Eternal Faith
The Emperor sprang to his feet, rounded the table, and hurled the bamboo slips he had been holding down with all his strength before Bai Jingyan.
"You asked me why? You held the campaign records in your hands and did not present them at once—instead, the people of the capital learned what was written on these slips before I did! And not only did you swear a vow before the Hall of Valor, you led a crowd of grieving, incensed citizens to bar the gates of Wude Gate! The mood was such that you might have stormed the palace at any moment, and now you stand there and ask me why? Do you take me for nothing more than a deaf, blind old man? Did you truly believe I would never see through the Bai family's sly little tricks?"
Bai Jingyan bent down, picked up the bamboo slips from the floor, and wiped them clean against her white mourning robes. A single line of text at the very bottom caught her eye. Vice Marshal Bai Qishan was besieged in Fengcheng for five days, his supplies cut off. The armies of Nanyan seized the five sons of the Bai family alive, stripped them bare before the soldiers and carved the flesh from their bodies to humiliate them—all to force Bai Qishan's surrender.
A fury that clawed at the heavens scorched through her chest. In the end she could hold back no longer; clenching her teeth, she answered.
"If the Bai family's stratagem for holding the pass and defending ourselves is contemptible, then tell me, Your Majesty—when you sent that witless fool to spy on the army, and bestowed the gold-plaque imperial tally upon that same fool, was your purpose not contemptible in the slightest?"
"Insolence!"
The Emperor's eyes blazed.
"Xiliang and Nanyan watch our Great Jin day and night, hungry to devour it, and the intentions of the Liang empire and the Rongdi barbarians are beyond reckoning. Our finest soldiers fought for their lives against the armies of Xiliang and Nanyan that pressed upon our borders. Even when their corpses were buried in the battlefield, even when their heads were severed from their bodies, they did not hesitate for an instant—they did not care if heaven and earth became their grave! With their hot blood they shielded their country and their families, hurling themselves into death without once thinking of retreat!
"And while the campaign in the Southern Border hung on a knife's edge, Your Majesty, you feared that a minister's achievements might threaten the throne—so you handed the gold-plaque imperial tally to a prince who had never once set foot on a battlefield, who did not know the first thing about war, and ordered him to spy upon the army and steal its glory. I ask you: is such conduct truly not contemptible?
"That incompetent wretch wielded the imperial tally as a weapon of coercion. Now every son of the Bai family is dead, and Great Jin has lost the Duke of Zhenguo, who for ten years kept the Liang empire and the Rongdi so terrorized they dared not so much as glance at our borders. There is no longer a single valiant, battle-hardened commander left in the court! Hundreds of thousands of soldiers lie dead—Great Jin has cut off its own two arms!"
Watching the Emperor's face twist, Bai Jingyan could not stop the cold smile that broke from her lips.
"When Great Jin grovels before Nanyan and Xiliang begging for peace, the Rongdi and the Liang will come running, desperate to tear off whatever scraps they can. Is such a state of affairs to Your Majesty's satisfaction?"
The Emperor's eyes, clenched shut behind grinding teeth, flooded red. Her words had struck true, piercing him again and again in the very heart of the wound—which was precisely why, upon reading the bamboo slips, he had been unable to contain his rage and had bitterly regretted the decision he had made back then.
"You may as well have driven the Bai family to their deaths—it hardly matters! The whole world knows the lesson now. Serve your country with unwavering loyalty, foolishly refuse to leave yourself a single path of retreat, devote everything you have to this nation—and this is what awaits you. One misstep, and every man of your clan will be slaughtered to the last. And those corpses will be returned in paper-thin coffins that even commoners would refuse to use, and the body of a boy of ten years will not even come home whole!"
Before the Emperor could speak again, King Xin, unable to contain himself any longer, exploded in fury.
"Your Bai family is nothing more than the gatekeeper's dog our imperial household has raised! Your grandfather and your father—those decrepit, venomous old men—used military power to entrench their own position. Did they ever once truly think of my father, the Emperor of this realm? Did they ever once think of the Li imperial throne! And you expect us simply to stand by and watch the gatekeeper's dog run rampant? Bai Weiting—that old fraud—spent his days spouting empty talk of living for the people of the world and for this nation, pretending to care for nothing but country and commoner! The Bai family was laying its foundations to steal the Li dynasty's rivers and mountains and commit treason against my father—can you stand there and deny it?"
"My father fought the enemy to his last breath in Fengcheng, even with his food supply severed. Is that treason?"
Bai Jingyan rose to her feet and held the bamboo slips open before her. Tears welled in eyes already drowning in blood, and the hands that gripped the slips trembled violently.
"My five younger brothers were taken alive, and Xiliang humiliated the sons of the Bai family to break the army's spirit. My father, weeping, shot his own five younger brothers dead with his own bow. Is that treason?
"My own brother Bai Jingyou was left in the rear. He could have escaped under the pretext of protecting King Xin—but he fought to his last breath on the front line at Bailing. We still have not even recovered his body. Is that treason too? My seventeenth brother, only ten years old, was bound in Fengcheng and given nothing to eat for five days—and after he died, those Xiliang bastards carved out his heart and devoured his liver. They said the boy's belly held nothing but dirt and tree roots. And still you ask me—is this truly treason!"
Her voice, soaked in killing intent and tearing itself apart, echoed through the great hall. It was a voice that raised the hair on a man's neck.
"My seventeenth brother was only ten years old! His life had not even begun! And yet his marrow itself was filled with loyalty and righteousness. Generations of unbending bone passed down through our bloodline taught him to take up his sword and fight the enemy, even knowing that nothing lay ahead of him but death! Show me another family under heaven that holds such loyalty as the Bai family!
