The Eighteenth Year of Yongle (11)

Only moments earlier, Jin Myeong had come within a hair's breadth of being caught using the Huanxu. He weathered the crisis well enough.

How had he gotten away with it? He had simply frozen in place, rigid as a statue—and somehow, absurdly, that had been enough.

It was so ridiculous he felt faintly cheated by his own panic.

Wang Guitong, first to arrive, had gone wide-eyed for a heartbeat—then burst out laughing.

Neither Wang Guitong nor any of the other grand eunuchs so much as entertained the notion that Jin Myeong might have mastered the Huanxu.

And why would they? The vast majority of body-altering arts in the martial world were all but useless. They were fiendishly difficult to learn, demanded enormous reserves of true qi and no small amount of time to execute, and the results were rarely worth the cost. After devouring that much energy and that many hours, one might reasonably expect something spectacular. Instead, the best most of them could manage was a slight reshaping of the facial flesh. Worse still, the side effects piled up: some practitioners could never restore their original features; others found the transformation unraveling without warning at the worst possible moment.

The jianghu even had a saying on the subject. Better to spend that time learning illusion arts—the kind that beguile the eye and deceive the mind—than to waste it on some half-baked transformation technique.

There was, of course, one exception: the founding secret art of Gongnyeongmun, ancestral home of the great thieves and the supreme sanctuary of every master burglar under heaven.

The Huanxu alone stood apart. It was regarded as the finest transformation art in the world precisely because it had slashed the qi and time required to a fraction of what any rival technique demanded—a genuine, revolutionary reduction. Barring qi exhaustion or a catastrophic deviation, a single execution held until the practitioner chose to reverse it. The stability, the convenience, went without saying. And of known side effects, there were none.

In any event, Wang Guitong and the grand eunuchs took one look at Jin Myeong's still-warped, incompletely restored eyelids and assumed they were wounds sustained in the clash with Gong Jeong-mun.

Relief crashed over Jin Myeong all at once. He shuddered from head to toe, and the suffocating tightness in his chest broke open like a dam giving way.

Yi Gwak nodded and nodded again, his pupils shining with a fullness of feeling that made Jin Myeong distinctly uncomfortable. The man was moved far beyond what the occasion warranted.

Just when stagnant water is about to turn foul, fellows like this one appear. That is why the future of our eunuch kindred remains bright.

Yi Gwak, a man who staked his very life on what it meant to be a eunuch and on the proper duty of their kind, had been struck to the core by Jin Myeong's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠willingness to throw himself at Gong Jeong-mun, ready to die.

Jin Myeong was, in some inexpressible way, the ideal eunuch Yi Gwak had always longed for.

A man like this should have arisen among our kind long ago.

The sort of man who might one day reverse the world's contempt and condescension ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠toward eunuchs. Strip away the eunuch's robes and his looks and physique would put him at ease in any company. His scholarship and flashing intellect were more than enough to silence anyone who might sneer at eunuchs as unlettered. Add to that a steadfast, almost blind loyalty, and the heroic spirit to back it—set him loose in the jianghu and he would be hailed as a great champion without the slightest stretch.

He was perfect. It was one of the reasons Yi Gwak had chosen him as the working officer of the Inspection Bureau in the first place.

Which was precisely why Yi Gwak had been so terrified after the blast. The talent he meant to raise—not merely to Chief of the Inspection Bureau, but through Superintendent of the Eastern Depot all the way to Grand Director of the Directorate of Ceremonial—had very nearly lost his life. Yi Gwak pressed a hand to his still-racing heart.

Jin Myeong lowered his head, his tone carefully self-reproachful. Inwardly, the sigh of relief he released was every bit as deep as Yi Gwak's—deeper, if anything.

That was too close. Our old lord is actually helping me this time. If he could just sweep the Heaven-Shaking Thunder problem under the rug while he's at it, I'd have nothing left to ask.

