Chapter 99: Dayun Temple

At the Jialu Post camp, Zhang Zhao held the Great Tang Jianzhong-era copper coin in his fingers, silent and speechless.

The second year of Jianzhong should be around 783 CE by historical reckoning; Zhang Zhao could no longer remember the exact year.

And twenty-five years after this batch of second-year Jianzhong coins was cast, the Tibetans stormed Kucha.

The Grand Protector-General of Anxi, Duke Guo Xin of Wuwei Commandery, vanished from that day forward, and with him the last tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians of Anxi, as if they had suddenly ceased to exist.

The appearance of this coin could be said to have given Zhang Zhao tremendous encouragement, because it meant that right here in Shule, descendants of the Great Tang's Anxi soldiers still existed.

Moreover, they still remembered the Great Tang and knew the meaning of this coin. A people with such a transmitted heritage could not exist in isolation; they must still have a community, and their numbers would not be merely a few dozen or a hundred.

"Fan Shun! The task of entering Shule again can only be entrusted to you. But this journey is extremely dangerous, and you must be fully prepared!"

Whom to send? That was the question, because entering Shule city again and making contact with Anxi Tang army descendants whose existence could only be regarded as highly probable was extremely dangerous.

Who knew whether it was a trap? Though the probability was small.

And once inside Shule, getting information back out would be even harder. As war drew near, Shule's defenses would only grow tighter by the day.

And Fan Shun was, apart from Ma Yaozi, the man in Zhang Zhao's company with the strongest ability to adapt on the fly, the nimblest mind, and the greatest loyalty to him.

The rest either lacked the wits — men like Dunzhu and Manxiong — or their loyalty was not entirely solid, like Qiongre Duojin and Bai Congxin.

"Rest assured, young lord! Your servant will be careful. Now that there is word of the Anxi army's descendants, I, Fan Shun, would walk into a dragon's pool or tiger's den for it!

If any misfortune should befall me, please inform my elder brother, young lord, and tell him to take a few more wives, sire a few more whelps, and pick a clever one to adopt over to my line."

Zhang Zhao nodded heavily, then clapped Fan Shun on the shoulder.

In Shule city, Ma Yaozi was still eating and drinking with wild abandon, getting himself thoroughly drunk every day, so much so that in the Shule of these past few days, the Gaochang people had almost become synonymous with drunkards.

And when he drank, he liked to stir up trouble — brawling with the junior officers at the post station, with patrons at the eating houses and wine shops, even with so-called champions of the gods from who knew where on the street — until everyone in Shule knew this deputy envoy was a reckless brute.

A bowl of grape wine went down, and Ma Yaozi let out a long, wine-laden breath. Beside him, a heavily bearded Karluk man was hurrying away.

"Dumbass!" Ma Yaozi muttered softly, full of contempt. This odd-sounding word had become his favorite; whenever he wanted to express scorn, it was always the first word that came to mind.

In his view, that Karluk just now had been a textbook dumbass, thinking he, Ma Yaozi, had drunk too much and trying to wheedle information out of him.

Wealth stirs men's hearts! Three thousand strings of cash! Whoever got their hands on it could live in ease for the rest of their life. Who cared about some darugha or no darugha — plenty of men were willing to take the gamble.

But while spreading the word far and wide, Ma Yaozi had reaped other gains as well. In these three days, he had received no fewer than ten different hints.

Among them should have been fishing expeditions sent by the Governor of Shule, Itihad, as well as hidden Buddhists, Manichaeans, even Nestorian Christians — but not once had there been anyone like that eating-house owner who could be connected to the Great Tang.

At the governor's residence, Wu Yuan'er walked out of the place for the second time, and he was on the verge of completing Zhang Zhao's arrangement — Itihad had actually agreed to his request.

Not to release anyone, of course, but to allow him to visit the prison where the monks of Dayun Temple were held, to see whether there was anyone the darugha Pugu Feng'en was looking for.

And as Wu Yuan'er left, the Governor of Shule, Itihad, summoned his most trusted officer.

