Sowing Discord
He had only just fallen asleep, and now someone was waking him again — the Crown Prince was seething with rage. But the moment word reached him that Li Zhijie had arrived bearing the corpses of Haoying Battalion soldiers, along with the bodies of twenty-some men dressed in Jin attire, he snapped half-awake at once.
Zhan Yu attended to the Crown Prince's garments, and the Crown Prince gave orders for Advisor Fang, Zhen Xiangzhi, and Lin Shijie to be summoned.
Advisor Fang, having dressed himself with scrupulous care, came hurrying over with the hem of his official robe gathered in his hand. Zhang Danyue, Bai Jingyan, and several other generals had already arrived and were waiting at the entrance of the Crown Prince's tent.
Anxiety gnawed at Zhang Danyue, and he could only pace helplessly. Inside the tent, the palace maids and eunuchs the Crown Prince had brought from the palace bustled in and out carrying a bronze basin, hot water, and hand towels.
"It seems the Prince of Yan has come with ill intent."
Zhang Danyue glanced once toward the tent's entrance, then murmured in a low voice to Bai Jingyan.
"General Bai, in yesterday's fighting — did the Haoying Battalion brothers attack the Prince of Yan of Xiliang?"
At those words, Advisor Fang turned his head to look at Bai Jingyan.
Before Bai Jingyan could so much as turn around, Bai Jinchi could hold her tongue no longer.
"Not at all! In yesterday's battle, my sister and I didn't withdraw until we had seen every last living Haoying brother retreat up the mountain! It was only when the two of us climbed up there ourselves that the Prince of Yan appeared on horseback. We never so much as ruffled a single hair on his head."
Advisor Fang narrowed his eyes and stroked his beard.
This matter had already been laid out by Bai Jingyan inside the Crown Prince's tent — that she had met the Prince of Yan, and had never once harmed him.
"Judging by the look of it, the Prince of Yan is striking first, for fear that we might come questioning him about the Jin-attired masters he hid away in Chuishanguan! With the bodies of our Jin Haoying soldiers in Xiliang's hands, how he chooses to spin this tale is entirely at the Xiliang Prince of Yan's discretion!"
Zhen Xiangzhi spoke with a deep frown.
Advisor Fang's eyelids trembled violently.
"We held the talks at the hour they themselves wanted, yet the Xiliang Prince of Yan tried by every means to change the meeting date. Setting aside the variables the Haoying soldiers introduced, consider that Jin-attired masters were hidden in Chuishanguan, and that the Prince of Yan arrived wounded today — this, then, must be why he ordered those masters to lie in wait at Chuishanguan!"
Zhen Xiangzhi lifted his head sharply and looked at Advisor Fang. In an instant, he grasped the man's meaning.
"Advisor Fang means that if His Highness had consented yesterday to changing the date of the talks, Xiliang would have gone on to falsely accuse us — claiming those Jin-attired masters had assassinated the Prince of Yan himself..."
Advisor Fang nodded and spoke in a resolute tone.
"In that case, Xiliang would have proclaimed to every nation: Jin's greed ran so deep that, when the two sides failed to find common ground at the talks, it sent men to murder the Prince of Yan — its own peace envoy — out of spite. That would have given Xiliang the perfect pretext to beg aid from the other powers, and after that, they would have marched on Jin once more."
"Advisor Fang's theory is not beyond believing,"
Zhang Danyue conceded with a nod.
"But the alliance has already been sworn — why would Xiliang pull a stunt like this now? Surely he isn't hoping to pin the foul slander on us that 'Jin, seeing no profit in the alliance after all, killed that so-called Prince of Yan in a fit of pique'?"
Zhen Zeping simply could not make sense of it.
"We of Jin are the victors! If we thought the terms of the alliance were unfavorable, we could simply have kept waging war! What kind of fool would believe a victorious nation would handle matters in so clumsy a fashion?"
"Then it must be that he intends to smooth the whole affair over by pleading his own wounds as his excuse!"
Advisor Fang spoke slowly, deliberating each word.
While this heated debate raged outside the Crown Prince's tent, Bai Jingyan and the generals of the Bai Family Army — who already knew every fact of the matter — kept their lips pressed firmly shut and said nothing at all.
