Chapter 7: I Will Accompany You to the End

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Tianyan, evening, in pouring rain.

The sun actually had not yet set, but the sky was so gloomy that evening looked more like midnight. Heavy rain slapped the ground with a dense drumming noise. In weather like this, the street vendors had long ago packed up and gone home, and even the guards who should have been patrolling were holed up in taverns.

Despite the heavy rain, there was quite the commotion in front of the post house, since nobles from all walks of life would still come and go from mansion to manor as long as the socialising season wasn’t yet over. In short, they didn’t need to worry about the rain. If the soles of their shoes got even the slightest bit wet, someone would be punished for it.

Lan Jue, standing at the door to the post house, refused Yang Feng’s umbrella.

An old man selling shoes limped by the post house’s door and was chased away by several aristocratic boys.

“My Lord, it’s raining, why do you stand here?” Yang Feng asked.

“Waiting for someone,” Lan Jue replied.

Yang Feng lowered his head, then said quietly, “My Lord, there was a group of Iron-Clad Guards last night. Although we did our best, two slipped through the net.” In other words, the person you’re waiting for is probably already cold…

But before Yang Feng could say this, a figure appeared on the street. The young man was dressed in pure white today, and he walked against the flow of horses and carriages on their way to spring banquets. On this dark and rainy night, he, like the Lord of Western Tang, did not hold an umbrella. He was soaked from head to toe and his long hair plastered against his face, yet his eyes shone like stars.

He didn’t seem surprised to see Lan Jue at all. When Lan Jue turned and walked away, the young man followed him without a word.

They walked through the streets in silence. Occasionally they would pass a flower-seller girl huddling in a corner, whimpering sadly as her flowers were washed away by the rain. A delirious old woman lay in an alley, while nearby, a handsome young man on the roadside tried to stop every passing carriage in an effort to promote himself.

They walked through the city, they walked through the rain.

When they passed the brothel, Chu Xiang suddenly said, “Thank you for standing up for my sister. You even paid for her with your own money and didn’t ask for repayment.”

“Your sister?” Lan Jue’s lips curled up with interest.

“Yes.”

By some unknown coincidence, they stopped at Qianli Lake, where Chu Xiang had once departed and later returned.

Qianli Lake, Chu Xiang thought, unable to stop his smile, it’s practically my personal launch pad.

Rainwater dripped from their brows as they stood in the open, causing their vision to become somewhat blurred. Yang Feng, who stood nearby with an umbrella, looked at his strange master and his strange guest, not knowing whether he should go hold up an umbrella for them. 

Chu Xiang still remembered this world’s etiquette and had tried to mobilise his best acting skills, but neither party seemed to care all that much about it.

“You do not seem surprised to see me,” he said.

“No, I’m a little surprised,” Lan Jue replied. “The Grand Princess’ Iron-Clad Guards want to kill you, but you could still escape. Why did you look for me?”

“The house leaks and it will rain all night, I need a roof to shelter me from the wind.”

“Then why should I take you in, what can you give me?”

Chu Xiang smiled. “What do you want?”

Lan Jue’s subordinates in the capital had already investigated Chu Xiang since it was impossible for them to allow an unknown person to approach their lord, but it was this investigation that made Lan Jue even more interested — this person’s identity was very simple and had nothing unusual in his past. He was once amazingly popular and attended many banquets, and the things he wrote in this time could, in Lan Jue’s eyes, be bound into a standard ‘anthology of obscene words and erotic songs’. The reason why the Grand Princess disliked him was also very simple: the man insisted on his status as a luminary and refused to be a guest of the Grand Princess.

His looks weren’t bad either, but that was all.

It wasn’t until the Spring Banquet and his unique poem, when he showed his edge, that Lan Jue’s attention was well and truly caught. At that moment, he had been even more eye-catching than when he was killing people.

He was someone unfit for irrelevance.¹非池中物: someone with great ambition is destined for great things, the opposite of being a frog in a well

Lan Jue knew that apart from the literati in the capital, there were also many who wanted to assist a nobleman as counsellors. He instinctively disliked these people — refugees were everywhere, but these people only thought of how to steal territory, rob power, and strengthen themselves in order to continue indulging in food and drink.

But he held a glimmer of hope, he thought that Chu Xiang might be more than that.

So he deliberately let people spread that poem around.

“I want a lot, but how are you going to help me?” he asked.

They went in a circle and returned to the original question, and the rain was starting to make him shiver, so he couldn’t be bothered to keep probing. “Don’t you want more power?” he asked directly.

Lan Jue: “Should I?”

“Then what you suffered at the Spring Banquet wasn’t enough?” Chu Xiang smiled.

