Chapter 743: There Are Never Any Shortage of Big Brains

This upheaval did not leave the newborn Great Zhou unscathed. In the prefecture of Jingzhao, Chang'an, the august father-in-law of the emperor, Chief Minister and Defense Commissioner of the Guanzhong Province, Duke of Qiao Cao Yuanzhong, was nearly beaten to death by the rebels.

In the divine capital Luoyang, the rebels stormed the Purple Tenuity Palace. Consort Cao, carrying the imperial prince, could only flee into the Jiama Barracks for refuge. The raging fire that broke out burned nearly one-sixth of Luoyang's area.

More than three hundred houses were burned down, over forty commoners were burned to death, and at least a thousand were injured.

As for those injured for various other reasons, they were beyond count. At Luoyang's south gate, a stampede broke out as people forced their way out of the city, leaving over a hundred dead and wounded.

But all this was far better than what befell Chief Minister of the Jianghuai Province, Commandant of the Consort, Duke of Yuyang Zhao Kuangzan.

Before Zhang Zhao established his rule over the Central Plains, the Later Jin's imperial guard numbered some thirty thousand infantry and cavalry, while the Military Governors across the realm held roughly thirty to forty thousand provincial yabing guards who counted as elite troops.

These sixty to seventy thousand men were the Later Jin's confidence in standing against the Khitan — more precisely, the confidence of Shi Chonggui and his ilk. The "one hundred thousand honed swords" that Jing Yanguang boasted of referred precisely to them.

Their combat strength was indeed not low. Twice they sent the Khitan Emperor Yelu Deguang home covered in dust and shame, so much so that he earned the fine title of "Camel War God."

After Du Chongwei shamelessly bent the knee by the Hutuo River, Yelu Deguang naturally had no kind face for these Later Jin "honed swords." He had even planned to drive them into the Yellow River and drown them.

So after Zhang Zhao entered the Eastern Capital, the Later Jin army — having been tormented by the Khitan and then battered in the Battle of Luoyang — numbered only a little over twenty thousand.

Zhang Zhao selected seven thousand of the finest and formed the Left and Right Divine Guard Armies, later reorganized into the personal Left and Right Divine Might Guards.

Of the remainder, some became garrison troops, and some were simply discharged. But there were fish that slipped the net — and that fish was the Wuning Army of Xuzhou, once commanded by Hu Cile.

First, their best men were taken away by Hu Cile at the Hutuo River. Later, after they entered the Southern Tang, they were reinforced with armor and personnel.

When Zhang Zhao campaigned in Huainan, Hu Guang entered Xuzhou alone and won them over without shedding a drop of blood. And Zhang Zhao, wanting a stable rear so he could strike hard at the Southern Tang, which was still putting up a decent fight at the time, chose not to carry out a large-scale reorganization of the Wuning Army.

After that, the post of Military Governor of the Wuning Army in Xuzhou changed hands with remarkable frequency. First Hu Guang served as acting governor for two months, then Ma Yaozi, Ma Zhaoyuan, held the seat for less than three months, and then Guo Wei took office for a little over a month.

And after Guo Wei left, the Wuning Army — by then reorganized into the Wuning Garrison of the imperial guard — had no commanding officer at all. Fu Yanqing's eldest son by a concubine, Fu Zhaoxu, held things together in name only for half a year as Commander, until Zhao Kuangzan formally took office.

It can be said that whether called the Wuning Garrison or the Wuning Army, this bunch of soldiers was the last surviving remnant of the late Tang and Five Dynasties Military Governor yabing guards anywhere in Zhang Zhou's territory.

It must be said that I, Sage Zhang, went to enormous lengths on every front to stamp out the Five Dynasties custom of inferiors overthrowing superiors — yabing guards coercing their yabing officers, yabing officers coercing their governors, and governors threatening the Son of Heaven.

I promoted loyalty and righteousness, was generous with money, generous with land, reformed the military system no fewer than three times, and constantly plied them with lofty talk of loyal service to the nation and resisting foreign humiliation. One could say I summoned every ounce of primordial strength I had.

