Chapter 389: Won't You Come Back to the Mountains with Me?

The white eyebrows on Wang Mang's forehead had already turned red.

Many years ago, Wang Mang had once imagined his meeting with Fan Chong: he would still be the exalted Emperor, supreme sovereign of the realm, while Fan Chong would be a bandit chieftain defeated and captured by the imperial army, kneeling before the old Emperor, bowing his head and confessing his crimes, and Wang Mang would denounce him fiercely.

But history played a cruel joke on the two of them. Now Wang Mang, cast adrift among the common folk, had to assume the guise of a rustic old man, "Old Man Tian," and pay his respects with the utmost caution to the Red Eyebrow Grand Marshal Fan Chong.

Because of his merit in raising a righteous force with Ju Wuba and capturing the Greenwood Marquis Zhang Ang, old Wang Mang had even been appointed by Fan Chong as an Attendant Clerk, continuing to manage fodder and provisions.

After emerging from his audience with Fan Chong, Wang Mang, completely reversing the campaigns and fury he had directed at the Red Eyebrows while on the throne, was now full of unstinting praise.

"He claims no credit for his achievements and bears no arrogance. Commanding an army of three hundred thousand, he remains so frugal and simple. Fan Chong is a true general — no wonder he wins battle after battle!"

Compared to military talent, Wang Mang still cared more about personal virtue, and he could only sigh: "If my generals had been like this, why would I have worried about not crushing the Greenwood?"

Later, as he wandered through the Red Eyebrow Army and saw how they locked up all the captured members of the Liu imperial clan in cattle sheds, sending them out to herd oxen, cut grass, and do hard labor, Wang Mang clapped his hands and praised them even more.

Having endured the agony of losing his kingdom and his altars of state, Wang Mang had completely abandoned his earlier conciliatory stance toward the former dynasty. He was now convinced that the Great Xin's realm had fallen precisely because he had been too lenient toward the Liu clan. He should have treated them as harshly as Fan Chong did from the very start!

He also heard that wherever the Red Eyebrow Army went, they uprooted the powerful magnates whose fields stretched across the boundaries. Remembering how these people had resisted his decrees on royal fields and private retainers, and how they were now, like him, left with nothing at all, Wang Mang felt a surge of deep satisfaction in his heart.

His experience as a grain officer among the Greenwood had made Wang Mang realize that if he bypassed the middlemen — the officials and powerful families — and dealt directly with the lower classes, his words and deeds would not be distorted.

These three hundred thousand Red Eyebrows, when you got down to it, were they not the very same impoverished commoners he had originally intended to treat well, only to have the Liu clan, the ministers, and the magnates obstruct him at every turn, until they ultimately misunderstood the Xin and rose up in revolt?

Wang Mang could not help but think: "In ancient times, in Qi and Lu, there was Robber Zhi, who ran rampant across the realm, plundering the feudal lords. He broke into chambers and forced open doors, drove off people's oxen and horses, and seized their women. Greedy and forgetful of kin, he cared nothing for parents or brothers, and made no offerings to his ancestors. In every city he passed through, great states defended their walls and small ones fled into their fortresses, and the common people suffered bitterly."

"Now the Red Eyebrows have also risen from Qing, Xu, and Yan provinces, and Fan Chong's mind is like a gushing spring, his will like a whirlwind, his strength enough to match any foe — he is no different from Robber Zhi."

"Back then, even with the wisdom of Confucius, his attempt to persuade Robber Zhi toward goodness ended in failure. How then am I to persuade Fan Chong, to make the Red Eyebrows a force for the realm's benefit, and not its bane?"

As he was pondering this, he suddenly saw several hundred Red Eyebrow soldiers crowding together up ahead, with more and more people gathering around them. Amid a burst of chanting, they knelt down one after another, revealing to Wang Mang the scene at the center.

