The Leaders of Four Armies gathered on the open ground before the camp, making their final deployment before battle. After they finished speaking, Yan Xiaohan called a soldier and distributed a bowl of hot wine to each person, beginning with: “This wine is to fortify you. May Heaven bless our army, and may we achieve a great victory.”
The generals each raised their bowls, creating a crisp sound in the air as they shouted in unison: “Heaven bless our army, may our flags rise victorious!”
Others returned to their troops, but Yan Xiaohan was slightly slower. Fu Shen seemed to sense his intention and raised an eyebrow with a smile: “Do you have something you want to tell me privately?”
His eye corners were flushed with wine, and his smile was softer than his usually sharp features. Yan Xiaohan knew the time and place were inappropriate, but he couldn’t help but be moved.
He most didn’t want to see Fu Shen go to battle, yet he had to admit this was also the most admirable sight of him.
“On New Year’s Eve, one should say auspicious words,” Yan Xiaohan raised his cup against the vast winter wind: “May our country be peaceful and the world prosperous.”
Fu Shen paused briefly, then lowered his eyes, seemingly sighing or perhaps smiling.
He raised his cup in return, his voice not loud, but clear in the wind, with each word distinctly heard by Yan Xiaohan.
“May we stay together forever, growing old side by side.”
After speaking, he drank the remaining wine and rode his horse into the boundless night.
Yan Xiaohan once asked Fu Shen before the Golden Platform Assembly what he really wanted to do. Did he want to be crowned and become an enlightened monarch himself, or to grasp power, control the court, and use the emperor to command the feudal lords?
Fu Shen’s answer was extremely brief, just four words, but also shocking.
“The world’s joint governance.”
He had long ceased to believe in wise rulers and had no intention of replacing them.
In the dark, it seemed some law constrained generations of heroes, with rise and fall having a predetermined fate. Fu Shen vaguely perceived this “heavenly way” but could not articulate it. One day, while browsing the “Xuemei Hermitage Collection,” a sentence broke through his confusion, and his hazy thoughts finally crystallized –
