The Yue Family Army Military Token
The great-grandfather of the Ye Yunzhou and Ye Yunshang siblings was one of the trusted generals under Yue Yun, son of the famous anti-Jin commander King Wumu Yue Fei.
Legend has it that Emperor Gaozong sent twelve successive Golden Plaques. To preserve his loyalty and honor, Yue Fei willingly went to his death, but lamented that the great cause of resisting the Jin remained unfinished. Should military power fall into the hands of the wicked, the Great Song would be beyond saving. So he dispersed the main force of the Yue Family Army, hid his treasure in the mountains, and forged an Iron Military Token (a proof of the authority to command troops, which, like a tiger tally, had to be matched with its other half before the three armies would obey) and entrusted it to his eldest son Yue Yun, hoping that one day the token could command the old troops and carry on the mission of protecting the nation.
Unexpectedly, Yue Yun died before his father. In his final crisis, he entrusted the token to a subordinate, instructing him to hide in the Jianghu and quietly await a descendant of King Wumu to come claim it. That subordinate (the Ye family's great-grandfather) concealed his name and lived in seclusion in the mountains, guarding the token unto death generation after generation. For this, the Ye family even gave up their original surname, taking "Ye Yun" as their surname to honor Yue Yun, the lord their great-grandfather had served; even the family's treasured sword "Listening Cloud" means "obeying Yue Yun."
A Family Divided: Yeli Chahan
Not every descendant of the old Yue Family Army chose to keep the vow unto death. The ancestral line of Li Yuanqi (born Yeli Chahan), also descended from the old Yue Family Army, lost heart after Yue Fei's murder. To take revenge, they defected from the army and threw in their lot with Western Xia. This branch later became the Left Guardian of the Supreme Bliss Cult. Badly wounded after defeating Qingcheng's Zhao Kui in The Battle of the Supreme Bliss Cult, he brought a token to the Ye family hoping to be recognized as kin, but was refused. He could only return the ancestral Listening Cloud Sword, and recovered from his wounds near the Ye household.
While recovering, he urged the Ye family to let go of this obsession that had lasted three generations: Marshal Yue was long dead, killed by order of the Emperor of the Great Song; the Ye family had already shown the Great Song loyalty enough, and blind foolish loyalty was not loyalty but folly, and no obsession should imprison later generations. Yet the Ye family would not accept his request to "return to his roots," and only then did his heart turn cold. He took the name "Li Yuanqi": "Li" from the Western Xia royal surname, and "Yuanqi" meaning to sever kinship and cast away the past.
The Secret Comes to Light, and Ye Yunshang's Own Account
A saying has long circulated in the Jianghu: this secret, kept for nearly a hundred years, finally leaked out, and the treasure and the token brought down destruction on the family. Ye Yunshang's parents, fearing the token would fall into the hands of villains and bring ruin to the people, branded the token's mark onto their beloved daughter's back and then destroyed the token itself with their own hands.
But according to Ye Yunshang herself, this "treasure" story is not accurate. What truly brought down the family was a secret letter her father wrote in a moment of panic, at the height of the fighting during the Baifeng Cave Uprising. After Li Yuanqi rose in rebellion, the four provincial garrisons could not take him for a long time and the Central Plains were in turmoil. Her father, heartsick, secretly petitioned the Imperial Court, denouncing his own kinsman Li Yuanqi in hopes of ruining his reputation and turning the people against him. The letter even called the family "unworthy descendants who have shamed the emperor's grace," an attempt to clear the Ye name.
It backfired completely. Reading the letter, the Emperor flew into a rage and instead concluded that the Ye family were traitors of the same stripe. Since he could not catch Li Yuanqi, he sent troops straight for the Ye household, intending to hold the whole family hostage so the rebel would pull his punches. The Imperial Soldiers came in force and gave no explanation. Her father, refusing to accept the disgrace, resisted and was killed; her mother, grief-stricken, dashed her head against a pillar to follow her husband in death; Ye Yunshang herself took a palm strike that severed her Meridians, leaving her barely alive, and for the next decade and more she lingered between life and death. Ye Yunzhou and Ye Yunshang were left orphans. Afterward, the Emperor, fearing talk and the charge of destroying loyal subjects, went to great lengths to cover the affair up, and so the Ye family's name as loyal subjects was preserved.
"Foolish loyalty is the truth behind the destruction of my family; it has nothing at all to do with any King Yue's Treasure." That is Ye Yunshang's own verdict on the affair.
Li Yuanqi's Atonement
On the night of the tragedy, Li Yuanqi left the camp alone and found Ye Yunshang already near death. He asked her first whether she wanted to live: if he saved her, her parents' injustice could never be avenged; if she chose to die to prove her resolve, he swore that one day he would make the foolish emperor kneel at Marshal Yue's grave and her parents' graves and beg forgiveness. The young Ye Yunshang answered that she would rather die to prove her resolve. Hearing this, Li Yuanqi did not praise her but scolded her for not taking his lesson to heart, and still fed her the painstakingly refined "Nine Springs Pill." Compared with the misty, insubstantial notion of loyalty, life was more to be treasured; the obsessions of others should not be carried by this generation.
The pill cost Li Yuanqi dearly: it was said that the Nine Springs Pill could not only bring the dying back to life but add ten years of Power. Had he taken it himself, and with his mastery of the Nine Turns of Reincarnation and the Heaven-Swallowing Treasure Mirror, perhaps even Tang Buyi and the others could not have matched him back then. Yet he spent this life-saving chance on a "stranger" of a niece.
Later, the homeless Ye siblings traveled south to Hunan, hoping to seek shelter with Li Yuanqi, but he drove them out without mercy, not even granting them a meeting. In truth, he feared implicating them further and wanted to preserve the Ye family's name as loyal subjects.
In the end, Li Yuanqi was defeated by Tang Buyi and four others, dying at the close of the Baifeng Cave Uprising.
Notes
- The "Ye" of Ye Yunzhou and Ye Yunshang is not the family's original surname; to keep this promise, the Ye family gave up their birth surname, which was "Hua."[1]
- See also the entries for Li Yuanqi, the Baifeng Cave Uprising, and The Battle of the Supreme Bliss Cult.