Chapter 860: Advancing South to Take Them as Dogs

Just as the Southern Han, the last of the Ten Kingdoms, was drawing its final curtain, the twenty thousand troops led by Zhang Cheng were also closing in on the territory of the former Tonghai Area Command of Dali.

The general extent of this place corresponds to the later Republic's Gejiu City and Honghe Prefecture, including that Hekou County so often seen on short-video platforms and so beloved of Vietnamese visitors.

Come to think of it, the ruling methods of the Dali Kingdom and even Nanzhao were much the same as those of Zhang Xiancun's Chu fiefdom.

Both treated the Bai and Han peoples as the national core, sending them out to garrison various places and rule over the Black Cuan, Baiyi, and other tribes great and small; the only difference was that Zhang Xiancun had a powerful backer.

The Tonghai Area Command held a very special place in Dali, because the Duan clan's ancestors had been sent here by the Nanzhao king to pacify the Baiyi, and Duan Siping's father, grandfather, and several generations before them had all served as Military Governor of the Tonghai Army.

At the same time, Duan Siping's mother was the daughter of a powerful chieftain of the Wuman tribe here in the Tonghai Army's territory.

The Wuman tribe, also called the Heman tribe, was extremely powerful in the southeast of the Dali Kingdom, controlling a range roughly equivalent to the later Yunnan's Honghe Prefecture, with a population of sixty or seventy thousand, able to field three or four thousand men at any time and more than ten thousand able-bodied males after full mobilization.

Historically, when Duan Siping was persecuted by Yang Ganzhen, he took refuge with his maternal uncle, the Wuman chieftain Cuan Pan.

It was under the Wuman tribe's protection that Duan Siping was able to convene an alliance at Tonghai City, joining with the Thirty-Seven Tribes of eastern Yunnan to overthrow Yang Ganzhen's Dayining Kingdom.

After gaining the kingdom, Duan Siping was deeply grateful for his uncle's past protection, and elevated the Tonghai Military Governorship into the Tonghai Area Command.

He also sent his son Duan Sizhong to Tonghai as Area Commander, and had Duan Sizhong marry the granddaughter of his uncle Cuan Pan, further strengthening the marriage ties between the two families.

Beyond this, Duan Siping also rewarded the Wuman tribe with great quantities of wealth and goods, replenishing them with several thousand Pyu people captured from the Lishui Military Governor, and in his later years he even bestowed more than seventy gold Buddha statues (of brass) in a single grant.

Rewards of this magnitude caused the Wuman tribe's strength to swell rapidly, and their relationship with the Dali Duan clan grew even closer; the seventy-odd gold Buddha statues also brought about a flourishing of Buddhism in this region.

So when Zhang Cheng reached the Tonghai Area Command, what he faced was a barbarian people deeply bound to the Duan clan, who regarded the Gao and Dong clans as traitors, and who were not particularly backward.

On top of that, the local Azhali school of Buddhism refused to accept the Chongsheng Temple's summons to go to India, and likewise refused to accept the Six Dharma Sect, so the atmosphere of religious resistance was extremely fervent.

Once the two combined, it was simply something else.

Zhang Cheng also knew that in the face of this situation, war was the only choice, but at the same time, as the man bearing the heavy responsibility of attacking the Jinghai Army, he could not completely slaughter the Tonghai Area Command.

Otherwise this place could not serve as a logistical base for the routine suppression of Jinghai Army rebellions in the future.

Fortunately, Zhang Cheng was not only outstanding in personal martial skill and military affairs, but also extremely solid politically.

If Murong Xinzhang was the first disciple Zhang Zhao had personally trained step by step, then Zhang Cheng was the second.

There had originally been a Li Cunhui as well, but the fellow turned rather blockheaded once he left the army, and Zhang Zhao had failed to train him up.

And so, after swiftly capturing Tonghai City, Zhang Cheng strictly restrained his troops from committing the slightest offense against the populace.

Because Zhang Cheng had come far too quickly, the family members of Duan Sizhong and the others were almost all taken captive, and several thousand defeated soldiers were captured along with them.

Zhang Cheng ordered his men to protect their families and held them as hostages, hoping to have a detailed talk with Duan Sizhong and the Wuman tribe.

In the end, Duan Sizhong and the Wuman tribe gave no reply at all, and continued retreating southeast toward Jianshui City.

Zhang Cheng overrode all objections and voluntarily released the families of Duan Sizhong and the Wuman and other tribes, gave each captured soldier fifty jin of beans, wheat, black millet, and other grain as provisions for the road, proclaimed the court's policies so they would understand them, and then released them all.

Of course, Zhang Cheng still kept one trick in reserve: the released soldiers did not include officers above the rank of centurion, and apart from simple daggers and short knives, they were given no weapons at all.

