Chapter 835: The Water of the Vast Deep Washes My Spirit and Soul

Historically, the fighting strength of the men of the Batang Plateau seems to have declined extremely quickly.

In the eyes of those who do not understand the situation, they went almost instantly from the warriors who beat down all comers in the era of the Tibetans Empire to a people that a few hundred Mongol cavalry could handle with ease.

It seemed that the plateau behemoth which in former days had held a slight advantage even against the Great Tang at Dafeichuan by relying on the plateau climate, and which later beat down the Uyghurs and the Arabs, had after the fall of the Tibetans Empire become a harmless Tibetan antelope.

But in reality this was not so. The fighting strength of the Tibetans had not declined that quickly, nor was it, as the popular imagination had it, that they had been swindled into lameness by Esoteric Buddhism.

The real reason, or rather the most important reason, was that on this plateau, once the Tibetans Empire had fallen, there was no longer any future in being a warrior.

After the Tibetans Empire split apart, the Tibetans no longer had the rich Hexi and Longyou, nor the Anxi from which they could freely draw blood.

And because of their own internal fragmentation and chaos, they lost their warm, humid colonies along the banks of the Ganges, losing that vital road to wealth by which they could ceaselessly extract riches from India.

Without the nourishment of external wealth, in the natural environment of the Batang Plateau, where boulders the size of bushels roll with the wind across the ground and snow flies in the eighth month, there was simply no need for many warriors, and still less for armored soldiers who had to be built up with great quantities of gold and silver.

What would they do with so many armored soldiers? With so little output, if it all went to the armored soldiers, what would the lords eat?

Therefore, once the Tibetans Empire that expanded outward and could each year extract great wealth from below the plateau was gone, the Tibetan warriors became orphaned wolf cubs.

This plateau not only no longer needed them, it even treated them as a burden.

This situation was first discovered by Li Cunhui.

Because ever since he went up onto the plateau and promulgated the court's plan to establish two commanderies of fubing troops on the border facing India, overnight there appeared countless armored soldiers coming to enlist.

Of course, these "armored soldiers" were not true armored soldiers. Although they had armor, their bodies were not as strong as the armored soldiers of the Central Plains, nor did they have much military experience.

The armor in their hands was genuine Tibetans-style lamellar armor, but it was all used by their grandfathers' generation and earlier.

By their generation, martial skills might still have been passed down, but the ability to temper the body was gone. Most men who put on their ancestors' armor would inevitably collapse from exhaustion after fighting for a quarter hour.

But Li Cunhui knew they could still be saved, because the collapse of the Tibetans Empire had been only a hundred or so years ago. Physical strength and combat experience could both be trained, as long as food was guaranteed and systematic training was added.

So after seeking instructions from Zhang Zhao, Li Cunhui selected from among them the armored soldiers who mostly had armor at home and whose family circumstances were already destitute.

He prepared to settle them on territory roughly equivalent to the later Ali region plus the three countries of Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan.

Li Cunhui believed that once Great Zhou gave these armored soldiers' families the dignity of living as men again, and gave them the opportunity to go down from the plateau to seize wealth, these twenty thousand Tibetans armored households would become Great Zhou's most loyal supporters on the Batang Plateau.

This was also the most important reason Guo Tiance and Li Cunhui were able to stabilize the plateau in so short a time.

The military power of the Tibetans Empire had, along with the collapse of the Tibetans Empire, likewise avalanched.

When the Great Zhou army entered Lhasa, the only remaining spark had originally prepared to resist.

But they suddenly discovered that they did not know whether the Zhou people were utterly evil, but they could see clearly that these Zhou people had come to restore their glory and dignity, so not only did they not resist, they very quickly came over to their side.

And Zhang Zhao's three-step plan for stabilizing the Batang Plateau had also been carefully considered.

First, carve out Dafeichuan and Songpan, then enfeoff all the core regions of the plateau except Lhasa to pacify the great and small nobles, and finally move the grassroots military force to the frontiers and keep it under control.

