Chapter 197: Ji Province Boils Over into Utter Chaos

After the Chengchang conference, the three Red Eyebrow columns failed to unite and went their separate ways. Fan Chong struck east, heading back to his old base; Dong Xian turned southwest, aiming to take Dingtao. Chi Zhaoping, however, stayed where she was, gathering refugees as she went, attacking county towns, and throwing open granaries to distribute grain. Her strength swelled to twice its size, reaching twenty to thirty thousand men, making her one of the foremost leaders among the various forces between the Ji and Yellow Rivers. People now spoke of her in the same breath as Mother Lü, who had first raised the banner in the Haidai region.

But Chi Zhaoping's resentful gaze remained fixed on Yuancheng, fixed on Wang Mang's imperial temple and ancestral tombs. Time and again she proclaimed to her followers: if only they could destroy that place, the Yellow River would return to its old course, and life downstream would improve.

What frustrated her, though, was that earlier this year she had at least fought her way to the outskirts of Yuancheng, coming within a hair's breadth of taking Wulu City and burning the Great Xin's dragon veins to ashes. Now, she could only stand by the river and sigh in despair.

Even in the dry season, the Yellow River still surged mightily, rushing and colliding across the flat plain. A large force could not cross without a vast number of boats and rafts.

"Elder Chi, when our men were foraging for grain, they searched over a hundred li up and downstream and couldn't find a single boat."

Chi Zhaoping's brows knotted together. With so many mouths to feed, she could not halt her attacks on the commanderies and counties. She had been delayed too long attacking Dong'e, the seat of Shouliang Commandery, and had arrived a step too late. That "Lord Diwu" on the opposite bank, who was "assisting neighboring commanderies in consolidating river defenses," had long since dispatched Ma Yuan to race into the six counties north of the Yellow River in Shouliang. Every ferry and boat along the shore had been rounded up and taken to the north bank, incidentally ruining the livelihoods of many fishing families.

Now, both on the river and along the north bank, guard posts and barriers had been erected everywhere. Wei Commandery troops and local magnate militias patrolled constantly to guard against the Red Eyebrows crossing north.

"Why not build rafts?"

"Or we could move further downstream, back to our old home in Pingyuan Commandery. I refuse to believe we won't find boats there."

Chi Zhaoping thought neither plan was workable. A small raft could carry only a dozen or so men at a time — how many days would that take? Not to mention that her followers were loosely organized to begin with; given enough time, they would simply scatter on their own. And did they take Diwu Lun on the opposite bank for a blind man? Over the past few days, guard posts and earthen watchtowers had sprung up all along the embankments. Ma Yuan had simply transplanted the methods used to guard against the Xiongnu in the new Qin heartland. Mid-crossing, the beacon fires would blaze, and the Red Eyebrows, severed by the great river with head and tail unable to support each other, would surely suffer a crushing defeat.

She was skilled at the game of bo, and knew perfectly well when to gamble and when to wait.

After thinking it over, Chi Zhaoping decided to hold off a while longer.

"No hurry. Wait until deep winter, and it won't be too late to cross then."

Waiting for heaven to oblige was the Red Eyebrows' chief method for crossing rivers. The previous times, they had all gone back and forth by taking advantage of the Yellow River freezing over.

Chi Zhaoping walked to the water's edge and reached out to test the temperature. Though it was already bone-chillingly cold, it would probably take another two months before it froze solid. In the meantime, she could lead her followers to continue raiding through Qing Province and Yan Province, stockpile grain, and incidentally contact a few allied groups.

In her view, Diwu Lun was a far more troublesome opponent than the General of Renewal or the Grand Preceptor. The forces she had now were probably not enough.

"Chengzi Lulu from Lu County in Taishan Commandery, and Liu Xu from Feicheng — both are Red Eyebrow officers. They didn't follow Fan Chong east, but stayed behind to raise their banners locally, and have also gathered tens of thousands of men. The land between the Ji and Yellow Rivers is already desolate; there's no food left to seize. They must be eager to see the rich lands of Hebei too."

When the Yellow River froze solid for ten thousand li, when all living things lay still, when the Yan Province Red Eyebrows were at their hungriest and most frenzied — that would be the moment to swing the army west and destroy Yuancheng!

"The Red Eyebrows have withdrawn."

Diwu Lun, who had come in person to inspect the riverbank, saw the same scene. After testing the waters a few times, they recognized the difficulty and retreated, pulling back eastward in succession.

It seemed that in a couple of days, he would once again have to send soldiers from the refugee troops to dye their eyebrows red and cross the river under cover of night to gather intelligence. This was how Diwu Lun had been able to stay ahead of Chi Zhaoping's movements.

