Chapter 456: The Many Xia Are Kin and Dear

"This matter is acceptable!"

Fusu was still deliberating, but Meng Yi spoke first.

The Meng clan had served as Qin generals for three generations — Meng Ao and Meng Wu had both done similar things. Though the number they killed was but a fraction of Bai Qi's tally, the Meng clan had long grown accustomed to the Qin army's custom of killing captives.

While this matter would draw criticism from some civil officials at court, it was of tangible benefit to the soldiers. The Qin army awarded merit by severed heads; a general who regarded his troops as his own children would not hesitate to cut off the heads of enemy prisoners, earning them an extra rank of nobility and a hundred mu of land.

Once done, the benefits were so immense and the potential punishment so trivial that ever since Shang Yang's reforms, the practice had clung to the Qin army like a maggot to bone.

After Bai Qi, before taking his own life, declared, "At Changping, several hundred thousand Zhao soldiers surrendered; I deceived them and buried them all alive — this is enough to warrant death," the killing of captives abated considerably, yet small-scale incidents remained common everywhere.

Thus, killing seven thousand Xiongnu barbarians was truly no great matter.

Meng Yi having stated his position, Heifu turned his gaze to Fusu and said with a smile:

"Young master, what do you think?"

Fusu still hesitated. Only after Heifu pressed him twice did he reply: "Before coming beyond the frontier, I read the ancient military treatises. The Methods of Sima states: When attacking a state that has abandoned the Way, when entering the land of the guilty, do not desecrate the sacred altars, do not hunt for sport, do not destroy earthworks, do not burn houses and walls, do not fell trees, do not seize the six domestic animals, grain, or implements. When encountering the old and young, escort them home and do them no harm. Even when meeting able-bodied men, if they do not resist, do not treat them as enemies; if an enemy is wounded, tend to him with medicine and return him."

"Previously, my imperial father raised a righteous army to punish the cruel and villainous, to extinguish the six kingdoms. Therefore, killing captives or civilians among the people of the six kingdoms was truly something that should not have been done."

In his words, he deeply condemned the vile habit of Qin's various generals of killing captives after every engagement, and he believed this was a major reason why, though the six kingdoms had been annexed by Qin, their people still remained estranged and disloyal at heart!

"Thus, in wars among the Many Xia, this principle should be followed. Otherwise, wanton slaughter will make sworn enemies of one another, and then the so-called Great Unity Under Heaven, the merging of the seven kingdoms into one, becomes empty words. However..."

Young Master Fusu raised his head, his resolve set:

"However, this principle applies only to civil wars among the Many Xia. War against the barbarians is different!"

"Oh?" Heifu said. "How is it different?"

Fusu replied: "In ancient times, when Yu attacked the Youmiao, when Shang attacked the Di and Qiang, when Zhou attacked the Xianyun, when Duke Mu attacked the Rong states — all had rites of presenting captives and severing ears, for these people were fierce, untamed, and difficult to reform, no different from beasts! Now, with Commandants Wei and Li as the commanding generals, isolated beyond the frontier, they cannot escort captives back to the capital for His Majesty's judgment and can only act according to expediency."

"If the General deems killing them appropriate, then this matter is not impermissible!"

Though Fusu felt some personal revulsion toward the act of killing captives, he had at least agreed to it.

"Presenting captives and severing ears..."

Heifu nodded. Being well-read did have its uses — Fusu had found a fine pretext for killing captives.

It was a custom dating from high antiquity: captives were often offered as sacrifices to ancestors and heavenly spirits. It was said that the Yin-Shang were most fond of this; the sacrificial pits were filled with layer upon layer of Qiang and Zhou captives.

Even King Wu of Zhou, whom later Confucian scholars packaged as a "benevolent and righteous army," showed no mercy when slaughtering Yin-Shang captives. Over a hundred thousand were butchered like livestock. Before the Zhou ancestral temple, the severed heads of Shang people were piled into hills. The heads of King Zhou and Daji hung high. The heads of several hundred Shang nobles — such as the Qin ancestors' own Elai — were thrown into the fire, roasted into charred human heads, and made into offerings.