"Great Jin has been called a failing state for decades, and its capable generals can be counted on one hand! To raise commanders worthy of the name, my grandfather and father led every man of the Bai family to the front. They left the clan no margin for survival, left the Bai family no road of retreat. And this whole heart, this whole devotion—Your Majesty looked away and pretended not to see! Our Bai family swore to serve with loyalty until every last one of us died, and generation after generation we threw ourselves onto battlefields. And what was our reward? The slanders of treacherous courtiers! Your Majesty's suspicion! Your Majesty's envy! Nothing but Your Majesty's fear!"
It felt as though her very organs were burning to ash. Enduring pain as though her whole body were being torn apart, Bai Jingyan fixed her gaze on King Xin.
"If the Bai family had truly meant to commit treason, then the gold-plaque imperial tally in your hand would have been nothing more than a worthless lump of iron. Do you believe such a thing could command my grandfather? Do you believe he would have kept enough of his life to return to the capital at all?"
The chief eunuch, still on his knees, trembled like an aspen leaf, chilled to the marrow by the Emperor's fury.
King Xin's mouth hung open, mute. The Emperor, too, pressed his lips shut.
The vast, majestic hall fell utterly, deathly silent.
Bai Jingyan, the bamboo slips still in her hands, sank slowly to her knees once more and spoke in a small, choked voice.
"Your Majesty—do you still remember the day you were invested as Crown Prince? Do you remember what you said to my grandfather before the resplendent Eastern Palace? You said this: 'Uncle-in-law is ten years my elder, and from childhood I thought of him as my father's brother, not as a minister of the court. I know well that he holds the people of the world in his heart and pursues an age of peace for their sake—and so do I. I will keep the court, and Uncle-in-law will keep the battlefield. Until this life ends, I will entrust him with command of the armies, and we shall never doubt each other.'"
The Emperor's hanging hands curled slowly into fists. His memory was dragged back to that bitter winter, the white snow swirling through the air.
On that day, Bai Weiting had answered with solemn gravity. His eyes rimmed red, he had performed the full ceremonial bow, and the words that left his lips had been resolute.
"I will never betray the Crown Prince's trust."
Those words had been nothing more than strategy—a favored maneuver by a prince who had never known favor, standing for the first time a single step from the throne, seeking to consolidate his power.
And yet—had Bai Weiting taken those words to heart?
The Emperor's thoughts grew dim and distant.
"That is why my grandfather—why the Bai family—poured out such devotion. That is why they left themselves no margin, no retreat. That is why they led every man of our family to the Southern Border!"
Reading the Emperor's face, Bai Jingyan pressed on.
"My grandfather once said that a military commander is, by nature, a thing for a sovereign to fear. And yet he said he feared nothing, because he had Your Majesty's trust! He said Your Majesty's dream was to harbor great ambition and seize hegemony over all the world, while he himself longed only for peace under heaven—and that if he could not see that ambition fulfilled in his own lifetime, he prayed the descendants of the Bai family would carry it in his stead!
"My grandfather said that the day the world finally knew peace, the Bai descendants would return the military authority the Emperor had granted them back to the imperial house. Weakening a minister's power and returning authority to the center—this, he said, was something every emperor must enact after achieving peace under heaven, an inescapable duty. And he said that if the Bai family served with whole hearts and walked the straight path, caring nothing for power or prestige, then no matter which son of the imperial house ascended the throne, the throne itself would protect the Bai family's safety in the gentlest way possible. Not once—not for a single instant—did he doubt it."
The Emperor's mouth hung open, and no words came.
So Duke Bai Weiting thought that highly of me.
Bai Jingyan lifted her head and looked at the Emperor, who leaned slightly against the aloeswood table.
"Your Majesty. My grandfather trusted you this much—so tell me. Did you keep that promise? The promise never to doubt him, forever?"
In the side hall, the Grand Princess—who had felt her heart leap into her throat—did not release her breath until she heard Bai Jingyan's final words. The stiffness drained from her back, and she let herself sag against the cushion behind her. Her eyes were closed, but hot tears streamed down without cease.
Every time Bai Jingyan had flung out a word in her fury, the Emperor must have wanted her dead a dozen times over.
And yet with that single final sentence, her eldest granddaughter had saved her own life.
Thank the heavens. Bai Jingyan had not lost her reason to hatred. Mercifully, in the end, she had carved out a way to survive.
Gazing at the woman in mourning white kneeling proudly at the center of the hall, the Emperor thought that she looked strikingly like Bai Xiaozhui in his proudest bearing.
That image touched the softest, most vulnerable place in the Emperor's heart. He stared, unblinking, at this daughter of the Bai family who dared meet his eyes—a figure like an old monk passing at last into his final meditation.
Finding a loyal minister in this world was no difficult thing. But to find one who possessed ability alongside loyalty and honor—that was never easy. The more capable the minister, the more he drew the attacks of treacherous courtiers, and the more he became a presence even the Emperor feared, envied, and resented.
Only after a long while did the Emperor straighten his back and speak slowly. His voice was heavy with helplessness.
"King Xin shall be stripped to commoner status and confined within his residence. Yu Huanzhang shall be executed with his entire clan. Will this result suffice?"
"Father! Father!"
King Xin's eyes flew wide in disbelief, and he crawled forward on his knees, wailing.
"Father—I am your legitimate son!"
The Emperor ground his teeth. His disappointment in his legitimate heir had reached its extreme, and rage boiled up from beneath it. He roared.
"Drag him out! What in the name of heaven is all this wailing!"
Killing one's own legitimate son was, after all, no easy thing.
But it did not matter whether the Emperor's hand did the deed. She would be the one to kill him. It would only mean letting him live a few days longer—and those days, he would not spend free of torment.