Noticing that he looked a bit confused, like he hadn’t woken fully up from his daze, and had none of his typical witty and cheerful looks, Sui Zhou felt quite amused at heart. He couldn’t help but lean forwards, taking advantage of when the other was completely unguarded to press against his lips.
At that very moment, Mister Tang finally came back to himself, reaching out to push the other’s skull away with a dark face. However, that push unexpectedly aroused the other’s ferocity, and he pushed him straight down to deepen the kiss; it wasn’t until Mister Tang’s eyes were about to roll into the back of his head from being suffocated did Mister Envoy Sui compassionately released him.
Tang Fan was flushed fully red. It wasn’t from shyness, of course, but from lack of air.
Because he had been afraid of alerting Lu Lingxi, who was outside the door, and because there was no small difference between his strength and Sui Zhou’s, he had stubbornly held back from making any sounds. In result, he had nearly become the first ever Court official to be suffocated to death because of a kiss, narrowly reduced to a laughingstock for all the ages.
“You couldn’t breathe?” Sui Zhou asked, surprised.
That playful, obedient tone of voice…
Tang Fan didn’t want to acknowledge him at all.
Sui Zhou’s cold, unchanging-for-ten-thousand-years, strangers-will-never-see-it-shift-ever face showed a rare smile. “How about we go again, so I can teach you this time?”
Sir Tang had no strength to mock him. How had he never noticed how thoroughly shameless this guy was before?
A few knocks came from outside the door. “Brother Tang?” came Lu Lingxi’s inquiry.
On their first night in Ji’an, Lu Lingxi had been injured because of him, so Tang Fan had agreed to his request to sleep together out of consideration for his feelings.
Two sizable men sleeping on the same bed was so unbelievably common, there was nothing to say about it at all. However, this bed was so small, two people sleeping on it left very little room for movement, meaning that no one would end up sleeping well. For that reason, after Magistrate Fan borrowed people from Millarch Tan, Tang Fan didn’t allow Lu Lingxi to come over and sleep with him again, instead asking the soldiers to stand vigil outside. Even so, every day, Lu Lingxi would come in every morning to wake him up, taking up the job as his personal attendant while he was at it. Tang Fan had talked to him a few times, but seeing as he wasn’t stopping, he let him do whatever.
Since they stayed near and their two rooms neighbored, Lu Lingxi would occasionally get up in the middle of the night to make a round, seeing if anything unusual was about. He had truthfully been scared by that assassination attempt, and he feared the same thing would happen again, to say nothing of his personal deep respect and good feelings towards Tang Fan. If something happened to Tang Fan, he would bear the blame.
Clearing his throat, Tang Fan raised his voice a bit. “I’m fine. I woke up in the middle of night, so I started reading and saying my thought aloud. You go back to sleep!”
Lu Lingxi hummed. He made no noise for a minute, as if waiting for Tang Fan to call him in, but other said nothing. That caused him a bit of disappointment. “If anything happens, shout. I’m in the next room, I’ll hear you,” he said a long time afterwards.
“Thanks. You’re very considerate,” Tang Fan said happily. “There’s guards keeping watch outside, so it’s fine. You just go on to bed. We have work that needs doing early in the morning! You can’t run out of energy during the day!”
Lu Lingxi affirmed. Tang Fan listened close, but did not hear the other’s retreating footsteps.
However, he had forgotten that with Lu Lingxi’s skills, his walking movements were much lighter than the average person’s, and he went until Sui Zhou poked him. “He left.”
Only now was Tang Fan at ease. He looked coldly at Sui Zhou, lowering his voice. “You keep on regressing, Bastion Envoy, even imitating a thief by sneaking in here. If people learned of this, you might lose your hallowed reputation.”
That was a clear castigation, but in reality, it held a sense of concern. Being who he was, Sui Zhou could tell that plainly. Feeling amused at heart, he didn’t expose him, only saying, “I wanted to see you, so I came.”
No matter how Sui Zhou could try, he couldn’t compare up to Wang Zhi’s sort, whose linguistic skills could curse someone out until their body was covered in wounds, nor was he like Lu Lingxi’s sort, willing to have the cheek to act cute and play dumb until he was so wound around Tang Fan, the man had no way to deal with him. Such a huge sweet-nothing coming from him really left Mister Tang speechless.
As for his emotions, only he himself knew them.
Still, from his warming expression and softened tone, he had clearly been moved by those words. “You know I’m not talking about that.”
With Sui Zhou’s identity, he could always come and see him with confidence. Why had he elected to sneak in when no one was around in the middle of the night, or need to avoid the eyes and ears of the gate guards? That was no average amount of toil. If not for there being some other incident, Sui Zhou would never do anything like this.
Sui Zhou wasn’t going to hide it from him, either. In his opinion, there was no need to keep anything from Tang Fan. “An incident did happen.”
As it were, long before Tang Fan had come to Ji’an, the Brocade Guard had received news that traces of White Lotus followers were showing up in Jiangxi.