The fifty jin of grain they were given was absolutely no small fortune to the impoverished tribal people of this time.

These men, having escaped death and received rewards, would certainly not be thinking first of going back to find Duan Sizhong and the others, but rather of how to get the grain home as quickly as possible.

At the same time, trudging along carrying fifty jin of grain would greatly sap their strength, so they would not cause trouble along the way.

And without officers above the rank of centurion, their organizational cohesion was severed.

Having only daggers and short knives ensured their fighting strength would not recover quickly.

At this time, great swords, long spears, and bows and arrows were all quite valuable items, to say nothing of armor; without these, there was no fighting strength to speak of.

Afterward, Zhang Cheng left two thousand men to hold the city and continued south with the remaining seventeen thousand-plus troops to attack Jianshui City.

Jianshui City had only low earthen walls and could not possibly hold against the Zhou army, which was skilled at siege warfare; Zhang Cheng even deliberately surrounded it on three sides and left one open, letting Duan Sizhong and the others escape.

After a seven-day siege, Duan Sizhong and the others indeed fled through the side with no Zhou troops, only for their families, whom they had just caught up with, to be captured once again by the Zhou army, while the several thousand soldiers inside the city were also captured again.

At this point, Zhang Cheng still chose to release the families and soldiers once more, but before releasing them, he had the elders among the families and the bravest of the soldiers tour the Zhou army's camp.

On the one hand, this let them see the might of the court's military; on the other, it let them know that after two releases, the soldiers and officers below were already extremely dissatisfied.

Because every captive was merit to them, and with Zhang Cheng's prestige, he could only manage to release them twice.

Zhang Cheng told them plainly that if Duan Sizhong and the Wuman tribe continued to resist stubbornly, then after the next battle, the women would become camp prostitutes, the able-bodied men would become slave laborers, and every boy taller than a cart wheel would be put to the sword.

Having said this, Zhang Cheng released the several thousand family members of Duan Sizhong and the Wuman tribal chiefs great and small for the second time, released the soldiers as well, and then continued advancing toward Sixiaguan (Mengzi) further south.

But this time it was different: the released family members of Duan Sizhong were unwilling to leave.

First, the further south they went, the harder the roads became, and on a long trek they might well lose a great many before reaching their destination; second, if they were captured again, there would be no more preferential treatment.

Seeing how mighty the court's troops were, there was no need to think twice: being captured again was highly likely, and then there would be trouble, so they sent only a dozen or so half-grown youths on horseback to report to Duan Sizhong and the others, while the rest stayed put.

This was exactly what Zhang Cheng wanted, so he immediately settled the families in Jianshui City.

In mid-May, Zhang Cheng led his army to Sixiaguan, where there were no guards at all, and the common people in the city did not panic when they saw the Zhou army.

Because after more than three months of two captures and two releases, Zhang Cheng had successfully made the Zhou army's reputation.

Not only did the people in the city not panic, but a great number of Bai people even chose to stay and submit, and they revealed to Zhang Cheng that Duan Sizhong and the others had already fled to the mountainous region controlled by the Wuman tribe to the southwest, around the area of the later Yunnan's Lüchun County.

Before long, the chieftain of the Abu tribe on Qilin Mountain east of the later Gejiu City led several dozen tribal chiefs great and small to Sixiaguan to pay respects to Zhang Cheng and declare their submission.

Two days later, Nong Minfu, chieftain of the Liaozi tribe controlling the area around the later Wenshan and Malipo, led more than a hundred chieftains of the Nong, Sha, Liao, and other tribes to Sixiaguan to pay respects to Zhang Cheng, likewise expressing their willingness to submit to the court.

The reason these two tribes came so quickly was that among the soldiers Zhang Cheng had released twice, there were large numbers of common people from these two tribes.

Zhang Cheng not only did not kill them but also bestowed beans, wheat, black millet, and other grain, and the sincerity he showed in wanting to handle the matter with conciliation moved these two tribes.

Among them, the submission of the Abu tribe marked the point at which Duan Sizhong and the Wuman tribe had no choice left.

Because on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, the mountains and forests simply could not produce much grain, let alone necessities like salt, sugar, tea, and cloth.

The only places rich in resources were the basin plains interspersed among these high mountains, called bazi.

And within the territory of the Tonghai Area Command, there were only three bazi: Tonghai, Jianshui, and Sixiaguan together with Muze (Gejiu).

With these three bazi in hand, Zhang Cheng could simply wait for Duan Sizhong and the Wuman tribe to come down from the mountains and seek him out once they could no longer hold out; whether it ended in war or peace, there would be a resolution.

Generally, when campaigning in Yunnan and Guizhou, there is no need to chase them all over the mountains and hills; they are locals, and you simply cannot catch them — one dive into the forest and they vanish in an instant.

