For displaced disaster victims like those from Yong'an, to pick a fight against the imperial army was a losing battle, a gross overestimation of their own strength.
Yet cornered people often possessed the courage to court ruin andfight a losing battle. After that riot, the tens of thousands of Yong'an refugees finally left the city gates and rebuilt their temporary camps some distance away.
Still, they stubbornly refused to leave. They could die on the road if they kept going, but if staying was also death, what was the difference? Using the rations and water the king had distributed, supplementing them with bark, wild herbs, plant roots, critters, and insects, and topping it all off with resentment and loathing, those people possessed an unimaginably persistent will to live and relentlessly persevered. After a few days, they managed to assemble a few thousand men and returned for a fight wielding hoes, rakes, rocks, and branches.
Although their clash was a mess, an utter defeat, with over half of those few thousand dead, it wasn't fruitless. Lang Ying made it into a tower and returned hauling several large bags of grain and bundles of real weapons. There may have been serious casualties, but that just created a will to fight to the death among the people.
Their nature was closer to that of bandits now. They raided once, twice, thrice. The soldiers of Xianle soon discovered that the tactics of those "bandits" were rapidly improving.
The initially inexperienced rioters gradually got the hang of things, and every time they attacked they were more difficult to deal with than the last—the number who returned to camp alive increased with every attempt. There were also endless waves of new refugees joining the cause after hearing the news, and the group grew significantly in size. How to best deal with those "bandits" became the hottest topic for debate within the Kingdom of Xianle, and after five or six such ridiculous guerilla attacks, Xie Lian could no longer sit still on the parapet and simply watch from the sidelines.
He hadn't reported to the heavens in a long time, but this time, when he arrived at the Heavenly Capital, he dashed straight to the Palace of Divine Might without a word. When he barged in, Jun Wu was seated on his throne. A group of heavenly officials seemed to be discussing an important matter and were bowing to receive his command. In the past, Xie Lian would've chosen a different day to pay this visit, but at the moment he had no time to spare. He cut right in.
"My Lord, I'm returning to the Mortal Realm."
The heavenly officials were startled. They immediately covered their mouths, keeping silent, not wanting to show any kind of reaction. Jun Wu looked at him knowingly for a moment, then rose from his throne to speak to him gently.
"Xianle, I have an idea of what is happening, but you must remain calm."
"My Lord, I didn't come here to request permission. I came here to inform you," Xie Lian said. "My people are currently mired in the depths of hell, so please forgive me if I cannot remain calm."
"The world has its own destiny," Jun Wu said. "Do you not realize that if you descend and appear before mortals, it will be a violation of heavenly law?"
"If it's a violation, then so be it!" Xie Lian cried.
At this, the faces of the heavenly officials changed color. Never had a heavenly official dared to speak such words with so much gusto and so unapologetically. No matter how highly Jun Wu regarded this young, early ascended Prince of Xianle, it was still an act of great audacity.
A moment later, Xie Lian bowed. "Pray My Lord let me go this once —just give me a little time. Since fighting has started, casualties are unavoidable. But if I can stop this and reduce the number of dead, minimize the conflict, then after the war ends I will return willingly to repent, and My Lord can sentence me as he sees fit. Whether I should be sealed under a mountain for a hundred years, a thousand years, a hundred thousand years —I will not regret it!"
After having his say, he remained in that bowing posture and stood down, leaving the great hall.
"Xianle!" Jun Wu called.
Xie Lian paused in his step. Jun Wu gazed at him, then sighed.
"You cannot save everyone."
Xie Lian slowly straightened up. "I won't know until I've tried. Even if the heavens say I must die, if that sword doesn't pierce my heart and nail me dead to the ground, then I am still alive, and I will struggle till my last breath!"
Returning to the Mortal Realm in solid form was unlike all the previous times he'd descended. Xie Lian felt like something had been abandoned. He felt light, and at the same time, heavy.
