Chapter 76: The Power of a Nursery Rhyme

Chapter Seventy-Six: The Power of Nursery Rhymes

Yang Huaiyu had been kneeling in the ancestral hall for three days. The hall was drafty and bitterly cold; his hands were swollen and red, his face cracked with countless bleeding fissures, yet his back remained ramrod straight.

Madam Yang sat on a chair beside him, holding a hand warmer, her expression stern. Seeing that Yang Huaiyu still remained silent, she said coldly, “Since you insist on being an unfilial son to the Yang family, then you should renounce everything the Yang family has given you.”

Yang Huaiyu looked at his mother sorrowfully and replied slowly, “Since mother has gone to such lengths, your ultimate aim is nothing more than to strip me of the property under my name, is it not? Why not have said so from the start? I will hand over the deeds to the two estates and the three shops in the city at once. It is not difficult.”

Madam Yang’s face turned deathly pale. Gritting her teeth, she spat, “What madness has possessed you? You give up a perfectly good post as officer without a second thought, ignore a fine marriage as if it were nothing—where is the ambition you once held?”

Yang Huaiyu looked at his mother and said, “Long ago, my dream was to become a high official, ride fine steeds, hold beauty in my arms and be surrounded by children—such is the joy of mortal life.”

Madam Yang frowned and said, “That is precisely what the eldest son of our family should aspire to. So why did it all change?”

Yang Huaiyu smiled. “It wasn’t I who changed, but the Song dynasty itself. Now, storms gather on our borders; we have lost three battles to the Tangut. As the son of a military family, I am consumed with shame. Countless soldiers die wrapped in their horse’s hide; the borderlands are ravaged by barbarian riders; the Qingsheng Army and Slave-catching Army treat our people like cattle and horses...”

Madam Yang retorted angrily, “And what has that to do with you? Your father is already fighting at the front, your ancestors have bled dry for the Song—now our family should be reaping the rewards!”

Suddenly, Yang Huaiyu laughed and rose to his feet, bowing to his mother. “Mother, begging Su Mei for mercy is something I cannot do. If you wish my younger brother to marry Su Mei, then let him do so.”

Madam Yang glared at Yang Huaiyu and said coldly, “Do you truly think you can become the Champion of Martial Exams? Even if you do, you’ll only be given the rank of Forty-Third Degree Martial Scholar, which is nine grades lower than your former post as Deputy Commander of the Imperial Guard. How much time will it take you to make up that difference?”

Yang Huaiyu replied, somewhat impatiently, “A Martial Scholar is an active command in the army, capable of leading five hundred men—a war leader. The Deputy Commander of the Imperial Guard is nothing more than a glorified housekeeper for the royals. There is a world of difference. Mother, you need not persuade me further. My mind is set and will not be changed. This afternoon, you may take possession of the estates and shops.”

After three days of silent endurance, Yang Huaiyu could no longer suppress his rage. His voice rose sharply. Madam Yang’s hand warmer crashed to the ground as she pointed at him, shouting, “You unfilial son!”

Yang Huaiyu pointed to the gray, overcast sky above. “The heavens bear witness!”

With that, he strode out of the ancestral hall, leaving Madam Yang trembling with fury behind him, shouting, “If you walk out that door, never come back!”

Yang Huaiyu paused for a moment, then stepped over the threshold and left without a backward glance.

Safety, naturally, was of utmost importance. Xiao Qiao, unable to withstand Tie Xinyuan’s sharp tongue, surrendered after a few verbal rounds and agreed to all his unreasonable demands.

“Keep the output under control. Don’t work recklessly just to rush things. If you treat kerosene carelessly, it will be even more merciless to you. The people working here are all brothers, and losing even one is a pain in the heart. If something goes wrong, there’s no medicine for regret.”

Xiao Qiao roared, “Why don’t you just tie my hands and feet as well? Working the way you say, who could get anything done to satisfaction?”

As they spoke, a deafening blast erupted from the nearby workshop, followed by thick black smoke billowing up into the sky.

Not long after, the patrol soldiers of the fire brigade rumbled past with water wagons, heading straight for the workshop.

A strong wind blew the black smoke toward them. Xiao Qiao sniffed, then chuckled to Tie Xinyuan, “That was gunpowder exploding. With such a big commotion, I’d wager there have been plenty of casualties. According to Old Seventh from the Hou family at the Ministry of Works, they’ve been developing a new weapon lately called the ‘sudden-fire gun.’ It’s basically a hollow iron whip filled with gunpowder. In battle, you light the fuse, and the powder blasts iron shot out of the whip, disrupting enemy formations at close range.”

Tie Xinyuan scratched his itchy head. “Have they finished making it yet?”

Xiao Qiao sucked in his breath as if his teeth ached. “The gunpowder’s fine, but the trouble’s with the iron whip. If they cast it solid, it’s too heavy. If they cast it jointed like a bamboo segment to lighten it, the indented parts can’t release the charge properly and it’s likely to blow apart, hurting our own men. I’d bet today’s explosion was from just that—a whip bursting in someone’s hand and setting off the nearby piles of powder and sulfur.”

