Chapter 693: Laying Down Their Armor in Unison

Gongsun Shu never expected that the first man to break into the central plains of Shu would be neither Cen Peng nor Ma Yuan, but rather an obscure Di auxiliary officer named "Yun A"...

This was A Yun's Han name. "A" means "hill," but for him, the character leaned more toward another meaning: to bend and submit.

He had once been a straight, poison-tipped dagger — a member of the Qionglai Mountain assassins, dispatched by Gongsun Shu to Longyou to assassinate a Wei general. But after years lying low, A Yun had long since been bent by wealth, rank, and family...

Gongsun Shu did not even remember this man existed. A Yun had been out of contact too long; even Jing Han thought he was dead. An orphan bought for coin, he had no family to compensate, and his name had long been struck from the roster — after all, it was a dirty business best kept out of sight.

It was as if he had never existed. Perhaps only the comrades who had trained and lived beside him day and night on Qionglai Mountain still remembered this minor figure.

A Yun was a nobody, forgotten even in death. But Yun A was already a rising star among the Di people of the State of Wei. The panicked County Magistrate of Jiangyou who sent the urgent appeal had it wrong, though — his true rank was not auxiliary officer, but "Colonel." Ever since he had captured and killed Jing Han the year before and presented his head, A Yun had been valued by Ma Yuan, recommended to the court and enfeoffed as a baron, then promoted one more rank, giving him sole command of a brigade.

A Yun thus resolved to see this road through to the end, steeling his heart to serve the Wei sovereign Diwu Lun unto death. A month or so earlier, as Ma Yuan prepared to attack Bishui Pass, Jiameng, and the Greater and Lesser Sword Mountains, A Yun, a native of Shu Commandery's western frontier who knew the local terrain, presented Ma Yuan with a ruthless stratagem...

"Slip through Yinping, strike the enemy's rear by surprise!"

On the map, Yinping lay south of Wudu Commandery and northwest of Guanghan Commandery. The region, cut off from Yong and Liang, was truly a perilous defile.

Ma Yuan had the same idea: "If we can descend from Wudu to Yinping, follow the byways along the Fu River, and strike Jiangyou County in Guanghan — this place lies a hundred li west of Sword Pavilion and just over three hundred li from Chengdu — the enemy will surely be caught off guard."

It was a brilliant move, but though Wudu and Yinping looked close on the map, no army had ever marched that route before, for the terrain was far too treacherous. Dense mountain forests, rushing torrents — unless men turned into apes and wild beasts, neither horse nor man could pass.

Impassable — for Han people. But for A Yun and his fellow Di, high mountains, thick forests, and narrow gorges — were these not the very places they lived day to day? Moving through Yinping, the Di would be like gibbons springing through the trees, like fish darting through the deep.

Yet Yinping was said to be seven hundred li of uninhabited land. The troops could carry at most ten days' rations; even with mules bearing extra, that would only last a month. But the mountain march would take two full months! They would be starving and exhausted halfway — how could that be solved?

A Yun, however, was quite confident: "This so-called seven hundred li without a soul refers only to registered commoner households. But Di encampments are by no means absent!"

Under the Qin and Han system, any county whose main inhabitants were Man, Yi, Rong, or Di barbarians was called a "Circuit." The Yinping region administratively belonged to the "Guanghan Commandery Northern Commandant." Besides Yinping itself, there were also Dlandi Circuit and Gangdi Circuit — as the names imply, all places where Di people gathered.

Ma Yuan thus approved the plan. A Yun set out with 2,500 Longyou and Wudu Di troops, marching south in the fifth month. The vanguard of five hundred, all traveling light and wearing no armor — these Di men each carried axes, chisels, and tools. Wherever they encountered sheer, perilous ground, they hewed a path through the mountains and built trestle bridges to allow the army passage. The rear force of two thousand drove mules, each man carrying dried rations and ropes as they advanced.

The journey was indeed fraught with hardship. Fortunately, sharing a common tongue with the local Di encampments, they could occasionally obtain some food — though, of course, there was no shortage of cases where a single wrong word led to outright plunder...

