Chapter 873: Who Will Wander with Me

The eleventh year of Shaoming of the Great Zhou, 957 CE, in the winter month.

Somewhat tipsy, the Vice Commissioner of Military Affairs, Grand General of the Right Feathered Forest Guard, Grand Defense Commissioner of the Batang and Hehuang Provinces, Grand Surveillance and Disposition Commissioner of the Seven Prefectures of Batang, Commander-in-Chief of the India Campaign, and Duke of Wei, Li Cunhui, rode in the Son of Heaven's carriage.

Escorted by the golden-armored Ceremonial Guard of the Brocade-Clad Imperial Guard, who were responsible for the Emperor's processional display, he returned to his Duke of Wei's mansion.

Oh, but Li Cunhui could no longer be called Duke of Wei now, for at the palace banquet just held to welcome him back, his adoptive father the Emperor had personally enfeoffed him as Prince of Xiping Commandery.

This was the first princely title among the inner vassals, and only such a rank could do justice to Li Cunhui's great achievements.

And what, exactly, was this achievement?

The Great Zhou Shaoming Emperor had specially permitted a five-zhang iron halberd to be erected before his mansion gate, and the human head swaying left and right in the wind upon it was silently telling the tale.

In the eighth year of Shaoming, with Guo Tiance's support, Li Cunhui completed the establishment of seven prefectures along the border from Tibet to India: Juwai, Leh, Gartok, Purang, Manjushri City (Kathmandu, Nepal), Rongba Heavenly City (Gangtok, Sikkim), and Paro (southwest of Thimphu, Bhutan).

These seven great prefectures stretched from what later generations would call Gilgit in Pakistan on the Pamir Plateau in the west, to southwest of Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, in the east. Each prefecture garrisoned between one thousand and four thousand military households, totaling twenty-one thousand households.

The larger prefectures were assigned a Military Supervisor, and the smaller ones a Military Adjutant. Each prefectural soldier was given five warhorses, fifteen yaks, and eighty sheep. As for land—as long as you were willing to reclaim it yourself, you could have as much as you cleared.

At the same time, apart from a head tax worth one string of cash paid annually to the court, the military households bore no other taxes whatsoever. On the contrary, they received pay from the court every year, and occasionally imperial rewards were bestowed upon them.

The only thing required of them was to provide their own weapons, obey imperial edicts, and be ready for battle at any time.

However, the Military Supervisors and Military Adjutants of these seven prefectures were responsible only for military affairs; civil and administrative matters were held in the hands of the local Great Virtues of the Six Dharma Sect.

At the same time, among the Great Virtues of the Six Dharma Sect and the Military Supervisors and Military Adjutants of the seven prefectures, seven were directly Han Chinese, five had close ties to the Han lands, and only two had been promoted from among the locals.

Among the mid- and lower-ranking officers of the prefectural troops, there were also many Tibetans loyal to the court who had come from Dafeichuan, the Hehuang Valley, and Songpan Prefecture.

This was no small undertaking. From west to east it stretched a full four thousand li, and most of it lay through regions with relatively harsh environments and climates.

In two years, Li Cunhui must have traveled at least eight thousand li to assist the Six Dharma Sect in establishing the prefectural troops of the seven prefectures.

Beyond that, as can be seen from the place names, although these areas had belonged to the Tibetan Empire during its period of strength, after Tibet's decline these key points—from which one could at any moment sweep down onto the Ganges Plain of India—had essentially all been lost.

Therefore, Li Cunhui had not simply established prefectural military organizations in these seven prefectures; he had also had to conquer them one by one.

Take Manjushri City, for example—the future capital of Nepal, Kathmandu.

During the Tibetan Empire's heyday, this place had belonged to the Tibetan Empire, and the city's very name came from the belief that Manjushri Bodhisattva had used his divine power to move mountains and fill in a lake to create it.

But by this time, the city had gradually been occupied by princes from India who ruled over the ancestors of the later Gurkhas, the Khas people.