This was the same Yi Gwak who had talked Zhu Gaochi out of gifting him the Gong-eun Snow Lotus Thread, the same man who had dragged him into the Inspection Bureau in the first place. Always pouring lye on Jin Myeong's plans. Jin Myeong knew the intent behind it was good—if he hadn't, he would have dealt with the man long ago.

Jin Myeong answered the two grand eunuchs with a face shining with gratitude, tears welling in his eyes. That gratitude sprang less from any stirring of eunuch brotherhood than from the thoroughly practical hope that they would, in fact, bury the matter of his unauthorized use of the Heaven-Shaking Thunder.

A short while later.

"What, in the end, were you and your jianghu? Where were you, and what were you doing?"

Is every backstory of a Suchengye inner-circle figure going to be like this?

Having slipped the noose of exposure, Jin Myeong stood behind the Yongle Emperor, inside the concentric ring of Jinyiwei, and let out a bitter sigh.

Gong Jeong-mun's secret history was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠something he had never encountered in either life—not before the regression, and not after. Like Yi Yugyeong, Nam Woo-jeong, and Yong Hui-yeon, Gong Jeong-mun too was the Yongle Emperor's karmic debt made flesh.

History, in the end, is nothing but the result.

That Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di were heroes of the Han people, the men who had driven the Yuan beyond the Great Wall, was a truth no one could deny. The success or failure of any organization was always bound, to a considerable degree, to who stood at its head and what kind of man he was.

Zhu Di's words aren't wrong, as far as they go.

It was also true that among Zhu Yuanzhang's sons, Zhu Di had earned the greatest military distinction in the wars against the Yuan. True that he had expanded the Han domains accordingly. True that the compilation of the Yongle Encyclopedia and the final linking of the Grand Canal under his reign had brought prosperity to every corner of the realm and enriched the lives of the common people.

If Zhu Yuanzhang had driven out the Yuan, unified the Central Plains, and reopened a nation for the Han people, then Zhu Di had secured the frontiers, enriched the state, and strengthened its armies, raising the Ming into an empire in more than name.

And if it had been the Jianwen Emperor instead? If the Jingnan Campaign had never happened?

But hypotheses were only hypotheses—empty things.

The words are right enough. But a man shouldn't have to wade through quite so much blood to make them true.

On the other side of the ledger stood the label of a shameless usurper who had seized the throne by force of arms. The slaughter of Fang Xiaoru and ten degrees of his kinship, and the countless others killed to wipe out the opposition. The massacre of three thousand palace women. The epithet of an emperor of cruel temperament who had spilled blood without number—all of that was fact as well.

Karma. Karma without end, and no telling when it will run out.

The point, as Yi Yugyeong, Nam Woo-jeong, Yong Hui-yeon, and now Gong Jeong-mun's secret history all made plain, was this: the emergence of Suchengye was an inevitability of Zhu Di's own making.

But what was Jin Myeong supposed to do about it? If Suchengye succeeded in overthrowing the imperial house, blood would flow all over again, and the realm and its people would be plunged into ruin.

And what of it? The rice is already cooked. It's become a meal, and there's no uncooking it.

He was no Buddha, and he harbored no grand love for humankind. He had already taken Zhu Gaochi and Zhu Zhanji's side. All that remained was to crush Suchengye, earn his merit, and live his own life well. Helping where he could—as he had with Fang Xiaoru's granddaughter, Yong Hui-yeon—was the most he could offer.

That cruel streak of his, every single time.

He could acknowledge the Zhu clan's achievements for what they were. But thirty-three years as a eunuch had left him with a temperament that recoiled, viscerally, every time he brushed against the Yongle Emperor's cruelty. He and the Yongle Emperor were different stock—different down to the root.

If I could make the man mend his ways before he takes the long road, the country might actually know some peace.

He thought it, but it was a distant prospect. To manage such a thing, he would need a power or a rank that would keep him alive no matter what he did. Something like a Death-Exemption Iron Token—the kind that spared a man from execution for every crime save treason itself.

He was staring at the back of the Yongle Emperor's head, lost in that thought, when the Emperor issued an unexpected command.

