Chapter 283: The Wealthy Monk

On the third day after Li Wenqian's suicide, Zhang Zhao moved into the Hexi Acting Military Governor's office compound.

As for Li Wenqian's family, Zhang Zhao gave them five thousand strings of cash, and the group left Liangzhou city to live in Guzang County.

Presumably they feared retaliation; staying in Guzang County, where the Li clan made up the majority, gave them at least some measure of protection.

As for why Li Wenqian killed himself, aside from the man being naturally stubborn, Zhang Zhao could only barely piece together a rough guess after synthesizing information from all sides.

The main reason was that Zhang Zhao lacked a clear understanding of just how bloody power transitions were in this era.

In the late Tang and Five Dynasties, when a Military Governor or even the Son of Heaven was replaced, the prevailing rule was that the winner took everything and the loser suffered a fate worse than death.

Every Military Governor in history who was toppled had only one ending: his entire family was slaughtered, not even a chicken or dog left alive. If a few wives, concubines, or daughters were spared to be violated and humiliated, that was already considered an act of mercy.

Take Sun Chao, for example. After Li Wenqian finished him off, his old wife and three sons were all killed in the resistance, while his two concubines and daughter were seized by Li Wenqian. All the wealth Sun Chao had scraped together over a lifetime also went to Li Wenqian for nothing.

So from Li Wenqian's perspective, Zhang Zhao would surely use the same methods against him. Thus when Zhang Zhao sent Guo Tiance to extend goodwill, it only made Li Wenqian more terrified.

Because he had no idea what hidden malice Zhang Zhao was brewing. Sun Chao at least had a pretty daughter and concubines. His own two daughters were big and coarse; Zhang Zhao certainly couldn't have taken a fancy to them.

And so this already despairing Acting Military Governor Li feared that Zhang Zhao meant to keep him alive and then humiliate him by some unknown means. Guo Tiance's sneering, sinister, and perverse expression only further confirmed Li Wenqian's judgment.

This man was always prone to extremes. In history, when the Wenmo people poured into Liangzhou city and rioted, and the Han folk of Liangzhou, utterly disappointed in him, refused to come to his aid, Li Wenqian simply locked his whole family inside the Hexi Military Governor's compound and burned them all to death.

In fact, the day before yesterday Li Wenqian had wanted to burn his family to death too, but his yabing guards had received instructions from Pei Yuan and were keeping a close watch on him. So Li Wenqian had no choice but to end his own life with a long dagger.

"Commander, the investigation is complete!" Guo Tiance, who had put on a perfect performance alongside Zhang Zhao the day before, walked in holding a register.

The register contained the list of owners of the several hundred thousand mu of fertile land around Liangzhou that Zhang Zhao had secretly ordered investigated over the past few days.

Of course, this was only a very rough survey. Zhang Zhao did not yet have the foundation to carry out a true land measurement.

And even this rough investigative report had been completed mainly with the help of the Sogdians of Liangzhou.

These Sogdian peddlers roamed the streets and alleys, and only when they went out into the fields did they become less conspicuous.

"The Buddhist temples of Liangzhou actually occupy this much land?" Zhang Zhao was shocked after reading for only a short while.

According to the information provided by the Sogdian merchant association and roughly verified by people Guo Tiance had found, the several counties around Liangzhou had about 360,000-plus mu of cultivated land, and the Buddhist temples alone occupied as much as 140,000 mu of it.

This proportion was already astonishing. One had to realize that of this land, Li Wenqian alone had seized more than 80,000 mu. That added up to 230,000 mu, leaving only 130,000 mu shared among the remaining tens of thousands of Han folk of Liangzhou.

And even of those 130,000 mu, several great clans occupied more than seventy percent.

The true Han folk of Liangzhou, more than twenty thousand people, actually had only thirty or forty thousand mu of land. Many people were tenant farmers with their whole families or even entire clans, without a single plot of land to their name.

Damn it, no wonder Li Wenqian was single-mindedly thinking about getting the hell out of there!

Under this model, the Han folk of Liangzhou lived worse than the Wenmo. All the land was in the hands of powerful clans. If trouble broke out, not only would they not help, they might even join forces with the Wenmo.

From Li Wenqian's standpoint, this truly was unsolvable. Even if he divided up the 80,000 mu he occupied, he wouldn't win over many hearts. He might as well grab what he could and run.

What was even more frightening was that the 140,000 mu occupied by the temples yielded not a single copper coin in spring and autumn taxes, and the land held by the great clans most likely yielded little money either.

