Chapter 834: Grind, All of You Grind

Murong Xinzhang still did not know that the Huangfu clan had brought his aunt and mother back again; he was busy taking stock of the property of the twenty-four great clans of Goryeo.

After a series of adjustments and observations, Murong Xinzhang had kept three families — the Huangfu clan of Hwangju, the Yu clan of Pyongju, and Kang Kung-jin's Kang family — while all the other twenty-four great clans were to be purged from Goryeo.

On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, more than thirty-four thousand surviving members of the twenty-four great clans were all loaded onto ships; once the court's order arrived, they would sail to Dengzhou under escort by over a thousand naval troops.

When these great clans set out, each person was permitted to carry only property worth no more than five hundred cash.

After they reached Dengzhou, the comely women among them would be kept by Sage Zhang to be given as Silla maidservants to reward meritorious officials.

The remaining men would be scattered to various places to perform labor service; if their luck was good, perhaps after a few decades they might blend into the local population.

The property they left behind was in part directly occupied by the enfeoffed lords in each region, and in part turned over to Murong Xinzhang, the Great King, to be held in reserve for next year's campaign against Wa.

Yet when Murong Xinzhang had his men finish tallying the property of these so-called great clans of Goryeo, he could not help sighing.

A full twenty-four clans, with a population of over thirty thousand, had left behind cloth, grain, houses, livestock, gold and silver vessels and the like, altogether worth less than two hundred thousand strings of cash.

On average, less than one string per person — what the hell kind of great clan was that!

Fortunately, the Goryeo royal house still had some surplus: a treasure vault accumulated by the founding king Wang Geon in former days, intended for use in a northward campaign to seize all the land south of the Yalu River once the state's strength had recovered.

It was worth roughly three hundred seventy or eighty thousand strings, including one hundred seventy thousand shi of grain, which relieved Murong Xinzhang's most pressing need.

The casualty reports had also come in. Through the Battle of Pyongyang, the naval battle at Haeung Island, the siege of Gaegyeong, and the subsequent campaigns to suppress rebellions across the land, at least forty thousand Goryeo soldiers had died in battle, and no fewer than thirty thousand civilian laborers had been lost.

If one counted the people killed by rampaging troops in various places during the suppression, the Wang dynasty's Goryeo, with a national population of only a little over 1.2 million, had lost at least 150,000 people — 12.5 percent of its total population — and the great majority of them were able-bodied men.

When he received this report, Murong Xinzhang knew the Goryeo people could no longer fight on.

For on the basis of a total of 1.2 million people, the adult men of all of Wang Goryeo numbered only around 340,000 or 350,000.

Now at least 110,000 or 120,000 had died in battle, more than thirty percent of the total male population. Basically all who could fight, and all who dared to fight, had already been killed; those who remained naturally could not fight on.

At the same time, Murong Xinzhang as the conqueror also understood that he could not keep fighting.

If he fought on, there would not be enough labor left to farm for him — and farm work was heavy labor that the old, the weak, women, and children could not accomplish.

This was precisely the important reason why Murong Xinzhang had ordered the surveillance and disposal commissioners in each region to summon all the great and small enfeoffed lords to report for duty.

As a Great King who had risen from the lower ranks, Murong Xinzhang naturally knew the custom of those below adding layer upon layer. He, the Great King, had set a tax rate of about eighteen percent, but some men would dare to collect thirty-five or thirty-six percent.

In particular, most of the enfeoffed lords under him came from poor backgrounds; having suddenly risen to high positions, wholesale plundering would likely become the norm. He had to sound a warning bell for them before they would restrain themselves a little.

He was just about to summon Wang Pu to discuss whether the enfeoffed lords should be more strictly managed when he heard gongs and drums resounding outside, with cheers rising wave after wave.

Before long Wang Pu, Wang Jing, and the others came running in excitedly, offering congratulations one after another. It turned out the court's rewards had arrived.

The sixth year of Shaoming, 951 CE, the first day of the ninth month — an auspicious day on the almanac.

Murong Xinzhang, then in Gaegyeong, was witnessed by the court's special envoy, who was also his maternal grandfather, Cao Yuanzhong, Duke of Qiao.

