Chapter 119

Jin Wushu drew his knife, but Wanyan Nianhan felt only contempt in his heart.

First, with so many great generals of the Western Route Army here, including plenty of true battlefield warriors and a ring of armored guards outside, there was no way a cripple could actually harm him, a Boglieh and commander of the Western Route Army.

Second, although this meeting was only in Yanjing and only two Boglieh were present, it was in fact a major occasion for two of the Great Jin's three major factions to conduct a "large-scale friendly consultation" on this year's main military operations. For Jin Wushu to rudely call him Nianhan by name right from the start, then draw a knife at the slightest disagreement, only showed that this young man was impetuous and hot-headed. After one defeat on campaign, he was at his wit's end, had lost his senses, and was merely displaying his incompetence.

Third, and most importantly, incompetence was not terrifying; what was terrifying was that Jin Wushu had let everyone see his incompetence!

However, just as Nianhan sneered inwardly while maintaining a composed expression, the next moment, Jin Wushu, under everyone's gaze, suddenly did something no one expected... This Fourth Prince of the Jin Kingdom did not threaten anyone after drawing his short blade. Instead, without a word, he directly slashed open his own forehead in front of everyone!

White blade, red flesh, blood streaming down.

And while everyone stood dumbfounded, Jin Wushu threw down the short blade, knelt facing north, and kowtowed repeatedly, even bursting into loud wails:

"Father, if your spirit is in the underworld, please open your eyes and see! You've been gone only five or six years, and your son is already being bullied by family slaves to this extent!"

Like everyone else, Nianhan first froze, then was stunned, and then felt a chill in his heart mixed with a surge of rage... This Fourth Prince of the Wanyan clan was too good at making trouble, and too shameless!

Was it worth it, for a grudge over a buttocks?

"Fourth Brother!"

Sure enough, in this eerily quiet atmosphere, without anyone else needing to speak, Wanyan Woben, the eldest son of Wanyan Aguda, another Boglieh present, and the true leader of the Aguda faction at this moment, promptly spoke up to rebuke him, and his expression showed no sign of pretense. "Nianhan is our elder brother, not some family slave. If you dare speak nonsense again, I will petition the Emperor to have you sent back to Liaodong, never to enter the Pass again!"

Upon hearing this, Jin Wushu, ignoring the blood still streaming from his forehead and the bloodstains on the ground before him, immediately turned around, slightly cocking his buttocks as he made a grand salute to Nianhan, and with a serious face assumed a posture of apology, as if it hadn't been him who had just cut his face and cursed: "Elder Brother Nianhan, I didn't know my place and spoke recklessly, offending you. Please punish me."

"Wushu, we are brothers, and you are young. If you're momentarily unhappy and curse me a couple of times, it's no harm," Wanyan Nianhan said, his rage having reached its peak, yet he managed to hold it in, merely complaining slightly. "But you shouldn't have said 'family slave'... because those words dragged my father into it as well! My father was the cousin of the late Emperor Taizu and your cousin, and also the Grand Chancellor of the Great Jin! The Hulun Boglieh that your elder brother holds was inherited from him. If my father was a family slave of Emperor Taizu, wouldn't your elder brother also be a family slave of our current Jin Emperor?"

"Drag him out!" Wanyan Woben, the Hulun Boglieh beside him, was momentarily startled, then took over the conversation again, pointing at his own fourth brother from his seat in the hall. "Right here, whip him twenty times!"

The guards beside them hesitated for a moment, but under the silent pressure of the two Boglieh, they gritted their teeth and stepped forward, dragging Jin Wushu to the threshold of the Grand Hall of the Yanjing Branch Secretariat. They didn't dare pull down his trousers, only bared his upper back, and proceeded to flog this Fourth Prince in public.

The sound of the whip was slow and heavy, and in the Grand Hall of the Yanjing Branch Secretariat, the scene once again fell into a silence so deep it was frightening.

To be honest, no one had expected Jin Wushu to pull such a stunt, but this Fourth Prince, by slashing open his own forehead with one knife, had also used one sentence to easily tear away all the outer curtains of the Jin Kingdom's core power.

