Chapter 193: Holding the Line

After Qi Hao and his men were hauled up onto the wall, Song Xianggong immediately had them separated from the envoy and placed under guard, then interrogated them one by one.

This was only to be expected, and Qi Hao bore no grudge against the Taiping Army for it; had he been in their place he would have done the same — caution keeps a ship safe for ten thousand years, for who could say the Qing army would not use the same trick to slip spies into the city?

He remembered clearly that back when he had held Hengyang by order of Li Dingguo of the Western Prefecture, Qing spies had mingled among the refugees and slipped into the city, then set fires everywhere under cover of night.

Had the garrison not discovered them in time and suppressed them, it would not have been a case of him abandoning Hengyang without a fight — the Qing would have taken it far earlier.

Song Xianggong questioned the envoy first, and only afterward questioned Qi Hao and his men separately. Cross-checking their accounts naturally turned up no problems, yet Song Xianggong still could not fully set his mind at ease.

It was not until Qi Hao produced his Regional Commander's official seal, issued by the Yongli court of the Southern Ming, that Song Xianggong's suspicions were thoroughly dispelled.

Qi Hao's Regional Commander seal had been issued uniformly by the Yongli court's Board of War after the Daxi Army joined the Ming to resist the Qing, based on the roster Sun Kewang had submitted.

But most of the time this Regional Commander of his had little to do with the Yongli court; the ones who could truly command him were still Sun Kewang and Li Dingguo.

To Ming army generals like him who had come out of the old Daxi Army, the Yongli court was no more than a Buddha statue set upon an incense table.

Back when Qi Hao had been forced to abandon Hengyang in the face of overwhelming Qing strength, Li Dingguo had stripped him of his Regional Commander post and made him serve in the army under the rank of Assistant Regional Commander, though the Regional Commander seal had not been taken back.

Presumably Li Dingguo, though angered by Qi Hao's abandonment of Hengyang, understood that the situation had forced his hand — had he himself not been compelled by Sun Kewang's pressure to shift his operations to Guangdong?

That being so, there was naturally no need to play the villain to the bitter end. After all, Qi Hao was not of his own inner circle, but he was still a member of the Daxi Army, and moreover had come over to Li Dingguo of his own accord.

Had Li Dingguo been truly merciless and treated Qi Hao too harshly, word of it spreading would do his own reputation no good.

Zhou Shixiang naturally had a Southern Ming court official seal of his own as well, but compared with Qi Hao's Regional Commander seal it was far inferior — it was only a Luoding Assistant Regional Commander seal.

That seal had not originally been meant for him either; it had been given to Hu Quan by Cheng Bangjun, a director of the Bureau of Operations in the Yongli court's Board of War.

Now that Hu Quan was dead, the seal had naturally fallen into the hands of Zhou Shixiang, the de facto leader of the Taiping Army.

One rank higher crushes a man to death. The visitor was a Regional Commander, while he himself was merely an Assistant Regional Commander not yet formally recognized by the Yongli court.

Set side by side, Zhou Shixiang came out looking weak, and that raised a problem: how to treat Qi Hao, this Ming Regional Commander who had come to join them.

The problem was easily solved. Where command of the Taiping Army and his own life were concerned, Zhou Shixiang was not one to be vague.

In front of Qi Hao and all his men he said plainly: the Taiping Army welcomes you to join, and is now willing to offer you the post of squad leader in the army — are you willing to accept?

He had expected that Qi Hao, having once been a Regional Commander, would now be reduced to a mere squad leader — no small drop, and surely he would harbor resentment. But to his surprise, upon hearing the appointment Qi Hao said nothing at all and accepted gladly.

His ready manner made Zhou Shixiang feel a little embarrassed inwardly, secretly reproaching himself for measuring a gentleman's heart with a petty man's mind.

Consider: the man had followed Zhang Xianzhong in campaigns north and south from an early age; in both age and seniority he far surpassed a xiucai like himself who had lived two lives.

And he had been able, when Li Dingguo's army retreated west with no road left, to lead his brothers in continuing to resist the Qing.

True, according to the envoy they had done more bandit work than fighting the Qing, and had even fenced stolen goods with some men of the Qing Green Standard, but no matter what, the man had not surrendered to the Qing, had not turned his guns on his former comrades, and had resolutely come to join them even knowing Xinhui was already surrounded by the Qing army.

That alone was enough to clear away everything. A man like this was hardly one whose eyes held only rank and riches — how could he be someone to be suspected?

From Qi Hao, Zhou Shixiang also learned something of conditions outside after Xinhui was surrounded. The previous month, a Ming force at Dong'an had attempted to move toward Xinhui but had been beaten back by the Qing.

Also, more than a thousand troops under Zhou Beifeng of the Haibei Circuit had boarded boats and entered the river mouth, but failed to break through the blockade of the Qing Guangdong fleet, and after losing several boats had hastily withdrawn from the river mouth again.

Just half a month ago, word came that a Ming force had landed at Hailing Island off Yangjiang, but afterward there had been no further movement.

Beyond this, Qi Hao had little news of the outside world; even this intelligence he had gleaned from a few stray words dropped by the other side while doing his fencing business with the Qing.

This news made Zhou Shixiang sigh inwardly. Before the siege of Xinhui he had sent out more than a dozen waves of envoys, but the one he truly pinned his hopes on was the Gaozhou front.

He had very much hoped that the tiny butterfly wings he had stirred up in Luoding by his arrival might influence the course of the Ming-Qing war, might at least keep Sun Kewang and Li Dingguo from falling out at this critical juncture.