The fine young man, wearing a royal crown-and-robe newly devised by Zhang Zhou's Ministry of Rites, only slightly inferior in form to that of the crown prince, held his enthronement ceremony at Manwoldae in Gaegyeong.

Zhang Zhao also specially granted Murong Xinzhang the use of a twelve-tasseled crown to display his status and achievements.

Sage Zhang promoted Murong Xinzhang, Prince of Liaoyang Commandery, to Great King of Yan, enfeoffing him with all the land south of Pyongyang, called the State of Yan, with Gaegyeong as its capital.

Gaegyeong was renamed Hanseong, and the royal palace Manwoldae was renamed Guangyue Palace.

The name Goryeo was completely abolished, and the land of Yan was granted the name Joseon, taken from the meaning "the morning freshness"; the land south of the Yalu River to Pyongyang reverted to its ancient name and was called Lelang Commandery.

At the same time, Zhang Zhao ordered Murong Xinzhang to demolish the imperial tombs of Wang Geon, Wang Mu, Wang Yo, and Wang Geon's parents and grandparents, strip them of their royal titles and posthumous honors, and demote them all to commoners.

The corpses of Bak Sul-hui and Wang Gyu, who had once urged Wang Geon to adopt Goryeo as the dynastic name, were to be dug up, their bones crushed and ashes scattered; their descendants and all male members of their clans were to be beheaded to the last man, and the women and children reduced to slavery.

Under the practice of clan endogamy, all descendants born of close-kin marriages within the Wang clan, and their posterity, regardless of sex, were likewise to be beheaded to the last.

As for the Goryeo king Wang So, he did not even get the chance to perform the dance of homage at the Purple Tenuity Palace, for along with Zhang Zhao's edict enfeoffing Murong Xinzhang came a joint judgment from the Ministry of Justice, the Court of Judicial Review, the Censorate, and the Ministry of Rites of Zhang Zhou.

The four tribunals unanimously judged that Wang So, as a descendant of the Wang clan of Lelang, had taken a traitor for his father, betrayed his ancestors, and practiced clan endogamy in disregard of human ethics, and should be sentenced to immediate execution by beheading.

And Murong Xinzhang, in order to overawe the remaining Goryeo people, chose to do it before the civil and military officials, more than three hundred great and small enfeoffed lords, and tens of thousands of the common people of Gaegyeong — no, of Hanseong.

Right by the Imjin River, Wang So was stuffed into a hemp sack and beaten to death with a great club, after which three hundred white-robed, silver-saddled Zhaoyi lancers were ordered to ride back and forth over him until he was trampled into pulp.

After the punishment was complete, it was time for feasting.

Murong Xinzhang had enfeoffed one marquis in the State of Yan: Xiang Xun was made Marquis of Wonsan, with a fief of eight thousand households, located precisely at the later North Korean city of Wonsan, on the eastern side of the Korean Peninsula, facing the East Korea Bay.

This place was far from the western side of the peninsula, which was the political and economic center, and urgently needed a ruthless man of means to go and hold it down — Xiang Xun was just the right man.

There were two counts. Murong Yanchao was enfeoffed in Geumseong Commandery, south of Xiang Xun, with the title Count of Geumseong and a fief of four thousand households.

His clansman Murong Xinzhen was enfeoffed in Chunju, with the title Count of Chunju and a fief of forty-five hundred households, located precisely near the later North Korean city of Chuncheon.

Of this one marquis and two counts, apart from Wonsan being slightly better, the rest were all relatively poor regions, and so capable men were needed to coordinate the occupation and suppression.

And besides this one marquis and two counts, these places also had four viscounts, nine barons, and twenty-nine patrol commissioners, whom Murong Xinzhang specially authorized to command separately according to distance.

The other, relatively densely populated areas were different: viscounts were rare, and most were barons with seven or eight hundred households, along with large numbers of patrol commissioners holding between one hundred and five hundred households.

In the most densely populated areas, even patrol commissioners were few, and most were large fubing garrisons — these places belonged to Great King Murong's direct forces.

Big Fish Hai had now thoroughly swaggered into prominence. He wore a lan robe made of fine Jiangnan silk, and even the futou on his head — that small scrap of cloth — was made of fine Khotan white cotton and gauze.

