The Reincarnation of a Powerful Minister Chapter 273

That autumn brought endless rains, and the lower Yellow River burst its banks once again.

For thousands of years the Yellow River had changed course time and again; each shift meant fertile fields turned to ocean, a calamity without measure. With its heavy silt load, the riverbed rose higher year by year, until the levees could no longer bear the strain. A few days of torrential rain could undo decades of flood control efforts.

Before leaving the capital, Su Yan heard a report from the Ministry of Works: in the region of Guide Prefecture, Henan, the Yellow River had broken through, flooding countless homes and drowning the land.

The news tore at his heart. But the work of flood relief and water control was not his domain; he could only pray that the disaster would soon end, and that the people would find safety and aid.

This time, he was heading south for his new post, traveling along the waterway later known as the Grand Canal, then called the “Canal River” by the people. But when he reached the Xuzhou region, the canal boats could go no further.

It turned out that the old Yellow River channel through Feng and Pei counties had also burst under the rising waters, flooding and clogging the canal, rendering the section from Xuzhou to Suqian impassable.

Su Yan had no choice but to disembark with his servant and luggage, and continue by horse, skirting around the flooded area.

“Sir, look over there, ” Su Xiaobei pointed toward the banks of the canal, where crowds of people were hard at work. “The laborers are dredging the silt. Another ten days or half a month and this stretch should reopen.”

Su Yan, atop his horse, shaded his eyes and gazed into the distance. “The state sacrificial ceremony at Nanjing takes place on the winter solstice, less than twenty days from now. We’ve only covered half the journey. We can’t afford to wait for the river to reopen. Let’s go! Once we reach Jingjiang, we’ll see if we can board another canal ship southward.”

Su Xiaobei answered and tugged on the reins of the two pack horses, urging their mounts onward.

This time, Su Xiaojing did not accompany them. Before their departure, he had been bitten by mosquitoes and contracted malaria, fever and chills wracking his body.

In this era, malaria was a deadly disease. Even though the physician prescribed Chaihu Jie Nue Yin, Su Yan worried it would be useless. He thought with dismay that quinine trees still grew unseen on the faraway lands of the Americas, yet to be discovered by seafarers.

“…Use huang hua hao instead!” Inspiration struck, he recalled the modern female scientist who had won a Nobel Prize for discovering artemisinin’s power against malaria. Hurriedly, he told the physician, “Use huang hua hao, you know it?”

The physician stroked his beard and nodded. “In Emergency Prescriptions Kept Up One’s Sleeve it is written: ‘Take a handful of qinghao, soak it in two liters of water, wring out the juice, and drink it to cure malaria.’ So the official is versed in medicine as well! This qinghao, ”

Su Yan cut him off. “Not qinghao! The books got it wrong. The herb with the active compound is huang hua hao, ‘stinking hao!’”

The physician blinked in surprise. “Stinking hao, not qinghao? But… medical texts don’t make mistakes.”

With no time to explain, Su Yan pressed his authority. “Just use huang hua hao. He’s my own servant, if anything happens, I’ll take responsibility.”

So the physician complied, squeezing juice from the herb and mixing it with the decoction for Su Xiaojing to drink.

Su Yan should have departed by midday, but worry for Xiaojing’s condition kept him until dusk. Finally, when Xiaojing’s mind cleared slightly and his fever seemed to ease, Su Yan allowed himself to breathe. Taking the boy’s hand, he said softly: “Xiaojing, the Emperor commands that I leave the capital today. I cannot disobey. But you are too ill to travel, stay home and guard the house for me, all right? The physician will come daily, and I’ve told the servants to take good care of you.”

Su Xiaojing, moved to the depths of his heart by the rare care he received from Su Yan, said weakly, “My lord, don’t worry about me. Go take up your post. I’ll recover soon and look after the house for you.”

Su Yan comforted him a few more times before finally setting off with Su Xiaobei.

