Chapter 865: Recovering the Three Han Commanderies of Lingnan — Today Is the Day

Wu Changwen was stunned and despairing. He had barely woken up, had not even had time to wash his face, when he received the explosive news that Tanglin County had fallen.

And at this very moment, the thirty thousand strings of silver cash sent by Wu Riqing was still in his residence, not yet moved into the cellar for storage.

The reason Wu Changwen despaired was that he understood he had very likely been played. The Two Guang Commander-in-Chief and Duke of Hanguo, Zhang Zhaojun of Guangzhou, had never wanted his money at all — he wanted his life.

Now the Chu vassal army was charging down from the West Dao River (the Red River), and that was surely only one front. The court's main force would likely attack by both water and land as well.

Good news never came true, but bad news always did. Very soon, before Wu Changwen had even begun summoning the remaining Nine Governors to work out a defense, an urgent report arrived from the northeast.

It turned out that Nong Minfu had secretly slipped back from the Chu vassal state to Guangyuan Prefecture, and then helped the court's main army trick open the natural stronghold of Menzhou.

Menzhou was the later Zhennan Pass. From its very name, one can guess how important its terrain was — if it were not a natural stronghold, how could the word "gate" be used for it?

The ones originally garrisoning Menzhou were the Chen clan, a great Han family, and the several thousand Baiyue people under their control.

In Wu Quan's time, the great power of the Jinghai Army all lay with the Wu clan, so they had also intermarried with the Chen clan of Menzhou, and stationed yabing guards there.

But afterward the Wu regime was usurped by Yang Sange, and the Chen clan, remembering Wu Quan's past kindness, no longer obeyed the orders of Coloa City.

By the time Wu Changwen took back the Wu clan's throne, because he was not the son of the principal wife, the Chen clan of Menzhou had always supported his elder brother Wu Changji.

So Wu Changwen had never had the chance to win over the Chen clan, which led to the present disaster.

The end of the second month.

The court's main army advanced with extreme speed. Duke of Hanguo Zhang Zhaojun made Qu Yanqing the commander-in-chief, with Pan Mei and Cao Bin as left and right vanguard commanders, and Hou Renbao as army supervisor. Leading ten thousand elite infantry and cavalry, plus eight thousand of the Nong clan's troops, after accepting the surrender of the Chen clan of Menzhou, that local power, they quickly smashed Liangzhou (Lang Son) and arrived at the north bank of the Bach Dang River.

As for this river, historically it could be called the river of heartbreak for the Central Plains courts, because this band of Annan rebels had defeated the Central Plains courts on its banks three times.

The first time was seventeen years earlier, in 938, when the Southern Han sent the Prince of Ten Thousand, Liu Hongcao, to lead a fleet ashore at the mouth of Ha Long Bay, the fleet sailing upstream, preparing to head straight for Hanoi.

Wu Quan had planted wooden stakes in advance at the mouth of the Bach Dang River, luring the Southern Han army into attacking. When the tide went out, the Southern Han fleet was carried back toward the sea by the tide.

Because the water was shallow at low tide, the warships struck the stakes one after another, jammed together, and sank in succession. Liu Hongcao, Prince of Ten Thousand of the Southern Han, was captured and killed. Of thirty thousand soldiers, only the great general Liang Kezhen led a thousand or so men in a successful retreat.

That battle caused the Southern Han to completely lose control of the Jinghai Army. Wu Quan, brimming with pride, began to think of establishing his own state. This was the beginning of Annan's break from the court.

The second time was in the second year of Taiping Xingguo of the Song, that is, 981 AD, when Zhao the Second Brother learned of internal strife in Annan's Dinh dynasty and ordered Hou Renbao and other generals to attack Annan, attempting to recover the lost territory.

It must be said, although Zhao the Second Brother's skill at warfare was nothing special, he did have ambition.

In this battle Hou Renbao displayed tremendous prowess. First he smashed tens of thousands of Annan troops at Lang Son and beheaded several thousand. Then he pursued them to the Bach Dang River and again dealt the Annan army a great defeat, beheading more than two thousand and capturing several hundred warships.

