Chapter 898: Extra 3: The Cold-Hearted Great King of Shu and the Kindly Father Great King of Liao

Extra 3: The Cold-Hearted Great King of Shu and the Kindly Father Great King of Liao

Extra 3: The Cold-Hearted Great King of Shu and the Kindly Father Great King of Liao

A cold wind mixed with fine rain howled across the Densa River.

This was a great river in Bulgaria, an important tributary of the Maritsa, Bulgaria's mother river.

It rises on the southern slopes of the Balkan Mountains in northern Bulgaria, flows south to the border between Turkey and Greece, and finally empties into the Aegean Sea.

Because the river runs north to south, it served as an important barrier for Bulgaria's defense against enemies coming from the Black Sea to the east.

Compared to the various Xia states of the Five Western Provinces, which had only just begun mobilizing, the great army of the Great King of Shu, Zhang Xiantai, had already been facing off against the Bulgarians and the Byzantine host across the Densa River for more than four months.

At thirty-nine this year, Zhang Xiantai had shed all traces of youthful naivety; the marks of wind and frost on his face and hands bore witness to the hardships of these years.

But the army of more than a hundred thousand at his back also proved that he was about to receive the reward he had long dreamed of: entering Constantinople.

Luketu rode slowly up beside Zhang Xiantai. His father, Lu Zhen, Lu Sanlang, had died ten years before. The Sage, moved by his achievements, posthumously enfeoffed him as Great King of Dinghai, with the posthumous name Zhongzhuang.

At the same time, he had Luketu send the armor and robes Lu Sanlang had worn in daily life to the Divine Capital, to be buried as a tomb of clothes and cap in the Zhao Mausoleum of Zhang Zhao himself.

At the same time, Zhang Zhao ordered craftsmen to carve a stone statue of the Great King of Dinghai crossing the Anti River (the Volga) and set it up within the Zhao Mausoleum, to display Lu Sanlang's merits.

Why did Zhang Zhao give Lu Sanlang, such a marginal figure, such fine posthumous treatment? It was because the path followed by the King of Shu, Zhang Xiantai, whom Lu Sanlang accompanied, had been too arduous, and his merits too great.

Compared with them, the Xia kings of the Five Western Provinces had it much easier. Whether defeating the Persian Buyid dynasty or the Hamdanid dynasty, though there were hard battles, the disparity in strength between the two sides was so great that there was only alarm and no danger, not difficult at all.

Moreover, Transoxiana, Khorasan, Persia proper, and the Arab lands were all ancient civilized countries with long histories. For one thing, the land was fertile, products abundant, and trade routes open and well developed.

For another, the population was large and the common people had considerable accumulated wealth. That even a baron like Wei Yingxiong could rule fifty or sixty thousand people gives a glimpse of this.

So one can say that although the Xia kings of the Five Western Provinces were far from the Central Plains and often had to suppress local discontent, it truly could not be called hardship.

As long as one adapted to the climate, endured the pain of homesickness, and did not fear blood on the blade, this place was absolutely a better paradise than facing the yellow earth with one's back to the sky back home.

But the path taken by the Great King of Shu, Zhang Xiantai, and the Great King of Liao, Zhang Xianjiong, was not like this. The lower Volga and the great Ukrainian plain along the Dnieper at this time were not the rich plains of later ages.

On the contrary, this was a cold-leaning temperate continental climate. When the Volga and Dnieper crossed these great plains, the flat terrain often caused them to shift their short-distance channels at will, creating vast marshlands along both banks.

And because the climate was relatively cold, these cold, wet marshes were all the more terrifying and treacherous.

Historically, the lower Volga and the great Ukrainian plain becoming the granary of Europe was the result of hundreds, even a thousand years of continuous development, tamed generation after generation at the cost of lives.

In fact, it was not only Ukraine and the lower Volga; even northern Germany at this time was covered in vast cold, wet marshland, hardly fit for habitation.

