Chapter 507: Old Benefactor, Save Me

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Luoyang's defenses, in terms of terrain, truly deserve the description "easy to defend, hard to attack."

Mount Xiao and Mount Xiong'er to the west and Mount Song to the east wrap around Luoyang, forming the Luoyang Basin.

The Luo River, Yin River, and Jian River not only facilitate the transport of troops, grain, fodder, and supplies, but also provide abundant water sources.

To the north lies the natural barrier of the Yellow River; burning the pontoon bridge is enough to block an enemy army.

Moreover, on this boundless expanse of the Central Plains, Luoyang — ringed by high mountains and girded by rivers — is like a natural fortress upon the vast plain, which is why Luoyang has been the capital of several dynasties since antiquity.

But at the same time, the flaw in Luoyang's city defenses is equally obvious: the Luoyang Basin is simply too small, and cannot compare at all with the Guanzhong Plain or the Chengdu Plain.

This means that once Luoyang is besieged from the west, it cannot endure a prolonged war of attrition.

And compared to the Guanzhong Plain, that supreme strategic position, it has another huge defect: there are simply too many places that must be defended.

Once the Guanzhong Plain has taken Bashu, the only points that need defending are superbly defensible natural barriers like Tong Pass and Xiao Pass.

But Luoyang? It has a full eight passes, and because the Luoyang Basin lacks strategic depth, if even one of those eight passes cannot be held, it deals an extremely heavy blow to the overall defense.

So there is a reason Luoyang is called the capital of a flourishing age.

Its terrain actually raises the state's margin for error. A natural fortress situated at a hub open in all directions is very hard to take while the state has not yet reached a dead end.

Because if it holds out just a little, the armies of loyalist reinforcements from all regions arrive, and it survives again.

But when the state is in steady decline, this system of natural defenses around Luoyang is of very limited use.

Surround it casually, or — as Cao Cao proposed in Romance of the Three Kingdoms — surround all eight passes on four sides and assault them fiercely; break one, and it is finished outright.

That is exactly Luoyang's situation now. The way contemporaries mocked Luoyang as "the vast divine capital, open to green fields on every side" shows how far its defensive system has decayed.

If even Luoyang city itself has decayed, then the eight surrounding passes must be riddled with holes.

This man Mada, as the son of Yelu Lage — Yelu Abaoji's younger brother by the same mother — and the cousin of Yelu Deguang, had fairly decent military ability.

And it was only natural that he should, because this was the Khitan empire's rising period. From Yelu Abaoji to Yelu Deguang, the Khitan had been campaigning constantly north and south, and generally winning.

As long as one is not a fool, after so many years of hearing, seeing, and personally experiencing it, one is bound to have acquired some ability. So Mada of course knew Luoyang simply could not be held.

Nor did he intend to hold it, because previously no one had ever imagined that Zhang Zhao's Yong-Liang would become a threat to the Khitan empire!

Before this, Zhang Zhao's disguise had been quite good. He put on the appearance of being about to attack the Gaochang Uyghurs, kept clashing with the Khitan empire over the question of the Kyrgyz, and even staged a grand ceremony to elect a Great Khan.

In addition, Zhang Zhao always carried an ineradicable tinge of the northern barbarian about him, so the entire Khitan empire never regarded Zhang Zhao's Yong-Liang as a Central Plains state like Meng-Shu or Wu-Tang.

In the eyes of the Khitan empire, Yong-Liang was much like themselves — a half-barbarian regime with only a slight connection to the Central Plains.

Yelu Deguang's policy toward Zhang Zhao was actually to swallow the Central Plains first, then come back and contest the steppe with Zhang Zhao, and finally achieve his great enterprise.

That was why he temporarily tolerated Zhang Zhao going to subdue the Kyrgyz, who had already submitted to the Khitan.

How could a mere bitter-cold land in the Northern Court compare to the Central Plains? Once the Great Liao had entered and taken the Central Plains, using the whole realm to strike Hexi, Longyou, Anxi, the Northern Court, and Shuofang — would that not be effortless?

And there was an even more important factor: from the moment Yelu Deguang marched south, no one knew how the Jin-Liao war would turn out.

Even Yelu Deguang himself, after his great defeat at White Regiment Guard Village in Yangcheng, had experienced a certain degree of wavering.

At that time, anyone who said he knew the Jin army would be so strong, or that Jin's destruction would come so quickly, would certainly have been dismissed as talking nonsense.