Nianhan was certainly not a family slave. As Nianhan himself had said, his father, Wanyan Sagai, was the cousin of Jin Taizu, Wanyan Aguda, and also the Grand Chancellor.

In fact, Wanyan Sagai's faction had been the second largest faction within the Jurchen from the very beginning... And after Nianhan inherited his father's power and influence, he also held command of one of the Jin Kingdom's three main armies—indeed, the strongest, the Western Route Army. After the death of Wanyan Elibu (Aguda's second son), relying on his immense military achievements and prestige accumulated in the wars to destroy Liao and Song, he became the foremost figure in the military and the top founding meritorious official of the state.

So, of course, Nianhan had the right to be angry! He also had the right to be angry! And he could openly force Jin Wushu to be punished... Not to mention a single Jin Wushu; a few years ago, Nianhan had even led the flogging of the current Jin Emperor, Wanyan Wuqimai! No one had heard of Emperor Wuqimai doing anything to Nianhan after receiving those twenty strokes.

However, Nianhan was Nianhan, and others were others. With Jin Wushu's words just now, almost everyone keenly realized a problem: no matter how chaotic the internal power struggles of the Jin Kingdom were, how they checked and balanced each other, how they still possessed a tribal democratic spirit, how they were rapidly sinicizing, and how many loopholes in power were left by the parallel systems of the Boglieh system and the Grand Marshal's Office... one undeniable fact was that the core power structure could no longer accommodate outsiders.

The Jin Kingdom had three major factions.

The first was the Wanyan Wuqimai faction. He was the second emperor of the Jin Kingdom, legitimate and natural.

The second was the Nianhan faction. The source of Nianhan's power was also too classic... political tradition, blood inheritance, military power, plus prestige built from personal military achievements, a natural safe haven for distant branches of the Wanyan clan. The complexity and legitimacy of the situation could practically warrant a specialized book titled "On What is Political Power."

But the third faction, the Aguda faction, was conversely too straightforward. Especially after the death of the prestigious Second Prince, Wanyan Elibu, the source of this faction's power was simple to the point of being criminal: it was blood inheritance, pure and simple, because they were the seed of Wanyan Aguda!

By virtue of this, Wanyan Woben, Aguda's eldest son by a concubine, could be the Wulu Boglieh, the de facto Grand Chancellor. By virtue of this, Wanyan Eliduo, Aguda's third son, could command the Yanjing military after the death of the second son, Elibu, and hold the nominal command of the Eastern Route Army. By virtue of this, the young, inexperienced Jin Wushu, who had even lost a battle with heavy casualties, could silence everyone, preventing them from meddling in the affairs between his brothers and Nianhan.

In fact, after the flogging, Jin Wushu, covered in bloodstains, stood up. He did not look like someone who had just been punished and lost face, but rather like an absolute victor!

His face contorted, he looked around, surveying the scene. Wherever his gaze fell, the various nobles of different tribes in the hall, the countless great generals from the Eastern and Western Routes, and the numerous high civil and military officials of Yanjing all averted their eyes.

After a moment, Jin Wushu sat down again, and both sides resumed discussing this year's military plans. But this time, with heavyweights like Wanyan Loushi, Wanyan Gushen, and Wanyan Yinshuke absent, Nianhan was left alone to face the three Wanyan brothers, making him appear utterly discomfited. As for the others, after what had just happened, they dared not easily interject... Even Wanyan Talan, a representative of the third faction and a Marshal Left Supervisor, remained silent with a dark face throughout.

To be fair, Jin Wushu had used a strange tactic, a "kill one thousand enemies, lose eight hundred of your own" approach, turning an expanded meeting into a core meeting and creating a siege-like situation, causing Nianhan to show many flaws under the attack of the three brothers... But this foremost powerful minister of the Jin Kingdom never wavered. In the end, perhaps out of anger, he simply followed Wushu's example and started acting like a rogue in public.

