Chapter 813: Who Wants to Harm Me

In September, Andong was cool and breezy, golden waves of wheat dancing in the wind.

Because of its high latitude, Andong's wheat ripened one or two months later than in the Central Plains, and this was exactly the best season for harvesting.

At the same time, the millet, which covered an even larger sown area, was also about to reach harvest time, so everyone in Andong Province, including the Liaoyang Commandery Prince's household, had begun the rush to bring in the crops.

From the Great King and his consort above down to the officials below, everyone aged fifteen to sixty, men and women alike, had a share of the wheat-harvesting labor.

Murong Xinzhang swung his sickle and cut wheat faster than anyone, looking nothing like a commandery prince who had opened his own princely establishment, but rather like a sturdy farmer.

Lady Qian sat atop a tall stack of wheat, watching Murong Xinzhang in the distance, dressed only in coarse hemp, his strong abdominal muscles now visible, now hidden. Her eyes curved into a crescent moon of laughter, and thinking of last night's pleasures, she could not help but feel a few blushes creep onto her face again.

Lady Qian was the daughter of Qian Hongcheng, Chief Minister of Jiangbei Province, and the niece of Qian Hongchu, the former Great King of Wuyue and current Prince of Lu.

Originally married off to Andong as a concubine in a political exchange, Lady Qian had been extremely dissatisfied at first. Had she not dared to defy her uncle Qian Hongchu's orders, she would have long since thrown a fit.

Hangzhou was so wonderful — who would be willing to travel ten thousand li to this poor, bitter Andong?

But once she actually arrived as a bride, Lady Qian was immediately captivated by this vast northern land of ten thousand li.

Unlike the gentle, exquisite beauty of Jiangnan, Andong had broad skies and wide earth, towering trees, fertile plains stretching a thousand li, extremely level terrain, and extraordinarily rich natural resources.

Fishing in the Liao River, hunting in the White Mountains, and the countless plump sea crabs and lobsters along the shores of the Eastern Sea — all of this enchanted Lady Qian, who came from Hangzhou.

Of course, what satisfied her most was the man before her eyes.

The Liaoyang Commandery Prince, Murong Xinzhang, had just turned thirty this year, right in the prime of a man's life. He was tall and handsome, and walked with the stride of a dragon and the gait of a tiger.

Although he campaigned year-round, he was not dark-skinned, nor coarse. On the contrary, he was gentle in manner and quite refined in temperament.

More importantly, though this Great King held high rank, before her he had only one consort and two concubines.

One of those concubines was even a poor soul he had rescued on the battlefield, and the Great King had never shown any disdain for her.

The other concubine was the daughter of the convicted Kang Jinshan. At the time, when Kang Jinshan was clearly about to be dealt with by the Emperor, everyone in the Liaoyang Commandery Prince's household, high and low, demanded that Murong Xinzhang depose Lady Kang to demonstrate his loyalty to the Emperor.

Murong Xinzhang not only refused, but even worried that Lady Kang would be implicated in the Eastern Capital, and specially dispatched trusted men to risk bringing her to Andong to be properly comforted.

In the eyes of some men, this was utterly lacking in imperial bearing — the soft-heartedness of a woman. But in the eyes of a woman like Lady Qian, his sense of security was absolutely maxed out, all right!

A man of high rank, handsome looks, extraordinary bearing, strong body, gentle temper, deep loyalty, and fierce protectiveness — he was simply every woman's dream husband. No — not even in dreams would most women dare imagine such a perfect lord!

"What are you grinning foolishly about? Now you can rest easy — this year's wheat of yours, I've already finished cutting it for you."

Lady Qian was still lost in her happy daze when she suddenly felt her body float — Murong Xinzhang had finished cutting the wheat, and with one sweep of his long, ape-like arm, lifted her down from the wheat stack with a single arm.

The surrounding maidservants hurriedly turned their faces away. Lady Qian blushed, but quickly recovered her composure.

"My lord has just sent word that he has persuaded Yao Yanhong. He has agreed to lead sixty thousand soldiers of the Jinghai Garrison and their families, one hundred fifty warships, and three hundred large vessels to come serve the Great King."

"Hahaha! Excellent!" Murong Xinzhang excitedly lifted Lady Qian and spun her around twice.

What Murong Xinzhang lacked right now was precisely a fleet that could set out from Jiaodong and Jiangbei to strike directly at Goryeo's left flank.

