The Soldier's Dao

Arranging the meeting without drawing attention required a patience Han Muyang had come to recognize, over the past two weeks, as this court's particular tax on every genuine act of conscience — nothing could happen quickly, nothing could happen visibly, and every careful step forward demanded a plausible, entirely mundane explanation should anyone ever ask why Skyreach's delegation had chosen that specific evening for that specific walk.

"An evening stroll through the eastern gardens," Elder Bai proposed, when Han Muyang relayed Grand-Uncle Feng's instructions, "framed as simple courtesy toward the palace's celebrated grounds. Grandmaster Ji mentioned admiring the eastern gardens during our arrival banquet. It would seem entirely natural for two members of her delegation to request a private viewing, particularly given how carefully we've cultivated an image of quiet, respectful appreciation for the capital's traditions throughout our stay."

The request, submitted through the same careful diplomatic channels that had secured every prior arrangement, drew no particular scrutiny from Chamberlain Yao's office, and Han Muyang found himself, the following evening, walking beside Elder Bai through a garden considerably more elaborate and deliberately cultivated than even the palace's other ornate grounds — a landscape designed, he understood, watching the careful arrangement of stone, water, and seasonal blooms unfold around them, to project exactly the kind of serene, effortless prosperity that this kingdom's actual, fractured politics so thoroughly belied.

They found the fishing pond exactly where Grand-Uncle Feng had described it, a modest, still body of water tucked into the garden's quieter eastern corner, shaded by a stand of willows whose drooping branches offered a natural, unremarkable privacy that Han Muyang suspected had made this particular spot a favored meeting place for considerably more than fishing across the palace's long history.

The old servant was already waiting, seated on a weathered stone bench with a simple fishing line cast into the pond's still water, and his careful, unhurried posture as they approached carried none of the rushed urgency that had marked their earlier ninety-second exchange.

"Please," Grand-Uncle Feng said, without turning from his line, "sit, if you would. An old man fishing with two visitors admiring the garden's evening light draws considerably less attention than any arrangement that looks deliberately private."

They settled onto the bench's remaining space, and Han Muyang, studying the old servant's weathered profile in the fading evening light, found himself cataloguing details he hadn't fully registered during their brief, hurried exchange in the prince's study — the careful, deliberate way Grand-Uncle Feng held himself despite his modest servant's robes, a bearing that spoke, unmistakably, to someone who had once occupied a considerably more elevated position than his current station suggested.

"You held rank in the old emperor's court," Han Muyang said, not quite a question.

"Minister of Rites, for eleven years, under the old emperor's father before him, and then under the old emperor himself for the first decade of his reign." Grand-Uncle Feng's voice carried a quiet, dignified weight beneath its careful, unhurried delivery. "I retired from formal service six years ago, by my own choice, wishing to spend my remaining years in simpler pursuits than court politics demanded. The old emperor, out of genuine friendship rather than any formal obligation, granted me a modest position within his household staff, allowing me to remain near a court and a family I'd served faithfully across three decades, without the burden of the responsibilities I'd chosen to set down."

"And when he died," Elder Bai said quietly, "you remained."

"I remained because young Prince Jian had no one else who remembered him as a genuine child, rather than as a political symbol requiring careful management." Something raw and genuinely angry entered the old man's careful composure, briefly, before he reined it back into its practiced, unhurried delivery. "I watched that boy take his first unsteady steps, disciples. I was present at his naming ceremony. I have no illusions about my own current usefulness to this court's actual power structures — a retired servant, modest in station, easily overlooked by anyone with genuine ambition. But I have eyes, and I have memory, and I have spent eight months watching Regent Xun Bo systematically, deliberately isolate a child I love as though he were my own grandson, and I have been entirely unable, until your delegation's arrival, to do anything meaningful about it."

Han Muyang absorbed the confession with the same careful, weighted attention he gave every genuinely significant piece of testimony, feeling the shape of the old man's grief and frustration settle alongside everything else this investigation had already revealed. "You mentioned correspondence. Records of prior attempts to reach the prince, blocked by the Regent's household."

"I did, and I have brought what I could safely carry without risking discovery, should I be searched on my return to my quarters." Grand-Uncle Feng reached, with careful, unhurried motion, into a small pouch tucked beneath his simple robes, and withdrew a slim, folded packet of paper that he passed to Han Muyang with the same unhurried care he'd shown throughout the entire exchange, his attention never leaving his fishing line, his posture never suggesting anything beyond an old man's idle evening pastime. "Three letters, copied in my own hand from originals I dared not risk carrying directly. The first, from Minister Sun Wei, formerly of the Ministry of War under the old emperor, requesting formal audience with the prince regarding his continuing education in matters of state defense — denied, on the grounds that such matters exceeded what the Regent's household judged appropriate for the prince's current age and temperament. The second, from Dowager Consort Mei, the old emperor's own aunt and the closest surviving blood relation the prince retains beyond the Regent's immediate household — requesting simple, private family visitation, denied on grounds of 'necessary protective isolation during this politically sensitive transitional period.' The third—"

He paused, and Han Muyang, watching the old man's weathered hands tighten almost imperceptibly around his fishing line, understood that whatever came next carried weight considerably beyond the first two examples.

