Chapter 755: Two Famous Generals Serving Together — Could Such Good Fortune Possibly Be Small?

Zhao Kuangzan was not idle either. He was busy saving himself, and his method of self-rescue was simple: writing IOUs.

And they were all IOUs for enormous sums. A thousand strings of cash written on a blank sheet of paper, stamped with his private seal reading "Great Dynasty's Fine Vessel," and it counted.

You might ask whether these IOUs were any use. Well, that depended on the moment, and on whether a man had the sense to see it. At the very least, Zhao Kuangzan himself believed the things were useful.

The source of his confidence was that this rebellion in Wuning Town would surely be crushed at lightning speed, so he, the imperial son-in-law Zhao, tossed them out at a rate of ten a day.

At first, no one paid him any attention at all. The soldiers guarding him mocked him relentlessly, thinking this son-in-law Zhao had been frightened out of his wits.

But by the fifth day, when this Xuzhou rebellion began developing more and more unfavorably for Wuning Town, and Zhao Kuangzan again tossed out ten IOUs of a thousand strings each, no one laughed at him anymore. Some even went back and picked up the IOUs they had thrown away days earlier.

By yesterday, when Zhao Kuangzan still tossed out ten IOUs, the yabing guards watching him had already begun fighting over them.

This showed that the situation in Xuzhou city had deteriorated to the point where it could get no worse.

Zhao Kuangzan keenly sensed that his chance was fast approaching. He prepared to toss out ten IOUs of ten thousand strings each the next day, and then he could negotiate terms with whoever held all the IOUs.

Because that man, and the small clique behind him, would surely be the strongest among the yabing guards holding him, and there was a very good chance they would have the ability to set him free.

But son-in-law Zhao's luck was very good.

Because although his father-in-law Sage Zhang was a founding hero-ruler, he was not a ruthless man like the First Emperor of Qin or Emperor Gaozu of Han, who did not treat their sons-in-law or even their own children as human beings. So he had been arranging people to rescue him all along.

On the first day of the twelfth month, the whole area outside Xuzhou city lay wrapped in silver, the cold so bitter it made men shiver. Yet in such cursed weather, the north, east, and south sides of Xuzhou city were all blocked off by troops flying banners of every color.

Just as the soldiers and officers on the walls turned their eyes to the west, they heard bursts of drums and music, and a troop of cavalry bearing fanged gate banners and recognition banners came galloping up from the distance.

The sharp-eyed ones stood on tiptoe for a look, and instantly went cold all over, because on the recognition banner was written a great black character "Liu." This was the Duke of Tian, Liu Zaisheng, whose troops were stationed at Shangqiu Prefecture, arriving.

With Liu Zaisheng's arrival, there were now two famous generals of Helong outside Xuzhou city.

The tiny Wuning Town of Xuzhou city, a rebellion of a mere three or four thousand men, had actually drawn the Duke of Wei, Li Cunhui, and the Duke of Tian, Liu Zaisheng, to join forces and strike from both sides. Could such good fortune possibly be small?

And more importantly, in such heavy snow, an army of tens of thousands did not lift the siege, but instead kept adding troops and forming battle lines. What did that show?

It showed that the army outside was no ordinary army, but a strong force with strict discipline and united purpose, just waiting to use these few thousand men to claim rewards from the Son of Heaven.

Zhu Yuan had never arranged the time for the uprising with the low-ranking officers who had secretly joined him. He waited until today, when Liu Zaisheng arrived and the rebel soldiers and officers of Xuzhou city were terrified out of their wits, before deciding to act.

His first task was to rescue Zhao Kuangzan, so he did not need many men at all, only the finest.

So Zhu Yuan personally selected twenty blood brothers who had sworn a blood oath with him, and together they wore mail shirts underneath and cloth-faced iron armor on the outside.

They hid armor-breaking war hammers, black iron hammers, wrought bronze maces, iron rods, and other weapons in a large chest disguised as a food delivery, and swaggered toward the east gate tower where Zhao Kuangzan was held.

The men guarding Zhao Kuangzan all belonged to Li Yuanzai's yabing guards. After all, he was the local power and controlled the greatest armed force, the 3,500 Wuning Town imperial guards. A fine hostage like Zhao Kuangzan naturally had to be under his control.

And this in turn made things convenient for Zhu Yuan. The thirty of them, received by a squad general who had already gone over to Zhu Yuan, went up the east gate tower without any obstruction.

The men outside assumed they were going to the east gate tower to relieve the guard, since they were all familiar faces, and never imagined they were rising up.

The men guarding the gate tower had also already been bought off, and as soon as Zhu Yuan arrived, they immediately sent him inside.

On the second floor of the east gate tower, the man guarding it was Li Yuanzai's cousin Li Yuande. He was furiously confiscating the Zhao Kuangzan IOUs from the soldiers' hands.

Clearly, once Xuzhou fell, he, as the trusted cousin of the rebellion's ringleader, would certainly get a blade to the neck, so these IOUs were utterly useless to him.

But the soldiers below were not so easy to handle. Li Yuande confiscated for half the day and only got seven or eight of them, and even drew furious glares from the soldiers in the room.

But Li Yuande did not care, because behind him stood two armored soldiers of the Li family, clad in heavy armor and holding long sabers, while the soldiers across from him wore only padded jackets. They might have twenty-some men, but in a fight they stood no chance at all.

"Kaifeng White Robe Pavilion, bearer form, redeemable upon sight of the seal, ten thousand strings in full, ten notes in all!"

On the third floor, just as the gunpowder atmosphere below was at its thickest, Zhao Kuangzan immediately began shouting from the third floor, along with the sound of paper fluttering and scattering into the air.

