Chapter 174: A Man's Worthiness or Unworthiness

The beautifully carved hollowed-out wooden door was kicked open by Dongmen Bao with a crash, letting out a loud crack. Heifu followed right behind him, frowning as he swept a glance across the lavishly decorated room. He saw a white silk sash hanging from a beam, swaying back and forth in the breeze — but there was no one on it.

"Escaped?" Dongmen Bao panted, gripping his short halberd and looking left and right, unwilling to accept it.

"Shh." Heifu gestured for him to be silent. Listening intently, one could hear the sound of nervous breathing coming from the direction of the bed.

Heifu understood. He nodded toward Ji Ying and Gong Ao behind him, and the two immediately entered, crouched down, and sure enough, found the person they were after under the bed.

Looking at the Chu official curled up into a ball beneath the bed, Heifu smiled at him. "Crawl out on your own, or taste my sword first?"

"I'm coming out, I'm coming out."

The official crawled out from under the bed, trembling. He was short and stout, with a handlebar mustache on his face. His original tall cap had long since fallen off somewhere, and his hair bun was stuck with cobwebs, making him look rather wretched. After coming out, he sneezed several times — he must have swallowed quite a bit of dust under the bed.

"Are you the County Magistrate of Dun County?" Heifu asked.

"I am not... I am a cook..."

The fat official looked up, about to deny it, only to discover that the Qin clerk before him was not asking him, but rather two maidservants in the residence.

The maidservants nodded fearfully.

And so, a moment later, the County Magistrate of Dun County was seized by several sturdy Qin men and marched toward the main hall of the magistrate's residence.

"Where are you taking me?" The magistrate was somewhat panicked, yet dared not struggle.

"The Commandant requests your presence."

Heifu walked ahead, hand on his sword. By this moment, the magistrate's residence had long been occupied by the Qin army. Short-weapon guards were everywhere; this place was about to become Commandant Li You's temporary command post in Dun County.

They had left Yangcheng on the first day of the tenth month, traveling southeast along the Ying River. They had quickly routed the hundred or so sentry posts the Chu army had deployed on the border and invaded the territory of Dun County.

They reached Dun County on the third day of the tenth month and breached the city by the following evening — swift, one could say. But considering that Dun County was only a small county town, with walls no more than two zhang high and only three or four hundred soldiers, it was hardly surprising.

"Could the Chu army have simply abandoned this city? And where are the Chu chariot and cavalry scouts that clashed with the Qin cavalry several times near the Ying River just days ago? Why are they nowhere to be seen?"

Heifu, however, felt somewhat uneasy. The less resistance they met, the more he suspected a trick. He knew this war would end in defeat, but he did not know exactly how it would happen. He could only remain cautious day and night.

He could only hope that the defeat would not begin with their own unit.

Thinking this, they had already reached the main hall of the magistrate's residence. Heifu signaled his subordinates to follow him and threw the pampered County Magistrate of Dun County down before the hall, even kicking him in the leg to make him kneel before Commandant Li You.

"Commandant, the County Magistrate of Dun County has been brought. He did not hang himself, but hid under the bed."

The short-weapon guards in the hall all showed contemptuous smiles at these words.

Li You was leafing through some bamboo scrolls found in the residence, which recorded the local garrison deployments of the Chu army. He did not look up at this prisoner before the steps and asked directly, "County Magistrate of Dun County, do you admit your guilt?"

The Dun magistrate said in a trembling voice, "This foreign official could have abandoned the city and fled, yet remained here when the General's great army pressed the border, because defending the land is my duty. Toward Chu, I am guiltless; toward Qin, I may be guilty..."

The first half was neither servile nor overbearing, but the second half immediately revealed his true colors: "But this foreign official is willing to govern the people for the General, pacify their hearts, and atone for his crimes through service!"

"So, you are willing to surrender?"

Li You looked at the Dun magistrate, only then noticing that the man was also staring fixedly at him, eyes wide.

Seeing Li You raise his face and scrutinizing it for a moment, the Dun magistrate could not help but show a joyful expression. He rose and said, "Worthy nephew, so it is you!"

At this reckless movement, Heifu and two subordinates immediately stepped forward, pressed the Dun magistrate back to the ground, and set their swords against his neck!

"A misunderstanding, a misunderstanding! I truly am an old acquaintance of the Commandant!" the Dun magistrate hastily explained.

Li You looked the Dun magistrate up and down but could not recall who this person was. He said, "Who are you?"

"My name is Cai Cheng. In my early years, I was a commandery clerk in Shangcai and served as Li Si's — no, Lord Li's — senior clerk. We were on good terms..."

Li You shook his head, still without any impression. Although their family was indeed from Shangcai in Chu, ever since he could remember, his father Li Si had already gone to Lanling to pay respects to Xunzi and become his disciple.

A few years later, when Li Si returned after completing his studies, he only stayed for a few days, taking his sons hunting and playing for a couple of days. Then he left behind the words, "To dwell long in a lowly position, in a place of hardship, to criticize the age and despise profit, entrusting oneself to non-action — this is not the sentiment of a true scholar," and went west to Qin to seek his fortune.

It was from that time onward that the Li family rose from an ordinary household of humble scholars onto the path of meteoric success.

