Chapter 229: The Story Behind the Story

West of Didao County, the Great Tang had not a single relay station left; Wujie Relay Station was the westernmost station in the Longyou region. Past Didao County, the wreckage of abandoned military camps from years past could be seen everywhere.

Some belonged to the Tang army, others to the Tibetans, and every few li one could spot a garrison fort of varying scale. On the Longyou frontier, traces of war were visible everywhere—after all, the Great Tang and Tibet had only ceased hostilities these past few years, having fought intermittently for decades before that.

Out of the vigilance born from a "treacherous subjects will harm Us" mindset, Fang Chongyong did not foolishly charge straight for Shanzhou City. Instead, he stopped at Longzhi County, the nearest county seat east of Shanzhou. Longzhi County took its name from its proximity to Longzhi Valley and was built on an elevated plateau atop a hill.

This city's economic value was virtually nil, yet militarily it was an ideal "observation post" for monitoring the movement of people in and out of the Hehuang Valley.

One had to admit, the Great Tang's strength allowed it to utilize cities with no economic value to achieve its strategic objectives, shouldering the costs of such losses.

Why didn't Fang Chongyong go directly to Shanzhou City to "report in," but instead chose to stop at Longzhi County?

Because he was both an Investigating Censor and the Longyou Army Supervisory Envoy, possessing absolute authority to move freely within the Longyou region, with no need to report to anyone—including the Longyou Military Commissioner, Du Xiwang.

On matters of such fundamental importance, one absolutely must not let personal feelings lead to forgetting oneself, thereby neglecting the proper etiquette and decorum.

In other words, Fang Chongyong was not personnel under the command of the Longyou Military Commissioner; rather, he represented the imperial court conducting official business here, and even bore a hidden mission to oversee military affairs in the Longyou region. He took orders only from the imperial court—specifically, he did not even need to heed the words of the Chancellor, but needed only to obey Brother Ji alone!

At least for now, Fang Chongyong and the Longyou Military Commissioner Du Xiwang were two parallel lines. Theoretically, neither could interfere with the other's civil and military affairs.

This was also Brother Ji's original intent in sending Fang Chongyong to Longyou: to recruit troops, and incidentally to see how things stood with the Longyou frontier army.

However, theoretical matters were ultimately just flowers in a mirror and the moon in water—mere illusions.

The reason Fang Chongyong still needed to go to Shanzhou City was simply that selecting elite soldiers from the various Longyou armies required dealing with the Longyou Military Commissioner—an impossibility to avoid—and even depended heavily on Du Xiwang's cooperation.

But this did not mean Fang Chongyong would be servile, rushing straight to Shanzhou City like a subordinate to report in and pay respects to Du Xiwang.

Longzhi County's seat was classified as a "county" in the Great Tang's administrative divisions, but it was an out-and-out military camp, a thoroughly regulated troop-stationing site. Five hundred frontier soldiers were stationed here, a battalion belonging to the Lintao Army's order of battle.

This small city atop a hill, by Fang Chongyong's estimation, was no more than a thousand meters in length and barely over a hundred meters in width! With the military camp, granary, storehouses, parade ground, and such areas taken out, there was not much space left for soldiers' families.

After Fang Chongyong and his entourage entered Longzhi County's seat, the camp commander immediately yielded his own quarters and dispatched someone to Shanzhou City to notify the Longyou Military Commissioner's office to send someone to coordinate official business with Fang Chongyong.

When night fell, after a hasty meal of the frontier army's ordinary rations, Fang Chongyong went to the crude stone-built bedroom. He lit a torch inside and spread a hand-drawn map on the dusty, neglected stone table for examination.

In the dim yellow firelight, his thoughts seemed to fly to the valley called "Kanglang Mountain," which he had surveyed in person a few days earlier, just north of the Great Wall Fortress north of Didao County.

An endless expanse of Tibetan troops surfaced in Fang Chongyong's mind—a mixed force of infantry and cavalry, many clad in heavy armor. Here, roads ran north and south, while east and west were walled in by the gorge with nowhere to hide.

This Tibetan army, trapped in the Kanglang Mountain valley, could originally have fled. They had just been defeated by a Tang army detachment that sallied out from the Great Wall Fortress to the south, and their route southward was blocked. That general named Wang Haibin had killed a great many of them.

Though the Tang army was fierce, their numbers were negligible—less than a tenth of the Tibetan forces inside the Kanglang Mountain valley.

At this point, perhaps Wang Haibin's overbearing arrogance enraged the enemy. The Tibetans did not choose to flee, but instead turned around and concentrated their forces for a decisive battle against Wang Haibin's Tang detachment.

