Chapter 77: When Will Another Ban Dingyuan Come?

In the Khotan royal palace, atop the Five Phoenix Tower, a plump Khotanese man in black imperial robes, wearing a crown of gold set with gems and fine Khotan jade, his skin fair, his eyes long and narrow, with a mustache above his lip and a sparse goatee on his chin, was beside himself with delight.

"Hahaha! This nephew of mine is certainly no ordinary character. No wonder my esteemed father-in-law would rather give away twenty armored champions than keep him — he couldn't kill him, couldn't keep him, so sending him away was the only good option!"

"Your Majesty!" Beside the plump man, a palace-dressed woman with a golden flower ornament on her forehead, wine-flushed makeup, and jeweled hairpins in her hair shot him a reproachful look, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

"What kind of son-in-law jokes about his father-in-law? My elder brother sent word that this Zhang cousin of mine is cunning as a fox and fierce as a tiger, with the air of the late Grand Guardian.

He's no cloistered young lord like your brother-in-law the White-Robed Son of Heaven. Even the Great King could do nothing with him. Now that he's slain the Zhongyun king Sanpoba with just a hundred men, you'd better have a plan for how to place him!"

The man laughing uncontrollably was none other than Li Shengtian, the Great Sage Son of Heaven of the Great Treasure Golden Kingdom.

And the one reproaching him with a worried look on her face was Li Shengtian's Queen of Khotan, Cao Yijin's sixth daughter, Cao Yuanxin.

Consider the family relations here: Zhang Zhao was nominally the son of Li Shengtian's elder sister, Princess Fengtian, so he should call Li Shengtian uncle.

Yet Zhang Zhao had just had a brief affair with Li Shengtian's cousin Li Ruoliu in Wuni City, and he was also the nephew of Li Shengtian's father-in-law's wife, so the two should be of the same generation.

Cao Yuanxin was born of Cao Yijin's principal wife, Lady Suo, making her Zhang Zhao's blood cousin, but by custom, as Li Shengtian's queen, Zhang Zhao had to call her aunt.

And if he could return, Zhang Zhao would also have to marry Cao Yuanxin's own niece, Cao Shijiu Niang Yanxi, which would make him Cao Yuanxin's niece's husband.

"Haha! Sixth Daughter, don't worry! My father-in-law dares not use Zhang Erlang because your Cao family's foundation was originally his Zhang family's.

But I have no such worry. The Karakhanids are persecuting our Buddhist faithful on a grand scale, and Zhang Erlang is so divinely brave, his armored men each worth a hundred. Who knows if he isn't another Xue of Youzhou or Duke Zhuang of Xing — a divine general who awed the Western Regions! I shall use him!"

Cao Sixth Daughter sighed inwardly. She knew her husband had always been deeply dissatisfied with the Cao family's replacement of the Zhang family back then, especially since it had led to the early death of his own nephew Zhang Geng.

Her father Cao Yijin had married her into Khotan precisely to mend that rift. Though Li Shengtian had never mentioned the Cao replacement of the Zhang again all these years, she had not expected that while his lips stayed silent, his heart still remembered.

Ah! Who could blame him — the Great Sage Son of Heaven lost his mother early and was practically raised by his elder sister, Princess Fengtian!

Three hundred paces beyond the Five Phoenix Tower, the Tang folk and Hu lads who had followed Zhang Zhao all the way numbered at least two or three hundred, perhaps more, with dense crowds still surging in behind.

No wonder they were so stirred at the sight of Zhang Zhao, for when these sons of Tang stranded in Khotan had joined the Khotanese to restore their kingdom, their greatest support had been Zhang Yichao, who had already recovered Gua and Sha.

Back when Zhang Yichao's might shook Hexi, the Tibetans in Khotan had their rear cut off and their hearts and gall shattered — that was what gave them their chance.

Though Zhang Yichao had not sent a single soldier to Khotan, everyone knew they had someone to rely on.

"Young lord! Since the wuchen year (908), when we saw the White-Robed Son of Heaven send armored riders to welcome Princess Fengtian, for twenty-three years we have seen no Han armored soldiers, no Han official dignity!"

