Chapter 859: The End of the Ten Kingdoms

Liu Sheng's bipolar disorder actually had an origin, and that origin came from his father, Liu Yan.

Although Liu Yan was the founding emperor of the Southern Han, his background was actually quite pitiful.

His mother, Lady Duan, was only the mistress of Liu Yan's father, Liu Qian — the kind of wild woman kept outside the home who did not even count as a concubine.

The reason Liu Qian dared not bring Lady Duan home as a concubine was that he had built his career on the strength of his wife's family, the Wei clan.

At the time, Wei Zhou of the Wei clan was serving as Military Governor of Lingnan, and Liu Qian was merely a yabing officer. By sheer luck, Wei Zhou took a liking to him and married a niece to him, and only then did Liu Qian begin to rise.

The Wei clan was not only Liu Qian's benefactor; they also came from the famous great clan, the Jingzhao Wei. For a Lingnan man like Liu Qian to marry into such a family, one could say he had used up eight generations of his ancestors' luck.

Moreover, after Wei Zhou left his post and returned to the capital, he soon became Chief Minister, and his power grew even greater.

Therefore, in Liu Qian's household, his wife, Lady Wei, had the final say in everything. How would he dare bring Lady Duan home?

But paper can never wrap up fire. When Liu Yan was two or three years old, Lady Wei finally learned of Liu Yan's existence.

Originally, as long as only Lady Duan was there, Lady Wei could still tolerate it — she was just a woman kept in an outer residence, nothing that could overturn the heavens.

But Liu Yan's appearance was something Lady Wei could not endure, because after the second son she bore, Liu Tai, died young, Lady Wei could no longer bear children. She had only one son, the eldest, Liu Yin, so Liu Yan's existence would greatly threaten Liu Yin's position.

So Lady Wei personally took up a sword, stormed into the outer residence, and dragged Lady Duan and Liu Yan back to the family home. She ordered someone to bring Liu Yan over, intending to kill him to eliminate future trouble, but the moment she saw Liu Yan, Lady Wei was greatly startled.

For although Liu Yan was only two or three years old at the time, his appearance was outstanding, and his arms hung past his knees — very much the look of an extraordinary man.

So Lady Wei changed her mind. She chose to kill Liu Yan's mother, Lady Duan, and made Liu Yan acknowledge her as his mother.

Misfortune in childhood: his mother was killed almost before his eyes, and he still had to acknowledge his mother's murderer as his mother, or his own life would not be safe.

His elder brother Liu Yin also looked down on him. Had Liu Yan not later grown up to be skilled in archery and horsemanship and possessed of keen military insight, Liu Yin probably would never have treated him as a brother.

Growing up in such an environment, Liu Yan naturally developed bipolar disorder. When manic, he would slaughter on a grand scale; when depressed, he felt the whole world was out to harm him; then he would turn manic again and start killing — over and over, in an endless cycle.

Liu Yan's bipolar disorder and innate sense of insecurity were perfectly inherited by Liu Sheng, and since Liu Sheng had also killed his elder brother to take the throne, his condition was even more severe than Liu Yan's.

Therefore, although Liu Sheng was not an incompetent ruler, it is hard to say he was a normal person. In his short ten-year reign, the manic side of his bipolar disorder was displayed very clearly.

In those ten years, Liu Sheng killed thirteen of his own younger brothers alone. The meritorious officials who had helped him kill his elder brother and take the throne, such as Liu Sichao and Chen Daoyu, were also all killed, and there were even exterminations of nine clans — annihilation-style executions implicating hundreds of people.

In fact, in Chinese history, the extermination of nine clans was an extremely, extremely rare thing, because the scope of implication was too broad, and it easily caused the civil and military officials under one's command to lose their most basic sense of security.

In the age of emperors, the emperor's power was already very great. If there was no restraint even in the matter of killing, that would be a truly terrifying thing.

When an emperor brings unease to everyone, then in all likelihood a single spark would cause the entire dynasty to explode on the spot.

So let alone exterminating nine clans, even exterminating three clans or wiping out entire families was used very sparingly by normal emperors.

But Liu Sheng was precisely not a normal emperor. When he killed Chen Daoyu, Liu Sheng slaughtered even Chen Daoyu's very distant cousins, executing more than six hundred people in total.

