Chapter 216: The Wind Rises (IV)

The emperor's labyrinthine mind was beyond the grasp of ordinary men.

Therefore, whether or not they had guessed his intentions, every courtier held their breath, waiting in silence for the imperial verdict.

In Zhaoming Hall, you could hear a pin drop.

Zhang Yue could no longer bear the pressure. His knees buckled, and he collapsed to the ground, cold sweat pouring down his face.

After what felt like an eternity, a cold, aloof voice rang out from above, as if from the heavens: "Zhang Wuzhi."

Zhang Yue's pallid face flushed crimson. He knocked his head to the floor, sweat droplets scattering into the cold, dark cracks between the bricks.

"Go home and rest for a few days," the emperor said, his tone surprisingly mild. "Wait for further summons."

Then he said flatly: "Since Geng Hetong of the Ministry of Justice is out sick today... Vice Minister of Justice Yu Xiuqun, Left Censor-in-Chief Wang Su, and Grand Court Director Zhang Yuanye."

The named officials stepped forward one by one, holding their hu tablets, and bowed respectfully.

"You are all pillars of the court, steadfast in justice and loyalty. I hereby charge you to jointly investigate this case. You must investigate thoroughly, verify evidence and testimony, and neither wrong the innocent nor let the guilty off. If any of you act with bias or negligence, I will punish you without mercy!"

The three answered in unison: "Yes, Your Majesty!"

Vice Minister Yu responded with the most enthusiasm and fervor.

In his eyes, the emperor's willingness to heed remonstrance and purge the wicked made him the greatest sage of the era!

He praised with heartfelt sincerity: "Your Majesty is most wise!"

All the court officials naturally joined in acclaim: "Your Majesty is most wise!"

Zhi Jie also bowed in salute, glancing sidelong at the trembling Zhang Yue behind him.

His father had given him time—time to kill himself in atonement.

Whether he would choose to die, and how, remained to be seen.

He averted his gaze and thought he should go ask his father for forgiveness again later.

Speaking of which, what was his teacher up to right now?

Better if he hadn't woken up yet, sleeping soundly until the sun was high.

...

Meanwhile, in Tongzhou Prefecture.

Le Wuya squinted, tangled in a mess of blankets, his head against the bed's footboard, his pillow kicked to the floor.

Hua Rong came in carrying a basin of wash water. Seeing his master's sleeping pose, he couldn't help but chuckle.

He set down the brass basin, grabbed a corner of the pillow, and stood by the window, carefully beating the dust off it with a feather duster.

Standing by the window amid the drifting dust, he muttered: "My lord, you've succeeded in suppressing the bandits. Even Lord Mu, diligent as he is, said you needn't worry about official business these two days—he and Lord Zong will handle it. Why not take the chance to laze around? Why are you up so early?"

Le Wuya ran a hand over his forehead, pushing back his slightly tousled curls, and said out of the blue: "Seems like someone was thinking about me."

Hua Rong didn't get it: "What?"

Le Wuya didn't answer. He pulled the small chess piece from his chest and glanced at it, wondering how things were going.

Yesterday, when he got back, Zong Yao told him Zhang Kai still had the nerve to go visit young opera boys.

Tsk, annoying. He felt like cutting the man's balls off.

He glanced at the endless spring scenery outside, rubbed his warm, tight lower belly, and swung himself up in one motion, tucking the chess piece close to his body: "No more sleep. Time to go see my men."

After a quick wash, he ran to Yuan Zijin's door, his curly hair a mess, and pounded on it with all his strength.

The tactic worked like a charm.

From inside came Yuan Zijin's weary voice: "...Wen Ren Ming Ke, are you trying to summon my soul or what!"

Le Wuya asked flat-out: "You dead yet?"

Yuan Zijin: "..."

Le Wuya: "Alright! A whole night's gone and that bandit hasn't come to haunt you—that means he's already been devoured by the ghosts of his victims! Everyone's been reincarnated by now. What are you still moping in there for? Come out, come see your soldiers with me!"

Yuan Zijin reluctantly opened the door, the dark circles under his eyes impossible to hide.

The little tiger had gone off to suppress the bandits yesterday, chest puffed with pride, and come back with his head hanging low.

For him, throwing at a human-shaped target in practice was one thing; watching a living person's brains splatter as they fell before his eyes after a meteor hammer strike was another.