After exhausting vast numbers of troops and morale, and expending tremendous effort to annihilate this Tang detachment, the Tibetans discovered in horror that the valley running north-south had both exits sealed tight by the Tang main force that subsequently "arrived."

Then came a one-sided slaughter! The Tibetan army was nearly annihilated; only a few commanders escaped back to their homeland.

Later Tibetan records devoted over a hundred characters to the preparations for this campaign, writing at great length;

but regarding the outcome of this campaign, they were miserly with ink, writing just one character: "returned!"

"What are you looking at?"

Pei Xiu's voice suddenly came from beside him. Fang Chongyong snapped out of his reverie, took the wine flask from her hand, and sighed with emotion: "Just reviewing the battle between the Tang army and the Tibetans from back then."

"On this piece of scrap paper?"

Pei Xiu did not stand on ceremony with Fang Chongyong either, sitting directly on the stone stool in the room and pointing at the large, very crudely drawn paper on the stone table. The lines on it clearly depicted a gorge, closed off on the left and right, with roads on the top and bottom.

The paper was also marked with many incomprehensible symbols and notations.

"Yes, on this piece of paper."

Fang Chongyong sighed, looking rather wistful.

"Uh, so what did you figure out from your review?"

Pei Xiu seemed to be in a very good mood today, asking like a curious child.

Fang Chongyong was about to habitually retort with "What the hell do you know," but suddenly felt a bit soft-hearted and began to feel pity for this "blockhead" before him.

Though their circumstances differed, both he and Pei Xiu were pawns unable to control their own fates.

So Fang Chongyong spoke up:

"Back then, more than twenty thousand Tibetan troops were trapped in this place called the Kanglang Mountain valley. Because the corpses were counted afterward and twenty thousand heads were found, with surely many more undiscovered, we can preliminarily conclude that the Tibetans lost at least thirty thousand men in that campaign.

That counts as a great Tang victory.

The sole unlucky soul among the Tang commanders was my wife's grandfather—Wang Yunxiu's grandfather, Wang Haibin."

Fang Chongyong said, pointing at the hand-drawn map on the table.

"And then?" Pei Xiu nodded. Though she did not understand military affairs, she had previously heard her father Pei Min say that swordsmanship was merely a minor art and could not achieve any great undertaking. Only the skillful use of strategy, only ability on the battlefield, was first-rate skill.

Whether Fang Chongyong possessed such ability, Pei Xiu was not yet certain, but at least he was beginning to look a bit like a famous general.

"Wang Haibin originally stationed his troops at Wujie Relay Station and, as vanguard, routed the Tibetans north of the Great Wall Fortress. At that point, if you were the Tang commander-in-chief, what would you have done?"

Fang Chongyong asked in a low voice.

"You don't take me for a fool, do you? Of course you'd trap the Tibetans in the valley and beat them to death!"

Pei Xiu asked with a look of bafflement. Even if she did not understand strategy, looking at the terrain she knew that driving the Tibetans—who had many horses—into the valley was the way to fight a war of annihilation.

"Of course that's so. But if you know this, and the Tang commander-in-chief who directed that battle knew this, would the Tibetans not know it as well?"

Fang Chongyong posed a soul-searching question, and without waiting for Pei Xiu to answer, he immediately drove the point home:

"Moreover, at that time the Tibetans had merely encountered setbacks in their southward advance; their main force had not only suffered no major losses, but was still full of energy.

Even if the Tang army set up defenses at both ends of the valley, the Tibetans, fighting like cornered beasts, could easily have broken through the Tang lines, ultimately causing the entire effort to fall short.

If the Tibetans had been blocked at that point, the outcome of the war might have been rewritten."

Fang Chongyong stated one conclusion from his review of that battle.

Pei Xiu nodded slightly. The other party's explanation was easy to understand; even she, a blockhead ignorant of military affairs, had understood it.

"So, what did the Tang commander-in-chief do back then?"

Pei Xiu asked with keen interest.

"Very simple—the Tang army's follow-up forces delayed the pace of encirclement, letting only Wang Haibin's single army press the attack against the Tibetans, leaving the Tibetans unable to retreat yet unable to advance.

By deploying this way, the Tang army led the Tibetans to believe: the Tang main force had not yet arrived, and if they could just defeat Wang Haibin, they could head south to the Great Wall Fortress and then attack Didao County.

With such an arrangement, the predicament they faced was resolved.

So the Tibetans could have fled, but they held onto wishful thinking and feared returning empty-handed, feared being held accountable after going back, which was why they fought a bitter battle against the Tang army led by Wang Haibin.

