Chapter 12: Quietly Changing Another's Fate
"Go and seek protection from His Lordship the Magistrate?"
Out of a bone-deep, instinctive fear of those above him, Feng Guan flinched involuntarily, the small flicker of courage he'd just managed to muster collapsing almost immediately. He began to waver.
Li Shun's brow shot up. "What are you afraid of? You're a First-Rank peer of the Great Qian now."
Feng Guan blinked, then slapped his own thigh as though waking from a dream. "Right! I'm a Gongshi now!"
Even so, he paced back and forth inside the room for the better part of a quarter hour, tangled in indecision, before finally steeling himself and turning back toward the Magistrate office.
Perhaps it was true that rank, once conferred, truly did change everything.
When County Magistrate Fang Xun heard Feng Guan's concern, he did not wave the man off as he would a servant. In an uncharacteristic display, he actually paused to consider for a moment, then nodded. "What you say is not without reason. The rebel remnants of the Great Xiang have not yet been fully rooted out, scattered holdouts remain in the wilderness. For a newly granted Gongshi traveling home with only two courier escorts, the arrangement is admittedly not particularly secure."
Fang Xun tapped a finger on the desk and said with mild indifference: "Yishu, pull a unit of Black Armor soldiers. Personally escort Gongshi Feng. See to it that he arrives at his home county without incident."
County Commandant Cheng Yishu, standing to one side, visibly froze. "My lord, this..."
Sending the commandant who controlled an entire county's military forces to personally lead elite Black Armor soldiers as escort for a man freshly removed from the degraded labor registry? Cheng Yishu had just opened his mouth to point out how unseemly this was but he caught the depth and unquestionable authority in Fang Xun's eyes, and thought better of it. He bowed his head and clasped his fists in acceptance.
"Take Swiftward Talismans. Go quickly and return quickly." Fang Xun added with the same mild, even tone.
"As you command."
Nine o'clock in the morning.
Surrounded by a mounted unit of armored Black Armor cavalry, Feng Guan rode out through Lengshan County's city gate at a gallop.
Li Shun again stood hidden within the crowd to watch him off, then returned to the wooden house and waited patiently through the day into the night.
This time, with the Black Armor army as an iron wall around him, the homeward journey appeared to proceed without incident and by deep into the night, no word of disaster had come.
Li Shun's heart settled.
The Self-Reflection activated once more.
Time reversed again to the seventeenth day of the second month.
Li Shun went through the same motions as before. Feng Guan, surrounded by the Black Armor cavalry, set off on the road home.
Watching Feng Guan on horseback clearly intimidated by his first time riding, shrinking slightly in the saddle yet with an uncontainable flush of exhilaration on his face, Li Shun slipped back into the morning mist, a quiet thought passing through his mind.
"Old Feng. This is as far as I can take you."
"Whatever road lies ahead, that's entirely up to your own fate."
The Great Qian Black Armor Army's mounts were the renowned steeds Moongazing Whites, capable of covering three thousand li in a single day. Combined with the Swiftward Talismans and the channeled earth-qi flowing through Great Qian's official roads, they moved as though riding the wind itself.
At first, Feng Guan clung to the reins with a white-knuckled grip. But as he gradually found his footing in the saddle, watching the world blur past on either side and feeling the wind tear past his ears, he felt a wildness and exhilaration the likes of which he had never known in all his life. A surge of something vast and fierce rose in his chest, he almost wanted to throw his head back and shout at the sky.
But a sidelong glance at the stone-faced, tower-like soldiers in full armor riding beside him was enough to convince him to swallow that impulse quietly back down.
Hooves flew. By late afternoon, the escort procession had already reached the border checkpoint of Lengshan Commandery.
The need for a border inspection slowed the column's pace.
The sudden appearance of this group of towering, savagely imposing Black Armor elites immediately set the merchants and travelers on the road murmuring amongst themselves.
"Whose Black Armor soldiers are these? That murderous aura, are the border territories going to war again?"
"Ha, not at all. You see that young man in the middle of the column with that look of confidence about him? Word has it he was nothing more than a lowly corvée laborer in Lengshan County, stumbled onto a stroke of absurd luck, uncovered a rebel plot, reported it and earned the credit. Managed to claim a staggering piece of merit and was granted a First-Rank Gongshi peerage! This, right here, is a genuine homecoming in glory."
"First-Rank Gongshi!" A wave of awed and envious exclamations swept through the crowd.