Yuan Zijin said, dejected: "I..."

Le Wuya grabbed him and hauled him out of the room: "Let's go, let's go!"

Yuan Zijin, seeing how full of energy he was, couldn't help recalling how he'd climbed the hill yesterday and neatly slit a hidden sentry's throat with one stroke—the look and motion so effortless it was no different from killing a chicken.

He stared at Le Wuya with pleading eyes: "Tell me, have you really killed people before?"

"Sure have," Le Wuya said readily. "I've killed at least a hundred, if not two hundred. And when I go berserk, I've even killed my own men!"

Yuan Zijin snapped: "...You're lying to me again!"

Yuan Zijin was so caught up in his own feelings that he failed to notice the shadow lurking beneath the other's bright expression.

"Lying to you is fun," Le Wuya quickly recovered his usual demeanor, clasping his hands behind his back and cheerfully leaning in. "Feeling better yet?"

Yuan Zijin rubbed his face roughly, forced himself to perk up, and pulled up his shoe heels: "How many were hurt?"

Le Wuya slung an arm around his shoulder. "A dozen or so lads—they charged too recklessly. Hey, I'm asking you, how were you holding the line?"

Though Yuan Zijin had broken his killing taboo yesterday and was unsettled, he still couldn't help being awestruck by Le Wuya's true skill.

Otherwise, he certainly wouldn't have allowed him to put an arm around his shoulder.

Yuan Zijin grumbled: "It's all your fault—shouting 'Win and eat meat, lose and eat dirt.' You riled everyone up and they all charged forward in a flood. Some even tripped from charging too hard and got trampled by the ones behind them!"

Le Wuya laughed heartily: "That happened? Who was it? I'll go mock him."

Yuan Zijin: "...You caused the trouble, and you have the nerve to mock others!"

The two of them bickered and laughed as they walked on.

... In Tongzhou Prefecture, everyone knew the Prefect had been busy suppressing bandits lately.

Since the "Jade Bridge Brand" failed to corner the market on grey cloth, which sent grey cloth prices in Tongzhou plummeting, Luan Yuqiao's reputation took a serious hit. Even the major merchants who had long followed him in bulk cloth purchases got caught in the fallout and suffered great embarrassment, which naturally led them to cut ties with him.

The once-thriving "Jade Bridge Brand" thus went down in a spectacular, earth-shattering crash.

The winds of fortune shifted in favor of "Tonglu Snow," ushering in spring and opening up a wide-open market.

With the steady stream of military funds from Qi Hongzhuang, plus the intelligence Zong Yao gathered from every corner of the prefecture with painstaking effort, Le Wuya quickly zeroed in on the hideouts of several groups of "Japanese pirates."

Even though the local magnates were eager to fund the pirates, they wouldn't dare keep such hardened robbers and thugs as household staff.

They didn't trust these bastards one bit.

So these men were stashed away in the mountains by the magnates, setting up sheds, posing as mountain folk, and passing themselves off as settlers clearing new land.

In peacetime, the magnates funded and supported them. If supplies ran short, they were given free rein to plunder passing merchants and villages at the foot of the mountains.

When officials came to investigate, they could easily transform back into simple mountain dwellers in coarse clothing, pleading ignorance and brushing them off.

These men had wreaked havoc across Tongzhou for years, and now their comeuppance hit them like a ton of bricks.

The garrison soldiers now had the standard-issue Suzhou steel sabers that Le Wuya had coveted back in Yizhou.

The cavalry unit "Qingcang," with a hundred fine horses, was up and running.

Every garrison soldier got a full suit of armor—head, torso, arms, legs, and feet.

Not to mention anything else, a single squad of fully armored infantry could rout an equal number of unarmored bandits, carving through them like butter, with surprisingly few losses.

Relying on this superior equipment and their hard-earned training, the "pirates" nurtured by the magnates soon found their hideouts going up in flames all over.

The common folk remarked that Prefect Wenren looked like all show and no substance, yet who'd have thought he was such a badass in a fight.

Time and again, on raid after raid, Prefect Wenren led the troops himself.

Le Wuya was like a mole—no matter how deeply these "pirates" hid, he could smoke them out, seizing large quantities of weapons and stored grain, loading them onto carts, and tying the ringleaders to the front, hauling them back in a victory procession.

