Chapter 623: In the South You May Not Stay

In the thirty-fourth year of the First Emperor of Qin, late in the fifth month, in the Western Ou region that Tu Sui had reported "will certainly be pacified within the year," on the lower reaches of the Li River, at the Qin army encampment named Cangwu, soldiers up on the stockade watchtowers were gazing out with furrowed brows at the unbroken spell of drizzly weather.

"Why won't this rain ever stop."

A Five Hundred Leader from the Guanzhong region felt as if he were about to grow mold on his body, and asked his subordinate: "Chen Ying, is the south always like this?"

Prompted by the Five Hundred Leader, Hundred-Man Chief Chen Ying hurriedly replied: "Superior, the climate of Lingnan is vastly different from Huainan. In my hometown of Donghai Commandery, the fifth and sixth months do have rain, but it lasts seven or eight days at most. Yet here in Lingnan, which is even more humid and sweltering than the Jianghuai region, it has actually been drizzling on and off for a full month with no sign of letting up."

The Five Hundred Leader shook his head and sighed: "In the past there were seven kingdoms — six in the north, and only Chu in the south. I always thought the southern lands were small. Only after arriving did I realize they are just as vast as the north!"

"Hearsay is no match for seeing with your own eyes."

Chen Ying smiled in agreement. Indeed — only after being forcibly conscripted and sent to Lingnan to garrison did he learn that the legends back home, which made people turn pale at the mere mention of the south, were actually true…

His family lived in Dongyang County, in the coastal commandery — he was a typical Eastern Chu man. Ten years ago, when Wang Jian destroyed Chu, the great army besieged Shouchun. Chen Ying and the young men of his county were dispatched to go to the rescue. They never imagined that on the way they would be intercepted by a Qin official called "Hefu," who captured them all, and then forced the oldest and most honest among that group, Chen Ying, to guide the Qin army.

Not long after, Shouchun was breached, the Chu kingdom fell, and Dongyang became a county under the Qin Dynasty's Donghai Commandery. After Chen Ying returned to Dongyang in a daze, because of the dishonorable episode of assisting the Qin army, he was endlessly criticized by his fellow villagers. Yet he also gained a blessing in misfortune — he became a minor official in the county and secured a post.

Over the course of ten years or so, Chen Ying was now in his forties. Although corvée labor and taxes were crushing and the times were not peaceful, none of that concerned Chen Ying. He did his work honestly and drew his salary. Only occasionally did he hear that the "Hefu" who had once commanded him had enjoyed a smooth official career, winning merit after merit — fighting the Xiongnu, quelling rebellions — and was just one step away from being enfeoffed as a marquis…

Chen Ying mentioned this as an amusing story when he went home and told his mother. That wise old mother, who had once told him to value his life and not throw it away for a Chu kingdom doomed to fall, set aside her needlework and told Chen Ying to request leave, make a trip to Jiaodong, and pay a visit to this old acquaintance.

Chen Ying, however, was unwilling to play the bootlicker. He said: "Mother, is there any principle that says one must go toady to someone just because they've become rich and powerful? How would that be any different from a fly chasing after stench? Besides, he may not even remember me. If I travel all that great distance and he asks who this Chen Ying person is, wouldn't that be mortifying?"

"This is not toadying to wealth and power — it is planning for the days ahead."

Although Mother Chen was illiterate, she possessed uncommon insight. She analyzed for Chen Ying that, although she herself never set foot outside, she too had heard that people far away were rising in revolt. Right now, in Dongyang County, the clashes between the authorities and the young bravos were growing ever more intense, and large numbers of people had begun secretly fleeing into the mountains, marshes, and woodlands, purely to escape the government's harsh policies. And the authorities, for their part, were seizing and killing every single one of these people, showing no mercy whatsoever.

She always felt that if things went on like this, the times were bound to descend into chaos sooner or later. She had heard that Jiaodong was peaceful. If Chen Ying could go to Jiaodong and meet this Hefu, perhaps he could find a way to stay on as a retainer and bring the family over. Even if that proved impossible, should trouble arise in the future, he could still use Hefu's name to intimidate people.

In the end, Chen Ying did not heed his mother's advice. But two months later, he regretted it bitterly!

…

In the thirty-third year of the First Emperor of Qin, the decision was made to campaign south. The main targets for conscription were the people of the Three Chu regions. Chen Ying of Dongyang County was also put forward — as an official, to escort the conscripted soldiers to the front lines.

