Chapter 354: Shandan Army Horse Farm

Just as Zhang Zhao was preparing to strike the final blow against the Ganzhou Uyghurs, to say that Ganzhou City was strewn with the corpses of the starving would be no exaggeration at all.

The once-bustling streets were so desolate that even the stray dogs roaming them were listless, and from time to time one could see emaciated corpses being carted outside the city on handcarts and hastily buried.

The cause of all this was none other than the blockade imposed by the Guiyi Army.

The entire Ganzhou Uyghur people had, almost overnight, lost their external sources of grain.

In truth, there had been times like this before, but back then the Khagan would lead his warriors out to raid for provisions.

Whether it was the Long family of Suzhou, the scattered Wenmo of Liangzhou, or the Tatars out on the steppe, all were targets of plunder for the Uyghur warriors.

But that was no longer possible, because the core military strength of the Ganzhou Uyghurs had in fact already been largely destroyed in the Battle of Suzhou.

The remaining warriors did not dare go out raiding casually either, for with so formidable an enemy as Zhang Zhao now in the field, the only people they could still rob were the Tatars.

But if they robbed the Tatars, the Ganzhou Uyghurs' sole escape route would be gone.

For Khagan Renyu, if Ganzhou could not be held, he planned to flee far into the great desert and seek refuge with his kinsmen north of the Tianshan Mountains; offending the Tatars would make crossing the desert impossible.

And over this past year or so, Khagan Renyu of Ganzhou had also had rather good luck, for Zhang Zhao had been ordered to Guanzhong to suppress a rebellion and had been gone a full seven months, giving him extremely precious time to prepare.

But imagination was one thing; in reality, even with a relatively ample amount of time, what Khagan Renyu could actually do was still very limited.

Because although Zhang Zhao had left, the armed warriors of the Six Tribes were still there.

On this campaign, Zhang Zhao had deliberately not brought along Shen Nianban and Garrison Commander Zhao, precisely so that the Shen family of Yangfei Valley and the Zhao family of Xiying River would continue to exert pressure on the Ganzhou Uyghurs.

Shen Nianban and Garrison Commander Zhao also performed excellently; under Yin Yaozi's arrangements, they raided the Ganzhou Uyghur settlements at all hours, day and night, with no regard for the calendar.

They seized the Uyghurs' warhorses, burned their crops, and killed anyone who dared resist.

Among them, the Shen family knights, relying on their fine equipment and excellent horses, frequently harassed from all directions and served as the main force in this war of plunder.

At times, they would even join forces with the Zhao family garrison troops left behind, riding north from Baiting Lake into the great desert, then south by way of Juyan Lake, making a great ∩-shaped detour to raid Ganzhou.

At the same time, Zhang Zhao's policy of tightening the grain supply to Ganzhou had also achieved tremendous success.

Although Zhang Zhao could no longer buy much grain from Ganzhou, that was because there was simply nothing left to buy; grain prices in Ganzhou were already more than twenty times their normal level.

At the same time, the Ganzhou Uyghurs' spring planting and autumn harvest had been disrupted for two consecutive years, causing an extreme drop in grain production.

Zhang Zhao further forbade a single grain of rice from passing from Liangzhou or Shazhou into Ganzhou, strangling the Ganzhou Uyghurs' lifeline from both ends.

Under the combined blows of these policies, by the third month of this year, while Khagan Renyu of Ganzhou was still preparing for spring planting, many Uyghur households had already run out of food, and it was common for entire families of poor Uyghur herders and farmers to starve to death.

In the second month alone, refugees fleeing from Shandan and other places controlled by the Ganzhou Uyghurs into Liangzhou numbered in the thousands, and Zhang Zhao absorbed and resettled them one by one.

Those with a deep blood feud against the Guiyi Army were, to put it plainly, the upper stratum of the Ganzhou Uyghurs headed by the Yageluo royal clan, but as for the poor herders, they bore little grudge against the Guiyi Army.

Nor could Zhang Zhao possibly slaughter all two hundred-some thousand of the Ganzhou Uyghurs; there was no need for that. Breaking them apart, scattering them, and assimilating them was the correct approach.

