Chapter 148: Rift Between Court And Regional Lords
The news of Emperor Shu’s death officially arrived in Bo Prefecture. To meet the earnest expectations of all parties toward himself, Wu Fei also put on a show and performed a piece of performance art.
In front of the earthen platform, surrounded by numerous elders and officers and soldiers, Wu Fei burned incense while crying and shouting incoherently.
“Previous Emperor, you were wise and divine, you showed me kindness by recognizing my talent! How could you suddenly be gone! You escaped from the collapse of a hundred thousand troops, and under the support of various vassal lords along the way, you smoothly returned to Yao Capital. How could you suddenly be gone in Yao Capital?!” Wu Fei disregarded decorum and beat his chest and stamped his feet. Large amounts of paper money fluttered in the wind.
Wu Fei had no literary talent; even if advisors wrote articles for him, they could not become widely renowned. Performance art had to be “striking.”
Of course, the surrounding literati would absolutely not record Wu Fei’s crude words as they were; they would only spread that Wu Xiao Que was heartbroken over Emperor Shu’s death, with words incoherent.
As for what all parties were thinking? Wu Xiao Que knew clearly. It was nothing more than that he had been promoted by Emperor Shu, and now with the previous emperor’s unexpected death, holding heavy troops, he should make some statement.
Of course, just crying a bit would suffice. If he really fulfilled certain ambitious people’s wishes and charged to Yao Capital like a hot-headed youth to challenge the new emperor, that was impossible. This crying performance transmitted to Yao Capital was to remind the new emperor in Yao Capital to quickly come appease him.
Wu Fei: “As long as I guard and abide by the basic law, can you really demote me?”
Prince Zhou, oh, Emperor Ling now was overwhelmed even in the imperial court and did not want to target me.
As for the Eastern Market Army’s losses in this incident—Xuan Chong: “Tsk tsk, those non-commissioned officers of the Eastern Market Army who originally thought of becoming the Son of Heaven’s trusted heavy ministers, now their blood reward has been withheld by Su Wang’s faction. What does that have to do with me? Anyway, I’ve trained the army organization.”
Now Wu Fei reviewed Emperor Shu’s operations and confirmed that Mu Xingyu was the key to Emperor Shu replacing him.
Wu Fei led numerous non-commissioned officers of the Eastern Market Army to achieve merit outside, but upon returning to the imperial court for rewards, Emperor Shu clearly did not want Wu Fei to come. He wanted to replace with Mu Xingyu to operate, in order to reclaim military power.
But Mu Xingyu died directly in the incident, and was pinned with a rebellion charge by Prince Zhou’s faction, forcing the Eastern Market Army now to center on himself and stay entrenched in Bo Land.
Wu Fei staggered on unsteady legs as he was carried down by the soldiers, staggering precisely avoiding horse dung on the road.
Two days later, all Great Yao vassal lords learned of Wu Fei’s performance art performance in Bo Land, so they all waited with considerable strategic composure, just waiting.
…Pigeon flapping wings, flying back and forth…
On a piece of saline-alkali land, Wu Fei was looking at a field. This field had harvested a batch of potato-like things, and a small workshop nearby was extracting, boiling, and processing.
Wu Fei valued this thing highly; it was a special crop brought from Haotian Realm. What it produced was not edible stuff, but rubber. That is, the core material for various sky boat airbags on the Haotian side now, and also the sealing rings for steam engines.
This thing yielded highly like potatoes, with a 10% rubber yield probability from the underground tubers.
On the Bo Land side, as artisans from Hao State fled over, bringing back the technology of “kiln-firing sulfur and refined carbon powder,” Wu Fei gave a positive evaluation to this “East-West Exchange”… pfft, “cross-planetary exchange.”
Gongshu Wang already had many key applications for this material, such as installing corresponding materials on the mechanical feet and joints of all wooden cattle and horses, reducing wear and tear.
Speaking of which, after Gongshu Wang learned of this thing, he shook his head and sighed; this was lamenting that his descendants were again taking shortcuts.
Puppet mechanism technique, the Yin Yang attribute timber Yao calculation combination was quite critical; if the wooden joints were not handled strictly, slight expansion would scrap the mechanical puppet structure. But after inserting these processed rubber parts, the stability of the entire wooden mechanism improved, its buffering effect made the handling between wood and wood, timber Yao calculation processing, not need to be so strict.
Gongshu Wang as a traditionalist could not bear to see his descendants in the future muddle along in craftsmanship, not advancing.
Speaking of which, Wu Fei did not care about this artisan spirit, only understood one sentence “technical default processing error value can be larger” and thus asked: “So, it can be mass-produced?”
After getting Gongshu Wang’s helpless affirmation on this matter, thus, Wu Fei began planting in Bo Land, and sent seedlings back to his hometown.
