Chapter 155: The Heir

Compared with the southwestern provinces, even neighboring Fujian could be called a superior province, and Guangdong far surpassed its surroundings not only in population and resources, but more remarkably in the maritime trade it had enjoyed since the former Ming dynasty — a trade so enormously profitable it made one gasp.

Naturally, then, Guangdong had become a hereditary treasure-land in the eyes of the Shang father and son.

The two of them had long regarded Guangdong as their private preserve; otherwise they would never have fought so desperately when Li Dingguo's great army twice attacked Guangdong. Had it been any other province, they would likely have turned and fled long ago.

Likewise, the Prince of Jingnan, Geng Jimao, also eyed the treasure-land of Guangdong with burning envy. As the saying goes, a newborn calf does not fear the tiger — and before the elder-generation "tiger" Shang Kexi, the calf Geng Jimao was not the least bit timid.

For the past two years the Prince of Jingnan's household had made it plain that it too wanted Guangdong, or at the very least wanted a share of the prize; otherwise Geng Jimao would not have stubbornly lingered in Guangzhou, refusing to leave.

To drive Geng Jimao out, Shang Kexi had submitted several memorials to Beijing, but all sank like stones into the sea.

The young Emperor within the Forbidden City seemed quite satisfied with the present state of affairs in Guangdong and was in no hurry to settle which princely house the province should belong to.

There was but one bowl of porridge, yet two monks, and the abbot of the temple paid no heed — so the relationship between the two princely houses in Guangdong naturally became extremely delicate.

With a great enemy before them, the two could join hands; once the great enemy was gone, the two were no longer so solidly united. Li Shuaitai saw all this and kept it in his heart.

The young Son of Heaven must have given him certain instructions as well; otherwise he would not have been so impatient, the moment he took office, to sow discord between the two princes.

As heir of the Prince of Pingnan and the future Prince of Pingnan himself, Shang Zhixin was far more sensible than his younger brother Shang Zhixiao. This "sensible" did not mean Li Shuaitai had wronged him.

In character, Shang Zhixin was indeed arrogant and conceited, utterly disdainful of others.

Apart from his father Shang Kexi and a handful of men in the Prince of Pingnan's household, he truly held no one in his eyes — even his own younger brother Shang Zhixiao was, to him, a person of no consequence.

Yet when it came to the ownership of Guangdong and the relationship between the Prince of Pingnan's household and Beijing, this heir was quite sensible indeed.

Over the past two years, most of the memorials Shang Kexi sent to Beijing had been urged on by him, and the memorials concerning moving the Jingnan princely house elsewhere had been single-handedly engineered by him.

Of course, His Highness the heir was not particularly skilled with the brush; the actual drafting was done by others.

At the beginning of the year, after Li Dingguo lifted the siege of Xinhui, Shang Kexi and Geng Jimao simultaneously sent urgent dispatches to Beijing, identical in content — reports of merit.

Shang Kexi reported merit for the banner troops of his Prince of Pingnan household, and Geng Jimao reported merit for the banner troops of his Prince of Jingnan household — one of the Han Banners' Plain Yellow Banner, the other of the Bordered Blue Banner.

They contended for merit with great relish, each claiming the defense of Xinhui had been chiefly the work of his own troops, until the Qing court itself could not decide whose merit was greater.

It was only when Li Shuaitai could no longer bear to watch and submitted a direct memorial that the Qing court finally fixed the merit according to the facts, determining that the troops who had contributed most in the battle of Xinhui were those under the Prince of Pingnan.

Unfortunately, the commander of the Xinhui battle, You Yunlong, had actually been assassinated by a xiucai within the city — a matter that greatly humiliated Shang Kexi.

The chief reason he had contended with Geng Jimao for merit was to secure You Yunlong's appointment as Provincial Military Commander of Guangdong, thereby gaining complete control of Guangdong's military and civil authority.

Who could have expected that the merit would be won, but the man would be gone?

Left with no choice, Shang Kexi had to step back and recommend another favored general — Wu Jinzhong, Regional Commander of the Right Wing, a man of bandit origin from the Dashun army — for Provincial Military Commander of Guangdong.

The memorial had already been submitted; so long as no one at court raised objections, it would most likely pass in the palace as well.