But that idiot Militia Commissioner Sun Quanxing, fearing danger if they advanced deeper into Annan, insisted on waiting for another Song general, Liu Cheng, to arrive with the naval force before advancing, thus wasting the best chance to pursue the Annan army.

Hou Renbao was furious, but he did not have overall command authority. He could only lead several thousand vanguard troops ahead. Sun Quanxing then waited a full seventy days in place, only slowly setting out after Liu Cheng arrived with the naval force.

By this time, Hou Renbao had already approached the Zhileng River, and Hanoi was right before his eyes. The situation was still favorable to the Song army.

But those four wretches Sun Quanxing, Liu Cheng, Jia Shi, and Wang Zhuan, seeing that all the previous credit had gone to Hou Renbao, were inwardly jealous and deliberately dawdled, refusing to move closer to Hou Renbao, who was serving as the vanguard.

Le Hoan, founding emperor of Annan's Former Le dynasty, saw this and immediately seized the moment. He first pretended to send men to Hou Renbao to offer surrender. While Hou Renbao let down his guard, he attacked at dawn with a large force against Hou Renbao, who had only a few thousand troops.

In that battle, Hou Renbao died in combat, and the several thousand elite vanguard troops were completely wiped out. Sun Quanxing and the others were terrified and fled at full speed, pursued by Le Hoan for over a hundred li, the entire army suffering heavy casualties.

After this battle, the Northern Song, as the central court, was forced to recognize Annan's independence from then on. This was the true beginning of Vietnam's independence.

The third time was in 1288, when Kublai Khan sent Toghon and other generals with a great army to attack Annan. But this time the Yuan army encountered a freak of nature: Tran Quoc Tuan, the Prince Hung Dao of Vietnam's Tran dynasty.

This man, together with Nguyen Hue, the famous Vietnamese general of the Manchu Qing period, can be said to be the two generals in the entire history of Annan who were of the genetic-mutation level.

Even placed in Chinese history, these two would still be quite dazzling figures. Considering that the platform on which they could display their talents was only this small, one could say that if they had been placed in China, their achievements would have been even more extraordinary.

In that battle, Tran Quoc Tuan nearly annihilated the Yuan army at the Bach Dang River, and the river water turned crimson.

The impact of this battle was also extremely far-reaching.

Because at that time, looking across the world, all the great powers that ranked among the top — the Jin, Western Xia, Southern Song, Dali, Western Liao, and the rest — had all been destroyed by the Mongol Yuan.

Only Annan's Tran dynasty defeated the Yuan army several times, and even achieved the glorious result of forcing the Yuan army to acknowledge that it would no longer invade the Tran dynasty.

With this battle record, all of Annan held its head high. Tran Nhan Tong of the Tran dynasty and Tran Quoc Tuan both believed that the Southern Song had fallen, the divine land had sunk, and the Central Plains had entirely fallen into the hands of the barbarians. Only Annan had preserved the vital essence of the Confucian teaching for civilization, making it the true and rightful Little China of the Southern Sky.

They even believed that the word "little" could be removed.

In this atmosphere of exultation, the people of Annan — whether the former Annan Han people or the sinicized Baiyue people — no longer took pride in being Han. A national consciousness gradually formed, centered on the Red River plain where Hanoi was located.

Because they lived almost entirely around the capital of Hanoi, they called themselves the Kinh people, regarded themselves as the Hua people, called the other Viet peoples barbarians, and under the slogan of civilizing the barbarians, expanded continuously westward and southward. In later times this formed the Kinh ethnic group, the main ethnic group of Vietnam.

It can be seen that Annan's independence was not formed all at once, but was strengthened step by step. By the time the Southern Song fell and Annan's Tran dynasty defeated the Yuan dynasty, it could never be pulled back again.

Afterward, although the Ming dynasty regained control of Annan, the national consciousness had already formed. This land had only the Kinh people, no Han people. Therefore, no matter whether the officials the Ming sent were honest or corrupt, it was all to no avail.

Some say that at the time the Ming should have enfeoffed the Duke of Ying, Zhang Fu, and sent him over to suppress the region. In fact, that would not have succeeded either.

