Chapter 804: I, An Sicun, Am Genuinely Envious

Inside Resa (the Jokhang Temple), dozens of Han and Tibetan monks were painting a mural together.

At the same time, Gu Hongzhong, a court painter of the Zhangtai Academy who had come with the army and excelled at large scrolls, was also painting on a sheet of xuan paper several zhang long.

This painting, which would become extremely famous more than a thousand years later and be regarded as a masterpiece of Han and Tibetan unity, was called "The Tsenpo Flees to the Buddha," also known as "The Supreme Heaven Protects the Tsenpo."

On the left side of the scroll, Tsenpo Tri Wangxuzan rode a divine white horse, wearing golden armor, his arms spread wide as if seeking an embrace, like a child seeing its parents.

On the right side of the scroll, brilliant golden light shone down from the heavens above, each ray as gentle as a parent's hand reaching out to caress a child.

Beneath the golden light, dozens of monks in varied forms were depicted with extraordinary vividness.

Some were striking wooden fish and chanting sutras in prayer, some were turning pellet drums with encouraging eyes, and some held pipas and konghous, playing music in welcome.

There were also those holding weapons in the fierce aspect of guardian kings, meant to intimidate the demons behind the Tsenpo.

Not far from the Tsenpo, two guardian warriors whose bodies faintly emanated Buddha-light, holding demon-subduing vajras and spinning golden wheels, were striking down the demons pursuing the Tsenpo.

One had a human body and a snow-lion's head, the other a human body and a white yak's head, symbolizing the faithful followers of the local Tibetan Six Dharma Sect.

Behind the Tsenpo, all manner of demons wearing terrifying masks were howling, stretching out long black monstrous hands and dispatching ghost soldiers wrapped in black robes, trying to drag the Tsenpo back down into hell.

At that moment, below the Tsenpo in the painting, a divine general clad in silver-white armor, wearing a silver phoenix-winged helmet, draped in a five-colored khata, and holding a bright silver spear, spurred his horse into the air and charged at the demons trying to drag the Tsenpo back.

Behind this divine general, countless smaller divine generals were bursting forth endlessly from the Buddha-light, charging together at the demons.

At the very top of the scroll, eagles in the sky also carried flecks of golden light as they swooped down from the heavens upon the demons.

At the very bottom of the scroll, countless animals unique to Tibet — snow leopards, snow wolves, snow foxes, Tibetan antelopes, black yaks, long-haired Tibetan sheep — were depicted as mountain spirits and earth spirits who had taken refuge in the faith.

They too held all manner of weapons, their bodies glowing with golden light, helping the divine generals strike down the demons.

Farther in the distance, countless believers were cheering or prostrating themselves in worship, making abundantly clear who ultimately won this battle.

The Potala Palace is divided into the White Palace and the Red Palace; the White Palace handles government affairs and serves as the Tsenpo's residence, while the Red Palace is used mainly for religious purposes.

After Langdarma's persecution of Buddhism, the Red Palace's role began to decline, and when the Tibetan Empire collapsed, it became the residence of the Tsenpo's family members.

Lun Boren stood in the main hall of the White Palace, while the Tsenpo's relatives in the Red Palace were being moved out; the monks of the Six Dharma Sect had already begun renovating the Red Palace.

Yesterday's battle quickly turned one-sided; the five political blocs such as Lu Hui's were utterly unable to work together, and so were swiftly defeated one by one.

The head of the Lu Hui family was beheaded on the spot, and two to three thousand of the family's private soldiers were killed or wounded, with the armored troops almost completely annihilated — losses of extreme severity.

The private soldiers of the other four families were also routed, but Lun Boren had made contingency plans in advance and focused the attack on the Lu Hui family, so the other four families were not very severely damaged.

As for why they chose to strike hardest at the Lu Hui family — it was because their family was the most powerful and also deeply entangled with the Bon religion.

Most importantly, the largest "shareholder" in the Lu Hui family political bloc was the Chen clan.

And the Chen clan, as one of the Four Shang of Tibet — "Shang" simply means maternal-relative families — historically, except when the Tang dynasty married princesses to Tibet, the Tsenpo would only choose his Zhumeng (principal wife) from these four families.

(Regarding the Nepalese Princess Bhrikuti, modern scholarship strongly suggests she was most likely fabricated by Indian monks seeking to elevate their own status when Esoteric Buddhism entered the plateau from the Ngari region.)