His own troops were already stronger than that whelp Geng Jimao's, and since marching south he had successively taken in many surrendered soldiers and officers.

With the merits of pacifying Chaozhou and holding Xinhui, he could also seize the post of Provincial Military Commander of Guangdong for his own command. However one reckoned it, the Prince of Pingnan's household held every advantage in Guangdong.

Now it only remained to see how long that whelp Geng Jimao could hold out before slinking away. If he truly would not leave — without money and without troops, could the Prince of Jingnan really endure?

He could not even think much of his own younger brother Shang Zhixiao, let alone Geng Jimao, who was a year younger than himself and had inherited his princely title because his father had died.

From childhood, because Shang Kexi, Kong Youde, and Geng Zhongming had been close, and because all had been placed in the Han Banners with their homes near one another, Shang Zhixin and Geng Jimao had often played together.

In those days, Geng Jimao had been at best a tag-along to "Big Brother" Shang Zhixin. Shang Zhixin's attitude toward him had been that of a mere playmate, and once he grew a little older, he was no longer much inclined to bring Geng Jimao along to play.

Instead, he spent all day ******** hanging around Kong Youde's precious daughter Kong Sizhen, calling her "elder sister" all day long, eagerly hoping his father could arrange the match for him, so he could bring Kong Sizhen home and have his way with her.

Who could have expected that the Prince of Dingnan, Kong Youde, would be defeated by Li Dingguo at Guilin? After Kong Youde's death, Kong Sizhen fled alone to Beijing, where the Empress Dowager in the palace took her as an adopted daughter and enfeoffed her as a "Heshuo Princess."

It was said the young Son of Heaven also eyed this princess with great interest, the two of them stuck together all day long — who could guarantee there was nothing filthy between them?

The moment he thought of the woman he had wanted to ride since childhood being ridden by another man, Shang Zhixin burned with rage and stifled frustration. Had that man not been the Emperor, he would long since have hacked him to pieces.

But alas, that person's station was too high, not one that he, heir of the Prince of Pingnan, could afford to offend, and so this grievance could only be pressed down in his heart.

We're all fucking human — why the hell are you the Emperor, while I'm just a prince's heir! Why must my father obey you, and I obey you too!

Are kings, lords, generals, and ministers born of a special breed?

A true man should be like that!

Shang Zhixin, feeling he had been cuckolded, had suddenly conceived such thoughts the year before last, and as time passed, this notion had somehow grown stronger and stronger.

Shang Kexi, Kong Youde, and Geng Zhongming had all come from the Liao army of the great Ming dynasty in their day. His father Shang Xueli had served as a Mobile Corps Commander of the Eastern River in the Ming, and later died in battle at Louzi Mountain.

His elder brother Shang Kejin had also been a famed general of Liaodong, killed in action in the fourth year of Chongzhen while fighting the Later Jin army. Father dead, brother dead — by all reason, this was a blood feud that could not share the same sky.

Yet Shang Kexi had still surrendered to the very enemies who had killed his father and brother. If his father and brother knew beneath the springs, they would surely die with their eyes open.

Three generations of military service — the Shang family could be counted a house of generals. By Shang Zhixin's generation, skill in bow, horse, and arms had not been neglected.

Shang Zhixin himself was an extremely accurate archer and an excellent rider, while his younger brother Shang Zhixiao excelled with the long saber. In martial skill, the two brothers were not, as Li Shuaitai had said, mere wastrel sons.

The brothers were extremely diligent in military matters, though not from natural inclination but rather constrained by the times.

With Ming and Qing now contending, the whole realm was a world of warriors, and the Shang family, enfeoffed as Prince of Pingnan, had to pacify the southwest for the Qing court. If the sons of the house did not know warfare, how would that do?

Yet when he received his father's order to lead troops in relief of Xinhui, Shang Zhixin was extremely unwilling. It was not that he was unwilling to lead troops into battle — he was a young man, after all, and had practiced martial arts for years; how could he not love fighting?

Besides, it was not that tiger Li Dingguo who was coming, so there was no need for fear. What he objected to was that the one who had named him to command the troops was not his father Shang Kexi, but that whelp, the Prince of Jingnan, Geng Jimao.