For this, Li Cunhui twice mobilized armies of ten thousand men, twice marched out through the Mount Everest range, and spent nine months on the campaign.

In total, he slew more than three thousand able-bodied Khas men, took over sixty thousand captives, burned hundreds of villages, and utterly reduced them to slavery. Then he moved more than twenty thousand Qiang and Black Yi people from the Hengduan Mountains to settle the area, and only then was it pacified.

Rongba Heavenly City (Gangtok, Sikkim) was the same. The Rongba people had originally been a branch of the Tibetans, but after Tibet's decline they had begun to develop their own distinct culture and refused to obey orders from Lhasa.

To conquer them, Li Cunhui personally went to the front lines. As winter approached, when the Rongba people believed an attack was impossible, he braved ice and snow, crossed snow mountains and glaciers thousands of meters high—his own younger brother Li Cunzheng froze off two toes—and then descended like divine soldiers from heaven to settle the matter in a single battle.

And the head on the great halberd before the gate was none other than the man Sage Zhang had hated most before this: the cousin of Worthy Consort Cao Yanmian, the Lord of Zhenyuan, Zhang Bingzhong.

In the ninth year of Shaoming, 955 CE, after completing the establishment of the seven prefectures' troops, Li Cunhui concentrated seven thousand soldiers each at Juwai and Leh, crossed the Pamirs in two columns, and suddenly appeared north of the State of Zhenyuan.

After the Zhang clan had taken control of the State of Zhenyuan, it had held its own for a few years at first. But for one thing, they were not Zhang Zhao's trusted inner circle and had never undergone strict training, nor were they Han armored soldiers hardened by bitter warfare and resolute in spirit.

For another, they were originally downtrodden wretches who had suffered every kind of oppression. Once they landed in the honey pot of India, how could they possibly maintain their fighting strength? From the ruler Zhang Bingzhong down to the common soldiers, they all began to rot at astonishing speed.

By the time Li Cunhui put down the war of the three sons of Jidenima Gon, the fighting strength of the Zhenyuan armored soldiers was already inferior to that of the Tibetans up in the high mountains.

This was also the main reason Zhang Bingzhong wanted to break free of Zhang Zhao's control: according to the original arrangement, Zhang Bingzhong was merely the State Lord, not a King.

The former was an official post; only the latter was a royal title. Therefore, forty percent of the State of Zhenyuan's profits had to be remitted to Khotan.

And after Zhang Bingzhong's entire clan had rotted, they became extraordinarily greedy. They felt even their own share of the spoils was insufficient, so how could they bear to hand any over to Khotan?

With the whole state rotted to such a degree, when Li Cunhui's great army arrived, they naturally could not organize any decent resistance at all.

Zhenyuan City (the Fortress of the Heavenly Faith) had a population of over two hundred thousand, with theoretically more than forty thousand soldiers. Yet when Li Cunhui besieged it with fourteen thousand men, it fell in less than three months.

Er, it was not even that it was stormed. Rather, as the fighting went on, the people inside Zhenyuan City simply collapsed into chaos because their psychological defenses crumbled.

In that battle, after Li Cunhui entered the city, he unleashed a great slaughter—except for Zhang Bingzhong's second son, who escaped with several hundred men.

All the males of Zhang Bingzhong's clan whom Zhang Zhao had placed in the State of Zhenyuan—old and young alike, more than six thousand in total—were killed. Zhang Bingzhong himself, the State Lord, along with his sons and grandsons, were taken captive together with the women and children.

At the same time, Li Cunhui plundered Zhenyuan City clean. The mountains of wealth, bolts of cloth, and spices piled up in the city all became spoils of war for the Zhou army.

From Zhenyuan City and the surrounding populace, a full eighty thousand able-bodied Indian men and sturdy women were also carried off to the Batang Plateau.

Afterward, with Zhang Zhao's consent, Li Cunhui had Guo Tiance, in the name of the Emperor and the court, bestow half of these treasures and captives upon the prefectural soldiers of all ranks in the seven border prefectures. Every officer and soldier received a share.

Not only they—even the obedient nobles in places like Lhasa received rewards.

