Chapter 191

Cao Yuanxin wore a white cotton-padded jacket, and under the blazing red sun she was drenched in sweat. Even so, she kept it on for a full quarter hour before taking it off, then went to wash up before coming out to see Zhang Zhao.

"It is a fine thing. Some days ago I heard people say that Great King Zhang of our Great Jin had made an enormous wooden bow, saying you wanted to shoot down the sun. So it turns out you were tinkering with cloth!"

Zhang Zhao was speechless for a moment. Which unreliable fellow had been spreading that nonsense? That big wooden bow was for fluffing cotton — it would take a giant three or four meters tall to shoot arrows with it.

"Still, this cloth is good, and it truly is warm in winter, but it's of little use!" Cao Yuanxin said, shaking her head. "At its cost, nobles and officials already have furs to wear — who would wear this ugly thing? Common folk can't bear to buy it. Better to buy a few bolts of cloth and make two more outfits yourself; when it's cold, wear more layers, and in summer they can still be used."

"Auntie-in-law indeed has a keen eye. But the reason this thing is expensive is the yield per mu and the weaving technique. I can assert that once cotton seed and weaving techniques improve, it will surely replace kudzu and hemp and become the most important cloth. And today I have not come for the cotton jacket, but for this suit of armor."

As Zhang Zhao spoke, he beckoned, and Lady Cao, who had been waiting outside the door, came in laboriously carrying a cloth-faced suit of armor. Cao Yuanxin glanced at her lightly. Lady Cao's face glowed with the luster of conjugal affection, and her whole spirit looked much improved.

After hesitating a moment, Lady Cao glanced sidelong at Zhang Zhao beside her, and at last set aside the bearing she had once held as queen of the Karakhanids. She bent gently and slowly knelt before Cao Yuanxin. "Your servant, daughter of the Cao clan, pays respects to Auntie-in-law!"

Cao Yuanxin lifted her chin, struggling to control the twitching of her facial muscles. Queen of the Karakhanids! Once, this had been a woman as noble as herself, and now she knelt before her, sincerely and willingly.

After half a minute of soaring on clouds, Cao Yuanxin drew a breath and calmed the excitement in her heart. Looking at Lady Cao on the ground, she spoke lightly. "I hear you are a descendant of the royal house of Eastern Cao?"

"Replying to Auntie-in-law, your servant's ancestor was the King of Eastern Cao. It is only a pity that after the Persian Samanids destroyed our state, the ancestral temple was cut off and the genealogies were lost." Now that she had knelt and set aside her pride, Lady Cao was much more docile, and no longer begrudged the time Cao Yuanxin had forcibly sent her to Zhang Zhao's bed to bring luck to the unconscious Zhang Zhao.

"That is a pity. If the genealogy still existed, you and I could properly discuss seniority. My maternal grandfather's family came from Western Cao, and were descendants of Prince Huaide!" Benwei was the self-address used by imperial consorts at this time, while bengong was reserved for the empress, because only the courtyard where the empress resided could be called a gong.

Although Cao Yuanxin was queen of the Jin Kingdom of Khotan, by the rites by which Khotan acknowledged the Great Tang as its mother state, Cao Yuanxin was only the consort of a commandery prince, and her residence could only be called a ge, not a gong. Therefore Cao Yuanxin generally also called herself benwei.

"You both bear the surname Cao, so there is still some connection. This time she gathered her clansmen to work the cotton and rendered meritorious service. Why not have Auntie-in-law send a letter to the Great King Linggong, and let this woman enter the Cao clan school?" Zhang Zhao said with a grin, his face carrying a hint of ingratiation.

"Tsk tsk!" Cao Yuanxin gestured for Lady Cao on the ground to rise, clicking her tongue all the while. "It seems you are quite fond of her! You men — other men's wives are always better than your own, is that it? You even want to bring her into the gates of the Qiaojun Cao clan. You really are prepared to give her a proper status!"

"I beg Auntie-in-law to grant this!" Zhang Zhao cupped his hands toward Cao Yuanxin.

