“Delicious, delicious. I’m full!”
Xiao Yue patted her little belly, contentedly licking her reddened lips.
The food at Shen Yu’s always surprised her.
It was a pity that if Shen Yu really went to Qingzhou City, who knew when she’d next get to eat something made by Shen Yu.
“Shen Yu—”
“Are you still going to stop me from going to Qingzhou? Impossible. I’m definitely going. Anyway, you’re full now, so go ahead and scold me if you want.”
Shen Yu saw Xiao Yue hesitate and thought she was going to try to persuade her not to go again.
But Xiao Yue put down her chopsticks and gently shook her head.
“I know I acted willfully and selfishly just now. You have a desire to serve the country, so of course I can’t stop you. And I couldn’t stop you even if I wanted to. But this journey is dangerous… I’ll be waiting for you in the capital. Send a letter if you need anything, and I’ll help if I can.”
Deep down, Xiao Yue didn’t want Shen Yu to go, but she knew she couldn’t stop her.
Saying more words of reluctance would only add to her own sorrow, so she simply gritted her teeth and let go.
‘If it comes to it… I just won’t see her off! Let Shen Yu regret it for the rest of her life, hmph!’
“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. You need to have confidence in me,”
Shen Yu said softly.
Her words didn’t improve Xiao Yue’s mood much.
Xiao Yue sighed softly.
“When do you leave?”
“Tomorrow morning. His Majesty has sent Yun Wei to accompany me and ensure my safety.”
Yun Wei was currently in South Pass searching for sweet potatoes.
It seemed she most likely hadn’t found any.
The Emperor had already sent an urgent decree by eight-hundred-li express.
It was estimated that Shen Yu would depart tomorrow, and after a few days of travel, when they were close to Qingzhou, Yun Wei would receive it.
South Pass was not far from Qingzhou City.
After receiving the secret decree, Yun Wei would set off immediately and could meet Shen Yu just outside Wangzhou City.
Xiao Yue nodded without saying much and stood up.
“I’ll go back now. I wish you… a smooth journey.”
‘…I’ll never forgive you for the rest of my life.’
Hearing this, Xiao Tao, who had been waiting at the side, quickly stepped forward to put on the small embroidered shoes that were placed by the heated brick bed.
Before leaving, Xiao Yue, with her back to Shen Yu, spoke through gritted teeth: “Shen Yu! You listen to me. When you get there, don’t try to be a hero. Everything must be done with your own safety in mind. If you die there, I will never, ever forgive you.”
“When you reach Qingzhou, the first difficult problem you’ll encounter is the despair of the people. If you cannot solve this situation, you won’t be able to take a single step forward. So I will ask my father to submit a memorial to His Majesty. Don’t just take Yun Wei and the Fenglin Guards—take the Dragon Banner with you. Though it’s just a flag, it will be of great use once you reach Qingzhou City.”
Shen Yu was a bit confused, but Xiao Yue clearly didn’t give her a chance to ask questions.
She dropped a heavy bag of silver and hurried away with Xiao Tao without looking back.
Looking through the window of the side room into the courtyard, one could see Xiao Yue’s slightly frail and lonely back.
Her small shoulders were trembling slightly, as if… she was crying.
***
The Emperor’s decree to lock down Qingzhou City had been in effect for over twenty days.
The city, once the most prosperous in Qingzhou, had now completely changed.
The hustle and bustle of carriages and people had vanished, replaced by a deathly silence that seeped into the bone.
Occasionally, one could hear suppressed cries from behind closed doors, or the monotonous rumbling of wooden carts dragging away corpses over the stone slabs in the dead of night.
The air was thick with a strange smell of burning mugwort, vinegar, and rot—it was the smell of fear.
The entire city had ground to a halt.
With the imperial lockdown order, all troops that could be moved had been urgently redeployed by the court.
The Qingzhou Military Commander had taken his family and fled long before the complete lockdown.
Inside the city’s military camp, only the remnant soldiers infected with the Hundred-Year Sore, on the verge of death, remained.
Order in the city could not be maintained, but the riot by the citizens only lasted half a day before ending.
There was no need for the army to restore order, because they discovered in horror that the city gates had been completely locked from the outside, and every exit was fully blocked by boulders brought from who knows where.
Only the main gate of Qingzhou City was still passable.
