Chapter 156: The White-Haired Soldiers of Anxi (Two-in-One Chapter, No Evening Update)

"Zheng Tong, seventh-generation descendant of the late General of Martial Might, Grand Envoy of the Khotan Army, Defender of Khotan, Lord Zheng, personal name Ju, pays his respects to Zhang Erlang of Shazhou!"

"Yang He, seventh-generation descendant of the late Defender of Yanqi, Prefect of the remote city of Shule, Acting Commander-in-Chief of Yanqi, Lord Yang, personal name Riyou, pays his respects to Zhang Erlang of Shazhou!"

"Li Wang, eighth-generation descendant of the late Valiant Cavalry Commandant of the Hanhai Army at Tingzhou, Administrator of Shenxian Town, Acting Vice Commissioner of the Border Command and Escort Officer, Lord Cao, personal name Lingjie, pays his respects to Zhang Erlang of Shazhou."

These three who announced their lineages and made deep obeisance to Zhang Zhao were all old acquaintances.

Zheng Tong was none other than the big bald monk Huitong.

Yang He was the monk Huixing, Daozhen's eldest disciple, who had practiced the silence vow and barely spoken all this time.

Li Wang was Li Qilang.

Behind them, Master Daozhen, who had already announced himself earlier, sat composedly upon a meditation cushion.

As the three spoke, they each raised a tattered, worn-out fish pouch and presented it to Zhang Zhao.

Zhang Zhao took them and looked inside: they contained the official seals and fish tallies of the last Defender of Khotan, Zheng Ju; the Defender of Yanqi, Yang Riyou; and the Valiant Cavalry Commandant of the Hanhai Army, Cao Lingjie.

"A lone city ten thousand li away, filled with white-haired soldiers!" Zhang Zhao's eyes grew hot as he accepted the three fish pouches and raised them high above his head.

"I have finally found you — finally found the descendants of Anxi's loyal subjects of old! Heaven has eyes!"

With that, Zhang Zhao solemnly placed the three fish pouches into a prepared wooden box.

"If the three of you are willing, I, Zhang Erlang, would like to keep these three fish pouches at my side. When matters here are concluded, I hope to carry them in person to Kucha and pay homage to the spirits of the Great Tang's heroes of old!"

When Zhang Zhao finished, Master Daozhen on the meditation cushion smiled and nodded. "Young Lord Zhang Erlang is thoughtful. From the day our forebears left Kucha, we have longed day and night to return to Kucha — to return openly and honorably. These three fish pouches, we entrust to you."

The monk Huitong, that is, Zheng Tong, touched the dreadful scar on his head. "I, Zheng, truly never imagined that the Son of Heaven of the Great Tang had long forgotten us homeless ones, while you, young lord, still remember us.

If only you could have come a few decades earlier. My ancestor Lord Zheng, personal name Ju, was still alive then. If he could have seen this day, how happy he would have been!"

"A few decades earlier?" Zhang Zhao asked, puzzled.

If his memory served, the Defender of Khotan Zheng Ju should have been a figure from around 790, because the reason his name survived to later ages was entirely due to the records of the monk Wukong, and Wukong passed through Anxi around 790.

And the time the Tibetan army captured Kucha, the Great Tang's last stronghold, was recorded as around 808. From 808 to the present year of 932 should be a little over a hundred years. How could it be a matter of only a few decades earlier?

Moreover, his current status was Fengtian Commandery Duke of the Khotan Kingdom of Jin and Prefect of Polu Prefecture. By rights, when addressing a person, one should use his highest office. Why address him directly as Zhang Erlang of Shazhou? These people seemed not to trust the Khotan Kingdom of Jin very much!

Yet from Zhang Zhao's observations over the better part of a year, Li Shengtian's Khotan Kingdom of Jin was thoroughly sinicized, and Li Shengtian himself placed great trust in the sons of Tang of Anxi. Within the Khotan Kingdom of Jin alone, there were at least four or five thousand sons of Tang.

