86

Cao Cao’s eyes began to turn as well.

“Is it really wise to wipe out Chen Lan and Lei Bo? Would that not be a little improper?”

He felt, in a vague way, that he was being unfair to them. After all, those two had worked so hard to become his dogs, and here he was already thinking of stewing them alive.

“My lord, you are jesting,” Guo Jia said.

He was not like the others; how could he not know exactly what sort of man his master was? If there were profit to be made, this man would sell even his own father. Would he truly feel guilty over two insignificant Chen Lan and Lei Bo? Guo Jia rolled his eyes in open contempt.

“As for that heirloom imperial seal, if my lord wishes it to appear, then it was seized from Chen Lan and Lei Bo. If my lord does not wish it to appear, then it was carried off by the remnants of their forces.”

Guo Jia’s words swept away Cao Cao’s last hesitation.

“Ha! The one who knows me best is indeed Fengxiao!” Cao Cao laughed heartily at him. “Pass down my military order. Tell Zihe to prepare. The bandits in this Huainan region of Yu Province have grown far too arrogant, daring even to seize my frontier city. It is time to restore peace to Huainan!”

On Mount Song stood another bandit stronghold. Its chief was a man named Mei Qian.

He was not a government rebel, nor was he one of those half-trained mountain brigands like Chen Lan and Lei Bo. He was the real thing: a professional outlaw chieftain.

He had already been at it since the outbreak of the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Back then he had only been a minor leader, too small for the court’s great armies to notice. Later, once the Yellow Turban main force had been crushed and the various warlords had withdrawn, Mei Qian found a few surviving Yellow Turbans in the mountains and gradually gathered them together into a small fortress. Relying on the difficult terrain of Mount Song, easy to defend and hard to assault, he managed to survive.

Mei Qian could be called a character in his own right. He knew whom he could provoke and whom he could not. He never robbed cities, and lived by plundering small villages instead. That was how he stayed alive. By now he had several thousand men under his command and had become a notorious bandit chief in the Huainan area.

But Mei Qian’s life had grown difficult.

There was competition.

In the past, Chen Lan and Lei Bo had been Li Shu’s official troops, so all their supplies came from Li Shu. They never worried about food or drink. As for mountain bandits like Mei Qian, hidden deep in the hills, so long as they did not attack cities, no one could be bothered to deal with them. War cost money, after all; even if you took their fortress, it might not cover the grain you spent on the campaign.

Back then, Mei Qian lived very comfortably, and with those mountain villages at his back, he too had been a figure of some standing.

But once Chen Lan and Lei Bo entered the trade, things changed. Not only did they fail to pay due respects to their senior in the business, they even came to take his livelihood.

After all, Chen Lan and Lei Bo had betrayed Li Shu, and no one was supplying them with grain anymore. They were also not the kind of men who could govern a city and make it self-sufficient. How were they supposed to survive? Naturally, by robbing.

Chen Lan and Lei Bo were cut from the same cloth as Mei Qian. They always chose the softest targets. They could not defeat the regular troops of the court. For example, Cao Cao was right next door in Yan Province, and even they did not dare so much as to touch him. If they truly enraged such a slaughtering demon, none of them would escape. So the villages became their prey.

One bandit in Huainan could be supported comfortably enough. Two, however, was more than the land could bear.

Nobody ever thought they had too much money. The two factions operated in the same market and in the same line of work. As the saying went, rivals in the same trade are natural enemies.

So of course there was endless friction. If words did no good, then they fought.

The two sides had clashed more than once. They had merely restrained themselves and never gone all out. Even so, Mei Qian was no match for Chen Lan and Lei Bo. Mei Qian might be an old hand among bandits, but he was no match in battle for those two professional soldiers-turned-bandits.

Though Li Shu’s forces were shabby, with only middling combat strength and third-rate generals, they were still not someone a fourth-rate bandit like Mei Qian could bully. So the veteran of the bandit world, Mei Qian, had been badly harried by these two upstarts.

Still, Chen Lan and Lei Bo had not forced him into a corner. They took their meat, but they also let Mei Qian have a little soup. If they pushed too hard, it would benefit no one.

But now Mei Qian could barely avoid starving to death, and he was indeed starving. His several thousand men were howling for food, and some were even on the verge of abandoning him.

So Mei Qian urgently needed new income and lower expenses.

And now good news had arrived. A new way to make money had appeared.

“Boss Mei Qian, within Jiangting there are only a few thousand old, weak, sick, and disabled men. Yet they are sitting on ten thousand dan of grain, along with countless weapons and armor. Boss Mei Qian, so long as you send your troops, Jiangting will surely fall. By then, Boss Mei Qian, whatever you want will be yours!” a minor leader acting as messenger said to him.