The tall walls around the city, originally built to defend against barbarian incursions from the south, had now become a cage imprisoning the people.
They couldn’t escape, filled with endless despair, forced to watch helplessly as the plague killed everyone around them one by one.
Of course, these circumstances were not the main reason they gave up the riot…
After all, there was still one gate that could be opened.
Since death was inevitable either way, they might as well fight and try to break through the main gate.
But when the enraged masses rushed to the city gate, they found standing before them was Li Zhengyang, the Qingzhou Provincial Administrator.
He had not fled.
He stayed inside the city, choosing to share the fate and life-or-death struggle with the people.
This high-ranking official of the second rank was a well-known fatherly official to the locals.
Qingzhou was bitter and remote, its only purpose being to guard the South Pass for the imperial court.
Yet this former Supervisor of the Supervisorate of the Heir Apparent, a close minister of the East Palace, had once been a teacher to the then-still-living Crown Prince and the current Empress during the reign of the Former Emperor, and had been granted the title of Grand Tutor of the Crown Prince by the Former Emperor.
In the imperial court, he held a high position with great seniority.
Even after the Empress ascended the throne, she still respected him.
He could have definitely stayed in the capital, had a meteoric rise, and even entered the cabinet to participate in politics with just a word.
But he didn’t.
When he voluntarily exiled himself to the local area, it was exactly when the imperial court lacked control over remote prefectures, and the barbarians at South Pass were growing stronger, seeming on the verge of being uncontrollable.
So he came and stayed for ten years, spanning two reigns.
Across all dynasties, besides Li Zhengyang, it would be difficult to find another person with such courage.
In the two years before the Empress officially changed the era name to Wangshu, the imperial power was exercised provisionally and was inherently weak, making it even harder to control the South Pass.
It was precisely because of Li Zhengyang’s presence—he resolutely stayed—that the turmoil at South Pass was once again quelled, and the barbarians outside the pass continued to obediently farm and deliver grain for the court.
Incidentally, he also enabled Qingzhou near South Pass to develop steadily and for a time showed signs of prosperity.
But good times did not last long…
A great plague raged, directly turning Qingzhou City into a giant tomb.
In fact, Li Zhengyang could have, like the Qingzhou Military Commander, submitted a memorial to the court and found any excuse to leave Qingzhou City.
But he did not do so.
On the contrary, he resolutely stayed.
This was both to implement the court’s lockdown decision and to seek a way of survival for the people trapped in the city.
This Qingzhou Provincial Administrator was different from those officials in the imperial court who viewed Qingzhou City as a discarded piece.
He also knew that once the city was locked down, it meant the city would no longer be a point on the empire’s map, but a huge, living tomb.
But he had to stay.
He needed to give an account to the court and to the people in the city.
Though the empire was riddled with holes from gnawing worms, it didn’t mean everyone was a worm.
Even if the empire was in its twilight years, even in remote places far from the capital, it wasn’t all pitch black darkness.
“Lord Li, the medicinal herbs in the city are running out. If the court doesn’t send more herbs soon, I’m afraid the only thing we can do is watch the sick people die.”
On top of the high city gate of Qingzhou, Li Zhengyang stood with his hands behind his back, gazing somewhat despairingly at the scenery outside the city.
There wasn’t much grain in Qingzhou.
Relief from the court was hopeless, herbs were in critical shortage.
It was all too clear what fate awaited Qingzhou City.
“My lord, look… Should we ration the grain a bit?”
“No! Without grain, the people will be even less able to resist the plague. Some have not yet fallen ill; we cannot let them starve to death. And those with mild cases need sufficient food to restore their strength. As for the grain, I will figure something out. Not a single grain of the relief grain that should be distributed to the people can be reduced!”
Li Zhengyang said sternly, but even he didn’t believe his own words.
For the epidemic prevention in Qingzhou, he had done everything he could.
His own family was still waiting for rice to cook.
The vast estate of the Li manor had all been used to relieve the people.
Even the mansion had been taken to house the severely ill.
He truly had nothing left.
He had three sons and two daughters.
Two sons were far away in the capital, unable to meet, and presumably also overwhelmed.
Another son had died from the Hundred-Year Sore.
As for the two daughters, the elder was helping him aid the victims, while the younger had already fallen ill and was being cared for at home by Li Zhengyang’s wife.
