The Hainan Sect, the Yingtian Banquet (1)
Four days later—the eighth day since he had entered the palace.
Every last eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial's new cohort had gathered at the training grounds from early morning. At the round stone dais in the very center stood Elder Yi Gwak and Yun Bong, their faces grave.
"From this day forth, the Directorate's new eunuchs shall receive instruction in our clan's martial arts every morning. Afternoons shall continue to be devoted to whatever a palace eunuch's duties require. Is that understood?"
When Yun Bong announced the change in their daily regimen, the new cohort roared their answer at the top of their lungs.
Those pitiful eunuchs. How long they must have waited. A week had surely felt like an eternity. This was the moment men who had been complete novices would step onto the path of martial arts—and the art they were about to be taught was the Sunflower Manual. Counterfeit or not, it was a method that need not envy any divine art in the world.
Of course, only a eunuch could learn it. No one who practiced it had ever reached the Transformation Realm, and the fatal drawback was that they died before their sixtieth year. Then again, the average commoner lived to forty, or fifty if they were lucky. Sixty was a rare old age. Train the counterfeit Sunflower Manual and you stood a fair chance of living longer than most—and of spending those years as a Peak Realm master. There was not a eunuch alive who qualified to learn it and would refuse.
"Jeonbu Zhang!"
"Yes, Gonggong!"
Yun Bong had spotted me among the new cohort and called me out.
"Jeonbu Zhang will train with the new cohort only until he has learned the fundamentals and forms of the Sunflower Manual. After that, he is to train with the intermediate class."
"Yes, Gonggong!"
That I had learned martial arts before entering the palace was by now an open secret. My level was publicly known as First-Rate, so there was no chance they would drill me alongside complete beginners. It would only breed awkwardness and a sense of being left behind.
The only person in the Imperial Palace who truly knew the measure of my martial achievement was Daoist Hyeondo. And even that measure was about to change.
The Jeong-eum Divine Blade. That was the name of the short sword Crown Prince Zhu Gaochi had given me. After I heard Daoist Hyeondo's account, it turned out to be a rather extraordinary piece of work.
It was a divine weapon the Orthodox sects of the Central Plains had presented as a token of complete surrender during the reign of Borjigin Kublai—Emperor Shizu of the previous dynasty, Kublai Khan. That had been some hundred and fifty years ago. At the time, the Orthodox Martial Alliance had furnished Jeong-eum Kunlun Jade and Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron, and the Tang Clan of Sichuan had taken on the forging. Emperor Shizu Kublai gifted the blade to his wife, and thanks to the nights he spent wrapped in the yin energy the Jeong-eum Kunlun Jade poured forth, he lived to the age of seventy-nine.
There was a twist, however. While the Emperor enjoyed his long life, his first wife departed this world thirteen years before he did. The second wife was said to have inherited the blade and gone on using it. Successive generations of empresses, coveting the jade's efficacy, had passed it down from one to the next.
A beautiful arrangement. Truly, a most beautiful arrangement. Flesh and bone, searing hot… this body of mine would soon know that heat…!
…No. This was not the time for that.
In any case, I was a man, and my yang energy was swelling more explosively by the day. A tool that could supplement yin was useful indeed. And this was only a guess, but Dongfang Guihua must have possessed something similar. To become a woman, she would have had to keep her yin at a level far exceeding her yang until the very moment of her bodily transformation.
Wield the Jeong-eum Divine Blade while circulating the Isin Heart Method, and breaking through the sixth star was only a matter of time. I had been lucky. Had Zhu Gaochi known what the blade truly was, he would never have given it to me. He would have given it to one of his wives.
Zhu Gaochi was an emperor even between the sheets. When he died suddenly, before my regression, there had been a theory that he died of overexertion in the bedchamber. Chronic illness, compounded by death in the act of passion. For a man famous for the generosity of his character, he had remarkably poor relations with the physicians and ministers who tried to curb his nighttime exertions on the pretext of his health. Ailing in every way a body can ail, and he had still managed to sire sixteen children.
All in all, things were falling into place reasonably well. All except one.
There was a problem. My little brother, Jeong Go.
Jeong Go. That boy was the problem. He had never been one for expressions, but now he looked like death itself. Of everyone in the Directorate's new cohort, he alone could not learn martial arts. He had lost his dantian.
The poor kid.
Jeong Go stood at the far edge of the training grounds. He could not cultivate inner energy—but that was no reason to do nothing but lament. Life would go on. He would have to live somehow. He would have to endure. He would not drop to his knees before fate.
I will… I swear I will!
Halfway up Wuzhi Mountain on Hainan Island. After he had been abandoned at the place that had once been his entire world, the refuge he fled to was a manor in Yingtianfu, four thousand li away. There he had given up being a man and entered the Imperial Palace. The power to crush the sect that had discarded him like a worn-out shoe—authority, the only power left to him—was what he had come to the palace to seize. The Imperial Palace was where every rare treasure and every gifted talent in the world was said to gather. If heaven's fortune smiled on him, he might yet recover his martial arts.
I'll have my revenge… I'll take it with my own two hands.
