The Demon Lords

Chapter 1000 - 232: Min Clan

The bandit stronghold called Whirlwind Village is gone.

It was said that it had existed in the Mong Mountain region for quite a few years already. In the early days, it was a group of boatmen and porters who, dissatisfied with their oppression, killed their overseer, then gathered on the mountain and set up a fort.

On ordinary days they did do some killing and robbing, but they could also be hired by other caravans with money to act as escorts. You could say they worked both the black and the white paths, and could be considered as keeping to the rules.

After all, any stronghold that doesn’t follow the rules would’ve been wiped out long ago.

Yet one day, the people of this stronghold suddenly saw a group of Yan people enter the mountains, their blood rushed to their heads, and they went to assassinate the Yan Army’s main general.

The ironic thing was, there was no one and no force behind them directing them to do this.

However, the more spontaneous the action, the more it lacks any utilitarian drive, the harder it is for people to accept. It seems to violate some unwritten codes of conduct everyone has taken for granted.

Chu State has its own problems as well. First of all, it is absolutely not a situation where civil officials shun wealth, warriors do not fear death, and scholars and commoners are of one body and one mind. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be the current Yan State lording over the north and eyeing the south like a tiger, but Chu pushing northward, expanding and shaking the world with its might.

As for some specific matters, such as whether the old, weak, women and children in the stronghold had any survivors, or whether there might be a lucky child who hid away and would someday come seeking him for revenge—those storylines, Lord Zheng no longer cares about.

He didn’t even ask the name of that stronghold chief. Jin Shuke found the man some wine, fed it to him, then sent him on his way. Zheng Fan didn’t spare him a second glance.

One can only say that some people, some events, are destined to be nothing more than scenery in this lifetime.

He has actually only been awake in this world for a few years, but he has indeed seen all sorts of scenery.

Sometimes, Zheng Fan even feels lost—lost as to whether this world is, to him, truly real, or whether he himself is nothing more than a hurried passerby.

This is the sort of state of mind that belongs to poets: time and again they borrow it to vent their feelings, to sing and thus express their will.

Ji Chengjue once said that so‑called poets merely write out that cloying, awkward feeling everyone has in their hearts. Why is it only they write it, while others do not?

Because most people in this world are busy scrambling for food and clothing, trapped by worldly affairs, and don’t have as much free time as those poets.

Lord Zheng enjoys this pretentious sort of feeling,

when he sees a person,

when he encounters some matter,

then sits on horseback, swaying this way and that, that way and this;

mulling it over, not for any purpose, just for fun.

Perhaps this is the true meaning of life: one needs busyness to make it feel substantial, and also needs pretentiousness to cultivate one’s tastes.

The assassination at the racecourse could be considered wrapped up.

When it comes to "silencing witnesses," the Fan Family and the people on that chain of interest will be even more decisive than Zheng Fan.

Zheng Fan only needs to lead his men onward. The traces of where they have gone and what they have done—there will be people who do their utmost to dust them away, leaving everything clean.

Once upon a time, Beifeng Prefecture was also full of military strongmen and forts everywhere; and the Mong Mountain region could be said to surpass even the Beifeng Prefecture of those days.

After all, Chu State implements a great‑nobility system. If you say that rule by great clans still requires at least a bit of public face, then the nobles’ power of life and death within their own fiefs is entirely proper and legal—they are orthodox, aboveboard self-made emperors.

The strengthening of local power will inevitably lead to the weakening of imperial authority in those places. These are two forces that rise and fall inversely; there can never be a win‑win, coexistent state.

That is why there appears this strange situation: at Town South Pass, great armies are massed to block the Yan Army from advancing south, while here in Mong Mountain, Lord Zheng can ride lightly into Chu and be warmly welcomed.

Xiayong is a county town, and can be considered the last piece of territory within the Mong Mountain range. Once past Xiayong, one is truly leaving the rugged mountains behind, and just barely entering what counts as Chu’s real interior.

Xiayong does not belong to the Fan Family, because the Fan Family are a slave clan of the Qu Clan, engaged in commerce and profit on their behalf. The Fan Family is not qualified to own a fief.

But Xiayong also belongs to the Fan Family, because this family that bases itself on the way of merchants has long since extended its tentacles into every aspect of Xiayong, while at the same time radiating influence across the whole Mong Mountain region.

The smoothness of Lord Zheng’s passage into Chu can be regarded as the Fan Family seizing the opportunity to display their clan’s abilities to Lord Zheng, to demonstrate the Fan Family’s potential.

Ji Chengjue has extensive ties with the Fan Family, and those ties make Zheng Fan faintly feel that it seems to surpass a normal smuggling partnership.

But,

the people

were introduced by Ji Chengjue,

while the deal

has to be negotiated by Lord Zheng himself.

Ji Chengjue is only acting as a middleman. First, Ji Chengjue still has to squat in Yanjing; he cannot leave Yanjing, at least he cannot leave Tiancheng Prefecture, because there have always been rumors that the Yan Emperor’s health is poor.

Second, matters of commerce are often tangled and complex, but once they fall under the domain of blades and troops, they can often become much more straightforward.

Zheng Fan’s troop did not enter the heart of Xiayong, but stopped at a manor by the mountains on the outskirts of Xiayong. This was one of the Fan Family’s outer residences—one could call it a summer retreat; it was very quiet.

Xue Three was already waiting here as well.

When they met, Xue Three directly knelt down:

"I beg my lord to punish me!"

As his lord’s "eyes" and "ears", he had seemed to be running about busily, yet failed to help his lord avoid that assassination. This was Xue Three’s dereliction of duty.

Every demon king actually has his own jurisdiction, as well as his own tasks and responsibilities.

So, when the arrows rained down that night, Siniang’s first reaction was to curse that Xue Three was a good‑for‑nothing!