Chapter 788: Whoever Offends Our Mighty Han, However Distant, Shall Be Put to Death

In mid-June, at Suyab — this was Hu Guang's second time in this place, and it was also the place where he had first entered Zhang Zhao's notice.

Back then, his elder brother Hu Wei had intended to use his cavalry to make himself indispensable, because in those days the Sage did not yet have much cavalry; the only usable light cavalry were the few hundred riders of the Hu family.

Later Hu Wei was humiliated and brought low by the Sage, and Hu Guang, a boy of fifteen, began to be promoted from then on.

But looking back now, his father Hu Cile at that time may well have harbored the same intentions as his elder brother; his elder brother's daring recklessness may well have been influenced by their father.

At this thought, Hu Guang hardened his heart. After Li Jing surrendered his territory, his elder brother Hu Wei and the last few dozen remaining knights of the Hu family could only follow Li Jing in surrendering.

Because of the Hu family's special circumstances, they would of course not be pardoned. However, to spare Hu Guang's feelings, Zhang Zhao still sent men ten thousand li to ask Hu Guang's wishes.

If Hu Guang agreed, Zhang Zhao would banish Hu Wei, these few dozen riders, and their families to Anxi.

If Hu Guang did not wish to show leniency, then most likely after the Southern Han was conquered and destroyed, they would be used on the battlefield against the Jinghai Army.

The difference here was still very great. The Hu family were originally Anxi Tatars. For others, banishment to Anxi was only slightly lighter than execution, but for the Hu family, being sent to Anxi was nothing more than going home.

"Jiangnan is hot and damp, much like the Yue region. Northerners going south to the Jinghai Army mostly fall ill, while Jiangnan men are better adapted. Though Hu Wei and the others are rebels, they are still brave and skilled cavalry. Used against the Jinghai Army, they would be a hundred times more valuable than in Anxi."

Ever since his mother took her own life, Hu Guang no longer considered Hu Wei his elder brother in his heart.

"Commander-in-Chief, urgent report from Beiting!" Li Jiwo, Hu Guang's personal guard officer and adjutant, came running in holding a secret letter sent from the Beiting province.

This man's elder brother, Li Jixun, was the infantry commander Hu Guang relied on most heavily in this western campaign; his skill in deploying troops and arranging formations was not inferior to Yao Yuanfu's.

And although Li Jiwo was not skilled at deploying troops and formations, on the battlefield he was peerlessly brave.

At the great archery ceremony in the second year of Shaoming, he competed with the imperial champion Murong Xinchun, and prevailed in lance, spear, axe, and hammer, falling slightly short only in foot archery and mounted archery. The Son of Heaven personally bestowed armor upon him and ordered him to escort Hu Guang on the western campaign.

"Eleven messengers set out, and only two were left by the time they reached Suyab, and even they are nearly spent. The physicians are working to save them. As for those fine heavenly horses, I doubt they can be saved."

Li Jiwo, brave as he was, did tend to ramble on a bit.

Hu Guang valued his valor and did not mind it, but hearing Li Jiwo speak this way, Hu Guang knew something major must have happened. He opened the letter, and joy immediately rose to his brows.

"Quickly, go find Master Yao, the Guo brothers, Pei Shengyuan, and your elder brother, and bring them here!"

Before long, the senior generals of Hu Guang's army had all assembled. Hu Guang spread out the secret letter in his hand and said with some excitement:

"An eight-hundred-li express report. Bai Guizi has already led his troops across the Duotan Range. His vanguard smashed the Oghuz–Karluk allied force at the old site of the Yinshan Protectorate, capturing several hundred soldiers and officers under the Oghuz Great Yabghu, and has already mapped out the route across the great desert of Yibohai.

Around the Mid-Autumn Festival on the fifteenth of the eighth month, he will certainly reach the west of Talas and invites us to join him in a pincer attack on the rebels Guo Guangyi and the rest."

"Excellent! Lord Bai has come from the Yanran Mountains, and his command is all elite cavalry. With them, the rebel Guo Guangyi will not escape."

Yao Yuanfu was overjoyed. He had now come to appreciate the pleasure of beating a weak opponent, and the yabing guards under his command also seemed to enjoy this feeling of unrestrained, wanton freedom.

"If that is so, then we should set out now. Otherwise we would waste the hardship Lord Bai and his men endured crossing the great desert." Li Jixun also nodded and spoke at once.

Hu Guang looked at him thoughtfully. "Adjutant Li means that we should now go and pin Guo Guangyi at Talas, to keep him from fleeing further?"

