Chapter 254: The Great Prophecy Art

"The Zuo Commentary says: a falling stone is a star. In my army there is one skilled in reading the stars; observing the heavens by night, he foretold that within a few months, a star might fall near Kunyang…"

Wang Yi turned Diwu Lun's letter over and read it twice, then glanced at the honest-faced Dou Rong. "Duke of Zhou, is this truly a letter from Diwu Lun?"

"It is."

"When did you receive it?"

Dou Rong reported: "On the first day of the fifth month, while we were still at Luoyang. The messenger came from Henei. At first this humble officer took it for wild ravings and paid it no mind — until tonight, when the star fell…"

Reckoning the time, the letter must have been written in the fourth month at the earliest, while Diwu Lun was on his way back to court. This whelp had actually foretold the meteor that fell at Kunyang more than a month in advance! Though tonight's falling star was nothing like the earth-shaking one that fell in Dong Commandery in the First Emperor of Qin's time — it barely left a trace on the ground — it was certainly bright enough.

Just as in the Zuo Commentary, which Wang Yi was also fond of reading, it tells much of spirits and portents, foretelling the timing of blessings and calamities. And not in ambiguous nonsense, either — even quite specific events could be accurately predicted through divination. The timeframe was broad, but the place and the event were correct. Could it be that Diwu Lun truly had a man of talent beside him, someone like Diviner Chuqiu?

Another puzzling point lay in the letter's warning to Dou Rong to beware of Liu Xiu. No wonder Dou Rong, throughout the march south, had repeatedly brought up Liu Bosheng's younger brother — yet the several counties Liu Xiu had taken had all been easily overrun.

Dou Rong added another warning: "A few days ago someone slipped away to Dingling and Yanling — we cannot afford to be unguarded."

"I am aware." Wang Yi did not take it too seriously. After all, they held every advantage now. A star had fallen, yes, but so long as it did not land on their own heads, they could spin it as a favorable omen for the attack — it might even boost morale. What was there to worry about?

Yet when dawn broke the next day, another strange thing happened.

"The weather has turned."

Dou Rong had slept poorly. The moment he stepped out of his tent he noticed it: the sky was overcast, and in the distance a great bank of thick morning fog had massed together, pushed and shoved by the wind as it drifted slowly toward the Xin army. Then — whether the wind suddenly tightened or for some other reason — it surged forward violently, toppling like a collapsing mountain, crashing down upon the camp!

For a moment, officers and men throughout the Xin camp were thrown into shock, crouching low. Though the fog dispersed quickly once it touched the ground, the soldiers went on murmuring about it for a long while. The older men all shook their heads, saying they had never seen such a bizarre thing.

Dou Rong, for his part, was thinking to himself: "Diwu Lun's letter said nothing of this. It seems even he cannot predict everything."

The commanders had the diviners cast lots, and indeed it was no auspicious sign. But Wang Yi ordered them to divine again: "I have received a star omen — how can it be inauspicious? Change it to an auspicious sign at once!"

Then he had men weave this together with the previous night's falling star and spread the word, to dupe the soldiers into fighting fiercely. After the morning meal, he ordered the great army to advance and launched the general assault on Kunyang.

Yet the battle at the front had barely begun when the Grand Minister of Works, who had been calmly beating the command drums, was met by his son, the Palace Attendant Wang Mu — who ought to have been in Chang'an — and the Emperor's edict that Wang Mu carried.

"Father!" Wang Mu had set out from Chang'an days ago, taking a roundabout route through Lantian and Hongnong, riding post-horses two hundred li a day. He had not closed his eyes for days and nights. He dropped to his knees before Wang Yi, too drained even to read it aloud, and with trembling hands passed the edict to him. "A grave matter has occurred in the capital."

"On the twenty-fourth of the fifth month, Diwu Lun raised troops in revolt at Hongmen. When your son set out, the rebel army had already seized everything east of the Ba River, and their blades were pointed straight at Chang'an!"

"What!?"

This news shocked Wang Yi far more than any falling star or great fog. For a moment he stood frozen. Though he had never thought well of Diwu Lun, when an ally suddenly turns traitor, no man can remain unshaken.

"I saw it long ago — Diwu Lun's face bears the marks of rebellion. A pity His Majesty was so fond of him!"

Wang Yi dismissed everyone else and silently read Wang Mang's edict, listening to his son's tearful account of Diwu Lun's treason. He could no longer attend to directing the siege.

The forward troops were on the verge of being first up the walls, yet the attack order for the follow-up forces never came. The colonels looked at one another in bewilderment, until Dou Rong at the front lines spurred his horse back to request orders.

It would have been better if he had not come. The moment Wang Yi saw Dou Rong's thick-browed, wide-eyed face, the letter and Diwu Lun's prophecy came rushing back to him. Was this too part of a long-laid scheme? A plot to unsettle his army's morale? Was Dou Rong his accomplice?

