The Sorceress' Revolt -
Ko Eiji's Story
Author: Toriumi Jinzō
Translator: Ainikki the Archivist
Part Two: Zhengzhou
Ou Soku’s father, Ou Daiko, was a landowner in Wucheng who also served as a county clerk. He was not quite a government official, but he worked for a local official and served as that official’s agent and representative. The official had passed the civil service exam and was versed in poetry and classical Chinese, but he knew nothing of the economy, law or politics. Furthermore, his term of office was only three years and his authority was limited. It was more reliable and convenient to leave the actual politics to clerks who’d been born in their home provinces and already knew a little about how to govern them.
This might seem like a wise policy, but in practice it meant that clerks like Ou Soku’s father did all the work for little pay while the higher-ranking officials collected a generous government salary and did little to no work. Many clerks were also corrupt, since they had no real oversight. Some clerks took advantage of residents’ weaknesses and accepted bribes instead of punishing crimes.
Ou Daiko was a high-ranking clerk; he’d been put in charge of many of the other local clerks after years of service. He was a scrupulous man with an excellent reputation. Eventually, the provincial governor grew jealous of Ou Daiko and had him framed in a bribery scandal. This mainly happened because he’d refused to offer the provincial governor a bribe during an official state visit. Ou Daiko appealed for a hearing, but the provincial governor refused to give him one. The provincial governor’s allies turned against him and made it nearly impossible for him to continue his good work.
Being framed and abandoned changed Ou Daiko. He started spending money recklessly, drinking day and night, and living a lavish lifestyle. His land was sold to other people, and his wife Ryu made a living by cultivating a smaller plot. Ryu never blamed her husband. She understood his frustration at being framed for a crime and the eventual loss of his job, which he had loved.
Ou Daiko died of an illness contracted due to his reckless lifestyle when Ou Soku was two years old.
Ryu was the daughter of a merchant from Jiangsu Province, and was a beautiful woman. Ou Daiko fell in love with her at first sight and proposed marriage shortly after.
Before agreeing to the match, Ryu prayed to the goddess Kyūten Genyo. The goddess visited her in a dream and gave her good advice, after which Ryu agreed to marry Ou Daiko.
For her part, Ryu came to love her husband. She also had high ambitions for the family’s future. On the night of their wedding, she said: “I will give you a blessed son. Even that may not be enough, if we do not live with honesty and integrity. Let us live well and build a strong family together.”
That same year, Ou Ryu became pregnant with Ou Soku and had a prophetic dream from Kyūten Genyo about a glorious future for their child.
When Ou Daiko heard about the dream, he said to Ryu: “I want this boy to pass the civil service examination, no matter how hard it may be. He will become a Prime Minister and eliminate bribery and corruption from our government. What could be more glorious than that?”
Ryu took her husband’s words to heart and decided that she would do everything in her power to make sure their child could pass the civil service exam.
In the Song Dynasty (960–1279 CE), many poor people and peasants passed the civil service exam and were elevated to powerful positions in the Imperial Court. Fan Zhongyan was one of them. He lost his father at the age of two and fell into poverty, studying at a monastery. He endured great hunger and hardship: he made rice porridge in a pot in the morning, divided it into four portions and ate two bowls each for breakfast and dinner.
Ou Soku was not so unfortunate as all that. When he was three years old, his mother Ryu began teaching him to read and write. In China, it was the mother’s job to educate her child at home. The Five Classics and Four Books were the basis of the civil service examination in imperial China and could be considered the Confucian canon. The Five Classics were The Book of Odes, The Book of Documents, The Book of Changes, The Book of Rites, and The Spring and Autumn Annals. The Four Books were The Doctrine of the Mean, Great Learning, Mencius, and The Analects of Confucius. Poetry and composition were also tested.
When Ou Soku was seven years old, a private tutor was hired for his education. Jo Yun, a local man who’d been a good friend to his late father, recognized Ou Soku’s talent and sent a private tutor of his own choosing to instruct him. Wealthy families often had private tutors, but the tutors were usually old men who had repeatedly failed the civil service exam.