His first action was to return to the palace at once. The king and the queen were in the imperial study whispering to each other, their faces grave and exhausted. Xie Lian approached the door nervously at first, but then he calmed himself, raised the curtain, and walked in.
"Father."
The king and the queen both looked back at the same time in shock. It was the queen who stood up first, crying joyously.
"My son!"
She extended both her hands and came forward to welcome him. Xie Lian caught her arms, accepting the gesture. But before the smiles went away, he saw the king's expression growing darker.
"Why have you descended?" the king demanded.
Xie Lian's smile froze.
Before, when he heard his parents talk about him behind his back, Xie Lian had thought that his father might miss him and wasn't as biased against him as it always seemed. He had thought that the king would show at least some degree of pleasure in seeing his return and that he would surely soften his attitude. How could he expect that the king would react this way, so full of scorn? Xie Lian's own temper flared.
"Why have I descended? Isn't it all because of you?!" he replied sharply. "Shouldn't you ask yourself whether you bear responsibility for the situation with Yong'an coming to this?"
The king's face completely changed, and he countered harshly, "My responsibility? Is that something you can say to me?!"
His fury made him forget his royal plurals, and the queen teared up.
"The situation is already as bad as can be, so why are you two arguing?"
"We're not arguing," Xie Lian said. "We're talking about basic logic. Even if you are the king and my father, if you are the one responsible, why can't I say anything? Why didn't you work harder on disaster relief? If the aid money was completely swallowed by government checkpoints, why
didn't you punish the corrupt officials? If you were fierce like thunder and fast like lightning, jailing them all with no exceptions, then would there still be so many parasites who'd dare to steal? Wouldn't things be better than they are now?"
Veins popped on the king's forehead, and he banged on his bureau desk. "Quiet! Do you think the royal treasury is a bottomless well that can fix any leaking hole?! Jail them all—if it were that easy, if by just one order from this king it'd work fast like lightning, fierce as thunder, then why has history never seen a dynasty untouched by corruption? What logic do you know?! You ignorant child, you dare speak politics with me?!"
"Fine," Xie Lian acquiesced. "I don't understand. But even if the imperial capital had no room for the victims to settle and their expulsion was inevitable, why not provide more for them? Why not appease them properly and have an army escort them on their journey eastward?"
The king's eyes bulged with rage, and he pointed to the sky. "Begone! Get out of here! Get back to the heavens; just looking at you annoys me! Don't ever appear here again!"
Xie Lian had descended with a heart full of fervor, yet the reunion with his parents ended with his father yelling and sending him back to the heavens. Without a word, Xie Lian gave a curt bow and stood down to leave the imperial study.
The queen chased after him as he left and pulled him to a stop.
"My son!"
"Mother, don't worry," Xie Lian said gently. "I'm just going to walk around the imperial capital to check on the situation."
The queen shook her head. "My son, I don't understand these political matters, but I understand your father. Throughout the years, I've seen how he is as a king. You can think from the bottom of your heart that he isn't competent, and sometimes I think the same, even if I don't say it out loud. But you can't say that to his face. He's your father, after all. It's devastating to hear you say that he's been neglectful."
Xie Lian opened and closed his mouth.
The queen added, "You might have been the crown prince, but you have never been King. Ruling a nation is different from cultivating. When you first entered the Royal Holy Temple, the state preceptor said cultivation only concerns the heart, isn't that right?"
Xie Lian nodded slowly, and the queen clutched his hands.
"But there are many times in this world when just having heart isn't enough. You must be capable too; and not just you but your subordinates as well. They must match you in ability and also share your heart."
Xie Lian remained silent. After a moment, he asked, "Is the royal treasury suffering? I don't need temples; tell him to stop building so many for me. Those golden statues can go."
"My child…" the queen replied helplessly, "of course your father's bias is showing a little in building temples. He wanted to give you the best and to make you look impressive in the heavens. But do you know just how many of those eight thousand temples were actually built by your father? You don't know, do you?"
Xie Lian really didn't know, and he pondered briefly. "Half…?"
