Chapter 713: The Merit Is Too Great — So Great That I Can Only Come to Be Your Father

The third year of Shaoming, 948 CE, the twentieth day of the eighth month.

Out on the steppe, Shulu Ping, with only two thousand Khitan armored cavalry remaining, was preparing for a desperate last stand.

The Zubu chieftain Duosage, deluded into thinking he could use his position to extort concessions, demanded that Zhang Zhao grant him three chiliarchs.

The Merkit chieftain Hulubashi hoped to obtain the Wugushan pastures.

The escaped fugitive Yaoluoge Jingyi decided to "let go" of his hatred and find a way to become a dog for me, Sage Zhang.

While the father-worrier Bayegusi was considering how to show his filial devotion.

I, Sage Zhang, summoned to Liangzhou the chieftains of the Qingtang tribes, chiefly the Eight Tribes of the Western Mountains, the Thirty-One Dongdai of Songpan, and the Six Clans of Dafeichuan.

Apart from Langjie Jiangcuo, Pacification Commissioner of Songpan Prefecture, and Su Shangzhi, Pacification Commissioner of Kangding Prefecture, who had already received official posts.

Zhang Zhao re-established Xihai Prefecture at the site of the old Sui-dynasty Xihai Commandery, in the former heartland of Dafeichuan and the old Tuyuhun territory; the prefectural seat was located around the present-day county seat of Gonghe County, Hainan Prefecture, Qinghai.

He appointed Lun Jingxu, head of the Lun clan of Dafeichuan, as Pacification Commissioner of Xihai Prefecture, and permitted the Lun family to recruit the Jintian Garrison of the imperial army in Dafeichuan, with Lun Renbo as Commander-in-Chief of the Jintian Garrison.

Afterward, Zhang Zhao appointed Shen Nianban, Deputy Defense Commissioner of Longyou Province, as Prefect of Huangshui Prefecture, Military Supervisor of Huangshui Prefecture, and Surveillance Commissioner of Qingtang, among other posts, putting him in charge of coordinating aid to the Qingtang Plateau.

At the same time, Cui Huxin of Ya'an Prefecture also received orders to support the Eight Tribes of the Western Mountains and Songpan Prefecture.

Behind these orders lay the fact that the tribal chieftains who had come to court were preparing to begin stockpiling money and grain, ready to throw their full support behind the Six Dharma Sect as it continued advancing into the Qingtang heartland, and they were prepared to resolve matters by war.

However, I, Sage Zhang, did not pay much attention to these matters.

For now, the Qingtang strategy remained a relatively low priority; let Lun Jingxu, Su Shangzhi, and Langjie Jiangcuo go test the waters first. If it worked, excellent; if not, it could still be remedied later.

After I, Sage Zhang, had taken away six beauties from the families of the tribes that had come to court, my mind was entirely focused on the expedition beyond the frontier.

And just as he was summoning the tribal chieftains, the Luantai of the Secretariat and the Bureau of Military Affairs had already completed all war preparations.

According to the operational plan jointly submitted by the eleven Luantai strategists and the nine carriage-and-cavalry staff officers of the Bureau of Military Affairs, they had already begun stockpiling large quantities of supplies at Juyan Lake, Dihan Mountain, Shuofang, and north of the Hetao region, in the surviving and abandoned Great Tang surrender-accepting cities and garrison towns.

This was done, first, to prepare for the army's advance, and second — most importantly — as preparation in case the army could not accomplish its operational objectives before the depths of winter.

If the set operational objectives could not be achieved, the main force would temporarily withdraw to these towns built on the steppe to shelter from the wind and snow.

The remaining elite troops would blend in among the conquered local tribes and bide their time, waiting until the fifth or sixth month of the following year to coordinate with the main force advancing north again.

On the twenty-first day of the eighth month, Zhang Zhao personally arrived at Juyan Lake and held a swearing-in ceremony.

After reorganization and training, the conscripts of Hexi and Longyou left behind twenty-one thousand cavalry; the Hanshan Division, personal army, and imperial army he brought totaled twelve thousand infantry and cavalry.

Besides these, there were also three hundred elite riders from the Eight Tribes of the Western Mountains, the Thirty-One Dongdai of Songpan, and the Six Clans of Dafeichuan who had come to court.

