Chapter 49: Sons of Tang on the Vast Sea (Two-in-One Chapter — No More Today)

Dunhuang City, Mingsha Mountain — known as one of China's four great singing-sand sites. In later ages, this "singing sand" phenomenon would be enough for three episodes of a science-explainer TV show, but in this era it seemed utterly supernatural and unfathomable.

The Shazhou Gazetteer records: the mountain has singing sands, heard within the city walls. Travelers who visit the sand mountain keep their parties small; some dare not go on before they have even set out, so great is their dread.

And today, at the foot of this Mingsha Mountain that ceaselessly emits its diabolical whistling, beneath a Great Tang sun-and-moon banner and the great standard of the Guiyi Army Military Governor, an old man attended by more than ten serving women was meeting with a knight clad in golden armor.

The one with serving women dressed in brocade ruqun was Cao Yijin; the one in golden armor riding side by side with a youth was Zhang Zhao.

"Zhang Erlang! Your uncle is here — dismount, remove your armor, and pay your respects!"

Cao Yijin wore loose, flowing robes, looking every bit the man out on an excursion. The table beneath the Military Governor's great standard was laden with fine wine and delicacies.

Fortunately there was no wind and no blowing sand at the moment, or they would have had nothing to eat but grit.

Zhang Zhao swung nimbly down from his horse and handed the reins to Cao Shisi, Cao Yanming, who stood beside him with somewhat evasive eyes.

"Fine skill! This old man truly never saw it — that you, Zhang Erlang, have secretly trained yourself into such martial prowess. That old dog Zhang Zhong really did have some ability after all!"

Cao Yijin praised him loudly. Though it looked like a mere dismount, it in fact displayed a rider's skill and strength to the fullest.

For an ordinary man wearing several dozen jin of heavy armor could not dismount at all without assistance. But what Cao Yijin could never have imagined was that Zhang Zhao's martial skill had not been secretly taught by Zhang Zhong — it had come from a later age.

"Uncle of the Suo family, what do you think — in this armor, does your nephew carry a touch of the Grand Guardian's bearing?" Zhang Zhao removed the phoenix-wing helmet from his head and tossed it to Cao Yanming as well, then asked Cao Yijin with a smile.

Cao Yijin's original principal wife, Lady Suo, was the daughter of Suo Xun, the fourth Military Governor of the Guiyi Army. Some matrilineal clan customs still lingered, and so Zhang Zhao addressed Cao Yijin as "Uncle of the Suo family."

"You little dog-slave. The Grand Guardian was a heaven-sent genius. How many horses do you have, how many blades, that you dare compare yourself to the Grand Guardian? I'd say you bear more resemblance to your father, the White-Clad Son of Heaven!"

Seeing Zhang Zhao's roguish, irreverent manner, Cao Yijin shifted his own style at once, and the two of them truly did come to seem like an uncle and nephew meeting.

"Uncle, do you really believe my father lost his kingdom only because his ambitions outstripped his talents?" Zhang Zhao walked unceremoniously over to the table Cao Yijin had laid with delicacies and fine wine, picked up a cup of grape wine, and drank.

"At that time, the Zhang clan had been weakened by repeated infighting, so the great Han families of Gua and Sha seized the chance to raise my father up, using war to gather power into their own hands.

And clans like yours, mixed with Sogdian blood, stood by watching the show. Only when things truly went wrong and the Xianyun of Ganzhou were at the city walls did you rise up for one desperate fight — but by then it was too late, and in the end my Zhang family was sacrificed to restore stability!"

A hint of amusement showed on Zhang Zhao's face. "So tell me, Uncle — when I can say such things, do I resemble my father the White-Clad Son of Heaven, or do I more closely resemble my great-grandfather the Grand Guardian?"

Zhang Yichao — that was a great hero, glorious and mighty beyond doubt.

But Zhang Zhao's father, Zhang Chengfeng, was not. In a sense, he was a tool raised up by the great Han families of Gua and Sha to contend with one another for power and profit.

Flattered day after day by a crowd of people writing doggerel verses in his praise, he drifted into believing that the Guiyi Army of his day was still the Guiyi Army of Zhang Yichao's time, the one that had awed all of Hexi.

