Chapter 739: Hearing That Name Again

Shi Manqiang, for his part, married the daughter of a battalion commander from the local garrison — a match actually brokered by Dong Bingfeng's father. Ji Xiang found a wife in the cousin of a clerk at the departmental magistrate's yamen. Though a clerk is an unranked post, in the Xuzhou region it still counted as a family of scholarly refinement.

What surprised everyone was Liu Yong's situation. Liu Yong was practically an orphan with no elders in the family, but that was no great obstacle — Master Yong is the big man running the factory-guards in our Xuzhou. Plenty of great households and jianghu bosses were falling over themselves to offer up their daughters and sisters. Besides, Master Jin would surely pick out a fine match for him.

Zhao Jin did indeed give thought to Liu Yong's case — even Xu Zhenzhen took an interest in the matter. After the couple talked it over, they planned to propose one of Xu Zhenzhen's cousins to Liu Yong, a marriage to strengthen family ties and spare Liu Yong from being left alone with no one to lean on.

But Liu Yong spared everyone the trouble: he found a match for himself. The girl was young, of unremarkable looks, but what surprised everyone was her background — she turned out to be a tenant household from a manor below Yunlong Mountain, and what's more, a tenant from the refugee manors. It was said there were three siblings: two elder brothers who had guarded their little sister the whole journey here and had the good fortune to hold out until Zhao Jin opened the manors and took them in. All their relatives back in Shandong were gone; the three siblings had only each other to depend on.

No one knew how Liu Yong had found her, and given Liu Yong's status and position, he ought never to have chosen such a girl for a wife. His companions all went to dissuade him, but Liu Yong held firm.

As for Liu Yong's choice and his stubbornness, Zhao Jin understood his intent. He said only one thing: "You don't have to be this hard on yourself." Liu Yong's reply was just as simple: "This way I won't drag anyone else down."

And so the matter was settled. No one had any news of Lei Cai, but Zhao Jin could guess the outcome — in all likelihood, Lei Cai would end up making the same choice as Liu Yong.

Ruhui's situation, by contrast, was quite simple: he merely elevated his outside woman to proper wife. As it happened, this outside woman had been set up back when Ruhui became a monk, and she had already borne him two sons and a daughter. By now it was only a matter of giving her the formal title.

One marriage after another was settled. Whatever lay behind these arrangements, whatever their deeper significance, the festive atmosphere had already begun to bubble up. The recent tension and chaos had just passed, and everyone needed to relax and enjoy themselves — the bustle of all these happy occasions was a perfect excuse to join in. As for the various outside powers, right now they feared only that they had too few chances to engage with every branch of the Zhao Camp. Now that there were betrothal and wedding ceremonies to attend, they could not have been more eager.

By now, quite a few people had already come around asking about the dates of the various ceremonies and had begun preparing and purchasing gifts, determined to throw themselves wholeheartedly into the festivities.

"Master Jin, we've detained a young fellow over in Pei County. From his accent, he's from the Shandong area. He says he has an urgent matter of the utmost importance to discuss with Master Jin, something he can only report to Master Jin in person. He's already on his way here — we've ridden ahead at speed to give you notice."

This was news sent over from the north bank of the Yellow River. These days, on the roads between Xuzhou and the Shandong border, the Zhao Camp kept a very tight watch. On the main official highway, they used government runners from Feng County and Pei County directly to set up roadblocks and checkpoints — a bit of a front, since to outside eyes this was still the imperial soil of the Great Ming…

The young man in question had come riding on horseback, haggard and exhausted, his horse on the verge of collapse. When he spotted the roadblock and checkpoint, his first instinct was to charge straight through. The way he looked, no one even wanted to stop him — what could one man and one horse possibly do once they entered Xuzhou territory? It would be nothing but shutting the gate to beat the dog.

Everyone stood by with folded arms, though a few riders unhurriedly mounted up — let one slip through, and they would still have to chase him down.

But the young man and his horse must have reached their limit. Barely a dozen paces past the checkpoint, the horse let out a whinny and collapsed outright, throwing the young man to the ground.

After a brief moment of shock, everyone rushed over to check. The horse had died of exhaustion, and the young man was too battered from the fall to get up. Anyone with a trained eye could see that, never mind the horse — the young man likely had not eaten in two days, or he would not have been in such wretched shape. He had probably run into trouble along the way too; there were bloodstains and wounds on his body. But the trained eye could also spot something else: this young man came from a very well-off family. His clothes, though torn and filthy, were of fine material and workmanship. His sword and horse tack were of no mean quality either. He was clearly the young master of a wealthy household.

For someone like that to end up in such a state, something must have happened. Everyone was quite curious about it, but no one could be bothered to ask. One man merely said, annoyed, "Have you lost your mind? How dare you run wild on Master Jin's turf!"

Those words, however, made the young man — who had been clenching his jaw and feigning unconsciousness — open his eyes. In a hoarse voice, he asked, "This Master Jin you speak of — is he Zhao Jin?"

The moment Zhao Jin's name was mentioned, everyone turned dead serious.

"Isn't Zhao Jin only famous around the city of Xuzhou?" the young man asked another question.

"These days, who in all of Southern Zhili doesn't know Master Jin's great name? He's the Heavenly King Zhao who scared off the court's army of ten thousand — not just in Xuzhou." Stories always grow taller as they spread. The more fantastical the tale they told, the more it reflected glory on themselves.

