The Emperor Reigns Them All

Chapter 371 One Thousand Coins

The middle-aged man began to drink wine on his own. Cripple Xu sat down before the previous table and glanced at the young man who was staring at the wine and swallowing saliva. He said lightly, “Little b*stard, didn’t you say that you were going to join the army, fight on the battlefield, and gain military exploits? But why were you scared back before you arrived at Taiyuan?”

“Old cripple, since you spoke of this, you should give me a bowl of wine, and I’ll tell you the battle situation in Taiyuan!” In high spirits, the burly young man winked and said, “Do you know that there is a great change in the battle situation in Taiyuan?”

Cripple Xu took out his tobacco bag and began to roll tobacco leaves for the tobacco pipe. Hearing this, he looked up at the young man. He sneered and said impatiently, “If you want to say it, just say it. If you don’t, just shut up. Do you want me to beg you?”

What he meant was he had seen the world, so he wouldn’t be surprised by his words.

The young man had no choice but to throw up his hands. “I know that you were a warrior when you were young and that you were a leader of a hundred-people army of the border army. However, now, you are a cripple!”

Cripple Xu glared at the young man coldly. “Even though I’m a cripple, I can also beat you with only one hand!”

The young man curled his lips, in a look of disbelief. He didn’t continue this topic but turned to talk about what he saw and heard in Taiyuan. “I went to Taiyuan was to join Prince An’s army, fight on the battlefield with the Imperial Army, and make contributions. Prince An’s troops defeated Hedong previously, and Thirteen Grand Guardians were totally a bunch of good-for-nothings for Prince An. Prince An’s troops were going to reach the city wall of Taiyuan, and Li Keyong was going to die. I needed to catch up with the last battle anyway. If I missed this, I was afraid I would never have such a chance in my life again.”

The young man had one leg up on the bench, his saliva spattering. Cripple Xu lit and smoked the tobacco leaves. The latter looked as usual, with no impatience in his face.

The young man in front of him was philistine and idle, and he always did the dirty work in daily life. He never did his duty on farming, but he wasn’t useless.

This guy was burly and good at fighting, so the average person couldn’t fight him more than two rounds. Moreover, he dared to leave home alone to the battlefield and to join the Imperial Army when more than 100,000 troops surrounded Taiyuan. His courage was enough to show that he was unusual.

From a private to a leader in the border army, Cripple Xu had fought many bloody battles and accumulated many military exploits. He was experienced and insightful.

He knew that the people like this young man were dregs of society and would be cast aside by the others in peaceful times. But in turbulent times, if they were lucky, they would probably make an achievement.

This was what it called times created heroes.

The young man continued, “Fortunately, I was a little late. If I really joined Prince An’s army, I’m afraid that I will be beheaded these two days. Can you imagine that the offensive and defensive of Taiyuan have been completely changed?”

At this point, he felt a lingering fear. Maybe, he thought of something horrible. His lips were dry and he drank half a bowl of water in one gulp.

Cripple Xu was a little stunned. “The offensive and defensive have been changed? Prince An is powerful, and he is invincible all the way north. Even Li Cunxiao couldn’t defeat him, so who else can resist him in the whole Hedong? How is that possible?”

As a veteran and a previous junior colonel, Cripple Xu paid attention to the Hedong Army all the time, so he was very surprised at this moment.

“If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believed it!” The young man nodded heavily.

Cripple Xu glanced at the young man. “Are you fooling me with a lie because you were scared back before arriving at Taiyuan?”

“Of course not!” the young man said righteously. He moved closer to Cripple Xu. He glanced at the middle-aged next to him and saw him just drinking wine and eating food as if he had paid no attention to their conversation at all. Then, he continued, “I heard, some time ago, Prince An...”

The young man pointed to the sky with fear in his eyes. He said in a trembling voice, “He was punished by heaven and has disappeared since then!”

“What?!” Cripple Xu was so surprised that he forgot to smoke, even though the cigarette holder was holding in front of him.

The young man lowered his voice and said, “Some time ago, a large number of great cultivators gathered in Taiyuan, and all of them could fly in the sky and get into the ground! My goodness, it isn’t easy to see them in daily life. But there were dozens of them this time! Many people saw Prince An kill many great cultivators! Some people said that God couldn’t stand it and took him away because he killed many people and disturbed the order of heaven and earth!”

Cripple Xu’s face darkened. “Nonsense!”

“Don’t you believe it?” The young man scratched his head anxiously and didn’t know how to persuade Cripple Xu. Wit came to his mind suddenly, and then, he said word by word, “Have you forgotten how old Prince An died?”

Cripple Xu got stunned.

The saying of old Prince An, Li Xian’s death was different in the official statement and the folk speech. In the official statement, he died on the battlefield, while there were many folk versions. Some said that he was murdered by treacherous ministers, and some said that he died from the emperor’s suspicion. But there was another popular version.