When they reached a watershed on the Yinping road called "Motianding," it was so steep that the mules and horses could go no farther. After climbing to the highest point, they saw below them another sheer slope and cliff face, impossible to cut a path through. Even the Di men hesitated.

A Yun rallied their spirits: "As we passed through Yinping and the other circuits, how did the Di people there live? Deep in the mountains, tilling barren soil, staving off hunger with game and wild fruit, eating raw flesh and drinking blood — and still forced to pay tribute by the Chengjia officials, constantly raided by the Western Qiang and other Di tribes, their elders killed, their women carried off, their children sold to Chengdu as slaves."

This was his own bloody experience! A Yun had learned to stop feeling grateful to Emperor Gongsun, desperately searching for reasons to resent him: "But the two thousand-odd Di in my brigade need not live like that. We are loyal subjects of His Majesty the Great Wei Emperor. When the war is over and we go home, we will live better than registered commoners! We have already marched over five hundred li on this road — just a little more and we will succeed. Shu is rich. The Di troops who enter first will seize the most plunder. If we win merit, even greater wealth and rank await us. Not just me alone — every Di soldier will have his share!"

Great reward ensures bold men. The Di soldiers strung ropes across the mountain, linking them into a long, continuous line. Then, one by one, gripping the ropes, they descended from the steep slope into the river valley, clambering over trees and clinging to trunks, filing forward in single file. Some, when a knot came loose, plunged into the abyss and were dashed to pieces — but most of the Di troops reached the lower ground safely.

The road beyond was easier. They followed the Fu River south. The Chengjia regime had shifted most of its forces to Jianmen, Guanghan, and Zizhong; the Guanghan Northern Commandant had only a few hundred men garrisoning the Yinping Bridge to guard against barbarians. The Wei troops descended like soldiers from heaven and swiftly took the position — and Jiangyou County lay just ahead.

By this point, when A Yun counted heads, though they had lost several hundred on the march — some dead from mishaps or illness, others too spent to go on and left behind — their numbers had, against all expectation, not shrunk but swelled, now reaching over four thousand...

It turned out that the tribes of the three Di circuits along the way, recruited by A Yun and coveting the wealth of Shu, had decided to follow along and grab a share of the plunder...

Jiangyou was only a small county seat. After holding out a few days, it fell. A Yun let the Di troops who had joined midway plunder the town freely, even goading them to push deeper and raise havoc around Zitong, the capital of Guanghan Commandery — far richer than Jiangyou.

As for himself, he led his Di troops to eat and drink their fill from the county granary, then, carrying five days' provisions, quietly left Jiangyou. Skirting Zitong, where the Shu army's rear guard and supply trains were massed, he marched toward the Greater and Lesser Sword Mountains, two hundred li to the northeast. The Chengjia regime had made Grand Marshal Yan Cen its commander, massing a full fifty thousand men there — a force equal to Ma Yuan's...

Although Diwu Lun had arranged for Ma Yuan and Cen Peng to close on Shu from two sides, the two Grand Generals held equal rank, each commanding his own army, and a faint rivalry simmered between them. Moreover, with Jianmen and Jiangzhou separated by hundreds of li and long-distance communication difficult, they were in effect fighting independently. So Ma Yuan could not simply sit and hope for Cen Peng to coordinate — he would rather trust A Yun, who had already proven his ability.

A Yun's mission was to use this surprise force to strike at the enemy's vitals, forcing Yan Cen, upon hearing the news, to split his forces to relieve Zitong and Jiangyou. At the same time, he would harass the Jianmen Shu army from the rear, coordinating with Ma Yuan to break through this newly built stronghold of Gongsun Shu's!

If he succeeded, A Yun reckoned his merit would leap past viscount, earning him a direct enfeoffment as "count"!

Strangely, however, though Jiangyou had fallen, Zitong was under harassment by the Western Shu Di tribes, and Chengdu itself was in a state of alarm three times a day, with couriers racing back and forth with urgent appeals — on the road from Jiangyou to Jianmen, A Yun saw not a single Shu soldier turning back to rescue the sovereign. What was Yan Cen playing at?