During the ten days they spent aboard the canal boat, both men remained worried about Xiaojing. Sending a letter home through the postal relay was easy enough, but receiving a reply in time was difficult, they were constantly on the move, after all. So Su Yan could only send a letter asking about Xiaojing’s condition, instructing him to forward the reply directly to the Ministry of Rites in Nanjing.

Rushing to make it in time for the Winter Solstice ancestral ceremony, Su Yan didn’t linger and soon departed in haste, his figure growing smaller and smaller along the muddy road.

Meanwhile, on a dredging barge along the canal, Jinghong Zhui, who was fastening an iron drag claw to a hemp rope to lower it into the water, suddenly felt a pang in his heart. As if summoned by something unseen, he turned his head toward the distant road along the riverbank.

A few travelers passed by now and then; far at the road’s end, a small figure flickered faintly, then vanished.

Jinghong Zhui stared in a daze.

For half a year, he had used extreme restraint and suppression as shackles, drowning himself in drunken stupors as anesthetic, barely managing to seal his yearning and longing for Su Yan deep in his heart. Yet at this very moment, for reasons he could not name, that yearning sprouted again, like a blade of grass pushing stubbornly through a stone slab, showing a tender green tip.

A sudden whack struck his calf. Jinghong Zhui frowned and turned to see Old Ghost Wei’s hateful, ghastly face.

“Get back to work!” the old man barked. “No slacking!” He shuffled over and, trembling, began to turn the rope pulley that hauled the iron claw to clear the riverbed.

Jinghong Zhui asked, “Why do we have to do this labor? With your skill, couldn’t you live in comfort and wealth?”

Old Ghost Wei retorted, “And why shouldn’t we do labor? When the fields lie fallow, every household must send men for corvée. Otherwise, who clears the silted canals? Who repairs the broken roads?”

“But you’re not an ordinary commoner…” Jinghong Zhui began.

“We’re all commoners!” Old Ghost Wei slammed his cane hard against Jinghong Zhui’s leg. “Put away that killer’s mindset of yours, where lives are just numbers in a mission! What, you think being able to kill a man with one stroke makes you special?”

Jinghong Zhui’s heart jolted. Instinctively, he looked down at his hands… only sand and mud between his fingers, no blood. Yet the old scent of slaughter seemed already soaked into his bones, impossible to wash away.

“What’s this, missing your past glory?” Old Ghost Wei’s cold, mocking voice came again.

Jinghong Zhui shook his head firmly.

“Then tell me, why do you draw your sword?”

“…Once it was to survive. Later, for revenge. And then… to protect someone.”

“And that person now?”

Jinghong Zhui pressed his lips together, saying nothing.

Old Ghost Wei’s head, still resting on his knees, wobbled along with his cane as he muttered in a barely audible voice, “Should’ve thrown you out long ago. The way you are, just like I once was…”

Then, suddenly, he raised his voice. “Hurry up with that dredging! When you’re done, go thresh the grain, the autumn tax isn’t paid yet!”

Jinghong Zhui kept dredging until dusk, when the water’s surface was no longer visible, before disembarking and returning with Wei to the thatched hut.

There was only one hut. Refusing to sleep under the same roof as Old Ghost Wei, Jinghong Zhui went to the woodpile alone to sleep. When he woke, he found a tattered quilt draped over him, and a small pile of mugwort ash at his feet.

So this strange old man… had a soft heart beneath that sharp tongue?

The thought had barely formed when it was instantly snuffed out, Old Ghost Wei, disgusted by Jinghong Zhui’s clumsy threshing, jabbed him with the cane and sent him tumbling into the rice field.

Lying on his back amid the golden stalks, Jinghong Zhui gazed up as the ripe grains swayed, nearly covering the sky above.

Unconsciously, he closed his eyes, listening to the sound of the wind rustling through the fields, mingled with the distant scrape of sickles cutting stalks, 

The wind moved through heaven and earth, formless, shapeless, without beginning or end.