And there was something even more dreadful: the existence of these cold, wet marshes had a great effect on the climate, lowering temperatures and causing dense fog to linger for long periods after late summer. This meant that relatively high-yield crops like wheat and rice could not grow here; the only thing that could be planted was oats.

Oats, that wretched stuff, were about the same as the highland barley of the Qingtang Plateau: foul-tasting, low in carbohydrates, yielding one or two hundred jin per mu, not even half of what the Central Plains produced.

Of course, it was not that nothing worked at all. Rather, there were some places that had been opened up and could be cultivated, but they had all been occupied by people.

Between these small patches of farmland stretched vast expanses of cold, wet marsh, making every attack on any one place extraordinarily difficult.

Heavy weapons could not be transported over, and even the troops' rate of armor-wearing could not be too high, for if armor and weapons were transported over, other supplies could not be.

Thus Zhang Xiantai's road of conquest had always been fought with difficulty. The battles were not hard to fight; what was hard was finding the people, and after finding them, finding which road to take to strike them.

Under such harsh conditions, Zhang Xiantai first conquered the Kipchak-Kimek confederation in the eleventh year of Qianyuan, that is, 970 CE.

He brought these barbarians, who largely believed in primitive shamanism, under his jurisdiction, gaining the allegiance of tribes whose territory corresponded to most of later Kazakhstan and the lower Ob River region of Russia.

After three more years of forcibly promoting the Six Dharma Sect and putting down dozens of rebellions great and small, Zhang Xiantai obtained the complete submission of more than twenty thousand households and one hundred fifty thousand people, enabling him to draw fifteen to twenty-five thousand retinue cavalry from this region at any time.

Then, in the sixteenth year of Qianyuan, 975 CE, Zhang Xiantai cooperated with the Great King of Liao, Zhang Xianjiong, who had by then arrived in Transoxiana and firmly established himself, to jointly strike the Pechenegs, a remnant Turkic people who occupied a vast territory from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea, numbered more than four hundred thousand, and were swift as the wind, cunning, and fierce.

The Great King of Liao, Zhang Xianjiong, was born of Yelu Abuli. He was more familiar with steppe peoples than Zhang Xiantai, who was born of the elder Fu. At the same time, because the Khitan people were extremely devout believers in the Six Dharma Sect, the religious personnel in Zhang Xianjiong's army were far more professional and powerful than those in Zhang Xiantai's army.

After the two joined forces, they began a war of attrition across the vast lands from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea against the Pechenegs, who fled whenever they could not win.

By building stockades, setting up beacon towers, cutting off trade routes, and burning grain and pastureland, they gradually compressed the Pechenegs' range of movement.

In the twenty-first year of Qianyuan, 980 CE, the Pechenegs, who could no longer flee, fought a decisive battle with the great armies of Shu and Liao at Sarkel Fortress on the left bank of the Don River (northeast of Crimea).

Before this, in order to resist the great armies of Shu and Liao, the Pechenegs had even gone so far as to submit to their former enemies, the Rus, in exchange for Grand Prince Vladimir I of Kiev sending troops to help.

Therefore, what the great armies of Shu and Liao faced this time was a combined host with seven thousand Rus heavy infantry and four thousand heavy cavalry as the center, and fifty-five thousand Pecheneg light cavalry on the left and right wings.

But once matters reached this point, victory and defeat were already clear. The reason the Pechenegs had been able to hold out against the great armies of Shu and Liao for nearly five years was their flexible movement, which kept the Shu and Liao armies from catching them.

Now that they had taken position and begun a decisive battle, they simply could not withstand the assault of the Shu and Liao armies.

Moreover, the Rus infantry were called heavy infantry, but they were merely trash infantry wearing a piece of rotten leather armor and a small amount of iron armor, utterly unable to compare with the Shu and Liao allied forces, who were armed to the teeth.

As soon as battle began, Zhang Xiantai had Zhang Xianjiong take command while he and Luketu, one on the left and one on the right, led thirty thousand light cavalry straight at the enemy's two wings, formed of Pecheneg light cavalry.

