Chapter 1714: Inside the Rebel Plot

"I hear the rebels attacked twice and were both times driven back by you—and on the second occasion, you even took over three hundred heads?" Inside Guidei Fort, Liu Fang asked softly of the garrison commander, Wu Ping.

He was a low-ranking officer in the prime of life, plain of feature; the most conspicuous thing about him was probably the thick, full beard that hung down over his chest, lending him a certain distinctive bearing.

The Prince of Zhao was plainly the highest-ranking, most precious personage Wu Ping had ever met, and facing Liu Fang's questions, he could not help but be ill at ease—especially since Liu Fang's expression was very grave, adding further pressure.

His answer therefore came out haltingly, though in the end he managed to make himself clear: "To answer Your Highness, the rebel host numbered some three thousand in all, intending to launch a sneak attack and seize the pass. But after the rebellion erupted, this humble officer sealed the pass and set up obstructions, strengthening our defenses, and so the rebels did not have their way.

The rebel troops were ill-equipped, their blades and weapons uneven, and they lacked siege engines. Had they come by stealth, they might have caught us off guard—but the fort was already prepared, we held the high ground, and the brothers fought desperately to hold the line, so naturally they tasted defeat before the fort!"

"This fort of yours seems to have only two hundred regular garrison troops. To hold a fortress against odds of fifteen to one, and not only hold it but rout the rebels—quite impressive!" Liu Fang said. "The bandits of Yulin are no ordinary rabble, after all!"

There was a hint of praise in Liu Fang's words, and Wu Ping felt it; his rough face flushed slightly, but he shook his head and said: "The first time, we could only hold our ground. Once the prefecture learned the rebels were marching south, the Commander urgently dispatched an additional five hundred regular troops and five hundred militia, and together with the volunteers temporarily armed inside and outside the fort, it was only by combining all our strength that we managed to defeat the rebel host!"

Hearing this, Liu Fang looked Wu Ping up and down, then said: "You're an honest one!"

With that he glanced at the Commander of the Jinzhou troops who had accompanied him: "Is that so?"

"Yes, Your Highness! Exactly so!"

Wu Ping, for his part, was stunned for a long moment before it dawned on him that he seemed to have missed an opportunity to claim merit—though perhaps it was precisely this honesty that lodged him in Liu Fang's memory.

Jinzhou was a prefecture newly established during the nationwide administrative reform after unification: west it bordered Huan and Qing Prefectures, east it connected with Yanzhou, south it faced Fuzhou, and to the north it adjoined Yulin—a key point in the northern part of the Guannei region.

At a signal from the Commander, Wu Ping said respectfully: "Your Highness, this humble officer and his men captured several hundred rebels, among them a few ringleaders, and from their mouths we have extracted some intelligence on the rebel situation in Yanzhou."

Without a moment's hesitation, Liu Fang ordered: "Bring them up. I will question them personally!"

"Yes!"

Soon two rebel ringleaders from Yanzhou were brought in. Both were sturdy, vigorous men with a fierce air about them, though their appearance was quite bedraggled; one of them bore wounds of no small severity, crudely bandaged. Of course, had they not been able to provide intelligence, they would likely have died of their wounds long ago—the imperial army had no sympathy whatsoever for such rebels, and a dead man was one more head to claim as merit.

Gazing at the two men, Liu Fang narrowed his eyes slightly and asked directly: "Talk."

"I already said everything I had to say!" The uninjured one, though instinctively cowed by Liu Fang's majesty, still put on a show of toughness: "I know what I've done is a crime punishable by extermination of my clan. If you're going to kill me, kill me—why put us through all this!"

"Then say it again!" At this, Liu Fang smiled, but his tone suddenly turned harsh: "Since you know it is one of the Ten Abominations, why did you commit it?"

"If I talk, will I live?"

"That depends on whether what you say has any value to me!" Liu Fang said coolly.

With the eyes of a mere bandit chieftain, this man naturally could not know Liu Fang's identity, but he could tell that the only man seated in the hall before him was someone of no ordinary standing—at the very least far higher than the imperial officers who had crushed, captured, and interrogated them before.

"If it has none, then you will be executed on the spot!" Liu Fang added another cold remark.

A wave of pressure bore down on him. The ringleader hesitated, looking distinctly guilt-ridden under Liu Fang's gaze, but in the end the instinct to survive won out. Without even needing to be pressed, he began to speak on his own initiative, laying out everything he knew of the rebels' inner affairs in far greater detail than he had given Wu Ping.

According to his account, his name was Wang Shen, a Han by ethnicity, originally from Hanzhou in the Jiannan Circuit. More than twenty years ago, he had been moved with his parents to settle in Yanzhou, but his family's business failed and they went bankrupt. He was later taken in by Yuan Ke and became a tenant on the Yuan family estate. After passing tests of loyalty, he became one of Yuan Ke's trusted men and one of the chieftains of the Mingsha bandits. The Mingsha bandits had committed major crimes and grave offenses, and he had participated in nearly all of them—including the Kara-Khanid envoy case last year.

