Chapter 705: For the Nation, Zhangye

After receiving the envoys from Wuyue, when it came to the Southern Tang envoy Li Jingda, Zhang Zhao simply summoned him for a brief audience and exchange.

Because as for Li Jing's intentions, Sage Zhang could guess them completely.

This Li Jing was not entirely raised in the depths of the palace; back when his father Li Bian still went by the name Xu Zhigao, Li Jing was the important banner Li Bian left in Jiangning to control the regime.

At that time Li Bian had not yet prepared to usurp the Xu family's Southern Wu regime, and the resistance forces had not been thoroughly cleaned up either; one could say Li Jing grew up in a treacherous political environment, and he himself did possess some ability.

In his self-perception, his father Li Bian was the Tang Gaozu, so he was born to be a Tang Taizong, or at the very least a lesser Taizong.

With such thoughts in mind, there was no way he would immediately submit and act the vassal; this bend was not an easy one to turn.

Perhaps in Li Jing's view, his current submission was him learning from King Goujian of Yue, enduring humiliation and bearing heavy burdens.

The moment Zhang Zhao saw Li Jingda wearing a silver-white python robe, and moreover acting extremely eager for unification, spouting sycophantic flattery one set after another, he immediately understood that Li Jing wanted to lull him into complacency.

Otherwise, the one who came to court this time, still wearing a python robe and looking smug about it, should have been the Southern Tang heir apparent Li Jingsui, not this Li Jingda, who had a reputation abroad for uprightness.

This was purely and simply treating me, Sage Zhang, as a mediocre ruler and trying to fool me!

But Zhang Zhao did not expose it; instead he appeared very pleased, and generously bestowed gifts beyond the standard upon Li Jingda.

Hmph! Having a Meng Chang around was vexing enough; if another Li Jing were added, it would get even livelier. Since he was courting his own death, it actually saved me, Sage Zhang, the trouble of figuring out how to arrange for him.

After the audiences with the envoys of the two states were finished, another memorial from Bai Congxin arrived.

Lu Sanlang had successfully latched onto the defeated army of Shimi Li, and with the help of some local small tribes that had converted to the Six Dharma Sect, he had established a foothold three or four hundred li from Mount Yanran.

At the same time, the tribes around Mount Yanran, summoned by the Merkit chieftain Hulubashi and the Zubu powerful chieftain Duosage, also began gathering here; they even raised the banner of protecting the Dharma, and were said to number as many as a hundred thousand riders.

Zhang Zhao passed Bai Congxin's memorial around for the generals in the hall to read, tapped his fingers on the desk before him, and then spoke.

"The Merkit, Zubu, Dalimi, and Yedugua are nothing but savages beyond the frontier; their so-called powerful chieftains have little insight either. How would they understand the difference between this Six Dharma Sect and the esoteric Buddhism originally prevalent in those lands? Someone must have specially explained it to them."

The generals all expressed agreement after hearing this; Zhang Zhao's words were correct. Religious doctrine was precisely the sort of thing deliberately made as abstruse as possible.

Let alone the Merkit, Zubu, and other steppe barbarians who could not recognize more than a few characters, even cultured men of the Central Plains would not find it easy to clearly explain the differences between the Six Dharma Sect and other Buddhist schools.

Although the Six Dharma Sect revered the Supreme Heaven as the true lord, it had not entirely abandoned the Buddha either, had it?

Other schools enshrined the Buddha on high, and it was not uncommon for them to select one revered Buddha or bodhisattva as the primary object of faith, to say nothing of those that directly voided the Buddha and simply turned it into philosophy.

Therefore, without a professional to explain it, it was not easy to make clear the ins and outs of how the Six Dharma Sect's scriptures used the Supreme Heaven to hollow out the Buddha, and to make people resent it.

Yuan Heng, the Secretariat and Phoenix Pavilion Military Registry Drafter and Hanlin Academician, cupped his hands. "The Sage's words strike exactly at the heart of the matter. Judging from the memorial sent back by Duke Bai, even the tribes west of the desert that originally believed in Buddhism quickly converted to the Six Dharma Sect, without any great resistance; they even submitted of their own accord.

Because compared to the Buddhist scriptures previously prevalent on the steppe, the Six Dharma Sect's teaching of worshipping only the Supreme Heaven, and uniting the Supreme Heaven with Tengri, was more suited to the understanding of the steppe commoners.

Those old scriptures with gods and Buddhas great and small flying all over the sky were, compared to the Six Dharma Sect, actually more complicated.

But when it came to the tribes around Mount Yanran, it suddenly encountered extremely strong resistance; this was surely premeditated.

This minister can even assert with certainty that the instigator behind this is none other than the Khitan!"

