Chapter 502: Deguang's One Glance: Appraised as a Loyal Subject and Righteous Man

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By the fifth day of the fifth month, Zhang Zhao was almost at Hezhong Prefecture, while Yelu Deguang was only then summoning the Later Jin military governors from across the realm—men he had effectively placed under house arrest—to Chongning Hall in the Eastern Capital.

With the help of those two traitors Zhao Yanshou and Feng Yu, Yelu Deguang sorted the Later Jin military governors into categories.

Men like Wang Zhou, Fu Yanqing, An Shenqi, Yao Yuanfu, and He Chongjian, who had openly or covertly shown discontent, were judged unusable.

Men like Xue Huairang, Pan Huan, and Song Yanjun, who did not care whom they served, were judged unfit for outside postings.

Men like Zhao Zaili, An Shuqian, Li Yin, and Hou Yi, who had eagerly bent the knee and even come fawning, were judged fit for important use.

As for heavyweights like Du Chongwei and Li Shouzhen, of course they had to be courted anew and drawn in as trusted confidants.

Moreover, Yelu Deguang had a uniquely discerning eye. Perhaps because all the knee-bending turncoats were such a sorry lot, my man Guang felt he was losing face.

So he pulled off a stroke of "Deguang's one-glance appraisal," judging Gao Xingzhou, who had been passively resisting all along, as fit for important use.

The reasoning was simple: Gao Xingzhou was Du Chongwei's in-law through their children's marriage. Birds of a feather flock together, and since Gao Xingzhou had been willing to marry his daughter to Du Chongwei, he presumably did not mind becoming a subject of the Liao state.

His current passivity was only because no benefits had been offered, so he lacked motivation.

This... well.

When Gao Xingzhou himself learned of it, he was speechless for a long while, not knowing whether to weep or to regret having become Du Chongwei's in-law.

Having finished the appraisal spectacle of "Deguang's one glance," Yelu Deguang began moving against the Buddhist establishment.

Of course, he did not dare go about it the way the Three Wus had in their persecutions of Buddhism. The Khitan already believed in all this spirit-and-demon business; had he not been truly desperate, Yelu Deguang would never have dared reach into the Buddhist establishment's money bag.

So he did not act in person, but pushed forward his maternal uncle Xiao Shilu, who had lost battle after battle.

This Xiao Shilu had been thrashed by the various generals of the Yong and Jin states, and even now that he had entered the Eastern Capital, he still crept about like a beaten wretch.

Yet precisely because he was Yelu Deguang's own maternal uncle, his status was not low, and there was no one better suited to step forward and deal with the temple money houses.

The problem was, Xiao Shilu was afraid too! Extorting the temples so brazenly—was he not afraid the Buddha would strike him down with heavenly thunder?

So he dawdled for several days, dragging on until Zhang Zhao had already entered Hezhong Prefecture. Only under Yelu Deguang's threat of "either I cut you down, or the Buddha thunder-strikes you" did Xiao Shilu choose to preserve his life for the time being.

On the ninth day of the fifth month, Xiao Shilu, under the pretext of discussing a grand Dharma ceremony, summoned the eminent abbots of the Great Xiangguo Temple, the Great Guanyin Temple, and the White Robe Pavilion Temple to his residence, and then, the dagger revealed at last, announced that he wanted to borrow a little money.

The monks of the various temples stared at one another in astonishment. They had never imagined that someone would come begging alms at a temple—begging from the monks themselves!

The great monks collectively and sternly refused Xiao Shilu's demand, and on the spot angrily rebuked him: did he not fear falling into Avici Hell after death?

Xiao Shilu could only smile bitterly inwardly. What could he do? If he did not step forward, he feared he would not have to wait until after death—he would descend into hell right now.

So when reasoning failed, it was time for physical means. First came the starvation package: Xiao Shilu sealed his residence so the great monks could not leave, while earnestly and tirelessly exhorting them.

