Chapter 716: The Subtlety of Its Use Lies in the Mind

Lu Sanlang, of course, had no idea he had just been cursed out by Li Cunhui again.

Even if he had known, there was nothing he could do about it. When Li Cunhui got into one of his reckless moods, apart from Yan Jin, he dared curse even Murong Xinzhang and Bai Congxin. Cursing Lu Sanlang a few times was practically doing him an honor.

Besides, Lu Sanlang was very excited right now — very excited indeed!

What he had originally proposed was a direct surprise attack on Duosage, and what he had been telling everyone all along was a direct surprise attack on Duosage. Qu Yanqing, Cao Bin, and the others were very excited, and Huang Yingda was very excited too.

Everyone said the difficulty was too high — no, wait! Too low. It could definitely be done.

Because arriving almost at the same time as the southern main force under Qu Yanqing, Cao Bin, Murong Yanzhao, Pei Tongyuan, and the others was Huang Yingda, coming from the west.

Originally it should have been Bai Congxin arriving with the main army, but since they had marched beyond the frontier last year, they had been fighting on and off outside the border for nearly a year now.

Because supplies were so hard to come by beyond the frontier, the plump Hexi heavenly horses and dragon horses had lost a great deal of condition, far inferior to the warhorses of Li Cunhui and the others, who had set out directly from Hexi.

So after receiving Lu Sanlang's intelligence, Bai Congxin immediately transferred several thousand of the best-condition warhorses to Huang Yingda and had him lead nine hundred elite cavalry, riding day and night without rest to reach Lu Sanlang.

Added to Qu Yanqing and the others, that made nearly two thousand elite cavalry, and Lu Sanlang himself still had three hundred riders with him.

At the same time, Baketu, who had already been renamed Lu Ketu, had selected three thousand sturdy herders of the Western Zubu as auxiliaries.

Soon this force of five thousand cavalry was assembled. After Murong Yanzhao and Qu Yanqing each declined once, Huang Yingda took command without further ceremony.

No one else, not even Lu Sanlang, had any objection, because their seniority was far below Huang Yingda's.

And at this moment, I, Sage Zhang, had only just led my army to the Han-dynasty city of Lady Fan, still more than six hundred li from Yanran Mountain, and a full thousand li from the Zubu people's Woluoduo.

The city of Lady Fan was actually no more than fifty or sixty li from the old city of Junji Prefecture of the Great Tang, which Yang Jiye and Pan Mei had originally wanted to search for.

Moreover, when Zhang Zhao arrived at the city of Lady Fan, Yang Jiye and the others had passed through only two or three days earlier.

With a bit of coincidence, the two groups could very well have met.

But on the vast Gobi and grassland, sense of direction is an extremely difficult thing to determine.

Especially after a Han army marches beyond the frontier, communication between units is basically impossible, and losing one's way is hardly a rare occurrence.

So even when the two armies were at their closest, probably only a hundred or two hundred li apart, meeting would still require enough good luck.

Zhang Zhao divided his twenty-seven thousand infantry and cavalry into a front army and a rear army. The rear army, five thousand strong, carried a large amount of baggage and was led by Fan Shun, Commander-in-Chief of Yingyang Garrison and Marquis of Xinchang.

Zhang Zhao personally led the main force of twenty-two thousand infantry and cavalry at the very front. On this march, every soldier was a combat soldier; there were no support troops.

Therefore feeding horses, donning armor, making camp, and even cooking all had to be done by the officers and soldiers themselves.

Even Zhang Zhao was the same. The Emperor marched together with the soldiers, and when conserving horse strength was necessary, they had to roll up their armor and advance on foot.

What they ate was food stewed in blackened great cauldrons, mixed with tea leaves, milk bricks, cured meat, peas, and the like — full of oil and salt, but somewhat hard to swallow.

Even Sage Zhang's field rations were the same as an ordinary soldier's: thirty percent steamed cakes of fine white flour, seventy percent coarse-grain flatbread.

Besides sharing hardships with the soldiers, Zhang Zhao constantly went deep into every company of one hundred men to march together with the soldiers, and even personally served as company inspector or squad general for five companies.

