After three rounds of wine, a commotion broke out beyond the hall.
The courtyard fell abruptly silent.
The clamor of flattery and coaxing people to drink stopped at once. Every eye turned to the center of the courtyard.
Two burly retainers were dragging a disheveled, middle-aged scholar out of the main hall. His deep robe had been torn askew, his cap sat crooked, and his hair hung loose around his temples.
Wei Qi emerged at an unhurried pace, dressed in brocade. A crowd of nobles followed at his heels, and his expression was full of contempt.
He stood on the steps and looked down at the man. “This fellow accepted a bribe while on a mission to Qi and sabotaged Wei’s affairs. He deserves to die.”
Before he’d finished speaking, one of the retainers kicked the man behind the knee. The dull crack of bone striking stone made several guests flinch. The man pitched forward and struck his forehead against the ground. Blood streamed down, pooling across the flagstones. The banquet fell utterly silent. Only the heavy thud of fists striking flesh and the brittle snap of breaking ribs echoed through the courtyard.
No one knew how long it went on. At last the man lay sprawled in a pool of blood, his remaining fingers twitching faintly. It was clear he wouldn’t survive.
“Drag him away and throw him in the latrine,” Wei Qi said flatly, as if ordering someone to dispose of rubbish.
Two servants came forward, grabbed the man by the ankles, and dragged him away headfirst. His body scraped across the stone, leaving a slick, winding trail of blood.
The servants quickly splashed water over the courtyard and wiped the blood away. The strings and flutes timidly began to play again, but they couldn’t quite cover the coppery tang beneath the cloying reek of wine.
Ying Zheng remained seated, not moving an inch. He knew his limits. At his size, he couldn’t have pushed his way into the crowd anyway. And he wasn’t curious about who had angered Wei Qi or how he’d met his end.
The guests returned to their seats one by one. The atmosphere had changed completely. Everyone was visibly more subdued.
Zheng Anping, pale-faced, squeezed back beside Ying Zheng. He lowered his voice, still shaken. “That was a retainer of Senior Grandee Xu Jia. He went on a diplomatic mission to Qi a while back and secretly accepted money from the King of Qi. Senior Grandee Xu found out. The chancellor just had him beaten to death in front of everyone.”
Ying Zheng sensed something was off. “If he’d accepted a reward from the King of Qi, why didn’t he stay in Qi?”
“I couldn’t say.” Zheng Anping lowered his voice further, his usual gossipy excitement returning. “Just now, the man tried to argue with the chancellor. He said he hadn’t betrayed Wei. The King of Qi had rewarded him because he admired his talent.”
“Would the chancellor believe such nonsense? He had the man’s teeth knocked out, then dragged him into the courtyard as a warning.”
Ying Zheng fell silent. Zheng Anping assumed he was frightened and patted his shoulder reassuringly.
“It’s all right. We’re not important enough to betray Wei.”
“What was the man’s name?” Ying Zheng asked suddenly.
Zheng Anping sucked in a breath. “He was only a retainer. Who’d bother to remember his name? I’ll ask around.”
Once he’d recovered, he picked up his wine cup and squeezed back into the crowd, leaving Ying Zheng alone.
The wine fumes in the hall were overwhelming. Ying Zheng quietly left his seat and went to the covered walkway for some air.
The early-autumn wind was cool, but it couldn’t chase away the cloying smell of wine or the faint scent of blood. He was looking for a quiet place when he heard laughter and filthy jeers coming from the latrine.
Almost without thinking, Ying Zheng softened his steps and headed that way. He hid in the shadow of a pillar and looked out.
Several richly dressed guests were gathered in a crooked circle, their faces flushed from drink. The man they’d surrounded was the same one who had been dragged away earlier.
He now lay motionless in the filth beside the latrine.
“Come…come have a look!” A thin, lanky man, so drunk he could barely speak, was the first to undo his belt. He swayed as he approached, mumbling, “A low…lowlife like this should be washed…with something just as low…”
“Hahaha! Brilliant! Brilliant, just as Senior Grandee Xu said!” The others clapped and laughed as though they were watching a wonderful performance.
Ying Zheng clenched his fist inside his sleeve. A strange anger stirred in his chest.
A scholar could be killed, but never humiliated.
