This time around Ling Zhang planned to enter Jiangzhou via Cangzhou. Now that Shan Congyi had planted some men in Cangzhou, they needed to locate these people and monitor Shan Congyi’s every move.
As for those killers in Jiangzhou, Ling Zhang had promised Yuwen Tong that he wouldn’t engage any of them, that he would let Yuwen Tong’s secret bodyguards handle them. If he broke his word, Yao Yi would have to take him back to the capital city immediately.
Meanwhile, several secret imperial edicts were delivered to Haizhou via Yanzhou. What with the detour, it took the messengers quite some time to reach the destination, though their horses were very fast. The commander of the Haizhou garrison had started deploying troops already.
…
Ling Zhang and the others, after riding hell-for-leather for six days, entered a county of Cangzhou adjacent to Jincang County of Jiangzhou.
They had traveled all the way from the capital city to Cangzhou, and Ling Zhang had been observing the situation in Cangzhou since he’d entered it. Due to the destruction caused by that armed popular uprising, burnt houses and broken walls could be seen everywhere in this prefecture. A lot of towns which used to be quite prosperous had had half of their buildings flattened in the previous chaos and were cloaked in an air of faded grandeur.
Standing in contrast with these were fortifications under construction and fields being plowed. Yuwen Tong had shown great kindness to the people of Cangzhou at his enthronement ceremony by issuing an decree exempting them from the next three years’ tax. Also, earlier this year the imperial court had allocated a sum for helping them rebuild their houses and restore their fields. In addition, the imperial court was preparing food supplies to see them through the winter. The food would be delivered to Cangzhou and distributed to local people before winter set in.
The incumbent Cangzhou governor was Xu Lingyun. After arriving in Cangzhou, Ling Zhang had heard a lot of local people talk about Xu Lingyun, all of whom had observed that he was a good official. Xu Lingyun, after taking office in Cangzhou, had taken a lot of measures, all of which had been beneficial to local people and aimed at improving their livelihood. Most of the troops of the General Zhongwu (AKA the General of Loyalty and Valor) were stationed near the two checkpoints on the boundary between Cangzhou and Jiangzhou. Ling Zhang had barely seen any soldiers in this prefecture. Everybody seemed to be occupied in resuming normal agricultural activities or rebuilding their communities.
With the subsidies provided by the imperial court and the tax exemption, residents felt that there was still hope. Although faces of most of them still registered apprehension, their eyes were no longer hopeless. As long as they held out hopes, they’d be able to move on with their lives.
Midway through his journey, Ling Zhang specially lingered in a small town for half a day. He walked around to take a look and for good measure offered some help to some of the residents. By talking with the townsfolk, he acquired more information. By night, he put all he’d seen and heard along the way in letters which were later delivered back to the capital city.
Staff members of courier stations always traveled non-stop to deliver his letters. As day after day passed by, letters piled up on Yuwen Tong’s desk.
Every time Yuwen Tong received a letter from Ling Zhang, he spent almost an hour reading it again and again until he learned every sentence by heart, and then he anticipated the next letter.
Yuwen Tong replied to Ling Zhang’s every letter with care. Every few days Ling Zhang received a letter from the capital city, in which Yuwen Tong kept reminding him to take care of himself. Those letters were even more long-winded than Yuwen Tong’s chatter the day he left the capital city, but Ling Zhang always carried them with him. Sometimes, when he missed Yuwen Tong badly, he would take them out to read them, and Yao Yi and the others would pretend not to notice.
The only one who still found Ling Zhang’s behavior shocking was Jiang Yu. There had been several occasions when his face took on an incredulous expression at the sight of Ling Zhang producing letters Yuwen Tong had written him in reply, probably because it’d really never crossed his mind that anybody could be so gooey.
But maybe owing to these letters that had been coming on a regular basis, Ling Zhang, who had found the separation unbearable at first, slowly got used to it.
Ling Zhang even told Yuwen Tong in the last letter that he could now sleep soundly at night.
Yuwen Tong in the faraway capital city read the letter word by word, his eyes wide open. When he got to the part where Ling Zhang said he’d been sleeping fast lately, he felt a sense of relief but at the same time couldn’t help but inwardly criticize Ling Zhang as “a heartless little devil”. Still suffering from insomnia, he believed that Ling Zhang had taken to the life there and started to have a blast.
It had indeed been quite some time since the last time Ling Zhang had taken a journey like this. Though he’d been traveling in a hurry all along, every person he’d met and every event he’d seen had brought changes to his opinions and the way he saw things without him realizing it, and he’d also learned a lot during the process unawares.
As a result, when he’d reached Jincang County, he’d felt a trifle regretful, thinking that if only he could keep traveling forward like this, that even a journey around the whole country didn’t sound like a bad idea. He had to acquaint himself with this country, otherwise the perspectives from which he saw many things would be inferior to other people’s. Apart from anything else, he was now the empress, and this position came with some attached responsibilities.
In a county of Cangzhou.
This place was close to Jiangzhou and also where the ancestral home of the Jiang family was located. It was at nightfall that Ling Zhang and his team quietly entered the county. Though plainly clothed, they were a fairly large group of people, so their arrival attracted many residents’ attention, most of whom had watchful expressions in their eyes, rather wary of this team of strangers from out of town. It was not until they noticed the group of people were unarmed and appeared friendly that they shifted their gaze elsewhere.