But as things now appeared, that hope was likely sunk. By his reckoning of time, Sun Kewang and Li Dingguo were probably locked in bitter strife at this very moment, with over a hundred thousand crack Daxi troops butchering one another under the command of the two princes.

Without Li Dingguo's third eastward advance, the situation at Xinhui was a deadlock.

To expect those utterly combat-worthless Southern Ming motley units, or a navy that could only dominate on the water, to break the Taiping Army's perilous stand — that was the talk of fools dreaming.

What was more, of the Southern Ming generals scattered across Guangdong, few seemed able to see what the Taiping Army's seizure of Xinhui meant for the overall situation in the province.

Otherwise, why would only one or two forces have stirred, while no other commanders moved together toward Xinhui?

Better to rely on oneself than beg others. This deadlock at Xinhui, it seemed, would have to be resolved by the Taiping Army itself. But how to resolve it?

The Qing encirclement outside the city — three layers deep and three layers wide — left Zhou Shixiang at his wits' end. Without abandoning the old, weak, women, and children, he had virtually no possibility of breaking out.

Yet if he truly abandoned those old, weak, women, and children, and expected soldiers whose wives and children were all in the city to run off with him — that was even more unrealistic than a fool's dream, damn it.

Fortunately, after suffering two setbacks, the Qing no longer had the nerve to storm Xinhui by force. The grain in the city could hold out for another three or four months; the only real trouble was salt.

With salt on his mind, Zhou Shixiang naturally asked Qi Hao how they had gotten into the city, and whether there was any way to go back out along that route and bring salt in.

If Qi Hao and his men could get in, they could naturally get out as well. As long as the numbers were small, this passage outside the west gate was the only channel by which the Taiping Army could maintain contact with the outside world.

But getting out was easy — where were they to find salt? They could hardly seize salt from the Qing's own hands.

If they truly made a stir, the Qing were no fools; they would know there had to be a gap in their lines, and once they investigated, the river route would surely be cut off. Then Xinhui would truly be a lone city.

Qi Hao was at a loss for a moment, but then one of his brothers suddenly spoke up, saying there was indeed a way to get salt into the city — though the cost would likely be steep.

At these words, Zhou Shixiang and Song Xianggong's eyes both lit up, and together they questioned the man. According to him, when he and Qi Hao had taken to the hills as bandits, they had ranged about in search of food and by chance made contact with a man of the Guangdong fleet.

Though this man belonged to the fleet, he also moved freely in the underworld and was famous for his daring; his eyes recognized only silver, not people. If the silver was enough, he would probably even butcher his own mother.

Back then, most of the goods they obtained on their raids down the mountain had been handed to this man to dispose of. At this point, both the man and Qi Hao looked somewhat embarrassed, and their words grew vague and halting.

But how could Zhou Shixiang and Song Xianggong not understand? They had gone down the mountain, killed people, robbed goods, and then handed the loot to that fleet man to sell off in exchange for the grain they needed.

Zhou Shixiang had never done such work himself, but how could Song Xianggong not have? And Bald Jiang He, Ge Zheng, and their whole crew — which of them had not!

To be a bandit, one must have a bandit's awareness; to be a bandit, one must have a bandit's way of surviving. If you won't kill and burn, what use is a bandit?

In times of chaos, human lives are as ants; kill and burn, and you wear a golden belt. Having lived two lives, Zhou Shixiang had long since made his peace with it. As long as the world was not at peace, such things would never cease; the only difference was who died.

Seeing the look of shame on Qi Hao's face, Zhou Shixiang hastily changed the subject and asked directly whether he had any way to contact that fleet man, to see if they could buy the salt the Taiping Army so desperately needed from him.

It did not matter if the man was black-hearted, and silver was no great matter either; as long as there was salt, price was no issue. What he feared was having no salt at all!

And so it was arranged. Qi Hao and his men rested in the city for two days, then slipped out again in the dead of night along the route by which they had come.

Relying on the connections they had built up in their bandit days, they did indeed manage to speak with that fleet man. When the man heard they wanted salt, he said not a word more and straight out named his price: one hundred taels per bag of salt (fifty jin).

The price was outrageously black. Though these were chaotic times and salt cost far more than in years of peace, a bag of salt was worth ten taels at most — yet this man had raised the price tenfold in one stroke.

Qi Hao was so furious he cursed the fellow for a son born without an arsehole. But after cursing, he still went back and reported to Zhou Shixiang.

Zhou Shixiang did not react with such agitation. After a moment's thought, he told him to go to the rear camp, find Song Xianggong, and draw one thousand taels of silver from the public treasury to take along, then slip out of the city that very night.

No matter what, ten bags of salt had to be brought into the city tonight.

Zhou Shixiang did not care about money, and Qi Hao naturally had no objection either. Thus the Taiping Army's salt shortage was solved by this black-hearted figure of the Qing Guangdong fleet.

Basically every three days Qi Hao would lead men out of the city. It was not that he did not want to buy more at once, but the party leaving the city could not be large — if the Qing discovered them, everything would be lost.

With the salt problem solved, firewood barely managed by tearing down houses, drinking water barely scraped by, and grain able to hold out for a while longer, the Taiping Army sat and held Xinhui, making no night sorties or raids, letting the Qing keep them surrounded as they pleased.

The Qing army outside the city was likewise determined to starve the Taiping Army out. Months passed with no sign of withdrawal, yet no reinforcements either; instead, from the walls one could often see large quantities of grain and fodder being brought into the Qing camp.

What the two sides were now contesting was supplies — whoever had more grain would be the final victor.