This had already completely transcended the bounds of law, and between Liu Sheng and Chen Daoyu there was no deep, heaven-high, sea-deep enmity. Such conduct can only be explained by saying Liu Sheng had fully inherited his father Liu Yan's madness.

And the problem with bipolar disorder is that what it fears most is repeated stimulation — one stimulation and he might fall ill.

Thus, Liu Sheng had originally planned everything out carefully months ago: first, seek to marry a daughter of the Zhang clan, gain as many bargaining chips as possible for himself, and if things could not be done, he could accept going to the divine capital Luoyang to live as a wealthy man.

But after being cursed out by Wang Jiu a few months ago, Liu Sheng immediately had an episode.

The killing and self-destructive genes inherited from his father Liu Yan began to take control of Liu Sheng's brain, causing Liu Sheng to cut off all his own escape routes.

The fall of Wuzhou was a very severe blow to the future of the Southern Han and to Liu Sheng.

Because ever since Wuzhou had been seized from the Ma Chu six years earlier, it had always been the northwestern gate of the Xingwang Palace, with grain, fodder, and supplies stockpiled mountain-high.

Ji Yan-Yun and the Left and Right Longxiang Armies were also the Southern Han's elite troops. Their loss in a single stroke was equivalent to the Southern Han losing one-third of its supplies and one-third of its military strength.

And although between Wuzhou and the Xingwang Palace (Guangzhou) there was still Duanzhou (Zhaoqing), which counted as a key water and land junction, given the Southern Han's national strength, it was utterly incapable of building another defensive fortress beyond Wuzhou. Therefore, once Zhang Zhaojun passed Wuzhou, there would be no further obstacles.

Liu Sheng received the battle report the day after Wuzhou fell. He had no good solution. His ministers, fearing they would anger Liu Sheng, dared not speak, and Liu Sheng's brothers had nearly all been killed, so there was no close kin to console him.

So, in extreme despair, Liu Sheng staggered back to the palace and drank himself into a stupor. The more he thought, the more aggrieved he felt; the more he thought, the more dejected he became, feeling that everyone was laughing at him, that everyone was scheming to hand him over to the Zhou state in exchange for wealth and rank.

This is rebellion against heaven itself! There are far too many treacherous ministers and traitors in this country!

The drunken Liu Sheng's madness erupted. He immediately ordered his guards to summon his twelfth brother, Liu Hongmiao, Prince of Gao, to the palace, then ordered the palace eunuchs to hold Liu Hongmiao up and force wine down his throat without stopping.

He also threatened that if Liu Hongmiao refused, Liu Sheng would throw him into a cauldron of boiling water and cook him. In despair, Liu Hongmiao was forced to drink several dou of wine, which triggered massive gastric bleeding.

Seeing Liu Hongmiao vomiting blood violently, Liu Sheng not only did not summon a physician to treat him, but instead laughed uproariously. Feeling it was still not satisfying enough, he ordered his favorite actor, Shang Yulou, to be brought in.

After Shang Yulou arrived, Liu Sheng ordered the eunuchs to bring a large papaya and place it on Shang Yulou's neck, ordering Shang Yulou to clamp it with his head. Then he drew his sword and hacked down fiercely, cutting off Shang Yulou's neck together with the papaya in a single stroke.

Blood sprayed out, and the papaya dropped and shattered all over the floor. Liu Sheng laughed maniacally without stopping, feeling the knot in his heart ease considerably. He turned and went back to gulping fine wine, and finally fell into a deep sleep.

Meanwhile, his full brother Liu Hongmiao lay prostrate on the ground, blood coming from his mouth and nose. From late night until dawn, no one attended to him, and in the end he died of massive blood loss.

The next day, Liu Sheng awoke from his drunken stupor and called for Shang Yulou to come attend him. Only then did he learn that Shang Yulou had been killed by him the previous night. Liu Sheng let out a long sigh and ordered a lavish burial.

As for his full brother Liu Hongmiao, Liu Sheng could not even be bothered to ask about him, leaving his corpse lying in the palace chamber.

In the end, some eunuchs could not bear the sight, so they casually dug a pit behind the rear hall, wrapped Liu Hongmiao in a piece of hemp cloth, and buried him.