In these four days, at the cost of two good horses ridden to death, he had received a fairly reliable piece of news: a personage of importance from the east had indeed appeared in the Jiashi area.

Combined with that drunken deputy envoy's slip of the tongue, and the fragments coaxed out of the official history, Itihad was certain that even if Pugu Feng'en himself was not present, his trusted men had certainly brought three thousand strings' worth of valuables into the Kara-Khanid realm.

"General Hassan, I order you to take one hundred cavalry and ride swiftly to Jiashi, and continue intensifying the search.

I believe that thanks to that brute of a deputy envoy spreading word everywhere, many people now know that around Jiashi city there are Gaochang Uyghurs carrying valuables worth three thousand strings.

You must find these Gaochang people before they do. These valuables should serve the great Bughra Khan, should serve the spreading of the will of the True Lord."

General Hassan nodded. "But what of those Gaochang people? Kill them?"

"No! No!" Itihad wagged the index finger of his right hand. "We cannot open war with the Gaochang Uyghurs at the same time as we fight the men of the Golden Kingdom!

Pick a few unimportant monks from the city and take them along. Tell them these are the monks of Dayun Temple. The people are delivered, and the valuables naturally belong to us."

Hassan nodded in approval. Three thousand strings of valuables! By the custom of these times, he, Hassan, could receive a reward of no more than three-tenths — at least seven or eight hundred strings.

It was said the Great Khan's army was about to capture — ah, no, should say recover — Balasagun, and when that happened, large numbers of high-quality female slaves would surely appear on the market.

His Excellency the Governor was a man of faith, with no love for wine or beautiful women, but Hassan — he liked them!

"No! That won't do!"

Hassan was still lost in pleasant fantasy when Itihad suddenly shook his head. Hassan's heart tightened — surely His Excellency the Governor wasn't going back on robbing the Gaochang people?

"If we just hand over any monks at all, it would still deeply offend the Gaochang people. We must give them someone fairly important, yet not so important, to stop their mouths!"

Hassan secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Thank goodness the Governor had not changed his mind. He thought for a moment.

"Your Excellency, I have an idea. That old monk of Dayun Temple — has he not always refused to say where the treasure vault of the Shule infidels is?

What if we let that Gaochang envoy take away his most important disciple? I have always suspected the Gaochang people may also have learned this secret."

Itihad's eyes lit up at once. A possibility suddenly struck him.

"Hassan, you mean to say this Pugu Feng'en does not intend to use the three thousand strings to ransom anyone, but rather learned the secret of the Dayun Temple treasure through some channel, just as we did?

It must be so! What a fine scheme — currying favor with the Gaochang Buddhists while getting the treasure into his hands at the same time."

Itihad murmured to himself. Why, after destroying Dayun Temple, had he kept its monks imprisoned for more than three years instead of killing them? Because from the temple he had found, in total, less than a thousand strings' worth of valuables.

One must understand that Buddhist monks have always had a habit of amassing wealth. Dayun Temple had stood in Shule for over two hundred years, always the holy land of the Buddha in the land of Anxi, covering thousands of mu, with over a thousand monks at its peak.

The Han monk abbot of Dayun Temple had also been the Superintendent of Monks for the Four Garrisons of Anxi of the Tang Empire, overseeing the affairs of the infidel monks of the Four Garrisons — how could he possibly have possessed a mere thousand strings of property?

Moreover, the legendary and supremely precious infidel Buddha relics and Buddha's begging bowl were nowhere to be found. They must have been hidden away in advance.

But that old monk Daozhen and his disciples had been threatened, bribed, and tortured more times than anyone could count, and still would not reveal the location of Dayun Temple's treasure.

Watching these monks' bodies deteriorate day by day, Itihad was anxious beyond measure. If these monks died, he would never find the infidels' treasure.

"Indeed! This governor can release Huixing, the disciple of old monk Daozhen. Those infidels hate us bitterly. Once Huixing escapes, he is very likely to tell this secret to Pugu Feng'en, a fellow infidel.

But this treasure is by no means something that can be moved casually. We need only keep close watch, and when the Gaochang people dig up the treasure, we can seize them!"

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