So why had these descendants of the Western Regions' loyal holdouts not gone to Khotan, but hidden themselves away in Shule instead?

"It was only a few decades! Lord Zheng lived all the way to the gengshen year and passed away at the age of eighty-seven. At that time, I heard from eastbound traveling merchants that the Great Tang was in the early years of the Huichang era.

Our forebears lost control of Kucha only in the year before the first year of Huichang, which is no more than ninety-odd years from now, less than a hundred.

And it has been less than sixty years since we could no longer stay in Kucha and moved to Shule." Zheng Tong thought Zhang Zhao had miscalculated, so he deliberately worked it out for him.

No! The time doesn't add up! Zhang Zhao tapped his head lightly and signaled Zhang Zhong to bring him the almanac.

Huichang, gengshen year — Zhang Zhao searched one by one. Indeed, the gengshen year was the first year of the Huichang era of Emperor Wuzong of Tang. But that couldn't be right! Zhang Zhao began counting on his fingers and working it out carefully.

He did not know the exact Gregorian year, but he remembered that Li Siyuan, Mingzong of the Later Tang, ascended the throne around 930.

Assuming the second year of Changxing was 931, then ninety years earlier would be around 840. But hadn't Kucha fallen around 808?

"Brother Zheng, you mean the time your ancestors' Kucha was breached by the Tibetans was in the gengshen year, that is, around the first year of Huichang. But how is it that I heard Kucha fell in the third year of Yuanhe, which was a wuzi year?"

This was too strange. Could later historical records be mistaken? Holding the almanac, Zhang Zhao walked up to the four and said softly.

Now it was the four's turn to be baffled. Li Qilang looked at Zhang Zhao in confusion. "Where did the young lord get word that the Tibetans captured Kucha? The Tibetan army never took Kucha!"

"Qilang is right. If our ancestors' records are accurate, in the third year of Yuanhe the Tibetans did besiege Kucha, but at year's end the Uyghur Khagan Baoyi sent thirty thousand troops, and together with us, striking from within and without, we routed the Tibetans. After that, the Tibetans never had the strength to attack Kucha again. From beginning to end, they never captured Kucha."

The Tibetans never captured Kucha? Zhang Zhao was utterly shocked. He grabbed Zheng Tong's hand in astonishment.

"So Prince Guo led everyone and held out? How long did they hold on? When did you come to Shule, and why? Tell me quickly."

Zheng Tong nodded, gathered his memories, and began: "After the Tibetan army was beaten back in the third year of Yuanhe, the danger to Kucha was lifted. We had hoped to rely on the Uyghurs to restore production, but by then Anxi had seen war year after year, and the Uyghurs themselves were impoverished. They had no means to support us.

And we were in even worse shape. Back then, the four garrisons of Khotan, Shule, Yanqi, and Kucha together had twenty-three thousand households and over one hundred ten thousand people. But after the third year of Yuanhe, all of Kucha had only a little over twenty thousand people left.

Moreover, the military farms and wells outside the city had mostly been destroyed. With the weather turning colder and harvests failing year after year, the produce around Kucha could not even feed twenty thousand. So we had no choice but to let Li Qilang's ancestors lead people to migrate to places like Quli and Yanqi.

After seven or eight years, the military farms around Kucha recovered, and some of those who had moved out returned to Kucha. But population remained a grave problem.

When Khotan, Shule, Yizhou, and Xizhou fell back then, nearly all the women and children were lost, leaving us with far more men than women. We had over twenty thousand people, but after seven or eight years, instead of growing, we had only a little over ten thousand, less than twenty thousand."

"How could that be?" Ma Yaozi blinked, thoroughly puzzled. "If there were no Han women, then foreign girls would do as well. You people were far too inflexible!"

Zheng Tong gave a bitter smile. "What Captain Ma doesn't know is that we thought the same back then. If there were no Han women, we could marry some foreign girls.

