Chapter 201: Great Rats or Flying Locusts

"So you're Lu Da?"

In the main camp at Yangping County, Diwu Lun looked at the young scholar kneeling before him — gaunt, sallow, and emaciated. The man was so frail one might doubt he had the strength to truss a chicken, but as a local, his account of being trapped inside Liaocheng for the past two months proved extremely useful to Diwu Lun.

This Lu Da's courtesy name was Zhongkang. Because his given name always reminded Diwu Lun of the flowery monk Lu Zhishen, he resolved to address him by his courtesy name instead.

Lu Zhongkang had starved for far too long, yet faced with the hot meal set before him, he still maintained the decorum of a Confucian scholar — he forced himself not to look at it, kept his eyes fixed solely on Diwu Lun, and slowly recounted his ordeal.

"This humble man is a descendant of Lu Zhonglian of the Warring States period. My clan has been settled in Liaocheng for over two hundred years, spanning more than ten generations. I dare not claim great wealth, yet our household enjoyed modest comfort — until the Wulou bandits seized Liaocheng and my family was ruined."

The most famous historical event in ancient Liaocheng was indeed when, during the war between Qi and Yan, Lu Zhonglian shot a letter over the walls persuading the city to surrender for the Qi general Tian Dan. This region was the western border of Qi in antiquity, and the local accent already differed greatly from that of Wei.

"Three hundred years ago, Tian Dan besieged Liaocheng for a year, until the grain within the walls was exhausted, the firewood gone, and the people cannibalized the dead and cooked their bones. The common folk suffered calamity beyond bearing. The present circumstances are even worse than those days!"

Lu Zhongkang loathed the Wulou bandits to the marrow of his bones, and he poured out their crimes to Diwu Lun. From his account alone, the Wulou bandits were worse than beasts. After entering the city, they committed every conceivable evil — murder, cannibalism, violating wives and daughters. Their deeds were even more outrageous than the way Geng Chun had once demonized the Red Eyebrow Army.

As he spoke, Lu Zhongkang's tears began to fall. Diwu Lun saw his fists clench tight atop the table. Though he had escaped through grueling hardship, his family remained inside the city, suffering torment and humiliation at the bandits' hands. He desperately wished to follow Diwu Lun and strike back.

Though clad in a short jacket with narrow sleeves, that did not stop Lu Zhongkang from performing a full-sleeved bow to Diwu Lun: "When the time comes, Lu Da is willing to take up a three-foot sword and be the first to scale the walls for you, my lord!"

"Naturally, we shall not be without Zhongkang's aid." Diwu Lun nodded and had Huang Chang lead him away, appointing him as an Attendant Retainer under his staff. He was just then looking for Confucian scholars who had suffered at the bandits' hands, so he could send them into Wei to frighten the powerful clans. This Lu Zhongkang, his face etched with bitter hatred, would serve nicely.

But Lu Zhongkang's words were laced with too much personal enmity. Following the principle of listening to both sides to gain clarity, Diwu Lun next summoned Company Commander Zhen — the man who had earlier been ordered to disguise himself as a refugee, infiltrate Liaocheng, and then smuggle Lu Zhongkang out — to speak.

Company Commander Zhen was the very same junior officer who had followed Geng Chun through the Battle of Chengchang. Afterward, because his courage and quick wits had repeatedly helped Geng Chun escape danger, he had been promoted to Company Commander.

"Is what Lu Zhongkang said about conditions inside the city true?"

"Much of it is not true." Company Commander Zhen smiled. "Lord Diwu, I have been a refugee myself. The Wulou troops inside Liaocheng are not so very different from any other refugees — they are simply gathered under a chieftain, searching together for food and survival."

In Company Commander Zhen's eyes, stripped of the filter of class hatred and personal grievance, his assessment of the Wulou bandits was rather favorable: "Wulou is much like the Red Eyebrows. They slaughter all the powerful families inside a city, throw open their granaries, and distribute grain to the poor. A family like Lu Zhongkang's was no modest household — it was a rural magnate holding dozens of qing of land, with residences linked one to the next. Naturally, they suffered for it."

Of course, bandits were bandits after all. The Wulou chieftain Zhang Wen did not keep the wives and daughters left behind by the powerful families for himself, but distributed them indiscriminately, regardless of age, to the Wulou leaders great and small. Those who received young and beautiful women were often overjoyed, embracing them on horseback and galloping up and down the main street, boasting to their comrades. Those allotted ugly or elderly women could only hang their heads in dejection and curse their own bad luck.

With the intelligence provided by Lu and Zhen, supplemented by confessions extracted from several captured bandits, the conduct and true strength of the Wulou bandits inside Liaocheng became largely clear. They were not as savagely exaggerated as Lu Zhongkang had described, yet they had their bloody and brutal side all the same.