It passed over plains and hills, rivers and forests, through cities and villages, markets and lanes.

It witnessed every facet of human life, absorbing all manner of scents, pure and foul, fragrant and rancid, yet its nature never changed.

“What is wind?” Old Ghost Wei’s voice came again through the rice stalks, asking that question for the second time.

“To pass through all things without form yet give them form; unseen, yet everywhere present, that is wind,” Jinghong Zhui murmured, eyes still closed.

“And what is a sword?”

“…In the hand, it is iron. In the heart, it is intent. Outwardly, it is motion; inwardly, conviction. All forms and all will move with the heart and are everywhere present, that is the sword.”

There was a brief silence. Then Old Ghost Wei’s creaky voice rasped again, like a broken door hinge: “Hmph. You’ve got a little insight. But… you’re still far, far off. Get up! Thresh the grain! When you’re done, winnow and dry it, live as the common folk live, day by day, you hear?”

“I hear,” Jinghong Zhui said calmly, rising to his feet.

Out of his sight, far down the river, Su Yan had boarded a new canal ship and continued south with his servant, past Huai’an with its autumn bells echoing over the hills, past Yangzhou where cranes graced the clouds, past scenic Zhenjiang, finally arriving on schedule at the tide-washed, ancient city of Jinling.

There, the newly appointed Left Shilang of the Ministry of Rites, Lord Su Yan, accompanied the Crown Prince, at the ancestral ceremony on the Winter Solstice, in clearing his name of desecrating the imperial tombs, in closing doors against the snow to read with a cat in his lap, in his disguised visits to observe spring plowing, in meeting scholars and venerable ministers, in weathering the lowest, most desolate, most disheartened days of his life…

While Jinghong Zhui lived as an ordinary man.

One among the millions of Great Ming’s common folk, he plowed, labored, cooked, traded… witnessed life and death with his own eyes, and came to understand anew what it meant to be human.

In that single year, he learned more than in the twenty years before combined.

He still didn’t like to smile or talk much. His eyes remained like a clear, cold lake. Yet he would step in to block the pursuers of a wife fleeing her husband’s abuse; he would grab mischievous brats by the collar and hang them from tree branches, only letting them down once their tearful apologies rang sincere; and he would spend the copper coins meant for buying meat on the last wilted bundle of apricot blossoms in a flower girl’s basket.

Without realizing it, the murderous edge that once lurked in his gaze was gone, and his hands no longer carried the lingering scent of blood.

He was forced to draw his blade less and less often, eventually forgetting his own techniques altogether. One day, he casually snapped off a willow branch, flicked it once, and with that simple motion entangled the legs of a notorious demonic cultist, hanging him upside down beneath the magistrate’s gate plaque before dawn.

As Old Ghost Wei’s illness worsened, his body curled up tighter, and he began ordering Jinghong Zhui around more frequently. Jinghong Zhui didn’t mind. He handled every task with ease, his movements light and natural.

The cane Old Ghost Wei used to jab him, once striking true with every blow, gradually fell to five or six hits in ten, then one or two, until finally it couldn’t even graze the hem of Jinghong Zhui’s robe.

He hadn’t dodged deliberately, he simply went about chopping wood, tending fires, cooking meals, his motions flowing like water, seamless and effortless. What weapon in the world could ever pierce a cloud, or cleave through water? From that day on, Old Ghost Wei never used his cane to poke him again.

One day, Jinghong Zhui suddenly felt a faint warmth and swelling at his dantian.

“What is this?” he asked Old Ghost Wei. “I clearly dispersed my internal strength and destroyed my dantian. How can I still feel qi?”

Old Ghost Wei huddled by the stove like a coiled inchworm, rolling his eyes. “In midwinter, the fields lie barren and the soil cracks; the rice stubble is burned to ash, yet why is it that come spring, they can still be plowed again?”

