Chapter 404: History Swerved Around a Bend

Under the Qin system, commanderies that produced abundant iron established Iron Offices to oversee smelting and casting, while those without iron production set up Minor Iron Offices.

Beidi Commandery originally had only a Minor Iron Office and no government-operated iron mines, but with the discovery of the Yiju iron deposit in Niyang County, Heifu proposed establishing an Iron Office here to mine, smelt, and cast weapons on the spot.

This proposal was approved by the Chancellor's Office and the Privy Treasury, which then dispatched Privy Treasury clerk Zhang Ping, along with several hundred artisans and over a thousand convict laborers, to assist Heifu.

In the last ten days of the fifth month of the twenty-eighth year of Qin Shi Huang (the fifth month of the lunar calendar), Zhang Ping arrived at Yiqu County and met with Heifu.

Zhang Ping was Zhang Han's younger brother, the same age as Heifu—in fact, even a few months older—but back in Xianyang, Zhang Han had instructed Zhang Ping to treat Heifu as an elder brother, and had brought him to Heifu's residence for banquets several times, so the two were well acquainted.

After exchanging pleasantries, Zhang Ping told Heifu two major pieces of news.

First, construction on the palaces within the Pass had been temporarily halted, and Zhang Han had been ordered to Shang Commandery to oversee a massive new project: the Direct Road!

This had happened half a year ago, and Heifu already knew of it; what Zhang Ping told him was that the first phase of the Direct Road had been successfully completed.

Zhang Ping said, "There was already a road from Xianyang to Fushi, but from Fushi to Yunzhong, the territory formerly belonged to Qin and Zhao separately, and the roads were not connected. Over ten years ago, after Yunzhong submitted to Qin, a small path was opened, but travel by cart and horse between the two places was extremely inconvenient. Therefore, His Majesty sent my elder brother to Fushi with one hundred thousand garrison soldiers and convict laborers to use the military road beneath the Great Wall from King Zhao of Qin's time, widen the roadbed, cut through mountains, fill in valleys, and build the road northward."

"His Majesty and the Privy Treasury pressed hard, so my elder brother could only order the men to work day and night. It was completed in half a year. From Fushi to Beihe, seven to eight hundred li, a full two thousand convict laborers were worked to death..."

This was only the beginning of the Direct Road's colossal project. The road Zhang Han had completed was merely a narrow path allowing two horses abreast, far from the standard Qin Shi Huang expected. It would likely require even greater manpower and resources to continue widening it, transforming it from a county-level road into a "highway" for the rapid deployment of troops and generals in the future.

Heifu understood Qin Shi Huang's intent in doing this: "In any case, Shang Commandery and Yunzhong are the main battlefields against the Xiongnu, while Beidi, where I command the troops, and Longxi, where Li Xin is stationed, are merely the flanks..."

One could say that the day the Direct Road is fully open to traffic will be the day the Qin Dynasty launches its military campaign against the Xiongnu!

The four commanderies, with their four Governors and four Commandants, were generally in a cooperative relationship, but behind the scenes, there was also competition. Who wouldn't want to demonstrate their abilities before the Emperor in this war?

Therefore, while urging Beidi to prepare for war, Heifu was also keeping an eye on the movements of the other three commanderies.

Zhang Ping then told Heifu the second major piece of news:

"His Majesty has canceled this year's eastern inspection tour and changed it to a northern tour. When I left for Beidi Commandery, the imperial carriage had already departed east from Ba Bridge, planning to cross the river at Puban and head to Hedong and Taiyuan!"

Zhang Ping launched into a torrent of words about the chaotic battles in the Xianyang court at the start of spring over where the Emperor's next inspection tour should go. Heifu listened with keen interest; it seemed he had missed quite a few good shows while away from Xianyang. Although Neishi Teng had mentioned it in letters, they were not nearly as detailed as Zhang Ping's account.

