Chapter 201

Lin’an, the Political Hall.

When Shi Miyuan placed the intercepted proclamation from Jiankang on the table, his fingers were steady. He had served as an official his entire life, rising from Vice Minister of Rites to Chancellor of Military and State Affairs, enduring Han Tuozhou’s arrogance, the frenzy of the northern expedition, the bloodshed of coups, and the humiliation of peace treaties—each event enough to shatter a weak mind. He had not broken. But this sheet of paper made his fingers, steady for forty years, curl slightly inside his sleeve.

He had read the proclamation’s content over ten times. He recognized every character, but their combination produced a power he had never seen in official documents, impeachment memorials, or even rebel manifestos—not threats, not curses, not the cold sarcasm of literati. It was a cold, blade-like logic. It declared the Southern Song imperial house a vassal of the Jin, a characterization more lethal than any insult. Shi Miyuan could refute accusations of treason in court, repackage “joint defense against the steppe” as “lips and teeth” in the court gazette, and mobilize censors to write a hundred eulogies proving Zhao Kuo still held the Mandate of Heaven. But he could not refute a single fact in the proclamation. Had the tribute doubled? Yes. Had Tangzhou and Dengzhou been ceded? Yes. Had Han Tuozhou’s head been sent to Jin in a box? Yes. Had the imperial letter confessed to “misgoverning and provoking conflict”? Yes. Had the “military subsidy” of three million taels been written into the treaty? Yes. Had the Yangtze River’s waterways been opened to Jin? Yes. None of these were fabricated.

More terrifying than the proclamation itself was the way it spread: it did not travel along official roads, nor was it posted at city gates, nor sold openly in teahouses; instead, like mercury spilled on the ground, it seeped into the rice sacks of Yangtze grain transport laborers, into the sewing boxes of dye-house workers, into the bamboo yokes of dock porters, slipping into places the court had never reached—and never imagined it could reach. Shi Miyuan’s advisors urged immediate orders to confiscate and destroy it, but how? How could one seize a rough scrap of paper hidden inside a rice sack, a half-burnt log in a hearth, a few whispered phrases passed among dye-house women? Arrest every hundred thousand laborers along the Yangtze? Plunder every million textile households in the south? Impossible.

The advisors then suggested banning speech: anyone spreading heretical words would be executed along with nine clans. Shi Miyuan fell silent for a long time. He knew execution of nine clans would not frighten those already beyond hope. He could not place spies in every rice sack, undercover agents in every dye-house, or firewalls along every field path. The organization calling itself the “Jiangnan People’s Revolutionary Committee” was using a logic he had never encountered in Confucian texts, tearing apart the fragile order he had painstakingly maintained.

Zhenjiang, south bank of the Yangtze.

Xia Zhen, Deputy Commander of the Imperial Guard stationed in Zhenjiang, received a military order from Lin’an. It was simple: immediately confiscate all private writings in the army, strictly forbid discussion of current affairs, violators to be punished under military law. Xia Zhen read the order twice, then placed it on his desk. He was the man who personally arranged Han Tuozhou’s assassination outside Yongjin Gate on the day of the coup, one of Shi Miyuan’s most trusted generals. He knew what lay behind this order—the slogan emerging from the southwestern hills of Jiankang had spread like plague through the garrisons along the river.

The proclamation’s content had already spread secretly within Zhenjiang’s camp—not in written form, but orally adapted: stripped of flowery parallelisms and classical allusions, reduced to its core accusation: “The Song house are the Jin’s lapdogs.” This struck the soldiers’ deepest wound. Their comrades had died at Lingbi, perished from plague at Suzhou, frozen at Dengzhou—and the court called the northern expedition “misgoverning and provoking conflict.” The dead received no compensation; the wounded, no treatment; the living, unpaid wages. Meanwhile, tribute had doubled, indemnity had risen by three million taels—where did this money come from? They knew better than anyone.

One of Xia Zhen’s battalion commanders, while confiscating military documents, found a crumpled scrap beneath an old soldier’s pillow. It bore a shaky copy of the proclamation’s closing lines: “First, oppose Song; second, resist Jin; third, declare independence. No vassalage, no tribute, no marriage alliances, no cession of land.” The commander brought the paper to Xia Zhen and asked whether to punish it under military law. Xia Zhen stared at the paper, sat silently behind his desk for a long time, then folded it and slipped it into his sleeve. He spoke: “This is heresy. Confiscate and burn it. Since it’s your first offense, I’ll overlook it. Leave.” The commander froze, but dared not ask anything further.

Lanterns swayed in the river wind. Xia Zhen sat behind his desk, gazing at the unseen shore across the night, turning over one question in his mind: For whom did the bones at Lingbi fight? He had never asked this before. Soldiers did not ask why—they asked how. But now he began to ask. And once he began, he could not stop.

South bank of the Huai River, Guangzhou.

The headquarters of the Jingdong Pacification Commission was shrouded in gloomy silence. A discharged veteran of the northern expedition stood beneath an ancient locust tree at the village entrance, reciting a passage from the proclamation to a group of conscripted laborers building fortifications.

“The bones at Lingbi are not yet cold; the blood at Dengzhou has not dried—but the teahouses of Lin’an now speak only of wind and moon.”

The laborers did not applaud or cheer. They were too poor—even to muster the strength for excitement. But their eyes changed. Before, their gazes were gray, like the frozen mudflats of the Huai in winter. Now, something glimmered in them—not hope, but hatred. Hatred was harder than hope. Hope could be worn smooth by reality; hatred only grew sharper with friction. On the Jiankang docks, a porter told his companion of the proclamation; the companion told the boat captain; the captain, as he rowed to the opposite shore, told Han merchants trading across Jin territory.

