Chapter 302: Adding One More Person

It was a pity that Heifu's grasp of history was only average. Apart from having heard the name Zhao Tuo, he actually knew nothing of the deeds of the other two men, and so missed a chance to feel smugly pleased with himself.

He merely regarded Gong Ao as a subordinate with a bit of courage and tactical sense, a man who wore a sour face toward others but was utterly obedient to him.

Wu Rui, meanwhile, was a chieftain of the Gan Yue who could be either foe or friend.

"If he welcomes the royal army, he is a friend; if he harbors disloyal thoughts, he is a foe — and can be killed!"

This was the advice Li Xian had given Heifu after hurrying back a few days earlier. Heifu had sent Li Xian and Xu Shu together precisely so that the most intelligent and meticulous men under his command could carefully observe the Yue people of Yugan.

After making a circuit of Yugan City, Li Xian discovered that it could not be compared to the small Yue tribes they had seen along the way, who "have no walled towns or village wards, but dwell among streams and valleys, within bamboo groves." Wu Shen was a Chu man from Jiangdong, cultured and knowledgeable. Embraced by the Yugan Yue, he had built walled towns, annexed several neighboring tribes, and now commanded a population of nearly ten thousand, with two thousand able-bodied young men, controlling a territory a hundred li in radius along the lower reaches of the Yugan River.

Li Xian kept his composure, but inwardly he was somewhat alarmed, feeling that their side had underestimated Yugan. After returning to Heifu, he laid out what he had observed and said:

"I saw that Yugan profits from copper and tin, and has cast a great many weapons. Nearly every able-bodied man owns a bronze sword. Though they are not as sharp as Qin blades, they are enough to make them look down on all the other Yue."

"Although Wu Shen is advanced in years, his son Wu Rui is very young and also well-liked by the Yue people. Hearing of the Qin army's arrival, he showed considerable arrogance and disdain. For now, pressured by circumstances, he has agreed to help the Sima attack the Chu forces, but when commanderies and counties are established here in the future, newly arrived officials will likely find them hard to tame. Yugan may seize the moment to unify the Gan Yue, and by then it will be too late to deal with them…"

Li Xian found Wu Rui disagreeable in every way and believed that Yugan would sooner or later become a local hegemon in northern Yuzhang, so he offered Heifu a ruthless stratagem.

"Why not plant hidden assassins to kill Wu Rui when he enters the camp tent, then send out all our troops to annihilate these one thousand able-bodied Gan Yue warriors? Pile their bodies into a victory mound on the banks of the Gan River, and thereby establish the Qin army's fearsome prestige in Yuzhang. Then incite the various Gan Yue tribes to attack Yugan: whoever can kill Wu Shen shall possess his walled town and its people. In this way, the Wu clan can be wiped out. Afterwards, the Sima can casually prop up some chieftain, keeping the Gan Yue tribes divided and at each other's throats…"

But after pondering it again and again, Heifu rejected this proposal.

"This plan might settle things once and for all and eliminate a decade of future trouble, but it does nothing to help me seize all of Yuzhang right now."

Li Xian's farsightedness was a good thing, but the urgent task at hand was to destroy the Chu enfeoffed lords, not to make enemies of the Yue. If Wu Shen of Yugan, seeking revenge for his slain son, threw his support behind the Lord of Poyang, then even if they wiped out both forces, the casualties among the Nan Commandery troops would likely be severe.

Besides, although Li Xian had discerned the hidden danger of Yugan growing powerful, he did not know that in a few more years, the First Emperor of Qin would launch a vast military campaign, deploying five hundred thousand men to conquer the Hundred Yue in the south — a campaign rivaling the destruction of Chu in scale. Tu Sui and Zhao Tuo would both be among the expeditionary forces. Although the main military objective was the Min and Yue regions, Jiangxi would also become a gathering point for the great army's provisions and fodder.

If the Wu clan of Yugan harbored disloyalty then, wiping them out would be a matter of a single word from him, a single letter. Why make an enemy of them now?

All of Heifu's current actions still took "bringing the lads from home back safe" as their starting point, not helping the First Emperor root out local strongmen ahead of time.

If history proved hard to alter, then in another dozen or so years, the entire land east of the mountains would be plunged into chaos; this remote corner would hardly matter…

And so, Li Xian's plan of "hiding axemen behind the screen" was replaced by the current display of troops arrayed before the tent. Heifu intended to use the Qin army's martial bearing and the might of its armored soldiers and towered warships to overawe this unsophisticated Yue chieftain, making him know his own measure.

But the men outside, like Dongmen Bao, were no mere decorations. The moment Heifu threw the tally in his hand to the ground, they could charge in at any time.

Fortunately, Wu Rui was shaken by the array of Qin ships. The dismissiveness in his heart was replaced by awe, and he obediently bowed to Heifu. He had no idea that this attitude had just let him narrowly brush past a bloody calamity.

Heifu laughed heartily, walked over, and helped Wu Rui up, putting on a look of great delight as he praised him: "With such a stalwart warrior to aid me, why worry that Poyang will not fall?"

His first impression was that Wu Rui was a simple-minded second-generation chieftain, but in the conversation that followed, this young man revealed the carefulness and cunning he had inherited from his father…

…

"Over the past ten years, Chu people have kept coming to this land. The Lord of Poyang has stolen quite a bit of territory from Yugan — all of it the ancestral lands of the Yue. If the Yue help the Qin army break Poyang, I hope the General can return those places to Yugan…"

Wu Shen had changed his attire and customs and had Wu Rui dress as a Yue man, but he still taught him the Chu tongue. Though a lack of practice partners in daily life made him somewhat inarticulate and mixed in a great many Gan Yue words, Heifu still understood his bargaining.