At the same time, the Emperor's second son Zhang Xianyu, whom Zhang Zhao had brought along, was treated the same way. Zhang Zhao threw him into the very lowest ranks, starting as a deputy fire-team leader. After a few days, he was transferred to another unit, working his way up from deputy fire-team leader all the way to company inspector.

Beyond that, during the march Zhang Zhao continually organized the soldiers into opposed drills, or launched surprise attacks on small tribes that refused to submit to royal authority, temporarily promoting soldiers who distinguished themselves to junior officer positions so they could grow accustomed to the atmosphere of leading troops in battle.

As for logistics, Sage Zhang kept an even tighter grip. During the grueling march, the Emperor would at any moment pose questions to the second-generation scions of Hexi and Longyou merit families around him — problems such as calculating army rations, estimating enemy numbers by eye, and determining direction by observing the stars in the sky.

For ordinary soldiers and officers, he focused on surprise inspections of their knowledge of warhorse care, weapons maintenance, and veterinary medicine.

Those who could answer were rewarded; those who could not had to help others tend warhorses, carry fodder and provisions, and the like.

In this way, the army marched all the way to a point some ten-odd li southeast of Yanran Mountain. The Zhou soldiers, now deep in the boundless great grassland, could already see Yanran Mountain in the distance, its summit capped with snow.

Yet Zhang Zhao still had not seen so much as a single herder, let alone large numbers of steppe cavalry.

After confirming again and again that his route was correct, Sage Zhang still ordered the great army to halt. They made camp beside a small hill, along the bank of a small river that should have been a tributary of the Punu River.

Looking back at the more than twenty thousand troops behind him, Zhang Zhao was very cautious. Whenever the Han or Tang marched beyond the frontier, had it ever been with fewer than eighty or a hundred thousand? With him, it was only a bit over twenty thousand. Even counting all five routes of attack, it came to no more than seventy thousand infantry and cavalry.

Especially now, with only a bit over twenty thousand men present, he had to be extra careful.

It was not that he feared a surprise attack by some steppe cavalry. Right now, this steppe was like Anxi and Transoxiana — an era of amateurs pecking at each other.

Never mind hegemons of the Xiongnu or Turkic sort — there was not even anyone of the Xueyantuo or Uyghur class. If someone really was blind enough to come looking for trouble, it would save me, Sage Zhang, the effort of going to find them.

What Zhang Zhao feared now was that he had led his army astray.

So while making camp, he sent the elite cavalry around him to do their best to find some guides.

He also summoned all the officers and men in the army who came from the Shuofang Tangut or were even from steppe tribes themselves, along with some steppe scouts from the Brocade Guard and the Dharma-preaching monks the Six Dharma Sect had sent into the grasslands, to cross-check everything.

Everyone studied the map for a long time and in the end unanimously agreed that neither the direction nor the route was wrong. Several Tatar warriors who had been near Yanran Mountain before also firmly maintained that the high mountain before them was indeed Yanran Mountain!

That was strange!

Zhang Zhao scratched his head. How was it that they had reached Yanran Mountain and still had not seen hide nor hair of a single person?

It shouldn't be like this! Could it be that the steppe tribes of this era were as shrewd as the Northern Yuan in the early Ming? Had another Arughtai appeared on the steppe?

I, Sage Zhang, could never have imagined that Yang Jiye, whom he had missed five or six days earlier, was at this very moment leading several hundred riders less than a hundred and fifty li to his northwest, slaughtering left and right.

His "good son" Yang Wudi had already done his work for him ahead of time, sending the Yedugu tribe fleeing north in droves. It would have been strange if he could have seen anyone.

But since the direction was correct, Zhang Zhao stopped worrying. The army had ample provisions, the horses were in good flesh, there was still enough time, and more importantly, the whole army was of one mind.

Continue north, all the way to where the Great Tang's Anbei Protectorate-General once stood. He refused to believe there would be no tribes there either.

And so I, Sage Zhang, after resting one night south of Yanran Mountain, broke camp the next day and arrived at the foot of the mountain's southeasternmost edge, roughly twenty li south of what in later times would be Khairkhan Dulaan in Övörkhangai Province, Mongolia.

Historically, during the Manchu Qing period, Emperor Kangxi ordered Fiyanggū and Sun Sike to serve as the vanguard and personally led the campaign to this place, where the famous Battle of Jao Modo was fought against Galdan.