And what is strange is that the Tang princesses sent for marriage alliances — Princess Wencheng and Princess Jincheng — are recorded as having borne no children. (Tride Tsuktsen claimed to be Princess Jincheng's son, but most likely it really was just his own claim.)

From this one can see how great the power of these four families was — they could even monopolize the loins of successive Tsenpos, and even a great ruler like Songtsen Gampo was no exception.

Among these Four Shang, the Chen clan had the greatest enmity with Sage Zhang's family and the Lun family, because the Chen clan had long been stationed in Longyou attacking the Great Tang.

Now, apart from their fief in the Shannan region, most of their largest sphere of influence had been swallowed up by the Great Zhou and turned into Huangshui Prefecture, while a smaller portion had been occupied by Lun Boren's family.

Blocking a man's road to wealth is like killing his parents, so the Chen clan simply could not be won over — and even if won over, could never be trusted. They had to be destroyed. The other four families, however, could be won over.

Thus the other four families only lost about a thousand men each; the heads of two families were captured, while the other two escaped.

Lun Boren and Langjie Jiangcuo exchanged a glance, then conferred with Li Xiaojie for a while, and decided that for the time being Langjie Jiangcuo — being older, more deft in his methods, and more skilled at handling government affairs — would take the lead in issuing orders.

Of course, the deeper reason was that Langjie Jiangcuo's daughter Langyi was now a favored consort of the Emperor.

At the same time, Langjie Jiangcuo was of the Sunbo clan — a great and powerful Tibetan lineage — and his maternal grandfather's family was the Caibang clan, one of the famous Four Ru; this was the same family as the maternal grandfather of the current Tsenpo Tri Wangxuzan, making the two of them, by reckoning, cousins once removed.

With such connections, Langjie Jiangcuo was the most suitable choice at present.

And this moment was also precisely the most dangerous moment.

Because if you haven't taken Lhasa, no one takes you seriously; but once you've taken Lhasa and control the Tsenpo, you immediately become the target of everyone's arrows. The real war is about to arrive, and command must be unified first.

At this time, Lun Boren and the others could only rely on the Six Dharma Sect and these ten thousand-odd cavalry, and recruit a batch of brave men from yesterday's onlookers to strengthen the defenses.

They needed to hold out until the fifth month of next year — that is, after the ice and snow on the plateau began to melt — and wait for the court to send high officials and religious figures of greater weight to Lhasa to complete the integration of the plateau.

Who could blame them for advancing too quickly? Originally, these ten thousand-odd men were supposed to take Nagqu and dig in on the spot, waiting for at least ten thousand court elite troops to arrive before entering Lhasa.

But now that they had gone straight into Lhasa, they had no choice but to face an even more dangerous situation.

The greater the risk, the greater the reward, after all.

If the problem in Lhasa was waiting for someone to come and make decisions, then in Bukhara, Salih very much wished that his father Hamid, the Emir who could no longer speak, would suddenly stand up.

To teach him what to do?

In the fifth year of Shaoming, on the thirteenth day of the second month, when the weather began to change, the ice and snow in Transoxiana receded, and the temperature began to warm, the city of Shiguo once again faced a tremendous crisis.

This time, the Zhou army setting out from Talas and Baishui City had come out in almost full force.

Not only had more than forty thousand of the fifty thousand regular troops been mobilized, but Bai Congxin had also conscripted sixty thousand cavalry from among the nearly one hundred thousand herders brought from the four tumens of Moxi and the six tumens of the Zubu and Yedugua.

This made a total of one hundred ten thousand troops, who swept down from the north, and in just a few days captured all of the more than twenty towns, large and small, in the Chirchiq River valley where Shiguo City was located.

More than five hundred thousand shi of grain that the governor of Shiguo City, Amir, had not had time to move all fell into the hands of the Zhou army.

On the twenty-fourth of the second month, the Zhou army drove tens of thousands of commoners outside Shiguo City to carry earth and fill in the moat, and dug channels to divert the waters of the Chirchiq River.

The excavated earth was piled outside the city walls to form earthen ramps nearly level with the walls; trebuchets, battering rams, gunpowder, and the like were all prepared.

Amir, the governor of Shiguo City, sent envoys to Bukhara like a madman, until in the end he was practically begging on his knees for Bukhara to send reinforcements to rescue Shiguo City.

As for surrendering to the Zhou army — even if you gave Amir a hundred times his courage, he would not dare surrender. Did he really think the terrifying reputation of my Great Protector-General Bai, who slaughtered a hundred thousand people in a single month, was just hot air?