"No matter what you brothers say, the Western Route Army has its own place to go." As the sun began to set in the west, Nianhan said this, and the meeting broke up on bad terms.

After the meeting adjourned, the various Jin nobles of Yanjing, who had been stifled all morning, naturally called their friends and companions to return together, buzzing with discussion.

However, regarding that stifling meeting just past, apart from the core members of the two major factions, most neutral parties held a consistent view—in terms of individual high-level performance, the Fourth Prince Wushu had undoubtedly gone too far, to the point of being repulsive. However, Nianhan had also ended up at a disadvantage in the subsequent debate, because he could not effectively explain his strange stance on the Western Xia issue. Why, on one hand, did he use Western Xia as a reason to refuse assisting the Eastern Route Army, while on the other hand, he refused to launch a war of annihilation against Western Xia?

Combined with various recent rumors in Yanjing, some speculated that either Western Xia had given Nianhan a massive bribe, or Nianhan deliberately wanted to keep Western Xia alive, the so-called "nurturing bandits to enhance one's own importance," thereby maintaining his political privileges in western Hebei and Shanxi.

It should be known that the just-concluded first imperial examination of the Jin Kingdom had been entirely handled by Nianhan in his capacity as the Left Vice-Marshal of the Grand Marshal's Office, and all the talents who passed had been assigned by him to Hebei and Shanxi.

However, with this near-white-hot conflict between the direct and collateral lines of the Wanyan clan now exposed, leaving aside the inevitable gossip of others within Yanjing, let us speak only of Wanyan Talan, the Marshal Left Supervisor of the Grand Marshal's Office and a trusted minister of the current Emperor. Upon returning to his residence, he did not go to his own quarters but instead hurriedly turned into a secluded small courtyard within his home, and asked the somewhat flustered "master" of the courtyard for his counsel.

"What do you think, Little Qin Academician? How should I handle this?" Wanyan Talan sat cross-legged on a stone stool under a grape trellis in the small courtyard. After rambling on about the situation, his expression remained unpleasant. "Which side should I help?"

Little Qin Academician was naturally the handsome, long-legged Qin Hui, Qin Huizhi, who was in the prime of a scholar's life. Upon hearing this, he also responded with a composed and serious expression, no longer showing the anxiety of the past: "This matter is actually simple, but coming from my mouth, a student, it might seem somewhat inappropriate."

"What does that mean?" Wanyan Talan frowned slightly, his mood growing even more irritable.

"To report to the Vice-Marshal, the current situation is that the differences between the Eastern and Western Route armies cannot be easily reconciled. Rather than thinking about helping one side persuade the other, it would be better to take advantage of the intense confrontation between the two sides to reap some benefits for yourself, Vice-Marshal." Qin Hui carefully cupped his hands in salute. "However, not to mention that I have received great kindness from the late Second Prince, Marshal Elibu, and great kindness from Marshal Nianhan, and later also great kindness from the Emperor. Just considering the current tripod-like balance of power in the state, to enable you, Vice-Marshal, to profit from it would inevitably require manipulating things from the highest level, looking down from above. This would carry the suspicion of playing with power. And for a surrendered person like me, wouldn't such an action be overstepping my bounds?"

Talan was momentarily stunned. After understanding the meaning behind the other's flowery words, he couldn't help but stroke his beard and sigh: "Little Qin, you yourself said the state is like a tripod, with three legs standing. The situation between the two sides is intense, and it's not something we can meddle in. You've been in my residence for years now; we are already very close. At a time like this, for you to offer me a plan or a strategy, why speak of overstepping bounds?"

"Yes." Qin Hui became even more cautious.

"So, how should we manipulate things?" Talan ignored the heat and leaned forward eagerly, as if impatient. "And what benefits can we gain?"

Qin Hui, smelling the strong scent of spices on his patron, pursed his lips slightly, took two deep breaths, and then slowly said: "Vice-Marshal, although the Academician calls you Vice-Marshal, that is just a common title. In reality, you are only the Marshal Left Supervisor of the Grand Marshal's Office. And although everyone calls Marshal Nianhan 'Marshal,' he is only the Vice-Marshal of the Grand Marshal's Office... Is that correct?"

