Casting Out the Kinsmen
To the Bai family, their reputation in Suyang mattered above nearly everything else. Bai Jingyan intended to raise an army there under the pretext of crushing the bandits, and that meant she would need the unwavering support of the common people.
This was, in truth, the very reason she had made a point of returning to Suyang. It was why she had poured so much time and effort into this place, turning the tyranny of the Bai clan's kinsmen and the lawless excesses of their spoiled children to her advantage and engineering the situation she now stood in.
When the people looked up at the woman standing atop the high steps—gaunt-cheeked, dignified, her speech crisp yet composed—something like faith took root in their hearts.
Bai Jingyan mounted her horse, gripping a dark-gold riding whip in one hand and the reins in the other, and looked down at Prefect Zhou.
"Prefect Zhou, a man must serve his office as befits the seat he occupies. As an official charged with governing the people, you are bound to cherish them and stand up for them. An official who is nothing but an empty shell can never hold his post. Do you understand?"
"Yes! Xia Guan understands! Xia Guan understands perfectly!"
Afterward, the crowd stood in silence for a long while, watching Bai Jingyan and her party dwindle into the distance. Then someone broke the stillness.
"That's the Zhenguo Commandery Princess? But… why is she so different from what I imagined?"
"They say she arrived in Suyang last evening, and spent this morning walking about listening to the people. Surely she came back specially because of what the Bai kinsmen have been doing to us?"
"Don't tell me the Bai family in Dadu truly never knew how the Suyang Baiks have been running roughshod over us…"
Whenever outsiders came to Suyang and sang the praises of the Zhenguo Duke Bai Weiting—how magnificent he was, how devoted to loyalty and righteousness—the locals would only curl their lips.
But then word spread through Suyang of how Bai Jingyan had punished the illegitimate son in the streets of Dadu and enumerated every one of the Bai family's merits before the imperial banquet, and some in Suyang City came to believe that the Bai family had passed down its love for the common people through the generations.
The people who had suffered every persecution the Bai kinsmen could devise, however, despised both the kinsmen and the main Bai family down to the bone, and dismissed it all as theater staged for their benefit. When news came that every man of the Zhenguo Duke Estate had died, they had even cheered in secret.
Yet today, seeing the Commandery Princess stand so boldly and honestly before them, they found themselves remembering Bai Weiting's unyielding spirit. Perhaps—just perhaps—the Bai family of Dadu really had known nothing of the kinsmen's tyranny in Suyang.
"Whether the face the Dadu Baiks show us is a mask or the truth, we'll know soon enough by whether Prefect Zhou does his duty honestly. Watch whether the Commandery Princess truly returns what the Bai clan stole from us. It will all come to light."
After Bai Jingyan left, upheaval swept through Suyang City. Prefect Zhou seemed transformed into another man entirely. Not only did he arrest every Bai young master who had run riot at the Tianxiang Tower that day, he dispatched men to seize even those young masters and household retainers who had killed commoners and violated innocent women.
The Suyang Baiks were thrown into instant chaos. Weeping and wailing, the wives dragged their husbands off to the clan head.
"Clan Head! Clan Head, disaster has struck! The county office has taken our A-Jin!"
"The deputy magistrate stormed into our quarter and seized our A-Rong without a word of explanation! Clan Head, please, bring our boy home!"
The clan head had no idea what to do either. Bai Qiyun gathered gifts in lavish quantity and set out to call on Prefect Zhou, intending to beg for the release of the young masters—including Bai Jingjie—but the prefect had vanished without a trace.
The prefect instead sent a messenger to Bai Qiyun with a message: he had been utterly deceived all this time, everything was now laid bare, and he would have to pay the price.
At first, Bai Qiyun could not make head or tail of it. When he relayed the words to the clan head, the old man collapsed into his chair. In a flash, he remembered what Bai Jinchi had said before she left—clutch that pitiful pride of yours tight, and don't come crawling to Bai Jingyan begging later.
So it was Bai Jingyan who had set this whole thing in motion!
But how could she dare? The bloodline of the Bai family could not simply be severed! The Suyang Baiks and the Dadu Baiks shared the same blood, rose and fell with the same glory—how could Bai Jingyan presume?
Even Bai Weiting, her own grandfather, had never dared to trample the kinsmen's dignity like this and drive them into a corner. How could a mere girl, barely grown, dare such audacity?
Does she never think of the future? They were meant to spend their remaining years under the clan's care. Who would look after them in their old age? Who would offer incense to the kinsmen's tablets when they died?
And yet, on reflection, these two things were the only levers the kinsmen had ever held over Bai Jingyan—and all the while, the Suyang Baiks had been lording it over the county on the strength of borrowed majesty from the very Commandery Princess they sneered at.
"Elder Brother! Elder Brother!"
Onoya, the younger brother of the eldest legitimate son, came crashing in from outside with his wife in tears at his side.
"Elder Brother! They've taken Liang'er to the county office!"
Catching sight of Bai Qiyun, Onoya grew frantic and pressed on quickly.
"Prefect Zhou—the very man you've been so thick with—had Liang'er arrested! Qiyun, don't tell me you've offended the prefect somewhere, and he took our Liang'er because of it!"
The clan head felt an unaccountable surge of rage at the sight of Onoya.
"How dare you say that! If you hadn't seized the ancestral mansion, none of this would have happened! How could Qiyun have earned the prefect's displeasure? It's you who got on Bai Jingyan's bad side! Every child of the Bai clan is about to suffer for your doing!"
Onoya's face twisted.
"Brother, it was you who gave me leave to move into the ancestral mansion!"
The clan head stared at him. When Onoya sheepishly avoided his gaze, the old man sank into his chair and slammed his fist down on the table with all his strength.
