Chapter 323: Bean Gruel

In late September, Diwu Lun hosted a grand banquet for his guests at Changping Manor, feasting on fine food and drink — while Liu Xiu, cold and starving, was stranded on the banks of the Si River.

The late-autumn rain fell without end. They took shelter in a village hamlet that had been looted clean — whether by the Red Eyebrows, the King of Liang, or Xin Dynasty troops, no one knew; it had been abandoned for over a month.

Liu Xiu frowned at the rain outside. Gone was the heroic fervor he had felt beside Mount Mangdang when he cried "Rise, dragon!" Unlike his high spirits of a few days before, Liu Xiu now understood: a soaring dragon does not rise so easily. In times of chaos, most men are nothing but dead snakes crushed beneath mudslides and landslides.

Deng Yu's broad strategy had been correct — the regions of Xu and Yang Provinces were where every power's grip was weakest. If they wanted to build their cause, this was the only place left.

But Liu Xiu's choice of Pengcheng had cost them dearly.

Pengcheng was what later ages called Xuzhou; today, the capital of Xu Province was also Pengcheng. When they first arrived, using the seal of "Governor of Xu Province" that Liu Xiu had forged, they posed as envoys of the Gengshi Emperor and managed to dupe the local remnant Xin officials into obedience. The descendants of the King of Chu also entertained them warmly — but no sooner had they finished lamenting the devastation of a Red Eyebrows raid than a detached Red Eyebrows force came charging in!

Though the Red Eyebrows had shifted their main strength west to Huaiyang and Chen, their numbers were so vast that one contingent had returned to Pengcheng to forage for the winter. Liu Xiu's attempts at pacification proved utterly useless. The Red Eyebrows giant Pang An was blunt and decisive: Governor of Xu Province, Xiu? Never heard of him. Amnesty and recruitment? The Red Eyebrows rose in arms even before the Greenwood — on what grounds should they submit to you? Without another word, tens of thousands of Red Eyebrows came surging to kill.

For all Liu Xiu's silver tongue, the enemy gave him no chance to speak. He could only flee in panic.

During the escape, many were separated. Worst of all, Deng Yu, whom Liu Xiu valued most, vanished along with his Nanyang compatriot Chen Jun. Liu Xiu sent Fu Jun to search for them, but he had yet to return.

As dusk was about to fall, the sound of hoofbeats rose outside the hamlet. Yao Qi, who had been leaning against the house wall as if dozing, suddenly sprang to his feet, seized the long halberd at his side, and strode out!

"It's Zhonghua and the others, back!" Zhu You's voice rang out. Liu Xiu hurried out to meet them and saw Deng Yu, soaked like a drowned rat, his expression despondent, his head hanging slightly low. Fu Jun, who had escorted him back, had red-rimmed eyes, and an arrow was still lodged in his lamellar armor.

Liu Xiu quickly checked Fu Jun's wound, then threw his own rain cape over Deng Yu's shoulders and led him under the eaves. But Deng Yu would not move; he merely bowed to Liu Xiu and said, "My lord, had it not been for Zizhao, I could never have returned to see you alive..."

Liu Xiu scanned the group — there was no sign of Chen Jun, Chen Zizhao. A terrible premonition struck him. Deng Yu was already weeping uncontrollably; it was Fu Jun who told what had happened.

"The Red Eyebrows pressed us hard. To cover our retreat, he held off a hundred men with only a few comrades. He died a hero's death!"

Perhaps because they shared the same given name and similar temperaments, Fu Jun had always been close to Chen Jun. Having witnessed Chen Jun fall under a flurry of blades with his own eyes, no one grieved more deeply than he did. He simply raised his head and let the rain beat against his face.

Liu Xiu stood frozen in place, his chest heaving. He could only murmur:

"Last year, when we rose in arms at Chongling and I fled Wancheng, Zizhao, as an official of the Xin dynasty, was sent to pursue and arrest me — yet for righteousness' sake, he showed mercy and let me go."

"Afterward, Zizhao pledged himself to me. For a full year, he has been at my side."

"In the Battle of Kunyang, I charged at the very front. Zizhao's warhorse stumbled, so he abandoned the horse and followed close behind me on foot, taking up short weapons. Wherever he struck, the enemy line broke. He pursued Wang Yi for more than twenty li, cut down his Assistant General, and returned. I sighed then and said: If all our fighting men were like this, what worries would we have!"

"I never imagined that before our cause was even established, Zizhao would fall here!"

"Alas, Zizhao! How it pains me, Zizhao!"

Liu Xiu beat his chest and stamped his feet, splashing mud all over himself. His grief was genuine — this was the first of his officers to die in battle.

