Chapter 38: The Great Cause

The next day, before dawn had even broken, Zhou Shixiang was already up early — though not in any hurry to go find Zhao Sihai, but rather to first go see Boss Hu.

Much as Zhou Shixiang wanted to start being the big boss from this moment on, the reality was that he could not.

At least in name, Boss Hu — a bandit who had received a Luoding Assistant Regional Commander's commission from the Yongli court — was the true master of Luoding City and the big boss of all the men from Dajiao Mountain.

No matter how dazzling Zhou Shixiang's performance, he was still just a junior brother following Boss Hu, at best the number two or three man.

To raise his own banner, to become the true big boss, Zhou Shixiang first needed men of his own. Otherwise, it would be very hard to make Ge Wu and his crew submit to him, and it would also easily arouse Boss Hu's wariness.

The anti-Qing cause had only just been founded; everything was still a makeshift operation. If internal division and infighting broke out now over a power struggle, it would be a fatal blow no matter who was involved.

Therefore Zhou Shixiang always maintained respect and obedience toward Boss Hu. Unless Boss Hu lost his head and did something foolish, Zhou Shixiang would absolutely never clash with him.

Fortunately, so far this boss, Hu Quan, had performed reassuringly. He had shown none of the short-sightedness of men like Ge Wu, nor any arrogance or self-importance.

He had led from the front in the capture of Luoding, followed the advice of Zhou Shixiang and Song Xianggong without question, and in order to open up the situation as quickly as possible, had handed over all affairs to them to handle without the slightest suspicion.

Such breadth of mind and boldness of spirit — Zhou Shixiang admitted he himself fell short.

A man like that, and the greatest filial son from ancient times to the present — how could Zhou Shixiang be willing to fall out with him over a little power, to turn blades on each other and slaughter one another?

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Unite with every force that can be united — even if the other party is a bloodthirsty bandit chief, so long as he is willing to throw himself into this struggle to save the Han people, Zhou Shixiang would firmly regard him as an ally.

As for right and wrong, merit and fault, let posterity judge.

After Zhou Shixiang gave a rough account of yesterday's business to Boss Hu, Boss Hu nodded in deep agreement, then repeatedly urged Zhou Shixiang that once the troops were recruited, they must quickly discuss how to deal with those Qing prisoners.

Several dozen men — they could not be killed, could not be released, and keeping them locked up forever was no solution either.

Besides, he could not keep leading men to stand guard at the jail forever; with such a huge pile of affairs in the city, how could things work without him, the proper, bona fide Luoding Assistant Regional Commander, holding the fort?

When Boss Hu brought up his own status as Luoding Assistant Regional Commander, Zhou Shixiang remembered that he should send someone to report the good news to Cheng Bangjun. The official robes did not matter; the key was to coax some money and grain out of Cheng Bangjun.

After all, capturing a prefectural city was a real achievement — if those big shots of the Yongli court in Guangdong did not bleed a little, it would chill men's hearts.

A sparrow, however small, is still meat. Moreover, this was the chance to have the Yongli court formally recognize Hu Quan as Luoding Assistant Regional Commander and recognize the men under him as the Ming army.

It would be laughable to take all those empty words Cheng Bangjun had spoken earlier as genuine.

Zhou Shixiang even planned that once the situation in Luoding opened up, he might find an opportunity to have an audience with the Yongli Son of Heaven, or to meet Li Dingguo.

What little Southern Ming history he remembered from his previous life told Zhou Shixiang that Li Dingguo seemed to have some conflict with his sworn elder brother, Sun Kewang, the Prince of Qin, and that Sun Kewang ultimately surrendered to the Qing, thereby strangling the Southern Ming's chance at a revival.

If Sun Kewang's surrender to the Qing could be prevented, the Southern Ming's situation would naturally not worsen because of it, and at the very least it could drag on a few more years than in the original history.

And the stronger the Southern Ming Yongli regime was, and the longer it held out, the greater the benefit to Zhou Shixiang.

Though the time was already the twelfth year of Shunzhi — the eighth year of Yongli — so long as the Yongli Son of Heaven had not abandoned the country, so long as the Southern Ming had not perished, the great cause still stood, and hope remained.

The people of the realm would not let their hearts die and willingly submit to enslavement by the Manchus. If the Ming army appeared before them once more, many would surely be willing to rise again and resist the brutal Manchus!

Zhou Shixiang had never imagined that he too would have a hand in the dynastic change between Ming and Qing. He knew that the Southern Ming had failed because the struggle over the throne had drained all its strength in infighting, letting the Manchus pick up a great bargain.

Therefore, before the Manchus were driven from the Central Plains, driven from the northern lands the Han had possessed for generations, he absolutely must not harbor any ambition, must not repeat the Southern Ming's fatal mistake of infighting — he must not even think of it!

Besides, as things stood, he was not even qualified to thrust himself between the Ming and Qing sides.

The most advantageous means for Zhou Shixiang's rise at present was to openly raise the banner of the Southern Ming Yongli court, use his centuries of knowledge to contend with the Qing court for Guangdong, and afterward march north on a punitive expedition.

Luoding was the first step of this plan, and the hardest step to take. Only by taking this first step well could he take the second; if he could not even take the first step, what was there to say of the second and third?

A xiucai starts a rebellion, and ten years later nothing is accomplished.

Zhou Shixiang had no wish to be a xiucai who truly rebelled for ten years and accomplished nothing. Therefore he urgently needed to build up his strength and rise quickly.

Otherwise, even living a second life, he would still become an insignificant pawn in the long river of history, a shooting star in the sky.

