Three Steps: From Assassin to Empress - Chapter 15: "Give Me a Token of Authority, and I'll Be Your Instrument"

Chapter 15: “Give Me a Token of Authority, and I’ll Be Your Instrument”

This was an unexpected answer. To turn the two colors of chess pieces into one, there would be no distinction.

Xie Zhou seemed to pause. “How do you turn them into one color?”

Ying Xiu gently rubbed the cold, smooth chess pieces and said casually, “There is no distinction, so there is one color.” There is no distinction of high and low, no distinction of gentry and commoners, so there is one color. Ying Xiu was smart and clever. He saw that Xie Zhou was using the chess game to refer to people.

Xie Zhou was silent for a moment before he finally said softly, “It’s impossible to have no distinction.”

Ying Xiu said without hesitation, “Then we can only seek a common ground, and try our best to make every piece tend toward one color, without distinction of high and low, and without nobility or commonness.”

Rarely, Xie Zhou began to scrutinize Ying Xiu. The young man who always wore black was now wearing a shimmering golden-sleeved robe, embroidered with brilliant patterns and adorned with beautiful pearls. This outfit suited Ying Xiu more than he had imagined. Or rather, Ying Xiu was born to wear luxurious and beautiful clothes, adorned with gold and jade, to be full of spirit and walk among the government officials. He was not meant to be a small assassin, hidden in the darkness, never seeing the light of day.

Ying Xiu noticed that the other person’s gaze was on his collar and couldn’t help but feel a little nervous. He subconsciously straightened his loose and flowing robe. He had never worn such good and beautiful clothes before and was afraid of damaging them. Golden was too conspicuous. It was not a color an assassin should wear. The teachings of the Wang clan of Langya told him that he should wear a bamboo hat, a face mask, and black clothes, and lurk in the shadows. But Xie Zhou had prepared golden clothes for him, which were cold and soft on the inside and beautiful and eye-catching on the outside.

The young man kept his head down, straightening his robe, his eyes lowered and his cheeks slightly flushed. Xie Zhou asked him, “Don’t you like these clothes?”

“No!” The young man subconsciously denied it loudly. Suddenly realizing that his voice was a little too loud, he immediately lowered his voice and whispered, “…I like them.” He liked golden. It was the color of the sun and looked very warm. It was just… a little uncomfortable.

The white-robed young man didn’t laugh at his startled reaction. His attitude was gentle, and he quietly waited for him to calm down before continuing, “I have prepared a carriage for you to go to the Jiangzhou government office. You can thoroughly investigate the collapse of the Bottle Mouth.” He took a token from his sleeve and pushed it in front of Ying Xiu. “Take this. It will make things easier for you.”

It was a lustrous and bright white jade piece, cold and radiant. One look and you could tell it was extraordinary. More than the jade piece, Ying Xiu paid more attention to Xie Zhou’s hand. The palm was lean and powerful, with tendons lurking under the pale flesh. The fingers were long, and the knuckles were distinct. It was a pair of hands very suitable for holding a sword.

The young assassin didn’t dare to look anymore. He moved his gaze away and looked at the jade piece again. He hesitated, not knowing whether to take it.

“Don’t worry,” Xie Zhou’s voice was warm and cool, like water quenched with ice, with a reassuring power. “This is not from the Xie clan, it’s mine. Take it and use it when you need to.” Ying Xiu didn’t refuse anymore. He reached out and held the jade piece in his hand. It was engraved with complex seal script. He couldn’t recognize the words, but he knew they were carved in a dignified way that could make people’s hearts tremble.

Xie Zhou was not an ordinary retainer. Feeding the deer before might have been a hobby, and besides, that deer was very beautiful and probably not an ordinary deer. The jade piece was heavy, weighing down his sleeve. Ying Xiu was very clearly aware that the beautiful retainer sitting opposite him was not an ordinary person. He was Xie Si’s retainer, a man of the Grand Chancellor.

With the jade piece from Xie Zhou in his sleeve, Ying Xiu carefully walked down the bamboo building, touching his sleeve pocket from time to time, afraid that the item inside would fall out or get lost. Behind him, the white-robed retainer picked up another piece, quietly playing chess against himself, silently recalling the words the young assassin had just said.

One path for all of Kyushu, one wind for the whole world. No high or low, no noble or common. This is one color for the world.

…The Jiangzhou prefectural office was a bleak place. The water from the collapsed Bottle Mouth seemed to have turned into clouds and fog, rising into the sky and turning into fine, dense rain that beat against the wide-open gates of the government office. A group of commoners knelt in the open space outside the hall. Last night, they had jumped into the Yuan River in groups, holding hands and trying to block the dike with their bodies. Each of them had been soaked through by the cold river water, and now they were still wet, kneeling in the rain.

On the dais, the commandant and the commandery governor were sitting on the left and right, presiding over the case. The seat at the top was empty, which was the position of the governor of Jiangzhou. On the two sides of the central hall, the powerful families and gentry in charge of repairing the Bottle Mouth were sitting on the left side. The vice-governor of Jiangzhou, Wang Yu, was sitting on the right side, with the officials who had moved to Jiangzhou with him standing in order of their official ranks from highest to lowest. The situation was clearly a confrontation between the northern and southern gentry.

Without rushing to question them, the commandant casually asked Wang Yu, “Is the eldest son feeling better?” A small Wang Yu was nothing. He was just a retainer recommended and promoted by the Wang clan of Langya. Wang Shouzhen was the eldest son of the Wang clan of Langya, the true northern gentry. Wang Yu didn’t say anything. Just this morning, he had received an urgent letter from the Grand Secretary from Jiankang, telling him to make sure to look after the eldest son and not let Wang Shouzhen provoke the wrong noble. It also said that if he angered the noble, even he wouldn’t be able to protect them. What kind of noble could make Wang Daokui, the master of the Wang clan of Langya, so nervous?