Over these past years, the organization had constantly refused to dissipate, suddenly popping up in the capital, then suddenly giving the Tartars plans. Not only were they sly and hard to deal with, but due to their decentralized power, it was quite hard to dig them up by the roots. For that reason, despite the Brocade Guard’s far-reaching powers, the labor and resources it had spent contending with the Society was immeasurable, to the point that even Sui Zhou had become a bit frustrated.
Fortunately, that influence had not got eternally without defeat. By their piece-by-piece efforts, the Society’s former great numbers of followers had now been chased and beaten all over the place, and could not be more subdued. Its branches had repeatedly been demolished, with even the forces that had colluded with the Tartars. The defect within that beauty was that the few remaining Society leaders had still slunk off to elsewhere, infrequently causing some headache for the Court — if they could be caught all together, then could be completely exterminated.
Sui Zhou’s group had toiled a few rounds in Jiangxi, and had finally destroyed the last Society branch. They had also caught its Vicar, the third-in-command of the society, Zhong Hao.
In light of Zhong Hao’s testimony, Sui Zhou and them had learned that beneath the unrelenting pressure of the Court, the White Lotus Society had already reached the desperate realm of having nowhere to go. Even the Tartars, due to worry over angering the Ming Court and thinking the Society to be too unreliable, had stopped cooperating with its followers and chased them entirely out of the passes. The followers had been forced to wander, taking refuge with Zhong Hao.
He was quite an ambitious man. He had laid dormant in Nanchang for many years — low-key, quietly enduring things, and rarely showing his face — but seeing Li Zilong have the limelight over and over again had long made him unhappy with his third-in-command position, and he wanted the entire Society in his pack. Thus, the first one he wanted to get rid of was the second-in-command that blocked his way in front, Li Zilong.
Far prior to the Brocade Guard receiving news of it, the Society had undergone a bout of large-scale infighting. At the end of it, Zhong Hao, the snake in his home burrow, had taken a slight advantage. Li Zilong had been forced to leave the Nanchang Prefecture branch. Zhong Hao had been wanting to kill him to have everything done with, but had been found out a step too soon, leading the other to run so fast, he ended up failing.
A bunch of factors had combined; due to that infighting, the Society’s remaining influence had once again diminished by over half, which meant that Sui Zhou’s group had experienced a lot of danger, yet had still been victorious. Had Zhong Hao not fought against Li Zilong, there would be a discussion on whether Sui Zhou would be seeing Tang Fan right now.
Following Zhong Hao’s capture, he had fessed up many things. In addition to the Society’s twilight hours, he revealed a shocking bit of insider information: even though Li Zilong was the second-in-command, the Society had no first-in-command whatsoever.
In other words, the rumored first-in-command was nothing more than a ruse to deceive all his followers, for the purpose of fabricating an unseen, enigmatic, omnipotent figure. When the followers saw him using face-changing, arrays, and other such things, they would inevitably believe that the first-in-command above him was even more powerful, thereby building more confidence in the Society’s indestructibleness.
That was real, shockingly massive lie. Not only had Sui Zhou’s group been deceived, but even the Society’s own had been. Owing to the matter’s heavy importance, it was known to no one but a scant few, and there was no way that those who knew would have ever unveiled the smallest word about it to the outside world, decreasing the Society’s might.
Had it not been for Zhong Hao being unable to bear the Brocade Guard’s variety of tortures, thus taking it upon himself to confess and get away from it, Sui Zhou’s group would have likely kept rushing to find this illusory ‘first-in-command’.
Furthermore, after the infighting, Li Zilong had brought people with him to flee a step ahead, which is why he had escaped their ambush. However, that was tantamount to planting another hidden trap.
The Society was an organization that could persist since Song not because because it was tightly organized or had a distinct methodology, but because it loved to oppose those in power. Regardless of whether the Court was Han orthodoxy or did good or evil things, as long as someone held power, it would stir up troubles against them. For that reason, all successive dynasties had been disgusted by it.
However, an objective like that was favored by those with other intents. For example, in the late-Yuan-early-Ming period, the heroes of the realm had raised their weapons in succession to fight against Yuan’s rulers, the Society had joined in on the fun, then later followed Zhang Shicheng in fighting against the Great Ancestor of the present Dynasty, aided the Jianwen Emperor in dealing with the Yongle Emperor, and so forth. This was not due to it sympathizing with the weak and wanting to take from the strong, but due to it fearing a world not in chaos.
Therefore, once it had a suitable habitat, it would be exploited by people like Li Zilong. If he couldn’t be captured, more and more people would imitate him in the future, the unstable element of the Society tirelessly causing the Court trouble and wearing out Sui Zhou’s group.
Listening up to here, Tang Fan immediately thought of something related. “Speaking of which, Huang Jinglong, the former Ji’an Magistrate, abusing his prisoners also had a connection to the Society?”
“Zhong Hao said that Li Zilong was very cunning, and had secretly developed his own power out out of Nanchang a long time ago, behind his back. Supposedly, he secretly opened a mine, then colluded with Huang Jinglong to have him sell him prisoner. Li Zilong used those people to help him mine and make private funds. However, there are numerous mountain ranges in Ji’an, and Li Zilong did this very secretively, so Zhong Hao has no idea where this was.”
So that was the truth behind the prisoner abuse!
