Chapter 413: No Kingship Is Eternal

Li Yu, head of the Li clan of Zhao Commandery and Grand Marshal of Northern Han, had already surrendered Xiangguo (Xingtai) in the north and come to Handan to pay homage to Diwu Lun. His attitude was quite eager — the Sixing Emperor had run off to the Bronze Horses to start his own faction, the various kings were splitting apart with no one knowing whom to follow, and the Liu family had fallen into such infighting themselves. For men of other surnames like them, with no object of loyalty left, what was there to do but surrender?

As a ranking heavyweight of the Northern Han regime, Li Yu's surrender warranted a personal audience with Diwu Lun. After extending a welcome, Diwu Lun suddenly recalled something. "I remember that the Li clan of Wu'an is a branch of your family, is it not?"

Although Wu'an County neighbors Handan, it belongs to Wei Commandery. When Diwu Lun served as Grand Governor there, he had drawn his first pot of gold from the Wu'an Li clan, using over twenty thousand qing of their land to distribute fields to the Boar-Rush Braves — and from there began a snowballing campaign of farming and warfare.

After their defeat, the Wu'an Li clan had fled to Handan and gained the protection of Li Yu and Liu Lin. Diwu Lun glanced behind Li Yu with a smile. "What is this — does Li Neng, once my Bandit-Suppressing Clerk in Wei Commandery, still refuse to come pay his respects to his old master?"

"Li Neng is muddled and dull-witted, blind to the true sage-king — he is still following Liu Lin!" Li Yu hastily disavowed any connection. "Once the city falls, this old man will execute him according to clan rules!"

Diwu Lun smiled but did not answer. Huang Chang took the hint and corrected Li Yu's mistaken notion. "Sir Li, if Li Neng is captured, should he be dealt with by the King of Wei's state law, or by your family rules?"

Cold sweat streamed down Li Yu's face. "State law is greater than heaven! Of course he shall be dealt with according to the King of Wei's statutes. What this old man meant was, if the King of Wei still leaves a scrap of Li Neng's flesh and bone, I will personally add my own punishment and cleanse the family's name!"

Deeply anxious that his surrender had come too late, he also presented Diwu Lun with two pieces of intelligence.

"Liu Ziyu's identity is a fraud — he is a physiognomist named Wang Lang whom Liu Lin found and set up as an impostor! Liu Lin thought no one else knew, but this old man saw it all along; I only dared not expose it, cowed by Liu Lin's tyranny."

Though everyone said Liu Ziyu was a fake, the specifics of his true identity had never been clear. Upon learning that this man was in fact the son of the diviner Wang Kuang, whom Diwu Lun had driven to his death in Yecheng, Diwu Lun was briefly startled, then laughed.

"This false Liu is more like a descendant of Han Gaozu than many a true Liu!"

First, he had endured in concealment, lulling Liu Lin into lowering his guard, then resolutely abandoned a comfortable life as a puppet and fled.

He fled straight into the Bronze Horse army, and after a flurry of maneuvers, actually led those bandits to carve out a stretch of territory and gradually rose to power. Such boldness was anything but ordinary. Diwu Lun had already ranked Liu Ziyu as his third-greatest enemy, behind King Wu, Liu Xiu, and the "Red Eyebrows Republic." His ranking was higher than that of Liang Han and Hu Han — this was the first enemy who could force the King of Wei, unable to rally the common people and the bandits, to rely solely on the strength of the great clans.

After receiving the intelligence Li Yu offered, the Traveler Fu Long was overjoyed, believing that if they spread the word, Liu Ziyu's followers would scatter without a fight.

"It's not that easy."

Diwu Lun disagreed. "When the false is taken as true, the true becomes false; when the true is taken as false, the false becomes true. At this point, whether Liu Ziyu is really a descendant of Emperor Cheng of Han, whether he even bears the Liu surname — none of that matters anymore."

