Chapter 985: What? Shunzhi Is Still Alive? (Seeking Subscriptions)

The imperial edict summoning Dodo to court for an audience took more than a month to arrive, and it was not until the first month of the tenth year of Hongxing of the Great Ming that it was finally relayed to the Jianzhou fortress far away by the shores of Lake Khanka.

And at that moment, inside and outside the Jianzhou fortress, everything was a field of white! White not only from the snow, but also from the white mourning banners and white cloth hung everywhere, and from the white hemp mourning garments worn by the officials and commoners of the city who were holed up for the winter. The entire city of Jianzhou was in mourning for Dodo, Lord of the Lands Beyond the Pass and of Joseon, who had passed away on the fifth day of the first month.

The twenty-two-year-old Doni was also dressed in full mourning, and at this moment he was keeping vigil over Dodo, who lay comfortably inside a fine nanmu coffin of the highest grade.

On a rush cushion opposite him knelt two eminent monks, one of whom was Dodo's brother, the Great Monk Ajige. When the Ming army reached Dorgon's tomb at Jieshi Mountain, Ajige had hurriedly fled beyond the pass with Dorgon's coffin, which had been dug up from the ground, and had since been living under Dodo's protection.

Dodo had not made things difficult for this brother who had lost his power, and had even built a temple called the Temple of Ultimate Bliss in a valley of the Changbai Mountains near Lake Khanka, specifically for Ajige to reside in. But no one had expected that before the Temple of Ultimate Bliss was even completed, Dodo himself would pass away!

The other eminent monk had an even more impressive background: he was a great monk from Qingliang Temple on Mount Wutai in Shanxi, and his name was Sonin! He was the very Sonin who had vanished together with Fulin.

Fulin, it turned out, had not died. Instead, he had fled disaster by renouncing the world and becoming a great monk. But he had still never forgotten the restoration of the Great Qing. So he had waited until Emperor Zhu had returned south in triumph and the situation in the north had somewhat stabilized, and then sent trusted confidants to contact his old associates, preparing to bide his time and act.

The old subordinates he contacted were mainly two groups. One was the force originally entrenched at Datong under Jirgalang and Chang'adai. After the Battle of Beijing, they had yielded Datong and gone to the Tumochuan, where they established the Guihua Army, subordinate to the Anbei Protectorate. Jirgalang served as the Guihua Army Garrison Commissioner, and Chang'adai served as the Tumochuan Agricultural Commissioner. The Guihua Army's registered strength was 2,000 men; it did not draw on the Anbei Army's establishment, nor did its military expenses need to be provided by the Anbei Army. However, when the Anbei Protectorate needed to deploy Guihua Army troops, payment still had to be made according to the contract signed by the three parties: the Guihua Army, the Anbei Army, and the Ming court. The Zhu Ming dynasty rebuilt by Zhu Cilang now placed great emphasis on the spirit of contract — contracts were everywhere!

According to this contract, the two posts of Guihua Army Garrison Commissioner and Tumochuan Agricultural Commissioner would be inherited by the descendants of Jirgalang and Chang'adai for three generations, after which the personnel authority over the Guihua Army would be held by the Ming court.

Because the hereditary privilege for three generations had been confirmed, and because the Guihua Army garrison was sandwiched between the two powerful garrisons of Shuofang and Anbei, neither Jirgalang nor Chang'adai dared entertain any thought of restoring the Great Qing — the Guihua Army's establishment was only 2,000 men, and its actual strength was about the same.

The Shuofang and Anbei armies, by contrast, each had a large establishment of twelve regiments, four battalions, and one office. The twelve regiments, counting auxiliary troops, amounted to thirty thousand men. In addition there were two artillery battalions and two engineer battalions, plus one Protectorate office, bringing the total strength of each to around thirty-three thousand. The Shuofang and Anbei armies combined made sixty-six thousand troops — more than thirty times the size of the Guihua Army!

Moreover, to cope with steppe warfare, the Shuofang and Anbei armies had each organized and trained four regiments of firearm cavalry (the black-gun mule soldiers) and one horse artillery battalion for mobile operations. The remaining regiments were stationed at strategic points by battalion and company.

In addition, the Shuofang and Anbei armies each had one fortress artillery battalion, stationed by company at eight locations: Ningxia, Wuyuan, Jiuyuan, Lingzhou, Dongsheng, Datong, Yulin, and Jining. Of these, the three cities of Ningxia, Lingzhou, and Datong were old fortresses, while Wuyuan, Jiuyuan, Dongsheng, Yulin, and Jining were all newly built or rebuilt fortresses.

Among them, Wuyuan belonged to the Shuofang Army and was located between the northern and southern branches of the Yellow River in the Hetao region. The Shuofang Army had established an Agricultural Office and a Herd Office there.

Jiuyuan City was located at the foot of Munashan, in the area of what would later be Baotou. The Shuofang Army had established an Agricultural Office there, planning to open up military farmland between Munashan and the Yellow River.

Dongsheng City was rebuilt at the confluence of the Yellow River and the Heihui River, on the site of the original Dongsheng Guard city from the early Ming, and belonged to the Anbei Army.