"I have heard that the Yue have no walled towns or village wards, but dwell among streams and valleys, within bamboo groves. I did not expect them to have the concept of ancestral lands as well?" Heifu voiced his doubt.

"Yugan is different. It has walled towns, and has begun to settle in one place, no longer migrating."

Wu Rui had his own set of arguments: "It is a Yue custom that when a tribe's brave warriors or chieftains die, they are buried in coffins in caves or on cliffs along the rivers, and sacrifices are made along the water every year. Most of the Yue people in Yugan migrated here from the Fan River and the Daxi River, so their ancestral lands are in that area. In past years, many of the tribes under our rule begged my father to go to war with the Lord of Poyang to reclaim those ancestral lands."

He bowed to Heifu: "I hope the General can hand the lands south of the Fan River over to Yugan, so that the Yue of Yugan can go there to clear land by fire for farming, hunt and fish, and perform sacrifices at their ancestors' cliff coffins."

Heifu did not rashly agree. He first glanced at Xu Shu, who was seated to the side.

Among the men in the tent, Zhao Tuo commanded the tower-ship marines and was versed in rivers and waterways. Dongmen Bao and Gong Ao were fierce generals. The only ones who could offer Heifu strategies and counsel were Li Xian and Xu Shu. Of the two, Li Xian favored swift, ruthless plans, while Xu Shu inclined toward broader stratagems and, being a local, was familiar with the mountains and rivers of Yuzhang.

Xu Shu rose and whispered in Heifu's ear: "South of the Daxi River, there is mostly mountain forest and wildland, difficult to clear for farming; you may grant it. Between the Fan River and the Daxi River, however, there are already many cultivated fields, where several hundred households of Chu people farm. There is also a gold mine that produces gold all year round, called the Gold Harvest — it is the Lord of Poyang's most important source of wealth. You must keep it firmly in the Sima's hands; under no circumstances should you give it away…"

At the word "gold," Heifu's heart stirred greatly. Campaigning far from home, even with merit, it was hard to receive timely rewards from Xianyang or Nan Commandery. Whether grain or coin and silk, he had to rely on himself for the time being. If he could control that gold mine during the war, it would be of immense benefit to him.

In a sparsely populated frontier like Jiangxi, struggles over land mainly centered on vital resources like gold, silver, copper, and tin. Thus, in his bargaining with Wu Rui, Heifu held this bottom line to the death. Seeing that Heifu would not yield, Wu Rui did not press the point.

Finally, Wu Rui inquired about the treatment he and his father would receive after the war, when Qin established commanderies and counties in the region, as well as the taxes and levies Yugan would have to pay.

Qin had tax concessions for minority regions that had difficulty delivering grain or copper coin.

For instance, in the Yi Circuit that Heifu had visited, Qin law stipulated that the chieftains of the Ba tribes pay an annual rent of 2,016 coins, and a poll tax of 1,800 coins every three years. Their commoner households each paid eight zhang and two chi of coarse Dong cloth and thirty plumes of chicken feathers.

For the Gan Yue here, what would likely be collected were local specialties like copper, tin, bamboo, timber, and hides — not much more than what the Chu had collected.

At present, the premise for all of this was that Xianyang's policies remained unchanged.

Only after inquiring about each point in detail did Wu Rui breathe a sigh of relief and break into a smile: "So that is how it is. I have no more doubts."

Though this young man had an impulsive-looking face, he was exceedingly meticulous when it came to concrete matters. Heifu could not help recalling Li Xian's warning about him: with a chieftain like this, Yugan truly did have a chance to grow strong and become a local hegemon in the future…

Just as he was weighing whether to plant a few landmines for Yugan, Wu Rui suddenly rose and made a request of Heifu.

"Might we, according to the customs of the Gan Yue, let me drink chicken blood with the General to form a covenant and swear brotherhood? Only thus can Qin and Yue truly trust one another!"

This was a Yue custom, but as soon as Heifu heard "drink chicken blood," he recalled a revolutionary tale he had heard in later ages.

"In later times, there was Liu Bocheng and Little Yedan swearing brotherhood at Yihai; now, will there be Heifu and Wu Rui swearing brotherhood by the Gan River?"

He hesitated a little: "I had originally thought that in a dozen or so years, I might latch onto that pair of fair-weather brothers, Liu Bang and Xiang Yu, and stage a Peach Garden Oath. But if I refuse now, the Yue might take it as an insult…"

And so Heifu weighed the pros and cons, slapped the table, and rose, readily agreeing. But at the same time, he said: "However, I wish to invite one more person to join us in swearing brotherhood."

"Oh?" Wu Rui was a bit surprised, but he also said: "If he is a brave warrior, there is naturally no objection."

The men in the tent looked at one another, unsure what Heifu was up to. At the same time, each felt a flutter in his heart, and they all, without prior agreement, thought that the person Heifu wanted to add might be themselves.

Yet Heifu pointed to a man none of them had considered.

Heifu looked at Zhao Tuo, the future King of Nanyue, his smile brimming: "Commander of Five Hundred Zhao, though you and I have known each other for barely two months, our words have found common ground. I admire your insight and wish to deepen our friendship, but I always felt that any sudden intimacy would be presumptuous on my part. Would you be willing to seize this chance and swear an oath together with me?"

Zhao Tuo, who had yet to rise to prominence, was first dumbstruck, and then overwhelmed by the unexpected honor!

He did not know that Heifu was a man who never loosed his hawk until he saw the hare…

(End of chapter)