Chapter 572: Li Qimao

The eunuch in Longzhou City was named Li Qimao.

Compared to most people in the world, eunuchs fear death a little more, and they have to live a little harder too.

Because posthumous reputation is a false proposition for them — eunuchs have no descendants; once they die, they are truly dead, and no one in this world will remember that a castrato ever lived.

As a result, they are naturally more true to their feelings than others. If they have a grudge or grievance, they generally settle it on the spot if they can. If they can get their enemy killed, they'll do it that very day, unburdened by concerns for reputation.

But some grudges, limited by ability, simply cannot be avenged — and for those, there is nothing to be done.

Liu Chengzong was the enemy Li Qimao could not avenge.

In truth, he had never even met Liu Chengzong. They had never crossed paths in their lives, so there should have been no enmity. In fact, in over forty years of life, Li Qimao had never even heard the name Liu Chengzong, and he had no connection whatsoever to Shaanxi.

Li Qimao was a eunuch of the older generation. He was one year younger than Cao Huachun. Both had been castrated and entered the palace when their hair was still tied up in goat-horn knots — they were, so to speak, of the same cohort.

Back then, he was eleven and Cao Huachun was twelve, both at that ignorant, impressionable age fit for study. They entered the Inner Academy, bowed before the image of Confucius, and paid their tuition to the teacher with handkerchiefs, white wax, and dragon-hanging incense. They learned to write poetry and prose, appraise antiques, and train in drafting rescripts — thus beginning their careers as eunuchs.

By all rights, these young eunuchs who entered the Inner Academy to study were management trainees of the Directorate of Ceremonial, little fellows with boundless prospects.

But their family circumstances were different. Cao Huachun had been sent into the palace under the custom of "serving the sovereign to support one's parents"; his family's contribution of tuition was investment capital. Without being arrogant, he was at least cheerful and outgoing, the sort people liked.

Li Qimao's family was utterly destitute, so poor they couldn't afford to raise a half-grown boy and sent him into the palace. His tuition for study was borrowed from the teacher, and he'd also taken a knife below the belt — he was deeply timid. Thus, in his youth, he was withdrawn and not well-liked.

Life in the Inner Academy was not easy either, especially since their cohort of young eunuchs had all been selected by the great eunuch of the time, Wang An.

Wang An had gone through the same experience as them when he was young, and he had been very mischievous and restless. When he wouldn't study properly, the eunuch overseeing him, Du Mao, would tie him to a stool with rope and force him to read. When he wouldn't write properly, Du Mao would stand behind him holding a big club, watching him write.

Later, this whole routine was repeated on Cao Huachun and Li Qimao in their youth. The two of them were tied up and clubbed into studying more than a few times.

After the grueling life at the Inner Academy ended, Li Qimao's career began in the Directorate of Palace Maintenance. The name of that department sounded rather nice, as if the word "palace" brought one closer to power, but in reality, it was just being a human-shaped sweeping robot in the Forbidden City, responsible for cleaning — little money, lots of work, and constant scolding.

This life worse than a pig or dog did not change until Wei Zhongxian seized power.

Wei Zhongxian was an old rogue who could slap with both hands at once, lenient on himself and strict with others, with a towering temper. The sweeping robots not only got scolded but, if unlucky, got beaten too — truly treated like pigs and dogs.

His old classmate Cao Huachun's career also met a major turning point, finally entering the Prince of Xin's estate to serve the imperial grandson Zhu Youjian. At the time, this wasn't considered a particularly good job — after all, no one then could have imagined that the younger brother would succeed the elder brother so quickly — but it at least helped Li Qimao switch departments, which was a great effort on his part.

But after helping, Cao Huachun's luck ran out. After Wei Zhongxian had Wang An killed, Cao Huachun, as a trusted follower of Wang An, was banished to the secondary capital, Nanjing, to await punishment, and did not return until the Chongzhen Emperor ascended the throne.

Meanwhile, throughout the entire Tianqi reign, Li Qimao just drifted among the twenty-four government offices of the inner court — the four directorates, eight bureaus, and twelve eunuch directorates. He never made a mistake in any office, but he was always just a little short on luck.

Actually, it wasn't really luck. Every time his career was about to make a small breakthrough, someone would remember on behalf of the Nine Thousand Years: "His Excellency Wei got drunk that time and slapped him twice — he cannot be promoted."

