Chapter 512: Backbone

The armor Fan Chong wore was the interlocking-ring armor that had once belonged to Lian Dan, the "General of Renewal" of the Xin Dynasty — bestowed by Wang Mang himself. Before the State of Wei's armors appeared, it had been one of the sturdiest suits in the realm, famed as "armor like linked rings, no arrow can pierce."

Yet even this armor could not withstand the erosion of battle after battle. Now it was even more shattered and broken, especially the back, where arrow fletchings caught in the seams had grown so numerous they could no longer be plucked out one by one — so they had simply been stripped away altogether.

The hard shell peeled off, the two layers of silk beneath had stopped the crossbow bolts that had luckily pierced through. Fine, dense flesh wounds covered him everywhere, dyeing the white silk a dripping, bloody red.

Once those too were stripped away, all that remained was a dark, broad back, crisscrossed with scars. From the nobleman's lash he had suffered as a woodcutter, to the wounds of every war since, all had left their marks upon it — but no matter how heavy the injury, none had ever broken his backbone!

Just like that, Fan Chong crouched bare-backed on a rock. It was the coarse habit of a commoner — eating, sunning himself, chatting, always in this posture, never fond of kneeling to sit. His personal guards used knife tips heated red-hot to sear the rotting flesh on his back.

Every time his back sizzled, Fan Chong's brow furrowed, but he still made no sound. He only lowered his head and watched the red ant, half its body gone, still struggling on the rock.

The world is hard to predict. Fan Chong had just shattered Ma Yuan's undefeated record, yet no sooner had he done so than he, who had won battle after battle, met with defeat. Unlike the Red Eyebrows' blind, chaotic fighting, the Wei army's various divisions reacted far too quickly. Wherever the Red Eyebrows struck, reserves would immediately rush to support that place. It was like a man with nothing but brute strength, clumsy and heavy, fighting someone whose hands and feet were several times quicker than his own.

The Wei army not only reacted fast but also coordinated well, their order and endurance surpassing the Red Eyebrows'. Once the Red Eyebrow Army's initial furious onslaught produced no result, defeat was inevitable. Who could blame them for meeting such a foe? Compared to the Xin army, the Greenwood, and Liang Han, the Wei army under Diwu Lun's personal command had clearly become "the realm's strongest force." In this campaign, from Aocang to the Pu River and on to Zhuzao, the Red Eyebrows had not lost unjustly.

The sky was darkening. Every unit had fallen into utter chaos; the only force still maintaining its formation was Fan Chong's personal guard.

"Grand Duke, even the personal guard is down to half." After a rough headcount, the Elder reported the result to Fan Chong. In the bitter fighting, many of the personal guard had vanished without a trace — among them, Xiao Ji.

"Let us only hope they scattered during the retreat." Fan Chong prayed his personal guards had escaped with their lives. The Red Eyebrows had been defeated, but those boys were still young — just in their teens. He had meant to lead them toward the "Promised Land"; who could have foreseen death instead?

"Grand Duke, what do we do now?" This question was thrown at him again and again, for the Red Eyebrows were now caught between a rock and a hard place.

Fan Chong fell silent once more. Whenever the Red Eyebrows stood at a fork in the road, a similar question would be laid before him.

When they could no longer stay in their homeland of Chengyang in Langya, where should they go? When they had achieved modest success in East Mount Tai and received the Xin Dynasty's offer of amnesty, should they submit? After the great battle at Chengchang, when the Red Eyebrows became the focus of the realm, should they march west to contend for the world, or return east to their old home?

Time and again, Fan Chong had made his choice. Sometimes he had made the Red Eyebrows grow mightier; sometimes he had led them down the wrong path, wasting time in vain and missing the moment.

After all, he, Fan Chong, was only an illiterate woodcutter. He did not understand the great trends of the realm, nor what kind of changing times he was living in. Fan Chong could only grip the axe in his hand and hack wildly at the fog before him, seeking the path forward by instinct. He had thought of yielding his position, but besides him, who else could hold the Red Eyebrows together? If he stepped aside, would the "fairness" they had clung to so bitterly collapse overnight?

