Chapter 1997: Urgent Need for Change

It wasn't just Yang Fu who was puzzled; as the head of Anxi, Prince Wei Liu Min was also plunged into deep thought over the Jile garrison attack. Of course, he wasn't puzzled about where these people had come from—large-scale attacks had not been uncommon in Anxi over the past two years. But Jile could be considered the very heart of Anxi's current rule, and those "sect bandits" gathering and striking at government offices and market towns was truly audacious.

This in turn stirred Liu Min's anxieties about the current situation in Anxi. The sect bandit rebellions that kept flaring up one after another—even if they were only minor disturbances—had become an endless source of vexation for the Governor-General's office.

This had already become the most direct threat to public order and stability in Anxi. The trouble with counterinsurgency warfare—only those who tried it knew what it was like, and Liu Min had tasted more than enough of it over the years.

The people of various ethnicities who had migrated west from the heartland were all armed settlers—they could pick up farm tools to produce and draw blades to kill—but sect bandit attacks could never be fully guarded against. There was no such thing as guarding against thieves for a thousand days.

And the migrants from the heartland did not fear hardship, nor even danger, but if they remained for long in such an unstable social environment, their enthusiasm for production would be greatly affected. After all, most of them had come to Anxi carrying hopes for a better life.

Three-tenths of one's energy had to be spent on guarding against sect bandits, and the remaining energy was not enough to do everything well. The sect bandits' depredations had already severely impacted Anxi's public order and grain and livestock production. And for Anxi as it stood now, agriculture and pastoral production were matters as important as military construction. If this problem was not resolved, not to mention the common people, even the Governor-General's office could not eat or sleep in peace.

Over the years, the Anxi Governor-General's office had been trying every means to attract migrants from the heartland. A very important purpose was to bring in citizens to fill Anxi's vacancies, change the local population structure, and consolidate the foundation of rule.

But to bring people in, basic public order had to be guaranteed. A place where order was unstable and riots could break out at any moment—no matter how excellent its farming and pastoral conditions—would only make people balk at the doorstep.

After all, in the Great Han as it was now, even if the lower classes had it hard, as long as they were willing to work, they could get by. Better to be a dog in times of peace than a person in times of chaos—this was the simplest truth.

Add to that a deep attachment to one's homeland, and the number of people willing to trek a thousand li to Anxi grew even smaller. Thus, the pace of migration had slowed dramatically, which gave the Anxi Governor-General's office a severe headache.

Of the more than two hundred thousand heartland migrants now under Anxi's rule, Han Chinese numbered only a little over one hundred thousand—and that figure even included some exiles, criminals, and poor folk from the He-Long region who could no longer bear the "hardships of the Western Expedition policies." In the heartland, they bore the burdens and suffering of the Western Expedition; in Anxi, they enjoyed its benefits.

Yet even these people were far from satisfying the Anxi Governor-General's office's demand for population. They even treated the heartland's "second-class barbarian subjects" as their own people, entrusting them with trust and protecting their property.

On the matter of migration's purpose, Anxi seemed to have fallen into a dead knot. On one hand, they hoped to adjust the local population structure by bringing in Han migrants and fundamentally solve the problem of rule; on the other hand, without basically stable public order, their appeal to the heartland population was extremely weak.

For many northwestern commoners, if migrating west became the inevitable choice for seeking a change in livelihood, then why not go to Gaochang? The neighboring Gaochang Circuit was also implementing population policies, and it was still "within the country"—no need to cross the Tianshan Mountains—and its farming and pastoral conditions were equally excellent.

Of course, in terms of results, far more people had moved to Anxi than to Gaochang. The reason was simple: Anxi had the court's unstinting support and blood transfusion, and even the impoverished Gaochang Circuit itself had to draw blood to send to Anxi.

This had historical roots. When the Anxi jurisdiction was adjusted and the Gaochang Circuit was established, the Shule region was transferred from the Anxi Governor-General's office to Gaochang—a slice of fat cut away. Afterward, drawing a bit of blood from Gaochang as "compensation" to Anxi was also within "reason."

Among northwestern officials and commoners, those who suffered from the Western Expedition were many, but none more so than the Gaochang Circuit. There was no helping it—Gaochang Circuit was the stepchild, weak in every foundation. In less than ten years, those who had once been "born of the same mother" had also grown somewhat estranged. This too was territorial consciousness at work.

Now, the situation was visibly undergoing enormous change. Though the court had only ostensibly abolished a series of "harmful policies" triggered by the Western Expedition, it had in effect declared an end to that blood-transfusion style of support.

In response, other northwestern circuits and prefectures might still have vested interests pulling and wrestling, but in the Gaochang Circuit, officials and commoners were of one mind, unanimously supporting the court's correct decision.

Against this backdrop, the crisis awareness at the Anxi Governor-General's office surged, and alarm bells rang loudly. A group of Anxi's high-ranking officials, led by Liu Min, had come to recognize that the series of internal problems in Anxi—especially the public security issue—had to be resolved, or their not-so-solid rule risked being overturned.

However, recognizing this was easy; the hard part was how to resolve it.