In forests like these, heavily armored warriors raised on the vast North China Plain, and iron cavalry from Hexi and the steppe, might not even be as quick in the woods as someone else's half-grown boys.

So it was the same approach as conquering the steppe: on the steppe you follow the rivers; in Yunnan and Guizhou you seize the bazi and wait for them to come.

Of course, you could also choose to force the issue, but the price would be both sides utterly exhausted and suffering heavy casualties. Unless it reached the scale of the She-An Rebellion at the end of the Ming, this approach must never be taken.

And if the submission of the Abo tribe cut off the last shred of hope for Duan Sizhong and the Wuman tribe, then the arrival of Nong Minfu of the Liaozi tribe was nothing short of an earthquake in the minds of the local people.

Because what Nong Minfu represented was not merely the Liao people who now controlled the Wenshan and Malipo region.

What he represented also included the Nong clan of the Liao people, who had accepted investiture from the Southern Han and now held Xilin and other counties west of Baise in northwestern Guangxi, as well as Guangyuan Prefecture of the Jinghai Army (around present-day Cao Bang in Vietnam).

The Nong surname, one could say, was the largest and most widely influential clan among these tribes later classified as the Zhuang people.

Moreover, for a thousand years after the Song, the Nong clan had essentially remained loyal to the court, making them a fine partner for cooperation.

Historically, after the Jinghai Army became independent as Vietnam at the end of the Tang, the Nong clan became the main force on the southwestern frontier resisting Vietnamese encroachment.

Even Nong Zhigao, who stirred up a rebellion in the Northern Song, was a pitiable man. His original intent was not to rebel.

Our Great Song truly had a special talent for pushing its own people into the arms of the enemy.

A man like Nong Zhigao, whose father and uncles had been killed by Vietnam's Ly dynasty and who bore a deep blood feud against the Vietnamese, was driven to revolt.

Think of it historically: Nong Zhigao repeatedly offered tribute of trained elephants, gold, and silver, and in the end humbled himself to beg for a trash office like drill instructor, even merely begging the Northern Song court to grant him a single official robe so he could use it to deter the Ly dynasty — and even such a man was forced to rise in arms and fight like a cornered beast.

In the end, the Northern Song made a grand spectacle of itself. Nearly all of Guangnan West Circuit was ruined, hundreds of thousands of commoners were killed or wounded, millions of strings of cash in military spending were consumed, and both face and substance were lost completely.

I, Sage Zhang, would naturally never do such spineless things as the Northern Song court did. Therefore, I have given instructions on how Zhang Cheng should handle the various Li and Liao peoples of the southwest.

In Sage Zhang's view, the system most suited to these regions at present is the tusi system.

In places where local great clans are few, install bold and capable Han strongmen to serve as tusi.

Where there are great clans, let those clans directly become tusi recognized by the court.

And also appropriately strengthen their power, have them keep migrating their surplus population southward, and for every region they occupy and develop to the south, immediately shower them with tusi titles and rewards to help them gain a firm foothold there.

Let them, together with the Han — specifically the second and third generations of the Zhang and Zhou families in the Longtao Academy — keep gnawing southward, establishing over a hundred large and small semi-independent vassal states across the Indochinese Peninsula.

Of course, most importantly, these southwestern tusi must first be sinicized.

Thus, the moment Zhang Cheng heard that the Nong clan had arrived, he immediately sent an urgent letter to the King of Chu, Zhang Xiancun, who was in Dali City.

A local power like this, capable of commanding two to three hundred thousand Nong people, had to be recruited by Zhang Xiancun in person to achieve the most perfect effect.

Nong Minfu sounded by name like an older man, but in fact he was only twenty-one this year, and he was no easy character either.

Because the Nong clan, as the greatest local magnates of western Lingnan, was also a rather enormous family. Nong Minfu was not even of the most direct line of the Nong clan, yet through sheer ability and two generations of father and son maneuvering adroitly among various powers, he had ultimately become the head of the Nong clan.

Historically, Nong Minfu had not only accepted investiture from the Southern Han and Dali, but had also been enfeoffed by the Northern Song with offices such as Acting Minister of Education and Supreme Pillar of State. The Nong Zhigao who was driven into that great disaster was precisely Nong Minfu's grandson.

The reason he had come all the way from Guangyuan Prefecture to Wenshan, and then personally called on Zhang Cheng, was first that Zhang Cheng had genuinely made a name for himself over these months, making Nong Minfu feel that Zhang Cheng was someone worth approaching.

Do not assume that these chieftains deep in the mountains are necessarily ignorant of affairs beyond the hills. These men are the outstanding figures among the local natives. Brutal ones and arrogant ones exist, but fools do not.

