Chapter 263: Why Be Confined to a Mere Patch of Land

In the great hall of Qingxi Palace, the atmosphere was awkward and heavy. The explosion had drawn the palace guards outside, but they all stood frozen beyond the doors, because Cao Yuande and his brothers, along with the leaders of Dunhuang's great clans, were all inside the hall.

At the same time, Zhang Zhao could not get out either. He was certain that the moment he showed his face, he would end up shot dead by a hail of arrows.

Taking a deep breath, Zhang Zhao glanced toward a shadowed corner, where a gaunt old man sat with his eyes closed, resting, looking perfectly at ease.

Old fox! Zhang Zhao cursed inwardly. This old man was none other than Murong Xinzhang's grandfather and Cao Sanniang's father-in-law, Murong Guiying.

In fact, before Zhang Zhao entered Dunhuang, Cao Sanniang had secretly returned to Guazhou and, on Zhang Zhao's behalf, negotiated terms with Murong Guiying.

It was agreed that once Zhang Zhao took power, the Murong family would receive the largest share of the spoils from him, and the sixteen-year-old Murong Xinzhang would become the Surveillance Commissioner of Suzhou.

That was essentially handing half of Suzhou to the Murong family, and Murong Guiying had cheerfully agreed at the time.

But now it seemed the old fox was hedging his bets, or rather, he would only show up to add flowers to brocade, never to send coal in the snow.

If that was the case, Zhang Zhao could only fall back on the hundred Uyghur warriors under Princess Tiansheng. But that was a last resort, not to be used unless absolutely necessary.

"Young lord, my third uncle is here. He wants to come in!" Cao Yanming leaned close to Zhang Zhao and whispered.

It seemed Cao Yuanzhong, who had been placed under house arrest, must have been released by the younger members of the Cao family outside. After all, he was the only one left who could take charge.

"Fine! Let him in!" For the sake of his double father-in-law, Zhang Zhao decided to give him face.

In truth, he had never intended to fight it out with the Cao family. Even the wooden tubes on Cao Yuanshen's body were filled, except for a few, with dry, fine loess.

"Cao Shisi, you really are a fine child of mine!" Cao Yuande's face, from the main seat, had darkened beyond recognition.

He glared furiously at Cao Yanming, a violent rage at being betrayed by a beloved son flooding his mind. Right now, all he wanted was to drag Cao Yanming over and give him thirty strokes of family discipline.

"Father, Fourteen will beg your forgiveness later!" Cao Yanming felt awkward too, but he increasingly sensed that the Cao family had no future on this path. Today, while the Cao and Zhang families still had a bit of old affection between them, stepping down quickly was the best choice.

"Zhang Erlang! Why are you so rash? Is there anything that cannot be settled with words? Must one family meet with drawn swords?"

Cao Yuanzhong pushed open a narrow gap in the door and walked in, his face dark, putting on the airs of a father-in-law to lecture him.

Zhang Zhao curled his lip. Among the second generation of the Cao family, only this father-in-law of his had any real ability, though even that was only at the level of a paper-hanger.

On the surface, his words were a scolding of Zhang Zhao, but underneath, he was reframing Zhang Zhao's serious act of holding an entire room hostage as the mischief of children. He truly had a talent for smoothing things over.

"Come here! Have you not yet greeted your maternal grandfather and your eldest and second maternal uncles!" Sure enough, the next second, Cao Yuanzhong turned the whole affair into a family reunion.

Zhang Zhao looked in the direction Cao Yuanzhong pointed. Two short, stocky men flanked an old man, who was watching him with an extremely complicated expression.

This is so damn awkward! Zhang Zhao suddenly felt that coming to Dunhuang might have been a bit rash.

Because in his heart, he was not yet prepared to disown all his kin, and in this room, at least a third of the people were his relatives and elders. Purge? How the hell was he supposed to purge this!

"Your grandson greets his maternal grandfather. Today, I have truly given offense!"

What a talent I am. I'm staging a coup here! On the verge of tears, Zhang Zhao knelt and kowtowed to the old man. A genuine maternal grandfather — he had no choice but to kowtow!

Song Tongshan's lips quivered. He was just as awkward.

Though Zhang Zhao was his daughter's son, in truth, to avoid suspicion, he had seen this grandson no more than ten times in twenty-three years, and most of those had been in childhood. After the boy came of age, they had barely met at all.

And the first meeting in adulthood turned out to be on an occasion like this. He had nearly been scared out of his wits just now by the thunder-bomb his grandson had thrown.

After swallowing hard, Song Tongshan stiffly reached out and made a vague gesture of helping him up.

"Rise... Erlang, rise. No need for such ceremony!"

