The Jing Province Magnates (4)
Ever since driving Liu Biao out, the General-in-Chief had been exposing corruption day after day, tightening the noose around the necks of Jing Province's magnates.
The magnates who had been drawing up countermeasures against him gathered once more to hear how their plan had fared—this time in a different place than before.
"Hm... So he refused the Five Minerals Powder."
As the man murmured this, the one who had delivered the intelligence nodded.
"That's right. Apparently our fellow managed to rub the General-in-Chief the wrong way."
"……."
"I don't know exactly what was said, but word is the General's face went stone cold and he ordered the guest expelled on the spot."
"Tsk."
The man clicked his tongue.
"He stepped forward brimming with confidence, so we entrusted the matter to him in good faith—and all he did was raise the General's guard."
At that, another spoke up in a tone that said he had expected as much.
"Didn't I warn you? Men who are all bark can't be trusted."
"……."
The man chose his words for a moment, then asked out of curiosity.
"What's become of the fellow we sent, anyway?"
The one questioned answered with a shrug.
"He got himself blacklisted by the General-in-Chief. What do you think?"
"……."
"Last I heard, he's barred his own gates and hasn't shown so much as the tip of his nose since."
"Is that so."
Having gotten his answer, the man dismissed the matter as beneath his concern. What happened to one magnate at the General-in-Chief's hands was no business of theirs; circumstance alone had bound them together for now, while in ordinary times they spent their days squabbling with one another over every scrap of profit. One fewer rival waiting in the wings? For these men, that was welcome news indeed.
"Still, turning down the Five Minerals Powder—now that is a genuine surprise."
the man murmured, sorting through his thoughts. However sharp a mind the General possessed, he had assumed curiosity would get the better of him at least once. With the General-in-Chief's intelligence network, he was bound to know the powder's boasted effects were no lie—so why refuse it? He could not fathom it.
Could he have known about the side effects?
It was true that the powder cleared the head and made one feel unshackled from every worldly bond—but the strange behavior of those who took it was a secret known only to those who knew. Skin ravaged to the extreme could not endure even the faint chafe of clothing; with time, users grew unnaturally obsessed with the powder itself; and when the condition dragged on long enough, it was far from rare for them to be found dead in some far corner of the world. Most died wandering the mountains in search of ingredients, but even those who never left home vomited blood, withered, and did not live long. Had he not witnessed that sight with his own eyes, he would never have believed for the rest of his days that the famed elixir harbored such effects.
"Then what do we do now..."
A man who refused what the whole world hailed as a peerless elixir—the General-in-Chief was far more cautious than they had estimated. The powder affair would most likely be written off as the wayward folly of some reckless provincial gentry, but it had undoubtedly raised his guard. From here on out, half-baked tricks would do nothing but shorten their own lifelines.
It was then that a voice rose from among them.
"If it has come to this, shouldn't we be ready to stake our lives as well?"
"...What is that supposed to mean?"
As the man turned his head, the one who had first delivered the intelligence wore a careless expression.
"We die if we sit still, and we die if we resist."
"……."
"Then at least dying after we've tried something will sit easier than dying for nothing."
It was a magnanimous air that seemed to prove just how long these men had lorded over a single region while drowning it in every manner of graft. The speaker swept his gaze slowly around the room.
"Looking over the faces gathered here, only the truly hardened sort remain. I trust none of you are harboring any funny ideas?"
Among them sat a loan shark who had swollen his fortune bleeding the powerless dry with ruinous debts, and a smuggler who had lined his pockets running every manner of contraband along waterways only he knew. There was a crooked merchant whose gouging prices on daily necessities had earned him universal loathing, and even official magistrates who had taken bribes to turn a blind eye to their crimes. Pardon was out of the question for any of them. Every man in the room had skimmed his fortune from one racket or another, and from the General-in-Chief's standpoint there was not the slightest reason to accept their surrender when lopping off their heads was just as easy. Even if he did deign to accept, once the affair was settled they would be dealt with like the hounds in the old tale—boiled the moment the rabbits were caught. None of the men here were fools; they could all see that much.
"When the time comes to stake the pot, you stake it for certain—and to catch a tiger, you must walk into the tiger's den."
