Chapter 494: Isn't This Just Bullying an Honest Man?

When a general or a two-thousand-bushel official stays in one place too long, disciples and former subordinates multiply, he entrenches himself in the region, and a faction naturally forms around him. After all, within a realm, if there are no factions, all manner of strange things happen.

If one had to classify him, Zhang Zong probably belonged to the "Eastern Sili Clique." He joined the Wei army in Hedong, served almost entirely in the Sili region, and became Governor of Henan — his nominal superior being the Sili Colonel, Dou Rong...

Hedong, Henei, and Henan within his jurisdiction were all places where the powerful families had never been properly dealt with; the prominent clans were fairly strong and also hoped to push forward a spokesman at court to look after their interests. But Dou Rong only wanted the Dou family to last another hundred years and had no desire whatsoever to build a faction, which made the so-called "Eastern Sili Clique" rather loose.

As the number-one general of the Eastern Sili Clique, Zhang Zong's ambition for merit and fame was far stronger than Dou Rong's.

"I hear that Wu Ziyan has already been appointed Rear General — truly a case of the latecomers surpassing their seniors."

Zhang Zong could hardly be blamed for his impatience. Wu Han had only defected during the Hebei campaign, yet his luck was astonishingly good, and he was even transferred to Longyou to take part in the great battle. Zhang Zong, on the other hand, could only hold Henan — a place wealthy enough, true, but one that left a man restless and vexed. In the great battle at Aocang, the one who shone was Ma Yuan himself; Zhang Zong had only taken a few heads during the counterattack.

This campaign did not start well for Zhang Zong either. Diwu Lun transferred him away from his original unit and stuffed him with a batch of powerful-family armed retainers conscripted from the Three He regions — troops he could only make do with. But Zhang Zong was also quite strict with them. This time his luck turned: he was ordered to follow His Majesty's movements. As everyone knew, wherever His Majesty went, a great battle was sure to follow...

In the end, man's calculations fell short of heaven's design. Cheng Touzilu was routed by Ling Hong, and after the Great River crossing, the Red Eyebrows either surrendered or fled. There were no more great battles in Hebei.

Zhang Zong was dumbfounded — but fortunately, a new assignment soon arrived.

"General of Tiger Might Zong, take the Sili troops across Baima Ford and hold Baima City (present-day Hua County, Henan) pending orders."

In Diwu Lun's plan, besides the Jizhou troops he and Geng Chun personally led, there were four other armies south of the Yellow River. Zhang Zong and the ten-thousand-odd men under his command were the force closest to Puyang!

Baima Ford commanded the natural barrier of the Yellow River and guarded the vital north-south route. From there one could cross the river north into Zhao or south to attack Chu, and also advance east or strike west via the water and land routes. This unique strategic position had made the busy ancient ford a battlefield where the sounds of slaughter never ceased. As far as Zhang Zong knew, during the Chu-Han struggle, Liu Bang had sent Generals Liu Jia and Lu Wan with troops across Baima Ford southward to cut the Chu army's supply lines.

After Zhang Zong entered Baima City, he fed the horses and sharpened the weapons. According to the scouts' reports, they could not even begin to determine how many Red Eyebrow troops were near Puyang, because the chaos was simply too great — the usual methods of counting banners and camps that worked against ordinary regimes were utterly useless here.

All they knew was that the land between the Yellow River and the Ji was nothing but people, people, people! On the periphery were the Red Eyebrows' grain-raiding parties and scouts, but there were no hamlets left for them to plunder for food. Further in were the Red Eyebrows' main combat forces, which, having now detected the trap to the south, had reportedly turned back to Puyang.

"Now, by holding Baima, I can on the one hand cut off any Red Eyebrow designs on the west, and on the other, strike at their flank from close range."

Zhang Zong estimated that the Red Eyebrows between the Yellow River and the Ji numbered two hundred thousand. The five Wei armies north and south of the great river, added together, came to nearly a hundred thousand. The scale of the war would be unprecedented — whether he could rank among the titled generals all depended on this one battle!

But just as Zhang Zong was rubbing his hands in anticipation and about to march, a new order arrived from Diwu Lun's main camp in Hebei.

"What?"