Most of those present were comrades who had fought together at Kunyang, or fellow townsmen from Yingchuan and Wancheng. Bonds of deep affection had formed among them, and all were stricken with sorrow. The endless rain seemed to be their very tears.

This was, without doubt, the greatest defeat Liu Xiu had suffered since leaving Chang'an.

The towering Yao Qi burned with fury: "Let us fight our way back to Pengcheng and avenge Zizhao!"

"How?" Feng Yi, still level-headed, checked the fierce warriors' impulse.

"Pang An's Red Eyebrows force numbers in the tens of thousands. They hold Pengcheng and Xiapi for winter provisions. Even the King of Liang and Dong Xian avoid clashing with their sharp edge — and we had the misfortune to run right into them..."

And they themselves were down to a mere hundred-odd men. The plan to take Pengcheng and secure Xu Province had collapsed. What should they do now? Even Feng Yi felt somewhat lost. He looked to Deng Yu, but Deng Yu was still gripped by the shock of his brush with death and remained silent for a long while.

For a moment, everyone fell mute. It seemed only a matter of time before someone said "Let's disband."

"Let us eat first."

That was all Liu Xiu said. Those words stirred the grief-stricken men into motion. Zang Gong silently gathered firewood and straw. Zhu You lit the stove. Deng Yu and Fu Jun opened their clothes to dry themselves by the stove door. Wang Ba went out and roamed a wide circuit, returning with some beans from an abandoned field; he sat with head bowed, shelling them. Zhai Zun dug up wild greens of the dodder-shoulder kind and chopped them without a word — so distracted that he nearly cut his own hand.

Liu Xiu pressed down his hand and took the knife. "Though we have no meat today, I have no wish to emulate Duke Wen of Jin and eat the flesh of Jie Zitui."

In the end, Feng Yi, the best cook among them, mixed everything together and personally prepared a pot of bean gruel. Liu Xiu himself portioned it out to everyone, placing the green, foul-smelling food into each man's bowl — even the soldiers and retainers huddled under the eaves outside, whispering in despair about the future, were not overlooked.

He kept only one bowl for last and set it at the spot where Chen Jun would normally have sat, then bowed three times toward it.

"Gentlemen, down this bowl of gruel!"

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Liu Xiu turned around and raised his bowl. "Sleep well tonight. Tomorrow we leave this place, to recruit men and train horses, and one day we shall avenge Zizhao!"

The next morning, the rain had cleared and the sky was bright. Liu Xiu had clearly spent a sleepless night on his cold cot, yet he stretched extravagantly and put on a show of boundless energy. To Feng Yi, who had risen early to prepare the morning meal, he said:

"Last night, Gongsun's bean gruel dispelled both hunger and cold!"

A lord who comported himself so indeed steadied men's hearts. Feng Yi smiled and said that this morning they would have a change of fare — wheat rice. But some hearts could not be steadied. Zhu You came with a dark face to report that Wang Ba and the dozen-odd retainers he had brought with him had all vanished!

"I knew that man could not be relied upon."

Fu Jun was furious. "Wang Ba is always talking about his aging father back home. He must have seen our setback and run off with his retainers!"

Fu Jun was different. When he had first followed Liu Xiu, his family had been implicated and exterminated to the last clan member by the Xin army! Now he had no ties and nothing to lose — the most solitary and reckless of them all. A barefoot man cannot stand to see others wearing shoes.

"Yuanbo is not that sort of man. At the Battle of Kunyang, he fought fiercely at my side." Unlike his ancestor Liu Bang, who flew into a towering rage upon hearing that "Xiao He has run too," Liu Xiu sat down calmly. He trusted his own judgment of men.

Sure enough, barely half a shichen later, Wang Ba returned, his whole body caked with mud and grass. Without a word, he prostrated himself before Liu Xiu and said in shame: "My lord, the dozen-odd retainers I brought coveted ease and comfort. They wanted to flee to Liang and join Liu Yong. I chased after them to stop them, but I could not bring them back. I am guilty!"

Quite a few others had slipped away during the night — more than twenty in all. Wang Ba had failed to recover a single one. His face was full of shame, but Liu Xiu smiled.

"Are you not still here?"

Liu Xiu helped him up and encouraged him: "Even if all the rest are gone, you alone chose to stay. That is enough!"

"Press on, Yuanbo. The strong wind reveals the sturdy grass!"

With that, Liu Xiu summoned his chief followers and swept his gaze over them. "Does anyone still yearn for the comforts of Suiyang?"

"Or wish to return to your homelands in Yingchuan or Nanyang?"

Whether it was Feng Yi's "Gongsun bean gruel" that had truly warmed their bodies, or Liu Xiu's conduct that had fortified their spirits — not a single man shrank back.

