Ying Qingyang felt that his stirring, righteous speech was deeply moving to the core. Who could hear it without pausing in a daze for a moment, feeling a half-second of pity for his unjustly fated life, and becoming one fraction more intoxicated by his exquisite, carefully angled side profile?
However, having taught him for many years, Grand Tutor Jiang had long grown accustomed to what kind of specimen his student the sole remaining prince of the Great Ying truly was.
Without even blinking an eye, he grabbed Ying Qingyang’s hand as it reached under the table toward the stack of copper coins with a speed that was fast, fierce, and accurate.
The smile on Ying Qingyang’s face froze. The excitement that was about to flash through his eyes slowly warped into awkwardness as he thought to himself: What a pity.
As expected, this trick had no effect whatsoever on the Grand Tutor.
Ying Qingyang had been raised by Grand Tutor Jiang single-handedly; the moment he rolled his eyes, Grand Tutor Jiang knew the brat wasn’t plotting anything good.
If they were back in the former dynasty’s imperial palace, Grand Tutor Jiang would undoubtedly be the Crown Prince’s Grand Tutor, tasked with the heavy responsibility of cultivating His Highness into an enlightened monarch.
Yet, it was abundantly clear that the sole prince of the current Great Ying was a mediocre talent lacking grand ambitions and profound virtues.
Nearing his capping age, he could neither excel in literature nor martial arts. He was neither humble nor compassionate, growing up wildly to this day in the most remote region of Qiong Province. The only remaining vestige of refinement about him was his extraordinary appearance, which at a glance clearly did not belong in this cold, ruthless northern borderland.
Stripped of this innate exterior, Ying Qingyang possessed only exceptional eloquence. He could always exaggerate trivial matters wildly, spinning a few sentences to lead people astray with his line of reasoning. If he wanted to, there was no one he couldn’t swindle.
Yet every time, he managed to speak with reason and logic, moving his listeners. Only Grand Tutor Jiang possessed “discerning eyes like pearls” to see right through Ying Qingyang’s belly full of crooked, unorthodox ways.
Having navigated the official bureaucracy for over twenty years, Jiang Yunzhi possessed a pair of discerning eyes that had seen countless people through the years, and he had long since seen through Ying Qingyang’s true nature.
They say a dragon has nine sons, each different. When considering a royal destiny, Ying Qingyang was much better suited to live the life of an idle, carefree prince enjoying blessings. As for the common people, not a single trace of them could remain in this fellow’s mind they couldn’t even compare to half a beggar’s chicken swindled from a village entrance beggar.
Pity that the so-called Great Ying had only this single surviving member of the royal family, along with a few former dynasty old officials who had fled in panic when the capital fell, coupled with the gold, silver, and rare treasures that had been almost entirely depleted over the past decade or so.
Born in the wrong era, completely helpless against the circumstances.
Grand Tutor Jiang sighed inwardly.
Naturally, Ying Qingyang had no idea what his Grand Tutor was thinking. Seeing his foolproof strategy instantly seen through by the tutor, he felt somewhat stripped of his dignity.
“Aiyo, it’s just too cold today cold enough to make my hands shake, hahaha…” Ying Qingyang awkwardly glossed over it.
“Hmph” Grand Tutor Jiang emitted a cold hum from his nasal passage, pulling his hand away to slowly distance it from the money on the table. Outwardly, he looked as though he wasn’t affected in the slightest by the previous act of playing the pitiful card. “Your Highness certainly needs to warm up properly.”
With that, he tossed a piece of animal skin he had just collected earlier into Ying Qingyang’s hands.
“Ahem, wealth is merely an external possession; this sort of thing suits my preferences much better.” Ying Qingyang stroked the deerskin, unable to put it down as he clicked his tongue in wonder. “You can’t even find deerskin of this quality anywhere inside the Qiong Mountains. How is this little village so crouching tiger, hidden dragon?”
