Chapter 682: Battle of the Plateau Gods

Outside Songzhou, great bonfires were lit, and yak after yak was stabbed down by broad-shouldered, thick-waisted butchers, then cooked on the spot.

After the blood-froth was skimmed from the shank meat, it was stewed in great cauldrons until the fragrance drifted everywhere, while the sturdy beef legs were brushed with all manner of sauces and set to roast slowly over low flames.

Even the strongly rank offal was boiled up in several big cauldrons — a delicacy bestowed on the lowest-ranking herdsman slaves.

As for Pei Yuan, Li Cunhui, and the rest, they were naturally entertained with a whole-ox feast, roast whole lamb, and the like.

These past days, even Pei Yuan had let himself go and relaxed completely, so the soldiers and officers below needed no mention — every night they were bridegrooms, and many were enjoying themselves so much they had forgotten home.

On the whole Qingtang Plateau, the prefectures of Songzhou, Weizhou, and Fuzhou, controlled by the tribes headed by Langjie Jiangcuo, had a total population of only a little over three hundred thousand.

These three hundred thousand or so people were spread across an area roughly the size of the Chengdu Plain, and their mobility was far lower than in the Han lands, so they were extremely eager for outside bloodlines.

The Tibetans did not understand genes, but they knew that if their own clan members married each other over and over, the clan would soon become a clan of fools.

In this respect, they were still far more advanced than the Tungusic savages.

So at this time, any traveling merchant who came up onto the Qingtang from the Han lands — not necessarily Han, any ethnicity would do — basically received this kind of treatment.

Of course, for wealthy Han merchants, they were certainly even more welcoming; sometimes wife and daughter together was nothing new.

This had nothing to do with romance; it was an inevitable choice for the clan's propagation, growth, and even survival.

So those women of the various tribes did not have the sense of shame of Han girls, but were instead quite uninhibited; they did not regard this as anything bad, but as a joy born of instinct.

Especially those already-married women — if they became pregnant, they would marry the child they bore to the children of their husband's brothers and sisters, to rapidly swell the tribe's numbers and enrich the gene pool.

As for the cost of raising children — ha! This was the Qingtang Plateau in the tenth century; a child born to a poor family was not much more precious than a wild dog pup in the fields.

Of course, the powerful and noble families did not have this custom, because they could easily arrange marriages with people a thousand li away, and had no need of such primitive methods to enrich the gene pool.

So the difference in treatment between Pei Yuan and Li Cunhui in this regard was very great.

The young woman beside Pei Yuan was a daughter of the Xianjie clan, a widowed lady living in her natal home; after that one night of tenderness, Pei Yuan grew very fond of this woman, but to have her attend him again, he would have to follow local custom and give salt, tea, sugar, silk cloth, and satin.

But Li Cunhui was completely different, because he had the identity of a sworn son of the Boundless Heaven; in the Six Dharma Sect's narrative, Li Cunhui was a garuda descended to the mortal world beside the Boundless Heaven, sent specifically to guard the Boundless Heaven in the world of dust.

So the pretty young woman beside him, blinking her large, sparkling eyes, was the legitimate daughter of the Xianjie clan, still unmarried, and so obedient she could not be more so, granting whatever was asked of her — and Li Cunhui needed to pay no goods or wealth at all.

Moreover, before Li Cunhui had even left, the young woman's value immediately rose.

The Songchang clan, which was connected by marriage to the Xianjie clan, said that if the young woman became pregnant, then the betrothal gift that had originally been two hundred yaks would be raised to three hundred, and if she bore a boy, another three hundred would be added.

Do not think the Songchang clan was foolish — what sort of man was Li Cunhui? He was the sworn son of the Boundless Heaven, a garuda descended to the mortal world.

The seed he planted was certain to have a Buddhist affinity; when the child grew up and mastered the scriptures, he could at the very least become the abbot of a temple.

Since Buddhism had flourished greatly in Tibetans during the time of Songtsen Gampo, three hundred years of twists and turns had produced a relatively stable political narrative.

That is, the scope of a local power's (a great clan's) rule was, to a large extent, determined by the reach of the temples their family controlled.

That is, if a herdsman worshiped at your family's temple, then that herdsman was a subject under your family's rule.