Fortunately, Cao Yuanzhong did not go on to make him kowtow to his two maternal uncles as well. But his father-in-law's hand pointed further back again.

"Over there is your grand-uncle from the Yin family. You've never met him, have you? The old man is in poor health. If you frighten him, see how you'll clean up the mess afterward!"

Great! Another relative. But this one was not his maternal grandfather; he was his father's uncle.

Zhang Zhao's grandfather Zhang Huaiding had married a daughter of the Yin family — that is, Zhang Zhao's grandmother came from the Yin family. This grand-uncle was the full younger brother of Zhang Zhao's grandmother, and also the grand-uncle of Yin Yaozi.

Utterly mortified, Zhang Zhao could only kowtow and pay his respects again. He now felt that letting Cao Yuanzhong in had been a complete mistake. How was he supposed to be ruthless now? My God, it had turned into a full-blown family reunion.

Seeing Cao Yuanzhong point to the right again, Zhang Zhao's head instantly felt twice its size. That one, called Suo Shengquan, was the grandson of Suo Xun, the third Military Governor of the Guiyi Army, and his grandmother was the ninth daughter of Zhang Yichao.

The tall, burly man beside Suo Shengquan was called Li Shaozong. His grandfather was the great Guiyi Army general Li Mingzhen, and his grandmother was the fourteenth daughter of Zhang Yichao. Come to think of it, they were all Zhang Zhao's blood cousins.

As for the old man staring at Zhang Zhao in open-mouthed astonishment, he was even more formidable. He was called Zhang Huaiqing, and from the name alone, one could tell he was of the older generation of the Zhang family.

Zhang Zhao's grandfather was called Zhang Huaiding, originally also Zhang Huaiding, except that after becoming Military Governor of the Guiyi Army, the character "huai" was changed to "huai."

This "old grandpa" in his sixties was a nephew of Zhang Yichao, the sole surviving member of the Zhang family's "huai" generation, and at the same time the clan head of the Nanyang Zhang family of Shazhou — Zhang Zhao's grand-uncle.

Enough! Zhang Zhao sighed. This whole circle of people — all relatives.

But Cao Yuanzhong's maneuver was not without benefit: everyone quietly put away the short knives and long daggers they had drawn, and the tool-bomb man Cao Yuanshen also recovered a little from his extreme terror.

Zhang Zhao looked at Cao Yuanzhong, then at the expressions of the people in the hall, and knew that today's matter was going to be troublesome.

Originally, he had planned to seize control of these people directly, take down the brothers Cao Yuande and Cao Yuanshen, and then toss out some benefits to placate them.

He had brought back several million strings of cash in goods and wealth. At worst, he could simply buy them off with money, and with the support of his father-in-law Cao Yuanzhong and his half father-in-law Murong Guiying, he could seize the position of Military Governor of the Guiyi Army outright.

But now it seemed the people in the hall, including his maternal grandfather Song Tongguang and the great general of the former Western Han Jinshan Kingdom, Luo Tongda —

these people had all, to some degree, forced his father Zhang Chengfeng to abdicate back then. Toward Zhang Zhao, the only surviving direct-line blood descendant of the Shazhou Zhang family, they still felt some resistance. After all, what they had done back then could be called rebellion.

For Zhang Zhao, this coup had caused his father to die of despair, his elder brother to die of fright and illness, and himself to be trapped in Dunhuang for over a decade. From any angle, it would be perfectly justified for him to take revenge on the people in this room.

So in most people's minds, no matter what Zhang Zhao said — even if he now promised never to pursue the old matters of twenty-odd years ago — these people would not believe him.

You won't pursue it now, but what about later, when you remember? Original sin is not so easily washed clean.

In that case, there was no choice but to activate the second plan. The power base of the Guiyi Army Military Governor rested on two things: one was bloodline inheritance, which Zhang Zhao had; the second was the great cause of opening the Ganzhou-Liangzhou route and reconnecting with the motherland.

But by this point, the great cause of opening the Ganzhou-Liangzhou route and reconnecting with the motherland was no longer realistic.

Historically, only Zhang Zhao's great-grandfather Zhang Yichao and his grand-uncle Zhang Huaishen, two Military Governors, had ever achieved it. Even the "restorer" Cao Yijin had only broken through Ganzhou and could advance no further east.

But if the standard of opening the Ganzhou-Liangzhou route and reconnecting with the motherland were lowered, and changed to defeating the old enemy, the Ganzhou Uyghurs, then now was exactly the right time.

Because if the Ganzhou Uyghurs received word of Princess Tiansheng's death, they would certainly send troops westward, and the two sides, over Suzhou, had long been at odds.

