Chapter 44 Part 1

Gu Jinyu stayed in the Student Courtyard until the twentieth day of the first lunar month. The new year had passed, and he had reached the age of eighteen. The first decision he made in the Gu Family that overrode the authority of his father’s generation was to close the Vast Marsh Academy.

Gu Yan was busy with the Northern Expedition, so the Gu Family truly became his own personal fiefdom.

It was just that this new chapter had arrived too late.

The Vast Marsh Academy had been open for five years. Perhaps it was a youthful Peach Blossom Spring for many sons of noble families in Changluo, a land of sweet dreams and tender romance. Many found tenderness in its embrace. But Gu Xiaodeng spent those five years ostracized daily, relegated to the last row, receiving nothing but endless gossip and slander.

Gu Jinyu hated it.

On the day of the Lantern Festival, Gu Jinyu went to the Bamboo Courtyard where Su Mingya resided. He inspected it three times and had Zhu Mi record the value of every item belonging to the Su Family within the courtyard. That night, he gathered them around a fire and burned them all to ash. Before the night was out, he had the sum for the destroyed items delivered to the Su Family manor.

The next day, the spies watching the Su Family came to report. Su Mingya, whose health had been improving, had become gravely ill again.

“Sick again. I wish him a serious illness every year.” Gu Jinyu held Xiao Pei, whose fur had recovered some of its luster, and then inquired after the others.

“The Young General of the Ge family was pierced through the chest by your blade that day. He can now get out of bed. His constitution is on par with yours.” The subordinate even sighed with feeling. “As for the Guan brothers, Guan Yunji is largely unharmed. Following your arrangements, he was sent to the Frost Blade Pavilion. Guan Yunxiang is like mud. That Guan Yunji is somewhat better.”

The Frost Blade Pavilion was Changluo’s institution for forging martial arts. It once had a glorious era of producing countless talents. In the last hundred years, its internal cruelty had been repeatedly curtailed, gradually mellowing into a relaxed place for eclectic and broad training. It prioritized literature second and martial practice first, excelling at teaching according to aptitude. Gu Jinyu had spent half a year inside before later directing Zhu Liu there, allowing him to learn a full set of martial skills.

Guan Yunji’s past dream of abandoning literature for martial arts could finally be realized.

It was just that after departing this time, when he left, he would no longer be the celebrated high noble of a great aristocratic family in Changluo, but a so-called lowly servant who had bowed his spine.

The youth who once galloped his horse tasting spring breeze osmanthus wine was destined to turn the page. After the page turned, a rare few could still ride as young men; most had to dismount and walk alone.

Holding Xiao Pei, Gu Jinyu fell into a long silence, lowering his head to look at several memorials on the table. There were reports on the Northern Border army situation, on the layout of Changluo, on the hundred prominent new talents, and on the hundred stubborn old guard.

Skimming over those rains of blood, he looked again at the bound volumes of the Record of Shanqing’s Observations. He had spent twenty days memorizing Gu Xiaodeng’s five observation records. Every single stroke was now engraved into his Mind Sea.

【Tianming 13th Year, Midsummer, Night of the Fifteenth. Drank with Brother Guan and Brother Ge, feeling great joy.】

【Brother Dongchen was witty and eloquent, like a torrential storm, also like the rapid clatter of a fine steed.】

【Brother Yunji, though proud, was truly dazzling like thunder and lightning, solemnly dignified as a stone lion.】

【The two of them and I are as different as birds and fish. I am like fish bait; they are birds, yet they never bully me.】

【Su Mingya, as pure as the bright moon, as gentle as a clear breeze. The same age as me, yet as different as the clouds above and the mud below.】

【I am still fortunate. To be lowly earth with brothers who can reach heaven, to be a fish with bird-hunting friends, to be mud with love above the clouds.】

On the twenty-third day of the first lunar month, the first year of the Hongxi era, Gu Jinyu received one of the five Military Tallies and led one hundred thousand troops to the Northern Border, six thousand li away.

Gu Jinyu led out the thousand-li horse, Northern Gaze, from the Gu Family. He carried Xiao Pei, who came from the Northern Border, in his arms, with Zhu Mi following behind him.

Zhu Mi won people over with civil arts, while Zhu Liu secured situations with martial might. The two brothers had swapped roles this time. Zhu Liu stayed in Changluo to be one of Gu Jinyu’s eyes and ears, secretly investigating news of Gao Mingqian and others, and crucially, holding the pond at Baiyong Mountain. Zhu Mi resolutely followed him to the Northern Border.

Gu Jinyu let him follow. In his youth, he had spied on Zhu Mi’s thoughts as if observing a fool’s wishful thinking. Now, finally coming to his senses, he realized Zhu Mi was a hundred times luckier than him.

On this march for the Northern Expedition, Gu Yan held the other Military Tallies, finally fulfilling a decades-long obsession.