"Sa Hapji. Untie him, and give him his bow."

"Your Majesty?"

Sa Hapji, who had received the order, was not the only one stunned. The Eastern Depot agents and the Jinyiwei watching from the sidelines wore the same look.

Untie him—and give him his bow?

The Yongle Emperor's nature, cruelty aside, was as open-handed and magnanimous as any great hero under heaven. Surely he didn't mean…

What's he playing at all of a sudden?

Jin Myeong was no less baffled than the rest.

"Did you not hear Our command?"

"As Your Majesty commands!"

Sa Hapji locked eyes with Crown Prince Zhu Gaochi, Zheng He, Zhang Fu, and the others. Only after reading their consent did he carry out the Emperor's order. They had heard the Emperor's roar only moments before, and they knew better than anyone how dangerous a man the Yongle Emperor became with a traitor standing before him. None of them dared object.

"…What is the meaning of this."

The bonds fell away. Gong Jeong-mun looked down at the iron bow and the blood-death arrow lying at his feet, and muttered the words.

"The Gong clan funded the Jianwen court. We, who had liberated the realm alongside Our imperial father, were destined to die on the blade of a nephew who had borrowed the Gong clan's wealth."

Prince of Yan Zhu Di had been, among all the regional princes of the Jianwen Emperor's reign, the man of the strongest army and the gravest prestige. To the Jianwen Emperor and to Fang Xiaoru, Qi Tai, and Huang Zicheng who followed him, he was a man who had to be removed. The five other regional princes had already been stripped of their titles and reduced to commoners. Zhu Di was next—and the settled judgment of the age was that the Jianwen Emperor and his ministers would have killed him without fail.

"What should We have done? What would you have done, in Our place? If you believe We were wrong—then shoot Us. Eastern Depot. Jinyiwei. Fall back."

With that, the Yongle Emperor rose from his seat, turned his back on Gong Jeong-mun, and stood unmoving. The Nine Dragons Grand Luo Qi that had gilded his entire body in gold withdrew from sight.

"Your Majesty!"

Zhu Gaochi and every soul present dropped to their knees in a panic.

"Fine. You think this old man hasn't the stomach for it?"

Gong Jeong-mun snatched up the bow at once and drew the string. The blood-death arrow settled on the left side of Zhu Di's chest, over the heart. The distance was three zhang—scarcely thirty feet. A range at which missing was not possible.

Steel sang from scabbards. The Jinyiwei were never going to stand idle simply because they had been told to, and the Eastern Depot agents raised their blood claws in the same breath.

Gong Jeong-mun's arms trembled as he drew the string to its limit with no inner force behind it. The tremor was not a matter of muscle. It was a matter of the heart.

"You… you…!"

What did Zhu Di's fearless stance mean? That his convictions were that unshakable. That he felt no regret.

Gong Jeong-mun's mind tangled itself between the greater cause and the lesser.

The greater cause. What would follow if Zhu Di died on a blood-death arrow was as plain as fire. Killing him here would not usher in Suchengye's world. The throne would pass to Zhu Gaochi. However gentle the Crown Prince's nature, his father and emperor would have been assassinated before the eyes of his assembled ministers. There would be no gentle handling of it—and by Confucian principle, there could be no gentle handling of it. A vast purge would follow, all in the name of rooting out Suchengye. And there was the further possibility that the remnants of the Northern Yuan, the Jurchen, and Annam—all of them held down by the Yongle Emperor's weight—would rise.

Suchengye and Gong Jeong-mun himself had never given those considerations a moment's thought. Their sole aim had been Zhu Di's assassination. But standing here, facing the man, thinking it through—the feeling was entirely different from before. A question had taken root: until Suchengye's world arrived, would the realm itself remain intact?

The lesser cause. But the grudges of his household, the grudges of Suchengye, the grudges of all who had died because of Zhu Di—what of those?

Gong Jeong-mun hung suspended between the two when a voice slipped into his ear.

