Chapter 785: The Sweet Fragrance of Gaochang Melons

If you asked Yao Yuanfu to practice benevolence and bring peace to a region, then although he is already one of the more capable and courageous men among the traditional warriors of the Central Plains, this sort of thing he probably would not do very well.

But if you asked how to crush people's hearts with sheer terror, how to use just a few hundred men to cow an entire city into submission, that he knew inside and out.

To put it bluntly, Yao Yuanfu and the several hundred yabing guards he brought with him were no good men. Apart from eating people, there were few evils they had not committed, and he knew exactly how to go about them.

And so, under Guo Guangcheng's worried gaze, Yao Yuanfu did not hold his soldiers back in the slightest.

Starting from the south gate, they chased the White Wolf Army and slaughtered them in a frenzy — and it was not mindless slaughter, but deliberate herding; they did not kill everyone at once.

This had one advantage: once the White Wolf Army's defeated soldiers had their psychological defenses shattered, they would instinctively flee toward places they knew well, often even running to where their families lived in an attempt to hide.

This tactic of chasing them down and raiding their homes, wiping out entire families in one stroke, had been perfected by the yabing guards over two hundred years of warfare in the Central Plains.

Throughout history in the Central Plains, apart from curs like Qin Zongquan and Sun Ru, or after the population of the Central Plains had fallen to a terrifying level, few people resorted to massacre unless fighting a war of annihilation.

When you took a place, it was enough to kill off the entire families of the opposing yabing guards and yabing officers. The rest had to be kept alive to farm and produce wealth for the soldiers.

And so this utterly one-sided battle dragged on for a long time. Yao Yuanfu and his men had entered through the south gate and cut straight through the entire city of Suyab, only stopping when even a brawny man like Bai Zhu'er felt his blood sugar dropping.

By that point, in all of Suyab, not a single person dared remain standing.

In such a land beyond civilization, the common folk were far more sensible than those of the Central Plains. They knelt prostrate along both sides of the road with their families, trembling as they awaited their doom, praying that these soldiers had grown tired of killing and might show a little mercy.

Of course, even if they wanted to flee, it would have done no good. While Yao Yuanfu and Guo Guangcheng were rampaging through the city, Chi Tian and Guo Tianfang had already organized the laborers outside the walls.

Most of these laborers were people who had refused to become barbarians under Guo Guangyi, or who were dissatisfied with Guo Guangyi's rule.

Many of them were even members of the Guo family and herders of the Gray Wolf Tribe to which Chi Tian belonged. Once organized, they quickly sealed off the other three gates of Suyab.

Guo Guangjie had long since woken up, but he did not dare move a muscle. Only when a mountain-like brawny man gnawing on a large leg of mutton grabbed him and hauled him up did Guo Guangjie, now missing half his teeth, begin howling desperately, with not a trace of his former smugness left.

Guo Guangcheng came over dragging his great hammer, furious and wanting to smash Guo Guangjie dead with a single blow.

Yao Yuanfu chuckled, stopping this Guo Erlang. He nodded at Bai Zhu'er, and a cruel sneer immediately appeared on Bai Zhu'er's face.

Guo Guangjie saw wooden stakes as thick as a child's arm, sharpened to points. Above the stakes was a frame specifically for securing a person, and on top of the frame sat a large stone.

Those members of the Guo family who had been tormented half to death while building the inner city were now oiling the sharpened stakes.

Guo Guangjie suddenly felt a stabbing pain in his rear. He struggled in terror, but Bai Zhu'er grabbed him by the throat and lifted him into the air like a goose, leaving Guo Guangjie with only a purple-red face and flailing limbs.

Yao Yuanfu chuckled, and the surrounding yabing guards all burst into laughter.

In the Central Plains, the Great Zhou's military discipline was a bit too strict. Here in the Western Regions, ten thousand li from home, the yabing guards felt as though they had come home.