In the eighth year of Shaoming, 954 CE, in mid-May, the western route Zhou army under Zhang Zhaojun captured Duanzhou (Zhaoqing). The Prefect of Duanzhou, Lu Guangtu, committed suicide for his country, and the Zhou army sailed downriver to within twenty-some li of the Xingwang Palace.

The northern route Zhou army, under Fan Shun's command, also advanced from Shaozhou to attack Yingzhou (Yingde). The Prefect of Yingzhou and other officials of the Southern Han, great and small, surrendered without a fight, and the army smoothly followed the Zhen River (the North River) from Yingzhou to Huashan (Hua County) north of the Xingwang Palace.

Not long after, the eastern route force under Lin Renzhao, led by the great clans of Chaozhou, also successfully persuaded the Prefect of Xunzhou (Huizhou) of the Southern Han to surrender.

When Lin Renzhao set out, he had only some ten thousand troops. By the time he reached Xunzhou, he already had more than thirty thousand infantry and cavalry. He then advanced and garrisoned at Chi'an Fort (southwest of Zengcheng, by the sea), awaiting Zhang Zhaojun's orders.

Lin Renzhao and Fan Shun were quite self-aware. Zhang Zhaojun had stayed in Lingnan for four whole years in order to destroy the Southern Han, and for this campaign, he had also been made Chief Commander of the Lingnan Circuit Field Headquarters.

Barring accidents, the one who would garrison Lingnan for the next one or two decades would also be him.

So after these two arrived, they very tacitly did not attack the Xingwang Palace, but held their troops in place, wanting to leave the achievement of destroying the state to Zhang Zhaojun.

Zhang Zhaojun also did not decline. This was not the time for polite refusal. The officers and soldiers under his command, who had eaten dirt for four years in Guilin Prefecture and repaired the Ling Canal for four years, had to be comforted with the achievement and glory of destroying a state.

So Zhang Zhaojun ordered Fan Shun and Lin Renzhao each to select two thousand elite troops to join forces with him, while the rest of the troops stayed in place to seal off the north and east to prevent the Southern Han ruler and his ministers from fleeing. Then he led his troops to camp below Yao Mountain (Yuexiu Mountain), assuming the posture of attacking the city.

But before the formal attack, Zhang Zhaojun had one more thing to do: offer sacrifices to Lady Xian and restore Lady Xian's tomb, located in what would later be Dianbai District, Maoming.

As for why it needed restoring, it was because Lady Xian's tomb had been destroyed when the Feng clan's main branch was raided — that is, when Gao Lishi was taken captive to the divine capital Luoyang — by the Tang court. No! It should be said, by people sent by the Wu Zhou court.

Of course, this destruction did not go so far as opening the coffin, desecrating the corpse, and exposing the bones in the wilderness. Rather, the tomb mound, spirit way, and sacrificial temple of Lady Xian's tomb were demolished, and the stone statues and stone beasts before the tomb were smashed.

Zhang Zhao sometimes suspected that that fellow Wu Zetian had something wrong with her brain.

Never mind whether the Feng clan's rebellion was a false accusation or the result of coercion — even if they really had rebelled, how could the blame possibly be extended to Lady Xian, who had already been dead for one or two hundred years?

Without Lady Xian, could Lingnan have returned to the nation so quickly? By dragging Lady Xian into this now, are you trying to destroy the Central Plains court's "since ancient times" claim over Lingnan?

Besides, you, Wu Zetian, ruled as a female sovereign — shouldn't you all the more have exalted Lady Xian, to show that there have been women since ancient times who could wield authority just as men do, women no less than men?

Yet Wu Zetian did something so contrary to reason: she ordered Lady Xian's tomb destroyed, and when the people of Lingnan heard of it they wept, and in their hearts they bitterly hated her for it.

Fortunately, Lady Xian's sixth-generation descendant Gao Lishi later held power over the whole court, and he prevailed upon Emperor Xuanzong to order the restoration of Lady Xian's tomb in Lingnan. Otherwise, who knows how severe the estrangement between the people of Lingnan and the Central Plains court might have become.

