He Lingchuan looked at him and the jade pendant, feeling a subtle stirring in his chest.
In reality, that very pendant rested in his own hands. Now he knew it had been a gift from Zhong Shengguang to Lu Xun, which, once Lu Xun carved the character "Lu" into it, would become the Lu family heirloom for the lords of Bailie.
Such misalignments of history often blurred the passage of time for He Lingchuan.
As the two walked into the post house, He Lingchuan asked, "How have these past few days been for you, Mr. Lu?"
"Very well. The order in the city was barely disturbed by the Emperor's Flowing Dew, which is truly remarkable." The day after the first descent of the Emperor's Flowing Dew, Yuheng City remained orderly. Only five buildings had burned down, some thirty people had been arrested for brawling, and casualties remained in the single digits.
Losses on this scale were negligible. It showed that barely a year after Panlong City had taken Yuheng City, the residents here were already law-abiding. It also showed that He Lingchuan had deployed his forces properly and the Yuheng Army had maintained sensible control—otherwise, the Emperor's Flowing Dew would have inflamed desires and magnified malice.
He Lingchuan hesitated briefly before asking, "There is something I would like to ask you about, Mr. Lu."
"Please, Commander He, speak freely."
"I've heard that the Lu family line stretches back nearly three thousand years, making it one of the rare ancient clans of our time," He Lingchuan said. "I wanted to ask, Mr. Lu, how has the Lu family maintained its succession and survived generation after generation to this day?"
How many prominent and noble clans had failed to withstand time, eventually buried in the depths of history?
Even in a great empire like Beijia, the houses of founding merit that had survived to the present were extraordinarily few.
"Is it simply because of the inheritance of fortune?"
Lu Xun looked at him sideways. "You've also heard the legends about the Lu clan's fortune?"
"Commander Zhong mentioned it."
"It seems Commander Zhong holds you in high regard." Otherwise, Zhong Shengguang and He Lingchuan were superior and subordinate; normally, a commander merely issued orders. Why would he chat idly about another family's affairs?
He Lingchuan did not hide it. "It was my own curiosity."
"Our ancestor, Immortal Hongli, once said that circumstances do not always go as one wishes, and fortune will inevitably wax and wane. In the end, it still comes down to human effort."
"How so?"
"Immortal Hongli left our family a legacy that any bearer of Lu blood may inherit. But whether it can be put to good use depends on his descendants."
A legacy? He Lingchuan felt a flicker in his heart.
Lu Xun did not elaborate further, however. This was Bailie's secret, not something he would share with an outsider.
So He Lingchuan asked instead, "Can only the main branch inherit it?"
"No, no." Lu Xun shook his head. "Even collateral branches or those with different surnames can inherit, provided they are within five generations."
"So lenient?"
"With spiritual energy dwindling and the mortal world undergoing vast shifts, if we stubbornly clung to the so-called main branch and insisted on strengthening the trunk while starving the branches, the Lu clan wouldn't have survived long," Lu Xun said with a smile. "Over all these centuries, children of fortune have not appeared exclusively in the main branch. Were we supposed to reject them?"
So it still came down to the child of fortune. He Lingchuan understood. This was both the Lu clan's blessing and its greatest wildcard.
Lu Xun let out a deep sigh. "It was only after leading the clan for many years that I finally understood: in the eyes of Immortal Hongli of old, the survival of Bailie was what mattered most. What did it matter who stood at the head of the Lu clan?"
"I see." He Lingchuan asked again, "What if later generations are incompetent yet refuse to yield to those more capable? What if both the main and collateral branches are full of mediocrities, yet still fight endlessly?"
That was likely the true norm.
"That is inevitable. Even with a wisp of Immortal Hongli's fortune to protect us, the Lu clan has struggled to reclaim its past glory over all these years precisely because unworthy descendants squabbled and kin turned on kin."