Moreover, although the Qian and Hu families could provide Murong Xinzhang with twenty thousand naval troops, these naval troops were not actually his — they were recruited by the Qian and Hu families but belonged to the imperial court's army.

What Murong Xinzhang could truly obtain were the clansmen of Yao Yanhong, the former Jinghai Commissioner of the Southern Tang — the man who had fled to Wuyue during the Huainan campaign when Zhang Zhao first attacked the Southern Tang — and the families of the soldiers under his command.

The Yao family had flip-flopped between the Southern Tang and Wuyue, and had long since deeply offended both sides. Now that the Great Zhou had unified the realm, Yao Yanhong and the Jinghai Commission, which functioned like a military province, naturally had even less room to maneuver.

After the Prince of Wu, Li Jing, and the Prince of Lu, Qian Hongchu, obtained Zhang Zhao's tacit approval, both were holding back their energy, eager to properly deal with Yao Yanhong. So the Yao family had only one path left — to follow Murong Xinzhang.

This was several hundred large ships, at least fifteen thousand seasoned veteran sailors, and around ten thousand half-grown youths about to mature into skilled sailors.

Japan was an island nation, and these men would become an extremely crucial part of Murong Xinzhang's forces.

Lady Qian also smiled with great delight, because Yao Yanhong and his people were the most valuable dowry she had brought with her.

With this dowry, she would be able to attain an extremely high position at Murong Xinzhang's side, in the future court of the Great King of Yan.

"Sister Hu has also written. Wang Sheng of Huzhou and more than a hundred Wuyue naval officers have been persuaded by her elder brother Hu Zhao, and will follow two thousand sons of powerful Eastern Prefecture families to Daxie Island in Dengzhou, Jiaodong. After building warships, they too will follow the Great King."

The "Sister Hu" Lady Qian spoke of was the granddaughter of Hu Jinsi, and also a noble daughter of Wuyue who was to become a concubine of Murong Xinzhang.

Wang Sheng of Huzhou was one of only two Wuyue yabing guards who had held out to the very end alongside Chen Huzi when Zhang Zhao swept across the great desert — a fierce man who could swim while wearing chain mail. Upon hearing of him, Murong Xinzhang had always wanted to recruit him as a naval commander.

Daxie Island in Dengzhou was the area of the Miaodao Archipelago in what would later be Penglai District, Yantai City, Shandong. In Tang times there had been a naval base there specifically for attacking the peninsula, and it was perfectly suited for use now.

The rapid sound of hoofbeats approached, and Lady Qian quickly led her maidservants away from Murong Xinzhang's side.

The horse had barely come to a stop when Wang Pu leaped down from the saddle and said to Murong Xinzhang with sky-high excitement: "Your servant brings the Great King joyous news! The Sage has approved Lord Cao's request, and has granted the Great King the former lands of Silla and Baekje together as his fief."

The so-called former Silla and Baekje were roughly the area of what would later be South Korea. At this time, after several hundred years of development, this region was the wealthiest part of Japan and the peninsula.

After Murong Xinzhang's maternal uncle Cao Yanlu arrived in Andong, the first thing he did was request Zhang Zhao to grant this region to Murong Xinzhang.

This was not entirely Cao Yanlu doting on his nephew — there were practical considerations behind it.

Because no one had expected that, after the Khitan's development and Murong Xinzhang's two or three years of management, Andong would already present a scene of vigorous vitality, with all things flourishing and competing to grow.

The Northeast was naturally flat, suited to collective farming, with rivers crisscrossing it, ideal for irrigation. Although the climate was somewhat cold, at worst one simply planted late and harvested late — one crop a year was still guaranteed.

Located near the grasslands, it lacked plow oxen but did not lack horses, and horses could also be used to plow the land. Though not as good as oxen, they were far better than human labor.

The greatest advantage, paradoxically, was the cool climate, which meant that unlike Lingnan, this place had few mosquitoes and little miasma — where two or three out of every ten who went died — and most people could survive.

Moreover, the Emperor had also placed the Han family of Khotan in western Liaoning to manage the great marshes of western Liaoning, and they had already achieved considerable results.

The absence of large numbers of mosquitoes and an environment almost free of malaria parasites made the management of the western Liaoning marshes relatively fast and effective. The only large-scale expenditure was nothing more than the mobilization of grain and fodder.

