CH 28

As she was the first female general in a hundred years, the women of the capital worshiped Ye Zhao almost to the point of madness. 

So now, they turned their eyes to the general’s husband. 

Xia Yujin shivered under the stares. “My wife was there just a moment ago, wasn’t she?”

Guessing his intentions, Qiu Laohu repeatedly shook his head.

“She really wasn’t?” Xia Yujin asked the others. 

Guessing Ye Zhao’s intentions from Qiu Lahou, the girls also repeatedly shook their heads. 

Xia Yujin remembered that wherever Ye Zhao went, she would be offered cartloads of fruits, and that whenever he went to a brothel or a pleasure boat, all the women there—brothel madams, famous courtesans, songstresses, even the floor sweepers—would all take turns lecturing him and telling him, over and over, the same words: “Go home soon, don’t disappoint the general.” He suddenly felt very miserable.

Half-drunk, half-despondent, not knowing what to say, he rubbed his drunken and dizzy head. On his smooth and pale jade-like face, his nose turned a little red, and his limpid eyes looked helpless and dazed, like an injured little rabbit… 

What could they do to such a good-looking man? No wonder the general wouldn’t give him up! 

Qiu Laohu, fearing that he would lose control of his big mouth again, quickly said he needed to go to the Ministry of Rites, turned around, and fled.

Xia Yujin couldn’t keep asking. After turning it over in his mind, he decided to make others even more miserable than himself. 

The investigators had already tied up the owner of the Baohe Apothecary and his shop assistants and sent them to the city magistrate’s. He eagerly ran after them and caught the city magistrate in his courtyard, claiming that the case was particularly vile and requesting an impartial judgment—when the time came to put the case to trial, he would come over and listen, to meet the Emperor’s expectations and learn from all the officials. Soon after the city magistrate agreed, wiping the cold sweat on his forehead, Ye Zhao, Marquis of Xuanwu, sent someone over to imply that cases of fake medicine had recently started cropping up one after the other in the capital, harming an extended relative of a young officer of hers. It was an uncomfortable affair. 

The city magistrate gripped his official’s black hat, turning the problem over in his head for a long time. 

His beloved concubine tears fell, graceful like raindrops on a pear blossom. It was useless to look for compassion here. 

The city magistrate resolutely came to a decision. He immediately sent people to search all the apothecaries in the city, who discovered and arrested eighteen various manufacturers and peddlers of fake medicine. Then he judged them on the spot, sentencing the chief criminals to sixty floggings of the stick, three days in pillory kneeling at the entrance of their shops, and to compensate their victims. Their accomplices received thirty strikes and a day in the pillory. 

The day the punishment was to be carried out, the prince of Nanping showed up as he’d said and greeted the city magistrate. He moved his stool next to the convicts awaiting flogging and sat with his chin in his hand, happily and unblinkingly watching the proceedings. “Last time my wife had people flogged, I couldn’t assist,” he kept saying. “I can’t miss it this time. Come on, all of you, put your back into it. You’ll get rewarded! And you, on the ground, scream louder. I’m not satisfied.”

“Your Highness,” Chief Lao Yang warned him with a sour expression on his face, “they don’t give out rewards for flogging harder.”

“Your Highness,” the city magistrate also warned him, “if you go too far, you’ll be reported.”

Xia Yujin happily turned to look at him. “If I’m reported, can you take my post?”

He was completely unaffected. 

This rascal angered them all so much that they couldn’t reply. They had expected that the Emperor would let him keep his position and so, thinking about how much of a troublemaker he was, they decided to let him be, as long as he wasn’t too outrageous, and let the Emperor deal with him. 

Some bailiffs, who’d been receiving bribes from the owners of the shops selling counterfeit medicine, had orchestrated lighter beatings. Now that they were being so closely watched, though, and that the planks used for military discipline had been brought up, they couldn’t make all strikes equally light—the sound and reaction wouldn’t be the same—so they had to give up on their silver and let the beatings happen the way they ought to, with the cries of the pampered and ruthless medicine dealers shaking the sky. 

When the beatings were over, Xia Yujin stood up, stretched his back, and went with the bailiffs to escort the convicts to the pillories, summing up for the onlookers, “Go back and recuperate. Whoever heals the fastest proves that his shop’s medicine is the most efficient. A good thing for your shop’s reputation! You’ll have plenty of customers after that.”

