Chapter 423: The Final Preparations

Just as Shi Chonggui's envoy was about to reach the Khitan, Zhang Zhao was also writing a letter to the Khitan ruler Yelu Deguang.

Of course, he did not need to do as Shi Chonggui did, reporting his father's death to his grandfather in the posture of a grandson; instead, he wrote in the name of a younger brother writing to an elder brother.

The matter was actually quite simple. At this time, between the Khitan and Zhang Zhao's two states there still lay an entire Hetao region.

The Khitans had no spare capacity to control the Fengzhou Zhenwu Army and Tiande Army area, and Zhang Zhao likewise had no ability to attack the Khitan.

So the two sides remained at peace, and one might even say their relations were somewhat amicable.

And the main purpose of Zhang Zhao's letter to Yelu Deguang was to explain two matters.

The first matter was that although the birthday of Yelu Deguang's mother, the Wrist-Severing Empress Dowager Shulu Ping, was still several months away, as her nephew, this first birthday congratulation still needed to be arranged in advance.

Therefore, Zhang Zhao first needed to write a letter and have an envoy carry it to the Khitan, so that Yelu Deguang could confirm where exactly the birthday-congratulation envoy should go, and with what identity and status the Liang state's birthday envoy should appear.

Because after the Khitan acquired the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan-Yun, they had a great many capitals.

Sometimes they might be at the Supreme Capital, Linhuang Prefecture; sometimes at the Eastern Capital, Liaoyang Prefecture; sometimes at the Central Capital, Dading Prefecture; and sometimes at the Southern Capital, Youzhou.

With communications so inconvenient at this time, only by confirming where the birthday celebration would be held could Zhang Zhao's birthday envoy be spared from running about blindly and missing the birthday date.

Moreover, the Liang state was not a vassal of the Khitan, so what ceremonial protocol to use also had to be discussed in advance.

The second matter concerned the Gaochang Uyghurs. Contact between the Gaochang Uyghurs and the Khitan had in fact existed from very early on.

Back when Yelu Abaoji first founded the Khitan state, relations with the Gaochang Uyghurs had been rather good. In seventeen years, the Gaochang Uyghurs had sent tribute as many as twenty-four times.

However, sixteen years ago, in the second year of Tongguang of the Later Tang, that is, 924 CE,

the newly enthroned Khagan of the Gaochang Uyghurs was unwilling to continue treating the Khitan, ten thousand li away, as his suzerain state, and even contended with the Khitans over the Kyrgyz tribes north of the Altai Mountains.

So Yelu Abaoji dispatched twenty thousand elite cavalry, who crossed the shifting sands north of the Gaochang Uyghur lands and made straight for the Gaochang Uyghurs' summer capital, Futo City — which was none other than the old Beiting City of the Great Tang's Beiting Protectorate.

The Khitans took the city in a single battle, killed several thousand of the Gaochang Uyghurs, and placed all the Kyrgyz tribes under Khitan command.

Afterwards, although the Khitans, unable to hold the territory long-term, chose to make peace with the Gaochang Uyghurs and allowed them to ransom back Futo City with gold, silk, and women, the enmity between the two sides had already been sown.

In recent years, had it not been for the enormous pressure Zhang Zhao put on the Gaochang Uyghurs, they would never have gone to pay homage to the Khitans.

But since they had paid homage, a bond of old friendship now existed.

Zhang Zhao and Yelu Deguang had sworn brotherhood, and now that he wished to swallow up the Gaochang Uyghurs (though of course he could not say so openly), he still had to give Yelu Deguang some word of it.

This was also why Zhang Zhao had first sent men to demand that the Gaochang Uyghurs' Xieli Pijia renounce the title of Heavenly King, and so on.

This was deliberate provocation — provoking the Gaochang Uyghurs' Xieli Pijia, then using it as a pretext to send troops and attack, so that the Khitans could hardly say much about it.

So the letter to Yelu Deguang, Zhang Zhao divided into three versions: one saying Xieli Pijia refused to renounce the title of Heavenly King, the second saying Xieli Pijia refused to convert to the Buddha, and the third saying Xieli Pijia refused to marry his younger sister to him.

Whichever choice Xieli Pijia ultimately made, the envoy going to the Khitan would present the corresponding one of the three letters to Yelu Deguang.

