Later, the royal family built an altar outside the city and held a grand ritual for seven consecutive days. They burned incense and prostrated themselves, praying for the Goddess's protection.
Yet, despite the seven days of rituals, the floods grew more ferocious by the day. Even the various auspicious beasts that were once a common sight gradually vanished without a trace.
Before long, the rain turned red, plunging the populace into immediate panic.
While the Goddess who had protected Southern Tang in previous years was nowhere to be found, the Grand Preceptor's warehouses—stuffed with hoarded disaster-relief grain—were uncovered, revealing piles of rotting, moldy millet.
Rumors began to circulate in the capital that the Grand Preceptor had embezzled the funds, thereby angering the heavens and bringing down divine punishment. It was said that this was why the Goddess was no longer willing to protect Southern Tang.
Losing his temper, the Grand Preceptor searched high and low for the one who had leaked the news. After investigating left and right, his suspicions finally fell upon the Music Registry.
Around that time, Hong Xiu had accompanied several censors at a banquet. After a few rounds of drinks, the censors had cursed the Grand Preceptor to their hearts' content. Hong Xiu had merely smiled and refilled their cups, never uttering a single word to anyone outside.
But the Grand Preceptor did not believe her. He felt that the Courtesan Queen, by sitting there and listening to the censors insult him without reporting it, needed to be taught a lesson.
For an entire month, the Grand Preceptor did not set foot in the Music Registry, yet he secretly dispatched men to keep a close eye on Hong Xiu's courtyard.
Hong Xiu, however, remained entirely unbothered. She entertained her guests as usual, played her zither as usual, and smiled as usual.
Only, one night, after washing her hands in the backyard and hanging her handkerchief on the railing to dry, she turned around and saw the mute boy squatting beneath a corridor pillar, clutching a package in his arms.
She walked over to inspect it. It was a bundle of dried red dates, wrapped in a clean cloth and tied tightly at the top.
The mute boy handed the red dates to her and gestured twice. He meant that the refugees in the southern part of the city had run out of food, and he had managed to get this package of red dates by helping out in the kitchen.
He still remembered that Hong Xiu did not like buns, so he had gone out of his way to trade for such a rare treat.
Hong Xiu took it, weighed it in her hand, said nothing, and turned to walk back into her room.
She didn't just dislike coarse grains; she disliked sticky things as well.
At the same time, she knew very well that the Grand Preceptor would not keep his eyes on her forever. Once the floods receded and he had a free hand, he would come to deal with her.
Was it laughable?
It certainly was.
How grand the title of Courtesan Queen sounded, how many envied her, and how many threw fortunes away just to win a single smile from her.
Yet, in the end, she was nothing more than a plaything for those in power, to be disposed of however they pleased.
She could already envision the scene when that day finally arrived.
With a single word from the Grand Preceptor, the Music Registry stewards would be the first to turn on her. The servants and maids who usually called her “Miss Hong Xiu” with such affection would instantly change their tune.
As for the patrons who fought over her and spent lavishly at her banquets, they would distance themselves even faster, desperate to tell everyone that they had absolutely nothing to do with her or her troubles with the Grand Preceptor.
No one would help her.
Not a single soul.
Refugees had flooded into the capital, and Southern Tang lost countless lives before the flood finally receded after over half a year.
When the waters finally drew back, they left behind a landscape of thick mud, collapsed houses, and bloated, pale corpses.
The area around Linhe Town suffered the worst. It was said that on the day the flood receded, over a hundred bodies washed up on the riverbanks—men, women, young, and old—some so bloated by the water that their faces were completely unrecognizable.
The authorities sent men to collect some of them, but the vast majority were buried right where they lay. Shallow pits were dug, and they were thrown in haphazardly, without so much as a headstone.
The aftermath of the disaster was even harder to endure than the disaster itself. Evil spirits and ghosts began to spawn everywhere, and a plague started spreading among the refugees, causing people to drop dead in droves every day.
The imperial court dispatched round after round of disaster-relief grain, but after being skimmed at every level of bureaucracy, what actually reached the refugees' mouths could hardly even be called rice soup.
The Grand Preceptor took full credit in court, claiming he had already allocated three hundred thousand dan of grain to the disaster areas. In reality, half of that grain had been quietly moved into his personal granaries, to be sold at exorbitant prices the following spring.
