Chapter 5 – Broken Sword

Fan Xian looked at him, an indifferent laziness in his eyes, “Although Qingzhou is on the frontline, it is after all under the control of the Western Battalion, so why be afraid like this.”

Li Hongcheng pointed his finger at his nose and said angrily, “You are a dignitary, you want to go to Qingzhou as soon as your mind moves, don’t you know how much trouble you will cause?”

Qingzhou city is one of the most remote state cities in Qing Kingdom, it is the land that was forcibly knocked down by the great prince when he first led the army, and it is also the newest state city, hanging deep at the edge of the grassland, the three sides are empty, and it is often in the sharpness of the two sides’ fighting, if the West Hu knew that Fan Xian of the Supervisory Yuan was deep in Qingzhou, he was afraid that he would come to attack at any cost.

Fan Xian knocked off the finger that was about to point at his face and said in annoyance: ”Are you not a dignitary? Prince He is not? Ye Ling’er isn’t?”

“But we’re all in the middle of a military camp!” Li Hongcheng looked at him and angrily raised his voice, saying, “You think I don’t know you? That you stop when you arrive in Qingzhou? I know you too well as a person, seeing the grassland in front of you, you would be willing to not go in? You like to take risks, you like to sneak around, you never follow the large army forward and backward.”

“I can watch you sneak into the grassland under my rule?” Li Hongcheng gritted his teeth and said, “I’m telling you, not a chance!”

Fan Xian was silent, not realizing that Hongcheng had seen his intentions at a glance, but that dark fire was burning in his heart, making it imperative for him to enter Qingzhou and see what was going on, even if he didn’t enter the grasslands.

“I promise you, I will not take my men into the grasslands.” He looked at Li Hongcheng and said very seriously, “I’m just going to go to Qingzhou to check on some things. If …… if my people don’t arrive, everyone won’t be clear about what’s really going on. Believe me, this matter is very important.”

“What matter are you going to Qingzhou to check?” Li Hongcheng calmed down and looked at him and asked word by word, “If you have a decree, I’ll let you guys go over, if not, you should stop talking.”

“If I have a decree, I’m still talking shit to you!” Seeing that he wasn’t getting any more oil and salt, Fan Xian couldn’t help but get angry as well and scolded, “Don’t forget that I’m an imperial envoy! His Majesty allowed me to act cheaply, and I’m respecting you by informing you. I really want to go to Qingzhou, what are you doing to stop me?”

Hearing this, Li Hongcheng gritted his teeth, but couldn’t find any words to retort, and after a long time coldly said in his voice, “I must warn you, the border now is not the same as it was before, it’s easy to die, and the Hu people have become more and more insidious …… and your tactics are similar. Why earlier you took the inspectorate into the city, can be caught by me, is because Dingzhou city are now mixed in a lot of treacherous spies, the western battalion and the governor’s office of the Xiliang Road are very nervous about this matter.”

“Your disguises can’t even fool me, let alone those Hu people.” Li Hongcheng stared into his eyes and tried to persuade, “Ye Ling’er is different from you, the Ye family is still revered by the Hu people in the west, but your reputation represents the face of the imperial court, and if the Hu people are able to kill you, they will definitely do whatever it takes.”

“There are indeed many spies …….” Fan Xian long exhaled a mouthful of turbid air and said quietly, “For the past thirty years, the Hu people have been unable to send spies into their territory because we look too different …… As a result, there have been more of them just in the past two years, and I’m also very curious as to where these spies who sell our information to the Hu people have come out of thin air. ”

A strange aura flashed in Li Hongcheng’s eyes.

Fan Xian looked at him and said, “The most important purpose of my trip is to unearth that person, and all the people associated with that person. For this matter, I’ve been preparing for four whole months! If you want to stop me, go and ask His Majesty for a decree.”

Li Hongcheng raised his hands, indicating that he gave up, but still sneered, “But have you thought about it, if something happens to you, what about His Majesty? What about these people in my Western Battalion?”