"If your father really used funds from the royal treasury to build four thousand temples, we wouldn't need to wait for the Yong'an refugees to start anything—the imperial capital would revolt first," the queen said. "So if the royal treasury is empty, where do you think all that money came from? Your father built maybe twenty temples, and others followed suit; masses of them wanting to build to curry his favor, to curry your favor. Is that counted among your father's failures too?"
"I…" Xie Lian was stumped.
The queen said softly, "Your father isn't the greatest king, but…he's done his best. Only, in this world, simply doing your best isn't good enough."
After a pause, she added, "Right now, you feel sympathy for those Yong'an refugees, so you blame your father. But they're all his people; do you think we're the ones bullying them? In truth…"
Halfway through her words, the enraged voice of the king echoed from the study.
"What are you doing, telling him so many useless things?! Make him leave and go back to the heavens!"
The queen turned back to him and sighed. "My son, don't…don't descend for this. Go back."
After leaving the palace, Xie Lian wandered down an alleyway near the Grand Avenue of Divine Might. As he walked, Feng Xin and Mu Qing appeared in a rush.
The moment Mu Qing approached, he asked in disbelief, "Your Highness! You requested to descend to the Mortal Realm? You spoke to the Heavenly Emperor?!"
"Yes," Xie Lian answered.
"Why didn't you tell me first?" Mu Qing demanded.
"What do you mean?" Feng Xin asked, puzzled. "When he wants to do something, does His Highness have to report to anyone?"
Mu Qing seemed to be losing it. "Why shouldn't he? We're his subordinates, and right now we're all tied together. His every action affects us! So is there something wrong with me wanting to know his plans?"
"We'd have to follow His Highness no matter what he does! Heaven or earth, he goes his own way. So what are you afraid of?" Feng Xin said.
"You—!" Mu Qing cut himself off in frustration. "I'm not afraid! I'm only…"
Xie Lian waved. "Enough. Stop arguing!"
Feng Xin and Mu Qing quieted immediately. Just then, a crowd of demonstrators paraded down the main street in a long line; thousands of citizens hollering.
"There will be no peace in the kingdom until Yong'an is exterminated!"
"They've gone too far! They've created too much disorder! They're a cancer!"
The people of Xianle had never been so aggressive about anything, nor had they ever engaged in such a roaring protest. Xie Lian couldn't help but think something was amiss. Feng Xin, on the other hand, frowned.
"How come there's a woman in there?"
Sure enough, at the forefront of that crowd marched a young woman. She was slender, her skin snow white, her eyes bright and black, her cheeks flushed not from shyness but from rage—an eye-catching sight.
By then, Mu Qing had calmed himself down. "His Highness doesn't recognize her?" he asked coldly.
"No," Xie Lian replied.
Feng Xin knitted his brows. "She looks a bit familiar."
"She's one of the catalysts," Mu Qing said.
"What catalysts?" Xie Lian asked.
"The catalysts for this standoff," Mu Qing replied. "Before, when
there were more and more Yong'an refugees surging into the capital, some wouldn't quietly mind their own business and went around causing trouble. The court was discussing the matter of expulsion, and word of it was spreading. There was a Yong'an refugee who wanted to avoid being expelled, so he decided to take a risk. One night, he snuck into the house of a wealthy family and kidnapped their daughter."
Xie Lian couldn't wrap his head around this. "Why would he kidnap a rich family's daughter if he didn't want to leave?"
Mu Qing gave him a look. "To marry her. The only way a daughter from a good family in the imperial capital would marry a man of Yong'an would be…by force."
He didn't say it plainly, but Xie Lian understood. He had never thought that there were actually people out there who would do such a thing —that something like that could happen. A sudden wave of nausea rolled up from his chest.
"Disgusting!" Feng Xin cursed angrily on the spot.
Just then, a group of aunties rushed over, grabbing and pulling at the young woman. By the looks of it, she had snuck out when her family wasn't paying attention.