It was not until the third day, when A Yun and his men could already see the towering, sword-like peaks, that they encountered the first army — not Shu troops flying the White Emperor banner, but rather Ma Yuan's vanguard cavalry!

"Colonel Yun has arrived a step too late. The Shu army has surrendered."

"Ah!?" Only then did A Yun learn that all his painstaking detour through Yinping had been a case of great effort for scant result — tantamount to a wasted march. How could they have surrendered? Yan Cen had fifty thousand men! Had he simply not dared to fight a single battle because Ma Yuan was invincible?

The Wei cavalryman cheerfully told A Yun: "That Yan Cen was turned long ago by the Director of Messengers."

"The moment Yan Cen reached the Greater and Lesser Sword Mountains, he had the generals loyal to Gongsun Shu bound and killed. Then he distributed the gold and silver ingots Gongsun Shu had bestowed among the mid-ranking colonels. He led his fifty thousand troops to lay down their armor in unison. Now the gates of Jianmen stand wide open, and the Grand General of Agile Cavalry is right behind us!"

Yan Cen had surrendered without a fight. To Gongsun Shu, waiting in Chengdu for the enemy to "die beneath the sword," this news was nothing less than a bolt from the blue.

"We always regarded Yan Cen as a pillar of the state. Now We shall surely be mocked by the people of Shu. So he was the greatest traitor of all — his clan must be exterminated, exterminated!"

But Yan Cen's wife and children had already "perished amid the chaos of battle" when Hanzhong fell. Thinking back now, they had either been sent to the State of Wei or hidden somewhere in Ba Commandery. Yan Cen had been in league with Wei for a long time!

Gongsun Shu was so furious he nearly vomited blood. Back when Yan Cen had vehemently advocated fighting the State of Wei to the bitter end, he had brazenly declared to Gongsun Shu: "Your Majesty, a man should seek life in the midst of death — how can he sit and wait to perish!"

Yan Cen had spoken the truth — he was indeed unwilling to sit and wait for destruction! He had trotted off at a run to surrender to Ma Yuan, and thrown in nearly all of Gongsun Shu's armies, along with the gold and Zhuti silver that Emperor Gongsun, in his stinginess, had hoarded for over a decade. Though the amount was far less than Diwu Lun's, it was still the last-resort wealth of Shu. Overnight, all of it had gone to feed the enemy.

Worse still, with Jianmen thrown wide open, Ma Yuan, sweeping up the surrendered Shu troops, was rapidly driving south with a host of a hundred thousand. His vanguard cavalry had already bypassed Zitong and reached Mianzhu, the northern gateway to Chengdu! The spearpoint of his army would be within a hundred li of Chengdu!

And by now it was too late for Gongsun Shu to recall his forces for defense: another twenty thousand men were at Guanghan County, and ten thousand at Zizhong — all deployed to guard against Cen Peng. In Chengdu, only a thousand-odd palace guards and a few thousand troops of the Guard Commandant remained. Perhaps, if they conscripted the common people and sent every able-bodied man to the walls, they could scrape together a little over ten thousand...

At this moment, Chancellor Li Xiong once again urgently urged Gongsun Shu, bringing up the strategy of a "southern hunt."

"Your Majesty, at the end of Qin, had Ziying hunted south in time, entering Hanzhong and Ba-Shu, there might still have been hope of reviving the Qin dynasty."

But Gongsun Shu had utterly lost hope, sunk deep in the mire of despair. He murmured: "Back when Chang'an was breached by Diwu Lun, Wang Mang hunted south and fled. What was the result?"

He looked at the Imperial Heirloom Seal in his hand. Had this thing not, in the end, fallen into his own grasp? And Wang Mang, after years of wandering, had been humiliatingly escorted back to Chang'an by Diwu Lun and publicly beheaded on the scaffold before the masses, following in the footsteps of King Zhou of Shang.