In that battle, the sixty-eight-year-old Sun Sike displayed tremendous prowess, using infantry to defeat cavalry and sending Galdan fleeing in disarray; even Galdan's principal wife died in the fighting.

This last figure of the Choros house never recovered, and within less than a year he died in misery and illness.

Zhang Zhao did not realize that this was the site of the later Battle of Jao Modo, but he did know of another tragedy that no one wished to recall.

In the third year of Zhenghe under Emperor Wu of the Former Han, in the sixth month, Emperor Wu, using the witchcraft affair and the alleged plot to place Liu Bo, Prince of Changyi, on the throne as pretext, had Li Guangli's key political ally and in-law, the Chancellor Liu Qumao, cut in half at the waist, and had Li Guangli's family arrested. Word of this soon reached the steppe.

In the seventh month, Li Guangli's strategy of gambling on military merit to atone for his crimes failed, and he could only retreat with his army. The Xiongnu Chanyu Hulugu, on the advice of Zhao Xin and others, led a great army in pursuit of the Han forces all the way to Yanran Mountain.

When the Han officers and soldiers learned what had happened in Chang'an, their morale wavered. Li Guangli, seeing that returning to court would mean certain death, simply surrendered to the Xiongnu.

Seventy thousand elite Han troops, carrying the awe-inspiring martial spirit that Wei Qing and Huo Qubing had built up through dozens of great victories, were annihilated here to the last man.

Zhang Zhao did not know the exact spot where Li Guangli finally bent his knee, but according to the histories, it could not have been far from here.

Just at that moment, the Youyi Army scouts who had gone out to look for guides sent back word that traces of an old military camp had been found in this mountain hollow.

Zhang Zhao immediately ordered the great army to move to this place.

To be sure, the site of a Han-dynasty army camp could not possibly survive intact to the present day, but neither would this have been a camp of the steppe peoples; more likely it was the old site where the Great Tang had once stationed troops.

For on these ruins there remained, unusually, traces of Central Plains-style rammed-earth walls.

Zhang Zhao at once ordered an altar set up, with the three livestock offerings of pig, ox, and sheep, along with melons, fruit, and fine wine as sacrifices, while monks of the Six Dharma School set up a simple rite and chanted sutras for the dead.

After all this was done, Zhang Zhao climbed a small hill to the left of the camp.

Around him crowded the officers and soldiers who had just joined him in offering sacrifice to comrades who might have died a hundred years ago, or perhaps a thousand.

Li Fang, a Hanlin Academician accompanying the expedition, had just composed a long and eloquent funeral oration, drawing a burst of praise from the staff officers of the Wangyi Division.

But one could not say this army was basically illiterate, because in the past few years, under Zhang Zhao's deliberate urging, the level of education in Hexi and Longyou had risen considerably.

These sons of Hexi-Longyou meritorious officials, or of the personal army and palace guard, had all more or less studied for a few years, so calling them illiterate would certainly be wrong, but it was limited to recognizing some characters and knowing how to hold a brush.

Zhang Zhao pressed his hand downward, signaling the surrounding soldiers to quiet down, then looked at them with a smile and asked, "Who among you can recite Chen Tao of the Great Tang's 'Longxi Ballad, Second Poem'?"

Among the soldiers, those who knew it were about to raise their hands, when unexpectedly a dark-skinned young fellow with fuzz still on his lip jumped up at once and shouted loudly, "Sage, this junior officer can!"

The soldiers all looked — well now! The one shouting was none other than our Sage Zhang's own son, the Emperor's second son, Zhang Xianyu.

Everyone hurriedly refrained from raising their hands; to raise a hand at a time like this would be far too tactless.

Zhang Zhao also spotted Zhang Xianyu and with a smile beckoned him up. He had not sent Zhang Xianyu to Nanxi Prefecture this time precisely in order to boost his confidence, and now that there was a chance for him to show his face, naturally he wanted him to come up.

Zhang Xianyu had darkened a great deal and grown much more cheerful. As soon as Zhang Zhao extended his hand, Zhang Xianyu grabbed his wrist and leapt up the slope in one bound.

Though his literary talent could not compare with Zhang Xiancun's, Zhang Xianyu had nonetheless received a proper imperial education, and a single "Longxi Ballad" was no challenge to him at all; he opened his mouth and began to recite.