This place was still some distance away from the Qiong Mountain range, and along the route, aside from a few post stations and a commercial trading town, there were hardly any human settlements.
Their residence was at the foot of the Qiong Mountains, completely secluded from the world. In the dilapidated village, there were only a few peasant households making a living by hunting. Aside from them, there was only this group of uninvited guests.
Nineteen years ago, when the capital of Great Ying fell, Ying Qingyang was still an infant in swaddling clothes. Old officials loyal to the royal family rescued him from the flames of the imperial palace, hiding him here and there until they finally arrived at the most inconspicuous barren mountain within the Qiong Mountain range.
Ying Qingyang’s earlier words were not groundless either. With his identity, within the current territory of Great Liang, the moment anyone discovered it, not only would he be unable to protect himself, but anyone implicated would be spared as well.
Burdened by his identity since childhood, the old ministers of the former dynasty never dared to take him to crowded places. As he grew older and the gold and silver salvaged from the palace dwindled down to the bottom, Grand Tutor Jiang who reluctantly had to go out and lecture brought him along simply to force this fellow to study more.
Unfortunately, the results were minimal.
Ying Qingyang was naturally fond of bizarre little trinkets. Since Qiong Province bordered the frontier and held wide-open markets, the more of the world he saw, the more things he desired.
Grand Tutor Jiang deliberately sought to curb Ying Qingyang’s consumer impulses, maintaining extremely strict control over financial matters over the past few years.
Even though His Highness was treated like a precious pearl in the eyes of his fellow comrades, Jiang Yunzhi remained the same iron-faced, impartial Grand Tutor.
Having just handed Ying Qingyang a piece of deerskin, he demanded back a few of the copper coins they had agreed upon earlier.
The youth rubbed the deerskin in his hands and frowned, seemingly pondering which decision was more cost-effective.
Ying Qingyang counted the copper coins in his hands, sighed deeply, and stuffed them into his pouch.
After that little episode, the old gentleman was unwilling to let him meddle or help, terrified that his hard-earned food rations would be pilfered by this unruly rascal.
Unable to sit still, Ying Qingyang could only pace back and forth inside the hall with his hands behind his back while his esteemed tutor organized the tuition payments.
He walked up to the dilapidated deity statue, which had only half its body left, inspecting it up and down and getting hands-on.
The stone statue appeared to have been slashed horizontally by a blade and further smashed with something like an iron pestle, shattering it into a complete mess. Its head was split cleanly in two, and the cracked, dual-faced expression looked somewhat bizarre—half crying and half laughing, half mourning and half compassionate.
Ying Qingyang found this antique rather peculiar.
Even the furnishings inside the hall—lamp stands, incense burners, crossbeams, and even the hall doors—retained the slash marks of long swords.
The traces of wind and frost made the stone statue look exceptionally weathered. Ying Qingyang crouched down and reached out; the moment his fingers brushed the edge, tiny fragments began to rustle and fall off.
Before he could do much else, Grand Tutor Jiang scolded him from behind: “You brat! Stop right there! Aren’t you afraid of taboos?!”
Ying Qingyang sheepishly pulled his hand back and muttered a defense to himself: “This stone statue looks quite rare…”
Then he added righteously: “You just said my name didn’t have any ill-omened meaning; why are we suddenly worrying about taboos when it comes to a deity statue…”
“You dare open a private school right here, yet you’re afraid of gods…”
Grand Tutor Jiang packed the items into a bundle, turned around, and shot a glare at Ying Qingyang, uncharacteristically failing to come up with any retort.
He merely urged Ying Qingyang to gather his things, as it was time to head back to the mountain.