He smashed a few Canwei tribal settlements and thought himself invincible under heaven — and then was knocked flat into the dust by a single blow from the Ganzhou Uyghurs.

To be a Zhang Yichao — yes! But Zhang Zhao would absolutely never become a second Zhang Chengfeng.

The easy expression vanished from Cao Yijin's face in an instant. He waved a hand, dismissing the serving women, straightened his robes, and fixed his eyes on Zhang Zhao.

"Who told you this?"

Cao Yijin could not help his alarm, because what Zhang Zhao had said was all true.

Back then, after Zhang Zhao's father, the White-Clad Son of Heaven Zhang Chengfeng, had relied on the great Han families of Gua and Sha to throw off the control of his own aunt, Lady Li, and several of his cousins, those great Han families of Gua and Sha had ceaselessly urged Zhang Chengfeng to campaign in all directions — because only war, only the mode of war, could concentrate power fastest.

And sure enough, in Zhang Chengfeng's Western Han Jinshan Kingdom's campaigns against the Canwei, the Gaochang Uyghurs, and the Long family of Suzhou, power rapidly concentrated in the hands of the great Han families of Gua and Sha headed by Zhang Chengfeng, while families like Cao Yijin's, mixed with Sogdian blood, saw their interests damaged and were pushed to the margins.

At the time, both sides were waiting to see the other made a fool of, each thinking the other an idiot — but it never occurred to them that, fight as they might, if the Guiyi Army itself were gone, what would they have left to stand on?

Only when these people crashed headlong into the Ganzhou Uyghurs and found the enemy at their very walls did they realize they had played themselves into a corner!

But such matters cannot be understood without considerable political acumen — and what was more, it had all happened twenty years ago. The old men who had played themselves into that corner had a tacit understanding to avoid the subject, and the new generation had no impression of it left at all.

How did this Zhang Erlang know any of this?

Zhang Zhao knew Cao Yijin's doubt. He pointed at his own head. "Uncle, your nephew worked all this out for himself!"

A joke, surely. I, the transmigrator Zhang, made my name among the average Class-A war criminals of Paradox Interactive, and I was also a history-channel uploader on a certain video site. Before transmigrating, I'd seen the same situation play out in who knows how many historical events.

For instance, my dear Qing court standing coldly by while Li Hefei's Huai Army was left to take on the entire nation of Japan alone — isn't that extremely similar to this business with the Guiyi Army's Jinshan Kingdom? With so many living examples before him, how could Zhang Zhao fail to figure this much out?

This is the vast gulf between modern people and ancients in knowledge and the sheer volume of information they are exposed to. The hard-won insights and experience that ancients hoarded like a treasured broom were, in later ages, dissected and retold by countless people.

"Fine lad! A match for a hundred, able to produce the divine-arm crossbow, and with such insight besides — it seems Yannai was right. You do have the makings of a hero!

But with your edge so boldly exposed, are you not afraid that this old man, with one word, will have you hacked to mincemeat?"

Cao Yijin narrowed his eyes. He no longer regarded Zhang Zhao as a young tiger cub, but as a hidden dragon lying in wait.

Zhang Zhao smiled and gently set down his wine cup. "If Uncle were truly the ruler of a unified realm, I would never have come to say these words — I would long since have run off without a trace.

But you are not. You are merely the paper-hanger patching over the cracks for us people who have lost our state and our homes! Tell me, does the whole Guiyi Army have even two thousand shock-troop warriors like Ma Yaozi and Vice-Captain Yan?"

Cao Yijin had not expected Zhang Zhao to say anything like this. It surprised him even more than what had come before, and left him not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

He, Cao Yijin, was after all the Great King of the West who held the lives of two or three hundred thousand in his hands, with nearly ten thousand armored soldiers under his command — and this Zhang Erlang, with a mere hundred-odd men, was calling him a paper-hanger!

And yet — Cao Yijin sighed again. What the boy said was not, in fact, wrong. With a bitter smile, he held up one finger and wagged it.

"Two thousand? If this old man had two thousand such bear-and-tiger warriors, would I have withdrawn from Ganzhou City back then? I'd have marched on Liangzhou long ago. Two thousand? Not even a thousand — at the absolute most, I could scrape together five or six hundred."

"Then why is Uncle still talking to me of fighting and killing? We have only this many men. Today you give your nephew a road to walk — who knows whether, in days to come, there may not be a time when I lend a hand to the Cao family.