Tang Fan saw the light. When he had first heard Sui Zhou explain that case, he had felt it strange — a magnificent fourth-rank Prefectural Magistrate being so bored as to abuse prisoners, giving no one any benefit, not even himself? Had that been a mental issue?
If the real explanation was this, though, then it made a lot of sense.
“So, you came to Ji’an to track down Li Zilong and his dregs?” he asked.
“Not only that.”
After receiving all sorts of information related to the Society from Zhong Hao’s mouth plus learning that Li Zilong was very possibly hiding in Ji’an, in order to not alert the enemy, Sui Zhou had decided to deal with things in bits, distribute his manpower, then wait for a good opportunity to eradicate everything in one go.
Right in that time period, on account of Tang Fan’s quarrel with Shen Kunxiu, the war of words and complaints had all reached the capital. The Wan party had been happy to see Tang Fan be defeated, wanting to send one of its members to add chaos, but Huai En and Wang Zhi had gotten to the Emperor in time, saying that the truth was unclear, and if someone was sent, they would very likely create interference with Tang Fan’s investigation that would only end up making things more complicated. Moreover, the previous Suzhou case had demonstrated Tang Fan’s competence, illustrating that he indeed had skill at investigations.
And yet, the Wan party had argued that, for fairness’s sake, another imperial ambassador should be sent to investigate without the need to interfere with Tang Fan; both parties could do separate things. Faced with the aggressive posturing of the party, Huai En had simply pushed the boat along the waters to recommend a candidate directly to the Emperor: Sui Zhou.
He had been recommended on two bases. One was that he was the Bastion Envoy, a confidante and close personal guard of the Son of Heaven, as well as consort-kin, having the Emperor’s trust. The other was that he was already in proximity in Jiangxi, so there was no need to make someone else travel far away from elsewhere, which would both waste time and delay the case’s progress.
The Emperor had agreed to that suggestion. Sui Zhou thereafter became the second imperial ambassador, coming to Ji’an with a perfect reason.
That outcome made the Wan party’s teeth itch in hatred. Who didn’t know that Sui Zhou and Tang Fan had a fateful friendship? Who didn’t know that the two were close enough to wear the same pair of pants? The proposal for another ambassador had been to make a stumbling block for Tang Fan, but with this, it had turned into a helping hand for him instead!
At the beginning, no one had placed importance onto Tang Fan. How could they have known that in a brief few years, this guy would go from being a minor, sixth-rank Judge to getting promoted to fourth-rank Censor, also having a third-rank veneer title?
That alone would have been alright, but the Wan party had been pushed down several times, and rather than beat Tang Fan down, it had caused him to make a clear stance for the Crown Prince’s side, continuing to rise in steps. Was that not a clear smack in the face to the Wan party?
Ever since the Suzhou case that had been followed by Shang Ming’s fall and the Eastern Depot’s change in leadership, the party no longer took Tang Fan seriously. On the contrary, in their eyes, his status was about to rise to a similar rank as Huai En’s, becoming a role that it would need to quickly eliminate.
If Tang Fan knew that his level in the Wan party’s mind had risen, how would he feel? Honored, or dumbfounded?
With the edict done, Sui Zhou had another assignment, but as of right now, his most important matter was the White Lotus Society. The reason why Wang Zhi and Huai En had strongly recommended him was to keep Tang Fan from being bothered, anyways, so in this imperial exam case, as long as he showed support for Tang Fan and did nothing at all, that would be the greatest help.
This was why Sui Zhou had not entered Ji’an with great pomp. Instead, according to his prior plan, his subordinates had disguised themselves to sneak into Ji’an, ask around for information, and wait for orders. He himself had quietly come to find Tang Fan and clear things up, lest he not be informed.
Xi Ming, Lu Lingxi, and the others had been injured, so their alertness was not as good as it had been. Those soldiers at the posthouse alone certainly couldn’t obstruct Sui Zhou, either, thereby letting him come in without anyone knowing.
The night before, he had seen Tang Fan sleeping deeply, then hadn’t disturbed him, coming quietly and leaving quietly in the night, alerting no one. Tang Fan discovering him tonight had naturally been because he wanted him to.
Truly, from the time Tang Fan had left the capital for Suzhou to now, the two hadn’t seen each other for a few months. To say that Sui Zhou hadn’t missed him a single bit would be a lie. It was simply that he was typically restrained and introverted that made it hard for others to detect, but Tang Fan different from bystanders — some words didn’t even need to be said for them to understand each other.
If the realm of understanding what the other party was thinking with only eye contact, language would turn into a needless decoration.
“I lined people up outside the posthouse already. You don’t need to worry about being safe. Starting from today onwards, I’ll be accompanying you,” Sui Zhou said.
“What about the Society?”
“There’s no news for right now. If they make any movements, there will definitely be word of it, and that discussion can happen then. There’s no use staring at them all day; it’s better to wait for them to move first.”
Tang Fan thought about it, feeling that to be a good method. Sui Zhou being at his side had the honorable grounds of being on imperial orders, and it was also good to look after each other. “Since you want to hide your identity, though, isn’t you following me like this not a great idea?”
