Chapter 828: The Promise of the Supreme Heaven

Jianghua Bay is indeed a place of extremely complex hydrological conditions — on this point Huangfu Zhao was not wrong.

Historically, the most famous feature of this bay was Jianghua Island.

During the periods of Wang-ruled Goryeo and Yi-ruled Joseon, whenever a strong enemy from the north pressed southward, Jianghua Island would become the refuge of the Goryeo and Joseon kings.

If one were to attack from the sea, Jianghua Bay looks broad, but the water depth is generally only about five and a half meters, which is unfavorable for the movement of large ships.

At the same time, the coastline twists and winds for more than two thousand li, with over a thousand islands large and small, and the tidal range can reach more than ten meters.

In particular, its main channel, the Jianghua Strait, is narrow and elongated; at low tide large numbers of reefs are exposed above the water, making passage extremely difficult.

At high tide, although the reefs are submerged and passage is smooth, certain higher reefs turn into extremely dangerous hidden rocks that are impossible to guard against.

The terrain is so complex, and entering the bay so difficult, that without a fisherman who has lived locally for decades to guide the way, no warship of five hundred liao — roughly one hundred and fifty tons or more — could hope to get through.

This was the source of Huangfu Zhao's confidence, and even more so the confidence of Wang Zhao in wanting to test Wang Jing of Namgang.

If anything went wrong, they could lead their elite cavalry back to Kaegyeong before the Great Zhou navy could come ashore from Jianghua Bay.

Wang Zhao had even prepared himself to abandon Kaegyeong and flee to the Gongsan Mountains — the mountains north of what later generations would call Daegu in South Korea — to hold out there.

Master Fayan, wearing a brown haiqing robe, walked slowly through a small seaside fishing village, followed by his junior fellow disciple, the eminent Indian monk Vara, and a mysterious young novice.

At the sight of them, although already quite impoverished, countless seaside fishermen surged to both sides of the road, holding coarse buckwheat cakes mixed with large amounts of wild greens, wanting to offer them to Master Fayan — this was already the best food they could bring out.

Master Fayan declined each one with a smile; he was a devout believer who kept the practice of not eating after noon.

Yet although he did not accept the believers' offerings, Master Fayan still smiled kindly and ceaselessly chanted sutras and prayed for their blessings.

Goryeo Buddhism had developed greatly at this time, but just as Wang Zhao's refusal to allow Shilifoluo to build temples everywhere reflected a problem.

Goryeo Buddhism could still only spread among the bottom strata — the bitterly poor peasants and fishermen who dreamed of enduring hardship in this life to wash away their sins and be reborn in the next life into the household of a military-aristocrat lord.

Seeing Master Fayan's compassionate, heaven-pitying bearing, and how strictly he observed the monastic rules, the fishermen felt all the more that he was no ordinary monk.

Listening to the chanting of Fayan and Vara, the fishermen, full of devotion, followed in groups, walking all the way to outside a crude seaside shrine.

This little shrine was very distinctive: it was not built of the local mud walls, but of blocks of reef stone of every shape gathered from the seashore.

Clearly, these were stones that fishermen from the various fishing villages had spontaneously carried from all over.

When Fayan and Vara reached the gate, Shilifoluo — with curly hair, a leopard's head and ringed eyes, looking less like an eminent monk than a highway robber — was already waiting at the entrance.

"Uncle-master has still not shed the Vajra aspect; it seems you have encountered a bottleneck!" Fayan pressed his palms together, his face full of mirth.

"Vara greets Uncle-master!" Master Vara also pressed his palms together, but spoke in the language of India.

Shilifoluo laughed three times. "Nephew already possesses the compassionate treasure-aspect. Today, for this young master of the Pak family's passage to the Pure Land, the dharma-incantation should be led and chanted by you."

It turned out that a fisherman's child had died young that day, and the parents had come to beg Shilifoluo to arrange a monk to chant for the child's rebirth in the Pure Land.

Master Fayan did not decline. He immediately bathed by the sea, rinsed his mouth, donned his kasaya robe, and sat cross-legged outside the shrine, chanting sutras and praying for the departed little life.

To be honest, if Indian monks like Shilifoluo did not truly have real abilities, their influence among the common people would be less than that of local monks.

Because in the eyes of East Asians, such foreign monks with curly hair, hawk noses, and pale blue eyes are hard to associate with words like kind and benevolent.

But Fayan was different. Not only was he a Khitan Han, he also had a forehead like a full moon and a face as square as a field, somewhat like Chi Zhongrui's natural solemn treasure-aspect.

That he could become Master Cixian's chief personal disciple owed a great deal to this appearance.

The father of young Pak was the finest fisherman in the Jianghua Strait, and a capable man trusted by the fishermen of the nearby villages.