And, as luck would have it, Amir also had a precedent to warn him.

Two hundred years ago, the king of Shiguo had thought that surrendering would spare his life, only to be escorted to Chang'an by Gao Xianzhi and executed; his daughter Jinsikaiya became Gao Xianzhi's concubine, the able-bodied men and sturdy women of Shiguo City were used to transport supplies, and the old and weak were all put to death.

With such a cautionary example, you could beat Amir to death and he still would not dare surrender, nor would the soldiers in the city, so they could only seek help from Bukhara.

But this was just like last year — the forbidden city of Bukhara was in an uproar of argument, yet Salih simply could not make a decision.

In his eyes, the Zhou people were certainly hateful, but Amir disgusted him even more; he wished the two sides would simply destroy each other, and truly found it hard to choose.

Time dragged on until mid-March, when Bai Congxin led his troops to storm the outer city of Shiguo City.

The old deputy governor of Ningyuan, Zhang Zhong, ordered Xue Shouli, the Ningyuan Chief Troop Commander, to lead twenty thousand troops and tens of thousands of laborers out of Juzhanti, down along the Yaxartes River, to transport armor, arrows, medicines, and other supplies to Bai Congxin's besieging force.

Seeing that the Zhou forces were about to open the route between Juzhanti and Shiguo City, Salih finally grew anxious. He mobilized the whole country and appointed the great general Abu Yusuf as Salar, that is, commander-in-chief of the army.

It must be said, the Samanid Persians' mobilization capacity at this time was still quite good.

After Salih issued the mobilization order in the name of Emir Hamid, the Samanid dynasty within a single month mobilized fifteen thousand Ghulam armored infantry and cavalry, six hundred iqta knights with twelve thousand elite retinue cavalry, and thirty thousand regular troops of the Awlia standing army.

There were also thirty thousand Mutawa conscripts serving as auxiliaries, bringing the total to nearly ninety thousand, proclaimed as two hundred thousand.

At this time, between Shiguo City and the Samanid city of Kangju lay the towering Kangju Mountains.

And after the governor of Shiguo City, Amir, attempted to set himself up as an independent ruler, the Samanids had built the Jeddah Fortress on the northern side of the mountains to prevent Shiguo City's raiding cavalry from descending south toward Kangju City.

So for this campaign, the Samanid army of ninety thousand first assembled at Jeddah Fortress, then prepared to march north to Shiguo City to lift the Zhou army's siege.

But all of this was already too late.

If they had come a month and a half earlier, when the Zhou army had not yet fully controlled the towns and fords on the northern bank of the Yaxartes, the Samanid host could have crossed the Yaxartes at leisure and marched north to break the siege.

But now, while they were still assembling at Jeddah Fortress, the pontoon bridges on the Yaxartes had long since been destroyed, and all the warships controlled by the governor's office of Shiguo City had been captured by the Zhou army.

Of the twenty thousand troops Xue Shouli brought out from Juzhanti, more than twelve thousand were naval troops. With their presence, it was extremely difficult for the Samanid army to cross the Yaxartes.

Beneath the walls of Shiguo City, Bai Congxin was also growing somewhat anxious.

A year and a half had passed since the campaign began. Homesickness pervaded the entire army, and the soldiers had all grown rich, so their will to fight was dropping very quickly.

More importantly, although he now had one hundred ten thousand troops, and with those Xue Shouli brought, a full one hundred thirty thousand, the true elite among them numbered only a little over thirty thousand.

If they could not take Shiguo City quickly, and the Samanid host reached the city walls, they would be put on the back foot. If they were forced to withdraw, the chance to break Shiguo City so easily would almost certainly never come again.

Whatever else one said, Samanid Persia was a flourishing state of Transoxiana, with relatively developed ironworking and handicrafts. If they threw the whole country into the field, they could still field at least thirty thousand armored soldiers.

In Transoxiana, that was a very formidable force, and for the current Zhou army, a troublesome opponent.

With their support, it was certain that before the imperial court's main army came west, there would be no more such opportunity to swiftly conquer the lands north of the Yaxartes.

No help for it. In this situation, I, the Great Protector-General Bai, can only bring out the great method of sacking the city.

Without this move, in a place more than ten thousand li from the homeland, there is simply no way to fully rouse the soldiers' initiative.