“You overestimate the Hu people.” Fan Xian lowered his eyes slightly and said mockingly, “Underestimated me.”

Li Hongcheng was stunned, but suddenly pulled him in and headed for the study where the maps were stored. Walked through the back garden, came to a room, lit a bright lamp, Li Hongcheng spread a very large map, heavily slapped the palm of his hand on a place in the extreme west, coldly said, “Look at the location of Qingzhou, far away from two hundred miles away, if you want to go, I will send a team of a thousand men to send you, if you don’t want to be sent …… that I want to know, how will you cope with this last thirty miles of flat desert land where the Hu people come to raid?”

Fan Xian carefully looked at the map, although he had studied this map many times in the Kyoto courtyard, but at this time, re-watching it, he still felt a chill, the road towards Qingzhou was close to the edge of the grassland, and the hu people, with their ability to be invisible on the grassland, could indeed launch an attack at any time.

“I am a merchant, and the Hu people do not kill merchants.” Fan Xian bowed his head and said, but in his heart, he was thinking about the agreement with Hu Ge.

Li Hongcheng didn’t pick up on his words, pointing to the map, “In these two years, the Hu people have run out of the grasslands every day, sweeping the tundra in the back of Qingzhou……. Do you know how many people have died? Once those hu people get excited about killing, what do you care if you are a merchant or not? Even if you’re an expert on the ninth rank, what escape can you have if you’re up against hundreds of rangers?”

Not waiting for Fan Xian to answer, his finger continued to move across the map, “Look at this piece, this is the direction the Hu people are mainly attacking, and over the past two years, a total of more than a thousand Tuntian troops have died.”

Fan Xian knew of the tragedy on the border and said, “There is no way to solve this problem?”

“I can guarantee that the iron cavalry under my tent will never lose to the Hu people’s rangers, but it’s like two people stabbing each other with knives, the knives are both sharp but the targets are different, they don’t dare to touch my main force, but I can’t catch their main force.”

Fan Xian thoughtfully said, “While the Hu people’s ministry tents are on the move, our people are tied to the land because of their fields, and the damage they inflict on us is naturally greater than the damage we inflict on them.”

Li Hongcheng nodded somewhat helplessly.

“That’s why I have to go to Qingzhou all the more, I have to go to see who the high ranking person …… who invented the son of a bitch method of warfare like hitting grass valleys really is.” Fan Xian’s eyes were eerily cold, and in the midst of the cold, a meditative fire began to ignite.

Knowing that he couldn’t convince Fan Xian, Li Hongcheng stared into his eyes and asked, “Why is the …… Supervisory Academy paying so much attention to the matter of Western Liang?”

“It’s not the affairs of the Academy, it’s my personal affairs.” Fan Xian was clearly in a bad mood as he looked at the red dots on the map and said, “Of course, it’s not just a personal matter. I must stabilize the situation in the west before next year. I need your help, and at the same time, I’m going to cut down the support the Hu people are getting.”

“Before next year?” Li Hongcheng looked at him suspiciously, wondering why he was so anxious about the situation in the west.

“Next year, the Four Gu Swords will last until next spring at best.” Fan Xian lowered his head and said, “Going around puts a large portion of his attention on observing the Four Gu Swords’ injuries. This great master can really stay up …… actually stayed up for so much longer than expected. Although he hasn’t seen any outsiders at all in these two years, we know that he is still alive, and we know that he will die next year.”

“What does the death of the Four Gu Swords have to do with the west?” Li Hongcheng asked in annoyance.

Fan Xian raised his head and looked at him and said, “Because if Four Gu Swords dies, His Majesty will send me to Dong Yi City …… I will no longer have time to solve the problems in the west.”

Li Hongcheng laughed coldly and said, “Do you think that you alone can finish solving things under the sky? I recognize your ability, but I hope you don’t think too highly of yourself.”