The light cavalry of Shu and Liao were equipped with large numbers of horn crossbows and fine horse bows, and some also had three-eyed guns. These were of little use against Han heavy armored infantry and cavalry, but against pure light cavalry like the Pechenegs, who had only rotten leather armor, they were still ferocious.

A single ball from a three-eyed gun could easily pierce a Pecheneg's armor. After firing three rounds, one simply swung the iron lump of the three-eyed gun to smash, and it was longer than the Pechenegs' horse spears and sabers.

In barely two quarters of an hour, the Shu and Liao cavalry successfully routed the numerous Pecheneg light cavalry on both wings. These steppe tribes had little discipline to begin with, and once routed they quickly abandoned their newly acknowledged masters, the Rus, and scattered in flight.

Zhang Xiantai paid no attention to the Pechenegs at all, because they had almost nowhere left to run.

Over the years, the Shu and Liao allied forces had dealt a tremendous blow to the Pecheneg economy. They did not have enough grain, livestock, or cold-weather clothing, and going further north would be a death march.

The only retreat left to these remnant Turkic people was to enter the territory of Kievan Rus to the northwest, so Zhang Xiantai only needed to slaughter to the last man the ten thousand Rus elites who had come to help.

In this way, if the Rus army was completely annihilated while the Pechenegs only suffered superficial losses, Vladimir I would absolutely be unable to persuade his subjects to accept these steppe barbarians.

So the great armies of Shu and Liao blocked the retreat of the Rus, who wanted to flee. First they shot them fiercely with bows and crossbows, then heavy infantry advanced to break their formation, and after the formation was thrown into disorder, heavy cavalry charged in.

It must be said that these Rus were tough. In such overwhelming disparity and desperate straits, they actually withstood the first round of attacks, only collapsing under the second charge of armored cavalry.

And just as Zhang Xiantai had predicted, while the Shu and Liao allied forces were slaughtering the Rus army, the Pechenegs, who had long since fled far away, came back.

They sat on horseback watching from a distance. When they saw Zhang Xiantai mercilessly kill even the Rus who knelt and begged for their lives, their spirits completely collapsed.

Before Zhang Xiantai could send light cavalry in pursuit, the Pechenegs sent envoys to express their willingness to submit.

Zhang Xiantai killed the envoys with his own hands and paid them no heed. Afterward, infighting broke out among the Pechenegs.

In the internal strife, the chieftain of the Kölöpi division, one of the eight Pecheneg divisions that had taken a hardline stance of resistance, Yibawosi, and the chieftain of the Yiertian division, Baizansi, were killed.

Kuo'erkuotai, chieftain of the Jila division, who had had early contact with Zhang Xiantai and was inclined to submit, was elected as leader.

Kuo'erkuotai killed all the opponents, and led the eight Pecheneg divisions to cast aside their swords and kneel prostrate on the spot in supplication. Only then did Zhang Xiantai accept their submission.

In this battle, more than two thousand Pechenegs were slain in battle, and the remaining more than three hundred thousand tribespeople surrendered one after another. Zhang Xiantai divided them into four ten-thousand households, taking two ten-thousand households for himself and naming them Dongchuan and Xichuan. His younger brother, the Great King of Liao, Zhang Xianjiong, received two ten-thousand households, named Yuling and Rilian.

And the Rus' people, who had come full of glee expecting to pick up easy gains, became the biggest losers of all — all eleven thousand of them were killed, their bodies thrown into the Don River, and their heads piled into a skull mound two or three zhang high outside the walls of Sarkel Fortress.

With this, the Shu-Liao allied forces occupied the vast territory stretching from the northern shore of the Caspian Sea to the northern shore of the Black Sea.

