Chapter 819: Still Had to Rely on Bluster

The Southern Han and Dali had in fact always maintained contact, though at that time relations between the two sides were not good, and they had even come to blows over control of Guile Prefecture (the Baise region of Guangxi) and the Jinghai Army.

However, after the Great Changhe Kingdom, which then ruled Nanzhao, was soundly beaten by Wang Jian of the Former Shu, the two houses began to draw closer.

The Great Changhe emperor Zheng Renmin even sought a marriage alliance with the Southern Han, and the Southern Han founder Liu Sui married his niece, the Lady of Zengcheng County, to him. But not long after, Zheng Renmin died suddenly, and contact between the two sides was cut off again.

Yet today, when the Dali envoy Dong Mohe saw the Southern Han envoy, his heart could not help but leap, and a natural sense of kinship arose in him.

Seas turned to mulberry fields, times changed and circumstances shifted. The two states of Dali and Southern Han, once rivals, had now fallen into the same perilous situation. Of all the states under Heaven today, the only ones that had not yet submitted were Dali and the Han Kingdom.

Dong Mohe was no fool. He naturally understood the gap in strength between Dali and the Great Zhou, but precisely because he was clever, he had "discovered" a hidden truth.

That truth was that the Great Zhou, busy with its campaigns against the Western Regions and the suppression of the Khitan remnants, had no choice but to squeeze Shu desperately, leaving the people of Shu destitute and their hearts alienated.

The Zhou people were now showing weakness everywhere in Nanxi Prefecture, refusing to let the Dali people penetrate deep into Shu, all in order to conceal the truth about Shu.

This was Dali's last chance. Once the Zhou settled the Western Regions and Liaodong, they would turn their full strength to attacking Dali.

Of course, the greatest source of Dong Mohe's confidence came from the fact that Dali's predecessor, Nanzhao, in its conflicts with the Central Plains courts after its founding, though mostly at a disadvantage, had not been entirely without the power to strike back.

Even the mighty Great Tang had only been able to keep it loosely tethered. This newly founded Great Zhou was far inferior to the Great Tang of old, and Dong Mohe believed that now was exactly the time for Dali to use war to force peace, making the Zhou acknowledge its position in the far south as one that heard orders but did not heed summons.

But what Dong Mohe could never have imagined was that the real purpose behind Zhang Zhao's complete surveillance of the Dali mission, forbidding them any contact with merchants and commoners, was not to conceal ongoing campaigns in the Western Regions or the suppression of the Khitan.

On the contrary, those two tasks were already complete, and they were only waiting to settle the Wang clan's Goryeo before coming to deal with Dali — hence the deliberate smoke screen.

Zhang Zhao traveled to Xuchang Prefecture and then stopped there. The envoys of Dali and Southern Han were likewise required to go no farther than Xuchang Prefecture, and were not permitted to proceed to the eastern capital of Kaifeng or the divine capital of Luoyang.

Because those two places, under Zhang Zhao's policies of light taxes, light corvée, and the revival of trade routes, had already begun to show the faintest signs of a golden age.

Letting them go to the eastern capital and Luoyang would mean many eyes and many tongues. The people of those two places in particular loved to talk politics, and every other word out of their mouths was about how the Great Zhou's mighty armies had slain this barbarian from Hezhong or conquered that tribe of the northern desert. Sooner or later something would slip.

Nor did Zhang Zhao summon the two envoys quickly. He waited until Zhang Lieming came to report that, under the skillful arrangements of the Brocade Guard, the deputy envoys of the two missions had already met. Only then did Zhang Zhao summon Dong Mohe.

In Dong Mohe's eyes, this Son of Heaven of the Great Zhou was in fact no longer young. Though he looked healthy, from time to time he pressed a brocade handkerchief to his mouth and coughed softly a few times.

Recalling that this Sage and Son of Heaven was about to turn thirty-eight, Dong Mohe reckoned that the Zhou emperor had perhaps ten years of life left.