A gentleman's revenge is never too late, even after ten years. He would become a Supervisor, then a Junior Director, then a Grand Eunuch, and grind the Hainan Sect beneath his heel.
Nam Geonhu. Geum Hwayeong!
His teeth ground together. The ones who had reduced him—once the promising future of the Hainan Sect—to this. Nam Geonhu was the son of Head Disciple Nam Yeonghak, and second among the second-generation disciples. Geum Hwayeong was the granddaughter of Sect Leader Geum Jong-mu, and fourth among them. Together with Jeong Go, the three of them had been fellow disciples. Martial siblings.
Twenty days later, at the tail end of August.
The Imperial Palace had finished its preparations to receive guests flooding in from every corner of the realm, and now it waited for its principals to arrive.
The Yingtian Banquet. Whenever Zheng He returned from his voyages, the Yongle Emperor summoned the orthodox sects that stood for the martial world of the realm and held a feast that lasted three days. It was a banquet meant to soothe the orthodox martial forest even as it confirmed their loyalty. The exhibition of treasures from across the world, the exchange of gifts—those were little more than ceremony.
Of all the events at the Yingtian Banquet, the one best known beyond the palace walls was the martial contest. The Orthodox Martial Alliance held a tournament of its own, but the Yingtian Banquet's was more famous—and the reason was simple. It was held in the Imperial Palace itself. A contest of martial skill before the master of all under heaven! Win, and your name would go down in history as a master and a sect recognized by the Son of Heaven.
The Orthodox Martial Alliance could talk itself hoarse; ordinary people would never know. Win at the Yingtian Banquet, and every commoner in the realm would know. That meant not merely honor, but commercial interest. And so the orthodox sects that represented each province of the Central Plains staked everything on the Yingtian Banquet. Money was an eternal truth, in this age as in every other. Monk, Daoist, or official—everyone had to eat.
Today was the first day of that Yingtian Banquet. Yingtianfu seethed with people pouring in from across the realm.
"It isn't the first time, and still it astonishes me every time I see it, Sect Leader."
"So it does. That a mere city gate should be so vast."
Nam Yeonghak and Geum Jong-mu had paused before Cuibao Gate, the southernmost of the outer city's thirteen gates, and a murmur of wonder escaped them. The colossal barbican and gatehouse stretched some forty zhang east to west—nearly four hundred feet—and as much again from north to south, the largest of the thirteen by far.
"Senior Brother, it's incredible. That a mere city gate could be this big."
"I know. It really is. So this is the majesty of His Majesty the Emperor?"
The teenage boy and girl equally overwhelmed by Cuibao Gate's grandeur were Nam Geonhu and Geum Hwayeong, second-generation disciples of the Hainan Sect.
"Look there. Jinyiwei on top of the gate."
"The Jinyiwei?"
Nam Geonhu pointed, and Geum Hwayeong lifted her gaze to the gate tower. Atop the gatehouse, some seven zhang high, Jinyiwei guardsmen radiating cultivated inner energy looked down upon them. Ordinary townspeople, crushed by that austere presence, did not even dare raise their heads.
Gongsun Dajing's stern voice rolled down the avenue before Cuibao Gate like a thunderclap. A Peak Realm master's true qi rode in that voice, and it drew gasps of admiration from the townspeople and martial artists gathered before the gate. He was young. And he was strong.
Ten thousand years! Ten thousand years!
Ten thousand times ten thousand years!
Geum Jong-mu and the ninety-nine disciples of the Hainan Sect dismounted at once, prostrated themselves toward the northeast, and raised the imperial cheer.
"You may pass. Inside, you will be received by a eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial, who will compile your register and take roll. A roster prepared in advance will be accepted. Thereafter a Directorate eunuch and a Jinyiwei guardsman will accompany you and show you the way."
Geum Jong-mu and his disciples entered the gate. Beyond the tunnel of the gatehouse—forty zhang of stone, like a cave—eunuchs and guardsmen were waiting. When the party reached the inner side, the eunuch charged with receiving guests at Cuibao Gate that day stepped forward. Wang Zhen.
"Cheongsa Wang Zhen of the Directorate of Ceremonial. It is an unbounded pleasure to receive the Sect Leader and disciples of the Hainan Sect, whose fame resounds throughout the Great Ming."
"So you are Eunuch Wang. This old man is Geum Jong-mu, come from Hainan Island. We shall be in your care."
"But of course! If you have a roster prepared, please give it to this humble servant."
Wang Zhen was of the Directorate of Ceremonial, and the Directorate of Ceremonial was the very heart of power in the Great Ming. Even the leader of a famous orthodox sect could not afford to treat a Directorate eunuch lightly. That particular climate had taken root in the reign of the Yongle Emperor, who—unlike his father—entrusted eunuchs with weighty office.
"Sect Leader Geum and the ninety-nine beneath him: all confirmed. Have you arranged lodgings? If not, this humble servant would be glad to make an introduction."
"You are kind, Eunuch Wang. Our sect has already taken rooms at the Gong Family Inn. We will accept the thought, if not the offer."
The Gong Family Inn stood immediately beside Yuwol Pavilion.
