Chapter 854: The Shu-Shendu Road

In Chong Sheng Temple, Qiong Re Duojin wore a simple black robe, not even a single guard at his side, standing as straight as a green pine before the entrance of the temple's main hall.

Quite a few of Chong Sheng Temple's warrior monks were peeking from outside the gate at this brave general from the Central Plains — it was said he was a guardian deity dispatched by the Buddha himself to descend to the mortal world and protect the Supreme Heaven.

Although the Azhali sect's doctrines differ enormously from those of the Six Dharma Sect, both believe in the Buddha, and in certain respects they can be alike. A man of Qiong Re Duojin's standing would naturally draw a crowd.

The current head of Chong Sheng Temple was surnamed Dong, imperially titled the Great Divine Power Master, Pillar of the Five Esoteric Traditions — none other than Dong Sankuo's fifth granduncle.

Monks of the Azhali faith are permitted to marry and have children, so there is no talk of renouncing the world. This fifth granduncle of Dong Sankuo, the head monk with the dharma name Jue Rong, not only had a houseful of sons and daughters, but already had no small number of great-grandsons and great-granddaughters married off.

Qiong Re Duojin watched indifferently as the monk Jue Rong walked toward him, his face expressionless, then shifted his gaze to the pale-faced foreign monk behind Jue Rong.

The monk Jue Rong was already over eighty, his beard and hair all white. The Azhali sect does not insist on tonsure, but neither does it allow long hair — instead they keep a sort of crew cut, much like later generations would wear. Of course, if you wished to shave your head, that was also permitted.

Compared to the white-bearded, white-haired Jue Rong, this pale-faced foreign monk with his high nose and deep-set eyes was at most in his early thirties, looking about the age of Jue Rong's grandson.

Qiong Re Duojin studied the pale-faced foreign monk carefully, and the more he looked, the more familiar the man seemed, as though he had seen him somewhere before, though he could not quite recall where.

Qiong Re Duojin was still racking his memory when the pale-faced foreign monk pressed his palms together and gave him an extremely devout bow, speaking in slightly halting Tang-accented Chinese:

"So it is indeed the guardian deity himself. I thought that the one who accomplished such great deeds in the Middle Kingdom must truly be the Dharma King in person."

The moment the title "Dharma King" came out, Qiong Re Duojin finally remembered — this pale-faced foreign monk seemed to be one of the disciples of Baotongzi, the head monk of Nalanda Monastery.

Back when Zhang Zhao had led them in carrying off Nalanda Monastery's treasures, they had been short-handed and had made those monks help with the transport, which was why Qiong Re Duojin still had some impression of him.

And seeing this foreign monk, Qiong Re Duojin also understood what the old monk Jue Rong had meant when he repeatedly asked the Six Dharma Sect's dharma-transmitting monks — actually the Brocade Guard in disguise — to have the Sage send someone who had been to India.

"It seems the Divine Power Master is unwilling to become a child of the Supreme Heaven, and instead wishes to return to India, the land of the Buddha?"

Qiong Re Duojin felt like laughing. He had been born a Tibetan slave-soldier and was somewhat religious by nature, and after following Zhang Zhao for so long, he had developed an eye for such things.

These monks were truly indulging in wild fantasies! Given the present state of Indian Buddhism, there was simply no way they could outplay the Brahmins — every path had already been blocked off by the Brahmins.

The Azhali sect still wanted to go to India — did they want to see with their own eyes just how miserable Indian Buddhism had become?

The Sage himself had once told them personally that Indian Buddhism was doomed to perish, that it would never again have the slightest chance, and Qiong Re Duojin believed this without a doubt.

Of course, Qiong Re Duojin was professionally trained — no matter how funny something was, he would not laugh. But his tone was not exactly friendly, and it immediately made the monk Jue Rong somewhat ill at ease.

Only after a long while did the old monk say with a bitter smile: "Guardian deity, do not take offense. Some things become very clear once one reaches my age.

Since the eminent monk Zhan Tuo Jue Duo came south to spread the Dharma, Mahakala has flourished in this land for several hundred years. But now that the Supreme Heaven is about to arrive, how can Mahakala continue to exist? Better to return to India."