The people of Wei today, the people of Zhao tomorrow—they all seemed to take pleasure in humiliating others.
Ying Zheng turned away. He didn’t want to look anymore.
A gust of wind passed. At the center of the crowd, the fingers of the “corpse” twitched almost imperceptibly.
“Where did you go?” Zheng Anping had already returned to their seats. He’d been fretting, and only relaxed when Ying Zheng came back unharmed. With so many nobles around and a man just killed, he hadn’t wanted the boy out of his sight.
Then he lowered his voice, excitement creeping into it as he shared a bit of gossip. “I found out who that unlucky fellow was.”
“His name was Fan Ju.” Zheng Anping was eager to share every detail. “He went on a mission to Qi with Senior Grandee Xu. The King of Qi singled him out for a reward of a hundred thousand in gold, plus wine and meat. That’s what got him into trouble…”
Clatter!
The bronze chopsticks fell onto the mat with a sharp ring.
Zheng Anping stopped mid-sentence, startled by the sound. He looked up and saw Ying Zheng’s stunned expression.
Ying Zheng quickly composed himself, putting on a pained look. “I kicked the corner of the table by mistake.”
He bent to pick up the chopsticks. Only when the table hid him from view did he let his shock show.
The man who’d been beaten in front of everyone and thrown into the latrine was Fan Ju!
Fan Ju, whose name was spoken in the same breath as Lord Wu’an Bai Qi!
Ying Zheng had grown up in Zhao, and his understanding of Qin was fragmented and vague. Aside from the few half-finished accounts from the people Lu Buwei had hired to teach him, most of what he knew came from the things Zhao people said through gritted teeth. Whether they praised Qin or cursed it, they all pointed to the same truth: the name Fan Ju carried enormous weight.
At the Battle of Changping, Bai Qi had buried four hundred thousand Zhao soldiers. That battle had marked the beginning of Ying Zheng’s fate. He had been born the year after it ended, when the people of Zhao hated Qin more than ever.
And Fan Ju had turned the tide of the battle. He’d proposed a scheme to deceive King Zhao into replacing the veteran general Lian Po with Zhao Kuo, the man who only knew how to talk about war on paper. The result had been Zhao’s crushing defeat.
Ying Zheng picked up his chopsticks but no longer felt like eating.
“No. 108.” Eight-year-old Ying Zheng spoke silently in his mind, his bewilderment plain. “Is he really Fan Ju? Marquis Ying Fan Ju?”
[I’m here~] The System’s voice rang out brightly.
“Yes, that’s your quest target, Fan Ju~ The instance perfectly recreates history, down to the smallest detail.”
Ying Zheng’s heart gave a heavy thud. A storm of feelings rose inside him, too tangled to name.
Fan Ju, the man whose name shook the world, the man the people of Zhao hated so much they wanted to eat his flesh and sleep on his skin—he had once been beaten, humiliated, and left on the brink of death?
He had assumed the “Rescue Fan Ju” quest would involve an assassin. Perhaps Ying Zheng would have to step forward and save Fan Ju from a dagger. He’d been practicing swordsmanship with Zheng Anping for two hours every day, without fail, in preparation…
Instead, Fan Ju’s life-or-death crisis had been this degrading beating and humiliation.
For the rest of the banquet, Ying Zheng couldn’t taste a thing.
He quietly considered how to complete the quest. He couldn’t make a scene. He was a nobody, a merchant’s nephew. Even if he risked his life, he had no chance of taking Fan Ju from the chancellor’s residence by force.
…Besides, as far as he knew, Fan Ju would eventually become chancellor of Qin. That meant he wouldn’t die here today. But surviving and being rescued were two different things. The quest was to rescue him.
By dusk, the banquet was over, and the guests began to leave in small groups.
Zheng Anping sighed over and over. He’d spent the whole day smiling and flattering people, only to come away empty-handed.
“They don’t turn their noses up at merchant money when they take it in private. In front of everyone, they put on airs.” Zheng Anping complained under his breath, but there was nothing he could do. The powerful could make whatever rules they liked. Wei Qi had taken his money and done nothing for him, and Zheng Anping had no one to complain to.
He didn’t notice that he’d begun following Ying Zheng. The two of them were gradually walking farther away from the main gate.