That young woman wouldn't yield, yelling, "I'm not afraid! I have nothing to be ashamed of! I wasn't in the wrong!"
"That chick's pretty spunky," Feng Xin said, amazed.
"Yes," Mu Qing replied. "She didn't come from an ordinary background. Her father is a high-ranking official, and her mother hails from a family of wealthy merchants in the capital. They refused to suffer this quietly, and definitely wouldn't marry off their daughter for shame's sake, so they beat that Yong'an man to death. Soon after, all the wealthy merchants and gentlemen of renown in the capital signed a petition that listed every crime the Yong'an refugees had committed since entering the city and demanded the king jail all of them and have them severely punished. There's no need to explain where the government officials stand on this."
He paused briefly, then said with a casual air, "I hear that the girl's father once wanted her to enter the harem and fight for the position of the prince's consort. Your Highness must've seen her face a few times long ago. I'm surprised you don't recognize her."
Xie Lian finally realized that everything was much more complicated than he had imagined.
There were two sides to this tumultuous standoff, deeply entrenched, within and without. The people were furious, and each side desperately wanted to kill the other. If the king's decree was partial to Yong'an, wasn't that a slap in the face to his own people? When at last he decided to distribute some aid from the royal treasury to the Yong'an refugees, it probably displeased many of the city's residents.
Even more frightening than a displeased enemy was the dissatisfaction of a kingdom's own people. While technically everyone was of Xianle, there were probably very few who believed that now.
For so long, Xie Lian had been standing on high, unaware of all the problems of the Mortal Realm. However, his father was still in it. As a king, he needed money, he needed people, and in his position, the stress, the pressure, and the compromises he needed to make to solve the problems of his citizens were incomparable to the troubles Xie Lian knew. When the Yong'an refugees arrived, they took over land, made a racket, stole things, and so on. To a martial god sitting in a temple, these were all small matters that did not call for such fury; simply endure it, and it will pass. However, to the residents of the capital, these were all very real, unmanageable, intolerable tortures—a crisis waiting to erupt. It was only because he wasn't in the thick of it that he could consider these matters simple or trivial.
Xie Lian couldn't help but recall that the king's hair had gone even whiter than the last time he had seen him. Last time, the king had said he was going to dye it, but he probably didn't have the energy to care anymore.
When Xie Lian was younger, he firmly believed that his father was the world's greatest king. But the older he got, the more he realized that wasn't the case. Although his father was king, he couldn't be called a wise or competent one; he was even a little corrupt and made mistakes often. Without his prestigious status, he was nothing more than a common mortal man.
The more Xie Lian realized this, the more disappointed he became. The king noticed his disappointment and could not accept every disagreeing look, every disagreeing word from Xie Lian. What he couldn't accept above all, however, was having Xie Lian see his failures.
No father in the world wanted his son to see his failures. Every father wanted his son to see him as the greatest. Yet Xie Lian had appeared before him at a terrible time just to berate him: "You're making such a mess of things that I had to descend to help you out!" As both a king and a father, how could he withstand hearing that?
The young woman was finally hustled away by her servants, and the hundreds of other demonstrating residents continued their protest, waving signs and hollering. They were crying for only one thing.
"Kill them! Open fire! Show those Yong'an refugees crawling around outside the walls!"
A moment later, Mu Qing spoke up.
"Your Highness, at this point it'd be best to go back and apologize to the Heavenly Emperor. Favorable time and place and conditions, it's all lost. There's no helping this."
It was just as Jun Wu had told him at the Palace of Divine Might —"The world has its own destiny." But that was no different from telling him that the Kingdom of Xianle's time had come to an end and to let it go.
Even the queen, his mother, who wished day and night to be granted only a glimpse of him, asked him to leave with tears in her eyes when she finally saw him. How could Xie Lian not understand that they simply didn't want him to go through this difficult trial, that they'd rather he just take care of himself and watch from afar?
But how could he?
After a long silence, Xie Lian gravely declared, "No!"
And he strode out.