It was a Qi shaman with disheveled hair, putting on a show of spirits and sorcery, twitching and convulsing. After drinking a bowl of fresh chicken blood, he suddenly let out a great shout:

"The Illustrious King of Chengyang descends upon me!"

Wang Mang certainly knew of the Illustrious King of Chengyang — Liu Zhang, Marquis of Zhuxu in the early Han. He was descended from the eldest son of Han Emperor Gao, the line of the King of Qi. He had rendered great service in the coup against the Lü clan, leading a thousand-odd soldiers of the Northern Army to pursue Lü Chan and kill him, annihilating his entire faction and kin. He was a man of courage, judgment, and decisiveness.

It was only a pity that in the subsequent struggle against Emperor Wen of Han and the military merit Marquises Zhou Bo and Chen Ping, Liu Zhang and his elder brother the King of Qi were defeated. He was later enfeoffed as the King of Chengyang and died young not long after.

However, the people of Ju County, grateful for Liu Zhang's benevolence, righteousness, loyalty, filial piety, and courage, built the Shrine of the Illustrious King in Ju County, Chengyang. Over two hundred years, Liu Zhang had become the local deity. From Langya and the six commanderies of Qing Province to the capitals of Bohai, in every village, hamlet, and settlement, shrines were erected for him. They spread across every city, village, hamlet, and settlement in the entire Qi region, nearly omnipresent, becoming a vital local faith.

The main strength of the Red Eyebrows came from Qi in Qing and Xu provinces. From the Elders and Attendant Clerks down to the common soldiers, they all devoutly believed in the Illustrious King of Chengyang. So when the Qi shaman claimed the deity had possessed him, the simple and superstitious Red Eyebrow soldiers all bowed their heads to the ground.

Today's ritual was originally meant to seek blessings and aid for soldiers who had died in battle. Unexpectedly, the Qi shaman added his own improvisation. After mumbling and muttering as if communing with the Illustrious King of Chengyang, he suddenly pointed at the Red Eyebrow Elders presiding over the ceremony and rebuked them:

"The Illustrious King is greatly angered, and says: 'Since you have raised a righteous army against Wang Mang, and have also routed the Greenwood pretender emperor, you should establish my descendant as the county magistrate. Why do you remain mere bandits?'"

These words instantly shocked and startled Wang Mang. "County magistrate" was a common colloquial term for the Emperor in Han times.

Good heavens — even among the Red Eyebrows, there were people who wanted to restore the Han, right before his very eyes!

"What is the meaning of this?"

Fan Chong's joy after his great victory had vanished. He glared at Xu Xuan, Xie Lu, Yang Yin, and the other Elders, who had come to him in unspoken agreement to report this matter.

These three were founding veterans who had joined the Red Eyebrows in the early days, all men of Donghai Commandery. Today, they had joined forces to lay their cards on the table before Fan Chong!

Xie Lu spoke first: "Grand Elder, this is not our intention, but the words of spirits and gods! The Qi shaman received instruction from the Illustrious King of Chengyang. Among the soldiers, there were disbelievers who mocked the shaman in public, but they quickly fell ill. For a time, the entire army was stirred with alarm."

They knew Fan Chong was a man of Ju, and so they sought to pressure him using the deity of his homeland.

But Fan Chong did not believe in such heresies: "When I was young and poor, I too followed my parents to worship at the temple of the Illustrious King of Chengyang. Did he save my family? My little sister was sold off as a slave, and within days she was beaten to death by a powerful magnate, all because she dozed off from exhaustion while holding a chamber pot and accidentally spilled the urine. My parents also fell ill and died one after the other. When did the Illustrious King of Chengyang, or that thieving Heaven, ever help me?"

"I do not believe the words of that Qi shaman. If he dares spout nonsense again, I will kill him myself — and then we shall see if the Illustrious King of Chengyang sends illness down upon me!"

If Fan Chong had also believed that the Illustrious King of Chengyang was sacred and inviolable, then his descendant Liu Penzi and the others would never have ended up as shepherd boys.

