Chapter 590: The Bewildering Chengde Prefecture of Liangzhou

Good books,,,,,,,,,

In the early morning, Zhang Zhao rubbed his bleary eyes and forced himself to get up.

To be honest, at this moment he envied the foolish and mediocre rulers of history. He truly wondered how they managed to sit in this position and still find time every day for debauchery.

In any case, ever since I, Sage Zhang, took the throne in the Qianyuan Palace, there have been few days when I could relax.

For instance, Li Gu in Chuzhou sent a report that his land equalization work there was basically complete. All of Chuzhou rejoiced, and the people who received land fervently supported the Zhou state's rule in Chuzhou.

But in Haozhou and Sizhou it was a different story. Although they had been ceded to the Zhou state, the local powerful clans, stirred up by the Liu family of Shouzhou, kept rising to make trouble.

Back when they wanted to calm people's hearts, Zhao Cunyi, the Surveillance and Disposal Commissioner of the two prefectures of Hao and Si, had gone to take up his post with only a thousand men.

They had assumed the local strongmen in those places would know what was good for them, but to their surprise, they gave him no face at all!

They took Zhao Cunyi's goodwill as a sign of weakness.

And Li Gu, having completed the land equalization in Chuzhou, was on his way back to the eastern capital Kaifeng to report on his mission when he was attacked on the Bian River outside Songzhou.

The attackers disguised themselves as merchants, drew near, and then suddenly launched a surprise assault. Although Li Gu himself was unharmed, four of his guards were killed in the fighting.

Moreover, the attackers had timed it very precisely, striking in the gap just as the party was about to enter Songzhou, after the Wuning Army sent by Ma Shacai had just left to return to Xuzhou and before the Guide Army of Songzhou had arrived.

With timing this precise, it was hard to say there were no inside collaborators among the prefectural and county officials and the yabing guards of the two garrisons.

This incident also put Zhang Zhao on high alert, because he could roughly guess why Li Gu had been attacked.

It was because a rumor had recently spread widely across the Central Plains, claiming that Zhang Zhao was preparing to distribute all the top-grade fields of the Central Plains to the personal guards and imperial army families who had come from Hexi.

Furthermore, another three hundred thousand people from Hexi would later move to the Central Plains, and when they arrived, they would be allowed to equalize the top-grade fields first, before it was the turn of the Central Plains commoners.

Hmm, on the surface this rumor seemed unremarkable. Even to ordinary people, such a practice would seem perfectly normal.

And weren't the commoners of the Central Plains also able to receive equalized land? The Central Plains was now vast and sparsely populated, so what was the hurry?

But in reality it was not so. Although the Central Plains now had few people, the population was highly concentrated, almost entirely under the control of rural strongmen.

They built fortified manors, occupied the good fields, organized private troops, and usually two or three large surnames mixed with other smaller surnames, ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand people, living by their fortified manors.

And the other commoners who did not receive the protection of a fortified manor had basically all died under the limitless exploitation of the Later Jin officials and the Khitan raids for forage.

The situation Zhang Zhao now faced was that once his officials went a few li beyond the county seat, their words carried little weight.

The countryside was entirely populated by the great manor-holding clans. Even in the capital region close to the eastern capital Kaifeng — places like Yongqiu (Qi County) and Weishi — the number of "wild" commoners accounted for less than twenty percent of the county's population.

And good farmland, being a delicate thing requiring constant upkeep, mostly lay in the hands of the great manor clans. Equalizing the remaining vast tracts of wasteland was meaningless.

So this rumor was highly damaging. Its implied meaning was that Zhang Zhao intended to drive out the great rural manor clans, distribute their cultivated fields to his trusted Hexi officers and soldiers, and then make the locals go farm wasteland.

If that were truly the case, then it would in fact be driving the commoners of the Central Plains to their deaths.

This was probably why they so feared Zhang Zhao implementing land equalization, and why they attacked Li Gu.

But the local powerful clans alone should not have had such boldness or the influence to affect two garrison armies. Someone must be pushing from behind.

Yet for Zhang Zhao, who was pushing did not matter. What mattered was whether he should take this opportunity to clean up the local great clans of the Central Plains.

Break their fortified manors, equalize their tools of production, liberate the commoners from the manors, and, as in Hexi, select agricultural studies erudites to be sent to various places to guarantee productivity.