And he could not slaughter them all anyway, because the Uyghurs were after all a horse-riding people; of these two hundred-some thousand, nearly three hundred thousand people, roughly one hundred thousand were actually scattered across the lands from north of Ganzhou to Juyan Lake and the vast steppe beyond.

They often mingled and gathered with the Tatars, who were skilled nomads; defeating them was not difficult, but slaughtering them all would be.

At the end of the third month, it was exactly the time for sowing spring wheat, millet, and other crops. Unlike the Liangzhou area, where great numbers of people took part in the most important spring planting of the year, the Uyghurs of Ganzhou were once again forced to muster.

Because Khagan Renyu of Ganzhou had received intelligence that Zhang Zhao of Liangzhou had obtained the grand moral authority of Military Governor of Hexi and Longyou, and was coming to deal with them.

Going west from Fanhe County in Liangzhou, it was only a few dozen li to Yanzhi Mountain, and a bit over seventy li past Yanzhi Mountain was Shandan, the key stronghold of the Ganzhou Uyghurs.

Shandan, known in later ages as Shandan, was most famous for the Shandan Army Horse Farm — first established by the Champion Marquis, still functioning even in the hands of the People's Liberation Army, and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union's Don River Army Horse Farm, the largest army horse farm in the world.

This was Zhang Zhao's first time here. From his vantage point, the entire Shandan region was flat and boundless, rich in water and grass, with jade-belt-like rivers winding and coiling across the verdant plain.

Because the land was so flat, even the sky seemed to hang much lower, and the distant clouds gave the feeling that one could pluck them with an outstretched hand.

"A treasure of a place! Truly a land of excellent feng shui — the finest horse-raising ground in all of Hexi is right here, is it not?"

Liu Tao, who was following beside Zhang Zhao, exclaimed in admiration. This scholar still had some courage; the older Lu Dao had simply stayed in Liangzhou drinking wine and eating meat, while Liu Tao, on the contrary, was full of enthusiasm and followed Zhang Zhao everywhere.

"Derun is right. This is the Shandan Horse Farm established by the Champion Marquis Huo Qubing of the Former Han after he arrayed commanderies at Qilian.

Its uniquely favored conditions surpass even the Six Valleys of Liangzhou and the Yellow River valley of Lanzhou. In former days, the Han army was invincible throughout the realm, and much of that relied upon the strength of the Shandan Army Horse Farm!"

In just a few days, Zhang Zhao had stopped addressing Liu Tao as 'Imperial Envoy' and instead called him directly by his courtesy name.

As the two were talking, several dozen Uyghur riders burst out from somewhere. They looked to have been chased by Guiyi Army cavalry with no way left to flee, and in their panic they actually came charging toward Zhang Zhao's position.

Liu Tao and Guo Tiance, who was beside Zhang Zhao, instantly turned pale with fright, for there were several dozen Uyghur riders bearing down on them, while Zhang Zhao's side had only the two of them; all the other guards were some distance away preparing wine and meat.

The Commandery Prince Zhang was not here to attack Shandan City at this moment, but had personally come to inspect whether Shandan was truly as suited to horse-raising as the reports claimed.

Because Zhang Zhao's second- and third-generation mixed-blood Ferghana horses and folded-ear horses were breeding extremely rapidly and urgently needed a good horse farm, Zhang Zhao had felt uneasy and come to inspect it personally.

The several dozen desperate Uyghur riders saw that Zhang Zhao's side had few men, and noticing his splendid attire, they likely thought to seize Zhang Zhao and use him to threaten the Guiyi Army cavalry pursuing them, so they came charging on without slowing.

Zhang Zhao gave a cold laugh. His mounted archery was only mediocre, so he simply dismounted and took up his divine-arm crossbow.

Three bolts fired in succession, and two Uyghur riders without armor immediately tumbled from their saddles; the Uyghurs' charge faltered for a moment.

At that very moment, Li Cunhui came flying up on horseback, both hands moving in rapid succession like an eagle spreading its wings.