When they were trapped in the valley, stripped of all morale and utterly exhausted, the main Tang army blocked them in the valley of Mount Kanglang! As for the outcome, there is no need to go into detail."

Fang Chongyong tapped the map on the stone table as he spoke. In this battle the Tibetans were beaten very badly, but it was because they had fallen for a stratagem, not because they lacked intelligence.

Fang Chongyong's words left Pei Xiu completely befuddled; only after a long while did Pei Xiu suddenly realize, "Ah, that matter! I heard my father mention it—back then many people deliberately refused to save him, jealous of Wang Haibin's military merit, which led to the tragedy. So it wasn't entirely like that after all!"

Compared to Pei Min's version that "the various generals were jealous of Wang Haibin's great merit and refused to send troops," Pei Xiu clearly believed Fang Chongyong's explanation more.

Battlefield military law was no joke; other Tang generals might have envied Wang Haibin's great merit and refused to rescue him, but among them there must have been timid ones who feared post-battle accountability and would have gone to rescue Wang Haibin—so how could not even a single relief force have arrived?

What the truth of this past event was may already be very difficult to verify. But after that battle, every army's commanding general received rewards and promotions; none were called to account or taken to task by Brother Ji afterward, and none were targeted for revenge by Wang Zhongsi—this was an indisputable fact.

The commanding general made the overall arrangements, deliberately sending Wang Haibin to pin down the Tibetans, and then the Tang army, well-rested and waiting at ease, encircled and slaughtered the Tibetans in the valley in a massive annihilation battle—this was perhaps the truth of the matter, the main reason no one was purged by Brother Ji after the war.

On the battlefield, including the commanding general, there is no one who cannot be sacrificed—this is the cruelty of war.

In war there is only victory and defeat, regardless of sacrifice.

"I want to discuss something with you."

Fang Chongyong put away the map and looked at Pei Xiu as he spoke.

"What is it?"

Seeing Fang Chongyong so serious, Pei Xiu's heart pounded with apprehension, and she could not help growing nervous.

"Tomorrow, have Judge Cen escort you to Wujie Relay Station. Take the relay station's carriage back to Chang'an yourself. Be careful on the road—don't eat anything given to you by strangers, and there shouldn't be much of a problem."

Fang Chongyong sighed and said.

"Uh, why?"

Pei Xiu did not want to leave, but was embarrassed to say so; after hemming and hawing for a long while, she squeezed out this one sentence.

"There is going to be fighting here in Longyou. After you return to Chang'an, have your family arrange for you to marry an honest man. The world is slowly becoming not so good; rushing about like this—let alone a young woman, even I cannot say I'm absolutely safe."

Fang Chongyong poured Pei Xiu a cup of wine and said softly, "Drink this cup of wine, and let us part here. Tomorrow you will leave together with Judge Cen. After he escorts you to Didao County, he will return to Shanzhou City to rejoin us."

Pei Xiu briskly took the wine cup and downed the cloudy wine in one gulp; the sour, astringent taste made her frown. Her tolerance for alcohol was not bad, but this wine delivered to the military camp was so sour and astringent it was truly beyond description.

"I'm not leaving."

After finishing the wine, Pei Xiu took a deep breath and said.

"Longyou is very unsafe here, and the danger does not come from me. That I won't do anything to you doesn't mean others won't do anything to you either.

Border garrison soldiers behave crudely—you need to understand that in your heart."

Fang Chongyong frowned slightly and said. He had already spelled it out this clearly—how could this blockhead Pei Xiu still not get it?

"I'm not leaving."

Pei Xiu said with great firmness, without explaining why.

Looking at her childlike naivety and stubbornness, Fang Chongyong suddenly could not help but scoff with a laugh, though it was unclear what he was laughing at.

"What do you mean by that?"

Pei Xiu complained with slight displeasure.

"There's a question I've never asked you—now is the perfect time to ask."

Fang Chongyong put away his smile and gazed intently at Pei Xiu.

"Go ahead and ask—there's nothing you can't ask."

Pei Xiu said, feigning nonchalance, though her heart had already leapt to her throat.

"That day in the carriage, you were rooting around at my face like a little pig—what were you trying to do?"

Fang Chongyong looked at Pei Xiu with a half-smile and asked.

"Huh? You mean that..."

Pei Xiu instantly blushed to the roots of her neck; if Fang Chongyong had not brought it up, she would have forgotten about it entirely.

Pei Xiu had already grown accustomed to bantering and joking around Fang Chongyong, talking nonsense as casually as cracking jokes, and had long forgotten what she had originally been thinking at the time.

