Chapter 12: The Key Information: Salt

"I, Qi Jingtong, eldest son of Lord Qi Jiarun, Chief Escort Officer before the Military Governor's headquarters and concurrently Yumen Army Garrison Commander, kowtow before the Grand Guardian!"

Sure enough, Old Zhang Zhong was sent off in just a few words by Qi Xiahua, whose real name was Qi Jingtong — he had been listening outside the door just now.

Otherwise he would never have come in and immediately kowtowed to the statue of Zhang Yichao, which had already shattered into pieces and been only hastily gathered up, his flushed face brimming with emotion.

Zhang Zhao also understood now why this Qi Xiahua had thrown in his lot with Old Zhang Zhong — because this fellow's father was none other than Qi Jiarun, Chief Escort Officer before the Military Governor's headquarters and Yumen Army Garrison Commander during the Zhang Chengfeng period.

This Chief Escort Officer before the Military Governor's headquarters was the highest honorary rank in the Guiyi Army's military-governor hierarchy — an empty honorary post, but one of immense status. If the Guiyi Army had been a unified dynasty, then Chief Escort Officer before the Military Governor's headquarters would have ranked roughly at the level of Grand Commandant.

And the Yumen Army Garrison Commander was an extremely important substantive military post in the Guiyi Army. The Guiyi Army's administrative divisions during the Zhang Chengfeng Jinshan Kingdom and the Cao-family Guiyi Army periods were organized on the model of two prefectures and eight garrisons.

The two prefectures were Guazhou and Shazhou, and the eight garrisons were Shouchang, Ziting, Changle, Xuanquan, Yonggui, Xincheng, Xinxiang, and Kuaiji.

Most of these eight garrisons combined garrison and county into one — that is, the garrison's Defender was both the highest military officer of the garrison and the County Magistrate in charge of civil affairs, the equivalent of a Military Governor within a Military Governor.

So where was the Yumen Army Garrison Commander? Right near today's Yumen Pass. It was the highest military authority jointly overseeing the two garrisons of Xinxiang and Kuaiji and the fortress of Yumen Pass. That was why other garrisons could only be called Garrison Defenders or Restrainers, but the Yumen Army was called an Army Garrison Commander.

And east of Yumen Pass lay the Guiyi Army's hereditary enemy and greatest source of threat — the Ganzhou Uyghurs.

The Yumen Army Garrison Commander had been specially established to defend against the Ganzhou Uyghurs, and had always been a position of high rank and weight in the Guiyi Army, second only to the Military Governor and the Prefects of the two prefectures.

So Qi Jiarun, Chief Escort Officer before the Military Governor's headquarters and Yumen Army Garrison Commander in the Zhang Chengfeng period, was without question the most trusted of the trusted.

Moreover, according to Qi Xiahua, Qi Jiarun had been rescued by Zhang Chengfeng's troops from the hands of the Canwei people. A top confidant like that — once the Cao family replaced the Zhangs, keeping his life at all would have counted as burning high incense.

"So Brother Qi's father was Chief Escort Officer Lord Qi — truly a descendant of a famous general. A tiger father has no dog sons!"

Zhang Zhao sent another flattering hat his way at just the right moment, while inwardly gaining a few more degrees of confidence about persuading Qi Xiahua.

The man before him was already almost bound to him at the deepest level. What needed to be done now was to break that heart of his — the heart willing to conspire with the Kucha Uyghurs, even willing to become a Uyghur, all for the sake of staying alive.

"Young lord, do not flatter me. My father was such a hero, yet his descendants have fallen so low that even turning bandit cannot keep us alive. I am nothing but a worthless dog of a son!"

Qi Xiahua rose after finishing his kowtow, and tears were already beginning to glisten in his eyes.

"Is the situation in the stronghold that difficult?" It had only been meant as a compliment and a bid to win him over, but Qi Xiahua's reaction stirred something in Zhang Zhao too. If Qi Xiahua was a dog of a son, then this Zhang Zhao probably did not even qualify as a dog.

"Not difficult — impossible to sustain. We are not short of grain, but the stronghold has lacked salt for two full months now. Women and children get one small bowl of salt water every five days just to keep them alive; able-bodied men get one pinch of salt every two days to get by. And we lack hemp cloth — we do not have much fabric for keeping warm either."

Cao Sanniang's face suddenly turned awkward, because she now knew who Qi Xiahua and the people in the mountain stronghold were.

Back then, after Zhang Chengfeng lost his war against the Ganzhou Uyghurs and was forced to acknowledge the Ganzhou Uyghur Khagan as his father, the Han people of Guazhou and Shazhou all resented Zhang Chengfeng for ignoring his own strength and forcibly imitating his grandfather Zhang Yichao's campaigns east and west, bringing disaster and heavy casualties upon the people of Guazhou and Shazhou.

After that, the Zhang family's prestige in the hearts of the people of Guazhou and Shazhou vanished completely. Even Zhang Chengfeng's favored minister, Chief Hall Chancellor Zhang Wenche, abandoned Zhang Chengfeng.

And Qi Jiarun, the Yumen Army Garrison Commander who had retreated to Dunhuang city, brought his small force of Yumen Army troops to serve as the Military Governor's yabing — one could say they were Zhang Chengfeng's final confidants.