Moreover, he dispatched military households to occupy all the land the "pirates" had worked so hard to farm.

As long as they were willing to settle there, the land they reclaimed would be theirs, and they would be exempt from taxes for three years.

Instantly, military households jumped at the chance.

Those who'd slipped through the cracks, like sewer rats, figured they could sneak back to their old stomping grounds—no such luck.

Many magnates suffered heavy losses and were seething with resentment, planning to use the same tactics they had employed against previous prefects: hit him from all sides, stirring up trouble in the countryside, hoping to catch him with his pants down.

The garrison soldiers were formidable, but they couldn't clone themselves like Sun Wukong, could they?

However, this time when they clashed, the "pirates," who had won nine out of ten battles before, got their asses handed to them!

Before the new year, after a rousing pep talk by Le Wuya, seventy or eighty garrison soldiers volunteered to return to their own counties and townships to train troops and prepare for battle, seeking their own fortunes.

These seventy or eighty top-notch soldiers returned to their hometowns, freeing up a large number of garrison positions!

Many of these soldiers, before leaving their counties, were still snot-nosed kids who talked crap and played in the dirt.

But after six months of training, they came back completely changed—sharp, disciplined, and able to spout fancy words.

Any young man from a military family with a shred of ambition eagerly set down his hoe and threw himself into training.

And the wives, children, fathers, and mothers of these military households, seeing how much being a garrison soldier could pay off, supported them wholeheartedly, so the young soldiers had nothing to worry about back home.

Moreover, Zhang Feng of Mixi County had made a name for himself fighting the pirates, now with a pretty wife and good farmland—everyone could see these benefits clearly.

Thus, the "pirates" who had merely intended to cause some harassment found themselves crashing into a bunch of hard-asses hungry for glory.

Throughout Tongzhou's counties and regions, there were no more beaten-down soldiers dragging their gear and dropping their weapons.

The prefect's words hit the nail on the head.

Win, you eat steak; lose, you eat dirt!

...

The armed forces that the gentry relied upon were being broken one by one, leaving them all fuming with frustration and agitation.

"Staying 'home' gets us wiped out, and going out gets us wiped out too—can a man even live?!" a drunken gentry named Cao cursed. "That Wen Ren... a peddler by trade... a bastard whelp!"

"Why not just kill Wen Ren Yue first? Without a leader, let them fall into chaos!"

"Haven't you seen the two Thunderclap Bombs he always carries at his waist? At a distance, he has his bow; up close, he has his bombs! Last time, when he hit Old Yu's place, Old Yu had the high ground and could have held out for a while, but that damned Wen Ren Yue shot a primed Thunderclap Bomb over, blowing up Old Yu's stronghold—damn, half the mountain was leveled!"

"Shut your mouth—if you can't talk sense, don't talk at all! You're boosting the enemy's morale and deflating our own! Leveled half a mountain? Why don't you say he blasted the East China Sea into existence?!"

A bunch of minor gentry gathered together, cursing back and forth for a long while, until finally they looked at each other, at a loss for what to do.

Someone timidly offered a thought: "Say, if Wen Ren Yue is in such a hurry to strike, why isn't Zhang Meng'an in any rush to hide his people?"

Zhang Meng'an was none other than Zhang Kai.

"Not only is he not worried, he's living a leisurely, carefree life!" someone said indignantly. "A while back, when Luan Yuqiao went bankrupt and fled with what little wealth he had left, Zhang Meng'an didn't even bother to help. That bastard—all he does is whore around all day, not afraid of dropping dead in bed."

However, the speaker meant no harm, but the listener took it to heart.

Soon, someone hesitantly said, "A few days ago, I heard that Prefect Wenren rode his horse to Zhang Meng'an's residence, and when he came back, he was carrying Zhang Meng'an's precious umbrella. Since that incident, Zhang Meng'an has become elusive, appearing and disappearing without a trace. Luan Yuqiao later went to beg him several times but was turned away at the door every time."

Silence fell over the group.

After a moment, someone spoke in a sinister tone: "Come to think of it, with Wen Ren Yue stirring things up like this, we've all suffered losses, but under Zhang Meng'an's command... that group led by Master Xi—haven't they been left untouched?"