Chapter 229: Dong Zhong

When Diwu Lun went to Chang'an to receive his tiger tally, Geng Yan, who had accompanied him west, also took the chance to return to his hometown of Maoling.

By registered households, Maoling's population had already surpassed Chang'an, making it the largest county west of the pass. After all, Chang'an's growth was constrained by the Shanglin Park, and with a large transient population, many lived there but could not necessarily secure a capital household registration.

Maoling, however, occupied the advantageous site of the old Qin capital Xianyang and also benefited from court policy. During the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, starting from the third year of Jianyuan, immigrants from east of the pass were continuously relocated here, and the Geng clan also moved from Julu at that time.

Geng Yan was born and raised here, a typical "youth of the Five Tombs." In Maoling city, no household was ordinary: the old families favored culture and ritual, the rich pursued profit through commerce, and the bold were knights-errant colluding in crime — a place that truly concealed dragons and crouching tigers.

But now, returning after several years away, he found it much decayed. Trade had ground to a halt, and though it was broad daylight, few people were to be seen inside or outside the city.

A fellow townsman of Geng Yan, who had also been his childhood teacher of the Five Classics — a Confucian scholar named Du Lin — encountered him outside the city. Stopping his carriage at the gate to speak with Geng Yan, he answered his questions: "Some days ago, to scrape together the hundreds of thousands of men the Emperor demanded, the local officials simply sent men on market day to the wards to seize people as conscripts."

"To avoid conscription, many who went out had no choice but to disguise themselves as women, wearing women's dress. Some even resorted to self-mutilation."

Shaking his head, Du Lin told of a neighbor who, terrified of being seized, secretly broke his own arm at night using a large millstone.

His right arm was thus shattered and crippled; he could neither hold blade nor draw crossbow, hoping to use his disability to avoid conscription. The campaign against Gouding, the Western Regions campaign, the northern frontier campaign, the Chengchang campaign, the Tanghe campaign — which one had not ended in catastrophic defeat for the imperial army, with countless soldiers lost? As a populous county, Maoling sent men each time, and almost none ever returned. Their bodies perished, their souls scattered, their bones abandoned in foreign lands, able only to become weeping, homesick ghosts.

Better, then, to shed the tail like a gecko — destroy one arm to preserve one's life.

And yet...

"He was conscripted anyway. The officials cared nothing for whether a man was disabled; so long as they could meet the quota, they took him. White-haired old men, boys barely of age — all were conscripted without exception." So lamented Du Lin. It was a sorrowful tale, and only gentry and powerful clans like themselves could escape it.

No wonder Maoling was so desolate. Now not only peddlers and live-in sons-in-law, but even the idle youths on the streets had all been seized and sent south to war. One could well imagine what sort of men made up Grand Minister of Works Wang Yi's "million-man army."

There were also those unwilling to submit, reckoning that conscription meant death and rebellion meant death too, so they simply fled into the mountains and forests to become bandits — which was why the Guanzhong region had lately grown so turbulent.

Seeing the carts and horses behind his teacher laden with baggage, Geng Yan asked where he intended to go. Du Lin simply said, "Guanzhong is not peaceful. I intend to take my family to refuge, to Hexi to seek shelter with a friend."

Their Du clan were also newly risen under the Xin Dynasty. Du Lin's father, Du Ye, had attached himself to the Wang clan's maternal relatives during the Cheng and Ai reigns, offering them counsel and stratagems. Had Du Lin wished to hold office, relying on his father's legacy, a two-thousand-bushel post would have been well within reach. But Du Lin felt he lacked the talent to govern a region, and seeing the court's corruption and chaos, he chose to stay home and study the ancient-script text of the Book of Documents.

Now, with the Xin showing ever clearer signs of collapse, Du Lin planned to take his family and slip away to safety.

Geng Yan, however, suggested a different destination: "Rather than Hexi, why not go to Weicheng Commandery?"

Although Geng Yan had rarely praised Diwu Lun's governance while in Yecheng — a young man's pride — before Du Lin he spoke of Wei with unreserved admiration, and also mentioned that Du Lin's good friend Ma Yuan was now serving as Grand Governor of Weicheng.

Though one was a scholar and the other a military man, Du Lin and Ma Yuan had admired each other since childhood and shared a deep friendship.

"Come to think of it, my family's ancestral home is precisely Fanyang in Wei," Du Lin said, swayed by Geng Yan's persuasion and momentarily hesitating. Maoling's residents were all immigrants.

Geng Yan urged, "Master, why not return home for now? I won't hide it from you — I came back this time precisely to move my family away from Guanzhong. My father's post in Shuodiao is too far; I plan to use Yecheng as a waypoint first. Though the Geng clan has been here barely a hundred years, and our private retainers and guests are mostly in Shuodiao, our attached clansmen still number two or three hundred. Why not travel together, so we can look after one another?"