Ryu trusted nothing to chance or the tutor. She worked in her fields during the day and wove at night while teaching her son. The civil service exam did not just test on academic subjects; manners and etiquette were also important to learn. Although the family was struggling financially, Ou Daiko had left a small inheritance for Ou Soku, which covered the tutor’s fees.
Ryu taught Ou Soku repeatedly and consistently from his early childhood on. She said, “You must not forget your father’s words. You must pass the exam, rise to the position of Prime Minister, and rebuild the country into one where righteous governance is practiced. That is your path in life.”
Ou Soku worked hard to live up to his parents’ expectations. As he grew up, his academic ability improved.
“Ou Soku will definitely pass the examination. I guarantee it,” Jo Yun told Ryu.
In his early years, Ou Soku learned from his mother’s lessons easily, but as he grew older, he began to look at society more clearly. He was keenly interested in corruption and depravity in politics. Because of that interest, he also came to truly understand his father and what he’d wanted Ou Soku to do before his death. The anger and resentment of his parents underwent a sort of sea change as it transferred to the young Ou Soku. He hadn’t suffered the same injustice as his father, but he felt to the core of himself that such injustices were fundamentally wrong.
***
At the time, there was no more lucrative occupation than that of a government official. The occupation was not just prestigious, it was also very profitable. Families that produced government officials were termed official-led households and were exempt from certain taxes and given privileges in the Imperial Court. The enormous income of government officials guaranteed their families a comfortable life, even out to their grandchildren’s generation.
But Ou Soku’s goal wasn’t privilege or money. All he wanted was to fulfill his father’s dying wish.
Before Ou Soku could take the civil service exam, a political upheaval occurred that further inflamed his rage. The corrupt and wicked minister Lü Yijian fought with the reformer Fan Zhongyan before Emperor Renzong repeatedly. These fights led to the eventual dismissal of Fan Zhongyan, Bungen Haku, Ouyang Xiu, Bao Zheng, and other loyal and patriotic ministers from their posts.1
At this time Ou Soku was still young and impressionable, and he blamed Emperor Renzong for this terrible occurrence. Clearly the emperor had no love for his people, since he sided with the corrupt officials and sent away the honest ones.
Bungen Haku and Ou Soku had the same outlook on life in many ways. Bungen Haku was from Fenzhou in Shanxi Province. He was a man of great intellect and military prowess, defeating the barbarian armies to the west at a young age by using cunning strategies. He rose through the ranks of the Imperial Court as a military commander and a man of incorruptible integrity. Skilled in both academics and martial arts, he was an important voice in Emperor Renzong’s court for many years. Now seventy-nine years old, he still possessed the same energy of his younger years. After his dismissal, he busied himself working a boring job far beneath his talents in Luoyang.
Ou Soku felt like it was his life’s mission to pass the civil service exam to prevent injustices like Fan Zhongyan and Bungen Haku's exile from court in the future.
***
Ou Soku passed the civil service examination with flying colors. Next, he had to pass another, more difficult exam in order for him to be able to secure a high position in the Imperial Court. This exam was conducted by the emperor himself, in theory. In reality, it was conducted by a high-ranking official in the emperor’s name. It was said that Empress Wu Zetian personally conducted the exam, but this was simply a rumor she’d started to increase her popularity.
Ryu cried tears of joy when her son passed the first exam. Ou Soku was overjoyed at this auspicious beginning to his career in the Imperial Court. However, an unexpected misfortune awaited him.
A young man from the same village who had failed the initial exam accused Ou Soku of passing it unfairly. Shocked by this accusation, Ou Soku secretly and thoroughly investigated the matter. The young man accusing him was the governor’s son. He discovered that Jo Yun was feuding with the local governor, who he’d bribed recently.
That wasn’t the only thing that Ou Soku found out. He visited Jo Yun’s house to ask what was going on and saw his mother and Jo Yun in the same bed together.
After his father’s death, his mother became Jo Yun’s mistress to pay for Ou Soku’s tuition. He’d never had any inheritance from his father. Ryu, ashamed, said that she would abandon house and home and will everything to him, but Ou Soku refused. He cursed his mother and gave up his home and everything he knew. Naturally, he also gave up his qualifications to take the next exam. Ou Soku lost faith in politics and people, and in the depths of despair he even considered ending his life.
