I. A Mother's Bargaining Chip
Zhang Xin studied the kneeling woman for a long, heavy moment before breaking the silence. "Since you have already gone to such immense lengths to sever your ties with the house of Qi... why have you still sought out my presence in the dead of night?"
"I beg the Governor to show mercy... to spare my innocent son," Jiang Cai whispered, finally laying her true purpose bare. The fragile composure she had maintained collapsed, her shoulders trembling violently. "He is only five years old this year. He understands nothing of the world, and he harbors absolutely zero knowledge of the treasonous madness King Liu Cheng enacted behind your back."
She looked up, her beautiful eyes locked onto his face, swimming with tears. "If the Governor is willing to grant a sliver of grand clemency... to spare my child's blood..."
A sudden, deep flush rose from her collar, painting her neck and cheeks in a brilliant crimson. When she spoke again, her voice dropped so low it was barely audible over the crackle of the hearth.
"This wretched woman... this commoner... is entirely willing to submit her body and soul to serve my Lord's private desires from this night forth."
Zhang Xin's analytical mind instantly put the pieces together.
Ah. So that's the anchor.
By the iron jurisprudence of the Han Dynasty, the penalty for active treason was the absolute extermination of three entire familial generations. This wasn't the fluid, pragmatic warfare of the northern steppes. When the nomadic tribes of the grasslands clashed and conquered one another, they strictly adhered to the ancient law of the plains: Spare any child who does not reach the height of a wooden cartwheel. They did this out of pure necessity, preserving a labor pool and breeding stock to sustain their populations in a harsh environment.
But within the legal philosophy of the Central Plains, the barbarian standard did not apply. Imperial justice demanded that a treasonous root must be ripped out from the absolute depth of the soil!
The fundamental philosophy of the death penalty was not merely the eradication of a criminal; it was the generation of absolute, paralyzing deterrence. If a noble lord could launch a bloody rebellion against the state, secure in the knowledge that even if his gamble failed, his bloodline and descendants would be preserved to inherit his memory, what deterrent power would the law possess?
They would rise in rebellion today, and their sons would rise again tomorrow. What does it matter if my neck hits the block? My child survives. When he grows to manhood, he will draw his steel, gather his father's old retainers, and launch another war to avenge my name. The cycle of chaos would endure for eternity. If every regional player adopted that mindset, the civilized world would fracture into perpetual, bloody anarchy.
To be entirely fair, Zhang Xin had already displayed a degree of unprecedented, almost miraculous mercy when he purged the aristocratic clans of Qingzhou weeks prior, by deliberately refusing to put their young children to the sword. Had he enacted the full, unrestrained cruelty of the Han code, moral purists like Hua Xin and old Master Zheng Xuan would never have let the matter rest so quietly.
His restraint was born entirely of his unique origin—carrying the psychological conditioning of a future era where children were viewed as the sacred, innocent flowers of the nation. The standard rulers of this brutal century operated with a casual, systematic cruelty that made Zhang Xin look like a saint.
In truth, the Governor had never harbored a single intention of putting King Liu Cheng's young children to the axe. At most, his strategic blueprint involved executing the adult males who had taken up steel, stripping the youth of their noble status to reduce them to commoners, erasing the State of Qi from the imperial maps, and redirecting the local tax revenues straight into the provincial treasury.
Jiang Cai's agonizing terrors were entirely unfounded.
II. The Choice of the Flesh
Zhang Xin looked down at the incredibly enticing woman kneeling at his feet, his mind instantly becoming a battlefield of conflicting impulses.
Since Jiang Cai had traded her dignity solely to buy her son's survival, it was now mathematically certain that she wasn't an assassin. She hadn't come to stick a blade into his ribs; she had come to surrender herself entirely to his will. If she were to harm the Governor, regardless of whether her strike struck true, her young son would instantly be buried alongside his corpse.
So...
To eat, or not to eat?
"No, no... absolutely not..." Zhang Xin frantically shook his head within the privacy of his own thoughts.
No matter how loudly she proclaimed her commoner status, Jiang Cai was, in the eyes of the public, the recognized Queen Consort of a sovereign Han King. If he succumbed to his carnal desires and bedded her tonight, the whispers across the empire would instantly twist the narrative. The regional gentry would claim that Zhang Xin had manufactured the entire treason charge against the King of Qi simply to fulfill his lust and possess his beautiful wife.
Furthermore, Jiang Cai's sudden, unilateral declaration of divorce was merely her private legal maneuver. What if this was a sophisticated political trap designed to ruin his moral standing? A provincial governor sleeping with a consecrated royal peer—the explosive cultural impact of such a scandal would shatter his political legitimacy. If he partook of her flesh tonight, the entire capital of Linzi would be screaming the news by dawn. If the chroniclers of future generations recorded this event, they would jokingly mock it as "the most expensive honey trap in human history."