"We swore to sweep away the Xiongnu, heedless of our lives; five thousand sable-and-brocade coats perished in the barbarian dust. Pity the bones by the Wuding River — they are still the men in the dreams of spring boudoirs."

This poem by Chen Tao has always been regarded as exhausting the cruelty of war, and has always been treated as an anti-war poem.

And so Zhang Xianyu, who had originally come up in high spirits to show off, found his voice growing lower and lower the further he recited.

Those who could gather around the earthen slope where Zhang Zhao stood were mostly second-generation Hexi-Longyou nobles with some education, and they too began to feel that something was amiss, their expressions turning somber.

The soldiers behind did not know what had happened up front, but human emotions are contagious, and they too quickly fell silent.

Zhang Zhao drew a deep breath, as if remembering something, his expression extremely complex, and after a moment drew another deep breath.

Everyone watched their Emperor, not knowing what had come over Zhang Zhao.

Suddenly, just as everyone was utterly baffled, our Sage Zhang removed his outer robe, picked up a bowl of the fine wine just used in the sacrifice, and slowly poured it onto the ground.

Along with the glistening wine, drop after drop of tears suddenly welled from Sage Zhang's eyes and rolled down.

The assembled civil and military officials were stunned; amid cries of alarm, they all fell to one knee in bewildered confusion.

Zhang Xianyu thought he had made his imperial father cry, and in terror prostrated himself flat on the ground, trembling all over.

At a moment like this, someone was needed to play the straight man and ask, "Why does the Prime Minister laugh?"

Li Fang was well suited to such an occasion. He feigned puzzlement and asked, "Why does the Sage weep? This is no bearing for a king!"

Zhang Zhao held up the wine bowl and first repeated a line from "Longxi Ballad": "Five thousand sable-and-brocade coats perished in the barbarian dust."

Then his voice turned sorrowful, and looking at Li Fang he said, "What I weep for is what my heart cannot bear. This was not merely five thousand — it was a full seventy thousand of our Han sons!"

Right here in this place, they could have gone home, back to the side of the ones who dreamed of them in their spring boudoirs, yet because of Li Guangli's shamelessness and the muddle-headedness of the Former Han's Shizong, all of them were buried here.

A soldier always has his moment of wrapping his body in horsehide, but he must not die so senselessly, so utterly without glory, in this desolate wilderness!"

Only then did everyone understand that what the Emperor wept for was the seventy thousand brave sons of the Great Han who had died here a thousand years ago.

After pouring out the wine, Zhang Zhao took the hands of Zhang Cheng and Wang Quanbin beside him, drew a deep breath, and then spoke to the two of them and to the soldiers before him.

"All of you will one day command a hundred thousand troops as Li Guangli did. If in the future you encounter such a situation — and I, Zhang Zhao, will also have my day of old age and muddle-headedness —

please remember that you must bring our Han sons home, and not let them die for nothing in the bitter wind and rain of autumn.

Today these sons are all witnesses. Before the seventy thousand heroic spirits of the Former Han from a thousand years ago, We hereby swear this oath.

From this day forward, when the soldiers of our Great Zhou shed blood for the realm abroad, their families shall be safe.

Even if a man's family commits a crime, so long as he brings my good sons home, even if it be rebellion, We shall spare his life, and his family shall be dealt with leniently!"

These words, these few tears — spoken from different mouths, their effect is entirely different.

If it were an emperor like Zhu Yunwen, who cut the soldiers' pay and benefits while hypocritically mouthing high-sounding phrases like "Do not make me bear the name of killing my uncle" to tie the soldiers' hands,

the soldiers would surely curse inwardly, "Who the hell are you trying to fool?"

But coming from our Shaoming Sage Zhang — an emperor who not only shared the soldiers' hardships but also gave freely of offices, titles, gold, silver, and jewels, and who himself rose to the throne from a mere Jiangyuhou — the effect was completely different.

No one would think Zhang Zhao was faking it; they would only feel that the Emperor truly was grieving for the seventy thousand Han soldiers who had been done to death a thousand years ago.

In fact, Zhang Zhao was not entirely faking it either. There was certainly an element of performance, but not much.