Most likely, after destroying the Southern Han and barely making the golden bowl whole, he would turn to pleasure. Otherwise, what would be the point of being emperor for a mere ten or twenty years?

The main reason Dong Mohe thought this way was that the lifespans of emperors down the ages had never been long.

Later generations would calculate that the average lifespan of Chinese emperors was only around forty years.

Although there were extreme cases like Emperor Shang of Han, one also had to set aside long-lived emperors such as the eighty-nine-year-old Perfect in All Things, the eighty-one-year-old Wanyan Ninth Sister, the seventy-year-old Hongwu the Great, and the sixty-nine-year-old Brother Pockmark.

The profession of emperor required facing both the constant vexation and mental strain of political struggle, and at the same time the most powerful temptations in all the world.

With only a little lack of self-restraint — rich food and heavy drink every day, and every night a beauty of seven- or eight-tenths looks joining in a threesome or foursome or the like — it would be strange if one lived long.

Historically speaking, among the long-lived emperors, Hongwu the Great and Brother Pockmark were of the naturally gifted sort, their energy and certain abilities far exceeding ordinary men.

As for the rest, Perfect in All Things was a master of health preservation with broad interests and an extremely strong resistance to feminine charms — and as for the quality of the harem of my Great Qing, those who know, know.

At the same time, after Monk Xiao became a devout believer in the Buddha, he no longer kept close company with women. After Wanyan Ninth Sister was frightened, that part of him simply stopped working. And Wu Zetian was simply a woman.

Clearly, if a man wishes to live long, he must exercise restraint in certain areas!

So all things considered, Dong Mohe believed that I, Sage Zhang, could live another ten years and barely reach the age of fifty — an absolutely normal and fair judgment.

With this thought, Dong Mohe's heart relaxed by more than half. After performing the ritual kowtow, he said in a loud voice:

"The Kingdom of Dali lies in the far south. Since the time of Nanzhao, it has been a vassal of the Central Plains. Today my sovereign is likewise willing to follow the example of former dynasties, honor the Great Zhou as the legitimate calendar, and take the Sage Son of Heaven as his lord."

Had this been a native-born founding emperor, hearing these words would basically have extinguished any thought of further conquest of Dali.

The Duan clan's Dali at this time was just like the Wang clan's Goryeo — even if it were conquered, it would be a money-losing place. Better to collect some tribute and save face.

But Zhang Zhao was not like that. Coming from later generations, he deeply understood the importance of the position of the Kingdom of Dali, that is, Yunnan.

My great Yunnan is like a Mount Tai pressing down on the head of Southeast Asia. A dozen great rivers rush from this place toward Southeast Asia, and with a little work one could follow the current downstream and establish a host of small vassal states.

Though it may be tasteless to eat now, it can expand living space and seize claims for later generations!

Therefore, I, Sage Zhang, gave a cold snort. "You speak reverently here, but We have heard that Duan Siliang calls himself emperor within his own country, and has even bestowed on Duan Siping the posthumous title of Divine, Sage, Civil, and Martial Emperor.

Hmph! Does your Kingdom of Dali not know the principle that there are not two suns in the sky, nor two masters in a house?"

Dong Mohe had known Zhang Zhao would be displeased on this point, but this was no great matter — it was entirely negotiable. As long as the central court gave enough or its fist was big enough, abolishing an imperial title was a matter of a minute.

But at this moment Dong Mohe thought of Nanxi Prefecture, the bone stuck in Dali's throat. Although Guo Rong felt he had already been very soft, the gap between Dali and the central court was still too great.

Guo Rong was using salt, sugar, and cloth in Nanxi Prefecture to lure the various tribes of Dali. To win them back, Dali either had to grit its teeth and hand out rewards as well, or send troops to attack.

For Dali, whose strength had not yet recovered to the level of the Nanzhao period, the cost was enormous.

So Dong Mohe, with a touch of anger, said to Zhang Zhao: "If the Great Zhou is the head of the Dali household, then why does it recruit the Apang, Adu, Mangbu, Shama, and other tribes of Dali in Nanxi Prefecture?"