The latrine door stood open. The inside was empty.
Ying Zheng glanced at the clear drag marks on the ground. Fan Ju had already left the Wei Qi residence, and the tight cord around his heart loosened a little.
He knew he couldn’t help Fan Ju inside the chancellor’s residence. Ying Zheng was calm, and he valued his life. Even in an instance, he wasn’t about to throw it away.
…There were still so many books in Zheng Anping’s study he hadn’t read. In the real world, he had never had such a safe place to study.
He had to outstudy Ying Chengjiao, the son his father had back in Qin, who’d been born and raised in Xianyang.
The sky darkened. Lamps blazed throughout the residence, lighting the front gate as bright as day.
The guests were in high spirits from the wine, and left in groups of two and three. Some laughed loudly, some staggered along, and some clung to the hands of Wei Qi’s stewards, babbling flattery and refusing to climb into their carriages.
The entrance to Wei Qi’s residence was a mess. Carriages fought for room, and servants shouted at one another. Zheng Anping and other guests the household could afford to neglect had to search hard to find their carriages at the back gate.
He dragged Ying Zheng through the crowd and finally reached their carriage. He climbed in, then let out a long breath.
As soon as he sat down, Zheng Anping couldn’t help scolding them. “What an insult! Who invites guests to a banquet and then makes them leave through the back gate?”
Ying Zheng lifted one corner of the curtain. Only a handful of plain carriages waited by the back gate. “At least the road’s wide.”
The rules said merchants weren’t allowed to ride in covered carriages. They could use an ox cart or a carriage pulled by one or two horses, but they weren’t allowed red or feathered covers. Only plain cloth would do.
The servants at the chancellor’s residence had a sharp eye for these things. They could tell at a glance whom they could afford to offend.
It was hard to understand why the servants had such keen eyes when their master, Wei Qi, couldn’t tell the worthy from the worthless.
“If Fan Ju could earn such a lavish reward from the King of Qi, he must have talent. The chancellor didn’t use him, and instead humiliated him like this. How can a state grow strong without worthy men?” Ying Zheng suddenly looked at Zheng Anping, offering his sincere question to the only adult beside him.
Was supplying talented men to Qin some kind of Wei tradition? Shang Yang and Zhang Yi had both come from Wei too, as he recalled.
Zheng Anping fell silent for a moment, then managed to say, “Little kids shouldn’t ask about grown-ups’ business.”
Ying Zheng eyed him with suspicion. Zheng Anping’s back began to sweat under the boy’s stare.
Oh, this is bad.
As a little kid, he ought to be rolling around with other snot-nosed children, wooden sword in hand. Why was he always asking about matters that concerned senior officials?
The carriage rolled along a narrow road. At the roadside, a bundled straw mat rose and fell faintly. A pale, scrawny hand suddenly shot out!
“Ah!” The driver’s startled cry cut through the awkward silence between uncle and nephew.
Zheng Anping leaned out. A disheveled figure was clinging to the axle, reeking from head to toe. Zheng Anping was about to demand an explanation when the smell made him gag.
“Ugh… You… ugh…” He covered his nose, his face turning green.
In the moonlight, he recognized the man. It was Fan Ju, the man who’d been “beaten to death” at the banquet!
“Please, sir, save my life!” Fan Ju clung to the axle, his upper body draped over it. His voice was raw and broken. “If I survive, I’ll repay your kindness!”
He had pretended to be dead and begged a servant to lie about his body. Only then had they wrapped him in a mat and thrown him out. But if they came to collect his body tomorrow and found him alive, Wei Qi would never let him go. He had to escape!
This passing merchant was his only lifeline.
Zheng Anping was shocked. He opened his mouth to refuse. Fan Ju was obviously an enemy of Wei Qi. How could a merchant like him get involved in the chancellor’s private feud?
Suddenly, a small hand came to rest on his forearm.
“Uncle, you spent a hundred gold pieces trying to make connections. What did you get for it? And how many hundred gold pieces can our family afford?” Ying Zheng’s eyes were dark, his voice soft.
He had realized that this was his chance to complete the quest.
Zheng Anping’s heart gave a jump. The refusal on his lips died away.
