As a previous Minister of Royal Affairs, old Master Rong was quite open to voicing his doubts about some eventualities. He was looking gravely at Lord Wei, his hands though, were now clenched under the table. “Not that I am being overly fussy… I assure you of that, I am certainly not. That my concerns lie in the troubles that might arise from any misconduct in this matrimony forged only for benefits, is only natural. If this marriage breaks, what we face is not only a tense connection with the Imperial line, few broken confidences between delegates but more likely the wrath of Gods. Who dares to cross them-or even think of that?! They have shown great concern for our second princes’ marriage, have they not?”

Here he stopped. His eyes were as dreamy as they were in the beginning. No one would ever discover, as the darkness covered under its folds, the lines bleeding on his palms, his nails broken from fervor clinging to his cloak.

Lord Wei took a deep look at the languid old gentleman, his eyes a little more focused than it had been a while before. He walked back naturally to his chair, gently caressing the wooden surface of his chair, as he addressed others.

“No one should worry over this more than me, my Gentlemen. If you have concerns of this nature about my home, or its affair, I request you to cease them at this very moment. Our Wei house had taken the pledge with the Gods, Master Rong, that we will be the leading family in Dajin – the principal family that will assure them of the worship and sacrifices to the Moon goddess.” Silence followed.

“I assure you; we don’t take it lightly. The previous affairs as you might as well say out loud, between my youngest daughter Wei Cuihua and her childhood engagement with our highness the emperor, was as much my Wei Jia’s fault as it was your house’s. We failed to secure a treaty by marriage fifteen years ago. Jinghai faced several man-made disasters, uncountable sanctions, pushing its economy decades behind than it should be right now. The court was angry, the general populace furious. It was a personal loss – no one seemed to recognize that! Understandable - but coming out from you? No. After that for several years we were patient in our handlings. What my granddaughter has learned is only virtue of a good woman, with no bad influence to hinder her mind.”

The chair screeched at being pulled, and the sleeves rustled.

“What we have realized in our current marriage with the second prince would have been realized a decade ago, and that remains a fact, a shortcoming that is only human of me – or you! But it was all a fault of chaotic circumstances and to say that any future conduct will be the same…? My granddaughter Wei Ziya, Old Master Rong, is a very sweet child who knows her own responsibilities and has been brought up as a candidate for this very marriage since her birth. She will never overstep her boundaries!” There was a decided air to this declaration.

Old Master Wei continued as he sat down, “and no, I don’t think any refutation from your side will make that sordid event of the past, any less of your family’s fault than it is, my dear lord, NO! As for your present concerns, we will fulfill our side of promise as we are expected to. We supply Dajin with sacrificial candidates. We hold the ceremony in our lands and above all, we have kept this worship under cover - from even the eyes of those in the capital -! That is the least we can do for our heavenly Masters and for Dajin. Second prince will be our hope, our future, our light in these murky times of darkness which knows no light – he will be the beacon of the new age that will lead us out of this mortal realm, and take our Dajin from a small place to the wider world of greatness… Hope he is to be, of the whole wide world, no doubt in that of course!(To doubt that our Weijia, with all our humble sacrifices will hinder that, is at best preposterous-! Or simply a negation of our pain!) If men knew of his future greatness, they would fall down on their knees and kiss his feet with gratitude; and being one such man in knowledge of his greatness, nothing I do will ever grieve me more than acting as a villain to his highness's dream! The gravity of the prophecy, the voices of reason, the future, the prosperity of our whole world - all lie on his shoulders and this we at Wei house have known from the moment we came under this pact! So DON’T point fingers!You- are in no position to do that.”

After a zealous refutation of the most vehement kind, Lord Wei didn’t just stop there but followed with his own doubts. No one in the council was unaware of the small friction between the Wei’s and the Rong’s. It was only natural that the majority hesitated to meddle in this small scuffle.

“…but Master Rong, will you please explain? Your constant protection of your offspring has proven to be a clear shortcoming instead. Everyone here will agree with me over this point. Your grandson was sent over to oversee a small frontier in the south – look, what he had made out of this small event? Rong YuGuang's constant championing of those barbarians right has brought us to our present dilemma. What about ancestral precepts of fulfilling vows and never supporting injustice, he says, forgetting that our land will be embroiled in a mutiny if those barbarians were allowed to succeed, or that eventually this small fulfillment of a mere vow will break the harmony of our great nation and push it into another long dark age of land-struggle between different clans!” Silence followed.

“There are many who are peering at us like hungry lions, looking for a moment for us to slip and lose. A mere vow, can it replace the great duty we have to our common dream to maintain our Dajin’s destiny as the greatest empire in the world? Can I ask as a member of this council, how have you allowed him in his capacity and allegiance, to mix with those barbarians in the south and keep doing that, and with so much audacity? If you were not a member of this council, I would have even doubted if your intentions held more than you let on.” The heightened voice had once more regained their previous calmness. By the end of his tense question, his slovenly pronouncement even caught others off guard.

“No trouble over that – he will eventually do as bid.” Master Rong could only promise this. The blush that reigned over his cheeks was invisible in the darkness, yet few close to him still spotted his shaking body.

“We all hope so.”

Lord Wei didn’t dwell further in pressing this long-time adversary of his, as his mind was clearly preoccupied with graver matters. Just like that, the friction simmered off on its own with no intervention needed. The two gentlemen in the midst of the heady exchange settled down, while the rest murmured amongst themselves. For a while, the meeting seemed to have come to a halt. But soon, with his decided airs, and a penchant for wearing smiles at odd times, Lord Wei once again tapped the table with his iron goblet, calling everyone’s attention.