He had come from Mount Tianzhu, the stronghold of Mei Qian’s rivals, Chen Lan and Lei Bo.

“Boss, let’s send the troops!” Some of the men nearby had already been tempted. They had not seen meat for months, and now that a fat feast had been placed before them, their eyes instantly turned red.

Yet Mei Qian remained impassive. Looking at the messenger sent by Chen Lan and Lei Bo, he said calmly, “Since this was discovered by the two chiefs of Chen Lan and Lei Bo, if I were to send troops now, that would be taking advantage of another’s misfortune.”

“Please, no!” The messenger from Chen Lan and Lei Bo panicked. He had been sent by Chief Chen specifically to incite Mei Qian into action. If Mei Qian truly sat still and did nothing, how could he possibly go back alive? Chen Lan could change his face faster than turning a page.

Hearing Mei Qian say this, several of the nearby underlings, whose eyes had been bright with hunger, also sobered up.

Indeed, if this messenger from Chen Lan and Lei Bo had really discovered such a huge windfall, would he have come here to tell them? Could he possibly be so kind as to notify the men of Mount Song? Obviously not. This was not a pie from the sky; it was more likely a trap.

“Ahem, Boss Mei, you misunderstand,” the messenger said, breathing easier now that Mei Qian had not immediately ordered him out. That made things manageable.

“Our two chiefs, Chen Lan and Lei Bo, do not not want that fat prize. It is just that this fat prize was sent out by our two chiefs.”

With that, the messenger repeated the words Chen Lan had taught him.

The gist was this: Chen Lan and Lei Bo had become weary of being bandits and wished to return to the court. Unfortunately, their reputation was ugly, for they were stained with the infamy of betrayal. So they intended to offer up this fat prize as a gesture of goodwill to Li Miao’s army, to ease old grudges and cleanse their names.

“Sent it out? Then why are you telling me?” Mei Qian was still puzzled. You give someone a kindness in front, and then turn around and sell him out behind his back? That made no sense either.

“That is because our two chiefs, Chen Lan and Lei Bo, want a greeting gift, but we ourselves are not convenient to take it,” the messenger explained to Mei Qian.

“A greeting gift?” Mei Qian frowned.

“I believe Boss Mei Qian has heard of something before,” the messenger said mysteriously.

“Speak.”

“The heirloom imperial seal.”

The messenger finally revealed the secret object.

“Hm?!” Mei Qian’s eyes lit up.

The imperial seal—forget the officials, even a bandit like him knew what it was worth. Back then there was the He Shi jade: a famous object from the age of the battle for the unbroken jade, and its value was enough that the state of Qin would have exchanged dozens of cities for it.

“Our boss says that if General Mei Qian helps us obtain this thing, then not only will the grain in Jiangting belong to Boss Mei, but our own commander is also willing to give Mount Tianzhu to Boss Mei as well.”

“Hm?” Mei Qian was tempted.

To withdraw from Huainan and yield Mount Tianzhu—this bait was simply too large. So large that Mei Qian could no longer resist his own self-control and wanted to swallow it whole.

He had someone escort the messenger away.

“Boss, should we wade into this muddy water?” one of Mei Qian’s men, Xiu Cheng, stepped forward and asked.

“The heirloom imperial seal. The heirloom imperial seal indeed!” Mei Qian was already drooling inwardly. How many heroes had wanted to gather that thing to their bosoms? King Qin, King Zhao, even later Xiang Yu and Liu Bang, all of them had been like that. And after them came Wang Mang, and then Li Shu, that emperor-of-amateurs.

Chen Lan and Lei Bo had not been tired of their bandit lives for just one day or two. Mei Qian knew that much. He had dealt with Mount Tianzhu before, and those men had long been thinking of joining the great warlord Cao Cao in Yan Province, to eat court rations under the imperial banner.

“Big Brother, if you ask me, we should just rob Jiangting to hell and back. We take the grain, and we do not give that heirloom imperial seal to Chen Lan and Lei Bo. We keep it for you, Big Brother. Isn’t that the very thing the emperor uses when ascending the throne? If we are going to do it, why not simply have Big Brother sit on the imperial throne here on Mount Song? That would also let us brothers become high officials!”

One underling stepped forward with a suggestion.

That remark really did stir up quite a few people. They were bandits and brigands to begin with, with no reverence whatsoever for the Han emperor. Back during the Yellow Turban Rebellion, they had already raised the banner of “The azure heaven is dead, the yellow heaven shall rise.” Now that they had the heirloom imperial seal, setting up an emperor was naturally no great matter.

“Nonsense!”