At the Spring Banquet, even the attendants dared to sigh at Lan Jue’s background behind his back, and not a single noble family was willing to marry into Western Tang.

Lan Jue’s expression slowly turned cold and murderous as rain slid down his cheekbones.

Chu Xiang seemed unable to detect it.

“Power is a good thing,” he sneered. “You see, everyone wants this thing, because only when you have it is your life worth anything. If that young man on the road had power, why would he need to sell himself? It’s raining so heavily but that flower girl has to protect some flowers a noble would just throw away and might be sold to a brothel at any time. They’re just ants, so the city’s dignitaries can step on them as they please. The guards can openly kill people on the street without consequence because no one notices whether the child begging on the street corner would still be there the next morning… This is power. On a cold winter night, an infant and its mother turn into ice sculptures overnight, but nobles can sit in their greenhouses and listen to elegant music until dawn, and they might even order the windows be opened because it’s too hot inside. This is also power.”

“Yes, once you have power, you can prey on the people and treat the world as a plaything. Just like the consul and chief justice — in order to eat more new dishes, they would happily watch people starve to death in the wild and make themselves vomit,” Lan Jue agreed solemnly.

As they looked at each other, Lan Jue suddenly pulled a dagger from his waist and pressed its tip against Chu Xiang’s throat. Tiny beads of blood welled up which were instantly washed away by the pouring rain.

“And you, what do you want? I know that everyone thinks the Lord of Western Tang’s position is awkward, he’s obviously the lord of a principality but people despise him wherever he goes. Do you think you can persuade me, help me improve my standing, then enjoy the glory as well? What is power in your eyes?”

The dagger moved a bit deeper and more blood was washed away by the rain with some staining Chu Xiang’s collar. However, this white-clothed young man only stared at the dagger and didn’t move another inch.

“It’s a delicious yet poisonous wine that one would fight to swallow even when you know it would pierce your intestines and make your stomach rot. Those with absolute power could naturally dominate the world and treat everyone like grass, but before winter comes, lighting will strike on rotten trees and the wildfire it sparks will scorch heaven and earth,” he replied.

Lan Jue lightened his hold. Chu Xiang used two fingers to push the blade away and took half a step forward.

“My Lord, do you want to be a rich and powerful ruler, or a blazing wildfire?”

Yang Feng let out a startled sound, then hurriedly covered his mouth.

Turn into fire, then burn away all the rotten wood in the world? Then wouldn’t that be–

Lan Jue suddenly smiled, pinched Chu Xiang’s chin, and said slowly, word by word, “You want to instigate me to rebel?”

Chu Xiang still seemed as if he couldn’t feel pain. “I don’t dare, but My Lord, have you ever truly submitted?” he asked rhetorically with a smile.

Did he ever truly submit?

The year when Lan Jue’s father was banished by the previous emperor, he was also exiled to beyond the Great Wall at a young age. Outside the walls, there was a city that never slept, where fish and dragons mingled,²A messy power structure, somewhere both weak and strong people coexist and suffered occasional raids by foreigners. His father transformed that place into a paradise on earth.

He had felt inferior due to his status as a criminal, until one day he discovered that his father had never done anything wrong. The Lord of Tang had used gold intended for the emperor to purchase food, provide relief for victims, and rescue citizens displaced by locust plagues. As a result, the refugees survived, but their lord could never return.

“My Lord, there is no reason to accept it.”

“You’re right.” Lan Jue put away the dagger, but it was Yang Feng not too far away who was so scared that he almost fainted.

The heavy rain covered up all the surrounding sound, leaving only two men facing each other, both drenched, but they seemed to be holding swords in their hands which sparked as they collided.

“But why do you think that you can incite me? I’m already the lord of a principality, at most I’ll just think of a way to take back Eastern Tang, but you want me to… directly usurp the throne?” A strange light flashed in Lan Jue’s eyes. He seemed to find it very funny, but also found himself unable to laugh. “You think I desire greater power?”

“You must,” Chu Xiang replied.

“Aren’t you afraid that I’m loyal to the emperor?”

As if hearing a joke, Chu Xiang burst into laughter. “The emperor? What’s loyalty to him worth in a time like this?” he shouted sharply.

He advanced another step but Lan Jue did not back down.

“Today, even as we speak, King Qin’s forces have sprung up like mushrooms after rain, so many lords’ flags have appeared in his camp, but everyone knows that power is the real rallying banner. King Qin hasn’t even put forward his own name for the throne, all his government affairs are left to his sister; his sister does have the ambition, but she has no ability to lead; as for the emperor, he’s busy sleeping with a few more beauties in his harem before the world changes hands. My Lord, everyone knows that King Qin is raising an army to seize power. All anyone in the world wants is a jade seal and a dragon chair, but this is a meat grinder. Once you get involved, it’s either tearing others apart or being torn apart yourself. You want Eastern Tang, does the Lord of Eastern Tang not want Western Tang? Once this war begins, no one can escape.”