And the reason Zhang Zhao had gone from originally fearing Khitan interference to now daring to write openly and state his intentions was that he had figured out one thing.

In Yelu Abaoji's time, the Khitan state had positioned itself as the successor to the old Xiongnu and Turks.

What they wanted to be was a steppe power, except that their political and economic center lay in the Liaodong region.

But by Yelu Deguang's time, especially after obtaining ownership of the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan-Yun from Shi Jingtang,

all of Yelu Deguang's energy had turned toward the Central Plains. What the Khitans now wanted to be was the Northern Dynasty of the old Tuoba Xianbei.

In fact, this trend had already appeared in Yelu Abaoji's later years.

Otherwise the Gaochang Uyghurs would not have dared to jump out and contend with the Khitans over the Kyrgyz tribes — it was precisely because the Khitans had withdrawn their military presence in the west.

These Khitans, compared with the Xiongnu and the Turks, were still different. The latter were purely steppe peoples, and so could control and dominate the entire great desert.

But the Khitans had risen from a fishing-and-hunting people, lacked sufficient steppe attributes, and did not have the ability to control the entire great desert. Thus they had to focus on one direction.

In the end, under Yelu Deguang's leadership, they chose to go south and become a Northern Dynasty, and they did rather well at it, achieving a certain measure of success.

But just as the letter was about to be finished, Zhang Zhao thought it over and decided to add one more item.

Because the previous year, when he and Yelu Deguang had sworn brotherhood, they had only agreed that Zhang Zhao would address Shulu Ping as "Aunt Empress Dowager," and Yelu Deguang would address the Fengtian Queen Dowager as "Uncle's Wife Queen Dowager."

But Zhang Zhao's own birth mother, Lady Song, had received no honorific title from Yelu Deguang or the Khitan state.

Correspondingly, of course, the Khitan would send no envoy for Lady Song's birthday, which made Great King Zhang feel he was getting the short end of the bargain.

So Zhang Zhao added one more item on the spot, wanting to agree with Yelu Deguang that on Lady Song's birthday, the Khitan must also send an envoy.

That way, the Khitan would have to produce two sets of congratulatory gifts, and the wealth each side spent on birthday congratulations would be roughly equal.

However, Guo Tiance, standing at his side, was somewhat puzzled.

"Great King, you are about to swallow the Gaochang Uyghurs whole, and you need the Khitans to turn a blind eye. How can you raise this matter at such a moment? Will it not anger the Khitans?"

Zhang Zhao smiled faintly. "If I raise this, the Khitans will certainly be greatly displeased, and the focus of their argument will surely be drawn to this matter.

Because for the Khitans, they are now drawing in their strength and striving to devour more land in the Central Plains.

Compared with our annexing the Gaochang Uyghurs, which is merely eating a bit of meat, their desire to enter the Central Plains is the truly critical matter. They fear even more that we might intervene at this time.

So if I offer this proposal of increased birthday gifts, they will very tacitly seize upon this topic and make a fuss over it, and not discuss the Gaochang Uyghurs."

Guo Tiance nodded. Compared with Zhang Zhao's certainty, he was quite uneasy.

"Great King, if the Khitans truly enter the Central Plains, what shall we do?

Even the Khitan of today is stronger than us. If the Khitan ruler gains the Central Plains, it will surely be beyond what our Great Liang state can contend with."

People of this time did not have Zhang Zhao's ability to see through the fog of the future. They all believed that once the Khitans moved south, they would very likely gain a firm foothold in the Central Plains — the Later Jin's soldiers and generals vying to defect in history was clear proof.

But Zhang Zhao knew that the burden the Khitans carried on their backs was too heavy!

Their backward institutions, the irreconcilable interests of the great Khitan tribes, and Yelu Deguang was no heaven-sent heroic ruler capable of reconciling the Khitans' internal contradictions while also winning the hearts of the Central Plains.

He was no peerless second-generation Taizong like Li Shimin or the Yongle Emperor; he was a disgrace among Taizongs, surpassing Second Brother Zhao only slightly in martial prowess.

But Zhang Zhao could not say these things to anyone, so he could only feign a heavy nod.

"This means our speed in crushing the Gaochang Uyghurs must be fast. As long as we can swiftly annex the Gaochang Uyghurs, we will have enough time to select tens of thousands of elite troops.