While she was lost in wild thoughts, wishing she could hurry up and run out yet unable to move her feet, Fang Chongyong suddenly pulled her into his embrace. Their lips pressed together, and soon Pei Xiu grasped the art of kissing, her arms wrapped around Fang Chongyong's neck, the two of them kissing inseparably.

Not long after, outside the room where Fang Chongyong and Pei Xiu were, Cen Shen, holding an account book in hand, gently pushed open a crack of the door.

Then he saw Fang Chongyong and Pei Xiu busy at it on the bed; in the flurry, Pei Xiu's clothes were being tossed to the floor one piece at a time, so Cen Shen carefully closed the door, tiptoed away, and instructed He Changqi and the others not to disturb Fang Chongyong's rest.

At last this silly girl wasn't stupid to the bone!

Cen Shen reflected on this in his heart.

In fact, by his understanding, these two should have gotten together a long time ago. Everyone in their group knew it was only a matter of time.

The soldiers over in Hexi might not lack for Hu dancing girls, but the soldiers in the Longyou border garrison camp—many of them hadn't seen what a woman looked like in years. For a young, beautiful woman like Pei Xiu to come to the border garrison as merely a so-called guard beside Fang Chongyong—wouldn't she be devoured alive by those soldiers!

If Pei Xiu were not Fang Chongyong's exclusive woman, here in Longyou she would likely have lost her virtue in less than a month.

So what if her father was the Sword Saint Pei Min? The soldiers didn't care about consequences that far off—retaliation would come much later. An army commissioner in Longyou wielded considerable power; there was nothing he couldn't accomplish.

In their eyes, a beautiful woman was just that—once they'd had their fun, they'd had their fun.

If Pei Xiu was Fang Chongyong's woman, then others would not dare lay a hand on her; otherwise it would be a fight to the death. Clashing with Fang Youde's son over a woman was far too unworthy.

Cen Shen thought to himself that given Young Master Fang's trouble-averse personality, perhaps his choice to pull Pei Xiu into bed today was because it had truly reached the point where he had no choice but to act. Waiting until they reached Shanzhou City to "take care of business" would easily invite complications and unnecessary trouble.

……

"Censor Fang! Censor Fang!"

The sun was already high in the sky when Cen Shen's urgent knocking came from outside the door.

"Let me sleep a bit more, I'm dead tired."

Pei Xiu, her body nearly worn to pieces, huddled in Fang Chongyong's arms and mumbled a sentence; last night she had finally learned what it meant for a fierce man to descend from heaven, and at last understood why there were palace maids in the palace who, risking execution, willingly degraded themselves to carry on illicit affairs with the imperial guards.

It was simply because that sort of shameful thing was so embarrassing to speak of yet so intoxicating!

Last night, going from girl to woman, Pei Xiu had truly broadened her horizons.

Fang Chongyong had his eyes closed and said nothing at this moment. He hadn't touched a woman for the better part of a month, and last night's one evening of romance—that exhilaration truly made one want to sing aloud. Right now he was still savoring last night's thrilling experience.

After last night's events, Fang Chongyong somewhat understood why, in the Tang dynasty where productivity was not high, so many powerful nobles liked to mess around, changing women one after another. It was truly because different women were different scenery, able to bring completely different and entirely new experiences.

In the Great Tang, where entertainment was scarce, this was one of the rare pleasures!

This kind of fresh excitement alone would make men who remained boys until death and never stopped playing unable to stop themselves—this kind of debauchery was addictive!

"I really am a vulgar man too, huh."

Fang Chongyong couldn't help but sigh, muttering to himself. Last night he had played the role of "Brother Ji" once, and his understanding of Brother Ji had deepened a bit more.

There was nothing to do today anyway; he just needed to wait for Shanzhou City to send someone over again. Fang Chongyong didn't want to get up. Holding Pei Xiu's smooth shoulder, he planned to keep sleeping and couldn't be bothered to pay attention to Cen Shen. He was even thinking about whether to indulge in some daytime pleasure, and in a bit, conduct another biological exploration with Pei Xiu.

But the unease in his heart still suppressed this impulse. Fang Chongyong was afraid that if he gave himself over to unrestrained indulgence, he would in the future become a monster controlled by his lower half.

"Censor Fang, the eunuch Bian Lingcheng sent from Chang'an has come to Longzhi City! He says there is an important matter and requests an audience! He is in the military camp right now!"

Receiving no response from inside the room, Cen Shen's anxious voice from outside the door had even changed pitch.

There's still another chapter today.

(End of this chapter)