It was not until the Spring and Autumn period, after the concept of "Many Xia" emerged, that the various states established a custom of no longer slaughtering each other's captives. Captured nobles could even be exchanged and returned, lending war a touch of civilized color.

However, entering the Warring States period, thanks to the precedent set by Sun Wu, war once again became cruel and treacherous.

Heifu was a witness to it all. Countless bloody battles had taught him that this was, from the start, a cruel era. Wars for land left the fields choked with corpses; wars for cities left the cities choked with corpses.

Mencius said that only one who took no pleasure in killing could unite all under Heaven. Yet in reality, it was Qin, which killed the most, that completed the unification...

At that moment, Fusu spoke again: "Commandant Wei, I have another suggestion!"

"Young Master, please speak."

Fusu said: "Soldiers who fall in battle or are wounded still have people to collect them and healers to treat them. But last night, I made another inspection tour of the laborers' camp and found that many were also injured, yet no one cared whether they lived or died."

Heifu nodded: "I am already aware of this. But we are truly short of healers and cannot attend to everyone."

As early as the unification war, he had proposed establishing medical corpsmen and implemented it within the army. Yet each platoon could only be assigned one corpsman with rudimentary medical knowledge who could bandage wounds. After a major battle, with thousands of wounded, they were so busy they had no time to shut their eyes; the laborers' light wounds went unattended.

Fusu, visibly moved, continued: "Beyond wounds and sickness, I believe that those laborers who pushed the Wugang wagons, advancing and retreating with the great army, enduring the Xiongnu's rain of arrows — though they have no merit, they have hardship. And those laborers who died of exhaustion or illness along the way also died for Qin. I do not wish for these people to receive nothing after this campaign!"

"Therefore, I hope that the General, after killing the Xiongnu captives and using their heads to count as military merit, will also record the achievements of the laborers from east of the Pass in the victory dispatch! So that the living are rewarded, the dead receive compensation, and they may even be interred in the Loyal Soldiers' Cemetery!"

Having spoken, Fusu rose and clasped his hands toward Heifu:

"The ancients said: The Rong and Di are wolves and jackals, never to be sated; the Many Xia are kin and dear, never to be abandoned. Now that Commandant Wei has beheaded the wolves and jackals, he must not abandon the laborers from east of the mountains. Regardless of whether they were once men of Chu, Yan, Han, Zhao, Wei, or Qi — since they have entered the Qin army and shed blood and sweat beyond the frontier, they must all be regarded equally, without distinction of origin!"

At these words, Meng Tian was somewhat astonished, and Heifu was also greatly surprised.

For in Qin, corvée service by the common people was an obligation, with no expectation of recompense. Unless there was a special exception — such as when King Zhao of Qin mobilized all the able-bodied men of Henei Commandery to rush to Changping and cut off Zhao's reinforcements and provisions, granting every male in the commandery aged fifteen and above a collective one-rank promotion in nobility — laborers rarely received rewards, and rank promotion was even more impossible.

But after a moment of deliberation, Heifu nodded.

"The Young Master possesses great benevolence! Regarding this matter, I will jointly submit a memorial with the Young Master to seek His Majesty's approval!"

Three days later, at the edge of the green land, in the parched desert, beneath dune after dune lay corpses strewn across the field. Everywhere the eye could see were the bodies of Xiongnu...

The seven thousand had been divided into seventy groups and led separately into the desert. Surrounded by Qin troops, they were driven beneath the dunes and shot dead, with men periodically stepping forward to deliver the finishing blade! The killing of captives lasted an entire day. The next day, several thousand laborers from east of the Pass were herded to the site and ordered to load all the Xiongnu heads onto carts and haul them out.

"Bleargh!"

The stench of blood permeated the desert. A laborer from Waihuang County could not hold back and vomited in great heaves.

Guan Ying went over to pat the man's back. He himself was unaffected and instead laughed at the laborer: "You once boasted of having been a wandering swordsman who could kill without blinking — how come you're throwing up like this? Haven't you seen enough corpses these past days?"

The man from Waihuang wiped his mouth and said: "These barbarians dying is one thing, but seeing this scene, I can't help recalling when the Qin army attacked Waihuang. That Qin general called Yang Xiong also beheaded the wandering swordsmen who surrendered. My elder brother was among them. In the end, I could only search for him among a pile of headless corpses..."