Gong Jeong-mun's eyes met Jin Myeong's. The young eunuch had leaned out, just slightly, from behind the Yongle Emperor. Jin Myeong closed his eyes and opened them again, a look that said he understood.

Gong Seon-hu and Gong Seon-hye. The twin martial prodigies of Suchengye. In the life before Jin Myeong's regression, they had appeared during the Zhengtong Emperor's reign as Suchengye's master archers. Twins, surname Gong—he had taken a stab in the dark, and Gong Jeong-mun's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠reaction told him he had struck true.

Once again, that peculiar eunuch's compassion had stirred in Jin Myeong's chest. Gong Jeong-mun had committed the crime of raising his hand against the Eastern Depot and the Jinyiwei, and for that he had to die. His grandchildren did not. If Jin Myeong could keep the twins from the road to Suchengye, he would.

Gong Jeong-mun could not believe it. That Suchengye had come out of Jin Myeong's mouth was astonishing enough. That the boy also knew the identities of the grandchildren Gong Jeong-mun had hidden away from Suchengye itself—that was something else entirely.

He would not bequeath this brutal, wretched path to his grandchildren. His son, Gong Sun-uk, had been happier as an ordinary merchant than he had ever been as the child of Gong Jeong-mun the archer. For that reason, Gong Jeong-mun had resolved that the tragedy would end with his own generation. His grandchildren, at least, would live ordinary lives, knowing nothing.

He had left them, in secret, at the gates of a provincial manor belonging to a family renowned for its generous character. He had checked on them from time to time. The lord and lady of the house, long distressed by their inability to conceive, had been overjoyed at the arrival of two lovely children, and were raising them in comfort—well fed, well clothed.

That those names would come from Jin Myeong's mouth was something he had never imagined.

Jin Myeong, realizing he had guessed correctly, felt a quiet relief.

In his previous life, while gathering intelligence on Suchengye, a single fragment of rumor had come his way. After the blood-death at Mount Baohua had ended in failure for both Suchengye and Gong Jeong-mun, a coolness had settled between Gong Jeong-mun and the organization. He had even contemplated withdrawing from the world entirely—until the grandchildren he had hidden were discovered, and he was pulled back into Suchengye's service.

Gong Seon-hu and Gong Seon-hye had only stepped into the open after Gong Jeong-mun's death. Gong Jeong-mun and the Blood Death Archery Corps had appeared in the jianghu more than once between then and the day Zhu Gaochi and Zhu Zhanji died and Zhu Qizhen, the Zhengtong Emperor, took the throne. But the names Gong Seon-hu and Gong Seon-hye had never been heard.

If that rumor had been true, the twins' late appearance in his previous life was because Gong Jeong-mun had refused to send them to the battlefield in order to protect them—or because Suchengye had been holding them as hostages. They were twins, the ages lined up well enough, and the surname was Gong. Jin Myeong had judged the rumor likely to be fact, and he had thrown the names out. He had thrown true.

Gong Jeong-mun was thrown. Protect the grandchildren of a traitor? That was not a sentence that should come from the mouth of a man in a Touhou Robe.

Gong Jeong-mun was certain Jin Myeong was simply playing a card to keep that drawn bowstring from being loosed. What was the Touhou Robe on the boy's back if not the mark of the Emperor's own confidant? A man who served the Emperor above all others, who had earned merit enough to wear that robe, offering to find and protect a traitor's grandchildren? That was treason in all but name. He could not believe it. He would not.

If Gong Jeong-mun heard what came next, he would have no choice but to believe. Jin Myeong broke off the transmission, slipped a ring from his robes, and held it out—carefully, just far enough for Gong Jeong-mun alone to see. Every other gaze in the hall was locked on the old archer aiming a blood-death arrow at the Yongle Emperor's back.

The Holy Mother Palace of Mount Snow was, together with the Shaolin Temple of Mount Song, one of the two oldest orthodox sects in the martial world. Gong Jeong-mun had spent a lifetime in the jianghu. He would know that name.