Seizing the opportunity, Chen Baoxiang cleaved through a thick tree trunk with her axe.
She pointed toward the cave ahead and said, “Pay attention — this is the best shelter. If danger arises, the wounded are to retreat here.”
“And those high slopes we passed earlier — all excellent defensive positions. If there’s fighting, those must be seized first.”
Fenghua and the others walking behind listened carefully and dutifully committed everything to memory, then puzzled aloud: “Why are we scouting these spots? It’s not like we’re going to war.”
Chen Baoxiang moved aside a boulder blocking the path and continued forward. “Better safe than sorry. Why do you think we’re patrolling the mountain, if not to prepare for every possible emergency?”
“If I’m overthinking it, then this whole trip was for nothing,” she murmured quietly. “But what if I’m not?”
Earlier, when she had been at the garrison assigning personnel for the mountain patrol, she had spotted Cheng Huaili.
This man despised being seen in a disheveled state by others, yet here he was, willingly letting people carry him up the mountain on a palanquin.
Recalling what this man had done on Tianning Mountain before, Chen Baoxiang narrowed her eyes slightly.
Using her command token, she had reassigned all the military officers who had previously served under her. These men were obedient and fiercely loyal to her. While ordinary soldiers grew too exhausted after one hour of patrolling and had to return to camp, these men had been running with her all day without a single complaint.
“Commander.” Wang Wu ran over with his men, gesturing toward the southeast. “There are a great many Imperial Guards on the mountainside over there — they won’t let us approach.”
“That’s normal. How could the Holy One travel without Imperial Guards?” Chen Baoxiang took a few steps forward, then stopped and turned back to ask Wang Wu, “Are they the Imperial Guards normally stationed around the Holy One and Princess Rouyi?”
Wang Wu scratched his head. “I couldn’t tell. There were just masses of them — too many to count.”
Chen Baoxiang went to make a round of the camp.
Without drawing attention to herself, she counted the guards around Rouyi, then used a shift change as cover to sweep her gaze toward the direction of the Holy One’s tent.
Imperial Guards on the inner perimeter, regular patrol soldiers on the outer ring — layer upon layer of checkpoints. On the surface, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Which made those Imperial Guards appearing on the mountainside distinctly out of the ordinary.
She stood among the trees and looked up. Branches and leaves blotted out the sky all around her, and she felt impossibly small standing beneath them — as though nothing she could do would change anything.
·
Zhang Zhixu sat with a cold expression, revising a document, when Xie Lanting suddenly burst in through the door, so out of breath he could barely speak. “Feng — Fengqing.”
Zhang Zhixu didn’t look up. “How much are you borrowing this time.”
“No, who comes looking for money in broad daylight?” Xie Lanting strode up to his desk and dumped everything he was carrying onto it in one heap. “I found Chen Baoxiang’s motive for the killing.”
Zhang Zhixu’s brush tip paused.
He looked up. “What are you bringing this to me for? If it’s conclusive, it should go to the Court of Judicial Review to open a case.”
“It’s all witness testimony — no physical evidence. No case can be opened.” Xie Lanting waved his hand. “But I think you understand her so well that you ought to be able to tell whether it’s true or false.”
Chen Baoxiang had suddenly gone to Tianning Mountain without so much as mentioning it to him — he knew even less about it than Ningsu did. What understanding.
Feeling vexed, he picked up a long scroll and unrolled it.
Seven years ago, torrential rains had fallen across the Jingzhou region for months on end. The court, seeking to relieve the flooding, decided to blow up a dam and redirect the flow, and dispatched a nearby military unit to evacuate the villagers in the settlements downstream.
The task had been completed without incident, stirring no grievances among the people, and the registrar in charge of the evacuation had even earned praise from the late Emperor.
Zhang Zhixu had heard of this matter — but what did it have to do with Chen Baoxiang?
He read on, and saw the name of the registrar who had received the commendation.
Lu Shouhuai.
His eyelid twitched. Zhang Zhixu flipped through the pages quickly.
Among the dense list of downstream village names, Yuexian Sanxiang and Yuexian Guixiang stood out plainly —
The year I was twelve, Sanxiang Village was struck by a tremendous flood.
Recalling what Chen Baoxiang had said at the time, he asked, “You think Lu Shouhuai nursed a grudge against her over this matter?”
“A grudge? That’s far too mild a word.” Xie Lanting searched through the pages and pointed to a particular piece of testimony for him to read. “This is an enmity unto death.”
Zhang Zhixu followed his finger and read. His pupils contracted sharply.
— Lu Shouhuai, acting out of personal vendetta, had concealed news of the upstream dam demolition, resulting in the flooding of Guixiang Village, which drowned eighty-two households — three hundred and seventy people in total.
Lu Shouhuai had been responsible for evacuating the villagers, yet he had deliberately failed to notify Guixiang Village?
Had the man lost his mind? Wasn’t Guixiang Village his own hometown?
Zhang Zhixu recalled the full sentence Chen Baoxiang had spoken —
The year I was twelve, Sanxiang Village was struck by a tremendous flood. Many people died. I was lucky enough to escape, and went with Grandmother Ye and the surviving neighbors to make a living at the frontier garrison.
— He had found it strange at the time. Ordinary farming families typically returned home once floodwaters receded, so why had she and Grandmother Ye insisted on going somewhere as far away as the frontier? Now he understood: it had not been a natural disaster. It had been an act of human malice.
Reading further, he found that most of the dead in Guixiang were the elderly, the sick, and the disabled — an old man with a broken leg, a blind man bedridden with paralysis.
Anyone else reading this would simply sigh at the tragedy, lamenting so many innocent lives lost just like that.
But Zhang Zhixu remembered these people. Chen Baoxiang had mentioned them long ago —
Old Liu next door had his leg broken by a powerful man and wailed in agony for three days and nights without receiving any medical care. It was a terrible thing.
In our Sanxiang Village there was a man who had been blind in one eye since childhood. No one would hire him for work — he had no way to survive. But he was hardworking and resilient. He went to the city to collect slop water, keep night watch, sweep streets — whatever work there was to do. Finally, when he was around twenty, he had saved up a little money and was planning to return to the village to pay for his mother’s medical treatment.
……