Whether it was the Bon religion currently supported by the authorities, or Buddhism in its suppressed state, both accepted this rule.

The Phagmodru theocratic regime that formed a hundred-plus years later in history was the ultimate expression of this form.

So the Songchang clan appeared to have taken a loss, but in fact had gained an enormous advantage; many people praised the Songchang clan chief for his foresight in arranging the betrothal early — now with only six hundred yaks, they could obtain an abbot.

In truth, not just in Tibetans, but even in the Han lands, this sort of thing was often counted as a gain.

Historically, in the mountain regions of Fujian and Zhejiang, there were men who took shortcuts by offering their wives to wealthy monks, then raising sons for the monks to gain benefits — this was likewise not rare.

Clever as Pei Yuan was, he quickly sensed from this difference that something was unusual.

It was indeed as Li Cunhui had said: these Tibetans on the Qingtang Plateau did not fear punitive expeditions from the Central Plains court at all.

Er, "did not fear" may not be quite accurate — rather, they did not think their land was worth the court sending an expedition at all.

Moreover, historically the Tibetans were the only empire the Great Tang had never beaten down, so psychologically they did not much fear the dynasties of the Central Plains.

It was just that although this Langjie Jiangcuo was a hero of his region, compared with a man like Pei Yuan, his wits were far too insufficient.

Once the two had drunk to seven or eight parts drunk, Pei Yuan had basically coaxed out all of Langjie Jiangcuo's hidden calculations.

It was also at this time that Pei Yuan learned why the Six Dharma Sect had not stirred up much of a storm in Anxi and Beiting, yet on the Qingtang Plateau it had led wave after wave of towering, earth-shaking surges.

So much so that without the court sending a single soldier, not only had the three prefectures of Song, Wei, and Fu come to submit, but even the Western Sea and Dafeichuan — places the great dynasty had once expended all its strength and failed to take — had submitted, and the reason still lay with the Buddhist order.

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Historically, Qingtang Buddhism began in the time of Songtsen Gampo, because he married the Nepalese Princess Bhrikuti and the Great Tang's Princess Wencheng.

In those years, when these two entered Tibet, both, without prior agreement, brought Buddhism to Tibetans, and even the struggles that unfolded between the two arose from the Buddhist order.

What Princess Bhrikuti brought was authentic Indian Dharma, while what Princess Wencheng brought was Buddhism blended with Han culture.

From that time on, the Dharma on the Qingtang Plateau was a neither-this-nor-that — no, it should be called a neither-this-nor-that-nor-that.

It was neither Indian Dharma, nor Central Plains Dharma, and it fit even less with the Tibetans' own culture and customs.

It muddled along awkwardly like this for over a hundred years, until the time of the Tsenpo Tri Ralpachen, when the Tsenpo's authority was constantly being eroded by the local nobles; Tri Ralpachen therefore chose to strengthen the authority of the monks and the Buddhist order, seeking to use the hand of religion to control the local nobles' military, political, and financial powers.

But in the end things went contrary to his wishes; whether Tri Ralpachen recovered his power is unknown, but his pro-Buddhist policies brought disaster upon the empire's common people, and in the end he himself was strangled to death by ministers who believed in Bon, taking advantage of this nationwide atmosphere of loathing.

After Tri Ralpachen, Langdarma, put on the throne by the Bon faction, began a path of violently exterminating Buddhism; compared with Langdarma, even Emperor Shizong of the Central Plains' persecution of Buddhism would have to be called gentle.

Although Langdarma was later assassinated by a monk and the extermination did not continue at high pressure the whole time, Buddhism on the Qingtang Plateau had nevertheless utterly declined.

History calls this period the Dark Age; it was not until the early Northern Song that the Buddhist order on the Qingtang Plateau began to revive.

But at this time, Zhang Zhao's sudden rise, his identity as the Silver Wheel Dharma King and the Boundless Heaven, immediately drew the attention of the Buddhist forces across the entire Qingtang Plateau.

Although the Six Dharma Sect had something of a heterodox flavor, the Buddhist order on the Qingtang Plateau was in its Dark Age — who could still care about such things?

And the Six Dharma Sect's teachings, in many places, were astonishingly well suited to the thinking and customs of all strata on the Qingtang Plateau.

