Chapter 36: Entering The Capital
The carriage left Luofeng Mountain and entered the Great Road. This stretch of road was built wide and straight, able to accommodate sixteen carriages side by side, yet it was crammed full by merchants and travelers coming from south and north, government convoys dispatched from the Capital City on orders, and disaster victims and commoners fleeing to the Capital City…
Because ahead lay the heart of the Great Xuan Dynasty, the super city of a million people—Luodu City!
The houses along both sides of the Great Road also grew dense, no longer the farmhouses and villages seen along the way, but rather ornate pavilions and layered towers with pink walls and delicate willows, flying eaves and heavy galleries, pink walls and dark tiles, gardens and villas lined with flowers and trees, as well as temples and Taoist monasteries as splendid as palace halls, gleaming with gold and jade… Lu Yun was dazzled, truly feeling a bit like a country bumpkin entering the city.
This was the first time in his life he had left the Capital City, taking this very road, but at the time he was only focused on escaping with his life—how could he have noticed the scenery along the way?
“This is even more prosperous than Yuhang City.” Lu Yun could not help exclaiming.
“Of course!” Lu Ying proudly explained to Lu Yun: “This is Luodu City, the most prosperous metropolis under Heaven for a thousand years!” She paused, then emphasized: “This is still just the outskirts of the Capital City. When we get to the Capital City proper, don’t let your jaw drop!”
“The people under the feet of the Son of Heaven are actually this wealthy?” Lu Yun found it somewhat hard to believe.
“Not exactly…” Lu Ying said: “Outside the Capital City, not one inch of land within a radius of five hundred li belongs to the common people.”
“All of it belongs to the Royal Family and the Noble Clans?” Lu Yun understood. “So these manors and towers along the road all belong to them too?”
“Exactly.” Lu Ying nodded and pointed to a distant building with pink walls and dark tiles: “That’s our Lu Family’s Jiangnan Garden. There are more than a dozen gardens of this scale in the outskirts of the Capital City.”
Lu Yun nodded silently. He finally had a direct sense of the extravagant luxury of the aristocratic Noble Clans.
As Lu Ying had said, the closer they got to Luodu, the more prosperous the scene became, with crowds and carriages flowing ceaselessly, surging toward that massive city ahead!
Luodu City had finally arrived! Looking at those grayish-green city walls over ten zhang high, one suddenly felt one’s own insignificance. The convoy was like a small fish, following the dense school of fish into Luodu City.
Once inside the city, the scene grew ten times more boisterous. Shops lined both sides of the Street densely, with colorful flags fluttering in front of the doors. The Street was filled with all sorts of pedestrians rubbing shoulders, people from all walks of life. There were also many Western Regions merchants leading camels, dressed in exotic clothes with high noses and deep eyes, as well as monks from Tianzhu with shaved heads and wearing kesas, all mingling in the crowds. They had set out from distant foreign lands, coming here to the center of the world almost like pilgrims!
The slightly discordant note was that there were far too many disaster victims in the Capital City. Groups of beggars in ragged clothes begged door to door along the Street. Everywhere one could see the thatched sheds they had set up, clearly intending to settle in the Capital City…
They had trekked from the disaster-struck prefectures, because they knew that only in this Luodu City was there any chance of survival… The government, the Imperial Palace, and the Various Clans had all set up congee kitchens in various places in the Capital City, where the disaster victims lined up in long queues waiting in front of large pots—that was their whole family’s hope for survival.
The carriage moved slowly forward, and the brother and sister Lu Yun could clearly hear the conversations of the disaster victims.
“When it comes to generosity, it’s still the Xiahou Clan’s congee kitchen—the amount of rice they put in is even more than at the Imperial Palace’s congee kitchen.”
“Yeah, I hear the Xiahou Clan has set a rule that the porridge pot must be thick enough to stand chopsticks upright in it. If the chopsticks tip over, the porridge maker loses his head…”
“The Mei Clan’s congee kitchen is good too. It’s not as good as the Xiahou Clan’s, but much better than the others!”
“The stingiest has to be the Lu Clan—their porridge is so thin you can see your reflection in it. How many grains of rice do they put in a whole pot?”
“That’s right! The Lu Clan claims to uphold a scholarly family tradition and loyalty and filial piety, yet they’re so shameless?”
“The people at the top naturally have face, but the people at the bottom don’t—who can do anything about it?”
