Chapter 272.2: Hello Chang'an
Chapter 272.2: A Grand Spectacle
Among the throng of refugees, a gaunt little girl with a pale face and clear, wide eyes peered up at the old man beside her and asked.
Children possess not yet a firm grasp of right and wrong, but she knew this much: on the day the marauding troops burst into Jiangning, her fair mother had been taken by those soldiers; her father, trying to rescue her mother, had been hacked down; her grandfather had surrendered everything the household owned, knelt and kowtowed to those men until his head was split open, and only then had they spared her life.
From that moment, her home was gone.
On the road of flight she learned, little by little, that those raiders served a general called Xu Zhengye—but the general of the tale was not the saviour of the storyteller; he was a slayer of men.
She wished that murderous general would die at once.
The old man, hearing this, clapped his hand wildly over the child’s mouth. “...Do not speak nonsense!”
“You’re wrong!” a boy of some ten or twelve stepped forward, clenching his fist and crying aloud, “It’s sixty-five days — not seventy-three. Eight days have already passed!”
No elders stood over him; no one kept him in check, and the other refugees fell into whispering.
They had all heard the proclamation in which the Ningyuan general vowed that within seventy-three days he would take the head of the traitor Xu. That proclamation had been carried far and wide.
Ordinary people would have laughed such words off as drowned stones—no one would heed them. But this Ningyuan general, though born a woman, had repeatedly won extraordinary deeds and carried a fame coated in peculiar wonder.
That which ordinary folk could not accomplish, a wonderworker might yet achieve.
Since the accession of the Holy Emperor, Taoist and Buddhist shrines had sprung up across Da Sheng, and people were wont to propitiate and consult the spirits and mysteries; they were the sort to prefer to believe in such things.
Some declared the matter with conviction, others wavered in doubt, and some scoffed—but none of that prevented them from beginning, in their hearts, to count down the days until that appointed time.
True or false, the answer would emerge in sixty-five days.
At that moment a patched monk in fraying robes passed the refugee column and, with a sigh, intoned “Amitabha.”
“Master,” a little monk trailing him asked, “do you think — that Young Miss Chang truly received guidance from a celestial immortal? Or is she merely speaking boastfully?”
“Perhaps it is to save people.” The old monk walked slowly and answered slowly. “If the villain is thus forewarned, like a sword hanging above him, his strength will be disordered and his path obstructed. For the stricken people, such a dawn gives hope and will to survive — the very seed of life.”
The little monk did not fully understand; his curiosity remained: “But is there truly a celestial immortal?”
“There can be.” The old monk replied. “If she makes her big words come true, then she is a celestial saviour.”
“And if she cannot?”
The old monk shook his head and sighed: “Then it will be a calamity...”
If she fails, she will no longer be a destined military star but a known deceiver; her renown will be shattered, and those who had seen in her a glimmer of hope will be driven by righteous anger to strike back. Her doom will be irreversible.
Hearing this, the little monk suddenly felt concern for that noble lady.
He asked one more thing: “Master, why must it be seventy-three days?”
The old man pondered, then shook his head; the mystery eluded him.
Not only they could not fathom it — Xiao Min, who read that proclamation three times a day, could not make sense of it either; it gnawed at him ceaselessly.
The rest of the manifesto’s purpose he understood; only that time limit vexed him.
One day, under the pretense of discussing military affairs, Xiao Min could not help himself and questioned Chang Suining.
Chang Suining answered softly and honestly: “I wrote it on a whim.”
Xiao Min was stunned. “...Then why an odd number like that?”
“It makes it seem more credible, more striking,” Chang Suining said. “Commander Xiao, you were pondering the same thing, weren’t you?”
Xiao Min was left speechless.
“Suining, is this a lie?” Ah Dian asked in a low voice.
Chang Suining: “When I turn it into fact, it will no longer be a lie.”
Xiao Min: “...”
A strange way to put it.
But just how much confidence did Young Miss Chang truly have in killing Xu Zhengye?
Sixty-odd days — a little over two months — and at present they could not so much as sniff out a trace of Xu Zhengye.
“Hard to say.” Chang Suining fed an intelligence dispatch she had read into the brazier. “Not yet. But I am already killing him.”
She was cutting away at Xu Zhengye’s name.
First kill the name, then the life becomes easier to take.
Watching the flames swallow the paper, Chang Suining’s eyes passed over the roads of Jiangnan filled with those endless lines of refugees, all full of grief and despair. She murmured: “I will have every circuit of Jiangnan, even the whole of Da Sheng, counting down his final days.”
Xiao Min glanced instinctively at Chang Kuo; he feared that such reckless measures would ruin the hard-won renown they had fought for.
Chang Kuo’s face, however, was even more resolute: “So many mouths counting his death — perhaps even the Lord of Death is alarmed. This man is already half dead from the shadow that clings to him; we need hardly lay a hand to finish him off!”
Xiao Min: “...!”
He trusted the general and the young lady, but at times, hearing such talk, he felt helpless alone.
Chang Kuo, noticing his concern, asked: “Commander Xiao, can you still hold the line?”
Xiao Min put on a steady face and lowered his voice: “The court presses repeatedly for the dispatch of troops...”
Chang Kuo, knowing his difficulty, offered a way to absolve him: “Just send word to the capital that everything is my old Chang’s arrangement — complain and groan as much as you please.”
Xiao Min sighed: “But then the court and the Holy One will surely hold you to account...”
“No matter.” Chang Suining said. “Once we have Xu Zhengye’s head, they will all hush themselves.”
Chang Kuo laughed heartily: “Exactly so!”
Who better than he to relish the comfort of a lord who will cover one’s back?
...
At the same moment, far to the north, Cui Jing also read that proclamation.
Before the piece had fully circulated, Yuan Xiang had already sent a swift-mounted courier to the northern territories.
“So... is this a provocation?” Cui Jing murmured, as if to himself; the usual calm between his brows now held a trace of worry.
Good night!
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