Chapter 224: Entering the Pass

Ren Guang's first piece of advice after joining Diwu Lun's command proved its worth once they had crossed the river on the pontoon bridge built from boats.

This Grand Governor of Shiyu, Tian Kuang, was truly iron-faced and merciless. He had the officials at Puban Pass strictly check the number of troops Diwu Lun was bringing, in accordance with the Pass and Ford Ordinance. That law dated back to the early Former Han, when the central government directly controlled only the Three He, Dong Commandery, Yingchuan, and Nanyang — from Jiangling west to Shu, and north from Yunzhong to Longxi — plus the Inner Administration, fifteen commanderies in all. Everything beyond was vassal kingdoms. From the time of Liu Bang and Empress Lü onward, leaving the passes was like entering hostile territory.

Guanzhong's scrutiny of visitors from east of the passes had been strict, but after Emperor Wu of Han achieved true unification, the law gradually slackened. Now, with the Red Eyebrows and Greenwood rebelling again east of the passes, it had been dusted off and brought back. At Puban Pass in particular, under Tian Kuang's control, without a tally and an imperial edict, no one from Hedong could hope to cross. Commerce and travel had virtually ceased — everything was subordinated to military necessity.

Wan Xiu said quietly to Diwu Lun, "That is why, when we sought passage through here to the east last year, Tian Kuang blocked us, and we were forced to go by way of Shang Commandery, which was even harder to cross."

What was more, Tian Kuang had at the time directly lodged a complaint against Diwu Lun with the court, accusing him of colluding with the staff of the General of Renewal to alter his old unit's marching route, harboring treacherous intent. Had the news of the great defeat at Chengchang not arrived just then, forcing Wang Mang to rely on Diwu Lun, and with the cooperation of the Master of Fates of the Five Majesties at court, that malicious charge would likely have stuck.

So in crossing the pass today, there must be no wishful thinking, no ruining a great matter for the sake of petty cunning. Diwu Lun was very fond of settling old scores.

Once it was verified that Diwu Lun had truly brought only eight hundred men, the pass officials had nothing more to say and could only let them through. One wonders what expressions these trusted men of Tian Kuang would wear if, in days to come, Diwu Lun were to cross the ford and pass with ten times, a hundred times that number.

Diwu Lun met Tian Kuang in person at Linjin. The Grand Governor of Shiyu's residence was actually in Chang'an, and the commandery seat was at Yueyang, but Tian Kuang had relocated here to guard against the east.

Tian Kuang was roughly twice Diwu Lun's age, nearing fifty, but his eyebrows had strangely turned white while his beard remained black — an odd countenance that left a deep impression on Diwu Lun.

He laid out wine to receive Diwu Lun and, upon meeting him, first sighed and said, "Lord Weixin is truly young. It is just as people say: officials are like piled firewood — those who come later rest on top."

After a few cups of wine, he added, as if in jest, "When the ruler summons, one does not wait for the carriage to be harnessed. Yet Lord Weixin puts on quite the show of importance. His Majesty has summoned you repeatedly and you have not arrived — and you even bring troops into the pass."

Diwu Lun took no offense and had no wish to make enemies, so he merely said, "It is only to facilitate leading troops to quell the chaos, nothing more. Everything is for sweeping away the bandits."

Tian Kuang, however, had no intention of letting Diwu Lun off. He pressed him on how he planned to pacify the rebellion. Diwu Lun refused to answer, citing military secrecy, which greatly displeased Tian Kuang. "Zhao Kuo could at least hold forth with lofty talk. Could it be that Lord Weixin truly has no strategy for defeating the enemy in his breast?"

This hostility was baffling, but Tian Kuang was indeed a man of ability who was simply terrible at dealing with people. Otherwise, why would he have been "promoted" back to the capital when he was doing perfectly well in Qing Province?

It was no wonder Tian Kuang felt unbalanced. Compare their experiences, and the resemblance was almost uncanny.

I train troops; you train troops.

I fight the Red Eyebrows; you fight the Red Eyebrows.

I make the bandits afraid to enter Qing Province; you make the roving bandits detour around Wei Commandery.

I operate across provinces and commanderies; you operate across provinces and commanderies.

The only difference was that after his victories, Diwu Lun went to great lengths to hide his ability, wishing Wang Mang would not notice him; whereas Tian Kuang, after a single minor victory, had actually taken the initiative to petition the court, asking it not to send generals on an eastern campaign, saying the imperial army would only cause trouble and that it would be better to hand Qing and Xu provinces entirely over to him, guaranteeing their pacification.

This had led to their vastly different circumstances. Tian Kuang, after more than ten years as an official of the Xin, was still only a "Soup-Testing Marquis." His entry into court service, nominally a promotion, was in reality a stripping of his authority. Diwu Lun, on the other hand, had first been a Provincial Governor, then been enfeoffed as a high duke, and now was summoned to the capital with Wang Mang's high hopes, about to take command of a great army.

