Chapter 251: The Whole City Clad in Golden Armor

The reason Diwu Lun had such feelings atop the Twin Phoenix Towers was that his troops had entered the capital for their naked exam, and the results were, unsurprisingly, abysmal.

Only half a day since entering the capital, Diwu Lun's voice proclaiming the Five Articles of Covenant still echoed through the streets of Chang'an, yet the soldiers' eyes had already been dazzled by the metropolis's riot of colors, and they began to flout the rules and run wild.

A refugee tenant farmer who had suffered for twenty or thirty years, always trampled underfoot, had been conscripted barely a month ago; discipline had not yet been driven into his bones when he muddle-headedly followed his general to overthrow the Emperor and marched into the flourishing great city as a victor.

Everything had gone too smoothly. They had just seen blood, killed men, and held blades in their hands. The city folk who once looked down on them now bowed and scraped, trembling with fear. In such circumstances, not getting light-headed — how hard that was.

Relying on the intimidation of fifty heads, looting in the wards outside the city gates had been stopped, but once the troops entered the city, word spread from who knows where that robbing the middle class and above would not anger the Grand General. So they set their sights on wealthy households, wanting to push into Shangguan Ward and Qi Ward, their eyes roving over the women.

The already loose military discipline grew even slacker. When many of the units that had entered the city assembled at their designated posts, a full third of the men had vanished! Only near dawn did they come staggering back dead drunk, a chicken in the left hand, a duck in the right, refusing to admit they had stolen them, insisting the creatures had panicked and run headlong into them on the road.

Military officers were critically short-handed; one man had to keep watch over dozens or even a hundred pairs of hands, and sometimes the junior officers could not resist joining in themselves. They even grew so brazen as to storm the residence of Song Hong, which Diwu Lun had repeatedly and emphatically ordered to be protected!

The "elite troops" who followed Diwu Lun into the palace and ministerial compounds gave him no peace of mind either. Although the Imperial Workshops were kept under tight guard, and Diwu Lun tried to have it proclaimed that "all seizures are to be turned over to the public coffers," countless men casually pocketed lacquerware, pried off gold and silver ornaments with their knives, and smashed the gilded handles off palace lanterns to stuff into their bosoms.

They even argued with righteous conviction: "Though it is said that looters shall be punished for their crimes, we are fighting Wang Mang — robbing Wang Mang's house hardly counts as a crime."

Some even wanted to pry up the stone pillars from the palace steps and carry them off: "My family are refugees; I'll take it back to build a house."

A soldier draped all over with palace curtains and drapes, planning to find a tailor to make clothes, laughed and said: "Chang'an is so huge. Many rich people have fled, and their houses stand empty. Since they're empty, they're ownerless. Just bring your family here and let them live in one — what's the problem?"

Whatever Diwu Lun intended, many men had already decided to settle down in Chang'an and live as masters over others.

Some, relying on being direct subordinates, old comrades, or Diwu Lun's own clansmen, thought the covenant did not apply to them and forcibly seized women. In the palace compound, they clashed with the guard units Diwu Lun had posted while trying to break into the offices of the Nine Ministers to loot.

Few men could remain as clear-headed as Diwu Lun. Many senior officers came to complain, saying they could no longer restrain their subordinates. Rather than forcibly suppressing them and earning their hatred, they suggested, why not have the Grand General Diwu take up residence in the palace halls, ride in Wang Mang's carriages and wear his robes, take Wang Mang's harem of one hundred and twenty women as his wives, and then distribute the palace maids among the soldiers!

Back when they had first raised their troops at Hongmen, Ren Guang had indeed offered Diwu Lun just such a suggestion: "If any city dares not open its gates and surrender, once it is breached, permit the soldiers to plunder wealth at will — this will boost morale."

But Diwu Lun had not agreed then. Now Ren Guang, knowing Diwu Lun's preferences, had promptly reversed his stance. When someone covertly petitioned Diwu Lun to lift the ban, Ren Guang said sternly: "Wang Mang was without the Dao, and thus we were able to follow the Grand General to this point, to punish the tyrant and rid the realm of a single despot. We ought to make plain white mourning our capital, and pacify the people — nothing more. Now, the moment we enter the city, if we indulge in its pleasures, how can we accomplish great things?"

"Grand General, any who dare speak recklessly of lifting the ban — I request that they be executed!"

Diwu Lun glanced at Ren Guang and nodded. "Boqing speaks rightly. Since the covenant has been established, it must be upheld!"

He therefore ordered Ren Guang to take his personal guard and enforce order in the city. Within a single day, the military officers and soldiers arrested and executed numbered in the hundreds!

Chang'an truly lived up to its name — the ratio of "casualties" it inflicted on Diwu Lun's army was even greater than that dealt by the Northern Army.

They were aggrieved, too, and heartbroken — especially the old comrades among the eight hundred military officers. On the verge of death, they still raised their heads and shouted: "I want to see Lord Diwu! I shed blood in New Qinzhong! I was wounded in Shouliang Commandery! You whelps, your seniority is less than mine — how dare you kill me!"