"Come, someone bring some oil for the back door of this young lord who has dog's eyes that cannot recognize Mount Tai, who does not know what the Celestial Court is, and who willingly abandoned his ancestors to become a barbarian. Consider it a great act of charity from me!"

Yao Yuanfu deliberately put on a look of compassion, and the laughter grew even louder.

Bai Zhu'er tossed him aside in disgust, and Guo Guangjie collapsed to the ground, staring with terrified eyes, defecating and urinating all over himself.

Because he knew what this contraption was. The sharpened stake was being oiled precisely so that it could slide smoothly into his rectum.

The frame for securing a person was to keep him from being impaled to death all at once.

The large stone on the frame was to ensure that the frame would slowly sink a little bit lower at every moment.

"Young lord, you may rest assured. This sort of thing usually takes four or five days to fully skewer you."

"And so that the young lord can properly enjoy himself, I will also have someone feed you honey and cow's milk every day to keep up your strength. Otherwise, if you cannot cry out, it would be no fun at all."

A inhuman smile appeared on Yao Yuanfu's face. Then he said to Luo Yechuan: "I once heard Zhao Siwan say that the highest level of this thing is when the stake's point comes out through the mouth, but the victim has still not fully died, and his eyeballs can still move."

"You watch carefully for me. If the man dies within four days, then your earlier crime of disobeying orders like a donkey-fucker will be punished along with it!"

Luo Yechuan had not actually committed any great offense, but Yao Yuanfu needed at this moment, before the greater storm arrived, to strengthen his own authority. Luo Yechuan had thus very unfortunately run straight into the fire.

As for what the greater storm was — did that even need to be said?

Now that Yao Yuanfu had taken Suyab, Guo Guangyi, in order not to be utterly defeated, would surely launch a ferocious counterattack.

Yao Yuanfu had already seen through what this traitor was planning. Guo Guangyi wanted, under a scorched-earth policy, to turn Suyab into an anvil, while he himself led his elite troops as the hammer, smashing the exhausted imperial army that had crossed the mountains directly beneath the walls of Suyab.

But now that Suyab had been retaken by surprise, if Guo Guangyi did not seize it back before the spring thaw, his death was certain.

Knowing the opponent's move, the countermeasure was easy to find — but it was equally cruel.

Yao Yuanfu sought out Guo Guangcheng and said very seriously: "We brought two thousand men, but Guo Guangyi can still mobilize at least forty thousand — twenty times our number."

"Chief Commander Hu cannot move until at least mid-fourth month, and the earliest he can reach Suyab is mid-fifth month. For these three and a half months, we can only rely on ourselves."

A pained expression appeared on Guo Guangcheng's face. Although many people in this city of Suyab had failed to hold out, they had all once been Guo Guangcheng's closest friends — one could even say his clansmen.

Yao Yuanfu looked at Guo Guangcheng sympathetically. "Guo Erlang, you truly should not have come to Suyab. Why seek out pain for yourself?"

Guo Guangcheng slowly shook his head. "Lord Yao, ever since Lord Guo Xin led the soldiers of the four garrisons to hold the Western Regions alone, my Guo family has never been separable from Anxi, Suyab, and Transoxiana. Can you spare twenty thousand people?"

Suyab and its surroundings originally had around one hundred forty thousand people. Guo Guangyi had moved one hundred thousand away, then brought in five thousand trusted followers.

If one excluded the several thousand scattered across the Suyab region and those pressed into hard labor, then within the city of Suyab there were still around thirty thousand people.

Yao Yuanfu had brought only two thousand men. If they had to guard against these thirty thousand people of uncertain loyalty within, while holding off thirty or forty thousand besiegers outside for a full three and a half months, that was absolutely impossible. Therefore, they could not possibly keep so many people inside the city.

But neither could they simply drive these people out of the city, because they would certainly be used by Guo Guangyi as cannon fodder for the assault.

So only one option remained: dig a pit and bury them.

The five thousand men, women, old and young that Guo Guangyi had stationed in Suyab would certainly all have to be killed. That still left twenty-five thousand people.

