Three Steps: From Assassin to Empress - Chapter 11: But Xie Zhou Is Very Kind
Chapter 11: But Xie Zhou Is Very Kind
After the application to build the Sixteen Ferries was finalized, Ying Xiu finally had some free time. However, as soon as he was idle, he noticed that the private residence where Jianxin lived was filled with a sense of gloom, and a dark cloud hung over everyone.
Outside Wang Shouzhen’s study, the guards were silent, wordlessly shaking their heads at Ying Xiu. The eldest son was busy with official business and probably didn’t have time to see him. Ying Xiu stood outside the door, hesitating whether to leave, when with a creak, the purple sandalwood door of the study suddenly opened from within.
Wang Shouzhen, his hair disheveled, stood behind the two open doors, his hands resting on the frame. There were dark circles under his eyes, a clear sign that he hadn’t slept for several days. “Fuwei, you’re here. Come in,” he said to Ying Xiu, his voice exhausted.
Ying Xiu had never seen Wang Shouzhen like this before. He subconsciously frowned and walked into the study. The first thing he saw was Wang’s retainers sitting around a carved table, buried in their work, scribbling furiously with their brushes. The table was piled with documents, and the open bamboo slips listed the names of prominent families and gentry in Jiangzhou.
During the Jianyuan period, when the gentry moved south across the river, the royal family from the Central Plains was new to Jiangzuo. The imperial power was weak, and the country was ruled jointly by the two clans. Local powerful families built their own armies and occupied their own territories. Although the court had slowly divided and weakened them over the years, they had gradually become less of a threat. However, even today, the power of these wealthy families in the region was still not to be underestimated. The Wu clan’s powerful families in Jiangzhou occupied forts and strongholds, their retainers were their own armies, and they conducted business behind closed doors. In the eyes of these powerful families, the commoners without registered residences were their private property.
What Wang Shouzhen had to do was to register and organize all the commoners in Jiangzhou, including the “private property” of the powerful families. Their registered residences would be moved to the official government office to facilitate the arrangement of corvée labor and the collection of taxes and land rent. He was from the northern gentry and had only recently arrived in Jiangzhou. He was still not familiar with the situation in Jiangzhou. As the saying goes, a powerful dragon cannot defeat a local snake, and he was facing all the local snakes in Jiangzhou. Wang Shouzhen had no way to start and was inevitably exhausted.
After hearing the whole story, Ying Xiu found a place to sit and casually picked up a roll of documents to read carefully. These local records were obtained from the Jiangzhou government office. They were written by southern scholars and were not only extremely obscure and difficult to understand, but some parts were also contradictory, making it difficult to distinguish truth from falsehood. There were even many missing pages and fragments. The retainers Wang Shouzhen had brought from Guangling were scribbling on these fragmented pages, trying to piece together the real situation in Jiangzhou and find a breakthrough.
The writing was incredibly obscure and difficult to understand. The vertical cursive script seemed to be dancing before his eyes. Ying Xiu felt dizzy after reading a few lines. He put down the bamboo slip and asked Wang Shouzhen, “Why don’t you find a Jiangzhou native to ask?”
“It’s not that we haven’t tried,” a retainer suddenly interjected. “But how is that so easy? The southern scholars of Jiangzhou are all on the same side, and they are all united in their exclusion of the northern gentry. The aristocratic families won’t talk, and the commoners don’t dare to. We can only sort it out ourselves.”
“Actually, I have a few friends in Jiangzhou. Maybe they’ll tell me,” Ying Xiu said.
At his words, the retainers and servants with dark circles under their eyes, who were sitting around the table, all looked up at the young assassin. In their impression, this assassin always wore a silver face mask or a disguise. He was elusive, and the sword at his waist shone brightly, a murderous aura that made people stop in their tracks. How could such a person, who had only been in Jiangzhou for a few days, make friends with southern scholars in a place ruled by them? And even get them to tell him the intricate situation of Jiangzhou… They looked at each other, and the word “disbelief” was written all over their faces.
Thinking of people who had lived in Jiangzhou for a long time and might know the private affairs of the powerful families, Ying Xiu remembered many people—the fifteen southern scholars who had co-signed the Sixteen Ferries with him, and the commoners of Jianxiafang. He had a close relationship with these people and could call them his friends.
Wang Shouzhen didn’t really believe that Ying Xiu could get useful information from the southern scholars, but there was no harm in letting him ask his so-called friends. Before that, he had something very important to tell Ying Xiu. “Fuwei, Xie Zhou might not be who you think he is.” Wang Shouzhen earnestly advised, “He does have an outstanding appearance, but when living in this world, one should not only look at a person’s skin but also at their inner self. Don’t be deceived by others.” The retainer he had carefully selected and sent to investigate Xie Zhou never came back. A retainer of the Wang clan of Langya would never betray them, so there was only one possibility—he was dead, which was why he didn’t come back. Whether or not Xie Zhou had done it, it was enough to show that Xie Zhou was very dangerous. For Ying Xiu, an assassin, to be close to Xie Zhou was an extremely dangerous thing. If his identity were to be discovered, he might be faced with utter doom.
“But Xie Zhou is very kind,” Ying Xiu said. “On that day, I broke into his boat with a dripping bloody sword in my sleeve. He didn’t chase me away. Instead, he took me to the shore.”
Wang Shouzhen: “…” He does sound very kind. If it were him, if someone broke into his boat with a bloody sword, he would definitely turn the person over to the government office and investigate the matter thoroughly.