"Very well. I will write the letter shortly." Cao Yuanxin studied Zhang Zhao's expression carefully, and once she saw he was not pretending, she agreed. "But for the next few days, let her follow me. To bear the surname Cao, she must memorize the genealogy and clan laws of our Qiaojun Cao."

With that, Cao Yuanxin looked at Lady Cao and gave another proud snort. "Our Shazhou Cao family comes from the Qiaojun Cao clan. This branch is descended from the Great Wei Emperor Gaozu Wu, a famous and noble house. You, a Sogdian, being able to enter a Hua clan is a blessing your ancestors cultivated for generations."

"Since Auntie-in-law has agreed, why not also bestow a name upon her!" Zhang Zhao quickly struck while the iron was hot. His cousin and auntie-in-law was like this — she liked to say slightly sharp-tongued things, but generally when she said such things was when she was happiest.

"Why so hasty? I only said I would write the letter. Whether the Great King Linggong agrees is still uncertain!" Cao Yuanxin snorted again.

"With Auntie-in-law taking the matter in hand, how could the Great King Linggong possibly disagree!" Zhang Zhao sent another tall hat her way.

"Fine then. Since you enter my Cao clan gates by merit of cotton, I will give you the name Mian. Hmm — Cao Yanmian, descendants stretching on unbroken. That name is not bad either!" Cao Yuanxin very naturally placed Lady Cao one generation lower, which was also quite fitting.

"Many thanks to Auntie-in-law for bestowing the name. From now on, your servant shall be called Cao Yanmian!" Lady Cao quickly prostrated herself again to give thanks, and this time it was sincere. For a Sogdian who had long been infatuated with Han and Tang culture, entering the gates of a great Central Plains house had once been one of her dreams.

"Zhang Erlang, with this woman Yanmian added, my Cao clan will have married three daughters to you — Yanxi, Yannai, and Yanmian. When you stand alone as master of your own domain in the future, do not forget!"

"Auntie-in-law, rest assured! I will never dare forget!" Zhang Zhao understood what Cao Yuanxin meant. Judging by the ability Zhang Zhao had shown so far, neither the second nor third generation of the Cao family's Guiyi Army — whether Cao Yuande or Cao Yanlu — could contend with Zhang Zhao, and the great power of the Guiyi Army would soon return from the Cao family to the Zhang family.

"Let Yanmian go back first. Put on that armor and come with me. Lately your uncle has been so angry he cannot sleep at night. That wretch Yusuf not only refused our overtures, but cut off our envoy's nose and ears and drove him back to Shule. Such arrogance!"

Crossing the sparsely forested Geluo Ridge, Zheng Tong let out a long breath. After a month of arduous trekking, he had finally entered the land of Ferghana from Shule. Behind him were a dozen or so men.

There was Shan Zhu'er, whose face was so ferocious he often had to cover it with a black cloth, and Ma Yaozi, who at a glance was an old hand, and the brothers Pei Shengyuan and Pei Tongyuan, wearing iron vambraces and constantly watching the movements of the hawks overhead.

Disguised as traveling merchants, they had received Zhang Zhao's orders to go to the former land of Ferghana — first, to scout a passable route for the army, and second, to search for the descendants of the Yang, Zheng, and Xue families of the Anxi Army who had migrated to Ferghana sixty years before.

Geluo Ridge was the Fergana Range that in later times lay between Andijan and Shule (Kashgar). These mountains were a branch of the Tianshan range and extremely difficult to cross. For an army to cross, one had to find an ancient road built over a thousand years ago. It was by this ancient road that Satuq had been able to conquer this place.

Without this ancient road, a few hundred or a thousand men could cross, but an army of tens of thousands would find it hard. Yet Yusuf, the governor of Ferghana under Satuq, had built Andukang City to be easy to defend and hard to attack. A few hundred or a thousand men could not take such a great city — they would not even outnumber its garrison. So to seize this place, they had to find the ancient road as quickly as possible and raise a great army.