He couldn’t figure it out. Just then, he heard that Wang Shouzhen had gone to the Xie clan’s retainer’s lodge to look for someone. His intuition told him that it was best to stop Wang Shouzhen, so he hurriedly brought people to tie the eldest son back. Wang Shouzhen was not an official sent by the court to supervise the work. He had no official rank. Even though everyone knew that Wang Shouzhen was the one who was truly in charge and supervising the canal work behind the scenes, there was nothing they could do to him. All the trouble was coming toward him.

Wang Yu took a deep breath and had already thought of a solution. Wasn’t it just about finding a scapegoat? The eldest son was now confined to the private residence, and the commoners kneeling outside were recommended by that person. There was no one more suitable to be a scapegoat than that person.

After Wang Yu finished speaking, the commandant squinted his eyes and said nonchalantly, “You’re saying that the scholar named Ying Xiu is the culprit for the collapse of the Bottle Mouth?” The commandery governor sitting next to him casually asked, “How old is this Ying Xiu?” The commandant and the commandery governor were both from the Wu clan of Jiangzhou. They clearly did not accept the result of using an unknown person named Ying Xiu as a scapegoat. This was a big fuss. They had to make the northern gentry give up a piece of their meat.

Wang Yu had always disliked Ying Xiu and naturally didn’t know his age. However, a voice came from the ear room outside the screen on either side. “Seventeen.” In the ear room were the victims of the collapse, the fifteen scholars, plus a few fishermen. The person who spoke was an elderly scholar. No one in the hall responded.

“Be quiet!” A clerk knocked on the window frame of the ear room and reminded them in a low voice, “The officials on the dais are questioning you. You can speak then.”

“A seventeen-year-old scholar, a mere commoner,” the commandant said slowly. “How could he be the culprit for this collapse?”

Wang Yu had already prepared. While ordering his officials to present the documents, he said, “Your Excellency, you don’t know this, but this Ying Xiu is good friends with the team leader and had the team leader choose the commoners he recommended to repair the Bottle Mouth. I have already questioned a few of the commoners last night, and they all said that Ying Xiu instructed them to come.” With that, a soaked middle-aged man was brought into the hall by the Wang clan’s retainers. The man knelt down with a thud and kept kowtowing, shouting that Ying Xiu had begged him to hire those commoners, which led to the disaster last night. This person was the team leader, Ah Hong, who was in charge of hiring people. He had agreed to hire the lowlifes from Jianxiafang because he thought Ying Xiu had a good relationship with the eldest son. He never expected things to turn out like this.

“Bang—”

The gavel suddenly struck the table. “Where is this Ying Xiu?” The commandant, impatient to listen to these people’s nonsense, asked directly. There was a moment of silence. No one knew where Ying Xiu had gone. They only knew that after he confirmed that the scholars were all safe and sound last night, he seemed to have left the weir and disappeared.

—He was at the retainer’s private residence. For some reason, perhaps out of an intuition for danger developed from twenty years of immersion in the officialdom, Wang Yu was unwilling to implicate that mysterious retainer in this matter.

“He’s missing,” Wang Yu said. “Since midnight last night, Ying Xiu has been completely gone.” Although he didn’t say it explicitly, the people in the government office were smart and could understand his true meaning. Fled in fear of his crime. This seventeen-year-old scholar has fled in fear of his crime.

“Search the whole city,” the commandant said coldly. “Quickly apprehend this suspect named Ying Xiu and bring him to justice!”

“Are you looking for me?”

Outside the gates, the rain was misty. The young man in the golden robe held an umbrella and passed through the layers of guards, stepping lightly through the gates. He was elegant, youthful, beautiful, and magnificent. It was hard to imagine these words could be so perfectly combined in one person. Wang Yu had never seen the assassin’s true face. He looked over at the sound and his pupils suddenly constricted.

—He seemed to have seen this face somewhere before. It was very familiar, from the face to the eyes, it gave him a terrifying sense of familiarity. He had seen it when he was still young. There was a type of person in this world who was righteous, passionate, and unwavering in their beliefs. They were like the rivers and mountains below, and the sun and stars above. Even after they died, it was hard to forget their eyes.

—Ying Xiu was seventeen years old.

Wang Yu’s expression changed slightly. Fortunately, everyone else’s attention was on Ying Xiu, and no one noticed. The golden robe’s hem gently brushed against the stone steps. Ying Xiu didn’t continue to walk forward. He stopped among the commoners who were kneeling in the rain, holding his umbrella, standing tall among them. The commoners of Jianxiafang recognized him at a glance and called out in a low voice, “Young Master, it’s all our fault.” “They want to make you a scapegoat. You must not confess.”

“You will be alright,” Ying Xiu said to them in a low voice. The young man’s voice was not loud, but it was loud enough to be heard both inside and outside the hall, echoing throughout the entire Jiangzhou prefectural office.

This person has a lot of nerve! The commandant and the commandery governor looked at each other, both seeing mockery in each other’s eyes.

Ying Xiu looked around, his gaze unyielding as he looked directly at the commandant and the commandery governor sitting on the left and right of the main seat. “The collapse of the Bottle Mouth was caused by a commoner scholar. Do you dare to rule on this case? Will the Court of the Grand Justiciary, the Censorate, and the Ministry of Justice believe you?”

Facing a hall full of officials, the young man who rarely stood in front of people seemed calm, but the tips of his fingers holding the umbrella handle had already begun to tremble slightly. The jade piece was heavy in his sleeve, cold and pressing against his skin through the fabric.