Huang Bingzhong had offended the prefect’s son. After weighing it over, Huang Zheng decided to gather some gifts and drag Huang Bingzhong with him to make amends — to admit he’d offended the young master.
Though Huang Bingzhong was at fault, it at least gave them a reason to go to the prefect’s residence.
Fang Zichen called Da Li back from the yamen and had him receive the guests.
The servants took the gifts, and Da Li led the Huang father and son to the main hall, served them tea, and said the master was busy—they'd have to wait.
And wait they did — most of the day. No one brought more tea.
The Huang father and son knew exactly what it meant. They’d been snubbed. So they left, seething.
After that, Fang Zichen did nothing more. The whole matter seemed to just fade away.
Hot food is best eaten while it's hot—but if it's too hot, it burns your mouth. Sometimes you need to let it cool down before you dig in.
---
On the second day of the new year, the letter reached the capital. The imperial guards rode at full speed, swapping horses at every post station along the way. Even with all that haste, the letter didn't arrive until after the court had closed for the New Year recess.
No court sessions were held during the holidays, and no official business was conducted. But the moment Eunuch Huang heard the letter was from Hezhou, he immediately summoned the messenger in.
After reading the letter, Xia Jinghong's face darkened. That very night, he summoned the Left Chancellor and the Right Chancellor to the palace.
In the middle of the New Year celebrations, something serious must have happened.
The two ministers rushed over without delay. They took the letter, read it, and both fell silent.
"What do you two think?" Xia Jinghong asked. "Do you believe this is possible?"
Could the Chao Kingdom, Northern Qi, Da Yuan, and others truly be planning to join forces? One to the south, one to the north—how could that even work?
Was he worrying over nothing?
But when he thought about it more carefully, Northern Qi and Da Yuan had been stirring up trouble at the borders for years. Apart from that one large invasion by Da Yuan right before the New Year, the rest had only been small skirmishes.
But war is war. Even the small ones cost lives. They’d been fighting for years and never broken through. So why keep throwing men at it for no reason?
He’d always thought they were just a belligerent lot by nature.
But after reading Fang Zichen’s letter, it all made sense.
Constant harassment created the illusion that they were always plotting to invade Da Xia.
That meant the border defenses had to stay on full alert, pinning down troops.
Under those conditions — especially for men dragged straight from their villages — the first taste of battle would break them. The blood, the brutality, the deaths right in front of them. Fear, terror, despair. It would all come crashing down at once.
If these emotions weren't addressed in time, they'd seriously hamper future training. The soldiers wouldn't be able to focus, and their performance would suffer. That one time Da Yuan did break through might well have been a probe to gauge Da Xia's military strength.
The Left Chancellor pondered for a moment. It was hard to say for certain, but what Fang Zichen suggested wasn't impossible. It was the worst-case scenario, and whether true or false, they had to prepare.
The Right Chancellor spoke up: "Your Majesty, this old minister believes what the letter says is not without merit."
Even if it wasn't true, the mere possibility demanded caution. If it were real and they were caught off guard, with the enemy attacking from both sides... they couldn't afford to bear that outcome.
After half a night of discussion, they granted Fang Zichen permission to recruit troops and establish a second line of defense.
But then—
Could it be that he'd gotten too comfortable in Hezhou, grown addicted to being the big boss, and was planning to rebel?
Xia Jinghong dismissed the thought immediately. Fang Zichen was lazy to the core. He'd once said he wanted to live to be a hundred!
Emperors died young—they had to hold court before dawn, marry three thousand ancestors, and toil until midnight. Only an idiot would want that job.
Besides, the man never thought about anything except taking advantage of others. He had no interest in doing real work.
The Right Chancellor shared the same concern and asked the imperial guards: since Fang Zichen had gone to Hezhou, had he had any dealings with the prefects of Jizhou or Qinzhou?
The imperial guard said no: "After Lord Fang arrived in Hezhou, he went straight to the villages the next day."
"To the villages?"
"Yes," the imperial guard reported honestly. "First, he diverted water to Anhe Village and Xiaxing Village in Anhe County. Then he built a paper mill and a cement factory, laid cement roads, made chemical fertilizer, recruited workers, and wiped out bandits. He's been too busy even to meet with the county magistrates under him..."
"Wait." Xia Jinghong interrupted, utterly confused. "Diverted water to Anhe County?"
"Yes."
"By digging canals?"
Xia Jinghong knew Hezhou like the back of his hand. He'd only just finished cleaning up that prefecture last year.
If he remembered right, Anhe County was the one that kept sending up the most death reports in its memorials.
He had Eunuch Huang unroll the map and studied it closely.
"There's no river in Anhe County. Digging canals wouldn't help. How did he divert water?"
Even now, the imperial guard's voice carried excitement: "Lord Fang blasted through the mountains to bring the water in."
"What do you mean?" Now not only Xia Jinghong but both chancellors were baffled.
They leaned over the imperial desk, and the Left Chancellor pointed at Jinghe River and the mountain range nearby. "Did he blast through this mountain to channel water from Jinghe River?"
The only waterway near Anhe County was Jinghe River.
"Yes."
The three men were usually dignified, their every word weighty and commanding. But now their hearts were trembling, and their voices couldn't hide the shock.
"Are you certain of this?"
"This humble subject would never dare lie, Your Majesty." The imperial guard traced the route on the map. "Lord Fang and his fulang recruited many villagers and dug a canal from Xiaxing Village to Fangniu Village—over thirty li in total. Your Majesty can verify this with a simple inquiry."
The imperial guard was telling the truth. Though they had followed Fang Zichen to Hezhou, they were still the emperor's men at heart. This could easily be checked, so there was no point in lying.
The Right Chancellor's hands trembled. His face went slack with disbelief. "Anhe County sits in nothing but rocky mountains," he said. "You can't dig through that. So how in the world did he divert the water?"
If it had been anyone else, the imperial guard would have wanted to slap him. How did he divert it? They'd just said—he blasted the mountain. Was the old man deaf?
But this was the Right Chancellor, not someone he could offend.
So he repeated himself.
The Left Chancellor's eyes went wide. "What explosive was that? Is it truly that powerful?"
"Yes. I accompanied Lord Fang up the mountain at the time. The explosive was lit, and within seconds, the mountain was leveled." Even now, recounting it, the imperial guard still felt like he was dreaming. It was both miraculous and staggering. If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he would never have believed that anyone could flatten an entire mountain with so little effort, in the blink of an eye.
The Left Chancellor tried to compose himself and asked hoarsely, "How is this explosive made?"
"I don't know," the imperial guard replied.
When the explosive was being made, Fang Zichen hadn't done it in front of them, so the imperial guard naturally had no idea.
Xia Jinghong could barely sit still. His mouth went dry, and he took a sip of tea to steady himself before saying, "Tell me everything—every single detail—about what that boy has done since he went to Hezhou."
The imperial guard recounted it all: building roads, setting up factories, giving the common people work.
"Good, good..." But before the third "good" could leave his mouth, the imperial guard added, "All the factories built were, um, registered under Lord Fang's fulang's name."
Xia Jinghong: "......"
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