Li Jixun nodded and cupped his hands. "Commander-in-Chief, Guo Guangyi commanded forty thousand troops and besieged the city for two months, yet killed or wounded no more than three to five hundred of Master Yao's men. This shows his army is not strong.

Now he is fleeing in panic. By the time he returns to Talas, who knows whether he still has twenty thousand men. With morale unsteady, it is indeed possible he will keep fleeing.

And merely killing these tens of thousands of remnant soldiers — how would that show the matchless valor of our western expedition's warriors? Better that we immediately pursue westward.

If Guo Guangyi sees that I have only ten or twenty thousand men, few cavalry, and no barbarian horsemen guarding me, he will surely dream again of the old Anxi Army's defeat at Talas. Not only will he not leave, he will think of turning the tables.

Moreover, behind the rebel Guo Guangyi are the Satuq Khan and the Oghuz Yabghu. If we advance west with few troops, showing arrogance and weakness, they will not know that Lord Bai has already crossed the great desert, and will surely lead troops to surround us.

Then, outside the walls of Talas, we shall wash away the shame of the Great Dynasty's Marshal Gao's defeat, and make the various barbarians know once more the heroic spirit of our Han and Tang warriors, so that in days to come their legs tremble at the sight of us."

"Good!" Hu Guang slapped the low table with one palm. "The barbarians west of Anxi have long forgotten the majesty of the Great Dynasty of old. It is time to teach them a lesson!

My intention is this: draw six thousand armored troops, four thousand support troops, and five thousand sworn followers, and advance west at once, reaching outside Talas before the twenty-fifth of the seventh month to annihilate the rebels!"

Lu Duoxun gently lifted the door curtain of the White Tiger Command Hall and cupped his hands in salute to Hu Guang, who was calculating grain and fodder.

Hu Guang hurriedly waved at Lu Duoxun. "Young Lord Lu, you're here — why stand on ceremony? Come help me deal with these documents."

Lu Duoxun's father, Lu Yi, had served as Hu Guang's Secretary when Hu Guang took office as Military Governor of the Zhongwu Army in Xuzhou. He was frugal and devoted to duty, and deeply trusted by Hu Guang — which was also the reason Hu Guang had brought Lu Duoxun along on this journey to the Western Regions.

One must understand that in the present Zhang Zhou, the Emperor's favorite men of letters were those who could mount a horse and shoot the enemy, and dismount and draw a blade to cut men down.

If they also had frontier achievements, that was simply perfect; within a few years they could leap to the fourth rank or even the second or third rank.

And although Lu Duoxun was still a few months short of sixteen, this lad was full of schemes and cunning, with eight hundred tricks up his sleeve.

He naturally knew that Hu Guang had brought him to Anxi in order to cultivate him. And though the journey with Hu Guang had tempered this somewhat frail and bookish youth, broadening his spirit and giving him something of a heroic, chivalrous air, the hardships he had suffered were more than all those of the previous fifteen years of his life combined.

He knew even better that Hu Guang favored him only out of admiration for his father Lu Yi. Of course, his handling of documents and his dealings with people also won Hu Guang's approval, but he was still far from being taken into Hu Guang's inner circle.

So the lad rolled his eyes, and his cunning bubbled up. He did not obey Hu Guang, but instead cupped his hands.

"Lord Hu, Suyab is ringed by mountains on three sides, its strategic position the finest in Anxi. Within the valley are ten thousand qing of fine fields, rich in produce, enough to support three hundred thousand people. It is practically a smaller Ningyuan.

In the days of the Great Dynasty, holding Suyab meant one could use it as a base to march west and overawe the various barbarians. Losing Suyab meant the Four Garrisons were in constant danger of being captured.

Fifteen years ago, when the Sage was in Anxi, he stationed troops and moved settlers to Ningyuan, and also ordered the Guo family to hold Suyab. He intended to use the strategic positions and produce of Ningyuan and Suyab as today's reserves. How far-sighted that was.

Now the Sage wishes to make the Xia sovereign and the Yi his subjects, and to settle the Riverlands, Persia, and other places. Ningyuan's grain and fodder can supply a hundred thousand troops to conquer Kang, An, Mi, Eastern Cao, and other lands.

Only Suyab is ruined. To supply what fifteen thousand troops need now, everything must be transshipped from Shule. After crossing the Tianshan and the Zhenzhu River, only one or two parts in ten survive — an enormous cost.

Therefore, your servant believes Lord Hu should still put conquest second and restoring Suyab's production first."

