Chapter 308: Against the Current

In late February, the Gan River surged northward, while two thousand Qin soldiers traveled south against the current.

Heifu sat on horseback by the riverbank, watching the column stretch endlessly into the distance, and couldn't help but exhale deeply.

This was the most arduous long-distance journey he had undertaken in either of his two lives.

In later ages, driving from northern Jiangxi to the south would take only six or seven hours.

But in this era, it required at least a month of travel — not only because the route spanned over a thousand li, but because within that thousand-li stretch, there were no cities, and even villages and hamlets were exceedingly rare.

Nor were there any level roads for the army to march on. The Qin troops trudged along narrow footpaths trampled by men and beasts, sometimes forced to hack through trees and brambles just to advance. Heifu had specifically assigned Gong Ao to lead five hundred men at the front to cut trees and clear the way, which was why the distance covered each day was never great...

"The distance between north and south is so vast — how did Chu manage to rule Upper Gan?" One day, weary from the march, Heifu asked his advisor Xu Shu.

Upper Gan referred to the upper reaches of the Gan River. Chu had enfeoffed a district lord there, who reportedly communicated with Shouchun only once a year.

Xu Shu smiled and said, "I have heard that when King Dao of Chu reigned, he appointed Wu Qi as Prime Minister. Wu Qi believed that what Jing possessed in excess was land, and what it lacked was people. He therefore relocated the nobility from Chu's inner commanderies to the vast, empty lands south of the Yangtze. This gave rise to numerous enfeoffed lords, and the Lord of Upper Gan was the one enfeoffed farthest away."

These Jiangnan enfeoffed lords were stationed at remote frontiers, and the cost of traveling back and forth was too high. The King of Chu did not even bother to collect taxes from them; an occasional delivery of local exotic specialties as tribute sufficed. Thus the Lord of Upper Gan, the Lord of Poyang, and others enjoyed a high degree of independence. It was precisely thanks to this fief system that Chu was able to spread its territory so far and wide.

Xu Shu said that the Lord of Upper Gan had no more than five hundred soldiers under his command, so Heifu was not the least bit worried about battle. Compared to the weak enfeoffed lord ahead, the endless road and the increasingly sweltering weather were their greatest enemies.

Just then, a stir rippled through the marching column. Ji Ying came over wiping sweat and reported that several more soldiers had collapsed from heatstroke...

"Give them lightly salted water to drink, and have their comrades carry them forward on stretchers. Gong Ao sent word back that we must march another ten li before there's suitable ground to set up camp."

During the month they had been stationed at Poyang, Heifu had requisitioned a good deal of supplies from Jiujiang Commandery — one item being salt. Zhao Tuo had shipped a large boatload of salt to Pengze, then used mules and horses to carry it to the expeditionary force. Heifu had the salt dissolved in water and distributed to every man, so that when the army marched under the blazing sun, they would not collapse from heatstroke due to excessive sweating and salt deficiency.

Even so, every day around ten men fell. They took along as many as they could, but for those truly unable to walk any farther, Heifu could only leave them behind to establish outposts and await the army's return.

As the sun gradually sank westward, they finally reached the campsite. It was an open stretch of ground by the water, surrounded on all sides by dense green jungle. Ancient trees hung with tough, gnarled old vines, and beast roars and bird calls rang out from time to time — rhinoceroses and elephants might well be inside.

Heifu ordered everyone to set up camp at once. Although the scorching day was about to end, the night held no appeal for the soldiers either, because the biting insects would make their lives unbearable. The mosquitoes of southern Gan were truly huge and their bites fiercely painful, and all manner of beetles crawled out of the earth and skittered everywhere. Heifu's most perilous moment came when he woke to find a brightly patterned snake on his camp bed...

The Yue man whom Wu Rui had sent to guide them examined the snake's corpse and said it was a highly venomous serpent — one bite would certainly be fatal.

Heifu shuddered at the thought, but the Yue man was delighted. He asked for the snake, skinned it, and roasted it to eat. The Yue diet was richly varied; snakes, insects, rodents, and ants could all be considered delicacies.

Just as Heifu was having his personal guards check the undergrowth around his tent, Xiao Tao approached and said gravely, "Commander... in the forest, someone is watching us!"

"Where?"

Xiao Tao led Heifu to the edge of the camp and pointed toward the woods a little over a hundred paces away. There were indeed several human silhouettes in the trees.

Heifu immediately grew alert. Over the past month, they had already suffered several attacks, all from Yangyue tribes along the Gan River.

Compared to the Ganyue, the Yangyue were more primitive and uncivilized, and astonishingly bold. At times, when the Qin army passed by their settlements, bands of Yangyue would emerge, whooping and hollering in an attempt to block their advance. On one occasion, several hundred Yangyue, brandishing crude weapons and howling loudly, had even attacked Heifu's path-clearing unit.

The Qin army did not hold back. Every Yue tribe that displayed hostility was wiped out along the way, and their grain stores plundered clean. After they entered the middle reaches of the Gan River, such incidents became rare.

Heifu therefore assumed that those spying on the Qin army from the forest were scattered Yue individuals. He ordered Dongmen Bao to take a hundred or so men to investigate and drive them off.

Dongmen Bao and his men were gone for half a shichen. When dusk fell and wisps of cooking smoke rose from the earthen stoves, the group returned, clamoring outside the tent for Heifu to come out and see what they had caught.

"So the ones spying on the camp weren't Yue people, but some long-haired freaks!" Dongmen Bao was brimming with excitement.

"Freaks?" Heifu found this odd. He set aside the southern expedition diary he was writing and went out with him.

"Those freaks had black bodies covered in hair, enormous frames, and boundless strength. It cost two men their lives to kill them and bring them back."