In this situation, Dafeichuan and Songpan would gradually become disconnected from Lhasa. The military force on the border would quickly become the court's enforcers for controlling India.

As for the other old-line nobles, they could do as they pleased. As long as they caused no trouble, there would be rewards at festivals, and if conflicts arose, the court would help mediate.

With these three measures applied together, plus the assistance of the Six Dharma Sect, the matter would be settled.

However, the matter of settling twenty thousand fubing households on the border would still have to wait, because it was already the ninth month and heavy snow had begun to fly. If there was to be fighting, it would be next year's affair.

So while Li Cunhui carried out military system reforms on the Batang Plateau, he ordered the local nobles who had submitted to the court to deliver a message to the last of the three kings of Upper Gun in the Greater and Lesser Boli region, Beiji Ribagun, eldest son of the Guge dynasty's btsanpo Kyide Nyimagun, urging him to submit to the court.

Historically, the Guge dynasty established by Kyide Nyimagun was actually very short-lived. After Kyide Nyimagun's death, his three sons divided the dynasty he left behind.

The eldest son, Beiji Ribagun, controlled the Greater and Lesser Boli region, which is the later Ladakh and part of the Pamirs.

Beiji Ribagun was the founder of the Ladakh dynasty. This place was later forcibly occupied by the Indian bastards and has not yet been recovered.

The second son, De Zugun, controlled the core Ali region and always claimed legitimacy. The historical Guge kingdom refers to De Zugun's line.

The third son, Zhaxi Degun, received the area east of the Ali region, including a large territory in what would later be western Nepal. This was the predecessor of the Gungtang dynasty.

And before this, in the Battle of Lhasa, Beiji Ribagun's third brother Zhaxi Degun had been egged on by others and wanted to come and be the btsanpo who saved the situation.

In the end, his forty thousand troops collapsed like a mountain avalanche, he himself was captured alive, and now his entire family has been escorted to the divine capital Luoyang to await judgment.

After Zhaxi Degun was captured, Beiji Ribagun's second brother De Zugun jumped out again.

But De Zugun was far more cunning. He had his sons and sons-in-law take the lead while he himself remained ambiguous.

In the end, the allied army was defeated just the same, and De Zugun was likewise to be relocated to the Central Plains. But because he had submitted, and because the Ali region still needed the support of these old-line nobles, one or two of his more obedient descendants might be left behind to serve as mascots in Lhasa.

Under these circumstances, when the final choice came before Beiji Ribagun, faced with the living examples of his two younger brothers, he thought for a moment and then made his decision.

He sent word to Li Cunhui that as long as the court would treat him well, he would accept the court's enfeoffment, come to Lhasa himself to live as a wealthy man, and divide the territory of Ladakh among his three sons to rule separately.

He would also permit the rinpoches of the Six Dharma Sect to preach in the Ladakh kingdom, and permit the court to send officials from the two directions of Khotan and Lhasa to Leh to serve as garrison ministers.

And Li Cunhui immediately agreed to Beiji Ribagun's demands.

Those who have traveled the Ali central route and the Ali northern route in later times all know, especially the Ali central route, that even in the era of the Republic it was a chronic headache, let alone in this period.

Although Li Cunhui had the support of large numbers of locals, after traveling the Ali central route once and defeating the allied army on the southern side of the Gangdise Mountains, it was very difficult to drive his soldiers northwest to attack Ladakh and the Pamirs.

With that energy, it would be better to quickly settle the fubing arrangements in the Guge region, and then go back and attack the Lamen region and Yuemen region.

He had to complete the fubing construction of the Guge military prefecture, the Lamen military prefecture, and the Yuemen military prefecture before next year.

At the far eastern edge of the sea, the blazing sun hung high.

Looking around in all directions, there was nothing but blue seawater.

The monk Yanshou wore a simple single-layer robe, his trouser legs rolled up to his knees. The waves on the sea's surface rose and fell unsteadily, but he sat in full lotus position, steady and unmoved, not affected in the slightest.

Gaunt, his cheekbones jutted from his face like two pillars, and in his sunken eye sockets only his black pupils still flashed with a look of resolve.