The King of Shu, Zhang Xiantai, and the King of Liao, Zhang Xianjiong, on one hand ceaselessly recruited able-bodied men from the steppe and the Central Plains, and on the other conscripted commoners from the three provinces of Hezhong, Baoshan, and Xiliu who had converted to the Six Dharma Sect, opening up wasteland, building post stations and roads across this vast land, and opening a transport line to Hezhong.

Of course, the most important thing was the vigorous promotion of the Six Dharma Sect — everyone was required to convert.

After five years of this, along the route of more than five thousand li from what later generations would call Odessa to Kangju City in Hezhong, forts, post stations, and beacon towers were complete, and the basic roads had received simple repair and maintenance.

If there was an emergency, news could travel from New Xinzhou (Odessa) to Kangju in Hezhong (Bukhara) in only twenty-three days, and if Hezhong sent light cavalry to the rescue, they would arrive within fifty days at most.

Thus, with the various Huaxia states of Hezhong as their backing, Zhang Xiantai and Zhang Xianjiong parted ways in the twenty-third year of Qianyuan, 982 CE.

The Great King of Shu, Zhang Xiantai, advanced to the southwest, attacking the Bulgarians, who were locked in constant warfare with the Byzantine Empire.

The Great King of Liao, Zhang Xianjiong, struck north to attack the Kievan Rus' principality.

The two men agreed that if Zhang Xiantai conquered the Bulgarians first, he would draw on all his strength to help Zhang Xianjiong crush the Magyars, the Shield of Catholicism, who were on the verge of establishing the Kingdom of Hungary.

If Zhang Xianjiong first took Kiev and conquered the Rus', then he would draw on his troops and give full aid to Zhang Xiantai in smashing the Byzantines and entering Constantinople.

Another gust of cold wind blew over, and the sound of hoofbeats rose in the distance. Before long, a messenger bearing a banner returned, bringing news from the front line.

More than four months of standoff had exhausted the Byzantine army, and with internal instability as well, the Byzantine commander Bardas Skleros decided to withdraw first.

He notified the Bulgarians of this, hoping they would also abandon the Tundzha River and retreat east to their heartland of Macedonia, relying on the rugged Balkan Mountains to resist Zhang Xiantai's assault.

Zhang Xiantai raised his head to the sky and let out a long howl. Twenty years — twenty years ago, at the age of nineteen, he had sworn to become a fierce man who would bring nightmares to the Roman Empire like Khagan Attila, but reality had forced him further and further from that dream.

Because Zhang Xiantai had encountered military geniuses like Nikephoros II and John I, his repeated attacks had been beaten back by the two men working together with the Bulgarians.

The Black Sea fleet he had painstakingly built — dozens of warships — had been burned to nothing by a single blast of Greek fire.

That great fire was the most deeply etched image in Zhang Xiantai's memory; it nearly burned his dream to ashes as well. At the time, he had even been moved to return to the divine capital Luoyang and just lie flat.

But Heaven rewards the persevering. In his desperate straits, Zhang Xiantai activated the Turtle-Breathing Great Art, and in that moment, the souls of Sima Yi and Tokugawa Ieyasu possessed him.

Comrade Zhang Xiantai, Great King of Shu, used twenty years of his lifespan to simply outlive Nikephoros II and John I, until at last the Byzantine Empire's line of military-genius emperors was broken and the state fell into chaos.

As for the Byzantine Empire right now — how to put it — its system is a little different from what Chinese people imagine. Men like Nikephoros II and John I were not actually true Byzantine emperors.

They were actually representatives of the military aristocracy of Asia Minor. After entering the court of Constantinople through war and various other channels, they quickly seized great power. By Chinese custom, they should be called regents.

For example, during the reigns of Nikephoros II and John I, the true Byzantine emperor was the young Basil II.

Nikephoros II became co-emperor with Basil II by means of marrying Basil II's mother, Theophano.

John I was the lover of Basil II's mother, Theophano. After killing his own uncle Nikephoros II, he too began a co-rule arrangement with Basil II.