However, although the tomb was restored during the Xuanzong reign, only the restoration itself was approved — the court neither ordered the Ministry of Works to restore the original tomb's form and scale, nor did it exonerate the Feng family.

Therefore this counted only as a private restoration, not one officially recognized by the court.

Once Zhang Zhao learned of this, he immediately knew the first thing to do to placate the people of Lingnan.

Under his direction, the Ministry of Rites quickly drew up a posthumous promotion and honors for Lady Xian, and dispatched Vice Minister of Rites Zhang Yuan to Lingnan to preside over the matter in person.

On the seventeenth day of the fifth month, Zhang Zhaojun led officers of the Zhou army above the rank of Chief Military Inspector, along with more than ten officials from the Ministry of Rites, to Mount Yao (Yuexiu Mountain), where they raised an earthen mound in the shape of a tomb, set up spirit tablets for Lady Xian and her husband Feng Bao, and with the heads of a sheep and a pig, the three lesser offerings of chicken, duck, and fish, along with fruits and other tributes, made sacrifice to Lady Xian and Feng Bao.

Maoming is four or five hundred li from Guangzhou, and Zhang Zhaojun could not leave the army to go there now, so he first held the rites at Mount Yao, and would carry out the restoration after Southern Han was taken.

Amid the rising incense smoke, Zhang Zhaojun's face was utterly solemn. He understood Zhang Zhao's purpose in doing this, and he genuinely admired Lady Xian's lofty integrity, so even before the army reached Guangzhou, he had men widely proclaim that upon entering the Prince of Xing's palace he would first offer sacrifice to Lady Xian.

The aim was that, through word of mouth, more of the people of Lingnan would learn of this — especially the Xian and Feng clansmen now entrenched on the Leizhou Peninsula and Hainan Island, so that they would come forward.

Sure enough, just as the rites were nearing completion, when Vice Minister of Rites Zhang Yuan announced that the court posthumously enfeoffed Lady Xian as King of Nanhai Commandery, with the posthumous name Zhongzhen, and permitted temples to be built everywhere for her worship, with the title "Zhongzhen, Protector of the Realm, King of Nanhai" — not only did the tens of thousands of commoners watching erupt in thunderous cheers, but the Xian and Feng clansmen who had come from Leizhou and Qiongzhou appeared, wailing aloud.

Since ancient times, she is the only woman to have received a royal title.

As for women who received posthumous names, before her there was only Li Shimin's younger sister, Princess Pingyang, whose posthumous name was Zhao, and who was called Princess Pingyang Zhao.

After her, there was only Qin Liangyu of the late Ming, whose posthumous name was Zhongzhen.

So one cannot blame the descendants of the Feng and Xian families for being so moved that they wept on the spot.

Seeing them come forward, Zhang Zhaojun immediately struck while the iron was hot, announcing that after the court recovered Lingnan, it would immediately exonerate Feng Junheng, the Guangzhou Governor-General of the Wu Zhou period — that is, Gao Lishi's father — and return to the Feng family part of the lands confiscated during the Tang.

For the new dynasty to go this far was, in ordinary people's eyes, already far beyond the scope of bestowing favor. As the greatest local powers in Lingnan, the heads of both the Feng and Xian families prostrated themselves on the ground, and facing north performed the three kneelings and nine kowtows in gratitude.

Zhang Zhaojun seized the moment to announce publicly once more that after the great army entered the Prince of Xing's palace, it would not wantonly kill a single person, would not plunder a single coin of the people's wealth, and that anyone with grievances could come forward to appeal.

Thereupon the people's hearts were greatly settled, and they prostrated themselves one after another. The elders of the great clans all expressed their willingness to contribute money and grain to aid the royal army.

Sure enough, a few days later, the people of more than ten counties and prefectures around the Prince of Xing's palace, led by the local great clans, came out on their own initiative to help the Zhou army transport grain, fodder, and supplies.

Zhang Zhaojun, for his part, bought pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, fish, shrimp, eggs, and other produce from them at twice the market price.

The washing and mending of clothes for the tens of thousands of troops was also paid work given to the local women, and the human and animal manure accumulated by the great army was given to the local people free of charge.

Liu Sheng's ability to govern amounted to no more than not brutalizing or harming the people — the taxes and corvée labor were not light in the least, and the administration of officials high and low was relatively crude.