But by then the Great Tang was in decline, and the Uyghurs and Tibetans had successively dominated Anxi. We sons of Tang were no longer in favor. It was long past the days when a wave of the hand could get you a foreign girl.

Not to mention that foreign girls from the Uyghur and other tribes, with different languages and customs, were rarely willing to marry into Kucha. And it was even more common that a son of Tang who married a foreign girl would end up with his whole family becoming foreigners."

"Wh— what kind of reasoning is that? How could they abandon their ancestors like that?" Ma Yaozi's eyes went wide. He could scarcely comprehend that there were people who would rather not be sons of Tang but become foreign slaves.

"This is cultural collapse! Without the Great Tang's prestige, in Anxi, where the land was full of foreigners, the sons of Tang went from being people of the Celestial Dynasty to homeless outcasts!"

Zhang Zhao, however, nodded in understanding. Once the Great Tang's prestige was gone, twenty thousand sons of Tang surrounded by over a million foreigners had instead become bullied outsiders.

"The young lord is right!" Zheng Tong did not know what "cultural collapse" meant, but the situation at the time was exactly as Zhang Zhao described.

"According to my grandfather, being a son of Tang back then truly brought no advantage. We were constantly bullied by the great foreign clans nearby. Marrying and raising children was hard enough, and even traveling any distance was dangerous. Everyone could only huddle near Kucha to survive.

Because beyond Kucha the land was full of foreigners, and people were often plundered. Many could not endure it, so they simply found connections and became foreigners."

Zhang Zhao and the armored soldiers of the Hanshan Capital behind him all fell silent. Though Zhang Zhao felt deeply uncomfortable, he knew he had no grounds to blame them.

After 808, most of the descendants of the Anxi Army in Kucha were born after the Great Tang had completely lost contact.

They could only hear of past glories from their fathers' lips, but they themselves had never seen them. Born surrounded by foreigners, apart from the blood flowing in their veins, the Great Tang court had never shown them the slightest favor.

Not to mention that among them were many naturalized Sogdians, Kuchans, and Yanqis. It was understandable that those who could not endure gave up their identity as sons of Tang.

"At that time we still followed the house of Prince Guo as our leaders. Seeing this situation, the head of the family, Prince Guo's grandson Lord Guo, personal name Qi, forbade everyone from marrying foreign girls anymore. Even if one did marry, the family had to be kept inside Kucha city." The monk Huixing, Yang He, also narrowed his eyes and spoke as if recalling.

"Ah! That was a blunder! Wasn't that just forcing those who couldn't find a wife to leave?"

Zhang Zhao shook his head. In his view, in such a situation, the thing to do was quickly unite with a few small tribes through marriage alliances and secure the base first. How could they impose such a crude, blanket ban!

"Exactly as the young lord expected. Once that order was issued, even more people fled. In the end, only a little over eight thousand remained in Kucha!" Zheng Tong smiled bitterly.

"With just these eight thousand or so people, we could still have managed, because those who wanted to leave had already gone, and those who stayed were true sons of Tang.

We built irrigation works, founded schools, registered households, and made every citizen a soldier. Life even got a little better. But heaven simply would not let us rest!"

"Was it the Uyghurs who started the trouble?" Zhang Zhao let out a long sigh. This should be the beginning of the Uyghur Khaganate's collapse.

The Kyrgyz, the Karluks, and the Basmyls and others joined forces and began constantly challenging the Uyghurs. In the end, the Uyghur Khaganate collapsed under the combined blows of the Kyrgyz and the Great Tang.

At this time, the Anxi remnant forces should have been dependent on the Uyghurs. Once the Uyghur Khaganate collapsed, they naturally could not fare well either.

"Indeed! We had finally enjoyed a dozen or so years of peace, and then Anxi fell into chaos again. The Kyrgyz, the Karluks, the Basmyls, and the Uyghurs all slaughtered one another.

