Chapter 78

Lei Xianchu actually had no wish to come to Luoding and deal with a pack of bandits, but Governor Zhang Xiaoqi insisted on sending him, saying that there might be a great upheaval on the court's side, that the Prince of Xining had already withdrawn the garrison from Gaozhou, and that if they did not get some troops under control, Gaozhou would become an empty city.

He added that Hu Quan of Dajiao Mountain was no bandit after all; he had once been a personal guard of the Prince of Ningxia and was a man of considerable loyalty and righteousness. The year before, he had answered the call and led his men to attack Xinhui.

Now that he was serving the court once more and had even taken the prefectural seat of Luoding, such a man ought to be brought under one's command, both to strengthen their forces and to boost their prestige.

What great upheaval on the court's side?

Lei Xianchu had asked Zhang Xiaoqi about this, but Zhang Xiaoqi would not tell him much.

Once, at a banquet, Lei Xianchu did hear a few words from Zhang Xiaoqi's aide Dong Yunyao after he had drunk too much, but they were vague and ominous, only hinting that the Prince of Qin seemed to show disrespect to the Son of Heaven and harbored disloyal intentions, while the Prince of Xining served the Ming with all his heart and often reproached the Prince of Qin.

Beyond that, not a word more was revealed.

Speaking of the Prince of Qin, Sun Kewang, and the Prince of Xining, Li Dingguo, Lei Xianchu was full of contempt. In his view, Sun and Li were great bandits just like Zhang Xianzhong of old — great bandits of the realm!

Had it not been for Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng, how could the Ming dynasty have collapsed!

What galled him was that after the bandit Zhang died, the Great Western bandits, already at the end of their rope, suddenly heard of the Wuding tusi rebellion in Yunnan.

The tusi rebellion left the Mu family, hereditary lords of Yunnan, unable to control the situation, and the Great Western bandits seized the chance to enter Yunnan.

Under the pretext of mediation, they took the whole province in one stroke, then extended their control over Guizhou, turning Yunnan and Guizhou into their own troop-raising ground, wielding power and lording it over all.

And now these Great Western bandits, taking advantage of the Qing army's entry through the pass and the government troops' inability to resist, proposed some "alliance with the Ming to resist the Qing," and then, together with the remnants of Li Zicheng's Great Shun bandits, transformed themselves overnight into Ming soldiers!

It was truly laughable. They were all plainly bandits, yet now one by one they had been made princes, dukes, and marquises, while men of their sort — military men whose families had served the Ming loyally for generations — had become stray dogs.

To have to kowtow and bow to those bandits — truly the world was unjust. How could anyone accept it willingly!

But what could be done? The Great Western bandits had strong soldiers and sturdy horses, and the court had to rely on them to fight the Qing army.

So no matter how unwilling one was, one could only endure it. Who told them to have so many soldiers and horses, while he himself was only a Mobile Corps Commander in empty name?

In times like these, only with soldiers could one have a say; only with soldiers could one have standing. Why were the Great Western bandits able to be made princes? Was it not simply because they had soldiers!

That pack of bandits in Luoding might be worthless, but since they had taken the prefectural seat, they must be able to fight, no worse than government troops. It all depended on whether Hu Quan knew what was good for him.

If he did, Lei Xianchu would take him into the ranks and make him an officer with troops. If he did not, he would simply kill him.

Hah — what damned Assistant Regional Commander of Luoding? It was nothing but a broken seal.

Cheng Bangjun had long since gone back to Anlong Prefecture. With the Governor backing him, what did it matter if he took the post of Assistant Regional Commander?

Would the court really break their hearts for the sake of a pack of bandits?

Thinking that Zhang An had already gone back to Luoding to report, and that the people in the city would not be coming out to greet him for a while, Lei Xianchu simply dismounted and had his personal guards bring over a stone.

At once, an attentive subordinate brought over a chessboard. Once the pieces were set, however, Lei Xianchu did not sit down grandly and casually summon someone for a game.

Instead, he clasped his hands toward an official in a seventh-rank robe who was still mounted, and said with a smile, "Since we are waiting anyway, perhaps Master Pang would care to dismount and play a few games."

"Since Master Lei is in such a mood, this humble official will keep you company for a few games."

The mounted official laughed and dismounted, stepping down on a servant's back. His rank was not high: he was the County Magistrate of Dianbai County under Gaozhou Prefecture, surnamed Pang, given name Tianci.

In the Ming dynasty, though civil officials were esteemed and military men despised, ever since the roving bandits had ravaged the Central Plains more than ten years before, military officers had long ceased to hold civil officials in any regard.

Yet Lei Xianchu, a Mobile Corps Commander of the upper third rank, was exceptionally courteous to this seventh-rank Magistrate Pang.

When something is out of the ordinary, there is a reason — clearly, this Pang had a background considerable enough to make Lei Xianchu lower himself to befriend him.

Pang Tianci's background was indeed considerable. He himself was nothing much, but a cousin of his from the same clan was a figure so great that Lei Xianchu could not even glimpse him from below.

That man was Pang Tianshou, the Seal-holding Eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial in the Yongli court, far away in Anlong Prefecture.

Pang Tianshou had been a eunuch of the Imperial Stables as early as the Chongzhen reign. Shortly before Li Zicheng took Beijing, he was dispatched by imperial order to Nanjing, and afterward served the Hongguang Emperor, overseeing the pearl pools of Guangdong and Guangxi.