Unless Zhang Fu had the courage and the capital to kill five hundred thousand people and move five hundred thousand back to the Central Plains, giving Annan a complete blood replacement.

Well, all of these are things that happened in history, things that make one sigh with regret yet cannot be changed in the slightest. But at this moment, who asked Heaven to give us Sage Zhang?

The present moment is simply the best time to recover Annan, because whether it is the Wu clan or the Ten Governors, although they have the heart to be independent, in their hearts they still acknowledge that they are Han people, and understand that they are rebels.

And at this time, it is also the critical juncture after more than twenty years of their chaotic fighting, which has left the people destitute and longing to regain peace.

Therefore, when Qu Yanqing arrived at the Bach Dang River, Wu Changwen had not even had time to carry out the traditional craft of planting wooden stakes in the Bach Dang River.

Qu Yanqing ordered Hou Renbao to supervise a hundred warships crossing the river. One charge scattered more than a thousand Jinghai Army yabing guards in the river, and without any suspense they seized control of the last and most critical defensive line before Hanoi.

At Coloa City, apart from Wu Riqing, who had already been captured by Zhang Cheng, the other nine governors all came. Together with Wu Changwen, they once again made exactly ten governors.

Now that things had come to this, they finally stopped scheming and fighting among themselves, because they all understood very well in their hearts that once they left this place called Annan, they were nothing. If they were defeated, whether they were killed or relocated, there was fundamentally no difference.

Wu Changwen looked left and right, and finally fixed his gaze on Chen Lan, known as Duke Chen Ming. After all, after so many years of attacking each other, everyone knew very well who had what skills.

Chen Lan's territory was the smallest, and his land the most barren, yet the Chen clan's yabing guards were precisely the best fighters, and Chen Lan's ability to command troops was also the strongest.

Indeed, from a historical perspective it was the same. Dinh Bo Linh, who later wiped out the Twelve Governors and founded Vietnam's Dinh dynasty, was promoted by Chen Lan, who even entrusted his own private troops to him, which was what allowed Dinh Bo Linh to establish his great enterprise.

Chen Lan also saw the look Wu Changwen cast at him. At this point, he did not decline. Without waiting for Wu Changwen to speak, he immediately leaped onto the table and shouted:

"Gentlemen, if you wish to have your entire families executed by the court, by all means continue wasting time here. But if you still want to keep the heads on your shoulders, then listen to a few words from me."

Although the other eight governors knew Chen Lan's abilities, Chen Lan's power was the smallest, and some of them still felt uncomfortable. But Wu Changwen immediately jumped out and chose to support him.

Of course he had to support him, because their Wu family was the leader. It was his father Wu Quan who had killed the Prince of Ten Thousand, Liu Hongcao, and set himself up as king.

To put it bluntly, everyone else in this room might have a way to survive, but their Wu family certainly did not.

Seeing Wu Changwen support Chen Lan, everyone immediately stopped arguing. When it came to choosing between face and their little lives, they still had a clear sense of the score in their hearts.

Chen Lan stood on the table and said, "The court's great army is coming from two directions, with plenty of cavalry, and with the Nong clan and the Chen clan of Menzhou leading the way, we have nowhere to run at all.

There is only one way now, and that is to hold out. Hold out until after the sixth month, when the weather turns scorching and miasma rises everywhere — that should drive the court's great army away. Then we can go and beg for mercy, and perhaps there will be a way to live."

Everyone heard this and thought it made sense, but then they immediately lost heart again. The Bach Dang River was gone, and the Chu army had also come down from the upper reaches of the West Dao River (the Red River). What did they have left to hold out with?

Chen Lan at once pointed to the northwest and the southwest. "Co Loa certainly cannot be held. We still have five or six days before the court's great army arrives. All of you go down at once and make arrangements to withdraw to Jiaozhou City and Jiaozhi City.

These two cities support each other like horns, with waterways between them, so they can watch over and aid one another.

If we truly cannot hold them, we board the warships and go down the Zhu Yuan River to Changzhou. If Changzhou cannot be held, we go to Jiuzhen in Aizhou. As long as we are not captured, there is always room to bargain."

The Zhu Yuan River was the lower reaches of the Red River. Now old Jiaozhi City and Jiaozhou City lay one to the northwest and one to the southwest, cutting the Red River off in the middle.