They were all men of ambition. They had followed Liu Xiu because they admired the heroic spirit he had shown at Kunyang, and his temperament, which made men feel so at ease — he seemed like a lord who could achieve great things. To flee now, when their cause had only just begun — would that not invite ridicule?

"Good."

Seeing that his core followers were defeated but not disheartened, Liu Xiu revealed the conclusion he and Deng Yu had reached after a night of study: the one place in all the vastness of Xu Province that could give them shelter.

"Linhuai Commandery!"

Pang An, the Red Eyebrows chieftain who held Pengcheng, had killed Chen Jun and hung his head high — and was still hunting for this "Governor of Xu Province, Xiu."

The road south was fraught with peril. It was the quick-witted Liu Xiu who came up with a plan: smear their eyebrows red with blood or mud to blend in and slip through. As long as they did not open their mouths and betray their native accents, they could generally fool anyone. The Red Eyebrows were so loosely organized that even Pang An himself probably had no idea how many bands he actually commanded.

But there were dangerous moments too. Once they ran into a Red Eyebrow "giant" who suspected their background and loudly questioned them; Liu Xiu fobbed him off with a strange dialect, claiming they were from Yan Province.

"I never knew you could speak the Yan Province tongue, my lord!" Everyone was astonished — even Deng Yu, who was close to him, was a little surprised.

"That's the Chenliu Jiyang dialect." Liu Xiu laughed. "I was born there, but left after my father died. My elder brother, though, has a strong Jiyang accent. I picked up a phrase or two mimicking him when I was young."

Then he thought to himself, "If only I could speak all the dialects of the Nine Provinces, like Diwu Lun."

But that could only fool them for a moment. After the Red Eyebrow giant left, he thought it over and realized something was off. By the time he led men back to kill them, Liu Xiu and his party had already swept off into the distance.

Yet in Pengcheng territory, which was crawling with Red Eyebrows, the powerful families were being killed one by one, their grain looted and divided up. Liu Xiu and his men dared not seek refuge with any local strongmen. They traveled day and night, braving frost and snow. It was early winter, and even Liu Xiu's face was chapped raw and stinging from the wind.

But the further south they went, the more confident Liu Xiu grew, certain that their general direction was right.

The Red Eyebrows ran rampant, bandits rose everywhere, and clansmen and fellow villagers scrambled to attach themselves to the great houses and powerful lineages in each county. Those lineages, in turn, built forts at strategic points and led their people, bows drawn and spears leveled, to hold fast and defend themselves.

When they saw Liu Xiu and his party come to ask for provisions and heard that they were high officials sent by the "Han," the powerful families of the Huai-Si region were all overjoyed and expressed their willingness to follow the commands of Commissioner Liu.

Liu Xiu thought to himself, "Feng Gongsun was right. The common people now have no one to rely on. With the Red Eyebrows running wild across Xu and Yu provinces, the great clans, powerful houses, and even middling respectable families are deeply uneasy, terrified of being stripped clean. A man long parched and famished is easy to fill. They are now holed up in their forts, each fighting alone. They need one man to unify their command and lead them against the bandits!"

Yet the Gengshi court's reach could not extend here; they were content merely to claim submission by proclamation. The King of Liang and Li Xian of Lujiang had limited strength and could not expand here anytime soon either. Southern Xu Province had become a child with neither father nor mother.

No matter — here comes the father.

Liu Xiu traveled south along the Si River, winning over the powerful families everywhere, soothing and reassuring them. He received support from each household, and at last they had full bellies. Their horses and gear were also refitted and replaced.

By the time they entered the borders of Linhuai Commandery to the south, their numbers had swelled to three or four hundred.

And the reason they had chosen to come to Linhuai was that Deng Yu believed: "The richest and largest part of southern Xu Province is none other than Linhuai (central Jiangsu)!"

"Linhuai is a great commandery."

"Its population exceeds a million."

Deng Yu did not know the exact figure. In fact, at the last census during the Former Han, Linhuai Commandery had 268,000 households and a population of 1,237,000 — a number that even surpassed Wei Commandery in the north.

And this was after two small vassal kingdoms, Sishui and Guangling, had been carved out of it. Add those three together, and the population of this land north of the Yangtze, ringed by the Huai and Si rivers, was already surging toward two million.

Yet even Linhuai Commandery could not remain intact in these chaotic times. North of the Huai River was the domain of the Red Eyebrows, and there were plenty of opportunistic deserters who flew the Red Eyebrow banner while doing the work of bandits.

By the time Liu Xiu and his party reached the banks of the Huai River, the local customs had changed markedly. It was plain to see that the fields along the road were not dry fields, but flooded paddies for growing rice. Though now parched, the rice stubble still stood in the fields.

Seeing the rice paddies, Liu Xiu recalled a joke they had heard when they captured and questioned a Red Eyebrow prisoner along the way.