As for the former: after Yanzhou Prefectural Administrator Liu Fang was seized by Wang Xuanzhen, Yuan Ke, guilty of conscience, fled along with him and hid among the Tangut. Thereafter, as the Wude Office pressed its investigation relentlessly, and seeing more than a decade of careful scheming about to be uprooted, Yuan Ke could bear it no longer. He steeled himself, summoned his subordinates, made common cause with the Tangut of Yanzhou, and raised the banner of revolt.

Yuan Ke's connections among the Yanzhou Tangut were firmly established, and the local Tangut tribes had long been restless, nursing treason in their hearts—the two sides came together at once. Of course, Wang Shen also mentioned that he personally had not agreed with the rebellion, but having become too deeply entangled with Yuan Ke and being under duress, he had no choice but to go along. Naturally, Liu Fang treated such ghost-deceiving talk as if he had not heard it.

After stirring up great chaos in Yanzhou, an attack on the prefectural seat of Dingbian failed, and with no further room for expansion in Yanzhou's situation, Yuan Ke began to cast his gaze toward other circuits and prefectures.

This was the advice of his dog-headed strategist Zhang Hong: if they confined themselves to Yanzhou, they would inevitably draw the court's focused hammer-blow—no different from sitting and waiting for death. They had to spread the chaos wider.

Yuan Ke heartily agreed, and this was the reason the rebel force Wang Shen belonged to had marched south. Led by Yuan Ke's third brother, Yuan Zhen, they planned to take the Guidei road, pour into Guannei, stir up rebellion, and carry the flames of war to Fuzhou, Binzhou, and even Chang'an.

Of course, the thinking was fine; the results, however, were a bloody nose at Guidei Fort. Not only did they fail in their campaign, but Yuan Zhen himself nearly got captured. Speaking of this, Wang Shen was full of grievances, complaining that Yuan Ke favored kin in his appointments—that Yuan Zhen was nothing but a wet-behind-the-ears whelp who knew nothing of war. Of course, he himself had only experience robbing and plundering as a bandit, and likewise knew nothing of marching and fighting.

Having laid out in exhaustive detail his origins and his "glorious résumé" from Mingsha bandit to rebel to captive, Wang Shen fell silent, as if there was nothing more to say.

But what Liu Fang wanted was far more critical information. He thought for a moment, then said: "How many men does the Yanzhou rebel army have now?"

"By the time we sinners marched south, Grand General Yuan already commanded a host of tens of thousands!" Wang Shen said.

"What Grand General! That villain Yuan!" The Jinzhou Commander beside him flew into a rage and immediately snapped.

Wang Shen started in fright and hastily corrected himself: "Yes, yes! The villain Yuan!"

After raising the revolt, to give himself legitimacy, Yuan Ke had conferred upon himself the title of Grand General, and at the same time lavishly rewarded his subordinates—every one of them a General or Commander. Wang Shen here, for instance, was a Soaring Dragon General.

Liu Fang paid no heed to such laughable trifles. He said coldly: "Tens of thousands? Is it twenty thousand, thirty thousand, or fifty thousand?"

Wang Shen hesitated, then said: "It should be over thirty thousand, I'd say!"

Liu Fang's brows shot up at once, and he said to those around him: "It seems the situation in Yanzhou is far more dire than we previously knew! Over thirty thousand rebel troops—how many people does all of Yanzhou even have?"

"Your Highness, we can no longer let the rebels run unchecked—if we allow them to grow strong, they will only become harder to deal with!" Pan Luozhi, somewhat impatient, spoke up at once.

Liu Fang raised a hand to stop him: "No hurry. I have my own plans."

"Your—Your Highness—" Hearing that form of address from Pan Luozhi, Wang Shen gave a start, his mouth hanging open, tongue-tied.

Liu Fang glanced at him and said: "What you've said so far is not yet enough to spare your life!"

At these words, Wang Shen did not answer, but the other ringleader, dragging out a feeble voice, said: "The villain Yuan's rebel host may be even larger at present. Besides sending us sinners south, the villain Yuan has also dispatched envoys in all directions to contact Tangut tribes everywhere. At the same time, he has sent troops into Huan and Qing Prefectures, and has led his men to plunder towns and markets, forcing the local populace to join the rebellion."

"Rebels who prey on the common people like this—if they are not killed, how can we answer to the realm!" Liu Fang lost his temper for the first time, his gaze cold and piercing as he fixed the two men: "Those common folk—when they refused to join the rebels, what did you do with them?"

"Killed them," Wang Shen said in a low voice.