Chapter 434: The Old Ginger Is Still the Spiciest

Chen Tingxiao watched gleefully as Yinzhou City plunged into riot; by now the cry of "Kill the tax officials!" had resounded through the whole city.

Moreover, the riot of the Yinzhou commoners had stirred up the group most dissatisfied with the tax officials — the traveling merchants on the trade routes.

On the Silk Road today, Hexi's commercial taxes are the most reasonable: when entering Shazhou and Dunhuang, one must report to the officials of the Liang State's Ministry of Revenue in Dunhuang City, and the Ministry has seasoned old merchants on hand to appraise goods.

Most of these old merchants are men too old or too lame to keep working as traveling merchants, and their appraisals are generally very accurate.

After the appraisal, one takes the receipt issued by the Ministry of Revenue and goes to Liangzhou to pay the commercial tax.

Before that point, traveling merchants do not have to pay a single bit of commercial tax; they need only pay a small transit toll upon reaching each prefectural city.

In other words, no matter how much cargo, as long as one pays a single commercial tax, one can avoid being plucked at every stop.

But among the Gaochang Uyghurs it is different: Kucha collects, Gaochang City collects, and when you reach Yinzhou, it is collected just the same.

And as if they were competing, each place is heavier than the last; the traveling merchants have long been utterly miserable.

Now this great tide of resistance against the tax collectors set off by the people of Yinzhou was directly seized upon by the traveling merchants.

Most of them were not natives of Yinzhou; after killing someone they could simply flee, and with their enormous volumes of goods, escaping a single tax meant a great deal of money.

Very quickly, with the addition of these traveling merchants so full of martial vigor, the storm swept through the entire city of Yinzhou.

Not only the low-level tax collectors, but even several kinsmen of the Pugu family who held the title of Judge, along with their households and the locals who had attached themselves to them, were all killed clean to the last one.

"Elder Brother, it is time for us to enter the city. Once we control the situation, Yinzhou will return to our Chen family!"

A group of Chen family brothers all congratulated Chen Tingxiao with beaming faces.

They had long been extremely resentful over being stripped of Yinzhou's authority, especially the tax-collecting rights.

In their smiles was nothing but the fantasy that one day they too could become tax-farming officials, able to show off their valor before their parents.

But just then, the sound of hoofbeats came from behind them.

Chen Tingxiao ran up a hillock in surprise and looked toward the sound; at least three hundred cavalry were closing in on them from every direction, and they flew the Chen family banner.

Chen Tingxiao was dumbfounded, because beneath that huge banner bearing the character "Chen" he saw none other than his father, Chen Huiyao.

"Unfilial wretch! Look what you've done!" Chen Huiyao, not particularly angry, lashed Chen Tingxiao once with his whip, then waved his hand grandly.

"The second branch will hold the east and north gates; the sons of the fourth and fifth branches will hold the west and south gates respectively.

Balang, go at once and notify Sanlang, who is holding the city, and have him immediately quell the disturbance. Arrest all those traveling merchants who killed people — do not let a single one escape. They will have to pay for these losses."

Chen Tingxiao suddenly felt a hollow emptiness in his heart; he had labored and schemed for many days.

It seemed... it seemed his father had plucked the peach right out of his hands!

Watching the kinsmen around him carry out his orders, Chen Huiyao turned back with a face full of smug satisfaction and smacked Chen Tingxiao on the head.

This was the first time Chen Tingxiao had ever seen such an expression on the face of his father, who had always been stern and steady.

"With your paltry tricks, you thought of killing tax officials to force your old man into rebellion, but you never thought about how to control the situation afterward?

If I hadn't come, could those few brothers under you have suppressed the already enraged commoners? Could you have made those armored, sword-bearing traveling merchants obey you?

If I hadn't come today, Yinzhou City would have been slaughtering itself by now."

Chen Tingxiao listened, stunned. "Father, you... you knew all along?"

