If the prince wanted to gamble, he ought to gamble until he was satisfied.
When Xia Yujin was done playing, the Forever Flourishing House had lost altogether a hundred and twenty-three thousand taels and one arm of Master Lu’s. Regrettably, when Ye Zhao sent her men to conduct a search of the whole gambling hall once the game was over, smashing the tables and chairs into pieces, they only found twelve thousand two hundred and thirty-four taels of silver, plus a few antique pieces and some spare copper coins.
Sniveling and crying, Master Lu was held at sword point and forced to sign a promise to pay with his bloody fingerprint.
Xia Yujin, who was holding and examining the antiques, disdainfully remarked, “It’s all worthless junk. This painting from Li Bainian is a fake. I didn’t expect that your usefulness, your morals, and your eyesight would all be so lacking. You still have much to learn, that’s for sure… Who are you looking at wrongfully? Did I teach you the wrong lesson?”
Ye Zhao knocked Master Lu on the head and slightly narrowed her eyes at him.
Eyes filled with tears, Master Lu hurriedly clambered up. “Yes…” he entreated, “Your Highness, you’ve taught me that… I’m unscrupulous and immoral, I was blind…”
“Forget it. You’ve admitted to your wrongs. I’m an open-minded person, not some kind of unreasonable villain. How could I take this small offense to heart?” Xia Yujin stood from his seat, the only intact one in the whole place. He picked up the letter of debt and observed it carefully. Then he violently threw down the worthless antiques and added, with a wave of his hand, “Let’s just forget it. Although it’s quite outrageous that he refuses to gamble, we ought to spare those we can spare. Let’s not make everyone believe we use our status to oppress the people.”
“Alright,” Ye Zhao said lightly, withdrawing her blade.
Xia Yujin, satisfied, patted Master Lu’s head, let out a long sigh, and addressed those gentle words of comfort to him: “Don’t despair. It’s often all or nothing in gambling houses. The bit of money you give out comes back in the end. What happened today isn’t that big of a deal, so don’t go killing yourself out of despair. The River Qin is very cold.”
Was there a more despicable character than him anywhere in the world?
Master Lu, psychologically distressed, spat out a mouthful of blood.
Xia Yujin strutted away, triumphant, without even looking at the trash on the ground. When he reached the door, he first distributed the copper coins and pieces of silver to the neighbors, who’d gathered in a lively crowd around the front doors to watch. Then he took out two hundred taels to buy tea for the soldiers Ye Zhao had brought over, and finally climbed inside the sedan chair. Before he could even sit down comfortably, Ye Zhao got in after him and quite rudely stretched out her hand. “Where’s the reward for my hard work?”
“Moral integrity is the reward! What kind of general are you?” Xia Yujin slapped her hand away, took out two thousand taels from his stack of bills, and handed them over to his attendant. “Go straight to Lao Gao’s shop, give him the money in secret, and buy five catties of meat and five of tendons… Then go back again later with someone, tell him that I got sick from the meat, smash everything in the shop again, slap him around once or twice, and chase him and his whole family out of the city. Tell him I’ll beat him on sight if he ever dares to set foot back into town!”
The servant, understanding, took people with him to handle the matter.
After a moment of silence, Ye Zhao said, “If you make such a fuss, Prince Qi may not make the connection between you and Lao Gao so quickly, but he’s no fool. He’ll recover from the shock, and since he won’t be able to catch up with Lao Gao, he’ll take all his anger out on you.”
“It’s just gambling. Besides, even the dog he raised couldn’t do his own job well. What can he do to me? Frankly, the Emperor tried his best to punish me with twenty strikes of the plank two years ago, but he gave up on it after the Empress Dowager lectured him for half a shichen. As long as I don’t make a huge scene, he won’t care. And as long as anyone else doesn’t cause a huge scene for me, he won’t care either…” Xia Yujin said despondently. “That’s why those bastards dared to go up against me.”