The land of Ferghana had been rich since ancient times. In the Han period it was called Dayuan, a great state with more than seventy cities large and small, capable of mobilizing over sixty thousand soldiers. Ferghana itself had been conquered and destroyed by the Arabs over a hundred years ago, and later occupied by the Persian Samanid dynasty, which renamed it Marghinan. In the future it would also bear the names Kokand and Fergana.

"Five days ago we passed this small town called Kaman. If we keep going east now, we reach Yusuf's Andukang City. Going north is the place where the Yang, Zheng, and Xue families settled." Zheng Tong wiped the sweat from his forehead and said to Shan Zhu'er and Ma Yaozi.

"You bald scoundrel, can you be sure the Yang family's castle is north of here? Everything north of here is mountains — which north is the right north?" Ma Yaozi scratched his head, looking somewhat irritated. He had originally heard the Great King say that Ferghana was a heavenly land of Anxi, and had thought there would be plenty of people, so asking directions and making inquiries would not be hard. But since they had passed Kaman, they had seen almost no one.

"I... I actually don't know either." The sweat on Zheng Tong's forehead grew heavier. "The last time I saw someone from the Yang family was eight or nine years ago. That was exactly what he told me then — that after passing Kaman City, if you follow the main road east for about five days, you will see a great city, and if you follow the river that flows through the great city northward, you will find them."

"Eight or nine years! That is enough to change many things!" said the masked Shan Zhu'er, trying to sound refined. Recently he had entered the officer training military academy personally taught by Great King Zhang, and could already recognize more than two hundred characters, which had made him considerably more cultured.

"Indeed." Zheng Tong nodded in agreement. "In these past few years, the Karakhanid state and the Persian Samanid state have fought several great battles here. It is quite possible the great city the Yang family spoke of has already been destroyed in the fighting."

"We have company!" Pei Shengyuan, who had been listening to them talk, suddenly gave a low shout. Then a hawk's cry came from the sky. The great eagle Pei Shengyuan kept was circling continuously in the distance.

"People are coming, and not a few!" Pei Tongyuan's face turned serious. Judging whether there were many or few people was very simple — one only had to look at the size of the circles the great eagle in the sky was flying.

"Put on armor. See what sort of people are coming. Watch my eyes and act accordingly!" Ma Yaozi dashed to the cart, put on the cloth-faced armor that belonged to him, and began issuing orders to the others.

This armor the Great King had invented was excellent. From the outside you could not tell at all that it was iron armor; you would only think it was padded clothing. So even when the enemy situation was unclear, they did not fear exposure and could put the armor on directly.

Sure enough, Ma Yaozi and the others had just finished donning their armor when thunderous hoofbeats sounded in the distance. A troop of thirty or forty cavalrymen came from afar, approaching them in an enveloping formation.

"Who are you people? How dare you come here?" After the cavalrymen had completely surrounded Ma Yaozi and the others, an officer with a long horse face just like Ma Yaozi's barked the question.

"I say they must be bandits from the mountains in disguise. Look at that fellow — he looks just like those bandits!" someone shouted, pointing at Zheng Tong, who had the look of a son of Tang. But the man's eyes kept drifting, intentionally or not, toward Ma Yaozi's several fully loaded carts.

"Esteemed beg, we are traveling merchants from the east, absolutely not bandits!" Ma Yaozi hurried over with an ingratiating look, and he really did look like a long-faced old hand who traveled everywhere as a merchant.

"Traveling merchants? What do you sell? Who can prove you are traveling merchants?" Hearing that these people were merchants, the cavalry leader hesitated, a look of uncertainty appearing on his face. Traveling merchants were extremely important to all the peoples of Anxi and Transoxiana, so merchants were generally rarely robbed.

"Here is a bolt of white cotton cloth from Gaochang, as a token of our respect for this beg and his brave warriors. Are there bandits about to the north? Is the road to Andukang City still open?"

The cavalry leader did not reach out to take the bolt of white cotton cloth Ma Yaozi offered. This foolish merchant — he should not have given anything, the leader mocked inwardly. When the merchant had gone to fetch the cloth just now, everyone had already seen that the carts held a great deal of fine cotton cloth, at least several dozen bolts. It was worth letting them take a little risk.

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