Chapter 435: The World's Winds and Clouds First Stir

At Qingzhou, seat of the Pinglu Military Governor, Yang Guangyuan and his eldest son Yang Chengzuo were plotting in secret within the governor's headquarters.

Because the more Yang Guangyuan thought about it, the more furious he became, feeling that he had been played by the Later Jin court.

They had agreed to let him exchange garrisons with Du Chongwei at Yedu, but after he passed the Eastern Capital, they made him transfer his garrison to Pinglu instead.

Had Yang Guangyuan not been carrying little wealth at the time, and had he not had three hundred armored soldiers escorting him, he probably would not even have kept his life.

This Qingzhou was a cramped, impoverished place — how could it compare with Yedu, with its bustling population and its position as the northern gateway of the Eastern Capital?

He had originally agreed with Du Chongwei that each would leave a thousand elite warriors for the other to command.

In the end, Du Chongwei went off to the Western Capital, Luoyang, and took control of the tiger-and-wolf warriors Yang Guangyuan had left behind — men raised on silver and coin scraped from all over Luoyang.

While he himself had come to Qingzhou, and all the money he had spent before had gone to waste.

Yang Guangyuan's eldest son Yang Chengzuo was equally furious. The moment Shi Jingtang died, his position as Commandant of Consorts immediately lost its luster.

When the edict came transferring them to Pinglu, he had wanted the princess to go to the palace and plead their case, but Shi Chonggui would not even let her through the palace gates, causing Yang Chengzuo to lose great face.

"Father, word has come from the Eastern Capital. That bumpkin Jing Yanguang has cursed the Khitan envoys and sent them packing — still calling himself 'grandson' but refusing to call himself 'subject.' It seems war with the Khitan is now unavoidable."

Yang Guangyuan's second son Yang Chengxin ran in from outside, beaming with delight. To them, Jing Yanguang's provocation of the Khitan was their opportunity.

"Let us act, Father! The troops we raised with the money we scraped together in the Western Capital have all gone to benefit Du Chongwei.

Now that Jing Yanguang dares to transfer us to Pinglu, later he will dare to transfer us to the Jingnan Army at Binzhou or the Zhangwu Army at Yanzhou — bitter, cold places facing the Liang Kingdom."

Yang Guangyuan's brows were tightly knitted. He still could not quite make up his mind, and he looked at his eldest son Yang Chengzuo's impatient expression.

This scab-headed military governor, a man who had long experience of battle and knew what the Khitan were really like, spoke hesitantly.

"The Khitan are treacherous and ever-changing, and Yelu Deguang has long harbored the ambition to invade the Central Plains southward. Shi Jingtang has already sold off the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan-Yun — what terms could we possibly offer?

We cannot sell the two prefectures of Ding and Zhen as well, can we?

Dingzhou is the later Dingzhou in Hebei, while Zhenzhou is Zhengding County in Hebei — the two places correspond to the later Baoding and Shijiazhuang.

After Shi Jingtang sold off the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan-Yun, the Later Jin court used the prefectures of Zheng, Ding, Shen, Zhao, and others to build a fortress-style defensive chain made up of walled cities.

It barely managed to somewhat restrict the Khitan cavalry, preventing them from riding south with reckless abandon.

If the two prefectures of Ding and Zhen were to be sold off as well, then north of the Yellow River there would no longer be any place capable of blocking the Khitan.

Toward Yang Guangyuan's hesitation, Yang Chengzuo appeared utterly unconcerned. He tossed his head and said, utterly shameless.

"Shi Jingtang sold the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan-Yun — why can our Yang family not sell the mere two prefectures of Ding and Zhen?

Can Father still not see the situation of the times? Everyone at court, high and low, wishes for us, father and sons, to die, and the sooner the better. If we sell Ding and Zhen, we can still become Son of Heaven south of the Yellow River.

At worst, we build fortresses along the Yellow River line, cut off the pontoon bridges, and every winter chop the ice to prevent freezing, and so defend against the Khitan.

If we do not sell Ding and Zhen, then we can just wait for the day the court suddenly sends an imperial envoy to our door to cut off our heads."

Yang Guangyuan was silenced by Yang Chengzuo's words. Ever since they, father and sons, had killed Fan Yanguang in the Western Capital of Luoyang and tasted the sweetness of it, in less than a year they had murdered commoners, traveling merchants, and officials of all ranks in the Western Capital of Luoyang — no fewer than two thousand people.