Jiao Jixun nodded upon hearing this, and also cupped his hands in memorial. "The Wrist-Severing Empress Dowager can be counted a hero of her generation. Presumably, if she wants to make one last gamble, it would be to drag these steppe barbarians into opposing us."

"My lord, it seems Murong Erlang has bullied Shulu Ping quite terribly!" Li Cunhui said with a grin. "The other day I heard you say Murong Erlang's report would arrive soon as well; we'll know once we see what he says!"

The generals all laughed heartily, not taking the matter to heart, because the great trend of the realm was set; no matter how Shulu Ping struggled, she could not escape the outcome of Zhou rising and Liao falling. It merely added a bit of difficulty.

As they were speaking, word came from outside that an express messenger had arrived, saying the report of Murong Xinzhang, Grand Governor of Andong and Duke of Yan, had come.

Zhang Zhao quickly had the man brought in, then opened Murong Xinzhang's report.

Such was this age; the distances were too vast. Without a report arriving, Zhang Zhao had no way of knowing what was happening over where Murong Xinzhang was.

He had only read a few lines of the report when he burst into loud laughter. "It truly was Shulu Ping who could not hold back!

In the third month of this year, the Tuyuhun elite cavalry of the Andong Grand Governor's Office completely cut off the internal and external communications of the Khitan's Jinzhou. After a three-month siege, Shulu Ping dispatched twenty thousand troops westward to the rescue, only to have them crushed by Xinzhang on the east bank of the Daling River, where he waited at ease for the exhausted enemy.

More than three thousand Khitans were slain in battle; the elite troops Shulu Ping had spent a year and a half training were almost entirely annihilated in a single day and night."

In the past, Zhang Zhao had used the method of boiling a frog in warm water to deal with the Khitan, precisely because he feared that Shulu Ping and Yelu Lihu would make a desperate, all-or-nothing move, such as razing the rice paddies, destroying the irrigation works, and moving away all the people of Jinzhou, the Khitan Eastern Capital (Liaoyang), Yinzhou (Tieling), and other places.

He feared they would turn the rich lands of western and eastern Liao into a thousand li of uninhabited wilderness, and even more he feared that the Khitans, who still had twenty or thirty thousand elite troops, would flee to the Greater Khingan Mountains and fight a guerrilla war against him.

So he gave the Khitans quite favorable treatment, and then left only Murong Xinzhang and Gao Xingzhou to guard Beiping Prefecture, with a garrison of no more than three or four thousand, even fewer than the Khitan troops, thereby holding the Khitans in place so they could not harden their hearts and flee north.

This stratagem indeed proved effective. Shulu Ping naturally knew this was Zhang Zhao's poisonous scheme; after meeting Zhang Zhao at Chengde Prefecture, she returned and immediately advocated withdrawing north at once and laying waste to all of Liao.

But not a single person responded to her. What a joke — the Greater Khingan Mountains, even the Xianbei wastelands, were not places one could endure so easily. Not only the Khitan nobles, but even the common tribesmen below had grown accustomed to the prosperity of eastern and western Liao, and were utterly unwilling to migrate north.

Not only could Shulu Ping not persuade them, even her own son Yelu Lihu was unwilling to return north.

No matter how forceful the Wrist-Severing Empress Dowager was, she could not single-handedly smash everyone's rice bowl. With no alternative, she had no choice but to compromise and let the Khitans remain in western and eastern Liao.

And seeing Zhang Zhao's stratagem take effect, Murong Xinzhang immediately turned crafty.

At the time, Zhang Zhao had promised to open border-market trade at both Chengde Prefecture and Jinzhou, but Murong Xinzhang used the excuse that Chengde Prefecture had not yet been fully constructed, and opened only the Jinzhou market.

Moreover, he very magnanimously placed the market outside the city of Jinzhou, that is, in territory the Khitans could control.

At the same time, he sent memorial after memorial to Zhang Zhao, asking Zhang Zhao to personally urge the Hexi Merchant Guild to transport large quantities of sought-after goods to Jinzhou for sale.

Under this two-pronged push, in barely half a year Jinzhou went from an ordinary Khitan prefecture to the most important and prosperous market in western and eastern Liao.

Every day, several hundred merchant caravans of various peoples entered and left Jinzhou; one could say merchants gathered like clouds and precious goods piled up like mountains.

Khitan nobles, their eyes dazzled by the immediate benefits, began pouring large sums of money into Jinzhou to open trading houses, shipping the specialty goods of western Liao, Linhuang Prefecture, the Jurchen tribes, and even Goryeo in an endless stream to Jinzhou.

Like the most skilled of hunters, Murong Xinzhang waited a full year and a half, until almost all the Khitan nobles had sunk large amounts of wealth into Jinzhou, before instructing the Tuyuhun under his command to start making trouble for the surrounding Khitan tribes.