During his travels, he met several local officials. He saw how corruption in government led to the suffering of the masses. The reality of the world he saw was beyond his imagination. The world was an even worse place than he’d thought. Those with power and means exploited the poor and the common people for the sake of their own greed.
Leaving home made Ou Soku despise the government he’d once hoped to serve.
***
Tanshi closed his eyes and listened to Ou Soku’s words as he spoke through tears.
“Form is emptiness, emptiness is form…” Tanshi uttered a passage from the Heart Sutra softly, then said, “There is no such thing as an eternal, unchanging entity. The same is true of the human mind. The mind is malleable and changeable, as are all things. You may believe that corruption and evil are unchanging, but even they alter themselves over time.”
“Gods and Buddhas are powerless against evil. They ignore the abuses of those in power and the common people, who cry out for help in their desperate poverty.”
Tanshi sighed. He understood what Ou Soku meant. At around the same age as Ou Soku, he’d lost faith in the Buddha and left his temple. Yearning for immortality and supernatural powers, he’d sought out the Way of Shattering Earth. He was older now, and liked to think he was wiser. He knew that Ou Soku had recently discovered his own weakness in the face of the world’s power. It was a discovery that many people had when growing up. After discovering that weakness, what Ou Soku was looking for was strength. He’d given up his life’s path and lost his main reason to live. If he was going to live for the future, he needed the strength to defy his past—and the corruption of the world around him.
Ou Soku placed his palms together and looked up at Tanshi. “Monk Danshi, please teach me Daoism.”
“No,” Tanshi said immediately, his eyes wide open and his voice stern.
Ou Soku just stared at Tanshi with a pleading sadness in his expression.
When Tanshi spoke again, he was calm. “Ou Soku, why do you seek to learn Daoism?”
“I…” Ou Soku shook his head.
“To learn Daoism, you must approach the pursuit of power with a pure and righteous heart. If you are tempted by power for its own sake or seek to use it for selfish ends, you will fall into sorcery and follow a heretical path. If that happens, Sei Koko will have power over you, and you will have no choices in life.”
“Who is Sei Koko?” Ou Soku asked.
Tanshi sighed again and closed his eyes.
***
After Sei Koko stole Ko Biji’s body, Tanshi returned to the Shaolin Temple to train hard. Tanshi had no idea, but the magnetic power that En Kō had secretly bestowed upon the staff had, through Tanshi’s training, unleashed great spiritual power. Tanshi named this technique the The Way of Divine Thunder and Lightning.
The Daoist technique that Sei Koko had obtained from the Heavenly Book was transformed into an evil sorcery technique through her own arts. This was a sorcery technique unique to Sei Koko, who possessed a natural demonic nature. Sei Koko’s ambition was to wait for the reincarnation of Wu Zetian and seize control of the world.
It was clear to Tanshi that evil magic would wreak havoc everywhere if Wu Zetian’s reincarnation were to appear.
Tanshi gave up on his ambition to become immortal after Ko Biji’s death. In the twenty-two years since Ko Biji had taken her last breath, Tanshi had never loved another woman.
***
Tanshi stopped his training at Shaolin Temple after a few years and retired to a hut at the foot of Yunmeng Mountain. The hut reminded him of the brief time he’d shared with Ko Biji, but he didn’t return to the mountain just to reminisce about the past. He used the spiritual power of the mountain to enhance the power of his pewter staff, gaining finer control of its magnetic energies and its power over lightning. Yunmeng Mountain was the perfect training ground for Tanshi.
En Kō had bestowed magical magnetism upon the staff. Electromagnetic forces weren’t so rare in the natural world. Tanshi’s ability to wield the staff’s powers well came from his improved understanding of the natural world—specifically, how natural electromagnetic forces worked and how lightning formed in the atmosphere. The Daoist knowledge in the Heavenly Book opened Tanshi’s eyes to the main principles behind the Way of Divine Thunder and Lightning.
Tanshi didn’t cultivate this knowledge because he wanted to fight Sei Koko. His goal was broader than that. Tanshi had always been a man who wanted to transcend the limits of fate. With his new knowledge, he was motivated to challenge his own limits and those of humanity as a whole. Hurt and disillusioned as he’d been, Tanshi still believed deeply in the human potential for good.
