It was a rather cold winter. Luo Xin sat beside the stove, attending to affairs of state, and sighed faintly. "In this cold winter, who knows who else will die?"
Since the Lords King had returned to their states, the first major figure to pass away had been Xiao He, once the foremost of all Great Han's ministers.
That, too, had been a bitterly cold winter. Xiao He had failed to hold on, and Luo Xin had personally visited the Marquis of Zàn's Residence on behalf of Lü Zhi and Liu Ying. Xiao He had been very weak then, but in that final flicker before death, his spirits had seemed quite good.
Upon seeing Luo Xin, he had even smiled and said, "It is my good fortune that the Chancellor could come to see me. I have not encountered much hardship in this life. I followed Emperor Gao when he raised his army, and thanks to Emperor Gao's Mandate of Heaven, in just a few years I rose from humble origins to become a marquis with ten thousand households. I suppose I have no regrets.
"Now that death is near, glory and riches are no more than clouds drifting past my eyes. Only two things still weigh on my mind."
Luo Xin said softly, "You were one of the senior ministers who followed Emperor Gao from the beginning. For senior ministers such as yourselves, the Empress Dowager will grant two-character posthumous names, with either Wen or Wu as the first character. For yours, we have chosen 'Wen for moral virtue and broad learning, Jing for goodness and exemplary adherence to law.' You will be called Marquis Wenjing."
Two characters had been chosen because there simply were not enough single-character names to go around. Toward the end of the Zhou State's