Chapter 2049: The Final Journey 17

That very night, the Guangzhou garrison and constables moved swiftly, sealing the city gates, clearing the streets, and banning markets. Hou Yanguang directly mobilized five thousand militia into the city, heading straight for Fanfang Street, surrounding that "Arab quarter" composed of nine wards and eight lanes, and in a flurry of activity, sealed off every street and exit.

The Patrol Inspector soldiers of Guangzhou Prefecture were responsible for the city-wide lockdown and maintaining order, which also interrupted Panyu's nightlife, bringing it to an unusually early end. And with such a major operation by the government forces, even in the depths of the cold night, Panyu City fell into a state of unrest.

Of course, the Guangzhou Prefecture government offices had finally done something—pressure had been transmitted layer by layer down from the old Emperor, and every level of clerk and constable displayed ten times their usual zeal and sense of duty.

The Guangzhou Prefecture side issued proclamations overnight, passed down through the ranks, notifying all public offices and neighborhoods in the city. The requirements were simple: the city was under lockdown, and commoners were not to go out casually; if they did, they had to carry identity documents, otherwise, should anything go wrong, they bore the consequences themselves.

As the chief person in charge of this "rectification campaign," Liu Changyan also spent a sleepless night. He ordered people to find the architectural plans of Fanfang Street, but they turned out to be drawings from decades ago, not including later expansions, and basically impossible to match with the current actual situation—a clear sign of the local government's neglect in managing these Fanfang Streets.

So Liu Changyan could only, with a headache, mark on the map based on the oral accounts of subordinates familiar with the situation, the most important target of this operation—the mosque.

Even Liu Changyan himself hadn't expected that within the bounds of those nine wards and eight lanes, as many as twelve mosques of various sizes had been built.

Thinking carefully, the Emperor's fury was indeed justified—if it were just one or two, one could say it was an oversight, but this many, without even pretending to comply, was truly open defiance of imperial orders and opposition to the court. The previous administrations really hadn't measured up, failing their sacred trust. Liu Changyan was doing his utmost to distance himself from any connection to this matter; his short tenure in office was a barely passable excuse.

Staying up late was hard, and the nearly fifty-year-old Prefect Liu was having a rough time of it, but none of the subordinates under his jurisdiction could expect to be comfortable either—they all had to get moving.

When all preparations were complete, at dawn the next day, as the sky was just beginning to lighten, all the constables of the prefectural and police offices under Guangzhou Prefecture, who had long been awaiting orders, deployed in full, splitting into groups and teams, each heading for their objectives, carrying out the "rectification" plan drawn up overnight by the prefectural government.

Despite the big commotion, according to the prefectural government's plan, they only intended to first demolish the mosques within Fanfang Street—this would produce the most immediate results and make it easy to show achievements and give the old Emperor an account.

As for the matter of changing customs and practices, that could be dealt with later. As for the mosques outside the city within Guangzhou Prefecture and even throughout the entire Guangnan East Circuit, the Chief Command would send troops directly to handle them.

Within Panyu City was clearly the main focus, and also the place the old Emperor saw as most deeply "poisoned." At first, seeing the fully armed, murderous-looking Guangzhou constables, the Arabs in Fanfang Street, though furious, wisely did not resist. The ordinary Arab merchants and residents hid obediently in their homes, only daring to peek at the situation through cracks in doors and windows.

And so, many Muslims witnessed things that touched their very souls. The revered, wise, and benevolent imams and elders were tied up with ropes by the constables and paraded through the streets, no one knowing where they would be taken or what their fate would be;

Large quantities of Islamic scriptures, ritual implements, and decorations were piled up in the streets, doused with oil, and set ablaze;

Believers near the mosques watched helplessly as the temples they regarded as sacred places were trampled at will and wantonly demolished by the government constables, the "thud thud" sounds of walls being smashed ringing continuously in their ears.

For those true believers, what the government was doing was demolishing their spirit, burning their souls, and trampling their hearts.