Hongguang sent him to Fujian and the two Guang provinces to collect taxes, but halfway there he learned that Nanjing had fallen, so he transferred his service to the Longwu Emperor.

Because the Longwu Emperor had few trusted eunuchs around him when he ascended the throne, and Pang Tianshou came to him of his own accord, and moreover held the qualification of a Chongzhen-era eunuch of the Imperial Stables, Longwu trusted and employed him, making him a Drafting Eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial.

In the second year of Longwu, the Longwu Emperor sent Pang Tianshou to Macau to seek aid, hoping to use Portuguese firearms and cannon to help the Ming resist the Qing.

But after Pang Tianshou reached Macau and had just finished purchasing the firearms, he learned that the Fujian capital had fallen and the Longwu Emperor had died for his country.

Unlike Lei Xianchu, who after hearing of the Longwu Emperor's death went to serve the Shaowu court in Guangzhou, Pang Tianshou was after all an old hand of the palace and knew that the succession did not fall to the Shaowu Emperor, and that Shaowu was no true sovereign.

So he went straight to Zhaoqing with three hundred Portuguese soldiers to serve the Yongli Emperor. Thereafter he followed the Yongli Emperor through the campaigns in Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, and Guizhou, loyal and devoted, deeply trusted by the Yongli Emperor.

Now he was Seal-holding Eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial and concurrently Superintendent of the Brave Guard Battalion of the Imperial Stables, had been granted a first-rank robe, and was a man of immense power and influence — one of the foremost favorites before the Yongli Emperor.

As it happened, Pang Tianci was of the same clan as Pang Tianshou, but the kinship was rather distant. Back when Pang Tianshou went to Nanjing, Pang Tianci was merely taken along as a servant.

It was only the year before last, after Pang Tianshou was promoted to Seal-holder of the Directorate of Ceremonial, that he remembered this cousin who had followed him for over ten years, and so petitioned the Yongli Son of Heaven for a favor, appointing him County Magistrate of Dianbai.

Had Pang Tianci been a close kinsman or within the five mourning grades, a mere county magistracy would hardly have been enough to send him off with — a prefectship would have been the least he deserved.

Pang Tianci was, however, a man of modest disposition. Unlike the common image of a eunuch's relative bullying others by borrowed authority, he did not rely on Pang Tianshou to throw his weight around.

On the contrary, he kept a very low profile, so much so that after nearly a year as County Magistrate of Dianbai, apart from the initial attention from the Gaozhou Prefecture offices because he was a relative of the Directorate of Ceremonial, no one paid him any mind afterward.

Lei Xianchu had no need for Pang Tianci to accompany him to Luoding. Pang was a local magistrate, not an aide of the Governor's office, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the Luoding affair.

But it happened that he was in Gaozhou on business those very days. Keeping a low profile in ordinary times was all well and good, but when a man actually appeared before everyone, people could not help recalling the great eunuch standing behind him.

Out of a desire to cultivate Pang Tianshou's goodwill, Zhang Xiaoqi had deliberately arranged for Pang Tianci to accompany Lei Xianchu to Luoding, thinking to use the matter to report a merit for Pang Tianci as well.

That way, Pang Tianshou would have to remember Zhang Xiaoqi's kindness. There was no need for Pang Tianshou to arrange anything in particular; it would be enough if, when something came up in the future, he casually put in a good word.

Though Pang Tianci kept a low profile, he understood perfectly well what the Governor was up to, and did not expose it, simply following Lei Xianchu the whole way. On the road, Lei Xianchu was exceptionally warm toward him.

Being a military man himself, and not versed in the things scholars knew, Lei Xianchu kept pulling Pang Tianshou into games of chess, hoping to use the games to draw closer to Pang Tianci and, by a roundabout route, climb onto Pang Tianshou's line, so that in the future he might obtain a good post — unlike now, when he held only the empty title of Mobile Corps Commander with nothing to show for it.

What he did not know was that Pang Tianci was no scholar either, and his learning was quite limited. Had Lei Xianchu really tried to engage him in flowery, romantic nonsense, Pang Tianci would have been embarrassed.

Chess, on the other hand, suited him perfectly, and all along the road the two of them played with great relish.

The game was not go but xiangqi. As a military officer, Lei Xianchu had neither the interest nor the energy to learn go; xiangqi, by contrast, was easy to learn and easy to play.

Pang Tianci likewise had no patience for go, and loved the satisfying clash of soldiers and generals in xiangqi. Before long, the two were locked in heated battle.

The two hundred Gaozhou soldiers who had come with Lei Xianchu sat along the road in groups of three or five, lazily hugging their weapons and chatting idly. Not one was posted as a lookout or on guard; they had not the slightest look of soldiers about them.

Some of the bolder ones even raised a loud racket, not in the least afraid of angering the Mobile Corps Commander.

The reason was that they knew Master Lei loved his soldiers most of all and delighted in liveliness; so long as they did not go too far, Master Lei would not take them to task.

After about half an hour, the sound of hoofbeats came from up ahead. Hearing horses approach, the Gaozhou soldiers still seemed unconcerned; only a few at the front stood up and peered ahead.

Lei Xianchu, chess piece in hand, paid no attention, only considering whether he should first deliver a check. Pang Tianci, however, grew somewhat nervous and turned to look.