When they had arrived in this county, that middle-aged guard of Jiang Yu’s proved himself helpful. A native of this place, he spoke very fluent Cangzhou dialect and was familiar with every street and every alley. With him as the introducer, Ling Zhang and the others were soon accepted by local people and found themselves a residence to live in. This residence was quite large. The former owner’s whole family had moved to Yanzhou when the revolt had broken out in Cangzhou. After standing empty for some time, it’d been sold to someone else. Ling Zhang purchased it, shut the front gates and then started unpacking.
Ling Zhang and the others had been in disguise all along for fear of encountering Shan Congyi’s men, so none of them looked who they really were. Ling Zhang had posed as a man older than his actual age with a mustache on his upper lip, looking fairly dashing – a conclusion Ling Zhang himself had drawn after looking into a mirror.
Yao Yi and the others found it quite amusing that Ling Zhang on a daily basis looked into the mirror at his mustache and then smiled a smug smile. Ling Zhang had very little body hair and barely grew any mustache. Every time he saw his maternal grandfather’s mustache, he felt that it was very flattering. He’d been meaning to get a mustache like that for quite a few days, but he had no facial hair and it was in the genes, so there was nothing he could do about it. This time around, before they departed for this southern prefecture, Ling Zhang had specially had Yao Yi disguise him as a mustached man. He could look into the mirror at his mustache with a smug smile on his face for quite a while.
At this time he looked like a cheerful teenager.
“Young Master, your bathwater is ready. You may go and take a bath now,” Wang Dashan yelled into the house.
Ling Zhang replied, “I’m coming!”
His traveling companions were all men – rough men actually, and all the people he’d met during the journey were commoners, so Ling Zhang, in order to blend in and prevent himself from appearing conspicuous, had intentionally started mimicking them. Gradually, he’d developed some habits unawares which were far removed from his true identity as the Prince Consort of the Great Wen.
He took a change of clothes to the bathroom, comfortably had a bath, washed his hair, toweled himself, changed into clean clothes and dried his hair with his internal energy, feeling that all his tiredness caused by the long journey had ebbed away. Outside his house, Wang Dashan and the others were engaged in unpacking and cooking, the whole place buzzing with activity. Hearing the noises, Ling Zhang was in a dreamy state for an instant. It struck him that life in the capital city seemed to be somewhat distant now, but this was only because of the contrast between this life style and the one in the capital city. At the sight of the man in the imperial palace, the look in his eyes naturally changed and with that he let out a sigh. So many days had passed since his departure from the capital city. He wondered how Yuwen Tong had been doing recently.
Yuwen Tong was fine actually, aside from his constant eagerness to receive a letter from Ling Zhang. If Ling Zhang’s letter didn’t come in the morning, he would be sulky for the rest of the day, frightening all the courtiers out of their wits. If Ling Zhang’s letter came, he would be in a relatively good mood for a whole day, and all the courtiers would feel relieved.
In a word, every letter from Ling Zhang was virtually a lifesaver for all courtiers.
Ling Zhang was unaware that courtiers of all descriptions regarded letters from him as lifesavers. Although his departure from the capital city was still confidential, as he hadn’t shown his face in public for a long time, some astute courtiers divined what had happened, thinking that the emperor and his consort indeed loved each other very much, given that the two of them hadn’t seen each other for merely a few days, but the emperor was having such abrupt mood swings. His mood was like the weather in June, which could switch between a cloudy one, a rainy one, a stormy one and a sunny one in an instant. Their mental endurance was being put to the test.
It was such a sore trial to the courtiers that lately they had taken to gauging Yuwen Tong’s mood first before deciding whether it was advisable for them to say a few extra words. If the emperor seemed to be in a good mood, then they might leisurely make some more remarks, and those who had disagreements with each other could prolong their arguments by a few moments, but if the emperor appeared sullen, then nobody would dare talk more than necessary. Otherwise the emperor might dress them down or cast them glances icy enough to make cold sweat well up on their backs.
The air about the emperor was so powerful that the courtiers had no alternative but to learn to gauge his mood to figure out a correct way to avoid getting themselves executed.
The first thing that the empress, who was hundreds of miles away but affecting the emperor’s mood perpetually, did after his bath was sit down behind the desk in his room and start writing a letter, telling Yuwen Tong they had arrived in Jincang County and settled in already. He also put in his letter what he’d seen since he’d entered Jincang County. Believing that Yuwen Tong might not be able to find the time to come to this prefecture to observe the people’s condition, Ling Zhang gave Yuwen Tong a detailed account of what he’d seen, so that Yuwen Tong, after reading his letter, would be as informed as though he’d been here himself.
Ling Zhang was writing the letter with rapt attention when Yao Yi walked inside at dinner time. Seeing he was writing a letter, Yao Yi said in a quiet voice, “Childe Ling, dinner is ready. Would you like to eat with us or should I bring the food in here?”
Ling Zhang was warmed to his letter and didn’t want his train of thought interrupted, but he also felt it inappropriate to keep Yao Yi and the others waiting too long, so he said, “Bring it in here. You may eat without me.”
“Yes, Childe Ling,” Yao Yi answered and then brought Ling Zhang’s dinner into the room and put it down onto the table beside the desk. Seeing Ling Zhang had filled so many pieces of notepaper, Yao Yi was somewhat astonished. It would seem this master of theirs was going to have another super-thick letter delivered back to the capital city, but then he realized that the other master of theirs should be very happy to receive the super-thick letter. Thinking about this, Yao Yi involuntarily stroked the goosebumps on his arm. Though having got used to it, he was still shocked by the way his two masters displayed their affection.
Ling Zhang was unaware that his behavior was giving Yao Yi goosebumps once again. He was enjoying writing this letter very much and didn’t want to pause at all. It was after a long time, when the food was getting cold, that he stopped writing.