“What should we do if Prince Qi really finds out it was you and wants revenge?” Ye Zhao couldn’t help asking.
Xia Yujin gave her a wily smile. “What are you afraid of? The current Emperor is the Empress Dowager’s son, and my father was his own blood brother.[1] They loved each other deeply. If Prince Qi settles this too harshly, I’ll pretend to be pitiful and go complain to the Empress Dowager. How could she not help out her own grandson?” He saw Ye Zhao lower her head, pondering. After some hesitation, he took out a piece of red paper, wrapped the letter of debt inside it, and handed it out to a senior servant. “Alright. If there’s the slightest fault in my behavior, I’m afraid the blow he’ll give me will be difficult to bear. Deliver this as a gift to Prince Qi. Tell him that it’s my gift to him, as his nephew, to celebrate the first month of his young concubine’s daughter, so he doesn’t need to pay me back.”
“Moral integrity! What kind of prince are you?” Ye Zhao laughed as she listened to him, then seriously said, “Don’t worry. If he dares to touch you, I’ll deal a fatal blow to his whole family. But you can’t keep the cash you won from him either.”
“Well, I’m not an idiot,” Xia Yujin replied, “The Empress Dowager’s sixtieth birthday is in a few days, but the coffers are empty and the Emperor is worried. I’ll give him a bit of cash to show off my filial piety and I’ll stop for a chat with the Empress Dowager on the way, tell her stories of unlucky cheating gambling dens. That will keep an old person like her happy.”
Ye Zhao put her arm around his shoulders. “Hey, how did you actually cheat to win? Tell me while there’s no one around.”
“How can I divulge my secret techniques?” Xia Yujin tried to shrug off her arm a few times, to no avail. “I can hear the god of dice talking. He told me the points,” he invented nonsensically.
“You listen to the sound of the dice, right?”[2] Ye Zhao said. “Who taught you?”
“I taught myself,” Xia Yujin replied indignantly.
Ye Zhao shook her head. “That skill demands ten or twenty years of practice to master, even if you’re skilled. I can’t picture you with this kind of dedication.”
“Who would teach me?” Xia Yujin said angrily. “I was born with a frail body. When I was four years old, I accidentally fell into freezing water, which worsened my condition. I wasn’t allowed outside. I spent fourteen years cloistered away in my courtyard, forbidden to do anything. I was bored out of my mind. What else could I do but play dice? I played with both hands, I played everything I could think of.”
He’d been ill since he started understanding the world. Sometimes, he would grow inexplicably dizzy after taking two steps in the garden while the wind blew. The smell of medicine never left his room. Yellow-bearded, white-bearded, beardless doctors — they all examined him countless times, and they all said he wouldn’t live past eighteen. Consort Dowager An almost cried herself sick. She raised him in a padded house like he was made of crystal and she didn’t dare to tax his nerves or his mind, lest he break from a single touch.
He didn’t need to study, since he could read literary texts out in vernacular pronunciation anyway.[3]
He didn’t need to practice calligraphy, since they would be empty exercises.
They were too extravagant skills to place on the shoulders of someone who could die at any moment.
No matter how much or well he learned, it would all disappear in a few years.
Sometimes, he would eavesdrop on the servants and the maids talking about the outside world: the ten miles of the River Qin and its endless extravagance, source of fantasies. Sometimes, leaning against the door of his courtyard, he listened to the shouts of the peddlers, the hubbub, the hooves of the horses, all so animated. Sometimes, he browsed his books, where there were thousands of miles of mountains and rivers, grasslands and deserts, as beautiful as paintings.
All he saw were the four walls of his enclosure and the blue sky above, a few white clouds passing through.
At times they looked like a monkey, a lark, or a horse…
But when he reached for them, he could never touch any.
When he was fourteen, the Man Jin invaded and slaughtered their way through the Northern Desert.
When the news came, the imperial family and the aristocrats in the capital city were all in turmoil.