The monk Yanshou had set out to sea in the fourth year of Shaoming, reached Japan in the fifth year of Shaoming, and this year was the sixth year of Shaoming.

In these three years, the monk Yanshou had spent all the gold and silver he had raised from Liangzhe, the sponsorship of Japanese Buddhism, and the rewards of the Japanese Grand Minister of State Fujiwara no Saneyori.

This gold, silver, and brocade amounted to no less than fifty thousand strings of cash, and that was measured by Chinese prices. In the Japan of this time, it was a considerable fortune.

Having spent all this money, Yanshou had also completely used up all the halo he carried from being an eminent monk of the Central Plains.

Originally, after he crossed east to Japan, whether in knowledge or in scriptural debate, or even in the very act of braving danger to cross east to Japan, he had instantly outclassed the entire body of Japanese monks.

When he first arrived, the Japanese Emperor Murakami, the cloistered Emperor Suzaku, the de facto ruler Fujiwara no Saneyori, and even a host of warriors from the eastern provinces all regarded Yanshou as a second Master Jianzhen.

But after Yanshou arrived in Japan and began mysteriously declaring that he had come to find the Water of the Vast Deep and the continent of Purvavideha, and then put it into practice, all of Japan began to think Yanshou was out of his mind.

We have taken root and flourished here for several hundred years — how could we not know there were Cangming Waters around us?

And the Eastern Purvavideha Continent — if such a blessed land truly existed, would these Japanese have waited for the people of the Central Plains to go seek it? They would have emigrated to the Eastern Purvavideha Continent long ago.

And so, very quickly, Yanshou gained the title of "the mad monk." Apart from the disciples Yanshou had brought with him and the believers he had won over in Japan, almost no one believed him.

Amid the fierce wind and towering waves, the monk Yanshou drew a small golden Buddha from his breast.

This had been given to him by the Japanese Dharma Emperor at Todaiji Temple in Nara when he first arrived in Japan — a golden Buddha said to be cast from the purple gold left behind after the passing of the great master who once crossed the sea, namely Master Jianzhen.

By now, the monks of Nara's Todaiji Temple had long regarded him as a madman, but this golden Buddha image of Master Jianzhen alone still spurred Yanshou on.

"That man falsely claims to be the final Buddha of the Age of Dharma Decline, and he has already caused the lands beyond the Central Plains to fall. His Six Dharma Sect does not debate the meaning of the scriptures, but blindly trumpets the power of gods and Buddhas — clearly a complete betrayal of our Buddha's true purpose."

He murmured to himself in a low voice, as if steeling his resolve. Another wave struck, and Yanshou raised the Buddha image high.

"Our Buddha is compassionate. Your disciple Yanshou is resolved to fight this heresy to the end. The Six Dharma Sect claims that four or five hundred li out from Japan lie the Cangming Waters. Your disciple has now gone four hundred li and still found nothing — proof enough that this Zhang Zhao is speaking falsehood!"

Yanshou had now called him Zhang Zhao outright, yet in his heart he did not know whether to feel disappointment or joy.

The disappointment was because, in this world, there were ultimately no gods or Buddhas. Though Yanshou had known this before, now that the illusion was utterly shattered, he still felt some pain.

Suddenly, Faming, Yanshou's disciple standing at the bow, let out a shriek and dropped to his knees with a thud.

After a moment of stunned stillness, this great monk in his forties abruptly began prostrating himself frantically at the bow, shouting in a frenzy: "The Cangming Waters! Master, the Cangming Waters truly exist!"

Yanshou sprang to his feet and ran to the ship's rail, gazing into the distance. There, in what had been an endless expanse of blue-green sea, a stretch of black water — extremely broad, at least a hundred li wide — wound its way northeast like a black dragon.

The sailors aboard had already been frightened to their knees. Countless men prayed in low voices, filled with awe at this wonder of heaven and earth.

This was the Japan Current, also known as the Black Tide.

In truth, ocean currents were not a discovery of the modern era. As early as the two Han dynasties or even earlier, coastal fishermen had sensed these flows of seawater hidden deep beneath the sea.