However, those who had crossed the seas to make their way in Guangzhou certainly had their adventurous and fierce qualities, but they also knew how to read the times. Especially since this was a foreign land, having this patch of ground to call home was enough. Besides, living in the Great Han, how could they not know the court's attitude toward Islam?

It was only a matter of time. When they heard that the Great Han Emperor would tour Guangzhou Prefecture, the more farsighted among the Arabs already had a bad feeling. It was no secret that throughout the Great Han Empire, the foremost opponent of religion was the old Emperor, followed by Prince Wei, Liu Min.

Therefore, the Guangzhou Prefecture's rectification work on those mosques proceeded smoothly. Building a mosque might take several months or even a year or more, but destroying one only took a day.

By the time dusk approached, they had already entered the finishing stages. The lockdown order was still in effect, but everyone, officials and commoners alike, gradually relaxed their nerves.

And accidents tend to happen at such moments. Exactly how many Arabs were in Panyu City, how many Muslims believed in Islam, was already hard to say at this point. Given Guangzhou Prefecture's past performance, the registered data clearly couldn't be trusted.

But at least within Fanfang Street, there were no fewer than seventy to eighty thousand people. Such a large crowd was diverse in origin and background, and not all of them were rational and sensible—there were bound to be "fanatics" with unclear minds.

First, the two constables who had been guarding and pasting seals on the thoroughly desecrated mosques died, stabbed to death in the dark.

This was clearly an act of retaliation, which could be seen as a provocation against the government. The prefectural government naturally couldn't let it go. Without waiting for orders from above, the constables had already launched operations to search and arrest. If one insisted on procedure and evidence, finding the culprit would be very difficult, but in such tense times, all the rules and regulations could be temporarily set aside—especially when targeting a group of foreigners who had killed constables and retaliated against the government.

A police captain on duty came up with a method: directly arrest those believers with the most "notorious" reputations to break the case open. The officials above didn't understand the internal situation of these Arabs, but the constables, as the upper crust of local underworld figures, knew a thing or two.

During the arrests, the incident began to escalate. First, some people resisted arrest—if they'd just fled, that would have been one thing, but they actually dared to resist with weapons, not just swords and blades, but bows and arrows as well. This was serious. Under the Great Han's urban public security regulations, ordinary citizens were not permitted to possess bows and arrows. Violators, even if not beheaded or exiled, would certainly be sentenced to hard labor.

With trouble breaking out, the constables immediately moved to suppress it, and the foreigners participating in the resistance grew in number, the chaos expanding further. The night brought stillness, but it also suppressed people's inner cowardice and magnified their courage. Those Muslims had been accumulating deep hatred from the government's unreasonable and excessive actions during the day, and all those negative emotions burst forth at once. The officials and constables, exhausted from a full day and night of work, were also irritable, and what started as suppression of a riot gradually turned into retaliatory killing, the scope of the crackdown continuously expanding.

When the Chief Command and the Guangzhou Prefectural government received word that Muslims in Fanfang Street had gathered in rebellion, the situation rapidly slid into an uncontrollable abyss.

Officials and constables deployed, Patrol Inspectors deployed, the garrison deployed. In the southern winter night, a pall of blood hung over the once-lively Fanfang Street in Panyu City.

It's hard to say exactly when the chaos began, or how it expanded to the point of being out of control. One can only make a simple summary of the incident from its results.

First, many people died. The initial thousand-plus constables and five thousand militia couldn't even fully control the scene, forcing the Chief Command to transfer another ten thousand men into the city. The mission then became one of suppressing rebellion, killing Arab rebels—from those holding weapons, to all those with hatred in their eyes, until finally, any Arab who had breathed the air of the Great Han was guilty of a capital crime!

During the suppression, the entire city of Guangzhou inevitably fell into turmoil. The reckoning against the Arabs—more accurately, the slaughter and plunder—involved not just the government and military, but also some of Panyu's own citizens.

"The Arabs have rebelled!"

"The foreigners are killing people!"

"."

