Chapter 297: Framing and Shifting the Blame

The Book of the Later Han once said that Liangzhou had lush water and grass, a vast land with few people, and livestock farming that was the richest in all the world.

At this time, the ecological environment of Hexi was completely different from later ages. The Liangzhou area was not the bleak, barren land of yellow dust and low wild grass that one might imagine.

In fact, at this time Lanzhou had lush water and grass and a well-developed network of rivers, making it a rare treasure of Hexi.

The one who came to welcome Fan Zhi was a young officer in white robes and silver armor. The young officer wore a light suit of armor that Fan Zhi had never seen before, which the people of Liangzhou called cotton armor.

He had red lips and white teeth, sharply defined features, and wore a military officer's cap, draped in a silver robe and silver cloak. He looked full of heroic spirit and exceedingly imposing.

However, from the perspective of someone of a later age, this getup was as absurd as it could possibly be.

Wearing Ming-dynasty cotton armor, draped in a silver robe and silver cloak, and with a grand Han-Tang military cap on his head, he was simply a patchwork monstrosity.

When Jia Yanchang saw Murong Xinzhang arrive, he said cheerfully to Fan Zhi, "This is the fine son of Military Commander Zhang, the peerless youth of the Guiyi Army, and the eldest grandson of Prefect Murong Guiying of Guazhou—Murong Xinzhang."

Murong Xinzhang could not help but want to roll his eyes, though by now he was quite used to many people teasing him about being Zhang Zhao's good son.

Murong Xinzhang had lost his father at the age of two. To a youth like him, who most admired heroes, if Zhang Zhao were not quite so young, it would not matter much to have him as his father. In any case, he could not change it.

And while Fan Zhi praised Murong Xinzhang's elegant young bearing, he was also gaining a deeper understanding of the relations between the civil and military officials of Liangzhou.

What would a status like Murong Xinzhang's be in the Central Plains? It would be like the relationship between Emperor Mingzong of this dynasty and Taizu Li Keyong.

For such a top-tier military man to still be so courteous to an escort officer like Jia Yanchang was unimaginable in the Central Plains.

Murong Xinzhang cupped his hands toward Fan Zhi. "By order of Military Commander Zhang of the Guiyi Army, this humble officer has come to welcome the imperial envoy. The Military Commander is already waiting respectfully in Liangzhou for the envoy's arrival."

"Then I must trouble you, General, to lead the way. Do not keep the Military Commander waiting." Fan Zhi returned the salute and said in a low voice.

Traveling north from the Wucheng garrison, Liangzhou city was only a little over a hundred li away.

And after leaving the Wucheng garrison at Hongchi Ridge, Fan Zhi found that the sights along the road grew better and better.

The post road beneath his feet had clearly been newly repaired, without the situation found elsewhere where one step could splash mud halfway up the leg.

The post road was both broad and wide, and every thirty or forty li there was a small post station where people could rest.

Moreover, they were not the only ones on the post road. Merchants traveling north and south, monks hurrying on their way, and around the post stations there had even formed small sheep and horse markets.

In the markets, herders from the mountains, Han farmers who tilled the fields, and small peddlers traded with one another, while the petty clerks of the post stations acted as managers.

The herders, who looked rather rough and wild, were not unreasonable or bullying. The Han farmers who controlled the necessities the herders depended on did not deliberately sell at inflated prices, and the peddlers were quite well-behaved.

But what surprised Fan Zhi most of all were the newly built irrigation channels on both sides of the post road, the reclaimed farmland, and the demarcated pasturelands—a scene of thriving prosperity everywhere.

Murong Xinzhang, who escorted him, also astonished Fan Zhi. This young white-robed officer and the knights under his command came and went on horseback like the wind. More than once Fan Zhi saw Murong Xinzhang firing arrows in rapid succession while galloping at high speed, and every arrow struck true.

Sometimes it was a Mongolian gazelle, sometimes several hares and pheasants. Every night the roast mutton and roast rabbit had Fan Zhi eating until grease ran down his chin.

He could not help comparing the one hundred and fifty cavalry under Murong Xinzhang with the imperial guards of the Eastern Capital, and he arrived at a conclusion that startled even himself.

If they dismounted and formed ranks for battle, these one hundred and fifty riders, though quite strong in combat, would probably still fall somewhat short of the Eastern Capital's imperial horse and foot guards.

But in places like Longyou and the two prefectures of Lan and Liang in Hexi, these one hundred and fifty riders were more than the Eastern Capital's one hundred and fifty infantry could handle.

If Military Commander Zhang of the Guiyi Army had three thousand such fine young men under his command, given the court's current strength, it would be very hard to suppress them without mobilizing fifty thousand troops.

"Young Lord Murong, I have observed Liangzhou, and everywhere new waterworks are being built and farmland reclaimed. The expense must be considerable, surely?