There were too many similar examples. During the Rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms, when the Wu army's defeat was certain, King Liu Pi of Wu and his stoutest warriors fled by night, crossing the river to take refuge in Dantu, then drifting further to Eastern Yue. Later, lured by the imperial court, the King of Eastern Yue instead cut off his head and sent it by express carriage to Emperor Jing. Old Liu Pi had been arrogant and overbearing for decades, yet his end made him the laughingstock of the realm.

Gongsun Shu fancied himself a hero in this age of chaos, which was why he had been able to fight Diwu Lun nearly to the endgame. He did not wish to end in such disgrace.

Li Xiong knocked his head on the ground with a thud, tears and mucus streaming down his face, earnestly entreating Gongsun Shu. Gongsun Shu sighed, and helped the Chancellor to his feet.

"The Crown Prince is overseeing the army at Zizhong. Chancellor, go swiftly and join him."

Li Xiong was baffled: "Your Majesty means to recall the Crown Prince and the Zizhong army to rescue the sovereign?"

Gongsun Shu shook his head: "No need to come north. You must hurry south at once!"

"And what of Your Majesty?" Li Xiong cried in alarm.

Truly, when a man is near death, his words turn kind. Gongsun Shu, who had been a hypocrite all his life, finally spoke a few words from the heart.

"Ever since We gained you, Chancellor, We were fortunate to establish the imperial enterprise. We had hoped to retrace the path of Han Gaozu, or at the very least become a Duke Mu of Qin, hegemon of the west. Who could have foreseen encountering an anomaly like Diwu Lun, and on top of that, trusting men like Yan Cen, rejecting Our Chancellor's loyal counsel — thus We brought this defeat upon Ourselves. Regret comes too late."

"Ruin and rise are matters of fate. If We are destined for defeat and destruction, so be it. But the Son of Heaven dies for the altars of state. We became Emperor in Chengdu, and We shall never leave this capital, not one step!"

As he spoke, Gongsun Shu took the Imperial Heirloom Seal from his waist, gazed at it longingly again and again, and finally pressed it into Li Xiong's hands!

"Give the Seal to the Crown Prince. Have him succeed to the throne there in the army. Then use the Chancellor's strategy — find a way to take the thirty thousand troops from Zizhong and Guanghan to Zhuti, and hold Nanzhong with all your strength!"

"The Crown Prince is weak. Never mind contending with Diwu Lun — I fear he cannot even handle the Dian lands and Gouding."

The White Emperor, tears in his eyes, entrusted the orphan to Chancellor Li: "Your talent is no less than Xiao He or Cao Can; you will surely be able to pacify the south and prolong the altars of my Gongsun clan. How long I, your sovereign, may enjoy the blood offerings of the emperor's nine cauldrons and eight tureens in the netherworld rests entirely upon you, Chancellor!"

……

As Gongsun Shu dispatched Li Xiong to flee south with the Imperial Heirloom Seal, Ma Yuan had already taken Mianzhu and was sweeping through Luo City, drawing ever closer to Chengdu…

Meanwhile, Yan Cen, the Grand Marshal of the Cheng clan who had surrendered at Sword Gate, was treated as an honored guest by Ma Yuan after switching sides. In truth, he was kept close at hand and controlled, denying this flip-flopping fellow any further chance to betray his master.

Yan Cen's attitude was quite good. He ate and drank unperturbed among the Wei troops, unembarrassed by the mockery from Ma Yuan's subordinates, and was instead rather curious about the Wei army's sharp weapons:

"I have long heard of the might of the Wei army's firearms. Might I have a chance to witness their majesty?"

In fact, as early as when he was guarding Hanzhong, Yan Cen had kept one red heart and two hands ready: although he had long been in secret contact with Feng Yan, the Grand Messenger of the State of Wei, at that time Ma Yuan's reports of victory were coming in thick and fast. Even if Yan Cen had brought his troops to surrender, it would only have been adding flowers to brocade, and he would not have received very good treatment.

