The next morning, Zhao Rong heard about the night's events — above all, that Wang Yu had invited Gutong and Ziyu home as house guests — and simply stood still for a moment, processing. Then he hurried to the reception hall, where he found everyone already at breakfast.
Introductions made, Wang Yu waved Zhao Rong to a seat, and Wei Gutong explained what had brought them under the Manor's roof.
"My wife and I are idle cranes — no fixed nest, and long past minding it. But with Feifei in our care, drifting no longer serves."
He went on, "Her family is gone and her heart is low. She had resolved that once her vengeance was taken she would leave the Central Plains altogether — vanish into the Western Regions under another name.
The stories say the Western Regions bridge east and west: desert and oasis, the Thirty-Six Kingdoms at peace, every man and woman a singer and dancer — a gentle land. Then we reached Longshan and asked around, and learned the truth: the Western Regions are boiling with war, and can barely protect themselves."
"And then — as luck would have it — we met Prince Zhao," Yan Ziyu said. "A prince with a temper, no one disputes; but true, and solid — and the Westguard Manor casts a shadow long enough to keep off vermin.
So we would like to entrust Feifei to Prince Zhao. Let her live quietly at the Manor a while, and my husband and I will carry the debt with full hearts. And should some worthy young man of the northwest not disdain her — we will furnish a dowry worth the name."
"Auntie." Yuan Feifei's breath went short. "I intend to grow old alone..."
"Foolishness." Wei Gutong cut her off. "You grow old alone, and the Yuan bloodline ends with you. Full stop."
Yuan Feifei said no more. Her eyes remained entirely unconvinced.
Wei Gutong sighed and let it lie, turning instead to Wang Yu.
Wang Yu, naturally, had no objections at all. "That Elder Wei and Elder Yan trust the Westguard Manor is this prince's honor. Miss Yuan shall have the Windward Pavilion for as long as she cares to keep it — the Manor could use a breath of refinement about the place. And this prince gains the luck of hearing a legendary piece from the source."
"Excellent, excellent." Wei Gutong clapped his hands, pleased. "Feifei is young, but she carries the true Yuan transmission. Her qin is far beyond her years — and her 'Ice Mountain, Flowing Spring' is very fine indeed."
Yan Ziyu smiled. "Then we are in Prince Zhao's debt."
***
Children of the rivers and lakes: when they go, they simply go.
Breakfast done, Wei Gutong and Yan Ziyu took their leave. Wang Yu sent Yan Ziyu off with three bottles of his own perfume — banking one more round of goodwill — Zhao Yingjie aired out the Windward Pavilion, and Yuan Feifei became a resident of the Westguard Manor.
Within days, the Thousand Willows affair was fully wound up. The Ding collateral branch sold the bulk of the lands and shops to the Manor, keeping only the manor house itself and a modest remainder — and with the new family head's martial arts being nothing much, the Dings had, for all practical purposes, retired from the martial world.
The perfume workshop rose on schedule. The northwest's own orchid, peony, and peach-blossom lines began trickling out of production; the Manor's caravans were already moving finished bottles toward the Central Plains — with purchase orders riding along for the east's roses, lilac, and briar.
This world had no greenhouses; flowers kept their own calendar. One waited on the seasons — or bought up last year's dried petals, which the caravans were doing too.
Wang Yu kept training through all of it — internal energy, lightness art, sword art, all climbing.
Especially once Zhao Rong's buyers landed another century-old wild ginseng and a root of aged mountain yellow-essence.
Once again Zhao Rong stood and watched Wang Yu eat a century of medicinal potency the way other men eat a steamed bun. His mouth twitched throughout.
All medicine carries its measure of poison. Even the great tonics — surely you don't just CHEW them?
He finally couldn't hold it in. "Shall I have Physician Li take your pulse? Just once?"
Physician Li: the Manor's resident doctor, keeper of the household's health.
"No need. I know exactly what I'm doing!"
Wang Yu waved him off, feeling along the fresh give in his meridians, the smoother-than-ever turn of his internal energy. "Keep buying, Uncle Rong. Century-old and up — and anything genuinely fortifying that a martial artist can use."
Zhao Rong: "..."
Seeing him rooted in place, Wang Yu asked, "Something else?"
Zhao Rong nodded. "You've now met General Peng and General Lu. The household stands steady. It's time, I think, you considered the northern line — Generals Yang and Feng."
General Yang — Yang Tianzhao, commander of the Yangwei Army, holding Goldwind Pass on Longshan's northern line.
General Feng — Feng Jing, commander of the Ding'an Army, holding Lingwu Pass on Qing'an's.
The Westguard princedom had been won from horseback. Its founder Zhao Ling and Wang Yu's supposed father Zhao Zheng had both commanded the armies in person, swept the desert, and held the ground they took.
A general must know his soldiers — and a prince must know his generals.
Yang Tianzhao and Feng Jing could not leave the line to present themselves at the Manor; if Wang Yu never went north, the introduction would wait a full year for the rotation. And a year of "the new prince won't come to the front" was exactly how a house began to be whispered into decline.
"Yes!" Wang Yu's eyes had already lit. "Let's go!"