Seeing that the appeal to spirits and superstition had failed, Xu Xuan, the most cultured of the veterans, who had studied the classics and understood laws and ordinances, began to reason with him.

"Grand Elder," Xu Xuan said with earnest gravity, "Back when Gengshi sent envoys to summon our surrender, we had no territory of our own, and some of our followers were beginning to desert. That was why we led the troops into Runan. Now, though we have won battle after battle, Runan's grain is nearly exhausted, and the men are weary and sick of war. Many weep day and night with worry, longing to return east to their homeland."

"You, Grand Elder, have discussed with us: if we let the men head east, they will surely scatter and be picked off one by one by the Greenwood, King Liu Yong of Liang, Dong Xian, and the rest. It would be better to attack Wancheng to the west, destroy the Greenwood Han, and occupy the rich lands of Runan and Wan. Let the men settle down here — far better than splitting apart and continuing to be trampled by the various warlords and magnates."

"But, Grand Elder, have you considered? We were the first to rise up — we rebelled back in the Tianfeng era of Wang Mang. Two years ago, at the great victory of Chengchang, we smashed a hundred thousand Xin troops and killed Lian Dan, shocking the entire realm! Back then, the Greenwood was still hiding deep in the mountains and forests!"

"And what happened after that? We did nothing but roam and scatter, wandering aimlessly through Qing, Xu, and Yu provinces. By the time we came to our senses, the situation had changed entirely. Who knows how many have declared themselves emperor, how many have declared themselves king? The Red Eyebrows, once the focus of all under Heaven, became something no one cared about."

Xu Xuan had always believed that Fan Chong had led them all down the wrong path back then. If they had established a Han emperor two years ago and marched on Luoyang and Chang'an, what would Diwu Lun and the Greenwood have amounted to?

Now that the Red Eyebrows had finally defeated the main Greenwood force, they once again stood at a crossroads. They absolutely could not let Fan Chong's stubbornness make them miss this opportunity again.

Fan Chong felt a deep sense of loss. Two years ago, his only thought had been "to bring the brothers back home." But once they returned to their homeland, they had become a heap of loose sand, and could only gather again to continue the struggle.

Yet if you asked him where the path forward lay, Fan Chong could not answer. He could only find an enemy, lead everyone in a rush to knock him down, and sustain war through war. As for how to govern after victory, how to reach the "Happy Land" the Red Eyebrows yearned for — he had no good solution to offer.

Wasn't the solution ready-made? What had Emperor Gao of Han, Liu Bang, done? What had the Greenwood done last year? The Red Eyebrows only needed to follow the same blueprint!

Seeing Fan Chong's resolve waver, Xu Xuan pressed while the iron was hot: "Gengshi is dissolute and chaotic; his decrees go unenforced. That is why the Red Eyebrows have been able to come this far. Now we command a host of a million, advancing west toward Nanyang, yet we have no formal title. The people of every commandery call us a bandit horde. This cannot last."

"The reason the Red Eyebrows cannot win the hearts of the scholars, and find it so hard to gain a foothold in the commanderies along our path — when you trace it to its root, it is because we lack an Emperor!"

This was the conclusion Xu Xuan and the others had reached after racking their brains: when the scholars cursed the Red Eyebrows, did they not always curse them as "men without fathers, without a sovereign"? Indeed, even oxen and sheep have their herds. Born as men, how can we have no sovereign to serve? As long as they established an Emperor, every obstacle the Red Eyebrows faced would be easily resolved!

The last veteran, Yang Yin, also sided with Xu Xuan: "Exactly. Since the Grand Elder is adamant in refusing to become Emperor, and we lack the qualifications..."

"In my view, we should establish a descendant of the Illustrious King of Chengyang as the Han Emperor, and use him to wage righteous war. With such a mandate, who would dare not submit?"