If the Khitans truly enter the Central Plains, we will seize the three military governorships of Guanzhong and the territory of the Hezhong Military Governor, and enter the Central Plains as well!"

The moment Guo Tiance heard "enter the Central Plains," his face lit up with joy. He was about to say a few more words when Guo Rong came in, tears streaming down his face, to request an audience.

For Guo Rong, his feelings toward his uncle Guo Wei were not necessarily very deep.

If they had been deep, Guo Wei would not have been willing to let the thirteen- or fourteen-year-old Guo Rong follow Tongzhou merchants to the lands of Southern Wu and Qian Yue to trade tea.

One must understand that at this time, even a grown man traveling far from home faced the constant danger of falling ill in an unfamiliar climate and dying on the spot, let alone a half-grown boy — and one going "abroad" to Southern Wu and Qian Yue at that.

But Guo Rong's feelings for Lady Chai were certainly very deep.

History says Guo Rong came from the great Chai clan of Xingzhou, a family of great merchants, but in truth this was merely gilding Guo Rong's face.

Theirs was an ordinary household that by luck produced a beautiful eldest daughter, chosen for the palace, who served Emperor Zhuangzong, Li Cunxu. Later dismissed by Emperor Ming, Li Siyuan, she returned home with a large sum of money.

She then set her sights on Guo Wei, giving half her property to her parents for their old age and keeping half as her own dowry.

Only thus did the Chai family enter the ranks of the modestly wealthy, but after Guo Rong's grandfather and grandmother passed away, his father Chai Shouli proved a wastrel and quickly squandered the family fortune — and very likely his wife ran off as well.

This can be seen from the histories: Chai Shouli had three wives, Lady Wang, Lady Huang, and Lady Liu, yet none is recorded as having borne Guo Rong.

For a figure of Guo Rong's stature as a generation's wise sovereign, this is highly abnormal.

Had any of these three borne Guo Rong, it would surely have been written in large characters; even if Guo Rong's birth mother had died early, that too would have been recorded.

So there is only one possibility: after Chai Shouli squandered the family fortune and continued his dissolute ways, his first wife ran off with another man.

Guo Rong at the time must have been very young, and his two elder brothers' names are likewise unrecorded — one can tell from the fact that only the later fourth son Chai Hua and fifth son Chai Gui have their names preserved.

It is very likely that the young Guo Rong was abandoned by his mother, and that when she abandoned him, she took with her the two elder brothers, who could already work and still had some value.

So for Guo Rong, abandoned by his mother in childhood, with a wastrel for a father, he had no choice but to seek refuge with his aunt as a child — yet his uncle was not particularly fond of him.

To have lived such a life without utterly giving up on himself truly counts as strength of heart.

In the darkness of that life, only his aunt, Lady Chai, gave him a mother's warmth.

Lady Chai adopted him as her son, partly to make provision for her own future, and partly to give the young Guo Rong a proper standing.

Being an adopted son was far better than being a nephew living under another's roof, and it also spared him the awkward position of an aunt who could not yet bear children and an uncle who feared he had come to seize the family property.

Watching the tear-streaked Guo Rong, Zhang Zhao too raised his head and sighed to the heavens. He had with great difficulty persuaded Guo Rong to stay, and now Lady Chai had fallen gravely ill — was this not heaven's will?

At first he had suspected this might be a scheme by Guo Wei and Lady Chai, merely to call Guo Rong back.

But on second thought, it seemed Lady Chai had indeed died early in history, well before Guo Wei held great power, so it was quite possible she would pass away within the next year or two.

"Since your mother is gravely ill, how could I force you to stay? We have been lord and subject once; who knows whether we shall ever meet again!" Zhang Zhao said with deep emotion.

"Tiance, go to my inner treasury and take out five hundred strings of gold, silver, and silk, to serve as traveling expenses for Commander Guo."

Hearing this, Guo Rong was all the more moved, kneeling on the ground and sobbing too hard to speak. Yet he did not say that once matters were settled he would come to join him.

For the realm was in turmoil, Hedong and Hexi lay several thousand li apart, and once he returned, if Lady Chai truly passed away he would have to observe mourning — whether he could ever return to Hexi was truly uncertain.

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