It must be two or three million strings of cash. Can the Hexi Military Governor's office afford it?"

Murong Xinzhang rode his horse beside Fan Zhi, holding in his hand a Mongolian gazelle that was still dripping blood.

The adult gazelle of over thirty jin seemed as light as a hare in his hand. He smiled and said to Fan Zhi,

"The imperial envoy is comparing the prosperous Eastern Capital with our broken and desolate Hexi and Longyou!

How could this place need two or three million strings? If we could have around one million strings, the work could be done.

And this is not labor done for Military Commander Zhang. These able-bodied men are working so that they themselves may eat their fill and dress warmly in the future.

Therefore all, high and low, are of one mind and share hardships together, so the expense is not all that great."

Fan Zhi nodded. If the conscripted laborers worked with one heart, if officials at every level did not line their own pockets, and if everyone worked together with united effort, then indeed a little over one million strings could cover it.

But this was still no small sum, so Fan Zhi looked at Murong Xinzhang and said, "Young Lord Murong, do not underestimate one million strings. The present court in the Eastern Capital probably could not even produce that amount."

As he spoke, Fan Zhi felt somewhat emotional, and even more worried. He was an official of the Ministry of Revenue, so he naturally knew the court's situation.

When he had left, the Northern Pacification Commissioner Zhang Jingda had already been defeated by the Khitan army.

And in order to raise the one hundred and ten thousand troops for Zhang Jingda's campaign against Shi Jingtang, the Luoyang court had already sold off everything it had, imposed levies on merchants, and forcibly collected taxes from farmers, just to scrape together the silver, grain, and fodder needed for the northern expedition.

The Eastern Capital court was indeed as he said: it would now be very hard to come up with another one million strings. If the war dragged on, who knew how it would end!

Hearing this, Murong Xinzhang smiled with a touch of pride. "Let the imperial envoy know that the Hexi Military Governor's office in Liangzhou could hardly produce even one hundred thousand strings, let alone one million.

This one million strings was actually accumulated by Military Commander Zhang through his campaigns across the Western Regions, where he broke several enemy states."

What? This came from Military Commander Zhang's personal treasury?

The news was so explosive that Fan Zhi thought he had misheard, and he even overlooked the mention of campaigns across the Western Regions.

He abruptly looked at Jia Yanchang beside him, and Jia Yanchang nodded in confirmation.

The muscles on Fan Zhi's cheeks twitched twice. He opened his mouth but was at a loss for words.

Was there anyone else under heaven who used money and grain from his own private treasury to build waterworks and reclaim wasteland for the common people?

Empress Liu of this dynasty had once pushed the princes and princesses forward to block the chief ministers who were pleading for relief for the soldiers! Compare the two, and the difference is immediately clear.

And even with Empress Liu's recent cautionary example, in the Luoyang court, whether the present emperor above or the military men below, who was not racking their brains to squeeze out money?

The saying "the sky is three feet higher" was no joke!

After a long while, Fan Zhi sighed deeply with great emotion. If the lords of every region under heaven had the benevolent heart of Military Commander Zhang, why worry that the chaos could not be quelled?

While Fan Zhi was sighing, Zhang Zhao was so busy his feet were smoking. Moving two hundred thousand people off the territory of the Liugu tribe and resettling them around Liangzhou, while also leveling roads and building waterworks, was by no means light work.

Zhang Zhao himself did not have many civil officials, but fortunately he had prepared for a rainy day back in Anxi.

The several dozen youths of his adopted-son army were all war orphans from various parts of Anxi, chosen for their quick eyes and clever minds.

After three or four years of personal instruction, these several dozen youths of sixteen or seventeen had now displayed considerable ability.

They had a certain idealism, could uphold principles in handling affairs, and had also read quite a few books. They were also better able to mingle with the youths of the Six Tribes.

Of course, the greatest credit still belonged to the civil-official bloc of the former Guiyi Army, headed by his maternal uncle's family, the Song clan of Shazhou.

His eldest maternal uncle Song Shantong had lost a good ten-plus jin over these two months, entirely from being run ragged by Zhang Zhao's orders.

The final supplement to his administrative capacity came from the Buddhist clerical official corps of Liangzhou.

Offices such as Chief Buddhist Registrar and Chief Buddhist Controller had a long history. During the Wu Zhou period, in order to suppress Daoism, which the Li-Tang dynasty had elevated, Buddhism began to flourish under Wu Zetian.

From Hexi and Longyou to Anxi, officials like the Chief Buddhist Controller were quite numerous, and once the Tibetans took control of the region, the faith grew even more fervent.

The Tibetan btsanpo continued the Tang system of Buddhist clerical offices and even expanded their authority, until by the Guiyi Army period, posts such as Chief Buddhist Controller across Hexi had been carried on as well.