These words swayed Du Lin, and he agreed to delay his departure.

After making this arrangement with Du Lin, Geng Yan returned home. No sooner had he entered the gate than his four younger brothers knelt before him in a neat row.

"Eldest Brother!"

The four younger brothers of the Geng family were named: Geng Shu, Geng Guo, Geng Guang, and Geng Ju. Shu and Guo had already come of age, while Guang and Ju were somewhat younger.

Though Geng Yan was only twenty-one, he was the eldest in the family. Usually a proud youth, here he assumed an air of premature gravity. Yet governing a household was like commanding an army. He singled out his second brother, Geng Shu: "Shulü, assemble the clansmen, inventory the household's silks and valuables, and prepare carts, horses, and provisions. Within twenty days, the entire clan of several hundred must be ready to move at a moment's notice!"

"Those unwilling to leave will not be forced. They may stay behind on their own, but the clan will no longer bear responsibility for protecting them."

"Elder Brother, where are we going?" The Geng brothers were all somewhat surprised.

Geng Yan did not elaborate, saying only, with terse clarity: "To a new home."

He also ordered Geng Guo to take a hundred clan soldiers and accompany him back to Hongmen in Xinfeng. Diwu Lun needed men from his old unit and clan to command troops. As one of Diwu Lun's two chief generals, Geng Yan would likely be assigned several thousand or even ten thousand men, and he too needed trusted men placed among them to be effective.

The next day, as he left Maoling to return to Xinfeng, he had just reached the Middle Wei Bridge when he encountered over a thousand men crossing noisily from Changling County north of the Wei to the south bank. Their banner bore the character "Five."

It was unmistakably the various Di clans from Linqu Township.

At their head was Diqi Biao. In the past, he had been merely a pugnacious small landlord, his official post no higher than Precinct Chief. But after following Diwu Lun for several years of training in New Qinzhong and Wei, and after fighting a major battle against the Red Eyebrows, he now commanded these clan troops with practiced ease.

But Geng Yan had always been aloof. The two had only crossed paths in Wei and had barely exchanged a few words. In Diqi Biao's mind, he and Geng Yan were of the same rank, and his own seniority was greater; as a direct clansman of the lineage head, he was also more trusted than this outsider youngster.

Thus, encountering Geng Yan on the road, Diqi Biao greeted him only as an equal.

"Young Lord Geng."

In Wei, people often called Geng Chun "Elder Geng" and Geng Yan "Younger Geng."

Geng Yan, however, greatly disliked this form of address. Having never before looked Diqi Biao in the eye, he now merely cupped his hands in a perfunctory salute.

But Diqi Biao was very cordial today: "When Bozhao went back to Maoling, did he see Yuan Chu?"

Yuan Chu was the son of the Maoling knight-errant Yuan She. Years ago, a dispute over water had led to a feud, and at the behest of Diqi Biao's younger brother, Yuan She had sent Wan Xiu to assassinate Diwu Lun. Though Wan Xiu's sense of honor had resolved the misunderstanding, Yuan Chu nursed a grudge and vented his anger on Diqi Biao, forcing him to kneel stripped to the waist before the Diwu family gate.

That day's humiliation was something Diqi Biao dared not and could not resent Diwu Lun for, but he had always harbored a bitter hatred for Yuan Chu. Now that Diwu Lun had appointed him Colonel, he considered himself "the third man in the clan" and was returning home in glory, his desire for revenge rekindled.

But Wang Mang had always been bold in employing men. Yuan She had recently been appointed in haste as Grand Governor of Weirong (Beidi), and his son Yuan Chu was now the son of a two-thousand-bushel official. Arranging to have the man's legs broken was no longer so easy to manage.

His only hope was to use Diwu Lun's return as a pretext to have Yuan Chu conscripted into the army, where he would finally have a chance to repay insult for insult.

Geng Yan was quite indifferent: "I am not acquainted with the Yuan family. I wouldn't know."

Rebuffed, Diqi Biao inwardly fumed at Geng Yan's arrogance, but still thought to himself: "No matter what, I must propose to the lineage head that Yuan Chu be conscripted. The pretext will be... that we need to seize him as a hostage to coerce Yuan She!"

Geng Yan's interest, however, was entirely focused on the clan troops of the Di clans from Linqu Township. When Diwu Lun had left New Qinzhong, he had taken two hundred of his old unit. Most had followed him to Weicheng, while a smaller number had settled in Linqu Township, marrying local women and starting families. Using these men as a foundation, and following the military principle of "one man teaches ten, ten teach a hundred," they had trained clansmen and fellow villagers in each hamlet separately, under the pretext of defending against bandits.

Two years on, if you took the men of a single hamlet alone, they looked quite impressive, not inferior to the refugee soldiers under Ma Yuan.

But to avoid alarming the court, they had never drilled together. When over a thousand men gathered at once, they appeared somewhat disorderly.

