Li Gu and his seventh elder brother Li Weifeng both stood in the shade of the trees, waiting for their adoptive father to finish his imperial audience.
Even from a distance, one could tell they were different from the eunuchs.
The eunuchs stood with heads bowed, shoulders rounded, backs slightly hunched — the posture of servants.
The two adopted sons of Li Ming, Military Governor of Hexi, were both tall and long-limbed, with lean, powerful builds. They stood motionless as green pines, straight-backed and firm. The vigor and martial bearing of northwestern men could be glimpsed in that posture alone.
The brothers were ranked by the order in which Li Ming had adopted them, not by age — but Li Gu was only nineteen that year, several years younger than his seventh elder brother, and therefore somewhat leaner in build.
A wide belt of linked rings cinched a slender waist — supple and unyielding.
The martial air of these young generals was so overwhelming that the little eunuchs nearby held their breath, hearts pounding with excitement at the sight. They thought inwardly: if only their own manhood had remained intact, would they too have looked something like this?
But then the eyes of one young eunuch drifted to the imperial guards posted outside the imperial garden, and the thought deflated at once.
These inner palace guards were all drawn from the sons of noble families in Yunjing City — every last one of them possessed of an intact manhood — yet none of them had this sort of commanding presence. Even standing there gripping their long halberds, armored and silver-bright at first glance, a closer look revealed that their backs were not straight, and their waists not upright.
After a while, they would shift their weight, moving a leg, changing the distribution.
It was not only the eunuchs who noticed. Li Ming’s two adopted sons had naturally taken in every detail of the guards’ posture. A look of contempt flickered in Li Weifeng’s eyes.
“Embroidered pillows,” he said in a low voice.
“Seventh Brother, do not speak carelessly,” Li Gu said, glancing at him with a warning look.
The guards were standing far off, but there was a little eunuch quite nearby who might have overheard them talking.
Li Weifeng glanced at the young eunuch, saw his head bow even lower and his back hunch even more, and gave a disdainful curl of his lip.
Both of them were true sons of the northwest, and both were visiting Yunjing for the first time. The city had dazzled and overwhelmed them at first sight with its splendor and extravagance — but what followed immediately was a pervasive sense of softness and indulgence that made these northwestern men, forged in dust and blood, furrow their brows.
Li Gu’s gaze suddenly froze and was drawn toward the distance.
Li Weifeng followed his line of sight. Far off in a long corridor, three figures in official robes, each carrying a case on his back, were being led by a eunuch toward some destination.
“Imperial physicians,” Li Gu said abruptly.
Li Weifeng asked the little eunuch: “Are those the imperial physicians?”
The young eunuch, bowing, replied: “Yes.”
Li Gu could not stop him in time — Li Weifeng had already asked point-blank: “Which noble personage has fallen ill?”
At that, beads of sweat broke out on the little eunuch’s forehead.
Li Gu and Li Weifeng had both come from common backgrounds, chosen for their valor and taken in as adopted sons by Li Ming. Li Ming had twelve sons in total. Apart from his fourth son, Li Hao, who was his own flesh and blood, the remaining eleven were all adopted.
Taking in brave young men from among his soldiers as adopted sons was a common method these military governors used to cultivate talent.
Of Li Ming’s eleven adopted sons, only the three he had taken in early on had received a proper education.
Li Ming had long struggled with the matter of heirs — for many years his household had been empty of children — and so he had taken three boys from among his relatives to raise beside him, intending that once they were a little older, he would observe their character and abilities and choose the finest among them to formally adopt as his heir to carry on the family line.
Unexpectedly, after he had been raising them for two years, a concubine bore him a son.
Young children were fragile and easily lost to illness, and so Li Ming had not sent the three adopted boys back home, but raised them alongside his biological son, personally overseeing their education — while never again raising the subject of formal adoption. Once his biological son passed the age of five and was truly established, the idea of adoption became like drifting clouds.
As the years passed and the children grew, Li Ming continued to seek out brave young men from within his army each year and take them as adopted sons, gathering them around him. To these adopted sons, however, he no longer lavished the careful cultivation he had once given the three earlier boys — which had, as a matter of course, diluted the significance of those three.
This was, one might say, a strategy that achieved two aims at once.
Li Weifeng was the seventh among the brothers and Li Gu the eleventh — both soldiers by background, with little formal education. “Prying into forbidden palace matters” — forget knowing what it meant; they had never even heard the four words of the expression.
All Li Gu sensed was that his seventh elder brother’s blunt, open question had been most improper.
The sight of the little eunuch breaking out in a cold sweat only confirmed that he had been right.
“Never mind — you need not say anything if it is inconvenient,” Li Gu said to the young eunuch.
The young eunuch understood at once. He let out a quiet breath and bowed. “This servant is grateful for the general’s consideration. This servant dares not speak carelessly of forbidden palace matters. Fortunately, His Majesty is in good health, and at this very moment he is receiving Li the Lord in the imperial garden.”
Li Gu understood with a single hint. He studied the little eunuch for a moment, then said: “I am the eleventh son of the Lord, Li Gu. How shall I address you, Sir?”
The palace was glutted with eunuchs — just those of the fourth rank and above numbered in the thousands. This little eunuch was no more than an odd-jobs attendant who stood at the outer perimeter like a human post, unlikely ever to catch a glimpse of the Emperor’s face, and certainly not the sort of person any official would spare a glance for.
For a general as commanding and impressive as Li Gu to actually take the initiative and ask his name — the little eunuch was so overwhelmed he could barely contain his joy, and suppressed the excitement in his heart with some effort before bowing and answering: “This servant is Fuchun.”
A typical servant’s name — all fortunate and auspicious characters, pleasing to the master’s eye and easy on the tongue.
Li Gu nodded and called out: “Sir Fuchun.” Then he said no more.
Even so, Fuchun’s heart was quietly delighted. Though he was a eunuch, he had come from a respectable family in the capital region — it was only because they had been ground down to such poverty they could no longer survive that he had been castrated and entered the palace. He was not the sort of person who had entered through crime. Deep inside, he still harbored the naive fantasy of striding the world with a blade at his hip, seeking glory and a marquisate on horseback.
In daily life he was cautious and restrained, indulging that fantasy only in dreams — but these past two days, seeing Li Gu and Li Weifeng, two strapping seven-foot men, imposing and magnificent, the very image of the self he dreamed of becoming, he could not help feeling a surge of longing.
This was not a good place to chat, so Li Weifeng stood bored for a moment and, feeling a pressing need, said to Fuchun: “I need to use the — ” He caught himself. “The clean room.”
Though he had corrected himself just in time and not said “the outhouse,” the phrase “use the clean room” still made Fuchun’s head throb. He beckoned, summoning from a little further off a still younger eunuch, and instructed him: “The general needs to freshen up — show him the way.”
Rough soldiers talked about going to the outhouse the way they talked about anything else, and Li Weifeng had already been laughed at enough times in Yunjing City these past days that he had forced himself to swap “outhouse” for “clean room.” But even in the palace, apparently, even “clean room” was too vulgar.
He went off in a huff, following the little eunuch.
Li Gu withdrew his gaze, still standing with his hands clasped behind his back.
Fuchun hesitated for a moment, then suddenly stepped forward.
Li Gu’s gaze swept over him.