The results were indeed excellent. After Zhang Zhao established his rule over the Central Plains, not a single mutiny of yabing guards occurred.

There was no helping it — this emperor was simply too good at the game. These yabing guards and yabing officers, already made brutish and bullheaded by the simple mindset of settling everything with "physics," were no match for Emperor Zhang's scheming even if you tied them all together.

Still, to say no one resented Zhang Zhao for this would be a lie. In this world, for every ordinary person who hopes for a stable life, there is sure to be a violent maniac with a dark, even twisted heart.

If they go a single day without touching a blade, it's as if their soul has left them. If they don't stir up some trouble, it's as if their days have been wasted.

And more tragically, such people were not few in the late Tang and Five Dynasties — one could say you could grab a whole fistful of them. So in Zhang Zhou, from governors who had lost their positions as local tyrants to yabing guards who had lost the right to draw a blade and cut a man whenever they pleased, those who resented Emperor Zhang could not be called nonexistent — only too numerous to count by the cartload.

Under these circumstances, the Wuning Army of Xuzhou — which had basically kept its structure intact and had not been purged once each by Yelu Deguang and Zhang Zhao — became the greatest gathering place for filth and villainy.

Great numbers of degenerates who had been discharged by Zhang Zhao and who loved licking blood from a blade all flocked to Xuzhou. At the same time, the excessively frequent rotation of governor-level officials gave them constant room to band together.

The reason Zhao Kuangzan, in his posts as Chief Minister of the Jianghuai Province and Commander-in-Chief of the Wuning Garrison, could hound the Huaibei bandit Li Renshu into having no place to stay was that the Wuning Garrison, top to bottom, had a conflict of interest with the Huaibei bandit Li Renshu.

Once Li Renshu was driven out, the countryside he controlled would become a place for the Wuning Garrison, top to bottom, to line their pockets.

From this one can see that although they were called the Wuning Garrison of the imperial guard, in reality they were still the Wuning Army. Zhang Zhao indeed did not understand this clearly. Had he understood, he would have waited for Liu Zaisheng to recover from his illness and sent an entire garrison to relieve the Wuning Garrison, then carried out a thorough purge.

He would not have let Zhao Kuangzan go take office with only a little over three hundred of his personal retainers. Although Princess Baoding, Zhang Qiw an, was not his biological daughter, and Zhao Kuangzan was naturally not his son-in-law by blood, Zhang Zhao was no Li Shiji either — he had no hobby of specially ruining his sons-in-law.

But through a twist of fate, Zhao Kuangzan met with tragedy. Just as unrest erupted one after another in Chang'an and Luoyang, the four gates of Zhao Kuangzan's Chief Minister office were tightly shut. Outside stood armored soldiers with spears and sabers, and inside, the smell of blood had not yet dispersed.

Zhao Kuangzan's retainers had just put up the fiercest resistance, but the attackers were not only formidable — there were also traitors among their own ranks. After paying the price of more than thirty dead, they were all tied up.

Zhao Kuangzan himself was quite composed. He was not tied up, because these people had not come to kill him — they had come to raise him up as their leader.

But when he saw Wang Jun, Zhao Kuangzan could not help sighing: "The Imperial Father is still too merciful. He took the great garrison of Hedong and entered Taiyuan without killing a single man, and in the end let schemers grow contemptuous of him." Wang Jun was none other than Liu Zhiyuan's chief strategist of old, and had once represented Liu Zhiyuan in the Eastern Capital, where he was received by Yelu Deguang.

After Zhang Zhao pacified Taiyuan, he executed only those with notorious reputations, such as Su Fengji. For men like Wang Jun, he merely confiscated their property.

A trace of shame crossed Wang Jun's face, but it vanished in an instant.

"Lord Zhao, scion of the imperial house of the former dynasty and consort of the new dynasty, you command both prestige and popular esteem. Now there are treacherous ministers at court stirring up evil, and darkness blots out the sun. We have come to ask you, my lord, to go with us to the capital and purge the court of villains." Zhao Kuangzan looked at Wang Jun and nodded as if suddenly enlightened.