What is this equivalent to? "Regent" may not be quite accurate. It should be the status of one who enters court without hastening, is praised at audience without his name being announced, wears sword and shoes into the hall, bears the ceremonial axe and uses the Son of Heaven's imperial carriage, wears the Son of Heaven's crown, commands all military affairs within and without, oversees the Secretariat, is enfeoffed as King of Wei, establishes a hegemonic headquarters — plus the special privilege of spending the night in the imperial bed.

Nikephoros II was the Dorgon of Rome; John I was the Cao Mengde of Rome.

With two such fierce men present, they keenly perceived the threat of Zhang Xiantai and decisively abandoned their original policy of suppressing the Bulgarians, instead using Orthodox Christianity as a weapon to win over the Bulgarians, providing them with weapons and grain, and even directly taking the field to help the Bulgarians resist Zhang Xiantai.

After the destruction of Zhang Xiantai's Black Sea fleet, the Byzantine Empire even attempted to contact the Rus' and the Pechenegs to completely annihilate Zhang Xiantai.

Had Zhang Xianyu not personally led thirty thousand infantry and cavalry from the Huaxia states, arriving at any cost, Zhang Xiantai would have nearly been destroyed by the seventy-thousand-strong coalition army that John I had assembled.

Under this strategy, the young Zhang Xiantai, coming from ten thousand li away, naturally could do nothing against the combined might of the Bulgarians and the Byzantine Empire.

But fortunately, after John I's expedition returned without success, its enormous cost provoked nationwide opposition, and he was never able to launch a second one.

Zhang Xiantai was thus able, together with Zhang Xianjiong, to eliminate the Pechenegs, deal a heavy blow to the Rus', and stabilize the situation.

On the Byzantine side, after John I's death, the Asia Minor military aristocracy, having tasted success, put forward Bardas Skleros as co-emperor.

But Basil II had now come of age. He no longer wished to be pushed around by usurping ministers, and he did not want yet another man sleeping in his mother Theophano's bed.

So Basil II used his legitimacy and the opposition of the Constantinople nobility and ministers to the Asia Minor military aristocracy to prevent Bardas Skleros from entering Constantinople.

He also vigorously promoted another Asia Minor military aristocrat, Bardas Phokas, to counterbalance Bardas Skleros and maintain equilibrium.

So now, the Byzantine Empire is in complete chaos. Emperor Basil II was unable to prevent Bardas Skleros from becoming co-emperor, and has in fact already lost control of most of Asia Minor.

Bardas Skleros, unable to control Constantinople and Basil II the way his predecessors Nikephoros II and John I had, lacked proper legitimacy, and his power was greatly constrained.

These two men are now both cripples — they have split the empire and greatly weakened its ability to wage war abroad.

Now, Zhang Xiantai is relentlessly attacking the Bulgarians, driving them to the edge of a cliff — but not to annihilate them.

There was no need for that. What Zhang Xiantai wanted was precisely to conquer the Bulgarians, then lead them together to attack Constantinople.

This standoff was meant to make the Bulgarians give up hope, to let them see Byzantium's chaos, to make them understand that the Byzantines could no longer support them, and to make the Bulgarian Tsar Samuel submit to him and convert to the Six Dharma Sect.

Bardas Skleros left. Though he knew that once he left, the Bulgarians were finished and Byzantium's frontiers would never know peace again, he had no choice but to go.

Because during the four months he had been locked in standoff with Zhang Xiantai, Basil II had been constantly winning over the centrists and suppressing his political allies. If he did not return now, he would die and his clan would be wiped out.

To say something that shouldn't be said: if the Byzantine state fell, Bardas Skleros would not necessarily die. He could flee to the highlands of Asia Minor and continue being a feudal lord. Even in the worst case, if he had to die, his family would most likely still be preserved.

But if he did not return now, once Basil II finished his arrangements, his entire family, his entire clan, would be finished.

In such circumstances, not even a fool would keep leading a bunch of Asia Minor legions to hold out on the banks of the Tundzha.