After a moment of silence, under Ying Xiu’s unwavering gaze, Wang Shouzhen couldn’t help but doubt himself. Maybe I’m overthinking it? The retainer who was sent to investigate might have been held up by someone else from the Xie clan.
The order to register and organize the commoners came from the capital and was said to be an edict from the tyrannical and cruel Emperor Zhaosu. The current situation really didn’t allow him to be distracted. He could only solve the matter of registering the commoners first and then investigate this Xie clan retainer.
Ying Xiu was also a little nervous, not knowing if the southern scholars would really tell him the secrets about the powerful families of Jiangzhou. He returned to the tavern with a feeling of unease, ignoring the questioning and later “Are you crazy?” looks from his supervisor. He ordered a large pot of wine, carried it into his room with his bare hands, and placed it in front of the fifteen scholars. The fifteen scholars, both old and young, all gasped at the same time.
Since ancient times, literati and poets have loved wine, especially scholars like them who had no way to enter officialdom and were destitute. It was hard for them to resist. “In the future, when the Sixteen Ferries are built, the sixteen of us will have a name in the local records of Jiangzhou, but…”
Here, Ying Xiu sighed with a troubled look on his face, looking at the confused faces of the scholars in the room. “There are so many powerful families in Jiangzhou. They are the ones who truly bring good fortune to the people. Compared to them, we are nothing.”
“Bring good fortune to the people?” A scholar so old that he was almost toothless laughed coldly. He took the wine gourd Ying Xiu offered and took a big drink, saying confidently, “What they do can’t be compared to what we do. We are the ones who truly bring good fortune to the people.”
“But the local records…” Ying Xiu’s eyes were full of doubt, as if he didn’t believe what the old man said.
“The local records are written by the powerful families. They write whatever they want,” the old scholar said drunkenly. “Sit down! Let me tell you all the good things they’ve done.”
In the early years of Jianyuan, there was a children’s rhyme in Jiangzhou: “The Court of the Grand Justiciary’s prison is as flat as a whetstone; if you have money, you live; if you don’t, you die.”
If a powerful family committed a crime, they could pay to get away with it. If the common people were wronged, they had no one to turn to for help. How many unjust and false cases, how many absurd explanations? The river flowed on, burying everything, but some things remained in the hearts of the people of Jiangzhou for a long, long time. Taking advantage of the good wine tonight, they were eager to speak their minds.
Xue Hao seemed to have seen through Ying Xiu’s purpose and helped pour wine for the group of elderly scholars who knew almost everything about Jiangzhou. In the cramped room filled with the smell of wine, the secrets of the powerful families of Jiangzhou were revealed one by one. Ying Xiu’s expression slowly became serious. He was an assassin, but he was not ignorant. If what they said was true, these powerful families in Jiangzhou were truly lawless. He had originally planned to use the powerful families’ secrets to force them to cooperate with Jianxin’s plan to register the commoners. But the more he listened, the angrier he became. He felt a surge of anger rise from the top of his head, and the Heart-Questioning Sword hidden on his body seemed to be humming faintly.
Based on the principle of not listening to only one side, Ying Xiu went to Jianxiafang again. Jianxiafang was filled with a mix of commoners from the northern gentry. These people had suffered from the ravages of war. Their family and friends were dead or sick. As the survivors, they had migrated south from the Central Plains and lived a life of displacement, barely surviving in the cracks between the powerful families. No one knew better than them what kind of people the powerful families of Jiangzhou were.
It was a great crime for commoners to slander a powerful family. If they were discovered, they would never have a day of peace. Therefore, no matter who they were, the commoners of Jianxiafang always kept their mouths shut and refused to reveal a single word. But in front of Ying Xiu, the people who had been silent for a long time chose to speak. Starting with the former Lord of Jiangzhou, Xiangli Jue, to the powerful families and merchants who were connected to him through marriage…
Ying Xiu carried bags of high-quality white rice and went from house to house, staying in each one for a long time.
Three days later, he returned to Wang Shouzhen’s study. The documents were still piled high, and the retainers were still sitting around the table, working hard with their heads down. When they saw Ying Xiu return, they only slightly lifted their eyelids and then, without stopping, continued to bury themselves in the documents. No one believed that this overly young assassin, who only knew how to kill, could analyze the situation in Jiangzhou in just three days.
Even Wang Shouzhen felt the same. He wanted Ying Xiu to wait a while, at least until they finished sorting out these documents. Then he would have some free time to listen to what useful information Ying Xiu’s friends had to say.
Just as Wang Shouzhen was about to speak, he looked up and saw Ying Xiu’s clear and bright eyes. The young man’s gaze was like a clear sword, its sharp edge fully exposed. He swallowed the words that were on the tip of his tongue.
A retainer spoke for him, his tone polite but weary and heavy, like a warning to an ignorant child not to cause trouble. “Young Master Ying, we are busy right now. If you have something to say, could you please wait until we are finished?”
“I have the secrets of the powerful families of Jiangzhou,” Ying Xiu said, taking a stack of papers from his chest. “I visited the southern scholars and the commoners of the northern gentry in Jianxiafang. They—”
“Young Master Ying,” the retainer, his face full of fatigue from the documents, suddenly interrupted him. “The secrets of the powerful families are not so easy to get. I’m afraid your friends just made it up. You’ve been bothering the eldest son all the time, and he doesn’t hold it against you. Now, at this critical moment, are you still going to be so unreasonable?”