Though this was the Five Dynasties, an age of endless war, the number of people they, father and sons, had killed in the Western Capital of Luoyang was not considered large.

But in terms of sheer cruelty, perhaps the only one before them was the man-eating general Qin Zongquan, who had served under Huang Chao in former days.

And after them, it would be some years before Zhao Siwan, the Military Governor of the Jinchang Army, who delighted in eating human livers, could be compared to them.

What Yang Guangyuan could see now was that in the Later Jin court, whether civil or military, from the Son of Heaven above down to the junior officers below, everyone truly did intend to kill them.

Thinking of this, he slammed his hand heavily on the armrest. "My son, go at once and have the Secretary draft a letter. Choose a man skilled in speech and deliver it to His Majesty the Khitan Emperor, inviting him to lead his army south so that together we may plot for the Central Plains.

Also, share the gold and silver we brought from Luoyang with the officers and soldiers of the Pinglu Army, high and low, so that they will rise with us."

Yang Guangyuan's arrangements were sound, but Yang Chengzuo hesitated somewhat.

"Father, the wealth we scraped together in Luoyang has all been exchanged for Hexi silver notes, and they are all large notes of one thousand strings each. How are we to distribute them?"

Yang Guangyuan said "share," but in reality he only planned to put up around fifty thousand strings.

With these silver notes of one thousand strings each, fifty thousand strings would be only fifty notes. How many men could that buy?

When the time came, the yabing officers above would take the silver notes and not share them with the yabing guards below — that would actually ruin things.

Moreover, Yang Guangyuan was also very reluctant to part with the wealth he had extorted from Fan Yanguang. After thinking it over, he simply hardened his heart.

"Then summon the commanders. I will speak with them personally. When the time comes to rise, we will strip Zizhou clean to supply the army."

At this time, the Pinglu Military Governor's jurisdiction contained two large cities: one was Qingzhou, where the headquarters was located, and the other was Zizhou, west of Qingzhou.

With Pinglu's mere few thousand troops and Yang Guangyuan's several hundred trusted yabing guards, once they rose in revolt they certainly could not hold both Qingzhou and Zizhou; they would inevitably have to hold only one place.

Therefore Yang Guangyuan prepared to abandon Zizhou, using Zizhou's wealth and goods to win the hearts of the Pinglu Army's yabing guards in Qingzhou, and then hold the Qingzhou area and wait for the Khitan host to come south.

Among the Khitan — oh, they should now be called the Liao Kingdom — in the Eastern Capital of Liaoyang Prefecture, Yelu Deguang on one hand ordered men to buy up all manner of treasures, brocades, and satins, putting on the appearance of preparing a grand celebration for his mother Empress Dowager Shulu's birthday in the tenth month.

On the other hand, he secretly ordered the left and right Pishi Armies to drill diligently, and also conscripted large numbers of Xi and Bohai people.

And after obtaining Empress Dowager Shulu's permission, he even mobilized Shulu Ping's private army, the Shushan Army, completing his preparations for a southern invasion.

And these operations of Yelu Deguang's did indeed succeed in lulling the Later Jin court into complacency.

With the Later Jin court's pitifully few spies inside Khitan territory, they could not even roughly track Khitan movements, let alone accurately, and were quickly deceived by Yelu Deguang's little tricks.

This led to Shi Chonggui taking no other defensive measures at all, apart from stockpiling large quantities of military supplies and fodder at Beizhou, north of the Yellow River.

On the contrary, it was Zhao Yanshou who, through his agents in Hebei, had already ascertained that the place where the Later Jin court was stockpiling military supplies was Beizhou.

The two sides were already a full grade apart in intelligence.

And as for Yang Guangyuan's letter, to Yelu Deguang it merely further hardened his resolve to march south and punish the Later Jin.

Because he had already seen clearly the character of these Central Plains warriors — to say nothing of Yang Guangyuan, with whom he had no friendship at all, and who moreover bore a scab-covered head that made people loathe the sight of him.

Even the handsome middle-aged Zhao Yanshou, whom he treated as an adopted son and who was always bustling about at his side — Yelu Deguang had never once considered propping him up as Emperor of the Central Plains.

This Emperor of the Central Plains — Yelu Deguang intended to be it himself.

And Zhao Yanshou, of course, knew none of this. He was still dreaming his beautiful dream that Yelu Deguang would make him Emperor of the Central Plains, that he would establish the Great Yan dynasty and become Yan Taizu.

Now, hearing that Yang Guangyuan had sent an envoy, Zhao Yanshou immediately and eagerly sought an audience with Yelu Deguang, requesting to serve as vanguard.

