keep them company. At the same time, he sent a letter over to Li Qingge's residence. Since Sun Mingke had come to Tongzhou Prefecture, Su Luo Yan and Lu Yaoniang must surely have come as well, and he had to observe the proper courtesies. A short while later, Li Qingge sent word that she would come to visit the next day; Wang Chong didn't mind, and went on entertaining Sun Mingke warmly. Up on the mountain, Sun Mingke had heard how Wang Chong had crushed the grassland cavalry and cut down several of their masters, and he had long been itching with curiosity. When he pressed for the details, Wang Chong held nothing back—he told the most entertaining parts, and also mentioned in passing that he had already yielded the credit to others. Sun Mingke pursed his lips and said, "I won't need you to hand me anything, Brother Wang Chong. I can cut down a few formidable masters all on my own." Wang Chong had no doubt that this youngest disciple of the Guanlong school was capable of it. He smiled and said, "Since you're set on it, how about I give you a body of troops, and you go scout the road ahead for your brother?" Sun Mingke perked up at once and cried, "Scout where?" Wang Chong had someone bring over a map and said, "Our Tongzhou isn't some remote frontier prefecture, but go further southwest and you reach Lingzhou, and further northwest lies Bazhou. Pass through either one of those two prefectures, and you come to my fief, Yanzhou—and just beside Yanzhou lies Yunzhou." "As the Prince of Yan, sooner or later I must go to Yanzhou to take up my fief, so I have to take Yanzhou for my own." Sun Mingke truly didn't understand. At Taiyi Temple he had only studied martial arts, and had never learned any of this business of officialdom, so he really believed Wang Chong had to take Yanzhou. He thumped his chest and declared, "I'll take Yanzhou for you, brother!" Wang Chong laughed and said, "War and the battlefield are deadly things—how could it be so easy?" "Set Lingzhou aside for now. The military governor of Bazhou is a fence-sitter who keeps one foot in each camp. He does acknowledge the current dynasty as the legitimate sovereign, but he's been secretly consorting with the eighteen grassland tribes in some murky, half-hidden fashion, so there's no way he'll let our troops pass through his territory." "Take some men and go have a look around Bazhou, gather a little intelligence, so that your brother can get his preparations in order." Sun Mingke was overjoyed and agreed on the spot. Wang Chong immediately assigned him two or three hundred men—all of them young men with a solid grounding in martial arts and clean family backgrounds. The horses were the best he could pick, every one of them taken from the Yaglakar clan cavalry he had defeated, and all their weapons were provided as well. Wang Chong also knew that he had actually won only a single battle, and even that had come about through a string of lucky coincidences. For instance, the man commanding the enemy had not been Yehu but his son—this Pishaluo of the Yaglakar clan—who had shown off his martial skills and insisted on a personal duel with Wang Chong, and so the commander himself had fallen. After that, the higher-ranking men in the cavalry were all so frantic to avenge their young lord that Xuan Gang, Gan Ci, and the others had managed to break clean through their ranks. The rest of the fighting had all been jianghu scraps—some one-on-one duels, some outright brawls. He didn't have much faith in the troops under his command. Gan Ci had a rough grasp of strategy and could drill men, but in so short a time, how could they have any real fighting strength? Lately Wang Chong had been working hard to consolidate his forces, but the men under him were a motley, ill-assorted bunch of tangled origins, and no matter how he tried, he couldn't get them all sorted out. So Wang Chong simply changed his approach: he would pick out the most obedient and dependable men, form them into a separate unit, and slowly fill out the ranks afterward. And now, with Sun Mingke's trip to gather intelligence as his excuse, he could draw out the men he had quietly selected. Some of them were Qin Gao's, some were Gan Ci's, but since they were relatively few, neither Qin Gao nor Gan Ci had any complaint. Most, though, were younger men among the government runners of the various prefectures, along with a number of jianghu folk who had come to throw in their lot. Sun Mingke was young and headstrong, and leading several hundred men was a fine mark of prestige for a young man. That very day, brimming with excitement, he left Tongzhou, sending only a letter to his senior sister Lu Yaoniang. Scarcely half a shichen after Sun Mingke had left the city, Lu Yaoniang came storming to the door to demand an accounting. Li Qingge and Su Luo Yan had come along with their friend to Wang Chong's residence. Even Li Qingge, that famed female constable, felt Wang Chong had been far too bold—how could he dare let a mere boy like Sun Mingke take several hundred men off to Bazhou? Su Luo Yan was even more at a loss for how to calm her friend; she could only keep flashing Wang Chong pointed looks, hoping he might smooth it over. Lu Yaoniang was truly beside herself with rage. She strode into the residence with her saber in hand, and the moment she saw Wang Chong, she demanded, "Where's my junior brother?" Wang Chong put on a look of utter shock and cried, "Has Sun Mingke gone missing?" Lu Yaoniang flew into a fury. "You're the one who sent him off—and now you pretend you know nothing? Who do you think you're fooling?" Wang Chong said hurriedly, "I'll go after him and bring him back this instant."