"The third," Grand-Uncle Feng continued, his voice dropping lower, "is a formal petition, submitted six months ago by a coalition of eleven regional governors, representing territories loyal to neither Prince Chengyu nor Prince Kaiming, requesting that Prince Jian's majority be formally, legally established at age fourteen rather than the traditional sixteen, given the kingdom's urgent need for legitimate, uncontested succession to end the current civil war's ongoing damage. Such a petition, under Wei succession law, requires only the Regent's formal endorsement to proceed to imperial ratification. Regent Xun Bo has neither endorsed nor formally rejected it. He has simply allowed it to remain, indefinitely, under what his own office describes as 'continued review.'"

The implication settled across the small group with a weight Han Muyang understood immediately, cataloguing its significance alongside everything else this investigation had gathered. "Eleven regional governors, representing a genuine political path toward ending this civil war two years earlier than the traditional timeline would allow, and the Regent has simply let the petition sit unanswered, for six months, rather than either supporting or formally opposing it."

"Precisely," Grand-Uncle Feng said grimly. "Formal rejection would require public justification, and I don't believe Regent Xun Bo currently possesses a justification for opposing early majority that wouldn't reveal, plainly, exactly the ambition your delegation has already begun to suspect. But formal endorsement would end his own regency two years sooner than his current arrangement provides, cutting considerably into whatever timeline he's actually planning toward consolidating permanent, independent authority. So he does neither. He simply lets the petition wait, indefinitely, in the careful, deniable purgatory of 'continued review,' while quietly ensuring the prince himself never develops the independent capability, confidence, or political relationships that might eventually force the matter regardless of the Regent's own preferences."

Elder Bai's expression had settled into something grim and genuinely troubled, and Han Muyang, watching her weigh the revelation's full implications, understood that whatever remaining uncertainty had lingered in the delegation's assessment of Regent Xun Bo's true intentions had just been resolved considerably more thoroughly than any prior fragment of evidence had managed.

"This is precisely the kind of confirmation Grandmaster Ji requested," Elder Bai said quietly. "Documented, specific, difficult to dismiss as mere suspicion or circumstantial pattern."

"It is also," Grand-Uncle Feng said, his voice carrying a careful, deliberate warning, "considerably more dangerous for me to have shared than anything I offered during our first, brief exchange. If the Regent's household ever traces this correspondence back to my possession, I do not believe my modest station or my long, faithful service will offer any meaningful protection. I share it regardless, because I have watched that boy's spirit slowly, deliberately ground down for eight months, and because your delegation represents the first genuine opportunity I've seen, in all that time, to actually change his circumstances rather than simply mourning them privately."

"We won't let this cost you what it could," Han Muyang said, meeting the old man's weathered gaze directly, offering the same plain, deliberate promise he'd made to Bo Hai months earlier under considerably different but no less consequential circumstances. "Whatever we do with this information, we'll do it in a way that protects your safety as carefully as we can manage. You have my word on that, for whatever an outer disciple's word carries in a court like this one."

Something in Grand-Uncle Feng's careful composure eased, marginally, at the plain sincerity of the promise. "I have watched considerable political maneuvering across three decades of court service, disciple. I have learned, across that time, to distinguish genuine conviction from careful diplomatic performance rather more reliably than most. I believe your word carries considerably more than you perhaps realize, and I find myself, for the first time in eight months, genuinely hopeful that this old man's careful, patient waiting has not been entirely in vain."

They spoke for a while longer, Grand-Uncle Feng offering additional detail about the specific mechanisms of the prince's isolation — the careful vetting of every tutor, the deliberate scheduling that left no genuine unstructured time, the small, cumulative cruelties of a childhood systematically stripped of anything beyond what served the Regent's careful, patient construction of a legible, harmless heir — and Han Muyang, absorbing every detail with the same methodical attention he gave every genuinely significant intelligence gathering, found the full shape of Regent Xun Bo's actual strategy assembling itself with a clarity that felt, by the conversation's end, both considerably more damning and considerably more actionable than anything the delegation had managed to confirm before this evening.

The walk back through the garden's darkening paths passed in a considering silence that Han Muyang understood, watching Elder Bai's own troubled expression, reflected the full weight of what they'd just learned settling properly across both of them.

"This changes everything," Elder Bai said finally, once they'd put sufficient distance between themselves and the fishing pond to speak with genuine privacy. "We're no longer weighing whether to support a Regent whose ambitions might exceed his stated intentions. We have documented evidence he's actively, deliberately suppressing a legitimate political path toward ending this civil war, purely to preserve his own extended authority, at direct cost to a child he's simultaneously, systematically isolating from any genuine capacity to eventually challenge that arrangement."

"Grandmaster Ji will need to decide how to use this," Han Muyang said, turning the strategic implications over with the same patient, careful attention he gave every developing crisis. "Formally, publicly confronting the Regent with this evidence carries its own considerable risk — to Grand-Uncle Feng, to Prince Jian himself, and potentially to this entire delegation, if Regent Xun Bo decides exposure outweighs whatever value he still sees in courting Skyreach's support."