I shouldn't touch her. I must refuse, his logic shouted.
But my lower half is nodding along quite enthusiastically...
Seeing the warlord hesitate, his eyes tracking the line of her silks, Jiang Cai summoned the absolute limit of her feminine courage. She rose gracefully to her feet, taking a slow, deliberate step forward until her breath brushed his collar.
"Does the Governor... find my form unappealing to his eyes?"
"The princess is naturally a peerless beauty of the age," Zhang Xin said, his voice flat as he took a deliberate step backward, resetting the boundary.
Hearing him revert back to her formal royal title, Jiang Cai let out a soft, confident smile. "You can rest your mind, Governor. Every syllable I have uttered tonight is the absolute, legal truth."
She took another step, her perfume filling his senses. "This humble woman has completely severed her destiny from Liu Cheng. Even when I departed the royal palace under the cover of darkness, I did not utilize a royal carriage. I requested a standard transport from your own provincial vanguard, and I was escorted directly to your gates by your own elite soldiers."
"You need harbor no fear, Lord Zhang. Not a single soul in this city will ever learn of what transpires between us within this chamber tonight."
Jiang Cai reached out her slender, pale hand, her fingertips gently brushing against the cold steel of Zhang Xin's jawline, while her other hand subtly waved toward the door, signaling for Dian Wei to leave them in privacy.
III. The Outrage of the Commander
The moment her fingers touched his skin, and her lips uttered the phrase "escorted by your own elite soldiers," Zhang Xin's eyes didn't soften with lust. Instead, they flashed with a sudden, razor-sharp fury.
He violently grabbed her wrist, shoving her away from his person with enough force to send her stumbling back. His head snapped toward Dian Wei like a struck cobra.
"Ah!" Jiang Cai let out a sharp, startled shriek, her face draining of color as she hit the floorboards, her mind descending into absolute panic.
What went wrong?
Dian Wei had been on the verge of quietly slipping out the door, assuming his lord was about to enjoy a lavish midnight feast. But the moment Zhang Xin's furious gaze locked onto him, the giant bodyguard froze in his tracks, a cold sweat instantly breaking out across his back.
"Is this the absolute limit of how you train your men?" Zhang Xin hissed, his voice trembling with an icy rage. "A woman who is officially the family member of a high-tier state criminal... possesses the autonomous authority to mobilize my most elite Xuanjia vanguard to act as her private carriage escort?"
"Dian Elai! Is this how a grand commander governs his division?"
"And what did I explicitly command you during our transit through Huayin? Have your useless brains forgotten my words already?"
"I... My Lord, this..."
Dian Wei felt a profound chill run straight down his spine. He cast a desperate, pleading glance toward the cowering Jiang Cai, his tongue turning entirely to stone. He couldn't muster a single word of defense.
She's a consecrated royal princess, Boss! his mind screamed. She came to the barracks weeping, begging for a secure transit to see you. How were my thick-headed brothers supposed to aggressively refuse her request?
But before he could articulate the excuse, Zhang Xin had already moved past him. The Governor violently tore open the heavy wooden doors of the inn, stepping out into the freezing winter night.
"Sound the horns! Emergency assembly!" Zhang Xin's roar shattered the midnight silence of the courtyard. "Get up, you lazy bastards! Drag your worthless carcasses out of your blankets! Every man horse-bound within three minutes!"
"We obey!"
Dian Wei didn't waste another heartbeat, sprinting into the barracks to enforce the command.
Within the blink of an eye, the lavishly prepared bedchamber fell entirely silent. Jiang Cai remained slumped on the floor, staring blankly at the open doorway as the freezing wind rushed in, her mind trapped in a state of profound, absolute self-doubt.
No... this can't be real.
Am I... truly that repulsive? Has my beauty faded to nothing?
Before she could form another thought, a grim-faced Xuanjia soldier strode into the room, his hand resting on his sword pommel. He offered a curt, completely mechanical bow. "My lady, the Governor has commanded me to escort you safely back to the royal palace layout. The carriage is waiting."
IV. The Missing Warlord
By the following dawn, the sun rose over a freezing Linzi.
The Chancellor of Qi State, followed by a small army of sweating, exhausted civil clerks, arrived at the gates of the provincial inn. Behind them, several heavy wooden carts groaned under the weight of hundreds of tightly packed bamboo slips and land registries. These were the complete administrative archives Zhang Xin had demanded to audit the previous afternoon.
