Chapter 33

Watching Cao Sanniang sink into reminiscence, Zhang Zhao did not know what to say either. This was the story of a nine-year-old girl secretly in love with her fifteen-year-old cousin!

The ancients matured early. Girls married at thirteen or fourteen, and quite a few were sent off as child brides even younger, so it was not surprising for a nine-year-old girl to feel the first stirrings of love.

Especially for a little girl like Cao Sanniang, who had rarely felt the love of her father and grandfather in childhood, that Suo Sanlang — skilled in both letters and arms and able to play refined instruments — must have been a beam of warm sunlight in her young life.

"Zhang Erlang! If you promise me one thing, I will tell you another great secret about the state of Dunhuang!"

Only after a long while did Cao Sanniang take out a handkerchief and lightly dab the corners of her eyes, not minding at all that Zhang Zhao had seen her cry.

"The dead cannot return to life. The departed are gone; the living must strengthen themselves. Even a feud ten generations old can still be avenged!" Zhang Zhao did not answer directly, but said something deliberately ambiguous.

Yet that ambiguous remark greatly satisfied Cao Sanniang, and she nodded solemnly.

"Zhang Erlang, if the day ever comes when our state of Dunhuang can storm Ganzhou again, I want to kill a hundred men of the Ganzhou Uyghurs above the rank of dangan, and carry their heads back to Bianqiao to build a mound of skulls, to sacrifice to Suo Sanlang and the other departed!"

Bianqiao was a bridge east of Dunhuang, the main road leading east to the two prefectures of Gansu. It was here that the Ganzhou Uyghurs had once pressed to the walls of Dunhuang, and Zhang Chengfeng had personally donned armor and fought the Uyghurs. Suo Sanlang, it seemed, had died in battle at this very place.

"Agreed!" Zhang Zhao nodded heavily. "I will not only kill a hundred Ganzhou Uyghurs above the rank of dangan, I will exterminate the entire Ganzhou Uyghur royal house! Mere Xianyun curs, and they dare claim descent from the Li clan of Longxi!"

Given the near-century of hatred between the Guiyi Army and the Ganzhou Uyghurs, the moment either side gained the power to fully devour the other, a great slaughter was certain to follow.

Do not think that because the Ganzhou Uyghurs once forced Zhang Chengfeng to honor the Uyghur Khagan as his father, and because Cao Yijin once stormed Ganzhou, no massacre followed either event.

That was only because the two sides were roughly equal in strength. Though one side gained the upper hand, it could not swallow the other. If one truly could, the other's upper and middle ranks would absolutely be exterminated.

Moreover, beyond their contest for the trade profits of the Silk Road, there was another knot between them that could never be untied.

The Guiyi Army had always presented itself as the last loyal remnant of the fallen Tang to rally men's hearts, but the Ganzhou Uyghurs were even more extravagant. Because the royal clan of the Ganzhou Uyghurs had often intermarried with the Li-Tang imperial house, the Li-Tang court frequently sending imperial clan daughters to wed them, from the end of the Tang onward the Ganzhou Uyghur royal clan had actually begun to take the surname Li, and even claimed descent from the Li clan of Longxi.

This thoroughly disgusted the Guiyi Army. The Li clan of Longxi — that was the lineage of the Great Tang imperial house! We style ourselves the last loyal remnant of the Great Tang, and you lot simply claim to be descendants of the Li-Tang imperial line. Is that not tearing down our stage?

You Yageluo clan paupers — are you even worthy of the surname Li?

"I thank you, Zhang Erlang!" Having received Zhang Zhao's answer, Cao Sanniang rose to her feet there on the stone tower and gave Zhang Zhao a grand ceremonial bow.

At this moment, Zhang Zhao had no more than seventy or eighty soldiers, and Cao Sanniang was a widow. The two of them stood here and treated the Ganzhou Uyghurs — with a population of over four hundred thousand, nearly ten thousand armored troops, and thirty or forty thousand archers — as though they were a steamed rice cake before the lady. It was all so absurd, yet somehow it seemed entirely natural.

"What I told you just now, Zhang Erlang — that the core population of this state of Dunhuang is only a hundred-odd thousand sons of Tang of Hexi and sixty thousand sinicized Sogdians — was by no means idle talk.

After the war with the Ganzhou Uyghurs twenty years ago, the great sons-of-Tang clans of Guazhou and Shazhou were all badly weakened, and to this day there are still more women than men.

And we Sogdians excel at crafts and commerce, dwell year-round in the cities, and are not prolific in offspring either. This has given other peoples their opportunity.

Can you guess which people now ranks second in population in the state of Dunhuang, after the sons of Tang of Hexi?"

