Chapter 837: Old Villain Sima, Come Take the Blame

Wang Pu's guess was actually quite accurate.

The three men around Monk Pingtong were no proper monks at all.

A moment's thought makes it clear: the Buddhist sects in Japan today are numerous, each side looking askance at the others, each with its own powerful patrons, and for centuries there has never been a unified leader.

This means that even if Japan's Buddhist establishment could see the enormous benefits the Six Dharma Sect might bring them, they could not possibly unite in the short term — or perhaps ever — to reach a consensus on inviting Murong Xinzhang over to lend them his strength.

Besides, the principle that "inviting a god in is easy, sending him away is hard" is something no monk who has climbed to the highest ranks of the Buddhist establishment could fail to understand.

If one insisted on saying someone did not understand it, that could only be a person lacking in experience and insight.

Or else, he simply did not care whether the god he invited could ever be sent away, because his original plan was merely to follow behind the invited god and feed on the scraps.

Hei Gou'er walked slowly into the dining hall where the monks ate their morning meal. Because the Dharma-propagating monks of the Six Dharma Sect often had to cross mountains and ridges, they burned a great deal of energy, and so in newly conquered places the monks generally followed a three-meals-a-day system.

Today also happened to fall on the Dharma-Protection Day, a relatively important festival within the Six Dharma Sect, originating from the day when Sage Zhang led his army into India and destroyed the first Brahmin warlord, thereby protecting the Dharma for the Buddha.

For this reason, the breakfast served on the morning of this festival was extremely lavish.

The seafood congee was sweet and savory, the steamed cakes of double-sifted white flour were soft and glutinous, and the buns stuffed with fried tofu were exceptionally delicious.

Pingtong and his two companions had been sleeping, but before long they were drawn over by the aroma. The three of them did not stand on ceremony, mingling among the crowd of Dharma-propagating monks and gorging themselves like starving ghosts reborn.

As they ate, the two attendants muttered under their breath, "Up at the crack of dawn and it's white rice congee, white-flour cakes, and tofu — eating better than the Governor of Iki, who holds a rank below Senior Sixth Rank, Lower Grade. This is simply too much!"

With that, the attendant tipped a great bowl of seafood congee straight into his mouth with a clatter, and without even wiping his mouth turned to get another bowl — only to find, as he turned, a man standing behind him with a faint, half-smiling, half-mocking expression.

Hei Gou'er reached out lightly and pressed the attendant back down onto his seat. The attendant tried to resist, but suddenly felt the hand on his shoulder tighten and squeeze, and half his body instantly went numb and weak; he could not stand up.

Monk Pingtong felt cold sweat beginning to bead on his forehead, because the man before him possessed a strange, intimidating force that made one afraid to move.

With his smiling, narrow eyes and wide mouth, he looked, in a dazed moment, very much like a venomous snake flicking its tongue at a person.

Hei Gou'er had been only nine years old when he helped Zhang Zhao blow up the city wall outside Shule, but even then he was a sharp-witted little spirit, meticulous in thought, skilled at reading expressions and tones, and able to spin lies and put on performances that even Zhang Zhao found hard to see through.

Of the three children from those days, Huabu had married old Zhang Zhong, and now had three children and had received the title of Lady of Xijiang Commandery.

Huang Yang'er had spent a period in the Brocade Guard, but his talents were limited, and in the end he transferred to the Academy of Works to become a scholar of mathematics.

The fates of those two had both turned out quite well, but Hei Gou'er was the one among the three who had done the best.

Because his appearance was indistinguishable from that of a Han person, he was ultimately chosen by Zhang Zhao to be the adopted heir of Huo Sheng'er Zhang Zhao, the first of the one hundred and eight heroes of the Western March to die in battle.

Thus, although Hei Gou'er had no blood relation to Zhang Zhao at all, and whether he was even Han was open to question, he was in fact a genuine member of the Zhang-Zhou imperial clan.

His adoptive father, Huo Sheng'er Zhang Zhao, was also a jialan with divine status in the Six Dharma Sect.

With these two advantages, plus the fact that he was naturally excellent material for a secret agent, the moment he entered the Brocade Guard he began rising like a rocket. Because he always wore a smiling face yet struck with ruthless cruelty, people within the organization called him the Smiling King of Hell.

Being targeted by such a man, Monk Pingtong felt a cramping ache in his lower abdomen, and sweat poured from his back like sap.

This feeling was one he had last experienced as a child, when he secretly ate all the rice balls his family had prepared for entertaining guests, humiliating his parents, and before he received a joint beating from both of them.