With that, the speaker turned his head and put the question to the man presiding over the meeting.
"What will you do?"
"...I had hoped to settle this cleanly, without risk. But it cannot be helped."
The man spoke as though resigned.
"If dying this way or dying that way makes no difference, then we may as well gamble."
At those words, the magnates could do nothing but nod along.
The meeting ended, and not long after, a letter bearing a single message was delivered to the General-in-Chief. Its contents were simple.
We intend to hold a grand banquet in the near future, and shall extend our invitation to the General-in-Chief when all is in readiness.
"So they've moved first."
I murmured as I looked over the invitation from the magnates I had been keeping under close watch of late. Sharp instincts, as ever. Given just a little more time, I could have thrown the whole lot of them in irons together.
As I pondered how to respond, I turned my head slightly and called to the woman standing nearby.
"Jia Xu."
"You called, my lord."
A woman whose composure ran so deep one might mistake her for utterly without emotion answered my summons. Jia Xu, styled Wenhe. History records that not a single stratagem she proposed ever failed, and later generations have rated her extraordinarily highly for it. After Dong Zhuo's death, with her own head hanging by a thread, she devised the scheme that crushed Wang Yun and Lü Bu; later, alongside Zhang Xiu—a force so meager that on paper they were beneath anyone's notice—she put Cao Cao's very life in jeopardy. Among fans of the Records of the Three Kingdoms, she is best remembered as the strategist behind the plot that claimed the lives of Cao Cao's bodyguard Dian Wei and his eldest son, Cao Ang. And yet the art of survival by which she lived out her full span of years under that lunatic Cao Pi—no one could hope to match it. Recall that Zhang Xiu, who had helped her kill Cao Ang, was hounded by Cao Pi's venom until he took his own life; the difference between their fates was heaven and earth.
What had he snarled at him, word for word...?
"The man who killed my brother—why does he still shamelessly draw his stipend from my father?"
...Yeesh. And that's the child that came from Cao Cao?
Scary just to imagine.
I waved the letter in my hand and asked Jia Xu.
"The magnates of Jing Province claim they mean to throw a most lavish feast, and that they will be inviting me to it. How should I conduct myself?"
"...There are two options."
Having received my question, Jia Xu deliberated briefly before answering.
"You may accept the magnates' invitation and attend the banquet—or decline it and continue tightening the noose around their necks."
A neatly concise explanation, clear enough even for me to follow.
"And the difference between the first and the second?"
"Should you accept, you may be walking into danger, but the magnates can be dealt with at once. Should you decline, your person will face no threat—but settling the magnates will inevitably take time."
"Dealing with them will take time?"
"Yes."
When I asked in a puzzled voice, Jia Xu inclined her head in acknowledgment.
"If Your Excellency refuses the invitation, they will set about causing trouble inside Jing Province itself before long."
"……."
"They will either gather their private soldiers and raise a revolt, or gather their wealth and flee to parts unknown. Neither would pose a threat to us—but both would be a considerable bother."
...A bother either way, just as she said. We had not yet fully secured Jing Province, so if the rebels dug in behind city walls, things would turn tedious; and even if they fled with their fortunes, unless they left China proper we would cross paths again sooner or later—and the odds were good they would spend that reunion clinging to my ankles and dragging matters out.
"And when you say attending the banquet might put me in danger—what do you mean?"
"It is quite simple."
At my next question, Jia Xu answered in a level tone.
"They, too, are now prepared to stake everything. They will scheme to do you harm, my lord."
"……."
In other words: catch them red-handed, arrest the magnates—or simply take their heads on the spot. With the ringleaders caught in the act, the rest would have no grounds to object. It was, admittedly, a seductive proposal.
Jia Xu looked at me with eyes of blue, as though cradling the sea itself.
"Which course does Your Excellency desire?"
I studied her for a moment, and then, all at once, the whole thing struck me as funny.
Harm me?
I was genuinely curious what they would try. Short of someone working actual sorcery to call down a bolt of lightning on my head, there was no way under heaven I was dying. Zhang Jue, the archetypal sorcerer of the Three Kingdoms, couldn't summon lightning either—or so I'd heard.
...If a bolt really did come down, I'd have to die crying foul. But since that wasn't going to happen, my decision was as good as made.