Ten thousand strings! Now that the Zhang Zhou dynasty was established, the arrogance of the military men was gradually being suppressed, the administration was relatively clean, the political situation basically stable, the trade routes open, and the price of grain had fallen from the Later Jin period's terrifying four hundred cash per dou to fifteen cash.

And this year the six provinces of Helong, Guanzhong, Zhili, Hebei, and Jiaodong had all enjoyed a great harvest. It was said that grain prices in Luoyang and Kaifeng had fallen to eleven cash per dou, and mutton was only eighteen cash per jin.

The Five Dynasties inherited the Tang system of weights and measures. Reckoned by later standards, one dou of grain was fully twelve jin, so ten thousand strings could buy 910,000 dou, that is, more than 90,000 shi, or eleven million jin of millet.

And a normal able-bodied adult man consumed only a bit more than a thousand jin of millet in a year.

A quick conversion shows just how much purchasing power ten thousand strings had, and how great a shock it could deliver to an ordinary man.

This was a sum that many ordinary people could not earn in a lifetime, or even in several generations of their ancestors combined.

Wealth moves the human heart! Having already had seven or eight thousand strings' worth of IOUs seized by Li Yuande, the several dozen yabing guards on the second floor had gone mad.

"Li Yuande, I'll fuck your mother! Give me back my money!"

No one knew who roared it, but in an instant the crowd exploded. The twenty-some yabing guards flipped over the low-legged table separating them from Li Yuande and his men, then grabbed long daggers and even wooden stools as weapons and charged at Li Yuande and the two armored soldiers behind him.

When Zhu Yuan and his men reached the second floor, this was the scene they saw. He was stunned. He had expected a great battle, but instead they had started fighting among themselves.

The yabing guard who had led the attack also saw Zhu Yuan and recognized him at once. "Sai Jumeng, kill Li Yuande quick, and I'll split a thousand strings with you!"

He assumed Zhu Yuan had also come to make trouble. Zhu Yuan did not explain, but immediately lunged forward, his war hammer swinging out with the motion. Thud! He smashed Li Yuande's temple directly, and red and white matter oozed out through the breach.

The blood brothers behind him also took black iron hammers, wrought bronze maces, and other weapons from the chest, and in two or three moves killed the remaining two armored soldiers.

"I am Zhu Yuan, here to see the Duke of Yuyang. Have no fear, my lord. The Duke of Wei, young lord Li San, has personally led a great army to surround Xuzhou city, and has specially ordered me to slip back into the city to rescue you, my lord."

Zhao Kuangzan was overjoyed. He did know Zhu Yuan, and knew his usual character, so his heart settled a little at once. He hastily crumpled the IOUs in his hand into a ball.

Damn it, that was a hundred thousand strings. With Zhao Kuangzan's family fortune, giving that away would basically mean total ruin.

As everyone stared dumbfounded, Zhao Kuangzan pulled out a single ten-thousand-string IOU and handed it to Zhu Yuan, laughing with great candor.

"My little family fortune has long been squandered away. The rest is all Princess Baoding's dowry, and I would not dare touch that.

But ten or twenty thousand strings, I can still afford. Great kindness needs no thanks. Once the siege of Xuzhou is lifted, come drink at my residence."

Zhu Yuan laughed heartily. "The Duke is generous. We are all stout-hearted men, so I will not stand on ceremony. My thanks for the son-in-law's reward!"

At that moment, the squad general who had brought Zhu Yuan up whispered in his ear and told him about Zhao Kuangzan's IOU-writing.

Zhu Yuan chuckled darkly, then suddenly whirled around and smashed his hammer onto the head of the Li Yuanzai yabing guard who had called for his help. The guard, caught off guard, screamed and collapsed to the floor.

The blood brothers beside him also struck suddenly, hammers and maces falling together, and in a few breaths killed all twenty-some unarmored yabing guards.

Zhao Kuangzan's eyelids twitched violently, because some of Zhu Yuan's blood brothers had already begun searching the dead yabing guards for the IOUs.

Zhu Yuan walked over and kicked that blood brother to the ground with one foot. "You donkey-fucker, you just can't stop, can you? The son-in-law has already rewarded us with ten thousand strings, and you're still not satisfied?"

Zhao Kuangzan's mouth twitched, and forcing a hearty laugh once more, he pulled out another ten-thousand-string IOU.

But Zhu Yuan absolutely refused to accept it. Taking it now would be extortion, and would greatly dilute the favor of rescuing Zhao Kuangzan.

"Does the Prince Consort look down on Zhu, thinking I came to risk my life saving you only for the sake of money?

It is because the Sage is concerned for the Prince Consort's safety, and I came to repay the Sage's kindness."

Zhao Kuangzan finally set his mind at ease. He cupped his hands toward the north and performed a grand empty-hand salute. "Your son has failed to govern his own household, and instead caused Your Excellency to worry."

Zhu Yuan also set his mind at ease. Wealth stirs men's hearts! Zhao Kuangzan had just written an IOU for a hundred thousand strings of cash. With that much money, even blood brothers become unreliable.

But with the two of them echoing each other like this, they immediately steered the mood toward serving the country and the Sage, and so barely managed to unify everyone's thinking.

"Raise the banner, beat the drums. Notify Zou Dalang and his men to move!

Fan Sanlang, you have a loud voice — announce the Sage's edict pardoning everyone in Wuning Town to all quarters.

Third Brother Song, we will escort the Prince Consort out through the east gate, and open the east gate along the way to let the great army into the city!"

(End of Chapter)

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