Tanshi continued his training on Yunmeng Mountain for many years before he was motivated to rejoin the world.
***
Recently, there’d been frequent incidents of theft and murder around Bianliang. Rumor had it that the criminals were all sorcerers. The estates of wealthy people and high-ranking government officials were attacked in rapid succession. No one was safe.
When Tanshi heard rumors of the attacks, he immediately assumed that Sei Koko was responsible. It was impossible for him to imagine that anyone other than her could be behind such a sophisticated and vicious crime spree. If an armed gang, or even several of them, were to perpetrate such crimes, they would be caught. Even if they weren’t caught, their identities would swiftly be discovered and publicized. No one knew who was behind any of these attacks. Sei Koko was the only person Tanshi knew of who could cover her tracks so well.
The gold and silver that had been plundered from Yang Chun and his followers must have been spent by now. The nature of the crimes committed told Tanshi that Sei Koko was in need of funding on a grand scale. That meant she was planning something—and that almost certainly meant that Wu Zetian was about to be reincarnated.
Tanshi deduced this and asked his disciple Ri Shun to investigate. His goals were to confirm that Ko Biji had been reincarnated and to find her before Sei Koko could. He owed Ko Biji that much, for the sake of her soul. She’d died defying her mother’s wishes. Her reincarnation shouldn’t be used and manipulated by Sei Koko. More than that, if Sei Koko managed to use Ko Biji’s reincarnation to bring Wu Zetian’s soul back, the entire world would suffer for it.
Ri Shun was the son of Ri Chū. Ri Chū had accompanied Tanshi in a night raid on the residence of the Imperial Court eunuch Rai Ingyō many years before, when Ko Biji was still alive.
Some years after that raid, Li Yuanhao of Western Xia invaded China. His troops were said to number between 370,000 and 500,000. The weak Song Dynasty soldiers were quickly defeated by the fierce Western Xia cavalry. The Imperial Court placed Han Qi, Fan Zhongyan, and Di Qing in charge of the defense of the country.2
The war was a long drawn-out one. General Di Qing, a former foot soldier with tattoos on his face who wore a copper mask into battle, proved himself a hero many times over. He was skilled in horse riding and archery, and his forces were unbeatable.
Di Qing sent a messenger to Ryū Gen, the leader of the salt smugglers. Ryū Gen had taught Tanshi how to fight with a staff when he was a boy. Ryū Gen and the salt smugglers generally had good dealings with Western Xia, which was one of their trading partners for salt. Di Qing sought to exploit this connection to lure out the general of Western Xia’s army, Ri Chū.3 It was quite ironic for Ryū Gen, long treated as an enemy of the Imperial Court, to be contacted and asked to work against the Imperial Court’s enemies. Times were desperate. The war had gone on too long, and China needed it to end.
Ri Chū was a master of exploration and the use of blowguns. He shot fayalite projectiles from afar to disable opponents. Having once shared a much stronger connection to China’s salt smugglers, he chose to infiltrate their camp alone and was ambushed before he could reach it. He died bravely, attacked on all sides by many arrows and penned in by a small host of cavalrymen.
Di Qing sent a large sum of money to Ri Chū’s family to express his condolences. Ri Chū’s wife had died of an illness, but Tanshi took in his eleven-year-old surviving son, who had taken shelter with the monk Kei Kai of Guangming Temple. Tanshi adopted Ri Shun and raised him. Ri Shun was fond of Tanshi, and Tanshi saw this adoption as a way of repaying Ri Chū’s kindness to him in the past.
Ri Shun at eleven was already very like his father in some ways. He was tall for his age, agile and smart, and he’d been trained in disguises by his father and Kei Kai. He was newly sixteen years old and had become Tanshi’s arms and legs in the region, investigating Sei Koko’s comings and goings and venturing to places that Tanshi, a wanted man, would never dare go.
***
The hermitage in Zhengzhou where they were currently staying was of new construction, built because Tanshi wanted an outpost in this region where he and Ri Shun could gather information.
