Liu Acheng saw nothing particularly praiseworthy about the emergency operation prompted by this sudden incident.
He had merely exploited an information gap to pick up some reputation through an unconventional route. In reality, these Jiangxi Qihuo had never been going to cause any major upheaval. They simply wanted to head north and had blundered onto Mount Liuhe.
If sending them away early with radishes and water spinach had accomplished anything concrete, it was preserving the court's dignity, particularly that of Sima Yu and the other regents, and preventing unrest in the capital.
That was all.
But the august gentlemen at court apparently thought otherwise, as did the hundred-odd great households of Jiankang, and so did the Empress Dowager. By comparison, nobody cared anymore what Gao Jian, who had received his general's title several years early, or Liu Shuang, who had been promoted on the spot beyond the normal rules to a proper departmental Gentleman of the Secretariat, thought about it.
After dawn that day, Liu Cheng had not even returned to the Department of State Affairs. Thinking of his family, he had landed at Jiangcheng and gone straight home.
Thus, a mere two days later, as Xie Shang arrived in the city out of breath, the Langya Interior Minister who had rendered such extraordinary service received another summons, ordering him back into the city early the next morning.
This time, it was not Sima Yu who would see him-the Empress Dowager who governed from behind a curtain and the Young Emperor were formally summoning the great contributor who had dissolved an enormous calamity before it could take shape.
And another great contributor, Southern Yuzhou Governor Xie Shang, who had spared no effort in coming downstream to defend the Empress Dowager and His Majesty.
Of course, there were others too: the