Of course, the most conspicuous thing on his whole person was the gold-inlaid jade hanging at his waist, on which were carved the four characters "Treasure of Kunming."

This was a form of gold-inlaid jade that only a viscount of the State of Yan could possess at this time. With this piece of jade, anyone seeing him from afar would know at once that this was a noble big shot.

His second brother, Hai Erxie, saw the gold-inlaid jade at his elder brother's waist, and his eyes went red with envy. The two brothers exchanged a few words, and then Hai Erxie could only watch his elder brother go in to the banquet.

For Hai Erxie was not even a patrol commissioner; he had merely been promoted from sailor to boatswain of the Heng Hai Garrison, in charge of five sailors.

Had it been someone else who had risen in the world, it might not have stung Hai Erxie so sharply, but seeing his own elder brother, who had always been at his side, now lord over several thousand men and arrive at the Great King's banquet with a steward and two bodyguards — how could that not deeply provoke Hai Erxie?

In the fine drizzle, Hai Erxie did not even take his leave. Sobbing, he spurred his horse and galloped toward the barracks, swearing a secret oath in his heart.

From this day on, he would practice the spear two hundred times every day and swim underwater for a full double-hour; he would win great merit in the next campaign against Wa; he would become a viscount in Wa — no, a count!

Clatter! Clatter! He was nearing the barracks when the sound of hoofbeats rose everywhere. Hai Erxie looked around in surprise.

Good heavens! That evening, the road before the barracks gate was packed with people — all of them had been spurred on and had rushed back to grind.

Hai Erxie even caught sight of his direct superior, Wang Ashui, squad leader of the Heng Hai Garrison. The Sage had just approved part of the Heng Hai Garrison's officers and men to join the Yan army, and already they had begun to push themselves desperately.

"This is too much grinding!" Hai Erxie could not help wailing.

And what Hai Erxie did not know was that it was not only the untitled like them who were starting to grind — even some of those who already held titles had begun to grind as well.

At the banquet, Hai Dayu found his brother Hai Sanxia, but Hai Sanxia told him something that left him utterly dumbfounded — he was going to give up the rank of Patrol Inspector he had just received and continue following the Great King on the campaign against Japan.

"Xiazai, have you lost your mind? Have you forgotten how we were boat-dwellers back home, and when our parents died we weren't even allowed to go ashore to bury them? You're now a full Patrol Inspector, a titled noble!"

Hai Dayu greatly prized this status he had won through bloody battle, and he always kept the words "titled noble" on his lips, so he simply could not understand his younger brother Hai Sanxia's decision.

Hai Sanxia gave a bitter smile. "You're a viscount, Elder Brother — a lord with over a thousand households under you. Of course you're satisfied.

But me? I've only got a hundred and thirty households, and the land isn't good either. Every year I can collect close to a thousand shi of grain and a bit of meat. Everything else — oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar — has to be bought from outside. It's enough to marry a wife and get by, but that's about it."

Hai Dayu thought it over. It really was a bit little.

Ah, human desire always climbs along with one's horizons and abilities.

Back in their old home in southern Fujian, it would have taken a small landlord with at least three or four hundred mu of land to bring in that kind of income each year — and only if he wasn't a boat-dweller like them, because boat-dwellers had no right to go ashore at all.

More importantly, this thousand-odd shi of grain required no farming on his own part — he could simply sit at home and receive it. Back in southern Fujian, that would have required a great landlord with at least two or three thousand mu.

So in the old days, never mind getting a thousand shi of grain a year without labor — even thirty shi would have had the two brothers grinning from ear to ear.

But now, for two brothers whose horizons and abilities had risen, a thousand shi in some poor backwater was far, far too little.

"Then what about your fief and your title? You're just going to throw them away for nothing?"

Hai Dayu thought for a long while. He was now a viscount, a man with a household and an estate. If he still tried to stop his brother from going off to win merit, he truly couldn't bring himself to say it. So he raised no further objection.

Seeing that his elder brother did not oppose him, Hai Sanxia at once grew much more resolute. He gazed into the distance at the marquises, counts, viscounts, and other great enfeoffed nobles who kept going up to toast the Great King, and answered as though steeling his resolve:

"Every prefecture has a set quota for relinquishing fiefs. Once relinquished, the fief is taken back, but one receives a suit of armor as compensation.

