Chapter 52

Since Jinzi wasn’t giving me any face, I didn’t find it appropriate to take the initiative to ask that he move back to staying the night to protect me. Thankfully, Shao Qing’s five-hundred elite guards aren’t just here to eat my food, and have already arranged for strict nighttime patrols. Old Tian assigned a few experts to the area around my Water Pavilion, and I recruited Hong Feng to sleep next door to me as my personal servant. Only then was I at ease enough to sleep.

Nothing happened that night, in the end.

That’s exactly how it should be, really. Were I to be assassinated the day of the conflict happening, would even an idiot not know what was going on? Li Minguo doesn’t have enough courage and power to face the consequences. He’s much more likely to be an obstacle for me in Court politics.

There was an inevitable maelstrom in the Court the next day. A few of the Waiqi party’s people to accuse me of taking arbitrarily rash actions, upheaving the conduct of the Court, covertly betraying Our Majesty, and being a swindling Minister. However, they aren’t imperial censors – how could of the Waiqi’s tiny fish do anything to this situation? I’m not stuffing my own pockets, I’m hastening funds for the Court. They’re almost completely unable to touch me, and I don’t have to bother disputing them.

Following Court, I hurriedly enter the Palace to find Eunuch Wang. As Li Minguo was settled, Wang Fugui is now the second largest debtor, and is the next to bear the brunt of it.

For imperial eunuchs to be money-hungry is an ancient and unchanging truth, like how a cat starts getting greedy, fat and lazy after getting fixed. Wang Fugui certainly isn’t short on silver; who knows how much in gains he nabbed from Zhang Qinglian each year? His money is bound to be the same as Li Minguo’s, with him surreptitiously using it for usury.

Wang Fugui is a shrewd one. How could he not know my intentions if I specifically seek him out? Besides, the huge disturbance I caused at the Li’s residence yesterday has already spread throughout every class of society, and is well-known at this point.

Therefore, when he sees me, he adopts the expression of a man whose parents are dead and wife has fled. Worry on his brow, he invites me into his room, calling for a young eunuch to fetch tea.

“Eunuch Wang, are you short on money?” I feel it’s better to get right to it.

“Ai,” Wang Fugui’s face wrinkles up like a bitter melon. He gives a long sigh of misery and sorrow, as if he could write ten Palace-themed rueful poems. “The Palace is a place of pure misery!”

I nod slowly, expressing complete understanding and sympathy, even following with a sigh of my own. The sound is sincere, and from the bottom of my heart.

Wang Fugui looked at me with anxious apprehension. “Sir Zhang, you can surely understand all our suffering…”

I sigh again, saying, “Eunuch Wang, I do understand, but this is a difficult time. Sir Li feels wronged, and I’m afraid that he’ll immediately demand for my Eunuch to pay his debt…”

Wang Fugui’s persimmon face promptly warps with concern into an unsightly one. “130,000 liang… how am I to get that? …Sir Zhang, this silver is not your own, yet with your current sky-shaking conduct… is there some other plan you have, Sir?”

He probably thinks that I want to take this as an opportunity to attack Old Man Li, or that I have a more hush-hush plot. Of course, it’s most likely that he just wants to draw my attention away from the money.

I smile bitterly. “Eunuch Wang, why would what is kept from others be kept from you? To say the truth, I am just a weapon working on another’s behalf this time. This matter has been agreed upon and must be strictly enforced. Sir Li was deliberately putting on an act!”

Wang Fugui’s eyes widened as he begins to look fearful. After making sure no one was around, his knees softened, and he knelt down to me.

I quickly helped him up. “Eunuch Wang, what are you doing?”

Wang Fugui squeeze out two tears, choking out, “Please help me, Sir. I come from a poor background, and I’ve sent money to my poor relatives back home. How could I procure this much silver?”

I inwardly mock that. Sending it to poor relatives? These words aren’t false, it’s just that it comes with a 50% interest rate.

I mutter. “Eunuch Wang, tell me the truth. How much do you have now?”

“20 or 30,000…” Looking at my unpleasant expression, he quickly adds, “I might be able to gather up 40 or 50 thousand!”