As long as the masters acknowledged that Great Liao silver notes were as valid as Hexi silver notes, they would be released at once.

Moreover, Great Liao silver notes were not like Hexi silver notes, which were estimated to have been issued in the tens of millions of strings. He needed only five hundred thousand strings.

But the monks of the Eastern Capital—talk to them about the Dharma and these masters might possibly be stumped, but talk to them about finance, and they knew it inside out.

They dared accept Hexi silver notes because, on the surface, Hexi had exclusive best-selling goods like white sugar, rock sugar, and cotton as backing, and Zhang Zhao also held a large number of Buddhist treasures they coveted as collateral.

Hexi moreover sat at a critical point on the trade routes, routes that the King of Yong had opened up himself. Add to that the merchants' need for such notes, and only then would they accept Hexi silver notes.

In secret there was also a tacit understanding: Zhang Zhao would not spread Hexi's Buddhism into the Central Plains, would not seek the status of Wheel-Turning Dharma King or Supreme Dharma King in the Central Plains. Only on that condition had the monks of the Central Plains agreed to cooperate with Zhang Zhao.

Such a thing required the right time, the right place, and the right people. For Xiao Shilu—or rather Yelu Deguang—to try to grab a share by force with nothing but words, how could that possibly work!

As for starving them, that would never make them yield, because the money-house and finance business was the very lifeline of the monks of the Eastern Capital Kaifeng Prefecture and the Western Capital Luoyang.

The Great Xiangguo Temple alone, from taking deposits and making loans, had long since earned profits far exceeding the offerings of patrons and incense money.

They knew even better that this business of using silver notes to get silver for free—once it started, there was no stopping it. With a first time, there would be countless times, and every time would always be "the last time."

Xiao Shilu starved the masters for a day, but before the masters cracked, Yelu Deguang ran out of patience.

Left with no choice, Uncle Xiao could only resort to the Khitan's most practiced method: going in hard, directly.

On the eleventh day of the fifth month, under Yelu Deguang's urging, Xiao Shilu tore off all pretense. Borrowing the name of bandits from Huazhou, he raided the Great Xiangguo Temple by night.

Guided by bribed monks, he carried off all the silver and coin in the temple's underground vault—over a hundred thousand strings.

At this point, the monks, who had been starved for two days, saw that Yelu Deguang truly dared to tear off all pretense and would not even give the Buddha face, and so they could only yield for the time being.

The silver and coin accumulated in the joint money houses of the Buddhist temples of the two capitals amounted to as much as three or four million strings. If the Khitan really confiscated it all, the Buddhist establishment of the two capitals would be finished.

But if the Khitan were willing to hand over printed Great Liao silver notes, they could grit their teeth and swallow these five hundred thousand strings. Even their losses could quickly be made up on the books.

Only, the masters surely could not yet imagine that there was such a thing as a bank run. Still less could they imagine that accepting Khitan silver notes had already touched the reverse scale of Great King Zhang.

Of course, for the moment they had not lost much. On the thirteenth day of the fifth month, Yelu Deguang announced that the Buddhist establishment of the two capitals, to support the Great Liao in exterminating the Tibetan rebels, recovering Guanzhong, and restoring peace to the realm, had voluntarily donated three hundred sixty thousand strings.

This sum, added to what Xiao Shilu had carried off, came to exactly five hundred thousand strings. Yelu Deguang did indeed order Zhang Li to print five hundred thousand strings of Great Liao silver notes and deliver them.

With this settled, Yelu Deguang could finally rest easy.

Did you think he did not know that the money houses of the Great Xiangguo Temple and other temples held large deposits from the former Jin state's civil and military officials, and even from the yabing guards?

He certainly knew. If he truly confiscated the Great Xiangguo Temple, would these people not rise in revolt at once?

But this way, the temple money houses merely gained five hundred thousand strings of bad debt. The masters suffered, but the soldiers' interests were still protected.