Tian Kuang could rack his brains and still not understand: with similar merits, separated by only two short years, why was the difference in their fortunes so vast?

Diwu Lun then smiled and said, "A skilled drinker makes no boastful claims. As for how I use troops, within a few months, the Soup-Testing Marquis will know for himself!"

This rather unpleasant small banquet gave Diwu Lun a clear picture of Tian Kuang's character, and he withdrew those remarks he had planned to use to "drive a wedge" between Wang Mang and Tian Kuang — a man who could file one complaint could file a second.

A grand provincial authority, who had once blocked the Red Eyebrows from daring to enter Qing Province — if he had been unwilling to go west, with his family not even in Chang'an, he could have simply rebelled, and Wang Mang could have done nothing to him. Yet at a single court edict, Tian Kuang had entered the capital alone. This lack of the slightest hesitation, this absence of regret to this day, this eagerness still to vie for the chance to serve the court — it seemed the man before him was the true loyal subject of the Great Xin!

And Wang Long, who had been seated in attendance at the banquet, also told Diwu Lun: "The Soup-Testing Marquis bears a grudge against Boyu. I hear the Emperor once summoned him as well. If you, Boyu, had not come, the command of this detached southern expeditionary force would have been none other than Tian Kuang's!"

Diwu Lun understood at once. And so, on the journey that followed through Shiyu Commandery, Diwu Lun took care to observe Tian Kuang's jurisdiction closely.

Shiyu Commandery and Diwu Lun's home commandery of Liewei, combined, were the "Left Pingyi" of the Han dynasty, each administering ten counties. Shiyu Commandery faced the Shawan to the front and rested against the Hugang Ridge to the rear, pressed close to the bend of the He, and was always a thoroughfare. The Luo River ran through it. This was the "Hexi" region over which Qin and Wei had fought for a hundred years during the Warring States period, beating each other's brains out, and it was the necessary route from Guanzhong east to Ji Province.

Although Tian Kuang's emotional intelligence was abysmally low, his past ability to block the Red Eyebrows had been no fluke. It had to be said that Shiyu Commandery was indeed kept in excellent order under his governance. In recent years, banditry had broken out frequently across Guanzhong, yet Shiyu alone remained stable. This was because Tian Kuang had delegated authority to the powerful and great surnames, letting them train their own local militia, and had also dispatched many trusted inspectors to tour the commandery, keeping everything firmly under control.

"Tian Kuang has governed Shiyu for over a year. Though he is an outsider official, he has gained considerable local prestige. The powerful support him, and with one rallying call, he could gather ten thousand men."

This Tian Kuang was clearly going to be a major stumbling block on his return journey.

For a moment, Diwu Lun felt as if there were thorns in his back, and he began to ponder whether there was some "non-military means" to resolve the Tian Kuang problem.

By late in the fourth month, they had penetrated deep into Shiyu Commandery. Two great parallel canals appeared across the thousand-li expanse of fertile fields — these were the Zhengguo Canal and the Bai Canal, linking the Jing and Luo, the two main rivers of Guanzhong, so that the region between them, originally arid and short of water, also received irrigation, yielding ten thousand qing of good farmland.

Hence the local folk song: "Where are the fields? At Chiyang Valley Mouth. The Zhengguo came first, the Bai Canal rose after. Lifting spades like clouds, opening channels like rain. One dan of Jing water, its silt several dou, both irrigating and manuring, growing our grain and millet, clothing and feeding the capital, its millions of mouths."

Diwu Lun had long heard of the prosperity along the Zhengguo and Bai Canals, where grain yields per mu far exceeded other places. The granary of the realm was Guanzhong; the granary of Guanzhong was these two canals. Without them, how could this over-exploited, increasingly barren land of eleven parts have sustained a population of thirteen?

But on this journey through, what Diwu Lun saw was a rather different scene.

At the Start of Summer and Grain Budding, the rains hurry one after another. In the dry fields, the millet seedlings were green and needed top-dressing. The winter wheat planted the year before was beginning to yellow at the ear; in just over a month it would be ready for harvest. Irrigation could not stop, and sparrows, constantly competing for the grain, had to be driven off — all tasks demanding great manpower.

Yet in the fields and at the field's edge, able-bodied laborers were rarely seen. The main force in the busy farming season was instead the old, the weak, women, and children, all bent over, laboring to weed, lugging heavy buckets to water the spots the canals did not reach, ladling out the night soil collected at home, hoping to restore the land's fertility.

"The able-bodied have all been conscripted by the Grand Minister of Works." Wang Long shook his head repeatedly and told Diwu Lun, "Though it is said to be one man from every two or three households, do not forget that over these past ten-plus years, first came the Xihai campaign, then the Xiongnu and Gouding, and on top of that, the hundred or two hundred thousand buried in the fighting against the Red Eyebrows and Greenwood. Guanzhong has long been emptied."