When he heard Master Fayan chanting the Pure Land Rebirth Incantation and the Ksitigarbha Fundamental Vow Sutra in Tang pronunciation, he was so moved that he prostrated himself on the ground; his mother and wife were even more stirred to tears, as if the pain of losing the child had lessened considerably.

At this time, most Buddhist sutras were translated into Chinese, and chanting in Tang pronunciation was the most orthodox and highest form, even somewhat above Sanskrit chanting.

In Goryeo, where only the upper class understood Tang pronunciation and Chinese, this was not something ordinary commoners could enjoy.

Master Fayan chanted the Sanskrit Pure Land Rebirth Incantation once and the Tang-pronunciation Ksitigarbha Fundamental Vow Sutra once, each twenty-one times, from the middle of the shen hour until the end of the shen hour — a full half shichen.

By the time Master Fayan opened his eyes again, the ground around the stone shrine was already covered with kneeling fishermen.

Every one of them was devout and awed. The father of young Pak performed the full kowtow to Master Fayan, thanking him for his great kindness.

Although Master Fayan's throat was parched, he hurriedly helped the Pak father to his feet.

"The young master has already passed to the Pure Land. It is only that this place has not yet been bathed in the Buddha's light, and still lacks a mountain temple to pray for the blessings of all beings!"

Master Fayan seemed to sigh this inadvertently, but the faces of the surrounding fishermen all showed expressions of deep indignation.

Why could they only build a stone shrine here by the sea? It was because the local powerful families would not allow them to build a temple on the mountain.

But having said this much, Master Fayan fell silent and walked directly into the temple.

He was not good at this sort of thing anyway, and saying more would make it seem as if he were leveraging the favor for repayment, which might provoke unnecessary resentment.

Inside the temple, Shilifoluo sighed softly. "Elder brother — is he still entangled by his inner demon?"

Master Fayan nodded. "Master faced the wall for thirty days, yet his inner demon has not diminished in the slightest; instead it has grown more severe and more painful.

For the sake of the Supreme Heaven's categorical promises, Master has broken many rules. Who knows how many believers died in the work of governing the Liaoxi marshes, and how many believers answered his call to serve Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva and died on the battlefield.

Had it not been for Master, they would not have come out to cooperate; they could probably still be roaming free among the mountains and forests.

Ah! All of this — every departed living being — is Master's karma. If he cannot verify whether the words of the Supreme Heaven are true or false, and attain the Great Dao, Master will probably never be able to walk out of this."

When Shilifoluo heard this, a complex expression — whether self-mockery or something else was unclear — rose on his face. He looked at Master Fayan and said:

"Elder brother is a true disciple of the Buddha, while I am merely a hypocrite who cannot leave this mortal world yet cannot truly enter it either.

I do not wish to verify truth or falsehood. I only wish, before the Dharma's karmic end in India, to find a suitable home for it."

Master Vara looked at Shilifoluo. "Uncle-master, is the Central Plains not the final home for our Buddha?"

Shilifoluo shook his head. "Their culture is too deep!

The people of the Central Plains chant the Buddha, recite the Buddha, believe in the Buddha, advocate being as if without Buddha yet as if with Buddha — it is a superb place for cultivation and enlightenment, but it is not what this poor monk wants."

"So, the Tokhara promised by the Supreme Heaven is where we shall settle?" Vara nodded with a sense of shared feeling.

Shilifoluo, upon hearing this, chanted a Buddha-name together with his personal disciple Maha, then gave a slight bow to the little novice who had remained silent all along. "This poor monk thanks the Supreme Heaven for its great compassion!"

Then Shilifoluo looked at Fayan. "Nephew, your treasure-aspect is solemn and your mastery of the Dharma profound. Would you be willing to go to Tokhara to see our promised land?"

Fayan slowly shook his head. "Master's inner demon has not been dispelled, and new karmic obstructions have arisen. This little monk must still escort Master to Japan to put the truth to the test!"

"Then what do they get?" Shilifoluo said no more, but instead pointed at the leaders of the eight nearby fishing villages outside, whom he had summoned and who were now kneeling devoutly on the stone slabs, and asked the mysterious little novice.

"By the command of the Prince of Liao's commandery, the man of highest merit shall remain on this land and be granted fields and ships; the man of first merit shall receive a title. All other meritorious men shall be moved to the land of Wa and enfeoffed there," the mysterious little novice replied calmly.

Shili Fuluo nodded. "Since it is the command of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, then the one hundred and seventy households of fishermen in Shaocheng County are willing to serve the great army! The gates of Shaocheng County will also open on time."

Liu Yibao pulled his cousin by the hand, and the two of them fled south, stumbling through the mire. The road beneath their feet, after being "moistened" by a light drizzle, had been churned into a muddy morass by countless pairs of feet.