Qiong Re Duojin's face betrayed nothing, but inwardly he nodded, because whether or not the Sage allowed the Six Dharma Sect into Dali, the Azhali sect had only two choices: convert to the Six Dharma Sect, or be destroyed.

For the Azhali sect and the Six Dharma Sect were in some respects quite similar — both placed the Buddha high upon an altar as a mascot.

The only difference was that the Six Dharma Sect made the Supreme Heaven the Buddha's final disciple, receiving the Buddha's mandate as the last Buddha of the world.

The Azhali sect, on the other hand, practiced dual-deity worship: for blessings, warding off calamity, and curing illness, they worshipped the Slender-Waisted Guanyin; for the state, warfare, and natural disasters, they worshipped the Great Black Deity, born as Mahakala.

To put it broadly, the Azhali sect had simply split the Six Dharma Sect's Supreme Heaven into the Slender-Waisted Guanyin and the Great Black Deity Mahakala.

Under this narrative framework, the Six Dharma Sect and schools such as Chan could still debate scriptures and seek peaceful coexistence, but toward the Azhali sect, there was only one option: war, to annihilate both body and thought together.

The pale-faced foreign monk, watching Qiong Re Duojin sink into thought, reached out and presented a letter written on palm leaves — that is, leaves of the pattra tree.

"Please, guardian deity, present this letter to the Dharma King. Beg the Dharma King, in his great compassion, to save Nalanda Monastery once more."

Jue Rong chimed in beside him: "This old monk is at death's door and is willing to become a believer of the Supreme Heaven. But I fear that among my children and grandchildren there may be those blinded by a single leaf who cannot see Mount Tai and will bring disaster. If the Supreme Heaven can grant this, the monks of Azhali would be endlessly grateful, and would be willing to leave a portion of their people behind to assist the Great Prince in holding the south forever."

Qiong Re Duojin thought it over. Although Zhang Zhao had granted him enormous autonomy before he left, saying that all matters could be decided after consultation with Guo Rong and Zhang Fei,

Qiong Re Duojin had not yet seen the contents of the palm-leaf letter, but his instincts told him this was out of the ordinary, so he decisively chose to send it by eight-hundred-li express, traveling day and night to the divine capital, Luoyang.

Luoyang, Jinyong Palace. Zhang Zhao held the scroll of palm-leaf letter, and the corners of his mouth could not help but curl upward. The letter's contents were simple: a plea for aid.

The reason was that after Zhang Zhao had left India, although he had left Indian Buddhism and the Pala Kingdom in an extremely favorable position,

in these nearly twenty years, Indian Buddhism had not only failed to develop further — they could not even defeat the Gurjara-Pratihara Kingdom, which had been split into three parts.

Now the city of Kanyakubja had long been lost, Nalanda Monastery was in imminent danger, and the Pala dynasty that supported Buddhism had been defeated in three consecutive great battles, already on the verge of national collapse.

Back when Zhang Zhao was in India, these people could not wait for him to leave. But now that they had reached such straits, they immediately remembered Zhang Zhao's virtues and hurriedly sent people to seek his aid.

But Zhang Bingzhong of the Zhenyuan State had betrayed Zhang Zhao and blocked the route from India through Tokharistan, Ningyuan, and Anxi to the Central Plains, so Nalanda Monastery could only send monks to make the arduous journey to the Central Plains via the Shu-Shendu Road.

As it happened, not long after they reached Dali, they encountered Zhang Zhou's attack on Dali, and these Indian monks immediately grew somewhat afraid again.

For they remembered how Zhang Zhao had given everyone a thorough beating back in India.

So, after several months of neither daring to advance nor willing to retreat, these Indian monks made contact with the Azhali sect at Chong Sheng Temple.

It happened that the Azhali sect had long been worried about the Six Dharma Sect entering Dali and had made certain contingency plans for it — a case of a dozing man meeting a pillow.