Zhang Zong was baffled. "Rescind the previous order, halt the advance? No movement without an edict?"

Diwu Lun rarely micromanaged frontline generals like this — the matter reeked of something strange.

But Zhang Zong, after all, was versed in both civil and military arts. Studying the map in detail, he quickly understood. "Could it be that His Majesty suspects the Red Eyebrows' move is a feint?"

General of Sweeping the Wilds Zheng Tong, despite his many years in the field, belonged to no faction. If one had to classify him, he belonged solely to Diwu Lun's inner circle...

That was why Diwu Lun could entrust him with the Jingzhao Guard Division, which had fallen behind. Among its ten thousand men were many veterans of the Boar-Rush Braves — all arrogant soldiers and fierce commanders. They submitted to no one else, but before Zheng Tong, the former "Commandant of the Jianzhang Palace Guard," they all had to bow their heads, just short of calling him "old chief."

Zheng Tong's predicament was similar to Zhang Zong's: both had earned a miscellaneous general's title early on for their valor, yet afterward, no matter what, they could not rise higher. Zheng Tong was also anxious, mainly because he felt it was a disgrace that not a single man from the old Boar-Rush Braves held a titled generalship.

So on this eastward advance, although Zheng Tong was the farthest away, his pace was the most urgent. He paid no heed to the fact that the Jingzhao Division had just arrived, driving them forward relentlessly. After leaving Chenliu City, they force-marched over a hundred li in two days, reaching Jiyang County by the Ji River.

This meant that the edict-bearing messenger Diwu Lun dispatched had to chase him for several relay stations before catching up. Upon meeting, the messenger handed Zheng Tong the edict, along with several gold tallies to indicate the utmost urgency.

Zheng Tong was so alarmed he thought the Red Eyebrows had made a surprise attack on Hebei and surrounded the Emperor, and that he was being summoned to rescue the throne. Only after the messenger finished reading did he learn that Diwu Lun had changed his mind and ordered all forces to encamp where they were and not to penetrate deep into the land between the Yellow River and the Ji!

Zhang Zong had at least guessed the general idea, but Zheng Tong was instantly stunned.

"Once I cross the Ji River, I can engage the Red Eyebrows' outer troops."

"Why the sudden halt?"

He dared not defy the edict. Clutching the gold tallies, he racked his brains in vain, and finally arrived at a bold conjecture.

"Could it be that the civil officials at His Majesty's side have whispered slander and misled our Sage Son of Heaven?"

Ma Yuan had once held sole military authority in Hebei for a time, but later, when Diwu Lun transferred him to the Central Plains, he was given only one division of veterans; the rest he had to recruit from scratch.

Ma Yuan essentially built his army from the ground up. From the deputy generals and colonels down to the common soldiers, the centripetal force was extremely strong, and his "Father-in-Law Clique" could be said to have taken shape.

For example, Gai Yan, the Yuyang cavalry commander who had originally been one of Wu Han's old officers, prostrated himself at Ma Yuan's feet after the battle of Aocang, filled with boundless admiration. On this campaign, when Ma Yuan launched the surprise attack on Dingtao, he used Gai Yan as the vanguard, and Gai Yan inflicted heavy slaughter on the Red Eyebrows along the way.

Ma Yuan's forty-thousand-strong army was spread between Yuanju and Dingtao, essentially sealing off the Red Eyebrows' route south. If Fan Chong had headed directly south, they were fully prepared to fight a hard, large-scale battle.

But the Red Eyebrows had instead turned around, which meant Ma Yuan had no choice but to "maneuver" and advance slightly north to join the decisive battle.

Yet just as the three armies were about to march, Diwu Lun's edict arrived right on schedule, much to the surprise of the generals and colonels.

After their surprise attack on Dingtao routed the Red Eyebrows' rearguard, they had captured no grain or fodder — the Red Eyebrows truly had no supply lines at all; they relied entirely on plunder!

The men could hold out for quite a while on fried flour, but the warhorses of their Yuyang shock cavalry could not. Normally they ate wheat and beans; what now? Were they to survive by gnawing on those tender green, nutritionless grasses by the Ji River bank? Seeing the warhorses idle and the bellies they had so painstakingly filled in Henei growing leaner by the day, Gai Yan grew ever more frantic.