While he was pondering, Zhang Cheng, the Right Chief Marshal of the Hanshan Capital Infantry and General of the Xuanwu Gate, who was in charge of palace security today, suddenly came requesting an audience.

Zhang Cheng was the elder brother of Zhang Xiaobao. Originally he was called Zhang Xiaobiao. The father of these two brothers, the eldest son of the Zhang family, had been a hunter, and he named all his sons after fierce beasts.

After Zhang Xiaobiao prospered, he felt the name was truly too unpleasant, but since the name had been given by his father, he dared not change it. It was Zhang Zhao who resolved the matter by bestowing the character "Cheng."

After Zhang Cheng arrived, Zhang Liecheng also came shortly after, and both had come about the same matter: Zhang Xiaobao wanted to go to the Shu kingdom and infiltrate the army of Meng Shu.

Zhang Zhao waved for the two to sit, while he himself slowly fell into thought.

Zhang Xiaobao's plan should be very useful, because historically, conquering Shu had always been an all-or-nothing affair.

This was determined by the terrain of Shu. The defender certainly had nowhere to hide, but the attacker in fact also had no way back.

If one could not win, then with Shu's terrain, even if one could retreat, one would die in the towering mountains under enemy pursuit.

Therefore, fighting the Southern Tang could be done slowly, grinding them down — take one city today, kill ten thousand of their elite troops tomorrow, repeat three or four times, and they would basically lose the ability to resist.

But to fight Meng Shu, one had to accomplish everything in a single campaign, striking straight through to Chengdu in one surge.

Moreover, Shu's terrain was surrounded on all sides by natural barriers, while the vital interior had no defensible positions. Once the natural barriers were breached, there would be little trouble.

At such a time, if one had one of their own in the Meng Shu army — no great influence needed, just the ability to slack off at one or two key passes — then Shu would be secured.

However, Zhang Zhao did not make a decision immediately. Instead, he asked Zhang Cheng.

"Does your father know? Your younger brother's mission is not without danger. Besides, he has already shed blood for the court, and by rights he could go enjoy wealth and honor in the provinces."

Zhang Cheng cupped his hands. "The Sage rises early and sleeps late, working for the welfare of all the people. My younger brother is only twenty-one; how could he go enjoy wealth and honor now?

When he wrote to me, he already said: our family was originally of herding-slave origin, and now that we have such wealth and honor, to repay the Sage's grace, he is determined to go to Shu. My father also wrote back from Xiangzhou, fully agreeing."

Zhang Zhao nodded heavily. The Zhang family — including the Wenmo of the Liugu Valley, whose circumstances were similar to theirs — had no problem with loyalty.

Without Zhang Zhao, they would almost all have been slaves at the very bottom, and in another generation or two they would have forgotten even their ancestral surnames. Added to their widespread Buddhist faith, they truly regarded Zhang Zhao as a god.

"Wang Jin, Centurion of the Guanzhong Office of the Brocade Robe Personal Guard, has also submitted a secret letter." Zhang Liecheng then handed over the secret report of the Brocade Robe Personal Guard.

Zhang Zhao opened it and saw the contents were in three parts. One part was the secret report of Zhao Erlang, Chiliarch of the Two Rivers Office.

The content was a comprehensive analysis of the status, personal relationships, daily preferences, and conduct of Li Hao and his son Li Xiaofeng within Meng Shu.

Another part was the personal report of Wang Jin, Centurion of the Guanzhong Office. Based on his own contact with Li Xiaofeng, he had analyzed Li Xiaofeng's temperament, preferences, and the like.

After the two reports was a consolidated summary by Deputy Commander Zhang Lieming.

After analysis by the Brocade Robe Personal Guard's internal experts in subversion and espionage, the conclusion was that the father Li Hao loved luxury, placed great importance on family status, and often took pride in his great-grandfather Li Shen. Though a man of talent and learning, his backbone was not firm.

However, he would not willingly betray Meng Chang. But if the deed were already done, he would not have the courage to resist the Great Zhou.

As for Li Xiaofeng, who was on this diplomatic mission, the assessment was that his abilities were mediocre, but he did know loyalty, filial piety, integrity, and righteousness.

However, due to the influence of his grandmother, father, and family background, in his heart he actually regarded Meng Shu only as a separatist regime.

Like his father, he yearned for a great unified dynasty, and yearned for the glory of his fifth-generation ancestor Li Shen, who had been a chief minister of a great dynasty.