As Zhen Xiangzhi, Advisor Fang, and General Zhang Danyue argued without pause, Bai Jingyan quietly withdrew to one side and turned the question of Li Zhijie's purpose over in her mind.
The reason the Haoying Battalion and the death warriors had gone to Chuishanguan was to rescue Bai Qingyun, whom the Xiliang court held in its grasp. But Li Zhijie would never dare breathe that truth to the Crown Prince.
Even if Li Zhijie spat out those words today, it was already too late. If he had failed to mention yesterday, during the talks, that Xiliang held a Bai family man in its hands — and only came forward with it now — what would the suspicious Crown Prince conclude? That Xiliang was straining to prove it had no connection to the death warriors in Jin attire, and that in the very act of proving it, he was driving a wedge between the Jin imperial house and its ministers.
"Standing here wrangling gets us nowhere. It would be faster to go and meet the Xiliang Prince of Yan alongside His Highness. We must find out just what game he is playing!"
Zhang Danyue clenched his fist.
"General Zhang speaks rightly. Speculation here is meaningless. Since the Prince of Yan has already arrived outside the camp, we shall know soon enough."
The Crown Prince, now immaculately dressed, walked out of the tent wearing his ceremonial cape. The assembled men bowed in salute.
"Spare me the courtesies. Let us find out, and quickly, just what the Prince of Yan of Xiliang intends!"
The Crown Prince strode toward the camp gate, brow furrowed. He had apparently no intention whatsoever of admitting Li Zhijie inside.
Bai Jingyan followed at his heels, head bowed, toward the gate.
The Crown Prince's displeasure toward Li Zhijie had curdled into something sharper. Where does an envoy of a defeated nation get the gall to cause such a ruckus? He couldn't even let me sleep in peace.
The gates of the Jin camp opened slowly, and Li Zhijie, clad in a black cape, raised his head. Supported on either side by Liu Chentuo, he approached before the camp and bowed in reverence even before the Crown Prince had emerged — a posture of the most abject deference.
At Li Zhijie's manner, the Crown Prince's anger seemed to cool somewhat. Hands clasped behind his back, fists clenched tight, he frowned.
"Prince of Yan — what is the reason you come to the camp of our Great Jin, bloodied as you are?"
Standing upright with Liu Chentuo's support, Li Zhijie did not answer the Crown Prince at all, but turned his gaze upon Bai Jingyan instead. The cold, razor-sharp glint was carefully buried deep within those black peach-blossom eyes, and he stood there wearing an expression of pure fury.
"General Bai — what deep and ancient grudge do you bear against this king, that the very moment our two nations swore their alliance, you took the soldiers of the Haoying Battalion, whose very name sets every nation trembling, together with these death-warrior masters, and marched them out to assassinate me?"
Li Zhijie pointed at the corpses loaded on the cart and spoke with brutal directness. It was a ploy to fluster Bai Jingyan.
Cheng Yuanzhi pressed down the heart that had leapt into his throat, ground his teeth, and gripped the sword at his hip with all his strength.
Yet Bai Jingyan, the instant she heard Li Zhijie's words, felt her heart settle into perfect calm.
She spoke in a quiet voice.
"So the purpose of Your Highness's grand visit, then, was to aim your accusation at me."
The Crown Prince narrowed his eyes with a grave expression and swept his gaze over the bodies of the Haoying soldiers and the death warriors in Jin attire. Then his eyes met Bai Jingyan's — she stood there smiling, composed and unashamed.
Bai Jingyan returned the Crown Prince's gaze with a smile and a small nod of her head. It was as though she were telling him: hold your temper for now, and let us hear what Li Zhijie has to say.
The Crown Prince lightly rubbed his clasped hands behind his back. He had a fair idea now of what Li Zhijie was attempting, and drawing his gaze back from the corpses, he spoke.
"So what you claim, Prince of Yan, is that General Bai took the Haoying Battalion soldiers and these death warriors in Jin attire and moved to assassinate you?"
Li Zhijie watched Bai Jingyan and the Crown Prince exchange glances, and though the ground had shifted beneath his feet, he had no choice but to press on.