Now, for the first time, the people of Lingnan experienced the refined administrative methods and manner of handling affairs of Central Plains court officials, and could not help being deeply shaken, and then overjoyed.

They cheered and leaped, rushing about to tell one another, declaring that the Zhou army was indeed a royal army.

It can be said that with these three measures, the people's hearts were firmly settled, and the support the Zhou army received outside the Prince of Xing's palace was even greater than that enjoyed by the Southern Han army.

At this time, inside the Prince of Xing's palace, no one yet knew what was happening outside the city. The officials and commoners within the city were anxious and uneasy, and even the Southern Han imperial guards defending the walls were quite fearful. Only the Imperial Guard War Elephant Commander Wu Xun and the Palace Attendant Wu Huai'en were willing to go out and fight to defeat the Zhou army.

Liu Sheng was overjoyed. He handed over all of the more than twenty thousand imperial guards in the city to the two men, conscripted the city's bravest fighters to make up a full thirty thousand, and ordered them to go out of the city for a decisive battle with the Zhou army.

On the twenty-second day of the fifth month, Wu Xun led thirty war elephants as the vanguard. Each elephant carried more than ten soldiers and was draped all over in multicolored brocade, with its trunk and tusks painted white, looking utterly terrifying.

They towered like ramparts of a mountain, and when they charged, the ground shook as if demonic beasts had descended, unstoppable. The soldiers on the elephants' backs held strong bows and powerful crossbows, shooting down at the Zhou army from their high vantage.

Most of the Zhou army's soldiers and warhorses had never seen such things, and for a time they were beaten back again and again.

Zhang Zhaojun was furious, and ordered his men to push the three bronze cannons to the front of the formation.

These small cannons had been further improved by the Academy of Heavenly Works after the Battle of Shouzhou.

According to Zhang Zhao's intent and the results of actual combat, in the Zhang Zhou army, the navy relied mainly on great cannons, the idea being that in naval combat, one close-range shot would smash an enemy warship to pieces.

The army, by contrast, relied mainly on small and medium cannons that could be pulled by horses, and on short-barreled, squat "crouching tiger" cannons. For this southern campaign, Zhang Zhao had approved three cannons for Zhang Zhaojun, but Zhang Zhaojun did not think much of the things.

He felt that cannons were cumbersome to load, and their power was only passable — equivalent to perhaps two Fuyuan crossbows. Apart from the terrifying blast, their advantages did not seem particularly obvious.

Moreover, their greatest flaw was that the carriage bearing the cannon was extremely prone to damage; on long marches the wheels and axles constantly had to be replaced, which was quite troublesome. For this reason, the whole army was reluctant to use them.

But at this moment, with the war elephants charging at him, Zhang Zhaojun thought it over — it seemed that only these fire-spitting, thunder-booming things could frighten the enemy's war elephants.

The Southern Han War Elephant Commander Wu Xun was flushed with excitement, waiting only for the elephants to completely scatter the Zhou army's formation, after which the Southern Han soldiers behind could form up and advance to deliver a beating.

But his joy did not last long before he heard, from the enemy formation opposite, a sudden thunderous roar, and even jets of orange-red flame.

Wu Xun was stunned for a moment, and then immediately knew things were going badly.

Because elephants are actually very timid and sensitive creatures. He had painstakingly trained them not to fear the shouts of soldiers on the battlefield, but they certainly could not withstand this kind of noise.

Sure enough, the charging elephants, hearing the thunderous roar from the opposite side and seeing the terrifying flames, immediately slowed their charge.

At just that moment, as if aided by the gods, a stone ball fired from one of the bronze cannons happened to strike the lead elephant in the herd.

However mighty an elephant may be, it is still flesh and blood. The lead elephant was struck square in the forehead by a stone ball weighing over ten jin, and it was as if it had been hit by lightning. With a pitiful shriek, blood poured from its ears and eyes, its brains burst out, and it toppled straight to the ground.

The gruesome death of the lead elephant triggered collective panic among the other elephants. Zhang Zhaojun immediately ordered the army's sharpshooters to fire volleys with divine-arm crossbows.