He smiled to himself and began, “Everyone here to some extent is aware that the main reason for the establishment of this council was a need to channel a legitimate sacrifice for our Master’s. At present our greatest utility lies in our being able to realize this job with greatest perfection. I hereby announce to the council with greatest satisfaction and delight, that another sacrificial ceremony for Moon Goddess will take place a year later, this time on the tenth month on the day the Star of Chaos meets the Constellation of Orion." He announced tersely, his eyes overflowing with pride.

“What?!”

“It’s too soon, so soon…Why are they in such a hurry? It’s not even a full cycle since the last occurred a decade ago – and the tenth month -? The needed stars aren’t aligned, nor the season right, is it just haste?”

“No - this event is going to be a unique one. As I said, this time, all we need is a Star of Chaos meeting the Constellation of Orion.” Lord Wei patiently replied.      

“Are you sure Lord Wei?”

“Pretty much.”

“Tell me you are kidding! By God! – we cannot do all this at once!? A war, and the sacrifice too! In the same year – by god, it seems impossible! Just don’t tell us that there is some more of this to come!”

“But we will have to.”

This news finally animated the faces of all the council members. Everyone had a different reaction, but all supported a mixed kind of shock over their faces. The root of their worries being that a sacrificial ceremony of that grand scale needed elaborate preparations even before the actual event – the previous ones had taken half a decade if not more! And this year was soon to come to an end!

"We have been told to prepare two brides. My two granddaughters, Wei Zhiruo and Wei Lina have been prophesied as the Chosen ones this time around. The rest will follow the arrangements of the council, as planned in previous years but we can cut out some ceremonies to hasten the preparation. But before that -”

Lord Wei looked up, taking a brief glance over the overcast heads of the twelve-member elder council. Every head at this moment faced him in apprehension: disagreeable ones, irritated ones, well-spoken or soft-spoken ones, as well as those who hardly spouted a word – every eye at the moment rested on his figure with guarded emotions.

“- the GODs have finally allowed our men to follow in a year to the lands above. Heaven… is at hand!” 

There was something boiling in that madness, or the gravity with which he clipped those sentiments in his words. Yet, like a mirror, the same zealous emotion seized everyone in a moment – the eyes were rounded and red, the breathing struck a notch higher, the shivering followed and many startled out of their chairs as if to take a deeper look at the speaker. So many hastily uttered ‘ but is that the truth - you are not jesting, my lord?’ rang inside the chamber one after another. Although in return no words were said, but the expression - it alone acted as the best guide and made them all boil out in mirth! Even the most reticent Old Master Rong had his whiskers in twists, his bulging eye-balls flushed with tears. 

The sunlight peaked silently through the window pane, the gray receded into foregrounds and everyone could see the echoing, reverberating dreams of each other – it was the dawn of destiny!

“Lord Zhang, have you decided on the future candidate to be sent back to the Cultivation realm?” Someone hurriedly shook master Zhang out of his stupor. “We have all made our selections – even Master Rong had long started preparing for the upcoming departure whenever it was to come– you must know, we have not much time to dwell over it. However angry you are with your youngest son, to us,  he still appears to be the best candidate in all our eyes for accompanying the second prince.” Tulou Hu, the current head of Jinghai’s Yamen shook up his close friend, inadvertently arousing several disinterested heads. Even Lord Wei looked up.

“Yes, my son Zhang YuShi will follow the second prince in his quest.” Lord Zhang replied in a small muffled voice, unclear whether with happiness or general indifference. 

Following this declaration, the council was once more abuzz with a pulse of general happiness. The expectation of this news was no less than the following hope they cherished in their hardened breasts, all beating with future uncertainties.

“Great! Great…we had expected something of this sort to tell you the truth–”

“Yes, a fine candidate! So, finally the last member of the expedition to ‘Heaven’ has been chosen now? Right in time-are we? When will they set-off? The date must have been determined, right, Lord Wei?”

“Two years, even less than that. That's why there is such a haste in this last sacrificial ceremony.” Lord Wei replied. “Great thing, you have told us Master Zhang. Several decades ago, in a battered cottage, some of us were present with our grandfathers, when that historical event took place.” Here in a ceremonial nostalgia, he spoke of the past, the hardships, and the toiling’s of their ventures.

“When the heavenly Master promised us a path, we had taken it as a recourse to all the exploitation that had occurred over the years in Dajin , thoughtlessly. In that war plagued Dajin, in its several tribes all vying for a throne and its patched-up entity, our forefathers could only see the help of god’s as to end at that - when the first king was christened an emperor of emperor's! No one could imagine, neither us nor our forefathers, that one day, that promise that vow of Gods would boil down to this and allow us to peer through our hazy destiny as a man and come out of these heavy chains! Not only will Dajin become the leading force in this world - but more than that-! We will become the sole conservator of our world, the country representing our world before Gods!  With him, our second prince at helms, we will enter an era of influence, where we will no longer be paltry servants at call! We will be Masters of our fate, the divine will not be out of reach. To ask for a goblet of ambrosia to make us all immortals will not be a mere pipe-dream. Our world will have an heir, and we – as the supporters, will forge our paths into heaven itself! Our dreams have brought us to this day – may our deities bless us that we succeed in saving our homes from the likes that we have seen, becoming the best guardians that we have set out to become. For Dajin, for our world’s destiny - today, we have reached a milestone.” Lord Wei’s resonant voice died down in a whisper as he raised a halting toast to all.

“The day we have been looking for, after so long…”

“Sigh…ah, what a time to be alive…”

***