Thereafter, Li Cunhui repeatedly gathered great armies from Manjushri City (Kathmandu), Rongba Heavenly City (Gangtok), and other places to go raiding across India. For a time, men answered the call in droves, and everyone from top to bottom reaped rich rewards.

In less than two years, Li Cunhui had revived the old Tibetan custom of riding south into India to "cut grass" for plunder.

From that point on, everyone on the Batang Plateau, from the great traditional nobles down to the slave soldiers, held that the Great Zhou of the Unsurpassed Heaven was even more ferocious—and even more benevolent—than the old Tibetan Empire.

Hmm, on the Batang Plateau, if you can make people feel you are invincible while also speaking pleasantly, then it means they have submitted to you in true sincerity.

And so, when Zhang Bingzhong's entire family was escorted back to the divine capital Luoyang, Zhang Bingzhong was sentenced to death by being torn apart by chariots, and thirteen of his sons and grandsons were sentenced to death by being cut in half at the waist.

After his daughters and granddaughters were bestowed upon meritorious ministers such as Prince of Lu Qian Hongchu, Prince of Wu Li Jing, Duke of Jin Yan Jin, and Duke of Zhao Pei Yuan,

it was only natural and proper that Li Cunhui should be enfeoffed as Prince of Xiping Commandery for his achievements.

One must understand that these seven border prefectures of Batang alone were places that even the Central Plains courts of the past—and even the Tibetan Empire—had never firmly controlled.

If this were in later ages, whoever could conquer northern Pakistan, Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan with just ten thousand infantry and cavalry allocated by the court plus twenty thousand native infantry and cavalry would probably be canonized as a sage on the spot.

However, once this smug, self-satisfied Great Commandery Prince of mine entered his princely mansion, the smile on his face vanished in an instant.

For no other reason than this: waiting to welcome Li Cunhui in this newly expanded princely mansion was a vast sea of men and women, so many that the broad little square below the mansion's moon terrace could barely hold them all.

These were all the wives, concubines, and children of my Prince of Xiping Commandery, Prince Li.

Among them were thirteen wives and concubines with formal status, and twenty-one without formal status who had borne him children—thirty-four in all, more than the number of consorts belonging to his adoptive father, Emperor Zhang.

As for the children—ahem! Twenty-nine sons and thirty-six daughters in total, a full sixty-five.

One must remember that Li Cunhui was a year younger than Murong Xinzhang, born in 920 CE, and this year he was only thirty-seven! Even counting him as an adult from age fifteen, his suitable childbearing years amounted to only twenty-two.

Hmm, twenty-two years, and he produced sixty-five children—an average of three a year. If you factor in all the time Li Cunhui spent campaigning north and south, this reproductive capacity is simply extraordinary.

His ability to seize every opening is truly formidable!

Li Cunhui's principal wife, Lady Song of the Song clan from Zhang Zhao's maternal grandmother's family, sighed inwardly, then led the eighty-eight wives, concubines, and children of Li Cunhui in a joyful prostration, congratulating our Great Zhou's Li, Duke of Wei, on his elevation to the rank of commandery prince.

Li Cunhui's eyes went wide. To tell the truth, he simply could not stay idle — and when he was idle, his need for bedchamber pleasures would rise.

Add to that his status as the Emperor's third adopted son, his renown alongside Murong Xinzhang as one of the twin jewels of the Guiyi Army, his prowess in battle and handsome bearing, his own aunt a favored consort of the Emperor, and his great-grandmother the own daughter of Zhang Yichao, founder of the Zhang line — the Emperor's own grand-aunt.

With such a status, wherever he went there were crowds of people fawning on him, and beauties of every sort were sent before him as though they cost nothing. And since he happened to have little resistance in that regard, the present situation was hardly surprising.

The Great Commandery Prince Li took a careful look. Good heavens — of the wives and concubines before him, at least three in ten he barely remembered, and as for the little children who had clearly been coached by their mothers and were now hugging his legs and crying "Papa," he did not recognize a single one!