"Clearly there is someone who does not wish to see our two nations bound in alliance. The moment both sides lay down their weapons, they surrender their war chest and their armies alike — and so someone schemed to have Jin's Haoying soldiers and death warriors assassinate this king, only for the plot to fail! How else could I, this king, still be drawing breath with the Sun-Shooting Bow in General Bai's hands? Is that not so, General Bai?"
Bai Jingyan merely smiled and said nothing. So — I blocked the end of the war out of fear of losing my military authority, and therefore deliberately staged a failed assassination with the Haoying Battalion?
So that was Li Zhijie's purpose — to drive a wedge between her and the Crown Prince. To plant in the Crown Prince's mind the belief that she sought to seize sole command of the army, caring nothing for the interests of Jin, that she would even cast aside her loyalty and reignite the war to grind Jin down, all so that the Bai Family Army might grow great and powerful.
And what a pity for him, then. Before leading the Haoying Battalion toward Chuishanguan, she had returned the military tally to the Crown Prince without a moment's delay, precisely to demonstrate that she had submitted herself wholly to him. Li Zhijie truly had chosen the one thing in all the world she could not be pinned with.
They say a blow aimed any which way still lands true — but the Xiliang Prince of Yan had, in the end, laid his own heart entirely bare. Deliberately goading the Crown Prince into doubting the very general who had conquered Xiliang. Maneuvering the court of Jin into a state where sovereign and ministers eyed one another with suspicion.
"Your words, Prince of Yan, seem calculated to deliberately sow discord between the sovereign and ministers of our Jin."
Zhang Danyue opened his mouth in a voice cold as frost, eyes blazing as he glared at the Prince of Yan.
Now not only the Crown Prince, but Advisor Fang and Zhen Xiangzhi and all the advisors, and every general down to Zhang Danyue, had grasped why Li Zhijie had carried the corpses of the Haoying Battalion and the death warriors to the gates of the Jin camp.
Li Zhijie had tried, time and again, to change the date of the talks in that meeting tent. If the reason was that he had meant to fabricate a false assassination — to claim that Jin, after the talks collapsed, had murdered Xiliang's peace envoy in order to wring aid from the other nations?
And now that Xiliang's cunning scheme had been exposed by Bai Jingyan — dispatched to scout Chuishanguan under the Crown Prince's own orders — Li Zhijie had ridden this very momentum to her gates, wounded as he was, to press his charges. Was that not precisely an attempt to set Jin's sovereign against his ministers?
Bai Jingyan had been the greatest contributor to Jin's victory over Xiliang. Xiliang would dread the thought of Jin possessing so fine a general. Of course they would try to sow discord.
But no scheme of men can outrun the will of heaven. Bai Jingyan had surrendered the military tally the moment the alliance was sworn. More than that — saying that her failing health no longer permitted her to lead the Bai Family Army, she had handed everything over to the Crown Prince, meticulously preparing every arrangement so that he might one day command the army as he pleased.
Could such a person truly be the craven, petty scoundrel Li Zhijie described — one who would wound her own homeland's interests for the sake of grasping at military power?
"So? What is it you want, Prince of Yan?"
The Crown Prince had already lost his patience with Li Zhijie's rambling accusations. Even his voice had turned to ice.
The light in Li Zhijie's eyes darkened as he looked upon the Crown Prince of Jin, and his breathing grew short. His mind was in chaos.
Liu Chentuo gave the Prince of Yan's sleeve the gentlest of tugs, then bowed in reverence to the Crown Prince of Jin and spoke.
"Your Highness, pray do not let your anger rise. The Prince of Yan bears no intent of sowing discord within Jin. It is only that events unfolded so far beyond all expectation... General Bai suddenly led the Haoying soldiers and these death warriors in a strike upon Chuishanguan. The Prince of Yan meant to see the peace concluded with his utmost sincerity, and to meet with such a thing has left him shaken and furious — he has come only to demand answers of General Bai face to face. So I beg you, Your Highness, for the sake of how greatly the Prince of Yan has been startled, pay his words no heed."
Bai Jingyan regarded Liu Chentuo — who had bowed himself as low as a man could fold — with eyes grown deep and unreadable. This plainly dressed eunuch was, in truth, a remarkably clever man. Knowing that his prince could not drive a wedge between her and the Crown Prince, he was now striving instead to fix it in place as established fact that she had attempted to assassinate the Prince of Yan.