Hong Xiu didn't know where she had heard these things; the nobles she entertained at the Music Registry simply had loose tongues when they drank too much.
She watched all of this with cold detachment, still saying nothing.
During that period, the mute boy grew even thinner, his clothes hanging off him like a piece of cloth draped over a bamboo stick.
He began to hide the pastries Hong Xiu gave him, sneaking them out to crumble and distribute among the refugee children in the south of the city.
Hong Xiu was aware of this. One day, when he returned empty-handed yet again, she threw a package of crisp pastries in front of him.
“If you use my things to feed others again, don't follow me anymore.”
She didn't want to lose a dog that was otherwise quite obedient.
The mute boy lowered his head, clutched the package of pastries to his chest, and huddled beneath the corridor pillar for half the night.
The next day, he went to the south of the city again, carrying the pastries in his shirt to divide among several children who were crying from hunger.
Hong Xiu watched from her second-floor window in the distance, then pulled the shutters closed.
Tsk, disobedient.
Such a disobedient dog... Forget it, let him be.
It wasn't like she could protect him much longer anyway.
...
After the flood receded, Southern Tang was struck by years of severe drought.
In the first year, there was no harvest at all. In the second year, the fields cracked open and the wells ran completely dry. By the third year, the granaries of the entire Jiangnan region were completely empty.
The imperial treasury was depleted, officials shifted the blame onto one another, and the common people were filled with resentment.
As the public anger reached a boiling point, the court officials—who usually sat comfortably being pampered by Hong Xiu—could no longer sit still. Several of them jointly submitted a memorial to impeach the Grand Preceptor, accusing him of ignoring the people's plight and lining his own pockets.
The Grand Preceptor merely let out a slow, cold sneer in court. He claimed that the consecutive years of drought in Jiangnan were a divine punishment, and there had to be an evil demon bringing ruin to the nation.
The officials looked at one another in silence.
The Grand Preceptor then leisurely added that he had already consulted a grand master for a divination, and the results showed that the demon was hiding within the Music Registry.
The faces of several officials, who had been drinking tea in Hong Xiu's room just the night before, instantly paled.
A younger vice minister stood up, wanting to speak on Hong Xiu's behalf. But the moment he said, “Grand Preceptor, is this not a bit hasty?” he was immediately silenced by a sharp glare from the Grand Preceptor.
The rest of them exchanged glances, none of them daring to make another sound.
Normally, they placed Hong Xiu on a pedestal, calling her the most beautiful woman in the capital, the pride of Southern Tang, and claiming her songs were worth a thousand gold pieces.
But when the fire reached their own doorsteps, not a single one of them would dare offend the Grand Preceptor for the sake of a Courtesan Queen.
On the day the Grand Preceptor personally led his soldiers into the Music Registry, the mute boy was squatting beneath a corridor pillar, slowly and meticulously carving a wooden stick, though what he intended to use it for was anyone's guess.
He suddenly heard a commotion in the front courtyard. Looking up, he saw a dark tide of official robes pouring through the moon gate.
The Grand Preceptor walked at the very front, followed by dozens of armed soldiers.
The mute boy threw down his wooden stick and stood up. He instinctively took a step back, but then he gritted his teeth, forced himself to stop, and took a step forward instead, frantically pounding on the door.
Hong Xiu was sitting in front of her dressing table, painting her eyebrows. By the time she heard the commotion outside, the Grand Preceptor was already standing at the threshold of her bedroom.
“Take her.”
The Grand Preceptor's voice was deep, devoid of any emotion.
Hong Xiu put down her eyebrow pencil and turned to look at the doorway.
The mute boy rushed out from behind the pillar and blocked the entrance to the bedroom. His scrawny body stood tall, his arms spread wide like two thin twigs, and his lips pressed into a tight line.
The Grand Preceptor didn't even spare him a glance, merely tilting his chin upward.
Two soldiers grabbed the mute boy by his arms from both sides, hoisting his entire body off the ground.
Hong Xiu stood up, her crimson skirt swaying in the candlelight.
She cast a glance at the mute boy, then looked at the Grand Preceptor.
“I'll go with you,” she said. “Leave him be.”
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