And so Li Qimao became the king of the eunuch children... Eunuchs his own age were basically all leaders — supervisors, bureau chiefs, record keepers, scribes — while he alone was sprinkling water and sweeping floors with a bunch of teenagers, the big brother of the Forbidden City.

But even though Wei Zhongxian had hit him, he did not hate Wei Zhongxian in the slightest.

He'd been beaten because someone had ridden a horse through the palace and horse dung had leaked from the manure bag onto the ground — work not done well, nothing to quibble about there.

Li Qimao knew that Wei Zhongxian had never schemed against him, because the Nine Thousand Years had no idea who he even was. If Wei Zhongxian really had schemed against him, then his age wouldn't add up.

In the forty-fifth year of Wanli, he was twenty-seven; by the sixth year of Tianqi, he should have been four.

Because in the second year of Tianqi, he would have already been reincarnated.

For a gentleman, revenge is not only not too late after ten years — even vengeance across nine generations can still be exacted. But eunuchs are not gentlemen; they have no descendants to avenge them. Dead is truly dead, so eunuchs do not delay their revenge for too long.

By the mere fact that Li Qimao was still alive, he had no hatred with Wei Zhongxian. It was only because others' memories were too good that he suffered an undeserved calamity.

It was not until Chongzhen ascended the throne and Cao Huachun returned from Nanjing that Li Qimao finally ended his days of drifting in circles and entered the Directorate of the Imperial Horses as he had long wished... Actually, which office he entered didn't matter; what mattered was that with Wei Zhongxian's downfall, he was promoted!

Not only did he not hate Wei Zhongxian, but every Qingming and Zhongyuan Festival, he would even burn some spirit money for the Nine Thousand Years in his mind.

Li Qimao had been diligent and conscientious for twenty years, a menial of no rank, and was even denied promotion for "being disliked by Wei Zhongxian." Yet during the Chongzhen reign, in just two years, for that very same reason of "being disliked by Wei Zhongxian," he was promoted ten ranks in a row, all the way to a rank-5b supervisor in the Directorate of the Imperial Horses.

In the Ming dynasty, the highest rank for eunuchs was only rank-4a, a level reserved solely for the heads of the twelve directorates and the seal-holders and superintendents of each directorate. The four directorates and eight bureaus of the inner court were slightly smaller in stature than the twelve directorates, and their seal-holders and superintendents were only rank-5b.

In other words, in just two years, Li Qimao had gone from a menial of no rank to a great eunuch worthy of the title taijian.

Taijian is not the same as a eunuch. Taijian is an official title, and a very high one at that. Only official titles like seal-holder and superintendent carry the designation taijian.

After all, the tai — as in taixue (Imperial Academy), taishanghuang (Retired Emperor), taijian (Grand Supervisor) — all carry this meaning: a little more than great.

In the fourth year of Chongzhen, after training in the Directorate of the Imperial Horses, managing the steeds of the four garrison camps of the Soaring Cavalry and the elephant stables, Li Qimao finally filled the most critical gap in his career and entered the Directorate of Ceremonial.

This was an experience he should have had twenty years ago, but he hadn't had it then, and he wouldn't have it now either. Barely half a year after transferring to the Directorate of Ceremonial as a supervisor, as a very reliable inner court talent in the eyes of the Chongzhen Emperor, Li Qimao struck great fortune and was dispatched by the emperor on assignment to Shaanxi as the garrison supervisor overseeing the tea-and-horse trade.

Without question, this was the greatest honor for a eunuch.

Although the inner court had the four directorates, eight bureaus, and twelve eunuch directorates, collectively called the twenty-four government offices, and the taijian — the seal-holders and superintendents of each office — were naturally the most powerful officials in the inner court, if one were to ask which among them held the greatest power, it would still have to be the seal-holding taijian and the brush-holding taijian of the Directorate of Ceremonial.

Even the seal-holder of the Directorate of the Imperial Horses, which could rival it as an equal, could not compare.

Because the Directorate of Ceremonial was the only one of the inner court's twenty-four offices that could communicate with the outer court. The superintendent had the chance to wield power over the entire court because the brush-holder had the authority to draft rescripts on the emperor's behalf, and the seal-holder had the ability to turn that rescript into waste paper — or into an imperial edict.

But this does not mean that in every period, every superintendent of the Directorate of Ceremonial could dominate the court. Quite the opposite — most of the time, the seal-holder and brush-holder of the Directorate of Ceremonial were merely the ones who brought the imperial seal and handed the imperial brush to the emperor.