"I need to see Zhao Jin. I have a matter of the utmost urgency — I must see Zhao Jin. Get me there fast, or if there's a delay, none of you will bear the consequences!" No sooner had they said that than the young man started shouting again.

Had no one among them traveled far and wide, it would have been hard to catch the Shandong accent in the young man's official speech. But taken together with the family background revealed by his dress and bearing, plus all the signs of hardship on his person, it made everyone take him seriously at once.

Whether it was truly of the utmost urgency was for Master Jin to judge, but if they really did delay something important and were held to account afterward, it might well cost them their lives. And right now, they could not even think of covering it up — heaven only knew whether there were Zhao Camp informants among them. Sometimes drunken words muttered over wine at midnight would be known to the Zhao Camp by the next day…

A flurry of activity followed. Someone got a cart, loaded the young man onto it, and went to fetch some hot broth to feed him. Several riders accompanied them on the side.

The young man was indeed ravenous. A few mouthfuls of salted sorghum gruel down his throat, and he perked up at once. Someone sidled up to make casual talk and probe for information — they could not just deliver anyone and everyone to Master Jin as if presenting a treasure. If anything went wrong, it would mean trouble.

But the young man would not even give his own name. He kept his mouth tightly shut on several points, saying only that he had been targeted by a bandit inn along the road. Though he had escaped, he then ran into highway robbers, and the whole ordeal had left him without rest the entire journey.

Shandong was in utter chaos. The second year's Liaodong levy had just passed, and bandits were swarming everywhere — even the official highways were no longer safe. This was something everyone knew.

They traveled on until nightfall. The young man said his surname was Li. After a hot meal, his strength and spirits were largely restored. He declined the suggestion of resting for the night, saying the matter was urgent — even a moment's delay could ruin everything. They would ride through the night at speed.

Seeing the nervous urgency of this young man surnamed Li, everyone realized more and more that this was no simple affair. On one hand, they arranged for him to travel by night; on the other, they stepped up the messages sent toward He Family Village.

The escorts accompanying the young man surnamed Li kept changing. Several capable men from the Internal Guard took turns appearing to draw him out in conversation. By the time they crossed the Yellow River, the man sharing the boat with the young man was Ma Chonghao.

"…Probably someone from around Dongchang Prefecture. Comes from a very wealthy family. His martial foundation is quite solid. He genuinely has an urgent matter to petition about. Tight-lipped — couldn't get anything else out of him…"

The reports kept coming in, but Zhao Jin found them a bit laughable. He thought to himself, at worst it's just one young man — what waves could he possibly stir up on the Zhao Camp's turf? By the time he got to him, he would not even be allowed to carry a sharp object on his person. He had no idea what everyone was so worried about.

Still, Zhao Jin understood his subordinates' mindset, not to mention how strange and hurried this young man's arrival was, and how he kept going on about some matter of the utmost urgency… As for Dongchang Prefecture, Zhao Jin's impression of it was very simple: just that force camped across the river from them. Nothing else worth remembering.

When it came time to see this young man, Chen Sheng, Wang Zhaojing, Ji Xiang, and Liu Yong were all present. Niu Jinbao, for once, stood at the door, so that the moment the young man entered, he would be under his control. Such treatment could be called making a mountain out of a molehill, or it could be called a lion going all out even against a rabbit.

The young man was stocky and robust, his face bearing a maturity and composure beyond his years. By the time he entered, he had already been searched, and had even been made to change his clothes from the inside out.

"This is our Master Jin," a household guard announced.

"So you are Zhao Jin?" The words the young man spoke next were anything but precociously composed.

"I am Zhao Jin." Zhao Jin nodded, a little curious. Right now, the opening of the Cloud Mountain Trading branches everywhere was the biggest matter at hand. If not for all this talk of "utmost urgency," he would not have bothered with this distraction.

"I didn't expect you to look like this," the young man added, still without rhyme or reason.

Zhao Jin was beginning to lose patience. He had no time to waste on nonsensical people fooling around. But the next moment, the young man dropped to his knees and said, "Master Jin, please, go save my sister! My sister, Mu Shulan, has been captured by the Smelling Incense Sect. If you don't go save her now, I fear great trouble is coming!"

The moment the young man moved to kneel, several people in the room had instinctively tensed to block him, guarding against a sudden attack. None of them expected him to utter such a name. The room fell silent at once.

The household guards stationed at the door and outside could not hear those words. Inside the room, apart from Zhao Jin and his companions, there were only Sun Dalin and Niu Jinbao.

The name Mu Shulan was unknown only to Niu Jinbao, but when he saw the expressions and bearing of everyone else in the room, he straightened his stance as well. Noticing his disciple Sun Dalin casting curious glances at Zhao Jin and the others, he shot him a glare. Only then did Sun Dalin catch himself and hurriedly duck his head.

Even someone as steady as Chen Sheng, once he registered the name, could not help looking at Zhao Jin. Ji Xiang and Liu Yong, at the far end, had already risen to their feet. Wang Zhaojing, too, was staring at Zhao Jin, his face full of shock.

Zhao Jin's face was expressionless. He did not know what expression he ought to wear. The name Mu Shulan was one he had always remembered clearly; he even dreamed of that girl often — though Zhao Jin rarely dreamed, and had always slept very soundly.

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