Similar cries rang through Panyu City for nearly two hours, until they were completely drowned out by the sounds of slaughter and wailing.

Some people were there to loot in the chaos. After all, while Fanfang Street was the Arabs' main residential area, that didn't mean they only lived there—their commercial activities could be found throughout the city, especially in the major markets and the foreign goods street.

And so, some neighbors who would normally greet each other with smiles launched attacks on the foreigners next door that very night. Others were simply protecting themselves—in such a chaotic situation, the safest course was to pick up weapons and kill anyone who posed a threat.

Although the government's main target was the Arabs, the other foreign quarters in the city—such as those of the Goryeo, Japanese, South Seas, and Indian communities—also inevitably suffered, especially the Indians and those who couldn't speak Chinese fluently.

The killing lasted a full three days and three nights without stopping. Of course, the current Great Han government's authority was still intact and its control strong—from the second day onward, the chaos was completely compressed and confined to Fanfang Street, the Arab enclave.

But the scope of this upheaval extended far beyond that. Outside Panyu City, among the common people of Guangzhou Prefecture, in those market towns and docks, an even larger-scale suppression of Arabs unfolded in tandem. At this point, officials and commoners were united in action—it was a fight to the death.

In Guangzhou Prefecture and its surroundings, the imperial army, militia, constables, and local militia—all military and non-military units combined—totaled over thirty thousand men, all thrown into the campaign to suppress and eliminate the Arab rebels.

Eventually, even the navy stationed in Guangzhou Bay joined in. Their target was the Arab merchant ships that hadn't managed to set sail southward—they seized over a hundred vessels and killed quite a few people as well.

At first, if one could prove they were not a Muslim believer, they might still live. However, as the atmosphere grew more fevered, as blood stained people's eyes red, and rationality gradually gave way to bestiality, the work of screening seemed to become unnecessary, with no room left to implement it.

It wasn't until the twenty-fifth day of the eleventh month, a full six days later, that the suppression of Fanfang Street in Panyu City officially came to an end, concluding with there being no able-bodied young men left within the nine wards and eight lanes who could threaten the safety of the government troops.

A campaign to rectify religion ultimately turned into a bloody massacre and purge, more like a total release of pent-up contradictions. To be sure, the arrival of the Arabs had brought the people of Guangnan novel goods, fashionable customs, and Islamic teachings. There were certainly those who embraced these as trendy and vied to imitate them, but there were far more who rejected and detested them.

Throughout the entire Guangnan East Circuit, aside from Guangzhou Prefecture and even aside from Panyu City, how many places remained open-minded? At the same time, what the citizens of Guangzhou typically saw was Arabs living comfortably on their turf, earning considerable wealth from trade with the Great Han, and displaying an air of affluence in their daily lives.

This naturally stirred envy in many lower- and middle-class citizens. In the past, the government had protected them, and the Arabs—especially the Muslims—were exceptionally united and not to be trifled with. Now that the government had suddenly turned tough and issued stern decrees, of course they would kick a man when he was down. Some even went so far as to tear a piece of flesh off the Arabs.

Regardless of the causes or the contradictions, the final outcome probably surprised many people, including the old Emperor himself. Even many who realized what had happened afterward turned pale, their hearts still racing. The citizens of Guangzhou Prefecture, who had enjoyed years of peace, had directly experienced the blooming of a bloody splendor beneath the Kaibao golden age.

It's hard to say whether this was due to the Emperor's authority—after all, when the Son of Heaven is angered, a million corpses fall and blood flows for a thousand li. Or perhaps it was the "charm" of certain religions—making people sacrifice life itself, lose themselves, and go mad unto death.

Exactly how many people died in this upheaval was never tallied in the end. All that is known is that in the remaining winter days of the twenty-ninth year of Kaibao, there was much mourning white in Guangzhou City, and the once-boisterous Fanfang Street had become a ghostly realm.

As for the high officials of Guangnan East Circuit, they were weeping without tears—after this chaos, Guangzhou Prefecture's economy had regressed at least ten years. Their money bags!