by Yan LeiSheng
When she lived her reclusive life in the depths of the Forbidden City she had heard talk of a Yangming. But she couldn’t be sure that person had been linked to the Brotherhood, it could be nothing more than a coincidence.
It was the mentor himself who answered her silent question. “I’m also known as Wang Shouren. Young girl, the last two years must have been difficult.”
The first time she saw him she was barely fourteen years old. Two years later the death of the Emperor threw the palace into complete chaos and he disappeared, leaving her in the care of Master Zhu. Over the five years that had passed since she had travelled to the other side of the world, overcoming immense challenges which had pushed her childhood to the furthest recesses of her mind. He seemed to have aged a whole decade since the night Master Zhu was assassinated, putting an end to her youthful innocence.
“Mentor, how did you join the Brotherhood?” she asked hesitantly.
If he hadn’t been there in front of her, she wouldn’t have believed he still lived. But he was there now, and she was trying to answer some questions that had haunted her since their first meeting.
The fire sputtered out. In the darkness, she heard Master Yangming take several steps.
“I’ll tell you everything when the time comes. First we must find a safe place to spend the night.”
He looked up at the sky.
“Young girl, Zhang Yong has you in his sights now. What are you planning to do?”
“He will certainly send men after me. I need to leave as soon as possible.”
Pausing for a moment, she added, “I must return to the capital.”
Chapter 2
Yu Dayong, the governor of Nanjing, shook at the sight of the body on the table.
It was Gao Feng, supervisor of the Imperial Residence Bureau and head of the Council of Works2. More importantly, he had also been the disciple of the most influential man in the empire, Zhang Yong, and had climbed to this highly enviable rank despite being only thirty-four years old. The old master had much more confidence in this “Little Devil” than in Yu Dayong.
2 Under the Ming dynasty, several thousand eunuchs governed the affairs of the Inner Palace through specialist councils under the supervision of the Imperial Residence Bureau.
But now his fellow disciple was no more than a lifeless corpse. The governor oscillated between joy and sadness. As a member of the Eight Tigers he should cry like one of his brothers. On the other hand, the early disappearance of such a notable rival could only be in his favor, especially when he had demonstrably played no part in it. Gao Feng had chosen to act alone; against the orders they had received. He had underestimated his adversary and paid for it with his life.
“Uncle Yu!” Mai Bing called from the door.
The eunuch had served him for years. Still young in mind, he immediately understood that his mercurial and opportunistic master was looking to take advantage of the situation to insinuate himself into Zhang Yong’s good graces.
“What is it, Mai Bing?”
“Uncle Zhang is here,” he replied in a low voice.
“Which Uncle Zhang?”
Yu Dayong had responded with shock, but Mai Bing’s panicked air left no room for doubt: there was only one Uncle Zhang. Caught off guard, he rushed to open the door to a large palanquin carried by twenty-four soldiers. The governor ran and prostrated himself on the ground.
“Your humble subordinate, Yu Dayong, reverently welcomes the captain general.”
China had always had eunuchs occupying positions of power, but Zhang Yong was captain general of twelve imperial guard battalions entrusted with protecting the capital. As the head of one hundred thousand soldiers in the largest national force, he was undoubtedly the most powerful man the country had ever known. His palanquin had three times as many carriers as those of high-level administrators, and for good reason: laden with beds, chaises, and tables, it was a display of luxury that was instantly recognizable wherever he went.
Not content with having an eye on everything, Uncle Zhang Yong could best anyone in the capital with a sword. The legend was born when the Tartar prince sent his best assassin to kill Zhengde when he led an expedition outside the boundaries of the empire. The man had made short work of the soldiers and the guard, but Zhang Yong had managed to stop him, his own sword against the seventy-pound iron club. During the subsequent fight he had literally dismembered the killer, cutting him apart piece by piece, removing slivers of flesh until little more than a skeleton remained.