The die-hard loyalists around him would still believe without doubt; what they were loyal to were the benefits and promises Liu Ziyu brought. And those who did not believe would scoff anyway. Diwu Lun would certainly spread the propaganda, but it would have little effect on the overall situation.

What Diwu Lun cared about far more was the second piece of intelligence Li Yu delivered.

"Earlier, when Liu Lin saw Wang Lang flee, the King of Zhending make war on him, and the Wei army pressing ever closer from the north, with no rescue in sight for a time, he conceived the idea of allying with Liang Han in the south. He sent envoys to Suiyang to see Liu Yong, requesting that he dispatch troops north to his aid."

Liang Han had been established too recently and was not even stable internally, so naturally it could send no aid. But the King of Wei unexpectedly asked a question in return. "Liu Lin sought help only from Liang Han alone?"

Seeing that Li Yu did not grasp the implication, Huang Chang thought the man terribly slow-witted and spoke plainly the words the King of Wei found awkward to say himself. "In the time of Former Han, during the Rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms, Liu Sui, King of Zhao, killed his Chancellor and his Interior Minister to rebel. He stationed troops on Zhao's western border, intending to wait for the allied armies of Wu and Chu from the south to arrive and advance west together. To the north, he sent envoys to the Xiongnu, communicating with the Chanyu and arranging a joint attack west of the Taihang Mountains…"

Huang Chang hinted with all his might. "The situation Liu Lin faces is similar to that of those days. Beset by troubles within and without, a man grows especially reckless. Did he ever order you, Sir Li, to dispatch messengers to the north…"

Li Yu suddenly saw the light. "There was indeed such a matter! Liu Lin did order this old man to send men to pay court to Lu Fang and the Chanyu."

"'The Rong and Di are wolves — never sated; the many Hua-Xia are kin — never abandoned.' The King of Wei devotes himself wholly to resisting the barbarians, yet Liu Lin, for the rise and fall of a single family, a single surname, a single clan, has cast aside the welfare of Youzhou, Jizhou, and all under heaven. Not only did he prop up the false Liu Ziyu, he even wished to pledge allegiance to a second false emperor and invite the Hu invaders in."

"He deserves to die!"

…

With the local powerful clans joining the assault, the pace of the battle for Handan quickened dramatically. The great families drove their own retainers forward as cannon fodder, scaling the walls under a hail of arrows and stones from the battlements. These men, who regularly passed in and out of the city, also knew exactly where the massive city of Handan was most vulnerable.

"I venture to inform Your Majesty: the easiest point to breach in Handan is the northeast corner of the great wall." Having been accepted, Li Yu now moonlighted as a guide, pointing out Handan's defenses to Diwu Lun from a watchtower.

Present-day Handan was divided into two walled areas, the greater and the lesser. The great wall was a surviving remnant from the Warring States period, and within its rammed-earth walls one could still occasionally dig up knife-coins of the Zhao state.

"In the old days, during the Rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms, Emperor Jing of Han sent Li Ji, Marquis of Quzhou, to lead troops against Zhao. Liu Sui, King of Zhao, held fast in Handan and withstood the Han army for seven months. Later, when Wu and Chu were defeated in Liang and could not advance west, and the Xiongnu, hearing of the Seven Kingdoms' defeat, refused to ride south, the Han army then resolved to divert the river and flood Handan."

"The great flood breached the northeast corner of the great wall. The Zhao city was ruined, Liu Sui took his own life, and Handan surrendered."

"Later, when Emperor Jing's son Liu Pengzu, the Reverent and Solemn King of Zhao, was enfeoffed here, he carried out repairs and expanded the Warring States-era Congtai, thus creating the inner lesser wall."

The walls of the lesser and greater cities overlapped at the northeast corner, shoring up that weak point — but this also meant that once the northeast corner was taken, even the trouble of assaulting the inner city was spared.