Of course they suited — because apart from inventing the Boundless Heaven, in all other respects Zhang Zhao had simply followed the path of later Tibetan Buddhism.

The places that suited were the ones Zhang Zhao could recall, or understood.

The places that did not suit were the ones Zhang Zhao had not recalled, or did not understand at all.

It could be said that Zhang Zhao rose from Hexi and Longyou, and over twelve years had repeatedly mobilized troops and requisitioned grain in places like Hexi and Longyou, where large numbers of Tibetans, various Qiang, Tangut, and Wenmo peoples lived together.

Yet not to mention rebellion, not even unrest had been stirred up; instead, large numbers of great plateau clans kept coming down from the mountains to join him — and the reason lay right here.

The Qingtang Buddhist order, suppressed for over a hundred years yet possessing a deep foundation of popular belief (after all, certain teachings of Bon were simply too anti-human), played a very considerable role.

They did not even need Zhang Zhao's military force; they only wanted to borrow the prestige of the Six Dharma Sect and his Wushangtian to revive Buddhism in Qingtang.

The Lunchang Bomi family of the West Sea and Dafeichuan region was the first to submit, and through them they drew out the Lang clan, a great aristocratic house that dominated the entire Sunporu region — roughly the area of the later Republic-era Xikang Province.

Langjie Jiangcuo was the outstanding figure of the Lang clan and its foremost driving force.

Of course, a clan this large could not come over in its entirety, but the most far-sighted among them had already staked their bets on bringing the Six Dharma Sect up onto the plateau.

Once Pei Yuan figured all this out, he went numb. These people were not coming to submit at all — they wanted to use the Six Dharma Sect's name and the Emperor's identity as Wushangtian, a living god, to fight a "war of gods" against their own kinsmen.

This was far beyond Pei Yuan's understanding, and far beyond the authority of an imperial envoy. He had only come to Songzhou to earn some credit for expanding the realm and pacifying the barbarians!

Still, Pei Yuan was a clever man after all. He suddenly understood why the Lunchang Bomi family had sent Lunbo Ren to pass word to him, hoping Pei Yuan would invite Langjie Jiangcuo to Liangzhou Prefecture to pay respects to the Emperor.

First, the Lunchang Bomi family wanted to see whether the Emperor supported them; second, this was a matter that only the Emperor could decide.

After thinking it over carefully for a while, Pei Yuan took advantage of the moment when everyone around him had gone out to perform the stomping dance, and walked over to Langjie Jiangcuo of his own accord.

He picked up the chopsticks that Langjie Jiangcuo had specially prepared for these Tang people, and set them gently down on the table.

"Luozhi should understand that Wushangtian has another identity — that of the Emperor of the Central Plains court. He is both the Wushangtian of the Buddhist faith and the Sage of the Middle Kingdom, just as the Buddha has countless incarnations.

Luozhi's devout faith in Wushangtian is admirable, but to believe in Wushangtian while turning a blind eye to his identity as the Sage of the Middle Kingdom — does Luozhi not fear being seen as insufficiently devout?"

Langjie Jiangcuo's head was spinning a little, but he was still very sensitive to this kind of talk. He deliberately put on the look of someone thoroughly drunk and waved his hand, as if he had not heard clearly what Pei Yuan said.

But Pei Yuan was unmoved, his gaze cold and sharp as he looked at Langjie Jiangcuo.

Pei Yuan's eyes were naturally much narrower and longer than most people's, giving him a somewhat uncanny look. Now, lit by the flickering light of the bonfire, they were even more unsettling.

After being stared at for a dozen or so breaths, Langjie Jiangcuo could no longer keep up the pretense. He shifted uneasily, and the feigned drunkenness in his eyes almost entirely faded.

Pei Yuan gave a cold smile. Did he think he could muddle through like this?

Then all the hardship of Pei Yuan climbing several hundred li of snowy mountains, and Feng Dao nearly losing his life, would have been for nothing.

"Luozhi should know that Wushangtian can wait, because the flourishing world of the Central Plains is not something the Qingtang Plateau can compare to. But how much longer can Luozhi wait?"

Langjie Jiangcuo fell silent for a moment, then leaned in toward Pei Yuan. "What Lord Pei says is indeed reasonable. Then what does Lord Pei think this one can still do?"