"Of course I knew. Otherwise why do you think your third uncle, who holds the east gate, obeyed your orders? Have you even grown all your hair yet, that you dare command your third uncle?"

"But, Father, since you knew all this, why did you not agree when the Great Liang's envoy came?"

For the first time, Chen Tingxiao felt he hardly recognized this father of his, who in his heart had always yielded and retreated.

Chen Huiyao chuckled. "Would you still treasure a wild horse that can be tamed just by throwing a lasso?

I fought against the Great King Zhang in Loulan City ten years ago. The envoy who came to our family is the brother of the man who swindled our family out of more than a thousand strings of cash back then.

If you want to follow a great king like that, unless you make him see your importance, how can you sell yourself for a good price?"

Chen Tingxiao could no longer speak; the "young" heart of a sixteen-year-old had just been given a thorough lesson by his own father.

The plan he had considered a stroke of genius had been used by others almost nakedly.

"What are you standing there for? I'm going to stabilize Yinzhou City. You take the best archers and riders of the clan and ride at full speed to contact that envoy of the Liang State.

Tell him your plan was seen through by me, and that although Yinzhou City is now under control, I am still hesitating.

Say that, and I believe the Great King's rewards will come pouring down like a flood."

At the Moheyan Desert, outside Xingxing Gorge, Zhang Zhao personally led thirty thousand troops. After less than three days of forced march, the thirty thousand troops had covered the more than three hundred li from Dunhuang to the western edge of the Moheyan Desert.

Here, the army was to split into northern and southern columns.

Bai Congxin and Murong Xinzhang took four thousand men and, after only a brief rest, immediately began moving north.

They not only had to reach Xianquan Town beyond the the the Shatuo Desert quickly, but also had to open roads, build bridges, and leave markers along the way.

Zhang Zhao, meanwhile, was assigning tasks to the visibly excited Feng Hui. He left Manxiong, Dunzhu, and Wang Tongxin all with Feng Hui.

These men were his trusted confidants; among them, the infantry belonging to the Hanshan Unit alone numbered over four hundred — the most important armed force at Zhang Zhao's side.

As for why Manxiong and the others were not to go with him on the northern route, it was because heavy infantry champions of Manxiong's great tonnage were not well suited to long-distance raids.

Not that it was entirely impossible, but it was not the most suitable: they ate a lot, wore heavy gear, and were a burden for the horses to carry, so Zhang Zhao simply had them move together with Feng Hui.

There was another reason as well: after taking Yinzhou, the southern column was to head directly to Gaochang.

There they would certainly come under fierce attack from the Gaochang Uyghur army. With more infantry and fewer cavalry, they were exactly suited to fortifying a camp and holding out, tying down the Gaochang men.

Feng Hui of course understood Zhang Zhao's purpose in giving him the southern column. But then, the Silver Lance Effect-Elite Unit had never feared fighting hard battles.

In the old Liang-Jin battle at Huliu Slope, Wang Yanzhang led the Liang army forward in formation, and the Jin army collapsed in terror and could not be stopped; even the fierce general Zhou Dewei and his son died in battle.

Only the Silver Lance Effect-Elite Army held under the pressure and fiercely attacked the Liang army, turning danger into safety for Li Cunxu.

Therefore, the Silver Lance Effect-Elite Unit never feared hard battles; the only thing they feared was not being paid enough.

But by now the Silver Lance Effect-Elite Unit was long gone, and Feng Hui had come to the Liang State not simply to make money under Zhang Zhao.

As a man of the Daibei military-merit group, Feng Hui and these Hebei men could probably only become top-tier military nobles under Zhang Zhao and win wealth and honor for their descendants — that was his most important consideration.

"Traveling west from Yinzhou, about four hundred li or so, there is a city called Puchang. It was the garrison of the Great Dynasty's Western Prefecture Tianshan Army in former years."

