Chapter 297: Zhao Tuo

"Zhao Tuo? A man from Zhao?"

When they heard Heifu say that a five-hundred-man commander of the Tower Ship troops was bringing a dozen or so boats to join their expeditionary army, the several five-hundred-man commanders under Heifu perked up. Then, upon hearing that Zhao Tuo was a native of Hengshan Commandery in the old Zhao homeland, Heifu's younger brother Jing asked, "Could he be connected to the Zhao royal house?"

Over these three years, as a seated disciple in the academy, he had not only studied the laws and ordinances but also broadened his knowledge considerably.

Heifu's good friend from his village chief days, Anpu, the County Lieutenant Clerk of Jingling, shook his head. "In Zhao, there are no fewer than ten thousand people surnamed Zhao—how could every one of them be related to the royal house? Even if there is a connection, it's probably very distant. Otherwise, how could he have become a five-hundred-man commander in the Qin army?"

Still, he was rather curious about how a Zhao man from the northern Hengshan Commandery had managed to blend into the Qin army's southern boat troops.

Heifu said, "He's likely from a distant branch of the Zhao clan, a wealthy house. He himself says his parents died at the hands of the treacherous minister Guo Kai, so he has no lingering attachment to Zhao. After the Qin army broke Zhao, he paid grain to obtain a rank. When Commandant Tu was building the boat troops on the Zhang and Yellow Rivers, he started as a platoon chief and rose to five-hundred-man commander in a few years."

Zhao Tuo claimed to be slightly younger than Heifu; six years ago, when Wang Jian destroyed Zhao, he was around sixteen.

"So this man really lived to be over a hundred…"

Just thinking about it made Heifu's scalp tingle. Over a hundred years old, and in a hot place like Nanyue at that—a true marvel of longevity. Perhaps the food of Guangdong has been nourishing people since ancient times.

No matter how ignorant he was, he had still heard the name "Zhao Tuo, King of Nanyue." Ah, the "Hero Who Opened Gan" of this timeline meeting the historical "Hero Who Opened Yue"—this was something Heifu had not expected.

Heifu guessed that, some years later, the reason the First Emperor would send Tu Sui, Zhao Tuo, and these other "Tower Ship warriors" as the main force to attack the Hundred Yue was because, in the northerners' impression, the south was all water and marshes, and only Tower Ship troops could be effective there. Although the south indeed has a crisscrossing network of waterways, Guangdong and Guangxi are mostly primeval forest. The naval forces were only useful for transporting grain; once they advanced deep inland, they wouldn't be of much use. This was perhaps a misconception of the Central Plains people of this era.

But no matter how illustrious they might become in the future, for now, everyone was just a petty Qin official, a cadre dispatched south by the First Emperor. Still, a man like Zhao Tuo, who could one day become the king of an entire province, certainly had ability. Tu Sui had truly left Heifu a capable assistant. With this man's help, why worry about not conquering Jiangxi?

Tu Sui had told Heifu to treat Zhao Tuo as a subordinate, but in reality, Zhao Tuo and his dozen or so boats of various sizes were only responsible for their transport and grain transfer. The two sides were merely temporary partners; when it came to fighting, Heifu still had to rely on his own "direct line" men.

At that moment, Heifu glanced at everyone's bowls—all contained the usual rice with fish stew. Only Dongmen Bao's plate was different, holding something very disgusting, like eyeballs, sticky after being cooked…

"What is this?" Heifu asked with a frown, disgusted just by looking at it.

"It's alligator eyes."

Ji Ying was the first to answer. "Abao heard from a relative that eating this can help one beget sons, so he asked some soldiers on the neighboring tower ship who had hunted a large alligator for a few."

Last year, when Dongmen Bao followed Heifu to the battlefield, his wife was pregnant again. Yet when he returned, he found she had given birth to yet another daughter. Thus, Dongmen Bao now had three thousand pieces of gold, as the saying goes. Ji Ying joked every day that whoever married his daughters would inherit the estate of Official Grandee Bao and make a huge fortune.

"What does it taste like?" Heifu asked him curiously.

Dongmen Bao raised his head with a look of utter despair. "A muddy taste. It turned to mush the moment it entered my mouth."