"Good heavens above! I'm going to die on the Batang Plateau!" Li Cunhui smacked his lips and muttered under his breath.

No wonder his adoptive father the Emperor had just now smiled mischievously and said that his reward silver had already been drawn in advance by his principal wife, Lady Song.

No wonder that in recent years, whenever Lady Song wrote, she always said the household funds were insufficient.

In any household where the masters alone numbered ninety, and which still had to maintain the dignity of the Great Zhou's peerless marshal, the Emperor's adopted son, and the fifth-generation descendant of the great hero Zhang Yichao, even mountains of gold and silver would run short.

"My dear, you have truly worked hard!" A surge of guilt rose unbidden in Li Cunhui's heart.

When Lady Song had married him, she had been a renowned beauty of Dunhuang. Now, worn down by managing this enormous clan for his sake, she had been exhausted to the point that crow's-feet had appeared at the corners of her eyes.

Lady Song's eyes reddened as well. To say she bore no resentment would be a lie — but what could she do? She had ended up with a bedfellow who could not keep his trousers under control.

Fortunately, her father-in-law and mother-in-law above all cherished and supported her, and although her husband liked dallying with flowers and willows, he still put her first. No matter where the beauties came from, none dared rely on favor to grow arrogant.

Forcing herself not to let tears ruin her freshly applied makeup, Lady Song smiled and lifted before Li Cunhui a swaddled infant just over three months old.

(Fuck my life)

"Fuck!" After freezing for several seconds, Li Cunhui suddenly flew into a rage. Fire seemed to shoot from his eyes as he glared around him and roared at the top of his lungs:

"Who did this? Damn it! I've been in Batang for four years without coming home — how could I have gotten a child in swaddling clothes?"

"Ah!" Lady Song was dumbfounded. "Pfft — hahahahaha!" Then she burst into uncontrollable laughter.

Seeing Lady Song laugh, the other concubines could no longer hold back either. Several concubines from Songpan Prefecture in particular simply could not help themselves, and they shook all over from suppressed laughter.

Seeing that they still dared to laugh, Li Cunhui grew even more furious, smoke pouring from his seven orifices. He thought that because he had not been home for so long, his wives and concubines had begun to look down on him.

With a wave of his hand, he was about to shout for the retainers and personal attendants outside the door to bring in clubs and carry out family discipline.

Just then, a somewhat gaunt man with an expression caught between tears and laughter stepped forward to Li Cunhui and stammered haltingly: "My lord, this is not your son — this is your grandson!"

Li Cunhui:

Only then did the Great Commandery Prince Li realize that the man before him — the down at the corners of his mouth gone, his features sharp and well-defined, his eyes bright and spirited — was his eldest son, Li Zexian.

Li Cunhui's face flushed red at once. After a long sigh, tears finally slid from his eyes.

In his memory, his eldest son Li Zexian was still a round-faced, tiger-headed little boy.

Indeed! When he had left for Batang, Li Zexian had been a youth of only fourteen. Now he was a grown man of eighteen, and even had a son of his own.

Li Cunhui took the grandson from Lady Song's hands and choked out, "I have let you all down!"

These words of apology could be said to come from the bottom of his heart. Li Cunhui had married early — at fifteen he had consummated his marriage with Lady Song, at sixteen he had his eldest daughter, and at nineteen Lady Song bore him his eldest son, Li Zexian.

All these years he had been away fighting, and his days back in the divine capital had been few.

When his eldest daughter married, the Zangke barbarians had just refused the royal civilizing influence and killed the officials sent by Guo Wei. Li Cunhui had been ordered to lead twenty thousand troops as the main force to pacify Qianzhong.

When his eldest son married, he was on the Batang Plateau, establishing the seven border prefectures of Batang and beating the Gurkhas of Manjushri City (Kathmandu).

For a father, this was utterly unqualified.

By now, Lady Song felt some sympathy and understanding for Li Cunhui. Bearing the names of the Emperor's adopted son and the invincible marshal, wherever there was fighting — north, south, east, or west — he was certain to be needed.

