Dangtugo (3)
I had, as it happened, prepared a contingency plan of my own for Yuan Shu's usurpation of the throne. After all, I'd long suspected the man would sooner or later bare his desires for all the world to see.
What truly gnawed at me, though, was that no matter how thoroughly we turned Luoyang upside down, the Imperial Seal was nowhere to be found.
The Heirloom Seal of the Realm — the jade seal said to embody the emperor's authority. In actual history, it would go on asserting its existence right up until the fall of the Tang dynasty, entrenching itself as the very symbol of legitimate rule.
And the thing had gone and vanished?
Losing the seal — the symbol of the emperor himself — was a grave matter, the kind that struck a blow at the dignity and power of the imperial house. Naturally, the moment I had driven out Dong Zhuo, I threw everything I had into hunting down the Heirloom Seal said to have disappeared during the Ten Attendants' Rebellion. Not that I intended to use it to usurp the throne, of course; I searched so desperately because I meant to return it to the Emperor.
Just as it had happened in the novel, I had every last well in the city dredged and searched from top to bottom — and the seal never turned up. Plenty of corpses that had plainly drowned in the wells during the rebellion were recovered, but the single most important object was not among them.
With matters standing thus, I couldn't help picturing the worst. Unless the seal had sprouted legs and run off on its own, surely someone had quietly made off with it amid the chaos of the Ten Attendants' Rebellion?
I had only just left Bing Province when the rebellion erupted, so there had been no way for me to be caught up in it. My first suspect was Sun Jian, the man who recovered the seal in the original history — but at the time of the Ten Attendants' Rebellion, Sun Jian had been off operating way down in Jing Province.
Which left the people who had actually been active in Luoyang when it happened. Cao Cao and Yuan Shao had both been there, yes — but above all, so had Yuan Shu, the Honey Water Emperor, who spent his dying moments crying out for honeyed water to drink.
Why Dangtugo, of all things?
It isn't the dang of sugar — the character for taffy — but a name is a name, and I couldn't help making the association. The meaning of Dangtugo, specifically, is this: a tall, striking figure who walks the great road in perfect openness and honor.
Open and honorable? No words could suit Yuan Shu less. Here was a man who, at the slightest setback, reached for shadowy schemes — assassination, sowing discord — and he had the gall to speak of openness. Presumably he had realized how poor his own military talent was and come to lean on such means instead, and thanks to that, trust in the Yuan Shu faction had hit rock bottom across the realm. You need look no further than Gongsun Zan and Tao Qian — the closest things he had to allies — regarding him with thinly veiled distaste.
That said, he did seem to be genuinely handsome. I'd never laid eyes on him myself, but apparently, as befitted the rightful heir of the illustrious Yuan clan, his face was exceptionally well-favored. The trouble was that this was the only card he had to play.
Come to think of it, that made me a little angry. Looked at coldly, hadn't I been tormented nonstop by a man whose face I didn't even know?
Now it was my turn to torment Yuan Shu. So how should I go about cooking this fellow? Yes — that was the way to do it, all right. Yuan Shu had a track record of rounding up his friends to gang-beat me, so I resolved to return the favor in exactly the same coin.
In the original history, Yuan Shu's decline after his usurpation was breathtakingly swift. He had founded a new state propped up by one contrived justification after another, but what other warlord in his right mind would have recognized it? Proclaiming himself Dangtugo and establishing his Zhong dynasty, Yuan Shu promptly began taking beatings from every power under heaven.
Sun Ce, then under his command, severed ties and declared independence the very moment the usurpation was proclaimed; Lü Bu, who had refused a marriage alliance, turned the entire Shuchun region into a scorched wasteland; and then Cao Cao crossed the border in her turn and thrashed Yuan Shu as easily as snatching up a mouse.
Somehow, amid all that, he managed to avoid outright ruin and keep his faction breathing — but endless extravagance and debauchery drained the treasury to the last coin, and in the end, while traveling to throw himself upon the mercy of Yuan Shao, the very kin he so despised, he died of pure fury crying out for honeyed water.
What I was about to do was not so very different. I intended to gather every soul with a reason to strike Yuan Shu into one place — and then strike him, tremendously.
"I see. So you mean to summon every power surrounding that arch-traitor to one place."
"That is so."
Eyes dark as the night sky.
"Whew... This one, that one — of late it feels as though they press upon Us one after another."
Letting out a single long sigh, the Emperor gazed at me with eyes that glittered like the Milky Way.
