Chapter 195: A Marriage Alliance

What Zhang Zhao had brought to Li Shengtian was a complete set of cloth-faced armor, including iron arm guards that did not exist in this era and a type of composite helmet.

Aside from being heavy, the lamellar armor of this era had a major flaw: it paid little attention to protecting the arms and wrists.

Especially for the arms, soldiers often had to forge or buy extra protection themselves — though of course it was also possible that the overall weight was simply too great, so they had no choice but to give up some arm protection.

But this blue cloth-faced armor of Zhang Zhao's weighed only about thirty-one jin, so he had directly added iron arm guards to it.

At the sight of this new-style armor, Li Shengtian immediately snatched the ice pack from his forehead; his head no longer ached and his legs no longer felt weak.

Although he was a ruler inclined more toward civil governance, Li Shengtian was by no means ignorant of military affairs — he simply lacked talent for it, but he still knew his business well.

He naturally understood how much fighting strength could be gained from a set of armor that, in his eyes, was quite nearly perfect.

The dark blue-black cotton robe — actually, Zhang Zhao had wanted to make it the red cotton armor common in later ages, but in this era the dye for red came from the red-blue grass.

Never mind that Zhang Zhao did not know how to extract the red from it; the mere fact that red-blue grass grew only south of the Qinling and Huai River was enough to stop him cold.

The cost of shipping the stuff to Anxi was not low, and it could not even be bought unless you specially had a traveling merchant bring it for you, so he had no choice but to settle honestly for dark blue-black.

Li Shengtian carefully examined the iron armor plates lining the cotton armor. These plates had been forged extremely smooth, more than ten times larger than ordinary lamellar plates, which greatly increased their defensive power, because larger plates meant fewer gaps between plates in the whole suit.

The studded plate connection design on the surface was also easier to manufacture and easier to repair than lamellar armor.

Li Shengtian gestured for Zhang Zhao to step back and tried it on himself. Even someone like him, who rarely wore armor, was able to put it on quickly. It was indeed convenient.

Moreover, this inner-lining armor style also served to conceal the armor's weak points.

Do not think that finding the weak points of an opponent's armor in battle is impossible; in fact, veterans of war are extremely skilled at discovering them.

Very often, when armored soldiers on the battlefield suffer severe wounds, it is rarely from brute force breaking through the armor; most of the time, after repeated grappling, the opponent finds a weakness in the armor plates and then stabs them to death.

Therefore, for the external-armor style — especially for an army like Khotan's, which relied mainly on heavy-armored infantry — the pressure of manufacturing, repairing, and maintaining armor plates was enormous.

Because even if every part of your body is excellently protected, as long as there is one tiny flaw, it may be magnified on the battlefield.

This difficulty, which later ages would summarize as the barrel effect, has been an unsolvable problem ever since armor first appeared, and it was also a major factor in the high cost of armor in the cold-weapons era.

Once you have made it, you still have to spend a great deal of time and money on upkeep, but the inner-armor style of cloth-faced armor can largely avoid this problem.

"Uncle, please look. This armor weighs only a little over thirty jin. For a well-trained armored soldier, the burden is not heavy at all.

So when we encounter the enemy's elite heavy-armored soldiers, we can wear a suit of ring-linked mail underneath, and then wear a padded jacket against the skin.

In this way the total weight is no more than fifty jin, yet the defensive power already exceeds two layers of armor, and it can almost make one impervious to blade and spear.

Whether it is the ghulam guards of the Karakhanids or the ghulam guards of Samanid Persia, none of them could stand against us!"

Zhang Zhao explained everything to Li Shengtian one by one, and Li Shengtian and Cao Yuanxin beside him listened with shining eyes. The fact that Zhang Zhao was willing to explain so unreservedly at least proved that he had no intention of keeping anything to himself.

"Then what is special about this helmet?" Li Shengtian asked, pointing at the composite helmet Zhang Zhao had brought.

The use of the iron arm guards was obvious at a glance, but what mystery this helmet held, he had not yet figured out.

Zhang Zhao picked up the composite helmet, a type that historically would only appear in the Southern Song period. He had reconstructed it in his later life together with fellow enthusiasts, using the Illustrated History of Chinese Armor Through the Ages as a reference.

The reason it was called a composite helmet was that it was not a single-piece helmet that you simply picked up and put on your head.

Rather, it was made of three parts — an outer helmet, an inner lining helmet, and a neck guard — and then the outer helmet and inner lining helmet were fixed together with large rivets.

When struck, the composite structure allowed the dome structure and brim of the outer helmet to absorb the kinetic energy delivered by blades or blunt weapons first, so that what finally reached the inner helmet was greatly reduced, achieving the goal of protecting the head through the two-layer inner and outer helmet structure.

This composite helmet with a brim was also considered one of the ancestors of the Ming dynasty's flying-saucer helmet. After later reconstruction tests, it was always regarded as the highest level of defense achievable before the Ming dynasty.

Now that Zhang Zhao had reconstructed it, it had already undergone more than ten tests, of which more than ten had even used live human testers directly — two feet of folded cloth plus a meal, and injuries were treated; plenty of people were willing to serve as guinea pigs.

"Erlang! Are you truly willing to hand over all this technology to your uncle without holding anything back? This is a treasure vital to the state!" Li Shengtian tightly grasped Zhang Zhao's hand, his face full of emotion.

For this era, the cloth-faced armor and composite helmet that Zhang Zhao had produced could indeed be called treasures vital to the state, without the slightest exaggeration.

Li Shengtian had in fact already prepared for the worst; as long as Zhang Zhao was willing to leave him three hundred sets of cotton armor, that would have been enough. He had never expected that Zhang Zhao would actually be willing to make public the complete set of techniques.