Diwu Lun was far away in the Guanzhong heartland. The Grand Minister of Works, though he held three hundred thousand troops in his hand, had nowhere to vent his towering rage. He simply pointed at the baffled Dou Rong and barked the order:

"Seize Dou, the Duke of Zhou!"

…

"Duke of Zhou, ah, Duke of Zhou — so you have long been in secret league with Diwu Lun! Speak! Besides ordering you to spread rumors in my army, prattle wildly about celestial signs, praise the enemy, and frighten the troops — what else did that villain Diwu bid you do?"

Dou Rong was utterly dumbfounded. He cried out his innocence: "Grand Minister of Works, I know nothing of this! What in the world has happened…"

"The truth is plain, and still you dare deceive me! In vain have I treated you as a brother these twenty years!"

Wang Yi was thoroughly disillusioned. He would not permit Dou Rong to defend himself, but merely waved for his men to drag him away and lock him up.

A general was still a general. Though Wang Yi was no true master commander, neither did he lose his wits entirely. He first pretended nothing had happened, kept the troops attacking as before, and delegated command to others while he himself fell into thought.

"No wonder this morning a fog like a moving mountain blanketed the ground — could it have been an omen of that whelp Diwu's rebellion?"

Wang Yi now faced an awkward predicament. He had driven his army forward in fierce assault up to the high ground, only to be stunned by the news that his home was being stolen, teetering on the brink… Would you turn back or not?

A dilemma — a true dilemma.

The Emperor's edict clearly hoped Wang Yi would fly back at once to suppress Diwu Lun. According to his son, who had delivered the edict, the Grand Chancellor Wang Xun, who had been leading a hundred thousand troops to attack Luyang Pass in the west, had already withdrawn. Luyang lay to the west and had received the edict a day earlier than Kunyang.

With Dou Rong no longer trustworthy, Wang Yi suddenly found himself with no one to consult. He could only ask his son Wang Mu:

"In your judgment, how long can Chang'an hold out?"

Wang Mu knew nothing of military affairs and could hardly give a clear answer. He could only say that the Emperor still had the Northern Army's six regiments, numbering in the tens of thousands, at hand. Even if they could not defeat Diwu Lun, surely they could hold Chang'an for a month or so? Look at Yan You and Cen Peng in Wancheng — with a mere few thousand men and a city full of doubt, they had stubbornly withstood a hundred thousand rebels besieging them for nearly half a year. Had they not held out?

No one could have imagined that Chang'an would hold out for even less time than Kunyang.

Wang Yi merely clasped his hands behind his back and brooded. Diwu Lun must have been plotting this for a long time, and he had a man of talent at his side who could even predict the falling star at Kunyang. What was he to do? Had Wang Yi possessed ambition, with three hundred thousand troops still under his command, he could have advanced or retreated with considerable freedom.

But he was a scion of the "Five Marquises," Wang Mang's own cousin, and one of the earliest to follow him. Their bones were knit together, their sinews intertwined — he would rise or fall with the Xin.

Wang Mang, likely fearing he might not return, had in this edict, uncharacteristically, refrained from using the royal "We," and instead wrote: "Our army is shattered without, Diwu Lun rebels within. To Our left and right, none remain whom We can trust. We can no longer think of distant commanderies and kingdoms, and wish to call Our younger brother to counsel."

"We are old and have no fitting heir. We wish to pass the realm to Our younger brother!"

Wang Yi had lost count of how many times he had read that line. He was at once glad and grieved, and could not stop the tears from streaming down. "When the lord is shamed, his minister dies. When an elder brother is in trouble, how can a younger brother not come to his aid? Your Majesty, ah, Your Majesty — why speak such words?"

He too had poured his heart and soul into building the Xin. Now, searching his conscience, he found that no matter how Wang Mang had sidelined him, his loyalty to his cousin had never wavered in the slightest.

"Return — I must return!"

Wang Yi made his choice. But with three hundred thousand men — still in the midst of a siege — how to withdraw was a tremendous problem. Many a defeat had occurred during a withdrawal.

He had an idea: "I will not announce this yet. I'll have the rear army prepare to retreat while the vanguard continues the assault. Once we seize the Kunyang pass, we slaughter the rebels, leave a few tens of thousands to hold it, and cut off any pursuit. That way, even if the Greenwood bandits take Wancheng, they will be delayed here for some time. While I return with the army to sweep away Diwu Lun, I can still ensure Luoyang is not lost."

But plans could not keep pace with events. Very soon, the outlying patrol riders brought him a letter they had intercepted to the east.

"Wancheng has fallen! Liu Bosheng and the Gengshi Emperor are bringing a hundred thousand troops — they will be here any day now!?"