Hu Guang rubbed his chin. He had in fact considered this question too. For a fifteen-year-old of the Lu family to think of such things showed real insight; it was not in vain that he had brought him to Anxi to be tempered.

But Hu Guang looked at Lu Duoxun with a faint, ambiguous smile. "Young Lord Lu, you wouldn't be trying to persuade me to stay behind in Suyab and not go to Talas, would you?"

Lu Duoxun secretly swallowed. Inwardly he grumbled — he really did wish Hu Guang would stay in Suyab, because that would be the best choice for Hu Guang.

But clearly Hu Guang would not do it, because this was a chance to wash away the shame of Talas!

Moreover, Guo Guangyi had married Guo Zhou'er — the beauty the Guo family had originally intended to present to the Sage — to Li Guoshou's grandson, that unlucky fellow who broke his neck two years ago.

Such a thing, even for a common man, would be a grievance worth spilling blood three chi high. Raised to Zhang Zhao's level, it was not merely an insult to the Emperor, but an insult to the Great Zhou itself.

This was not slapping Zhang Zhao's face — it was slapping the backsides of the Great Zhou's tens of millions of people!

So this campaign against Talas also carried a weighty meaning: "Whoever offends our mighty Han, however distant, shall be put to death!" How could Hu Guang, as commander-in-chief of the army, possibly not go?

If Lu Duoxun dared to remonstrate at this juncture, that would show insight but a muddled head, and Hu Guang would absolutely send him back to the Central Plains.

So Lu Duoxun cupped his hands. "For the capture of the rebel leader this time, Lord Hu must of course lead the troops personally. But your servant is willing to remain in Suyab and assist Lord Guo Guangcheng.

If Lord Hu can grant full authority, your servant is also willing to go to Shule and persuade the royal heir, Lord Li Congde, to send the families of these thirty thousand laborers to Suyab to open up farmland."

Hu Guang pondered for a moment. Guo Guangyi had moved a hundred thousand people out of Suyab, and Yao Yuanfu had killed more than twenty thousand, so now only a little over twenty thousand remained.

It was exactly as Lu Duoxun had said — to say nothing of supporting a great army's westward advance, even feeding these tens of thousands of people required grain to be laboriously transported from Shule.

If Suyab were to be restored to its former level, so that it could bear the heavy task of supporting the army's westward advance, at least two hundred thousand people or so would be needed to settle and farm the land there.

But of the hundred thousand people Guo Guangyi had moved to Talas, at most thirty to fifty thousand could be moved back, leaving a shortfall of over a hundred thousand.

Yet as it happened, the sworn followers who had come from Shule, together with the civilian laborers, numbered more than thirty thousand. If their families were all moved over as well, the population would recover at once.

Moreover, the Golden Kingdom of Khotan, after more than ten years of great development, still had around seven hundred thousand people even after moving two hundred thousand to Ningyuan, and its grain stores were enough to feed the whole country for five years and still have surplus.

With such wealth, moving eighty to a hundred thousand people to Suyab would be no problem at all.

Besides the people of the Golden Kingdom, Beiting could also take on part of the resettled population.

And Lu Duoxun was capable of handling this task, because on this very campaign's march from Shule to Suyab, he had assisted the army's marching administrator, Guo Guangsheng, the whole way.

However, there was still a problem. Hu Guang looked at Lu Duoxun and asked very seriously, "Moving a hundred thousand people — even the Great King of the Golden Kingdom would not make such a decision lightly. How dare I decide it in haste?"

What did he mean by "how dare I decide in haste"? If you understood this as Hu Guang being afraid of responsibility, you would be wrong.

Back then, that Hu Erlang had dared, for the sake of righteousness, to disregard even his own father and return west across a thousand li. Could such a man be afraid of responsibility? Impossible!

The Emperor had sent him on the western campaign precisely because he valued Hu Guang's willingness to take on difficult tasks.

What he was actually asking was: what benefit was there for him, Hu Guang, to justify taking on such a great risk to accomplish this?

One must understand that at this time there were no trains or buses. The roads were hard to travel and supplies were difficult to move. A project as great as relocating a hundred thousand people would take several years of sustained effort to complete.

It would be entirely normal for several thousand people to die along the migration route. Done well, it would indeed bring merit, but the slightest mishap would mean not only the court holding him accountable, but also a terrible reputation among the people and in the history books.

So it had finally come to this. Lu Duoxun had long been prepared. He cupped his hands and said, "This servant has heard that Lord Hu's eldest daughter is named Jie, and that since childhood she has been raised in the palace by Consort Li?"