"What of it?" Talan couldn't help but laugh at this, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth. "Ever since that scoundrel Anban Boglieh Xianye returned the post of Grand Marshal, the actual Grand Marshal of the Grand Marshal's Office has been the Emperor. The Left and Right Vice-Marshals are the true commanding marshals of the Left and Right Routes, the East and West. And the two Supervisors, myself and Wanyan Gushen, are in fact Deputy Marshals... It's not an incorrect title."

"Then, Vice-Marshal, have you ever thought about becoming a proper commanding marshal?" Qin Hui suddenly spoke, striking directly at the other's heart.

Talan fell silent, sat back down, and paused for a long time before shaking his head: "Huizhi, don't joke with me. Who wouldn't want to be a proper marshal? But the Left and Right Vice-Marshals are Nianhan and Eliduo (Aguda's third son, Wushu's third brother). What do you expect me to use to compete with these two?"

Qin Hui felt a slight pride in his heart but did not show it on his face. He took the opportunity to catch his breath, then continued calmly: "Vice-Marshal, you naturally cannot compete with these two... But what if the Grand Marshal vacates his post, leaving an empty Marshal position?"

Talan found this even more absurd: "The Grand Marshal is the Emperor. How can the Emperor vacate his post? If he does, what happens to the military power of the Marshal's Office?"

"Naturally, Marshal Nianhan would be promoted to Grand Marshal. The Third Prince, Eliduo, is already stationed in Hebei; why not transfer him to be the Western Route Army Marshal? And you, Vice-Marshal, could then be promoted to Eastern Route Army Marshal!" Qin Hui stood with his hands clasped, speaking without hesitation. "In fact, it is precisely because the Emperor has left the Grand Marshal's Office that you, Vice-Marshal, are needed to take over the military power for him!"

Talan's heart stirred. He felt he had grasped something, but couldn't see it clearly, leaving him intensely curious. He asked earnestly again: "But why would the Emperor willingly give up the post of Grand Marshal and let me take over the military power for him?"

"Two reasons." Qin Huizhi cupped his hands again in explanation. "One is that the Emperor is not actually capable of leading troops. Holding the title of Grand Marshal to control military power is rather like a chicken rib... ah, rather a display of empty authority. It would be better to send a trusted confidant to truly grasp the military power. And when the Emperor took this post of Grand Marshal back then, it wasn't purely for the military power. The other reason is, naturally, that the several Marshals would be willing to give the Emperor what he wants most."

"Don't be cryptic." Talan grew more impatient. "What is it that the Emperor wants most?"

"Naturally, it is the say in who will become the third Emperor of the Great Jin after the current Emperor's passing." Qin Huizhi made a distant salute towards the north.

Talan was suddenly enlightened, as if clouds had parted to reveal the moon.

To be fair, from the very founding of the Jin Kingdom, the issue of succession had been a complete mess!

After Aguda died, his younger brother, Anban Boglieh (Crown Prince) Wanyan Wuqimai, succeeded him, the current Emperor. After Wanyan Wuqimai ascended the throne, the Anban Boglieh (Crown Prince) was his younger brother, Wanyan Xianye... At the same time, relying on the prestige of founding the state, Aguda left a huge political and military legacy for his own sons. Wanyan Woben, Aguda's eldest son and the head of his faction, who had been opposing Nianhan today as the Hulun Boglieh, had been constantly trying to contend with Xianye for the succession, to the point where everyone openly referred to these descendants of Aguda as the "First Prince," "Second Prince," and so on.

However, returning to the current Emperor, Wanyan Wuqimai was unwilling to let either his younger brother or his nephews succeed him. He allowed his nephews to contend with his younger brother for the succession, and previously stripped his younger brother of the post of Grand Marshal, taking it on himself. This had only one purpose: to put his own son on the throne! And the greatest obstacle to this Emperor was none other than Nianhan! Because if this bizarre succession system were maintained, Nianhan could also get his hands on something. In fact, the previous farce of flogging the Emperor was precisely a mess jointly engineered by Nianhan and Xianye.