An ordinary regime would not have been able to mobilize them, but Zhang Zhao was an exception.

At his demand, the Chief Buddhist Registrars and Chief Buddhist Controllers of Hexi and Liangzhou had no choice but to come out and help him relocate the populace and soothe people's hearts. This was also why Fan Zhi had seen so many hurried monks along the road.

At the same time, in agriculture, the policy Zhang Zhao was now implementing in Liangzhou was a strategy integrating farming and warfare.

The more than two million mu of newly reclaimed wasteland and restored military farmland, as well as the five or six million mu of fertile pastureland, would not be divided equally among individuals, but would all be held in the hands of the government.

Only if a household supplied a man to perform corvée labor or military service for Zhang Zhao could their family members receive land from him to farm and graze.

Moreover, these cultivated lands would not be worked by each household independently on its own.

Instead, they were organized into a mechanism similar to the rural cooperatives of later ages: ten households formed a neighborhood, fifty households a jia, and five hundred households a township.

For every ten households, one plow ox was issued, and one neighborhood elder was chosen. The neighborhood elder had to be the person among those ten households most skilled at plowing and farming.

From farming techniques to the use and maintenance of farm tools, and on to the raising and use of plow oxen, there were strict regulations for everything.

This created a situation where ownership rights belonged to the Hexi Military Governor's office, while usage rights belonged to the farming households.

To a certain degree, this intensive rural mutual-aid model could more quickly advance the development of agricultural production techniques and the rational use of key tools such as plow oxen. It was one of the most suitable methods for Liangzhou at present.

As long as one did not push it too far ahead of the times in this era, and did not create a system of eating from the common pot, the rural cooperative system of later ages was actually very, very well suited to this period.

The Xuanwu Gate, the eastern gate of Liangzhou, had always been the gate through which imperial envoys entered the city when they arrived in Liangzhou.

Zhang Zhao had long since set up an incense table at Xuanwu Gate to welcome the heavenly envoy, and all the great figures of the Guiyi Army and the Hexi Military Governor's office had already assembled.

Banners waved and colored flags fluttered. Although the heavenly envoy who had come to confer the appointment was merely a minor inspector from the Ministry of Revenue, Zhang Zhao did not mind in the least.

On the contrary, he wanted to elevate this request for imperial appointment as high as possible. In truth, the smaller the official who came, the more at ease he felt.

This proved that the court in the Eastern Capital did not regard the internal changes within the Guiyi Army as any great matter.

And a minor official was, after all, far easier to handle than some grand figure from the Secretariat-Chancellery.

Of course, although the official was minor, he still represented the court, and Zhang Zhao did indeed need to borrow the authority of the Central Plains court to strengthen the core position of the Han people.

He would use the court's majesty to give a new identity to the six departments, who had only just been released from Wenmo status, and to raise their sense of Han ethnic pride.

Therefore, this grand occasion to welcome the heavenly envoy was staged with extraordinary splendor.

And Fan Zhi, arriving at the eastern gate of Liangzhou, had already been shocked into numbness by everything he had seen along the way.

He had seen a paradise entirely different from the chaotic Central Plains.

From Wucheng Garrison to Liangzhou, everything he saw along the road was a scene of thriving prosperity.

Oxen and horses thronged the roads, and post roads stretched in all directions. Everywhere he looked, fine fields and pastures could be seen. Whether officials or common folk, all wore happy smiles, with a sense of striving together, of putting all their strength toward one goal.

And when he saw the city of Liangzhou itself, it was even more different from what he had imagined.

Liangzhou looked as though it had just been fully repaired, solid and imposing. In appearance, it was far better than Luoyang, the Eastern Capital, which was mocked as "a grand and sacred capital, with green fields beside it."

The edict was written very simply. After all, it was only conferring the post of Acting Minister of Works and Commissioner of the Guiyi Army, a position that did not even compare to Cao Yuanzhong's Acting Minister of Education and Surveillance and Disposition Commissioner of Gua and Sha Prefectures, Commissioner over the Tibetans.

But the ceremony was made extremely grand by Zhang Zhao. The officials great and small of Liangzhou and the heads of the six departments first kowtowed toward the east, shouting "Long live the Emperor of the Great Tang!"

Then the heads of the various departments came forward to offer dances. By the time Fan Zhi had finished reading the edict and Zhang Zhao formally became Acting Minister of Works and Commissioner of the Guiyi Army, the entire city of Liangzhou erupted in thunderous cheers.

At the Hexi Military Governor's office, Zhang Zhao's official position had finally been transformed from a self-proclaimed army commissioner into a formally appointed Minister of Works of the court.