Never mind the motley troops he led — even if the Great Zhou's own elite came, the Left and Right Yulin Guards of the imperial army or the Hanhai Garrison of the forbidden troops, they would probably still need to be rewarded with a bout of plunder.

Hu Guang saw through Bai Congxin's thoughts and spoke up on his own: "Let the auxiliary troops from the six myriarchies do the killing. The rest of the elite must not be allowed to cut loose and slaughter, or it will be hard to rein them in afterward.

As for the able-bodied men in the city, leave me about twenty thousand to send to Suyab. The able-bodied men will be serfs, and the women will be married off to the Han settlers in Suyab."

Bai Congxin nodded. "That works well. The auxiliaries who enter the city and do the killing can leave tens of thousands behind to garrison Shiguo City.

I will also discuss with Xue Shouli and have him move three thousand households over from Ningyuan for us. With the Yaxartes as a route, travel is convenient anyway."

On the twenty-second day of the third month, before the Samanid host could cross the Yaxartes, Bai Congxin used the sack of the city as bait to spur the soldiers to assault the walls.

At the same time, Xue Shouli had brought a number of craftsmen, which allowed Bai Congxin to repair the trebuchets that were already overburdened, and then use them to bombard the inner city.

On the twenty-fifth of the third month, the army finally stormed the inner city of Shiguo City. Tens of thousands of auxiliary troops swarmed into the city and captured alive the governor of Shiguo City, Amir, along with his wife, children, nieces, and several dozen others. They slew more than a hundred officers from the great general Mahmud down, and casualties among the soldiers exceeded fifteen thousand.

Afterward, the auxiliary troops from the six myriarchies plundered wantonly within the city, killing more than twenty thousand of Shiguo City's unlucky inhabitants and seizing gold and silver piled high as mountains, along with more than twenty thousand able-bodied men and sturdy women taken captive.

But of this gold and silver, they could keep only a small portion. The greater part had to be handed over and distributed to the main force of the army.

And as soon as Shiguo City fell, Bai Congxin immediately led the main force to reinforce the banks of the Yaxartes. Even up to that moment, the Samanid host, harassed by Xue Shouli's ten thousand-plus naval troops, had still not managed to cross the river.

Seeing that Shiguo City had already fallen and that the Zhou army stood in strict formation, the two sides faced off across the Yaxartes for more than twenty days before the Samanid commander-in-chief Abu Yusuf could only choose to withdraw, abandoning the Yaxartes entirely and holding fast to Jeddah Fortress below the Kangju Mountains.

An Sicun strolled slowly along the main street of Shiguo City with a group of colleagues. The street, just having undergone the sack, still carried a faint trace of blood scent drifting from somewhere.

In the past, after a city was sacked, this blood scent would not have been so noticeable, because the more obvious smell of smoke would have overwhelmed it, and the raging fires would have quickly dried the blood.

But because Bai Congxin, the Duke of Kucha Commandery, had already been assigned to establish a state here, there was no need to destroy the city, so Shiguo City had only suffered a certain degree of slaughter.

In all, only a little over twenty thousand had been killed, which in a place like Transoxiana was not considered a large number.

A few Zubu herders were laughing and joking on the street as they grabbed at a young woman of Shiguo City, their hands all over her. The woman's terrified screams drew the attention of An Sicun and his companions.

The squad leader walked up and sent the Zubu herders sprawling with a few flying kicks, and they scurried off in disgrace.

But this was not the squad leader's sense of justice kicking in. It had been arranged beforehand: these herders serving as auxiliaries had the task of entering the city to kill, then plunder, and finally receive only a small portion of the spoils.

By now the slaughter and looting had long ended. Everything in Shiguo City belonged to the elite troops like them — including the woman those herders had been pawing at. She belonged to them too.

The woman was quite good-looking. Judging from her already torn clothes, she had once been the daughter of a wealthy household, and she was clever. She immediately threw herself at the squad leader's leg, clinging to it and rubbing against him as she pleaded.

At this, the several comrades who had also been about to come up and cop a feel immediately stopped.

The squad leader's surname was Zeng. He had once been a yabing guard of the Anguo Army in Xingzhou, and his circumstances were much like those of that famous unlucky fellow Luo Yanhuan.

When the Khitans invaded south, Squad Leader Zeng had fought to the death in Xingzhou, even losing his wife and children — three lives in all. He had barely made it to the founding of the Great Zhou, yet he foolishly followed his superior to Hedong to join Liu Zhiyuan.