Pale-faced, never imagining that he had come merely as an envoy bearing birthday congratulations yet would now have to take part in the high-level operation of carving stone at Yanran, was Li Jingda of the Southern Tang imperial clan, along with thirty Southern Tang imperial guardsmen under his command whose faces were equally grim.

The envoy of Qian Yue naturally could not escape either; Shen Huzi, who had thought he had stumbled into great luck and had begun to resist what he later came to desire, along with thirty of Qian Yue's inner yabing guards, were likewise completely dazed at the prospect of immediately setting out beyond the frontier to fight.

What kind of people were they! One moment they had been thinking of barely clinging to survival in Jiangnan, scraping together a little money to get by.

The next moment they were to take part in the legendary carving of stone at Yanran, and they could not help asking themselves in their hearts: were they worthy?

Li Cunhui spurred his horse over from the distance; approaching thirty years old, his face was full of irrepressible delight.

Because he already knew that Murong Xinzhang would not be participating in this expedition beyond the frontier, and thinking that he could finally win a merit that Murong the Second did not have, how could Li Cunhui not be happy and excited?

Zhang Zhao also watched Li Cunhui with a smile; this fellow had once been known, together with Murong Xinzhang, as the twin jewels of the Guiyi Army's younger generation.

But in terms of ability, Li Cunhui was not like Murong Xinzhang, who could handle the governance of an entire province or even a state; he was purely a general.

In terms of character, Murong Xinzhang could be called righteous to the heavens, long known as a lesser Mengchang, with friends throughout the realm. Though he held high office, he had only one wife and three concubines — one could say he was very devoted.

Li Cunhui, by contrast, had far more flaws. This fellow treated the soldiers under his command very well — one could say he loved his soldiers like his own sons — but he simply loved to pick fights with other generals of equal rank, and was constantly being reported to Zhang Zhao, giving me, Sage Zhang, no end of headaches.

His private life was even more dissolute; aside from a dozen or more wives and concubines, he had at least six or seven illegitimate children outside, and the powder wars in his household had long been a great joke among the noble circles of Kaifeng, the eastern capital.

But for Zhang Zhao, Murong Xinzhang was destined to be sent out, enfeoffed in a distant place to rule over barbarians as a Xia lord among Yi peoples, whereas Li Cunhui could be safely kept close at hand as a trusted general.

Li Cunhui would certainly never have the glory of wielding as much power as Murong Xinzhang in the future, but his days would surely be far more carefree and relaxed than Xinzhang's.

"Take all of your Right Yulin Guard, and I will also give you Zhang Zhaojie's Front Division and Qu Qilang Qu Yanqing's Left Yulin Wind-Fire Raider Battalion.

In addition, Yang Jiye, Pan Mei, Cao Bin, Wang Shenqi, Yao Kechou, Zhang Yuanhui, and the other generals will all go with you.

As for the specific command arrangements, decide according to the situation, but you must link up with Bai Congxin, Huang Yingda, and the others before the tenth day of the ninth month."

Li Cunhui was overjoyed; Zhang Zhao had essentially given him seventy percent of the finest troops in this campaign. It looked like only five thousand cavalry, but in reality, even fifty thousand steppe cavalry would not be their match.

Still, Li Cunhui was somewhat worried about Zhang Zhao's safety. "If I take all these elite troops away, there will be no one left to guard you, Father."

Zhang Zhao laughed heartily and pointed at the tens of thousands of cavalry waiting quietly in the distance for orders. "I am in Hexi and Longyou — how can you say there is no one to guard me?

These twenty thousand cavalry are enough to serve as two hundred thousand troops, and moreover there are Zhang Zhaozhong, Zhang Cheng, Wang Quanbin, and the rest."

Li Cunhui then accepted the order and departed. Five thousand cavalry with twenty thousand army horses; in the entire force, only Zhang Yuanhui's four hundred riders were fully armored cavalry, and the six hundred riders commanded by Wang Shenqi were heavy-armored elite cavalry; the rest, to conserve horse strength, were all light-armored hussars.