On the fifteenth day of the fifth month, Yelu Deguang held a swearing-in ceremony in the Eastern Capital Kaifeng Prefecture, declaring that he would personally lead the campaign to exterminate the Tibetan rebel Zhang Zhao, who occupied Guanzhong.

While lavishly rewarding the former Jin officers and men, he ordered the Khitan troops still out plundering to cease all looting.

For this, Yelu Deguang publicly punished a number of Khitan nobles who had disobeyed orders. The main event was dragging out Zhang Yanze and Fu Zhu'er.

These two wretches had been the ones who first launched the great looting of the Eastern Capital, making it impossible afterward to stop the Khitan troops from plundering. One could say they had set a terrible precedent.

Amid a roar of calls for their deaths, Zhang Yanze, Fu Zhu'er, and more than twenty other Khitan and Han men were dragged through the streets in a public parade.

The people of the Eastern Capital, who hated them bitterly, followed close behind with wooden clubs and the like. Before the prisoners even reached the execution ground, the twenty-odd men had been beaten into pulp.

Zhang Yanze, the most evil of them all, was by the time he reached the execution ground little more than a skin.

After killing Zhang Yanze and Fu Zhu'er, and after the lavish rewards to the armies had won back a measure of popular support,

Yelu Deguang announced that the Han army would be under Prince of Wei Zhao Yanshou as Supreme General, with Li Shouzhen and Gao Xingzhou as Left and Right Deployment Commanders, Xue Huairang and Pan Huan as Formation Commanders, and An Shenqi, Fu Yanqing, and other generals as Troop Commanders—though the last group was practically being held hostage.

In addition, Yelu Deguang appointed Du Chongwei as Military Governor of Guide Army in Songzhou, sending him to pacify the Guide Army soldiers, resist the Tiger Thorn Tribe, who had been raiding ever northward, and exterminate the "bandits" of Chenzhou and Bozhou.

Another shameless jack-of-all-trades, Zhao Zaili, was appointed by Yelu Deguang as Military Governor of Yicheng Army in Weizhou, tasked with holding the Yellow River pontoon bridge for Yelu Deguang.

Historically, this old fossil traveled a thousand li to pay homage to Yelu Deguang, only to be extorted for money by the Xi Prince Wei, and upon hearing that Yelu Deguang had arrested the ministers of Jin, was so frightened that he hanged himself in a stable.

But at this time, because of the threat posed by Zhang Zhao, the Khitans on the whole were considerably milder than in the same period historically, so Zhao Zaili not only lived well, but also gained important employment.

With arrangements complete, Yelu Deguang chose to set out that very day. For this campaign, Yelu Deguang levied sixty thousand troops from the Khitan Liao state and thirty thousand surrendered Jin soldiers — ninety thousand men in all, proclaimed as one hundred fifty thousand — advancing west along the Yellow River by both water and land to campaign against Zhang Zhao.

Before the main army departed, Yelu Deguang appointed the Liao-state Han Chinese Cui Tingxun as Military Governor of the Three Garrisons of Heyang, and Geng Chongmei as Military Governor of the Baoyi Army of Shanzhou, sending them westward in advance, intending to control the various regions, establish supply points, and firmly hold both banks of the Yellow River.

Since he did not yet know, and could not possibly imagine, that Zhao Kuangzan had already turned traitor, having received no warning from Hezhong Prefecture, Yelu Deguang's plan was still to rely on the natural defenses of the mountains and rivers at Hezhong Prefecture to fight a decisive battle with Zhang Zhao.

Therefore, the advance forces of Geng Chongmei, Military Governor of the Baoyi Army of Shanzhou, and Cui Tingxun, Military Governor of the Three Garrisons of Heyang, had very few troops at all.

Among them, for Shanzhou, the most important place after Hezhong Prefecture, Geng Chongmei went to take up his post with only six hundred troops of his own command; the Xi Prince Zhuaila led three thousand Xi infantry, and the surrendered Jin general Wu Xingde, Commandant of the Ningguo Capital Guard, led one thousand Han soldiers as escort.

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