"Oho! A fine establishment. Please settle in first. I shall call the eunuch who will escort the Sect Leader. Eunuch Jeong!"
Wang Zhen offered Geum Jong-mu a smooth smile and looked for the eunuch assigned to the Hainan Sect. The trouble was this:
"Eunuch Jeong Go!"
"Yes! Coming, Cheongsa. I was just returning from the latrine."
The eunuch Wang Zhen had called for was Jeong Go.
Jeong Go, of all people. Of the outer city's thirteen gates, the Hainan Sect had chosen Cuibao Gate—and Jeong Go had been posted to Cuibao Gate. Any number of eunuchs had been posted there. And it was Jeong Go's turn. Fate, karma, the ties between people: none of it was as simple as one might wish.
"You will escort the Hainan Sect to the Gong Family Inn."
"Y…es. Cheongsa."
Jeong Go had been coming at a shuffle, back hunched, in the quick little steps peculiar to palace eunuchs. At the word Hainan his body locked. He could not lift his head. He could not open his mouth.
Hainan… Hainan, of all names.
His whole body trembled beneath the dark-blue robes. He had known the Hainan Sect was coming to the Yingtian Banquet. He had never dreamed he would meet them like this. Unprepared. A mere novice of the lowest rank. He had not wanted a reunion in this shape. Not even a little.
Damn it all…
But Jeong Go had no way to undo what was happening. He could only hope Hainan would not recognize him. Guide them quickly, and part. There was no other move. The two hands clasped inside his sleeves went clammy in an instant.
A short while later, the Hainan Sect was on the move under Jeong Go's guidance.
"And you, Guardsman…? I am Nam Yeonghak of Hainan."
The eunuch ahead of them and the Jinyiwei guardsman had said nothing at all. A little embarrassed, Nam Yeonghak opened his mouth.
"This officer is Sogi Jiang Wenchen of the Jinyiwei. Jiang greets the Chief Disciple of Hainan."
From Jiang Wenchen—early twenties, First-Rate—there was no mistaking the mettle peculiar to a young guardsman. The Jinyiwei at present held arrests, interrogation, the prisons, patrols, palace defense, and ceremonial escort—and intelligence besides. Information on the principal figures of the great sects sat in the palm of their hand.
"Sogi Jiang, is it. To be escorted by a Sogi of the Jinyiwei, whose martial name shakes the realm—allow me to thank you on Hainan's behalf."
"It is all by His Majesty's command. For this officer to accept Hainan's thanks would be disloyalty to His August Majesty."
The answer was of a piece with everything else. A seasoned guardsman would have let it pass; Jiang Wenchen, only just made Sogi, went strictly by the book.
"Well said! I misspoke. As you say, it is His Majesty's grace. This eunuch beside us seems a man of few words as well."
Nam Yeonghak had not yet recognized Jeong Go. And why would he? Who would imagine that an expelled disciple had become a palace eunuch? Eunuchs were not scarce, but across the Central Plains as a whole they were uncommon enough—and rarer still when the man in question had been a true-inheriting disciple of an orthodox sect.
"This humble servant is not gifted with words."
"Eunuch Jeong has always been a man of few words. This officer is quite satisfied to be paired with him."
"I see. Then, if you would be so kind as to lead the way."
The stiffness coming off both Jeong Go and Jiang Wenchen closed Nam Yeonghak's mouth. A dreary pair. Well—they live in a palace where a single word can come back as a blade. Jiang Wenchen's remarks, in particular, had left the distinct impression that he did not care for talkative people.
A little later, Jeong Go and Jiang Wenchen walked in silence while the Hainan disciples chattered among themselves, taking in the market streets of Yingtianfu. The party turned onto the avenue where the Gong Family Inn and Yuwol Pavilion stood.
In front of Yuwol Pavilion that day stood a man who had lately become famous among the Jinyiwei and the eunuchs alike. Jiang Wenchen recognized him—and, forgetting entirely that he was supposed to be conducting an escort, unfolded a movement technique and shot forward.
"Jeonbu Zhang!"
"Sogi?"
"This officer is Sogi Jiang Wenchen of the Jinyiwei! I've heard of the things you've done, Jeonbu. I've been hoping to meet you."
Sogi was a rank of the seventh grade, three steps below Jeonbu.
"This one hasn't done anything worth the mention. The Qianhu and the Baihu did all the work. But Sogi Jiang, who are you bringing… Hainan?"
"Yes, Jeonbu! This officer and Eunuch Jeong Go of the Directorate are escorting Hainan. They say they'll be staying at the Gong Family Inn here."
"…I see."
Nothing showed on his face, but Jin Myeong's mood sank like a stone. The people at Jeong Go's back were none other than Hainan. How on earth had the boy ended up escorting them? It was enough to leave a man speechless. From the atmosphere, Hainan still had not recognized Jeong Go.
Jin Myeong's face had gone dark with the effort of swallowing rage and dismay. He sent the transmission to Jeong Go as the boy came walking toward him. No preamble. The vermin who had wrecked Jeong Go's life.
He asked who those bastards were.