But Zhang Zhao not only knew — he had begun preparations before the Jin-Liao war even started, even before Shi Chonggui came to power.

He stockpiled large quantities of grain, fodder, and supplies in Qinzhou, Yuanzhou, and Xiazhou.

Without those supplies, Zhang Zhao's Yong-Liang grand army could not even have marched out of Tong Pass now.

It can be said that Zhang Zhao relied on the foresight of a transmigrator to part the mists of time and lay his plans in advance.

This also meant that after Zhang Zhao took control of Guanzhong, the Khitan empire still did not wake up, and even adopted an attitude of numb forgetfulness toward the absence of news from Guanzhong.

Because Yelu Deguang, Liu Zhiyuan, and Meng Chang all reckoned that even if Zhang Zhao occupied Guanzhong, he would at least need to settle the region and gather supplies, and would not march until the seventh or eighth month.

But now, Zhang Zhao had issued a proclamation to the realm and truly led his army out from Guanzhong. Yelu Deguang's response immediately went badly wrong, which is why he seemed to blunder at every turn — it was truly painful to watch.

If even the Great Liao Emperor was this painful to watch, how much more so Mada.

And this dog of a man Mada counted as cruel even among the Khitan, rivaling Yelu Deguang's younger brother Yelu Lihu.

After he arrived in Luoyang, he did only one thing: forage and plunder.

Not only did he allow his troops to do it, he personally took part. Whenever he learned that some household among the people had a beautiful woman or precious treasure, he would certainly go in person to seize it.

Neither Luoyang's officials nor its commoners were spared — not even Liu Jixun, the Defense Commissioner of Zhengzhou who lived in Luoyang; his daughter-in-law and granddaughter were both carried off by Mada.

And apart from plundering, Mada was also extremely cruel. In Luoyang he invented four punishments — flaying the face, gouging out the eyes, severing the wrists, and burning — to harm the people he deemed guilty.

The so-called guilty were those who dared resist when Khitan soldiers plundered them — or even those Mada simply found displeasing to look at, who also counted as guilty.

He also often took the severed limbs, livers, and gallbladders of these commoners, preserved them, and decorated his tents and even his horses with them, to overawe the people of Luoyang.

As for the Heyang Army garrisoning Luoyang, Mada had apparently forgotten how Huangfu Yu and Li Shouzhen had thrashed him by the Yellow River. He actually believed the Han troops were useless, and thought it better to withhold their food and clothing for the Liao army.

Under such intense oppression, even if Zhang Zhao had not come, the Heyang Army in Luoyang would have risen up and fought to the death.

And Mada, sensing that Zhang Zhao's grand army was drawing near, had also received an urgent letter from Yelu Deguang ordering him to hold Luoyang tightly, and had sent Gao Song to assist.

So Mada, giddy with delight, made an exception and summoned all the officers of the Heyang Army, great and small, to his residence to discuss the defense of Luoyang.

Mada's original intent was that although these Heyang Army men were useless, they were at least locals, so perhaps they might have some good ideas for defending the city.

But when this order reached the officers of the Heyang Army, high and low, every man felt the terror of impending doom.

According to what Zhao Hongyin, the Chief Officer of the Western Gate, had found out, the King of Yong had led his grand army south along the river, and Mada feared the Heyang Army would go over to the King of Yong, so he wanted to slaughter the Heyang Army to the last man to eliminate future trouble.

The soldiers and officers who heard this believed it at once! Because it fit the Khitan way of doing things too well — and Mada's way in particular.

Immediately after, among the five or six hundred thousand commoners of Luoyang, a terrifying rumor began to spread.

The Khitan were short on provisions, and Mada was preparing to kill everyone over thirty, keeping only those under thirty locked up.

Their flesh was tender and rich, and could serve as two-legged pigs and sheep, to be made into dried meat when the army ran out of rations.

Children under ten in particular were the Khitan's favorite.

At this, the entire population of Luoyang began to panic. They wanted to flee the city, only to find it surrounded on all sides by Khitan cavalry.

It turned out that after Mada learned Zhang Zhao might be arriving soon, he too began putting on a show, sending men out in all directions to investigate — which the people of Luoyang took to mean he was going to trap them all inside the city.

And so, whether or not this rumor really counted as a rumor, Zhao Yanjin could not say. It fermented for only a single day before the soldiers of the Heyang Army could hold out no longer. They secretly contacted one another, and panic spread.