“So what do you want, to be able to say that you assisted the dragon to his throne?”

Chu Xiang paused for a moment, then sighed in frustration. “Why do you care what I do? It doesn’t matter what I want.”

Lan Jue cleverly avoided this topic to ask instead, “Aren’t you worried that our goals will differ on this long journey?”

“Will they?” he smiled again. “If one day you have absolute power, kings and nobles will prostrate at your feet, no one will dare call you a barbarian behind your back. All the rude attendants who laughed at you will be forced to become military prostitutes, the ministers who rejected your marriage proposals today will kneel in front of the palace steps and beg you to allow their daughters to be your personal maids, the scholars who laughed at your handwriting will have their hands cut off and their tongues pulled out, civil servants and military officials will all kneel before your throne. Everyone will worship you, your descendants will be true dragons who rule the world, destiny returns to its rightful path.”

“Ha,” Lan Jue sneered, “then what’s the difference between me and those powerful people now? I don’t know their books, I don’t care about their women, a woman who quarrels over the patterns on her clothing can never be my queen. As for descendants, I have an adopted son who’s ten this year and he already makes me angry enough, if I have any more I’ll lose at least a decade off my life.”

“But you are not without desires, otherwise you would not have put down your pride and wasted time on the extravagant spring banquets here.”

Lan Jue was silent.

“Everyone longs for power, but they forget where power comes from, and forget to think about why they want this sugar-coated poison,” Chu Xiang said. “You just walked through the city, didn’t you see the consequences of having no power in today’s world? You keep asking me what I want. What I want is very simple, you can give it to me, but the important thing is what you want.”

Lan Jue watched Chu Xiang, who was so agitated that he didn’t care about his wound even as more blood flowed down his neck to be washed away by rain, and as he did so he suddenly felt very stupid. There was nothing to probe here, this man could present his autumn and frost poem at the Spring Banquet, wield a blade without hesitation, and meet him alone on a rainy night. This was enough proof.

So Lan Jue spoke to him.

“I want the children as old as my son to not lose their parents, I want girls of sixteen to marry good men, I want every old woman the same age as my granny to be able to sit in bed with a warm bowl of congee. I don’t like fighting for power, but as you said, I have to have it in my hands for my words to be heard and obeyed. So, if anyone blocks my way, I will lead my cavalry to trample them into the mud.”

Hearing Lan Jue’s words, an unconcealable smile crept onto Chu Xiang’s lips, and he took two steps back.

Even if he lost his mothership, how could the captain of Longque drift with the tide and be lost among the quagmire of the world? Maybe travelling through time gave him amazing luck, Chu Xiang never thought that things would go so smoothly — the Lan Jue in front of him was a ready-made wise ruler.

On the day his mothership first launched, the captain once pointed to its power core and swore that as long as both ship and captain were present, he would use his body to defend his homeland, protect the river of stars, and never be afraid of death.

As the saying went, even if you left home for half your life, you would become a youth upon return.

Chu Xiang lifted the hem of his robe and knelt without hesitation.

“Your Majesty has the ambition of a dragon, it is only a matter of time until you soar; I am willing to pledge myself. On the day the true dragon ascends, clouds will spread and rain will fall, dry land will once again become fertile.” Chu Xiang looked at him, then suddenly knocked his head to the ground, splashing water everywhere.

Lan Jue stood quietly, receiving this bow.

“I entrust my body to you. I ask for nothing, save that you remember your vow today and never give it up.”

---

Author:
I’m telling you, Lan Jue’s heart moved first!!! And Captain Chu’s acting skills deserve a little gold man!³An Oscars/Academy Award, since the award statuette looks like a gold human figure. Basically all c-novels I’ve read use ‘little gold man’ to refer to the top acting award instead of its name, regardless of if it’s actually the Oscars in-universe. In fact this is why I set it as a round trip time travel, because I really don’t think a modern person can avoid self-destructing if they transmigrate, so if someone has already lived there a while they can do it, right? Hahahaha
……
Attention, look here, Lan Jue is only 24! You all know I like young ROs, he’s really not that old hahaha, his son is only ten years younger than him because he’s an adopted son!

< Previous | Table of Contents | Next >

• 1
  非池中物: someone with great ambition is destined for great things, the opposite of being a frog in a well
• 2
  A messy power structure, somewhere both weak and strong people coexist
• 3
  An Oscars/Academy Award, since the award statuette looks like a gold human figure. Basically all c-novels I’ve read use ‘little gold man’ to refer to the top acting award instead of its name, regardless of if it’s actually the Oscars in-universe.