Mei Qian was not stupid. The heirloom imperial seal was certainly good, but if you had a life to obtain it and no life to use it, what then? Li Shu had collapsed with such a massive power behind him; if he, a mere little bandit, tried the same stunt, was he not simply tired of living?

However, those words from the underling gave Mei Qian an idea. He wanted the grain. He wanted the heirloom imperial seal too. And if he really had to, he could even use the seal as a greeting gift and send it to Xu City. He did not want to keep being a bandit forever either; he simply had no proper path to surrender to the government. If he could become a court hound, who would want to do this chopping-and-beheading business?

And if that still did not work, he could take a step back and use the heirloom imperial seal to bargain with Chen Lan and Lei Bo. Either way, the profit would belong to Mei Qian.

“Have the brothers prepare,” Mei Qian told his men.

“Boss, have you made up your mind?” The eyes of the nearby underlings brightened. They had not had any real work for a long time, and each of them was nearly bursting. Now that such an opportunity had finally arrived, how could they let it slip away?

“Since someone is delivering it to our door, how can we refuse to eat?” Mei Qian stood up. A glint of craft flashed in his eyes.

Jiangting? The Li family? In the past he might have feared them a little, because the Li family had great wealth and power. But now the Li family’s little brat was merely hanging on by a thread. For a force that small, Mei Qian had long had ideas. It was just that before, Li Miao had not been worth Mei Qian’s attention. There was no oil to squeeze from him, and with only a few thousand old, weak, sick, and disabled men under his command, what use were they?

But now things were different. Li Miao had money. He had grain. More importantly, that heirloom imperial seal was in Li Miao’s hands.

At once, Li Miao changed from a lump of rotten dog dung into a fragrant steamed bun.

It was precisely because Mei Qian had observed Jiangting that he decided to send troops.

Mei Qian called the messenger from Chen Lan and Lei Bo back over and said to him, “Once I have taken Jiangting, tell your chiefs to prepare Mount Tianzhu.”

“Certainly, certainly!” the little man from Chen Lan beamed as he left.

After learning that Mei Qian would send troops, Chen Lan and Lei Bo laughed wildly on Mount Tianzhu.

“Big Brother, if we hand the heirloom imperial seal to Lord Cao, what sort of official rank do you think he will give us?” Lei Bo asked bluntly, as though the seal were already in his possession.

“Second Brother, rest easy. I will be the general, you will be my deputy. I will be governor, you will be my assistant. So long as your big brother is here, I will not let you down!”

Down in Jiangting, Huainan, Li Yin had already been away for seven or eight days, and the grain in the city had begun to run low.

“Brother Miao, just when exactly is Li Yin coming back?” A restless young man on the side was clamoring at Li Miao, who sat in the seat of honor.

This was Li Miao’s bargain-of-a-brother-in-law, Huang Yi.

“Brother-in-law, what sort of conduct is that?” Li Miao said with mock solemnity.

“Yes, yes, Your Majesty.” At Li Miao’s reminder, Huang Yi seemed not at all chastened. Instead, his tone was full of teasing. “Your Majesty, at most two more days of grain will remain in Jiangting. If Li Yin does not return, we may as well wait to drink the northwest wind!”

Huang Yi had never cared for Li Yin. Back when Li Yin had been in front of Li Shu, he had not spared him from reporting every little thing. So Huang Yi never did bother with politeness, calling him Li Yin this and Li Yin that without stop.

“Your Majesty, do you think Li Yin might abandon us and run off on his own?” Huang Yi, with the warped imagination of a pig teammate, maliciously pictured Li Yin still on the road. If it were him, Huang Yi thought, he might well have run off already.

“Brother-in-law, how can you think such things of His Highness the Prince of Fu? The prince is noble and magnanimous, placing the greater cause above all else. How could he possibly abandon us and flee? Minister Yang, would you not agree?”

With that, Li Miao passed the ball to Yang Hong beside him.

“Yes, yes, yes!” Yang Hong nodded repeatedly, though he would not even look at Li Miao, only rolling his eyes. In truth, the one who least trusted Li Yin was not Huang Yi at all, but our Emperor Li Miao.

Did Li Miao think the three hundred Imperial Guards he had sent out were loafing around and eating for nothing? Our Emperor Li Miao was clever. Every single day he had Zhang Xun send men to report back and reassure him of safety. If there were even the slightest movement from Li Yin’s side, the one most likely to be doomed first was Li Yin himself.

Between his own little life and his uncle’s life, our young Emperor Li Miao obviously chose himself.

It was precisely because of the scouts sent out by Li Miao’s Imperial Guard that he was not anxious. He knew Li Yin was already on the road. But he could not say so aloud, because the moment it came from his mouth, it would expose the fact that he had secretly sent out spies and did not trust Li Yin.