For them to seize power, there was one prerequisite: the emperor had to be too lazy to do it himself.

Only when the emperor ignored these matters would the seal-holder and brush-holder have the chance to dominate the court.

The Chongzhen Emperor had many flaws, but laziness was certainly not one of them. At the same time, his methods were ruthless, and he held tremendous intimidating power over the court. Thus, the great taijian of the inner court during the Chongzhen reign had... very limited power.

Under these circumstances, as one side lost what the other gained, the externally assigned garrison taijian became a more comfortable position than the superintendent of the Directorate of Ceremonial, and their status rose steadily.

A person's fortunes are strange indeed. When Li Qimao should have been promoted the most, he wasted his years because of Wei Zhongxian, while those who curried favor with Wei Zhongxian gained rank and title. Yet when he had calmly accepted that he might spend his whole life as a menial, he turned over like salted fish with Wei Zhongxian's downfall.

The day Li Qimao, having received the imperial grace, left the Forbidden City, he was brimming with confidence, thinking of doing great things for the emperor.

Recalling that time, the memory is still so vivid. The arduous three-thousand-li journey from Beijing to Guyuan, the local delicacies presented by the officials of Northern Zhili who escorted him along the way, and of course, the brutal scenes of disaster-stricken regions after entering Shanxi — but none of this compared to the thunderbolt of hearing the three characters "Liu Chengzong."

The office of the Shaanxi garrison taijian was in Guyuan. Li Qimao, full of heroic ambition to reform the horse administration for the emperor, was told halfway there: Guyuan was gone.

At that time, Liu Chengzong had just passed through Guyuan. Never mind the muddled accounts of warhorse deaths in Guyuan Garrison — the entire horse ranch hadn't a single four-legged beast left. Even the horse breeders had been lured away. What horse affairs were left for him to supervise?

Later, he rebuilt the Shaanxi horse ranches and wrote to the Directorate of Ceremonial to request a junior eunuch, Zhang Yuanheng, whom he sent to the Xining Tea-and-Horse Office, thinking he might at least get some horses back from Liu Chengzong. He had even left him with a word: "Yuanheng, so long as you do not unilaterally provoke border conflict, at the Xining Guard tea-and-horse office, act boldly and with a free hand!"

Actually, he had originally wanted a different eunuch surnamed Zhang from the Forbidden City, a very shrewd man who had once followed Wei Zhongxian. After Wei Zhongxian fell, he hid and dodged for a while but didn't die, and was instead protected by someone. So Li Qimao thought this fellow might really be able to use his shrewdness to snatch meat from the tiger's mouth of the great northwestern bandit.

He never imagined that the bastard was too shrewd. The moment he heard it was to go to Xining, he refused to go himself and plucked the unlucky Zhang Yuanheng out of Songpan Guard. Li Qimao had no choice — in these times, no one dared come to Shaanxi, so he had to make do.

And after just one use, Zhang Yuanheng let go and was gone.

For several years after that, Li Qimao was busy working on horse administration in the northwest, trying every means to breed horses. This job was actually not easy to do, because the supervising eunuchs and the managing civil officials belonged to two different systems to begin with. Even when working together, their objectives differed, and even with good intentions, there would be friction.

For example, the local Court of the Imperial Stud minister was named Zhu Ying, a capable official who had passed the provincial exam at fifteen to become a juren and earned his jinshi degree at thirty-one.

He had successively served as a messenger in the Messenger Office, a vice director in the Bureau of Reclamation of the Ministry of Works, prefect of Gongchang in Shaanxi and Luzhou in Shanxi, and vice commissioner of the Provincial Surveillance Commission in both Shandong and Shanxi. In the Messenger Office, he left a reputation for defying power and influence. In the Ministry of Works, when building Empress Dowager Li's tomb, he was also extremely assertive. As a prefect, he suppressed mining bandits and governed the region, deeply beloved by the people.

This was a man of talent, ability, and temper. Expecting him, having reached the position of Chief Minister of the Imperial Stud, to bare his heart and join hands with a eunuch like Li Qimao? Forget it. The Five-Province Supreme Commander Chen Qiyu would cup his hands in greeting first when meeting Li Qimao, but Zhu Ying, when handling official business with him, had always observed equal courtesy.