A crowd of soldiers had already gathered in front of Heifu's tent, all clicking their tongues in wonder. Seeing the Commander approach, they parted to make way.

When Heifu stepped forward and looked, he burst out laughing.

The thing lying on the ground was covered all over in long black hair, but its face was hairless. In death, its mouth gaped wide, revealing sharp canine teeth. Its shoulders were broad and rounded, and its neck and all four limbs were extraordinarily thick and stout...

What freaks? These were clearly orangutans!

And extraordinarily large ones at that — their frames were nearly two meters tall...

At that moment, Xu Shu and the Ganyue guide leading their way also came over. Upon seeing them, Xu Shu exclaimed in surprise, "Aren't these the Gan Giants?"

"Gan Giants?" That name was certainly novel.

Xu Shu explained, "Commander, the Gan River originates in Upper Gan, and that region has many Gan Giants. They have human faces, long arms, black bodies covered in hair. It is because these creatures exist there that the river was named after them..."

Heifu suddenly understood — so that was the original meaning of "Gan"? Still, he had never imagined that in Jiangxi two thousand years ago, there were close relatives of the great apes. They must have gradually gone extinct in later ages.

This little interlude soon passed. Dongmen Bao tried skinning the "Gan Giant" and cooking its meat, and even brought Heifu a bowl, but Heifu refused. He would rather eat domestic livestock than strange and exotic wild game — what if he caught some disease?

He made a round of the camp, and once he saw that the soldiers were all settled in, he returned to his own tent. By the light of the oil lamp that was a Commander's privilege, he added the matter of the Gan Giants to his campaign diary...

Setting down his brush, Heifu grew troubled. Days of marching through the jungle had severely drained the soldiers' stamina, and the weather grew hotter by the day. If they were still in southern Gan after summer set in, the sweltering climate and the diseases that came with it would cause massive attrition.

"Before summer arrives, this campaign must end!"

Fortunately, the Lord of Upper Gan was most accommodating toward Heifu. When the Qin army, after a grueling month and a half of trekking, reached the small town of Upper Gan in mid-March, it had already become an empty city.

"The Lord of Upper Gan learned from Yue people traveling north that the General was coming with a punitive army, so he took the townspeople and fled south."

The few who remained, unwilling to leave this place, had hidden themselves. After being captured by the Qin troops, they told Heifu exactly this in an exceedingly difficult local dialect.

"Fled?"

Heifu's subordinates looked at one another. In everyone's view, Upper Gan was already the edge of the world — where else could the Lord of Upper Gan possibly flee to?

Xu Shu warned Heifu, "A hundred li south of Upper Gan, there is still a fortress called Limen Pass. That is Chu's true southernmost border!"

And so, after resting and regrouping for several days in the city of Upper Gan, Heifu had no choice but to take half his troops and personally hurry to Limen Pass.

Limen Pass was located in the Dayu Range of later times. The terrain was rugged and treacherous — over ten li of mountain ridge, with only a single narrow stone path winding upward.

When they arrived panting at this small stone fortification, which could only be called a "checkpoint," Heifu, just as at Upper Gan, saw not a single soul. The King of Chu was dead, the realm of Chu already lost. Those Chu people unwilling to be ruled by Qin knew they could not resist and had abandoned even this place.

Heifu climbed to the top of the two-zhang-high fortification, which was also the highest point of the Dayu Range. Gazing southward, he saw only tropical rainforest even more ancient and dense than the forests they had traversed along the way. Towering trees, tangled lianas, and lush flowers and grasses wove together into one green labyrinth after another — an endless sea of forest, both awe-inspiring and terrifying.

"Where else can they flee to?" Heifu looked at Xu Shu.

Xu Shu had not expected Chu's last enfeoffed lord to be so adept at running. He cupped his hands and said, "South of Limen is no longer Chu territory, but the lands of the various Nanyue tribes..."

"It is said that on the shores of the Southern Sea, there is a small town called Chu Court, a place where Chu merchants trade with the Nanyue people for rhinoceros horn, elephant tusks, jadeite, pearls, and gemstones. The Lord of Upper Gan may be fleeing there."

That was it — Heifu understood clearly. South of this pass and this range lay Guangdong.

The Lord of Upper Gan could flee to Chu Court, but Heifu did not intend to pursue him. His southern expedition ended here.

At that moment, Ji Ying, who had been scouting the other side of the pass, shouted out, "Commander, there are characters here!"

After Heifu and the others reached the other side of the pass, they discovered that on the black pass wall, words in the Chu state's bird-and-insect script had indeed been written in dark red blood.

The Qin soldiers could not read it, but after campaigning in Chu for so long and dealing with Chu bamboo slips so often, Heifu could roughly guess the meaning.

This was a saying that had become extremely popular throughout Chu lands ever since Chu's destruction became a foregone conclusion, reportedly spoken by a lofty scholar of Chu named Nangong.

North of the Huai, south of the Huai, in the E region, in Jiangdong — the remnant people of Chu whisper it, shout it with raised arms, and silently recite it in their hearts.

And now, Heifu saw it once more.

It was like an unwilling curse.

And also like a mysterious prophecy.

Heifu shook his head and read it aloud.

"Though Chu be but three households, the one to destroy Qin shall surely be Chu?"

……

PS: Busy watching the match, a bit late, sorry. Congrats to RNG, congrats to Uzi! Normal updates resume tomorrow. Currently owe about ten chapters, will put the catch-up updates on the schedule.

PS: *Classic of Mountains and Seas*, Scroll 18, "Classic of Regions Within the Seas": "In the south there are the Gan Giants, with human faces and long arms, black bodies covered in hair, heels facing backward; they laugh when they see people laugh."

(End of chapter)