Fan Chong opposed it, slapping the table and rising to his feet: "What difference would there be between us and the Greenwood? Before the Greenwood established an emperor, they too rampaged across the Central Plains. Now they have been utterly defeated."

But Yang Yin replied: "That is because the Greenwood did not establish a good Emperor."

"The Illustrious King of Chengyang has over seventy descendants, all in the baggage train camp. Some herd oxen, some chop firewood. After these few years, they know the hardships of the common people. We can surely select a wise sovereign from among them."

Xu Xuan and the others were not like Fan Chong — who wanted to be a bandit chief for life? Once they had an Emperor, wouldn't kings, marquises, generals, and ministers simply fall into place in proper order?

Fan Chong understood now. He could only sigh and say:

"Since you had already made up your minds, why did you not give me a word of warning?"

"Are we not asking for the Grand Elder's approval right now?"

Fan Chong looked up at his old brothers. He did not know when it had started, but Xu Xuan, who had always worn a simple cloth cap, was now wearing a weimao official's hat, and walked with his head held high, as if a cut above the rest.

Well, so be it. Xu Xuan had been a clerk and official to begin with. But Xie Lu and Yang Yin had come from the same bitter poverty as himself, yet now in camp they let men address them as "General," white-feathered helmets covering their heads, hiding the red eyebrows on their foreheads.

Such was the human heart. When heaven wants it to rain, can you stop it?

The giant Fan understood. He simply closed his eyes and said, "Let you all do it, then."

……

"Over seventy descendants of Prince Jing of Chengyang — and we're to choose among them by senior and junior lineage branches?"

"That's not fair. Our Red Eyebrow Army prizes fairness above all else!"

"We have heard that the ancient Son of Heaven, when commanding the troops, was called High General. We shall find seventy wooden tablets, write the three words 'High General' on them in cinnabar, and then place them inside a bamboo tube."

"Set up an altar at Shangcai, make sacrifice to Prince Jing of Chengyang, gather all the Elders and Attendants in grand assembly, and let those seventy-odd men draw lots — whoever draws it shall be the Emperor!"

This truly was a fair, just, and open imperial election!

Fan Chong drank alone in brooding silence, letting Xu Xuan and the other two settle the ritual among themselves. When they came to seek his instructions, Fan Chong merely nodded.

But after the three men took their leave and departed, Fan Chong, full of indignation, hurled his wine cup to the ground!

"Absurd!"

Hadn't this just brought them full circle? They had fought across half the realm, struggled all these years, lost countless brothers and sisters — and in the end, it was all just to put a man of the Liu clan back on the imperial throne?

Fan Chong instinctively recoiled from the whole system of kings, dukes, generals, and ministers. They had smashed the fortified manors, taken back what belonged to them, distributed grain everywhere — and then what?

Then the Red Eyebrow Elders would stay in those manors, taking the place of the Greenwood chieftains? And the brothers and sisters of the Red Eyebrows would become the manor's serfs and slaves?

Fan Chong only felt that this was wrong, yet constrained by his learning, his experience, and the age he lived in, he could voice no argument against it, nor could he produce any other workable path.

He could only watch helplessly as the Red Eyebrow Army's discipline grew worse by the day, and the rifts among the Elders widened. The giant Fan, who had always pressed forward with head down, now looked back — only to find that his brothers had already chosen another road, leaving him standing alone, stubbornly clinging to a laughable ideal of "all equal, no lord, no father."

Yet everyone had told him plainly: from the Elders and Attendants down to the Red Eyebrow fighters, no one wanted that. They were happy enough, but it was never easy. Robbing the rich to feed the poor — once or twice was enough. Only by dividing up territory, each man becoming a master over others, everyone rising to be kings, dukes, generals, and ministers — only that could last.