Another point worth noting was that Li Xiaofeng's aptitude was mediocre. After reaching the position of Supervising Secretary, he had made no further progress.

By contrast, his fifteen-year-old younger brother Li Xiaolian was extremely outstanding — handsome in appearance and talented in letters. He was favored by his father Li Hao, and even the Shu ruler Meng Chang was very fond of Li Xiaolian, often saying he wished to choose him as a son-in-law.

His younger brother's brilliance put tremendous pressure on Li Xiaofeng as the eldest son, and he was constantly looking for something to do that would make his father see him in a new light.

Seeing this, Zhang Zhao chuckled to himself. When a person of mediocre talent is unwilling to accept a life of obscurity and wants to accomplish something, that is exactly when the opportunity to exploit a loophole appears.

It is like pyramid schemes and social-media reselling: people who have already recognized their own limits and chosen to lie flat cannot be scammed, and shrewd people will not fall for their tricks either.

Only those who look shrewd but are in fact mediocre, and who are unwilling to stay mediocre their whole lives, are their real targets.

Besides, putting on a show of honoring worthy men and making full use of the appeal of a unified realm and a Central Plains dynasty — that is Sage Zhang's specialty!

But there was still one last problem: whether Li Xiaofeng's uncle, Li Dalang, and his aunt, Li née Han, would be willing to cooperate, and whether they could be trusted.

Zhang Liecheng looked at Zhang Zhao, hemming and hawing, as if he wanted to say something but did not dare.

Zhang Zhao glared at him hard and asked coldly, "You are not thinking of speaking ill of Liu Zaisheng in front of me, are you?"

Zhang Liecheng shook his head rapidly and said with an ingratiating smile, "I know everyone's temperament, and I would never dare harbor any thought of slandering him.

It is just that this time the Duke of Hetian really showed us too little face. The centurion I sent over is still bedridden from the beating he took."

Zhang Zhao snorted coldly. The Brocade Guard had in fact already received Wang Jin's report. In order to make the report more complete, Zhang Liecheng had directly sent a centurion to the military camp at Zhangwu Town in Xiangzhou to investigate Li Dalang.

As a result, Liu Zaisheng — Military Governor of Shannan East Circuit, Commander-in-Chief of Zhangwu Town, and Duke of Hetian — had him seized, beaten with military rods at the military court, and then sent back to Kaifeng Prefecture in the Eastern Capital.

This might have been Zhang Liecheng being too naive, but it was even more likely a probe by the young man.

The Brocade Guard had long wanted to establish a Guard Operations Office within the army. This time they probably wanted to use the incident to gauge the opinions of the various guard commanders and town commanders-in-chief, and so Liu Zaisheng had given him a harsh answer.

Zhang Zhao had originally been somewhat supportive of Zhang Liecheng's idea, but after thinking it over, he immediately extinguished the thought.

Because the Transport Captain, the Eleventh Marshal, Lord Chang, had already provided a very striking example. He had shown Zhang Zhao clearly what the consequences would be of establishing a secret-police office within the army.

"Back when I first arrived at my uncle the Son of Heaven's court, Liu Zaisheng was already a commander of the Palace Guard. In seniority he is your elder, and in generation he is of your uncle's generation.

You sent men into the army without so much as a word of greeting. This was already him giving you face. Had it been the Duke of Zhangye, Ma Shacai, he would have dared to deal with you directly under military law.

To be honest, I have recently been using Wild Fruit Reading to read books and follow updates, switching sources, with many reading voices, available on both Android and Apple.

The focus of the Brocade Guard should still be on Taiyuan, Youzhou, and even the Khitan steppe.

The great clans of the Central Plains also need to be monitored. For example, this attack on Li Gu is an important target for the Brocade Guard's next investigation."

Zhang Liecheng sighed, quickly accepted the order, and did not dare say more, though inwardly he was full of regret.

Zhang Zhao also sighed inwardly. Whenever a powerful coercive institution is born, countless vested interests will push that institution to keep seizing ever greater power.

Zhang Liecheng might not have realized it, or might already be enjoying it, but Zhang Zhao, as the founder and controller of this state, had to regulate their conduct.

Not long after Zhang Liecheng left, Guo Tiance came in. After Liu Zaisheng had driven out the Brocade Guard who had entered the camp directly, he had sent Zhang Zhao a secret letter explaining what had happened and admitting his error, with the measure of it handled perfectly.