The deputy generals of the "Father-in-Law Clique" began to discuss among themselves: "Could it be that His Majesty intends to offer amnesty to Fan Chong, the way he did with Cheng Touzilu?"

Gai Yan said, "Those bandit curs are insolent. If we don't beat them to their knees, how will they ever submit willingly?"

In his impatience, he could not help but blurt out, "A chance for battle must not be missed. How can His Majesty be so irresolute and indecisive?"

In an instant, everyone in the tent fell silent, all staring at him. Did this tall, big-boned, loose-tongued Yuyang country bumpkin not realize that among those attending the council was a Palace Gentleman from His Majesty's side, specially assigned to record the proceedings with brush in hand, under the fine-sounding name of "facilitating the compilation of military history and treatises"?

In truth, the Palace Gentleman's records were not that detailed and would not specify that a certain person said a certain line. But for someone like Gai Yan, who directly questioned the Emperor's orders, even if it went unrecorded on paper, it would surely be recorded in someone's mind!

Seeing that Gai Yan still had not caught on, Ma Yuan directly cursed him out.

"Gai Juqing, you only understand the craft of soldiering. How could you possibly grasp His Majesty's art of strategic command?"

"The Art of War says: He who first occupies the field of battle and awaits the enemy is at ease; he who arrives later at the field and rushes into battle is toiled. Therefore, one skilled in warfare brings the enemy to the field and is not brought there by him. He who can make the enemy come of his own accord does so by offering him advantage; he who can prevent the enemy from coming does so by inflicting harm."

"The Red Eyebrows discovered the trap our army laid along the Ji River line and therefore turned north. It looks as though they have fallen for His Majesty's stratagem of luring them with the pontoon bridge, but how do we know this is not a deliberate move by the Red Eyebrows, seeking to bait our army into rushing to Puyang for a decisive battle, so they may wait at ease for our toiled troops?"

With four separate armies, even if the weather was clear and the river crossings unhindered, once they entered the Red Eyebrow-infested land between the Yellow River and the Ji, what they would encounter and how many skirmishes they would fight each day were all unknowns. Even if Diwu Lun set a specific day to converge for battle, the four forces would likely arrive at ten different times, giving the Red Eyebrows the chance to defeat them one by one.

Ma Yuan was confident he could fight his way through to Puyang, but Diwu Lun could not yet determine where the Red Eyebrows' true main strength lay. With both sides still in the phase of strategic probing, Diwu Lun ultimately canceled the plan out of caution, which was entirely reasonable.

Moreover, while Diwu Lun was tight-lipped with others, to Ma Yuan, the "deputy commander" of this campaign, he had revealed the bottom line in a secret edict. But Ma Yuan could not publicize it either, because the scheme was truly rather underhanded.

In the secret edict, Diwu Lun put it to Ma Yuan this way: "All three routes shall halt; only the eastern route shall not. Let Dong Xian be the first to test how deep the waters are between the Yellow River and the Ji!"

Last winter, Dong Xian had been beaten by Fan Chong until he was a commander without an army, and was even captured. By sheer luck, he was released during the Red Eyebrows' tile-tossing. At the time, he was utterly destitute.

Yet in just four short months, Dong Xian was swaggering about again. With the gold, silk, and bolts of cloth Ma Yuan had allotted him, over a hundred suits of armor sent from the Hebei region, and several thousand blades, he had once more raised a force of nearly ten thousand men by the shores of the Great Wild Marsh.

After the thunderous wave of official-killing and rebellion had passed, the Great Wild Marsh remained as poor as ever, even more destitute and chaotic than before the great upheaval. The local stalwarts Dong Xian had taken away had either died in battle or rejoined the Red Eyebrows, but there were always young men in the area who admired his fame and were willing, for the promise of "kings, marquises, generals, and ministers" and the lure of gold cakes and silk, to throw in their lot with Dong Xian.

It was just that his performance as a "roving force" was truly abysmal — not that Dong Xian was incompetent. The troops he had newly raised, though no match for Fan Chong's elite main force, always managed to fight the other chieftains to a draw.

The trouble was, back in the Chu–Han struggle, the old veteran Peng Yue could still cut off the Chu army's rear — but the Red Eyebrows have no supply lines at all; they have always fed themselves by fighting.