Fan Chong was deeply anguished. He stayed drunk like this for an entire day. By the next morning, word that "the Red Eyebrows intend to enthrone an Emperor by the command of Prince Jing of Chengyang" had spread everywhere. The whole army buzzed with clamor and divided opinions, and someone hurried over to pay him a visit.

"I won't see them!" Fan Chong was still seething — angry at his old brothers' "betrayal," and angry at his own helplessness. If only he could have found a better path, it would never have come to this.

"It is the newly appointed Attendant, Old Man Tian. He says that under no circumstances must a man surnamed Liu be made Emperor again!"

Only then did Fan Chong stir, and he had the man brought in.

This was his second meeting with "Old Man Tian." At their first encounter, the old gentleman had already shown himself to be a man of uncommon speech. Fan Chong had probed obliquely, asking whether he had held office under the former dynasty, but Old Man Tian would only say that he was a respectable country gentleman.

"I simply cannot bear to watch the realm perish like this."

Now meeting again, the old Wang Mang leaned on his pigeon-staff. It was fortunate that equality reigned in the Red Eyebrow Army — a bow to the Grand Elder sufficed. Otherwise, with the pride of a former Son of Heaven, he truly could not have brought himself to kneel.

The moment they faced each other, Fan Chong, reeking of alcohol, asked him, "Old Man Tian says that under no circumstances must a man surnamed Liu be made Emperor. Why?"

"That the realm has fallen into such calamity — the House of Liu and Han cannot escape the blame!"

Wang Mang launched his attack: "The Han enfeoffed princes by the dozens, and marquises who were sons of princes by the hundreds! The princes seized entire commanderies, the princely marquises seized whole counties. Leaning on their bloodline status and the protection of the government, they wantonly annexed fields and lands, bought up slaves and serfs, until their holdings stretched from path to path. For the decay of state governance at the end of Han and the displacement of the refugees, those people bear half the responsibility."

This was Wang Mang's new understanding after his great rise and fall. He now believed that the Han had declined largely because powerful clans and imperial kinsmen had obstructed land-tax revenues in the localities, and that the Xin had fallen because those same people, ungrateful and treacherous, had raised troops in revolt, stretching the court beyond its means.

How could he stand by and watch the Red Eyebrows, whom he admired, raise the Han banner as well? And, incidentally, make him a "Han subject" once more.

Wang Mang was no Liu Xin. Even if he had failed the last time, he would absolutely never retrace that road!

"The virtue of Han was exhausted long ago. The many Han regimes now standing are nothing but a dying flash. Elder Fan, how can the Red Eyebrows repeat the blunder of the Greenwood?"

Fan Chong, however, remained unmoved. Over the past few days, it was not as though no one had come to urge him not to enthrone a Liu as Emperor — would it not be better to make himself Emperor? He assumed Old Man Tian thought the same, and so he shook his head. "I know what Old Man Tian intends. It is simply to urge me to set myself up as ruler. But Fan Chong is a man of his word. I will not be Emperor."

"This old man is not urging the Elder to set himself up." Wang Mang laughed heartily. In his mind, he had already charted a path for the Red Eyebrows that no one in the world had ever conceived.

This was indeed strange. Fan Chong, still drunk, casually tossed out a great joke: "If it is neither supporting the Han nor setting up our own, surely you don't mean for me to raise the banner of the Xin Dynasty's Wang Mang? If I had to choose, I would rather be a Han subject than a Xin subject!"

This was a humiliation to his face. Wang Mang's expression instantly collapsed, but he was indeed not that mad. He merely rose and said, "This old man's meaning is this: even if the Elders wish for the Red Eyebrows to shed the ways of roving bandits, there is no necessity to enthrone an Emperor!"

These words instantly sobered Fan Chong up. It was precisely because he could not find such a path that he was in such agony! Could it be that Old Man Tian had a way?

Wang Mang indeed did. He spoke two words to Fan Chong — a piece of obscure history that a clodhopper like Fan Chong could never have known. Those two words were…

"The Republic!"