"Wei’er," Luo Zhiqiu called Luo Wei with a reprimanding tone. "The Second Highness has come to talk to you about disaster relief."

Luo Wei saluted Long Xuan and said: "The southern floods already need the imperial court's relief?"

Luo Zhiqiu asked Long Xuan to sit down and said to Luo Wei: "You’ve been working regularly in the Ministry of Revenue these days, don't you know how serious the situation in the south is?"

"Lan," Luo Wei didn't have Luo Zhiqiu's compassion for the people. He said to Wei Lan behind him, "Let Xiao Xiao prepare some refreshments." He didn’t want Wei Lan and Long Xuan to be in the same space.

Wei Lan went out. He knew of Luo Wei's concern, so he didn’t return after leaving.

 Long Xuan took a look at Luo Wei's study room. The books on the bookshelves were neatly arranged, but not many in number. There were pens, ink, paper and inkstones on the desk, and some official documents were piled up. As far as Luo Wei's current status is concerned, this study room could be said to be simple.

"Actually, it's better for Your Highness to go to his father." Luo Wei didn't want Long Xuan to stay with him, and said to Luo Zhiqiu: "Isn’t it condescending to have His Highness come here?"

"Did you paint this?" As if he couldn't hear the disgust in Luo Wei's words, Long Xuan pointed to a painting on the left wall and asked Luo Wei.

"Yes," Luo Wei said. The painting was of the water lotus in the pond in his courtyard. It was drawn on a whim, and Wei Lan took it and framed it like a treasure, and hung it on the wall.

"I didn't expect you to paint," Long Xuan said. He really didn't expect Luo Wei to be able to paint.

"What does that have to do with disaster relief?" Luo Wei didn't want to talk about these things with Long Xuan. "How much silver is your Highness planning to allocate?"

"This is the detailed account I calculated," Long Xuan put the two ledgers on the table. He said to Luo Zhiqiu and Luo Wei: "Look at it first, and see if there is anything wrong with it."

Seeing the account books, Luo Wei felt troubled, but now in his own study, there was no excuse to push it further. He had to reign his spirit and read the accounts one by one.

"You go over it first," Luo Zhiqiu saw that Luo Wei was reading seriously, and that he didn't hold a gun when talking to Long Xuan, so he stood up and said, "Excuse me, your Majesty, I will go to the palace."

"You are leaving? I can't finish this all by myself," Luo Wei said.

"I know you’re capable of settling these accounts," Luo Zhiqiu said, "There is a charter I must discuss with His Highness today. This is a life-saving matter that cannot be delayed."

"Can't you ask a few more people to help?" Luo Wei still didn’t give up. Staying alone with Long Xuan, he would never want to.

"Yun Qi," Long Xuan said, "I think my father doesn't want too many people to know how much silver is in the imperial reserve."

“These funds are for disaster relief," Luo Wei said, "It won’t go into the treasury of the Ministry of Revenue."

"What if the disaster relief funds we allocate exceed the amount in the treasury?" Long Xuan said.

"How is this possible?" Luo Wei did not believe it.

"We don't have much money anymore," Long Xuan said truthfully, "Did you not notice when you were in the Ministry of Revenue?"

"Notice what?" asked Luo Wei.

“Floods in the south have been causing trouble since last year,” Long Xuan said, “There was a severe drought in the Northwest. We sent troops to Beiyan, and changed the course of the Tianshui River. The epidemic in Chuzhou has just subsided, and there are reports of another epidemic in Yunzhou. You should be aware of all these disasters, big and small, all over the country. We have spent too much money this year."

Luo Zhiqiu saw that Luo Wei was placated by Long Xuan, so he clasped his fist at Long Xuan and left.

Luo Wei watched his father leave the study. He didn't say anything else, and concentrated on going over the accounts. This year, the struggle between the court and the central government was not as severe as in previous years. One reason for it is that, from south to north, from west to east, natural disasters have afflicted the territory of Great Zhou. At this time, whoever wants to make a fuss in front of Emperor Xing Wu really has no eyes.

Luo Wei and Long Xuan looked through the ledgers together in the study. Luo Zhiqiu was on his way to the palace, and the streets and alleys of Shangdu were still festive for the New Year. At this same moment, the long embankment in the south, which was known to run through thousands of miles, was under heavy rain. The water line rose and, under the double pressure of the relentless flood, the embankment broke. One crack quickly became many, and people watched the embankment shatter like a clay sculpture before their eyes. Before they could feel panic, they were swallowed by the flood rushing in front of them and suffered the weight of the calamity.

Eight southern provinces and sixty-nine prefectures instantly became a swamp. The flood was like a monster, swallowing everything that could be swallowed, consuming countless lives.

People in Shangdu were still oblivious to this. When Luo Zhiqiu walked into Emperor Xing Wu's Changming Palace, the emperor was annoyed by another matter. When he saw Luo Zhiqiu enter the hall, he said, "You should read the urgent report from Xiangzhou in the southeast first."