Ying Qingyang led the small donkey cart out from behind the main hall. The two of them loaded up the cart and returned along the path between the villages. Until they traveled far enough away from the village that no pedestrians were in sight, Grand Tutor Jiang finally stroked his white beard and spoke in a deep, heavy tone:
“That deity statue in the shop is called the Sorrow-Joy Statue, one of the deities that used to be heavily worshipped and offered sacrifices to. At its peak, half of the population of Great Ying was worshipping its statue…”
Much like every divine cult possessing bizarre stories, the Sorrow-Joy Statue was no exception. Grand Tutor Jiang spoke in a scholarly, elaborate manner, recounting its origins at great length. To summarize it simply in Ying Qingyang’s words: as long as someone who had experienced great sorrow or great joy entered the temple to pray and kneel, all their wishes would be granted.
A cult. Ying Qingyang mentally cursed in indignation.
However, the old custom of revering and worshipping gods was deeply rooted in this land. Starting from Great Zhou and reaching its peak prosperity during Great Ying, although it quickly declined under the new dynasty following the principle that things at their peak must decline, the dynasty change had only been a decade old. The ideology of superstitious belief in astral signs, the eight trigrams, and even sorcery and deities had long been deeply ingrained in the hearts of the common people, impossible to change overnight.
During the former Great Ying dynasty, divine officials frequently entered officialdom; even more impressively, some were enfeoffed as marquises and prime ministers, standing below one person and above ten thousand.
Tracing this fanatical reverence back further, it all began with the founding of Great Ying.
At that time, various states were locked in chaotic warfare, with different factions rising and falling. Ying Qingyang’s great-grandfather was also one of the independent kings. Because he possessed a certain talent in military strategy and warfare, he blazed brilliantly for a time, inevitably becoming the target of concerted alliances that nearly surrounded and buried him in Shu.
Escaping by sheer luck, he was left with only a thousand soldiers and completely exhausted supplies.
At his wit’s end, Ying Qingyang’s great-grandfather went to worship at an Earth God Temple. Shortly after, strange celestial phenomena occurred: broad daylight lightning split the main hall of the temple open, the earth cracked, and countless gold and silver treasures lay beneath the bricks and earth.
Relying on this “divine bestowal,” Ying Qingyang’s great-grandfather made a comeback, growing ever more valiant in battle to unify various factions and establish the new dynasty.
Before the downfall of Great Ying, this was an anecdote that common people loved to talk about—that they had emerged in response to the times. Therefore, Ying Qingyang’s great-grandfather changed his surname to “Ying”, corresponding to responding/destiny), and the new dynasty was also named the “Ying Dynasty,” hoping for the protection of all deities and endless blessings.
Ying Qingyang agreed with this point as well.
It truly was a response to heavenly induction: heaven wanted them destroyed, so they disintegrated completely down to the last scrap without a single moment of delay.
What was even more comical was that Ying Qingyang, as the sole surviving bloodline, was a contrarian who never placed any faith in deities.
Yet the people living on this land still retained the habit of worshipping gods and practicing old customs like Chen Ke. At most, they held slightly less reverence for deities and a bit more indifference.
Jiang Yunzhi could not remain detached either; he wasn’t someone who disrespected deities, but caught between filling his stomach and making offerings to invisible, intangible immortals of all paths, he very rationally chose the former.
There was probably only one person in existence whose heart was completely devoid of any concept of deities, much like Ying Qingyang.
He had heard of him for a long time, but they had never crossed paths.
Ying Qingyang had a momentary, imperceptible lapse in focus.
Fortunately, Grand Tutor Jiang was someone who never stopped talking once he started lecturing, so he didn’t notice Ying Qingyang’s abnormality. As he spoke, his little popular science lecture took a different turn. He continued: “When that person’s strategy to eradicate gods came out back then, if it weren’t for having an army of three hundred thousand as his trump card, Great Liang would have relapsed into the flames of war by the third year of its founding.”
“Even if religious cults now number fewer than one in ten, they remain a grave hazard.”
“Ambitious for quick success, willful and arbitrary how can such a person shoulder great responsibilities?”
Grand Tutor Jiang worked himself up into a fury, his beard and hair trembling slightly.