"Come to think of it, that Commandant Wei of Beidi Commandery — he was probably at Waihuang back then too. For all I know, he was the one who killed my brother!"

The scene before him turned the Waihuang man's stomach sour, stirring up old hatreds. He ground his teeth and said: "If you ask me, the Qin are just like the Xiongnu — tigers and wolves, the lot of them!"

"Stop talking — silence!"

Guan Ying urgently signaled. Not far away, the platoon leader in charge of them was making his rounds with a smug expression. Standing atop a dune, he addressed the laborers collecting severed heads: "Count yourselves lucky. Commandant Wei and the Young Master will petition for your merits! Though not everyone can obtain a noble rank, you will still receive some rewards, and may even be granted land! As for those who died of illness or exhaustion, the General said they will also be properly buried beside the Loyal Soldiers' Cemetery."

The laborers looked at one another. Qin dynasty corvée conscription had always been a matter of punishment for those who refused, and even those who went gained no benefit, often returning with nothing but wounds and sickness. Soldiers could trade severed heads for rank and land, but no one had ever heard of a general recording the merits of laborers or collecting their dead.

"It must be Young Master Fusu who recognizes our suffering and toil!"

The simple-minded among them had already begun to overflow with gratitude. Fusu had looked after the laborers all along the way; after the battle, once the Qin soldiers had been compensated, he had even come to visit them. Such kindness must have been won for them by the Young Master.

But the Waihuang laborer whose brother had died at Qin hands muttered under his breath: "Pah, petty favors. Besides, who wants to be buried in a Qin graveyard? If that happened, I couldn't close my eyes in death..."

Guan Ying agreed wholeheartedly. Staring at the platoon leader's arrogant back, he said: "Apart from Young Master Fusu, who is truly benevolent, the rest of these Qin officials all wear the faces of men tossing scraps to beggars!"

Moreover, he had one other matter weighing on his mind.

"My family has always sold silk. It's not that we wanted to be merchants — it's because there was long ago no vacant land left in Suiyang. If we really can be allotted land, it would indeed be a good thing. I only worry..."

"Worry about what?" the Waihuang man asked.

Guan Ying looked toward the oasis behind them, and further to the Helan Mountain grasslands two hundred li to the south, which they had already seen, and said with concern:

"I'm afraid the land the Qin officials want to grant us is right here beyond the frontier!"

……

A month later, in mid‑seventh month of the twenty‑ninth year of the First Emperor, the First Emperor, in Xianyang's Zhangtai Palace, finally received the military report from the Helan Mountains front!

"Open it. Read it aloud!"

The First Emperor ordered the Imperial Secretary Feng Quji to read it out — this was the news he had been waiting for ever since receiving the memorial from Shang Commandery reporting that the Chanyu's royal court was empty and the main Xiongnu force had vanished.

The Xiongnu had stripped the land and emptied the countryside, even going so far as to abandon the royal court. The First Emperor was certainly not naive enough to think they had fled in panic out of fear of him; those northern barbarians were definitely up to something.

Though he appeared completely composed, inwardly he could not help feeling somewhat agitated.

From the start of this war until now, the opposition had been considerable. The First Emperor needed a swift and decisive victory to slap the dissenters in the face, so he absolutely could not allow any failure!

What was more, his son was still beyond the frontier. A son of noble worth — if he should perish in a dangerous hall, then that scoundrel Heifu, if he did not die in battle, could present his own severed head in atonement…

After Feng Quji opened it and saw it was not a memorial from his own son Feng Jie, his heart already sank, but he still read it out loudly:

"Commandant of Beidi, Heifu, prostrates himself twice and knocks his head upon the ground in address: Relying on Your Majesty's brilliance, the officers and soldiers giving their lives, and the Prince, as army supervisor, directing the campaign with skill…"

"Your servant, together with General Li, has already driven the long chariots and trampled through the breach of the Helan Mountains!"

PS: For King Wu of Zhou's killing of captives, see the "Shifu Jie" chapter of the Yi Zhou Shu.

(End of chapter)