Luo Zhiqiu hurriedly took the urgent report from Zhao Fu. He glanced at its contents, and barely had time to read the words, which were actually written in human blood.

"Wei Zheng of Xiangzhou is gone," Emperor Xing Wu said in a hoarse voice, "This is a blood letter he wrote to me before he died."

Wei Zheng was the husband of Emperor Xing Wu's half-sister, Princess Ningguo, and the highest administrative officer in Xiangzhou. When Luo Zhiqiu heard Emperor Xing Wu say that Concubine Wei was gone, he was even more frightened, and hurriedly read the bloodied page. "The Yi people have rebelled?" After reading the letter, Luo Zhiqiu also lost his composure. He looked at Emperor Xing Wu, feeling almost as if he was caught in a nightmare. The Yi people in Xiangzhou were the largest group of aliens in the southeast [1]. They have always been peaceful, and a large part of them lived in the rolling mountains of the southeast. How could they suddenly rebel? Wei Zheng has been martyred for the country, isn't the garrison in Xiangzhou finished?

"I think I have always treated these foreign groups kindly." Wei Zheng's blood letter was written in a hurry. It was very short and did not explain why the barbarians rebelled, so Emperor Xing Wu did not know the details.

Luo Zhiqiu’s flustered panic lasted only a moment. After he calmed down, he said to Emperor Xing Wu: "The Yi people are distributed in all the southeast states. Their rebellion in Xiangzhou makes the whole area unstable. Your Majesty, the officials in the southeast will report the reason for the rebellion. The most urgent thing is to send troops. This is a year of disasters for the Great Zhou, and we must not let the southeast fall into chaos again!"

"As you've said, the Yi people are distributed in all of the southeast, so local forces cannot be mobilized," Emperor Xing Wu said: "We must dispatch troops from outside."

"If you don't use the troops from the southeast, I’m afraid distant water cannot quench present thirst [2]." Luo Zhiqiu said: "If the whole southeast is in chaos, how many troops will the imperial court send to quell the chaos caused by the barbarians?”

Both monarch and minister were faced with a dilemma. To use local troops or to dispatch troops from other provinces. They were at a disadvantage at every step.

"Let's call the generals to discuss," Luo Zhiqiu suggested. The military is not his forte. Luo Zhiqiu weighed the pros and cons in his heart to counter the rebellion, but he couldn't reach a decision.

"Deploy troops from outside," Emperor Xing Wu said arbitrarily. He said to Luo Zhiqiu, "It's better to prevent the barbarians from uniting and growing the rebellion, than to lose all the southeast of my Great Zhou."

A rumbling thunder resounded through the sky in Shangdu.

The doors and windows of Luo Wei’s study rattled with the heavy storm.

Long Xuan raised his head to look at Luo Wei, only to see Luo Wei still buried in the ledger, unmoved by the deafening thunder outside. "You were afraid of thunder when you were a child," Long Xuan asked Luo Wei, "Aren’t you afraid now?"

Luo Wei did not look at Long Xuan, and said, "People will change. One can be afraid of thunder when young, but now not be afraid."

“Like how one can be attached before, but not anymore?”

Luo Wei’s hand stopped, and he finally looked up at Long Xuan. With a blank face, he said, “Your Highness is right. Being afraid or liking, it doesn’t matter to me anymore.”

Translator Notes: 

Long notes today! Hurray!

[1] “Yí people” 夷人 is sometimes translated as barbarians. It’s a general term for foreigners / ethnic tribes. I’m not sure if “barbarian” is a very accurate translation, so I’ll sometimes leave it as “Yi people”. Read more here.

[2] Distant water cannot quench present thirst / Slowness can not meet hasty demand. / The aid is too slow in coming to be of any help. Luo Zhiqiu is saying sending troops from the capital or from other provinces is impractical.

Reminder: Chuzhou, Yunzhou, etc. = Chu Province, Yun Province, etc.

Reminder n.2 = Yun Qi is Luo Wei's courtesy name. 

Took me a little while to get through these last 3 paragraphs. They were more like this: “Afraid of thunder when young, now not afraid”, “Like how [you] used to like [me], but now [you] don’t?”, “Don’t care, it doesn't matter if afraid or like”. If I hadn’t included this sudden third-person jump to “one”, there would be (there still is) a certain je ne sais quoi lost in translation. This lack of pronouns is natural in Chinese, but in this passage I feel like it matches Luo Wei’s last sentence, of it not concerning him anymore, very intentionally. Also, “liking” seems to be left open-ended, like if someone were to walk in, they wouldn’t be able to tell if LW and LX were talking about liking the thunder, previous affections between two strangers, or between themselves.

Also, I’ve since fixed it, but in the previous chapter I mistranslated the ministries Luo Wei has been working at. Though only the latter has been mentioned since, the Emperor assigned him to the Ministry of Public Works (工部) and the Ministry of Revenue (户部), both part of the Six Ministries under the Department of State Affairs in imperial China.

That's all for today. 

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