Fan Xian knew there was no malice in the other party’s words, and spread his hands and said, “Dongyi City after the Four Gu Swords is always going to fall to one side, whether it’s me, Daqing, or Beiqi, and the biggest problem is …… how we can make the transition from Dongyi City into our hands smoothly.”

“Or if both sides are fighting each other, Dongyi City can still maintain a neutral stance.”

“Impossible.” Fan Xian smiled to himself and shook his head, “Once the Four Gu Swords die, the conflict between the City Lord’s Office and the Sword Lodge will erupt, so where does Dong Yi City qualify to be neutral?”

“But you still haven’t explained what this has to do with you rushing to Western Liang.”

Fan Xian gave Hong Cheng a somewhat helpless look, and after a long moment of silence, he said in a low voice, “The reason is simple, I must prove to the world that I can solve the problems of Xiliang and Dong Yi City.”

“And then?” Li Hongcheng looked at him suspiciously.

“Then I want to prove to your majesty, if …… I mean if, if you really want to unify the world, you don’t have to …… have to go to war, even if you have to fight, you don’t have to necessarily be a martial arts battle, a civil attack is also feasible, even if you must have a martial arts battle …… can be a small fight is a small fight.”

Fan Xian spoke in a lower and lower voice, so low that it even seemed that he himself did not believe this sentence. Li Hongcheng was also dumbfounded by what he heard, and sat in silence, wondering if he had heard something wrong.

Li Hongcheng suddenly stood up and walked quickly back and forth in the study, as if to digest what he had just heard, and after a few moments, he stood beside Fan Xian and laughed with difficulty in suppressing his own laughter, which was full of absurdity.

“You idiot!” Li Hongcheng cursed at him, “How can you even think of such a childish idea? You think you’re a god and can take care of the huans without spending a single soldier? You can take care of Dong Yi City, and Northern Qi without spending a single soldier!”

Li Hongcheng was shaking with anger, pointing at Fan Xian’s face, his fingertips trembling, “I thought you had such a marvelous idea to go to Qingzhou, but it’s such a childish and chaotic war!”

“What exactly do you want to do? Are you really so flattered by the students in the Imperial College that you forgot your last name? Do you really want to be a saint?”

Li Hongcheng fiercely clutched Fan Xian’s lapel and said through clenched teeth, “Are you crazy? The people of the world won’t obediently act according to what you think just because you think so!”

With their faces extremely close together, Li Hongcheng looked at the gloom in Fan Xian’s eyes and growled in a low-pressure voice, “Prove it to His Majesty? What the hell are you thinking?”

Fan Xian hung his head and said in a low voice, “What am I thinking? If I say that I wish for peace in the world and no wars …… would you think that this idea is ridiculous.”

Li Hongcheng loosened his hands and Fan Xian sat back in his chair.

He looked at Fan Xian and shook his head for a long time, simply too shocked to speak. Being a son of Qing, but being so averse to war? Fortunately, he knew how many life and death situations Fan Xian had experienced in his life, and was definitely not a person who was greedy for death.

“This idea is not ridiculous.” Li Hongcheng said word for word, “Rather, it doesn’t constitute an idea at all.”

Fan Xian raised his head and said stubbornly, “Why not? If I can unify the world on my own, why would Your Majesty need to go back to the south and fight in the north, letting those tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, or even millions of commoners …… die because of this honorable goal. For the sake of so many lives, why can’t I think this way!”

“Good good good.” Li Hongcheng nodded his head in exasperation and said, “You can think like this, but you can never do it, and I advise you that it’s best if you don’t let his majesty know what you think, or else he’ll definitely think that you’re crazy.”

“I was already crazy.” Fan Xian closed his eyes and said quietly, “You don’t know how I’ve been living these past two years, I’ve been thinking about this every day, it seems like the next moment a great war is going to break out, and the people who don’t understand anything are dying under horses, under swords and guns. I want to change all this, but do not know what I should do …… No one can help me.”