Of those, three or four thousand were the families of the men pressed into hard labor, and naturally had to be preserved. That left the fates of twenty-one or twenty-two thousand people undecided.

Guo Guangcheng asked whether twenty thousand could be spared, meaning he wanted to ask if they could kill only five thousand, preserving seventeen thousand residents and three thousand laborers.

But Yao Yuanfu shook his head. Killing only five thousand was no different from killing none at all. He said coldly: "At most we keep twelve or thirteen thousand. Of those, keep three thousand women and four thousand able-bodied men."

Keeping three thousand women meant they could wash clothes and cook, and could also ease the restlessness of the soldiers defending the city. If Chief Commander Hu's great army still could not arrive by mid-fifth month, and the grain ran out, they could also...

Four thousand able-bodied men plus three thousand laborers, plus the two thousand men who had come with them, made nine thousand men to defend the city.

Suyab had just been renovated by Guo Guangyi. If the inner city was not finished, forget it — defend the outer city directly. In any case, if they had to defend both cities, they did not have enough men.

Guo Guangcheng let out a long sigh. He believed Yao Yuanfu was not deliberately making things difficult for him, but had made precise calculations.

These old yabing guards were thoroughly practiced in this whole business; there would be little error or discrepancy.

In the fourth year of Shaoming, on the eleventh day of the second month, Yao Yuanfu and Guo Guangcheng led two thousand brave men over the Boda Ridge, then launched a surprise attack and retook Suyab.

Afterward, Yao Yuanfu subjected Guo Guangyi's younger brother Guo Guangjie, his trusted general Aksa, and more than two thousand soldiers to the cruel punishment of the wooden donkey.

Among them, Guo Guangjie howled in agony for a full three days before he finally died. It was said that in the end, even his internal organs were forced up and out through his mouth.

On the fourteenth day of the second month, Yao Yuanfu carried out a culling of one in three within the city of Suyab, killing more than fourteen thousand people in a single stretch. The burial pits alone numbered over a dozen. This earned Yao Yuanfu the title of Yao the King of Hell.

Hu Guang had just stepped out of the palace of the Great King of the Golden Kingdom in Shule. Somewhat irritated, he scratched his head.

This cousin of the Son of Heaven, Li Congde, heir apparent of the Great Golden Kingdom — when it came to governing the land, settling the people, restoring production, and building waterworks, he truly had real skill.

But he had chanted sutras until he'd made himself a bit simple-minded. His mouth was full of talk about not adding to the killing karma and not overworking the people.

Ask him to mobilize tens of thousands of able-bodied men to follow the army across the Zhenzhu River, and he would put on a face of pained compassion.

Because Li Congde believed that crossing the Tianshan Mountains and fording the Zhenzhu River in mid-third month was an extremely difficult undertaking. In his view, this was not asking him to conscript forty thousand laborers to help transport grain and fodder — it was sending those forty thousand laborers to their deaths. Better to wait until the weather warmed at the end of the fourth month before setting out.

It was said that this heir apparent had long studied Buddhism in Dunhuang. Which eminent monk had taught him, anyway? Not only had he been stuffed full of somewhat pedantic Dharma, but it had even been mixed with a good deal of Daoist Huang-Lao thought, producing a freak like this.

What Hu Guang did not know, however, was that in history, this heir apparent — the fifth Great King after the restoration of Khotan — had twice occupied Shule during his reign. The holy warriors of Central and Western Asia who died at his hands numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and all of them in brilliant victories won against superior numbers.

One could well imagine how fierce the expansion of the Tianfang faith must have been in those days, for a man like Li Congde would never otherwise have been forced to lead campaigns in person time and again.

"How much longer until the Great King reaches Shule?" Hu Guang suddenly stopped walking and asked Guo Guangsheng beside him.

Guo Guangsheng hurriedly pulled out the little notebook in his hand, glanced at it, and broke into a bitter smile.