Because they had been fighting all these years, the wooden stakes and other obstacles in the river were already in place, and a naval force of several hundred men was also ready-made. They truly had the means to hold out, and if they could not hold, escaping would not be difficult either.

The discussion concluded, and no one objected, so they immediately went down to begin arranging the defenses.

In the middle of the third month, Zhang Cheng's Chu army stormed Co Loa City. Because they were in a hurry to withdraw to Jiaozhi City and Jiaozhou City, the Wu clan's yabing guards had no time to wreck Co Loa City. They set a few fires, but a heavy rain happened to fall, so nothing caught.

On the twentieth of the third month, Qu Yanqing's force stormed Nam Dinh County in Jiaozhou, completely cutting off the wealthy eastern prefectures from Jiaozhou City.

After taking Wuding County, Qu Yanqing left Hou Renbao with over a thousand infantry and cavalry to garrison it, while he himself took the remaining ten thousand-odd infantry and cavalry to Co Loa City to pay his respects to Zhang Cheng.

The two forces joined together, and by Zhang Zhao's order the Annan Field Command was established, with Zhang Cheng as Commander-in-Chief of the Annan Field Command. Whether court troops, Chu army troops, or the private soldiers of the Nong clan and the Chen clan of Menzhou, all were under Zhang Cheng's command.

Zhang Cheng knew very well that after the sixth month, the land of Annan would turn as hot as flowing fire, with water vapor steaming upward, and all manner of poisonous miasma (germs) would breed easily. More than half of his army were northerners, and the number suffering from the unfamiliar climate and water would greatly increase.

At the same time, once the sixth month brought the fierce heat, cloth-faced iron armor and iron lamellar armor could no longer be worn, and his side's advantage would be greatly weakened.

The Song–Viet war of Xining in history had been like this. Because the fighting dragged on into the fifth month, although the Song general Guo Kui had killed both the crown prince and princes of Vietnam's Ly dynasty at the Phu Luong River, epidemic disease ran rampant through the army, and they could only swallow their resentment and withdraw.

So Zhang Cheng let the two armies drill together for only three days, and then began his deployment.

Zhang Cheng saw through Chen Lan's plan at a glance. You want Jiaozhi City and Jiaozhou City to support each other like horns, using small boats on the river to communicate — attack Jiaozhi City and Jiaozhou City comes to aid; attack Jiaozhou City and the troops in Jiaozhi City come out to harass.

Then I'll simply attack both cities at once, and see how you aid anyone!

As for the problem that fighting on two fronts meant he could not fully encircle the cities, Zhang Cheng no longer cared.

Because he had already ordered the Cuan clan of the Wuman and the Nong clan of Guangyuan Prefecture to conscript large numbers of fishermen from the upper reaches of the West Dao River (the Red River) and the Bach Dang River to form an inland river navy, preparing simply to let the Wu clan and the rest flee downstream southward and then pursue them.

Even if he could not catch up, he could then occupy the wealthy lands of the Jinghai Army, and when the cold winds began to rise in the tenth month, send the great army to continue the pursuit.

In any case, the first priority right now was to break Jiaozhi City and Jiaozhou City.

Zhang Cheng's two-front strategy indeed rendered Chen Lan's arrangements completely useless.

Chen Lan had originally thought that the main force of the court's great army was only the ten thousand men of the Chu army, with over twenty thousand court imperial troops and palace guards, while the Jinghai Army combined had seven thousand yabing guards, over twenty thousand auxiliary troops, and tens of thousands of laborers who could assist in battle.

At such a ratio, Zhang Cheng on the attacking side would never dare fight on two fronts, and even if he did, his attacking strength would be greatly weakened and pose no threat.

But once the fighting began, it completely exceeded Chen Lan's expectations. Whether the court imperial troops or the palace guards, their combat strength was extraordinarily fierce.

Even the Northern Prefecture Army and Southern Prefecture Army of the Chu domain were quite elite, their combat strength perhaps even above the Jinghai Army's yabing guards.