“No one can help me!” He suddenly became angry, opened his eyes, stared at Li Hongcheng, stretched out a finger and said loudly, “They are all gone! Chen Pingping doesn’t care anymore, father returned to his old age, and Lin Ruofu was scared into an old rabbit by His Majesty in Wuzhou! What about the Boss? He’s only too happy to go to war still, rather than stay in Kyoto ……”

Uncle Wuzhu had also left, leaving him alone. Fan Xian added in his heart.

“Only me.” Fan Xian’s lips trembled slightly as he gritted his teeth and said fiercely, “I’m the only one left thinking and struggling at night. I’m not willing to do it, knowing that it’s a difficult goal to achieve, but I still have to try.”

“Ridiculous! Ridiculous! Childish!” Li Hongcheng shook his shoulder, as if trying to shake this madman awake, “Your Majesty has spent thirty years to create such a great situation …… Xihu? If His Majesty had prepared well, Sui Jin could have beaten them into garbage! In the current situation, yet you want to go against His Majesty? Let me tell you, His Majesty doesn’t need you to do this for him, he’s capable enough to do it himself!”

Li Hongxi looked at Fan Xian like he was an idiot, “In the past two years, you’ve allowed the Supervisory Court to be deliberately cut down to stabilize the court, you’ve allowed the inner treasury to regain its luster of the year, filling up the national treasury and replenishing the army’s spending …… If you’ve really pacified the Western Hu and taken back the city of Dongyi on his behalf, you’ve already made all the preparations before the great war, yet you want to make His Majesty give up the idea of going to war at this time?”

“Do you think His Majesty is crazy or are you crazy?”

“What is it? What has happened to you in these two years?” Li Hongcheng looked at Fan Xian incredulously and asked, “Peace in the world? This kind of thing has never happened before.”

“At least while I’m alive, I want the world to be peaceful. This is sort of my ideal in life.”

Fan Xian smiled to himself, and after calming down for a moment, he said seriously, “Since I was a child in Tanyu, I’ve been thinking about what I want to do in this life, and then I gradually came to realize that it would be best if the world could be at peace.”

“Two years ago in Kyoto,” Fan Xian raised his head, looking at Li Hongcheng’s near-at-hand beard and concerned eyes, and said quietly, “I watched Lao Er spit up blood and die, the eldest princess stabbed herself to death, and so many rebel soldiers, forbidden troops, and subordinates of the Supervisory Academy, just because of the goal of unifying the world became sacrifices on His Majesty’s path. It was at that time that I firmly established this ideal. Is it ridiculous?”

“I’ve also seen dead people.” Li Hongcheng glared at him, “In these three years on the grasslands, I’ve seen even more dead people than you, but so what? History will always be like this, your ideals were already ridiculous, you know?”

“A ridiculous ideal is still an ideal.” Fan Xian crossed his arms in front of his chest and returned to his calm, saying quietly, “If a person doesn’t have ideals, what’s the difference between that and a salted fish?”

“In the entire country of Qing, there is not a single person who will support your so called …… ideals.” Li Hongcheng also gradually calmed down, shook his head in pity and said, “Including President Chen, including Fan Shangshu, there is no one who will support your idea.”

“I understand.” Fan Xian said, “I am inherently different from the vast majority of people in the world. I’m just trying to use the facts to convince Your Majesty.”

“Your Majesty …… will never be convinced!” Li Hongcheng aggravated his tone.

“Who knows what hasn’t happened?” Fan Xian stood up and said, “Don’t forget, I’m now a father of two children, and you’re always going to get married and have children in the next two years, we have to leave something for our descendants, at least I hope it’s not a turbulent world with more wars than wars, and dead bodies on the way.”

“You don’t favor His Majesty’s unification of the world?” Li Hongcheng was silent for a long time after listening to Fan Xian’s remark, and opened his mouth to ask.