"Do we wait for Lord Xu to come to the rescue, or break through under cover of night?" The Elders and Attendants would not let Fan Chong off, pressing him further, desperate for an answer.

By all reason, Xu Xuan should have reached the battlefield today. No one knew what had happened on his end; waiting in vain was pointless.

As for breaking through… unlike the Red Eyebrows who scattered in every direction after a defeat, the Wei army's tens of thousands had converged and already laid an inescapable net beyond this dry marsh. Two cavalry detachments roamed outside, so that even if they fought their way out of the encirclement, they would be attacked at once.

But the Wei army's numbers had not yet reached the point of "ten to one, then besiege." Once night fell, the cavalry's effectiveness would greatly diminish, and in the end, there was still a chance for the greater part of the men to escape.

In the past, when facing dire straits, Fan Chong had one word: "Fight!" There was no trouble a victory could not solve — if one was not enough, then two.

But today, as the Elders and Attendants argued back and forth over the breakout plans, Fan Chong did not join in. His thoughts had drifted to matters further off: breaking out was not hard, but what came after? The most hopeful path was east, advancing into Qing Province. Yanzhou and Yuzhou, he feared, would fall under the Wei army's control. The changes Fan Chong had instructed Old Tian to make in Nanyang and Runan would be destroyed in a single day.

Whether they went to Qing Province or Xuzhou, it would be nothing more than repeating the last seven years as roving bandits — merely acting as Diwu Lun's vanguard!

A buzzing filled his ears. Fan Chong felt an endless, boundless weariness. He truly wanted to close his eyes and sleep soundly. This was the exhaustion that comes after ideals are shattered. Fan Chong could feel it: the Promised Land had once been so close, but now, it was drifting further and further away from them.

He was like that broken, shattered interlocking-ring armor — he had endured too many campaigns and could fight no more.

But just then, he heard a wave of clamor.

The Elders and Attendants stopped their debate. Inside the encirclement, the Red Eyebrow fighters, who had been leaning on one another with dejected expressions, also rose to their feet one after another, looking outward.

It was the tens of thousands of Wei soldiers, under their Emperor's command, shouting toward the Red Eyebrow Army.

Just a few simple words, repeated over and over, yet they filled the Red Eyebrow Army with both grief and fury.

"Surrender and you will be spared!"

"Surrender and you will be spared!"

Once he clearly heard the Yanzhou troops' shout, one Red Eyebrow Attendant was the first to burn with righteous indignation: "If the Red Eyebrows feared death, we would never have risen against the Xin in the first place!"

The others all echoed this, but the Red Eyebrow fighters at the bottom, upon hearing the Wei army's words, fell into a silence. Then, no one knew who started it, they began to haltingly sing a ballad.

It was a song of their homeland, one they knew by heart. Slowly, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand voices joined the ragged chorus.

Even Fan Chong, who had been lost in confusion a moment ago, hummed along. He pinched the dying, struggling red ant between his fingers, then slowly rose to his feet and straightened his backbone!

Was it not merely death! In the end, they had not clung to a wretched existence. Even in defeat, they would die on the road to the Promised Land!

"Whose land is Wormwood Lane?"

"It gathers up the souls, no distinction between worthy and fool."

…

"Why does the ghost bailiff so fiercely hurry us?"

"A man's life allows not a moment's lingering."

The song drifted from inside the encirclement to the outside, and the generals and colonels around Diwu Lun looked at one another in dismay.

"It is 'Wormwood Lane.'"

Of course they knew what this was. Over two hundred years ago, after Diwu Lun's ancestor Tian Heng died, his retainers composed the elegies "Dew on the Shallot" and "Wormwood Lane" to mourn him. Among them, "Wormwood Lane" was most popular in the Tian clan's homeland of Qi, often used at commoners' funerals — everyone could hum it.

Diwu Lun listened, his heart stirred with complex emotions. "I have heard that when the five hundred warriors learned of the death of King Zhuangwu of Qi, they sang the song of Wormwood Lane and walked into the sea to their deaths, choosing death over surrender to Han."

"Now that the Red Eyebrows sing this song again, do they mean the same?"