He had both beaten back the Brocade Guard's possible interference in the army and kept the matter contained within a very small scope.

Zhang Zhao, after much deliberation, chose to have Liu Zaisheng submit a formal document to the Bureau of Military Affairs.

He had to give the world the impression that he, Zhang Zhao, did not approve of the Brocade Guard meddling in the army.

However, getting Li Dalang of Zhangwu Town to cooperate with the court was still a matter best handled professionally by the Brocade Guard.

So now the only option was to have the Bureau of Military Affairs send a secret document to the Brocade Guard, transferring the matter of Li Dalang to the Brocade Guard for handling. Guo Tiance had come precisely for this matter.

While Zhang Zhao was carefully laying out plans for Zhang Xiaobao's idea, Zhang Xiaobao had no idea how great a storm his proposal had stirred up, because he was in a state of tremendous shock.

Looking back now, Zhang Xiaobao realized that Lanzhou was actually the place he was familiar with: fields and paths intersecting, cattle and sheep blocking the roads, young men riding fierce horses and drawing strong bows, always ready for the Emperor's summons, never asking whether the enemy was strong, only asking where the enemy was.

Zhang Xiaobao had assumed Liangzhou would be the same, but the reality nearly blinded him.

Because the people and officials of Liangzhou, in addition to possessing those traits of the people of Lanzhou, had also added something rather bookish.

And this bookishness was not the kind of refinement that emanates from the bones, but a bookishness even more rigid than their own robust physiques.

The feeling was like a butcher holding a cleaver, slaughtering pigs and sheep, while what came out of his mouth was classical allusions and pedantic phrases.

It was utterly incongruous with the character of the people of Liangzhou.

As the first batch of imperial guards and palace army soldiers to return to Liangzhou, Zhang Xiaobao and his men received a grand welcome.

Zhang Huaiqing, the Defender of the Western Capital, even came out in person to organize a banquet to welcome them.

And this banquet was different from the one organized by Jia Yanchang, Prefect of Lanzhou, which had been full of Hexi style, bold and unrestrained.

Everyone was actually wearing Daoist robes, with netted caps on their heads, dressed up like scholars.

The gathering had less martial valor and boldness, and more of a specious elegance.

Rather than refined scholars, they seemed more like a pack of wolves in sheep's clothing.

And the most important entertainment at the banquet was actually composing poetry!

For example, Zhang Huaiqing, Defender of the Western Capital, composed: "The bright moon shines in the sky above, a beautiful woman arrives on the earth below. If dark clouds should cover it, who would know whether she is fair or not?"

Uh...! How to put it? At least it rhymed!

When Zhang Huaiqing finished his poem, everyone turned in unison to look at Zhang Xiaobao.

Zhang Xiaobao pointed at his own nose in alarm. "You are not expecting me to compose a poem too, are you?"

"You mean you cannot? You spent so long in the Central Plains, stayed in Chang'an and Luoyang, and you still cannot compose a poem? Did you not absorb even a bit of literary refinement?"

An old man of the Yin family asked Zhang Xiaobao, finding fault with everything about him.

Zhang Xiaobao went blank for a moment and carefully recalled what he had done in the Central Plains.

He had killed quite a few people, it seemed, received many rewards, and even been promoted one rank in honorary office, but he truly had never learned to compose poetry!

When the old man of the Yin family saw Zhang Xiaobao gaping speechlessly, he immediately began to swagger.

But this angered Zhang Xiaobao's grand-uncle. This old man, who had been a herdsman his whole life but had suddenly become wealthy, had two things he would never tolerate.

First, he absolutely would not allow anyone to say the slightest bad thing about Zhang Zhao.

Second, he was fiercely protective of the younger generation who had gone to war and killed enemies, lifting up the entire Zhang family fortune.

Seeing the expression on the old man of the Yin family, Old Man Zhang exploded. He leapt up at once, and with both hands stiff as clubs, drove them straight at the old man of the Yin family's chest.

The old man of the Yin family was caught off guard and was immediately knocked to the ground, but he scrambled back up in an instant, and the two of them began brawling right there in the banquet hall.

And the people around them had long since grown tired of pretending to be refined. Except for Zhang Huaiqing, who stood there shouting "A disgrace to refinement, a disgrace to refinement!" in an attempt to preserve the feeling of being a cultured man, everyone else began egging them on.