Still playing dumb! Pei Yuan grabbed Langjie Jiangcuo's hand.

"Luozhi comes from the Lang clan of Sunporu. The heroes of your clan are more numerous than the yaks on the hillsides outside Songzhou City. I wonder — are there not others who possess a Buddhist affinity?"

A look of struggle appeared on Langjie Jiangcuo's face, and Pei Yuan seized the moment to press further.

"Luozhi does not imagine that just anyone can come to Liangzhou to have an audience with the Sage by spouting a few grand words, does he?

Luozhi does not imagine that Wushangtian is like some down-and-out Rinpoche, who would come running on his own to become an honored guest the moment Luozhi says a word, does he?

Wushangtian is the Buddha's final disciple, one who embodies great compassion, great benevolence, and great virtue, possessing supreme and perfect great wisdom — a true god-Buddha walking the mortal world. Does Luozhi really dare to go to Liangzhou for an audience with the Sage just like that?"

To sum it up in one sentence: they wanted to freeload before a true god-Buddha. Say a few nice words and get the claim handed over?

Never mind a mere Luozhi of Songzhou City — even the entire Lang clan of Sunporu was not qualified.

One could say that although Pei Yuan did not understand the political rules of the Qingtang Plateau, he understood politics, and he understood the human heart.

Langjie Jiangcuo trembled all over from his words. Beads of sweat the size of beans poured down his face in the cold, whistling evening wind.

After a long while, a long, drawn-out sigh came, and then that ingratiating smile Langjie Jiangcuo had worn when he first met Pei Yuan and the eminent monks of the Six Dharma Sect appeared on his face again.

"Tomorrow, the four great Dongben and thirty-one Dongpujong of the three prefectures of Song, Wei, and Fu will all come together to pay respects to the imperial envoy. From tomorrow onward, the three prefectures will be the court's territory."

In the time of Songtsen Gampo, Tibet was divided into a number of Dongde, of which the commanders of the great Dongde were called Dongben, and the commanders of the lesser Dongde were called Dongpujong.

After the collapse of the Tibetan Empire, many great and small chieftains claimed the title of Dongde for themselves, which is why these tiny three prefectures of Song, Wei, and Fu had as many as thirty-five of them.

But no matter how one looked at it, Langjie Jiangcuo's declaration could indeed be regarded as submission to the Central Plains court.

Sure enough, the next day Langjie Jiangcuo again had his men put up the ceremonial regalia of the Tibetan era in Songzhou City. The four gates of Songzhou were thrown wide open, the roadsides were decorated with red silk, the ground was covered with yellow earth, all to welcome the imperial envoy's party into Songzhou City.

The four great Dongben and thirty-one Dongpujong of the three prefectures prostrated themselves on the ground in homage, while the eminent monks and virtuous elders of the city bowed and chanted sutras in welcome. Pei Yuan, following the rites of the Central Plains court, ordered Langjie Jiangcuo to set up an altar and burn incense, then had the attendant eunuchs in the party read out the imperial edict.

Once this whole procedure was completed, whether Langjie Jiangcuo acknowledged it or not, the Central Plains court certainly did. The three prefectures of Song, Wei, and Fu in northwestern Sichuan had from this day submitted to the court.

In fact, Weizhou had previously accepted an appointment from Meng Shu, but it had never heeded summons or orders; it was merely for the convenience of trade between the two sides.

So it could not be counted as belonging under Han leadership. Only this time could the relationship be considered firmly established.

After the edict was read out, Pei Yuan nodded, and the Secretariat Drafter and the Ministry of Rites Bureau Director accompanying the party together used brush and seal to fill in Langjie Jiangcuo's name in the blank space of the edict.

In this edict, Zhang Zhao merged the three prefectures into Songpan Prefecture, appointed Langjie Jiangcuo as hereditary and irrevocable Pacification Commissioner of Songpan Prefecture and Military Supervisor of Songpan Prefecture, and granted rewards and titles to all the other chieftains great and small.

From this point on, Langjie Jiangcuo formally became a native official of the court, and Songpan Prefecture became the court's bridgehead for entering Qingtang from northwestern Sichuan.

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