Every son of the Middle Lands carries the wuxia dream — sword on the back, the open road. But packed right beside it, always, is the general's dream: banners on the north wind, warhorses drinking at the far sea.
Back home, whenever the hanfu revival came up, someone would declare men had no interest in traditional dress — no good pieces for them anyway; the women carried that whole movement.
Put the same man in a set of Mingguang lamellar with a bright-silver spear, and watch.
At any costume park in the country, the crowd never turned for the tenth pretty girl in silk. It turned for the man in full armor on an actual horse with a polearm — or at minimum for the fellow in Embroidered Uniform Guard black with the saber at his hip.
It was never that men wouldn't wear it. It was that armor done properly costs a fortune — and that a dozen armed men in formation on a public street is the kind of hobby that gets the local constabulary very interested in your afternoon.
Dreams you cannot buy at home, apparently, come free with transmigration.
"Nothing pressing on the desk anyway. We ride."
Truth be told, taking control of the Westguard Manor had gone easier than Wang Yu had imagined — easier, even, than Li Yunxiu had projected.
She had never seriously feared the impersonation would crack. But a Zhao Yu with mediocre martial arts, ten years absent, rootless in his own house? By every sane projection, even the REAL heir would have had to claw for actual power through years of palace arithmetic — because neither Zhao Rong nor the six army heads was anyone's pushover.
Instead: on the road, Wang Yu had shown flashes that made her look twice. At the gates, he had answered Zhao Rong's probing — and Zhao Siqi's frontal test — with flat, decisive force, and looked every inch a sovereign doing it.
Zhao Rong had gone from wary to devoted. Zhao Siqi had gone from spearhead to cautionary tale. The household bent the knee in its heart — and even the clerks and registrars under Li Yunxiu started answering her dispatches on time.
Word of that day had leaked in fragments, as word does, and the conclusion the three prefectures drew was simple: the more capable Li Yunxiu proved, the stronger the Westguard Manor grew — and what could one woman alone ever overturn? Every road still ended at Wang Yu's desk.
Unless, of course, she bore Wang Yu a son, murdered Wang Yu, enthroned the child, and ruled as dowager until she could hand the Manor to the court — a plan requiring years, facing walls on every side, and holding odds a hair above zero. If she tried it, the world would say "impressive" and "vicious" in the same breath — and conclude the woman Top Scholar's name had been oversold.
The point being: the Manor was settled, Li Yunxiu's administration ran clean, and Wang Yu was no longer needed at home as a decorative paperweight.
Or, put properly: riding north to bind Yang Tianzhao and Feng Jing to the new prince WAS the work.
Zhao Rong, watching Wang Yu light up and agree on the spot, smiled too. "I'll prepare the army gifts — meat, wine, and reward silver; grain and medicines besides."
"How much are we talking?" Wang Yu asked, curious.
"Two catties of meat, one sheng of wine, half a tael of silver per man."
"Half a tael? What does half a tael even buy?"
"Half a tael is not small. This isn't pay — it's largesse."
Which reminded Wang Yu to ask: "What IS our pay?"
"Twenty taels a year."
"Twenty taels a YEAR?"
"Twenty taels is generous. Food and lodging come with the service — the twenty is what feeds a man's family. Fifty thousand men of the line is a million taels on that heading alone; add the three thousand cavalry, thirty thousand horses, clothing and weapons replacement, and just KEEPING the army costs the Manor close to two million a year."
Zhao Rong pressed the point. "Our Westguard men are paid far above the court's scale. The border troops in Ding'an and Yumen draw twelve taels a year — and the interior garrisons, don't ask."
Wang Yu counted on his fingers.
The wuxia novels of his last life had ruined his sense of money — heroes tossing hundreds of taels at innkeepers. An agrarian world ran on prices lower than instinct allowed: twenty taels genuinely kept a family for a year.
Twenty taels didn't sound like much. Twenty taels times fifty thousand was a very great deal indeed.
Standing armies were ruinously expensive. This was not a rich man's hobby; it was a state's.
Fine. He couldn't raise fifty thousand salaries on a whim anyway.
But between raises there was the bonus — and any modern soul understood the state-enterprise principle: the wage may be modest, but festival money and holiday gifts do wonders for how the whole institution FEELS about itself.
"This is my first year as Westguard Prince. Let the welcome gift say so," Wang Yu decided. "Two catties of meat, two sheng of wine — and two taels of silver a man."
An extra sheng of wine was nothing; two taels a man was another order of thing entirely. Zhao Rong had to ask: "And the other three armies, and the Iron Hawks...?"
"The same. Obviously."
Fifty thousand men of the line: one hundred thousand taels. The inner treasury could carry it — and the perfume workshop was already in production, with more than that expected off it every year.
Zhao Rong knew both numbers, so he raised no objection.
"I'll ride to the northern line myself. You watch the disbursement to the other three armies," Wang Yu instructed. "And tell them all: this largesse celebrates my investiture as Westguard Prince. Any hand that skims it is a hand raised against me personally — and if I find it, it answers to military law."
Zhao Rong's smile spread as if he were watching his sworn brother's youth walk past him again. "Good!"