Although this was a reduced configuration among Zhang Zhou's elite troops, to steppe cavalry, cavalrymen with at least one piece of iron armor on their bodies were simply irresistible.

One could say without exaggeration that if the warhorses beneath them were tireless machines, these five thousand cavalry would be enough to conquer the entire steppe.

Watching from afar as Li Cunhui's force slowly advanced north, Sage Zhang also began issuing orders to march east through his temporarily formed staff officer corps, the Wangyi Division.

I, Sage Zhang, had a very clear sense of my own limits. As could be seen from his division of forces, the true main force of this great campaign was not the massive twenty-seven thousand main force beside him, but rather the five thousand iron cavalry in Li Cunhui's hands — the finest elite troops of Zhang Zhou — along with the six thousand cavalry that Bai Congxin and Huang Yingda had already been fighting with on the steppe for more than half a year.

These eleven thousand elite cavalry, plus the twenty to twenty-five thousand auxiliary light cavalry of the four chiliarchies of western Mobei, would accomplish most of the operational tasks.

And the twenty-some thousand men Sage Zhang was bringing along were, in fact, conducting an armed parade.

Although these cavalrymen came from Hexi and Longyou and looked spirited, like dragons among men and horses, in reality the great majority had never been tempered by a major battle; their understanding of military discipline, marching, and the like existed only in training and in their minds.

If Zhang Zhao truly took them to participate in a decisive steppe battle and used them as the main force, he would only be making trouble for himself.

If this great expedition beyond the frontier were made to look utterly wretched, it would undoubtedly deal a severe blow to army morale.

Not to mention that this force also contained large numbers of people from Qingtang, Southern Tang, and Qian Yue, which meant Zhang Zhao had to fight this battle extremely brilliantly in order to achieve the effect he wanted.

Therefore, the true combat main force was the troops of Li Cunhui and Bai Congxin. If Zhang Zhao's twenty-some thousand men could complete the thousand-li expedition beyond the frontier with high quality, and finally take part in a few rout battles, achieving the carving of stone at Yanran Mountain with as few casualties as possible, that would be a tremendous victory.

Once that was accomplished, these twenty-some thousand cavalry would truly become the Western Liang iron cavalry, like dragons among men and horses; the people of the Qingtang Plateau would submit even more, and the warlords of Southern Tang and Qian Yue would find it hard to muster any will to resist.

Lu Sanlang laboriously rose from the tight embrace of a plump, fair steppe woman, rubbed his somewhat aching lower back, glanced at the woman still sound asleep, and thought of me, Great Sage Zhang, who was now marching beyond the frontier.

He, Lu Sanlang, considered himself a strong man, yet dealing with just this one woman, after half a month he was already finding it hard to endure.

And Sage Zhang's body was not much stronger than his, yet he alone had to handle a dozen or more women whom bedchamber politics had forced him to take in — could he possibly bear it?

I heard from that fellow Li Cunhui that the women up on the Qingtang Plateau are quite sturdy!

"Sanlang, up so early?" Lu Sanlang had just risen, and the plump fair-skinned woman was also startled awake. At once she stretched out an arm and pressed the two great mounds of her chest against Lu Sanlang's back, letting out a giggling, intoxicated moan that made Lu Sanlang's legs go weak. He hastily changed the subject.

"I wonder when Baketu will be back. Will that dog Dusha Ge run off to the Northern Sea or Lake Buer ahead of time?"

Baketu is a Turkic word meaning "warrior." It was later absorbed into Mongolian — Bater, Bate, Badu, and even the Manchu Baturu all trace their etymology back to it.

Hearing Lu Sanlang's question, the woman released her arms from around him and stood up with immense pride, saying, "My son Baketu is the bravest warrior of the Western Zubu.

Though he is only sixteen, he is as strong as a giant bear of the steppe, and his wits match the craftiest fox. If he says he will return today or tomorrow, then return he will."

Fine! So I, Lu Sanlang, have also done a bit of bedchamber politics. This woman — not ugly, merely somewhat plump and sturdy, thirty-five years old — is the de facto ruler of the Western Zubu tribe: Lady Yulizi.

She was the principal wife of the previous Western Zubu chieftain. After her husband died, she held firm control of this small tribe of over seven thousand people while raising her young son. She is no simple figure.