And I imagine that what Lady Sanniang said to your nephew — 'even if another Grand Guardian should appear, that would be well' — she heard from you, did she not? And the one in Dunhuang City who constantly frets that his children and grandchildren will turn into barbarians — that is also you, is it not?"

"You little dog-slave, what do you understand of the divide between Hu and Han? Do you know what a son of Tang is? Do you know what the Great Tang was like? Have you ever been to Chang'an?"

Cao Yijin looked somewhat doubtful, and a little contemptuous. He thought Zhang Zhao was lying.

Because when someone like Zhang Zhao was born, the Great Liang of that villain Zhu Quanzhong was already gone, and the Great Tang had long since become the past. He had never felt the Great Tang's strength and majesty at all — where would such an intense sense of the Hu-Han divide and the glory of the Great Tang come from?

"Chang'an! I have seen it in my dreams!" Zhang Zhao's tone turned dreamy, and as if in a trance he pointed east.

"Over there — over there is Chang'an!

There, I have seen Jieli Khagan dancing gracefully in Weiyang Palace!

I have seen Gao Zang, King of Goguryeo, trembling like a quail outside Daming Palace!

I have seen Wang Xuance destroy a kingdom single-handedly, leading Aluonashun, King of Central India, through Kaiyuan Gate on a tether like a mule or horse.

The nine heavens open their palace gates; envoys of ten thousand states in their robes and crowns bow before the imperial tassels.

I have heard the carefree spirit of Li Taibai — he threw back his head and laughed, strode out the door: how could we be mere weeds of the field!

And I have heard the heroic strain — the Big Dipper hangs high, Geshu rides by night with his blade; to this day the nomads spy on our pastures but dare not cross Lintao.

Uncle, tell me — have I ever seen the Great Tang? Do I know the Great Tang?"

Behind Cao Yijin, a "serving girl" who had been pouring wine suddenly turned around. She looked at Zhang Zhao in his golden armor, her eyes blazing with fervent light.

Cao Yijin also rose to his feet in a daze. He looked in the direction Zhang Zhao was pointing, as if he truly could see Chang'an.

"In years past, my great-grandfather often spoke to me of Chang'an as well, and of the scene of Jieli Khagan dancing in Weiyang Palace. That was a lord of the great desert who commanded hundreds of thousands of bowstrings!"

As he spoke, an expression of extreme pain appeared on Cao Yijin's face, and he gently beat his chest.

"How painful! How painful! Never again in this life shall I behold such splendor! Why was I not born in the glorious Tang?"

"Uncle, you have already done well enough. Without you, never mind Chang'an — we could not even hold Dunhuang. Now do you understand why your nephew had the Divine Arm Crossbow delivered to you through Sixth Brother? As long as three hundred Divine Arm crossbowmen stand beside my elder brother Yuande, the Guiyi Army will not fall into chaos!"

Cao Yijin laughed. He looked at Zhang Zhao beside him. "Little dog-slave, do you think your uncle's days are numbered? Or do you think your uncle cannot even handle a single Uyghur woman?"

"All men must die! Uncle is nearing sixty — can you live another ten years? In ten years, I will be only twenty-nine, not even thirty.

It is not that I think Uncle cannot handle one Uyghur woman, but after all, you have shared a bed for twenty years, and the children she bore are also your own blood!"

"Perhaps..." Cao Yijin paused lightly. "What you say is not without reason!"

After saying this, Cao Yijin felt a stinging pain on his face, as if needles were pricking it. Back then, to stabilize the situation, he had married the daughter of the Ganzhou Uyghurs' Tianmu Khagan. Now the time had come to repay that debt!

Zhang Zhao let out a long sigh. "Great King Linggong, we cannot fall into chaos again, cannot slaughter one another any longer!

From the time of my grand-uncle Zhang Huaishen, base oxen have wrought evil, and the lord has been deceived. Every change of Military Governor has inevitably brought bloody slaughter.

From the days when we wore armor thirty thousand strong and the barbarians dared not look us in the eye, we have fought ourselves down to fewer than ten thousand. It is time for a change."

Cao Yijin nodded, and a sudden sorrow rose in his heart. Zhang Erlang had seen that none of his sons were strong men or great rulers!