At the end of the third month, Zhang Cheng used large boats to bring six pre-built trebuchets down from the upper reaches of the West Dao River (the Red River). Annan did not lack timber, so the Ministry of Works craftsmen accompanying the army built them very quickly.

At the same time, Qu Yanqing, who was in charge of attacking Jiaozhou City, used harsh laws to round up thirty thousand Han people of Annan and forced them to pile earth into mounds day and night. In just over ten days, two earthen mounds were raised outside Jiaozhou City, each over ten zhang high — taller than Jiaozhou City itself.

Once these mounds were complete, although Jiaozhou City still had its moat for protection, Qu Yanqing first ordered soldiers to place whirlwind catapults on top and used the stones to smash and destroy the long-range crossbows on Jiaozhou's walls.

Then he ordered strong crossbowmen and the whirlwind catapults together to seal off the northern wall of Jiaozhou, so that the Jinghai Army soldiers dared not stand on the battlements.

Meanwhile, the Zhou armored soldiers below the walls seized the chance to force a crossing of the moat, covering the engineers as they buried coffin-powder explosives beneath the wall. Then with a thunderous boom, a breach several zhang wide was blown open in Jiaozhou's northern wall.

Pan Mei, Cao Bin, and Zhang Deqing, the three generals, donned three layers of heavy armor and led their troops charging in. The army's morale was like a rainbow. After about one double-hour of fighting, over two thousand of the yabing guards who were the Jinghai Army's main force were killed, and the remaining prefectural and county troops were directly shattered, with countless dead.

The Jinghai Army yabing officers (lords) Ruan Kuan, Li Kui, and Ruan Shoujie died in battle, and Lu Tang was captured.

Wu Changjun, who had withdrawn to the inner city, still wanted to hold out, but the yabing officer Jiao Shun beside him suddenly struck, lunging forward and stabbing Wu Changjun through the neck with one blow.

At the same time, the yabing guards around Jiao Shun also began to act, either hacking down Wu Changjun's yabing guards or rushing to kill and scatter the soldiers at the nearby city gate.

Hmm, very Five Dynasties in character. And Jiao Shun had reason to do so, because his father was none other than Jiao Gongxian.

In the past, when Jiao Gongxian was defeated, Jiao Shun was spared because he was a son of a concubine, and because the Jiao clan was powerful in Jiaozhou. After Jiao Gongxian and his two legitimate sons were killed by Wu Quan, only this concubine-born son was left, ruling some outlying regions to placate the Jiao clan.

And this Jiao Gongxian, when contending with Wu Quan for the position of Military Governor, had sought aid from the Southern Han. Later, the Southern Han's Prince of Wan, Liu Hongcao, died in battle at the Bach Dang River because of this. He was one of the Jinghai Army figures less inclined toward independence.

In history, the scheming rabbit's plan to prop up Ruan Aiguo as an enforcer on the Indochinese Peninsula was defeated by Vietnamese nationalism. After Le Duan, who represented nativism, came to power, he ordered his literary men to write articles viciously denouncing Jiao Gongxian and Mac Dang Dung, reviling the two as traitors who aroused the masses' widespread hatred.

The Le Duan clique was actually using the past to curse the present, using Jiao Gongxian and Mac Dang Dung to insinuate and 'smear' the then-still-living pro-China faction of Vo Nguyen Giap, Chu Van Tan, and Hoang Van Hoan, thoroughly pushing the monthly tribute to the opposite side of the big brother who had single-handedly raised them up.

So Jiao Shun and his uncle Jiao Gonghan were the only two of the Ten Lords with any chance of becoming turncoats.

Wu Changwen of course knew this very well, so he placed the uncle and nephew, Jiao Gonghan and Jiao Shun, separately in Jiaozhi City and Jiaozhou City, intending to make each hesitate for fear of harming the other.

But by this point, Jiao Shun was hardly going to care about his uncle Jiao Gonghan's life or death. Likewise, if Jiao Gonghan had the chance, he would not care about Jiao Shun's life or death either.

With Wu Changjun dead, the southern gate of the inner city was opened as well. Cao Bin immediately led his troops in first and quickly mopped up the remaining enemies in the city.

