Chapter Three: The Last Meal Before Execution

Liu Chengzong’s barracks were cave dwellings. From the outside, they resembled a siheyuan, a traditional courtyard house, only much larger and sunken into the earth.

Yuhe Fort was a rare stretch of flat land in the area, but sorely lacking in grain, so sunken cave dwellings were chosen for construction from the start. First, a large square pit would be dug, and then arched caves would be hollowed out on several sides of the pit, the number on each wall depending on the pit’s size.

Take their servants’ compound, for example: two sides of the pit were lined with cave dwellings, ten households on each side, totaling forty people living together. Of the remaining two walls, one was slanted, allowing passage to the surface and access to a cellar used as a granary; the other wall housed the stables. In the courtyard stood a well, a millstone, two shade trees, and racks of stone locks and weapons.

The standard for the cave dwellings used by the regular border troops was similar, except the infantry caves substituted the stable for a livestock pen. In better times, when grain was more plentiful, they even kept animals.

The sunken cave roofs could still be used to grow crops, and in some places, there were even underground streets lined with such sunken courtyards. But now, whether livestock pens or rooftop fields, all had lost their purpose. The pens were cleaner than the caves themselves, and the roofs were nothing but barren yellow earth.

The golden millet porridge filled Liu Chengzong’s belly only halfway at best. Wandering back to his quarters, he first threw the red flag into the stable and locked it up. Then, picking up a short branch from outside, he lit it from the ever-burning stove in the courtyard, carried the flame inside, and coaxed the almost-empty oil lamp to life.

Little Whirlwind, the dog who followed him in, wrinkled his nose at the lamp’s stench, raised a paw to try to snuff it out, but was promptly frightened by Liu Chengzong’s outstretched leg and slunk back to his spot in the corner, tail between his legs.

The lamp burned flaxseed oil, known in these parts as “wall tick oil” because the seeds resembled lice, and it gave off a faintly rancid smell. People didn’t cook with it, but in Shaanxi and Gansu, where it was widely grown, it was still tolerable for lamp oil.

Strange—he recalled that, centuries later, this very oil, once shunned by people and dogs alike, would become a prized cooking oil, the smell vanished. He had no idea why.

There were many things that confused him about his other set of memories, but Liu Chengzong was too weary to care. In thirty years, the world could change beyond recognition; over four centuries, anything was possible.

Rather than fret over how flaxseed oil would become edible four hundred years later, he cared more about how he might one day eat three meals with three dishes each.

His much-diminished martial skills had not come easily. In all his life, he’d only eaten three dishes at a meal once, back when he was learning martial arts in Mizhi County’s jail, during the autumn.

Autumn in jail was a good time—it meant a chance at “last meals.”

His family’s good fortune began in the second year of the Tianqi reign. His father, Liu Xiangyu, a titled scholar, had just finished his post as the instructor of the Yan’an prefectural school and transferred to serve as a constable in Mizhi County.

Though the post of constable carried no official rank, it was still a court appointment, requiring selection by the Ministry of Personnel and imperial approval. The job was to arrest criminals and manage prisoners, with an office to the west of the county yamen, hence the nickname “Lord of the West Yamen.”

That same year, the first of the Tianqi era, the regional commander, Du Wenhuan, in charge of Yansui, avoided an imperial order to aid Liaodong and instead launched a raid against the Mongols, provoking retaliation. The Mongols swept south, besieged Yan’an, and vowed to capture Du Wenhuan. Du dared not confront them; the Mongols looted for ten days and left. Because Du refused to fight, Liu Chengzong’s uncle fell victim to the raiders.

This misfortune spurred Liu Xiangyu to seek martial instructors for his two sons, who both aspired to become “jinshi,” or advanced scholars. He raised their ambitions from ordinary civil jinshi to the likes of Xiong Tingbi—scholars versed in both the civil and martial arts.

It was much like those parents in his later-life memories, who dreamed of their children entering Tsinghua University and already worried about the cost of living in Beijing before the child had even started kindergarten.

