Chapter 167: Where Are the Five Surnames and Three Kings Now?

Outside Guangcheng Fort, boisterous drum and pipe music rang out. The bride, Aluoluo, was wrapped in silks of every color, gold and jeweled hairpins in her hair, seated on an extremely simple palanquin — and the ones carrying the palanquin were her own brothers.

Around her were several hundred elite cavalry. The sun was setting in the west, and the dim yellow light of the setting sun laid a dark-gold sheen over the silks on Aluoluo's body, making her look even more sumptuous and alluring.

This Uyghur bride, whose features were close to those of a Han woman, looked at her groom, so overjoyed she wanted to jump to the ground and sing and dance. What a glorious moment this was! Which flower of the steppe, when she married, could drape herself in silks?

Silks! Silks from Taohuashi!

Even her husband, the most favored youngest son of the Great Virtue of Prudence, could only tie a thin strip of it around his waist to show off his wealth.

But she — she could wrap her whole body in silk. There were at least ten chi of it, just enough to make one full outfit. Her entire tribe, probably, was not worth as much as these silks.

And what made Aluoluo even prouder — she had been carried off by her husband with three hundred elite armored riders.

Three hundred elite riders like these — not even all the Yabghus in Balasagun put together had them.

So then, the one who could make men send out three hundred elite riders to seize her must absolutely be the most beautiful flower of all.

The only pity was that her own home was a bit far from Balasagun. If only she could have been carried off like this just outside the walls of Balasagun — that would have been even better!

Her gaze, brimming with deep affection, seemed capable of melting steel. Even without turning around, Guo Guangcheng could feel Aluoluo's burning stare.

He suddenly felt a scorching pain across his back, accompanied by wave after wave of weakness in his legs. Shuddering, Guo Guangcheng quickened his pace and ran toward his father.

"Father! Someone has come from the imperial court! Zhang Erlang of Shazhou has come looking for us with armored riders!"

Guo Guangcheng shouted excitedly, but the Great Virtue of Prudence, Xuancheng, only furrowed his brows, his face showing not the slightest trace of joy.

At this moment, when the Persians were about to attack, this Zhang Erlang, invited by Titexigu to lend a hand, had suddenly raised the banner of the Great Tang. He was not coming with good intentions!

"Chang'an? You're asking about Chang'an? You ask me how rich Chang'an is? Come, come here and I'll tell you! Look — isn't your little auntie here beautiful?"

At Guo Guangcheng's wedding feast, Zhang Zhao had taken off his leather armor and changed into a purple robe, a gauze headwrap on his head, a golden fish pouch at his waist, and in his hand a folding fan of the sort affected by the cultured.

But do not underestimate this folding fan. First, in the Tang dynasty there were no folding fans, only round fans. Second, the folding fan represented an extremely high level of craftsmanship.

It could absolutely be considered high technology for this era. The paper alone was something most places could not produce.

And "most places" included most places in every country, the Great Tang included.

The paper of Zhang Zhao's folding fan was Xuan paper, specially brought by traveling merchants. In Anxi, the price of one sheet of Xuan paper was worth twenty sheepskins.

Amid laughter, the crowd shoved a short young fellow in front of Zhang Zhao. The boy was Guo Guangcheng's own nephew, already fifteen or sixteen years old.

Zhang Zhao laughed heartily and threw an arm around the boy's shoulders. "You still haven't answered my question! Is your little auntie beautiful or not?"

Had this been the Ming or Qing era, especially under the Manchu Qing, a bride teased like this could probably have gone straight to drown herself in the river.

But in the Tang — and especially here in Anxi, and with Uyghurs at that — Aluoluo felt not the slightest embarrassment. She even danced a couple of steps proudly, showing everyone her lively figure and the silks draped over her body.

The young nephew's face went red as he stole a few glances, and finally he lowered his head and hemmed and hawed for a long while. "Beautiful! My uncle's a lucky man!"

"Hahahaha!" Everyone around laughed until they doubled over.

"Then let me tell you — in Chang'an, there are at least ten thousand beauties like your little auntie!" Zhang Zhao said loudly once the laughter died down.

"Young lord Zhang, you're telling tall tales. What city has ten thousand beauties alone? How big would that city have to be? Wouldn't it need a million people?"

"Ha, right. Here in Balasagun, even counting everyone, I don't know if we have two hundred thousand. Inside the city walls there are only thirty-some thousand. What kind of city could hold five Balasaguns' worth of people?"