Fan Zhi, meanwhile, was observing the Minister of Works Zhang before him. Suddenly, he realized that this Commissioner of the Guiyi Army, this Minister of Works Zhang who had already taken control of Liangzhou, was actually a year younger than himself.

One had to know that Fan Zhi had been called a child prodigy since youth. To pass the jinshi examination in this Five Dynasties era, when military men dominated, he was absolutely among the finest of the younger generation.

But he had never imagined that Zhang Zhao, at the age of twenty-four, had nearly unified all of Hexi.

This shock shook Fan Zhi even more than all the sights he had seen along the road.

Because for a man who aspired to great undertakings, age was also an extremely important condition.

If Zhang Zhao were already forty or fifty this year, then in this era, he would be fortunate to have a dozen or so more years of comfortable life.

And in a dozen years, his enterprise might well remain unfinished before he departed this world.

But Zhang Zhao was currently only twenty-four, with at least thirty more years to live. In thirty years, Fan Zhi did not dare imagine to what heights Zhang Zhao could carry the Guiyi Army.

"I have heard that the heavenly envoy traveled west from the Eastern Capital, and that the journey was arduous, with two of your attending clerks giving their lives in service. I am deeply grieved by this.

Hexi hangs isolated beyond China, its products are not abundant, and it has nothing good to offer. But I have nonetheless prepared fifty jin of Hexi white sugar for each man, with an additional fifty jin for those who died in service, to be taken back when the heavenly envoy returns to the Eastern Capital, as a small consolation!"

While Fan Zhi was marveling at Zhang Zhao's age, Zhang Zhao was already thinking about how to open up a market through them.

Fifty jin of white sugar was not cheap. If a frontier army commissioner like him could provide such generous compensation for clerks who had died of illness en route, it would surely cause a stir, and then everyone would know that Hexi produced fine white sugar.

"I am most grateful for the Minister of Works' generous gift. I..." Fan Zhi was indeed deeply moved, but before he could finish speaking, Murong Xinzhang hurried in and whispered a few words into Zhang Zhao's ear.

Zhang Zhao's expression changed, and he said to Fan Zhi in a mournful tone: "I have just received word that Elder Sun, who traveled with the heavenly envoy, has also unfortunately passed away."

Fan Zhi was stunned, and felt even worse. This Elder Sun was a fellow townsman of his, and had already fallen ill in Liangzhou from being unaccustomed to the climate and water.

He had thought the old man could hold on, but who would have expected that he too would depart this world!

"Ah!"

Fan Zhi was sinking into grief when, unexpectedly, Zhang Zhao across from him suddenly let out a great cry, startling him.

Envoy Fan looked up and saw Zhang Zhao with reddened eyes, tears seemingly about to flow, looking utterly grief-stricken.

Then Zhang Zhao jabbed his finger toward the southeast and shouted: "The Wenmo of Lanzhou are truly hateful! They dared to intercept and murder the court's heavenly envoy, causing the deaths of three men!

I swear to seek justice for the heavenly envoy! Zhebu Jiashi, Chen Nianban, where are you?"

The words had barely fallen when two fierce generals in padded armor leaped in through the doorway, clasping their hands in salute.

"Your generals are here!"

"You two, together with Murong Xinzhang, will immediately lead eight hundred cavalry to Lanzhou. Have the chief abbot of Weiyan Temple notify all the Wenmo chieftains of Lanzhou that they must arrive in Liangzhou within twenty days to explain this matter to the imperial envoy!

Every tribal chieftain must come. Whoever dares not come is surely harboring a guilty conscience, and I, Zhang Zhao, will campaign against them on the imperial envoy's behalf."

The shift in tone came so abruptly that Fan Zhi did not even react at first, but after a moment of surprise, he immediately understood what Zhang Zhao intended to do.

Although Lanzhou was not under the court's jurisdiction, neither was it under Liangzhou's. In fact, only two or three years earlier, they had even sold horses to the court and sought official posts.

Without a proper pretext, this Commander Zhang, entrenched in Liangzhou, would probably find it rather difficult to make trouble for the Wenmo of Lanzhou.

But now, Fan Zhi had come from the east as an imperial envoy, and while passing through Lanzhou, three of his accompanying clerks had died, and he himself had nearly been robbed.

Zhang Zhao evidently wanted to pin this matter on the heads of the Lanzhou Wenmo.

Fan Zhi stared blankly at Zhang Zhao, and found that Zhang Zhao was also looking at him.

Clearly, this Minister of Works Zhang was watching his reaction. Fan Zhi's throat bobbed. This man's ambitions were indeed far from small!

Still, being on someone else's territory, he might as well play along. Fan Zhi sighed and cupped his hands toward Zhang Zhao.

"It is indeed as the Minister of Works says. The Lanzhou Wenmo did rob us. I beg the Minister of Works to seek justice on our behalf."

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