Ordinary family successions followed primogeniture to prevent internal strife. The Lu clan, however, because children of fortune appeared at random, had to permit power to shift between main and collateral branches. This introduced countless variables, making internal rivalry the standard state of affairs.
Had Immortal Hongli's good intentions back then truly brought blessing to his descendants?
"It is a matter of tearing down the old to build the new—letting the capable rise and the mediocre fall," Lu Xun said softly. "If the main house is mediocre, the main house cannot endure; if the Lu clan is mediocre, the Lu clan cannot endure. Such is the way of all clans and realms under heaven."
Looking across history, the Lu clan had steadily declined; even with a child of fortune appearing every few generations, the trend could not be reversed.
This was the unstoppable tide of the times—the fortune of a single clan could never stand against it.
"In this world, the hardest thing to unite and the hardest thing to rely on is the hearts of men," Lu Xun said, shaking his head. "And for Bailie, the hardest thing of all is producing talent in every generation."
When a capable leader emerged, the Lu clan experienced revival; when there were only bumbling mediocrities, the family fell into decline.
He Lingchuan understood that the latter was the norm, which was why Bailie had fallen into such a state in reality.
Yet Lu Xun had not actually answered his initial question: why the Lu clan had managed to pass down its line to this day without its incense ever extinguishing.
He Lingchuan guessed it might be connected to Lingshan, something Lu Xun was embarrassed to say outright.
The two chatted for a while longer until Hu Min walked in from outside and silently took up a position behind He Lingchuan.
Lu Xun took the hint. "Go tend to your duties, Commander He. No need to keep an idle guest like me company. I'm off to get some food."
He Lingchuan did not stand on ceremony, exchanging a few lighthearted pleasantries before taking his leave.
Returning to the City Garrison Office, He Lingchuan entered the council hall, summoned the sand table, and laid down a warding boundary.
Hu Min had returned to report on military intelligence from Longchuan.
After Qianjin Stronghold and the Globe Amaranth Gang were recruited as road wardens for the Longchuan trade route, they served as an excellent example. Even under heavy pressure from the Xiji puppet troops, bandit gangs throughout Longchuan surrendered to Yuheng City one after another.
Faced with the choice between starving and sitting back collecting toll money, even a fool knew what to pick.
He Lingchuan had even granted the small and medium-sized gangs that voluntarily surrendered first pick of their territories—namely, the toll sections they would manage.
First come, first served; first to pick, first to get.
Not all stretches of road were equal. Inferior stretches did not bring in much toll money, yet still incurred maintenance and operating costs.
This greatly ignited the small and medium-sized gangs' enthusiasm to surrender. After all, nobody wanted to let others drink the prime broth and leave only bare bones for themselves to gnaw on.
Once the unified front between the populace and the bandits was shattered, Yuheng City promoted the headmen and respected elders of Longchuan's villages and towns to local rural officials. They were charged with pushing forward household registration—recording every villager in Longchuan by name, age, ancestral home, status, physical appearance, wealth, and other particulars into official registers.
After several decades, Longchuan was finally undergoing a census once more.
With this comprehensive data in hand, Yuheng City's control over Longchuan grew exponentially.
At the same time, Yuheng City dispatched numerous personnel into Longchuan under the pretext of collaborative governance. But with gangs like Qianjin Stronghold drawing official rations from top to bottom, and village headmen and elders now serving as rural officials, what authority or ground did they have to object?
With these personnel stationed within, Longchuan held virtually no secrets anymore. The locations of villages, population distribution, types and numbers of monsters, and even the conditions of crops, farmland, and local products were all sent to He Lingchuan for his reference in decision-making.
Of course, most important of all was intelligence on the enemy.
For the first time, He Lingchuan had a clear picture of the true numbers of the Xiji puppet troops:
Two thousand seven hundred men.
This figure included the Beijia squad led by Fu Shanlie, the remnants of three Xiji units defeated by General Red and Commander Xiao, other Longchuan river bandits they had absorbed, and even a detachment of troops from Jintao!
Chapter 912