Chapter 173: The Qin Mohists

On the walls of Yangcheng, Heifu walked behind with a few soldiers. Ahead was the middle-aged man who called himself a "Qin Mohist," Master Tang. He looked around forty, wore plain cloth, yet carried himself with great elegance, and had two young disciples with him.

One was called Cheng Shang, about thirty, a man of few words. He simply held a ruler and square in his hands, visually gauging the wall's height before ascending, and once on the rampart he began measuring the distances between the battlements. The other was called Tang Duo, in his early twenties, lively and restless; the moment he was on the wall he started asking about this and that.

"Master Tang, is this the very Yangcheng where, as you once told us, the Great Master Meng Sheng defended the city for the Lord of Yangcheng?"

Master Tang leaned on the battlements and gazed down, saying with deep feeling, "This is exactly the place. In those days, the Mohist Great Master Meng Sheng and the Lord of Yangcheng of Chu were close friends. The two were teacher and student, friends, and liege and vassal. The Lord of Yangcheng even entrusted his entire fief to Meng Sheng, breaking a jade half-ring with him as a token, so that he would guard this place. Meng Sheng then brought the Mohists here to establish themselves, and thus the Mohist elite all gathered in Yangcheng."

The other disciple, Cheng Shang, now added, "Indeed, I measured with ruler and square. The walls of Yangcheng bear traces of Mohist fortification techniques, and they are somewhat taller and thicker than the walls of ordinary county towns. They were probably built by the Mohists of that time."

Master Tang nodded. "A pity that even with such walls, they were still outnumbered. Later, with the affair of Wu Qi, the Lord of Yangcheng was implicated. He fled to another state, and the King of Jing sent men to reclaim Yangcheng. But without the token jade half-ring, Meng Sheng refused to open the gates. The King of Jing sent troops to besiege Yangcheng, and Meng Sheng, honoring his promise to the Lord of Yangcheng, defended the city to the death. In the end, a total of one hundred and eighty Mohists perished together with him…"

Tang Duo struck the rhythm and exclaimed in admiration, "How heroic…"

Cheng Shang, however, cut in from the side, "Meng Sheng, for his own personal friendship with the Lord of Yangcheng, dragged the Mohist elite to die with him. What heroism is there in that?"

Tang Duo retorted, "Cheng Shang, what the Great Master Meng Sheng practiced was precisely the righteousness of the Mohists. He believed that his bond with the Lord of Yangcheng was no shallow thing. Had he not died, he feared that in the future no one would trust the Mohists, or take them as teachers, friends, or vassals."

Cheng Shang sneered again. "That is a distortion. Is the righteousness of the Mohists merely to throw away one's life like some reckless knight-errant for the survival of a single city, a single lord, a single marquis? The righteousness in the Mohist Canon is clearly the righteousness that benefits all under Heaven! Meng Sheng abandoned the greater righteousness for the lesser. After this affair, Mohism went into decline!"

Tang Duo's face flushed red with anger. "If one cannot uphold the lesser righteousness, how can one practice the greater? Besides, who says Mohism has declined or ended? Are we not still here? Meng Sheng passed it to Tian Xiangzi, Tian Xiangzi passed it to Fuzi, and Fuzi then entered Qin — that is how we Qin Mohists came to be… It is precisely because the Great Master Meng Sheng died in the Lord of Yangcheng's calamity that the feudal lords all came to trust the Mohists, and Mohism became a prominent school!"

The two disciples were arguing heatedly. Master Tang, somewhat embarrassed, silenced the two of them, then turned and cupped his hands toward Heifu. "Many thanks to the Hundred-Leader for bringing us up onto the wall for a look. My disciples' discord has made a laughingstock of us before you."

"Not at all."

Heifu returned the courtesy, for this Master Tang was said to have some small reputation in Xianyang, a figure whom even Li You treated with three parts of respect, and he had specially arranged for Heifu to escort the three men up onto the ramparts.

Having just heard the three speak of the Mohists' past, Heifu felt something stir within him, and now he said, "In truth, I have been stationed at Yangcheng for two months already, yet the matter of Meng Sheng — this is the first I've heard of it. The local common folk have already forgotten that the Mohists once defended this city…"

Master Tang did not take it seriously. "The common folk are forgetful. After all, it is an affair from one hundred and fifty years ago, six or seven generations past…"

"Is it because the time is too distant?"

Heifu smiled and shook his head. "Not so. Last month during the autumn harvest, while chatting idly with an old farmer in the fields, I learned that two hundred years ago, a steward of a certain Lord of Yangcheng built a water channel for the common folk here. To this day, that channel is still in use, irrigating several dozen qing of land. The people even built a small shrine for that steward and make offerings every year. May I ask you gentlemen, why is it that the common folk can remember a minor steward from over two hundred years ago, yet have forgotten the great Mohist Grand Master from over a hundred years ago?"

