Chapter 1737: The Silent Yulin

In the dilapidated little town, it was not entirely a dead land—there was still some life. In the wind heavy with desolation, wild pheasants foraged and crows gnawed at rotting flesh.

Ever since Han general Wang Meng led the mixed Hu-Han army through this place, it had become nearly a forbidden zone. Dimness and loneliness were the dominant tones, the stench of decay spreading everywhere, as if even the fierce northwestern winds could not blow it away.

The bones amid the rubble were, without a doubt, mostly Tangut. However fervent and excited they had been when they first rebelled, just so bleak and desolate were they now that they had become a field of dry bones.

To say that all Tangut people wanted to rebel against the Great Han and oppose the court—that was clearly not the case.

Among the common folk, apart from differences in faith, means of production, and ways of life, there was no essential distinction between Hu and Han commoners.

Yet the difference between ethnic groups was nonetheless an objective reality. When someone proclaimed that the court was oppressive and that the Han were encroaching upon them, the Tangut could hardly avoid being swayed. Ambitious schemers were the minority, but those ordinary Tangut who were stirred up, those who silently encouraged and supported the rebels—they could not simply be described as innocent either.

In their hearts, did they not also wish to establish an independent, autonomous Tangut regime, even if only to restore the Dingnan Army's former status? Even if most of them did not know whether such an outcome would benefit them at all, or how much.

The court's pacification campaign could be described as brutal and ruthless. As for speaking of humanity—for an autocratic empire like the Great Han, such talk held little meaning. Those in power in the Great Han preferred to speak of the Mandate of Heaven. And to the court, what was the Mandate of Heaven? Those who obey me prosper, those who defy me perish—nothing more.

In fact, long before the court assumed such a stern posture and launched a military operation of such scale, the Tangut of Yulin had already grown uneasy. And after Yuan Ke and Li Jiqian were successively defeated, that unease fully transformed into terror—even producing a rift in their thinking. The rebel forces in various places and the various Tangut tribes had never been of one mind to begin with.

At that time, many people felt they should "quit while they were ahead." The court was so powerful; rebellion would come to no good end—such an understanding became exceptionally clear.

However, such reflection came far too late. Unlike the attitude of previous dynasties toward Hu uprisings—sending troops to punish, defeating the rebels, then enjoying a few years of peace while waiting for the next rebellion to erupt—

the Great Han court, under Emperor Liu's will, had always adhered to the principle of eradicating evil completely and pulling out the weeds by the roots when dealing with such rebellions. If there was even the slightest possibility of leniency toward ordinary Han, then toward the Hu there was rarely any room left at all.

Over the past twenty-odd years, the Great Han had seen countless rebellions and disturbances of all sizes, from south to north, from within to without. Without exception, all who participated in rebellion were either killed or thrown into convict labor camps where death was certain—there was no possibility of pardon whatsoever.

After such a high-pressure policy had been sustained for over twenty years, most of the barbarians gradually began to submit, entering a state of assimilation. After all, those who had rebelled or were suspected of rebellion had mostly been killed or sent to convict labor camps for reformation.

For many Tangut in Yulin, they sympathized with the rebels in their hearts and supported the rebellion—but as long as they did not personally participate like the Yeli and other tribes, there was still room to maneuver. …

If the rebels succeeded, they could seize benefits in the chaos; if the rebels failed, they would not suffer much loss either—at worst, they would return to the life of the past twenty-odd years, which was not something they could not get used to.

However, nothing in this world was so easy. Especially given Yulin's—and even the northwest's—peculiar ethnic, political, and military situation, the court's attitude was exceptionally resolute and its actions exceptionally cold-blooded. It simply gave no opportunity for the double-minded to play both sides. When the situation was complex, when friend and foe could not be distinguished, when loyalty and treachery could not be told apart—then sweep them all away together.

By this point, many Tangut finally woke up, regretting it endlessly. But it was too late—the rope of death had long been looped around their necks, and the executioner's blade had already been sharpened to a gleaming edge.

For the court, having deployed over a hundred thousand troops and expended countless human and material resources to lay out this formation, after paying such a heavy price, there was no longer any room for turning back. There was no possibility of applying the brakes—only continuing along the established strategic plan until it was completed.

And the most conspicuous result was that the entire territory of Yulin had become stained with blood—for a thousand li, there was scarcely a trace of human habitation, and even where there was, it was only corpses.