Diwu Lun could imagine — could even understand — that once these refugees, crushed at the very bottom of society, gained the power of life and death over the powerful officials and magnates who had once loomed so far above them, what rose from their hearts was not merely the joy of seizing cloth and grain, but a visceral thrill of turning the tables and taking revenge.

Whether the Red Eyebrows or the Hebei insurgent armies, when they rose up and overthrew the powerful who rode on their backs, their cause possessed an innate righteousness — just as the ancient poem says: "Large rats, large rats, do not devour my millet! Three years I have served you, yet you take no notice of me. I swear I will leave you and go to that happy land."

But after that, their limitations were utterly exposed. If the powerful magnates and officials were great rats, burrowing in one place and devouring everything, then the roving bandits were like locusts riding the wind, wreaking havoc across a thousand li. They left their native lands, gathered in tens of thousands, flew in from afar, and no longer depended on production. They had no orderly system of tax collection, relying mostly on plunder after sacking cities and seizing territory to supply themselves. Unrestrained, they devoured every edible crop leaf, then hastily flew off to another place, leaving a thousand li of barren earth behind.

To the local common folk of Shouliang Commandery, these former victims had in turn become brutal plunderers and thugs.

"Therefore, they must be driven out without fail!"

Driving the Wulou bandits — along with the Wuxiao and Wufan bands who had come to their aid — out of the territory was the strategic objective Diwu Lun set for this campaign during the pre-battle military council.

Young Geng Yan, transferred over from Liyang, had another battle to fight, but his ambition was greater: "Does the Governor not intend to annihilate them completely, to settle the matter once and for all?"

Young Geng was, after all, young and somewhat naive. His uncle Geng Chun shook his head: "You can't wipe them all out. Cut down one crop, and a few months later, another crop sprouts up in the neighboring commandery."

Diwu Lun could pacify Wei, but he could not control the collapse of order in neighboring territories, much less the heaven-shattering chaos across the great river. After Geng Chun had taken a stroll around and returned, he understood the current situation: just as water flows downward, roving bandits would move from places already stripped bare toward regions of plenty. There was no stopping them.

Ma Yuan, however, had a different thought: "Perhaps we could defeat and then incorporate them."

Unlike the Geng uncle and nephew, Ma Yuan — who had once been a bandit leader himself — harbored a measure of sympathy for the refugees. After all, the main force under his command was composed of just such people.

"At most, we could recruit one or two thousand young captives after the battle. Any more than that…"

Diwu Lun shook his head. If he did that, they would eat him out of house and home. His productive capacity was limited. After the great river changed course, Wei's climate had shifted drastically, and they had not seen a single abundant harvest since. There was no surplus grain to feed extra mouths.

The grain stores of Weicheng Commandery, which had seemed fairly ample at the start of winter, were already stretched thin after Diwu Lun took on the huge burden of Shouliang. Add to that the need to be ready to fight the Red Eyebrows at any moment, and even by the most generous estimate, they could barely hold out until the summer harvest. They absolutely could not bear the weight of over ten thousand more mouths.

Unless… he demanded that the powerful families, who had already donated grain once, bleed again.

But in these hard times, even the landlords' households had little surplus grain. You cannot shear the leeks too ruthlessly.

At least for now, incorporating roving bandits and relying on powerful families to "protect the territory and pacify the people" were two absolutely irreconcilable choices — just as Lu Zhongkang of Liaocheng could never share a room with the refugee chieftain who had plundered his wife and daughters. Diwu Lun had to make a decision.

Back in Weicheng, he had chosen the former. But circumstances had changed. In Shouliang, Diwu Lun resolved to choose the latter. It had nothing to do with good or evil, right or wrong — only a calculation of interests.

"Have any of you gentlemen heard the story of the locusts avoiding a border?"

Everyone shook their heads. Diwu Lun said: "Last year, when I traveled to the new capital of the Front Division, I passed through Wancheng and heard the local village Bailiff mention that there was a renowned scholar of broad learning in Wan named Zhuo Mao, courtesy name Zikang."

"During the reign of Emperor Ping of the former dynasty, this Zhuo Mao served as County Magistrate of Mi County in Henan. At that time, a great locust plague afflicted the realm. Over twenty counties in Henan were all stricken by the disaster, yet the locusts alone did not enter the borders of Mi. The Inspector submitted a memorial on Zhuo Mao's behalf, but the Governor did not believe it. He went out to inspect the county himself and found it was indeed so. Thereupon he regarded Zhuo Mao as a great sage."

Geng Chun, however, did not believe it. He merely said: "Most likely a coincidence."