Suyab City, like most towns under Anxi's rule, had undergone large-scale renovation of its city facilities. But having once served as the capital of the Kara-Khanids, it was no small scale. Han cultural temperament was continuously permeating the city, yet a great many exotic-style buildings remained within it. Even from the architectural angle alone, one could faintly discern Suyab's layered contradictions.

The Governor-General's office was the former Kara-Khanid palace, and also the most thoroughly renovated place in Suyab. After all, it was the supreme seat of power in Anxi; authority had to be guaranteed, and those obvious traces of the old regime had been cleared away.

Over the past few years, Liu Min had spent most of his time stationed at Taraz, personally suppressing Taraz and the vast region to its west. The situation there was far more severe than in the eastern regions—more remnants, more adherents, more fanatical believers, and naturally more intense resistance. An attack like the one at Jile would have seemed positively "gentle and tender" if it had happened over in Taraz.

But at the moment, Liu Min was in Suyab. Roughly since the Luoyang court formally began adjusting its Western Expedition strategy, he had returned to Suyab. Matters had their priorities, and Anxi's most urgent task right now was the question of which path lay ahead. The question of direction was always a serious and fundamental one. Compared to Taraz, Suyab clearly needed Liu Min's presence more, and internally it needed him to soothe and unite.

Qinzheng Hall was the main workplace for the senior officials of the Anxi Governor-General's office, not exclusively Liu Min's. For a long time previously, it had served as the office where Duke Wen of the State, Xiang Deming—Anxi's grand steward—led his people in work.

By the regulations of the Great Han, this building probably did not even qualify to be called a hall. But in Suyab, one could hardly demand too much; they had to make do with what was available. At night, even the lamplight within seemed somewhat stingy.

The upper echelons in Suyab mostly used oil lamps, their dim yellow light casting flickering shadows onto Liu Min. The summer wind was hot, but not as hot as the anxious urgency burning in Liu Min's heart at that moment.

Liu Min sat solemnly by the official desk, upon which lay the report from the Jile garrison commander regarding this sect bandit attack. Naturally, the report could not be too detailed or in-depth—it simply outlined the course of events and tallied the losses.

The garrison troops' casualties were not heavy—two dead, ten wounded. But the Hexi Army under Yang Fu, which had assisted in suppressing the rebellion, suffered nearly twenty dead and wounded. Of course, looking only at military losses, compared to the two hundred seventy-three heads taken in immediate execution and subsequent pursuit and extermination, this loss ratio was a complete victory.

But add in the casualties among Jile town's residents, and the result became serious. Unlike in the heartland, towns in Anxi had direct jurisdiction over the surrounding villages, and around Jile town there were thirteen villages with more than three thousand people.

Not counting losses of fields, houses, and other property, the casualties among Jile's common people in this attack numbered around one hundred, of whom thirty-eight were killed. Many had been slain while resisting with blades in hand. And this was still under a rough, low-level tally—it only included a few villages near the town; damage that roving bandits or remnant outlaws might have caused elsewhere was not included in the statistics.

But even so, looking at this loss report, Liu Min felt a pang of pain. Was it easy for the Governor-General's office to recruit these citizens? Jile was a town predominantly Han, and yet casualties had exceeded one hundred! In Liu Min's mind, the lives of ten Muslims were not worth the dignity of a single "Han life." For a moment, Liu Min's mind was entirely filled with vengeful thoughts—an impulse to slaughter every last Muslim.

Making an effort to calm his emotions, Liu Min picked up another report—one concerning the losses inflicted on Anxi's soldiers and civilians by sect bandits and remnants of the Kara-Khanids and Samanids over the past two years. This too was a rough statistical report, but the two figures alone—"349 incidents" and "over 6,000 casualties"—showed the severity of the destruction.

And this was only the past two years. If the time span were stretched further back, starting from the recovery of Suyab, the losses would double. Of course, this data was also padded; the biggest inaccuracy was that casualties among some of the subjugated local natives had been counted in. But it was already enough to illustrate the problem.

His mood inevitably turning irritable, Liu Min rose, strapped on his saber, and stepped outside to clear his head. Outdoors, he finally felt a hint of coolness in the night breeze, and he calmed somewhat. The night was like water, the sky brilliant with stars, leaves rustling in the wind—the scenery was quite pleasant.

Looking up at the sky, Liu Min suddenly thought of his late elder brother Liu Xu. As far as he knew, Andong had also gone through a long period of counterinsurgency warfare, but in the end Liu Xu had eliminated them one by one. In Liu Min's view, that process could not have been easy. At this moment, he suddenly felt an unusual curiosity about Liu Xu's governance in Andong.

Did he truly have to do as Tian Qinzuo had done in Andong back then—slaughter the rebellious people and build mounds of skulls—to achieve lasting peace and order?

Of course, Liu Min was also well aware that there were ultimately great differences between Anxi and Andong. Andong, since ancient times, had been influenced by China's radiance; many of the local tribes held a measure of admiration for imperial civilization. After rule by Bohai and Liao, it had acquired a deep foundation for sinicization.

Anxi was not the same. Although in official rhetoric the Great Han's Western Expedition was a just war to recover lost territory, in reality, beyond Gaochang, none of it could be called traditional territory.

And among these, the greatest difference was that in Anxi there existed a religion called Islam.