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Duke Sheng's Residence

Beyond the five-bay gatehouse stood a stretch of parapet built of gray brick. Autumn had arrived, turning the ivy climbing over it a deep, inky green. Within the walls, layers of trees and gardens stretched into the distance beneath a veil of mist.

Duke Sheng, now past sixty, was in a small garden full of chrysanthemums, patiently pruning their leaves and branches.

"The autumn wind returns, and a hundred flowers wither. Only the chrysanthemums bloom again." Duke Sheng studied the flowers in bloom with a faint sigh of feeling. After a long while, he gave a short chuckle.

"Everyone thinks I'm a sly old fox, but I'm really not. I've just been lucky."

Duke Sheng had followed Zheng Taizu on campaigns far and wide since he was thirteen. He had fought countless battles, great and small, earning illustrious military honors. He had even saved Taizu's life, suffering twenty-seven wounds in the process.

In the third year of Qingwu, after Great Zheng's founding, he had resigned from office due to illness. Others thought he had wisely withdrawn from the raging current, but his old wounds really had flared up. Had he not encountered a mysterious Daoist who gave him medicinal pills, he would nearly have died of his illness. Zheng Taizu had been so alarmed that he visited him in person and conferred the title of Duke Sheng on him.

Illness receded as slowly as silk being drawn from a cocoon, and Duke Sheng had begun his "retirement" early, enjoying the pleasures of family life.

Thus, when the emperor ascended the throne and suppressed the military officers, Duke Sheng had not only escaped the repercussions but had even been rewarded as an exemplary figure. The storms of all these years left him secretly thankful.

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