And then — then there was no "then." After Liu Zhiyuan's defeat and death, Squad Leader Zeng fell into destitution, until he was selected by Yao Yuanfu to take part in the western expedition.

Squad Leader Zeng gently lifted the woman's chin, and his eyes lit up at once. No wonder this little lady could make a few Zubu herders risk a beating from elite troops like them and still refuse to leave.

Her eyes curved like crescent moons, her teeth white as clean seashells, her small mouth bright red. She looked up at him pleadingly, her large, glistening eyes stirring even a hardened killer like Squad Leader Zeng to a flicker of pity.

"An Si, come with me. This little lady's speech — I can't quite make it out."

An Sicun was not actually Han. His ancestors had been Sogdians who came to the Great Tang in the Yonghui era, and even now An Sicun's eyes still had a touch of gray.

But never ask him whether he was Sogdian, because he might well pull out a knife and stab you.

Perhaps his ancestral genes had been awakened, for An Sicun picked up the Turkic tongue common in Transoxiana extremely quickly, and by now he was indistinguishable from the locals.

Squad Leader Zeng knew a phrase or two as well, but spoke them poorly, so he had called An Sicun along.

The group noisily told the woman to take them to her home. This was the order of the Great Protector-General and Duke of Kucha Commandery, Bai Congxin: those among them willing to remain in Shiguo City could choose any woman in the city and move directly into that woman's house.

Naturally, whether the woman's whole family became your slaves, or whether you showed great kindness and married the woman so that their status rose a little — that depended entirely on your own inclination.

The woman's home was not far. It was indeed a wealthy household, comparable to a three-courtyard compound in Han territory. Seeing the woman bring people in, seven or eight people knelt inside the gate.

The first two were a woman past her prime but still full-figured and alluring,

and the other a young girl wearing a flowered cap who shrank back timidly. As for the rest, judging by their clothing, they were likely the household's original servants.

Squad Leader Zeng stared dumbstruck at the girl in the distance — fifteen or sixteen at most, shrinking back shyly. An Sicun thought the squad leader's saliva was about to drip, because this girl was even more beautiful.

"Gulp!" Someone swallowed audibly. Captain Zeng immediately flared with jealousy, and with a mix of coaxing and cursing, he drove everyone out except An Sicun.

The woman pointed at the people inside the house, babbling away. Sure enough, the three women were the masters, and the other six were servants.

Moreover, the woman who looked somewhat older but still retained her charm was not the mother of these two women, but their sister-in-law.

As for the men of this household, the father and elder brother had been forcibly conscripted by Amir, Governor of Stone Kingdom City, to defend the city. The former had died on the city wall, while the latter had been bound and was about to be sent into exile in Suyab.

"Hahahaha! Truly a blessing from Heaven! I, Zeng Erlang, have suffered all my life, and my luck has finally turned!" Captain Zeng laughed three times, then pointed with an overbearing air.

"This is the house. From now on, I am the man of this household.

An Si, don't be picky either. Just be my neighbor. I'll go ask the Medicine Lord again, and no matter what, I'll get you and me some official posts here in Stone Kingdom City."

'Damn it, that slave really does have dog-shit luck!' An Sicun couldn't help cursing inwardly.

A family like this, with close kin still alive, is the easiest to manipulate, because they still have attachments and won't dare go to extremes.

And these three women are sisters-in-law, with decent looks and figures. If at night they all shared one bed—

Son of a bitch, how fucking good would that feel!

Captain Zeng was still rattling off promises of benefits, because he still needed An Sicun to help him practice simple Turkic phrases, otherwise communication would be difficult. An Sicun, meanwhile, was so envious his eyes had turned red.

The Duke of Kucha had granted each of these elite yabing—or rather, these killers perfectly suited to be colonists—one thousand mu of land and ten households of serfs.

Now, An Sicun only needed to find a family whose circumstances were similar to the one Captain Zeng had encountered, and it would be perfect.

Outside the house erupted a sour, fake-sounding cheer. A crowd of men mouthed congratulations, asking Captain Zeng to treat them to roast lamb and fine wine, while their eyes kept darting toward the interior of the house.

Captain Zeng was not falling for their tricks. He had the young lady inside bring out a stool, and planted himself squarely in the doorway like a lord.

Even if they beat him to death, he would not go drinking with those killers under his command tonight. Who knew whether, if he came back drunk, there might be one fewer person in the house.

No good. I wrote too much yesterday, and today my head is completely empty. I can't write anything.

(End of Chapter)

Related