The carriage gradually moved away, and the voices of the disaster victims faded, but Lu Xin’s face was full of shock.
.
The carriage passed through the market street and soon saw a great river stretching across ahead—this was the Luo River. To the north lay the Imperial Palace, where the Imperial Clan and the direct lineages of the seven clans also resided north of the Luo River.
South of the Luo was the residential area for lesser aristocrats, officials, and commoners; the collateral lineages, retainers, and dependents of the great Noble Clans also lived here.
The whole city was like a chessboard, with the Luo River as the Chu-Han boundary line; the chessboard to the north loomed high above, looking down on the subservient small fry to the south…
The carriage reached the south side of the Luo River Bridge and stopped advancing, instead following the Luo River eastward to the ward gate of a riverside ward. Lu Yun saw that the plaque on the ward gate bore the two upright regular script characters “Congshan.”
The convoy entered Congshan Ward and stopped in front of a house gate, where an old man with graying hair and beard was already waiting eagerly.
“Grandfather!” Seeing the old man, Lu Ying jumped down from the carriage and ran over with red-rimmed eyes.
Seeing his granddaughter whom he had not seen in ten years, the old man was so moved that tears streamed down his face. He held Lu Ying’s hand and looked at her again and again, saying in a trembling voice: “Ying’er, you’ve finally come back…”
“This is your grandfather.” Lu Xin walked to Lu Yun’s side and said softly. “Go over and pay your respects quickly.”
The old man had already looked over, his face full of excitement as he gazed at Lu Yun.
Lu Yun had already recognized that the old man was Lu Xiang, Lu Xin’s father. He took a deep breath, suppressed his complex emotions, stepped forward, and kowtowed: “Your grandson pays respects to Grandfather…”
Lu Xiang pulled Lu Yun into a tight embrace, patting his back hard, and said excitedly, somewhat incoherently: “Good grandson, Grandfather has missed you so much… It’s a pity your grandmother didn’t get to see you one last time. Let Grandfather take a good look at you…”
Saying this, Lu Xiang widened his dim, yellowed old eyes and examined his grandson.
At that moment, Lu Xin, Madam Lu, and Lu Ying all held their breaths in tension. Lu Yun stiffened a little.
“Good grandson, you’ve changed so much, Grandfather can hardly recognize you…” As Lu Xiang examined Lu Yun, he kept sighing: “This nose, these eyes—they’re so much better looking than when you were little…”
“Grandfather,” Lu Ying hurried forward and coquettishly said: “See if I’ve gotten prettier or uglier.”
Lu Xiang duly shifted his gaze to Lu Ying, his beard trembling with laughter as he said: “You’ve gotten prettier too. A girl changes eighteen times between childhood and adulthood, getting better each time!” Then he glared angrily at Lu Xin: “You beast, ruthlessly staying away from home for ten years—now this old man can’t even recognize his own grandchildren!”
Lu Xin gave an embarrassed smile, secretly relieved in his heart—this hurdle had been passed…
At this time, Madam Lu also paid respects to the old man. After a series of diversions, Lu Xiang completely stopped paying attention to Lu Yun’s appearance. For a lonely old man, as long as his grandchildren returned to his side, that was the greatest comfort—how could he scrutinize changes in their looks?
Besides, who could remember clearly what they looked like ten years ago?
Huang Ling and the others helped Lu Xin carry the luggage into the house, then took their leave. The Lu Clan’s retainers had also left upon entering the city, but the courtyard was not short of people. Congshan Ward was one of the Lu Clan’s eight residential enclaves in the south city; the ward was full of fellow clansmen, and Lu Xiang was the clan leader here, so all the neighbors naturally gathered to congratulate him.
Lu Xiang had not been this happy in many years and ordered fifty tables of banquet food from the restaurant. Since the house could not hold them, he set up a continuous open-air feast right on the Street.
Naturally, Lu Xiang did not forget to invite the direct lineage from North of the Luo, but only a few representatives came to perfunctorily respond, clearly not taking this branch seriously.
This inevitably left Lu Xiang feeling rather sad amid his joy. He was, after all, Clan Leader Lu Shang’s younger cousin, sharing the same grandfather as Lu Shang. He had lived in North of the Luo for most of his life before moving to this Congshan Ward. He never imagined that this, his first time hosting in over a dozen years, would already be impossible to get his North of the Luo clansmen to attend…