And on the official road of Bo Prefecture, batches of merchant caravans headed toward Southern Region Pengze. Ever since Wu Hengyu appeared in his south, Wu Fei utilized the Grotto-Heaven route.
Xuan Chong’s perception of heaven and earth was stronger than ordinary people. With Evil Moon’s waves of vortexes smoothly falling on the ground, this world began spiritual energy revival, ghost and spirit power also increased, many Grotto-Heavens capable of spanning thousands of li appeared in heaven and earth, and those with vigorous vital energy in the mortal world could also generate martial qi.
…Faction dividing line…
At Gu Shou Pass, Zhao Cheng awaited Great Yao’s collapse with a sense of relief. Across Gu Shou Pass in standoff was the most patience-testing squatting confrontation since he came out of seclusion.
Wu Fei had steadiness disproportionate to his age. This made Zhao Cheng, in addition to marveling, feel a sense of mutual appreciation.
But this time he did not take the opportunity to urge surrender Wu Fei, because after so long mutual letters, Zhao Cheng also knew Wu Fei’s character; in previous communications, he knew Wu Fei had seen through the intent of his flattery-kill.
In terms of “meticulous mind,” Wu Fei surpassed most generals of the same age. And after seeing through the intent, instead of “breaking into curses” to prove his innocence, he methodically used means to counter, which had a heroic demeanor.
Of course, more importantly, Zhao Cheng’s “playing means” also made it harder for him.
When Wu Fei sent the Great Cauldron back then, Zhao Cheng felt that Hao State’s dragon descendants were even more guarded against him. Of course, such guard also prompted the brigadier generals he promoted to comply with the imperial court’s suspicions of him and withdraw from Yan Land.
Zhao Cheng foresaw that if he now took advantage of Great Yao’s internal problems to send a surrender urge letter to Wu Fei while suffering setbacks, he might receive an even more damaging response.
Zhao Cheng guessed correctly; if he came to urge surrender at this time, Wu Fei already had a prepared plan in mind: he would counter with advise to ascend.
On the letter Wu Fei had written, it would emphasize: We are all Great Yao people, you are a hero, we submit to you, we are willing to surrender to you, but unwilling to submit to Hao State. Shall we do it together?
On this point, Wu Fei’s ridiculous performance would make the Great Yao side laugh haha; after all, no one would believe Wu Fei would surrender to Zhao Cheng.
This was equivalent to a superpower’s official quitting a good position to work for a second-rate country’s official. But Hao State’s dragon descendants could not laugh.
Both sides as military generals dispatched “spies” to each other’s territories and knew each other’s sensitive nerves.
The same chess moves, Wu Fei might not play as well as Zhao Cheng, but he could understand Zhao Cheng’s chess manual.
Unlike before, when Zhao Cheng made moves, those generals did not know where they were hit by dirty tricks.
…Wu Fei’s dirty tricks were not few…
On the other side, King Hao in Sha Prefecture looked at Zhao Cheng’s memorial and snorted coldly. The memorial said to wait another half year, at most two years, Great Yao would have discord between generals and ministers, then Bo Prefecture’s garrison morale would be low, and it could be taken in one battle.
Obviously, he felt uncomfortable with Zhao Cheng’s confident report of soon achieving great merit. He had an inexplicable “jealousy” toward Pu E valuing Zhao Cheng.
At this time, a nearby minister obviously saw all this, thus not so “envious of talent” and advised: “Your Majesty, if the Great General really elite-trains his troops, naturally victory can be achieved. For such great merit, please enfeoff the general as Duke Zhao.”
At these words, the imperial court buzzed with discussion. Actually, on Hao State imperial court, the ones least assured of Zhao Cheng were not King Hao; because King Hao knew Pu E could control this Great General.
Even if the Great General was ever so strong, he would not waste him for the time being.
And the ones least assured of Zhao Cheng were his peers, those veteran generals. Zhao Cheng’s power expansion directly competed with them.
Just like Li Guang’s line, when seeing Wei Qing and Huo Qubing’s line of more capable great generals rise, they were like facing a great enemy.
These Haotian Generals who had previously been “unfortunately” successfully ambushed by Wu Fei now formed a “losers” alliance, constantly reminding King Hao, making King Hao fear Zhao Cheng’s soaring prestige in the army.
Thus, King Hao now issued an imperial decree, ordering Pu E to leave Gu Shou Pass, while dispatching multiple Dragon Descendant Generals to the Eastern Region to obey Zhao Cheng’s commands.
…History homework…
Xuan Chong: Based on historical experience, small states find it hard to enfeoff great generals.
Because military merit blood labor is the greatest merit, the greater the great general’s ability, after a major victory, the harder it is to balance “blood labor blood reward.”
