Chapter 380 — Alliance
Purple Streets of Chang'an · Page 1 of 4
Song Yan sighed and gestured toward the round-backed chair below.
Jiang Yi hesitated a moment, then sat down respectfully.
Only then did Song Yan say mildly, "You were doing well in the Divine Machine Battalion, and you had just been promoted to platoon commander — why the sudden transfer to the Five Wards Command? And don't try to fob me off with talk of how hard life is in the Divine Machine Battalion. I have asked your superior at the Five Wards Command. He tells me you still rise at the hour of Yin every day and run two laps around the moat before you go to your office. That is not the conduct of a man who fears hardship."
Jiang Yi lowered his eyes and said nothing for a long while, but his hand slowly clenched into a fist.
Ma Youming was angered by his hemming and hawing. He counted Jiang Yi a friend who would die for him, and Jiang Yi treated him like a stranger on the road. In a fury he kicked the leg of Jiang Yi's chair. "Other people think that because you took third place at the Autumn Hunt you can sit as an equal with the Heir. That is only because the Heir is modest and does not hold such things against you. Do not take good intentions for a donkey's liver and lungs — do not be shameless when you are shown kindness!"
Jiang Yi smiled bitterly. "Brother Ma, if I meant to hide from the Heir, I would not have spent these days trailing after him, always hoping for a chance to meet him by accident. I simply do not know how to begin..."
Ma Youming thought of what Song Yan had said earlier, about Jiang Yi's hair being soaking wet, and the truth came to him in a flash.
So Song Yan had known all along that Jiang Yi was following him — that was why he had sent Ma Youming to fetch the man.
Song Yan smiled faintly.
Ma Youming said gravely, "There is no one else here. Neither the Heir nor I treat you as an outsider. What is it you cannot say?"
Jiang Yi's expression turned more bitter still.
Suddenly he seized the wine pot he had just used to pour for Song Yan, put it to his lips, and gulped the wine down.
Ma Youming could not help glancing at Song Yan.
He saw that Song Yan was watching Jiang Yi with a broad and genial smile.
Something stirred in Ma Youming's heart.
Song Yan's mind was truly unshakable.
With a hole that size gaping open, the man could still sit there unmoved as a mountain.
If that day truly came, he would surely go to his death with the same dignity.
At the thought, Ma Youming's blood ran hot.
What man does not die once? It is only a question of whether one's death weighs as heavy as Mount Tai or as light as a goose feather.
To walk a stretch of road alongside a man like Song Yan — that would be no disgrace to the name he bore.
It was as though the clouds had been swept from the whole sky. The fear and unease that had pressed upon his heart these past days scattered in the sunlight, and his heart grew bright with them.
Song Yan needed no mention. He himself was, after all, one of the youngest officers in the court, and with Jiang Yi beside him — a fellow who could seize third place at the Autumn Hunt — he refused to believe they could not carve out a road to survival.
If they truly met their Maicheng, then that was fate, was fortune.
Full of mettle, he found himself straightening in his seat without realizing it.
Meanwhile Jiang Yi, having downed more than half a pot of the Chen family's brew — soft on the way down, brutal in its afterkick — finally found the courage to speak. "On the sixth of the sixth month last year I went to air Lord Wang's books for him, and by chance came upon a military treatise of Prince Muwu. I could not put it down, and fearing that the Wang household's people would see me and think it ill-mannered, I hid up on the beam of the study to read. Halfway through, Lord Wang came in with a middle-aged scholar in blue robes, and I did not dare stir at all. But they dismissed the servants and posted men around the study, and began to talk in low voices.