In the space of a dozen or so breaths, he loosed seven arrows in succession, and every enemy rider he shot fell at the twang of the string — he actually shot the charging Uyghur riders into scattering and fleeing in all directions.

The moment he saw the enemy riders lose heart, Li Cunhui cast aside his bow, took up his long lance, and relying on the explosive power of his folded-ear horse, charged into the Uyghur riders and laid about him in a wild flurry.

One man alone had twenty or thirty Uyghur riders howling in misery, and not one of them even dared strike back.

The reason Li Cunhui was able to arrive so promptly when no one else was at Zhang Zhao's side was that he had been keeping his attention fixed on Zhang Zhao the whole time.

These past few months on the campaign to pacify Guanzhong had deeply shaken Li Cunhui.

Besides feeling that Zhang Zhao might well enter and take the Central Plains, or at the very least take Guanzhong, he had also keenly felt the advantages Murong Xinzhang enjoyed as Zhang Zhao's beloved son.

Originally, he and Murong Xinzhang had been called the Twin Jewels of the Guiyi Army, but now Murong Xinzhang's fame far outstripped his own, and he had even managed to marry a princess.

Li Cunhui felt he was in no way inferior to Murong Xinzhang; what he lacked, he thought, was simply having acknowledged Zhang Zhao as his adoptive father.

So as soon as he returned to Liangzhou, Li Cunhui wrote a letter to his father Li Shaozong, pouring out his frustration.

The day before yesterday, Li Shaozong's reply had arrived, saying that he would come to Liangzhou in person, and would bring Li Cunhui's aunt as well as all the younger generation of the Li family clan.

The matter Li Cunhui had in mind — acknowledging Zhang Zhao as his adoptive father — would likely soon come to pass.

"What a valiant young man!" Liu Tao could not help clapping his hands and exclaiming loudly: "Commandery Prince, I hear this lad is also from the Li clan of Longxi?"

Zhang Zhao answered with a cheerful laugh: "Not only is he a son of the Longxi Li clan, he is also a branch of the Great Tang imperial house. Cunhui's ancestors descend from the sixth son of Emperor Jing, the founding emperor — the Prince of Xun."

Emperor Jing of the Great Tang refers to Li Hu, the grandfather of Li Yuan. The Prince of Xun, Li Yi, was Li Hu's sixth son and Li Yuan's sixth uncle.

Li Cunhui's branch of the family are the descendants of Li Yi — more precisely, the descendants of Li Yi's sixth son, Li Youliang, the Prince of Changle, who once served as Commander-in-Chief of Liangzhou.

But that fellow's character was not very good, and in the end he was executed for plotting rebellion. So Li Cunhui's branch of the family basically only mentions Li Yi, or even goes straight to Li Hu.

After the several dozen Uyghur riders were scattered, they were quickly overtaken by the Guiyi Army cavalry, who had come swarming over at the news, and cut down one by one.

And Wen Chongle, who had caused this huge blunder, came running over with a deathly pale face and threw himself to his knees directly before Zhang Zhao's horse.

Zhang Zhao frowned. Wen Chongle might be a bit of a sly opportunist, fond of cutting corners, but he was still very meticulous — he would not have failed to clean out even this handful of Uyghurs at the Shandan horse farm.

Sure enough, before Zhang Zhao could even ask, Wen Chongle loudly reported: "Great King, to the southwest a force of several hundred cavalry suddenly appeared. Your servant led the troops to intercept them, and allowed the bandit horsemen to startle Your Majesty — a capital crime!"

"All officers from Captain upward: twenty strokes of the army rod each. You: thirty strokes. Put it on the books for now — one enemy head cancels it!" Zhang Zhao waved a hand, signaling Wen Chongle to rise.

"Who comes?"

"Their leader claims the surname Huang, and says he is an old acquaintance of the Great King!"

Zhang Zhao broke into a smile. He knew who it was. He signaled to Bai Congxin and Qiong Re Duojin, then took a hundred-odd riders and headed straight for the southwest.

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