Lin Fei let out a sigh. “No.”
“Then how many does it actually have?”
“No one knows,” Lin Fei said. “No one knows.”
Phantom soldiers filling payrolls were beyond counting. In the old days when Lin Fei’s grandfather had tried to investigate and verify, there was not a single regiment at full strength — they would “borrow” troops temporarily from other units whenever a superior came to inspect, stuffing the ranks with borrowed bodies.
A chill spread through Xie Yuzhang’s heart.
That was why, later, when the military governors one after another raised their flags in rebellion, they swept aside the Da Zhao dynasty with a speed that seemed almost incomprehensible — as if pulling up a dead stump. Because this dynasty had endured for over four hundred years and seemed to be in full flower, yet beneath the surface it had long since rotted through to its very roots.
Princess Baohua Xie Yuzhang, for reasons unknown, was again downcast and dispirited. As evening came, she had not even changed her clothes — and this from a woman who changed her dress three times a day.
“I knew I should not have said those things to Your Highness,” Lin Fei said, regretting it. “Affairs of court are for His Majesty and the ministers to handle. Why should Your Highness, a princess, burden herself with any of it?”
“You are right,” Xie Yuzhang said flatly, nodding. “These are matters of the nation and the state — hardly something a small, powerless woman like me could change.”
Lin Fei brightened. “Exactly! Come, it is time for the evening meal — shall we change clothes first?”
Xie Yuzhang was quiet for a moment, then asked: “Ah-Fei, why do I change my clothes three times a day?”
Lin Fei looked puzzled. “Why? There is no why… Is that not just how it has always been in the palace?”
Xie Yuzhang said nothing, gazing at the burnished golden light falling on the inner courtyard.
The extravagant and indulgent customs of the court, radiating outward from the palace, blanketed all of Yunjing City. She had never thought anything was wrong with it before.
She suddenly sat up and called for someone: “There is a little eunuch beside Father called Fuchun — go and give him a gift.”
When the palace maid acknowledged the order and withdrew, Lin Fei asked curiously: “Who is Fuchun? I have no recollection of the name.”
The Emperor’s attendants — no one among those with any standing had been mentioned by that name.
“Just a minor eunuch,” Xie Yuzhang said.
Palace eunuchs were a numerous and sprawling lot — just those of the fourth rank and above numbered in the thousands — and for anyone among them to rise to the top was exceedingly difficult. Fuchun had no doubt remained buried and obscure among them until the day Military Governor Huang Yungong had led his troops into the capital, stormed the palace, and carried out a mass slaughter of the eunuchs while violating the palace maids and the consorts.
Later, when Li Gu had crushed Huang Yungong and taken possession of Yunjing City, Fuchun — who had somehow managed to survive by hiding in some corner or crevice — had caught Li Gu’s eye and risen rapidly to become the great chief eunuch superintendent of the entire palace.
Having seen him now, how could Xie Yuzhang remain unmoved and do nothing?
In a single day she had encountered the future Emperor, the future Grand General, and the future chief superintendent — and that night, Xie Yuzhang slept extremely fitfully.
These figures of destiny — it seemed that from the beginning they had been tied together by threads of fate. And she? Was she someone fate had abandoned?
Even with a second life, the great tide of the world was not something she, a weak woman, could alter. What on earth could she do to change her own destiny?
Xie Yuzhang’s heart was full of bewilderment.
She tossed and turned like a fish being fried, and so Lin Fei could not sleep either — ever since the day Xie Yuzhang had been seized by that nightmare, Lin Fei had been sleeping in the same bed with her these past days, afraid she would have another bad dream.
“What is wrong?” Lin Fei held Xie Yuzhang close and patted her gently, the way one soothes a child.
Xie Yuzhang stared at the dim overhead of the bed canopy, and then said abruptly: “I want to ask Father to arrange a marriage for me.”
Lin Fei was suddenly wide awake. She raised her head and looked at Xie Yuzhang, smiling. “Who has caught Your Highness’s heart?”
Xie Yuzhang felt herself truly foolish — why had she not thought of this on the very first day she was reborn? She should have gone straight to her father and begged him to settle a marriage for her. A princess who was already betrothed — surely no one would send her away to a political marriage.
She only did not know… whether it was too late.
“Anyone. It doesn’t matter who,” Xie Yuzhang said, turning on her side to face Lin Fei.
If she were truly given the power to choose, she would actually want to choose Li Weifeng. He was the great general Li Gu would place his deepest trust in — Li Gu had even been known to say, “Ten thousand li of rivers and mountains, held together with you.” Marrying him, the next twenty years would be safe and stable.
But Li Weifeng at this point was no more than a lower-ranking frontier officer of common birth — it was simply not possible.
As for Li Gu — Xie Yuzhang did not even consider him.
By the time Li Gu later ascended the throne, the women in his life had all come from significant backgrounds. His alliances before he became Emperor — even just as formal secondary wives he had taken on, there had been three. Every union had been not about affection but about the consolidation of political resources.
He was the center of the entire political storm. Xie Yuzhang had been far away in Mobei and had not witnessed it firsthand, but she could well imagine how complex the situation had been in those years. A fallen dynasty’s princess carried no leverage whatsoever in such a political contest. Going to Li Gu’s side was absolutely not a wise choice.
The reality, however, was that regardless of whether it was Li Gu or Li Weifeng — it was not simply a matter of her wishing to choose whom she pleased.
Xie Yuzhang tried to recall the prominent noble sons of Yunjing City at this time, only to find that most of them had later been scattered to the winds — dead or lost. Those who survived and continued to live well in Yunjing City… there was not even one among them she could identify as someone worth trusting with her life.
Anxiety gnawed at her again.
“What kind of thing is that to say,” Lin Fei said with reproach. “Marriage — when has anything about it ever been ‘just anyone’?”
She pressed: “Is there truly no one you have feelings for?”
Xie Yuzhang sighed. “No.”
“If there is no one, then what is all this nonsense.” Lin Fei pressed a hand to her forehead.
Xie Yuzhang was silent for a long time, then said: “I have heard that Father is thinking of sending a princess to Mobei Khanate in a political marriage.”
Lin Fei sat bolt upright and stared at her. “Your Highness — who told you this?”
“Never mind who told me,” Xie Yuzhang said. “The information is true, is all.”
Lin Fei thought for a moment, then said: “Even if it is true — they would never use Your Highness for the political marriage.”
“Political marriages are usually just a woman from the imperial clan given a princess title,” Lin Fei said, her tone very certain. “And even if they wanted to send a true princess — how could they possibly send Your Highness? Forget that Your Highness was born of the late Empress herself; by birth order alone, there is Princess Anle, born of Noble Consort Shu, who comes before you.”
But Xie Yuzhang said quietly: “What if they specifically demand a legitimate-born princess?”