At the same time, outside Jiaozhi City, Zhang Cheng's thunderbolt carriages (large trebuchets) were also set in place. At once stones fell like rain, battering the walls of Jiaozhi into chaos.

Seeing the situation was critical, and with Jiaozhou City already fallen, Wu Changwen and Chen Lan dared not hold out any longer and immediately decided to flee before the court troops could encircle them.

In the tenth year of Shaoming, 955 CE, on the seventeenth of the third month, Wu Changwen fled with the Jinghai Army yabing officers Chen Lan, Fan Baihu, Du Jingshuo, Yang Jili, Jiao Gonghan, and others through the southern water gate.

As they fled, they also set a great fire, burning to death most of the family members and laborers left in the city. The fire nearly reduced Jiaozhi City to ruins, and it also blocked Zhang Cheng's pursuit.

On the twenty-fifth of the third month, Zhang Cheng personally led a hundred warships and caught up with Wu Changwen and the others at the mouth of the Red River, near what would later be Thuan An in Nam Dinh Province of Vietnam.

Wu Changwen and the others had not expected Zhang Cheng to come so quickly. They had just settled in under the protection of the great clans of Thuan An, and before they could recover their wits they had no choice but to raise their troops and resist.

Zhang Cheng used the advantage of having many swift assault ships among his warships and quickly broke apart Wu Changwen's fleet. Jiao Gonghan, Yang Jili, Fan Baihu, and others died in battle, and the Jinghai Army soldiers and able-bodied men who drowned numbered in the thousands.

Wu Changwen, Chen Lan, Du Jingshuo, and the rest barely escaped with their lives, fleeing southward with only a hundred-odd men toward Jiuzhen County in Aizhou — the territory of the Han-era Jiuzhen Commandery.

In the middle of the fourth month, Zhang Cheng led his troops in pursuit to Jiuzhen Commandery, but Wu Changwen and the others had long since vanished. Zhang Cheng took the opportunity to break the resistance of the Li clan, a great Han family of Jiuzhen, and recovered Aizhou.

With the fierce heat now approaching, Zhang Cheng appointed Pan Mei as acting Prefect of Aizhou and Supervisor of Aizhou's troops and horses, to guard Aizhou and search for traces of Wu Changwen and the others, while he himself led the great army back to Jiaozhou to garrison.

In the sixth month, Zhang Cheng mopped up all remaining resistance within the Jinghai Army's territory. By this time, a letter from the Virtuous Consort Li Ruoliu had also reached his hands.

Zhang Cheng had originally been unwilling to inflict too many casualties. For one thing, he was somewhat superstitious, believing that a commander who, like Bai Qi, casually buried enemies alive would damage his own lifespan and hidden virtue.

For another, after these battles the Han people of the Jinghai Army numbered only a little over three hundred thousand. If he kept killing, he would wound their vitality.

But now, seeing that the Jinghai Army was actually to be handed over to his own daughter and son-in-law, Zhang Cheng immediately transformed into a full-powered butcher of men.

From the thirteenth to the sixteenth of the sixth month, Zhang Cheng carried out mass arrests and killings throughout every prefecture of the Jinghai Army.

Of the ten governors, including the Wu clan, apart from the Jiao clan, the upper ranks of every family, as well as all officers who had ever held the rank of squad general (commanding a hundred men) or above, were buried alive by Zhang Cheng — a full twenty thousand killed, nearly one-tenth of the Han population of the Jinghai Army.

Along with them were killed more than sixty thousand Baiyue natives within the Jinghai Army's territory. In just three short days, over eighty thousand people were slaughtered in one breath.

After killing these eighty thousand, Zhang Cheng sent another memorial to Zhang Zhao, requesting that the Jiao clan's twenty thousand people be moved inland to the Chaori Province, to help Prince of Yan Murong Xinzhang develop Chaori's Guandong Plain.

At the same time, he requested that the court move ten thousand poor Han commoners each from Yongzhou, Leizhou, Danzhou, and Qiongzhou to the rich lands of Jiaozhou.

He had killed off all who nursed grievances, moved away all who were discontented, and brought in grateful people from poor places to divide up the great houses and first-rate paddy fields.

Lord Zhang truly is a fine father-in-law!