It was the same in practical matters. In recent years, Shaanxi had been scraping for military funds everywhere, and the commanders of every garrison came to the Imperial Stud demanding horses and money. Just over the coin-minting grounds and horse-pasture defenses of Guyuan Circuit, they had bickered and passed the buck back and forth countless times.

Li Qimao thought it was feasible. The Emperor wanted Shaanxi to mint coins, and he, as the garrison eunuch, was also thinking of ways to find money. Military pay that could be disbursed, he disbursed; warhorses that could be given, he gave. Then, wherever possible, he raised the compensatory horse levies in various places. In short, he got things done.

Zhu Ying, on the other hand, performed the duties of Chief Minister of the Imperial Stud to the utmost. For matters beyond his official duties, he could not care less about your concerns. Compensatory horse levies that could be waived, he waived. Military pay that should be given, he gave; but for anything the Imperial Stud was not supposed to fund, don't even think about getting a single cent. The defense of the horse pastures was whoever's responsibility it was — "Even if I, damn it, quit this post, don't you lot even think about imposing it on our Imperial Stud!"

These two working together meant constant minor friction, but when major issues arose, both could see clearly. When the Ministry of War impeached Zhu Ying, Li Qimao even spoke up for him. It was a pity that in the end, Zhu Ying was not brought down by the impeachment, but instead became utterly disheartened, resigned, and returned to his old home in Henan.

In short, the only thing Li Qimao had done fairly well these past few years was raising horses, allowing the imperial herds of Guyuan to recover their vitality. A pity that no sooner had he raised a fine batch of horses than they were requisitioned by the rebellion-suppressing army; he raised another fine batch, and damn it, they were requisitioned again. It was one vicious cycle, with never a day of hope.

Li Qimao brooded: What the hell! Do you soldier types eat horses for a living?

By now, the situation in Shaanxi was still a complete mess, warhorses on every frontier were insufficient, and he had lost all ambition to restore the horse administration. Li Qimao was weary, and even deeply envied Zhu Ying.

Zhu Ying could become disheartened, and when disheartened, still had an old home in Henan to return to. But he, Li Qimao, was incomplete in all five limbs — where could he find a path of retreat?

As vast as the world was, apart from strictly obeying imperial orders, there was no place left that would tolerate him.

Li Qimao had figured it out: a person's life or death was actually not that important.

Other eunuchs curried favor with Wei Zhongxian and lived the good life for seven or eight years. Once Wei Zhongxian was finished, they went to their graves with him.

He had failed to cling to Wei Zhongxian's coattails. While others lived the good life, he lived a hard one. When the Chongzhen Emperor came along, he finally had a few good years. Though it taxed his mind and spirit, it was still better than being a menial servant.

Now, Li Qimao simply pinned his hopes on managing the horse administration well, returning to the Forbidden City for one last moment of glory, and then, when His Majesty passed away, going along with him — that would be the end of it.

Therefore, for him, the most terrifying thing under heaven was not dying an unnatural death, but the arrival of Liu Chengzong.

To other civil and military officials, the name Liu Chengzong might mean Grand Marshal, the Foolish Khan, or the ringleader of the Northwest rebels. But to Li Qimao, these three characters could be translated, and the translation was: Horse-Snatching Bandit.

He wished he could run as far away from Liu Chengzong as possible.

In fact, as soon as Liu Chengzong openly deployed his forces along the Gongchang line, Li Qimao was already fleeing from Guyuan toward Xi'an Prefecture, driving over four thousand horses. He would rather run to the mountains of Yaozhou to raise horses than meet Liu Chengzong face to face.

A pity that man proposes but Heaven disposes. No sooner had he reached Xi'an Prefecture than that bastard Deng Qi fell from the city wall and died — would anyone believe that story if you told it? No.

Chen Qiyu was so thrown that he began doubting life itself, offering sacrifices to the local earth god. The inherently suspicious Chongzhen Emperor was even less likely to believe it. Before Li Qimao could rejoice at preserving the last spark of the Northwest horse administration, an imperial letter from the Forbidden City arrived, ordering him to Longzhou to see whether Deng Qi was truly dead or faking it.

Outside the city, cannon fire boomed, striking the brick walls of the fortifications and shattering them.

Inside the city, Li Qimao looked at the coffin, his face devoid of sorrow or joy. He even applauded: "So fast, so fast... Well, now it's perfect."

Now it was perfect. Li Qimao could not only see Deng Qi inside the coffin, but Deng Qi, who had not yet gone far, would soon be able to see him too.