Disbelief all around. The one who spoke was a young man in a Nestorian monk's robe, who seemed to have seen a bit of the world — though that knowledge apparently extended no further than the vicinity of Balasagun.

"A million people is a lot? Let me tell you — the city of Chang'an alone has a million! Add the surrounding areas, and it's at least two million or more. Every single day, the pigs and sheep slaughtered number in the tens of thousands!

Balasagun? In the Central Plains, Balasagun would be no more than a lower-tier prefecture!

You've been trapped in this bitter, cold land too long. You no longer know how rich our Great Tang once was. You should come out with me and see the world — broaden your horizons!"

Zhang Zhao felt rather like someone from the eighties or nineties returning to his village after working in the city, telling the villagers how rich the big city was.

"Let's talk more about silk. Do you know how much Shu brocade the Shu region presented to Emperor Ming in a single tribute in the fourth year of Kaiyuan?" So saying, Zhang Zhao held up two fingers of his right hand and shook them three times.

"A full two hundred thousand bolts!"

"Whoa!" The people around let out exclamations of astonishment. One bolt of silk was about four zhang — that is, about forty chi. The silk on Aluoluo's body, enough to buy her entire clan, was only about ten chi — exactly one zhang, a mere quarter of a bolt.

"Never mind Chang'an. Just speaking of when our Four Garrisons of Anxi were at their height — before the Anxi field army marched into the capital to rescue the emperor, under Commander Gao there were thirty thousand armored soldiers alone. Every two men shared one suit of lamellar armor, and each man had a suit of leather armor. There were sixty or seventy thousand fine horses, two hundred thousand donkeys and mules, and swords, spears, halberds, and pikes beyond counting.

Beyond that, they could also call up the Pei family of Shule, the Bai family of Kucha, the Long family of Yanqi, and the Yuchi family of Khotan — over a hundred thousand troops. Even by the time it passed to Commander Guo, there were still at least several thousand armored soldiers and over a hundred and fifty thousand head of livestock!"

This time there were no exclamations — only silence, because they simply could not imagine what tens of thousands of armored soldiers looked like.

The great powers of Anxi today — whether the Gaochang Uyghurs, the Karakhanids, or Khotan — none of them could field even ten thousand iron-armored soldiers.

The reason the Guiyi Army could hold out for over two hundred years with only the two small prefectures of Gua and Sha was that they held in their hands the great store of armor passed down from their ancestors.

With a population of only two or three hundred thousand, they could field three or four thousand iron-armored soldiers, and even the militia soldiers could each have armor. This was the foundation of the Guiyi Army's constant boast of "ten thousand crack troops, both Han and barbarian."

The reason the Guo family thought the Persian Samanid state was invincible was also that Samanid Persia was the only great power in Transoxiana that could field over ten thousand iron-armored troops.

"Young lord Zhang, everything you speak of is in the past! Now, never mind our ancestors' several thousand armored soldiers and hundreds of thousands of livestock — we can't even produce a hundred suits of armor, and our livestock number only a bit over ten thousand.

The Great Tang was indeed rich and glorious, but that was the wealth of the Sage and the high officials and nobles. What did it have to do with poor wretches like us?"

"May I ask your name?" Zhang Zhao cupped his hands in salute and looked at this middle-aged man with sword-like brows, star-bright eyes, and an uncommon bearing.

"I am Guo Guangsheng. My father is the Great Virtue of Prudence, Xuancheng. The Guo Guangcheng beside you is my youngest brother."

Guo Guangsheng cupped his hands in return salute, and the Guo family members around all fell silent. It seemed he was one of the more authoritative figures in the clan.

"Brother Guo, I cannot agree with what you have said." Zhang Zhao snapped his folding fan shut with a crack and shook his head.

"When the Great Tang was at its height, what was the status of the sons of Tang in Anxi? Never mind the begs and nobles — even the kings of the various states, what were they in the eyes of the sons of Tang? The garrison commanders of each region were the true rulers!

And now, what is our status? In the old days, when we held Anxi through bitter hardship, even the petty chieftain of some small tribe dared to think of biting a chunk of flesh off us. How can you say the Great Tang belonged only to the Sage and the high officials?

And furthermore! Your Guo family — the old commander was Prince of Weiwu Commandery and Military Governor of the Four Garrisons of Anxi. Is that not high office and nobility?

