Chapter 748

Old Blind Man was an old soldier. Though his hair and beard had gone gray, his body was still hale and sturdy. His eyes were big and bright, with no obvious sign of illness, nor was he blind in one eye.

When dust rose in the distance, Old Blind Man spotted it at once and immediately waved the red triangular flag in his hand to raise the alarm.

The reason he was still called Old Blind Man was actually because he suffered from presbyopia — he could not see nearby things clearly — and yet he insisted on posing as a man of culture.

From time to time he would hold some scripture of unknown origin in both hands, squint his eyes into slits, stretch his arms out as far as they would go, and sway his head as he showed off to people.

So the soldiers and constables of the Yanhe Fort Inspection Office gave him the nickname Old Blind Man to mock him.

"Commissioner, people are coming up ahead — looks like quite a few." After waving the red flag, Old Blind Man scurried back to the Yanhe Fort Inspection Office behind him to report.

The inspector of Yanhe Fort was a man with a face full of deep furrows, weathered by hardship. His skin was dark, and he looked less like a proper eighth-rank court official and local tyrant than like an old farmer toiling in the fields.

But everyone around Yanhe Fort knew that this Inspector Zhang was no ordinary man. He was a meritorious official of Hexi and Longyou who had followed the dragon into Luoyang, said to be of the Emperor's own clan. In the great battle of Luoyang he had personally taken seven Khitan heads, and for his merit had been granted the forty-fifth rank, the eighth-grade martial rank of Congyi Lang. After retiring from service he had been appointed inspector of the Yanhe Fort Inspection Office.

Inspector Zhang knew why Old Blind Man was so eager to please: the old fellow hoped his youngest son could take his place and continue serving as a long-service brave of the Yanhe Fort Inspection Office.

The so-called long-service braves were, in contrast to conscripts, soldiers who served in the Inspection Office for long periods during the agricultural off-season.

At present, Inspector Zhang's Inspection Office had two kinds of soldiers: long-service braves and rotating sworn followers. The former were fewer in number, but generally were warriors who had passed the Inspection Office's selection. A small number had even passed the county martial academy's selection and held the titles of Crossbow Captain and Spear-and-Staff Captain.

These men would only retire if they were selected by a higher unit — for example, joining a prefectural guard battalion as a low-ranking officer, or even entering the imperial guards or the personal army — or if they had grown old, like Old Blind Man.

The latter were the Inspection Office's main soldiers. Every able-bodied man in the home district under the Inspection Office's administration would come to the Inspection Office to serve as a rotating sworn follower.

Generally, three months of service made one rotation. When the busy farming season arrived, it was shortened to a rotation every ten days or half a month, or they were not conscripted at all.

If later generations understood it, serving as a soldier in the Inspection Office was basically equivalent to conscript labor — surely a bitter duty that no one would want.

But on the contrary, a soldier's post in the Inspection Office was a hot commodity. Whenever it was someone's turn to rotate in, every man was in high spirits, and the long-service braves were even more prized.

The reason was that serving in the Inspection Office brought benefits. The Inspection Offices that I, Sage Zhang, established across the land were generally placed at key water and land routes or at critical passes.

Their main duties were catching bandits in the countryside, suppressing smuggling, conducting searches, striking mountain bandits and river pirates, and training local able-bodied men.

Such water and land junctions and passes were, under normal circumstances, also busy and prosperous places. And once the political situation stabilized and commerce flourished, the Inspection Office could, with the county magistrate's permission, collect commercial taxes on his behalf.

The Inspection Offices at certain important commercial nodes were even directly administered by the Ministry of Revenue or the Transport Commission. Just looking at these functions, one could see the profits involved were considerable.

This was an important government office combining the roles of police, customs, and tax bureau. Although the vast majority of the tax revenue had to be handed over, even the little that leaked out was enough to be shared among everyone in the Inspection Office.

Moreover, this was the early days of the dynasty. Inspectors everywhere had just come off the battlefield; they had martial rank stipends to draw, their posts came with salaries, and they did not yet have large clans to support.

Importantly, everyone was grateful for the Emperor's grace and still thought of working hard below to repay the Sage's favor in promoting them.

Therefore, the great majority of inspectors could more or less abide by the law and were fairly generous to the soldiers under them.

Even the rotating sworn followers on their service rotation could usually get a few scraps — at the very least, two full meals a day was no problem.

As for the long-service braves, it was even more worthwhile. The visible benefit was a set amount of pay — small, but still an income — plus a decent share and subsidy from the Inspection Office's private purse.

The hidden benefit was that they could polish their martial skills together with everyone in the Inspection Office and adapt to the military environment.

Historically, when selecting low-ranking officers for guard battalions, and even for the imperial guards and personal army, the long-service braves of the Inspection Offices were the main source.

