Jin Se

Chapter 45

Translator's note: There's just whole bucketfuls of place names that could be made up, or could be historical, or could be abbreviations, or could be the names of two places just stuck together....

In the twenty-ninth year of Great Qian, the former emperor passed away; the new emperor ascended to the throne.

In the history books of future generations, that year would mark the beginning of a long, twelve-year, period of chaos.

Ever since the twentieth year of Great Qian, uprisings had been springing up all across the land. The number of rebels was too many to count. When one place decided to rebel, its neighbors would follow suit it like it was a trendy fad. Anyone who hadn't revolted at least a couple times would be too ashamed to show their face.

Plus, they'd been plagued non-stop by natural disasters and man-made catastrophes. Every day, the court was frantically tearing down the eastern wall to patch the western wall, driven to exhaustion as they did their utmost to save their failing country.

In the twenty-ninth year of Great Qian, war erupted in fourteen provinces in the region of Zhouyue. In places like Penglai and Dongyue, the refugees banded together into an army and took advantage of the chaos to loot, steal, and plunder. Their leader declared himself emperor and established his "Great Country of Dongyue" along the eastern coast. Then they put on a pompous show of writing a national charter and announcing to the world that they were openly rebelling.

The new emperor ordered his armies to vanquish them. The court's armies got halfway there, right on time to experience the largest earthquake that'd ever shaken the land.

Before the antiinsurgency army could even find the rebel troops, thousands of their number had already been squashed to death by crumbling mountains. The earthquake's effects were felt in multiple provinces: Penglai, Dongyue, Qinhe, Huaixi, and Wuchu. The earthquake had even caused Dazhou Mountain to sink a few hundred meters; half its western face had completely collapsed.

The pitiful new emperor of the "Great Country of Dongyue" was in the middle of touring his imperial palace, which was only half-built when it collapsed and nearly crushed him to death. Scared witless and nearly pissing his pants, he didn't bother dismissing his courtly officials before he gathered all the beauties in his harem, collected his riches, and fled. And so, the antiinsurgency army, a few thousand people short and missing all of their provisions, returned to the court.... in victory.

That farce was only the beginning.

No one knew yet that the violent earthquake was the aftereffect of breaking the three great sects' secret treaty.

At the same time, the bandits in the fourteen provinces in Zhouyue, who were no match for the imperial court's armies, took the opportunity to relocate their forces to the place where the "Great Country of Dongyue" had once been, shameless as the dove living in the magpie's nest.

The "civil and military officials" of Dongyue who'd barely worn their official uniforms long enough to warm them up, deeply agreed with the idea that "whoever has milk was their mother," threw all their qualms out the window, and merged with the bandits that'd arrived from Zhouyue.

The top boss of the bandit army, "Black Qilin," was draped in gaudy reds and greens with dregs of food still stuck in his teeth, when he seated himself on the throne like a monkey wearing a hat and became Dongyue's second emperor.