Chapter 553: Yin and Yang

Cen Peng had just returned from Luoyang when the eighth day of the twelfth month arrived — the La Festival, one of the major celebrations, livelier even than the New Year.

As the general in charge of military affairs in Yu Province, Cen Peng was duty-bound by custom to organize the festivities together with Nanyang Governor Yin Shi.

The rites were long and tedious, yet Cen Peng showed not the slightest trace of boredom or impatience; instead, he watched with keen interest as the people of Nanyang donned barbarian-head ghost masks and danced, pounding on narrow-waisted drums.

"Counting from the year the Xin dynasty of Wang Mang fell, I have not spent the La Festival in Nanyang for four full years. Now, at last, I see my homeland's customs again — it stirs a great many feelings." Cen Peng began chatting idly with Yin Shi.

Compared to Chang'an, the La sacrifice in Nanyang had its own distinct features. For example, in the most important rite, "sacrificing to the Kitchen God," the people of Guanzhong often slaughtered a small pig, but in Nanyang what they killed was...

A dog — and it had to be a yellow dog.

Cen Peng looked at Yin Shi and said with a smile, "I have heard that this custom originated over a hundred years ago, when the Governor's fifth-generation ancestor saw the Kitchen God on the La day and sacrificed a yellow dog to him. From that time on, the Yin clan received the Kitchen God's blessings generation after generation, until they became the wealthiest family in the entire commandery, and the people of Nanyang all rushed to imitate them."

"That is a popular misconception," Yin Shi, who had been especially cautious ever since submitting to the State of Wei, hastily denied it.

The truth was that the Yin clan had never produced a single high-ranking official or prominent figure during the Qin or Western Han; their influence had been modest. Yet within a few generations they had suddenly grown fabulously rich, amassing over seven hundred qing of land, with chariots, horses, and slaves on a scale rivaling the feudal lords, and their fame had spread beyond Xinye. Outsiders, not understanding the true source of the Yin clan's rise, had invented this legend, and the Yin family, to mythologize their path to wealth, had never denied it.

But Yin Shi felt that this legend had best be clarified — it absolutely must not reach Diwu Lun's ears.

The Emperor's appointment of him, a surrendered general of shallow seniority and young age, as acting Governor of Nanyang had already drawn considerable criticism. There were whispers at court, saying that Diwu Lun had seized Liu Xiu's wife, that he was showing favoritism to the Yin clan, and so on...

The Emperor neither refuted the rumors nor acknowledged them, which was intriguing. But Yin Shi knew that even if Diwu Lun had such intentions, he would not rely on that to grant him a weighty post.

He had originally thought that Diwu Lun intended to use the Yin clan as a horse's bone, to attract the local Nanyang powerholders into submitting and restore stability here as quickly as possible. Yet ever since he had entered Nanyang with Cen Peng, the Wei army had treated the powerful families that the Red Eyebrow Army had struck down and driven off as though they were dead and their lines extinguished, crossing their names off the household registers. When the powerful families who had fled abroad returned, they found their lands still confiscated. They protested to the general's headquarters, and were swiftly crushed by an iron fist.

And as for those peasants who had received land distributed by the Red Eyebrow Army, Yin Shi, acting on Diwu Lun's orders, "reclaimed their land for the government," but then immediately issued new title deeds on the spot. The former tenant farmers were overjoyed, weeping with gratitude toward the Wei Emperor, convinced the matter was now secure. One could only pity the Red Eyebrow Army — they had been the first to do good deeds, but had not had time to earn the trust and wholehearted loyalty of the Nanyang people.

Connecting this with the edicts sent one after another from the court, and recalling how Diwu Lun had wiped out the powerful families north of the Wei River and forcibly relocated the Liu clans of Hebei, it seemed that this Emperor's treatment of the Nanyang powerful families, while not as openly violent as the Red Eyebrows' call to beat and kill, was a death by a thousand cuts — far more lethal.

"Emperor Diwu does not want Nanyang's 'thousand-li steeds' at all. All he wants is the mass loyalty of inferior horses — the tenant farmers!"

And that made sense. The problem of powerful-family land annexation in Nanyang was deep-rooted and entrenched. Now that the Red Eyebrows and Wang Mang had, by rare chance, purged the region once, Diwu Lun could directly control the grassroots. Why would he insist on having the powerful families act as "middlemen," letting them take a cut of everything?

Among the newly trained soldiers under Cen Peng, the recruits were also mainly local Nanyang poor peasants, refugees, and even Red Eyebrow prisoners of war. As for the several powerful-family armed bands that came fawningly offering their services, he would only accept them as auxiliary troops. It seemed Diwu Lun was dead set on forging a new "Boar-Rush Braves."

After weathering the destruction of his family, backing the wrong man, and "betraying the Liu clan," Yin Shi's temperament had changed greatly, and he had grown much shrewder. He suddenly saw the truth: "He made me Governor of Nanyang not to unite the prominent clans, but solely to make the powerful families hate the Yin clan to the bone!"