Following that was a thorough denigration of someone’s governance policies over the past decade since ascending the throne.
Ying Qingyang had originally been listening with keen interest, but upon hearing that specially significant “that person,” his expression instantly warped into a bitter gourd.
The “that person” in Grand Tutor Jiang’s mouth was none other than the current Grand Emperor Emeritus of Great Liang, and according to the old ministers, Ying Qingyang’s mortal enemy.
If they wished to restore the nation, the monarch of Great Liang was the target they must assassinate.
And Ying Qingyang, this surviving remnant of the former dynasty, was equally a hidden threat to the Liang monarch.
With identities and stances standing in direct opposition, it sounded as though their relationship was destined to be a life-or-death struggle.
Reviewing the history of the new dynasty from the fall of Great Ying to the multi-factional chaos of contending heroes, all the way to the current Grand Emperor Emeritus clearing obstacles to establish a new dynasty, enacting new laws and policies, employing talents wisely, and acting with ruthless efficiency that restored vitality to this land within three years.
Three years later, the Grand Emperor Emeritus’s governance policies gradually grew somewhat radical, and the strategy to eradicate gods mentioned by Grand Tutor Jiang was precisely one of them.
The Grand Emperor Emeritus did not believe in deities, sternly ordering his massive army to destroy every single temple across Great Liang’s territory one by one. Over the course of two years, he used thunderous means to excise the tumor.
When Ying Qingyang first heard about it, he just wanted to cheer.
However, the old ministers led by Grand Tutor Jiang never uttered a single word of praise, managing to find derogatory angles for every single move made by the Grand Emperor Emeritus, leaving Ying Qingyang perpetually amazed.
To use an inappropriate analogy, it was like a mother-in-law picking faults wherever she looked; even Auntie Wang who sold steamed buns at the village entrance wasn’t as unreasonable as this.
No wonder people said Ying Qingyang was born incorrigible. He was full of rebellious bones; the more others said something was bad, the more he insisted on praising it.
In Ying Qingyang’s opinion, what kind of heavenly blessing was the Great Ying Dynasty? The current Grand Emperor Emeritus was truly a genuine darling of heaven.
After all, that Grand Emperor Emeritus was only 16 years old when he raised his army from the northern borderlands, and now, in the tenth year of Jinghe, that man was merely at the threshold of thirty.
Such an obvious fact, yet his dear tutor stubbornly covered his eyes and played blind.
“If one day you undertake great tasks, you must never be this reckless…”
Sigh.
Ying Qingyang was full of worries.
Outwardly, he showed no sign of it, firmly holding the reins in his hands like a professional, capable driver.
Grand Tutor Jiang’s burning loyalty to the country was evident to heaven and earth; anyone who heard it would be deeply moved. Unfortunately, having listened to it since childhood, Ying Qingyang had already developed immunity to this speech, playing deaf and blind with practiced ease.
Seeing his tutor getting into the flow of his lecture, Ying Qingyang let him be, nodding and acknowledging repeatedly while looking extremely docile and obedient.
Yet, because he wasn’t stirring up trouble, Jiang Yunzhi felt something was amiss.
This brat actually didn’t refute him there was definitely a problem.
Grand Tutor Jiang’s suspicious gaze landed on Ying Qingyang.
So Ying Qingyang chuckled and said, “If it weren’t for that year’s strategy to eradicate gods, where would we find a place that doesn’t charge rent for you to give lectures today? Speaking of this tuition, shouldn’t half of it be given to that person?”
Grand Tutor Jiang instantly turned red in the face. “You brat! Talking nonsense!”
“Hahahaha!” Ying Qingyang burst into loud laughter. He picked up the half-section of horsewhip in his hand, swung it upward, and the little donkey immediately accelerated, running forward with a rhythmic da-da-da-da-da.
Grand Tutor Jiang, who was nearly jolted off balance, let out a roar filled with vigorous energy: “You are a piece of rotten wood that cannot be carved!!!”