"And yet allowing it to continue unaddressed," Elder Bai said grimly, "makes this delegation, and this sect, complicit in exactly the kind of institutional cruelty we've already watched this world inflict on ordinary people repeatedly, dressed this time in considerably more elaborate political language than a discarded army column or a poisoned reservoir ever required."

They reported the full account to Grandmaster Ji that evening, and the Sect Master listened through the entire, carefully detailed recitation with a stillness that Han Muyang recognized, watching her, as the particular, controlled quality of genuine, deep anger held carefully in check by decades of practiced discipline.

"Eleven regional governors' petition, deliberately left in indefinite limbo," she said, once the account concluded, her voice carrying a quiet, resonant weight that filled the small chamber considerably more forcefully than any raised voice could have managed. "That is not merely troubling political maneuvering, disciples. That is a documented, specific act of bad faith against this kingdom's own legitimate governance structures, committed by a man who has spent this entire negotiation presenting himself to us as the singular voice of genuine stability and restraint."

"What do we do with it," Elder Zhuang asked, his own expression carrying the same grim, weighted consideration.

Grandmaster Ji was quiet for a long moment, her ancient eyes carrying a depth of calculation that Han Muyang understood, watching her, represented four decades of accumulated political wisdom finally, fully engaged with a decision she'd clearly hoped, throughout this entire negotiation, she might not actually be forced to make.

"We do not confront him directly, not yet," she said finally. "Not with this evidence alone, gathered through methods we cannot fully disclose without exposing Grand-Uncle Feng to considerable danger. But I believe we have gathered enough, now, to justify a considerably firmer approach to our own formal deliberation." She turned to the assembled circle with a resolve that settled the chamber's tension into something more purposeful. "I intend to inform Regent Xun Bo, formally and without elaboration on our specific reasoning, that Skyreach requires direct, unsupervised confirmation of Prince Jian's own genuine wishes regarding the succession timeline, before this delegation can offer any formal position on his request for military support. A reasonable, defensible demand, on its face — and one I suspect he will find considerably more difficult to refuse than he might prefer, given how publicly he's already committed himself to protecting and serving the prince's genuine interests throughout this entire negotiation."

"He'll suspect we know something," Elder Bai said carefully.

"He will," Grandmaster Ji agreed. "I intend for him to suspect exactly that, in fact. Sometimes the most useful pressure a careful, patient adversary can apply isn't a direct accusation, but simply the unmistakable signal that you're watching closely enough to have noticed something worth watching for. A man building the kind of careful, deniable arrangement Grand-Uncle Feng has described tends to grow considerably more cautious, considerably more constrained in his options, the moment he understands his careful construction has attracted genuine scrutiny from a party he cannot simply dismiss or overpower."

Han Muyang absorbed the strategy with growing, careful appreciation for its particular, patient sophistication — not a direct confrontation that risked immediate, dangerous escalation, but a deliberate, calculated pressure that forced the Regent to either grant genuine, unsupervised access that would likely expose his own arrangement more fully, or refuse in a manner that would itself constitute a considerable, damaging admission in front of a delegation whose support he still, evidently, genuinely wanted.

"A demand for unsupervised access," he said slowly, turning the strategy's mechanics over, "puts him in a position where either choice costs him something. Grant it, and Prince Jian may finally have the genuine opportunity to speak plainly, without Lady Chen's watchful presence shaping every word. Refuse it, and his refusal itself becomes evidence, in front of a delegation he's spent weeks courting, that his stated commitment to the prince's genuine wellbeing carries considerably less substance than his careful diplomatic language has claimed."

"Precisely," Grandmaster Ji said, something that might have been grim satisfaction settling into her ancient, weathered expression. "I intend to submit this formal request tomorrow morning. I want this delegation prepared, in the days that follow, for whatever response the Regent ultimately chooses to offer — and prepared, as well, for the genuine possibility that his response confirms, beyond any remaining doubt, exactly the kind of arrangement we've now gathered considerable evidence to suspect."

Outside the guest chamber's windows, the Imperial City's evening had settled fully into darkness, its distant lanterns marking the vast, indifferent rhythm of half a million lives carrying on beneath a palace whose careful, elaborate machinery had just been forced, however subtly, into a position where its own careful concealment would finally, genuinely be tested.

Han Muyang, walking back toward his own quarters through the palace's quiet, ornate corridors, found himself turning over Grand-Uncle Feng's weathered, dignified courage alongside everything else this investigation had cost and revealed — a retired minister risking his remaining years of safety for a child he loved without any formal obligation left to compel it, a frightened boy finally finding the courage to speak an honest truth to strangers who'd shown him genuine kindness, an entire delegation's careful, patient work finally converging toward a moment that would very likely determine, considerably more directly than any battlefield Han Muyang had yet faced in this world, whether genuine conscience could actually prevail against a considerably more comfortable, more politically convenient path of careful, diplomatic accommodation.

*Tomorrow,* he thought, *we find out exactly how far Regent Xun Bo is actually willing to go, once cornered by his own careful performance of virtue.*

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!