“It isn’t, which is why I’m going to disguise myself. It would be best that the people at your side can’t recognize me, too, to avoid them letting something slip for the Society to discover. Since Li Zilong has an arrangement in Ji’an, then he has people, and might even have them stuck in the government.”
Tang Fan smiled. “That makes sense, but you surely can’t dress up as Di Han again, right? This isn’t like Suzhou. The Society has fought with you countless times, to say nothing of anyone else. Even if you put on a beard, your presence can’t be covered up. Li Zilong would definitely recognize you.”
“So I’ll have to reduce my public appearances as much as possible.”
“Then you might as well crossdress. That makes your chances of getting discovered even smaller,” Tang Fan joked.
Unexpectedly, Sui Zhou took him seriously, giving it an earnest consideration, then nodding. “That’ll do. I can say that I’m a distantly-related, younger maternal cousin you’ve been betrothed to since childhood. Both my parents died and I heard you were in Jiangxi, so I specifically came here to seek shelter with you.”
Wow. In a brief moment, he had compiled a whole life story!
Mister Tang’s mouth opened and closed, until he choked out, “What kind of family would a ‘cousin’ as tall and sturdy as you come from?”
Sui Zhou smiled. “If a Northern woman practices martial arts since childhood, she would have a physique like mine. Did you not see how Du Gui’r was as tall as you?”
That was a completely fallacious argument. Tang Fan shook his head. “If your disguise is bad, it’ll make people even more suspicious! It’d be worse than not showing up to begin with!”
“Even if I don’t have the unfathomable face-changing techniques Li Zilong does, I’m passable in disguising. Two days from now, send people to prepare a sedan chair to pick me up at Fortune Comes Inn.”
Since he was this confident, Tang Fan had nothing to argue, only smiling. “Then I’ll just wait and see, If you show the slightest gap and lose me face, don’t blame me for sweeping you out the door! My Tang family wouldn’t have a cousin like that!”
“No matter what, I’m yours. Whether you lose face or not, you can’t even think about going back on your word.”
Hearing that, Tang Fan nearly choked to death on his own spit, thinking, When did you become ‘mine’?! I didn’t even do anything!
While they spoke, although it felt like not that long, more than half the night had unwittingly passed already.
If he didn’t want people discovering him, Sui Zhou certainly couldn’t wait until for daybreak to leave. He pressed against the bed with his palm, flipped right over Tang Fan, and landed steadily outside.
Tang Fan only now noticed how long they had been sitting and talking on the bed, and that he had been so engrossed with Sui Zhou recounting his days, that he had forgotten than tidbit.
“Those few at your side are so poorly vigilant, they didn’t notice me coming in and out. Looks like the people Wang Zhi sent are no good.”
Tang Fan was unconcerned. “That’s because they were injured.”
Sui Zhou furrowed his brow. “How were they injured?”
Tang Fan then realized that he had let something slip. Sui Zhou still didn’t know about the assassination attempt.
Face with the other’s gaze, his eyes like lightning, he couldn’t cover it up anymore, and explained what had happened that night.
Listening to the end, Sui Zhou’s brows knitted tighter. A good while after, he reached out and caressed Tang Fan’s face. “It’s good that you’re okay.”
Mister Tang promptly felt half of his face grow a bit hot.
Even if this hadn’t occurred, Sui Zhou would feel that since he was already in Ji’an, he definitely needed to watch by Tang Fan’s side to feel a bit of ease. Tang Fan saying this now had only made his determination all the stronger.
“From how it looks now, Ji’an is probably not going to be too peaceful. You should take extra care these days. Those outside the posthouse will follow after you when you go out, but they aren’t close protectors. Wait two more days; I’ll first set them up, then come find you.”
“Alright, I get it. When did you get so long-winded? My ‘cousin’ should be off to get ready, hm? You must be proper, and not scare me like you just did.”
Sui Zhou gave him a deep look, turned, and made to leave. Suddenly seeming to recall something, he turned his head around. “Speaking of that…”
“?”
“Who is Yiqing, really?”
“…”
Why did he still remember that tripe?
He said nothing, but Sui Zhou guessed it. “Is it the one that spoke outside the door? I saw him one, when he brought your message to Suzhou’s Guard post. He seems to be Wang Zhi’s?”
“He’s not. Huai En sent him to protect me. His skills are good, his character is moldable, and he’s a mainstay talent, if a little immature and in need of teaching.”
Sui Zhou hummed. “Next time, I’ll swap pointers with him to help you teach him.”
“…Don’t do one thing in the name of another.”
Tang Fan had no martial comprehension, but even he knew that Sui Zhou’s skills ought to be a grade higher than Lu Lingxi’s.
Seeing this, Sui Zhou comforted, “Don’t worry. I won’t break him.”
“…”
Him not saying that would have been better, as that just made Tang Fan feel even more uneasy.
Before he could say anything, Sui Zhou had already left quietly, just like how he had come. Were it not for the window being open, he would think himself to have seen a ghost.
On another end, Lu Lingxi, sleeping in the night, inexplicably shuddered, and subconsciously bundled himself tighter in the blanket.
The weather didn’t seem to be that cold, did it?