I feign distress, saying, “In that case, take out your 50,000 liang, and the rest I’ll have to think of a method for you… I remember one major merchant I could discuss borrowing 80,000 liang from. We just need to write up a certificate of the debt to me, and it won’t have a time limit or an interest rate. What do you think, Eunuch Wang?”

Wang Fugui was ecstatic upon hearing this, all smiles. “Thank you for helping me, Sir Zhang, in this troubled time. I will be useful to you in the future, walking through water or flame if you say it.”

I don’t believe what he’s saying at all, but I exercised patience and said a few polite phrases, also making a careful effort to console myself. Only then did I go of to find the Emperor for his classes.

He had unexpectedly started to burn up in the afternoon, and was since resting in bed. I came in at once to take a look at him; there was a layer of sweat on his little forehead, face pale and eyes shut as he laid like a little lump under the covers.

He is very on-guard, opening his eyes as he heard the noise. Seeing it was me, he said, “Subject Zhang.” His voice is meek and weak, like a kitten’s.

Compassion blooms in my heart. I rush to his side, helping him wipe off the sweat, and speak softly, “How did you get a fever all of a sudden?” Abruptly remember something, my expression shifts. “Your Majesty, you’re not taking that substance again, are you?”

The little Emperor quickly and laboriously shakes his head. “We have not.”

Can it be that the poison amassed in his body hasn’t cleared up? That shouldn’t cause a fever. I worry over it immensely, and then laugh at myself: a small child getting a fever is well within normal. Me getting so worked up like this… I’m quickly becoming an old mother hen.

The Emperor says, “Subject Zhang, you offended Grandfather by going to collect his money yesterday?”

My heart felt cold, but my tone was still soft. “Yes. Does Your Majesty blame this servant?”

He shook his head. “We know you did it for us.”

That’s so cute and affectionate, my heart can’t stop from warming up. I wonder if this matter will become one of the reasons for my criminal conviction ten years from now? Will he still remember what he’s said right now? Even so, a true man knows there are things to be done and things to be not-done. I won’t change my original intentions.

I watch him silently, then whisper, “Your Majesty, you will blame this impulsive, contemptuous servant in the future for this, and suspect him of commandeering power.”

He becomes anxious, turning around and grabbing my hand, the action causing him to be a bit out of breath. “No matter what you do, Subject Zhang, we would not blame you!”

I smile humbly. “Is that so? Your Majesty, even if you trust this servant, what if all your other subjects say he’s no good? If you don’t believe it from hearing it once or twice, will you still not believe after a hundred or a thousand times? This is called ‘heaped slander can melt bone, public gossip can melt metal’.”

The Emperor observed me cautiously for quite some time before his little face suddenly turned solemn. “Is Subject Zhang afraid of those villains? …Do not fear, we will protect you.”

I found it both touching and laughable. “Alright, then. Your Majesty needs to grow up faster, then you can disallow the villains from bully your servant.”

The Emperor gave a solemn nod in promise. I laugh with him a bit, him letting loose his pamperedness and decreeing that I hold him, and I move aside the bedding to do so.

As he was weak from illness, it didn’t take long for him to fall into a sound slumber. I laid him back down on the bed, wrapped him up tight in the blanket, instructed the maids and eunuchs to carefully fix up a decoction, then left the Palace.

Recently, due to not being in the mood to flaunt myself through the city, I haven’t been riding Hearth, instead just using a carriage. The carriage is stopped outside the Forbidden City, with Old Tian waiting for me outside the inner palace’s Donghua Gate. I recall that I’d lost 80,000 or so liang today for nothing – though it was a necessary political investment, because the payback prospects can’t be garnished and aren’t 100% predictable, I’m not too happy about it.

Who could have guessed that once I left the depressing Forbidden City, I would find something even more depressing: my carriage actually wasn’t waiting there for me, without even a ghost of a shadow to be seen of it in the empty space.

Old Tian wiped the cold sweat from himself. “I reckon the old guy hadn’t anticipated that you’d leave the Palace so early and went off to have fun somewhere.”

I’m trembling all over in anger. “That slave really has some guts!” I jeer.

I’m not one to treat those lower than me harshly, and it’s not that I don’t completely understand the coachman figuring that he had some time to fool around, but this is too much. This happening at the politically-sensitive Forbidden City’s gate, it’s pretty likely that everyone will be mocking me tomorrow about how I don’t understand how to use my servants and that the Zhang Residence has no organization.