Li Xian fought on the battlefield all his lifetime, spared no efforts to assist the Tang Empire, and killed many people. The luck of the Tang Empire no longer existed, and the Tang Empire was doomed to collapse. But Li Xian went against heaven and killed many people, so heaven couldn’t tolerate him anymore.

In the great cultivators’ view, heaven referred to the Taoist Immortal Court, while in the eyes of ordinary people, it referred to God, the immoral in heaven.

Cripple Xu kept smoking silently. He was completely submerged in the white smoke. No one could see his expression clearly.

The young man coughed twice as he was choked and waved the smoke before him away. Then, he glanced at the middle-aged man next to him again.

He was still drinking at the same pace, as if he didn’t notice that they were talking about “the state’s affairs and the secret of heaven and earth” all that time.

The young man disdained him. This guy didn’t care about the current situation and the world’s affairs. Even though he was knowledgeable and elegant, he was just a useless bookworm and couldn’t achieve great things.

When the young man spoke again, his voice grew louder and stronger. He spoke in high spirits, looking like he had a sense of superiority while looking down at this “weak” middle-aged man.

It was as if he was talking about his own imperial accomplishments instead of the state’s affairs.

The young man sighed deliberately. “Without Prince An, their commander, the Pinglu Army lost morale, even though they were powerful. The Hedong Army kept attacking fiercely these days. The Pinglu Army was defeated successively and had heavy casualties, so they could only retreat to their barracks. While I left Taiyuan, the Hedong Army was attacking the barracks of the Pinglu Army fiercely. It looked like the Pinglu Army couldn’t hold out for two days. Once the Pinglu Army was completely defeated in Hedong, how many of the 100,000 soldiers could survive?”

The young man paused.

Then, he said with a lingering fear, “If I had arrived a few days earlier and joined the Pinglu Army, I was dead now. Alas, I feel sorry for Prince An. He killed eunuchs and suppressed Huang Chao in the past. Inheriting his father’s ambition, he became the backbone of the Tang Empire, helped the country, and saved people from danger. But unexpectedly, the originally good situation turned straight down. Dying before achieving triumph makes heroes cry! Alas, both Prince An and his father are heroes of two generations and heaven and earth. It’s a pity that they couldn’t fight against ‘the will of heaven’!”

Sputtering, the young man spoke in cadence, full of emotion, in grief and anger.

After saying that, the young man was pleased and thought he was brilliant today. It seemed that the miscellaneous books he read these years weren’t in vain.

However, to his disappointment, Cripple Xu, behind the white smoke, had no reaction. Even his expression was hidden by the smoke. People couldn’t see anything unusual. Only his eyes were deep and obscure.

If the young man didn’t see it wrong, those old, dry eyes seemed filled with pain.

The young man didn’t understand Cripple Xu’s pain, nor did he pay attention to it. He just thought that he saw it wrong. “Old cripple, isn’t the news I brought back worth a bowl of wine?”

Cripple Xu said indifferently, “Do it yourself.”

The young man was overjoyed. He immediately got up and ran into the room quickly. A moment later, he came out with a small jar of wine. It was the cheapest kind of wine, not strong enough and not good enough, looking a little cloudy.

The young man poured out the wine and took a deep smell of it. He was intoxicated.

It was good enough for him to drink wine, and he wasn’t qualified to be picky. He also wouldn’t choose the good wine because it wasn’t easy for Cripple Xu to make a living by selling wine. It was already shameless to drink wine without paying money, so it would be heartless to drink good wine.

While the young man was still intoxicated, Cripple Xu already took the wine bowl and poured all the wine into his mouth. Then, he put down the bowl heavily, making the table shake.

His movements were sharp and agile, like floating clouds and flowing water. He just drank a bowl of wine but showed the momentum of killing enemies on the battlefield!

The young man looked at the old cripple in shock, as if he had seen a brave general fighting a bloody battle on the battlefield with the head of the barbarians’ chief in his hand.

“Good! One more bowl of wine!” When the young man brought back his mind, he could not help shouting his praise, and he poured another bowl of wine for the old cripple.

This was one of the reasons why he liked to stay with Cripple Xu. Although this old man had a strange temper and was stingy with money, the young man was enchanted with the heroic spirits he showed occasionally.

Cripple Xu didn’t look at the wine bowl again and began to smoke. “One bowl of wine is enough. Are you going to pay for another one?”

The young man was embarrassed, but he didn’t care. He quickly poured himself a bowl of wine. After he smelled it for a while, he raised his head and drank it. Then, he wiped his mouth and said happily, “Delicious!”

At this moment, the middle-aged man got up and came over. He said to Cripple Xu with a warm smile, “The check, old man.”

Cripple Xu glanced at the table over there. The food was eaten up. He didn’t know how much wine he had drunk, but he didn’t intend to figure it out. “One thousand coins.”

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