Dong Xian was in no hurry. While recruiting men and buying horses, he sent out proclamations in Wei's name to the various commanderies and counties of Yan Province, then turned around and used these "achievements" to demand gold, grain, armor, and weapons from Ma Yuan — borrowing the tiger's skin to fly his own banner. Dong Xian was confident he could expand to thirty thousand men and control two commanderies' worth of territory within the year…

Until he received an edict from Diwu Lun ordering him to lead his troops west and join the decisive battle between the Yellow River and the Ji River.

Seeing Dong Xian hesitate, one of his old subordinates advised: "Your Majesty only submitted to Ma Yuan because you had no choice. Now that your old troops are trickling back and you've gathered enough soldiers, why not go on being a king? Why stoop to being a petty marquis under Diwu Lun?"

Was he being told to imitate Han Xin in the Chu–Han conflict and become a third power between the Red Eyebrows and Wei? Dong Xian dismissed the thought at once. A defeated general like him — how could he compare to Han Xin's position back then? He was not even the equal of Peng Yue or Ying Bu!

But the subordinate had a point. In these chaotic times, whether you go it alone or throw in with a stronger power, having troops in hand is what matters most. Without that bargaining chip, he probably could not even scrape together a marquisate under Diwu Lun!

And so Dong Xian made up his mind.

"This great battle between the Yellow River and the Ji — I have to go."

"But not all the way…"

Were there not four Wei army columns? Following the Red Eyebrows' usual practice, they would "besiege a point to strike the reinforcements" — whoever arrived first got hit first! He would march slowly, steadily, because Dong Xian knew perfectly well that some eager general would always enter the battlefield before him.

So Dong Xian mustered seven thousand men and set out, dawdling along the Huzi River. This river had been formed when the Yellow River burst its banks during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han and surged into the Great Wild Marsh, carving out a watercourse. Even now, when the Yellow River ran wild, it often used this as its main channel, pouring into Yan Province and drowning the once-wealthy Shanyang Commandery — the Changyi Principality — into a vast watery waste, and long since creating a million Yan Province refugees.

Dong Xian's army halted every ten li, stopped for a meal every five, crawling at a pace of twenty li a day. At that tortoise-creep, they would reach Puyang in ten days at the earliest. He only hoped to catch the tail end of the campaign. If Diwu Lun won and the Red Eyebrows lost, he would join in for an easy victory and that would be enough. But if the Red Eyebrows won and Diwu Lun lost, Dong Xian could slip back to the Great Wild Marsh and then demand even more from Diwu Lun…

The edicts Diwu Lun sent them were all delivered by crossing the river through safe territory, but between the two armies lay the Red Eyebrow-infested lands between the Yellow River and the Ji — real-time communication was essentially impossible. Still, Dong Xian made every effort to send men to contact Ma Yuan. A surrendered general like him could only claim to belong to the "father-in-law faction" and survive by clinging to Ma Yuan's thigh.

Yet three batches of envoys were sent out in succession, and no word came back from Ma Yuan. Only then did Dong Xian sense something was wrong. By now they had marched a hundred li west along the Huzi River and reached a place called Zhencheng. Encounters with Red Eyebrow troops were also growing frequent. Should their main force not be elsewhere, blocking the other Wei army columns that had entered the river-Ji region first?

Fortunately, Dong Xian had a way to avoid attention: he ordered his men to smear their eyebrows red as well, planning to pass themselves off as Red Eyebrows coming from Yan Province under an Elder, and issued each man a multi-colored kerchief to tell friend from foe in the heat of battle. This had spared them a good deal of trouble along the way.

But now Dong Xian's little trick failed. Several Red Eyebrow bands suddenly closed in on them and launched an attack. Dong Xian hurriedly sent men to tell them: "We are Yan Province Red Eyebrows — Red Eyebrows do not strike Red Eyebrows!"

Yet all Dong Xian got in return was an even fiercer assault — and Yang Yin, one of the Red Eyebrow Five Dukes, sent by Fan Chong himself to deal with him.

"Still putting on an act in front of your old man? Your eyebrows may be red, but your hearts are every color of the rainbow! It's you traitor we're here to beat!"