And the small state’s internal power core is long adapted to internal “local network” interests, unable to handle wide-area network (under heaven) divisions. When the general conquers under heaven, the general awards merit and rewards, when not conforming to “local network” internal faction balance, it leads to discord between general and sovereign.
This formula applies to almost all cases; the few exceptions that escape this formula are historical classics sung, such as Prime Minister Zhuge, Guan Yu, etc.; these were unique honors given by Liu Bei to these great generals in history. After all, such private bond of not wanting the rivers and mountains but avenging brothers is only one case in two thousand years of imperial system.
And more cases are Zhao She and Zhao State, Lian Po and Zhao State, Li Mu and Zhao State, Jiang Wei and Shu State types.
Actually, it’s the same in modern times; in that Middle East mess, once an anti-US iron-fisted strongman appears, they can be precisely hunted by America and Israel; behind it are small forces dreading “great generals.”
So, founding great merit must be the founding lord himself being a great general, such as Liu Bang and Li Shimin types. Even Liu Xiu did not dare overly heavily employ Geng Yan.
Xuan Chong “boxed” Zhao Cheng for a year without “boxing” any results, thus gave up this “technique.”
Turned to summarizing on the “way.”
Xuan Chong summarized history as: Zhao Cheng’s current situation is “small state supporting great general.”
Nowadays Zhao Cheng has already several times achieved sky-high merits for Hao State internally, yet Hao State’s internal rights cannot distribute merits matching Zhao Cheng.
Xuan Chong: “Even if Zhao Cheng is loyal enough, like love-struck head over heels, faithful unto death; what about his subordinates, also love-struck head over heels, not for future prospects, just wanting to be dogs?”
In contrast, Wu Fei in this aspect, although experienced Emperor Ling’s succession and subsequent suspicion, still had advantages. No matter how muddle-headed Great Yao top level monopolized power, Emperor Ling under pressure from all sides still had to leak some prestigious titles to all parties.
And he only needed to hold down his subordinates’ restlessness, stabilize army morale, and slowly wait.
Oh, although Great Yao’s new emperor was harsh to Eastern Market Army, he was not harsh only to Eastern Market Army. All parties were watching Great Yao’s new emperor’s that group of “ten eunuchs,” amusing themselves above; in the end, who was anxious?
…Vassal lords unable to get merits all hoping a fool jumps out to make trouble, but Wu Fei is not foolish…
In Yao Capital, in Li Palace to the due south, Emperor Ling was enjoying beauties’ service on the couch. At this time Su Wang came in with small steps, kneeling and waiting outside the curtain.
Inside the curtain was a gentle land, outside on the jade steps, Su Wang flatteringly presented their handled court affairs, among which one on top involved a secret report of “Wu Fei conspiring with all parties in Bo Land, intending rebellion.”
Emperor Ling seeing this, the merriment inside suddenly stopped, as if scalded, immediately dismissed the beauties, hand lifted the curtain, and asked: “Wu Fei rebelled?”
The tone seemed calm, but actually a bit panicked; not only because Wu Fei’s troops were elite, but also because Eastern Market Army had inner responses among many powerful families in Yao Capital; even more importantly, he himself had no confidence—heaven’s mandate only half-integrated, constantly reminding him his position was not rightful.
Emperor Ling summoned secret guards and learned that his several imperial brothers were now all restless.
Emperor Ling rarely got serious, Su Wang originally thought it was easy persuasion, this time he felt the suppression of heavenly might.
Su Wang: “Not yet, but according to the secret report, this minister has full confidence that Wu Fei and they are plotting rebellion; this minister suggests detaining their families.”
“No!” Emperor Ling waved his hand, rejecting this statement. He closed his eyes, rubbed his brain overindulged in wine and women, mobilized mental power to think, then recovered some kingly poise, glanced at this close minister: “Do you want to attack dissidents?”
Su Wang: “This minister, this minister absolutely has no such intent; this minister everything is for our Great Yao’s rivers and mountains state altars.”
Emperor Ling’s kingly pressure grew heavier, the flames in the palace also dimmed somewhat.
But thinking it over, Emperor Ling still reined in his anger, slowly said: “Bo Land’s officers and soldiers these years battled for the country, labored hard with high merit, originally should be rewarded; unfortunately encountered national calamity, I was excessively heartbroken and somewhat negligent.”
Emperor Ling issued his first imperial decree. Affirmed Wu Fei’s correctness in battling at the border, loyal to previous emperor loyal to Great Yao, then started the enfeoffment.
Very obviously, crying children get milk. Emperor Ling now did not want subordinates to rebel.
As for Su Wang purging Eastern Market Army’s forces in Yao Capital? Heh, Eastern Market Army indeed had much goods and shops in Yao Capital. Families of army generals were also in Yao Capital, but Wu Fei himself in Yao Capital!—clean hands.