Noticing that he looked a bit confused, like he hadn’t woken fully up from his daze, and had none of his typical witty and cheerful looks, Sui Zhou felt quite amused at heart. He couldn’t help but lean forwards, taking advantage of when the other was completely unguarded to press against his lips.
At that very moment, Mister Tang finally came back to himself, reaching out to push the other’s skull away with a dark face. However, that push unexpectedly aroused the other’s ferocity, and he pushed him straight down to deepen the kiss; it wasn’t until Mister Tang’s eyes were about to roll into the back of his head from being suffocated did Mister Envoy Sui compassionately released him.
Tang Fan was flushed fully red. It wasn’t from shyness, of course, but from lack of air.
Because he had been afraid of alerting Lu Lingxi, who was outside the door, and because there was no small difference between his strength and Sui Zhou’s, he had stubbornly held back from making any sounds. In result, he had nearly become the first ever Court official to be suffocated to death because of a kiss, narrowly reduced to a laughingstock for all the ages.
“You couldn’t breathe?” Sui Zhou asked, surprised.
That playful, obedient tone of voice…
Tang Fan didn’t want to acknowledge him at all.
Sui Zhou’s cold, unchanging-for-ten-thousand-years, strangers-will-never-see-it-shift-ever face showed a rare smile. “How about we go again, so I can teach you this time?”
Sir Tang had no strength to mock him. How had he never noticed how thoroughly shameless this guy was before?
A few knocks came from outside the door. “Brother Tang?” came Lu Lingxi’s inquiry.
On their first night in Ji’an, Lu Lingxi had been injured because of him, so Tang Fan had agreed to his request to sleep together out of consideration for his feelings.
Two sizable men sleeping on the same bed was so unbelievably common, there was nothing to say about it at all. However, this bed was so small, two people sleeping on it left very little room for movement, meaning that no one would end up sleeping well. For that reason, after Magistrate Fan borrowed people from Millarch Tan, Tang Fan didn’t allow Lu Lingxi to come over and sleep with him again, instead asking the soldiers to stand vigil outside. Even so, every day, Lu Lingxi would come in every morning to wake him up, taking up the job as his personal attendant while he was at it. Tang Fan had talked to him a few times, but seeing as he wasn’t stopping, he let him do whatever.
Since they stayed near and their two rooms neighbored, Lu Lingxi would occasionally get up in the middle of the night to make a round, seeing if anything unusual was about. He had truthfully been scared by that assassination attempt, and he feared the same thing would happen again, to say nothing of his personal deep respect and good feelings towards Tang Fan. If something happened to Tang Fan, he would bear the blame.
Clearing his throat, Tang Fan raised his voice a bit. “I’m fine. I woke up in the middle of night, so I started reading and saying my thought aloud. You go back to sleep!”
Lu Lingxi hummed. He made no noise for a minute, as if waiting for Tang Fan to call him in, but other said nothing. That caused him a bit of disappointment. “If anything happens, shout. I’m in the next room, I’ll hear you,” he said a long time afterwards.
“Thanks. You’re very considerate,” Tang Fan said happily. “There’s guards keeping watch outside, so it’s fine. You just go on to bed. We have work that needs doing early in the morning! You can’t run out of energy during the day!”
Lu Lingxi affirmed. Tang Fan listened close, but did not hear the other’s retreating footsteps.
However, he had forgotten that with Lu Lingxi’s skills, his walking movements were much lighter than the average person’s, and he went until Sui Zhou poked him. “He left.”
Only now was Tang Fan at ease. He looked coldly at Sui Zhou, lowering his voice. “You keep on regressing, Bastion Envoy, even imitating a thief by sneaking in here. If people learned of this, you might lose your hallowed reputation.”
That was a clear castigation, but in reality, it held a sense of concern. Being who he was, Sui Zhou could tell that plainly. Feeling amused at heart, he didn’t expose him, only saying, “I wanted to see you, so I came.”
No matter how Sui Zhou could try, he couldn’t compare up to Wang Zhi’s sort, whose linguistic skills could curse someone out until their body was covered in wounds, nor was he like Lu Lingxi’s sort, willing to have the cheek to act cute and play dumb until he was so wound around Tang Fan, the man had no way to deal with him. Such a huge sweet-nothing coming from him really left Mister Tang speechless.
As for his emotions, only he himself knew them.
Still, from his warming expression and softened tone, he had clearly been moved by those words. “You know I’m not talking about that.”
With Sui Zhou’s identity, he could always come and see him with confidence. Why had he elected to sneak in when no one was around in the middle of the night, or need to avoid the eyes and ears of the gate guards? That was no average amount of toil. If not for there being some other incident, Sui Zhou would never do anything like this.
Sui Zhou wasn’t going to hide it from him, either. In his opinion, there was no need to keep anything from Tang Fan. “An incident did happen.”
As it were, long before Tang Fan had come to Ji’an, the Brocade Guard had received news that traces of White Lotus followers were showing up in Jiangxi.