Watching the distant figures of the Byzantine army departing, Zhang Xiantai swept his hand grandly. "Luketu, go personally. You must keep the Bulgarians pinned down. I want half of them dead before they can retreat to Macedonia."

"Since Samuel dared to call himself Tsar, he is doomed. Kill his whole family for me. I need only one obedient collaborator."

At Zhang Xiantai's command, the sixty-thousand-strong army moved at once. The Shu cavalry, built around elite steppe horsemen from East Asia supplemented by Turkic remnant peoples such as the Kipchaks, Pechenegs, and Khazars, was far stronger than the Bulgarian cavalry.

Now that the Byzantines had withdrawn, even with forty li between the two sides, the Bulgarians could no longer escape. What awaited them were only two options: submission or total rout.

Along the banks of the Dnieper River, northeast of Kiev, Zhang Nengqi led a tall, sturdy white horse. The white horse was adorned with a silver saddle and golden bells; on its left side hung a long lance gleaming with cold light, and on its right hung a mulberry-wood longbow and a fine horn crossbow.

Behind the white horse was a smaller brown horse, clearly of greater endurance, its back laden with a meticulously kept cloth-faced iron armor and the white horse's barding, looking as though it were carrying a small hill.

Squelch! Zhang Nengqi laboriously pulled his right foot out of the muddy black earth and stamped heavily forward.

Then his left foot sank deep into the mire, and he could only laboriously pull his left foot up again, then continue on to pull out his right foot, which had sunk in once more.

"Damn it all, that idiot Vladimir can't even build a road properly, and the Rus' people praise him as an enlightened ruler — what a bunch of brainless barbarians!"

Zhang Nengqi complained loudly. A young officer behind him heard this and nodded his head vigorously in agreement.

"No wonder they're called barbarians. With that level of competence, he couldn't even do a prefect's job properly in the Central Plains."

"Eldest Young Lord, I've heard that the streets of the divine capital Luoyang are all paved with blue flagstones, wide enough for a whole squad to walk abreast, and the food stalls on both sides sell delicacies hard to find even in heaven. I wonder when we'll get to go back and see it for ourselves!"

Zhang Nengqi sighed at these words and stopped walking, craning his neck to gaze eastward.

He had left the Central Plains while still in his mother's womb, and had lived in this far western frontier ever since he was born, yet names like the Divine Capital, Chang'an, and the Eastern Capital seemed branded into his mind.

Countless times he had heard his father the king describe the splendor of the Central Plains until his mouth watered, but he simply could not imagine what such a scene looked like.

"Soon. Father the King says Grandfather is not in the best of health and wishes to see us grandchildren before he re-ascends to the ranks of the immortals. When the time comes, I will personally name you, Xiao Sigan, to return with me."

"That would be wonderful! My thanks for the young lord's gracious favor!" Xiao Sigan beamed with delight at the words, as if even his walking had gained new vigor.

The party walked on for another li or so when hoofbeats sounded in the distance. It was the scout who had gone ahead to reconnoiter, returning. From far off he called out to Zhang Nengqi with a wink and a grin:

"Heir Apparent, only fifteen li to Chernigov. It's already late, and there's a village up ahead holding a wedding. The Heir Apparent can stop there to rest and enjoy himself."

The conquests of Zhang Xianjiong, Great King of Liao, went far more easily than those of his elder brother Zhang Xiantai, Great King of Shu.

For under the Principality of Kievan Rus, neither the Rus people nor the other peoples possessed a culture as brilliant as that of Byzantium.

Without that element, an early national consciousness was not easily produced; what existed at most was a mentality dividing people into one's own and outsiders, based on tribes large and small, or even on the family unit.

Moreover, the territory of Kievan Rus was comparatively cold and barren. It was called a principality, but in reality the Grand Prince's power was not much greater than that of a tribal chieftain.

Poor, savage, and with life hard, the Rus people's society had few rules and little subtlety—whoever had the bigger fist possessed the truth.