"The dispatch arrived five days ago. The Great King and the Grand Princess have only just reached Gaochang. The Grand Princess heard that the honey melons of Gaochang are unmatched under heaven, and it seems she intends to wait until mid-fifth month to eat the fresh melons before setting out again for Shule."

Hu Guang shut his eyes in pain. Was this damn Great King's palace of the Golden Kingdom even run by you father and son or not? War is about to break out — could you please not be so casual about it!

From Gaochang to Shule is itself nearly three thousand li. Even traveling fifty li a day would take two months.

If they wait until mid-fifth month to eat melons and then return, it will be mid-seventh month by the time they arrive. Yao Yuanfu and Guo Guangcheng will long since have been beaten to death.

And what's more, they could clearly have taken the southern route in spring to cross the desert quickly and come back, but they insisted on taking the northern route, sightseeing and enjoying themselves the whole way.

Hu Guang was frantic! Although he was Commander-in-Chief of the Western Expedition, he held only military authority, not civil authority.

His greatest power was the edict Zhang Zhao had granted him, permitting him to conscript twenty thousand troops in Anxi and Beiting. All other grain, fodder, baggage, and laborers had to be supplied by Anxi and Beiting.

And although Anxi was called a province, in practice its administration was still centered on the Great King's palace of the Golden Kingdom.

After all, this was the Yuchi family's patrimony of over a thousand years. That they were now willing to offer their lands in submission to the court was already remarkable enough — how could one truly replace the original Golden Kingdom of Khotan with a provincial government office?

Hu Guang was burning with anxiety. Although he had confidence in Yao Yuanfu and Guo Guangcheng, he feared not the ten thousand but the one in ten thousand. The sooner they could go, the sooner they should go. If they waited until Li Shengtian and his wife returned, the daylilies would have long gone cold.

Even waiting until the end of the fourth month, as Li Congde thought best, Hu Guang felt was not acceptable.

However, Guo Guangsheng at his side was beginning to catch on. He blinked a couple of times. "The Great King was once a renowned and enlightened ruler in Anxi. At such a critical juncture, he surely cannot be ignorant of what is at stake.

When I was in the Central Plains, I once heard the Commissioner of Military Affairs mention that His Highness the Great King did not wish to return to Anxi, and desired to settle peacefully in the Central Plains with the Grand Princess of Wei, Lady Cao. But the Son of Heaven would not agree.

Could it be that the Great King still wishes to return to the Central Plains in his heart, and is deliberately ignoring matters?"

It had to be said that Guo Guangsheng was not much good at leading armies into battle, but his ability in logistics, analysis, and planning was quite decent. He had guessed Li Shengtian's thoughts about seven or eight parts out of ten.

The kings of the Yuchi family of Khotan all seemed to have a bit of an obsession with the Tang.

After Li Shengtian arrived in the Central Plains, he had seen the ten-thousand-li expanse of splendid rivers and mountains he had only dreamed of. He ate delicacies from mountain and sea, wore Shu brocade and Su embroidery, kept company with cultured scholars and refined gentlemen, and took boundless delight in composing and exchanging poetry.

In particular, after he heard that the Li Jing brothers had offered up their lands, his heart itched unbearably.

For within the Southern Tang realm alone, Li Jing and his brother Li Jingsui, Han Xizai, Xu Xuan, and Xu Xuan's younger brother Xu Kai were all celebrated throughout the world — true masters of poetry and prose with real learning, carrying the air of the High Tang. How could Li Shengtian, who so loved literature, bear to leave?

What was more, Li Shengtian's eldest sister, the Empress Dowager Ciyou, was also in the Eastern Capital. After this parting, who knew whether brother and sister would ever see each other again?

Cao Yuanxin was much the same. In the Central Plains, her prestige was unmatched for a time, for she could be the aunt who had rendered great kindness to the Shaoming Son of Heaven, or she could be his cousin, and she was also the Empress's own paternal aunt. All of the Cao family's brothers, sons, and nephews were in the Central Plains as well.