The two sides put their heads together and prepared to take a portion of the various peoples from the areas of the Lishui Military Governor (Myitkyina), the Yongchang Military Governor (Baoshan, Tengchong), and the Yinsheng Military Governor (Pu'er, Jinghong), who followed the Azhali faith, away to India.

At the same time, the Pala Kingdom had already made preparations to retreat to northeastern India. The two sides hit it off immediately, and thus came this petition on palm leaves.

Zhang Zhao smiled faintly. He knew this plan had a certain feasibility. Though the Shu-Shendu Road was precipitous, it was not impassable.

Moreover, the Dali Kingdom at this time did not rule only Yunnan — it also ruled most of what would later be northern Burma and Laos. These regions were the key areas where the Shu-Shendu Road entered India.

Historically, the Ahom Kingdom of the Dai people had slowly migrated to northeastern India by this very route.

Most of those residents of Assam and Manipur who, on later internet forums, looked much like Chinese people, were descendants of the Ahom Kingdom.

And the condition these fellows proposed was that Zhang Zhao agree to let them take away a portion of Dali's warriors and over a thousand sets of iron armor and leather armor, while also bestowing some brocade and silk, salt, sugar, and tea.

Zhang Zhao closed his eyes and thought. According to the Brocade Guard's intelligence, the supply stations and road conditions along the Shu-Shendu Road could at most allow about a thousand people to pass through within two months.

To migrate ten thousand or more people at once, as in the historical exodus of the Dai people to establish the Ahom Kingdom, they would have to travel and settle along the way, ultimately taking several years to reach their destination.

This was also why the Azhali sect and the Indian monks had petitioned him — the timeline was too long. Very likely, before they could migrate many people, Dali would already have fallen, so they absolutely had to obtain Zhang Zhao's permission.

It was not impossible to agree. After thinking for a while, Zhang Zhao reached this conclusion.

The Azhali sect was indeed a thorny problem. Any religious conflict of this kind, unless one resorted to total slaughter, could not be resolved even in decades.

Now that the Azhali sect was willing to send away its core devout believers, that could be considered a good thing.

The vacancies they left behind could be filled with a batch of people from the Black Cuan Twenty-One Tribes of eastern Yunnan, and the vacancies left by the Black Cuan Twenty-One Tribes could in turn be filled by moving in a batch of Han people.

And the great Han clans that already existed in the Nanzhong region could be moved to Yangjumei City and Shanshan Prefecture to protect Zhang Xiancun.

So, having basically finished his deliberations, Zhang Zhao immediately summoned the chief ministers of the court and the various Zhaowu scholars, and had them turn his idea into a plan.

Salt, in ancient times, was a very special and precious commodity — small in quantity used, high in price.

Moreover, in this era, whether a great household or a small one, people generally did not hoard large quantities of salt. The cost was one reason, but more importantly, the stuff was not easy to store.

Most ordinary households stored salt in sealed pottery jars, but jars were limited in number and could not all be used for salt; besides, since they used so little, buying too much at once was not worthwhile.

So in ancient times, the only places with the means to store salt on a large scale were the salt works and the government granaries.

It was precisely because this was ancient times, when salt was expensive and hard to store, that large-scale dumping became possible.

In a later age, salt costing only a few yuan a packet would have made dumping a fool's dream; at that point one would have to use rumors to trigger a run instead.

In the eighth year of Shaoming, 953 by the common calendar, in early seventh month, the residents of Yangjumi City had long been waiting for nightfall, and in every household the able-bodied men and sturdy women held ready-prepared bottles and jars.

Everyone wore a secretive look, because they had all, without prior arrangement, received the same message.

A mysterious but very influential personage had obtained a batch of refined salt, and in order to accumulate hidden virtue for his gravely ill old mother, he was willing to sell it to the poor of the country at less than fifty percent of the official salt price.

Of course, this was illicit salt, so it had to be kept hidden from others, and therefore it would only be sold after dark.

At this time, Yangjumi City and the surrounding towns were still in a power vacuum, because King Duan Sicong, the Qingping Official Gao Fang, and the rest had all gone to Shanchan Prefecture, which allowed the Brocade Guard to bribe and infiltrate at their leisure.