The Khitans could not endure such provocation, and beat to death several Tuyuhun tribesmen whom they regarded as invaders. This immediately gave Murong Xinzhang his pretext; he suddenly sent troops to surround Jinzhou and cut off all contact in and out.

This threw all the Khitan nobles into a panic. After negotiations failed, they decisively organized a relief force, attempting to use military means to break Murong Xinzhang's siege of Jinzhou.

At this moment, the only people in the entire Khitan realm still maintaining vigilance were Shulu Ping and the Khitan Eastern Capital Defender Yelu Dinian.

Both believed that, given the Khitan army's current numbers and equipment, and especially its morale, it was utterly incapable of contending with the Zhou state.

Even the ten-thousand-odd men under Murong Xinzhang were more than they could defeat.

Moreover, Murong Xinzhang was clearly besieging the point to strike the relief force, having seen through their reluctance to abandon the wealth and goods of Jinzhou, and was simply luring them into the trap.

Yelu Dinian in particular threw himself in front of Yelu Lihu, weeping with tears and mucus streaming, and pleaded bitterly, even saying, "Our ancestors came from the mountain forests, and returning to the mountain forests now is the way of survival for us Khitans. If we cannot bear to part with the wealth and goods of Jinzhou, I fear we shall lose both men and wealth."

Yelu Lihu flew into a rage, and personally beat Yelu Dinian with an iron ruler until his head was split and bleeding.

In truth, how could these Khitans still take in Yelu Dinian's words? For many of them, their entire fortunes were inside the city of Jinzhou; how could they have the resolve to simply abandon them?

Wealth is hard to part with! If they had that kind of resolve, how could Zhang Zhao have so easily killed two Khitan emperors?

And so, the outcome was never in doubt. Yelu Lihu personally led twenty thousand troops to relieve the siege of Jinzhou, and Murong Xinzhang first sent a detached force—the Shuofang Tuyuhun troops under Yuan Yanchao—to meet the enemy.

Yuan Yanchao was badly beaten by the swiftly arriving Yelu Lihu, losing five or six hundred men, and only escaped with his life by burning the bridge over the Daling River in his panic.

Yelu Lihu's confidence soared. Ignoring Yelu Hou's advice to first make camp and learn the situation at Jinzhou before acting, he believed himself invincible and certain to crush Murong Xinzhang.

He went so far as to order the cavalry of every unit to dismount and build a pontoon bridge, insisting on crossing the river at once to pursue Yuan Yanchao's force.

As it happened, it was high noon. The Khitans were halfway through building the bridge, men and horses exhausted and armor not yet donned, when Murong Xinzhang suddenly struck with three thousand elite cavalry.

It turned out he had been lying in ambush all along on the upper reaches of the Daling River, waiting until the Khitans were worn out before suddenly appearing.

Gao Xingzhou on the left, Zhang Xibao on the right, Murong Xinzhang in the center leading the charge—the Khitans had no time to react and were pierced straight through!

In the chaos, Yelu Lihu, Yelu Hou, and others were killed amid the melee. Of the twenty thousand troops, fewer than a thousand escaped in the end.

With a single battle, Murong Xinzhang had snapped the Khitans' last backbone.

"Excellent! My son is a true hero indeed—with fewer than five thousand men, he has utterly finished the Khitans. From this day on, no one in Hebei Circuit can stand against me!"

Zhang Zhao rose to his feet and shouted aloud, and all the ministers in the hall rose as well, loudly offering congratulations.

Murong Xinzhang's battle was truly a fine piece of work. He had spent a full year and a half planning it, slowly letting the Khitans walk into the trap themselves, and in the end he took them down as cleanly as plucking a ripe fruit from a tree.

Zhang Zhao checked the date. Murong Xinzhang's memorial had been sent two and a half months earlier.

Because at that time Murong Xinzhang did not yet know Zhang Zhao had already reached Liangzhou Prefecture, the memorial first went to the Eastern Capital court, and the Eastern Capital court then dispatched a fast rider to deliver it to Chang'an Prefecture—but Zhang Zhao had already gone on to Liangzhou Prefecture, so the fast rider had to head north once more before it finally reached Zhang Zhao's hands.

And before Murong Xinzhang dealt with Yelu Lihu, the siege of Jinzhou had already begun at the start of this year—which happened to be exactly when Bai Congxin and the others had gone beyond the frontier.

Presumably, it was this matter that made Shulu Ping realize that Yelu Lihu, and indeed the entire Khitan nation, could no longer be saved. So Shulu Ping, who had been staying in the Khitan supreme capital of Linhuang Prefecture, began making contact with the Merkit, the Zubu, and other steppe tribes.