Lord Li'an once studied at the Dragon Tao Academy as a companion to the eldest son of Duke Chen. He says Japan is far richer than these places we've been enfeoffed with, and far larger too.

Once in Japan, a baron can rule more households than a viscount in Korea. I intend to join up with Lord Li'an and band together to go make a try of it."

Hai Dayu thought it over. Lord Li'an must be the Baron of Li'an County in Shangzhou Prefecture. The man's surname was Ma, he was highly skilled with spear and staff, and his archery was superb.

He had heard that the man was indeed a personal retainer of Duke Chen, Ma Zhaoyuan. If his younger brother followed him, there probably wouldn't be any great problem.

"These next few days, don't leave Hanseong. I'll sell five hundred shi of grain and twenty jin of refined salt to raise some money, and buy you and A Xie a good bow and a good saber."

This was all Hai Dayu could do for his brother now. After saying it, he felt, somehow, a touch of melancholy. Once his two younger brothers left like this, they would surely rarely see one another again.

With good luck, they would go to Japan and become great vassals, unable to leave their fiefs lightly. With bad luck, they would end up buried in the bellies of fish or laid to rest in a foreign land.

But the next moment, a group of viscounts and barons, all with gold-inlaid jade hanging at their waists, came over and invited Hai Dayu to go toast the Great King together.

Hai Dayu at once remembered that he too counted as a nobleman now, with six thousand commoners under his rule and a wife as beautiful as a celestial immortal. He immediately cheered up again and prepared to go give the Great King a proper kowtow.

In the early morning, Murong Xinzhang awoke from a splitting headache. The day before, he had very nearly been drunk to death by the civil officials, military officers, and nobles under his command.

Hearing the sounds of the Great King rising, the palace attendants outside filed in one after another, and the Secretary at his side also brought in the detailed list of memorials that Murong Xinzhang needed to approve today.

After his title of Great King of the State of Yan had been established, Murong Xinzhang's former hegemonic headquarters as Prince of Liaoyang Commandery had been abolished, replaced by a complete state structure.

In civil affairs, the Left and Right State Chancellors stood at the head, with the Six Ministries likewise established below — except that the heads of the Six Ministries could only be Vice Ministers, not Ministers, and there were likewise a Court of Judicial Review and a Censorate.

In military affairs, one Commandant and two Colonels were established nationwide for each of the standing army, the great garrison troops, and the vassal troops, with the Commandants and Colonels placed directly under the King's command.

The most important matter today was that one baron and seventy-six Patrol Inspectors had petitioned to exchange their titles.

"Exchanging titles" was merely the nicer way of putting it. In truth, they disdained their current titles as too small and wanted to follow him to Japan.

Murong Xinzhang was quite pleased with this current morale, and he did not refuse to let the vassals below him relinquish their titles.

Because through years of gathering information, Murong Xinzhang already knew that although Japan's territory was larger than Goryeo's and its population greater, it was also relatively more scattered.

Moreover, the Japanese army's equipment was worse — they were still at the stage where bamboo armor was used, and men wielding broken iron swords counted as elite troops.

This place was unlike Goryeo, where most of the country's population was concentrated on a few plains in the west.

In Goryeo, one only needed a few decisive battles to destroy the enemy and seize their fertile lands, and the whole country could be conquered.

In Japan, because the population was more scattered and combat strength lower, what was needed was a small number of elite troops — for example, small units of one or two hundred men in heavy armor with sharp blades, repeatedly sweeping and clearing the regions outside Kyoto and Nara until the locals were thoroughly subdued.

Therefore, Murong Xinzhang planned to enfeoff all of Japan outside Kyoto and Nara. Everyone who went with him would be a great vassal, and they would unite to suppress the resistance of the local Japanese.

So these ambitious men unwilling to be petty vassals in Korea were exactly the right candidates.

After going through memorials for a while, the newly appointed Right Chancellor Han Kuangtu walked in beaming with delight. "Great King, Consort Chong has sent someone with a gift list.