In the middle of the seventh month, Zhang Zhao approved all of Zhang Cheng's requests, and along with them came rewards and honors for the officers and soldiers.

For his achievements, Zhang Cheng was enfeoffed as Duke of Jiao, with an estate of one thousand households, and given the honorific title "Meritorious Minister Who Displays Valor, Punishes the Rebellious, and Completes the Realm" — rewarding him for having essentially made the golden goblet whole again for the Zhang Zhou.

At the same time, Zhang Zhao abolished the titles of Jinghai Army and Protectorate-General to Pacify the South, and in their place established Lingnan Guangnan Province from the old Jinghai Army territory, renamed Jiaozhou City to Zhennan City, and made Zhang Cheng Governor of Lingnan Guangnan Province, holding the staff of office to supervise and govern Guangnan.

The prefectures of Menzhou and Liangzhou, which had belonged to Jiaozhou, were transferred to Lingnan Guangxi Province, and the Governor of Lingnan Guangxi Province, Yuan Huan, was ordered to build a mighty pass at Menzhou, bestowed with the name Zhennan Pass.

The prefectures of Linxizhou, Gantangzhou, and Dujinzhou — originally part of Jiaozhou, that is, the upper Red River region of what later became northwestern Vietnam — were all transferred to Zhang Xiancun's Chu fief.

This served on the one hand as a reward for the Chu fief's dispatch of troops, and on the other hand let the Chu fief occupy the upper reaches and maintain pressure on Jiaozhou, now the Lingnan Guangnan Province beyond the mountains.

And in the future, the expansion of Lingnan Guangnan Province would surely focus mainly on recovering the old territory of Rinan Commandery to the south.

At the end of the ninth month, after the trade winds had weakened, Lin Renzhao finally led twenty thousand officers and men of the Liangguang navy to Jiaozhou.

At the same time, Pan Mei, Chief Clerk of Aizhou and Supervisor of Troops and Horses, reported that Wu Changwen and the others had already gone over to the Kingdom of Champa and were enticing the Champa king, Indravarman II, to march north.

By this time, the Chu fief's army had already returned, and Zhang Cheng immediately sent word to Zhang Xiancun. At the end of the ninth month, the Chu fief's great general Zhang Yongde personally led five thousand elite troops of the Chu fief's Northern Garrison Army back to Jiaozhou.

At the same time, Zhang Cheng mobilized Lingnan Guangnan Province, and in particular issued a conscription order to Nong Minfu.

Nong Minfu knew his opportunity had come. He immediately mobilized twenty thousand tribal warriors of the Lao, Nong, and Sha peoples, and one hundred thousand commoners, from the Hundred Thousand Mountains west of Yongzhou in Lingnan Guangxi Province.

At the end of the tenth month, Wu Changwen finally arrived leading tens of thousands of Champa troops, and the hidden elements within Lingnan Guangnan Province began rising up in response everywhere — killing officials and setting themselves up, cutting roads, and passing intelligence.

On the twenty-eighth of the tenth month, the Champa army arrived aboard more than three hundred warships at Anshun Harbor outside the Zhujiang River in Aizhou — what later became Thanh Hoa in Vietnam.

Zhang Cheng deliberately dawdled at Xupu, dozens of li away, making it appear he could not arrive in time. The Champa therefore landed at Anshun without worry, setting up camp while unloading supplies from the ships.

That night, Zhang Cheng selected eight thousand elite troops from the various armies, with three horses per man, the men gagged with wooden bits and the horses' bells removed. They cooked at the first watch and set out at the third watch, suddenly hurling themselves at the Champa main camp from more than sixty li away.

The Champa had never imagined war could be fought this way. Zhang Cheng's eight thousand iron cavalry were already riding into their faces while the Champa were still asleep. They had no chance to resist — forty thousand Champa and rebel coalition troops were shattered on the spot.

By the time the sun was three poles high, the Zhujiang River was choked with floating corpses, the channel so blocked that the water ceased to flow. The Champa trampled one another in their panic, with tens of thousands dead or wounded.

The Champa prince — later the great Champa king, Jaya Indravarman I — also had his neck broken by Cao Bin's cavalry lance in the melee.