Taking advantage of the guards’ inattention, he changed his clothes and slipped outside. He stood in the street like a fool, curiously watching everything around him: a man and his monkey, who beat on gongs and drums, another one hollering as he carried his candied hawthorn sticks. Everything was so novel and interesting, the colors of life so intense that they seemed to be pulsing—he didn’t have enough eyes to take it all in.
He wandered, randomly. There was a storyteller in a wine shop animatedly telling the story of General Ye Zhao, and he stopped to listen.
“General Ye is only sixteen this year, but his natural talents outshine the others’. Under his command, the army advances and retreats as needed. He’s comparable to our previous dynasty’s General Wei! Mighty, he towers at nine feet tall, carries a twenty-catty double-edged ax and rides a horse as white as the clouds. He has the bravery of ten thousand men! In his family’s vanguard, when he rushes into the enemies’ lines, running and yelling, swinging his ax, no one can stop him… They haven’t yet reacted that their heads are on the ground. He is a true man among men, a real hero among heroes!”
Could there really be such a powerful man?
He sat on the side and listened with fascination.
The two of them were clearly about the same age, but one of them was a general, moving unhindered through the world, while the other was a useless shut-in.
He was partly admirative, partly unresigned to his fate, partly envious, and partly frustrated.
His plan to escape from home failed before the storytelling was even over.
He was harrassed like a girl.
He fainted.
He was sent home.
Consort Dowager An sat at his bedside and cried for a whole day.
He lay there silently, silently listening, silently praying…
“If there’s a miracle way for me to recover, then let me become a man as powerful as Ye Zhao.”
Dreams, ah, dreams…
“Hey.” Ye Zhao punched his shoulder very manfully, cavalierly asking, “Where are you going?”
The man he’d admired in his youth had become his wife.
Xia Yujin suddenly felt the urge to cry.
He wanted to be a general, not take a general back home!
Fuck! Were the heavens deaf?
If the prince wanted to gamble, he ought to gamble until he was satisfied.
When Xia Yujin was done playing, the Forever Flourishing House had lost altogether a hundred and twenty-three thousand taels and one arm of Master Lu’s. Regrettably, when Ye Zhao sent her men to conduct a search of the whole gambling hall once the game was over, smashing the tables and chairs into pieces, they only found twelve thousand two hundred and thirty-four taels of silver, plus a few antique pieces and some spare copper coins.
Sniveling and crying, Master Lu was held at sword point and forced to sign a promise to pay with his bloody fingerprint.
Xia Yujin, who was holding and examining the antiques, disdainfully remarked, “It’s all worthless junk. This painting from Li Bainian is a fake. I didn’t expect that your usefulness, your morals, and your eyesight would all be so lacking. You still have much to learn, that’s for sure… Who are you looking at wrongfully? Did I teach you the wrong lesson?”
Ye Zhao knocked Master Lu on the head and slightly narrowed her eyes at him.
Eyes filled with tears, Master Lu hurriedly clambered up. “Yes…” he entreated, “Your Highness, you’ve taught me that… I’m unscrupulous and immoral, I was blind…”
“Forget it. You’ve admitted to your wrongs. I’m an open-minded person, not some kind of unreasonable villain. How could I take this small offense to heart?” Xia Yujin stood from his seat, the only intact one in the whole place. He picked up the letter of debt and observed it carefully. Then he violently threw down the worthless antiques and added, with a wave of his hand, “Let’s just forget it. Although it’s quite outrageous that he refuses to gamble, we ought to spare those we can spare. Let’s not make everyone believe we use our status to oppress the people.”
“Alright,” Ye Zhao said lightly, withdrawing her blade.
Xia Yujin, satisfied, patted Master Lu’s head, let out a long sigh, and addressed those gentle words of comfort to him: “Don’t despair. It’s often all or nothing in gambling houses. The bit of money you give out comes back in the end. What happened today isn’t that big of a deal, so don’t go killing yourself out of despair. The River Qin is very cold.”