Under such pressure, there was likely no room in Li Cunhui's heart for anything but war. Only when he suddenly looked back one day did he discover how much he owed those around him — and what was lost could never be recovered.

This was a pure soldier.

Lady Song affectionately took up a cloth and wiped the tears spilling from the corners of Li Cunhui's eyes. "What is there to speak of letting down or not letting down? You go to war for the country — climbing snowy mountains in winter, entering the riverlands in summer, enduring every hardship and near-death time and again. Without you, where would our family's peace and glory come from?

When Zhenniang married, it was your aunt who came from the imperial palace to our home to see off the bride. Qian Shisi is handsome, graceful, learned, and skilled in poetry and painting — truly a fine match.

When our eldest married, it was the Emperor himself who summoned him to the Purple Tenuity Palace and personally presided over the wedding according to the rites for imperial grandsons. The Prince of Jing gave a mountain of gold and silver as dowry, and the bridal procession stretched across the divine capital. You should be glad, my lord."

Li Cunhui's eldest daughter Zhenniang had married Qian Hongxin, the fourteenth younger brother of Qian Hongchu, Prince of Lu. His eldest son Li Zexian had married the legitimate daughter of Gao Baorong, Prince of Jing.

Both weddings had been extraordinarily grand, and Zhang Zhao had granted them the highest treatment precisely so that Li Cunhui would not feel disheartened — after all, it was because he was away fighting for the country that he could not return even for his children's weddings.

Although Li Cunhui had long known that Zhang Zhao had made the weddings very grand, hearing it now from Lady Song's mouth was a different feeling entirely.

Gratefully, he performed a kowtow in the direction of the imperial palace, thanking his adoptive father the Emperor for considering everything so thoroughly.

However, after his gratitude to his adoptive father Sage Zhang was done, Li Cunhui's furrowed brow still did not relax.

For one must know that at this time, not only did marrying in a daughter-in-law require betrothal gifts, marrying out a daughter also required a large dowry.

This money was essentially the startup capital for the young couple to establish their new household. So every time a son took a wife or a daughter married out, the parents had to "bleed heavily" once.

Not to mention someone of Li Cunhui's status and standing — anything less would simply be too embarrassing to give. Twenty-nine sons and thirty-six daughters — just thinking about it was terrifying.

After the lively family banquet, Li Cunhui looked at his sixteen-year-old second son Li Zeyi, his third son Li Zeyan, and his fourth son and the others — six sons aged thirteen and above — and an idea suddenly came to mind.

The children were all grown now. The eldest had already graduated from the Dragon Strategy Academy and was now serving in Xuchang Prefecture as the Troop and Horse Commissioner of Xuchang County. His ability was not particularly strong; he had not inherited the famous-general genes of the Li family ancestors.

But the second son Li Zeyi, the third son Li Zeyan, and the others were different. They had grown up in an environment where the Great Zhou was surging forward at full speed, watching their fathers' generation accomplish heaven-shaking deeds.

Therefore, although they were not very old, each was strong as a brown bear, and their personal martial skills and ability to command troops on campaign were by no means low.

The third son Li Zeyan in particular had startled everyone at last year's military provincial examination, taking first place in the Zhili military examination. With a single cavalry lance he had defeated all the finest fighters of Zhili's thirteen prefectures. In mounted archery he had hit the target ten times out of ten, six times striking the red star — even a divine archer like Fan Changgong had praised him highly.

Now the realm was whole as an unbroken golden goblet, and petty rebellions could not amount to anything. The unruly figures of the grasslands had long since been summoned beneath the great banner of the Six Laws Sect.

With the abilities of his third son, was it not a pity to keep him at home, grinding out seniority step by step in the personal army or the Hanshan Capital?

Thinking of this, Li Cunhui looked at his sons and asked: "Do you boys dare leave this land of comfort and go out to build a great career?"

Li Cunhui was still underestimating his sons. They were no longer the eleven- and twelve-year-old boys he had left behind.