Nong Minfu of course knew that the Central Plains had been unified, and he also knew that a great dynasty like the Han and Tang had emerged.

Since the Qin and Han, although these natives had basically still governed themselves, it had become customary to seek an investiture from the northern court so as to hold their lands with proper legitimacy.

The second matter was that the destruction of Dali and the impending destruction of the Southern Han had frightened Nong Minfu.

He had originally intended to make contact with Qu Yanqing, who was besieging Yongzhou (Nanning), but the hundred or so men he sent somehow, for reasons unknown, were taken by Qu Yanqing for native troops coming to reinforce Yongzhou, and a single surprise attack shattered them.

The few dozen who were lucky enough to survive fled back to Guangyuan Prefecture and embellished the story, describing the Central Plains soldiers as divine troops descended from heaven.

This thoroughly terrified Nong Minfu. At this moment, he was deeply afraid that after the Southern Han was gone, the court would hold him accountable for this matter.

So the moment he heard that the Zhou general on the Dali side was comparatively mild-mannered, he hurried over without delay.

Zhang Xiancun also came with great speed, because the young man had now found a bit of the pleasure of being a great king.

In the past, when Zhang Zhao had educated him, telling him not to keep his eyes stuck on women, he had said: a man's pleasures between the bed curtains are only a very small part.

Wielding authority, expanding territory, deciding the life, death, sorrow, and joy of ten thousand men with a single word, and leaving great achievements upon the pages of history — that is a man's supreme joy. Zhang Xiancun now understood this completely.

When Nong Zhigao saw Zhang Xiancun, he could not help but pause for a moment, because he had thought himself already a young hero, yet this Great King of the Chu fief was even younger than he was.

Zhang Xiancun wore a silver-white python robe draped over the shoulders, a gauze scarf on his head, with sword-like brows and star-bright eyes, exuding refined elegance. At a glance, he had that innate noble bearing of a prince of the blood.

A fair-skinned young woman beside Nong Minfu watched, entranced, the fragrant crisp cake in her hand forgotten halfway to her mouth, her puffed cheeks seemingly full of drool about to spill from the corners of her lips.

Although Nong Minfu was also awed by Zhang Xiancun's bearing and presence, what he paid even more attention to were the two brawny men behind Zhang Xiancun.

One of them wore heavy armor and resembled a giant bear. Nong Zhigao was quite certain that if an assassination were to occur now, this brawny man would be the finest shield, fully capable of covering Zhang Xiancun from every angle without a single gap.

The other man had arms as long as an ape's, muscles knotted and corded, and as he walked he moved with a dragon's stride and a tiger's gait, as though in the next second he might suddenly leap before you and behead you with a single stroke.

"Truly tiger-like ministers!" Nong Minfu could not help murmuring in admiration. If he had such warriors under his command, each could at least govern a cave of several thousand people and serve as his right and left arms.

Yet beside the King of Chu, they were only fit to serve as personal bodyguards.

In the midst of his admiration, Nong Minfu happened to glance to his left, and at once discovered that his sister — the "One Flower of Guangyuan," whom so many fine young men of his prefecture could not win a look from — was busy making a fool of herself over him.

Nong Minfu's heart stirred, and he made his decision on the spot.

The moment Zhang Xiancun arrived, the dozen or so officers on the scene immediately called out "Great King" and knelt in prostration.

Nong Minfu and the headman of the Abo tribe paused for a moment — especially Nong Minfu, who understood very well that kneeling and prostration was not an everyday Han courtesy, and that this was most likely aimed at them.

But when under another's eaves, one must bow. The two did not hesitate much and immediately knelt. Hesitation at a time like this was no good thing.

Zhang Xiancun walked slowly up to Nong Minfu, personally helped him to his feet, then took Nong Minfu's hand in his left and the Abo headman's hand in his right, and led them to the two sides of the banquet host's seat, saying with a smile:

"Today is a day of joyful gathering. I have brought fine wine from the Central Plains with me from Dali City. You two, come with me and drink your fill."

Zhang Xiancun would not discuss matters in detail with them at this time, because he had not yet figured out the purpose of their visit — especially Nong Minfu's purpose in coming from Guangyuan Prefecture.

Cooperation was certainly going to happen, but it had to wait until he knew them thoroughly.

Most importantly, Zhang Xiancun was waiting for news of the outcome of Qu Yanqing's assault on Yongzhou (Nanning).

Although Zhang Xiancun knew the Southern Han was doomed, he was not certain when Qu Yanqing could take Yongzhou.

Only after Yongzhou was taken could the armies of the Chu fief and the court squeeze the Nong clan's territory from left and right until they could not move — and that would be the best time to take them in as dogs.

I may need to take a day off tomorrow. The office is organizing a team-building event and I won't be at my desk, so I won't be able to write.

(End of Chapter)

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