The trick had never failed. The Red Eyebrows had many branches, with no unified command, and new leaders were rising up with bands almost every day. They relied on accents and dyed eyebrows to identify comrades. Even if Diwu Lun had Ma Yuan take two thousand refugee troops across the river en masse, they would not easily be discovered. They might even manage to blend into Chi Zhaoping's ranks.

But that was just a thought. Diwu Lun had no energy to spare for the opposite bank right now. After taking over this half of Shouliang Commandery, he had discovered it was truly a hot potato. The enemy was by no means limited to the Red Eyebrows of Qing and Yan provinces.

Ma Yuan explained to his son-in-law the new situation they had faced since entering the area: "As early as the start of the year, after the Red Eyebrows crushed Jing Shang, many refugees along the great river began imitating Chi Zhaoping and others, gathering mobs, killing officials, and rebelling. After the Battle of Chengchang, there were even more."

The areas along the great river had already been severely ravaged by floods. In the past, out of fear of court suppression, the unrest had been limited to small-scale disturbances. But now that the Xin army, that paper tiger, had been punctured by the Red Eyebrows, what was there left to fear? Uprisings rose one after another, and they began attacking cities and seizing territory.

Ma Yuan pointed to the map and said: "From Shouliang heading northeast, along the old course of the Yellow River — Pinghe Commandery, Xinbo Commandery, Shuoding Commandery, Heping Commandery in Qing Province, Yinghe Commandery in You Province — they're all swarming with refugee leaders, big and small. Some have tens of thousands, some a few thousand. Added together, there are probably several hundred thousand men."

"And their names are all different: some call themselves Bronze Horses, Great Tong, High Lake, Double Chain, Iron Shins, Great Spear, Youlai, Upper River, Green Calves, Five Units, Five Banners, Five Towers..."

The more Diwu Lun listened, the more something seemed off. "Hold on — why so many 'fives'?"

Ma Yuan looked up and laughed. "The character 'five' is simple and easy to recognize."

Your character 'Ma' is easy to recognize too — are the Bronze Horses not also horses?

www ▪ttKan ▪℃O

In any case, this was the current situation in Ji Province, Hebei: the southernmost Weicheng Commandery was firmly in Diwu Lun's hands; the western parts of Hebei — Zhao, Zhending, Changshan, Zhongshan, Guangping, and others — were under the control of the various Liu clans and great magnates; the eastern commanderies, severely hit by floods, were the domain of the refugee leaders, and had already boiled over into utter chaos. The Grand Governors of those commanderies could barely hold their administrative seats.

Diwu Lun silently mocked himself: "Though I boast of 'spanning provinces and commanderies,' in truth I don't even hold one-third of Ji Province. At best, I occupy a corner — maybe a tenth."

What's more, the threat from the Hebei rebel armies was not some distant prospect — it had already arrived at his doorstep.

Ma Yuan said: "I've been in Shouliang for half a month now, but I've only managed to control four counties, including Dongwuyang. The two counties to the north have already been taken by bandits. There's a refugee army calling itself 'Five Towers,' led by a man named Zhang Wen, occupying Boping and Liaocheng."

"How many men?"

"Several thousand, and they're still gathering refugees. Including the old, weak, women, and children, there may be over ten thousand."

Diwu Lun truly had a headache. Over a decade of accumulated rot in the Xin Dynasty was erupting all at once. He had spent an entire year unifying Wei Commandery with great difficulty, and just when he was about to stretch his legs and get to work, he found enemies sprouting up all around like bamboo shoots after rain, while his pig teammates were utterly useless.

"Even if I wipe out a few thousand or ten thousand peasant soldiers in one battle, tens of thousands or even a hundred thousand more will spring up nearby."

This was the momentum of earth collapsing and heaven tilting — absolutely not something a single pillar could hold up.

But even if he was exhausted from dealing with it all, he still had to fend off the enemy as best he could. Diwu Lun had a premonition that Chi Zhaoping's obsession with Yuancheng ran so deep she would likely return. He had to resolve the Five Towers bandits entrenched on his flank before deep winter froze the great river solid.

Weicheng's plate was spread a bit too wide. The Boar-Rush Braves had to be stationed at Wu'an to guard against sabotage by the Li clan and the Zhao Lius. Yecheng and Liyang had to be defended. The two thousand routed imperial troops who had crossed the river were still being reorganized. The Weicheng magnates and Shouliang magnates, though they had contributed men and resources under pressure from the Red Eyebrows, each harbored their own agendas and could not be trusted.

Counting up the soldiers at hand, only the two thousand men under Ma Yuan were of any real use. To go directly and wipe out the Five Towers bandits in Liaocheng would likely mean a tough, grinding fight.