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Misfortunes never come singly. Wang Yi immediately burst out cursing: "That old fool Yan You — you held out for half a year, why couldn't you last just a few more days?"

Then what was the point of fighting on? By now, Wang Yi's resolve was utterly shattered. Without even bothering to verify whether this news was true or false, he struck his wrist and sighed: "Victory within reach — and now it slips away! Victory within reach!"

It was all Diwu Lun's fault!

He abandoned the assault on Kunyang entirely, ordering only that the vanguard attacking the city pull back at once. The fighting spirit that the previous night's falling star had roused drained away in an instant, leaving nothing behind.

And because Wang Yi dared not explain the truth plainly to his commanders, the whole army was thrown into suspicion. When they heard the Grand Minister of Works was withdrawing, a clamor broke out: "What in the world has happened?"

Piecing together his son's sudden arrival, Dou Rong's arrest, and other incidents, the generals and colonels buzzed with speculation behind his back.

"Could it be that the Son of Heaven has passed away?"

"Perhaps the Xiongnu have invaded and threaten the Guanzhong region."

No one could have imagined it was the loyal and filial Diwu Lun.

Wang Yi knew this was bad for morale, but he dared not make the matter public. The families of the generals and colonels were mostly in Chang'an; the men would surely panic, perhaps even scatter like birds and beasts. He could only suppress it with military orders.

He left tens of thousands to keep watch on Kunyang, then the vanguard became the rearguard and they began a hasty retreat. Had they delayed a few more days, not only would Chang'an be unable to hold, they themselves might be entangled by the main force of the Greenwood Army moving north, unable to break free.

Wang Yi planned to pull the troops back to Luoyang for provisions, then personally lead tens of thousands of elite soldiers into the pass to join the various loyalist forces and strike Diwu Lun together…

"So what if he has someone versed in astrology by his side? I will sever that brat's head and use it as a kickball."

……

"The Xin army has withdrawn!"

In truth, the defenders inside Kunyang, having waited in vain for relief, had been barely holding on, down to their last breath and ready to surrender. Now, watching the Xin army pull back, they felt as if granted a great amnesty. The battered Greenwood and Han soldiers wept for joy.

Half a day's journey east of Kunyang, several thousand troops had also arrived. Beneath the fluttering "Han" flame-banners was none other than Liu Xiu, who had rushed to Dingling and Yancheng to seek reinforcements!

When scouts reported that the Xin army had begun to retreat, the commanders—who had been reluctant to throw eggs against a rock and only marched because of Liu Xiu's earnest persuasion—stared at one another in disbelief. Ma Wu was overjoyed: "Has General Wenshu's stratagem worked?"

It turned out that the message Wang Yi's scouts had intercepted—"Wancheng has fallen, a hundred thousand Han soldiers are on their way"—was nothing but a fabrication Liu Xiu had scribbled to unsettle the enemy's morale. But he had never expected it to work this well.

"Could it be they've spotted our army and are feigning retreat to lure us?"

Liu Xiu was equally surprised. Boldly, he took Feng Yi, Wang Ba, and eleven other commanders, along with three thousand elite troops as the vanguard, to approach and observe.

The Xin army's detached scout units had lost all will to fight; at the sight of them, they hastily fell back. When they reached a high hill, Liu Xiu climbed up and looked out—and saw a sight he would never forget.

A great ship is hard to turn. The three-hundred-thousand-strong army had stretched over a hundred li on the march and did so again in retreat. It had to be divided into the rear guard, the main body, the left and right divisions, and the rearguard; a full withdrawal would take until the day after tomorrow at the earliest. Encampments were abandoned, and many siege engines were simply left behind. With morale in turmoil, the chaos only worsened, order broke down completely, and conscripts seized the chance to flee.

Even if this disarray were feigned, it had now become the genuine article.

The commanders and colonels were elated, thinking it a stroke of luck to win without a fight—they need only wait for the Xin army to leave. But after observing for a long while, Liu Xiu made a startling decision.

"Attack!"

Liu Xiu pointed at the Xin army withdrawing in waves: "The enemy longs to return to their homes at dusk; the three armies are gripped by fear. If we send elite troops to flank them on both sides and strike swiftly at their rear, the enemy will surely be routed."

"Gentlemen."

True victory is never handed over by waiting or by heavenly signs—it must be striven for and seized by men!

He looked at them all, an extraordinary light shining in his eyes: "This is the best chance to annihilate the Xin dynasty's great army in one stroke!"

Liu Xiu made a pronouncement: "Believe me—this battle will set the pattern for all under Heaven!"

……

PS: Went out a bit late, scheduled post? It's all freshly written, what were you thinking.

I'll make up the New Year's Eve update I owe tomorrow.