When one’s down on their luck, they surely want to drink cold water and stuff their face.

“How about you wait here, Sir, and this small one will go back home and call a carriage here?”

How long would that take? It’s too dangerous for me to be alone here, anyways. I shake my head, sighing. “No need. It’s not far, we’ll walk back.”

Old Tian has no objections, so off we go on foot.

We have to pass through the Eastern Market on our way. I haven’t taken a stroll down the street in quite some time, and the Market is as busy as it was before. Just as we got to the end of the street, though, there was suddenly a small scuffle.

A shaobing peddler’s stall was suddenly knocked to the ground by a few people dressed as domestics and teenage street punks. They punched and kicked and smashed things, boiled shaobing filling the road. A good deal people are circled around the exciting scene and pointing.

The battered peddler wore poor clothes on his body and adolescence on his face, being at most eighteen or nineteen years old. His dismay is great, holding his head as he cried in anguish, “…Gentlemen, spare me! Isn’t this month’s interest not until the end of the day? …Ah, ow!”

One of the people came and kept viciously kicking him a few times, unable to understand the concept of regret in his hate, then spat out frothy saliva onto his face. “Pah! You’re not thinking far enough! Interest? We’re asking for the money from you right now! Our boss is about to be too poor to even eat rice, you think he still has money to lend to you?!”

The peddler threw himself over the remnants of his stall, pleading, “Mister, where am I to gather that now? This is this lowly one’s livelihood, if it’s smashed then money isn’t coming in!”

“Bah!” One of them yelled at him. “Who has the patience to wait for you to pay it back cake by cake? We want it by tomorrow! If you still don’t have it, the sooner you sell your mom or sister to a brothel to get it, the better! And if that’s not enough, sell ’em both!” Making a conscious effort at humor, he gave hearty laugh.

The rest of his people laugh with him, having further fun with it. “And if it’s still not enough, this kid still has fair skin – you can just sell yourself to that Everfragrant place! Then you won’t have to sell shaobing to support yourself!”

There was another burst of laughter.

The last one speaks with chilling nastiness. “Don’t blame us for being mean. You want someone to blame, then blame that fuckboy Zhang Qinglian. He’s really forcing everyone to pay their debts, so we gotta force the money out of you!”

The peddler cried to the skies and grabbed at the ground as he cursed Li Minguo and I, the unending sound of the words ‘dog officials’ hitting the ears. He lamented on how he had borrowed 2 liang of silver for his mother’s medicine, and he’s been paying 5 qian (⅒ a liang) a month for half a year now, and the debt is not only not any lower, but has changed into 5 liang. The surrounding people began to whisper, and though I made mental preparations for this long ago, my heart still sinks down. I lower my head, think about it, then say, “Old Tian, step in and make them leave. Ask that young man how much he owes and pay it back for him.”

Old Tian gave me a faintly amazed look, then went to do as I commanded. I hid far away to watch him negotiate. He said a few things, then suddenly smacked one of them and sent him flying, then threw silver into that guy’s gace, then said even more things. They all picked up the silver and ran. The peddler repeatedly kowtowed to Old Tian afterwards…

Old Tian returned from his mission full of joy, saying with excitement, “I’ve settled it, Sir.”

Seeing how happy he is, I am too. So long as you’re human, doing good things and helping others will inevitably put joy in your heart.

My small bit of enthusiasm coming to an end, I bow my head and walk in front with even more gloom. Old Tian sees that I’m not happy and doesn’t day say anything more, also wanting to console me yet not daring to be rash, having no other option but to tread on ants with me.

I fully understand that this absolutely not my fault, I haven’t done a thing wrong, and I couldn’t have done it even a bit better, but I can’t stop from feeling a bit down in the dumps.

Today’s a really crap day. Jinzi’s ignoring me, I lost 80,000 liang, the Emperor is sick, my carriage disappeared without a trace, getting called a ‘dog official’ for some unfathomable reason…

I let my thoughts run wild, entirely focused on looking down and not at where I was going. Raising my head after a while, I can’t help but stare: I actually walked straight to Everfragrant’s entrance.