How Chen Ying regretted it! If he had listened to his mother and made that trip to Jiaodong, wouldn't he have been able to avoid this calamity?

But now, with the blade pressed against his entire family's necks, he could only steel himself and accept the orders.

When word spread that they were headed to Lingnan, every household in Dongyang County that had someone conscripted was terrified. That very night, many fled with their entire families. After being caught and dragged back by the authorities, their whole households were reduced to penal laborers, and the able-bodied men were put straight into cangues and forced to continue on the march!

When seeing them off, the soldiers' families all dressed in mourning hemp, escorting them to the city gate, their wails unending…

What they sang was a funeral song very popular in the Chu region — "Summons of the Soul."

"O soul, come back! In the south you may not stay.

There the tattooed folk with blackened teeth offer human flesh in sacrifice, and pound the bones to paste…"

From the Central Plains' perspective, the Chu people already dwelt in the southern reaches of the realm. Yet in the hearts of these quintessential southerners, Lingnan was still an exceedingly terrifying region.

They had heard that the Yue people there carved patterns on their foreheads and grew black teeth, delighted in severing human heads, used human flesh as sacrificial offerings to malevolent gods, and ground human bones and brains into pulp to feed their own children…

Apart from savages, the south was also teeming with countless monsters. Venomous snakes clustered as thick as grass, huge carrion-eating foxes were everywhere, and malevolent serpents grew nine heads and came and went with lightning speed, most fond of devouring human hearts and livers.

A place so dreadful that even in death one's soul must not go there — what then of the living? Based on these impressions, the people of Dongyang believed that of those who went to Lingnan, nine out of ten would die!

Under this mortal terror, desertions continued without cease along the entire journey. The Chu men would rather flee into the rivers and become bandits than go south to their deaths. Of the one thousand men conscripted from Chen Ying's county, by the time they reached Zhu City in Hengshan Commandery, only seven or eight hundred remained…

The Troop Leader and the Five Hundred Leader were implicated and beheaded. But they could hardly keep killing further down the ranks. An Qin official was dispatched to take charge, and during the march they were sandwiched between two columns of Guanzhong troops — only then did the desertions finally subside.

At this point, another thought sprang up in Chen Ying's mind. He very much hoped that his unit would be assigned to Yuzhang. That was territory Hefu had conquered, and his former subordinates were posted all over the region. Chen Ying remembered that back then there was one called Ji Ying, who liked to chat idly with him. By now he must be an official of some standing, great or small. If he could run into him, perhaps he could ask for a bit of help.

But what drove Chen Ying to despair was that the great army marched straight through to Changsha Commandery, and then, as auxiliary troops, followed Tu Sui south into Western Ou…

It took a full three months and more to travel from Eastern Chu to Southern Chu — ample proof of Chu's vast expanse. During this period, the food and accents were still somewhat familiar, which could slightly soothe the terrified hearts of the Chu soldiers.

When they first reached Changsha Commandery, the season was already autumn turning to winter. They saw no fighting, and were merely assigned to dig a waterway — the front-line Supervising Censor Lu had decided to construct a canal here to solve the logistical supply problem.

The canal was not long, only a few dozen li. Yet the crushing construction schedule still worked many to death. When the waterway was finally cut through and the Qin officials gleefully reported to the First Emperor of Qin the good news that the first grain ship had successfully navigated the Ling Canal, no one mentioned that along both banks of the canal, over a thousand new grave mounds had already appeared — the dead were all Chu men…

After spending half a year digging the Ling Canal, the soldiers and laborers were granted no lengthy rest. What followed next was an unprecedented expedition!

A hundred years ago, when Wu Qi opened up the Yangyue region, he too had halted at the Five Ranges. That mysterious and unknown land of Lingnan had seen very few from the Central Plains ever set foot in it…

But with a single order from the First Emperor of Qin, an army of eighty thousand crossed over the range upon range of overlapping mountains and the sea-like expanse of wild forests, and formally entered the land of the Hundred Yue.

At the very beginning, the war went more smoothly than anyone could have imagined. Wherever the Qin army went, reports of victory came in rapid succession. The Western Ou people seemed afraid — they abandoned their settlements, but also burned everything they could not carry away: houses, livestock, rice paddies. What they left for the Qin army was a field of ashes and contaminated water sources.

According to the Central Plains mindset, gaining land was victory. The Qin army gleefully took over every flatland basin the Yue people abandoned and rebuilt encampments.