Jinghong Zhui thought for a moment and said softly, “Because new seeds have been sown…”

Old Ghost Wei drank the white liquor Jinghong Zhui offered him and nodded in satisfaction. “When the seeds sprout, let them grow freely under heaven and earth, through wind and frost, sun and rain. Now tell me, have you found your sword?”

Jinghong Zhui replied, “My sword is my life itself. Until the day my body dies and my soul fades, there will always be infinite ‘paths’ to walk and seek.”

From the vastness of mountains, rivers, and forests, to the smallest blades of grass and ants beneath one’s feet; from the movement of wind, clouds, thunder, and lightning, to the stillness of morning mist and evening haze; from the clash of armies to the whispers of lovers,  to witness and experience all things under heaven, this is the journey of a human life.

Old Ghost Wei, now drunk, murmured, “You’ve understood sooner than I did… and you’re luckier too. If only I’d awakened in time, hadn’t carried so many blood debts… If only I hadn’t been struck with this cursed illness… If only I hadn’t lost my wife and daughter… maybe, just maybe…”

But he never finished that “maybe,” for life allows few such maybes.

Even so, from his drunken ramblings, Jinghong Zhui pieced together fragments of the old man’s past.

Twenty years ago, the entire Tianyin Sect, renowned for using music as a weapon, was slaughtered to the last soul. Only a single infant survived, that massacre had been Old Ghost Wei’s doing.

He, merciless for half a lifetime, had been unexpectedly moved by the pure gaze and finger-suckling instinct of a newborn. He spared the child, tucked the sect’s heirloom weapon, the Crane Bone Flute, into its swaddling, and left the bundle on the doorstep of the baby’s uncle.

That child grew up. At twelve, seeking vengeance for his clan’s annihilation, he joined the Hidden Sword Sect, where he became the only person who ever called Jinghong Zhui “Senior Brother.” His name was Fuyin.

But before Fuyin could find his enemy, he was turned into a living medicine vessel, trapped in a cruel fate. He lost himself, became a pawn for evil, dragging others down with him until he died at the hands of the one person who truly cared for him: Han Ben.

“Perhaps it was retribution,” Old Ghost Wei rasped once, “for the blood I spilled in my youth, for the killing stench that clung to me. That’s why I caught this strange, twisting illness, leaving me neither man nor ghost…”

“I watched myself warp and wither day by day. All my fortune couldn’t buy a cure. My wife, desperate and deceived by villains, chose death with our young daughter rather than dishonor.

“It took me ten years to crawl out of that grief of losing everything. Another ten years to comprehend the ‘Dao’ that was meant for me.

“But what use is mastery of martial arts? I’m a broken man, alone and dying, like a candle flickering in the wind.”

“All I wish now is to live as an ordinary man, laboring away the rest of my days to atone for my sins. When I walk the Yellow Springs road, perhaps… they’ll still be waiting for me.”

“You, boy, you’re luckier than I ever was. The one in your heart still lives. She keeps your hope alive, your thoughts lingering.”

“Do you know why I never dragged you out of that woodpile and throw you away?”

Jinghong Zhui had listened in silence all this time. Now, at last, he asked quietly, “Why?”

“Because even dead drunk, you kept murmuring one name, ‘Qinghe, Qinghe…’” Old Ghost Wei laughed faintly. “I thought then, must be fate, eh? You were meant to clear the river’s silt for me.”

“And besides… in you, I saw my younger self. I’ve reached the end of my road, but you, you still have a long way to go.”

“Go, then. Walk your own path…”

His head drooped, and he began to snore.

Jinghong Zhui could smell the heavy, fading scent of old age upon him, the smell of one whose end was near.

He won’t last much longer, Jinghong Zhui thought. We never called each other master and disciple, but the bond is there all the same. I’ll see him off on his final journey. And then, I’ll take my sword… and go find the one I long to see. I’ll walk out the rest of my life.