And Lu Sanlang, having pursued Shibili — that is, Yaoluoge Jingyi — eastward all the way to the western slopes of the Yanran Mountains, was immediately taken a fancy to by Yulizi. The two hit it off at once. Lu Sanlang lay himself down on the bed, and with over three hundred pursuing cavalry, he blended right into the Western Zubu tribe.

Baketu is Lady Yulizi's son — truly a fine lad of both wisdom and valor, quite renowned among the Zubu people.

So Yulizi simply sent Baketu as an envoy to Dusha Ge to gather intelligence.

Her proud display finished, the woman casually threw on two pieces of clothing and went out. Before long, she brought in a large platter of milk cakes, strips of mutton, and a big bowl of salted milk tea for Lu Sanlang.

Lu Sanlang scratched his head. This woman treated him rather well. Apart from being a bit fierce in her bedchamber needs and being a barbarian, there really was nothing to fault her for.

The two ate a little together, and then they heard cheers from outside. Yulizi leapt up at once.

"It must be Baketu, back again."

No sooner had she spoken than a tall, long-legged youth with an alarmingly wide arm span lifted the tent flap and walked in. Though not especially bulky, one look told you he was an expert archer of the highest order.

The youth first embraced his mother Yulizi, then without any ceremony sat down across from Lu Sanlang and began eating the mutton strips. Toward Lu Sanlang's presence, he showed not the slightest hostility.

This was the steppe, after all — an age when reaching forty counted as dying of natural causes. His mother, past thirty, had endured twenty hard years and had finally found a reliable man of matching status.

This stepfather had no children of his own and commanded several hundred elite cavalry. Baketu was more than delighted — all of this was strength for the Western Zubu!

Lu Sanlang was in no hurry. He waited until Baketu had eaten his fill, then signaled Yulizi to step forward and ask the questions.

Baketu waved a hand, stopping his mother from speaking. He stared straight at Lu Sanlang and said,

"I met Dusha Ge. He treated me very well — gave me a suit of oxhide armor, thirty good arrows with birch shafts and refined iron heads, and two of his finest warhorses. He even said he would marry his granddaughter to me.

So now I am of two minds. I wonder what the Emperor of the Central Plains can give me?"

On the steppe, people generally speak this directly. Even Yulizi thought her son Baketu's way of speaking was perfectly normal. Whom one serves, of course, depends on who offers the greater benefit.

Lu Sanlang loosened his belt and resolved to give this mother and son — a pair of little experience — a proper shock from the Great Zhou.

But first, he very cautiously asked the lad Baketu just what trump card he held in his hands, and whether it was worth making an offer for.

Baketu chuckled. "I've brought a man with me — a clever fool. If I handed him over to Dusha Ge, I could get at least ten times the benefit.

But if I hand this man to you, Dusha Ge is finished. Now it all depends on what price you Tang people can offer."

Lu Sanlang rose abruptly. He knew Baketu was not one to speak carelessly, and was moreover a clever man. If he said this, then he must have gotten hold of information sufficient to decide the whole campaign.

"Lad, use your head. Dusha Ge is nothing but a petty steppe chieftain with fewer than a hundred thousand people.

The Son of Heaven of the Great Zhou rules over a realm of ten thousand times ten thousand li, with a hundred million subjects under his rule. What he can give, Dusha Ge could not even imagine."

As he spoke, Lu Sanlang thought of how Baketu had actually compared the petty Dusha Ge with the Son of Heaven of the Great Zhou, and he could not help bursting into loud laughter.

He laughed until both Yulizi and Baketu were beginning to flush with shame and anger before he stopped.

Lu Sanlang held up one finger. "Never mind what the Son of Heaven can give you. I, Lu Sanlang, can give you right now this many suits of cloth-faced iron armor — the very kind I wear, the kind you've been eyeing so greedily."

Baketu recalled Lu Sanlang's suit of silver-white cloth-faced iron armor and could not help swallowing hard.

What fine armor that was! The finest cotton pounded tight and firm, lined inside with steel plates worth ten thousand in gold on the steppe, and beneath that a suit of gold-thread soft armor. A bow of less than one dan could not pierce it even at thirty paces.