The Left Chancellor Geng Chun had always held a different view on Diwu Lun's wish to recruit the Red Eyebrows. In Hebei, he had not dared to object, but now he seized the moment and said: "Your Majesty, though the Red Eyebrows have suffered a great defeat and are trapped, every man among them is resolved to die. They will absolutely never surrender. And no wonder — these trapped bandits are mostly Fan Chong's own die-hard followers, fierce and hard to tame."

"Now they are like a cornered beast fighting desperately, and there are still the bandits at Suiyang nearby. In your subject's view, it would be better to surround them on three sides and leave one open — let Fan Chong break out, and then our army can fall on them and annihilate their main force. That way, the Red Eyebrows will no longer pose any threat to Yuzhou. The remnants will avoid our sharp edge, withdraw from Yanzhou, and head for Qing Province and Xuzhou. Qing and Xu are under the jurisdiction of Zhang Bu and Liu Xiu; both rose to power relying on local powerful families and are locked in a fight to the death with the Red Eyebrows. The roving bandits can perfectly serve as our army's vanguard."

In the past, Diwu Lun had indeed planned exactly that. But after witnessing the Yellow River suddenly burst its banks in Hebei, and seeing how tiny man is before the power of nature, his thinking had changed. He only said: "If it is to mend a rift in heaven, must one deliberately leave a crack?"

Geng Chun had long prepared his argument. "Your Majesty wishes to emulate Nüwa, smelting five-colored stones to mend the azure sky and severing the great turtle's legs to set up the four poles. Yet heaven is incomplete in the northwest, and so the sun, moon, and stars shift that way; earth is incomplete in the southeast, and so the hundred rivers pour into it. The Red Eyebrow remnants flowing east and south to wreak havoc — it is like water seeking the lowest ground. There is no helping it. Why must Your Majesty demand perfection?"

Diwu Lun still did not relent. If he had wanted that, he would not have gone to such elaborate lengths, laying out such a grand scheme between the He and Ji rivers to fight a battle of annihilation. "That is precisely why I intend to do the work of both Nüwa and Yu the Great, all at once."

"Your Majesty's ambition is vast!" Geng Chun could only offer this flattery and temporarily withdrew his suggestion.

The Colonel-Director of Retainers, Dou Rong, who was standing nearby, also offered his counsel: "Your subject does not propose letting the Red Eyebrows go."

He continued: "But neither can we accept their surrender in full, because Fan Chong's Red Eyebrow Army is not the same as the Red Eyebrows of Cheng Touzilu."

"Cheng Touzilu and the others are mostly disaster victims forced to flee by the Yellow River floods. Though they took up arms years ago, they still roam near their homeland — they are not roving bandits. If the court offers them amnesty and lets them assist with flood control, that will be enough to win over the majority."

"Fan Chong's Red Eyebrow Army, however, has long spread its poison across the realm, fighting and plundering as it moved. Its harm is worse than the muddy river's flooding! The Red Eyebrows are said to number a million, but in every province, those whose families they have destroyed number far more than a million. Their crimes are monstrous and hard to forgive."

Diwu Lun looked at Dou Rong, then glanced at Geng Chun, who was standing with eyes fixed straight ahead, feigning detachment. The two men's positions were, in truth, the same. Geng Chun, as a relative by marriage and an old friend, had probed first; Dou Rong, ever cautious, spoke more tactfully.

But at bottom, neither of them wanted Diwu Lun to accept the Red Eyebrow Army's surrender. So many people — who would feed them? The burden would fall on Hebei and the capital region, invisibly adding an enormous strain. Yanzhou and Yuzhou had no shortage of refugees. For military farming colonies, wouldn't it be better to use easily satisfied, honest folk? Why take the Red Eyebrow Army?

And what they feared most was that Diwu Lun, in a moment of folly, might, in order to win over the Red Eyebrows, recognize their policy of land redistribution in some places. If that happened, it would inevitably stir the powerful families within Wei to alarm and, in the end, sow division and disloyalty.

Diwu Lun would of course never do such a thing. Unlike uprisings and defections, where terms could still be discussed, those who surrendered had no chance of retaining any privileges — let alone immovable property. For the hundreds of thousands of Red Eyebrows, at most, the death penalty could be remitted, but the punishment of living would be hard to escape.