"The Red Eyebrows are just north of the Huai. Why don't you cross the river and go south?" Liu Xiu had asked in all seriousness. If the Red Eyebrows swept south in force, they would have to flee again.

"What's there in the south?" The Red Eyebrow foot soldier looked utterly baffled. Before following Giant Fan out of their home villages, they had all been simple, honest farmers. About the distant south, they had only heard that the ants and mosquitoes there were bigger than a man's palm and a single bite could kill. Ancient trees and primeval forests grew thick, and the roads were crawling with snakes, insects, and venomous creatures — nowhere to even set foot.

And the natives there tattooed their bodies and cut their hair short, and they even ate people — one child per mouthful! No going there, no going there!

These words made cultured men like Liu Xiu look at each other in disbelief. The Red Eyebrows were talking about the south from the Spring and Autumn period, weren't they? Lingnan might be like that, but Huainan and Kuaiji were both fine places. Liu Xiu had once heard his old classmate, the Kuaiji notable Zhuang Ziling, say that even south of the Yangtze, there were several great commanderies with populations in the hundreds of thousands.

And then there was one statement, strangely true to life.

The Red Eyebrow captive said, "We can't stomach Huainan rice. Eating it makes us vomit and gives us the runs, so none of us want to go south."

That was an exaggeration, but northerners mostly ate millet as their staple; the poor also ate beans and wheat. Rice alone was rare. Those who didn't know better had only heard it was a sort of water weed growing in flooded fields — could you even eat that?

Quite a few among the Red Eyebrows actually regarded it as poisonous. They had also stopped doing productive labor since following Giant Fan, and life had gotten a bit easier. They were starting to get picky about their food.

This talk made Liu Xiu laugh heartily. "We, on the other hand, are not picky. We're so famished we'll eat whatever there is."

"Sorghum, millet, wheat, rice." Liu Xiu looked at Feng Yi. "My favorite, though, is Gongsun's bean porridge — especially fragrant!"

Right. The most urgent thing now was to find a territory that could shelter them. Who cared whether it was south or north, west or east, poor or rich? They had to settle down first.

They had indeed come to the right place. Standing by the water and gazing at the opposite bank, the scenes of soldiers, bandits, and chaos north of the Huai were nowhere to be seen. The farmlands were orderly, with village gates neatly aligned. Order still reigned here — thanks, they heard, to Wang Mang's "Grand Governor of Huaiping," Hou Ba, who governed the commandery ably.

The capital of Linhuai Commandery had originally been Xu County on the north bank, but as the Red Eyebrow rebels and bandits ran rampant north of the Huai, Hou Ba — a capable official — moved the administrative seat, along with the common people, to Xuyi on the south bank: the capital of King Huai of Chu, Xiong Xin, and the future capital of crayfish.

Han Xin's hometown, Huaiyin, was also in this commandery.

The boat to cross the Huai River was found in a deserted village, but as soon as Feng Yi crossed with the first group of men, they were surrounded by farmers on the south bank wielding dung forks and commandery troops who had rushed over on hearing the news. The clamor was deafening; they were taken for bandits.

Then Liu Xiu arrived by boat as well, dressed in the crimson robes and cap of Han. He could not land smoothly. He stopped before the warship that had rushed to intercept him, raised his banner of authority, and said, neither servile nor overbearing:

"Under the Gengshi Emperor's command: Liu Xiu, Marquis of Wuxin, Bearer of the Gilded Mace, Governor of Xu Province, bearing the Gengshi Son of Heaven's banner of authority, comes to proclaim and instruct Lord Hou of Linhuai!"

Seeing the skeptical look in the eyes of the Colonel opposite him, Liu Xiu shifted his tone and smiled.

"I was the roommate and close friend of Zhuang (Yan) Ziling at the Imperial Academy. I have heard that Lord Hou is also on good terms with Ziling. A friend of a friend is also a friend — within the four seas, all men are brothers!"

"I, Liu Xiu, wish to meet Lord Hou, to discuss together the strategy for protecting Linhuai and defending against the bandits!"

On the first day of the tenth month, just as Liu Xiu, flustered like a dog that has lost its home, was fleeing through the southeast in search of a place to shelter, far to the northwest, Diwu Lun, bearing the prestige of a great victory, returned to Yueyang City.

And "Junior Guardian" Shi Chen, who had been fretting over marrying off his daughter, was quite delighted to learn of Diwu Lun's return — even more so than when he had rejoiced at the news of the great victory on the Wei River. Blowing on the memorial he had just finished drafting, he thought to himself:

"The King has been fighting wars for so long — it's time he enjoyed himself a little!"

PS: Tomorrow's update will be at 13:00.