The moon hung alone in the sky. The snow had stopped accumulating, but on cloudless nights the cold still bit. In the room there was a brazier, and to warm him up, some ginger tea had been brought by the servant—
Shuiren.
—and handed to him.
Jinshi
sat on his bed and gulped down the tea, which had gone slightly lukewarm.
How long would she keep treating him like a child?
It was full of honey. The last time he'd thrown a tantrum claiming the ginger was too spicy had been when he was seven.
Honestly, what he wanted was something to ward off drowsiness, but he realized that having Shuiren deliver this was her own form of silent pressure. She had probably figured out that he hadn't been sleeping properly lately. The wet nurse who had known him since childhood could see right through any of his attempts at deception.
Still, as long as there were things that needed doing, all he could do was keep working. That was the reality of his situation.
"What a bother."
Those who stand at the top must bear responsibility in exchange for their power.
It would be so much easier to cast off all these troublesome burdens and sink into becoming a dull, witless creature.
Eat whatever he wanted, sleep whenever he pleased, do whatever he wished.
And if there were something lovely to admire, all the better.
He sighed, thinking this, knowing full well it could never be.
Nothing in this world ever went the way one wanted.
He knew that becoming a dull creature would make life easier, and yet there he was, refusing to become one.
Jinshi took a sheet of paper from the locked drawer as the lamplight flickered. He unfolded the creased, wrinkled paper.
Loulan.
It was something left behind by the daughter of the leader of the children's clan.
"Once someone has died, please let them go."
She had made that promise with Jinshi, and she had handed this to him as thanks in return.
Just how much of it had been written in earnest? Perhaps Loulan, even after disappearing, intended to keep pulling the strings behind the scenes.
The contents of the letter were enough to make one think exactly that.
"Locust Plagues?"
A natural disaster that could topple an entire nation. Loulan had been helping with research on the matter. Unfortunately, the man who had been conducting said research had already been reduced to a shell of his former self — a side effect of the resurrection drug.
What was drawn on the paper was a map. Arrows marked upon it depicted the movement of winds flowing from the west.
The former imperial physician, now a vacant invalid, had once studied abroad in the west. Because he knew the geography of that region so well, his ideas were wildly unconventional — things Jinshi himself would never have conceived.
Locust plagues most often began when locusts rode the winds blowing from the west. They traveled hundreds of li, sometimes over a thousand li, from distant lands. Upon arriving, the locusts bred in this country's soil, first triggering a small-scale infestation. If left unchecked, that small infestation would snowball into far worse devastation the following year.
This aligned precisely with what the apothecary's daughter —
Maomao
— had pointed out to Jinshi. Countermeasures were already underway this year: increased taxes on regions unlikely to suffer infestations, a temporary ban on sparrow hunting, the dissemination of pesticide-making techniques to farming villages, and more.
Whether a locust plague would actually occur or not was uncertain. But even if it didn't, the measures would still serve to increase crop yields. That was the reasoning Jinshi had settled on.
As for Maomao, she didn't seem to have any further suggestions either. Jinshi, for his part, did not consider this a bad approach.
However, there was one more troubling passage in Loulan's notes.
It addressed the scenario in which locusts arrived not from another region, but from another country entirely.
Other nations suffered locust plagues too.
And throughout history, wars born from famine were not unheard of.
Jinshi pulled out another sheet of paper. It was an illustration he had drawn last year depicting what the swarming locusts looked like.
He compared it with Loulan's material.
Alongside the map, several species of locusts were illustrated.
They indicated which varieties of locusts were prevalent in which regions.
"..."
He found himself running his hand through his hair without thinking.
Every possibility that came to mind was worse than the last.
How wonderful it would be if all of this turned out to be wrong.
How wonderful it would be if the former physician's research was simply immature, if this was all nothing more than armchair theorizing.
Last year's massive locust outbreak — which region's locusts had they most resembled...
Li
A nation to their northwest. Possessed of vast granary regions and abundant forest resources,
the North Asia Federation,
as Jinshi and his circle called it.
The reason foreign tribes so frequently meddled in this country's affairs — it all traced back to this North Asian region.
As far as relations between nations went, one could hardly say they were on good terms.
The last major war with this nation had taken place during the reign of the Emperor two generations past. That war brought down the Emperor before the late one, after which the late Emperor ascended the throne.
Records indicated that in the year the war began, both their own country and the North Asia Federation had suffered locust plagues.
When people grew destitute, they had no choice but to seize what they could from others. This in turn invited further famine, resulting in tens of thousands of starvation deaths. Though those were merely the recorded figures — the actual toll was said to have been several times higher.
This imprecision was due in part to the unclear distinction between those who starved and those killed in battle, and in part to the far greater political corruption of that era compared to the present.
In this day and age, the former Empress Dowager — the one they called the Empress Regnant — had become a byword for wicked women. Yet one could only marvel at the boldness with which she had supported the late Emperor who succeeded her, cutting away the festering rot of corruption without mercy.
