Chapter 32: The Guiyi Army and the Ganzhou Uyghurs: A Game of Fathers and Sons

"Why does the young lord want to write about the Linggong Great King?" Lady Cao Sanniang laughed a few times, her voice like silver bells, then asked. This was the first time Zhang Zhao had seen her laugh so happily.

"Because I am nineteen this year, while the Linggong Great King is already fifty-nine. If I wait five years, I will still be strong and healthy; if the Linggong Great King waits another five years..."

Zhang Zhao did not finish the sentence, but the meaning was obvious enough: in five years he would only be twenty-four, while Cao Yijin would be sixty-four.

In this age, and in the Guiyi Army's embattled position, where survival itself required every effort, ever since Zhang Yichao founded the Guiyi Army, no Military Governor of the Guiyi Army other than Zhang Yichao himself had lived past sixty.

"Indeed! In five years the young lord will still be younger than I am now, to say nothing of the Linggong Great King!"

Lady Cao Sanniang stood up. She bent over and stretched her body across the table, her head reaching right in front of Zhang Zhao's eyes. Red lips, a fine nose, peach-blossom eyes naturally tinged with pink and glistening, and two soft mounds spread flat across the tabletop, making them seem all the more "vast!"

"And what is more, I can tell you that the Linggong Great King's health is actually already failing. This year's alliance meeting with the Shunhua Khagan of Ganzhou was only managed by forcing himself to go!"

Zhang Zhao nodded as understanding dawned. "So that is why. I had wondered why the Linggong Great King would condescend to travel to Ganzhou when it is clearly our Dunhuang state that has the Ganzhou Uyghurs pinned down!"

At present the Guiyi Army's greatest enemy was the Ganzhou Uyghurs to the east. Years ago, Zhang Zhao's father Zhang Chengfeng had gone to war against the Ganzhou Uyghurs and been defeated, pursued all the way to the walls of Dunhuang, and forced to acknowledge the Ganzhou Uyghurs' Tianmu Khagan as his father. After that he lost the people's support and had no choice but to abdicate.

Moreover, the Ganzhou Uyghurs frequently cut off the Guiyi Army's tribute and trade routes to the Central Plains court, so the enmity between the two sides ran deep.

After the Cao family replaced the Zhangs, in order to cast off this humiliating status, Cao Yijin, in his capacity as Military Governor of the Guiyi Army, sought a marriage alliance with Ganzhou.

He married the daughter of the Tianmu Khagan — that is, the aunt of the current Shunhua Khagan Yaoluoge Renyu, the Heavenly Princess Lady Li.

In this way the Military Governor of the Guiyi Army became the genuine son of the Ganzhou Uyghurs' Tianmu Khagan, and cast off the humiliating position of being forced to acknowledge a father.

Later, after the Tianmu Khagan died and the Ganzhou Uyghurs fell into more than a decade of internal strife, Cao Yijin swiftly seized the opportunity to storm Ganzhou, and then married the daughter he had with the Heavenly Princess Lady Li to Yaoluoge Renyu's elder brother — the previous Ganzhou Khagan, Yaoluoge Aduoyu.

From then on, the Military Governor of the Guiyi Army in turn became the father-in-law of the Ganzhou Uyghur Khagan. Now it was the Ganzhou Khagan's turn to be the son, and Cao Yijin the father.

In the space of a dozen or so years, the father-son positions of the two sides had been reversed — a small revenge, of a sort.

Although Aduoyu was short-lived, so Cao Yijin did not get to be father-in-law for many years, by this point the situation of a strong Guiyi Army and a weak Ganzhou had already taken shape.

So if it had been a normal alliance meeting, it should have been the current Shunhua Khagan of the Ganzhou Uyghurs, Yaoluoge Renyu, coming to Dunhuang — not Cao Yijin going to Ganzhou.

But hearing this secret that Lady Cao Sanniang revealed, everything made sense. The reason the Ganzhou Uyghurs were on the back foot was not that their strength was inferior to the Guiyi Army's, but that Cao Yijin was a man of great ability, and had beaten the Ganzhou Uyghurs into fear.

Yet an advantage formed entirely by the personal ability of a ruler is not secure.

The reason the Ganzhou Uyghurs had begun stirring and making trouble again in recent years was precisely because Cao Yijin's health was poor and he had long been unable to attend to government.

So this time Cao Yijin had disregarded his illness and the hardships of the journey to rush to Ganzhou. It was to tell the Ganzhou Uyghurs: I, your father, am still in fine health. Don't you bastards jump around — whoever jumps gets beaten.

At this thought, Zhang Zhao's mood darkened. He let out a long sigh. Although it was Cao Yijin who had overthrown Zhang Chengfeng's position as Son of Heaven,

in truth it was not something Cao Yijin had deliberately engineered. Rather, after Zhang Chengfeng acknowledged the Ganzhou Uyghur Khagan as his father, the Western Han Jinshan Kingdom had simply become unsustainable.