Heifu was speechless. He could only pat Dongmen Bao on the shoulder and offer him a single line.

"Heaven never fails a man who tries!"

…

The next day, the fleet officially entered Pengli Marsh.

Peng means vast; Li means gourd ladle. In other words, this low-lying lake region resembled a large gourd ladle, gathering the Great River, the Gan River, and other waterways into a single channel.

At first, the lake surface was calm and placid; the boats sailed upon it as if gliding across a bronze mirror.

But good weather comes quickly and goes just as fast. Not long after they set out, a sudden north wind swept across the lake. In an instant, the wind and clouds changed color, and terrifying waves battered the shores. Given the poor performance of boats and the crude navigation skills of this era, they dared not travel in foul weather and hastily docked at the nearby settlement of Xunyi (present-day Jiujiang), tying up their mooring lines.

A sudden shower and dark clouds drifted past, and by the next day, the sky cleared again. Heifu and his three thousand men just happened to be transferring onto the dozen or so boats managed by Zhao Tuo to continue their journey.

Once they sailed deep into the mouth of Pengli Marsh, looking out in all four directions, there was no boundary in sight. It was truly a case of "hoisting sail into a heavenly mirror." Compared to this vast expanse of water, the several hundred warships under Tu Sui's command looked like a school of tiny fish floating in the water.

Heifu now understood that Pengli Marsh was quite different from the later Poyang Lake. The main body of the lake lay north of the river, stretching long from east to west and short from north to south.

"Great Solitary Mountain is here," the old boatman piloting them announced loudly.

Heifu and the others were on the deck, enjoying the lake breeze, and indeed saw a mountain peak in the middle of the lake. Viewed from ten li away, surrounded by boundless, misty waters on all sides, a verdant peak rose abruptly and alone, soaring into the clouds, as if floating on the water's surface.

When they drew closer, they discovered that this solitary mountain had fissured rocks and all sorts of caves, grotesque in shape, with a glossy, lustrous color unlike other stones. There was also a massive boulder, detached from the main peak, towering majestically from the ground, over a hundred feet high, draped with red vines and green creepers, like a gem-studded screen.

Zhao Tuo nodded. "Indeed, it stands alone in the lake, the vast waters stretching endlessly around it."

Then he sighed to Heifu, "Had I not come on this southern journey, I would never have seen these wondrous sights."

It was clear that this young Qin official, slightly younger than Heifu, seemed to possess a curiosity and yearning for everything around him.

The lake and mountain scenery of Cloud Dream Marsh and Pengli Marsh were indeed wondrous sights for a man from Zhao. Heifu, however, silently mused to himself, "You'll probably go all the way to the shores of the Southern Sea in the future. When you stand by the tropical rainforest at the mouth of the Pearl River, gazing at the boundless ocean as waves crash onto the sand, I wonder what feelings you'll have then…"

By noon, they had reached a confluence of river and lake. Here, the waters were as distinct as the Jing and Wei rivers: the water of Pengli Marsh was murky, while the current flowing into the lake was exceptionally clear…

Zhao Tuo unfolded a map drawn by men Tu Sui had sent to scout the waterways and pointed to this spot. "This is the Lake Mouth. The Gan River, Fu River, Xin River, Rao River, and Xiu River all converge into the Southern River (Poyang Lake), and the Southern River enters Pengli Marsh from here."

Heifu suddenly understood. If one turned south here, one would enter what would later become Poyang Lake. But at present, Poyang Lake had not yet fully formed; there was only a narrow, north-south stretch of water called the "Southern River." Every spring, when the waters rose, it connected with Pengli Marsh to form a larger lake. Now, in autumn and winter, the waters receded, and most of the area was yellow reeds and white grasses, as open as flat wilderness.

The water of Pengli Marsh was very turbid. Whenever Heifu and his men needed to draw drinking water, they had to let it settle and clarify overnight before they could drink it. The water of the Southern River, however, was very clear—clear pools stretching far, green waves congealed and pure. Where it merged with Pengli Marsh, the boundary was as if drawn with a string and ruler, the two not mixing.

Looking at this place, Zhao Tuo seemed to have some thoughts. "The flow of many rivers pours north into Pengli Marsh, and the Lake Mouth is their gathering and discharge point. If a small town were established here to control and choke this waterway, then all passage in and out of the thousand-li territory of Yuzhang could be manipulated!"