"So it is you, Wang Xiufeng, doing the string-pulling in the middle. No wonder all the fools under heaven have gathered together — it turns out there is one not-quite-so-foolish, wildly ambitious schemer pushing them toward the execution ground." Having said this, Zhao Kuangzan thought for a moment.

"If I am not mistaken, Zhao Zaili of Weizhou, Liu Jixun of Weizhou, Song Yanjun of Huazhou, and that fool of an uncle of Liu Chengyou, Li Ye, should all have boarded your pirate ship already." Wang Jun clapped his hands and laughed.

"Besides them, there are also great figures among the meritorious officials of Helong who stand with us. Among the old loyalists, peerless warriors like Xue Huairang and Pan Huan have recruited retainers and raised the righteous banner. From Jiangling to the Khitan, the great Buddhist orders have also acted in concert with us. Old officials of Meng Shu, Ma Chu, and Nanping, and the crack troops of the Southern Tang, have already moved. Lord Zhao, the whole realm has risen in revolt — all that is lacking is a man of prestige to take the lead." Zhao Kuangzan's expression changed sharply. The men Wang Jun named were indeed all possible rebels.

"With such a grand momentum, is Hou Yi of Hedong among you? If he is, then I will absolutely not join." Wang Jun was taken aback. He truly could not recall any grudge between Hou Yi and Zhao Kuangzan, and inwardly thought Zhao Kuangzan was somewhat tempted, so he said:

"Hou Yi is old and decrepit, long since stripped of his former valor. He actually wants to be a rich old man in the Eastern Capital — truly a disgrace to the warriors of Hedong."

"Hahahaha!" Zhao Kuangzan burst into loud laughter.

"That old wretch Hou Yi — in his youth his name for loyalty and courage filled the realm, but in old age he has become expert at reading faces and trimming his sails. The fact that he is in the Eastern Capital and has not joined you tells me he has no faith at all in you, Wang Xiufeng. Hahaha, I am relieved. You people cannot succeed." Hearing this, Wang Jun's face darkened until it could drip water. Hou Yi had not merely refused to join their uprising — he had even quietly gone and informed on them.

Wang Jun's first choice had originally been to seize Li Congyi, Duke of Jinyang, because he was the son of the late dynasty's Mingmiao Emperor.

But because of Hou Yi's informing, they had been forced to flee in panic and settle on the Mingmiao Emperor's grandson, Zhao Kuangzan, as their candidate.

And what humiliated Wang Jun even more was that this information had been tricked out of him by Zhao Kuangzan — it truly gave him the urge to kill someone.

"Wang Xiufeng! With the present sage Son of Heaven on the throne, with all within the four seas on the verge of submission and the people longing for peace, how empty-headed must you be to choose to rise up at this moment? The way I see it, you are not leading these fools in rebellion — you are helping the emperor round up all the disloyal traitors in one pot! Were I the Imperial Father, I would certainly not kill you; I would thank you instead." Zhao Kuangzan spoke these words with utter sincerity. He truly could not understand: the emperor's fame was awe-inspiring, even the Tibetans on the plateau and the Zubu people on the steppe had knelt before him, and he held tens of thousands of elite Helong troops in his hands.

Never mind anything else — whether it was his uncle by marriage, Prince of Liaoyang Murong Xinzhang, Duke of Jin Yan Jin, Duke of Su Li Cunhui, or Duke of Kucha Bai Congxin, any one of them could have crushed these people. How did they dare to rebel?

This still has to be said: Consort Zhao's breadth of experience was lacking. Never mind that these people only dared rebel because Zhang Zhao had gone beyond the frontier — even in the time of Tang Taizong, Prince Yi'an Li Xiaochang, General of the Right Martial Guard Liu Deyu, and General of the Left Gate Guard Zhangsun Anye still dared to rebel.

In the era of "Pig Rides Me," the eunuch Cao Jixiang still wanted to rebel and become emperor. Even in the republic of the twentieth century, there were still people declaring themselves emperor in some mountain hollow and issuing edicts to Chang Kaishen on Frog Island.

Compared with those "legends," Wang Jun and his lot rebelling against Zhang Zhao would have to step back a bit.

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