We had only a few thousand people. Although we had several thousand able-bodied men who could fight, we were not like the barbarians, who could roam and graze anywhere and had somewhere to flee if defeated. We could only hold Kucha and take the beatings, and our numbers dwindled with every fight.

After the Uyghurs completely collapsed in the gengshen year (840), we had no choice but to abolish the title of the Anxi Army.

The reason we had held on for so many years was, in truth, because the Uyghurs had been supporting us all along. Once the Uyghur Khaganate was gone, if we had still carried the name of the Anxi Army, we would certainly have been attacked.

But after abolishing the Anxi Army title, people's hearts scattered even more. We gritted our teeth and held on for another seven or eight years. Then Guo Dalang, the head of the Guo family, betrayed us, and Kucha... Kucha was lost!"

A wave of unease rose in Zhang Zhao's heart. He truly did not want to hear what Zheng Tong had just said.

What a hero the Iron-Blood Commandery Prince Guo Xin was! He led a lone army and guarded the Western Regions for the Great Tang his entire life, and in the end the Anxi Army was betrayed by his own descendants! Why would heaven toy with such loyal ministers and righteous men?

"That's impossible!" Yan Jin's eyes bulged, and he shot to his feet, his face flushed red. "What kind of man was Commandery Prince Guo? He was a towering hero of the highest order. How could his descendants betray the Anxi Army?"

"We did not want to believe it either! But the facts are the facts!" Li Qilang sighed deeply, then picked up where Zheng Tong had left off.

"At that time, Kucha could no longer be held. Everyone was making plans to stockpile supplies for emergencies when Guo Dalang, who had returned from Xizhou, suddenly brought back a piece of news.

He said the Great Tang had been restored, that the court still remembered us, and that it had sent some sort of imperial envoy who was also the Military Governor of Yixi. Guo Dalang told everyone to ready the troops and go together to Xizhou, which is Gaochang, to welcome the imperial envoy.

Everyone was very excited at the time. We scraped together two thousand troops and set out for Xizhou, thinking that better days lay ahead now that the court had finally sent someone. But before we even reached Xizhou, we were cut off and attacked by barbarian cavalry.

Of the two thousand who went, fewer than half escaped back. Guo Dalang also vanished without a trace. Immediately after, even Kucha was surrounded. We fought a bloody battle and temporarily drove off over ten thousand barbarians, but Kucha truly could not be held any longer.

At that time, the Karakhanids had not yet converted to the faith of the Arabs. Shule was close to Khotan, and the Great Cloud Temple was still there, so we gradually migrated to Shule and settled there.

Later, after we reached Shule, everyone began to feel something was wrong. How had those barbarian cavalry so precisely blocked us on the road? Someone must have leaked the news.

So some people began saying Guo Dalang had betrayed us. Several families had huge quarrels over it and nearly came to blows. The Guo family gradually distanced themselves from us after that, and later we heard they had moved back to the Kucha area."

Zhang Zhao turned and exchanged a glance with Zhang Zhong, Yin Yaozi, and the others. The eyes of all of them blazed with the fire of hatred. The ambush of the Anxi Army descendants this time was indeed very suspicious.

"Li Qilang, can you say precisely which year it was when Guo Dalang claimed a newly appointed Military Governor of Yixi from the court had arrived? I suspect that perhaps it was not Guo Dalang who betrayed the Anxi Army!" Zhang Zhao took a deep breath and said darkly.

Li Qilang looked at Zhang Zhao in surprise, thought for a moment, and said, "According to my grandfather, it should have been twenty-seven years after we abolished the Anxi Army title!"

"Ah! Pugu Jun! You beast!" Zhang Zhao felt as though his head had been struck by heavenly thunder. Extreme fury made his whole body burn hot, and he violently overturned the low table in front of him.

"Pugu Jun deserves death! I will slaughter every last one of your descendants!"

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