Relying solely on squeezing the remaining tens of thousands of mu could not possibly sustain the daily expenses of the Hexi Military Governor's office, let alone support an army.

And a so-called Military Governor's office with only three hundred-plus yabing guards, facing more than a hundred thousand Wenmo who had long coveted the assets of the Han folk of Liangzhou, had no chance of victory at all. Grabbing the bucket and running before the Wenmo uprising was indeed the optimal choice.

"Go inform Master Sanyuan that I will personally escort the life-sized standing statue of Shakyamuni Buddha to Dayun Temple for enshrinement tomorrow, and while you're at it, summon Cao Wantongxi to me."

Zhang Zhao gave Guo Tiance this somewhat troubled instruction. To solve the land problem, he still had to start with these eminent monks.

Zhang Zhao now had to secure at least a hundred thousand-plus mu of farmland. Otherwise, the supply for his several thousand troops simply could not be guaranteed. Relying on the negligible land taxes of the Hexi Military Governor's office alone would certainly not support them.

Liangzhou's Dayun Temple, the later Wuwei Dayun Temple, was originally the palace of the Zhang kings of Former Liang during the Sixteen Kingdoms period of the Eastern Jin. Later, King Zhang Tianxi of Liang donated the palace to become a temple, called Hongzang Temple, and during the Wu Zhou period it was changed to the present Dayun Temple.

However, the original Dayun Temple was severely damaged in the great Wuwei earthquake of 1927, and the present Dayun Temple was rebuilt around 1980.

Zhang Zhao busied himself all morning and finally had the life-sized standing statue of Shakyamuni enshrined in the left main hall of Dayun Temple.

Afterward, he sat at leisure with the abbot, Master Sanyuan, and other eminent monks of Dayun Temple, along with several leaders of the Sogdian merchant association headed by Cao Wantongxi.

The Sogdian merchant association's relationship with Dayun Temple was in fact very close. Buddhism, especially pre-Ming Buddhism, had one very unsavory trait: it loved amassing wealth and also loved lending at high interest.

This was also related to the circumstances of the times. Although there had been the Three Wu and One Zong persecutions of Buddhism before the Ming, Buddhist power was already very great.

They occupied vast tracts of land and paid no taxes. Locally, shirkers and schemers, even great households, often fraudulently registered their fields under temple names.

Add to that the offerings of believers, and certain temples accumulated large amounts of gold and silver year after year that they could never spend. Thus moneylending became their means of putting idle money to work, using money to breed money.

Liangzhou's Dayun Temple was of course no exception. They not only lent money to farmers in difficulty, but even lent to the Military Governor's office as well.

But their biggest clients were actually the Sogdian merchant association. Only these merchants needed large sums of silver to keep their operations turning over.

Moreover, the more than 100,000 mu of land belonging to Dayun Temple produced grain, rice, cloth, and other goods each year that piled up like mountains.

If left too long, these things would rot. So every year they relied on the Sogdians to buy them up and sell them everywhere. The economic ties between the two sides were extremely close.

"Today I have invited you masters and Captain Cao, Captain Kang, and the others here because I wish for everyone to offer me some counsel.

When I was in Anxi, I was also quite concerned with the matter of the trade routes, and did not hesitate to personally lead a great army, all for the sake of keeping the trade routes open.

I even entered India, and besides propagating the Dharma and protecting our monks, I also surveyed the products of India.

That land has much sugarcane, all of top quality, and the syrup it produces far surpasses that of the Central Plains. It also has various fragrant leaves, pepper, nutmeg, and other goods that are likewise bestsellers in the Central Plains.

And our silk, porcelain, cotton cloth, and tea are also urgently needed there. This winter, traveling merchants should be returning from India.

Since the Yan rebels brought calamity upon the realm, the Hexi trade routes have been interrupted from time to time. That situation should now be alleviated."

Zhang Zhao was not boasting here; everything he said was true. The Kang-clan Sogdian, beating Cao Wantongxi to it, performed a solemn bow with clasped hands toward Zhang Zhao.

"Commander, you are truly the parent who has given us a second life! The opening of the trade routes alone will save countless lives and allow east and west to exchange what each lacks. I, Kang Jinshan, from this day forth shall be a claw and fang under the Commander's banner!"

Damn! This dog slave has nerve! Cao Wantongxi's eyes instantly went red, and he glared fiercely at Kang Jinshan.