What a joke.
When he considered that the only reason his lord was now regarded as a wise and virtuous ruler was that he was drawing on the legacy the Empress Regnant had left behind, and that there happened to be a villain named Koushou to cast as the antagonist, he could see all too clearly how thoroughly he was being made to dance in the palm of someone's hand.
Quite the parting gift.
Hoping this worry was unfounded, Jinshi closed the drawer and locked it.
As long as nothing happened, that would be enough. If nothing came of it, he would be satisfied.
But he could not afford to be complacent and invite the worst-case scenario.
He did not relish war, but there were times when it could not be avoided.
"That was a parting gift too, wasn't it."
He had spoken the words without thinking.
Jinshi recalled the fortress that had served as the stronghold of Koushou's clan. Buried under snow by an avalanche, beneath it lay a vast cache of gunpowder and
fire rockets,
still sleeping.
The fire rockets, which had been refined through countless improvements, were superior to the ones currently in the military's possession. Unfortunately, the blueprints had been destroyed in a fire, but as long as the actual weapons existed, they could be redrawn.
Plans were underway to make use of the fortress as-is and begin manufacturing gunpowder. However, the previous production process had carried a high risk of the gunpowder catching fire, and that point had been taken into consideration.
As for the fire rockets themselves, their manufacturing had been relocated. Given that they had been counting on the forest resources of Kihoku Province, losing access to them required considerable ingenuity. Iron smelting required not only raw materials but fuel as well.
A headache.
There were other things to do as well.
I needed to review the matters that would likely come up at tomorrow's morning court.
The high-ranking officials had been behaving quietly for a while after the incident with the Consort's family, but it was hard to say that all the rot had been wrung out.
I wouldn't call it cutting off a lizard's tail, but what had been excised in that incident was almost exclusively the Consort's family. There were surely still plenty of officials with ties to them.
How long would they stay obedient? It would be a relief if they just remained quiet indefinitely.
Conversely, those who had started raising their voices were either people with no connection to the Consort's family, or people who were exceptionally bold.
Among them was one person who caught his attention.
In terms of position, this was someone who had made even Shisho look like small fry—that impression was strong. But with those who had been above them now gone, this person's presence had surged all at once.
Though they were no longer a eunuch, the work still fell to Jinshi to handle, essentially.
Currently, there were two high-ranking consorts in the rear palace. One was Consort Rifa—a distant relative of the current emperor and Jinshi, who had just given birth to her second child.
The child was a boy, but since the favored consort Gyokuyou had already been elevated to Empress and her son had been named Crown Prince…
Unless some misfortune befell Empress Gyokuyou, the chances of Rifa becoming the primary wife were slim—and the emperor intended to keep it that way.
Luomen, who had returned as a court physician, had warned that closer blood ties could lead to frail children. Jinshi had already been aware of this.
At the same time.
Empress Gyokuyou hailed from the west—from Junsei Province. Should future disputes arise with neighboring countries, that region would become strategically important.
He had once thought it too early to settle the matter of the empress, but hearing the reasoning laid out this way, he could only accept it.
Consort Rifa was clever. She understood all of this perfectly well.
But as for the other consort…
Risu.
A consort, sixteen by reckoning this year—old enough to be treated as an adult, but…
Jinshi let out a long breath.
He knew the current emperor's taste in women. He favored those who were truly feminine and voluptuous. Whether this was his original preference or arose from revulsion toward the previous emperor's peculiar tastes, he couldn't say.
But he wished they would remember that a consort was not merely a title—it was a role that simultaneously served as political balancing.
To hope for at least a pretense of smooth relations—would that be a sentiment so utterly devoid of delicacy that only a man could voice it?
For the current Emperor, there was another reason beyond personal preference.
The former senior consort, Ada, had doted on Risu like her own daughter.
The Emperor, too, during his Crown Prince days, had apparently held tea gatherings with Risu and Ada—just the three of them—on several occasions.
A pseudo-family. That was what he had been building.
So he preferred plump women?
That, too, sounded like a kind of justification.
Ada had been slender even before she lost the ability to bear children.
Yet the Emperor, during his time as Crown Prince, had never taken a consort other than Ada.
What did that mean?
Jinshi had only noticed this in the past few years,
but Gaoshun had realized it quite some time ago.
Jinshi, who hadn't understood, ended up playing the part of Eunuch Jinshi.
To avoid being placed on the throne as the next Emperor, he had volunteered to take on the task of finding a wife for his brother.
Looking back now, he thought it was a terribly cruel thing he had done.
He let out a long breath and closed the morning court documents.
He climbed into bed and extinguished the lamp.
As he settled in to sleep, he thought about how he had been slacking on his pre-bed training lately.
Tomorrow, he would inform the Emperor about this matter.
If he at least showed the semblance of a procession, the officials who were slowly building up their influence might settle down.
The opposite could happen as well, but if so, there was nothing to be done about it.
A man who was a lesser counterpart to Shishou—
that was Risu's father, Uryuu.