After the procession halted, the black-robed old man who had collapsed weeping and cried out whether the Son of Heaven in Chang'an knew, rushed to the front of Zhang Zhao's horse.

Zhang Zhao quickly dismounted and helped the old man up. "May I ask your honorable surname, elder?"

The old man sobbed twice. "This old one is surnamed Zhu, descendant of Captain Zhu of the Sixth Flying Cavalry Regiment of the Yanqi Protectorate in years past. In the fifteenth year of Tianbao, my ancestor followed the Anxi field army east to quell the rebellion and has never returned. Now we know only the surname, not the given name!"

The mood was heavy and sorrowful. One could imagine the state of mind of the Anxi Four Garrisons' officers and men when they heard of rebellion in the interior and organized the Anxi field army to return and suppress it.

They had spent so many years in Anxi, garrisoning and farming, long since rooted there. Departing eastward overnight, never to return — who knows how many never saw the wives and children they left in Anxi again.

"Young lord, we hear the Great Tang has been restored in the Central Plains. As in the story of the Great Han, when will the soldiers come? When will a Ban Dingyuan come? We are straining our eyes in longing!"

A man with a hengdao saber at his waist, its scabbard already battered and broken, looked eagerly at Zhang Zhao.

The Great Tang! Zhang Zhao smiled bitterly to himself. This Great Tang — how to put it?

Never mind the Western Regions ten thousand li away — even in Hexi, even in the Central Plains, when Li Cunxu bore the Prince of Jin's three arrows and awed the realm, entering Luoyang, everyone believed the Great Tang had returned.

Not only because among the four great states of Liang, Jin, Wu, and Shu, Li Cunxu already held three, and the Later Tang's territory was the largest of the Five Dynasties, seemingly on the verge of unifying the realm.

But more because his father Li Keyong had not merely been granted the imperial surname Li — he had been entered into the Li Tang imperial genealogy, under the Prince of Zheng registry, as recognized Li Tang imperial clan.

Yet who could have known — just when everyone thought Li Cunxu was Emperor Taizong the Civil, the fellow pulled a dazzling about-face and told everyone: you thought too much. He wasn't a budget Emperor Taizong the Civil, but a beggar's version of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang!

Good heavens — before entering Luoyang he was the model second-generation ruler under heaven, his fame rivaling "if only I had a son like Sun Zhongmou."

The moment his backside touched the throne, he immediately put on a show of every kind of Hefei-style hundred-thousand-man head-delivery maneuver.

What kind of man is this!

With information traveling so slowly, Zhang Zhao guessed that even Li Shengtian probably still believed the Later Tang was at its zenith.

Ah! "As in the story of the Great Han" — ha!

Zhang Zhao knew what that meant. Back when Wang Mang usurped the Han and the Western Regions were lost, the Western Han Cheshi garrison troops and their descendants had waited just as bitterly as the Anxi sons of Tang did now.

But they were luckier. In the fifteenth year of Yongping, Emperor Ming of Han sent the Chief Commandant of Equipage Dou Gu to smash the Northern Xiongnu and recover Yiwu. Dou Gu then sent Acting Major Ban Chao westward into the Western Regions.

At that time, Ban Chao roamed the Western Regions with thirty-six men, seizing their rulers — killing whom he wished to kill, capturing whom he wished to capture — one man turning through the farthest lands, his might awing all the Hu!

These people truly believed the Great Tang had been restored in the Central Plains! They were still waiting for their Great Tang's Ban Dingyuan to appear!

At that moment, Zhang Zhao even felt the urge to impersonate a Great Tang envoy, just like the protagonist in the Tang cavalry story he had once read.

But he could not, and could not bear to. Facing people who had longed for their homeland for generations, unless truly cornered with no way out, how could he deceive them? He still had other options!

"Yes! I too have heard the Great Tang has been restored! But Shazhou is also isolated in the northwest, and the Xianyun of Ganzhou block our road, so no imperial envoy has yet arrived.

But I believe that as long as the Great Tang is restored, what are the mere Xianyun of Ganzhou? Surely the day will come when the royal army arrives from the east.

Yet before that, though I have only a hundred armored men, I am willing to do something. When the royal army comes, we will already have recovered Kucha — would that not be glorious!"

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