On the twenty-third day of the ninth month, in White Horse City, Eastern Commandery, two days had passed since a brief rain. The air was mild, neither too damp nor too dry.
Just after noon, Dou Bing, the commandery's commandant, received an invitation from Li Tingwen, its resident Black Sash. He said the chrysanthemums in his rear residence were in full bloom and perfect for viewing, so he had arranged an impromptu banquet and invited Commandant Dou to admire the flowers over drinks.
Dou Bing had not wanted to go. As the deputy official responsible for military affairs in the commandery, he had distinctly sensed unrest among the commandery troops these past few days. From the all-important White Horse Ford to the city defenses, the atmosphere had grown tense.
As a scion of a great Guanlong clan, Dou Bing naturally knew why... At the beginning of the month, a rebel army hundreds of thousands strong had taken Dengzhou, then run rampant, seizing cities and territory. As the news traveled along the Great River and the Ji River, it was bound to send violent shock waves through Eastern Commandery, which had likewise once belonged to Eastern Qi.
But what could one say?
Life had not begun growing harder by the day only recently. Compared with the impact and upheaval of the million-man march in the spring's Third Dongyi Campaign and the Sage's sudden southern tour in summer, this news had long been within most people's expectations.
Perhaps precisely for that reason, after some hesitation, Dou Bing accepted his wife's advice and decided to suspend his inspection of White Horse Ford and visit the Li Residence instead. After all, his first wife was right: Eastern Commandery's geographical position essentially guaranteed that it would take orders from the Eastern Capital. With Imperial Uncle