The third son Li Zeyan's eyes lit up, and he answered loudly: "Why would we not dare? We children have long wanted to go to the farthest frontiers like Father, destroy mighty enemies, and capture or kill the ruler of an enemy state to present to the Sage."

The second son Li Zeyi was cleverer. He looked at Li Cunhui and asked abruptly: "Father, could it be that you want us brothers to go to India and rule the barbarians as lords?"

Good heavens. Li Cunhui was thoroughly shocked. He had not even said anything, yet the children had already guessed everything, stuffing all the heroic words he had prepared right back down into his belly.

The Great Commandery Prince Li hemmed and hawed for a long while, and in the end could only nod and say: "That is right. Your father has already campaigned against India several times and knows well how rich that land is. Along the banks of the Indus and the Ganges alone there are at least one and a half million households — ten million people."

Its people are also weak and timid, and the military preparedness of the various states there is poor. With the strength of our Great Zhou warriors, a few hundred men could seize a large stretch of land and rule over tens of thousands of households with ease.

Although that land is scorching hot, when the heat comes you can simply go up to the Batang Plateau to escape the summer. If the natives rise up in large-scale rebellion, there's no need for the court to dispatch troops — just have the prefectural troops of the seven border prefectures march south to put it down."

Li Zeyan's eyes brightened further. "Father is the Surveillance and Disposal Commissioner of the seven border prefectures, and the prefectural troops of those seven prefectures were built up by Father's own hand. If we go, wouldn't it be all the easier to borrow that strength!

Elder Brother, the opportunity has come. Let us brothers go with Father! Once we reach India, every one of us can become a lord of ten thousand households!"

Li Zeyi was also stirred to heroic spirit by his younger brother's words, though after a moment of excitement he grew somewhat deflated.

"But no outer fief has yet been granted to anyone outside the imperial surname. Surely Father can't be made king of India. Besides, our family has no money — and without money, how are we to recruit retainers?"

Li Cunhui chuckled. "What's there to fear? We have no money, but your grand-aunt does! You can't become great kings of an outer fief, but your cousin Brother Li can!"

Li Cunhui's aunt Li Wenxiu was also one of the Emperor's favored consorts. Brother Li was the Emperor's ninth son, Zhang Xianli, born of Li Wenxiu. This year he was twelve, and in a few years he would reach the age to be sent out to a fief.

"Right!" Li Zeyi laughed loudly. "With Grand-aunt's support, we can join forces to lift up Ninth Uncle, send him to India to take up the post of king of a vassal state, and we'll be the lords under him.

We brothers will work as one to carve out a great state of a hundred thousand households. Let Ninth Uncle govern fifty thousand households, and the five of us brothers assist him, each governing ten thousand."

Father and sons grew more and more animated as they talked, wishing they could fly off to India this very moment to become lords of ten thousand households.

Li Cunhui was also secretly delighted. If they truly could secure a base of fifty thousand households in India, and these elder brothers put in more effort, then the betrothal gifts and dowries for the younger brothers and sisters would be taken care of.

Just then, Li Cunhui's full younger brother Li Cunzheng came running over swiftly, limping. "Elder Brother, the Sage and Fourth Aunt have come incognito and are almost at your gate."

Li Cunhui was overjoyed and let out three low, excited laughs. "It seems the Sage thinks the same as us. India will sooner or later have a share for you all."

But immediately after, Li Cunhui looked at his sons and said in a deep voice, "What happened just now with your father mistaking someone's identity — no one is to breathe a word of it!"

Li Cunhui knew that, given his foster father Zhang Zhao's habit of loving to laugh at him, once he learned of this matter, wouldn't he mock him for decades!

The sons nodded hurriedly, but unfortunately, before they could even step out the door, they heard someone outside laughing loudly:

"Hahahaha! Cunhui, my boy, I hear you mistook your grandson for your son, and even flew into a rage and cursed him out? Hahahaha!"

Li Cunhui clutched his forehead and let out a miserable groan, nearly collapsing to the ground.

"Who is this? What a big mouth!"

(End of Chapter)

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