Chapter 174

Shanyin, by Jinghu Lake, the winter rain had just stopped. Lu You had not slept for three days.

Three days ago, a swift horse from Lin’an brought news of the northern expedition decree. The messenger was an old acquaintance from his time at the National Academy in Lin’an, now a low-ranking clerk in the Privy Council. The letter contained only a few words—Grand Tutor Han had overcome all opposition; the Emperor had issued the decree: three armies would advance northward at once, reclaiming the Central Plains, today.

Lu You held the letter, his emaciated fingers trembling so badly he could barely grip the paper. He stood in the courtyard, drenched by the winter rain, his eighty-year-old servant rushing out with an umbrella, only to be shoved away. He read the letter seven times, each reading like a confirmation it was not a dream. Then he lifted his head toward the gloomy sky and let out a hoarse scream, so ragged it barely sounded human. The sound was too muddled for the servant to make out what he shouted. But anyone familiar with Lu You’s poetry would have known its content.

—On the day the imperial army secures the Central Plains.

He had waited for this day his entire life.

Lu You was born in Xuanhe Seventh Year, the year before the Jingkang Disaster. The Jin army’s southern invasion, the two emperors captured and taken north, the Song court’s flight south—these earth-shattering events occurred while he was still too young to walk. His whole life had been lived for one goal: northern expedition, reclaiming the Central Plains, washing away the nation’s shame. In his youth, he served on the frontlines at Nanzheng, clad in armor, wielding weapons, coming and going through Dasanguan—that was the happiest and most painful time of his life, for that northern expedition ultimately came to nothing. Afterwards, he was demoted, sidelined, ignored. In countless rainy nights, he drank alone, writing poem after poem with no audience. His poems multiplied, his hair thinned, yet the northern mountains and rivers grew ever farther. By his eighties, he believed he would never live to see the northern expedition. Last year, he even wrote “Shi Er”—“I knew from death all things turn void, yet grieve I’ll not see the Nine Provinces whole. On the day the imperial army secures the Central Plains, at family rites, do not forget to tell your old father.” That poem was not written for his son—it was his own deathbed testament. He had prepared to die with regret.

Now, this letter from Lin’an told him—you cannot die yet. You must witness the imperial army crossing the Huai River, see the people of the Central Plains offering food and wine, see the Song banner re-planted atop Kaifeng’s walls.

Lu You pressed the letter to his chest, tears streaming down his face. His old cotton robe, worn for three years, was soaked through with rain and tears, yet he felt nothing.

That night, Lu You’s study burned with light.

He took out his treasured Xuan paper—silk paper sent to him by an old friend from Nanzheng, its surface still faintly bearing the water patterns of Shu. His hand trembled as he ground ink, spilling it several times. He lifted his brush, the tip hovering above the paper for a long time. Eighty years of life, decades of waiting, countless sleepless nights, countless poems about northern expedition—yet at this moment, he did not know what to write.

Suddenly, a horn sounded outside the window. Not a military horn, but a fisherman’s call from a returning boat on Jinghu Lake. Yet when that horn rang through the night, Lu You shuddered. He closed his eyes and returned to fifty years ago. He was thirty-eight, on the Nanzheng front, snow blanketing bow and blade, riding with his comrades out of Dasanguan, chasing the Jin army, hooves shattering frozen rivers, the north wind slicing his face like knives. It was the most triumphant moment of his life, and the closest he had ever come to the Central Plains.

He opened his eyes and let the brush fall.

“In youth, how could I know the world’s hardships? Northward I gazed, heart like a mountain. Night snow on warships at Guazhou Ferry, iron steeds beneath autumn winds at Dasanguan.”

He paused here, lifted his head, gazing at the night outside. Jinghu’s water shimmered cold under the moon; distant mountains loomed. North lay the Yangtze, farther north the Huai River, beyond that, the Central Plains. He remembered his comrades who had fought and died beside him in Nanzheng, the soldiers who fell on the northern expedition, the belief he had followed his whole life—and been betrayed by. He lowered his head again, and the brush moved once more.

“The Great Wall of the frontier, empty boast; in the mirror, my aged temples already streaked with white. The Memorial on the Expedition is truly famed through ages—who else can match its peer?”

When he finished “Shu Fen,” he set down his brush, stared at the ink on the paper, and trembled all over. He had written poetry for decades—from twenty to eighty, thousands of poems. This one was not the best—but it was the truest. He read it once, then again, then suddenly laughed. Laughing, he wept; weeping, he picked up his brush again.

That night, he wrote four poems. “Shu Fen” recalled the past; “Hearing the Imperial Army Has Recovered Henan and Hebei” envisioned victory; “Sending Xin You’an to the Capital” sent word to his old friend; and one untitled seven-character quatrain, only four lines, which he wrote and then pressed beneath the inkstone, refusing to let anyone see. The four lines were—“I knew from death all things turn void, yet grieve I’ll not see the Nine Provinces whole. On the day the imperial army secures the Central Plains, at family rites, do not forget to tell your old father.”

It was his poem “Shi Er” from last year. He copied it again, changing “at family rites, do not forget to tell your old father” to “today I have witnessed the Nine Provinces whole.” He changed only this one line—but he had waited eighty years for it.

At dawn, the villagers of Shanyin noticed something strange. A flag hung outside Lu You’s gate. It was old, made of plain hemp, its edges frayed, its color faded beyond recognition, yet the original red could still be made out. It was a military banner from Nanzheng fifty years prior, which Lu You had kept buried in a chest, only taking it out once a year to air on the anniversary of his departure. Today, he hung it at his front gate.

The flag snapped fiercely in the cold wind. Woodcutters and fishermen paused, unsure what had happened. Then they saw Lu You step out, dressed in a faded but neatly pressed old official robe, a plum blossom pinned in his hair, holding a bowl of wine. Standing beneath the flagpole, he raised the bowl high toward the north and shouted, voice hoarse.

“Soldiers—old man Lu You cannot join you on the battlefield; from here, I offer my distant blessing—may your banners triumph! Reclaim the Central Plains! Wash away the nation’s shame!”

His voice carried little in the wind, but those nearby dropped their work. Some echoed his cry, some clapped, some ran home to fetch wine saved for the New Year. The news spread faster than the wind—by midday, all of Shanyin knew: Lu Fangweng had gone mad. An octogenarian, upon hearing news of the northern expedition, had stayed awake all night, hanging flags, shouting, writing poems—his vigor outstripping the young. Some laughed at his folly, some revered his folly, some said his whole life had been lived for a single thought, and now that thought had finally come true, madness was only natural.

Lu You did not care what others said. He raised his cup, drained the remaining wine, and turned back to his study. He must write more poems. He must make the whole world know that northern expedition was the Song’s most righteous cause. He must make those still hesitating, watching, calculating gains and losses feel this blood that had waited eighty years. He spread out paper, his brush dancing like a dragon, poem after poem. At the end of each, he signed with two alternating names—“Fangweng” and “Shanyin Veteran.” When he used “Fangweng,” he was the poet, the literary patriarch, the banner of the pro-war faction. When he used “Shanyin Veteran,” he was the soldier, the warrior who once donned armor on the Nanzheng front, the man who had spent his whole life waiting for the court’s order to charge across the Huai River.

On the seventh day, Lu You gathered the poems he had written, selected twenty-odd he deemed best, and prepared to copy several copies for dispatch. One to Xin Qiji, one to Zhao Chun, the rest scattered among friends to be copied, given to storytellers in teahouses as material. He would make these poems reach the ears of soldiers on the frontlines, the eyes of the courtiers in Lin’an, the hearts of every Song subject still doubting whether this northern expedition was worth it.