Yu Dayong had not been present, but he had seen the huge iron club when the expedition returned to the capital, which was so large that no ordinary man could even have lifted it. He was impressed by few things in this world but knowing that his master could overcome this supernatural weapon with only a single sword sent shivers up his spine. He had vowed complete and utter obedience to him ever since Zhang Yong had removed the former leader of the Tigers and taken his place.
Qiu Ju, Zhang Yong’s bodyguard, was the first to move and draw the curtain of the palanquin aside for his master to slowly emerge. The grace and elegance of his physique, relatively large for a eunuch, could have had him mistaken for an old man fond of poetry had his beard been thicker. The contrast with Yu Dayong’s fierce appearance was startling. The affable governor rushed towards him with a charming smile, but the master spoke first:
“So, the Little Devil has been killed?”
“Yes, honored captain general. Most likely by the Imperial Favorite…”
Rigidly adhering to protocol, Yu Dayong continued to use Shao Jun’s former honorific title despite her status as a rebel.
“How did the girl accomplish such a feat?”
“Honored captain general, Uncle… Uncle Gao did not follow the instructions we were given. He chose to track the imperial favorite on his own, and given that he ranked higher than me, I was unable to oppose his decision…”
While Yu Dayong spun the situation to his advantage, Zhang Yong knew he would never lie. Among the five Tigers still living, excluding Qiu Ju who followed Zhang Yong like a shadow, Gao Feng had been the worthiest of trust. The captain was aware of the complex and strained relationship between his two disciples. He had hoped that a joint operation would teach them to work together, but his strategy had failed. If he had allowed Gao Feng to choose his partner, perhaps Shao Jun would now be here, bound hand and foot. After a moment of silence, he asked, “Is the body of the Little Devil inside?”
“Yes. We found him on the northern side of Mount Wolong alongside his faithful Pang Chun. The killers had been gone for a while. It was the middle of the night, and we didn’t see any sign of them.”
“Mount Wolong?”
Zhang Yong quivered.
“Let me see him.”
Yu Dayong pushed the door open and stepped aside to let the old man and his guard pass, before following and closing the door firmly behind them. The captain approached the table where the two bodies lay, and ordered in a deep voice, “Qiu Ju, remove their clothes.”
Qiu Ju was nicknamed the Demon, and Gao Feng the Devil. Zhang Yong considered them to be his left and right hands. Nonetheless, one now stood dispassionately cutting the other’s clothes with a knife, using the rough yet expert strokes of the butcher Ding carving up a cow in the fable of Zhuangzi. Their clothes now removed and exposed in all their nudity, the two men were nothing more than corpses.
Zhang Yong inspected them attentively, like a knowledgeable collector before a rare jade statue. Almost breathless, Yu Dayong wondered if the captain wasn’t being a little sentimental, but he didn’t dare leave. In truth as emotionless as a stone, the old man fumbled with a bamboo tube resting against his chest. It was a dark red hue from being handled over the years and contained a pair of sheepskin gloves as light and supple as a second skin. The tube’s cap was lined with small slots which held glittering blades with razor
-sharp edges, old but without signs of wear.
Zhang Yong put on the gloves, took out one of the bright blades, and inserted it into one of Gao Feng’s wounds before removing it to measure the depth of the wound.
“His heart was pierced by a sword,” he murmured.
Yu Dayong had arrived at the same conclusion. While he had never liked Gao Feng, his talent with bladed weapons had been indisputable. Shao Jun would have overcome him only if she had made phenomenal progress during her time in Europe.
“Yes, and the cut is flat at the edges and slightly convex in the center,” he hurried to note. “It’s an exact match for the imperial favorite’s sword.”
Zhang Yong said nothing in response, turning to the body of Pang Chun. He had been a low-ranking eunuch, but he was said to have been almost as skilled as Gao Feng. He had clearly taken an injury to each shoulder, fled, and then been finished with a cut to the back. Despite her progress, Yu Dayong found it surprising that the favorite had been able to catch him when she must have still been busy with Gao Feng.
He was about to express his doubts when Zhang Yong announced in a serious voice, “Dayong, the rebel Shao Jun had an accomplice!”