"You are no monk!" Hei Gou'er declared with absolute certainty, and then quickly caught the flicker of defensiveness that flashed across Pingtong's face, immediately adding another line.

"Taking refuge in the Buddhist faith is only

your cover. Do all you bold, literate warriors of Japan like using this as a cover?"

The word "literate" in Hei Gou'er's mouth did not refer to ordinary literacy.

In Japan, calling a person literate was a very high form of praise, because with hiragana and katakana still in their earliest stages, literacy meant being able to fluently read and pronounce the vast majority of Chinese characters in proper Tang pronunciation.

Such a person, let alone in Japan, even in the Great Tang, would be considered a man of culture if he could recognize most characters.

In Japan, anyone who reached this standard already had the qualifications to hold office. No — he would certainly be an official.

Because in Japan at present, government documents, and indeed anything related to writing, were all in Chinese characters.

Hiragana and katakana still had about one hundred and fifty years to go before they would appear in small quantities in official documents in the late Heian period.

At the same time, the writing in use on the Korean peninsula was also Chinese characters; that Korean script with only phonetic functions would not be invented until several hundred years later.

This was also the main reason why, although the eminent monks of the Six Dharma Sect had already probed and found that this man was not particularly versed in the Dharma, Hei Gou'er had not let the Brocade Guard simply seize Monk Pingtong and put him to harsh interrogation.

A man of culture, after all, should be dealt with by the methods of a man of culture.

"You truly have great courage, sir. Without understanding anything clearly, you dared cross the sea to gamble on luck. No — in your case, this should be called gambling with your life!"

Hei Gou'er was somewhat moved, but had he known the temperament of the people on that broken island in later times, he would not have been so surprised.

Gambling the fate of the nation at the slightest disagreement is basic practice for them; reflected in individuals, this life-gambling behavior is hardly surprising.

"There was no choice; one has to stay alive somehow." A look mixing pain and relief appeared on Monk Pingtong's face.

Faced with a top-tier secret agent and interrogation expert like Hei Gou'er, a single simple exchange was enough to make Monk Pingtong realize that the time for truth had come, or else serious trouble might follow.

An app that has run stably for years, comparable to the old version of the Book-Chasing Tool, used by all veteran bookworms.

The Japanese court had specially established the Dazaifu to stabilize its rule over this region, which could be understood as a Protectorate or Governor-General's office.

Then what kind of family could accept orders from the Dazaifu, dispatch ships to the open sea to strike at island pirates, and still possess its own private retainers?

It could only be a samurai family of northern Kyushu.

Monk Pingtong kept rambling on, and what he repeated over and over was nothing more than that the court's oppression was too heavy, that they truly could not survive, and so they had made contact with the monks of the great temples of Heijō-kyō, hoping to receive the support of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva and establish a Buddhist kingdom on earth, and so on.

But these words, which Monk Pingtong believed to be logically self-consistent, sounded utterly riddled with holes to Hei Gou'er's ears. He was bullying people of the Central Plains into not knowing the internal affairs of Japan.

Hei Gou'er smiled coldly. "Master, if your mouth still contains not a single word of truth, then this meal will be your last before the executioner's blade.

You don't think the warrior monks of my Six Dharma Sect are afraid to kill, do you?

The monks and laypeople of Heijō-kyō are living quite comfortably, and even the monks of Iki and Buzen are not so hard-pressed that they cannot go on.

Moreover, a mere fake monk from Buzen Province like you, with just a flap of your lips, speaks of seizing Heian-kyō — don't you think you're bragging a bit too much?"

As he spoke, breakfast had already ended. There came a clatter of footsteps, and then Monk Pingtong and his two companions were surrounded.

Only then did they discover that the people who had eaten breakfast with them were no monks at all, but armored soldiers, each wearing a suit of ring-linked mail beneath and a black monastic robe over it.

And moreover... these armored soldiers always exuded an aura found only in fierce beasts. Even when one of them merely glanced at you sideways, it made you feel that in the next second he would pounce and devour you alive.

Wait — ar... armored soldiers. Monk Pingtong was suddenly horrified, and only then realized a question he had never considered before: the army of the Zhou people was very likely, like the Great Tang of old, an army equipped with large quantities of iron armor.

In Japan, three hundred years ago Emperor Tenmu had prohibited the eating of cattle, horses, dogs, monkeys, and chickens. Two hundred years ago Emperor Shōmu had even prohibited the killing of cattle and horses.