No matter what you looked like or where you came from, if you could beat me to the ground, you were the boss, the master.

All the more so since the eleven thousand men killed at Sarkel had already struck the Rus a crippling blow.

Thus in barely three years, Zhang Xianjiong won three battles in three campaigns, destroyed the last armed forces of Kievan Rus beneath the walls of Kiev, and slew Grand Prince Vladimir I of Kiev in battle. After that, the Rus people quickly submitted to these easterners with the bigger fists.

Even the nobles of Novgorod in the north, who had not been struck, had long since sent men to Kiev to declare their submission.

Coarse black bread, a great pot of oat porridge with small chunks of meat now appearing, now vanishing—though there was no shortage of fish, for the village lay on the banks of the Dnieper, and neither salted fish nor fresh fish was lacking.

Zhang Nengqi sat boldly and imposingly in the village's central square, while the village headman led all the villagers, men and women, young and old alike, to kneel before Zhang Nengqi, trembling as they awaited this great figure from the East to speak.

And before Zhang Nengqi, a woman in a dark red long dress, her face lightly made up, knelt prostrate, cleaning the mud-caked black leather boots for him.

Judging from her clothes, so different from the villagers' gray-black and gray-white garments, this must be the bride who was just about to be married.

Zhang Nengqi bent down, reached out, and pinched the bride's chin, tilting her face upward.

An oval face, large eyes, but the skin of her face was reddened like frostbitten flesh, and a fine dense ring of freckles covered her cheeks, visible only if one looked closely.

The skin of her hands was rough too; she had clearly done her share of labor. Her bosom was still quite grand—no doubt built up from a steady diet of fish and shrimp.

Her looks were ordinary, but passable.

The bride trembled slightly. It was a common thing in Rus for the lord to possess a bride's first night; whether he exercised it was the lord's freedom, but the right itself had to exist.

"Lida! Let go of my Lida! Let her go!"

An anguished roar rang out. The groom appeared, a huge scythe in his hand, bursting through the door.

But before he could threaten Zhang Nengqi, the kneeling village headman and the village men surged forward together and pinned him down.

Terror shot from the village headman's eyes. A dozen or so days ago, a village not far from here had defied the Great Khan's decree and had been ordered wiped out—every male killed, and all the women taken to Kiev to become the lowest of slaves.

Zhang Nengqi's eyes lit up. This Rus giant before him was very tall and strong. He could clearly have shaken off the villagers' grasp, even beaten them down, but he did not do so.

"Bai Er, go test this barbarian's mettle." Zhang Nengqi tilted his head, and a burly man from the Zheng fief in Transoxiana stepped forward.

But the result was unexpected. Bai Er, who had trained in martial arts since childhood, fought with a short blade and was actually driven back step after step by this Rus giant.

Seeing that Bai Er's face was starting to lose composure and that he was about to draw the hengdao saber and mace at his waist, Zhang Nengqi laughed aloud and stood up. He grabbed Bai Er's arm as it reached for the hengdao saber, and also casually snatched the fine iron hengdao saber from Xiao Sigan's waist.

"You're something of a brave warrior after all. Follow me as a vanguard foot soldier!" With that, Zhang Nengqi threw the hengdao saber to the ground.

In an instant, the face of the giant, who had been filled with grief and fury, broke into irrepressible ecstasy.

The land of Rus was cold and bitter; farming and fishing barely kept a man fed. At the lowest level of existence, two in ten starved to death, seven in ten went hungry, and only one in ten could barely eat their fill. Calling it hell would not be an exaggeration.

In the past, the Rus could raid south into the Byzantine Empire, but Byzantium was no soft persimmon, and moreover the Rus had accepted the Orthodox faith from Constantinople, so raiding still carried a certain burden on their consciences.

But since the arrival of the Great King of Liao, nicknamed the Terror Khan, the Rus had gained considerably more confidence in raiding Byzantium.