So many long-service braves chose to lease out their forty mu of household land to their brothers, uncles, and nephews to farm, while they themselves entered the Inspection Office to refine their martial skills, waiting to soar into the sky and become part of the state's regular army.

Even if they could not soar, after eight or ten years of service they could save up a large sum of money. For an adult man of rural origin, this was an excellent path in life.

And in an age where martial spirit was so prevalent, an able-bodied adult man who could not even become a rotating sworn follower was basically no different from a cripple. Being bullied, looked down upon, and ending up a bachelor were all highly likely outcomes.

Correspondingly, if one could be selected as a long-service brave, that was a symbol of status! Returning home, your parents would beam and praise you for having promise, and your elder brothers, sisters-in-law, and younger siblings would all treat you as the pillar of the family.

When the clan needed to decide something, or when two families within the clan had a dispute, they would drag you in to be the arbiter.

When conflicts arose with outside clans, or between neighboring villages, you would step forward, announce your status, and the other side would be so frightened they would suddenly become reasonable.

At ancestral sacrifices, you would stand in the front ranks alongside the clan elders and respected seniors. The worthless brothers of the clan could only look at your back and your rear end.

After the sacrifice, your family would get the largest cut of the sacrificial meat, and when the white sacrificial cloth was distributed, your family got first pick.

During the busy farming season, your family used the plow oxen first; during irrigation, your fields were watered first; when paying taxes, the county office's guards and clerks would not dare cheat you on the scales with a big measure going in and a small measure coming out.

At banquets you could sit in the seat of honor. Others ate dry, stringy wild boar and rabbit meat, while you ate glistening fatty mutton and great chunks of rich white pork.

If some family's pretty young widow lost her man and wanted to keep her property and avoid being violated by other men, she would be willing to follow you even without a proper title, just to seek protection.

Every long-service brave of Yanhe Fort enjoyed such benefits. Even an old fellow like Old Blind Man, nearly fifty, had a lover almost thirty years younger than himself.

This treatment was actually comparable to that of a xiucai in the Ming and Qing dynasties. No — one could say it was even better than that of an ordinary old xiucai.

Because the long-service braves had martial force behind them. Problems an old xiucai could not solve with his mouth in the countryside, Zhang Zhou's long-service braves could solve with fists and clubs.

These various special privileges were the biggest reason Old Blind Man, at his age, still diligently practiced with staff and club, curried favor with his superiors, and fought desperately in every annual assessment, refusing to give up his post even if it killed him.

They were also the greatest motivation for his family of six to tighten their belts and let his youngest son leave farm work to train in martial arts full-time.

Yanhe Fort — as the name suggests, it was located by a river. It stood on the north bank of the Yellow River, guarding the famous crossing known as Baima Ford. Past Yanhe Fort, only a li or two away, was the Yellow River pontoon bridge at Baima Ford.

So Yanhe Fort was not only an Inspection Office post but also a small fortress, serving to provide warning and inspection functions for the Huazhou Central Guard that defended Baima Ford.

After all, stationing several thousand men year-round at a crossing like Baima Ford was too costly. Therefore Yanhe Fort was needed as a nail driven in up ahead; only when their warning arrived would the Huazhou Central Guard begin to mobilize.

Inspector Zhang pushed aside Old Blind Man's fawning face. From atop the fort wall, he observed the approaching party — no banners, not many men, and what looked like large carts following behind.

But Inspector Zhang was secretly on his guard. As a veteran from the Zhang family of the Guiyi Army, he was very experienced with the dust raised by horses.

That great cloud of dust just now had clearly required at least two or three hundred riders to raise, yet only thirty or forty riders had appeared. The discrepancy was too great.

Inspector Zhang looked back. Yanhe Fort currently had nine long-service braves; counting himself, ten men who could fight.

There were one hundred twenty rotating sworn followers, but these were merely strong-bodied men, not soldiers. Defending the fort's two- or three-meter walls would be no problem, but taking them out to fight would not do.

And it would take the Huazhou Central Guard at least two quarters of an hour to arrive. Inspector Zhang's vigilance was not unwarranted: aside from the repeated orders of Huazhou's Troop Supervisor, when the Sage himself had set out from Baima Ford to fight the Khitan and Liu Zhiyuan, he had specially dismounted, smiled, and told him to guard this road home well.

Since then, Inspector Zhang had felt the weight of his responsibility. Even the Sage relied on him, so he was especially earnest.

"Old Blind Man, take a few men and go have a look!" Inspector Zhang pointed at the seemingly harmless riders approaching in the distance and spoke to Old Blind Man.

Old Blind Man was originally a yabing guard of Weibo. It was said that he had taken part in the rebellion that once drove the Later dynasty's ancestral temple to the Xingjiao Gate.