The reason he could not say whether it counted as a rumor was that Zhao Yanjin discovered that, once the rumor began spreading, Mada seemed to think it was a rather good idea, and showed signs of going along with it.

Jiama Camp, the Zhao residence.

Staging a mutiny is a task demanding a fine sense of proportion. At present, for example, if the rumor were allowed to continue any longer, even if the Heyang Army troops did not act, the Khitan would.

So Zhao Yanjin and Zhao Kuangyin quickly seized the opportunity, secretly contacting the Heyang Army officers above the rank of fire chief, the bold and able underworld figures of the city, and even the warrior monks of Luoyang's great temples, including White Horse Temple.

How could they not come? Luoyang's temples had also "voluntarily" contributed one hundred fifty thousand strings of cash to Yelu Deguang. Hmph! Did they think a Buddha's money was so easy to take?

And to avoid attracting Khitan attention, Li Jianchong and his sons did not come at all. Only Li Jianchong's eldest grandson came along.

The location was not chosen at Li Jianchong's Troop Commander residence either, but at the Zhao family's large house in Jiama Camp, where all sorts of people mingled and the Khitan could not get near.

At the Zhao house, when the Heyang Army officers saw that Li Jianchong had not come, they immediately began to waver.

For although Li Jianchong's rank was not high, he had one virtue: as a superior, he was reliable. He might not be able to win wealth and goods for the yabing guards, but he generally would not get them killed either.

Zhao Kuangyin's father, Zhao Hongyin, had too little prestige. Apart from his own trusted men, he could not hold the other Heyang Army officers in check at all.

Just as they were muttering noisily and about to withdraw, an old man with graying hair and beard emerged, flanked by two stalwart officers.

The old man glared hard at the officer making the most noise. "You whelp — do you recognize this old man?"

The officer turned to look, studied him carefully for a moment, and still was not sure. He stepped closer and scrutinized him for a long while, then suddenly dropped to his knees with a cry.

"Is it you, old benefactor? Were you not holding Shanzhou with your comrades of the Fengguo Army? How have you come to this place?"

The Heyang Army and the Fengguo Army had both originally been imperial guards of the Later Tang, so there were still some officers in the Heyang Army who recognized Zhao Hui.

Hearing that Zhao Hui was here, whether they knew him or not, the officers surged over to pay their respects. Everyone felt as though they had found a pillar to lean on, and one after another they knelt, weeping and pleading.

"Old benefactor, save us! Old benefactor, save us!"

These officers were no fools. Zhao Hui had a fine post as Acting Military Governor of the Baoyi Army in Shanzhou, yet here he was in Luoyang, dressed like an old farmer. He had certainly not come to visit relatives.

At that moment, Li Jianchong's eldest grandson also came out from the rear hall. Though he was only in his teens and could not do much, the meaning was clear enough.

Zhao Hui's presence here was known to Li Jianchong — indeed, he was an accomplice.

"Do you truly wish to live?" Zhao Hui asked coldly. At this moment he had to put on the full air of authority, to make them understand how rare this opportunity was.

"Old benefactor jests. If one could live, who would not wish to live?"

At that, a trace of a smile appeared on Zhao Hui's face. "Then would you also like a chance at wealth and rank?"

Wealth and rank too? Hearing this, the officers, who had already risen, immediately knelt again, every one of them kowtowing and shouting.

"Please, old benefactor, show us the way!"

Only then did Zhao Hui draw from his breast a piece of ochre-yellow cloth covered in writing. The officers took one look, and their hearts leaped with joy.

For such a thing was reserved for emperors alone. Who would ordinarily carry one of those around?

"This is an edict issued by Great King Zhang of the Great Yong. The Yong King's great general, Murong in White, has led three thousand elite cavalry to the southern slopes of Mount Mang, intent on destroying the Khitan and saving the realm.

He commands all in Luoyang, whether soldiers, officials, clerks, or commoners, to kill the Khitan troops swiftly and welcome the Great Yong's heavenly soldiers into the city. When the deed is done, Luoyang shall be exempted from land tax for three years. Those who distinguish themselves in killing the enemy shall be given gold and silver, and granted office."

The Heyang Army officers, the leaders of the city's underworld, and the warrior monks of the temples all burst into cheers at these words. Each kowtowed and cried out in unison: "We are willing to kill the Khitan bandits and welcome the Yong King into Luoyang."

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