From afar, Duke Gu spotted Gu Ci standing beside the Crown Prince, his beloved grandson.
As he drew closer, the Duke quickly dismounted, strode forward a few paces, and bowed to the highest-ranking person present. “This old subject pays his respects to His Royal Highness the Crown Prince. May Your Highness be blessed with boundless peace and fortune!”
Crown Prince Jun Yixuan hastily stepped forward to steady him, smiling as he conveyed the Emperor’s warm regards.
“You’ve had a grueling journey, Duke Gu. His Majesty has missed you dearly.”
At this, the Duke offered another deferential bow, assuming an expression of profound panic and awe. “I dare not, I dare not. For His Majesty to trouble his thoughts with this old set of bones. I am guilty of taking up the sovereign’s mind.”
Seeing that the Duke was completely impervious to polite maneuvering, the Crown Prince silently cursed him as an old fox before letting the matter drop with a smile.
After exchanging pleasantries with the assembled officials one by one, the Duke finally turned his gaze toward Gu Ci, whose eyes had long since grown moist.
He clapped Gu Ci on the shoulder, smiling with fond satisfaction. “Good lad! You’ve grown up.”
Gu Ci eagerly threw himself into his grandfather’s embrace, his voice thick as he murmured, “Grandfather, I’ve missed you so much.” With that, he tightened his arms around him.
The Duke chuckled and pulled him back out at arm’s length to tease him. “You’ll be a fifteen-year-old young man after the new year, why are you still such a crybaby? When your father was your age, he was already a teenage general galloping across the battlefield.” As he looked at Gu Ci, his gaze gradually grew distant and hazy.
It was as if he were reminiscing about things from a very long time ago.
Everyone present was deeply moved by the scene, and more than one veteran official openly wept on the spot.
The righteousness of family and country, coupled with the blood and tears of soldiers, was embodied with heart-wrenching intensity in Duke Gu. The entire Gu family was a lineage of absolute loyalty and heroic souls.
With eyes brimming with unshed tears, the Duke gently patted the back of Gu Ci’s hand. “Let’s head back first. Once I’ve paid my respects to His Majesty, I’ll return to share dinner with A-Ci.” With that, he remounted his horse and resumed his journey toward the palace gates.
Watching his grandfather’s retreating figure, Gu Ci was suddenly struck by the realization that the old man had grown truly old.
Inside the imperial palace, the Hall of Zhengzheng.
The moment the Emperor saw Duke Gu stride in clad in full armor, he immediately stood up and hurried forward. Once the Duke finished his full kowtow, the Emperor personally pulled him to his feet, offering a concerned word of mild reproach: “Old Duke, what is the meaning of this? Did I not say you need not perform such heavy bows before me? You are, after all, the vital pillar of my realm!”
The assembled ministers thought privately: Your Majesty, you could at least have made a token effort to stop the Duke from kneeling in the first place!
Hearing this, the Duke instantly adopted a look of overwhelmed, trembling shock, bursting into a flood of old tears. “Your Majesty, this old subject is unworthy of such grace! You are the sovereign, and the sovereign is Heaven itself. If Your Majesty will not allow this old subject to pay homage to Heaven, it is no different from taking my life! Entrusted by the late Emperor and trusted by Your Majesty, I have relied on nothing but this old set of bones to stagger forward to this day.” By the end of his speech, he was a weeping, snot-streaked mess.
Anyone capable of attending a morning audience in the Hall of Zhengzheng was an elite master of political maneuvering.
The moment the ministers laid eyes on this performance, the subtext was instantly clear to everyone.
It was simply the Emperor and the Duke staging their annual theatrical routine. This brand of monarch-subject mutual flattery took place roughly once a year, tracing all the way back to the late Emperor’s reign. Having watched the production for over thirty years, the senior officials were long past the point of finding it novel.
True to form, just like every previous year, the Emperor found himself backed into a corner.
“Ah, Your Majesty, this old subject truly thought I would never see you again. All along the road, I chanted my gratitude for the late Emperor’s heavenly spirit protecting me, protecting this old subject so I could live to see Your Majesty and my precious grandson once more. I am overcome with honor.”
The Emperor rubbed his brow in resignation, letting out a slightly exasperated roar: “Quickly, someone! The old Duke has suffered a grueling journey and is exhausted, escort him back to rest!”