Yelu Deguang, seeing that everything was in readiness, did not hesitate in the slightest and directly appointed Zhao Yanshou as vanguard.

He was assigned twenty thousand tribal troops of the Xi people, over twenty thousand Han soldiers from the prefectures of Gui, Yun, Ying, and Tan beyond the mountains, plus Zhao Yanshou's several thousand men — fifty thousand in all — and ordered to march south as the vanguard.

Yelu Deguang himself led the Left and Right Pishi Army, the Shushan Army, the Seven Tribes Army, and eighty thousand Bohai troops — proclaimed as one hundred thousand — as the main force pressing up behind them.

On Zhang Zhao's side, after fifteen days of long marching, the nine thousand men of his central main force had finally reached Xianquan Town as well.

And Xianquan Town lived up to the name of its salt spring: it was in fact a small pool of only about four or five hundred square meters, and the water in the lake was indeed faintly salty with a bitter tang.

Still, Zhang Zhao raised his head and looked around at the desolate sands of the the the Shatuo Desert, and felt at once that for such a spring to appear here at the edge of the desert was rare enough.

They had just finished resting when Bai Congxin rode over in person to report.

According to the intelligence provided by the traveling merchants, Tingzhou, the summer capital of the Gaochang Uyghurs, should have held only two or three thousand troops.

But by the time Bai Congxin arrived, the whole of Tingzhou was already under martial law, and the cavalry patrolling back and forth outside the city walls alone numbered no fewer than ten thousand.

The scouts of the Left Yulin Guard simply could not get close enough to reconnoiter, and the Brocade Robe agents disguised as traveling merchants who entered Tingzhou city were never seen coming back out — it seemed they had been detained.

This was somewhat strange. Zhang Zhao scratched his head. By all reason, it should not be so!

The traveling merchants who knew the army's exact time of movement had all been carefully selected by the Hexi Chamber of Commerce.

Every one of them had great interests and family members in Liangzhou; they would not dare reveal any intelligence to anyone.

And just over half a month ago, Zhang Zhao had sent out a final batch of envoys to the royal camp of the Gaochang Uyghurs to meet with Xieli Pijia, still using the renunciation of his royal title to lull the Gaochang Uyghurs above and below into complacency.

It could not be that Xieli Pijia had reacted immediately and then, within a month and a half, traveled from the Uyghur royal city of Gaochang to Tingzhou.

Zhang Zhao slowly shook his head. If Xieli Pijia were that easy to deal with — daring to leave the strong city of Gaochang and come to Tingzhou just when a great battle was about to break out — then he would instead be a target that could be taken with ease.

But this situation truly exceeded everyone's expectations, because before setting out, Zhang Zhao had presided over a council of war and had already made a detailed analysis of the Gaochang Uyghurs' population and army.

The entire Gaochang Uyghur people, even if all the herders were conscripted, amounted to no more than sixty or seventy thousand.

They simply did not have the ability to send out this many troops to screen Tingzhou, unless they had drawn every unit they had over to this side.

Bai Congxin took up the map and began to analyze it carefully. Suddenly, he pointed toward the northwest of Tingzhou and looked at Zhang Zhao.

Zhang Zhao was also briefly taken aback. How had he forgotten about that fellow?

Li Cunhui, at his side, saw the direction Zhang Zhao's finger pointed. He stroked his chin and asked.

"My lord means to say — the large numbers of cavalry appearing at Tingzhou might be Karluk men from the Land of the Seven Rivers?"

Murong Xinzhang nodded as well. "The Chen family of Yinzhou has sent word that Satuq is about to form a marriage alliance with the Gaochang Uyghurs, and Xieli Pijia also knows that we are about to launch an attack on him.

So it is very possible he has informed Satuq and asked him to send troops to the rescue. That makes sense.

Then we should have run straight into the Karluks under Satuq who have come to the rescue."

Heh heh! A cold smile appeared on Zhang Zhao's face. If that were the case, it would save him the trouble of going to find Satuq.

Great King Zhang made his decision on the spot. "Rather than sit here guessing wildly, how about this: Cunhui, you and Murong Yanzhao each take a hundred picked cavalry and go capture a few prisoners for interrogation.

If these men really are Karluks from the Land of the Seven Rivers, then we might as well encircle and destroy them outside Tingzhou.

Then, flying Karluk banners, we can deceive the Gaochang Uyghur garrison on the Baishui Stream Road and strike straight to the walls of Gaochang."

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