Chapter 105: The Charm of Civilization

The setting sun slanted down, its lingering light falling upon this little food stall, and in that moment the dim yellow sunlight somehow took on a solemn air.

Fan Shun finished the sesame cakes and drained the mutton soup, then raised his eyes toward the back of the stall's counter.

A tall, burly man in a fur hat and a short, nimble shop hand were huddled together, and one glance was enough to tell they were sons of Tang.

They were watching him — Fan Shun knew that. From the second day after he had entered this food stall, these two had taken notice of him, and the shop hand's appearance also matched Zhao Sanlang's description.

Over three days, he had carefully observed his surroundings and had basically confirmed that this food stall was not a trap set by the Governor of Shule or anyone else.

For this was the poor quarter of Shule, a place where dragons and fish mingled, where great numbers of Buddhists, Manichaeans, Nestorians, and followers of all manner of other strange faiths gathered.

Although Satuq Bughra Khan wanted to turn all of Shule into a stronghold of Islam, there were plenty who dared not oppose him openly but secretly refused to convert.

Over the past dozen or so years, this district had become the most complicated place in Shule — not only did Muslims rarely come here, but men from the khan's court and the governor's office rarely came either.

All in all, even if they meant to "fish," Satuq Bughra Khan and Itihad would not choose to fish here.

Seeing that nearly everyone in the food stall had left, Fan Shun simply leaned back against a wooden pillar, letting the warm rays of the setting sun fall on his body. He tapped lightly on the table with a small stick, then softly began to chant.

"A lone carriage sets out to ask after the border; a vassal state lies beyond Juyan. Drifting tumbleweed leaves the Han fortress; homing geese enter the barbarian sky."

A copper coin appeared between the two fingers of Fan Shun's right hand.

Huitong walked over without any change of expression, appearing extremely calm, but Li Qilang suddenly saw a great patch of goosebumps rise on Huitong's face.

What did that fellow across the way mean by his chant? For the first time in his life, Li Qilang cursed himself for not having studied properly.

"In the great desert, a lone column of smoke rises straight; over the long river, the setting sun is round. At Xiao Pass I meet a mounted scout; the Protector-General is at Yanran." Huitong chanted back in an equally loud voice.

This was the charm of culture — the charm of Han civilization. Two men had established communication through nothing more than a few simple lines of verse, something an ordinary foreigner could neither understand nor counterfeit.

When Fan Shun said "a lone carriage sets out to ask after the border; a vassal state lies beyond Juyan," he meant that he had come alone, in a light carriage, crossing the mountains and rivers from the east.

"Drifting tumbleweed leaves the Han fortress; homing geese enter the barbarian sky" — the ancients liked to use windblown tumbleweed as a metaphor for a wanderer drifting far from home, but when paired with the light carriage that signified an envoy, it became a metaphor for a minister bearing a mission from the court. That was precisely Wang Wei's original intent when he wrote the poem, and here Fan Shun was indicating that he bore a mission.

"In the great desert, a lone column of smoke rises straight; over the long river, the setting sun is round. At Xiao Pass I meet a mounted scout; the Protector-General is at Yanran" — used here, it was even more ingenious.

The first two lines were scenery and could be set aside, but the last two carried deep meaning. Xiao Pass referred to the frontier pass; the mounted scout referred to the outriders of the border; the Protector-General was the Grand Protector-General of Anxi.

By taking up this line, Huitong was saying that there were only a few common soldiers here, and that most of the men and their leader were still far away.

"May I ask from where the honored guest has come?" Huitong cupped his hands and bowed, his heart full of boundless expectation, all the while praying ceaselessly: please, let it not be someone from Khotan.

It was not that the Khotanese were unreliable, but that they simply did not have the ability to take Shule.

There had once been no small number of Han people and Buddhists in Shule, but Khotan had attacked six times, and not once had they succeeded. They had certainly suffered their own losses, but the Buddhists and Han people in Shule who had acted as their inside agents had suffered an even greater calamity!

Every time the Khotanese withdrew, the people of Shule would be purged once by the great khan of the Karakhanids, and after the last purge, not even the Great Cloud Temple had been spared.

"Last night the Tibetan soldiers avenged the nation's wrongs; the Protector-General of Shazhou broke Liangzhou. The nine bends of the Yellow River have now returned to Han; beyond the frontier, blood flows across the battlefields."

