Border Pass of Yandi (2)
"Look at the Empress. She doesn't need military power to pull off her schemes," Hushiyi said.
Yinyue rolled her eyes when he mentioned the Empress. The Empress came from a high-ranking official family who served the throne for five generations. They produced generals, ministers, but never the Chancellors.
Unlike the Empresses of the previous Emperors, her family had no relation to the four main aristocratic families in Huangcheng. The Emperor wanted to curb the influence of the four families who sent concubines into the inner palaces.
"Her maternal family and Huqi control some military troops," Yinyue said.
What did Hushiyi and she have?
Forget maternal family.
Their maternal grandfather came from a fallen noble house that didn't have a political presence in the imperial court.
So what if their maternal clan ran the Qisha syndicate?
An underworld syndicate can blackmail certain corrupt court officials for political influence. But they can never exert the same level of power and influence as the Empress's maternal family or the four aristocratic families.
Yinyue held the overall military power over the Yandi border troops, including their personal cataphracts.
However, they are too far from the capital of Huangcheng. It took a week's journey to reach Huangcheng from Yandi's regional capital of Yancheng by quick horseback ride without rest.
Forget politics in the imperial court. With the Yandi border military in her own hands, even the court officials showed her respect. Any Grand Prince, with the adequate number of troops to threaten the capital, caused those old farts in the imperial court to ooze fear from their sweaty pores.
"Holding military power is a double-edged sword," Hushiyi warned. "Just because father favours you now, doesn't guarantee he will continue in the future."
Yinyue took a deep breath and exhaled. She didn't need a repeated reminder from him. Nothing last forever. Not even her.
Hushiyi still treated her like an innocent child who knew nothing.
She glanced at her brother and bit her lips, resisting the urge to argue with him. The way he nagged her reminded her of their late mother. He resembled mother so much, especially his eyes — mother's gentle eyes looking back at hers.
"Do I have something on my face?" He asked.
Yinyue drew her eyes away to the cold grey bricks of the fortress and shook her head.
"Our father isn't as nice as he looks," he said.
With a loud sigh, she asked, "You think I don't know how our dear father held onto the throne?"
Suspecting each action and each move by others helped the princes to survive. Their Emperor-father went through what generations of his ancestors experienced to sit on the throne.
The official historians recorded betrayal, scheming, and plotting of imperial members against each other. She read the Dayan Imperial family's history. History repeated itself.
A trusting prince is as good as dead.
Yinyue thought of her previous naivety at trusting others in her first life. Her eyes shifted to the dreary view of the jagged mountain edge lining the large man-made path winding around the uneven, rocky terrain.
In her first life, that winding path led Yinyue to a miserable end in her first life because she trusted the Empress and her previous husband. Trust bred her dependence on others, and the same dependence on others led to her painful death.
After her rebirth into her second life, distrust of others led Yinyue to independence armed with a territory and control of military troops. So what if she paved her own path with endless sleepless nights, pain, blood, and sweat?
Her suffering paid off — she held the power to send others into a miserable death. Not the other way around.
"And do you want that throne?" Hushiyi asked.
"No," she replied without hesitation.
His fingers rubbed the side of his temples. Yinyue never answered the more important questions in detail.
"If you don't want the throne, then why did you even enter the damn battlefields at eleven?"
At ten, the Emperor reassigned her to the military for observation and training. She watched how the generals applied strategy and trickery in battles. Most didn't use her as an ordinary foot soldier but as a covert operative to mess with the enemies.
"There wasn't much of a battle," she replied. "The generals made up shit on the records to look like we all fought hard."
Hushiyi coughed, almost choking at her shameless answer.
On the records, Yinyue served with distinction in the battlefields at eleven.
"You mean…you sat there in the camp? Doing nothing while the others went to fight?" Hushiyi asked with his eyebrows furrowing.