In Yulin, those who were killed were, without a doubt, all "rebels"—but those who did the killing were not necessarily so. The reason lay in the policy issued at the very beginning: anyone who presented a rebel's head to the authorities could be spared death.

In Yulin, where slaughter ran rampant, this sole policy of leniency toward rebels could not escape being twisted out of shape. Of course, perhaps this was already within the court's expectations.

As early as when the blockade ring around Yulin had formed and supplies within the territory became severely scarce, some rebel forces—who had nothing left to plunder, nothing left to raid—had already begun to feel threatened.

In the bitter cold of ice and snow, wealth and glory were no longer the rebels' goal—survival came first. By then, some rebel forces had already begun attacking the "righteous armies" to seize survival supplies, and later, they simply took heads and risked surrendering to the authorities.

As for these acts of "coming over to the right side," under the stewardship of Zhao King Liu Fang, the court did not go back on its word. Instead, it strictly carried out Emperor Liu's will, accepting them all and granting certificates of exoneration from death.

Of course, for these people, though the death penalty was commuted, they could not escape punishment for their crimes—they were all dispersed to the far corners of the earth, with Anxi, Andong, Annam, and the South Seas as destinations of exile. But regardless, at least their lives were preserved.

With these examples set, the remaining rebels now had a practical reference for how to choose. The internal slaughter among fellow rebels thus began—initially just small-scale eruptions of conflict and fights over food, but later evolving into an all-out war for survival.

By the time Yuan and Li had both suffered disastrous defeats at the hands of the government forces, the motley righteous armies had even less reason to hold on, and a large-scale elimination contest formally commenced. The court's bounty money was only for government troops, Han civilians, and assorted Hu servants—but the rebels, fighting only to stay alive, also struck without mercy at the rebel bands around them.

At the same time, those pursuing the rebels included not only government and military organizations but also Tangut within Yulin itself—among them their own kinsmen and kindred. But they too, for the sake of survival, had no choice but to take up their steel blades. By the same logic, a Tangut who presented a "rebel's" head could likewise be spared death.

And so Yulin, this arena, reached its climax—everyone was killing, and everyone was being killed. …

In the entire chess game, only the government troops had it easiest; everyone else was fighting merely for the word "survival." By comparison, the ordinary Tangut were in the most difficult position and met the most miserable ends.

When they, for the sake of survival, had no choice but to take up their blades, mount their horses, and point their targets at the rebels—the rebels also discovered that compared to the organized forces, ordinary Tangut were much easier to deal with. Take their heads, and you could live. As for whether they were actually rebels—if the authorities did not care, why should they?

By the third month of the twenty-second year of Kaibao, the various government offices in Yulin had received a total of no more than seven thousand "surrendered" personnel—which meant at least seven thousand rebel heads had been presented.

Yulin had far more people than that. As for the rest—most of them had become bounty money for the government troops and barbarian soldiers.

After entering the third month, the great calamity seemed to have quietly passed. The sounds of slaughter no longer rose and fell one after another, no longer shocking heaven and moving earth. After the frenzy came a profound silence—Huangyangping was a standard example.

And Huangyangping, now sunk in deathly stillness, had received a new batch of visitors the previous day—not many, fewer than a hundred people, in tattered clothes and wretched condition, every one of them armed with a blade, along with a dozen-odd horses that were nothing but skin and bone.

In Yulin in these years, even people could not survive—let alone beasts. And that very morning, not unexpectedly, an internal conflict broke out. These nearly hundred people fought among themselves, slaughtering one another, until only forty-odd survived. Then, under mutual suspicion, another desperate struggle ensued, leaving just over twenty.

In the end, all the heads were severed, loaded onto the dozen-odd horses, and silently hauled south toward Xiazhou.

But on the road, they were discovered by a squad of government cavalry. A sudden raid—the remaining twenty-odd were all killed, and with nearly a hundred heads, this cavalry squad could split nearly a hundred strings of cash.

"Present a rebel's head to the authorities and you may live"—that policy was genuine, and the authorities never went back on their word. But the prerequisite was being able to reach a town and see the responsible official. And a band as small as this could be easily wiped out by a single squad of government cavalry. In Yulin's brutal environment, unless one had extraordinary luck, there was almost no chance of survival.

The silence of Yulin over the past few months had almost entirely been silenced here—the government and its troops were silent, and the court was silent as well.