In her year and more in the Central Plains, she had also become enamored of polo, mahjong, and the like, enjoying herself so thoroughly that she forgot Khotan entirely. If she left the Central Plains and returned to Khotan, looking around, there would be no one of equal standing to her at all.

With things like polo and mahjong, if you truly love them, then having no teammate or opponent who can truly match you and play seriously is indeed very, very painful.

More importantly, this couple — who could be said to have given everything to support Zhang Zhao at the most critical juncture of his life — knew exactly what sort of person Zhang Zhao was.

Li Shengtian believed that if he continued helping Zhang Erlang govern Anxi well, he would never again in this lifetime be able to return to the Central Plains. He would absolutely be tossed off to Samarkand to be a petty king of some foreign state.

Uh! Going to a fine place like Samarkand to be king — was that a good thing or a bad thing?

That depended on the person. For the vast majority of people, calling it the endpoint of one's struggles would be no exaggeration at all. But for Li Shengtian and his wife, it was no different from exile.

Of course, given their status, they certainly could not openly oppose Zhang Zhao's policy of Xia rulers and Yi subjects, but they could engage in nonviolent noncooperation!

So the two of them hit it off at once and decided to slack off! Before they had even left Liangzhou, the couple had already lain flat.

Hu Guang was also a clever man. After hearing Guo Guangsheng's analysis, he blinked a couple of times and caught on.

Indeed, the Great King of the Golden Kingdom and the Grand Princess of Wei, that couple, were simply slacking off in passive resistance.

And their slacking off had its benefits. First, by slacking off, the Golden Kingdom's continuation would not vanish — there were still the heir apparent Li Congde, the Marquis of Yanqi Li Congyu, and so on.

Second, they could return to the Central Plains as soon as possible to enjoy themselves.

And with the two of them slacking off, the heir apparent Li Congde, who was acting in state affairs in Shule, also began to act timidly and hesitantly.

Because if Li Shengtian was slacking off, yet Li Congde was still doing everything and holding every power in the Western Regions,

what would that become? Wouldn't it be wanting the glory on the surface (meaning Li Shengtian and his wife returning to the Central Plains to enjoy themselves) while also wanting the real benefits underneath (meaning Li Congde, representing the Li family of Khotan, continuing to hold the great power of Anxi)?

That would surely earn the Sage's loathing!

Good heavens. So it was not that the heir apparent was pedantic — it was precisely because he understood all too well that he hurriedly distanced himself from the matter, and was also deliberately ignoring affairs.

No wonder that when he had spoken with him just now, Li Congde could not go three sentences without mentioning his royal father. He had actually been hinting to Hu Guang, but Hu Guang simply had not noticed.

"Hah!" General Hu, Commander-in-Chief Hu, let out a long breath. In political matters, the difficulty did not lie in how hard they were, but in whether one could find the crux. As long as the crux could be found, the rest was easy.

In Anxi now, the provincial government office had not even begun to operate. It was only nominally the highest political institution. What actually ran these several thousand li of territory was still the Great King's palace of the Golden Kingdom.

Hu Guang looked at Guo Guangsheng and said, "Since that is the case, I can only submit a memorial to the Great King of the Golden Kingdom, requesting to temporarily assume the military and civil authority of the Golden Kingdom, as Left Chief Clerk of the Golden Kingdom's overlord administration.

This matter is of great importance. I fear it will require you, Dalang, to make the journey personally."

Guo Guangsheng immediately clasped his hands and acknowledged the order. "Rest assured, Commander-in-Chief. I will select a fine thousand-li horse and set out at once. Within twenty days, I will certainly return with the Great King of the Golden Kingdom's instruction."

Hu Guang heavily patted Guo Guangsheng on the shoulder. The round trip was close to five thousand four or five hundred li. To return within twenty days meant covering at least two hundred seventy or eighty li a day. This was trading his life for the mission!

But what choice did Guo Guangsheng have? His own younger brother and a whole group of clansmen were still in Suyab. He had no choice but to stake his life on it.

(End of Chapter)

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