Regardless of whether Yin Shi's surrender to Wei had been forced by circumstance or a case of hedging his bets, over these past six months, had he not relied on Cen Peng's army for protection, he could have been assassinated at any moment by the resentful, dispossessed powerful families!

Now Yin Shi had no choice but to serve Diwu Lun with desperate loyalty. Yet he remained nervous and jittery. By this point, he had boarded a pirate ship; losing his post would mean losing everything, perhaps even his life. Any news that might make Diwu Lun frown could become the cause of Yin Shi's downfall. And so it was that when Cen Peng, with no ill intent, casually mentioned the legend of his ancestor, Yin Shi strained to explain:

"General Cen, the rise of the Yin clan was simply because our forefather was a descendant of Guan Yiwu. He employed Guanzi's methods of commerce and wealth accumulation, and only thus slowly built up his fortune. Ignorant commoners, not understanding this, invented wild tales."

As for exactly what kind of business — whether slave trading, usury, or swallowing up other people's land — Yin Shi spoke of it only in vague, ambiguous terms.

Cen Peng paused, then sensed Yin Shi's anxiety and could not help but laugh silently to himself. He was a military man, and had never harbored so many devious thoughts.

Looking out at the street beyond the headquarters of the General Who Guards the South, he saw a crowd of old men and women, having finished the sacrifices and even drunk a little wine, playing the game of "hiding the hook" in groups. This was an amusement passed down from the court of Emperor Wu of Han: in the game, one group secretly presses a small hook into one person's hand, and the other side must guess in whose hand, and which hand, it is held; the one who guesses correctly wins.

Cen Peng thought to himself, "Yin Shi is in this very game. His Majesty's intentions are the hook. After the conference at Luoyang, it seems to have been passed into my hand, and every word I speak makes him stare at my two hands, guessing endlessly."

But this was merely wishful thinking on his part. Diwu Lun would not deign to expend so much thought on such a minor figure. After his second audience with the Emperor in Luoyang, Cen Peng had discovered that what His Majesty lately enjoyed playing were all open stratagems.

"The open stratagems of the sage Son of Heaven are beyond the discernment of a 'shady' man frightened by the mere twang of a bowstring."

And so Cen Peng abandoned any thought of deep communication or working in heartfelt harmony with Yin Shi, treating him merely as an ordinary subordinate. After returning to the main hall, he got down to business.

"Before I went north, I asked the Governor to send men to persuade Jia Fu and Deng Feng. How did that go?"

Yin Shi sighed. "Your subordinate is incompetent. I sent three batches of agents in succession, and none could persuade Deng Feng. The last one even had his tongue cut out by him, as a sign of severed ties and broken friendship!"

He and Deng Feng were not only from the same commandery and the same county, but were also family friends for generations. They had grown up together, hunting and riding, and had both served in Liu Bosheng's army. But when Nanyang was about to be invaded by the Red Eyebrows, the two had made different choices: Yin Shi chose to surrender to Wei, while Deng Feng decided to stay and defend his homeland. With the help of the King of Chuli, he had stubbornly held onto a corner of Nanyang.

Now, since the Wei Emperor only needed "dogs" like the Yin clan, who knew the local terrain, and refused to restore the lands and estates of the exiled Nanyang powerful families, then how could Deng Feng — a "wolf," fiercely untamed and still fixated on the former power of the powerful families — willingly bow his head and accept a collar?

Learning that Deng Feng had refused to submit, Cen Peng shook his head slightly. Although the forces under Deng Feng were powerful-family troops, they were the most elite armed band in Nanyang. In small-scale combat on their home ground, they had beaten back the Red Eyebrow Army. After Cen Peng marched south, he had sent troops southward several times and clashed with him. This Deng Feng was indeed a man who had once made Chancellor Dou suffer a great defeat — he was not easy to handle. Even with several times the troop strength, Cen Peng had only managed to force him to abandon Xinye, which lacked defensible terrain.

But once Deng Feng had secured a foothold in Deng County to the south, relying on the famous "Deng Forest natural barrier," the Wei army could do nothing to him.

The chance to subdue the enemy without fighting had vanished; Cen Peng could only consider how to win by force of arms.

"And what of Jia Fu?" Cen Peng brought up the other man — also a native of Nanyang, but who, through a twist of fate, had become a "great general of Shu."

"Your subordinate sent men to argue that Wei is strong and Shu is weak, that Gongsun Shu is muddled and foolish, and that a fine general would inevitably be buried in obscurity there. Jia Fu, at least, did not kill the envoy." Yin Shi drew out a piece of Shu brocade covered in writing. "Only recently did a reply letter arrive."

Cen Peng took it and looked. The handwriting was bold and wildly unrestrained; one could tell at a glance that the writer was a proud man — but a man with real ability.

The letter was not long. In it, Jia Fu spoke of only one thing.

"In this present age, pledging one's service as a subject to multiple lords is nothing remarkable. Jia Fu first served the Greenwood, and later gave his allegiance to Gongsun — I feel no shame in this."