Tu Sui even ignored all dissuasion and split his eighty thousand troops to hold the strategic passes, leaving his own headquarters at Guilin dangerously exposed…

It was said that Tu Sui also committed all manner of atrocities in Guilin — such as destroying the sacrificial holy sites of the Ou people, and hurling down from the mountains those cliff coffins that only the chieftains and tribal elders were entitled to enjoy, scattering the bones and corpses all over the ground.

Tu Sui had undoubtedly become the person the Ou people hated most.

After spring arrived, with food supplies running tight, the Western Ou people who wanted to return to the flatlands to plant their crops could finally hold back no longer. They surged out of the mountain forests like a tide and launched an assault on Guilin. Yet they fell right into Tu Sui's stratagem — it was an ambush to lure the enemy into the trap, and the tempting bait was Tu Sui himself!

In the bloody battle of Guilin, Qin reinforcements rushed to the front via the Ling Canal and encircled the Ou people in turn, scattering them. But the Ou fighters, relying on their familiarity with the terrain, still found a retreat path. The chieftain Yixusong personally covered the rear, only to be overtaken by a unit led by a Commandant named "Zhao Tuo." As he tried to break through, he was shot dead by crossbow fire!

After Yixusong's death, the greater part of the Ou people once again withdrew into the mountain forests, while many Ou, led by weak-willed "tribal elders," surrendered to the Qin army.

The territory under Qin control expanded further, and their forces became thoroughly dispersed. Chen Ying and his men were dispatched to garrison Cangwu on the lower reaches of the Li River. This was a vital route leading to Southern Yue. Word was that over there, two armies numbering in the tens of thousands had likewise driven the Southern Yue people, with their cannibalistic practices, deep into the remote mountains and old-growth forests, and had reached the shores of the Southern Sea.

Seeing the situation looking splendid across the board, General Tu Sui declared with satisfaction: "Western Ou is pacified!"

He resolved to end this war within the thirty-fourth year of the First Emperor of Qin!

…

Chen Ying heard of these matters from the Five Hundred Leader.

To his face, Chen Ying expressed nothing, merely saying that he truly hoped they could finish the fighting soon and go home.

"Go home?"

The Five Hundred Leader merely smiled, his meaning unreadable, which gave Chen Ying an ominous premonition.

After returning to camp, crouching inside the damp wooden hut, chewing on raw rice — which they had been eating for days because no dry firewood could be found — and recalling the Five Hundred Leader's smile, Chen Ying's heart sank into dejection.

"Even when the war is over, we likely won't be allowed to return home so easily."

Chen Ying was not yet certain of this and dared not speak of it recklessly. When mealtime came, the soldiers gradually gathered around to eat. No one spoke throughout; the atmosphere was heavy and oppressive. In this damp, sweltering, cursed weather, they didn't even have the energy for idle chatter.

After marching south, the Qin army had undergone several reorganizations. Of the one hundred men under Chen Ying's command, only seventy now remained.

Of the thirty who had died, ten had been attacked by Ou Yue raiders while standing guard or on patrol, struck by their bamboo arrows. Those arrows were either poisoned or smeared with feces. Those hit almost invariably died, and died gruesomely — their skin festering and rotting, both eyes bulging out.

Another twenty men either collapsed on the road or in camp, unable to adapt to Lingnan's sweltering climate after the onset of summer, or fell victim to the venomous insects, snakes, and ants that lurked everywhere…

Of the seventy who survived, more than ten were sickly and feeble. If they couldn't get hot food or boiled water again, no one knew when they might collapse.

From what Chen Ying knew, the three thousand troops garrisoned at Cangwu were in a similar state in nearly every tent. Attrition continued without pause, and only half of the Qin forces still had any fighting strength!

Meanwhile, the harassing attacks from the forest grew more and more frequent. It seemed that losing their chieftain had not diminished the Ouyue people's determination to resist to the end. Faced with this style of attack, the Qin army had no good countermeasure beyond sealing their camp and holding fast. They did not look like victors; rather, they resembled the battered remnants of a force trapped in an isolated city.

"Western Ou is pacified? We and that General Tu must be fighting a different war!"

Listening to his fellow villagers sigh and lament, Chen Ying chewed his rice with difficulty, raised his head, and gazed out at the unending rain beyond. A hint of despair showed in his eyes.

In his view, there was absolutely no way this war would end within the year. It was just like this damp, sweltering, restless rain — endless and without respite!

PS: Chapter 2 at 12 o'clock.

(End of chapter)