Ever since they learned that the Commander Zhang who had come to Liangzhou was the Ju'er Khan who had awed their Anxi and Hezhong, these Sogdians' view of Zhang Zhao had completely changed.

Because apart from Ganzhou, Zhang Zhao in fact controlled the vast majority of the Silk Road.

"What 'Commander'! You bumpkin, you truly don't know how to speak. This is the Khagan of us people of the Nine Zhaowu Clans.

The Khagan recovered the Eastern Cao Kingdom and appointed a descendant of the Eastern Cao king to guard it, and he also took a daughter of our royal clan. He is the king of us Eastern Cao people. I, Cao Wantongxi, pay homage to the Khagan!"

When it came to sheer shamelessness, Cao Wantongxi was clearly a cut above. He never addressed Zhang Zhao as Commander; he always directly called him Khagan.

Kang Jinshan over there, having lost a round without noticing, turned extremely ugly in the face. He stole a glance at Zhang Zhao, afraid that Zhang Zhao was displeased by the form of address.

But Zhang Zhao did not quibble with him over this; instead, he waved a hand at Cao Wantongxi.

"Whether it is Military Commissioner, or Khagan, or Deputy King of the Great Jin Kingdom — like my own titles of Wheel-Turning Sage King and Silver Wheel Dharma King of the Buddhist gate in India, Anxi, Transoxiana, and Hexi, they are all nothing but empty names!

Empty names! Call me whatever you like!"

Cao Wantongxi's expression froze, and then he could not help but give a thumbs-up deep in his heart. When it came to the art of showing off and sheer shamelessness, he would have to kowtow to Zhang Zhao a few times.

As soon as the eminent monk Shanyuan heard Zhang Zhao bring up the identities of Wheel-Turning Sage King and Silver Wheel Dharma King again, he immediately felt an itch all over, as if lice were crawling on his body. These two honorific titles were simply unbearable to him.

With these two identities, Zhang Zhao could rightfully interfere in Buddhist affairs, and moreover he held in his hands a great number of top-grade Buddhist treasures, and he even had his own sangha. If he was provoked, he really could pull something huge on the Liangzhou Buddhist establishment.

The company chatted idly for a while longer, though calling it idle chat was not quite right — in truth it was Zhang Zhao's one-man stage. Right! And beside him were Guo Tiance and the eminent monk Huixing, Yang He, playing the straight men.

The three appeared to be recounting what they had seen and heard in India and the present state of Indian Buddhism, but what the others actually heard was different.

It was how Zhang Zhao had crushed the Samanid Persians, with their population of five or six million, and trampled Bukhara under his horse's hooves.

How he had dragged the Shahi king of India to the banks of the Indus and magnanimously granted him leave to take his own life.

And how he had driven the king of the Pala dynasty, who had shown disrespect to the Buddha, into a corner with no way out, and how he had harshly taught a lesson to the Pala king who had slighted the Buddha.

As for attaining enlightenment at the Bamboo Grove Monastery, the Buddha's own retreat, practicing in the stone caves of Vulture Peak where the Buddha attained enlightenment, roaming in dreams with the Buddhas beneath King Ashoka's stupa, and the eminent monks of Nalanda and Vikramashila chanting sutras to see him off — the more ostentatious it got, the more ostentatious it got.

After this round of bragging, the monks in the room and the Sogdians of Liangzhou were all numb.

The Zhang Zhao they had imagined was, in truth, just a minor tough guy with a few thousand troops, who had seized a few scraps of territory and wheedled himself a Dharma King title.

But now, from what they heard, this was a ruthless hero who would kill the king of a country of several million people at the drop of a hat!

At once, they all felt a chill in their hearts, and their estimation of Zhang Zhao rose several more levels.

The eminent monk Shanyuan finally understood how Zhang Zhao had come by his titles of Wheel-Turning Sage King and Silver Wheel Dharma King. They had not been wheedled — they had truly been earned by protecting the Dharma!

They had been won by turning the three great kingdoms of India upside down and killing two of their kings.

This was true, genuine protection of the Dharma. He had even killed two Brahmin kings — who else could protect the Dharma to such a degree?

Seeing that he had frightened them about enough, Zhang Zhao had Guo Tiance bring out an exquisite painting, about the size of two palms, and pass it around for everyone to see.

Nothing else in the painting was particularly striking; only those seven black characters — "By decree, the full five hundred strings" — drew the eye with exceptional force.

All chapters have been cached for you. Download the APP to view.