Tie Xinyuan stared at Xiao Qiao. “They’re testing inside the workshop?”

Xiao Qiao answered matter-of-factly, “Of course. It’s freezing outside...”

Tie Xinyuan grabbed Xiao Qiao by the shoulders and looked him in the eye. “If I ever catch you lighting a fire to warm yourselves in the oil-steaming room again, I’ll set all the refined oil alight myself—save you the trouble.”

Xiao Qiao just grinned and dragged Tie Xinyuan toward the front end of Basket Lane. After winding through a tangle of alleys, they finally reached the street, only to see Yang Huaiyu standing at the door with a horse and a lance, two large chests strapped to the saddle, looking every bit the fallen hero.

Two young women stood at the gate, inviting him in, but he held his head high, spouting who knows what nonsense.

When Tie Xinyuan and Xiao Qiao approached, Yang Huaiyu flashed a broad smile. “I’ve got nowhere else to go, so I’ve come to stay with you!”

Xiao Qiao asked in puzzlement, “You have a room at home, and your things are all still there. Why say something so odd?”

Tie Xinyuan looked Yang Huaiyu up and down, frowning. “So you’ve had a final falling out with your family?”

Yang Huaiyu laughed heartily. “That’s right! A real man must have the courage to fight with his back to the river. I’ve cut off my retreat—now my only focus is the upcoming martial examination.”

“So you’re broke now? Did you leave home with nothing at all, like a true hero?” Tie Xinyuan continued to size him up.

Yang Huaiyu laughed. “After mixing with you lot of penny-pinchers for so long, how could I not know the value of money? Don’t worry—I brought along all the money from the two estates and three shops. This year the harvest was good, and many tenants wanted to pay next year’s rents in advance. So I also brought along a hundred thousand catties of grain—enough to feed us for several years.”

Tie Xinyuan gave him a thumbs up, sincerely praising him for the first time. After experiencing such ups and downs, a man inevitably becomes more mature.

Yang Huaiyu was doing well now; at least he knew what he wanted and what he didn’t. At least he could take what was rightfully his without shame, instead of shouting about conquering the world with nothing but the shirt on his back and ending up begging on the streets.

He had brought so much that it seemed he hadn’t even left behind a single chamber pot. The tenants who delivered the grain cheerfully helped him stash it all in the attic.

A nobleman with a blue ribbon in his hair sat on horseback in the distance, watching Yang Huaiyu busy himself. Tie Xinyuan nudged Yang Huaiyu, who glanced down the street, dropped what he was doing, and strode over. The young nobleman also dismounted.

No one knew what was said between them, but eventually the nobleman left, and Yang Huaiyu returned with red-rimmed eyes.

“That was my younger brother.”

“Come to reclaim the goods? We’re not giving anything up!”

“Get lost. He came to persuade me to come home... He said Mother was crying her heart out.”

“So, will you go back, or stay and make your own way?”

Yang Huaiyu seemed not to hear Tie Xinyuan’s mocking tone. He hefted a chest onto his shoulder. “I have to learn to stand by my words... I’m not going back.”

“Hey, who’s that beautiful lady? Is that Su Mei?” Tie Xinyuan suddenly called out.

Yang Huaiyu, already halfway through the door with the chest, shot back out, frantically asking, “Where? Where?”

The alley mouth was empty—not a soul in sight. Yang Huaiyu’s hopeful gaze dimmed. He gave Tie Xinyuan a smack on the head, then carried the chest into the courtyard.

“The north wind rises,
A hero weeps.
The lad is willing,
The maid is not.
Catch a toad to ride as a horse.
A hammer in the left,
A whip in the right.
The wind howls,
The clouds fly,
Yang Huaiyu wants to be Champion of the Martial Exams...”

Tie Xinyuan was always skilled at singing nursery rhymes. Whether it was Little Raindrop or the Little Princess, they all loved to hear them and constantly begged for new ones.

Tie Xinyuan never disappointed, singing from “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” all the way to “Two Tigers, Two Tigers, Run So Fast.” These catchy tunes soon spread among all the children in the capital, and whenever Tie Xinyuan saw a child on the street singing about the twinkling stars, he would wear a mysterious smile.

According to Xiao Qiao, who knew him best, it meant he was up to something again—though no one could guess who the next unlucky soul would be.

Xiao Qiao didn’t understand, nor did the burly Yang Huaiyu, but Tie Xinyuan, who had studied the Book of Changes, knew well the power of nursery rhymes.

Grand Historian Boyang once memorialized: “All rootless words in the marketplace are called rumors. Heaven, to warn the ruler, commanded the baleful star to turn into a child, who then invented rumors. When the children recited these, they became nursery rhymes. On a small scale, they foretell the fortune or misfortune of an individual; on a grand scale, the fate of the whole nation.”

P.S.: Begging for recommendation votes, dear readers. Please add this book to your collection. I, Jieyu, humbly ask.