Chapter 606: The White Rabbit Chronicle of Liu Zhiyuan

In Hedong, in Taiyuan, spring came especially late this year.

Even into the third month, snow still fell repeatedly across Hedong. This extraordinarily long and bitter winter, with its heavy snows, dealt a fatal blow to the livelihood of Hedong's people.

It must be understood that at this time in Hedong, animal husbandry accounted for at least half or more of the common people's way of life.

For the Han folk, such a terrifying snow disaster could perhaps be endured until the spring thaw; though the winter wheat was lost, the remaining crops could still be hastily replanted.

But for the herders of this time, who lacked any means of keeping their livestock warm through the cold, their cattle and sheep were surely all dead. Without cattle and sheep, the herders had no possibility of survival.

The reason Hedong had so many pastoralists must be traced back to the end of the Tang.

In the final years of the Great Tang, Li Guochang and his son Li Keyong rose to power in Daibei. This was both the fortune of Daibei and Hedong, and their great misfortune.

For from Li Guochang to Li Keyong and then to Li Cunxu, they failed to carry on the task of establishing a stable, unified dynasty, and instead squandered the choice history had offered them.

In this process, Daibei and Hedong were consumed by three generations of Li Guochang's line and by Shi Jingtang. The population withered, women outnumbered men, and by now the decline was plain to see.

They had seized political power, but instead of enlarging the pie, they fell into infighting.

By this time, the Han folk of Daibei and Hedong, and the heroes and even adult men of the various Sinicized the the Shatuo tribes, had for the most part already entered the Central Plains, forming the Daibei-Hedong military meritocracy that held power.

In the thirty-seven years from the Later Liang to the Northern Song, the changes of regime, the rebellions and submissions between Military Governors and the central court, were all essentially carried out within this Daibei-Hedong military meritocracy.

If one also counts the period when Li Keyong and Li Cunxu contended with the Later Liang, and the time when the Northern Han held out against the Northern Song.

One could say that the entire Five Dynasties was the great stage of the warriors of Daibei and Hedong.

But behind this dazzling stage of surface glory lay the near-total depletion of the Daibei-Hedong line of warriors.

Back when the Daibei-Hedong warrior group was at its height, Fengzhou and the Zhenwu Army in the Hetao region were overflowing with people.

Yet after fifty or sixty years of attrition, the Hedong region where Fengzhou and the Zhenwu Army lay had long since been abandoned because no one lived there.

Even in the most important Yunzhou (Datong) and Taiyuan, the dominant ethnic group had become the Tuyuhun people of the former Great Tang Yinshan Protectorate.

Historically, the Northern Han was even sustained by the Yang family of Linzhou and the Tuyuhun people.

Things were, of course, somewhat better now than in the Northern Han period, but the Tuyuhun had already begun to occupy close to forty percent of Hedong's population.

The Tuyuhun, naturally, were pastoralists.

Guo Rong led the curly-haired gray-green horse behind him and cautiously entered Taiyuan through the southern gate.

This caution was not from fear that someone would seize this Hexi dragon horse gifted by the Son of Heaven, Shao Ming — no one had that much nerve.

It was because outside the southern and western gates of Taiyuan lay great numbers of frozen corpses, looking like branches in the snow.

Hedong, which in later ages would be Shanxi, has a terrain described as "mountains and rivers without and within," meaning Hedong possesses natural defenses of mountain and river, easy to defend and hard to attack everywhere.

It sounds like a fine phrase, but in reality... it is hard to say.

If the realm were unified, and Hedong served as the shield of the Central Plains, with the state mobilizing supplies and Hedong needing only elite troops to slay the enemy, then it would indeed be a fine phrase.

Since the Warring States period, when the successive rulers of Zhao, down to King Wuling of Zhao with his "barbarian dress and mounted archery," fully absorbed Hedong, Shanxi has been the shield of the realm. Such geography made nomadic peoples tremble at the sight of it.

But in chaotic times like these, it was no fine phrase at all. "Mountains and rivers without and within" meant poor transport and poverty.

The good lands of all Shanxi were divided by mountains and rivers into the Xinding Basin, the Taiyuan Basin, the Shangdang Basin, and others.