Dou Rong said, "What is more, Your servant has just received word: earlier, State Commandant Ma, at Dingtao, imprisoned over ten thousand Red Eyebrow captives. Dong Xuan, to free up men to guard against the Red Eyebrow bandits at Suiyang crossing the Ji River, put them all to death. Fan Chong and his lot may not yet know of this, but once word reaches them, the Red Eyebrows, in shock and fear, will surely surrender only to rebel again!"

This was indeed a vexing problem. Morality in wartime differs from that in peacetime; a matter is rarely simply right or wrong. If what Dong Xuan did was right, were the lives of over ten thousand prisoners truly so worthless? And if he was wrong, should the Suiyang Red Eyebrows have been allowed to cross the Ji River at their leisure and join the battle?

Yet every choice brings irreversible consequences. The moment Dong Xuan decided to kill the captives, it was fated that Diwu Lun's wish to persuade Fan Chong's Red Eyebrow Army to surrender would become far more difficult!

In the eyes of Dou Rong and Geng Chun, it was not merely difficult — there was no longer any room for reversal at all!

Diwu Lun said, "What does the Colonel-Director of Retainers mean by this…"

Do not be fooled by Dou Rong's usual honest and stolid manner — among those who have survived this chaotic age, who is truly good and harmless? He raised his head, and within his mild and cultured words lay nothing but icy killing intent! He felt it was time for him to shoulder a black mark for Diwu Lun.

"Those coerced into joining the Red Eyebrow splinter forces who wish to surrender may be freely accepted. But Fan Chong and his direct followers must be utterly exterminated!"

Only a thoroughly crushed Red Eyebrow is a good Red Eyebrow — that reasoning indeed held much truth.

Just as in the early Han, the clans First through Eighth could live.

But Tian Heng and his five hundred warriors had to die!

Diwu Lun's thoughts were still unsettled when, at that very moment, the troops he had ordered to set defenses and patrol to the south, in case the Red Eyebrow splinter force's scattered soldiers turned back, reported a matter of great importance to him.

"Your Majesty, Xu Xuan's Red Eyebrow force, numbering in the tens of thousands, has reached ten li to the south!"

"So fast."

Everyone felt a chill of belated fear. Had the Suiyang Red Eyebrow Army arrived half a day earlier, even if they could not have turned defeat into victory, the Wei army could not have so methodically encircled Fan Chong, and the outcome would have been vastly different.

But even with the battle now decided, the arrival of this Red Eyebrow relief force made the situation far more complex. Diwu Lun had to decide quickly whether to launch an immediate assault on Fan Chong and annihilate him in one stroke!

Diwu Lun did not hesitate long. He understood very clearly that, like Dong Xuan, he had to do what "had to be done."

Nor was there any need for self-deception. Like Dou Rong and Geng Chun, Diwu Lun feared the Red Eyebrows more than he worried about Liu Xiu or Gongsun Shu.

"This giant."

"Is still too tall!"

"Sever his heels, cut his wrists, so that he can struggle no more." That was Dou Rong and Geng Chun's proposal.

But Diwu Lun shook his head. "That is still not enough."

"We must break the very backbone that has kept Fan Chong fighting bitterly to the end!"

Diwu Lun already had a plan, but this time, what would crush the Red Eyebrow Army would be not blades and weapons, but words.

"Now that things have reached this point, I need no longer conceal it." Diwu Lun let out a long sigh. Although Zheng Xing had disclosed it, even within the core decision-making circle of the State of Wei, those who knew of that matter were still few.

"It is time to proclaim it to the world, and to tell Fan Chong and the misled and exploited Red Eyebrow Army the truth."

Diwu Lun assumed an expression of helpless reluctance to speak, and merely gestured for Zhang Yu, the Embroidered Uniform Commandant in charge of intelligence, to speak in his stead.

Zhang Yu therefore cleared his throat, bowed to those assembled, and then opened his mouth to reveal that earth-shattering secret which would soon be impossible to keep hidden!

"Fan Chong's chief strategist, Old Man Tian, is in truth the arch-criminal who threw the world into chaos — Wang Mang himself!"

…

PS: Second chapter in the middle of the night.