Among the Jin nobles who had emerged from primitive tribal alliances, there were still some muddle-headed ones who were unclear about such matters. But for the surrendered Song officials, who were well-versed in the "Oath of the Golden Cabinet" between Song Taizu and Song Taizong and knew all about Song Taizong's shady maneuvers, as well as surrendered Liao officials, or even the more sinicized and quick-witted Jin nobles, this was an open secret.

In fact, there is a well-known joke among the Han Chinese in Yanjing, which is that Jin Taizu Wanyan Aguda was a peerless hero of his generation, and Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin was also a wise ruler, but Aguda learned only the bad things and not the good, copying the entirety of the disastrous Gold Chest Pact.

So back to the matter at hand, Qin Gui's proposal was simple when you got down to it:

The three major factions of the Jin state each had their own backing, and the current dispute over the advance routes between the Eastern Route Army and the Western Route Army was fundamentally irreconcilable, because they were not formed into the Eastern and Western Route Armies according to faction; rather, because they were the Eastern and Western Route Armies, each had formed two enormous interest groups in the course of the war, and thus factions had emerged.

So at this very moment, Talan, as the representative of the Jin state's ruler in Yanjing, could completely take advantage of the white-hot conflict between the two sides, from the perspective of the highest level, to manipulate the situation, play both ends against the middle, and use the name of the ruler far away in Huining Prefecture to benefit himself... or, one might say, to take a broad and lofty view and share the ruler's burdens!

"None of Marshal Nianhan's trusted men are in Yanjing; he is isolated and without support. His nature is such that he cannot swallow an insult, and I imagine that after today's events, he should also understand that, given his age, it is impossible for him to touch the great throne. So it is the perfect opportunity to use the position of Grand Marshal to get Marshal Nianhan to give up his support for Xianye. With the Grand Marshal position, becoming truly second only to the ruler and above ten thousand others, and suppressing the three Crown Princes besides, he should be satisfied..." Qin Gui gritted his teeth and continued, but ultimately dared not speak too plainly.

"It is bound to succeed. The ruler and Nianhan will probably both agree, but Woben, Eliduo, and Wushu will surely make a fuss." Talan was agitated, and couldn't help fidgeting nervously on the stone stool. "Actually, Woben will also agree, because he is also contending with Xianye. It's just that Xianye has always been pushed by Nianhan, and also has the title of Anban Bojilie. But Eliduo and Wushu have no benefit, and instead face the suspicion of losing military authority over the Eastern Route Army, so they are destined to make a fuss. Then Woben won't dare to agree either."

"The Fourth Crown Prince will not make a fuss." Qin Gui replied solemnly. "That Fourth Crown Prince, after what happened this spring, has lost his wits. As long as you, Marshal, go and tell him that you have become the Marshal of the Eastern Route Army, regardless of whether the dispute is resolved, you will urge the ruler to dispatch troops quickly, and the Eastern Route Army will at that time fully cooperate with him in attacking Nanyang. With these words, he will certainly agree!"

As soon as he finished speaking, Qin Gui himself suddenly lost his composure, barely managing to conceal it.

And Talan, after a moment of stunned silence, was overjoyed under the grape trellis: "If the Second and Fourth both support me, even if the Third is a bit unhappy, he'll have to swallow it. This matter is as good as done... Little Academician Qin is truly a figure without equal in the world. With such a light touch, you have spied out such a great opportunity for me, allowing me, a mere commander, to manipulate the levers of state power as easily as a child kneading mud! If I ever truly grasp power, I will definitely make you the Chancellor!"

At this, Qin Gui was completely flustered and could only bow hastily in confusion.

PS: Bigshot Ruigen is dominating the historical category with his new book, "Counting the Romantic Figures." It's a historical officialdom cultivation novel, a semi-alternate history setting of Red Mansions + Late Ming, already over two hundred thousand words. Those who like this genre can go and add it to their collection.