Diwu Lun merely had the Guanzhong craftsmen set up their "flying stones" in a line at the southwest corner to launch a fierce assault, while the great clans who had come over led their troops against the southeast corner — taking part in the attack counted as their pledge of allegiance. In secret, however, he ordered his elite death-sworn troops to make preparations at the northeast corner…

On the night of the fifteenth day of the tenth month, as a simultaneous assault pressed from three sides, Handan's defenders were stretched to the breaking point. Seizing the moment when the northeast corner's defense was temporarily drawn away, the death-sworn warriors, aided by the clan retainers bearing scaling ladders, gained the wall in a single rush.

This time, they were not driven back down. They held fast to a foothold wide enough for a few men, then, relying on soaring morale and a steady stream of reinforcements clambering up behind them, they expanded their position on the wall inch by inch — from a few dozen men to several hundred, until at last they had fully seized the northeast corner!

That very night, the great wall of Handan fell!

…

With the great wall lost, the lesser wall could not hold either. By the following day, Liu Lin and his last remaining partisans had retreated to Congtai, making a desperate last stand.

This place had been built by King Wuling of Zhao during the Warring States period for reviewing military drills. With its many towers and terraces linked together rather than standing alone, it was named Congtai — "Clustered Terrace" — and was, as it happened, easy to defend.

Liu Lin, King of Zhao, was wounded. He slumped dejectedly behind the parapet, gulping wine to dull the pain in his body — but the more he drank, the more it hurt, and he cursed and muttered under his breath.

"In the old days, after the Battle of Changping between Qin and Zhao, the ruler and ministers of Zhao were stricken with fear. They held court at dawn and retired at dusk, sent princesses in marriage in all four directions, bound themselves by kinship to Yan and Wei, and allied with Qi and Chu. With single-minded care, they devoted themselves to preparing against Qin. At home, their state grew strong; abroad, their alliances took shape."

"Though I, the solitary one, was betrayed by Wang Lang and struck by the King of Zhending, losing many commanderies and kingdoms, still I humbled my words and lavished rich gifts to bind Liang Han in friendship. Yet Liu Yong merely watched from the far bank and never crossed the river to save me — what a fool! Does he not know that Diwu Lun means to wipe out every Han, to cut off our Liu clan's mandate to rule anew? Once Handan falls, sooner or later it will be Suiyang's turn!"

Earlier, Liu Lin had consoled himself with the thought that when Qin attacked Zhao, Handan had held out under siege for three years — whereas now they had fought the Wei army for barely three months. If they could just hold on until deep winter, there was still a chance!

He issued another order. "In those days, the Lord of Pingyuan had his wife and all the women of his household take their place among the soldiers, sharing their labors. All the wealth of his house he scattered to feast the troops, and so he gained three thousand warriors sworn to death and held the city. Now I, the solitary one, shall follow his example. Every member of the Liu imperial clan within the city, men and women, old and young alike — all shall ascend Congtai to join the defense!"

The Liu surname was widespread in Zhao. Starting from Liu Pengzu alone, the Reverent and Solemn King of Zhao — though his rate of producing children could not match that of his younger cousin Liu Sheng, Prince Jing of Zhongshan, he still had twenty-seven sons who lived to adulthood. Emperor Wu of Han had looked after this branch of the family quite generously, enfeoffing every one of them as marquises. After seven generations of multiplying, the descendants of the Zhao Liu line had swelled a hundredfold; if not ten thousand, then at least several thousand. Gathered together, they made an army in their own right.

Earlier, fleeing the chaos of the Bronze Horses, the Zhao Liu descendants from all over had flocked to Handan for refuge. Now that both the greater and lesser walls had fallen, and because Liu Lin had proclaimed that Diwu Lun meant to slaughter every last person bearing the Liu name, they believed it utterly. They all huddled at Congtai — the men in martial garb, swords in hand, following Liu Lin, while their wives and children sobbed and wailed, a scene of a kingdom in its death throes.