Even Wang Long's own family, the Qiongcheng Marquisate, the greatest surname in Liewei, had been ordered to hand over a portion of their able-bodied men, slaves, and retainers just to meet the quota. If the powerful families were treated so, the common folk had even less chance of escaping the corvée.

And having assembled an army of several hundred thousand, they had to eat, did they not? With the harvest looking poor, the court had once again begun imposing the property tax and increased land rent in preparation for the campaign against the Xiongnu.

"Last year, it was raised only three times in total. This year, it is only the fourth month, and it has already been raised four times." Having learned early of Diwu Lun's imminent return, Diwu Xian, who was specially responsible for the clan's merchant trade, had come to Yueyang to greet him. The moment they met, he poured out his woes to Diwu Lun about how hard life had been this year.

In the spring, the court had begun forcibly requisitioning farmers' plow oxen to supplement transport. The middle households had been dealt a heavy blow by this; even the various Di clans of Linqu Township had many oxen taken, severely delaying the spring plowing.

Since the start of summer, the repeated rent increases had stripped the farmers of the aged grain they relied on to get through the lean period, forcing some to begin harvesting the winter wheat a month early.

"The officials even had the nerve to say, with righteous conviction, that since the able-bodied men who were the main eaters in each household were all in the army, why should the families still need to keep so much grain?"

So Diwu Xian poured out his grievances, but the Di clans of Linqu Township had already benefited from Diwu Lun's influence. The court had temporarily suspended the conscription of men from their clan, reserving them for Diwu Lun to lead to Wancheng to fight the Greenwood.

Though they had lost some money and grain, and the charitable granary and charitable funds had been drained considerably, at least the people were still there.

With only a few days until the first day of the fifth month, Diwu Lun did not return to Changling. He merely made a "passing by his door without entering," leading his contingent directly from the Eastern Wei Bridge to the Hongmen Barracks south of the Wei River. This was the camp left over from Wang Yi's force of several hundred thousand. The able-bodied men from various regions arriving later would also assemble here and be handed over to Diwu Lun's command — at least thirty or forty thousand, presumably.

Gazing at this familiar place, Diwu Lun could not help recalling how he had first entered the ranks four years ago and taken over the Boar-Rush Braves here. Many of his old brothers from those days, men like Zang Nu, were still with him, but many others had died in the hellish conscript camps, never to see the sun rise again.

Four years had passed, but similar tragedies continued to unfold without cease. Perhaps it was time to bring all this to an end.

It was also here that Diwu Lun once more received the Emperor's edict. Huang Ye, the Palace Attendant of the Yellow Gate and Wang Mang's most trusted eunuch, came to proclaim it, his face wreathed in smiles, treating Diwu Lun with the utmost deference.

"His Majesty, knowing of Lord Weixin's arrival, is quite delighted. Lord Weixin, please leave your troops at Hongmen and accompany your servant into the Shoucheng Hall to have an audience with the Son of Heaven!"

By the end of the fourth month of the fourth year of Dihuang, in the Shoucheng Hall in Chang'an, the Emperor Wang Mang had also learned of Diwu Lun's arrival in Guanzhong.

"The officers and men he brought are indeed neither more nor less — including Diwu Lun himself and his servants and personal followers, exactly eight hundred!"

Listening to the report from the Embroidered Uniform Direct Emissary at Puban Pass in Shiyu Commandery, Wang Mang breathed a slight sigh of relief, and his faint suspicions about Diwu Lun were temporarily allayed.

Seeing that the general in whom he had placed such high hopes had arrived on schedule, Wang Mang's heart could not help but lift with renewed joy. He decided to grant Diwu Lun a little more reward, to make him put his heart into conscripting troops and cooperate with the Grand Minister of Works in annihilating the rebels in the Forward Division and those who had usurped the title of Han Emperor!

"Where Diwu Lun points east, the rebel scum Li Yan is destroyed; where he controls the river, the traitor Chi Zhaoping is crushed to pieces. This is a treasured minister of the Xin's majesty."

And so, Wang Mang said to the high ministers beside him, "I have heard that the ancestors of the Diwu clan were also descendants of the Tian lineage."

"In the Shijianguo era, I bestowed great rewards upon those sharing my surname. The five clans of Yao, Gui, Chen, Tian, and Wang throughout the realm — all descendants of Yu Shun — were registered as imperial kin. How is it that Diwu Lun's family was overlooked?"

Wang Mang's ideas truly sprang from a whim. He laughed and said, "I wish to bestow upon Diwu Lun the status of imperial clan relative, and change his name to 'Wang Lun.' What do you think?"

……

PS: Something came up, so it's a bit short. Chapter 2 will be at 18:00 and will be longer.