"Bai Jingyan—that girl is far more formidable than any of us ever imagined!"
Onoya kept blustering on regardless.
"Last time, when Qiyun was robbed by common bandits, no one lifted a finger—and now he's had the children of our own clan dragged off to jail! The Dadu Baiks have no men left; shouldn't their property pass to the clan by rights? We already conceded half the mansion, and this is how they repay our generosity—with enmity for a favor!"
"Fifth Uncle, if you believed the ancestral mansion should revert to the clan, why didn't you say so from the start? Instead you waited until the repairs were finished and then sneaked your way in. Did you truly think we wouldn't notice? Once it passed to the clan, the only family enjoying that mansion would have been yours, wouldn't it? And now what? Your family alone got to live in comfort there, and our children are the ones paying the price? Why? Why?"
A fierce-tempered woman shrieked the words into Onoya's face.
The sharp, piercing volume of her voice made the clan head's head throb, and he thumped the floor with his cane.
"Enough of this racket! This is no time to be sorting out who's right and who's wrong! We have to find a way to bring the children home!"
"That's right! The clan head speaks sense! Hurry and rescue the children!"
The clan head's daughter-in-law pressed a handkerchief to her mouth, tears streaming down her face.
"When have our Bai children ever known such hardship? What in the world is happening to us?"
"Exactly! Clan Head! Go and confront the Dadu Baiks and get our children back! Our boys have suffered in prison, so demand proper compensation! Otherwise… I swear I will never get past this!"
Onoya ground his teeth as he spoke.
Standing at the entrance, Bai Jingping clenched his jaw so hard it ached. His grandfather's words, and the words of these kinsmen, made his chest feel as though ice had closed around his heart.
He lifted the curtain, braced a hand against the threshold, and stepped inside.
"The children of the Bai family in Dadu are sent to the battlefield before they've even turned ten, and they endure every hardship there is to endure. And the children of these kinsmen? They do nothing but eat, drink, and make merry all day long, fleecing the common people while they're at it! Now they've been thrown in prison to pay for their crimes—and why is everyone carrying on like this? Rather than reflect on your conduct as elders, you're sitting here scheming how to threaten the Zhenguo Commandery Princess, and even now trying to squeeze something more out of her!"
Bai Jingping stood there panting. Since when had the people of his clan grown so greedy, so selfish? And how, on top of that, had they become so arrogant and so blind? His chest felt heavy and hollow.
He looked around at the elders, all of them staring back at him, struck dumb by his words.
"Grandfather! Honored elders of the clan! Can you still not see what wrong the kinsmen have done?
The only reason the Suyang Baiks have been able to run wild in this county all these years is that they propped themselves up on the name of the Dadu Bai family! This affair is a warning bell rung for us!
The Commandery Princess asked Grandfather for the deeds to the Dadu Bai estates, and Grandfather refused to hand them over. So now she is cutting the Suyang Baiks off from the Dadu family's protection once and for all! This is her warning to the kinsmen. And yet if you keep raging about, fearless of heaven itself, the Commandery Princess will cast the kinsmen out without mercy. Can none of you imagine where we'll be driven to then?"
Bai Jingping's voice tore itself raw as he shouted. His face was drenched in tears.
Whether they fell for himself or for the rotting kinsmen of the Bai clan, he could no longer tell.
He looked at the elders of the clan—once people of principle, now nothing but lumps of greed. The kind, indulgent elders of his childhood had somehow been reduced to this wretched state, this ugly spectacle, and he could hardly bear to look at them with open eyes.
This was no longer the Bai family he had been proud of.
An unbridgeable gulf now yawned between the Bai kinsmen and the Baiks of Dadu.
The Dadu Baiks had carried forward the will and the unyielding spirit of the Bai ancestors, while the Suyang Baiks had begun to rot from the clan head on down—until now even the roots had festered through.
It would not be long, he was certain, before the Zhenguo Commandery Princess cast out these leeches who fastened themselves to the Dadu Bai family and swaggered about on its prestige.
"A-Ping! What on earth are you saying? Get out of here at once!"
Bai Jingping's mother shrieked at him.
"What lunacy is this child spouting? Abandon the kinsmen? In all my years I have never once heard such a thing spoken aloud! Even men of the highest rank—even a prime minister—would never cast out the kinsmen and leave trouble behind for later! What would a green boy like you know of anything!"
Onoya glared at Bai Jingping even as he berated his mother.
"How exactly did you raise this child?"
"A child may be cast out by the kinsmen, but who ever heard of anyone casting out the kinsmen?"
Someone chimed in.
Bai Jingping closed his eyes tightly. A wretched despair washed over him, as though everyone around him were drunk on some poison he alone could taste. When he spoke again, his voice was low and heavy.
"The reason men of power cannot cast out the kinsmen is that when the sons of the clan pass the imperial examinations and take office, they become relatives and allies at court. The reason men of humble station cannot abandon the kinsmen is that they depend on the clan's protection.
But what of the kinsmen here in Suyang? Not one of them holds a single office in the court. For years they have lived on nothing but the backs of the Dadu Bai family—and they have given it nothing in return.
Yes, the Dadu Bai family has no men left, only women. But the legitimate eldest daughter Bai Jingyan and the fourth young miss Bai Jinchi—one is a Commandery Princess, the other a County Princess. Even if the Bai women cast off the kinsmen, no one would dare lay a finger on them. And the kinsmen? Without the Zhenguo Commandery Princess and the Gaoyi County Princess, could they go on living as they please in Suyang, as they always have?
It was only because the late Zhenguo King let it all slide that we lasted this long. Every soul in this clan, old and young alike, has been blinded by the profit right in front of their noses. Where does such confidence even come from? To believe that the Bai family of Dadu needs to lean on a pack of minor kinsmen—honestly, where does it come from?"