"Zhao Tuo's eye is quite sharp."

Heifu glanced at the future King of Nanyue. He had at least studied geography and knew that Akalin Province was surrounded by mountains on its east, west, and south, making the route through Poyang Lake into the Yangtze the most convenient passage in and out.

So Heifu smiled. "Once we have captured the entire territory of Yuzhang, how about we establish a garrison post here?"

The boats traveled at a fair speed. Two shichen after passing the Lake Mouth, they were approaching their destination: the Chu settlement of Pengze on the southern shore of Pengli Marsh…

Gazing from afar, they saw that this settlement was a typical small waterside town. The city walls were two li from the water, and there was a small dock on the shore. Suddenly spotting a massive fleet appear on the water, the Chu people on the shore immediately fled at the sight, but before running, they did not forget to set fire to the wooden dock.

Watching the raging fire blaze on the dock, Heifu asked Zhao Tuo how they were supposed to moor without knowing the water depth near the shore in this situation.

"The Sima will have to reach the shore in small boats."

Zhao Tuo smiled indifferently. "Though I'm afraid we'll have to repair the dock shortly, or we'll have nowhere to moor."

Long boats, like centipedes with countless oars, were lowered onto the water. Each could hold fifty men. Fortunately, most of Heifu's soldiers had experience on boats and, following the chants of the Tower Ship troops, began rowing toward the shore.

Fortunately, the magistrate of Pengze did not have many garrison troops under him and dared not send men to stop them. As the oars rose and fell, dozens of long boats successfully landed.

The first group to land, Dongmen Bao's five hundred men, had already formed up in a square formation. The soldiers, holding shields and swords, watched the tightly shut gates of the small settlement warily. After Li Xian, Gong Ao, Anpu, Man, and Xiao Tao successively landed from the rear, they moved forward in sequence. In half a shichen, they formed a square formation of three thousand men on the shore. Then, as Heifu's army banner pointed forward, accompanied by the beating of waist drums, they marched toward the town with uniform steps!

On the walls of Pengze, people watched. Seeing the lake surface covered entirely with Qin warships, all with their stiff sails unfurled like a canopy of clouds blanketing the lake, stretching endlessly, they estimated the men aboard must number in the tens of thousands. The three thousand Wuben soldiers who had landed were in neat array, their aura fierce and menacing, seemingly just the vanguard of this great army. The watchers could not help but tremble in fear.

Heifu's soldiers halted their steps one li from the town. A thousand men were left in front to stand guard, while the rest went to fell trees or returned to the shore to fetch tents and other camp supplies. Heifu had assigned tasks to them the day before, so everything proceeded in perfect order.

Heifu had made up his mind. "Tu Sui won't put on a show of force for me for long; he'll leave soon. Therefore, we attack the town at dawn tomorrow. Within two days, we must take this town!"

His original plan was to play the fox borrowing the tiger's might, terrifying the town into submission to make it easier to attack. He had not expected that, as dusk approached and night was about to fall, before the camp fortifications outside the town were even finished, chaos suddenly erupted within the town as flames blazed high. Then, a white flag of surrender was swiftly raised on the walls, and the people above shouted that they wished to surrender to the Qin army, even saying they would send someone out to negotiate the terms of surrender…

Heifu's subordinates looked at each other, unable to help recalling the Battle of Tongyang that had brought them fame and success.

"Could it be a feigned surrender!" The five-hundred-man commanders were somewhat worried. Night was about to fall; if the army entered the town now, what if they fell into an ambush?

"Whether it's real or fake, we'll know once the surrender party comes out of the town."

Heifu was not at all intimidated. He sat down on the mat and sent Ji Ying to call out, telling the city to send someone out quickly.

Before long, a scholar-official around thirty years old was lowered by rope down the city wall, which was less than two zhang high, and was escorted by Gong Ao before Heifu.

From ten paces away, the scholar-official raised high the blood-dripping head in his hand and said:

"Xu Shu and the Xu clan of Pengze have slain the Lord of Pengze, and respectfully welcome the Great Qin King's army!"

(End of Chapter)