Over these past years, the organization had constantly refused to dissipate, suddenly popping up in the capital, then suddenly giving the Tartars plans. Not only were they sly and hard to deal with, but due to their decentralized power, it was quite hard to dig them up by the roots. For that reason, despite the Brocade Guard’s far-reaching powers, the labor and resources it had spent contending with the Society was immeasurable, to the point that even Sui Zhou had become a bit frustrated.
Fortunately, that influence had not got eternally without defeat. By their piece-by-piece efforts, the Society’s former great numbers of followers had now been chased and beaten all over the place, and could not be more subdued. Its branches had repeatedly been demolished, with even the forces that had colluded with the Tartars. The defect within that beauty was that the few remaining Society leaders had still slunk off to elsewhere, infrequently causing some headache for the Court — if they could be caught all together, then could be completely exterminated.
Sui Zhou’s group had toiled a few rounds in Jiangxi, and had finally destroyed the last Society branch. They had also caught its Vicar, the third-in-command of the society, Zhong Hao.
In light of Zhong Hao’s testimony, Sui Zhou and them had learned that beneath the unrelenting pressure of the Court, the White Lotus Society had already reached the desperate realm of having nowhere to go. Even the Tartars, due to worry over angering the Ming Court and thinking the Society to be too unreliable, had stopped cooperating with its followers and chased them entirely out of the passes. The followers had been forced to wander, taking refuge with Zhong Hao.
He was quite an ambitious man. He had laid dormant in Nanchang for many years — low-key, quietly enduring things, and rarely showing his face — but seeing Li Zilong have the limelight over and over again had long made him unhappy with his third-in-command position, and he wanted the entire Society in his pack. Thus, the first one he wanted to get rid of was the second-in-command that blocked his way in front, Li Zilong.
Far prior to the Brocade Guard receiving news of it, the Society had undergone a bout of large-scale infighting. At the end of it, Zhong Hao, the snake in his home burrow, had taken a slight advantage. Li Zilong had been forced to leave the Nanchang Prefecture branch. Zhong Hao had been wanting to kill him to have everything done with, but had been found out a step too soon, leading the other to run so fast, he ended up failing.
A bunch of factors had combined; due to that infighting, the Society’s remaining influence had once again diminished by over half, which meant that Sui Zhou’s group had experienced a lot of danger, yet had still been victorious. Had Zhong Hao not fought against Li Zilong, there would be a discussion on whether Sui Zhou would be seeing Tang Fan right now.
Following Zhong Hao’s capture, he had fessed up many things. In addition to the Society’s twilight hours, he revealed a shocking bit of insider information: even though Li Zilong was the second-in-command, the Society had no first-in-command whatsoever.
In other words, the rumored first-in-command was nothing more than a ruse to deceive all his followers, for the purpose of fabricating an unseen, enigmatic, omnipotent figure. When the followers saw him using face-changing, arrays, and other such things, they would inevitably believe that the first-in-command above him was even more powerful, thereby building more confidence in the Society’s indestructibleness.
That was real, shockingly massive lie. Not only had Sui Zhou’s group been deceived, but even the Society’s own had been. Owing to the matter’s heavy importance, it was known to no one but a scant few, and there was no way that those who knew would have ever unveiled the smallest word about it to the outside world, decreasing the Society’s might.
Had it not been for Zhong Hao being unable to bear the Brocade Guard’s variety of tortures, thus taking it upon himself to confess and get away from it, Sui Zhou’s group would have likely kept rushing to find this illusory ‘first-in-command’.
Furthermore, after the infighting, Li Zilong had brought people with him to flee a step ahead, which is why he had escaped their ambush. However, that was tantamount to planting another hidden trap.
The Society was an organization that could persist since Song not because because it was tightly organized or had a distinct methodology, but because it loved to oppose those in power. Regardless of whether the Court was Han orthodoxy or did good or evil things, as long as someone held power, it would stir up troubles against them. For that reason, all successive dynasties had been disgusted by it.
However, an objective like that was favored by those with other intents. For example, in the late-Yuan-early-Ming period, the heroes of the realm had raised their weapons in succession to fight against Yuan’s rulers, the Society had joined in on the fun, then later followed Zhang Shicheng in fighting against the Great Ancestor of the present Dynasty, aided the Jianwen Emperor in dealing with the Yongle Emperor, and so forth. This was not due to it sympathizing with the weak and wanting to take from the strong, but due to it fearing a world not in chaos.
Therefore, once it had a suitable habitat, it would be exploited by people like Li Zilong. If he couldn’t be captured, more and more people would imitate him in the future, the unstable element of the Society tirelessly causing the Court trouble and wearing out Sui Zhou’s group.
Listening up to here, Tang Fan immediately thought of something related. “Speaking of which, Huang Jinglong, the former Ji’an Magistrate, abusing his prisoners also had a connection to the Society?”
“Zhong Hao said that Li Zilong was very cunning, and had secretly developed his own power out out of Nanchang a long time ago, behind his back. Supposedly, he secretly opened a mine, then colluded with Huang Jinglong to have him sell him prisoner. Li Zilong used those people to help him mine and make private funds. However, there are numerous mountain ranges in Ji’an, and Li Zilong did this very secretively, so Zhong Hao has no idea where this was.”
So that was the truth behind the prisoner abuse!