Was there a more despicable character than him anywhere in the world?
Master Lu, psychologically distressed, spat out a mouthful of blood.
Xia Yujin strutted away, triumphant, without even looking at the trash on the ground. When he reached the door, he first distributed the copper coins and pieces of silver to the neighbors, who’d gathered in a lively crowd around the front doors to watch. Then he took out two hundred taels to buy tea for the soldiers Ye Zhao had brought over, and finally climbed inside the sedan chair. Before he could even sit down comfortably, Ye Zhao got in after him and quite rudely stretched out her hand. “Where’s the reward for my hard work?”
“Moral integrity is the reward! What kind of general are you?” Xia Yujin slapped her hand away, took out two thousand taels from his stack of bills, and handed them over to his attendant. “Go straight to Lao Gao’s shop, give him the money in secret, and buy five catties of meat and five of tendons… Then go back again later with someone, tell him that I got sick from the meat, smash everything in the shop again, slap him around once or twice, and chase him and his whole family out of the city. Tell him I’ll beat him on sight if he ever dares to set foot back into town!”
The servant, understanding, took people with him to handle the matter.
After a moment of silence, Ye Zhao said, “If you make such a fuss, Prince Qi may not make the connection between you and Lao Gao so quickly, but he’s no fool. He’ll recover from the shock, and since he won’t be able to catch up with Lao Gao, he’ll take all his anger out on you.”
“It’s just gambling. Besides, even the dog he raised couldn’t do his own job well. What can he do to me? Frankly, the Emperor tried his best to punish me with twenty strikes of the plank two years ago, but he gave up on it after the Empress Dowager lectured him for half a shichen. As long as I don’t make a huge scene, he won’t care. And as long as anyone else doesn’t cause a huge scene for me, he won’t care either…” Xia Yujin said despondently. “That’s why those bastards dared to go up against me.”
“What should we do if Prince Qi really finds out it was you and wants revenge?” Ye Zhao couldn’t help asking.
Xia Yujin gave her a wily smile. “What are you afraid of? The current Emperor is the Empress Dowager’s son, and my father was his own blood brother.[1] They loved each other deeply. If Prince Qi settles this too harshly, I’ll pretend to be pitiful and go complain to the Empress Dowager. How could she not help out her own grandson?” He saw Ye Zhao lower her head, pondering. After some hesitation, he took out a piece of red paper, wrapped the letter of debt inside it, and handed it out to a senior servant. “Alright. If there’s the slightest fault in my behavior, I’m afraid the blow he’ll give me will be difficult to bear. Deliver this as a gift to Prince Qi. Tell him that it’s my gift to him, as his nephew, to celebrate the first month of his young concubine’s daughter, so he doesn’t need to pay me back.”
“Moral integrity! What kind of prince are you?” Ye Zhao laughed as she listened to him, then seriously said, “Don’t worry. If he dares to touch you, I’ll deal a fatal blow to his whole family. But you can’t keep the cash you won from him either.”
“Well, I’m not an idiot,” Xia Yujin replied, “The Empress Dowager’s sixtieth birthday is in a few days, but the coffers are empty and the Emperor is worried. I’ll give him a bit of cash to show off my filial piety and I’ll stop for a chat with the Empress Dowager on the way, tell her stories of unlucky cheating gambling dens. That will keep an old person like her happy.”
Ye Zhao put her arm around his shoulders. “Hey, how did you actually cheat to win? Tell me while there’s no one around.”
“How can I divulge my secret techniques?” Xia Yujin tried to shrug off her arm a few times, to no avail. “I can hear the god of dice talking. He told me the points,” he invented nonsensically.
“You listen to the sound of the dice, right?”[2] Ye Zhao said. “Who taught you?”
“I taught myself,” Xia Yujin replied indignantly.