"It is not that Meng Sheng's righteousness was inferior to that steward's, but rather that the righteousness Meng Sheng practiced never brought benefit to the local common people. Thus, although over a hundred men went to their deaths, famed throughout the realm, making the feudal lords sigh with regret, it left no deep impression on the local people. At most, after two or three generations, it was all forgotten."

Tang Duo looked somewhat displeased, but Cheng Shang nodded in agreement. "The Hundred-Leader speaks rightly. This is precisely the distinction I spoke of between the lesser righteousness and the greater righteousness."

Master Tang now regarded Heifu with keen interest, no longer treating him as mere background scenery, and began to converse with him. As the two talked, Heifu learned that Master Tang had also been with the army when Wang Ben breached Daliang.

"Fortunately, relying on Master Zheng Guo's dikes and water assault, Daliang was breached. There was no need for the Qin Mohists to take part."

From Master Tang's tone, he seemed not to favor war, which made Heifu all the more curious. In the end, he could not hold back and asked, "Master Tang, I too have heard the name of the Mohist school, but I only know that Mohists uphold universal love and oppose aggression, aiding the weak and resisting the strong. I never imagined that you would be found within the Qin army…"

Heifu truly had not expected that the Mohists would become allies of "tyrannical Qin." Had they stood in opposition to the Qin army, there would have been nothing surprising about it.

The question was pointed, and for a moment Master Tang seemed unsure how to answer. At that point, Cheng Shang spoke up. "The Hundred-Leader is truly ill-informed. The Mohists you speak of are the Chu Mohists, who inherited Meng Sheng's will. That group prides itself on morality, delights in ascetic practices, and performs chivalrous deeds in the guise of knight-errants. They oppose all wars between states, holding that all war is unrighteous. Such Mohists have vanished without a trace for many years now."

As he spoke, he cast a glance at his junior fellow disciple Tang Duo.

"Beyond them, there are also the Qi Mohists. That faction focuses mainly on scholarly debate, traveling through the various states, persuading kings not to annex territory. Of such Mohists, only one or two remain, hiding away in Qi, immersed day after day in those useless arts of name-and-substance disputation."

Through Cheng Shang's explanation, Heifu now understood that the Qin Mohists were one of three contemporary Mohist branches, having put down roots in Qin for over a hundred years and contributed greatly to Qin's rise. But Cheng Shang did not say how the Qin Mohists' philosophy differed from that of the Chu Mohists and Qi Mohists.

Nowadays, with the Legalists in power in Qin, the Qin Mohists were gradually being marginalized, yet they still retained some influence. They provided much assistance to Qin's arms and equipment production. When a major battle arose, a general might even bring a few along to provide strategies for attacking cities and to repair those complex siege engines.

"So that is how it is. My ignorance made me impertinent."

Heifu smiled and cupped his hands in apology. The three Qin Mohists, having just met him, were not inclined to say too much, and soon descended from the city wall.

That night, Master Tang and Tang Duo took their leave of Li You. They were to continue following the Qin army toward Shangcai. Cheng Shang, who usually wore a perpetual scowl, was left behind. He was under orders to follow Li You's command, and when they encountered a siege, he could also offer some advice.

In his impression, the Mohists, famed for defending cities, were now voluntarily stepping onto the battlefield to devise plans for the attacking Qin army. This struck Heifu as somewhat absurd.

But before he could dwell on it too much, on the third day after the Qin Mohists arrived at Yangcheng, another military order came down. The commander-in-chief, Li Xin, commanded the five thousand Qin troops at Yangcheng to break camp and march at once!

Having restored morale, Li You had long since ordered the Southern Commandery troops to feed their horses and sharpen their weapons, and they had been prepared for some time. Now that the military order had arrived, he immediately summoned the officers of the Left, Center, Right, Front, and Rear divisions. Leaving only five hundred men to hold the city, and another five hundred to escort the baggage, provisions, and fodder together with locally conscripted laborers, the remaining four thousand all broke camp and set out early the next morning!

As short-weapon personal guards, Heifu and his men naturally had to surround Commandant Li You. Several thousand men marched south in a continuous line along the murmuring Ying River, the edge of their blades pointing straight toward Chu's Dun County, a hundred li away…

Heifu knew that this war had now officially begun!

PS: Didn't notice there was another alliance leader yesterday, so I owe another chapter. Currently three chapters owed, to be made up in April. My condition isn't great; tonight's third chapter will be very late.

(End of chapter)