When her grandfather Cao Yijin entered the palace to force Zhang Chengfeng to abdicate, the only resistance had come from the small Yumen Army force led by Qi Jiarun.

So these people, after the Cao family replaced the Zhangs, had simply been exiled.

East of Shouchang, there were Kucha Uyghurs who had come down from the Jinshan Mountains to the south, the Canwei people of the Zhongyun Kingdom occupying the Loulan region to the west, the Yizhou Uyghurs to the north, and Shazhou to the east restricting the flow of supplies — enemies on all four sides.

So if the people of this stronghold did not join forces with the Kucha Uyghurs, or attach themselves to the Kucha Uyghurs, death was indeed their only road. In truth, that they had held on until now — nearly twenty years without vanishing into the rolling yellow sands — was already astonishing.

And as for persuading these people, who were on the verge of not surviving, to give up the one road to life before them — Cao Sanniang no longer held any hope. Heaven is great, earth is great, survival is greatest.

But Zhang Zhao did not see it that way. He took Qi Xiahua by the hand and had him sit down across from him.

"Elder Brother Jingtong, what did your ancestors follow the Grand Guardian to risk their lives recovering the six commanderies of Hexi for? At that time the Tibetans had not yet declined as they have today, but the Grand Guardian raised his arm in a single cry, and the heroes of the six commanderies flocked to him — was it not so that we descendants would no longer be slaves to the Tibetans?"

Qi Xiahua drew a deep breath and shook his head with difficulty. "Does the young lord know our suffering? In this stronghold, one pinch of salt can make a young woman loosen her clothes, one small piece of hemp cloth can turn brothers against each other. Those too weak to walk from lack of salt are everywhere.

How could I not know that Loyal Elder's plan is truly drinking poison to quench thirst? But does the young lord know the bitterness of hunger and cold? Does he know the agony of eating food without salt? Ten thousand arrows through the heart, ten thousand ants gnawing the body — none of it compares!

I would rather be hacked to death, burned to death, than ever taste again that feeling of my five organs burning. So even though I know that after death I will have no face to meet my ancestors below the Nine Springs, I cannot stand by and watch them freeze and starve to death."

Lack of salt — this was a big problem. In fact, throughout the Hexi Corridor in the Tang period this was a big problem, because the salt of the Hexi Corridor was mainly produced in two regions.

One was the Liaquan area northwest of Ganzhou city, occupied by the Ganzhou Uyghurs — near later generations' Gaotai County in Gansu. The other was Chengzhou — later generations' Li County in Longnan.

But wait — something seemed off!

Zhang Zhao fixed Qi Xiahua with a meaningful stare. Gradually, the generous look on Qi Xiahua's face — the look of a man fighting for everyone's survival — faded, and before long he wore the same awkward expression as Cao Sanniang.

Since they lacked salt, and since this Qi Xiahua knew that Old Zhang Zhong's plan was drinking poison to quench thirst — or inviting the wolf into the house — why was he still going along with it?

Had he been given a guarantee of sufficient salt supply?

Without such a guarantee, following Zhang Zhong's reckless scheme would not solve their difficulties either!

So where would the salt come from? Could the Qilian Mountains, where the Kucha Uyghurs lived, have surplus salt?

Don't joke. That place has high mountains and bitter winds. Compared to them, Shouchang County, hit by sandstorms two or three times a year, would count as paradise.

Otherwise these Kucha Uyghurs would never have rushed down from the Qilian Mountains the moment they broke free of Tibetan control.

Then the only source of sufficient salt supply had to be Ganzhou. In other words, behind the Kucha Uyghurs' entry into Shazhou there was very likely the support of the Ganzhou Uyghurs. And this Qi Xiahua had very likely, behind Zhang Zhong's back, already been in contact with the Kucha Uyghurs.

How close! If he had not repeatedly mentioned the word "salt," Zhang Zhao would never have thought in this direction.

And the reason Zhang Zhao could spot the connection was that, historically, the biggest reason the Guiyi Army ultimately failed to resist the Kucha Uyghurs' infiltration was precisely the behind-the-scenes support of the Ganzhou Uyghurs, who shared the same origin as the Kucha Uyghurs. So this was not speculation — it had actually happened in history.

Of course, at present Cao Yijin was still alive, and in the standoff between the Guiyi Army and the Ganzhou Uyghurs, the Guiyi Army held a slight upper hand.

But historically, after Cao Yijin, the Ganzhou Uyghurs gradually gained the upper hand, and the Guiyi Army, to avoid giving the Ganzhou Uyghurs a pretext, never dared to specifically target the Kucha Uyghurs within its territory.

And with the support of the Ganzhou Uyghurs, the Kucha Uyghurs gradually began to control the other nomadic tribes within Shazhou, eventually forming the group known as the Shazhou Uyghurs.

In history, even the records of the Northern Song and the Liao state contain the name Cao Xianshun, a Shazhou Uyghur leader — which means the Guiyi Army had gradually been submerged and assimilated by the Uyghurs.

The present situation — if you replaced Ge Duo with the Shazhou Uyghurs, and saw Qi Xiahua as the Guiyi Army — was it not a small-scale reenactment of history?

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