The people around burst out laughing, applauding and cheering him on. 

The medicine peddlers’ faces turned gray. 

It was the first time Xia Yujin inflicted corporal punishment on someone. It was very different, he felt, from dealing a secret blow, and it put him in a good mood. No wonder his wife liked disciplining people! She probably felt the same way. 

Smug, he went on to look for anyone he could brag to, until it was the middle of the night and he couldn’t fall asleep. As he was strolling through the garden, he saw Ye Zhao coming back from work and, remembering what had happened last time, came up to greet her. Tentatively, he asked, “Did you go by East Street with Qiu Laohu, the day before yesterday?”

“No”, Ye Zhao calmly said. 

“Then where were you?”

Ye Zhao frowned. “I’ve been discussing the arrangements for the arrival of the Eastern Xia envoys next month. We’ve finally managed to establish a protocol.” 

“Is that why you come back so late everyday?” Xia Yujin asked after thinking for a moment. 

“Eastern Xia once secretly provided the Man Jin with horses and weapons, then took advantage of the war to fight for the Ximen Pass. Now they want to negotiate peace, exchange their horses for the Great Qin’s grain and cloth. I’ve dealt with Eastern Xia a few times before, so I’m familiar with its situation. The Ministry of Rites sought me out to ask me about it but everyone keeps arguing and making me late,” Ye Zhao said, nodding. But catching sight of the look on his face, she slowed down her words and tried to explain, “When I left after work today, we were all so happy that the Minister threw a feast at his house. We all drank two cups of wine, that’s why I’m late. But I swear I didn’t do anything else, I didn’t go to any brothels…”

“Brothel? What brothel?” Xia Yujin understood what she was saying; he knew that she was trying to change the subject, because she thought he was jealous, and jumped up to his feet in anger. “I didn’t suspect you were drinking at a brothel! Do you think I care that my own wife visits brothels for a drink?”

“You don’t care?” Ye Zhao leaned forward a little, smelling faintly of alcohol, her glass-colored eyes gleaming with a new light—a light that could pull people in. She reached out and hooked her hand behind his neck, her fingertips sliding softly until they almost touched his cheek. Barely moving her lips, her breath warm against his ear, she said, “Why don’t we… go drinking together next time?”

Alright, so she’d been drinking with her colleagues! But she still came on to him when she was drunk! How was he supposed to stand for this? 

Staring straight ahead, Xia Yujin violently stepped on her foot. “You damn drunkard!” he cursed. 

There was a cold gust of wind. Sobering up, Ye Zhao hurriedly stepped away, back to her serious self. 

“Do you behave like this every time you drink?” Xia Yujin asked her fiercely. 

“I can’t hold my liquor all that well,” she said. “I get drunk after just a few cups, and sometimes I drink more than I can hold.”

“So when you get drunk, you see anyone and just molest them?”

“No, just the beautiful ones…” 

“You’re terrible when you drink!” lamented Xia Yujin. 

Ye Zhao’s eyes flitted away as she tried to defend herself. “Well, however terrible I get, I’m still better than Fox. When he starts singing love songs it’s the whole camp who gets hurt.”

Xia Yujin remembered his talk with Hu Qing. Although he didn’t really care about this terrible wife of his, he still felt a little uncomfortable. He was quite straightforward and didn’t like secrets, so holding back wasn’t easy. But upon reflection, he thought that since their good relationship was only skin-deep, it didn’t matter if he added another barrier to it; he may as well ask directly. Besides, his wife wasn’t ashamed easily, unlike himself. If she dared to go out and visit brothels, dared to find someone to write the divorce letter for her, dared to dally with beautiful people as she pleased, would she fear reaping the reputation of being unfaithful?

So he decided he would inform Hu Qing of it later, along with his own conjectures, and suggested, “If the two of you are in love, in three years, I will intercede with the Empress Dowager. You only need to progressively cede your authority on the army and then you’ll likely be able to be together.”

“Hu Qing said he liked me?” A crack finally appeared on the icy surface of Ye Zhao’s face, getting bigger by the second. “He really said that?”

Sorry about the wait!! I didn’t mean to disappear for a week, but Things very much Happened. It’s fine, now, I guess, but I’ve fallen behind with translating this a bit. Ugh.