Only in these basins could farming be pursued. The rest of the land was basically a mixed zone of agriculture and pastoralism, and extremely barren.

This was also the key reason the Tuyuhun could now pasture in Hedong.

After they migrated inward to escape Khitan oppression, the pattern on Hedong's soil became: Han folk farmed in the basins, Tuyuhun herded in the mountains.

Therefore, the refugees who died outside Taiyuan were mostly Tuyuhun. In this long winter, comparable to a steppe white disaster, the Tuyuhun's livestock had nearly all perished.

With no way to live, after eating everything edible, the herders spontaneously converged on Taiyuan, Jinzhou, Fenzhou, Shizhou, and other large cities, hoping to beg for food.

And then... and then there was no "then."

In order to have the capital to contend with Zhang Zhao for the realm, Liu Zhiyuan had scraped Hedong to the bone. He no longer even cared whether the Han and the the Shatuo in the basins lived or died, so how would he care about the Tuyuhun, whom he saw as expendable?

So the four gates of Taiyuan, Fenzhou, and the rest were shut tight, and in the blinding snow, thousands of Tuyuhun refugees froze or starved to death outside the walls.

"Thus have I heard: once the Bhagavan dwelt in the unsurpassed heavenly palace of the great vajra realm, and all the vajra-holders assembled."

"The unsurpassed heaven, in playful divine transformation, raised a great tower of jewel-kings, high beyond center or edge, adorned with myriad wondrous jewel-kings, the bodies of bodhisattvas as lion thrones."

Guo Rong snapped his head toward the source of the sound. This scripture was wrong!

The Buddha within had been replaced with the Unsurpassed Heaven, and everyone knew who the Unsurpassed Heaven was.

Then he slowly lowered his head again. Not only in Hedong — even in Hebei, there were temples that enshrined the Buddha at the highest place and the Unsurpassed Heaven at a slightly lower place.

Among the ignorant common folk, the Unsurpassed Heaven was basically regarded as the Buddha's last disciple and the representative who handled worldly affairs.

"Great Compassion Dharma King of the Heaven Above Heaven, you know my heart completely, you know what wounds me."

Guo Rong slowly walked over. The one chanting was a Tuyuhun woman who had not yet collapsed. The tears streaming from her face had frozen into icicles hanging from her cheeks.

Opposite the woman was a hunched old Tuyuhun herder. His dark, deeply furrowed face, entirely frozen, had taken on an eerie crystalline sheen. His dead-fish-white eyes stared unblinking at the sky.

The woman chanted the Great Compassion Dharma King's Heart Mantra in a trembling, low voice, as if she had lost all sensation — it made one's heart quiver and one's hair stand on end.

Guo Rong remembered again: Hedong had always been the most devout in Buddhism, and the Tuyuhun even more so. In recent years, many of Hedong's Tuyuhun had come to believe in the Great Compassion Dharma King of the Unsurpassed Heaven.

Moreover, the direct descendants of the Tuyuhun's last great khan were none other than the most favored adopted son of the Unsurpassed Heaven, who had even been granted the title of Qinghai, the Tuyuhun ancestral homeland.

And in the coming struggle for the realm, the Unsurpassed Heaven had the greatest chance of victory. So what the Tuyuhun, from herders to chieftains, were thinking was almost written openly on their faces.

As if moved by some unseen force, Guo Rong stretched out his arm, scooped the woman up onto the horse's back like a chick, and rode on into Taiyuan.

He had come this time to ask the Prince of Beiping (Liu Zhiyuan) for reinforcements, because the forces of Yan Jin, facing them near the Fu River, had recently increased by at least five thousand men — all of them elite imperial guards of the Zhou state's Eight Garrisons. It seemed war had already arrived.

In Taiyuan, at the Prince of Beiping's mansion, Liu Zhiyuan, dark and gaunt, looked far older than a year ago, but the blazing fire in his eyes made Li Sanniang's heart tremble with fear.

Li Sanniang felt that this fire would burn to ashes everything she knew and cherished.

The love story of Liu Zhiyuan and Li Sanniang could actually be counted as a legend of sorts, and was later written into the opera "The White Rabbit Chronicle of Liu Zhiyuan."