"However, Gongsun treats me as an ordinary man, and so I shall repay him as an ordinary man would — merely fulfilling my duty to defend his territory. Should things become untenable, I may surrender or leave."

"But in the past, Liu Bosheng treated me as a true confidant, raising me up from the ranks of mountain bandits. I therefore repay a confidant as a confidant. The one who killed Liu Bosheng was Diwu Lun. Jia Fu can submit to any man under heaven — only Wei is impossible. Otherwise, when I die and go to the Yellow Springs, I would have no face to see Bosheng!"

Had anyone else read this, they might have laughed at Jia Fu's stubbornness — that for a casual promotion and appointment Liu Bosheng had given him in his humble days, he remembered it even now. Liu Bosheng's grave-mound grass was already three chi high!

But seeing this letter, Cen Peng was for a moment overwhelmed by a surge of mixed emotions — he did not know whether to feel shame, to sigh, or to lament the waste.

Come to think of it, Liu Bosheng had also saved his life once. If their positions were swapped, what would Cen Peng do?

But that small pang of guilt quickly vanished, because Cen Peng could beat his chest and declare that back then, he had not wronged Liu Bosheng in the slightest! When he was captured by the Greenwood, whenever Liu Bosheng questioned him, even if it was to Diwu Lun's disadvantage, Cen Peng had answered everything he knew without holding back.

"In terms of debts of gratitude, I owe Bosheng not the slightest thing."

"Rather, I have let down His Majesty more."

Cen Peng steeled his resolve, concealing his complex emotions, and merely said with a smile, "What a proud man."

"A scholar dies for the one who knows his worth; a woman adorns herself for the one who delights in her. Easy to say, but hard to do."

His voice sank low, as if speaking of himself. "The hardest thing in this world is for a brave man who wishes to die but cannot, or for a virtuous lady who dresses in her finest and offers her beauty to her husband, only to meet coldness and suspicion..."

After a series of life-and-death rises and falls, it was not only Yin Shi whose temperament had changed. When Cen Peng first studied the art of war under Yan Erudite, what he favored were "open and aboveboard" affairs. The Cen Peng of the past would surely have strained every sinew to fight Deng Feng and Jia Fu in a proper battle, soldier against soldier, general against general.

But now, Cen Peng's use of troops had acquired a touch of the strange, the cunning, and the crafty.

No — rather, it should be as the Emperor Diwu had written in his summary of the phrase "warfare is the way of deception" in his treatise on military strategy...

"Grand strategy should mostly employ open stratagems, leveraging the general trend."

"But in small tactics, one must never be ashamed to use shady schemes!"

Jia Fu was stationed on the eastern border of the Cheng family's Hanzhong, adjacent to Nanyang and not far from Jingxiang. Liu Xiu's elder brother had been a benefactor to him, and Deng Feng and the other Nanyang powerful families also had ties with him... At this critical juncture, when Cen Peng was carrying out imperial orders to contend for Xiangyang, he still had to divert his attention to guard against this fierce general lying right beside his seat. If left unchecked, Jia Fu could very well become the greatest variable.

But Wei and the Cheng family had outwardly reached an agreement and had not yet broken with each other, so it was not convenient for Cen Peng to strike west directly at Jia Fu. He could only resort to other methods.

Jia Fu's reply letter, written without a second thought by that straightforward man, became the best counter-weapon in Cen Peng's hands. He handed it back to Yin Shi and said something that sent a chill down his spine.

"Deliver this letter to the Embroidered Uniform Guard in Nanyang."

Embroidered Uniform Guards are stationed in every military district. They have two main tasks: first, to discreetly "supervise" the generals and report local affairs back to the Emperor; second, to conduct espionage activities — for example, smuggling counterfeit iron coins from Nanyang into Shu to accelerate the collapse of the Cheng family's petty court's credibility. That is carried out by the Embroidered Uniform Guard.

Cen Peng said, "Over half a year has passed. The Shu people should have roughly discovered the source of the iron coins by now — it is precisely at the Mian River border market, which falls under Jia Fu's jurisdiction."

Jia Fu is a fine commander, but when it comes to administration and trade, he is an amateur. The State of Wei's spies and agents can brazenly infiltrate Ba-Shu right under his nose, and Jia Fu remains utterly unaware.

But will the one in Baidi City believe that Jia Fu, that "fickle" turncoat general, is innocent?

Cen Peng instructed, "We must make that Gongsun Emperor believe that Jia Fu knew full well about this and deliberately allowed the counterfeit coins to enter, and moreover that he has been exchanging letters with Wei officials and harbors thoughts of defection!"

Yin Shi was stunned. For a moment, he barely recognized Cen Peng. Was this still the upright soldier who had surrendered to Liu Bosheng?

But in Cen Peng's eyes now, as a general, victory was the foremost imperative!

As the general Diwu Lun had personally appointed to guard the south, Cen Peng had taken the first step in this struggle for Jing-Xiang.

"Jia Fu said: since Gongsun treated him as an ordinary man, he would repay him as an ordinary man would."

"Then, if Gongsun treats him as an enemy, what will he do?"