The old commander's uncle, Grand Preceptor Guo, Duke of Fenyang, Zhongwu (Guo Ziyi), was a pillar of the state. All eight of his sons and eight of his sons-in-law were high officials of the court.

That one family alone produced one commandery prince, three dukes, and four men who married imperial princesses.

The Great Tang's Empress Yi'an, birth mother of Emperor Ruisheng Wenhui Xiaoxiao of the Mu Temple, was Grand Preceptor Guo's granddaughter.

With such a family background, you tell me you are not court nobility? You tell me the Great Tang court has nothing to do with you?

What kind of reasoning is this? Has the hard life of Anxi stopped up your ears and eyes? Have you forgotten family, state, and the realm entirely?"

This was the real bombshell. These members of the Guo family had been trapped near Balasagun, and for several generations they had lived in extreme poverty.

No one should imagine that some great Nestorian worthy could live a comfortable life. Zhang Zhao looked around at the Guo family members nearby — all of them wore coarse hemp clothing.

Though they did not exactly look starved, judging by the way they had just fought over the meat, they were not well off either.

Even the marriage of the youngest son of a grand and dignified worthy could only be marked by tying a strip of silk at the waist as a show of wealth.

For the young men of the Guo family here, owning a broken iron sword was already considered decent. Most of them could only manage a long spear, because all they could afford was an iron spearhead — worse equipped than the current militia troops of the Central Plains.

Extreme poverty, combined with more than a hundred years of hiding, had nearly worn away the pride in their blood. Their only thought this time was to flee — that was proof enough.

He could only hope that he could still bring them hope, and awaken them.

Guo Guangcheng's eyes flashed with light. The nephew whom Zhang Zhao had been holding back also looked full of longing. Everyone slowed their gnawing on the meat bones.

They had never imagined that the Guo family could be so wealthy and honored in the Central Plains — that even the Emperor of the Great Tang had been born of a daughter of their Guo family.

"To think our ancestors were so wealthy and honored! Truly we are shamed to death!"

Guo Guangcheng threw away the mutton bone in his hand in shame, and felt that the meat, which had been so delicious a moment ago, had suddenly lost all flavor.

"I am Guo Guangsheng. I have seen Zhang Erlang. I am the eldest son of the Guo family. Young lord may call me Guo Dalang!"

Guo Guangsheng also stammered in shame for a moment, then finally straightened his clothes and solemnly announced his name to Zhang Zhao.

"Guo Dalang?" At this name, Zhang Zhao could not help losing focus for a moment. He even murmured it aloud, but immediately knew he had made a mistake.

Sure enough, Guo Guangsheng, who had still shown shame a moment before, now looked displeased. With some anger in his eyes, he stared at Zhang Zhao.

"It seems the young lord must have found people from the other families. That is right — sixty years ago, the Guo Dalang they called a traitor was none other than my grandfather!"

"Guo Dalang, I am Zheng Tong. You are somewhat older than me, so I should call you elder brother. Sixty years ago, it was indeed our fathers' and grandfathers' generation who wronged your grandfather!"

The monk Huitong, Zheng Tong, stepped out from behind Zhang Zhao, his face full of distress.

"Wronged! Hah! How generous! So you Zheng, Yang, Li, and Lu families have finally stopped calling my grandfather a traitor?

My grandfather's bones have never even been found. His three younger brothers, more than ten legitimate sons and nephews — all died at Xizhou. What kind of traitor does that?

Even if he had been a traitor, he should have come back later to take us descendants of traitors off to enjoy wealth and honor. What kind of traitor gets himself killed and drags his whole clan down with him?"

Guo Guangsheng's handsome face was twisted with emotion. As Zhang Zhao had guessed, the Guo family still harbored resentment over what had happened to them.

"Guo Dalang, your family lost people too, but look around you. Here alone, there must be over a hundred men of your Guo family!

Now look at our Li family. Sixty years ago, my Li family was also a great clan with over a hundred men. But when Xizhou was ambushed, my Li family was responsible for covering the retreat. More than a hundred and several dozen went out, only a dozen or so came back. Over sixty years, a great clan that once numbered several hundred is now nearly extinct!

How does that compare to your Guo family? Back then, your grandfather Guo Dalang was the leader of our five clans and three royal families. When Xizhou was ambushed, was it not your ancestor's responsibility?"

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