Word came from the traveling merchants that this town was still habitable, and it was no more than a hundred and sixty li from the city of Gaochang.

Before the first day of the tenth month, you must reach Puchang, unfurl your banners in grand display, and make Xieli Pijia believe that my main army has already arrived.

If you hold for fifteen days or more, the main force of the northern army is certain to arrive, and I will count it as your first merit."

The Puchang of this time was the later Shanshan County, and it happened to be the eastern gateway of Gaochang.

As long as Puchang can be taken, Xieli Pijia within Gaochang will inevitably have to send out a large army.

At that point, the northern army that has taken Tingzhou will race to the scene, and the Gaochang Uyghurs will be finished.

Feng Hui clasped his hands and gave a deep, formal bow from the waist. "Rest assured, Heavenly King. Never mind fifteen days—even thirty days, I can hold it!"

Zhang Zhao was about to go on and ask what to do if the Chen family of Yinzhou refused to submit, when a guard reported from afar that people had arrived from Yinzhou.

The four clansmen Chen Tingxiao had brought with him were all the finest among the young men of the Chen family.

As descendants of the Southern Chen imperial clan, moved from Jiangnan by Emperor Wen of Sui in the early Sui dynasty, the Chen family had in fact always possessed considerable martial virtue.

Unlike the later impression that Jiangnan produced only frail scholars, the Han people of Jiangnan had actually always been formidable fighters. How else could they have assimilated and absorbed so many Yue people across Jiangsu and Zhejiang?

The impression of Jiangnan as weak and effete was actually formed in the Ming dynasty.

At that time, the Ming capital was far away in Beijing, and Jiangnan had already become the region with the highest tax revenue in the entire country.

If the people there had still been fierce and warlike, every one of them as capable in a fight as the Dongyang miners, how could the Emperor in Beijing ever have slept soundly? He would surely have had to stop Jiangnan from continuing to prize martial prowess!

In this period, however, although the saying "Yangzhou first, Yizhou second" had already appeared, on the whole the northern economy still held the advantage.

The people of Jiangnan were therefore still very capable fighters. These Southern Chen clansmen had endured from the end of the Sui all the way to the present—a full four hundred fifty or sixty years. Had they not been able to fight, they would long since have been swallowed up.

Now Zhang Zhao looked at Chen Tingxiao and the other four. They were tall and powerfully built, and though their faces still bore the fine down of youth, the webs of their thumbs were thick with calluses, and on their fingers the marks left by long years of wearing thumb rings were plainly visible. He was immediately well pleased.

"All you generals, look at Chen Dalang. Does he not have something of the bearing of the old Left Yulin Army commander?"

Zhang Zhao pointed at Chen Tingxiao as he asked. This was no small praise.

Back when Zhang Zhao and the others had returned east, Murong Xinzhang had also been around sixteen, and he had very nearly beaten an old veteran like Ma Shacai to the ground.

Of course, Chen Tingxiao still fell a little short of Murong Xinzhang, but all the generals understood Zhang Zhao's purpose in saying this, and at once vied with one another in praise.

Chen Tingxiao's heart surged as well. The fame of the "White-Robed One of Liangzhou" and the "Zilong of Wuwei" was renowned even in Yinzhou.

"Would you be willing to follow at my side, like these heroic youths?"

Zhang Zhao pointed to Zhao Kuangyi, Wang Shenqi, Li Xiaojie, She Deyuan, and the others beside him as he asked. These were all the young heroes around him.

Chen Tingxiao immediately dropped to his knees. "I am willing to follow the Heavenly King and range across the realm!"

"Good!" Zhang Zhao at once decided to keep Chen Tingxiao by his side, in part also to hold him as a hostage.

At the same time, he ordered Wu Yuan'er to lead a hundred elite cavalry and accompany the other two Chen clansmen to Yinzhou. After taking over the defense of Yinzhou, they would then let the main army enter the city.

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