Even an ordinary warrior, with just one suit of such armor, could easily kill the mightiest champion of the steppe.

"You'll give me one suit?" Baketu looked at Lu Sanlang with longing.

Lu Sanlang shook his head and motioned for him to keep guessing.

"You'll give ten suits?" Baketu's voice was trembling. With just ten suits, he could combine them with the dozens or even a hundred suits of hide armor in the tribe and form an elite cavalry unit.

Lu Sanlang shook his head again.

Baketu stood up in excitement, feeling his head spin. "Then how many? Surely not a hundred suits!"

Lu Sanlang clapped a hand on Baketu's shoulder. "A hundred suits it is — provided the information you bring is worth that price!"

Even a steppe warrior like Baketu, upon hearing the words "a hundred suits of cloth-faced iron armor," nearly lost his breath and keeled over on the spot.

Even Yulizi was trembling. She knew this man before her could deliver, because among the three hundred cavalry he had brought, at least a hundred wore such iron armor.

Of course, Lu Sanlang had played a little trick: the hundred suits were conditional on the information being worth that price.

Quite obviously, Lu Sanlang did not believe Baketu could produce information worth a hundred suits of cloth-faced iron armor.

Moreover, even if Lu Sanlang truly wanted to give them, he could not afford to. Ten suits he might perhaps manage somehow, but if a hundred suits of cloth-faced iron armor flowed onto the steppe, he could forget about keeping his own head.

So Lu Sanlang's plan was to fob the lad off with a few suits in the end. If he dared to keep pestering, by then the great army would have marched beyond the frontier. A petty chieftain of a few thousand herders would not dare keep pestering then — he would just have to swallow the loss in silence.

Clever as Baketu was, he had seen too little of the world. His mind had already been so overwhelmed by the hundred suits of cloth-faced iron armor that he had lost the ability to think. He strode abruptly out of the tent, bellowing for his men to bring someone over.

"Shibili? How is that possible! You little brat, how did you manage to capture Shibili?"

Before long, an exclamation of shock rang out from the tent. Now it was Lu Sanlang's turn to be dumbfounded — the lad Baketu had actually captured Shibili, the very man he had been pursuing all along.

The moment Yaoluoge Jingyi saw Lu Sanlang, he recognized him as the Great Zhou general who had been tracking him the whole way, and at once fell to his knees and began to wail.

"General, your servant is not called Shibili. Your servant is called Yaoluoge Jingyi. I now have intelligence of the utmost importance to report. I only beg the General to put in a word or two for me before the Sage. Your servant is willing to go to Liangzhou Prefecture and become a commoner there!"

A long while later, Lu Sanlang swayed on his feet. This dog of a Shibili was not only a leftover fish that had slipped through the Yaoluoge family's net — he had also revealed the most critical intelligence concerning Dusha Ge and the wrist-severing Empress Dowager Shulu Ping.

This intelligence was no longer a matter of whether it was worth a hundred suits of cloth-faced iron armor. It was a matter that bore on the Sage settling the steppe in a single campaign.

This merit was already great enough to raise him, Lu Sanlang, to the rank of marquis or even duke.

Suddenly, Lu Sanlang looked at this mother and son, and thought again of the thousand tents of Western Zubu herders. A bold idea rose in his heart.

The Duke of Kucha Commandery, Bai Congxin, had told him that he had decided to go west and found a state in Transoxiana, answering the Sage's strategy of "summer ruler, barbarian subjects."

And he, Lu Sanlang, was not well received by the entire East-Return faction in the Central Plains. His prospects could be seen to their end at a single glance.

Perhaps this mother and son were his future?

He had no children of his own now, so if he could seize this chance to lead a thousand tents of herders and also go to Anxi to settle among the Uyghurs, at least the prospect of a fiefdom would be secured.

In any case, he had been raised as a Uyghur since childhood — born in Anxi, grown up in Anxi — so returning to Anxi now would not be anything he couldn't adapt to.

Thinking of this, Lu Sanlang took Yulizi and Baketu by the hands, then said seriously to Baketu.

"This merit is too great — so great that now I truly can only be your father!"

(End of Chapter)

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