"A rabble," Geng Yan assessed their caliber at a glance, unimpressed. Though he had served in Wei for a year now, he still longed for the Shanggu shock cavalry of You Province.

When talk doesn't click, half a sentence is too much. Geng Yan and Diqi Biao both urged their horses forward, each intending to cross the river first via the Middle Wei Bridge.

"We have more men — let us cross first," Diqi Biao said, all smiles on the surface but with no intention of yielding. He needed to show this Geng whelp who the true inner circle was!

Geng Yan frowned. In all his life, he had never learned the meaning of the word "yield"!

And so both sides halted at the bridgehead, one's own men failing to recognize the other's.

"Clan Uncle!"

Just at this awkward moment, a call came from behind. It was a young man riding on horseback. He had been bringing up the rear, and seeing trouble ahead, he immediately spurred his horse forward.

He had grown a beard, and his face bore the marks of wind and frost, no longer the naive innocence of years past. Taking in the situation at a glance, he smiled and said, "Since we are all on the same side, why divide into 'you' and 'us'? Does the poem not say, 'How can you say you have no robe? I will share mine with you'? Since we can share robe and skirt, we can also share a bridge."

"The bridge is wide enough for two carts to drive abreast — can it not accommodate two columns of men? Why not cross together?"

He had given them both a way out, and neither side objected.

Having smoothly smoothed things over between the two, the young man then bowed to Geng Yan with clasped hands.

One could clearly see that the little finger of his left hand was missing — lost to frostbite on the desolate shores of the Western Sea, when their party crossed the Wushao Ridge to seek refuge in Hexi while fleeing Qiang pursuers.

"I am Diba Jiao, courtesy name Jizheng!"

……

While Geng Yan, Diqi Biao, and Diba Jiao were still on the road, Diwu Lun had already reached Xinfeng. The former "Office of the General of Renewal" had been replaced by the "Office of the Grand Marshal." Before Diwu Lun took over, the man in charge of conscription was the Grand Marshal Dong Zhong.

"Dong? Zhong?"

These two characters made Diwu Lun, who had been muttering "When the state is in chaos, there are loyal ministers" on the way here, seem to recall something. He nearly broke into laughter but held it in, and with a solemn face exchanged formal greetings with Dong Zhong.

Dong Zhong did not look at all like a man from Guanzhong — he had neither a thick beard nor a large paunch, but was rather gaunt and delicately handsome. He immediately tried to get familiar with Diwu Lun: "My family is from Yunyang County in Liewei Commandery, so I am something of a fellow townsman with the Duke of Weixin."

Right — Wang Mang's mortal enemy, Emperor Ai of Han's favorite Dong Xian, was also a man of Yunyang County. And this Dong Zhong was actually a kinsman of his. It seemed the Dong clan of Yunyang had placed their eggs in two baskets: though Dong Xian was executed by Wang Mang, his clansman Dong Zhong had become a prominent noble of the Xin Dynasty.

Besides transferring the conscripted able-bodied men to Diwu Lun, Dong Zhong also had to introduce him to his deputy for this southern campaign, an Assistant General.

When the Assistant General personally chosen by Wang Mang stood before Diwu Lun, even Diwu Boyu, thick-skinned as he had become, could not help showing a look of astonishment — Why you!?

He had imagined many candidates, and knowing Wang Mang's habit of making commanders and deputies check each other, he had even guessed: would he appoint Tian Kuang, the Grand Governor of Shivei, with whom he had a grudge, to divide military authority?

That would have actually played right into Diwu Lun's hands, sparing him the thorn-in-his-side worry of Tian Kuang holding his return route.

But he had never, ever expected it would be him!

The man who came was around fifty, dressed in military attire, his hair graying. Upon seeing Diwu Lun, his face was full of embarrassment.

It was none other than Diwu Lun's old superior from the days in New Qinzhong — Liangqiu Ci!

Had this man not been stripped of his rank and reduced to a commoner for allowing the Xiongnu to invade? How had he suddenly become an Assistant General, and his own deputy?

But one only had to consider that Lian Dan, who had lost tens of thousands of men in Juding and thrown Nanzhong into chaos, had actually been fished out of prison by Wang Mang and entrusted with over a hundred thousand lives in two successive important appointments — and then Liangqiu Ci's appointment seemed hardly surprising at all...

A superior who once stabbed you in the back becomes your subordinate — could there be any reunion in this world more bitterly laughable than this?

The two men could only stand there laughing awkwardly and exchanging pleasantries, while Diwu Lun sighed inwardly.

When it came to discerning talent and trusting those he employed without suspicion, he, Diwu Lun, deferred to no one — except Wang Mang!

"Your Majesty, oh Your Majesty, could it be you intend to create another pair of 'Crouching Dragon and Young Phoenix'?"

……

PS: Chapter 3 at 18:00.