So he fled to Chengdu and continued to deceive Gongsun Shu into trusting him, gathering military power into his own hands — that carried a very different weight. If the State of Wei could not easily destroy Wu and Shu for a time, Yan Cen might even manage to sideline the frail and sickly Gongsun Shu and become the local emperor of Ba-Shu himself…

But this ambition was quickly dispelled after the Han army's great defeat at Dangyang. After the Han army collapsed, a few Nanyang compatriots fled west into Shu and recounted the day's events to Yan Cen one by one, leaving him greatly astonished. The State of Wei had first the stone catapults, then the fire cannons — their weapons changed with each passing day. Against these ingenious devices, the perilous passes of Ba-Shu would be greatly diminished.

Sure enough, once Ma Yuan's western army was also equipped with fire cannons, the Baishui and Jiameng passes, which had once been impossible to take, became as flimsy as paper. Sword Gate might hold out for a while by relying on its thirty-li treacherous path, but Cen Peng had already entered Jiangzhou, and Yan Cen could be attacked from front and rear at any moment…

If even defending the fortifications was no match, field battle was even less worth mentioning.

So Yan Cen swiftly abandoned his ideas of going it alone or dying a martyr for Gongsun Shu. After tricking his way into military command, he immediately shed his armor and surrendered.

However, ever since leaving Sword Gate — Zitong, Mianzhu, Luo City — the Wei army had taken nearly every place merely by sending out proclamations. Before the fire cannons even arrived, the city gates would open, and the commandery and county officials along with the elders would scramble over one another to surrender. So Yan Cen had never been able to witness their power with his own eyes, and he was somewhat unwilling to let it go…

But Ma Yuan was not inclined to put on a special demonstration just for him. He only said flatly, "When we reach Chengdu, you will see for yourself."

As Gongsun Shu's childhood friend, Ma Yuan knew his temperament all too well. From his youth, Gongsun had been talented, proud, and conceited, unwilling to heed anyone's instruction. After proclaiming himself emperor, he became a frog at the bottom of a well, absurdly self-important. It was hard to believe he would bow his head and submit. The battle for Chengdu would certainly not be as easy as before.

Even so, out of regard for their old friendship, Ma Yuan wrote a letter and sent someone to deliver it to Chengdu.

"Is Ziyang well? We parted at Maoling, and it has been twenty years since. I, Yuan, serve the Wei sovereign, while you, Ziyang, have made yourself emperor. We look upon each other as enemies, and so there has been silence, no word between us."

"Earlier, Liu Wenshu was routed at Dangyang and fled like a rat to Jiangdong; his days are numbered. Now the realm is soon to be settled, and the millions share one heart. Only you, Ziyang, shut yourself away in Shu, standing as a target for all under heaven. I recently unrolled a map and saw that there are one hundred and six commanderies and kingdoms in the empire. Why would you wish to use this tiny Ba-Shu to contend against all the lands of Huaxia? I, Yuan, often fear that the realm gnashes its teeth, longing to tear you apart. So I send this letter with lingering affection, to offer a plan born of compassion…"

"Sword Pavilion has fallen; the Shu soldiers have shed their armor. Zitong and Mianzhu surrendered at the mere rumor of our approach. The city of Chengdu, too, can be taken with a single step. The fire cannons are set; they will not fire in vain. When the time comes, the whole city will be ground to dust!"

"You and I, Ziyang, though outwardly enemies, inwardly still share the bond of friends. Between friends, there should be frank counsel. How could I, knowing you are doomed to fail, simply wilt and bite my tongue, folding my hands and watching idly?"

"In past years, the Wei Emperor's edicts have been issued repeatedly, extending grace and good faith. I hope Ziyang will not doubt them simply because you have long been an enemy state. If you now come in person in good time, your entire clan will be preserved. If you remain deluded and fail to understand, it will be like throwing flesh into a tiger's mouth — how painful, what can be done! This letter is written by my own hand, a thing not easily repeated. I, Yuan, have consulted the court and especially wish to establish trust in this matter. We will certainly not break our word."

At the end, he urged again: "The three armies are restless; I, Yuan, cannot wait long. I eagerly await your swift reply!"

Though the letter contained threats, it was more a friend's sincere heart. Yet very soon, Gongsun Shu sent someone with his reply.

"Wenyuan, my friend, you are learned and well-informed."

"May I ask, in this world,"

"has there ever been a Son of Heaven who surrendered?!"