He was waiting — waiting until after his own death, when he would return from the Golden Kingdom of Khotan with men and horses to take back everything. And he could even afford to wait, because his eldest son Cao Yuande was already forty-four, while Zhang Erlang was not even twenty.

The two fell silent for a short while. Zhang Zhao clasped his hands and bowed to Cao Yijin.

"Uncle, I wish to seek out a path to rebuild the Great Tang and restore the might of the Han people. As long as the Grand Guardian's blessing keeps me from dying in Anxi, I will surely take back everything our sons of Tang once possessed!"

Cao Yijin turned his head in surprise to look at Zhang Zhao. After a moment, this sixth-generation Military Governor of the Guiyi Army, the Great King of the West, suddenly showed a rare trace of aged frailty.

"The young are to be feared! I am old, and I no longer understand your world. My former extravagant hope was no more than to be Military Governor of Hexi."

As he spoke, Cao Yijin suddenly laughed self-deprecatingly again. "If I could have been a Military Governor of Longyou and Hexi like Grand Preceptor Wang — Wang Zhongsi — that would have been even better! But I never imagined that you, Zhang Erlang, would have the ambition to restore the Great Tang!"

Having said this, Cao Yijin raised his wine cup.

"Drink one more cup! West of Yangguan, there will be no old friends!"

Zhang Zhao quickly received it, and the two drank a cup together.

"In years past, when the Tibetans conquered Anxi, the Grand Protector-General of Anxi, Surveillance Commissioner and Military Governor of the Four Garrisons, King of Wuwei Commandery Guo Xin, vanished without a trace, and his followers all scattered.

But the soldiers and their families under the Four Garrisons' Military Governor numbered over a hundred thousand. They cannot all have died in battle. Very likely they have already become barbarians, like the Wenmo.

If you can find them and bring them back to the Tang, perhaps there is still hope for Hexi.

Your uncle can help you with nothing else. Here are three thousand taels of silver — let it count as my atonement for the sin I committed against the White-Clad Son of Heaven back then!"

As he spoke, Cao Yijin yanked away the object beside the table that had been covered by a brocade cloth. It turned out to be a redwood chest full of silver ingots.

Zhang Zhao laboriously rolled up his armored skirt, then knelt on one knee before Cao Yijin.

"Uncle above, forgive your nephew for being unable to perform the full rites while in armor. This gift from an elder, I dare not refuse!

If the day truly comes when the Great Tang is restored, your nephew will personally escort your coffin and bear it back to Bozhou — Qiao Commandery — for burial, and raise a stele before your tomb, inscribed: 'The Great Tang's Lone Loyalist, Military Governor of Hexi and Longyou, King of Qiao Commandery, Lord Cao, taboo name Yijin.'"

"At least you have some conscience!" Cao Yijin's face broke into a great laugh.

"Who would have thought! The sons I taught by word and deed for decades do not know my heart's desire, yet you, my nephew, are my true confidant!

Go! Your marriage to Nineteenth Daughter is approved by this old man! Grandson Yanming, you go with him too!"

Having said this, Cao Yijin turned directly around, clasped his hands behind his back, and walked toward Dunhuang city, not even looking after his most beloved grandson Cao Yanming.

"Grandfather! Fourteen is unfilial. Take care of your health, and wait for Fourteen to return!"

"Uncle! Compared to Nineteenth Daughter, I actually prefer Third Daughter!"

Cao Yijin, who was just then deeply moved by his own greatness, stumbled. Veins bulged on his forehead, and he had a powerful urge to go back and give Zhang Zhao a great slap across the face!

Cao Sanniang, who had been playing the serving girl for half the day, instantly blushed bright red. She glared at Zhang Zhao with a mix of annoyance and, it seemed, a small secret delight.

"Third Daughter, I entrust Qi Xiahu and the others to your care! Treat them as your own people!" Zhang Zhao laughed heartily, pulled Cao Yanming along, and headed west.

A light breeze stirred up wisps of fine sand. The old man and the young man walked in two opposite directions. Amid the mournful singing of the Mingsha dunes, the Sun-Moon-Stars banner symbolizing the Great Tang flew high.

(Why do I suddenly have the urge to end the whole book right here? Ugh! Absurd!)

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