At the beginning of last month, Ri Shun had heard strange rumors about a fire at Ko Kō’s shop in Bianliang. There was fog on a windy night, a suspicious fire, the disappearance of many money boxes, and only one daughter, Ko Eiji, who survived the disaster. Since then, reports of attacks by sorcerers had spiked in the area. Tanshi had chosen Zhengzhou for the hermitage location because it wasn’t far from Bianliang, and then he’d tasked Ri Shun with investigating all these attacks more thoroughly.From the investigation of the fire and the sharp uptick of other attacks, Tanshi deduced that Sei Koko believed that Ko Eiji was Ko Biji’s reincarnation—and that, somehow, Sei Koko had lost track of her.
The attack on the governor’s office by sorcerers in Zhengzhou was an unexpected event that happened without warning. Tanshi had intended to secretly investigate sorcerers, seizing the opportunity to find out more about Sei Koko’s plans. He had to be cautious if he didn’t want Sei Koko to learn of his counterplotting to stop her.
Because of his caution and the sorcerers’ secrecy, Tanshi had been too late to stop the attack on Zhengzhou’s governor, but not too late to spare Ou Soku from an early and ignominious death.
***
Ou Soku bit his lip and lowered his gaze. It was clear that he wanted Tanshi to teach him Daoism.
Tanshi considered for a moment, then said, “I am returning to Yunmeng Mountain. Will you follow me?”
Ou Soku looked up. “Yes. Yes, I’ll accompany you.”
Tanshi knew that Ou Soku had nowhere to go. He was suspected of being a sorcerer and would be arrested and likely killed if he returned to Zhengzhou. Tanshi also sensed danger hovering around Ou Soku, though he didn’t know what direction that danger would come from. Ou Soku’s strong sense of justice helped make him a good person, but it could also lead to trouble when he clashed the corrupt world.
A capable man in times of peace, a man of virtue in times of chaos, Tanshi thought to himself. These were the words of Zhang Zhao4 commenting on the young King of Wei, Cao Cao, in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Ou Soku was a person who chose where he would stand and would refuse to budge on any moral principles. When I was Ou Soku’s age, I was just as narrow-minded and stubborn. I would lose my head and rush into things without being ready. Maybe that’s just a feature of youth, Tanshi thought.
Tanshi and Ou Soku were both wanted by the government. Tanshi saw a little of his younger self in Ou Soku and wanted to help him.
A few days later, Tanshi went with Ou Soku and Ri Shun to Yunmeng Mountain. Now that he knew Ko Eiji was missing, there was no reason for him to stay in Zhengzhou any longer.
Translator's Notes
1 范仲淹 Fan Zhongyan (5 September 989 – 19 June 1052 CE) was a Chinese military strategist, philosopher, poet, and politician of the Song Dynasty. After serving the central government for several decades, Fan was appointed Vice Chancellor over the entire Song Dynasty empire. A falling-out with corrupt colleagues led to his eventual exile from the Imperial Court.
2 韓琦 Han Qi was a Song Dynasty chancellor about whom little is known, at least in English. Find his wikidata page, which contains a portrait of him and his gravestone, here: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11663960
3 李忠 Ri Chū (Li Zhong) is a fictional character in the novel The Water Margin, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. A native of Haozhou (around present-day Chuzhou, Anhui), Ri Chū makes a living as he drifts around by teaching martial arts and performing fighting stunts in public for tips from onlookers and as a way to push his medicinal items. He is nicknamed "Tiger Slaying General," as he is muscular and looks like one who could kill a tiger. Later plots in the novel do have him joining up with a number of armies. ↩
4 張昭 Zhang Zhao (156–236 CE) was a Chinese calligrapher, essayist, military general, and politician. He served as an official of the state of Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period of China. Born in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, Zhang Zhao started his career as a scholar in his native Xu Province before the chaos towards the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty forced him to flee south for shelter. He became an adviser to the rising warlord Sun Ce. After Sun Ce's death in the year 200, Zhang Zhao played a key supporting role to Sun Ce's younger brother and successor, Sun Quan, as he consolidated power and his control over the territories he ruled. In 208, Zhang Zhao strongly urged Sun Quan to surrender to Cao Cao, a rival warlord, because he believed that they stood no chance against an impending invasion by Cao Cao. However, Sun Quan refused to listen to Zhang Zhao and Sun Quan's forces ultimately scored a decisive victory over Cao Cao at the Battle of Red Cliffs in the winter of 208. ↩
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