These supplies were all procured by her in the Central Plains. At the same time, she is willing to personally step forward and recruit no fewer than two thousand Khitan men of decent fighting ability to come to Yan and become the Great King's loyal ministers and brave generals."

Consort Chong of the Yelu was Yelu Abuli. "Chong" was one of the Nine Consorts, and it was Yelu Abuli's title.

And the reason this woman was so eager to curry favor with Murong Xinzhang was that Pyongyang was still being administered by Murong Xinzhang on her behalf.

Yelu Abuli's son, the Sixth Prince Zhang Xianjiong, had basically already been confirmed to be enfeoffed in Pyongyang.

That was why the Pyongyang region was now being oddly called Lelang Commandery — preparations were being made for Zhang Xianjiong to be enfeoffed as Prince of Lelang Commandery once he grew up.

This also counted as Zhang Zhao's most important gesture of willingness to let the Khitan assimilate and become Han.

Murong Xinzhang opened the gift list and looked it over, and at once raised his eyebrows in satisfaction.

Yelu Abuli had sent him two hundred thousand shi of grain, one hundred thousand jin of iron, sixty thousand bolts of cloth, one hundred suits of iron armor, five hundred hard bows, and five hundred hengdao sabers.

She also promised that from now until Zhang Xianjiong came of age, all tax revenue from Pyongyang would belong to Murong Xinzhang, and that every year thereafter she would give Murong Xinzhang gifts worth no less than three thousand strings of cash.

Her only request was that the officials governing Lelang Commandery include some people Yelu Abuli had recruited from the Han lands.

At the same time, Yelu Abuli also revealed a piece of news: of the three hundred households of Confucian scholars Murong Xinzhang wanted, the court was prepared to provide two hundred.

As for the remaining one hundred households, she would work with Murong Xinzhang's mother, Consort Cao, to find a way to make up the number for him.

Murong Xinzhang laughed heartily. Yelu Abuli had followed Zhang Zhao early on and was herself quite good at managing money. She counted as a woman of no small means, with a fair amount of savings in hand.

His dear eldest son had originally been a little uncomfortable in his heart — Lelang Commandery was land he had won at the cost of his soldiers' lives — but now that Yelu Abuli was being so accommodating, he had nothing more to say.

"Consort Chong must have sent someone. Show them in!" Murong Xinzhang decided to promise, in front of Yelu Abuli's envoy, that he would properly leave Lelang Commandery to his sixth brother, Zhang Xianjiong.

Ten thousand li away, on the snowy plateau, south of the Gangdise Mountains, by the shore of Machui Lake (Mapam Yumtso), a decisive battle had also just ended.

Li Cunhui personally led thirteen thousand infantry and cavalry, assisted by more than twenty thousand troops of the enfeoffed noble armies from various regions who had already converted to the Six Dharma Sect.

They utterly routed a great army of fifty thousand men, composed of the Three Kings of Upper Gun of the Ali royal line, other local lords who still followed the Bon faith, the State of Zhenyuan, and the remnants of the Utpala dynasty that they had hired and that occupied Kashmir.

In this battle, Li Cunhui, with overwhelming superiority and at a cost of fewer than six hundred casualties of his own, killed more than six thousand of the enemy on the field, captured tens of thousands, and pursued them all the way to the western edge of what later generations would call Nepal.

Along the way, dozens of clan chieftains of various peoples surrendered at the mere sight of his banners. One of the Three Kings of Upper Gun — Degun, third son of Jidenima Gun, the former Tsanpo of the Guge dynasty — also bared his upper body and came to beg for surrender.

By this point, nine-tenths of the entire Batang Plateau was under the court's control, and all of it was about to convert to the Six Dharma Sect.

The greater significance of this battle lay in the fact that Li Cunhui had essentially crushed all resistance forces in the Ngari region, and had also dealt a heavy blow to the traitorous Zhenyuan Kingdom.

With them defeated, the relatively warm and humid southern Tibetan valleys, suitable for farming and garrisoning troops, had in effect already opened their embrace to Li Cunhui. He need only wait for next summer to arrive, and he could dispatch troops to seize them.

And once he held the southern Tibetan valleys, India would be within distant sight.

(End of Chapter)

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