This fateful declaration hit the governor like a bolt of lightning. The favorite’s accomplices had always been their sworn enemies. Five years earlier, during the Great Ritual controversy that followed the enthronement of Jiajing, the five representatives of the Eight Tigers threw their united forces behind Zhang Yong to exterminate the Brotherhood. Only the Favorite and Zhu Jiuyuan escaped, but the latter had been caught in Venice. If Shao Jun had been aided by an accomplice, that meant that she had found another unknown survivor to help her achieve her mad desire – to revive the dead organization. Yu Dayong refused to believe it.
Without lifting his head, Zhang Yong continued.
“The blade that pierced the Little Devil’s heart was two and one third inches long and penetrated his chest at an angle of five degrees. Gao Feng was five foot three and a half inches, his sword two feet seven inches, and he could swing his blade in arcs of around three feet one inch. From this we can deduce that his killer was at least three feet three and a half inches away from him. A fighter using the correct posture holds their sword one or two inches above the navel, and judging by the wound, this person held theirs at three feet five inches from the ground. As the navel is located between six tenths and six tenths and a third of an inch of the height of the body, the killer measured at least five feet five inches and at most five foot eight inches for their sword to have entered at this angle. Three years ago, when Shao Jun left the capital, the Imperial Palace records noted her height for tailoring her clothes. At that time, she stood five feet one inch, two inches shorter than the Little Devil. Therefore, it was not she who killed him.”
Zhang Yong nodded several times and continued again.
“The wounds on Pang Chun’s shoulders all have an angle of sixty-six degrees, which proves that the cuts were delivered from an elevated position. This unusual angle limits the information we can infer. But if we focus on the fatal wound in his back, it clearly results from a strike which was not delivered with great force, while the one which felled the Little Devil was so powerful that two of his ribs were broken with the violence of the impact… I thus deduce that they were not killed by the same person.”
Zhang Yong used a scarf to wipe clean the small blade he had used to prod the various wounds, then continued his analysis.
“There were two killers. One measured around five feet and weighed no more than eighty pounds, which to me seems to correspond to Shao Jun… The other measures around five feet seven inches and weighs over one hundred pounds. That person is without doubt a man.”
Yu Dayong held his breath. These wounds all looked alike to him and seemed to have all been dealt by the Imperial Favorite. But Zhang Yong read the injuries like an open book! Could you really deduce such detailed information from so little? Hesitantly, he ventured, “Venerable captain general…”
“Dayong, it won’t be difficult. You simply need to go to Macao where my friend Pyros will take care of everything, and you will take all the glory.”
Pyros? None of the Eight Tigers bore this name. Other than those present in the room, there were two more still alive: Wei Bin, known as “The Snake”, and Ma Yongcheng, known as “The Butcher”. The first, the former commander of the Three Great Battalions under the Mings, was an exceptional tracker who had located their enemy’s headquarters in Beijing during the Great Ritual controversy, allowing them to exterminate the group. The second was known for his sadistic and bloody temperament: all the members of the Brotherhood who had passed through his hands after their capture had ended up begging for a quick death.
Yu Dayong himself was known as “The Cruel”, in homage to the last ruler of the Xia dynasty during whose reign people were exterminated with as much consideration as vermin, as demonstrated in a song from the period with a line that read “Yet another day of funerals, why am I not dead too?”. This cursed emperor had long been dead, but Yu Dayong seemed determined to perpetuate his bloody legacy.
It was only in the presence of Zhang Yong that he could be seen to bend and become gentle as a lamb, displaying honeyed obsequiousness. While the mention of this Pyros instantly caused an internal rush of jealousy, he betrayed none of his frustration.
Zhang Yong removed his gloves, returned them to the bamboo tube, and said bluntly, “Dayong, ensure the Little Devil and Pang Chun are get a respectful burial before you leave. They were not lucky enough to experience a natural death, but they died with honor.”
A hint of emotion seemed to punctuate his last words. Gao Feng was dead and had no family, so why bother with funerals, Yu Dayong wondered, though he responded only with “Understood.”