Coincidence or Heaven's will, Diwu Lun's present objective was precisely to achieve a situation where "the locusts avoid the border."

"For this campaign, I have concentrated the greater part of the troops of two commanderies. We must beat the Wulou bandits and their ilk so badly, so painfully, that they remember the lesson! Beat them until they, and every roving bandit across Hebei, turn pale at the mention of Wei, and henceforth make a detour around my jurisdiction, never daring to invade again!"

Water flows downward; bandits move toward wealth. But Diwu Lun intended to turn Weicheng and Shouliang into high ground that roving bandits would pass by and shun — a haven of peace and safety amid the chaos.

The assembled men were persuaded by Diwu Lun. At this military council, a consensus was reached among the decision-makers. Only once the objective was set could they discuss the methods to achieve it. It had to be said: though Diwu Lun's micromanagement skills in direct command were nothing special, when it came to preliminary planning and strategic calculation, he truly had a methodical flair. The many military texts he had studied under old Yan You these past years had not been in vain.

And in response to the officers' eager requests for battle, Diwu Lun smiled and said: "There is no rush to attack just yet. First, let us employ the strategy of strengthening the walls and clearing the fields — wear the bandits down a little!"

…

Diwu Lun had repeatedly sent refugee soldiers disguised as bandits to infiltrate their ranks and ascertain their true situation, so he knew that, due to their lack of restraint, the grain they had plundered when they sacked the county seat was far from sufficient for the bandits' needs.

By the time the eleventh month drew to a close, even the Wulou chieftain Zhang Wen was beginning to regret why he had summoned two allied bands to help.

"There's nothing left to eat."

Gazing at the empty granaries in Liaocheng and the hunger-panged eyes of his followers, Zhang Wen fretted in secret.

The Wulou bandits, counting men and women, old and weak, already numbered over ten thousand. After impulsively killing the envoy Diwu Lun had sent, Zhang Wen assumed the other side would surely come to fight him, so he summoned several minor chieftains of the Wuxiao and Wufan roving bands operating in Qinghe, inviting them over to jointly resist the Wei troops. He had thought that if they could defeat Diwu Lun, they could then sweep into the prosperous and stable Weicheng Commandery and resume their days of feasting and carousing.

But as the allied forces arrived, food grew ever tighter. The roving bandits relied almost entirely on plunder to obtain provisions. Every day they had to send men into the countryside to seize grain and loot food, but the local common folk were impoverished too — how much surplus grain could they possibly have? Consequently, people fled or scattered, leaving the bandits to go hungry month after month. In the dead of winter, not even wild greens could be dug up. Many were reduced to hunting field mice and wild hares in the fields for food, or casting nets along the freezing riverbanks. Over a single fish, they would even draw blades on one another, and lives were lost.

Even with his own main army massed, Diwu Lun was in no hurry to attack and fight on terrain Zhang Wen knew well. Instead, he garrisoned troops in each county seat, joined forces with the powerful families, and had them all hold fast within their fortified manors and strongholds, cutting off the bandits' food supply and leaving their bellies growling with hunger.

What was even more deadly was that Diwu Lun had emptied his reserves to assemble a mobile force of several hundred chariots and cavalry, placed specifically under Geng Yan's command. Swift and agile, they lay in wait. The moment the starving bandits attempted to assault a stronghold, Geng Yan would spot the signal beacon's smoke and race to its relief.

Just now, another grain-raiding party of several hundred men, having ventured somewhat farther to attack a landlord's estate, had been ambushed by Geng Yan. Over half were killed, and the rest fled in disarray back to Liaocheng.

Several such grain-raiding setbacks had cost Zhang Wen his patience.

"Before the great river even freezes over and the Red Eyebrows cross, we'll likely be eating each other!"

On the opposite bank, Chi Zhaoping had indeed sent men swimming across downstream to coordinate with Wulou and other factions, plotting together against Weicheng. But that required the Yellow River to freeze solid. Zhang Wen feared they would not last until then — his forces would scatter on their own from starvation.

"We have no choice but to fight a battle on our own initiative."

Zhang Wen, who had managed to rally over ten thousand men, possessed some ability and insight. He knew that if he concentrated his main force and marched out, he would very likely be playing right into Diwu Lun's hands. The enemy's troops were all encamped near the county seats and strongholds, resting in comfort while waiting for him to come and attack!

He cursed inwardly, "If I'd known, I should have pretended to accept the amnesty back then, swindled Diwu Lun out of a few dozen cartloads of grain first, and then turned on him — it's not too late for that!"

……

PS: Stuck on the writing, so it's a bit late. Chapter 2 at 13:00, Chapter 3 at 18:00. I'm not in good form, so both will probably be half an hour late.