By this time, the Japanese of the Heian period basically ate no meat at all.

Only a small number of warriors, and people of such low status that no one paid them any mind, would hunt wild pheasants and ducks to supplement their protein.

But even that was not eaten regularly — it was used to nourish the sick, or women after childbirth, to help them recover.

As for those who truly abstained from neither meat nor fish, it is doubtful there were even ten thousand of them in all of Japan.

Without the habit of eating meat, one can imagine what the so-called Japanese warriors were like — sallow and emaciated, short of stature, unable to bear the weight of iron armor.

"Young master, we all rise early to practice martial arts, and we have eaten nothing but vegetables all morning — I fear our strength is somewhat lacking.

These three Japanese may be scrawny, but if we roast them over a fire, they should still yield a few jin of meat. And these three gallbladders will do nicely for soaking wine for the Commander."

A bald-headed armored soldier said this to Black Dog in a muffled, booming voice, and from his tone you could easily tell this was no idle threat — he truly meant it.

The monk Pingtong suddenly shuddered, and a chill ran through his entire body. He remembered a legend — that among these Zhou people there was a band called the Beggars' Living, demons who had escaped from hell and taken human form.

They asked for no army rations; when hungry, they simply killed a man, cut off the plumpest parts, and roasted them over a fire. Their leader was an even greater demon who delighted in eating human gallbladders.

This was too horrifying. A Japanese like Pingtong would not even eat pork, mutton, chicken, or duck — and now he suddenly found himself surrounded by a horde of man-eating demons. He was scared out of his wits on the spot, and his two attendants' legs began to tremble outright.

"This is your last chance, because I am leaving soon."

Black Dog said coldly. Never mind these three Japanese — even he, standing among these murderous wretches, could not help feeling a certain psychological discomfort.

After all, other villains merely wanted to rob you of your possessions, or at worst kill you outright. But these Beggars' Living — they were the sort who could make a meal of you.

Under this terrifying pressure, the monk Pingtong could hold out no longer. With a thud he dropped to his knees, prostrated himself on the ground, and cried out to Black Dog:

"Buzen Province —

Kiku District, Left Guards Lesser Lieutenant Hata no Hira Michi, bearing urgent intelligence, begs once more for an audience with His Highness the Great King of Yan."

How many people in Japan had actually migrated from the mainland, or how many had Han Chinese blood — this remained a topic of heated debate on the internet in later ages, with every possible claim being made.

But in truth, even at this very moment the question could no longer be sorted out — not because there were too few, but because there were too many, and the mud and sand had buried the truth together.

At present, within Japan there were three main lineages that claimed descent from Han Chinese who had crossed the sea.

The Saeki clan, who had settled early in Kawachi Province; the Eastern Han clan of Yamato Province; and the Hata clan of Yamashiro Province.

Although these three great immigrant clans from the mainland all resided chiefly in the Kinai region, they had originally migrated from northern Kyushu and the northern part of Honshu.

Among them, the Saeki clan claimed descent from the Wang clan of Lelang; the Eastern Han clan claimed descent from Emperor Xian of Han; and the Hata clan was even more impressive — they claimed to be descendants of Qin Shi Huang.

Of these, the most famous in later ages were the Eastern Han clan and the Hata clan.

The Eastern Han clan produced a figure called Achi no Omi Liu Achi, who claimed to be the great-great-grandson of Emperor Xian of Han. It is said that in Japan they proliferated into over a hundred surnames, the most famous being Takahashi, Harada, and others.

The most famous of the Hata clan were, naturally, the Shimazu clan of the later Satsuma Domain, and the former Japanese prime minister Hata Tsutomu.

This old fellow went around proclaiming that his family had originally borne the surname Qin. But perhaps feeling that claiming Qin Shi Huang as an ancestor was a bit too conspicuous, old Hata Tsutomu instead claimed to be a descendant of Xu Fu, and even twice traveled to Xu Fu's hometown, Ganyu County in Jiangsu, to seek his roots.

As for whether any of it is true, one can only say it is probably sixty percent true and forty percent false. The most credible of these claims is that of the Eastern Han clan.

While they were unlikely to be direct descendants of Emperor Xian of Han, many of them were certainly members of the Liu clan. After all, after the proliferation of the two Han dynasties, imperial kinsmen made up no small proportion of those bearing the Liu surname.

The reason they migrated to Japan was, in all likelihood, the evil done by that old scoundrel Sima Yi.