The other princes, including himself, charged into the battlefields at 14 under the senior generals' watchful eyes. If they slacked or made mistakes in the killing fields, the generals would send a written complaint to their Emperor-father.
Yet none complained about Yinyue.
"Can you imagine me waving the sword and jumping into the battlefields at eleven?" She asked.
"Not really." Hushiyi grew curious about what she meant. If she did that, she would not be standing before him, but dead and buried.
"What did you do then?" He asked.
"Infiltrate the enemy camp with a team at night two days before the battle," she replied.
Hushiyi's eyes almost popped out at her answer. He felt faint. The bastard generals used his younger sister's skills as an elite assassin to sneak into the enemy camp. She was only an eleven-year-old then — a child.
Didn't they know of the consequences if the enemy caught her?
"We poisoned all the enemy livestock and grain," she added. "Freed all the enemy's war horses. The escaping horses made a lot of noise, which created confusion in the enemy camp… the rest, you know."
Hushiyi remembered the battle reports. The battle ended before it started. The enemy state sent a diplomatic message to the Dayan imperial court accusing the generals of being despicable enough to use underhanded methods.
In their complaint, they mentioned honouring battle rules, like waging battles on set dates in set places, and no one attacks at night.
Yinyue set a tent on fire to signal the generals on the Dayan side. They sent in the troops on the signal and slaughtered the enemy troops before the declared battle appointment.
The dead couldn't speak about honour. Results mattered, not the process of achieving the result.
Easy for men with physical strength to speak of honour on the battlefields. She had to rely on wits and cunning instead of brute strength.
"And you did the same covert operation on Luoran too?" Hushiyi asked, noticing a faint smile on Yinyue's face.
She looked too smug, making him uneasy.
Her troops swept through the last city, Luoran, less than a week ago. They turned Luoran into a blackened wasteland of desolate ruin with the charred bones of men, women and children who once lived there, scattered around.
Hushiyi heard the account of events, but he wasn't so sure if he wanted to hear the details.
She chuckled at his confused expression. "Wait till the Gaoyang diplomats send in their complaints."
Hushiyi smacked his forehead. "You know Yandi is a border territory, right? We're still vulnerable here, open to attacks."
"See the mountains around," she said, pointing her fingers at the nearby ranges with their peaks high enough to hide among the clouds. "Natural fortress. Plus this man made fortress."
"There's a reason our ancestors built a fortress pass here…," Hushiyi said.
No one builds a great fortress pass in the middle of nowhere for no reason, especially if the surrounding areas were peaceful.
"Not everything is all doom and gloom. Besides, I like it here," she said.
At thirteen, the Emperor granted Yinyue the large mountainous yet barren border territory of Yandi as her fiefdom.
Hushiyi saw it as punishment while their Emperor-father called it a reward.
She saw it as an opportunity.
Frequent border clashes occurred with the nomadic tribes running free on the Xirong Empire's border territory to the west, and the state of Nanmiao on the southwestern border of Yandi.
Too many bandits lurked near Yandi's borders to rob tradings merchants coming in from states on the Eastern and Southeastern border of the Black Mountains, disrupting trade.
With threats on all sides and far from the Capital, little wonder why none of the Grand Princes wanted Yandi as their fiefdom.
Now nearing sixteen, she rose to the rank of Grand Prince because of her victories in fighting small marauding tribes, or fighting banditry in Yandi. Fighting tribes or bandits counted towards the merits needed for the promotion.
She didn't want to enter large-scale battles like her other half-brothers. Yandi's internal troubles excused her from being sent to meet a formidable enemy, like the Xirong Empire.
Her two oldest half brothers died in those battles against the Xirong army at the Dayan borders. Their bodies returned dismembered.
The Shadow Pavilion and their Emperor-father made her who she was - a cunning hell flower who bloomed on the bodies of those she can kill.
Next on her list were the enemies within the Dayan Empire.
"Do you know why our Emperor-father sent us here?" Yinyue asked.