Chapter 644

After the morning court the next day, Xie Tu received the news; Lantai Hall summoned him.

He also had a sense of it, yet his feelings were inevitably complex.

Good news, the Grand Duke no longer needs to make the arduous journey north.

Bad news, it will be hard to explain to His Majesty.

Sure enough, as soon as the King saw him, he snapped, 'You hopeless idiot!' 'Don't tell me, you don't know those few lines from Lu Xiu.' 'I see you're doing it on purpose, deliberately lowering your presence.'

Xie Tu never thought the King was easy to fool; in some respects he could be described as unsurpassedly shrewd. The King always treated him cordially, and they got along well in private. Xie Tu felt that arguing and lying to the King would hurt their feelings, so after thinking it over, he gave up.

"Your Majesty, your vision illuminates a thousand miles, your gaze is like a torch." He acknowledged.

Such a frank admission left the King incredulous; he glanced at Wei Shen, who was lounging sideways in his seat, and exclaimed loudly, 'What does he mean?'

"The other party admitted that everything you said was correct, but out of embarrassment, he just threw in a flattery."

King: ……

Xie Tu: ……

As Xie Tu was performing the salute, he wanted to explain, but realizing the summary was spot on, he opened his mouth and then closed it again.

"No way, does that mean you admit you don't want Princess Shang?!" The King wanted to slam the table. "You actually don't like the Imperial Elder Sister?!"

"This cannot be admitted," Xie Tu immediately explained: "I am five years older than the Elder Princess; I feel the age gap is a bit large, and in life we might have nothing to talk about, lest I neglect the noble lady."

Upon hearing this, the King knew Xie Tu was out of luck; forced melons aren't sweet, and the Elder Princess has no worries about marrying. But he said, "Five years older? That's not really big; I don't accept this reason. Go back and think of a better one, or this matter won't end."

Xie Tu was driven away, his head bigger than when he came, and he actually wasn't sure what the King really thought.

At today's morning audience, the King again reiterated that they must fully pursue and apprehend the murderer who ambushed the Wusun envoy; Dong Fu, from the time of death, inferred the maximum distance the assassin could have fled, and yesterday he sealed the border of You Prefecture; the garrison cavalry of You Prefecture poured out of the west and south city gates in a mighty procession, and at year's end such an ill‑omened affair for the King occurred, tightening the atmosphere in You Prefecture city.

Meanwhile, before the morning audience had even begun, as the sky just grew light, a sizable caravan set out from Peace and Health City; the already‑on‑alert city guards found no problems, waited a while, and finally let it pass.

The magistrate who was inspecting the south gate saw only a back view and said, "That caravan is not small—did you check it carefully?"

"Sir, we checked it thoroughly. It is the Jin family's caravan; they brought in nearly four hundred thousand taels of goods onto Vermilion Bird Avenue, the invoices are present and the goods match. Every crate was opened and inspected before being allowed through."

Everyone knew which "Jin family" this unqualified reference meant—the wealthiest Jin family of Great Jin. Nowadays, with the times troubled, only that Jin family could bring in hundreds of thousands of taels of goods to You Prefecture. The magistrate nodded and said, "You must stay alert and miss no detail."

Who would have thought that, after the caravan had gone far out of the city, its two leaders were also muttering under their breath, "…I said we shouldn't take this load; even each bolt of cloth was taken out and weighed—what a waste of those fine blades."

"It's not that I'm Monday‑morning quarterbacking—given the standard of the Peace and Health city guards, could we even break out? Once we leave You Prefecture, the defenses drop by more than one level; what could they do to us? Chen Erxiong won't take any risk, so this trip of ours can't be considered smooth." This person obviously acts aggressively, a pity he's only the second‑in‑command.

"Don't forget our main mission on this trip: merely to sabotage the relations between the Western Regions and You Prefecture. Once the master's negotiating chip is in hand, our task is done. This time we've brought only experts; for two thousand blades we cannot afford to retreat intact and suffer a loss. You Prefecture might not be able to find those weapons, so we can just let the genuine caravan come back later to retrieve them."

"We're not even going through Luoshui Pass, and there's support to the south; having come all this way we've only killed a few Wusun people, yet Chen Erxiong doesn't want to kill more northern border folk to avenge his elder brother Chen Daxiong?"

The man called Chen Erxiong reined his horse, his face darkened, and after a moment he squeezed out a few words from between his teeth: "I've dreamed of it. I and Bai Li Jing cannot coexist under the same sky."

The column had gone forward half a li when he suddenly snorted coldly: "This place is crawling with northern border folk; before we leave we might as well kill enough to break even."

Contrary to everyone's expectation that the west would be more complicated, they therefore assigned the Marquis of Pacifying the North to handle the southern direction, while Zhang Tu personally led men westward. After a day passed with no word from the King, he knew the matter was likely in jeopardy.

Either they had already fled You Prefecture, or they were still hiding in place, having blended into the populace. The surviving Wusun captive only woke up that afternoon; upon regaining consciousness he divulged only the number of assassins, giving no other useful information.

Dong Fu had already begun to screen the floating population of You Prefecture; hearing that the assassins numbered about thirty, he immediately suspected the caravan that had left the city.

"They probably left under the guise of a caravan; right now there are two caravans whose numbers match. One belongs to the wealthiest Jin family, the other to the Ministry of Commerce."

The King could not comprehend the Wusun's fighting prowess, saying, "Only thirty men—that many Wusun, or even more, and yet not a single one was left alive; without our elixirs they would all have been wiped out."

The King tried to search with a full terrain map, but it was like looking for a needle in a haystack; he suspected the enemy had already dispersed and gone their separate ways.

"Was it the Jin family's caravan that left through the south gate of Peace and Health? Then pursue it! Don't count on the Marquis of Pacifying the North—assign more personnel to search the south‑bound caravans!"

This matter seriously dampened the King's New Year spirits; for the celebration of his first year on the throne he lacked all enthusiasm, only ordering Zhao Baolige to prepare the finest.

"Anyone can be deceived, but we must not deceive Heaven!" the King declared solemnly.

Zhao Ba: ……

If he weren't an insider, he would have believed it.

The King's troubles were far from over; on the twenty‑sixth of the twelfth month he received an urgent memorandum from the Marquis of Pacifying the North: in the village of Mo Jin, Yi Prefecture, a settlement near the imperial highway had been sacked by bandits, leaving fewer than two‑fifths of its two‑hundred inhabitants alive, right on the route the Marquis was tasked with intercepting the caravan. The Marquis sensed something grave and reported it at once.

You Prefecture city was shaken; the King's desire to throw the Marquis of Pacifying the North into prison could no longer be restrained.

The Black Wind Horse couldn't even outrun the caravan's lame steeds!

"They took no wealth or grain—isn't this just retaliatory killing?!" With too many enemies, the King could not immediately tell who hated the northern border so fiercely.

He opened his full terrain map of Yi Prefecture, located Mo Jin, and saw on the map a calm expanse; only his heart was seething with rage.

By this point, the ministers could only urge the King to quell his anger and settle the remaining survivors. The King pored over his Asian grand sandtable, gave a curt reply, handed the matter over to the Minister of Revenue to handle, and then hurriedly drove the people away.

Xie Yuan left feeling extremely uneasy; this shipment seemed in no way capable of swallowing that indignity. Leaving the Orchid Terrace Hall, he grabbed Zhao Ba, urging him to keep advising, and said that should any new … new development arise, he must send someone to inform the Xie mansion.