Now with the city’s herbs in critical shortage, his youngest daughter was estimated to have not long to live.
Li Zhengyang had stood on the gate tower for a long time.
Behind him were the sighs of his staff, the urgings of his subordinates, and the oppressive breathing of the entire city.
Before him were the sealed city gate, the border garrison troops tasked with preventing anyone from escaping, the two capitals he couldn’t see no matter how far he gazed, and that student he had personally taught who now sat on the dragon throne.
He suddenly recalled the scene when he first came to Qingzhou many years ago.
That was when the Former Emperor was still alive.
He knelt and bid farewell, leaving the capital.
The Former Emperor took his hand and said, “You are the person I selected for the Crown Prince. The Crown Prince is young; I fear he won’t be able to control those old ministers in the future. Go walk the local areas for me, accumulate some experience, and come back to help him later.”
Later, the Crown Prince did not ascend the throne and suddenly passed away.
The Empress, only in her twenties, took over that riddled and battered realm.
She sent someone with a secret letter.
The letter contained only four words: “Master, save me.”
Li Zhengyang burned the letter and continued in Qingzhou to build irrigation, open up wasteland, and appease the barbarians.
He knew that the Empress needed him to stabilize the situation locally more than she needed him back in the capital to attend court.
But now…
He looked into the city…
‘Take me, if you want to take someone.’
The wisps of cooking smoke were pitifully thin; the people were saving firewood.
The streets were empty and desolate.
If a figure flashed by, it was someone carrying a corpse.
He looked toward the direction of his own mansion.
It was now filled with patients.
His wife was there watching over his youngest daughter.
She was only fourteen.
The day before, he had gone to visit.
She called out from behind the door, “Dad, I’m fine. Don’t come in.”
He knew she was lying.
Her voice was already so weak it was almost inaudible.
Li Zhengyang suddenly spoke, his voice very soft, as if talking to himself: “Heaven…”
“If you want to take someone, take me.”
“I, Li Zhengyang, have been an official for thirty years. I dare not say I am without fault before heaven and earth, but I seek to have no guilt in my heart. If there is truly a heavenly principle, if there are gods, please listen to me—spare the people in the city. They are innocent. Some of them have not even seen the good days of eating their fill.”
His voice grew lower and lower, until it turned into sobs.
This old man, who had debated a hundred scholars in the imperial court, who never yielded an inch before the barbarians, who was like a father and mother to the people, now slowly knelt on the city tower like a helpless child.
He was a man who firmly believed that human effort could conquer heaven, yet now he was so helpless that he could only rely on praying to the heavens.
He suddenly remembered a book he had read as a child, one line always stayed with him: “The people are the most important; the state is next; the ruler is the least important.”
He had taught this line to the Crown Prince and also to the Empress.
The Crown Prince had learned it, the Empress had learned it.
But they both sat on the dragon throne, too far from the people.
Or rather, someone was forcing them to be too far from the people.
There were Fenglin Guards spies within the city.
The more than twenty memorials he had sent out could not possibly have failed to reach the Empress.
Something must be obstructing the Empress’s relief efforts…
And the vaccine made by that Imperial Physician Shen—the portion sent to Qingzhou City had definitely been tampered with.
If the vaccine had met the court’s standards, Qingzhou City could never have reached this state.
Where had it gone wrong?
Where had it gone wrong!?
“My lord! My lord, look quickly! Look to the north!”
“North?”
Li Zhengyang, who had been kneeling on the ground, heard the surprised shouts of his subordinates.
He instinctively raised his head.
Wiping the blurry tears from his eyes, he squinted and looked north.
In the distance, he could see a team of people galloping toward them.
Li Zhengyang couldn’t make out who they were, but he could see it was a squad of imperial guards in dark armor, dusty from the road, guarding a bright yellow banner that flapped loudly in the wind, charging toward Qingzhou City at great speed.
“The D-Dragon Banner! That’s His Majesty’s Dragon Banner!”
“Heavens… His Majesty’s Dragon Banner has come. The court has come to save Qingzhou City? We don’t have to die!?”
“His Majesty has not abandoned Qingzhou City! The court has not abandoned Qingzhou City!”
“His Majesty’s Dragon Banner has come. The court is here…”