Borrow every force that can be used, borrow every name that can win men's hearts, borrow every means that can defeat the enemy — so long as it benefited the anti-Qing cause, Zhou Shixiang did not mind and did not care which great lord he had to bend his knee to.

Sending word was simple enough. When Cheng Bangjun had left that day, he had said that once Luoding City was taken, they could immediately send someone to Gaozhou with the news.

He and the Governor of the four prefectures, Zhang Xiaoqi, were stationed in Gaozhou City; in addition, the Grand Secretary Guo Zhiqi would also stay in Gaozhou from time to time for some days.

Song Xianggong had told Zhou Shixiang that the Gaozhou Regional Commander, Le Tongwu, was one of Li Dingguo's trusted favorite generals, with over a thousand elite Ming troops drawn from the old Daxi Army, plus another three or four thousand Ming troops converted from Southern Ming local forces — no fewer than five thousand troops in all.

With Zhang Xiaoqi, Governor of the four prefectures of Gao, Lei, Lian, and Qiong, stationed in Gaozhou, Gaozhou had to a certain extent replaced Guangzhou as the military and political center of Ming strength in Guangdong.

And with Li Dingguo's main army, withdrawn to Guangxi, backing Gaozhou from behind, the Qing army in Guangdong dared not advance one step west of Luoding, lest the Li tiger who had just withdrawn from Guangdong come charging back with his troops.

At Zhou Shixiang's reminder, Boss Hu also came to his senses and hastily summoned one of his men, ordering him to ride to Gaozhou with the news.

At first Zhou Shixiang wanted to instruct the man to exaggerate when reporting — to inflate the enemy killed, the prisoners taken, the spoils captured, no need to worry about scaring anyone to death.

But then he reconsidered: the purpose of sending word to Gaozhou was to obtain material support and formal recognition from the Yongli court. If they reported everything on the high side, how would Gaozhou still be willing to give money and grain?

They might well turn around and demand the spoils from them instead.

One must not do things that backfire.

Coming out from Boss Hu's place, Zhou Shixiang wanted to go find Song Xianggong, but Song Xianggong had his own business to attend to.

The 120 dan of grain "borrowed" the previous night from the six households of Qi Yuantai and the others needed him to lead men to inspect and accept it, and he also had to send people back to the stronghold to transport the grain stored there.

Besides that, as the nominal Prefect of Luoding, he was indispensable to every matter great and small in the city, so Song Xianggong was also run off his feet — where would he find time to accompany Zhou Shixiang in recruiting troops?

The recruiting station was beneath the east city wall gate. When Zhou Shixiang arrived, Zhao Sihai and Peng Dazhu were sitting behind a table — one slumped over it, the other sprawled on it. Judging by the loud snoring, the two had clearly slept there all night.

Around them, several men from Dajiao Mountain with twenty or thirty able-bodied youths carrying assorted weapons were patrolling. Seeing Zhou Shixiang arrive, the lead man hurriedly shook Zhao Sihai awake.

Woken from a sound sleep, Zhao Sihai's temper was none too good. He was about to curse when he found Zhou Shixiang standing before him, and hastily laughed: "The xiucai's here!"

As he spoke, he reached over and shoved Peng Dazhu, who groggily raised his head and took a long while to realize who had come.

Zhou Shixiang glanced toward the gate archway. Three chests of silver were stacked there; only the seal on the top chest had been torn off, while the two below were untouched. He could not help asking: "How many men have you recruited, and how much silver have you spent?"

"How many recruited?" Zhao Sihai pointed at the twenty or thirty able-bodied youths, curled his lip, and said helplessly: "That's all of them."

"Only this many?"

Zhou Shixiang was taken aback. Two taels of silver per man as a settling-in allowance was no small sum. In these times, silver was truly valuable — one tael could keep a family of three barely fed for the better part of a month.

In the past, Zhou Shixiang could not have guaranteed that Luoding's able-bodied men would be lured by two taels of silver into risking their necks as soldiers for pay. But after last night's great fire, nearly half the households in the city had suffered damage.

Never mind grain — they had not even been able to snatch out a cloth sack. In such straits, two taels of silver could truly be called a lifeline.

In Song Xianggong's words, the able-bodied men of the stricken households ought to have signed up with great eagerness. So why, after a whole night, had only these twenty or thirty been recruited?

Where had the imagined bustling scene gone? Why were those able-bodied men not tempted by the two taels of silver?

"What's the matter — the common folk don't want to be our soldiers? Did you not tell them we're Li Dingguo's troops?"

Zhou Shixiang feared Zhao Sihai had not made clear under whose name they were recruiting. The gentry might already know they were not really the Ming army, but how would the common folk know?

Li Dingguo had attacked Guangdong twice, the year before last and last year, and his name resounded loudly among the people of Guangdong. Borrowing his name, there was no reason the common folk should not eagerly enlist.

Zhao Sihai, however, gave a bitter laugh and said helplessly: "Xiucai, we said everything you told us to. Brother Dazhu and I talked ourselves hoarse, but these are the only ones willing to sign up. The rest, no matter what we said, simply refused to join us."

"If it weren't for Brother Zhou telling us not to use force and to speak kindly to those people, I'd have long since tied them up at knifepoint and brought them here. No need to be polite with them." Peng Dazhu muttered a few words, clearly nursing a bellyful of fire.

Zhou Shixiang ignored Peng Dazhu's grumbling and asked Zhao Sihai: "Then do they think the silver is too little?"

Zhao Sihai shook his head: "That's not it."

"Then why?" Zhou Shixiang was puzzled too.

Zhao Sihai glanced at the common folk watching from a distance, then lowered his voice and said to Zhou Shixiang: "Xiucai, the people are afraid we'll run away!"