Hot flashes

On the thirtieth day of the twelfth lunar month, the granaries and armories in the capital were also staffed by different people.

As usual, the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of War would take stock of the warehouses on the last day before the New Year. After the inventory was completed, the managers of each warehouse would go home for the New Year, leaving one or two old officials on duty to guard them.

However, this year's "duty" arrangement is different from previous years. Several unfamiliar names have appeared on the duty personnel list for several key warehouses.

Those people had complete resumes and proper procedures. From the Ministry of Personnel to the Ministry of Revenue to the Ministry of War, all the approvals were stamped with bright red official seals.

The Cui family owned a fortified village near the imperial mausoleum, about ten miles outside Beijing. It was built against the mountain and usually only had a few old soldiers guarding the gate and an old, toothless yellow dog.

The fortified village was marked as "abandoned" on the Ministry of War's map. Three years ago, officials from the Ministry of Works conducted an on-site inspection and returned with a report stating that "the walls are crumbling, the houses are collapsed, and it is unusable." After the report was filed, no one went to the fortified village again.

But if someone climbed over the three-foot-high crumbling wall surrounding the fortified village that night and walked an arrow's length inside, they would see a completely different scene—behind the crumbling wall was a newly built alleyway, at the end of which was an iron gate. Behind the iron gate was a drill ground that could accommodate thousands of people. Around the drill ground were rows of newly built barracks, with neatly folded bedding on the beds and hidden swords, spears, and armor under the beds.

The Cui family spent five years and countless sums of money to deceive the imperial court in every inspection, maintaining a private army of three thousand men in this fortified village marked as "abandoned".

This private army's usual identity was "tomb guardians," receiving a salary from the imperial court and performing the duties of tending and cleaning graves. Yet, the knives in their hands were never dulled.

The Lu family's estate was on the other side, where it was more convenient to travel by water. The Lu family's estate outside Tongzhou City covered more than a hundred acres, and the granaries in the estate were piled up to the brim. From the outside, it looked no different from other estates, but only the people in the estate knew that those granaries stored more than just grain.

On the night of the 29th of the twelfth lunar month, the back gate of the manor quietly opened, and one oxcart after another drove out of the back gate, with sacks piled on them. Inside the sacks were weapons and armor that had been moved from the storeroom overnight.

The oxcart moved slowly along the path on the edge of the field, without a lamp or a sound, like a snake wriggling in the dark, silently gliding towards the capital.

The thirtieth day of the twelfth lunar month, Lunar New Year's Eve.

The capital city was more bustling than usual that day.

From early morning, firecrackers were going off non-stop in the streets. The crackling sounds mixed with the laughter of children, the shouts of adults, and the gongs and drums of vendors selling New Year's goods, turning the whole city into a boiling pot of porridge.

New couplets were pasted on the lintels of every household, the red paper and black characters standing out brightly in the hazy winter sunlight.

Some particular families even hung two red lanterns at their door, the lantern tassels swaying in the wind like strings of frozen candied hawthorns.

The capital city was also filled with the festive atmosphere of the Lunar New Year.

The eunuchs were busy pasting "Fu" characters, hanging lanterns, and laying red felt at the entrances of various palaces. The imperial kitchen had started preparing the menu for the New Year's Eve dinner several days ago, and the ingredients alone had been transported in more than a dozen carts.

Xiao Jue did not review any memorials or meet with any ministers today. He changed into a festive crimson casual robe, sat in the East Warm Pavilion for a while, and then got up and went to the Qianqing Palace.

Zhou Heng was even busier than him. In the last few days before the New Year, the Hanlin Academy had a pile of documents that needed to be sealed and archived. He worked overtime for two days in a row, and finally managed to finish approving the last few documents on the morning of New Year's Eve, seal them, stamp them, and hand them over to his subordinates for archiving.

After nightfall, the snow started falling again.

This time it wasn't the fine, salty snowflakes, but real, heavy snow, falling silently from the dark night sky, landing on the glazed tiles, on the white marble railings, and at the base of the palace walls, dimly lit by lanterns.

The red lanterns under the corridor of Qianqing Palace swayed gently in the wind, a thin layer of snow accumulated on the lantern tassels, and occasionally a few pieces were shaken off by the wind, drifting down and melting into the cracks of the blue bricks.