But there was no need to worry about that either. One must remember that in order to manage the western Liaoning marshes, Zhang Zhao had gone more than a year without using troops in the provinces of Hedong and Hebei.

The tax revenues of these two provinces had all been poured into managing the western Liaoning marshes. Even the salaries of the two provinces' officials had been borrowed from the money houses, with the Ministry of Revenue of the imperial court taking the lead.

And in order not to drag down the finances of these two provinces in the future, the interest on these loans was to be repaid by Zhang Zhao, while the central imperial treasury was responsible for repaying the principal.

With the Emperor's full support, Han Kuangsi and his colleagues in western Liaoning had dug the large marshes deeper on the spot to turn them into lakes, and for the smaller marshes, they had dug channels to divert the water into the Liao River.

At the same time, they had also widened the Liao River channel and built embankments on both banks to prevent flooding during the flood season.

To date, the Han brothers, commanding more than three hundred thousand laborers, had divided the great western Liaoning marshes into over a dozen separate marshlands that could no longer connect to one another, and had built a passage roughly two or three li wide and over seven hundred li long that could barely accommodate the movement of men and horses.

Yellow-grained rice, introduced from Jiangxi and suited to growing in marshland, had also been sown, and its growth was reportedly quite promising.

From next year onward, of the more than three hundred thousand people in the great western Liaoning marshes, at least thirty or forty thousand would be able to supply their own grain.

The entire great western Liaoning marshes were expected to be basically brought under control in at most another six or seven years, and the further along it went, the smaller the expenditure would be.

Apart from western Liaoning, the Liaodong region — after development by Goguryeo, Balhae, and the Khitan, and especially after Murong Xinzhang's good policies in recent years of broadly building waterworks, reducing taxes, and recruiting Balhae farmers persecuted by the Khitan to come down from the mountains and receive land — had enjoyed bumper harvests for two consecutive years.

The wheat and millet in the government granaries piled up like mountains, and weaving, iron-smelting, and the rest had all made very substantial progress.

In all this, one cannot say it was entirely Murong Xinzhang's doing, but it must account for at least sixty or seventy percent.

Therefore in recent years, the Jurchens, Shiwei, and Balhae people of Andong have called Murong Xinzhang the Ksitigarbha Buddha King, believing him to be another reincarnation of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva in the northeastern lands, after the Silla prince Kim Gyo-gak.

The Han people of Andong even simply call Murong Xinzhang "the Sovereign." If anyone among the common folk says the Sovereign should forever hold Andong, cheers immediately follow; if anyone says the Sovereign will be recalled, a storm of curses is sure to come.

Under these circumstances, all the civil and military officials of the Liaoyang Commandery Prince's overlord mansion hoped that Murong Xinzhang could occupy the land of Andong as a hereditary vassal king of the court there.

There were even quite extreme people who held that since the Great King had already changed his surname, he had the right to inherit the imperial throne.

So when Cao Yanlu saw this situation, he was frantic with worry.

He both ached that his nephew had governed Andong so well yet could only go to that barren land of Wa, and feared that in a few more years, Murong Xinzhang would truly be persuaded by the ambitious men under his command and conceive thoughts he ought not to have.

Whether it was his brother-in-law and brother-in-law the Emperor being harmed, or his own nephew Murong Xinzhang coming to grief — he did not wish to see either!

So Cao Yanlu, his hair turned white with anxiety, thought it over and concluded that only this plan might buy some time, and thus he took the initiative to go and win the old lands of Silla and Baekje for Murong Xinzhang.

When Murong Xinzhang heard Wang Pu's report, he too was pleased. To gain such a fairly prosperous territory without damaging his imperial father's unbroken realm — of course he was very willing.

"Uncle still cherishes me! He even fears I might take the wrong path." Murong Xinzhang first smiled, but then his brows furrowed.

"After all this investigating, how is it that I still cannot find out who has raised me so high? This person who says my family is the reincarnation of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, and who can make everyone believe it — who exactly is he?"

Wang Pu glanced at Murong Xinzhang, thought for a moment, and then spoke plainly: "The Great King has long known in his heart; he simply cannot fathom what this man's purpose is."

Murong Xinzhang fell silent for a moment upon hearing this, then gazed westward and said slowly: "Indeed. What I cannot fathom is — why would the Dharma Master wish to harm me?"

Related