Tang Fan saw the light. When he had first heard Sui Zhou explain that case, he had felt it strange — a magnificent fourth-rank Prefectural Magistrate being so bored as to abuse prisoners, giving no one any benefit, not even himself? Had that been a mental issue?
If the real explanation was this, though, then it made a lot of sense.
“So, you came to Ji’an to track down Li Zilong and his dregs?” he asked.
“Not only that.”
After receiving all sorts of information related to the Society from Zhong Hao’s mouth plus learning that Li Zilong was very possibly hiding in Ji’an, in order to not alert the enemy, Sui Zhou had decided to deal with things in bits, distribute his manpower, then wait for a good opportunity to eradicate everything in one go.
Right in that time period, on account of Tang Fan’s quarrel with Shen Kunxiu, the war of words and complaints had all reached the capital. The Wan party had been happy to see Tang Fan be defeated, wanting to send one of its members to add chaos, but Huai En and Wang Zhi had gotten to the Emperor in time, saying that the truth was unclear, and if someone was sent, they would very likely create interference with Tang Fan’s investigation that would only end up making things more complicated. Moreover, the previous Suzhou case had demonstrated Tang Fan’s competence, illustrating that he indeed had skill at investigations.
And yet, the Wan party had argued that, for fairness’s sake, another imperial ambassador should be sent to investigate without the need to interfere with Tang Fan; both parties could do separate things. Faced with the aggressive posturing of the party, Huai En had simply pushed the boat along the waters to recommend a candidate directly to the Emperor: Sui Zhou.
He had been recommended on two bases. One was that he was the Bastion Envoy, a confidante and close personal guard of the Son of Heaven, as well as consort-kin, having the Emperor’s trust. The other was that he was already in proximity in Jiangxi, so there was no need to make someone else travel far away from elsewhere, which would both waste time and delay the case’s progress.
The Emperor had agreed to that suggestion. Sui Zhou thereafter became the second imperial ambassador, coming to Ji’an with a perfect reason.
That outcome made the Wan party’s teeth itch in hatred. Who didn’t know that Sui Zhou and Tang Fan had a fateful friendship? Who didn’t know that the two were close enough to wear the same pair of pants? The proposal for another ambassador had been to make a stumbling block for Tang Fan, but with this, it had turned into a helping hand for him instead!
At the beginning, no one had placed importance onto Tang Fan. How could they have known that in a brief few years, this guy would go from being a minor, sixth-rank Judge to getting promoted to fourth-rank Censor, also having a third-rank veneer title?
That alone would have been alright, but the Wan party had been pushed down several times, and rather than beat Tang Fan down, it had caused him to make a clear stance for the Crown Prince’s side, continuing to rise in steps. Was that not a clear smack in the face to the Wan party?
Ever since the Suzhou case that had been followed by Shang Ming’s fall and the Eastern Depot’s change in leadership, the party no longer took Tang Fan seriously. On the contrary, in their eyes, his status was about to rise to a similar rank as Huai En’s, becoming a role that it would need to quickly eliminate.
If Tang Fan knew that his level in the Wan party’s mind had risen, how would he feel? Honored, or dumbfounded?
With the edict done, Sui Zhou had another assignment, but as of right now, his most important matter was the White Lotus Society. The reason why Wang Zhi and Huai En had strongly recommended him was to keep Tang Fan from being bothered, anyways, so in this imperial exam case, as long as he showed support for Tang Fan and did nothing at all, that would be the greatest help.
This was why Sui Zhou had not entered Ji’an with great pomp. Instead, according to his prior plan, his subordinates had disguised themselves to sneak into Ji’an, ask around for information, and wait for orders. He himself had quietly come to find Tang Fan and clear things up, lest he not be informed.
Xi Ming, Lu Lingxi, and the others had been injured, so their alertness was not as good as it had been. Those soldiers at the posthouse alone certainly couldn’t obstruct Sui Zhou, either, thereby letting him come in without anyone knowing.
The night before, he had seen Tang Fan sleeping deeply, then hadn’t disturbed him, coming quietly and leaving quietly in the night, alerting no one. Tang Fan discovering him tonight had naturally been because he wanted him to.
Truly, from the time Tang Fan had left the capital for Suzhou to now, the two hadn’t seen each other for a few months. To say that Sui Zhou hadn’t missed him a single bit would be a lie. It was simply that he was typically restrained and introverted that made it hard for others to detect, but Tang Fan different from bystanders — some words didn’t even need to be said for them to understand each other.
If the realm of understanding what the other party was thinking with only eye contact, language would turn into a needless decoration.
“I lined people up outside the posthouse already. You don’t need to worry about being safe. Starting from today onwards, I’ll be accompanying you,” Sui Zhou said.
“What about the Society?”
“There’s no news for right now. If they make any movements, there will definitely be word of it, and that discussion can happen then. There’s no use staring at them all day; it’s better to wait for them to move first.”
Tang Fan thought about it, feeling that to be a good method. Sui Zhou being at his side had the honorable grounds of being on imperial orders, and it was also good to look after each other. “Since you want to hide your identity, though, isn’t you following me like this not a great idea?”