More importantly, with the quiet support of the middle and upper monastic officials of the Azhali sect, this plan could be carried out all the more perfectly.

And so the common people of Yangjumi City, in the dim light, for the first time bought a considerable amount of salt very cheaply.

Every household converted all the money they could produce — cowrie currency — into precious salt that filled every bottle and jar they had.

At the same time, the great clans and caravan magnates who obtained large quantities of cheap salt from the temples and other channels and then sold it onward also made enormous sums of money.

Except that all the money they received was cowrie currency.

Then, seven or eight days later, the horrifying moment arrived. Almost overnight, slightly inferior cowrie currency surged into Yangjumi City like a tidal wave, blanketing everything.

And people from no one knew where used these cowries to frantically buy up the rice and grain essential to daily life.

Within three days, they had swept the grain shops of Yangjumi City completely clean. At first some local great clans took the chance to sell off old grain, but as they sold and sold, they discovered that the other side's cowries were nearly inexhaustible — so many that they themselves began to feel uneasy.

Grain prices in the market began to howl as they raced toward the heights, while the common people, having just bought large quantities of salt, had left themselves almost no money for grain — yet grain prices had already soared to a level they could not comprehend.

Money that had once bought ten days of grain now bought only a single meal. Panic began to spread in all directions, swiftly surging from the humble households to the great clans and wealthy merchants.

Everyone's property was undergoing inexplicable devaluation; the only difference was whether it depreciated more or less.

Ten days later, no one in Yangjumi City dared accept cowrie currency anymore.

And after barter returned, the great clans that had hoarded grain actually set a price of one jin of salt for two jin of grain — a price that was little short of robbery.

Thus, with certain interested parties fanning the flames, seething public sentiment rapidly swelled, and before long, rice-grabbing disturbances began breaking out in Yangjumi City and the surrounding towns.

Duan Sicong rushed back to Yangjumi City in a frenzy, intending to use the government granaries to stabilize grain prices.

Although the grain in the government granaries was barely enough to keep the army going for another half year or so, and releasing it would spell trouble for the army, Duan Sicong had no choice.

If grain prices could not be brought down now, chaos would erupt at once; before the army even had a chance to mutiny, Yangjumi City itself would be in trouble.

But before he could even begin releasing grain, word of it reached the troops at the front. The soldiers, already resentful of the prolonged conscription, quickly spread the news through every camp until the whole army was in an uproar. Gao Fang, at the front, could only dispatch fast riders back to Yangjumi City to stop Duan Sicong from releasing the grain.

Save the soldiers and you cannot save the common people; save the common people and the army is very likely to mutiny.

And even that would not hold for long. Once the families of the soldiers and officers began writing letters of lament, the army's morale could no longer be relied upon.

Now, two choices lay before Gao Fang.

Either send troops back to Yangjumi City to impose martial law and find out who was behind the trouble — but then the front line might not hold.

Or, as Dong Sanguo had said, while the Zhou state had not yet sent reinforcements, and while army morale had not yet collapsed, stake everything on a single throw and attack the Zhou army's stockade forts in the Wumeng Mountains outside the city.

In the eighth year of Shaoming, 953 by the common calendar, at the end of the seventh month, the de facto ruler of the Dali Kingdom, the Qingping Official Gao Fang, feasted the troops lavishly, then handed out offices and promises, drawing together the armies of three cities, forty-five thousand men in all, and concentrating them at Changcheng Commandery.

They raised banners and drums, advanced down the Niulan River, and made a swift attack on Awang, the small town outside the Wumeng Mountains that served as the Zhou army's supply base.

Gao Fang did have some ability; he knew that attacking the stockade forts Guo Rong had built by charging uphill was nothing short of suicide.

But by striking unexpectedly downriver at the Zhou army's supply base, he might achieve surprise; if he could destroy the Zhou army's rear supply depot, they would not be able to remain in the Wumeng Mountains.