But after all, ocean currents lie deep in the sea, so even if an extremely experienced old fisherman could observe them to some degree, he could not summarize them or understand their principles, and could only regard them as some kind of divine miracle.

And ordinary currents are very difficult to detect, so they were not widely known.

But the Black Tide was different. First, it was distinctly blue-black in color, easier to observe with the naked eye than other currents. Second, the Black Tide flowed at great speed, making it easier to perceive.

It was also several hundred li from the Japanese mainland, and with the fishing boats of that time, it was very difficult to sail so far out to fish.

Large warships were even less likely to go there — Japan's warships were basically all on the side near the Korea Strait.

More importantly, if an ordinary tenth-century Japanese fishing boat really did encounter a great Black Tide like today's, given its power, it would be very difficult for it to return to the Japanese mainland.

Amid the prayers, the little ship of over a hundred tons carrying Yanshou was pushed by the seawater straight into the Black Tide.

At this moment, Yanshou looked carefully downward. The originally striking blue-black color seemed to have turned clear and transparent, colorless.

Moreover, Yanshou clearly felt that beneath the seawater there was indeed an enormous propulsive force pushing the ship onward, so that it could sail forward at no slow pace without any need of wind power at all.

"Signal the two ships behind to follow!" Having finally found the Cangming Waters, Yanshou was surprisingly calm, though the fingers gripping the golden Buddha had turned white.

At the same time, his mind recalled the words spoken to him on the night before he had decided to return to Wuyue, when the Supreme Heaven had summoned him.

The Emperor, dressed in a short riding tunic, had said to him: "The Cangming Waters certainly exist, but an ordinary man, even if he finds the Cangming Waters, will find it very hard to follow them to the Eastern Purvavideha Continent.

For on the great sea, wind and cloud are unpredictable. A single wave, a single blast of wind, can send a man to feed the fish.

But I know that you, Yanshou, are certain to go. You are a man of great resolve, and you will surely succeed.

So remember this: if you follow the Black Tide, food will not be scarce. As long as there are not too many people, even fishing alone can feed many mouths. What is scarcest on the great sea is drinking water and vegetables.

Without the former, you will die of thirst; without the latter, your blood will rot. So I advise you to store up great quantities of strong liquor to mix with rainwater for drinking, keep the ship well stocked with sour oranges, and also use soybeans to sprout yellow shoots as a reserve.

And rainwater cannot be drunk directly, so I also have a method of filtering rainwater that may prove useful.

But even so, it is still a near-certain death. Whether you can survive these four and a half months will depend entirely on your luck. If your sincerity is enough to move heaven, perhaps you may reach the Eastern Purvavideha Continent."

"Why is it that the Supreme Heaven has clearly never been to the Eastern Purvavideha Continent, never followed the Cangming Waters, yet knows all this? Could there truly be a Buddha?" Yanshou stood at the ship's rail, his mind utterly unhinged.

"Master, now I know why the brothers Fazheng and Faxin never returned. Once a mortal enters these Cangming Waters, how can he easily escape? Even if they wanted to send word back, they could not return!"

The monk Faming suddenly burst into tears. Before Yanshou had decided to stake everything on going to sea himself, three waves of ships under Fazheng, Faxin, and others had set out, but none had sent back any word.

Among them, the monk Faxin had been a great pirate of Mingzhou won over by Yanshou. If he had not truly encountered trouble, he would certainly have been able to return.

Hmm — Yanshou's ship, following Zhang Zhao's advice, was loaded with strong liquor, citrus, charcoal, sand and gravel, and the like, and was entirely fitted with Chinese-style rigid sails, with no oar ports for rowing.

With such a great deadweight, once it entered the Black Tide, it truly would not be easy to leave.

Yanshou let out a long sigh and patted Faming on the shoulder. "This is the fate of us believers. If the Buddha protects us, we shall meet Faxin and the others on the Eastern Purvavideha Continent.

If we die as martyrs on the way, we shall meet again in the Pure Land of Bliss."

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