Ye Zhao shook her head. “That skill demands ten or twenty years of practice to master, even if you’re skilled. I can’t picture you with this kind of dedication.”
“Who would teach me?” Xia Yujin said angrily. “I was born with a frail body. When I was four years old, I accidentally fell into freezing water, which worsened my condition. I wasn’t allowed outside. I spent fourteen years cloistered away in my courtyard, forbidden to do anything. I was bored out of my mind. What else could I do but play dice? I played with both hands, I played everything I could think of.”
He’d been ill since he started understanding the world. Sometimes, he would grow inexplicably dizzy after taking two steps in the garden while the wind blew. The smell of medicine never left his room. Yellow-bearded, white-bearded, beardless doctors — they all examined him countless times, and they all said he wouldn’t live past eighteen. Consort Dowager An almost cried herself sick. She raised him in a padded house like he was made of crystal and she didn’t dare to tax his nerves or his mind, lest he break from a single touch.
He didn’t need to study, since he could read literary texts out in vernacular pronunciation anyway.[3]
He didn’t need to practice calligraphy, since they would be empty exercises.
They were too extravagant skills to place on the shoulders of someone who could die at any moment.
No matter how much or well he learned, it would all disappear in a few years.
Sometimes, he would eavesdrop on the servants and the maids talking about the outside world: the ten miles of the River Qin and its endless extravagance, source of fantasies. Sometimes, leaning against the door of his courtyard, he listened to the shouts of the peddlers, the hubbub, the hooves of the horses, all so animated. Sometimes, he browsed his books, where there were thousands of miles of mountains and rivers, grasslands and deserts, as beautiful as paintings.
All he saw were the four walls of his enclosure and the blue sky above, a few white clouds passing through.
At times they looked like a monkey, a lark, or a horse…
But when he reached for them, he could never touch any.
When he was fourteen, the Man Jin invaded and slaughtered their way through the Northern Desert.
When the news came, the imperial family and the aristocrats in the capital city were all in turmoil.
Taking advantage of the guards’ inattention, he changed his clothes and slipped outside. He stood in the street like a fool, curiously watching everything around him: a man and his monkey, who beat on gongs and drums, another one hollering as he carried his candied hawthorn sticks. Everything was so novel and interesting, the colors of life so intense that they seemed to be pulsing—he didn’t have enough eyes to take it all in.
He wandered, randomly. There was a storyteller in a wine shop animatedly telling the story of General Ye Zhao, and he stopped to listen.
“General Ye is only sixteen this year, but his natural talents outshine the others’. Under his command, the army advances and retreats as needed. He’s comparable to our previous dynasty’s General Wei! Mighty, he towers at nine feet tall, carries a twenty-catty double-edged ax and rides a horse as white as the clouds. He has the bravery of ten thousand men! In his family’s vanguard, when he rushes into the enemies’ lines, running and yelling, swinging his ax, no one can stop him… They haven’t yet reacted that their heads are on the ground. He is a true man among men, a real hero among heroes!”
Could there really be such a powerful man?
He sat on the side and listened with fascination.
The two of them were clearly about the same age, but one of them was a general, moving unhindered through the world, while the other was a useless shut-in.
He was partly admirative, partly unresigned to his fate, partly envious, and partly frustrated.
His plan to escape from home failed before the storytelling was even over.
He was harrassed like a girl.
He fainted.
He was sent home.
Consort Dowager An sat at his bedside and cried for a whole day.
He lay there silently, silently listening, silently praying…
“If there’s a miracle way for me to recover, then let me become a man as powerful as Ye Zhao.”
Dreams, ah, dreams…
“Hey.” Ye Zhao punched his shoulder very manfully, cavalierly asking, “Where are you going?”
The man he’d admired in his youth had become his wife.
Xia Yujin suddenly felt the urge to cry.
He wanted to be a general, not take a general back home!
Fuck! Were the heavens deaf?