So Diwu Lun sighed and said: "The Five Towers bandits have the character 'five' — that gives them some connection to me."

"Those people were driven to banditry by circumstance. The Master said: to execute without having instructed is cruelty; to demand results without having warned is tyranny; to issue tardy orders and demand punctual completion is robbery. First send some subordinate officials to go and proclaim my policies. If they are willing to surrender, they can be resettled, and their leader Zhang Wen can even serve as an official clerk."

Lord Diwu's reputation in Hebei was relatively good. Many refugees knew he governed with lenience and benevolence. He did not expect the entire Five Towers group to kowtow and surrender, but he hoped at least to sow division among them, to set their leaders, big and small, at odds with one another. That would be enough.

While dispatching two subordinate inspectors to Liaocheng to offer the Five Towers terms of surrender, Diwu Lun also had Feng Qin, Huang Chang, and others work with local officials to tally the household registrations of Dongwuyang and the other counties. He needed to find out exactly how many locals had abandoned their land and fled. Those who could be lured back would be; those who could not — well, their property would not be allowed to fall cheaply into the hands of local magnates. It would all be confiscated by the government as public land.

In Weicheng, there was no land left to distribute. The next wave of land distribution depended on Shouliang. The land here was a bit poor, but it was better than nothing.

Interestingly, this move did not provoke strong opposition from the local powerful families. The magnates, such as the Xie clan of Dongwuyang, raised no objections.

"They've all been beaten senseless by Chi Zhaoping."

Ma Yuan understood these magnates' thinking perfectly: "The Red Eyebrows are mostly from bitter backgrounds, and they hate the great landowners whose fields stretch to the horizon more than anything. When they passed through here earlier this year, they stormed two minor magnates' fortified manors, dragging off their sons and younger kin as slaves. The Xie clan only survived because their walls were high and their numbers strong."

But they had also suffered heavy casualties. The fields and property outside their manor had been largely destroyed. Marketplaces and workshops — things that take time to build up — can be ruined in a single day. These counties still hadn't recovered.

"If it were any other government troops coming, they'd be even more terrifying than the Red Eyebrows. But Boyu's reputation for governing commanderies peacefully has already spread to the neighboring regions. Everyone is hoping you'll keep the bandits beyond their borders. Who would dare trip you up now?"

So they were welcoming the imperial army with open arms. This situation gave rise to a wicked thought in Diwu Lun's mind.

"Let the Red Eyebrows and the Hebei rebel armies comb through a place first, utterly destroying the old local order. Then I'll march in and take over. The magnates who should have resisted me will instead bow their heads in welcome, and the common people, desperate for peace, will be content to be obedient subjects. That's not a bad method at all."

It could even bring benefits like relieving local population pressure and leaving behind unclaimed land.

Peasant armies, though mostly destructive and ignorant of construction, could indeed very easily serve as "the vanguard for a king."

With this thought, Diwu Lun said to Huang Chang: "Since both Weicheng and Shouliang are now under my jurisdiction, we should also recruit a batch of subordinate officials locally, and appoint a few sons of magnates to posts — preferably those who have suffered most bitterly at the hands of the Red Eyebrows, whose families have seen heavy casualties..."

Diwu Lun planned to send the sons of Shouliang magnates to Yecheng for "exchange." Building on Geng Chun's strategy, he would further demonize the Red Eyebrow Army in the eyes of the magnates and the common people of Wei. Not only would he mobilize the magnates to contribute more retainers to help guard the river and resist the bandits, but he could also use this as a pretext to conscript the abundant manpower of Wei during the agricultural off-season to work for the government for free and serve as soldiers.

But before two days had passed, that bright and open road ahead was shattered by dire news.

The household retainer whom Diwu Lun had sent to persuade the Five Towers bandits of Liaocheng to surrender had returned.

One of them was badly shaken, still holding a wooden box in his hands — inside lay the blood-soaked head of the other retainer who had gone on the mission.

The retainer kowtowed before Diwu Lun and said: "The Five Towers bandit chief Zhang Wen is arrogant and lawless. He refused to accept Lord Diwu's generous offer of amnesty, drew his blade and killed the man on the spot, and then declared…"

"What did he say?"

"The Five Towers soldiers would rather die free as outlaws than live bowing their heads as slaves!"

Well said! But for Diwu Lun, this was a declaration of war, a provocation. He flew into a rage, immediately flung aside his sleeves and rose, and strode out without even putting on his shoes — his sword was already at the door of his bedchamber.

"Mobilize the troops and appoint the commanders. Within two months, the Five Towers bandits shall be wiped out!"

…

PS: Chapter 2 at 18:00.