During his six years as constable, Liu Xiangyu found countless martial instructors for his sons. None were famous, but all were true experts in their craft: post riders from Yinchuan taught archery and horsemanship; Mizhi’s executioners taught beheading with a broadsword; the yamen’s constables taught the capture staff and meteor hammer; prisoners condemned to die for horse theft recounted survival tactics and combat experience; and a renegade monk, briefly jailed, taught them a form of Shaolin spear play.

The “plum-blossom spear”—a staff with a spearhead, blending staff and spear techniques, unlike the Ma family’s “spear with a staff’s core” or the Yang family’s spear, which favored thrusting. This one was suited for lone warriors in the martial world, favoring sweeps and swings over thrusts—good for solo combat, not for the battlefield, where massed spear formations and long weapons reigned. No matter how agile your seven-foot spear, you couldn’t withstand three spearheads coming at you at once.

Back then, every new prisoner in Mizhi County’s jail was questioned by Liu Chengzong and his brother for any useful skills. His elder brother was pickier about last meals, but Liu Chengzong, being young and heedless, always pounced on the opportunity.

No one could stop him; if anyone tried, he’d cry about being too hungry. He also thought these last meals were wasted—most condemned prisoners could barely eat, maybe a pot of rice wine at most.

He was utterly unafraid. In the end, his father stopped trying to restrain him.

But retribution came swiftly. In the seventh year of the Tianqi reign, Liu Xiangyu’s term as constable ended; he was promoted back to Yan’an as a tax commissioner, a ninth-rank post. That was the end of the good days for the Liu family.

Those years, all of northern Shaanxi suffered severe droughts—spring sprouts withered, followed by another drought in autumn. Peasants, driven to desperation, set their own homes ablaze to flee into the hills and escape taxes; fields lay fallow, unsellable.

Landlords and wealthy families would buy up land, but only if the original owners still paid the taxes. Lose your land, and you still owed the tax—how could a farmer pay?

When taxes became uncollectable, cautious and upright all his life, Liu Xiangyu finally took a stand. He had seen with his own eyes the suffering of the people and refused to collect taxes any longer.

He went to the prefecture to propose a memorial to the court, asking for tax relief and disaster aid, his language sharper than usual.

“If taxes are not lifted and relief granted, none of us will last these six years—we’ll all die together,” he declared.

The prefect survived, but Liu Xiangyu was not allowed to finish his term. Accused of cursing his superior and dereliction of duty, he was thrown in prison to make way for someone else.

That was officialdom: if you failed, you were replaced.

It was then that Liu Chengzong and his brother attempted the military exam, but as sons of a disgraced official, they were found out halfway through and chased out with beatings, only to be taken in by He Renlong, a deputy examiner.

Liu Xiangyu had been right. His successor lasted only three months before facing a township of 110 households from which not a single tax could be collected. He led the yamen constables himself to press for taxes.

By then, only one household remained; the rest had fled. According to Ming tax law, quotas were assigned by locality—ten households’ worth of taxes had to be paid, even if only seven remained. Of 110 households, 109 had fled, leaving the last—who was both village head and grain collector—to pay it all.

Had it not been for his crippled, blind mother, he’d have fled too. But leaving would have driven her to hang herself, or being taken away by the constables would have meant her slow starvation. There was no way to pay.

In the end, he lured the tax officer and two constables into the woodshed, locked the door from outside, and set it on fire.

Before the arresting officers could arrive, his mother had died of starvation and he had hanged himself.

After half a year in prison, Liu Xiangyu was released thanks to a general amnesty when the Chongzhen Emperor took the throne. He returned home to farm, stripped of all honors.

The family had no gold or silver, and now even the empty glory of rank had become a burden.

The world was sliding into chaos.

Liu Chengzong understood well: his classical education and the memories from four centuries in the future would determine how far he could go, but it was his martial skills that would decide whether he survived at all.

That was what truly mattered.