Their cries of injustice halted at the moment the blade and axe swung down. Diwu Lun looked at the heads of his old comrades impaled on spearpoints, displayed as a warning to all. Many of their faces were quite familiar, and a pang of sorrow struck his heart.

These men were all iron-boned, unyielding fellows. They had fought the Xiongnu and struck at the Red Eyebrows. They did not fall to the Northern Army's heavy crossbows by the banks of the Ba River, yet they fell here, in this glittering world of pleasure.

If the veterans were like this, the new recruits need hardly be mentioned.

After executing several hundred men in one furious stroke, Diwu Lun immediately sealed the treasuries and storehouses, registered the maps, documents, and treasures, and ordered Wan Xiu to guard the palace gates with five thousand troops. He had the eunuchs watch over the various palace attendants, consorts, and concubines, and forbade the soldiers from any encroachment or violence.

As for Diwu Lun himself, he promptly left the palace and took the lead in lodging at the military camp between Jianzhang Palace and Shoucheng Palace, just as he had said to Diwu Ba: "Only with your feet planted in the soil can you feel truly grounded."

In truth, he did not feel grounded at all. That night, Diwu Lun, who had been able to sleep soundly during the rebellion and the crossing of the Ba River, found himself utterly sleepless. Even when he rolled off the couch and lay directly on the ground, it was the same. In six years since crossing over, he had never felt his heart so panicked.

The heart of one man is the heart of a million men. The challenge he now faced was far greater than simply driving Wang Mang away.

The next day, just after the cockcrow, Diwu Lun, who had tossed and turned all night, rose and set about distributing gold cakes to the troops. Any later, and his tens of thousands of men might utterly dissolve in this quagmire.

The first to receive their pay were Wan Xiu and the five thousand men who had guarded the palace and ministerial compounds the previous night.

"The reason I had you gentlemen guard the palace precincts is that you were the first to cross the Ba River — you have rendered great merit!"

Diwu Lun's gaze swept over them. Every man seemed to have grown a size thicker; they had already filled their pockets and helmets to bursting in the palace, their armor stuffed with palace curtains and drapes cut loose with knives. But Diwu Lun still praised them — at least this group had not lost their heads enough to storm the Imperial Workshops, or the Tianlu and Shiqu archives.

It helped that old Wang Mang was frugal by nature, obsessed only with ritual. The entire palace complex was mostly filled with relics of the Former Han; the truly good things were all in the storehouses. What the soldiers had grabbed was mostly miscellaneous items. In terms of value, they still could not compare to gold.

The five thousand men assembled in the front courtyard before the Wanglu Hall. In the past, carriages and horses were not permitted to enter here, but now, who cared about such things? The ground was covered in horse dung, and as Diwu Lun's carriage drove through, it was crushed and smeared everywhere.

Behind him came carts fully loaded with gold cakes. Diwu Lun personally placed a bolt of silk together with a gold cake into each man's hands, patted their shoulders, and asked their names. Though he could not possibly remember so many, the soldiers were still deeply stirred and shouted their replies at the top of their lungs.

Once the gold cakes were tucked into their bosoms, they weighed them in their hands. "Is this real gold?"

"How dare you doubt the Grand General?"

"Then why is its color different from the 'gold' I knocked off a lamp stand yesterday?"

"What you knocked off was brass, not gold. Look at me — just bite it and you'll know."

So saying, he demonstrated by stuffing the gold cake into his mouth and biting down hard with his teeth. Sure enough, a faint tooth mark appeared. Others tried scraping it with the small knives they carried, and indeed, it scratched very easily.

Now that it was confirmed to be real gold, everyone was quite delighted. Yesterday, they had ransacked the palace halls with great zeal, exerting themselves on the sculptures on the corridor pillars and the bronze rings on the doors; some had even pried up the floor tiles and carried them off. But once that feverish excitement passed, they felt rather listless — the stuff was too heavy, hard to store and hard to carry. Gold, however, was different. A single small cake tucked in the bosom felt solid and reassuring. Used sparingly, it was enough to take a wife and buy an ox.

And so, when military discipline and the Five Articles of Covenant were reiterated, the soldiers did not resist as they had the day before. Most assented readily, though quite a few still thought to themselves...

"If the Grand General had let me loot freely, I'd have grabbed far more than a single gold cake!"

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Diwu Lun spent a full two hours distributing pay to these five thousand men. The gold cakes were not heavy, but repeating the act five thousand times still left his arms sore and aching.

But Diwu Lun could not stop. He immediately hurried without pause out of Shoucheng Hall to the plaza at the Northern Watchtower, where he distributed pay to Geng Yan's three thousand troops who had come south from north of the Wei River, and to the three or four thousand armed men from Linqu Township led by Diwu Ba and Diba Biao.

They too were heroes of this campaign. Had it not been for the beacon fires at the Five Tombs, the Northern Army's morale would not have collapsed so quickly.