Fan Shun chanted with immense pride this poem of which the men of the Guiyi Army were proudest.

Huitong's eyes lit up, and he gave Fan Shun a solemn bow of respect.

"Huitong, a registered disciple under the seat of the Venerable Daozhen, ninth-generation Chief Monk of the Great Cloud Temple of Shule, greets the honored guest. Has the honored guest come from Dunhuang?"

"Fan Shun, a retainer under the command of Zhang Erlang of Dunhuang, great-grandson of His Excellency Zhang Yichao, Grand Guardian and Founding Duke of Nanyang, Envoy of the Guiyi Army — I greet Master Huitong!"

Fan Shun returned a solemn bow, then announced his lineage. As he spoke, he tossed the Great Tang Jianzhong copper coin in his hand to the burly man who sounded like a monk.

"This item should first be returned to the Master!"

"Brother Fan, please come to the back! Li Qilang, lock the door at once!" Huitong stretched out his hand, and the copper coin was caught in his grasp. He glanced at it coolly — sure enough, it was the very coin Li Qilang had given away that day.

This was the secret room of the food stall, dark and damp, and with the stench of coarse wheat and other rotting vegetables, the smell was quite foul. Yet none of the three seemed to notice, for each side saw in the other's eyes a deep longing.

One side longed to find their own people; the other hoped to find a comrade.

"May I ask the honored guest: is Zhang Erlang the same person as the Gaochang prostrate Feng'en Dagan? Has the Great Tang in the east truly revived, as the merchants say? Is the honored guest's master, Zhang Erlang, the vanguard of a great army?"

After more than a minute of silence, Huitong was the first to lose his composure, and he looked at Fan Shun with a face full of hope.

Fan Shun gently shook his head. He would very much have liked to tell this monk Huitong that the Great Tang had revived, but according to the young lord, this Great Tang was not the true Great Tang.

Moreover, the young lord seemed to hold this Great Tang in considerable contempt, for Fan Shun had never once seen the young lord regard this Great Tang as someone to rely upon in his heart.

One had to know that the young lord was the most adept at borrowing others' strength — if this Great Tang were truly dependable, he would surely have latched onto it long ago.

"I can only tell Master Huitong this: a Great Tang has indeed appeared in the Central Plains, but this Great Tang does not seem to be the Great Tang of old. According to the young lord, it is a state founded by a member of the imperial clan named Li, the Prince of Jin, but it holds only the lands of the Central Plains. I fear it is still far too soon for it to send a great army into the Western Regions!"

Hearing Fan Shun speak thus, Huitong's expression dimmed at once. If it held only the Central Plains, then it had not yet taken the lands of Jiannan, Shannan, and Lingnan, and naturally it could not march into the Western Regions so quickly.

"I wonder when the Central Plains will revive? I have already passed thirty, and I cannot wait many more years!"

With a darkened face, Huitong sat down on a sack of millet, his eyes fixed on the ground, sighing softly.

He had never doubted that his compatriots in the Central Plains might not send troops at all; he merely sighed, wondering how long he would have to wait.

To the people of this age, it was only natural that once the Central Plains grew strong again, it would send troops into the Western Regions.

For before this, after the Former Han had declined and the Western Regions were lost, even the usurping Xin dynasty had once sent troops to recover them — to say nothing of the Later Han, which had dispatched the great general Dou Gu and the immortal Ban Dingyuan to reassert control over the Western Regions.

And after the Later Han fell, the Cao Wei that inherited its place, and even the Sima clan, had continued to manage the Western Regions. After that, the Former Qin and others had done the same, until the Great Tang had thoroughly crushed the Eastern Turks and pushed the territory of Anxi more than a thousand li westward.

Therefore, although the Great Tang was now gone, everyone believed that once the Central Plains court revived, sending troops westward was only a matter of time.

They never imagined that this time, after the Han people left the Western Regions, it would be eight or nine hundred years before they entered again.

"The young lord is of the Zhang family's direct line, not a Uyghur of Gaochang. The identity of Pugu Feng'en is merely a disguise assumed by the young lord!"

"Then why does the honored guest's master disguise himself as a Gaochang Uyghur? And why did he rescue the monks of the Great Cloud Temple?"

Hearing Huitong's questions, Fan Shun smiled faintly. "These questions, Master, you may ask the young lord in person at a later date, because this city of Shule will very soon change hands!"

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