For the Great Khan had under him iron-armored infantry and cavalry impervious to blade and spear, which greatly diminished Byzantium's advantage in equipment.

Under their leadership, the Rus did not need to storm strongholds themselves; they only needed to lend a hand. At the same time, the spread of the Six Dharma Sect also freed the Rus from their guilt about going south.

"Before you stands the Heir Apparent of Liao! Kowtow and give thanks, you base slave!"

Xiao Sigan, gazing reluctantly at the fine hengdao saber he had just bought now becoming another man's property, shouted with some indignation.

Hearing that this great man from the East was actually the Heir Apparent of the Great King, the villagers burst into exclamations.

But their focus was not on his status as Heir Apparent of the Great King, but rather on Zhang Nengqi being the grandson of the living god and Buddha.

The Rus giant, wild with joy, shuffled forward on his knees all the way to Zhang Nengqi, raised his head, and looked at Zhang Nengqi with the eyes of an infant gazing at its father. His pale blue eyes were filled entirely with longing.

"Alyosha has strength he can never use up! Alyosha fears neither death nor toil! He only wishes to become a devoted child of the descendant of God!"

The emergence of the Six Dharma Sect perfectly matched the early Rus people's longing for a patriarch and their veneration of holy fools. This was the Rus people's national choice amid extreme suffering and poverty.

A major reason so many of them rapidly abandoned Byzantine Orthodoxy was that the Six Dharma Sect suited this land better than Orthodoxy did.

For the Six Dharma Sect had been created by Zhang Zhao precisely to win over cold, bitter steppe peoples like the Rus.

Zhang Nengqi nodded and drew from his bosom a small bronze seal. The pattern on the seal was very simple: a single swastika.

Xiao Sigan deftly placed the seal over the fire to heat it, holding it there until it glowed red before bringing it back.

Alyosha had already torn open his clothes with his hands, and amid the envious gazes of all the Rus villagers, he let Zhang Nengqi press the seal hard onto his chest, thick with chest hair.

At the same time, everyone in the cavalry force of over a hundred men stood solemnly and chanted the Great Compassionate Dharma King's Heart Mantra.

Some of those of non-Han origin likewise pulled open the clothes at their chests, revealing the somewhat fierce-looking swastika brands on their chests.

Alyosha did not make a sound. Only when Zhang Nengqi removed the seal from his chest did he cry out in excitement: "Little Merciful Father! Alyosha has finally become your devoted child! From this day on, he will serve you forever as a son serves his father!"

"The Little Merciful Father has seen your loyalty, Alyosha.

He shall grant you boundless courage and an unbreakable will. From this day forward, you bear a sacred surname: Yelu.

Every man of the Yelu family may receive one hundred serfs and endless wealth on the warm lands of the south."

The creation of the Great and Little Merciful Fathers, the branding, the bestowal of the surnames Yelu and Xiao—these were all novelties devised by Zhang Xianjiong, Great King of Liao, and Zhang Nengqi, Heir Apparent of Liao.

Indeed, only those who themselves believed in a faith could adapt it to local conditions.

At the same time, in the city of Kiev, Zhang Xianjiong — whom the Rus and Pechenegs called the Dreaded Great Khan — received a letter from his elder brother, Zhang Xiantai, Great King of Shu.

He immediately summoned all the chieftains under his command — Han, Rus, Pecheneg, Khazar, Kipchak, and Kimek — to gather at the palace.

"Five years ago, I made a pact with my elder brother to strike the Byzantines together. Now the time is ripe. Go back, each of you, and within twenty days bring the warriors of every city. Before the birthday of the Boundless Heavenly All-Merciful Father arrives, we shall offer him the wealthy city of Constantinople!"

Cheers erupted at once. Chieftains of every color prostrated themselves one after another, pledging their loyalty. Under the banner of the swastika, they would storm Constantinople!

The plot and outline of the new book still need a little smoothing out — I've been revising constantly — but it is expected to meet everyone within the next week.

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