Shi Shouxin

"In Shi Family Village, there were those called Flood Watchers. At Roaring Sands, there stood a drum: the Drum of Heavenly Vindication. A gash ran across its surface, a wound from the year 960. That year, the Yellow River raged. The villagers beat the drum until it split, yet the Flood Watcher who should have returned with aid never came. At first, the drumming shook the skies, growing ever louder. Then, the wails of broken families and the frantic screams of children wove into its rhythm, until the drum could no longer drown out the crying. Finally, the weeping stopped. The drumming stopped. The weepers were dead. The drum was shattered. The man the drum failed to summon was Shi Shouxin. At the very moment the Drum of Heavenly Vindication shattered, his new lord donned the yellow robe of emperorship, escorted into Kaifeng. The ceremonial procession of the returning army was so thunderous that perhaps he truly could not hear the pleading drumbeats from his home. He was no longer a Flood Watcher. He was Deputy Commander of the Imperial Guard, then Minister of Equal Rank, and later, Commander of the Imperial Guard. The people of Shi Family Village could not recall this long string of titles. To them, his identity had never changed. Villagers would look at his parents as they passed and spit, ""Our humble village can't hold a general. As for Little Shouxin? He's long dead!"" The gash that split the drumhead was the symbol of his own shattered spine. He was the notorious turncoat, a man who climbed to power over the bones of his kin and friends, one of the murderers of Zhu Yu. The unheeded blood and tears dried into a chasm of hatred. Shi Shouxin never returned to Shi Family Village. No one knows if, standing in the imperial court, seeing a winding river churn white waves, or reading official reports of a flood somewhere, he ever remembered a shattered drum. Did the roar of the flood ever fade from his ears? Or had it, for him, never truly sounded at all?"

Compared to Li Jun, who died in battle, and Murong Yanzhao, now shackled in chains, Shi Shouxin's fate seemed the most dignified. No life lost on the battlefield, no soul broken in captivity. He merely stepped from the light of generalship into the shadows of power. He struck more decisively than Murong Yanzhao, adapted more shrewdly than Li Jun. He understood: one cannot cling to a book whose pages are destined to turn. Zhao Kuangyin was the next chapter, written in ink long dried. But his friends refused to see it, gripping the past until their hands were stained black with futility. Fools. Utter fools. At first, he couldn't return to Shi Family Village or see his parents. He heard his mother still longed for him. Even though he was reviled as a traitor, she still ached for her son. Then, he lost more friends. Some asked if his choices were worth it, some called him clever, some entrusted their children to him. Later, he relinquished his military power, barely securing his life. Some said he'd fallen from grace, others praised his ability to "judge the situation". Was he a wise man or a fool? Such questions couldn't be answered by looking inward. No one thinks their own actions are foolish, otherwise, why take them? Perhaps endless curses would follow him, but he couldn't hear the praises of the dead, nor the insults. Praise and scorn were irrelevant now. He didn't care to listen. Such voices served no purpose. Standing outside the Martial Temple, his ears filled with the footsteps of artisans, their backs bent under the scorching sun, their work chants shattering the heat. These were the sounds of the present. The emperor's words in the court chambers, those were the sounds of the present. The floodwaters of Shi Family Village, the whispers of old friends, under today's sun, had faded to near nothing.