“It’s easy to fight the world, but it’s hard to rule it.” Fan Xian sorted out his pulled and messed up shirt and slowly said, “Back then, the Northern Expedition broke up the Great Wei, but let the War Family inherit the Great Throne, the people of Jiangnan and Jiangbei, Shandong and Yanjing are easy to ambush, but the former people of the Great Wei are not so easy to bow down, even if my Daqing Iron Cavalry attacked the Upper Capital, it would take at least several decades to really get that Li people to recognize the rule of the Li Royal Family. ”

“To be precise, decades of suppression and slaughter.” Fan Xian walked towards the outside of the house, “I don’t want Xiao Hua and Liang Zi’s siblings, in the future, to see not the beauty of the West Lake and the scenery of the East China Sea, but blood flowing and iron ropes across the river, so I want to try to change things, or at least change the way.”

“But decades of iron blood will be exchanged for peace for ten thousand generations.” Li Hongcheng still couldn’t accept Fan Xian’s idea.

“The world’s situation will be divided for a long time, and united for a long time, and unification may bring more benefits to the people, but I can’t think that far ahead.” Fan Xian said, “This idea, as I once said to Yan Bingyun, I can only consider the present moment in which I am alive, the present moment in which my children are alive.”

“I just don’t want to be a salted fish, I’m not trying to be a saint.” After saying these words, Fan Xian walked towards the outside of the house. Inside the house, Li Hongcheng pressed his palms on top of the map and suddenly spoke, “Why are you saying this to me?”

Without turning around, Fan Xian smiled and replied, “We’re friends, and I don’t hide my thoughts from my friends.”

Then he thought of the friend in the flowery dress, and the tip of his heart throbbed.

A few days later, the line of the West Liang Road Chinamen, the Supervisory Yuan Tisi Lord, Tanya Gong Fan Xian entered the city on behalf of the Sacred Patrol, the Governor of the West Liang Road and the Great General came out of the city to welcome him, and the whole city celebrated for three days. At the end of the three days, the general’s residence tried the case of the spies in the mutton store and found out that the merchants in Jiangnan were secretly communicating with the hu thieves and smuggling salt and iron, and chopped off a total of fourteen people.

After the banquet, the imperial envoy left the city, and the whole city sent him off. On the same day, Fan Xian has dressed up as a merchant, sat on the carriage to Qingzhou, began his own investigation journey.

Just as he had said in the deal with Li Hong that night, he had to calm down the situation in Xihu and peacefully conquer Dongyi City before the world went to war, so as to prove to His Majesty the Emperor his ability and the feasibility of his means. However, this trip to Xihu was not only a step for Fan Xian to get rid of his salted fish life, but more importantly, he had to solve something, something that made him very angry, something that he couldn’t make clear to Hong Cheng.

The carriage was traveling on the official road between the boundless tundra, and before and after the caravan, the subordinates of the Supervisory Office were vigilantly watching everything in case they were raided by a team of hu people hitting the grass valley.

Fan Xian would prefer to have a small group of hu people can come, but unfortunately, after that night, Li Hongcheng will be the first to launch the Qingli nine years of the fall offensive, a time will be the western Hu’s roamers, killed back to the foot of the Tianshan Mountain, the grassland, Qingzhou’s empty rear, suddenly become quiet.

Fan Xian retracted his gaze out the window, knowing that the big move of the Western Battalion was entirely to ensure his own safety, and that Hongcheng, although he did not say so explicitly, was using his actions to help himself.

His eyes fell on a knife in his hand, this knife is ordinary in style, but the material used is extremely good, definitely not cast by the craftsmanship level of the hu people, but the problem is that this knife is exactly the hu people’s weapon that was captured within the city of Qingzhou five months ago.

The four officials in Qingzhou city were extremely vigilant in sending this knife back to Kyoto and presenting it to Fan Xian’s eyes. This knife did not have any markings that could be traced to its origin, but Fan Xian recognized it at a glance, for this kind of knife was made in a hidden workshop somewhere on the edge of the North Sea.

Fan Xian’s eyes were filled with unquenchable rage, and his true qi was released within his body, snapping the knife into two pieces.