In the fifth month of this year, Liang Xinde, Left Commander of Cavalry and Infantry of the Guiyi Army, was ordered to go on a mission to the Later Tang — in reality, to conduct business on behalf of the Military Governor's office. On the return journey, he was killed in the city of Ganzhou, and all the goods and wealth he carried were lost.

Ha! A Commander of Cavalry and Infantry of the Guiyi Army, with several dozen soldiers, killed in the city of Ganzhou, and no one could even figure out who did it. Well, who had the ability to do such a thing — isn't it obvious?

Even without the killing of Princess Tiansheng, a fight between the two sides was probably already unavoidable.

Historically, this great battle between the two sides was directed by Cao Yuande. Each side levied several thousand troops, and after small-scale contact, the Ganzhou Uyghurs, feeling they could gain no advantage, withdrew to Suzhou, and the matter quietly fizzled out.

But that was what happened in history. For the people of the Guiyi Army now, they certainly could not know that this great battle, which seemed about to break out, would end so feebly.

So what Zhang Zhao needed to do was fight this great battle against the Ganzhou Uyghurs in Cao Yuande's place. In that way, both legal standing and moral right would be in his hands.

Of course, he could not simply take his own troops and go to war with the Ganzhou Uyghurs. If he did, he would probably be sold out by these old fellows the moment he left Dunhuang.

"Erlang, release your second... er! Your second cousin. I will escort you out!"

Cao Yuanzhong said to Zhang Zhao, then sighed as he looked at his elder brother Cao Yuande.

"Let Erlang go to Suzhou. Long Hong of Suzhou has reported several times that Tatars are raiding the pastures, and that Ganzhou men disguised as Suzhou commoners have repeatedly stirred up trouble. Sending Erlang to Suzhou is exactly right."

Cao Yuanzhong had truly exerted primordial force for Zhang Zhao's sake, managing to dig up half of Suzhou from a Guiyi Army that had already shrunk back into Guazhou and Shazhou.

At present, Suzhou was split in two, with the Guiyi Army and the Ganzhou Uyghurs each controlling half.

Upper Suzhou, controlled by the Guiyi Army, still had tens of thousands of people, but because military strength had always been insufficient, its rule was not very secure.

But Zhang Zhao was coming with an army, so he should be able to hold it. Perhaps he could even swallow all of Suzhou, and then Zhang Zhao would have a foothold of his own.

Zhang Zhao, however, naturally would not go to Suzhou, but neither would he refuse outright. This was his father-in-law's proposal, and it was made in his favor. Refusing directly would make Zhang Zhao seem utterly ungrateful.

So Zhang Zhao gave a sly smile and decided to break through in a different direction. "Suzhou is good, but it faces the threat of the Ganzhou Uyghurs. If the Ganzhou men cannot be driven away, everything is flowers in a mirror and the moon in the water.

Better this: this time, when Ganzhou advances west, let me, Zhang Zhao, deal with them. It will also count as avenging the great wrong they did my father when they forced him back then.

My demands are not high. You elders are all pillars and venerable seniors of the Guiyi Army. If you elders will now hand over to me the able-bodied young men of your households who are skilled in arms, then the Xianyu of Ganzhou — I alone will bear the burden of them!"

The faces of everyone in the great hall immediately turned quite colorful. Zhang Erlang was using the younger generation of their families as hostages!

Moreover, most of the younger generation of the families present held posts in the yabing guards. If Zhang Erlang took them away, at least half of the Guiyi Army's standing forces would become Zhang Erlang's.

Once on the battlefield and mixed together, they might well be brought under control. And he could also use these young men to threaten them — if anyone dared to make trouble, did they still want their sons' and grandsons' lives?

A few traces of satisfaction appeared on Zhang Zhao's face. He had five thousand men; controlling a few hundred or a thousand-odd Guiyi Army yabing guards was entirely within his power.

And they were all young men. At worst, he could simply buy them with money and with Hu dancing girls, or inspire them with the prospect of winning merit and building a career. Zhang Zhao was fully confident he could win them over.

When the time came, after finishing off the Ganzhou Uyghurs, he would march straight back to Guazhou, stage another show of force, and smoothly push Cao Yuande off his seat.

Everyone knew Zhang Zhao's calculations, but they had no good reason to refute him. In fact, it was not that there was none, but that they could not refute him.

Because Zhang Erlang was still holding them detained. If they gave him no benefit, would he let them go?

Yet they could not agree either, because agreeing would only be drinking poison to quench thirst.

But if they did not agree, were they really going to send every high-ranking member of the Guiyi Army to the Western Paradise here in the great hall of the Qingxi Palace?

In the awkward silence, a voice sounded, calm and unhurried.

"If I were young lord Zhang Erlang, I would absolutely not choose Suzhou, nor the Guiyi Army. The world has far better places to go. Why confine yourself to this tiny scrap of land?"

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