Diwu Lun praised the Geng family for having three young tiger cubs, and he took a particular liking to Geng Guo. He asked Geng Yan for him, keeping Geng Guo at his side to serve as a junior colonel.

When it was the turn of his fellow townsmen, Diwu Lun was even more cordial. He could point out many of them and call them by name — like the sixty-five-year-old Diwu Sangeng, or Diwu Xiaogang, who had just turned sixteen. Some families even had three generations, father and sons, fighting together.

Another two hours passed like this. Before others, Diwu Lun still appeared vigorous and spirited, but in truth, after personally handing out over ten thousand gold cakes, his hands could no longer even hold a bowl and chopsticks steady. He ate his gruel using only a ladle and spoon.

After hastily eating a little, he set out again to distribute pay to the troops guarding the city gates — the ones who had been denied entry to the city and were grumbling the loudest.

The first gate Diwu Lun went to was the first gate on the southern end of Chang'an's western wall: Zhangcheng Gate, which Wang Mang had renamed "Wanqiu Gate." From Zhangcheng Gate to Zhicheng Gate and Yong Gate, the bronze dragons atop the gates stared down as he chatted and laughed with the three thousand soldiers guarding the city's west side.

Then he turned north. The first gate on the northern end of the western wall was called Heng Gate; next came Luocheng Gate and Chucheng Gate. The sun had already passed over the stork-and-sparrow carvings atop the gates and was beginning to slant westward.

Next he reached the eastern wall. The gate with the blue-green hue was Bacheng Gate, beyond which lay many Eastern Tomb melon fields. Next was Qingming Gate; as the gold was distributed, the soldiers were hauling grain from the nearby ritual fields. Then he circled back to Xuanping Gate, the gate through which he had entered the city.

Finally, he made a circuit along the southern wall: Fu'ang Gate, An Gate, and the final stop was Xi'an Gate, directly facing Shoucheng Hall.

For six full hours, Diwu Lun circled Chang'an clockwise, distributing pay to another twelve thousand soldiers. He could no longer lift his arms, and could only stand with feigned solemnity, watching as the junior officers handed out the pay to the troops, then accepting their jubilant bows and thanks.

"The Grand General is true to his word!"

Although the troops deployed on the outskirts and at Hongmen had yet to be paid, since it was a certainty, Feng Yan praised him, saying: "Ji Bu's one promise was worth a thousand gold; Your Excellency's one promise is worth a hundred thousand gold!"

One could not claim that a mere gold cake had changed everyone's nature, but at the very least, the grumbling over Diwu Lun forbidding them to loot had vanished. If anyone dared speak a word against the Grand General, others would take turns smashing his head open with their gold cakes.

"In all these years, have you ever seen a general or official who, when he said he'd give out gold, actually gave out gold?"

With enough troops and enough grain, the people will trust you. Shang Yang's reforms began with moving a log to establish trust, and today, Diwu Lun used over a hundred thousand jin of gold in one go to establish his own trust within the army.

The twenty-thousand-odd strongmen from north of the Wei River, who had struggled across the Middle Wei Bridge and come to scout near Chang'an hoping to enter the city and grab a share of the spoils, also witnessed this scene. Hearing the city-wide roar of "Long live!", they were awed into halting outside the walls, and only Wang Yuan and a few others entered the city to pay their respects to Diwu Lun.

Diwu Lun, already nearly collapsing from exhaustion, stood atop the city wall and watched this scene, breathing a little easier. The army had not scattered into loose sand after entering the city; it had maintained order and morale — that was victory. With the troops' hearts settled, it seemed tomorrow was the time to hold the public trial of criminals, an activity the common folk always delighted in.

Diwu Lun suddenly recalled that six years ago, he had recited half a poem at Changping Lodge.

"When autumn comes, the eighth of the ninth moon, my flower blooms and all others are slain."

And now, Diwu Lun had, through his own deeds, supplied the second half.

Because of the curfew, the ward gates were shut and no one dared come out. The only people moving inside and outside the city were Diwu Lun's soldiers, escorting Chen Chong and others deemed guilty, along with many high officials who had fled and been chased down by the Yueqi Camp, now returning in disgrace with straw ropes tied around their heads — men like Grand Mentor Tang Zun and Zhang Han.

The soldiers wore yellow scarves on their foreheads and carried gold in their bosoms; many held it up to the sunlight for a closer look. As refugees and tenant farmers, they had once been denied even a single bowl of the yellow gruel Wang Mang handed out, fit only to boil grass and bark into paste. But now, with silk wrapped around their waists and real gold in their hands, they strode along the Imperial Avenue, trampling the dukes and ministers underfoot.

Though it was only the first of the sixth month, still far from the eighth of the ninth, the setting sun bathed Chang'an, making its eight avenues and nine crossroads glitter and gleam — the whole city was already clad in golden scale armor!

……

PS: Chapter 2 at 18:00.