He looked at Fan Ju, drenched in blood and clinging to life. His expression changed. A moment ago, he’d seen Fan Ju as nothing but trouble. Now he was looking at him like a merchant sizing up a piece of merchandise.
It was hard for a merchant to climb the social ladder. At the banquet that day, Zheng Anping had smiled, spent money, and failed to earn so much as a glance from the nobles. Remembering the contemptuous looks, his anger flared.
“Pull him up.” Zheng Anping’s expression shifted several times. At last, he gritted his teeth and jumped down from the carriage.
Fan Ju’s will, stretched to its breaking point, finally gave way. He bit his tongue hard enough to draw blood and forced out his vow, one word at a time. “If Fan Ju survives, I’ll repay this kindness.”
“Whether you’ll live is another question…” Zheng Anping looked at Fan Ju’s injuries, wondering how many bones he’d broken. He wasn’t optimistic.
A high fever could be fatal. With so many injuries, Fan Ju was bound to develop one that night. He’d be lucky to last three days.
As a merchant, Zheng Anping knew better than anyone that a small investment couldn’t be expected to bring a large return.
He hadn’t spent a single coin. He’d picked up a man on the roadside. How useful could he possibly be? But Zheng Anping was angry, and besides, a free scholar was too good to pass up.
I hope his clothes will still be wearable after a wash. I had those made especially for the banquet—they took three different bolts of cloth!
Zheng Anping jumped down from the carriage, despair in his heart. He helped Fan Ju up, wincing at the state of his clothes, and called for the driver to help lift him into the carriage.
Fan Ju lay collapsed in the carriage, breathing faintly. Hatred alone kept him conscious. The cold night wind poured down his throat, and his broken ribs burned. He spat out a mouthful of blood, splattering the floorboards.
I can’t die. I haven’t made a name for myself yet.
Fan Ju refused to close his eyes. He stared up at the dark sky.
A soft touch wiped his face. His unfocused gaze slowly sharpened. A child who looked to be around ten was crouched in front of him, eyes lowered, gently cleaning the blood from his face with a damp cloth.
A thought came to Fan Ju, quite inappropriately: If I die now, at least I’ll die with a clean face.
He tried to squeeze out a smile to reassure Ying Zheng. But in the next moment, he could no longer hold on. His eyes rolled shut, and he lost consciousness.
All that reached his ears was a child’s soft sigh.
As expected, Fan Ju developed a high fever that night.
Zheng Anping sent for an itinerant physician. After several doses of medicine had been forced down Fan Ju’s throat, all they could do was leave the rest to fate.
Night deepened.
The candle flame wavered on the table, stretching Ying Zheng’s shadow across Fan Ju’s paper-pale face. Fan Ju lay on the couch, cold sweat soaking his hairline. His brow was furrowed, and each breath came out in a broken rasp, as though an unseen nightmare were tearing at him. His lips had turned blue. His fingers clutched the bedding in an unconscious, desperate struggle.
Ying Zheng sat motionless beside the low couch. Candlelight flickered in his black eyes, revealing only a still, shadowed gaze.
He watched this man, whose name had shaken the world and made the people of Zhao grind their teeth in hatred. The face before him was now marked by pain and humiliation. Just hours ago, Fan Ju had been dragged across the ground, doused in filth, and trampled into the mud. Even now, his life hung in the balance.
The intermittent chirping of autumn insects came from outside. Moonlight slipped through the paper window and spread a thin layer of silvery frost across the floor.
Ying Zheng didn’t look away. He watched every labored breath, every faint rise of Fan Ju’s chest, his expression impossibly complex.
So this was Fan Ju—the Qin chancellor who could turn a war with a single sentence, the most trusted minister of Ying Zheng’s great-grandfather. And now he was so humiliated and helpless that his life rested in someone else’s hands.
He had never wanted power so badly.
A mechanical voice without a trace of emotion suddenly sounded in his mind.
[Ambition (purple) upgraded to Ambition (gold).
Note: You desire more than simply returning to Qin.]
Ying Zheng listened to the System’s announcement without changing his expression. He wasn’t surprised that his Growth Trait had changed.
No. 108 fell silent.
This was all wrong.
An eight-year-old who witnessed the rise of a nobody should have felt inspired, or learned that talent shouldn’t be underestimated.
So where had this sudden, surging hunger for power come from?