The Weibo yabing guards sounded mighty and renowned, but few of them lived long. Anyone who could survive to Old Blind Man's age was an old fox selected from among the rarest of the rare; otherwise he would have died in some ditch long ago.

The moment he heard Inspector Zhang say this, he immediately realized something was wrong.

"Commissioner, is there something off about these people?" Inspector Zhang did not answer, but nodded. Of course there was a problem — that was why he was sending Old Blind Man down to check.

Because although Old Blind Man was still fairly fit and could pass the annual assessment, he only scraped by. His combat strength had already fallen far behind the other long-service braves.

If there really were bandits, losing him wouldn't much affect the fort's fighting strength. Hearing this, Old Blindy silently put on his own set of oxhide armor, which was none too fine, and even donned a leather helmet. Then, carrying a long spear and a hengdao saber slung across his back, he led a few of the rotating sworn followers down from the fort and ran over.

Inspector Zhang also began donning his armor and used flag signals to notify the Long March stalwarts in the fort, whether on duty or resting, to assemble.

Before long, Old Blindy came running back with those twenty or thirty riders, waving a green flag of safety the whole way. Yet Inspector Zhang's heart suddenly leaped into his throat.

For although Old Blindy was shaking the green flag with a relaxed expression, the direction he was running from was not the main gate, but beside a haystack on the wall flanking the main gate. Hidden within that haystack was a Fuyuan crossbow.

Old Blindy still wore that same fawning smile. Bowing and scraping, he said to the iron-tower of a man on horseback behind him: "My lord, allow this old fellow to announce you, and the fort gate will be opened." The iron-tower giant cautiously looked around, found nothing amiss, then gave a faint snort through his nostrils and nodded almost imperceptibly, playing the arrogance of the imperial guard elite to perfection.

Old Blindy stood beneath the fort wall, looking up at Inspector Zhang above.

"Commissioner, you said you are of the imperial lineage of the Longtongue Zhang clan, and can even speak with the Sage—is that true?" Inspector Zhang nodded. In truth, he did not know whether he was actually of the Longtongue Zhang bloodline, but the elders of his family had always claimed so.

In fact, it was quite possible he was. Later-generation genetic sequencing showed that among the Zhang surname populations of Gansu, Shaanxi, and Shanxi provinces, one Zhang lineage—continuous from the Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties and exploding in numbers by the late Tang—was distributed at high frequency, making it one of the largest northern Zhang branches. In all likelihood, they were the descendants of the Longtongue Zhang clan of Shazhou.

One would think that Zhang Yichao, loyal and righteous for his country, was a national hero. Though his own line had most likely died out, the Longtongue Zhang clan ultimately flourished into later generations, numbering at least several hundred thousand to a million people.

Seeing Inspector Zhang admit it, Old Blindy's face showed a gratified smile. His youngest son was only fifteen, still a little short of passing the Long March stalwart selection.

When Old Blindy had brought this up with Inspector Zhang in the past, Inspector Zhang had snapped at him: "If you want that fool son of yours to pass the Long March stalwart selection, you'd have to get me to go beg a favor from the Emperor.

What great deed have you done, that I should throw away my face for you?" Still smiling broadly, Old Blindy suddenly whirled around, and the long spear in his hand thrust straight at the iron-tower giant behind him.

The thrust was so precise that it pierced the armored giant's neck directly, and blood immediately gushed out.

The iron-tower giant let out two gurgling sounds, and before his hand could even rise, he toppled headfirst from his horse. Old Blindy bellowed at the top of his lungs,

"Zhao Zaili has rebelled! These are the remnants of the old Silver Lance Guard!" Inspector Zhang leaped to his feet at once. He uncovered the Fuyuan crossbow hidden beneath the haystack, and two strong men beside him immediately helped him string the great crossbow.

One shot was loosed, and it pierced straight through a burly man. The bolt, passing clean through his body, even pinned a burly man and his warhorse behind him to the ground.

Old Blindy howled, gripping his long spear and holding fast before the gate of Yanhe Fort. All around, terrified travelers fled in panic. The opposing riders loosed five or six arrows at him in succession, but Old Blindy did not so much as flinch.

A rider charged forward. Old Blindy erupted with ferocious fighting strength, and with a single violent thrust of his long spear, he unhorsed the rider.

In the setting sun, the blood was dazzlingly bright. Old Blindy stood ramrod straight, his whole body drenched in blood, and let out a beast-like roar.

Coordinating with the great crossbow and strong bows on the fort wall, he so intimidated the remaining dozen or so riders that they dared not rush the gate. Only when the gate of Yanhe Fort finally closed did he collapse headlong into the dust.

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