Yulin City was also a rebuilt fortress, located on the north bank of the Tumaochuan, close to the Great Wall of Datong Garrison. It had been first built in the early Ming and abandoned in the mid-Ming, and the Anbei Army had begun rebuilding Yulin Fortress in the ninth year of Hongxing of the Great Ming.

Jining City was a newly built fortress, located near Jining Lake north of the Great Wall of Datong Garrison. The Anbei Army had begun building the city there in the spring of the ninth year of Hongxing.

These newly built or rebuilt fortresses were all "simple bastion forts" constructed from sandbags, earth, and timber. But the "simple bastion forts" of today were a completely different matter from the simple bastion forts that had first appeared some ten years earlier. Their design drawings had been improved countless times, and even if defended by only one infantry battalion and one fortress artillery company (usually with 16 cannons), they were not something the Guihua Army or the Mongols of the steppe could crack.

In addition, Huang Degong's Daning Garrison and Gao Jie's Beiping Garrison now had the same troop establishment as the Shuofang and Anbei garrisons, and had also planned eight garrison-city-level fortresses. These were Xuanfu, Kaiping, Zhangjiakou, and Pangu Garrison, belonging to the Beiping Army; and Chengde, Daning, Hongshan, and Quanning, belonging to the Daning Army.

In other words, the four garrisons responsible for the security of the Great Ming's northern realm — Shuofang, Anbei, Beiping, and Daning — together possessed 16 garrison cities and 132,000 registered officers and soldiers. The registered soldiers of the northern frontier armies were further divided into two types: military households and recruited soldiers. The infantry soldiers responsible for garrisoning fortresses and strongpoints were all military household soldiers, while the 16 cavalry regiments of the four garrisons, as well as all artillery, engineers, and army office direct units, were recruited soldiers — a standing army that could be deployed at any time.

Although the standing forces of the four garrisons were not numerous — only a little over fifty thousand men — their mobility and firepower were both very strong, and they were professional soldiers long stationed in camp, so their combat effectiveness was very reliable. To the Mongols of the steppe and the Andong Army in the northeast, they posed an enormous threat.

Therefore, the envoy sent by Fulin to contact the Guihua Army had his head chopped off directly, on the charge of being "a spreader of wicked rumors and deceiver of the masses."

But Sonin's head was safe, because Doni knew that he himself was not tolerated by the Ming court!

The Ming dynasty would not let him, the Andong Army's acting commander, off the hook — and it would not even let Dodo, already lying in his coffin, off the hook either.

With a slap, an imperial edict that had been relayed all the way from Shanhai Pass was tossed by Doni at the feet of Sonin, who had come from afar.

"Look, just look — the Ming Emperor actually, actually wants my late father to come to court to be impeached! The man is gone, and still he won't let him be. This is bullying beyond all endurance!"

Sonin hastily picked up the edict, unfolded it, and after a glance, recited a Buddhist invocation out of habit: "Amitabha, excellent, excellent. The Imperial Uncle has already departed on a crane — surely this edict no longer counts? They can't very well make you send the coffin to Nanjing, can they?"

Ajige, at his side, said: "Of course it doesn't count. What use would sending the coffin to Nanjing be? Are they going to confront a coffin?"

Ajige thought for a moment, then added: "The question now is whether you can inherit the post of Grand Protector of Andong."

When Doni heard this, his heart gave a lurch.

His Ama Dodo's dying command to him had been that, if the court refused to let him inherit the post of Grand Protector, he should raise troops in Jianzhou City and support the restoration of the Great Qing's Shunzhi Emperor Fulin, who had faked his death and fled — Dodo of course knew that Shunzhi had faked his death. He had sent trusted men to investigate and discovered that before Shunzhi's death, people like Songgotu and Mingzhu had long since vanished without a trace; then the Empress Mengguqing had been expelled without cause and had likewise immediately disappeared; and finally Sonin, Suksaha, Bumburshan, and the other trusted confidants of the Shunzhi Emperor had all gone missing at the same time. If this was not a faked death, then what was?

So Dodo had instructed his son, when necessary, to push Shunzhi forward as the chief culprit!

Now that Sonin had delivered himself to their door, it truly fulfilled Doni's wish.

But Doni was still unwilling to take this final step lightly. Because he still hoped that Zhu Cilang would appoint him Grand Protector. As long as the territory of the Andong Protectorate remained under his rule, he would not rebel.

This matter had originally been hopeless, but now — had not Sonin delivered himself to their door?

Once again, I solemnly recommend the great author Qiyue's "Han Que" — it already has one hundred seventy or eighty thousand characters, well worth a look. A work by a great author is sure to be a fine piece. Any interested fellow readers?

Looking back across a thousand years, the palace towers of the Han still stand!

It is the third year of Yuanfeng of Emperor Zhao of Han. Powerful ministers dominate the court, the Xiongnu beyond the frontier have not yet been destroyed, and the Silk Road hangs by a thread...

Though Wei Qing and Huo Qubing are gone, the pioneering spirit of the sons of Han never ceases. New heroes are about to emerge!

In the Gobi of Dunhuang, at a post station called Xuanquanzhi, the lowly clerk Ren Hong casts aside his brush and cries out in anger:

"A true man has no other ambition than to follow the example of Zhang Qian and Fu Jiezi, to win merit in foreign lands and gain a marquisate. How can one linger long among brush and inkstone?"

(End of Chapter)