"What are you crying about!"

Liu Lin was thoroughly agitated. He rose to his feet. He knew Congtai would fall sooner or later; he had been driven into a dead end. Looking at the hundreds, the thousands of Liu clan members before him, he cursed. "From the Reverent and Solemn King of Zhao down to my royal father, King Miao of Zhao, the line was passed down for over one hundred and sixty years. When Wang Mang usurped the Han, it was already destroyed once."

"I endured humiliation and bore a heavy burden, my original intent to revive the Zhao Liu line and even to inherit the Han succession — yet I have fallen to this. The altars of the Zhao kingdom are about to be overturned, and the Great Han will never have the chance to rise again."

"When the House of Han is brought low, its branches and leaves are the first to fall. We, who are those branches and leaves — what right have we left to live?"

"Over ten years ago, when Han was usurped by Wang Mang, the Zhao Liu could not rise up and fight to the death — that was already a shame beyond reckoning. Today, as Diwu Lun breaches Handan, we shall meet death with composure! To perish for the ancestral temple!"

When the great tree topples, the monkeys and birds of other names may scatter as they please — but the branches and the leaves must perish together!

Desperate to the point of madness, as Congtai was about to fall, Liu Lin ordered his guards to drive all the children of the Zhao Liu line to the edge of the wall. With white cloth bound around their heads, they were made to stand in a row, wearing mourning for the altars of Han and Zhao.

The Wei troops below thought he meant to use a row of children as human shields. On Diwu Lun's orders, they ceased shooting. Then they heard Liu Lin, his voice hoarse and spent, screaming curses down at the Wei army from the terrace. "Today I shall let you see the blood and spirit of the Zhao Liu! Our men would rather die than eat Wei grain; our women would rather die than be defiled by base wretches like you!"

At that moment, Liu Lin turned his head and saw his own young son, only five or six years old, still clutching a táo in his hand. The táo was like a drum but small, with a handle and two ears; hold the handle and shake it, and the side ears strike the drum themselves — what later ages would call a rattle-drum. That the boy still held it even now showed it was his favorite toy.

The child was too young; terrified by the shouts of slaughter rising from below Congtai, he feared his father and dared not cry aloud, but beneath him he could not help wetting himself, a warm puddle spreading on the ground. The sight enraged Liu Lin, and he roared, "How could Emperor Gaozu and the Reverent and Solemn King have produced a cowardly descendant like you?"

With that, he reached out, dragged the boy to the front, lifted his own young son with his own hands, and hurled him outward — pushed him off the wall, from a height of over ten zhang! Behind him on the terrace, only the child's mother's wails of grief remained.

Seen from afar, the child in his plain white mourning clothes plummeted downward. The troops below, taking it for some sort of defensive siege weapon, hastily pulled back, leaving a patch of open ground. With the sound of impact, the scream was cut short. When they looked, it was a tender-haired child, dashed dead upon the earth, his blood slowly spreading — and in his hand, he still clutched his rattle-drum…

What followed was a sight the attackers would never forget for all their lives. Under the command of Liu Lin, the master of the main lineage, one after another, the children of the Zhao Liu were brutally shoved and hurled down. The Wei troops, after a moment of stunned paralysis, received Diwu Lun's order.

"Spread the banners wide and catch them at the base of the wall!"

A grotesque scene unfolded. The despairing Liu Lin believed that once the Han-Zhao line perished, the Liu surname, which had enjoyed over a century of privilege, no longer had any right to survive — and so he began slaughtering his own clan. Yet the Wei troops, their enemies, moved by some kind of pity, began rescuing the children hurled from the Congtai Terrace.

Liu Jian, a descendant of the Prince of Zhongshan Jing who had earlier been enfeoffed by Diwu Lun as Earl of Bai'er, was also sent to the opposite side of the high terrace to shout: "The King of Wei decrees: only the two men Liu Lin and Li Neng shall be executed. All others, regardless of surname, may be pardoned and reduced to commoner status!"