Hu Guang nodded. Several years earlier, after his first wife had died of illness, Hu Guang in his grief had never remarried. Zhang Zhao had once offered to arrange a match between Hu Guang and the younger sister of Prince Jing of the Gao clan, but Hu Guang had declined.

After his first wife's death, she had left him a daughter, named Hu Jie.

Because Hu Guang was constantly away on campaign with no one to care for her, Zhang Zhao had specially taken Hu Jie into the palace, where she was raised by his young aunt, who bore only sons and could not produce a daughter.

"This servant has also heard that the adopted son of Consort Guo, the Emperor's fifth son Xianxi, has been Jie's playmate since childhood." Lu Duoxun continued.

Hu Guang's eyes sharpened. Consort Guo was Guo Wan'er, who could not bear children. After Guo Zhou'er had been unable to take her place, Zhang Zhao had given the fifth prince, Zhang Xianxi — born of the Samanid Persian princess Sefiyeh — to Guo Wan'er to raise as her adopted son.

The boy was six years old this year, the same age as Hu Guang's daughter Hu Jie. The two had grown up together and were extremely close.

Lu Duoxun stepped forward and said in a low voice, "The reason the Sage agreed to the Guo clan's offering of Guo Zhou'er was precisely because Consort Guo had no issue of her own, and because Suyab, ringed by mountains on three sides and forming a realm unto itself, required a prince of Guo blood to hold it.

Now the fifth prince, Zhang Xianxi, bears the debt of the Guo clan's nurturing kindness and carries the bloodline of the Samanid Persian royal house. In the future he is certain to be the lord of a realm guarding Suyab.

Lord Hu, in moving commoners to Suyab to strengthen the state, may seem to be sewing a wedding dress for another, but in truth you are laying down a family estate for your own grandson!"

Hu Guang seized Lu Duoxun's hand in a grip that made the young man break out in cold sweat. "These are not words a fifteen-year-old boy could have thought up on his own.

Clever as you are, Lu Duoxun, you have no access to the affairs of the inner palace. Speak — who sent you to say these things?"

Lu Duoxun grimaced and sucked in cold air. He suddenly realized that the perfect scheme he had prided himself on meant nothing at all before a great hero like Hu Guang.

"Uncle, Uncle, please loosen your grip — it hurts terribly!" Dropping all pretense, no longer casting himself as some Zhuge Liang, Lu Duoxun hastily made himself small and humble, no longer calling him "Lord Hu" but hurriedly addressing him as Uncle.

Hu Guang gently released him. Lu Duoxun looked and saw his wrist was nearly purple. After sucking in a sharp breath, he ignored the wrist and spoke quickly.

"Uncle sees clearly. Your nephew is on friendly terms with the eldest son of Commissioner of Military Affairs Guo, young master Jie. Having heard that I was to accompany Uncle to Anxi, Lord Guo dispatched a household officer to travel with me. Only the day before yesterday, having seen that your nephew was not of the arrogant and frivolous sort, did he speak to me of these matters."

Hu Guang nodded. That made sense. Commissioner of Military Affairs Guo Tiance was always cautious and never formed improper ties with subordinate commanders, yet he needed something from Hu Guang, and so after much deliberation he had selected the Lu Duoxun before him.

And even then he had not spoken openly, waiting until he had seen that Lu Duoxun truly had ability before sending him up to make the case.

It seemed that after the affair of Guo Zhou'er, the Guo family understood that Suyab could no longer be controlled by them, so they had given up on installing a prince of Guo blood and turned instead to seeking cooperation with other powerful figures. Hu Guang was the best possible candidate.

Hu Guang looked at Lu Duoxun, whose wrist was bruised purple and whose eyes glistened with tears, and said coldly, "Boy! For the sake of your father's face, I will teach you one more lesson. A true man of action should use as little cunning as possible.

Those above you in station have weathered every storm there is. They will see through you at a glance, and if they grow annoyed, a single finger might be enough to crush you to death.

Those below you in station — use them once, and they will decide they cannot afford to provoke you but can afford to avoid you. Push them too far, and they may just stab you outright.

Even if you must scheme, you must judge the occasion. Take the relationship between you and me, for example. If you had to choose again, what should you have done?"

A thoughtful look appeared in Lu Duoxun's eyes, and then he said, "Your nephew should have spoken the truth plainly."

"Hahaha!" Hu Guang tossed out a small medicine bottle. "Your nature is not yet rotten, and you are no fool. The boy can be taught.

Summon Commissioner Guo's household officer, and then go and prepare how you will persuade the heir of the Golden Kingdom's king!"

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