The captain turned on his heels without another word. Qiu Ju rushed to open the door, then followed him out. Yu Dayong hurried to escort his guests, who climbed back into the palanquin without paying him the slightest notice.
At that late hour, the stars twinkled in the sky and the landscape was thrown into relief by the silvery light of the moon. Inside, the two men seemed to belong to another world. Qiu Ju, who never dared to sit, stood deep in thought to one side of Zhang Yong. After a long moment, he finally said, “Qiu Ju, do you think Shao Jun is still in Shaoxing?”
Qiu Ju lowered his head for a moment, then looked back up and responded, “Venerable captain general, if Shao Jun has returned, it is most certainly to rebuild the Central Plain Brotherhood. Now she has a partner, I think she will leave the area as soon as possible.”
Zhang Yong nodded.
“A fitting analysis. At least…” He hesitated briefly, then let out a cold laugh. “Supposing that the Brotherhood can only rebuild itself in the footsteps of its dead, she will either return to the capital, or remain near Mount Wolong.”
Qiu Ju jerked in surprise.
“Near Mount Wolong? But there’s nothing there except Jishan University. What would she be doing there?”
The rector of this scholarly institution was Master Yangming. During the rebellion of the prince of Ning, the scholar had allowed himself to be captured in an attempt to calm the ongoing unrest and had achieved his aim even before Emperor Zhengde’s emissary, Zhang Yong, had set out. One of the ministers suggested that the captive must have had prior connections with the enemy to have so speedily resolved the conflict, but Zhang Yong defended him vigorously, persuading the Emperor that he was above suspicion. And while they rarely met, the two men had since developed a sincere friendship, and it was because of this that Yu Dayong had not troubled the rector when the bodies of Gao Feng and Pang Chun had been found near the university. Which was why it was so surprising that Zhang Yong now seemed to believe he could be a member of the Brotherhood.
The bodyguards of the Southern Songs had been the army’s largest and finest soldiers, each wearing a belt embroide
red with the words “Legs of Steel”. It was after them that Zhang Yong, who hailed from an old aristocratic family, and castrated as he was, had nicknamed his porters the “legs section”. All attractive and well built, they were the elite of his troops, so it could easily be argued that restricting them to this simple task was a waste of their talent. From inside the palanquin all that could be heard was the rhythmic beat of their feet on the ground as it sailed through the silent night.
“There are things we regret delegating to others,” murmured Zhong.
Being illiterate, Qiu Ju didn’t recognize the verse by the poet Lu You, but he understood the meaning.
“Venerable captain general, you should never have trusted anyone.”
It was the watchword of the Eight Tigers. When the eunuchs founded the group, they had first taken the name of zouwu, named after a benevolent and vegetarian mythical creature, but their cruelty saw them quickly renamed after the tiger. At the time they were led by Liu Jin, who was hated by the people but still an influential figure for whom Zhang Yong seemed to have had boundless respect and loyalty. Who could have imagined that the captain would take advantage of the prince of Anhua’s revolt to accuse his master of treason? Sentenced to death, he was subjected to the lingchi, the “death of a thousand cuts”.
This anecdote was very characteristic of Zhang Yong: to never betray any emotion and deliver the fatal blow when it was least expected. Qiu Ju looked away to avoid looking him in the face.
The next morning Zhang Yong and Qiu Ju paid a visit to Jishan University. While they were the two most influential men in the dynasty, for this meeting they wore ordinary clothes and left the palanquin and its twenty-four porters behind at the foot of the mountain. The captain wrote their names in old Wu’s register and left him a tip.
This Zhang Yong had beautiful handwriting, the warden noted as he asked, “Mr Zhang, have you come to study or to teach?”
Some pretentious travelers also visited Jishan in the hope that the prestige of the university would increase their reputation, though it would have been impolite to mention that possibility. The old Wu was slightly perplexed, as these men seemed too old to be students – the small one with light skin had to be in his sixties, and the other in his forties – neither did they have the typical scholarly air of masters. Despite not being an academic, the warden knew enough Chinese characters to read works such as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and with experience, he had become expert in the art of categorizing people. These two were difficult to pin down.