Zhao Ying, the Vice Chief Minister seated below Zhang Zhao, laughed coldly. "Since Dali is a junior member of the household, then please have the envoy return and report to the Duan king: first return the prefectures such as Yuexi that were seized during the Nanzhao period. Is there any principle by which a junior member seizes the property of his elders?"

Dong Mohe's anger rose as well. Yuexi Prefecture was called Jianchang Prefecture in Dali — the later city of Xichang.

How to put it — the dozen or so tribes around this place were in fact nothing but fence-sitters, submitting to the court one moment and to Nanzhao the next. It could not strictly be counted as belonging to anyone.

But whenever the court wanted to discipline Nanzhao, it would use Yuexi Prefecture as the pretext. Over several centuries, this had driven the people of Nanzhao (Dali) to the point of nervous exhaustion. The moment they heard the court mention the name Yuexi, they felt a surge of rage and helplessness, as if a beating were imminent.

"Is Lord Zhao threatening us? Dali may be small, but it is not meat on a chopping board. If the court is willing to treat us with courtesy, we shall remain a loyal vassal of the great dynasty.

But if the court wishes to bully us without cause, then the million soldiers and civilians of Dali are not made of clay. My Duan king's ancestor was the defender of Taihe City, and today Dali is well governed and harmonious, with the strength of a Wang Darong."

The two men Dong Mohe spoke of were, first, Duan Jianwei, ancestor of the Duan clan of Dali, who had followed Geluofeng in defeating the eighty thousand Tang troops led by Xianyu Zhongtong outside Taihe City.

The second was Wang Cuodian, once a powerful minister of Nanzhao, honored by the Nanzhao king with the title Darong (meaning "elder brother of the emperor").

During the Changqing reign of Emperor Muzong of Tang, this man had led sixty thousand Nanzhao troops north, breaking the prefectures of Yue (Xichang), Rong (Yibin), and Qiong, and fighting all the way to Chengdu, where he captured the outer city.

This was the most glorious battle in all of Nanzhao's history. The histories record that south of Chengdu and north of Yuexi, for eight hundred li, neither man nor beast remained.

The Nanzhao army carried off at least one hundred fifty to two hundred thousand commoners, and those killed were twice that number. Emperor Muzong of Tang could only hurriedly transfer the chancellor Li Deyu to Chengdu to hold the line, barely stabilizing the situation.

Zhang Zhao had been waiting for exactly this. At these words he flew into a rage and flung the brocade handkerchief in his hand to the ground.

The gesture was actually somewhat effeminate, because the brocade handkerchief was so light that it drifted twice in the air before landing — hardly the imposing effect of hurling something heavy. But this was precisely the effect Zhang Zhao wanted.

The moment the words left Dong Mohe's mouth, he felt he had gone too far. Seeing Zhang Zhao's fury, he thought his head was about to be lost, and his thighs began to tremble. Then he heard Zhang Zhao roar:

"Duan Siliang has sent such an insolent wretch as his envoy — clearly he has no true intention of submitting! Guards! Beat this villain out with staves, and order the Brocade Riders to escort him back to Dali to be dealt with by the Duan clan. No halting along the way."

Dong Mohe felt a surge of wild joy. Though he took several blows to the body, he felt he had accomplished the task of sounding out the true strength of this Han-descended Zhou state.

He had spoken such excessive words, yet the Son of Heaven of Zhou did not dare to kill him — it must be that the main army was deeply bogged down in the northwest and northeast, and they were simply not prepared to start a war with the Kingdom of Dali.

He must hurry back and report the situation to His Majesty. Perhaps they could seize the Zhou's Nanxi Prefecture while they were at it, and could also stir up the Liu family of Lingnan to send troops together in resistance.

If the Zhou sent a great army to punish them, then they could also use returning Nanxi Prefecture as a bargaining chip. Presumably, with a way to back down gracefully, and with the Zhou still needing to attack Southern Han, they could obtain a situation like that of Nanzhao.

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