North bank of the Huai River, Sizhoucheng, Jin’s southern front camp.

Heshilie Zhizhong saw a copy of the proclamation during a routine military council. His advisor had translated it into Jurchen, softening the phrasing as much as possible—but the core slogan could not be softened: “The Jin barbarians are the eternal enemies of Huaxia; all our people must regard expelling the barbarians as their duty.” He spoke these words softly, as if describing something unrelated, then laid down the proclamation, lifted his head, and swept his single eye across the assembled generals.

“This proclamation is not Han Tuozhou’s northern expedition manifesto. Han Tuozhou wanted land and glory. This organization wants our lives—our entire Jin’s life. They call the Song house lapdogs not because they hate the Song, but because they mean to strike two enemies at once—us and the Song. Not a single word in this proclamation is meant for the Lin’an court. Every word is aimed at the tens of millions of starving poor in Jiangnan. The poor are more terrifying than any army. Armies break; the poor do not. Once they believe, they will never kneel again.”

He ended with one order: “Send agents into Song territory to spread rumors: the Jiangnan stronghold is Shi Miyuan’s political rival. Let the Song kill each other.” It was the most effective strategy a soldier could devise—but he knew the proclamation was not political rumor. It was truth. And truth is the only thing no strategy can destroy.

Shanyin, by Jinghu Lake.

Lu You had been ill for a long time. After the northern expedition’s failure, his body had withered like an ancient tree drained of sap. On his sickbed, he listened as his grandnephew finished reading the entire proclamation. Then he closed his eyes and fell silent for a long time. When he opened them again, he spoke two sentences. The first to his grandnephew: “Collect all my poems. Do not burn them—collect them. If someone someday asks what the northern expedition was like, show them. Tell them: someone wrote poems for it; someone died for it.” The second was to himself, so quiet his lips barely moved: “I grieve that the Nine Provinces are not united—but the Nine Provinces are not the Nine Provinces of one family, one surname. I wrote this line sixty years ago. Today, I finally understand what it means.”

He had his grandnephew help him sit up by the window. Outside, the winter scene of Jinghu Lake remained unchanged: thin ice covered the surface, reeds lay yellow and bent, distant mountains stood silent in twilight. He picked up his brush and wrote one line on the low table beside his bed. Not a poem—just one sentence: “Red banners roll in the western wind. Today I finally know: this wind is not the western wind—it is the eastern wind.” It became his final words on earth.

Yanshan, Piaoquan.

Three days after the proclamation reached Yanshan, Xin Qiji donned his armor and stepped outside.

He was sixty-two. His white hair stuck out from beneath his iron helmet; the fifty-pound iron spear in his hand no longer gleamed with youthful brilliance, but its shaft remained steady. He walked once around his courtyard. Tian Hu stood at the gate, neither daring to stop him nor daring not to. Xin Qiji halted at the gate, gazing at the winter sky over Yanshan. He said: “I am going to Jiankang.” Tian Hu’s throat tightened: “You’re sixty-two.” Xin Qiji turned to look at him: “What of it? Jiang Ziya was eighty when he was appointed chancellor. I am sixty-two—I can still kill a few more Jin bandits.” Tian Hu knelt and bowed his head.

Xin Qiji did not look at Tian Hu kneeling on the ground. He leaned on his iron spear, standing in the cold wind, gazing at the northern horizon. He spoke no grand words—only stood there silently. Far off, low clouds hung over Yanshan. The wind blew, carrying the scent of pine resin and winter grass. Xin Qiji squinted. At the edge of his vision, it seemed a red banner was unfurling in the wind—not the red of sunset, but the red of blood, the red of renewal, the color of the fire that burns away the old world.

Zhongdu, Daxing Prefecture.

When the proclamation reached the Jin central court, Emperor Zhangzong of Jin, Wanyan Jing, was reviewing memorials in a side hall of Daxing Palace. The memorials, sent from the frontier, reported that a heretical text had appeared in Song territory, with a copy attached. Wanyan Jing unrolled it and read word by word. When he reached the line: “If the Jin survive, the Song are vassals; if the Jin fall, the Song are their funeral pyre,” his hand froze. This judgment matched his own fear exactly—he feared not the Southern Song, which was a donkey with its neck tied, too cowed to kick even as it ground grain to death. But this proclamation was not written by the Song court. It was written by the organization calling itself the “Jiangnan People’s Revolutionary Committee”—unafraid of Jin, rejecting the treaty, viewing both Jin and Song as enemies.

Wanyan Jing slowly laid down the proclamation and said to the attendant Wanyan Anguo: “We just signed a peace treaty, believing the southern front would hold steady for five years. Now it seems we may not even have five months.”

Lin’an, the Political Hall.

Shi Miyuan finally made his decision. He reread the proclamation, which he had already read over ten times, then pushed back his chair, rose, and walked to the window of the Political Hall, his back to all his advisors. His voice was low, but clear.

“Declare the Jiangnan stronghold an ‘evil rebel.’ Anyone spreading its words shall be treated as a traitor, punished with execution of nine clans. From today, ban private discussion of current affairs. Order all routes along the Huai and Yangtze to strictly guard against infiltration by the evil rebels; seize and immediately burn all rebel documents, leaving not a single character.”

The advisors bowed and accepted the order. No one objected. But after they bowed, one whispered: “My lord, if the rebel writings spread like wildfire, too vast to burn, too widespread to guard against—what then?”

Shi Miyuan turned to face the advisor. His face was calm, but his eyes were leaden. He did not answer. Because he knew the answer—if the wildfire truly ignited, this rotting dam of the old era could not hold. But he had no choice. He was the chancellor of the old era. He must stand upon its dam until the flood swept him away.