Having more or less worked out the whole chain of cause and effect, Zhang Zhao returned to the map, the smile never leaving his face. Pointing to the area around the Yanran Mountains, he said:

"Since ancient times, the people of the steppe have had no fixed abode, coming and going like the wind. When the courts of the Central Plains have sought to punish them through the ages, the greatest difficulty has never been how to defeat them, but how to find them before the supply lines run out.

Shulu Ping thinks she is making trouble for me, but in truth she is helping me gather these rabble together.

Now, if we simply lead our elite forces north and strike from two sides together with Bai Congxin, we can settle all the steppe tribes in a single campaign. Since ancient times, has there ever been an easier carving of stone at Yanran than this?"

When the generals heard the words "carving stone at Yanran," every one of them trembled with excitement as if about to have a fit. Indeed! Was there ever an easier carving of stone at Yanran than this?

Li Cunhui had long been eyeing the great merit Murong Xinzhang had won at Jinzhou with envy. Unable to hold back, he hurried before Zhang Zhao and, pointing at the map, said:

"According to the surveys of the Board of War's map archives, going straight north from Juyan Lake, it is at most one thousand six hundred li to the Yanran Mountains.

Although part of the route north from Juyan Lake passes through high mountains and desert sands, as long as one carries enough drinking water and keeps heading north, it is not hard to cross."

With that, he looked at Zhang Zhao with eager eyes. "My lord, let me be the vanguard. With only five hundred elite cavalry, I can reach the Yanran Mountains and make contact with Lu Sanlang. Then my lord can follow with the main army, and the Merkit tribes will have nowhere to flee!"

Carving stone at Yanran—this matter, well, it was quite difficult in other dynasties, but for the Great Tang at its height, and for the present Zhang Zhou, it was not so hard.

Because both the Great Tang at its height and Zhang Zhou possessed a powerful Hexi.

Just as Li Cunhui said, from Juyan Lake in Hexi—that is, where Ejin Banner lies in later times—pointing north to the Yanran Mountains, it is only a little over eight hundred, not quite nine hundred, kilometers.

If a Central Plains court holds a strong, prosperous, and secure Hexi, it can calmly stockpile supplies and muster troops at Juyan Lake.

Then, crossing the Altai Mountains and the nearby sandy ground, one can reach the Yanran Mountains. Even the Badain Jaran Desert can be disregarded, because it is already within one's grasp.

Especially in the present Zhang Zhou, where the Emperor and more than half the meritorious noble houses come from Hexi—compared to the Li Tang, their hold on Hexi is even firmer.

One could say that, apart from the later Republic, in a thousand years before or after, no dynasty ever held Hexi so firmly.

Other dynasties, lacking this advantage, could not assemble a great army in Longyou. They could only strike out from Datong, Beijing, and such places, crossing half the steppe to get there.

The Ming dynasty had it hardest of all—it did not even have Shuofang, like a man missing one hand, and so it could never resolve the steppe threat.

"My lord, I also ask to go with Third Brother. Eighteen hundred li—I need only twelve days to cover the whole distance, and after three days' rest I can serve as the army's vanguard."

Hearing that Li Cunhui was about to grab this great merit, Yang Jiye quickly jumped out, and even shamelessly called Li Cunhui "Third Brother," making Li Cunhui's skin crawl—he wished he could go over and stuff the boy's mouth shut.

Zhang Zhao laughed three times, and without revealing his arrangements, said with deep feeling: "That we can carve stone at Yanran so easily today is all thanks to the Former Han Champion Marquis!

Ever since the Champion Marquis opened Hexi, severed one arm of the Xiongnu, and extended the nation's reach to Zhangye, the Yanran Mountains have always lain within the range of our blades.

This is what it means when the forebears plant trees and the descendants enjoy the shade. When we go now, we should carry the same thought—to settle the steppe threat for our children and grandchildren once and for all!"

The generals understood at once, and every one of them shouted that they wished to be the Sage's Champion Marquis.

Zhang Zhao made his decision. This time he would personally go beyond the frontier, and use this fine opportunity to spread the Six Dharma Sect thoroughly across the steppe, then swiftly establish the Twelve Myriarchies of the steppe, and gradually carry out his plan of diverting the steppe tribes westward—the plan of turning disaster westward.

Perhaps, right now, the cavalry mustered from Hexi and Longyou and assembled at Liangzhou already numbered as many as thirty thousand.

The envoys of Southern Tang and Wuyue were also present, and the Tibetans and Qiang chieftains of Dafeichuan, Songpan, and the Eight Tribes of the Western Mountains would come as well.

Better to bring them all out onto the steppe and let them see his strength in full.

Hmm, this has potential!

(End of Chapter)

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