In royal and imperial houses, the bonds of clan law and blood are extremely strong. The cadet branches had always cowered obsequiously before Liu Lin, the head of the main lineage. But today, at this moment of life and death, when the frenzied Liu Lin demanded everyone fight to the death and even tried to seize the children, forcing them to "die for Han" ahead of him — at last, someone erupted in rebellion.

Even if the roots have rotted, the branches and leaves still have the will to live!

Once the first person refused, a second followed. Civil war erupted atop the Congtai Terrace. In the slaughter, Li Neng was killed, and all of Liu Lin's guards died. He himself was pinned by the spear-shafts of kinsmen who did not wish to die, forced step by step to the edge of the terrace.

They still lacked the nerve to directly hack off Liu Lin's head. But as the clan crowd collectively shoved, Liu Lin lost his footing and plunged from the terrace!

Liu Lin fell headfirst, the ground rushing up at him — just as the Zhao-Han altars of state, which had miraculously endured for seven generations in this accursed place called Handan, now plummeted swiftly to their end, finally terminating utterly in a burst of crimson, his skull smashed and brains splattered!

By the time the King of Wei arrived at the Congtai Terrace, the platform above and below were both stained with blood. The corpses had been carried away, but there in the gore, a child's rattle-drum lay fallen.

Diwu Lun picked it up and was silent for a long while. Then he saw the several hundred remaining members of the Zhao-Liu clan groveling beneath the terrace, heads bowed low. Among them were many children. He only wondered — when they raised their heads, would their eyes hold more of the relief of having survived, or more of the hatred of a conquered state?

The Director of Rectitude, Huang Chang, came forward to request orders: "Great King, how shall these descendants of Zhao-Liu be dealt with?"

Having witnessed Liu Lin's madness today, Huang Chang feared leaving future trouble. He wanted to exterminate the Zhao-Liu root and branch on the King of Wei's behalf — it would not matter if it dirtied his own hands. As a subject, one must have this kind of awareness!

But Diwu Lun said: "Since I declared that only Liu Lin would be executed, I shall keep my word. Settle them properly in a major city and spare their lives."

In Hebei alone, besides the Zhao-Liu, there were also the Zhending Liu, the Changshan Liu, the Zhongshan Liu, the Hejian Liu, the Guangchuan Liu, the Guangyang Liu, and more — over a hundred thousand in total. If one wished to eliminate hatred, could they possibly be killed to the last?

"In former times, when Liu Bang destroyed the Tian brothers, he spared their descendants and moved them into Guanzhong, making them the First through the Eighth clans. Henceforth, follow that precedent — break them apart and send them to the various commanderies later."

"But the descendants of the Tian princes whom Emperor Gao spared are now the very ones coming to extinguish the house of Han," Huang Chang, still heavy with worry, spoke up in warning.

Diwu Lun, however, replied: "The house of Han did not perish because of Wang Mang, nor because of Diwu. It perished from its own decay. Had the Way of Han still flourished, Wang Mang could only have been the Duke of Zhou his whole life — and I might well have been a capable minister in an age of good governance!"

Royal power has no eternity. So long as it remains a civil war within Huaxia, does it matter whether, centuries later, it is destroyed by a Zhang the Third or a Liu the Fourth? When that time comes, let the sons and grandsons of the Wu clan kneel if they must — by all means, do not engage in any whole-clan suicide to die for the altars of state.

Diwu Lun ascended the Congtai Terrace and gazed out over the land of Zhao.

The rattle-drum was still in his hand. Blood stained his palm, though it had not soaked past his elbow. Diwu Lun paid it no mind, merely shaking it gently, letting it sound clack-clack in the wind — as if in mourning for innocent departed souls, or as if in celebration of victory.

"Handan was only an appetizer, to let the soldiers whet their teeth. The true feast is still that 'Bronze Horse'!"