Gu Jinyu traveled the same path as him, but they had long had nothing to say to each other. Since that Prince Zhenbei was so foolishly loyal, with such an obsession with Northern Gaze, then since this journey had begun, he need not return. Gu Jinyu had his own method of revenge, different from the others.

On the day he left Changluo, before dawn broke, Gu Jinyu made one final inspection of Baiyong Mountain. Even though the pond’s perimeter was guarded by a thousand men rotating shifts ceaselessly, he still dove into the water once more, searching inside and out.

The Empress had claimed that anomalies like Gu Xiaodeng traveling through to later eras appeared in every generation. As for similarities, every anomaly in each generation was male, extremely beautiful, and the anomalies were limited to the Changluo area. They returned from wherever they disappeared. If Gu Xiaodeng was indeed an anomaly, then Baiyong Mountain would be a new geographical record.

The triggers for this type of traveling anomaly were completely without pattern. If one were forced to investigate, it was that the anomalies were all utterly heartbroken and despairing at the time. When they returned, they were in a daze, as if having had a brief little dream.

This time, Gu Jinyu leaped into the water again, closing his eyes at the bottom to endure the cold spring water, trying to empathize with Gu Xiaodeng’s feelings at that moment.

He thought, of Gu Xiaodeng’s utter despair then, perhaps he alone was the cause of three-tenths of it.

When he emerged from the pond again, Blossom Ashes was slowly circling in the air. Xiao Pei was sniffing carefully outside the railing. The world was vast, with tired birds and wandering hounds.

In that instant, Gu Jinyu desperately wanted to sink to the bottom of the pool forever.

But an hour later, he was on horseback, leaving Changluo to the sound of hooves.

Five thousand li of road, clouds and moon. A year of battle, a year of strategy. The time spent waiting for Gu Xiaodeng passed far faster than Gu Jinyu had imagined.

And was far more painful.

The Jin army traveled a thousand li, arriving hastily at the Northern Border, only to be dealt a painful blow by the frontier defenses right in the face. The endless sky-high withered grass and the gray sun’s strong wind shattered the glory dreams of seventy percent of the officers and soldiers. Almost as soon as the military camp finished being set up, countless soldiers from the Central Plains began to grow restless, desperate to quickly defeat the Northern Rong so they could return to the rich, warm, and soft lands of the Central Plains.

The conflict between the Jin Kingdom and the Northern Border had not originally escalated to this level of irreconcilable hostility. Seventy years ago, the Northern Border was dominated by the Di Tribe. The Di Tribe merged into the Jin Kingdom with a posture of peace, their status equal to that of the Central Plains.

But in the seventy years that followed, thirteen foreign tribes migrated from the more northern deserts, collectively calling themselves the Rong Tribe. Their customs were savage and their martial might fierce, and they seized the territory left behind by the Northern Di. The Jin Kingdom also hadn’t anticipated that having finally dealt with one Northern Di, they would instead face a new, far more vicious foreign tribe.

For seventy years, the Northern Rong had been like a tumor, rapidly expanding along the northern border of Jin. Taking advantage of the century-long chaotic period of internal restructuring within Jin, they had steadily grown into the powerful force of this generation.

Among the five commanders-in-chief for the Northern Expedition, Gu Jinyu was the youngest. Even with military merits from within the Central Plains to support him, he was the most ostracized. Right after arriving at the Northern Border, he was the fastest to lead troops out of the camp to test the depths of the Northern Rong’s strength.

This probing lasted two months, and he nearly lost his life several times.

Gu Jinyu brought the Jin Kingdom’s newly developed Army-Breaking Cannons, which had a longer range and greater power than bows and arrows. But the Northern Rong were not afraid in the slightest. Knowing early on that Jin’s weapons were advanced, the Northern Rong centered their strategy around people and poison, creating Human Weapons. They made one poisonous humanoid Army-Breaking Cannon after another, endlessly approaching and infiltrating the Jin army, using suicidal mutual-destruction tactics to kill a thousand with one.

The Northern Rong also had large-scale long-range poison mist. As long as the wind direction favored them, they could use poison repeatedly. Even after racking their brains, the Jin army struggled to advance and attack through the poison mist; they could only defend.

The Jin army had always fought wars of blades, swords, chariots, and cannons. In a century, they had never encountered such a sinister and poisonous form of warfare. A few moments of carelessness led to a swath of casualties.

Gu Jinyu endured the wind, snow, and poison mist to probe for two months. When he led his troops back, the entire army was battered and exhausted. Before they could even rest, they were analyzing the Northern Rong’s situation with the other four main generals. Midway through, his body, having been poisoned several times, suddenly failed him. Purplish-black poisoned blood was vomited onto the sand table, and the world before his eyes plunged into pitch black.