Cai Cheng grew anxious and quickly said, "Twenty years ago, before Lord Li left Shangcai, he took the Commandant and his middle son, leading a yellow hound, out through the East Gate of Shangcai to hunt crafty hares. At that time, I was also returning from a hunt on horseback and exchanged a few words with Lord Li at the East Gate. I asked the Commandant's age then, and whether he had begun learning to read."

Seeing that Li You seemed to be recalling something, he pointed at his own hand and said, "I was even carrying a wild pheasant at the time, which I gave to Lord Li. Lord Li had the Commandant take it — does the Commandant not remember? A few years after that, when Lord Li brought the Commandant and his brothers to Qin, I even visited the Commandant's home, which is why I remember the Commandant's appearance."

"It seems there was such an incident. So you truly are an old acquaintance of my father."

Li You smiled, though not particularly joyfully. He merely waved his hand, signaling Heifu and the others to release Cai Cheng, give him a cushion, and bring a bowl of water for him to drink.

Cai Cheng had probably been hiding under the bed too long. He took the water and gulped it down noisily, then wiped his mouth. Seeing that the son of a resigned petty clerk, whom he had once looked down upon, had now become a dignified Qin Commandant, high and mighty, while he himself had become a prisoner whose life or death hung on a single thought, he could not help but sigh with a myriad of emotions.

"That was still thirty years ago. At the time, Lord Li was young and had just taken a post in the commandery as a petty clerk. Whenever he had a moment, he always liked to watch rats. When we asked him why he was so interested in rats, he said that he saw the rats in the latrine beside the clerks' quarters eating filth, fleeing in terror whenever a person or dog approached. But the fat rats in the granary where we worked ate the stored grain, lived year-round under the great roof, and had no need to fear disturbance from people or dogs."

"At that time, Lord Li sighed to us with deep feeling and said that whether a man is worthy or unworthy is like the rats — it is determined by the place he finds himself in."

"And so, within a few days, Lord Li resigned from his petty clerk post and went to Lanling to study under Xunzi, saying he wanted to learn some art of emperorship. Quite a few colleagues laughed at him back then, but now..."

Cai Cheng looked at his own wretched state, then glanced at the imposing Li You, who had seized his residence, and shook his head. "We are indeed the rats in the latrine, while Lord Li has already become a rat in the granary..."

After saying this, he realized the words were inappropriate and hastily corrected himself: "No, no — Lord Li and the Commandant and his brothers are all phoenixes and great swans!"

This was the first time Li You had heard of such past events concerning his father. He immediately became genial and chatted with Cai Cheng for a while in their hometown dialect.

In his first few years in Qin, Li Si had merely been a retainer of Lü Buwei and served as a Qin Chief Clerk, his status not high. After Lü Buwei fell from power and the Zheng Guo espionage affair came to light, the King of Qin issued a sweeping expulsion of foreign guests. Li Si, as a resident foreigner, was nearly driven out as well, and only gained the King of Qin's esteem through his essay "Petition Against the Expulsion of Guests." From then on, he soared upward, rising all the way to become Commandant of Justice.

It was only then that he brought Li You and his brothers to Qin. That year, Li You was already a youth in his teens. When the whole family left Shangcai, he still wore a set of plain cloth clothes, travel-worn and dusty. At the time, he could never have imagined that, over a decade later, he would be able to marry a princess of the King of Qin and even lead a great army back to his hometown...

Whether a man is worthy or unworthy is like the rats — it lies in where he is placed. Truly, a decade as dreamlike and illusory as this.

"Once this battle is over, I must return to Shangcai to pay respects at the ancestral tombs."

As Li You listened to Cai Cheng's flattery, he thought about what he would do after the war. Perhaps the taking of Dun County had been too smooth, giving him the false impression that the war might end very quickly.

"What an inspirational story," Heifu thought, listening to the conversation between Li You and Cai Cheng from the side. He felt that Li Si's experience was simply a model for every aspiring youth of this era — it was only a pity that such an era brimming with opportunity had already passed.

However, this metaphor of the latrine rat and the granary rat could only apply to Chu. If placed in Qin, a granary clerk who spotted a single rat would become deathly nervous and absolutely have to catch and kill it, then plug up the rat hole. Because Qin law stipulated that if there were more than three rat holes in a storehouse, the Granary Overseer would be punished. Thus, in Qin, the life of a granary rat was probably worse than that of a latrine rat.

After the reminiscing was over, Li You finally got to the main topic and began questioning Cai Cheng about the movements of the Chu army.

"I hear they have all withdrawn to Xiangcheng."

Cai Cheng was now holding nothing back and complained, "It is said that the Supreme Pillar of State is at Xiangcheng. I originally intended to go there, but I feared the Supreme Pillar of State would blame me for the crime of abandoning my city."

The "Supreme Pillar of State" he spoke of was Xiang Yan, the highest military commander of Chu, whose official rank was second only to the Prime Minister.

Listening in on this critical military intelligence, Heifu nodded to himself. It seemed his guess was correct — the reason the Chu army had abandoned border towns like Dun County was likely that they did not want to divide their forces to defend territory and be destroyed piecemeal by the Qin army. Instead, they intended to concentrate their forces so that the Qin army, fighting far from home, would gain no advantage in troop numbers.

"Do you know how many Chu soldiers are at Xiangcheng?" Li You asked again.

Cai Cheng thought for a moment, held out both hands, and said, "I also heard it from the military clerks who went to deliver grain. They said the Supreme Pillar of State is at Xiangcheng, and has assembled a hundred thousand troops!"

(End of chapter)