Zhang Xiaobao stood outside the crowd, watching them turn the banquet hall into a brawl. In the end, the old man of the Yin family and Old Man Zhang somehow produced two sets of armor from somewhere.

The two men wore oxhide armor, each holding a black-lacquered wooden club in one hand and a shield in the other, and just like that they began fighting in full gear right there in the banquet hall.

If Zhang Zhao had been here, he would have gaped in utter familiarity and shouted, "Isn't this fucking armored combat?"

At last!

Zhang Xiaobao wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. After the two elders had tangled into a brawl, he finally felt that the temperament belonging to Liangzhou had returned.

He could finally rest easy. Liangzhou, it seemed, was still that same Liangzhou.

And so that day's banquet ended amid all manner of brawling and horseplay. Zhang Xiaobao did not even know when he got home, because he was already hopelessly drunk.

The morning birdsong woke Zhang Xiaobao again, but this time there was no soft, burning body beside him — only a few half-grown nephews, bang-bang-banging on his door from outside.

It turned out that today was the day Zhang Xiaobao had arranged with them to return to Lower White Horse Village together.

After a simple wash and gnawing down two flatbreads, Zhang Xiaobao was hurried along by his nephews and rode out of Liangzhou City. It seemed they too did not much care for the strange oddities of Liangzhou City.

Leaving behind the city full of strange pedants and disguised by long robes, the moment he was out of Liangzhou City, Zhang Xiaobao clearly sensed that this city had undergone even greater changes than before he had left.

Merchants traveling west and east seemed even more numerous now. People of every sort had broken past the barrier of Liangzhou's walls, forming vast settlements pressed right up against the city walls outside.

And because of Liangzhou City's prosperity, Liangzhou's farm produce could always fetch a good price, so out in the countryside, the equal-field allotments of the garrison soldiers were all extremely valuable holdings.

There was one problem, however: at least thirty to forty percent of the land here was poorly reclaimed and cultivated.

With such advantages, if land still went uncultivated with care, that could only mean one thing.

The able-bodied laborers who remained around Liangzhou — or rather, the Liangzhou sworn followers whom the Sage trusted as his own — had drained away in great numbers during this recent period.

In fact, this could be seen from Zhang Xiaobao's own family. Originally, counting his father, elder brother, a younger brother, plus his mother, sister-in-law, and the rest, their equal-field land alone amounted to as much as seventeen hundred mu.

But how many people in their family were working that land now?

The answer was: not a single one. His elder brother was already Right Commander of the infantry in the Hanshan Battalion, and his father served as a battalion commander in Wuwei Garrison.

His seventeen-year-old younger brother, accomplished in both letters and arms, had already been admitted to the Dragon Strategy Academy newly established by the Sage, and had passed last year's Classics examination.

It was said the Sage admired him greatly and intended to promote him to serve at his side as a Hanlin Academician.

So their family now could not produce a single man to farm the land — and moreover, given their family's present status and the wealth they had received in rewards,

seventeen hundred-plus mu of land in Liangzhou, more than three thousand li away, was really something of a chicken rib.

So Zhang Xiaobao's return this time actually involved one more matter: finding a way to see whether he could lease out those seventeen hundred mu of non-transferable equal-field land.

He did not expect much from the yearly yield, but if it could bring in a few tens of thousands of cash more in income, that would not be bad at all.

But upon reaching Lower White Horse Village, Zhang Xiaobao quickly discovered that this idea simply would not work.

Because Lower White Horse Village, which had originally possessed over a hundred able-bodied men, now had only a little over thirty men left.

Of these, at least ten had been discharged after being wounded in service, and because of their disabilities could not work much land themselves.

Among the rest, every household still had at least four or five hundred mu of land. Once they had finished their own, they truly had no capacity left to lease and farm anyone else's.

Moreover, Zhang Xiaobao knew that if the fighting in the Central Plains grew urgent again and the Sage needed to draw troops from Hexi, many of those remaining twenty-odd men would likely be conscripted away as sworn-follower cavalry or militia archers.

This was something Zhang Xiaobao had never thought about before. He stood at the entrance of this familiar yet strange Lower White Horse Village, staring blankly and thinking for a long while.

No matter how he thought, he could not understand how land once regarded as a treasure could have lost its value here in Liangzhou.

This Liangzhou — it seemed it really was different after all.