Terror and hunger made these conscripted Goryeo soldiers as frantic and restless as stray dogs, and this extreme fear and prolonged nervous tension were rapidly draining their strength.

The mud on the ground grew deeper and deeper, and the road grew slicker and slicker. Many men fell and could never get up again. Corpses wrapped in mud lay everywhere, grotesque shapes sprawled across the ground like so many logs.

On such a road, Liu Yibao and his cousin naturally could not move quickly. That was bad news, but there was also good news.

It was that if even locals like them could not move fast, then the pursuers from the Central Plains behind them could not pick up speed either.

In particular, the Central Plains soldiers had many mules and horses, and on this kind of terrain, cavalry actually marched slower than infantry.

They crossed ridge after ridge and waded through stream after stream. Along the road of flight, the crowd grew larger and larger.

Great numbers of Goryeo soldiers used their local dialects to form one small group after another, and these groups even broke out into fights among themselves.

The cause might be a precious rice ball, or perhaps a dried-vegetable flatbread. On this road strewn with corpses, every mouthful of food that could restore energy was extremely precious.

Liu Yibao and his cousin had now joined a small group as well. It was said that the man leading it was a personage of considerable standing, and that by following him they would surely be able to withdraw to Gaegyeong and from there return to their homeland.

But the farther they walked, the more despairing Liu Yibao became, for although he had kept his life by relying on this small group, most of the food seized and obtained along the road was taken by the great personage and his guards. In two days, Liu Yibao had eaten only half a dried-vegetable flatbread and caught a few small fish in a stream.

Moreover, his cousin told him something utterly horrifying: he had seen with his own eyes the great personage and his guards secretly cut the flesh from the thigh of a man who had not yet breathed his last.

Ever since hearing this, Liu Yibao had hardly dared close his eyes. He did not dare imagine whether, if the great personage could not get fresh meat, he would come and cut the flesh from his own body.

In a daze, this Goryeo farmer who dreamed of returning alive to his homeland heard the sound of fighting. He hurriedly stood up and looked.

The great personage and his guard had actually fallen to the ground in a tangled brawl, and off to one side lay two more guards already fallen in pools of blood.

Liu Yibao did not know why they had started fighting, and for a moment he stood there stunned.

The great personage had not lacked food these past days. Although walking had cost him considerable energy, at least he was not like Liu Yibao, who was almost too weak to walk.

The two men rolled ceaselessly in the mud. In the end, the great personage was still the stronger. He pinned the guard beneath him and firmly controlled the guard's hands with both of his own.

But the guard had trained year-round and was far sturdier than the pampered great personage. Although he was somewhat winded from having just ambushed and killed two men, he still grabbed the great personage's wrists in return and wrapped his legs around the great personage's waist, binding him tightly.

For the moment, this former master and servant pair could do nothing against each other.

At this point, Liu Yibao's cousin also stood up. The two of them stood dumbly to one side, watching, at a complete loss.

"The road ahead is already blocked by Central Plains cavalry. They've already occupied the Anxi Protectorate. None of us can get back to Gaegyeong!"

The guard pinned on the ground forced out a few words through gritted teeth. "You two, come here, come hold him down. He is Hong Shun, Vice Minister of War. Only by seizing him and handing him over can we earn merit, can we have a way to live."

The Anxi Protectorate was naturally not the Anxi Protectorate of the Great Tang, but the Anxi Protectorate of Wang-dynasty Goryeo, located roughly in the area of later northern Korea's Haeju, a key node on the road from Pyongyang to Gaegyeong.

"Don't listen to him. He's spouting nonsense. The King's great army is right at Haeju. As long as you help me take down this traitor, I guarantee you both positions in the military class!" The great personage also made his offer.

Liu Yibao and his cousin exchanged a glance. The two of them were ordinarily honest, simple farmers. Going into the hills to shoot a wild boar counted as the greatest thing they had ever done in their lives.

Now to ask the two of them to choose between the Central Plains heavenly soldiers, the Vice Minister of War, and so on — they simply had no idea what to do.

"Don't believe him. The Central Plains soldiers really have occupied Haeju. Listen to me and you won't go wrong!"

Seeing that the two were still standing there in a stupid daze of hesitation, and that he himself was nearly exhausted, the guard pinned to the ground cried out urgently.

"The Central Plains people came here to seize your land and kill your wives, children, fathers and mothers!

We Goryeo people should unite as one. Kill me and the Central Plains people won't spare you either— Ah!"

With a sudden shriek, Hong Shun's shouting came to an abrupt halt. Dizzy and disbelieving, he turned his head back and found that the two dumbstruck farmers he had called upon were staring at him with extreme hatred.

Liu Yibao said viciously, "How do we serfs have our own land? The land is all yours."

Thinking of the misfortune his blind uncle had likely suffered, this much-afflicted farmer grew even more furious.