In years past, Sima Yi took Liaodong, killed Gongsun Yuan, and slaughtered the entire scholar-official class of Gongsun Yuan's state of Yan, piling their bodies into a burial mound.

From the standpoint of the state, the Gongsun clan sought to establish their own rule, so defeating them was a good thing. But you cannot, damn it, slaughter all the Han Chinese elite of Liaodong!

Is there something wrong with you? The two Han dynasties had painstakingly bred and multiplied hundreds of thousands of Han Chinese in Liaodong, and the finest tens of thousands among them were all killed just like that.

They were the crucial force for sinicizing Liaodong and the Four Commanderies of Han, and for holding the various barbarian peoples of Liaodong in check!

Even setting aside ten thousand steps, fine, you killed them. But after killing them, should you not have sent officials and generals from the interior to Liaodong to replace the original Han officials and generals and stabilize the region?

You slaughtered tens of thousands of Liaodong officials, generals, armored soldiers, and scholars, then simply dusted off your hands and left — what kind of behavior is that!

And so, historically, after Sima Yi withdrew the Wei army, he left hundreds of thousands of Liaodong commoners with nothing to rely on.

Some were attacked by the Liaodong barbarians and barely escaped with their lives back to Youzhou; some voluntarily merged with the barbarians; and a large remaining portion went south from Lelang Commandery and eventually flowed into Japan — these were the ancestors of the Eastern Han clan.

The ancestors of the Saeki clan, the Wang clan of Lelang, presumably also found Liaodong and the peninsula untenable during the subsequent Northern and Southern Dynasties period, and crossed the sea to Japan.

As for the Hata clan, their composition was even more complex. The credible explanation is that the Hata clan, which rose to prominence in northern Kyushu, was a vast political bloc of mainlanders who had crossed the sea.

They may have been Han Chinese — and even other relatively civilized peoples — who came from the peninsula to Japan from the end of the Qin through the Two Jins and the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and after the collapse of the Later Qin. After arriving in northern Kyushu, for the sake of banding together, over several centuries they formed the Hata clan of Japan.

At present, these three clans all occupied the middle and lower ranks of the court nobility. They got by, but were not exactly well off. The family heads and such were certainly fine, but the clan members beneath them had it somewhat hard.

"Great King, the interrogation is done!" Black Dog strode into Murong Xinzhang's study and handed him a stack of interrogation records, while speaking in an excited tone:

"This monk Pingtong is not actually called Hata no Hira Michi. His real name is Koremune no Hira Michi, a minor military officer of Buzen Province.

His family also has some connections on Iki Island, and serves under the Dazaifu of the Saikaido circuit of Japan, mainly responsible for suppressing pirates.

But the moment we arrived in Korea, we made things miserable for them. A few months ago, the remnants of the Goryeo navy that Commander Chen Hui defeated off Sizhou withdrew south to Tsushima Island.

They already had ties with the Japanese of Hizen Province and knew the situation there well. Now homeless, they simply made contact with Japanese bandits and began plundering the northern Kyushu coast of Japan on a large scale.

This Koremune no Hira Michi, following his family head, went to sea under the Dazaifu's orders to exterminate the Goryeo sea bandits and won a small victory. But because the main force of the northern Kyushu navy had been annihilated, he received no reward and could not answer to his subordinates, and so he harbored resentment.

His crossing the sea was no Buddhist delegation at all — rather, a group of low-ranking northern Kyushu warriors had banded together.

They reasoned: if bandits could collude with Goryeo sea raiders to seize great wealth, why could they not simply lead us over and outright seize Kyushu in the Saikaido?"

Just how absurd was Japan's coastal defense at this time?

Twenty years later, the Toi pirates launched a massive assault with a total of fifty ships — whether they even had a thousand men is doubtful — and sent the Japanese navies of Nagasaki, Hizen, Buzen, and other provinces fleeing in utter disarray, plundering and killing over ten thousand Japanese commoners.

In the end, it still took the Goryeo navy to drive off these Toi pirates.

(Toi: the Koreans' name for the Jurchens of the Liaodong coast, roughly the area of Korea's east coast and Vladivostok.)

"Heaven aids me!" Murong Xinzhang burst out laughing when he heard this. "Go tell that Japanese — I do not care whether he is called Hata no Hira Michi or Koremune no Hira Michi. But the welcome of the warriors of Hizen and Buzen in the Saikaido alone is not enough for me.

Have him contact the warriors of Nagato, Iwami, Izumo, and the other provinces of the San'in circuit. If we are going to do this, let us do it on a grand scale!"

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