Zhang Ping said, "Erudite Zhou Qingchen advised that in former times, Qin's territory was barely a thousand li, but relying on His Majesty's divine brilliance and sagely wisdom, the realm was pacified. The feudal lords were replaced with commanderies and counties, everyone lives in peace and contentment, free from the calamity of war, a legacy to be passed down for ten thousand generations—since high antiquity, none have matched His Majesty's majesty and virtue. Since antiquity, what sovereign who received the Mandate of Heaven has not performed the Feng and Shan sacrifices? His Majesty should tour the commanderies and counties eastward, perform the Feng sacrifice at Mount Tai and the Shan sacrifice at Mount Liangfu..."

How could Heifu not understand the Confucian scholars' intentions? The Feng and Shan sacrifices were generally believed to originate with Shun and Yu, though some said they came from Fuxi. But after Shun and Yu, no one had performed them again. Duke Huan of Qi had once entertained the idea, but was dissuaded by Guan Zhong.

No one was more zealous about the Feng and Shan sacrifices than the Confucians, for they were masters of ritual. They were most proficient in these ancient rites and music, and moreover, Mount Tai and Mount Liangfu were both in the Lu region east of the Pass—the Confucian stronghold.

His urging Qin Shi Huang to perform the Feng and Shan sacrifices was essentially a disguised way of peddling the Confucian theory of "the sovereign receives the Mandate and performs Feng and Shan." As long as the Emperor accepted it, the Confucians would gain a firm foothold in the state's great affair of "sacrifice."

The Erudites and Confucian scholars all supported the Feng and Shan sacrifices, with the most active being "Erudite-in-Waiting" Shusun Tong, whom Heifu knew.

The Qin Shi Huang of the past, who believed his virtue surpassed the Three Sovereigns and his achievements covered the Five Emperors, would certainly have done this thing that greatly satisfied his vanity. But what the Confucian Erudites did not expect was that Qin Shi Huang rejected this proposal...

"Though We have unified the realm, We have yet to expel the barbarians and extend the territory to the wild borderlands. To perform the Feng and Shan sacrifices now? It is still too early."

"When all that the sun and moon shine upon is the land of Great Qin, and the barbarians, Rong, and Di all come to submit, then We shall perform the Feng and Shan sacrifices without delay!"

And so the matter of the Feng and Shan sacrifices had to be dropped.

"Next were the fangshi of Yan and Qi, who also strongly urged His Majesty to tour east."

The fangshi of Yan and Qi were a group recruited to Xianyang after Qin's unification, including Lu Sheng, Han Zhong, Hou Sheng, and others. The famously notorious Xu Fu had not yet arrived.

They saw that Qin Shi Huang was obsessed with the art of immortality and firmly believed in fate, so they catered to his desires. Ideas like "modeling Xianyang Palace after the Purple Tenuity Star and the Wei River after the Milky Way" were their handiwork—grand constructions that exhausted the people and drained the treasury, yet served no future purpose. Historically, with a single great fire set by Xiang Yu, all of it would turn to ashes.

Heifu did not directly step forward to argue with them, because he knew that although this group consisted of strange, deceitful, and opportunistic men, they did possess some inexplicable and unfathomable abilities, akin to stage magic, making it easy to fool people. Crucially, the Emperor believed in this sort of thing...

His method was to incite Qin's traditional shamans, urging these native spirit mediums, who had declined almost to extinction, to step forward and lobby Qin Shi Huang with tales of the Queen Mother of the West and the Kunlun Ruins.

These legends were backed by the detailed stories in the "Biography of King Mu, Son of Heaven." Compared to the immortal mountains of the Eastern Sea touted by the fangshi, they sounded more genuine. Although the fangshi swore that King Zhao of Yan had been there, King Zhao of Yan did not enjoy the longevity of King Mu of Zhou, so that lacked persuasive power.

Thus, Qin Shi Huang now leaned toward first expanding the territory and incidentally searching for the Queen Mother of the West; his interest in the immortal mountains of the Eastern Sea had greatly diminished.