“It isn’t, which is why I’m going to disguise myself. It would be best that the people at your side can’t recognize me, too, to avoid them letting something slip for the Society to discover. Since Li Zilong has an arrangement in Ji’an, then he has people, and might even have them stuck in the government.”
Tang Fan smiled. “That makes sense, but you surely can’t dress up as Di Han again, right? This isn’t like Suzhou. The Society has fought with you countless times, to say nothing of anyone else. Even if you put on a beard, your presence can’t be covered up. Li Zilong would definitely recognize you.”
“So I’ll have to reduce my public appearances as much as possible.”
“Then you might as well crossdress. That makes your chances of getting discovered even smaller,” Tang Fan joked.
Unexpectedly, Sui Zhou took him seriously, giving it an earnest consideration, then nodding. “That’ll do. I can say that I’m a distantly-related, younger maternal cousin you’ve been betrothed to since childhood. Both my parents died and I heard you were in Jiangxi, so I specifically came here to seek shelter with you.”
Wow. In a brief moment, he had compiled a whole life story!
Mister Tang’s mouth opened and closed, until he choked out, “What kind of family would a ‘cousin’ as tall and sturdy as you come from?”
Sui Zhou smiled. “If a Northern woman practices martial arts since childhood, she would have a physique like mine. Did you not see how Du Gui’r was as tall as you?”
That was a completely fallacious argument. Tang Fan shook his head. “If your disguise is bad, it’ll make people even more suspicious! It’d be worse than not showing up to begin with!”
“Even if I don’t have the unfathomable face-changing techniques Li Zilong does, I’m passable in disguising. Two days from now, send people to prepare a sedan chair to pick me up at Fortune Comes Inn.”
Since he was this confident, Tang Fan had nothing to argue, only smiling. “Then I’ll just wait and see, If you show the slightest gap and lose me face, don’t blame me for sweeping you out the door! My Tang family wouldn’t have a cousin like that!”
“No matter what, I’m yours. Whether you lose face or not, you can’t even think about going back on your word.”
Hearing that, Tang Fan nearly choked to death on his own spit, thinking, When did you become ‘mine’?! I didn’t even do anything!
While they spoke, although it felt like not that long, more than half the night had unwittingly passed already.
If he didn’t want people discovering him, Sui Zhou certainly couldn’t wait until for daybreak to leave. He pressed against the bed with his palm, flipped right over Tang Fan, and landed steadily outside.
Tang Fan only now noticed how long they had been sitting and talking on the bed, and that he had been so engrossed with Sui Zhou recounting his days, that he had forgotten than tidbit.
“Those few at your side are so poorly vigilant, they didn’t notice me coming in and out. Looks like the people Wang Zhi sent are no good.”
Tang Fan was unconcerned. “That’s because they were injured.”
Sui Zhou furrowed his brow. “How were they injured?”
Tang Fan then realized that he had let something slip. Sui Zhou still didn’t know about the assassination attempt.
Face with the other’s gaze, his eyes like lightning, he couldn’t cover it up anymore, and explained what had happened that night.
Listening to the end, Sui Zhou’s brows knitted tighter. A good while after, he reached out and caressed Tang Fan’s face. “It’s good that you’re okay.”
Mister Tang promptly felt half of his face grow a bit hot.
Even if this hadn’t occurred, Sui Zhou would feel that since he was already in Ji’an, he definitely needed to watch by Tang Fan’s side to feel a bit of ease. Tang Fan saying this now had only made his determination all the stronger.
“From how it looks now, Ji’an is probably not going to be too peaceful. You should take extra care these days. Those outside the posthouse will follow after you when you go out, but they aren’t close protectors. Wait two more days; I’ll first set them up, then come find you.”
“Alright, I get it. When did you get so long-winded? My ‘cousin’ should be off to get ready, hm? You must be proper, and not scare me like you just did.”
Sui Zhou gave him a deep look, turned, and made to leave. Suddenly seeming to recall something, he turned his head around. “Speaking of that…”
“?”
“Who is Yiqing, really?”
“…”
Why did he still remember that tripe?
He said nothing, but Sui Zhou guessed it. “Is it the one that spoke outside the door? I saw him one, when he brought your message to Suzhou’s Guard post. He seems to be Wang Zhi’s?”
“He’s not. Huai En sent him to protect me. His skills are good, his character is moldable, and he’s a mainstay talent, if a little immature and in need of teaching.”
Sui Zhou hummed. “Next time, I’ll swap pointers with him to help you teach him.”
“…Don’t do one thing in the name of another.”
Tang Fan had no martial comprehension, but even he knew that Sui Zhou’s skills ought to be a grade higher than Lu Lingxi’s.
Seeing this, Sui Zhou comforted, “Don’t worry. I won’t break him.”
“…”
Him not saying that would have been better, as that just made Tang Fan feel even more uneasy.
Before he could say anything, Sui Zhou had already left quietly, just like how he had come. Were it not for the window being open, he would think himself to have seen a ghost.
On another end, Lu Lingxi, sleeping in the night, inexplicably shuddered, and subconsciously bundled himself tighter in the blanket.
The weather didn’t seem to be that cold, did it?