Before our Sage Zhang transmigrated, among all the Former Han military commanders, he had detested precisely these two wretches, Li Guangli and Li Ling.

One gambled with the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers; as commander-in-chief, his head was full of nothing but power and money, without the slightest breadth of spirit or aspiration — selfish to the extreme.

The other had no self-awareness whatsoever and no filter on his mouth, talking about taking Dragon City with five thousand infantry. In the end he himself "surrendered" under duress, all pretense, and lived on — pity only the five thousand Danyang warriors who followed him.

Since ancient times, an emperor's tears have always been an extraordinary thing!

And in the Zhang Zhou dynasty, after Zhang Zhao's several years of restoring the moral backbone of the civil officials, the official historians, as the most representative figures, had recovered the fastest.

A Court Diarist from the Secretariat, biting on his brush handle, scurried over to the hill in a puff of smoke, holding up his little booklet for recording the Emperor's words and deeds and writing away furiously.

As he wrote, he kept glancing at Zhang Zhao's expression, striving to make his account vivid and apt.

But very quickly he was squeezed by the surging tide of people until even his shoes fell off. What a joke — with his slight frame, how could he compete with the cutthroat soldiers around him?

The soldiers crowded in tightly, like the frenzied fans chasing celebrities in later ages. Wang Quanbin, whose hand Zhang Zhao was holding, was the first to kneel. He threw himself to the ground and wept aloud, saying to Zhang Zhao,

"Your subject will never go down that path. If my family truly committed treason against Your Majesty, without the Sage's order, I would personally take up my blade and, for the greater righteousness, destroy my own kin."

Zhang Cheng, clad in armor, knelt on one knee. "The Shizong Emperor of the Former Han was a hero, but he grew up in the palace and did not know the soldiers' hardships, so his actions were inevitably rash.

When a man had merit, he was praised to the heavens; when he erred, the Emperor wished to exterminate his entire clan. That is why there arose a commander like Li Guangli, who had no regard for his soldiers.

But in our Great Zhou, the Sage's magnanimity is vast, he understands the feelings of those below, and his rewards and punishments are measured. The soldiers of the three armies all wish to repay him with their deaths, and such a tragedy as befell the Former Han will absolutely never occur here."

Still, one must study! The level of Zhang Cheng's words has already surpassed that of an ordinary general.

And hearing Zhang Cheng speak thus, the officers and soldiers around could not help but inwardly compare our Emperor Zhang Zhao, the Son of Heaven, with the Filial Martial Emperor of the Former Han.

They suddenly realized that our Son of Heaven was actually a sage lord even more brilliant and divinely martial than the Filial Martial Emperor!

For a moment, feelings of gratitude and relief, pride and glory, sent everyone's adrenaline surging, and shouts of "Long live! Long live!" spread throughout the valley.

Zhang Zhao immediately pulled Zhang Xianyu up, letting this dark-faced little fellow—no, this dark-skinned lad—also feel a share of this glory.

"My son, you didn't think that one poem of yours was enough to make me weep, did you?" When the cheering had subsided somewhat, Zhang Zhao asked Zhang Xianyu with a smile.

"Hahaha!" The surrounding officers and soldiers all burst into laughter, and Zhang Xianyu, quite embarrassed, brushed the dirt from his clothes—it had gotten on him when he had prostrated himself on the ground just now.

Zhang Zhao also rarely broke into a smile. "'Pitiful are the bones by the Wuding River—still they are the men of spring boudoir dreams.' These words are true. My fine sons of Zhang Zhao ought indeed to be the men of spring boudoir dreams.

But you lads must know: if a man cannot use the sword in his hand to guard, for his family and for our race, this rich and fertile land our ancestors left us,

if he clings to life and fears death, and dares not resist when the enemy comes, then he does not even have the right to become a man of spring boudoir dreams—he only deserves to die like a pig or a dog.

I refuse to believe that any young lady in her spring boudoir could be so foolish as to take a fancy to a coward!"

"Hahahaha!" The laughter grew even louder, and countless soldiers, their faces full of excitement, jested with one another.

Seizing the moment, Zhang Zhao waved his hand. "My lads, follow me to carve stone on Mount Yanran, to tell the herdsmen of the steppe that we Han sons have returned, and to have them prepare once more to pay homage to the new Heavenly Khagan!"

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