Chapter 39: Memory Fragment 18-405005

  Lu Bu Age 18

  I sat on the roof of the hospital building, looking out over the capital city of Luoyang. Before our arrival here, I had never seen anything even close to the size of the imperial city, nor the Palace of Long Lasting Joy at its heart. Growing up, I’d believed the City of Deer to be a population center. I may as well have compared a termite mount to Mount Tai, or a barbarian yurt to my father Ding Yuan’s fortress.

  Truly, that is how great the disparity between my city near the edge of civilization and this utter metropolis was. The City of Deer could have housed perhaps sixty thousand, with another ten or twenty thousand people scattered through the steppes around it. The capital of Luoyang was a city of millions.

  This urban sprawl of thousands of houses, towering apartment buildings, businesses, offices, forts, hospitals, mills, and depots might look like it was still operating as per usual, but it was a lie. Luoyang was embroiled in a most peculiar siege, one where both forces were within the city already, and neither was willing to admit that they were fighting at all. Obviously, Ding Yuan had explained the politics of all this to me, and I had witnessed some of it myself, and listened to the reports that were given to my adoptive father. None of that made this political nonsense less confusing.

  So the son of heaven, also known as the emperor or the holder of heaven’s mandate. He died, and so a kid or something was named emperor in his place, but he was too easy for the court eunuchs to control. These ten eunuchs were powerful both as a political faction and as cultivators. Though once I had been made to understand exactly what they were and had given up for such power, I held these men in unbelievable amounts of contempt.

  So these ten not-men had taken over the capital and were using the new emperor as a puppet, so a guy who was dead before we got here, He Jon? He Jin? His name was He something. This He guy was a mighty general in the service of the Son of Heaven, and was fighting a sort of political war with the ten eunuchs. He whoever had called upon two old allies who had grown powerful. Dong Zhuo and my adopted father Ding Yuan, but then got himself assassinated before either had arrived.

  So then we got here and found Dong Zhuo slaughtering the ten eunuchs and their forces, which was a good thing. The forces of my father actually assisted in this, and I killed two of the not-men myself. That, however, had not been the end of things, as apparently Dong Zhuo held some pretty lofty ambitions and began trying to set himself up in the same position of controlling the young emperor, just like the eunuchs had, except, you know, he still had a cock.

  So yeah, I found it all very convoluted and confusing, but I understood this much. Ding Yuan and Dong Zhuo were now fighting a war in the streets of Luoyang, but as the empire had only just been wracked by rebellion and disaster, neither was quite willing to let it be common knowledge throughout the other provinces that the capital had fallen into chaos. According to Ding Yuan, it could be the final straw that convinced the populace that the Han dynasty, to which he was very loyal, had lost the mandate of heaven.

  So every night Ding Yuan’s forces would be divided into small skirmish units which would battle across the streets of the city with similar sized groups of warriors serving Dong Zhuo, and every morning the two warlords would meet in the palace to play word games, sip tea and try to outdo each other with displays of wealth and power, all the while they pretending that they weren’t the deadliest of enemies.

  Ding Yuan had me lead members of his elite cavalry, the same warriors that had hunted me across the badlands while I carried cups I wasn’t allowed to spill, and of course, each night that I went out, I and the forces under me would shatter all opposition we came across. In general, Ding Yuan’s forces were the superior cultivators, the better horsemen, and certainly the great archers. The problem was that we were outnumbered, and while I personally could be relied upon to drive off or kill the heroes within Dong Zhuo’s forces, there was always another to take their place, and many of whom were dangerous enough to match or even overcome the rest of Ding Yuan’s Elites.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Looking at the sun above the city, I could tell nightfall was still six or seven Shi away, but a pained cry from below was a reminder that I would probably be late joining the other skirmishers tonight. With an irritable sigh, I climbed to my feet and headed inside the hospital once more.

  Doctors, nurses, servants, and handmaidens, I knocked all aside as I collected my bodyguards and drove into the heart of the building. This particular hospital was deep inside the section of Luoyang where Ding Yuan’s forces held sway, but I still kept my ‘protectors’ on hand as a symbol of status.

  The room I was seeking was warm both in the literal sense and lit that way by red paper lanterns that gave it a pleasant and homely glow. This effect was absolutely shattered by the increasing shrieks, screams, and panted breaths of Lady Yang. A pair of her own handmaidens attempted to bar me from entry as my group surged into the room where she was currently going through labor, but I would not be denied. As much as I would have preferred to be out fighting the enemies of Ding Yuan, this was the birth of my first child, and I fully intended to be there for it.

  Lady Yang wasn’t exactly what you would call a beautiful woman, but she normally held some degree of allure for me, with her sultry smiles and her cloud white hair. None of that was the case now. Not only did the scholarly woman look fat, but her face was red and swollen with tears. It was enough to make me roll my eyes, though even I had enough decorum to make sure she didn’t see me do so.

  They had told me that today was the day, or tonight was anyway. It was earlier than was expected by at least a month, and several learned men and women had warned me to be prepared for a potentially small and sickly baby. I had informed each of the midwives and doctors who had suggested such to me that they were wrong; this was my child and was simply ready for the world earlier than most. The week before, I had even knocked five or six teeth out of the mouth of one doctor who had insisted on pushing the matter after I’d dismissed him.

  The woman I had impregnated let out another series of irritating shrieks. Honestly, this was a natural process, and couldn’t possibly be as painful as she was making out. Lady Yang was a courtly woman, and just weak like that, I guessed. No doubt it was naught compared to the pains of hard training or getting stabbed. With each new scream and each passing Shi, my concern that I had diluted my child with such a weak mother only grew.

  Still, I set myself up in a corner of the room and stood with my arms crossed as the woman bucked and screamed and eventually managed to birth a child that was far bigger than Lady Yang should have been able to contain, let alone squeeze out from between her legs.

  ‘Maybe not so weak after all.’ I thought with a small smile. As I had predicted, my child was far from sickly; rather, my firstborn, my daughter, was already broad and in possession of some muscle. Where her mother had stopped screaming and collapsed into awkward silence, the child took up the role and began shouting the room down.

  I could tell from the lungs on her, and the way she practically tore Yang’s blouse to begin suckling within only a minute or so of her birth, that this girl was indeed my child, the only real clue she had just popped out of Yang was the pure white hair turned pink with blood that was plastered to her scalp.

  Satisfied that my daughter had entered the world without complication or disease, I strode over and placed a hand on the back of my child’s head. The infant was too busy ripping milk from her mother to pay any attention to my touch.

  “Lu Linqui.” I declared. “ She will be my Lu Linqui.” For some reason, this prompted a tired but affectionate smile from Yang. Slightly perplexed by the expression, I gave her a curt nod before turning to the sword cultivator, who was functionally the leader of my bodyguards.

  “Hàorán,” I ordered. “ Protect these two until my daughter is strong enough to be brought to Ding Yuan’s camp near the palace. When she is, deposit these two with the maids and trainers.” Then I made to leave, after all, I had a war to win.

  “Wait!” Called the new mother. Prompting another annoyed sigh from me.

  “Yes?” I asked, half turning to look at the ugly mess that had once been Lady Yang, the scholar.

  “You are just going to leave your daughter in the hands of others? When will I see you again?”

  I looked down upon Yang’s form and offered a little sneer to the white haired woman.

  “Maybe once you lose some weight.” I casually declared and stalked out into the night.

  This is probably Bu at his most casually terrible. He does worse things that this, but there is something about the dismissal of the mother of his child that is just such a dick move hahah

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