The elephants could not withstand cannonballs, and in fact they could not withstand close-range fire from divine-arm crossbows either.

The reason the Zhou army had just been beaten back again and again was actually that, in their fright, their formation had been thrown into disorder, and they had been unable to concentrate their fire on the elephants.

Now that the commander had personally come to the front, and the cannons were bolstering their morale, the officers and men gradually recovered from their panic.

Remembering their earlier fluster, even these bravest warriors of the Zhang Zhou court could not help burning with shame.

Wang Quanbin, Commander of the Right Imperial Guard, went so far as to strip to the waist and charge into battle. In one hand he held a red banner symbolizing a fight to the death, and in the other a wooden single-shot crossbow, with which he shot dead a Southern Han soldier on an elephant's back. Then he threw away the crossbow, drew his hengdao saber, and roared as he plunged into the fray.

Inspired by him, the officers and men roared until heaven and earth shook, every man vying to be first.

Faced with this, the Southern Han war elephants were the first to break. Elephants are clever creatures; they can even sense the morale and relative strength of the two sides.

Under the sky-filling volleys of divine-arm crossbows, sensing that they surely could not defeat the enemy, they were the first to give way.

More than ten elephants turned and fled, throwing the Southern Han troops following behind into disarray. The Zhou army seized the chance to press the attack, and the Southern Han army of thirty thousand instantly fell into unprecedented chaos.

After about one shichen of fighting, the War Elephant Commander Wu Xun was killed, several thousand troops were lost, and the entire army fled in rout back toward the Prince of Xing's palace.

Inside the inner city, Liu Sheng heard the roaring outside like mountains collapsing and seas surging. Everywhere there were panicked, fleeing commoners and even soldiers and officials, all shouting that the great army had been defeated, throwing the city into even greater chaos.

In the crisis, the Great Ship Commander Wan Jingxin, the Crane-Controlling General Xie Guan, and the Palace Attendant Pan Chongche and others rushed over, and they escorted Liu Sheng as he fled toward the southern harbor outside the city.

Wan Jingxin said to Liu Sheng, "The state still has a hundred warships and more than ten thousand sailors at the southern harbor. We can board the great ships and flee south, either to Qiongzhou, Yazhou, Danzhou, and the like, or to the kingdom of Champa to take refuge."

But no sooner had the words left his mouth than flames shot skyward from the southern harbor, and shouts of battle and cries of terror suddenly erupted.

Before long, one of Wan Jingxin's trusted officers came running with news: it turned out that as soon as Wan Jingxin had left, a great number of the sailors and officers, unwilling to go to a barbarous wilderness like Champa, began clamoring right there on the ships. The yabing guards Wan Jingxin had left behind could not suppress them, and the two sides fell into infighting.

Now one part of the naval officers had already sailed off to surrender to the Zhou, while another part had plundered gold and silver and put to sea as pirates.

Liu Sheng knew he had no way of retreat left. Unwilling to die in the market wards, he immediately returned to the Daming Palace.

Pan Chongche and Wan Jingxin exchanged a glance, abandoned Liu Sheng, and vanished into the crowd.

General Xie Guan of the Crane Guard escorted Liu Sheng back to the Daming Palace. By this time the Zhou army had entered the city in force, and everywhere was even more chaotic.

In despair, Liu Sheng stood sword in hand within the Daming Palace and killed his favored consorts, the beauties Lady Li and Lady Chen, the eunuchs Lin Yanyu and Guo Chongtao, the palace woman Lu Qiongxian, and the rest, all together.

At the time, his eldest son Liu Jixing — the later last ruler of Southern Han, Liu Chang — was already twelve years old. Seeing his father killing people with a sword like a madman, the boy tried to flee in panic, but he too was overtaken and cut down.

Killed along with him were his younger brothers Liu Xuanxing, Liu Qingxing, Liu Baoxing, and the rest. Only the youngest, Liu Chongxing, still in swaddling clothes, escaped the calamity.

After slaughtering his entire family, Liu Sheng laughed wildly and ordered Xie Guan to kill him.

Xie Guan held that an emperor should not suffer the wound of blade or weapon, so he took three feet of white silk and strangled him, then fell on his own sword and died.

Southern Han was destroyed.

(End of Chapter)

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