"Could it be the Uyghurs?" Zhang Zhao asked, stroking his chin. From later times he knew that the greatest cause of the Guiyi Army's demise was the Ganzhou Uyghurs backing the Shazhou Uyghurs in seizing the magpie's nest. Could it be that there were already many Uyghurs in Guazhou and Shazhou now?

"No!" Cao Sanniang shook her head. "The people now second in number are the descendants of the Tuyuhun Murong tribe, led by my grandfather Murong Guiying.

They number over seventy thousand and occupy Guazhou, and are even still moving their people into Shazhou. At the start of this year, when tribute was sent to the Central Plains and the Great Tang court, my grandfather already sent tribute separately under the title of Prefect of Guazhou!"

Zhang Zhao's pupils contracted. He had not expected that the Guiyi Army, already shrunken to the two prefectures of Guazhou and Shazhou, would be so complicated within. Truly, a small temple breeds fierce demons, and shallow waters breed many turtles!

Although the Tuyuhun Murong tribe, like the Sogdians, had been almost completely sinicized, if they came forward to contest leadership with the Sogdians, it would be very troublesome indeed!

Because when Zhang Yichao drove the Tibetans out of Guazhou and Shazhou, the Sogdians who had already put down roots there were his firm allies.

To merge into the Great Tang, these Sogdians had even changed their traditional pointed hats and their surnames. Even the Cao family that now holds the Guiyi Army — though they claim to be the Cao clan of Qiaojun — actually came from a merging of the descendants of Sogdians from the state of Cao with the Han Cao clan.

These Sogdians, by learning the Han tongue and writing Han characters, entered the genealogy of the true Cao clan of Qiaojun and turned themselves into Han.

"Now you understand where the danger lies, Zhang Erlang. The mother and grandmother of the Great King Linggong were actually daughters of the sinicized Sogdian Cao clan. The Great King Linggong's cousins Renqi and Rende are Sogdian Cao on the paternal side. Even I have Sogdian blood in me."

Zhang Zhao looked carefully. Sure enough, the irises of Cao Sanniang's peach-blossom eyes were somewhat gray, and the tips of her hair carried a trace of purple-red — certain Sogdian features. And he too had now guessed where the Guiyi Army's crisis lay.

"You mean that your grandfather, seeing how the Cao family now holds the great power of the Guiyi Army, is preparing to imitate the Cao family's active sinicization, so as to enter the Guiyi Army's center of power — or at the very least to hold Guazhou and stand against the Shazhou military governor's office as an equal?"

"Exactly!" Cao Sanniang gave Zhang Zhao an approving look.

"In fact, they began doing this long ago. In the battle of Bianqiao twenty years ago, the sons of Tang of Hexi lost their menfolk. Most of the surplus women were taken in marriage by the Murong family.

At the same time, the Murong family did not hesitate to marry their own daughters down to poor Han sons, even as concubines, and thus married a great number of women into the sons of Tang of Hexi.

By now, the Tuyuhun Murong tribe has essentially completed its arrangements. The people of Guazhou support Murong Guiying as Prefect, and even the Great King Linggong can do nothing about it. It is because the sons of Tang of Guazhou have come to regard the Murong tribe as their own. They no longer see the Murong tribe as Tuyuhun, but as Han."

Zhang Zhao suddenly understood!

"I see. The sons of Tang of Hexi can accept the Murong family as their own, but your Cao family, with its Sogdian blood, cannot.

Because since my father's defeat and death, the sons of Tang of Hexi have had no leader. What leads the state of Dunhuang is this family of yours, formed from the merging of the Sogdian Cao clan and the Cao clan of Qiaojun.

When the Murong clan grows strong, it is coming to replace the Cao family. They now hold Guazhou as if it were already separate. If this goes on, the best outcome for the Guiyi Army, which now has only the two prefectures of Guazhou and Shazhou, will probably be to split into Guazhou and Shazhou!"

"Indeed! With only these two hundred thousand or so people, we still fight among ourselves so fiercely. And the greater danger lies on the other side. In former years, to cast off the humiliation of calling the Ganzhou Uyghur Khagan his father, the Great King Linggong married the daughter of the Ganzhou Uyghur Tianmu Khagan, the Heavenly Princess Li.

Once Lady Li entered the household, she displaced your cousin-aunt, Lady Suo of the Commandery Wife rank, and became the Great King Linggong's principal wife.

She has now borne the Great King Linggong three sons and four daughters. Two of the daughters have been married to the Ganzhou Uyghur Khagan and to the royal clan, and a son has married a daughter of the Ganzhou Uyghur royal clan.

Do you think the Heavenly Princess Li does not wish her son to become lord of the Guiyi Army?"

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