But a few with sharper ears and better connections let out quiet, knowing scoffs. "A mere First-Rank peerage, calling that a staggering merit is generous. The one who truly profited from all this is Lengshan County Magistrate Fang Xun. They say he was originally demoted and exiled from the Holy Capital and has been grinding away in this frozen backwater, waiting for his chance. This time he seized the opportunity to capture a living legitimate heir of the Great Xiang royal line. In my opinion, it won't be more than a few days before Magistrate Fang returns to the central court in triumph."
The crowd absorbed this fuller picture of events and erupted in another wave of astonishment, most faces settling into expressions of profound envy.
Within the press of that crowd, however, one entirely unremarkable old woman stood apart, her face beneath the hood of her cloak churning with an emotion entirely different from those around her.
It was Yu Niang, who had fled in disguise.
"Fang Xun..."
Yu Niang's fingers clenched the hem of her cloak until her nails were nearly drawing blood.
"All those years. How many times did you pour out your frustrations to me on that bed, lamenting that you had no path forward, complaining that you would likely spend the rest of your life rotting away in this remote corner of the world.
"Now you've achieved a merit that will mark your name in history. You're about to return to the capital in glory, crowned in titles and honors. And I... I have to spend the rest of my life skulking like a rat through back alleys, hiding from your hunters, because I dared to exist.
"I gave you the best, most beautiful years of my life as a woman. And now you intend to cast me aside without a second thought..."
The crushing weight of that disparity, like some invisible and vicious curse, ignited the jealousy smoldering at the bottom of her heart.
Yu Niang's eyes were threaded through with red, swimming in envy and resentment. Under the pull of those violently twisted emotions, the delicate face beneath her disguise had taken on something almost grotesque.
Her mind, completely consumed by that green-eyed fire, had also conveniently chosen to forget the matter of losing the [Lengshan Vessel]. Only one frenzied thought remained, beating like a drum, she absolutely could not allow that faithless, heartless man to go enjoy his windfall of good fortune alone.
She stared at the column ahead, still working its way through the border inspection, then looked back in the direction of Lengshan County.
She did not hesitate again. She turned sharply on her heel and slipped back against the flow of the crowd, heading in the opposite direction.
...
The undercurrents churning at the border of Lengshan Commandery were entirely unknown to Li Shun.
At this moment, his primary consciousness was submerged in the Fangcun space, methodically guiding stalk after stalk of Lengshan Grass to repair the half-ruined stone statue.
Watching the dim blue light disappear into the cracks of the statue one by one, Li Shun's brow furrowed slightly.
"This round of repair has consumed nearly eighteen stalks of Lengshan Grass again. The total inventory in the entire Fangcun space now stands at only eighty-seven."
Eighty-odd stalks was still a workable reserve for now. But the nearly one-directional drain on the supply, with almost nothing coming in, settled an uneasy weight on Li Shun's chest. He was not a man who liked leaving things to chance.
He cast a quiet glance at the brocade case containing the [Lengshan Vessel], sitting not far away.
The frost seal covering the case's surface had thinned considerably from what it had been at the start.
"Soon. Another ten-odd days, and this seal will dissolve entirely."
The nineteenth day of the second month.
Li Shun's officially granted rewards finally cleared the bureaucratic process and were formally delivered into his hands.
A ten-year exemption from Lengshan corvée labor. Three hundred thousand yuan in coin. And a single private residence, situated in a relatively quiet corner of the county town.
The first two he didn't care much about. But that last one, a private dwelling, was of exceptional importance. A space that belonged exclusively to him, where no one could shove the door open and barge in unannounced: for someone carrying the world-shaking secret of the [Fangcun], it was nothing short of a gift from heaven.
He collected the key, dragged his lame leg, and moved into his new home.
He did not rush to store the land deed and property documents inside the Fangcun space. He simply tucked them carefully under his pillow.
Then he conducted a thorough inspection of the entire residence.
"The Great Qian authorities have methods one cannot easily guard against, and that Fang Xun is a deeply suspicious man. I cannot be certain whether this new residence conceals any hidden detection formations or surveillance measures.
"Even if I haven't drawn suspicion, caution is still warranted. The puppet absolutely must not be released to show its face anywhere for the foreseeable future."
Li Shun sat in the empty main hall, his eyes moving with quiet thought, and forcibly suppressed the impulse to immediately begin digging a hidden escape tunnel beneath the floorboards.
...