"It's not only the Central Plains people who would kill us lowborn wretches — there are also you high and mighty nobles!"

Thud! The cousin struck Hong Shun on the head again, knocking him flat to the ground.

"I'm a lowborn wretch, but I'm not a fool. If I seize a great official like you and hand him over, why wouldn't the Zhou people spare me? This is called earning merit, understand?"

Haeju, where Goryeo's Anxi Protectorate was located, had not actually fallen yet, but it was already not far from falling.

A few days earlier, after Huangfu Zhao escorted King Wang Zhao south in flight, Jiang Gongzhen had immediately organized a defense below Mercy Ridge, and had also concealed the news that Wang Zhao had already fled.

But everything he did was quickly proven futile, because the gap between the two armies was simply too great.

This Zhou army's fighting strength was on par with the army that the Great Tang had once sent east to conquer Goguryeo.

And the fighting strength of Wang-dynasty Goryeo's army was perhaps not even a fraction of the old Goguryeo's, and was far inferior even to the old Silla and Baekje.

As soon as the two sides clashed, the Goryeo army was beaten into continuous retreat. Even though Jiang Gongzhen had the great army form up along Mercy Ridge with its back to the mountain forest, using the trees to block the Zhou army's bows and crossbows, once the Zhou army entered the woods, the battle still quickly became one-sided.

Often a Goryeo soldier would stab a Zhou armored soldier five times and the man would still be full of vigor, but a single hit from a Zhou soldier on a Goryeo soldier would at the very least put him out of action.

Jiang Gongzhen, with tens of thousands of troops and the corresponding laborers, held out below Mercy Ridge for a full day and a night, holding on until the great army was utterly routed. Only then did he take the lead and flee south with the Gaegyeong palace guard.

Along the way, Jiang Gongzhen even tried to organize a defense, but he was repeatedly defeated by the vanguard personally led by Xiang Xun. By the time he reached Haeju, only a little over three thousand men remained behind Jiang Gongzhen.

Xiang Xun, having received Wang Jing's reminder, quickly detached a force under Riluge, sending him with two thousand cavalry to pursue Wang Zhao, while he himself began to surround Haeju, waiting only for the main army to arrive before assaulting the city.

Jiang Gongzhen looked south from the city wall, praying that Wang Zhao had already returned to Gaegyeong.

But Jiang Gongzhen could never have dreamed that Wang Zhao, whom he had schemed with all his might to cover and withdraw, was already surrounded less than thirty li away from him.

Although Huangfu Zhao was a rising star in the Goryeo army, he had still made a huge mistake: he should not have personally shown himself to block the pursuit.

Thanks to his performance at Mercy Ridge, Huangfu Zhao had long since been marked by the Zhou army. The moment the pursuing Wang Tingyi and Zhang Jianxiong saw Huangfu Zhao appear, they immediately realized they had caught a big fish.

What kind of person could make a general of this caliber personally take the rear and block pursuit? Of course only Goryeo's Great King Wang Zhao had that qualification.

So Zhang Jianxiong volunteered to take only fifty riders to harry Huangfu Zhao, while the remaining one hundred and fifty riders were taken by Wang Tingyi to continue the pursuit.

This time, Huangfu Zhao truly came to understand the fearsomeness of the Zhou army's iron cavalry. The white-robed, silver-saddled Zhaoyi Riders were top-tier elites that Murong Xinzhang had raised with vast sums of silver.

Although there were only fifty riders, on horseback they could, within a distance of one hundred and fifty paces, execute a full combination: first precision shooting with horn crossbows, then rapid covering fire with horse bows, and finally a ferocious charge.

As for Goryeo's cavalry, because of the mountainous terrain, their warhorses were mostly similar in build to Dian horses, while warhorses from Jeju Island were extremely scarce because Wang-dynasty Goryeo had not yet fully brought the Tamna Kingdom under control.

It was precisely because of this rather exaggerated disparity in equipment that in a single clash, Zhang Jianxiong with fifty riders directly shattered Huangfu Zhao's four hundred riders. Huangfu Zhao himself was nearly shot off his horse by a single arrow from Zhang Jianxiong.

Having learned his lesson, Huangfu Zhao was terrified out of his wits. Realizing that more than a hundred riders had broken through his blocking force to pursue Wang Zhao, he could no longer sit still. He immediately fled with the remaining two or three hundred riders, hoping to continue guarding Wang Zhao.

And so a most absurd scene unfolded: Wang Zhao ran at the very front, Wang Tingyi chased behind him, and behind Wang Tingyi came Huangfu Zhao, while Zhang Jianxiong pursued Huangfu Zhao like a stray dog.

The two sides pulled back and forth at high intensity for two or three days, until Wang Tingyi finally caught up with Wang Zhao in a small town thirty li south of Haizhou.

(End of Chapter)

Related