As for Princess Xiasheng and Wu Fei’s marriage agreement? “What marriage agreement?” Princess Xiasheng: “Previous emperor never issued such an imperial decree oh.”
After Emperor Ling’s brain jumped out from wine and women numbness, he suddenly discovered the dynasty had no substantial leverage over such a powerful military general. And this mess was exactly made by himself!
After pacing back and forth in the palace, he slightly added some content to his imperial decree.
…Enfeoffment fast horses rushed northward…
Six days later, Emperor Ling transmitted the great enfeoffment news, to enfeoff officers and soldiers everywhere. Generals everywhere were jubilant.
Xuan Chong clearly knew: “The eunuch group around the new emperor could not control the opposing pressure from everywhere.”
However, before this enfeoffment, what attracted under heaven more was that Emperor Ling first implemented the enfeoffment of Bo Land’s Wu Brothers.
These two titles were respectively County Marquis Lao Guang and County Marquis Fu Ling. Imperial envoys respectively proclaimed the decree in the two military camps then left, and Wu Fei and Wu Hengyu both received the decree and gave thanks, accepting Emperor Ling’s appeasement.
This let under heaven understand that temporarily hoping Wu Fei to jump first wave rebellion, then implicate Wu Hengyu to join, was impossible.
In Yao Capital, in the Minister of Works’ residence, the Minister of Works stared at the Map of Mountains and Rivers (replica) at Bo Land and sighed with regret: Wu Yuanchang is not a loyal and righteous man!
However, in the Minister of Works’ residence, a young literati official named Ji Yan discovered details. The Wu Family Brothers’ enfeoffed lands seemed split. One in Bo Land, one yet in Chong Land. And Wu Fei’s enfeoffed land in Chong Land.
Ji Yan thus said: Su Wang’s faction does not trust Eastern Market Army, we still have opportunity.
…Wu Hengyu and Wu Fei’s military camps now separated…
After enfeoffment, Wu Fei went south to Wu Hengyu’s Military Camp.
In the camp, Wu Hengyu was already waiting; seeing Wu Fei enter the tent, he smiled and said: “County Marquis Lao Guang has arrived.”
Wu Fei paused, knowing he was mocking, retorted: “County Marquis Fu Ling has fine spirits!” Then moved a case by himself, joined Wu Hengyu’s table, then propped elbow and sat. Nearby soldiers and advisors all went out, leaving space for Wu Family Brothers.
Nearby Yu Li wanted to pour wine, Wu Fei: “No need, I’ll pour a full cup.”
Thus to Wu Hengyu said: “Our two armies are to merge camps.”
Wu Hengyu nodded.
Wu Fei: “Both sides’ non-commissioned officers to rotate, coordinate command.”
Wu Hengyu looked at the wine cup, still nodded.
Wu Fei: “You must do your task, prepare to take over Eastern Market Army.”
Wu Hengyu’s hand picking up the wine cup paused, then put down: “You’re handing the troops to me?” (This was his just silent key, because after troops merge, who leads?)
Wu Fei put the steamed buns steamed in the nearby bronze vessel into a bowl, at the same time cut open with knife and stuffed full of meat inside.
“New emperor gave my enfeoffed land in Chong Land, yours in Bo Land, so here is with you in charge.”
Wu Hengyu snatched the roujiamo Wu Fei stuffed, bit a mouthful, to Wu Fei with empty hands said: “So you’re just going back like this?”
Wu Fei not annoyed, took another bun, did not stuff meat, bit a mouthful of bun, ate a mouthful of meat.
Wu Fei squeezed a smile: “I’ve long wanted to go home.”
Wu Hengyu looking at Wu Fei sighed: “Eastern Market Army is your painstaking effort.”
Wu Fei indifferently waved hand: “Meat is all in our own pot, giving to you or not is the same? What’s more, I’ve given to you more than once.”
Wu Hengyu slammed the roujiamo back into Wu Fei’s bowl: “Did I rob yours?”
Wu Fei stunned, picked up the roujiamo: “If not eating, don’t waste grain.”
Then Wu Fei paused: “Later arrange all our matters well; take your Grotto-Heaven, we go back to south side, go see uncle. After all, matters between you and me have always been decided by uncle, must let the elder know.”
Wu Hengyu looking at Wu Fei wolfing down unselectively, deeply sighed. —Originally his subordinate officers and soldiers were displeased, because Wu Hengyu’s enfeoffed land was in Bo Land. And military strategists in one area can only have one head.
But Wu Fei’s reaction made Wu Hengyu somewhat complex; all along, it was Wu Fei proactively yielding to resolve potential problems between the brothers.