This did indeed catch Guo Rong off guard. Although the Zhou army, watching from the heights, had observed the Dali army's frequent movements and knew their direction was Changcheng Commandery,

Guo Rong truly had not expected Gao Fang to be so bold, so much of a gambler — that instead of coming to storm the Wumeng Mountains, he would strike out along the Niulan River straight for Awang.

Still, Guo Rong was, after all, the great and ambitious ruler of history. Though he had not expected Gao Fang to be so reckless, he had never stopped building up Awang's defenses.

In the middle of the eighth month, the Dali army arrived outside Awang. After resting only a single night, they began assaulting the small town from both water and land.

But the low palisade that had once surrounded Awang had, over the past year and more, been turned by the Zhou army into earthen walls, and the Zhou garrison was not the one thousand Gao Fang had estimated, but a full three thousand.

The two sides fought a bloody battle for a day, and the Dali army made no progress at all, instead suffering heavy casualties. And as ill luck would have it for Gao Fang, less than two days after he led his army to besiege Awang, another Zhou force came straight at him.

This Zhou force was the six thousand armored soldiers of the Hanshan Capital, sent by Zhang Zhao as reinforcements under the command of the Barbarian Bear Zhang Zhaozhong and Zhang Cheng, after Murong Xinzhang's eastern campaign had ended.

The Dali army had run headlong into the finest troops of the entire Zhou realm. Even outnumbering the Hanshan Capital eight to one, they were beaten back the moment battle was joined, and the Barbarian Bear even took the field himself, wielding a modao glaive glaive glaive and cutting men down.

And the garrison commander of Awang was none other than the Barbarian Bear's son, the Little Black Bear Zhang Liechao. Seeing his father arrive and take the field in person, he was greatly stirred, and personally led fifteen hundred picked troops charging out of the city.

Father and son attacked from both flanks, and the Dali vanguard could not hold, collapsing in retreat.

Gao Fang was frantic. He immediately ordered his eldest son to lead the central army forward in support. The two sides fought until dusk; the Dali army suffered several thousand casualties and fell back more than ten li before stabilizing their lines.

This battle gave the whole of Dali a clear understanding of the Zhou army's strength, and Gao Fang could only order his forces to pitch camp and plan their next move.

But Heaven would give him no such chance. On the seventh day of the eighth month, Guo Rong, returning in person with ten thousand cavalry, launched a sudden predawn assault.

The Dali army camped by the Niulan River was caught completely unprepared; the Zhou iron cavalry crashed into their camp while they were still asleep, and the Barbarian Bear and his son, along with Zhang Cheng, also came from Awang to join the battle.

In less than two hours, the Dali army — soldiers, officers, and civilian laborers, a full seventy thousand and more — was utterly shattered. Several thousand were killed, more than ten thousand drowned in panic as they threw themselves into the Niulan River, and the great remainder were taken prisoner.

Gao Fang and his son, in desperate flight, led several hundred men along small paths over the mountains to escape, but in the end they were caught by Wen Zhong, who had pursued with picked troops. In his final moment, Gao Fang drew his sword and took his own life; the rest surrendered.

On the tenth day of the eighth month, the Zhou vanguard reached the outskirts of Shanchan Prefecture, and the garrison commander, persuaded by Dong Sanguo, opened the gates and surrendered.

At the same time, Yin Yaozi received reinforcements on the banks of the Jinsha River — fifteen thousand troops led by Fu Yanqing — and immediately began forcing a crossing. More than thirty thousand elite Zhou troops, guided by long narrow warships, swiftly crossed the river and stormed the ferry-town.

The Dali garrison was terrified by the sight of the Zhou army crossing the river, never imagining they would dare cross the Jinsha River with only those slender warships.

Caught off guard, the Dali troops did not even have the courage to hold the beachhead. The siege had not lasted half a day before their morale collapsed, and several thousand soldiers surrendered one after another.

On the twenty-second day of the eighth month, Guo Rong arrived at Shisang Commandery with a great army of thirty thousand, and the garrison surrendered without a fight.

Then Yin Yaozi's great army also advanced south from the north. After the two forces joined up, a combined host of sixty thousand advanced on Yangjumi City in three columns.

(End of Chapter)

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