"Do as you see fit."
"I am grateful, Your Majesty."
In an even, level voice, the Emperor pressed her seal to the document laid before her — a crisp little tap.
Calling it a 'tap' makes it look almost cute, honestly.
In any case, the document now bearing the imperial seal had become an edict — a decree her subjects were bound to obey without exception. Whatever was written upon it was no longer counsel but obligation, absolute and binding.
And what if one refused the contents of such an edict? Refused, indeed. Defying the emperor's command in an absolutist state? If the country were whole, you would be branded a traitor who raised his hand against the sovereign, and your head would come off on the spot; in an age like this one, with the realm splintered among rival powers, refusal became excellent fodder for public condemnation.
That was precisely why Liu Bei, knowing full well it was Cao Cao's scheme, had marched out against Yuan Shu all the same — and lost Xuzhou to Lü Bu for it. Whatever her true intentions, Liu Bei was, on the surface, a servant of the Han imperial house.
A man as openly lawless as Yuan Shu would simply ignore such an edict, but for those who at least kept their heads bowed in public, it made for a very fine instrument indeed.
"It seems this is all We can do for you."
"You do Yourself an injustice, Your Majesty."
I bowed at the waist and paid my respects with due formality.
"Your Majesty simply standing firm upon the throne, untroubled by any calamity, is already a great strength to us."
"Hmm..."
At my words, the Emperor mulled something over for a moment, then began slowly to move. With my head bowed I could see nothing before me, but the sound of her steps drew steadily nearer — she was coming toward me, it seemed.
...Usually, at times like this, Her Majesty would suddenly floor the accelerator and come out with something mortifying.
The specifics differed from occasion to occasion, but one thing was certain: it was always terribly awkward talk.
Having roughly anticipated what was coming, I readied my heart and tensed, just slightly.
……
After that brief pause, the Emperor's steps came to a halt directly in front of me. Even bent at the waist, I stood the taller of the two. At the irreverent sight of the Emperor gazing up at me, I was just debating whether I ought to prostrate myself on the floor when she reached out a hand and caressed my cheek.
……
It was an exceedingly tender touch — and an exceedingly sudden one.
...How do I put this. This was a first, even for me.
Inwardly, I quieted my startled heart. And just as I opened my mouth to speak, the Emperor beat me to it.
"So We are a great strength to you, then."
……
"This 'us' you spoke of just now — Jeong Reung, do you count yourself among it?"
The Emperor, who ordinarily addressed me only by my office, had — very rarely indeed — put my name to her lips. Hearing it, I understood at once. It lasted only an instant, but the Emperor's voice as she spoke my name carried something that clung like a swamp, thick and inescapable.
...So that was why the ones who had openly kept me in check had all vanished somewhere.
A handful of senseless royals who, as my power swelled day by day, had kept demanding their privileges as princes of the imperial clan. In a state as rotten as this one, precious few people had their heads screwed on straight — but these were people one could still, by some measure, call the imperial family's own. And the Emperor had been disposing of them without a flicker of hesitation.
I had suspected as much many times before, but now that it was all but confirmed, the feeling was a strange one indeed. Things having come this far, what choice did I have?
I spoke in a deferential voice.
"Of course, Your Majesty."
"Is that so."
At my answer, the Emperor closed the distance further still. In the same breath, a fresh, sweet fragrance wafted past me, and I could only stare at her, utterly bewildered.
...What just happened?
I blinked at the curious sensation still lingering on my lips.
Having drawn her head back, the Emperor spoke as though my reaction delighted her.
"It seems there is little left for Us to be reserved about now."
……
"You are quite flustered, I see."
The Emperor studied me, then murmured in a small voice.
"There must have been many a woman who took a fancy to the Grand General."
"...That is..."
"We knew already that We stood first among them, so all is well."
The Emperor of Han, Liu Bian, whispered at my ear.
"Do you know? My courtesy name is Baeryeon."
A name that never reached posterity, for its owner had met death far too soon in the original history.
Having mentioned her own courtesy name, the Emperor went on in a voice sweet as honey.
"When it is just the two of us... you may call Us that."
"...Yes."
Baeryeon. Hearing that name, I could feel it in my bones that I had well and truly turned history on its head.
...And that before long, everything was going to descend into utter chaos.
Seo Yeo would notice this — one hundred percent. What on earth was I going to do?
The 'something good for men' my mother had once pressed into my hands still lay tucked away, safe and sound, against my chest.