Of course, the story of Liu Zhiyuan and Li Sanniang was not as beautiful as in the White Rabbit Chronicle.

Well... actually, the White Rabbit Chronicle was quite cruel too.

From the perspective of later generations, Liu Zhiyuan and Li Sanniang could be called one of the tragedies of this era.

The origin of this so-called legendary love was merely that Liu Zhiyuan, a crafty old soldier in his thirties with no proper wife, one day went out and happened to take a fancy to Li Sanniang.

But he was old, ugly, and dark-skinned, and merely a low-ranking officer with no prospects. How could Li Sanniang's father be willing to push his daughter into a pit of fire? Li Sanniang herself, presumably, was unwilling too.

But this was the Five Dynasties! If soldiers came to propose marriage, they were doing you a great honor. Since you didn't know what was good for you, very well.

Liu Zhiyuan's brothers put their heads together and simply snatched Li Sanniang straight into Liu Zhiyuan's bed.

By rights this should have been a tragedy — a delicate flower of sixteen or seventeen, seized into the bed of a rough man twenty years her senior.

But Li Sanniang was fortunate: Liu Zhiyuan had long admired her, and as they lived together, he was conquered by her intelligence and virtue. From then on, he obeyed her every wish and doted on her.

It was precisely under Li Sanniang's counsel that Liu Zhiyuan cast off the vices of a common soldier and began to better himself. In less than ten years he became a Military Governor, a virtual local emperor, and now he was even qualified to contend for the realm.

That their story could be retold again and again by later generations was surely because, in this dark and terrifying age, it was one of those rare flecks of brilliant good fortune.

Liu Zhiyuan saw Li Sanniang watching him with deep concern, and on his ordinarily stern, swarthy face there actually appeared a trace of warm smile.

"Is Sanniang worrying about me? Ha ha ha!"

Liu Zhiyuan laughed three times with forced bravado. "Think of me, Liu Zhiyuan, risen from humble origins, through hundreds of battles great and small, a man no one could match, and bearing the hopes of Hedong besides.

That Zhang Zhao is nothing but a brat from Hexi, a barbarian slave by origin, falsely claiming descent from loyal subjects. The heroes of the realm all see it plainly. He has been building his power for barely ten years and has no kinsmen. Once he is struck down, the Zhou state will surely crumble.

Sanniang, wait for me in Taiyuan. This time next year, I shall bring you south to the Eastern Capital, and you shall be Empress, mother to the realm. Dalang is unwell, so tend him carefully."

With that, without waiting for Li Sanniang to speak, he strode out.

Li Sanniang rose to her feet in a daze, watching Liu Zhiyuan's receding figure, tears already welling in her eyes.

She hurried a few steps, as though wanting to call him back, but in the end did not speak. She leaned against the door and gazed after him, then sighed softly.

"You say you rose from humble origins and have never lost a battle, but that Shaoming Son of Heaven likewise rose from humble origins. He even slew the Khitan ruler, and he too has won every battle. At your age, why still struggle for supremacy?"

Liu Zhiyuan strode into the White Tiger Command Hall of the Hedong Military Governor.

Outside the command hall, the assembled civil and military officers — Wang Jun, Bai Wenke, Guo Congyi, Shi Hongzhao, Murong Yanchao, Su Fengji, Wang Jingchong, Guo Rong, and others — had all been waiting there for quite some time.

Do you suppose Liu Zhiyuan did not know how formidable Zhang Zhao's strength was?

He knew. But he had no time left to stand off against Zhang Zhao, because he could not afford to wait.

Liu Zhiyuan was born in the second year of Qianning of Emperor Zhaozong of Tang, 895 CE — a full seventeen years older than Zhang Zhao, born in the second year of Qianhua, 912 CE.

If he waited any longer, he, Liu Zhiyuan, would be going to see the King of Hell.

Moreover, Zhang Zhao held Henan, with its fertile land and large population, and had Guanzhong, Hexi, and Longyou as his rear base. Every extra day gave him one more measure of advantage.

Hedong, by contrast, after this great snow disaster, if it did not act now, might never be able to act again.

(End of Chapter)

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