Zhang Zhao actually had a rather good impression of Li Shengtian as well. This uncle of his, though he had no shortage of flaws — for instance, he harbored a tiny bit of wariness toward Zhang Zhao in his heart — was never ambiguous on matters of fundamental principle.

For example, with the cotton-fluffing technique Zhang Zhao had invented, all those who now mastered the technique were members of Cao Yanmian's clan, and Li Shengtian had not sent anyone to learn it secretly. In all fairness, Li Shengtian had treated Zhang Zhao quite well.

"Of course I am willing, because with the barbarians hemming us in on all sides, your nephew still wants to stand together with his uncle and jointly protect the culture of the Great Tang!

Khotan and the Guiyi Army — if either is missing, the other cannot survive alone. Only by standing together like branches of the same tree and prospering together can we pass this on for ten thousand generations.

However, Uncle, your nephew has a request, though I do not know whether I should voice it."

"Speak! Between you and me, uncle and nephew, there is nothing that cannot be said!" Ignoring the look in Cao Yuanxin's eyes, Li Shengtian waved his hand grandly. He had made up his mind — even if Zhang Zhao asked him for a large stretch of territory, he would give it.

"If, one day in the future, your nephew has the chance to march east into the Central Plains, I beg Uncle to give me your full support!"

The words were short, but they exploded in Li Shengtian's mind like a thunderclap. He stared at Zhang Zhao in stunned disbelief. March into the Central Plains?

This was also the second time Zhang Zhao had revealed his innermost aspirations to an outsider. The previous one had been Cao Yuanxin's father, the Military Governor of the Guiyi Army, Cao Yijin.

Before Li Shengtian could speak, Cao Yuanxin had actually quickly realized the point herself, and she cried out in surprise.

"No wonder! No wonder that with my father's temperament, not only did he not order you killed when he met with you, he even gave you several dozen of the Guiyi Army's finest armored soldiers, and promised to marry Yanxi to you, and to include Yannai as well! And he was even willing to let Yanming travel west with you.

I could never understand it before. Yannai is no ordinary daughter of the Cao clan. Her grandfather is the Prefect of Guazhou in the Guiyi Army, and within the Guiyi Army her status is even higher than that of my elder brother Yuande.

For the Great King and Duke to make that decision, who knows how many benefits he had to give the Murong family. And Yanming is the grandson the Great King and Duke dotes on most — how could he bear to let him go risk himself with you?

Now it all makes sense. So you, Zhang Erlang, actually harbor such grand ambitions!"

"Excellent! Truly, heroes emerge from the young!" Li Shengtian abruptly stood up, his gaze burning as he stared at Zhang Zhao. Then he suddenly gave a bitter laugh. He too finally understood the answer to why Zhang Zhao had worked so desperately hard in Khotan.

"Now your uncle understands why you have been so generous to me, and why you have worked so hard for the great kingdom of Khotan. So it was because you had these grand ambitions.

But your uncle supports you. If the day truly comes when you march east into the Central Plains, whatever you fancy here in your uncle's domain, take it! However..."

Li Shengtian suddenly stopped short. Supporting Zhang Zhao, and even bringing the kingdom of Khotan along to support Zhang Zhao — this was not something given for free. It would certainly have to be counted as an investment, and the safest investment was to bind the families even closer by marriage.

But Li Shengtian had only four daughters. The eldest had died young, the third had already been promised to the most outstanding member of the Cao family's third generation in the Guiyi Army — none other than Cao Sanniang's own younger brother, Cao Yanlu — and the fourth daughter was only two years old, completely unsuitable.

As for the remaining second daughter, that was even more awkward. She had been born to the former Queen of Khotan, whom Cao Yuanxin had fought and driven to Samoruo Temple to become a nun. How could Li Shengtian dare use this daughter for a marriage alliance with Zhang Zhao?

Moreover, even if this second daughter's background had not been a problem, Zhang Zhao's principal wife had already been internally designated as the Cao family's Cao Shijiu Niang, Yanxi.

His Li Shengtian's princess, even if her background was lacking, could not possibly be given to someone as a concubine.

Unless Zhang Zhao could truly sit on the dragon throne — but whose investment could guarantee certain success? If Zhang Zhao failed to sit on the dragon throne, then he, Li Shengtian, would be left in an awkward position.

The three of them suddenly fell into an awkward silence. Zhang Zhao drew a deep breath — he decided to gamble.

"Uncle, how about this: Cousin Congde and I are close in age, so why not arrange a marriage for the next generation?

If my first legitimate child is a boy, he will marry Cousin Congde's legitimate eldest daughter as his queen; if I have a legitimate eldest daughter, she will marry Cousin Congde's legitimate eldest son as his queen."

This truly was a gamble, because Zhang Zhao intended, after entering the Central Plains, to raise up civil officials to check the military officers.

And once a Confucian civil-official atmosphere took shape, it would absolutely never accept a Scythian white woman as empress.

So Zhang Zhao was gambling — he was betting that his first child with Cao Yanxi would be a girl. If it turned out to be a boy, there would be trouble.

"Excellent! This way we'll be doubly bound by kinship!" Before Li Shengtian could answer, Cao Yuanxin delightedly agreed.

She had just been afraid that Li Shengtian would harden his heart and agree to marry the Second Princess to Zhang Zhao as a concubine. Now, being able to arrange a marriage contract between his son Li Congde and Zhang Zhao could be called the best possible outcome.

Whether her own granddaughter married into the Zhang family as queen or even empress, or Zhang Zhao's legitimate eldest daughter married over as Queen of Khotan — there was no outcome better than this.

Li Shengtian thought it over for a while, and also felt there was no better choice, so he nodded in agreement as well.

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