He could see right through it: out of everything the old Duke had just blurted out, the only part he actually meant was wanting to live long enough to see his precious grandson.
Still, Gu Ci truly was the old Duke’s only remaining emotional anchor in this world.
Softening at the thought, the Emperor relented a little and ordered a generous array of imperial rewards dispatched to the Duke’s estate.
The fury of thunder and the patter of rain, all are grace from the heavens. Whether meeting demons or Buddhas, all serve to transform.
In truth, Duke Gu understood perfectly well that the Emperor was employing this as a disguised test of his loyalty. The more submissive and terrified he appeared, the more at ease the Emperor would feel.
Dynastic rulers were universally suspicious by nature, and the current Emperor doubly so.
Generations of men in the Gu family had bled and died on the battlefield, leaving behind only young Gu Ci as the sole surviving bloodline. While the Emperor claimed in public to let A-Ci stay in the capital to enjoy a life of ease, in reality, the boy was being kept close as a hostage to hold over the Duke’s head.
The moment the Duke stepped out of the palace gates, he shed his pathetic, weeping facade entirely, mounting his horse with a cheerful grin and riding home in high spirits.
Upon receiving a secret report from his agent, the Emperor could only laugh and curse him as an “old scoundrel,” holding no actual intent to punish him.
From afar, the Duke spotted Gu Ci and Uncle Zheng waiting eagerly outside the estate gates.
Springing down from his saddle, the Duke strode briskly toward them. By the time he reached them, Uncle Zheng’s eyes were already swimming with tears as he choked out, “The General has grown old,” before turning red-eyed himself.
The Gu estate maintained an unspoken tradition: every year upon returning for the New Year, the Duke’s very first task was to lead Gu Ci to the ancestral hall to pay respects to the forebears of the Gu family.
Once their ritual worship concluded, stepping back out into the courtyard revealed dozens of men waiting in grim silence. Some walked with a limp, some were missing arms, and others had their bodies permanently warped and twisted by the agony of old wounds—yet they stood rigidly in neat rows, every single one of them holding himself as straight as a ramrod.
These men were all retired disabled veterans from the battlefields. According to standard military custom, such soldiers should have been left behind to fend and die for themselves on the front lines. Instead, the old General had brought them home, treating them as dearly as his own flesh and blood.
The least they could do in return was guard the young master, sparing the General any worries at home.
Following closely behind the Duke, the group walked with heavy, solemn strides straight toward a towering pavilion situated right beside the Gu family ancestral hall. As the doors swung open, a thick, heavy wave of incense ash rushed out to greet them, instantly followed by rows upon rows of neatly aligned memorial tablets honoring fallen martyrs.
Stretching as far as the eye could see, there were thousands—perhaps even tens of thousands—of tablets. This was the Gu family’s second sanctuary: the Gu Family Army Memorial Hall.
Here were enshrined the soldiers of the Gu army who had perished across countless campaigns, alongside Gu Ci’s father, uncles, and various kinsmen. Every single year, the collection grew larger.
Gazing at the fresh stack of name plaques resting upon the sacrificial altar, Gu Ci felt a sharp, dense web of agony tighten around his heart.
“Success is built on ten thousand bones.” Looking at the grim tableau before him, Gu Ci mentally repeated the verse that had challenged his worldview countless times before.
Growing up in an era of peace, reading those words had felt like mere rhetorical exaggeration. It was only later, when his father, his second uncle, and countless uncles and elders laid down their lives on the field of battle, that he truly grasped the brutal reality behind the verse: it was paved with the withered bones of soldiers. How much flesh and blood of ordinary troops did it take to build a general’s ten-thousand-mile renown?
He looked at his grandfather and the old veterans who had followed him for half a lifetime, locked together in tight, weeping embraces. Perhaps the ones who survived were the ones suffering the true torment.
Gazing up at the neatly ranked rows of martyrs’ plaques, Gu Ci knew with quiet certainty that this, too, would ultimately be his own final resting place.
Unlike the prolonged, uninhibited display of emotion he shared with Gu Ci, the moment Duke Gu stepped back out of the pavilion, he had already reclaimed his customary, sharp clarity of mind.
Smiling warmly, he beckoned everyone to take their seats at the banquet tables, raising a cup to toast today’s reunion and to the miracle of having survived to return home once more.