And the Cao family's replacement of the Zhangs could almost be called a bloodless coup — except that Qi Xiahu's father Qi Jiarun had put up a small resistance with the imperial guard, and Zhang Chengfeng's eldest son, who was suffering from dysentery — Zhang Zhao's elder brother Zhang Geng — had been frightened, his illness worsening until he died.

Even Zhang Huaiqing of the Nanyang Zhang family — Zhang Chengfeng's paternal uncle's son and Zhang Yichao's own nephew — as well as Zhang Yichao's grandnephew, the Chief Monk Overseer Zhang Xishou, and Zhang Liangzhen, the Commissioner of Internal and External Prisons, had not resisted. Nor, of course, were they purged afterward.

In the end, the only ones who truly suffered from this coup were Zhang Zhao, a two-year-old remnant, and people like Qi Xiahu.

From Zhang Zhao's standpoint, he had reason to resent Cao Yijin, because two years later his father Zhang Chengfeng died of depression, and he himself had been kept under surveillance for over a decade, stripped of all power and influence.

But from the standpoint of the great majority of the Guiyi Army, they had all benefited from this coup. Without Cao Yijin's all-out efforts after taking power, the Guiyi Army, reduced to only the two prefectures of Gua and Sha, far from being able to keep the Ganzhou Uyghurs in check, would probably have exploded on the spot and ceased to exist long ago.

"The Linggong Great King has not yet reached sixty — how has his health suddenly become so worrisome? This is truly terrible news! We sons of Tang have only just had a few years of peace — must chaos come again?"

Lady Cao Sanniang studied Zhang Zhao's expression carefully from right in front of him. Only after a long while did she sit back down, looking even more excited.

"Now I am all the more convinced that the young lord is certain to achieve great things. At the very least, if I were the young lord, I would only secretly rejoice that the Linggong Great King is nearing his end — I would never call it terrible news.

For the young lord to have such breadth of heart, such understanding, to not let private grudges cloud his mind, to not lose his judgment through hatred — the enlightened rulers of old were just like this!"

"An enlightened ruler?" Zhang Zhao grinned. "Is the lady mocking me? Right now I have a force of less than a hundred men. Even calling myself a Commandant is already brazen. Where would an enlightened ruler come from?"

"I am not mocking the young lord! Because the young lord does not yet know the responsibility he is meant to bear!"

Lady Cao Sanniang's expression remained utterly serious. "Right now our Dunhuang state appears prosperous and powerful, but in truth it is already beset with crises on every side. For the core of the Dunhuang state is no more than a hundred thousand or so Hexi sons of Tang, plus sixty thousand or so sinicized Sogdian subjects."

"So few!" Zhang Zhao was greatly shocked.

According to Zhang Zhao's memory and later generations' estimates, the Guiyi Army at this time should have had a core population of just over three hundred thousand!

Of those, the most central Hexi sons of Tang should have numbered at least two hundred thousand. Otherwise they could not possibly have supported ten thousand elite troops, nor ensured Han cultural dominance in the two prefectures of Gua and Sha. He had never imagined that the number of Hexi sons of Tang would be half what he expected.

"That great battle with the Ganzhou Xianyu (Uyghurs) twenty years ago truly wounded us to the marrow.

Among the Tang sons of Dunhuang, every household wore mourning and every family raised lament. Of ten thousand elite troops, the battlefield dead alone numbered over a thousand. Afterward we were forced to fight with the whole nation, and the losses among able-bodied men were even more devastating!"

Lady Cao Sanniang gave a bitter smile, and tears actually glistened in her eyes. Zhang Zhao had not yet been born then, but Lady Cao Sanniang had already been nine years old and old enough to remember.

"The Suo family, my maternal uncle's household on my mother's side — all their men were conscripted. Eleven went from the family; only three returned.

Suo Sanlang, what a fine young man he was! This cousin of mine was well-versed in the classics, could draw a stiff bow, understood music, and was skilled at playing the vertical konghou.

When I was little, my mother would always ask me with a smile: when you grow up, how about marrying your third cousin?"

At this point Lady Cao Sanniang's expression suddenly changed. Even those peach-blossom eyes, from extreme fury and grief, now radiated boundless killing intent and sorrow.

"By the time I saw my third cousin again, he was already a headless corpse. His head had been cut off by the Xianyu and has never been found to this day. And those hands so skilled at playing the vertical konghou had been smashed to pulp with an iron hammer!

That year, he was only fifteen! I have almost forgotten what he looked like!"

By now Lady Cao Sanniang's tears were streaming down, and she was choking too much to speak.

Note: "Xianyu" is the Guiyi Army's derogatory name for the Ganzhou Uyghurs, meaning short-legged, mangy-furred monkeys.

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