The remaining Champa tried to escape by ship, but Lin Renzhao suddenly arrived with the Liangguang navy. More than ten thousand Champa sailors were annihilated, and over two hundred warships were captured.

The Jinghai Army yabing officers Chen Lan and Du Jingshuo were killed, and Wu Changwen and a general named Ding Huan were taken alive.

This Ding Huan was none other than Dinh Bo Linh, the founding emperor of Vietnam's later Dinh dynasty. "Bo Linh" was his official title; "Huan" was his true name.

Zhang Cheng immediately ordered Ding Huan and a hundred captured remnant Jinghai Army officers beheaded on the spot. Wu Changwen was to be escorted at once to the court, so that Sage Zhang could hold a prisoner-presentation ceremony at the Imperial Ancestral Temple with him as the sacrifice.

The great army pressed its advantage, advancing by both water and land, marching south to recover lost territory.

On the fifteenth of the eleventh month, the four counties of Rinan Commandery — Zhuwu, Bijing, Lurong, and Xijuan — were recovered in succession. Zhang Cheng ordered Nong Minfu to lead one hundred thousand commoners of the various peoples to the region to hold it down, leaving him plow oxen, trained elephants, armor, weapons, and the like.

He also promised to petition the court for Nong Minfu to be enfeoffed as Lord of Rinan, under the future King of Tang.

The great army continued south. On the twenty-third of the eleventh month, the punitive expedition stormed the county seat of Xianglin — at that time called Indrapura, the capital of the Kingdom of Champa.

After entering the city, the great army plundered it for three days, killing more than forty thousand of the city's inhabitants and taking over a hundred thousand captives. They destroyed the temple commemorating Champa's first great king — Qu Lian, the son of a meritorious clerk of Xianglin County, that traitor.

They also demolished the tombs of all the Champa kings through the ages. The gold, silver, ivory, blood coral, pearls, assorted spices, leather, and other goods taken were piled up like mountains.

The Champa king Indravarman II fled to Panduranga (in southern Vietnam, north of Saigon).

Zhang Cheng had originally wanted to keep fighting, but the campaign had smashed through the Kingdom of Champa all the way, and the plunder was piled mountain-high. Even the lowest foot soldier had come away with goods worth at least twenty strings of cash.

Of course, a male Kunlun slave, once trained, could be sold back for ten strings, and a female Kunlun slave was worth more than five strings — naturally, every man had filled his pockets to bursting.

The troops therefore had no stomach for battle and all wanted to return home early. Zhang Cheng could only let the matter drop. Taking all the plundered trained elephants, gold, silver, slaves, and the rest, he led the army back to Zhennan City.

At the beginning of the twelfth month, Zhang Cheng led the army home, leaving Pan Mei as Supervisor of Troops and Horses of Rinan, commanding four thousand naval and land troops to garrison Xianglin County, assist Nong Minfu in gaining a firm foothold, and train Nong's soldiers in case the Kingdom of Champa, like a cornered beast, came back to fight.

On the day the great army returned, Nong Minfu sent his cousin Nong Mincun north to request that the court permit them to change their surname from Nong to Nong, that they might call themselves Han, and that their genealogies might record them as descendants of Shennong.

With this chapter written, this book is formally drawing near its end, because within this book's timeline, the limit of what can be controlled has been reached. Future expansion is, at the very least, a matter for decades later, after a population explosion.

Therefore, the main text of this book has roughly fifteen chapters or so remaining, with about ten chapters of side stories, expected to be finished by July.

Since I need to prepare for the new book, and the materials are not yet complete, the July updates may be somewhat irregular. I won't take leave of you readers one by one; I'll try my best to keep updating every day, and if there's no update, it's simply because I haven't managed to write it.

Additionally, the new book will most likely still be about the Southern Seas, with the timeline planned for the years just before the murder of the Thonburi Great King Taksin. Materials for this period are very hard to find, and I don't know how much this tiger will be able to collect, but I will do my best to reconstruct the political and economic landscape of that time for everyone. As for how exactly it will be written, it is still only a concept at this point. I hope I won't disappoint everyone when the time comes.

(End of chapter)

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