The Chancellor strode through the main archway, his eyes entirely bloodshot from spending the entire night forcing his scribes to organize the files. But the moment he breached the inner courtyard, he froze, staring blankly at the empty, desolate expanse.
What in the world...?
Yesterday, this very courtyard had been a bristling fortress of steel, packed with hundreds of elite, black-armored killers. Today, there wasn't a single horse, a single banner, or a single soldier left alive on the property. The fires in the braziers had burned down to cold ash.
The Chancellor frantically grabbed the local manager of the post station by his collar, his voice cracking with anxiety. "Where is the Governor? Where has the vanguard gone?"
"The... the Governor broke camp and initiated a forced march back to Pingyuan past the midnight bell," the clerk stammered, trembling under the official's grip. "The Governor left an explicit message for the Chancellor: he stated that all the municipal documents he requested should be packed up and delivered directly to his administrative desk in Pingyuan."
"Delivered... to Pingyuan...?"
The Chancellor of Qi State felt his chest tighten, his breath turning ragged as his blood pressure spiked to a dangerous degree.
Fine... marvelous... so this is how you play your games of power, is it?
You scream that you require these documents immediately, and my entire staff spends the night bleeding from their eyes to organize them without a second of delay! Now you casually march away in the dark and demand I haul tons of wood across the entire province?
If I deliver these original registries to your fortress, what records am I supposed to utilize when my own magistrates need to calculate the spring taxes next week? Do you expect my scribes to sit down and hand-copy every single line a second time?
Within the silence of his own mind, the Chancellor erupted in a towering, vitriolic rage...
And then, he calmly took a deep breath and swallowed his fury.
Forget it. A higher official can crush you to death with a single breath.
Reassuring his racing heart that survival was more important than pride, the Chancellor turned to his exhausted clerks, his voice hollow. "Pack the carts tighter. Secure the tarpaulins. We are driving them to Pingyuan."
V. Home and Hearth
Meanwhile, past the midnight hour of the following day, a lone horseman slipped through the rear gates of the State Prefecture in Pingyuan.
Zhang Xin, his face caked in road dust and his eyes heavily bloodshot from a brutal, non-stop forced march, slipped through the shadows of his private residential compound. He began to track directly toward Zhang Ning's private courtyard, his blood still singing with the residual psychological tension of his encounter with Jiang Cai.
But halfway across the snow-covered lawn, his boots ground to a sudden halt.
"No, no... what am I thinking?" Zhang Xin chided himself, his shoulders dropping. "Ning'er is currently deep in her pregnancy... she needs absolute peace and undisturbed rest. I cannot simply burst into her chambers to satisfy my baseline urges."
Should I head toward A-Rou's pavilion instead? he mused. No... she's a fragile, gentle girl. If I march in looking like a maddened soldier straight off the road, I'll terrify her out of her wits.
Then... whose door do I knock on?
In that moment of indecision, the image of Jiang Cai—that intoxicating, dangerous paradox of pure innocence and absolute, practiced allure—flashed vividly across his mind. When it came to pure, unadulterated sensuality, none of his current wives could match the specific, high-society training of a royal consort.
But if we were discussing absolute, unblemished purity...
Zhang Xin spun on his heel, his boots cutting a rapid path through the snow as he headed directly toward Han Shu's secluded quarters.
Just after the conclusion of the recent mass executions, Zhang Xin had judged that his young adoptive son, Zhang Ding, was developing far too timid and cowardly a disposition from being sheltered within the women's quarters. Consequently, he had packed the boy off to live within the spartan, disciplined military camp of General Wang Jiao to build his character.
The child wasn't home.
The courtyard was entirely empty.
Hehehe...
The following morning, the sun broke warm over Pingyuan. Zhang Xin strode into the great administrative hall of the State Prefecture, his posture straight, his skin glowing, and his entire demeanor radiating an immense, refreshed vitality.
"When exactly did the Governor return?"
Hua Xin, Liu Yi, and the rest of the senior civil staff looked up from their desks, their faces full of genuine astonishment. "Didn't your dispatch specify that the circuit of Qi State would require at least another five to six days? How have you returned so many dawns ahead of schedule?"
Hua Xin's eyes narrowed slightly in professional concern. "Could some catastrophic emergency have broken out within the eastern commanderies?"
Hearing their probing questions, Zhang Xin felt a rare, burning flush of embarrassment touch the tips of his ears. He quickly cleared his throat, shuffling a stack of blank papers on his desk to divert their attention. "The eastern borders are entirely secure! Let us speak no more of it. The grand inspection tour of the province has reached its successful, permanent conclusion."
He leaned forward, his expression turning sharp and focused as he looked out the window at the thawing earth. "The winter is dead. The spring plowing season is upon us. Let the machinery of state craft begin."