Seeing the Emperor shower great amounts of gold on the old shaman Ya instead of them, how could the fangshi be willing to accept this? They put their heads together and concluded that this was because the Emperor had toured west and seen the western scenery. They believed that if the Emperor went east and saw the boundless sea at Zhifu and Langya, he would surely change his mind and once again develop ideas about the immortal islands overseas.

So the fangshi spoke with honeyed tongues. Han Zhong, skilled in "observing qi," even claimed that recently, golden light had been radiating everywhere from the Si River, possibly because the great cauldron lost when King Yan of Song's state was destroyed had reappeared in the world...

But even so, it failed to shake the Emperor's yearning for the Queen Mother of the West, and he resolved to postpone the eastern tour of the seashore.

Although the eastern tour was canceled, the Emperor was not a man who could sit idle. Coincidentally, the road from Yunzhong to Fushi was now open. Since he planned to launch a campaign against the Xiongnu once the Direct Road was completed the following year, out of concern for national policy, the Emperor naturally wanted to make a journey north to see Taiyuan, Yanmen, Yunzhong, and Shang Commandery—places he had never set foot in.

This was something Heifu had not anticipated. Historically, in this year, Qin Shi Huang had indeed gone east, touring the commanderies and counties eastward, ascending Mount Tai to perform the Feng and Shan sacrifices, gazing out at the immortal islands overseas from the shore, searching for the lost Zhou cauldrons in the Si River, then going to Dongting in Nan Commandery to throw a tantrum and cut down all the trees on Xiang Mountain... Right, and he was also supposedly ambushed by a certain restorationist at Bolangsha? (This happened in the twenty-ninth year; Heifu remembered incorrectly.)

But now, all of the above historical events were gone! Or postponed, because Qin Shi Huang had changed his itinerary!

History had slammed on the brakes right in front of Heifu, then abruptly swerved around a bend. Although the general direction remained unchanged, the scenery along the road would likely be vastly different from before!

"The butterfly effect... In that case, will my foreknowledge of historical events as a transmigrator be greatly discounted?"

Just as Heifu was pondering the pros and cons of this matter for himself, Chen Ping and his party had already left the foothills of the Helan Mountains. After over a month of trekking, they traveled along the eastern side of the great river flowing north, passing through the lands of the White Sheep and Loufan.

In Chen Ping's eyes, the scenery within these several hundred li had once again undergone a tremendous transformation. The lush green grasslands of Helan gradually gave way to dried-up marshes and rocky flats overgrown with artemisia. Finally, at the great bend of the river, a stretch of rolling sand dunes appeared, the yellow sand shifting slowly as fierce winds blew...

"Is this the 'Shifting Sands' that the people of the Central Plains speak of with such dread?"

As a man from the interior, Chen Ping had never seen a desert before, and he could not help but marvel.

As night was about to fall, the travelers made camp at the edge of the desert, dug stoves to cook, and lit the dried cow dung and poplar branches they carried, sending up a solitary column of cooking smoke. Nearby, the surging great river roared and frothed, while in the west, the blood-red afterglow slowly sank. The entire world seemed to possess a vast and rugged beauty.

Chen Ping could not help but sigh, "Had I not earnestly begged the Commandant to let me accompany him, I, Chen Ping, might never have known in this life whether I could witness such a sight."

Faced with this scene, Chen Ping felt he had something to say, yet could not find the right words.

Had Heifu been here, he would surely have recited a line—"A solitary column of smoke rises straight over the vast desert, the round sun sets upon the long river"—to make Chen Ping beat the rhythm in praise.

Unfortunately, he was not here.

Wushi Yan could understand Chen Ping's mood. The first time he had followed his elder brother and seen the desert beyond the frontier, he too had stood in place, marveling at the wonder of heaven and earth's creation.

He walked to Chen Ping's side and pointed at the boundless desert. "Kujie Sand—this stretch of shifting sands is called Kujie Sand by the Xiongnu. It means 'the string on a bow,' because it lies at the great bend of the river, stretching continuously from east to west, beginning and ending with the river, just like a string hung upon the bow of the long river!"

"And the people of the Central Plains call this region: Shuofang!"

(End of Chapter)