Chapter 132: Ask the Ancestors

The night wind was cold and biting; hazy moonlight fell upon the hill ridges of Wangzhuang Fort.

Below the fort walls on the ridge, braziers burned at close intervals. Men wearing Lion Battalion uniforms with border-army padded jackets over them sat around the braziers, talking freely and at ease.

Liu Chengzong, leading the gagged and bound Li Bei, walked past several clusters of soldiers. Hearing a man whose accent was utterly different from the others saying something, he stopped and listened quietly.

"My name is Chen Qindai, Left Sentinel, Middle Company, Second Squad Leader. I've been a bandit and I've been a soldier. Before, I served under General Meng Ruhu of Yulin Garrison."

His voice was deep and strong, carrying a strange accent from elsewhere. He sounded like a Mongol, yet his Chinese was quite proper — just not the local speech here.

Liu Chengzong looked at the squad leader's back. He was not as burly as imagined — not tall, wearing a padded jacket and padded armor, but he looked sturdy enough.

He nudged Li Bei with his elbow and whispered, "Your soldier, Meng Ruhu's subordinate. No idea where General Meng ran off to either."

Someone asked Chen Qindai, "You were Li Bei's soldier — how did you end up in the Left Sentinel?"

The Left Sentinel was composed entirely of Feng Rang's troops. By all rights, its ranks should not include any of Li Bei's subordinates — aside from the earliest few border soldiers and the bandits from Old Huihui's band, it should only be the surrendered troops from Yanshui Pass.

Chen Qindai said, "I was originally in the Rear Sentinel, but Sentinel Commander Feng gave me half a bowl of parched flour on the battlefield, so I followed Sentinel Commander Feng. The general told us to introduce ourselves — I was born in Tumed Plain. I've gelded livestock, worked as a blacksmith, and I can also set bones. Any of you whose bones are out of place, come find me and I'll set them right."

Hearing this, Liu Chengzong understood. Feng Rang was a man who had known hunger — even on the battlefield, he had to carry food on his person.

"My father passed away early, I never met him. My mother was a Tartar, and so am I. The Chinese she taught me isn't the same as what they speak in Shanxi or Shaanxi. Does anyone know where Shandong is?"

This question was a bit too profound.

The several squad leaders looked at each other, unable to name a specific location.

Someone said it was in the east.

Someone corrected him, saying the east was called Liaodong, where the Eastern Invaders came from.

Yet another said Liaodong was Shandong. The others didn't believe him and said he was talking nonsense.

Chen Qindai shook his head, very disappointed. "Forget it. Someone said the Sentinel Commander knows. I'll ask him later."

Liu Chengzong said, "The Shandong Provincial Administration Commission governs the Liaodong Regional Military Commission."

Only then did the squad leaders notice him. They hurriedly rose to greet him.

"General."

"General."

Liu Chengzong pulled Li Bei along and squeezed into the circle to sit down. He said to Chen Qindai, "Go on. You're from Tumed Plain — how did you end up in Han territory, and become a bandit at that?"

Tumed Plain was Altan Khan's territory. During the Jiajing reign, Zhao Quan, the White Lotus leader from Yanbei, led his followers into Tumed Plain and recruited borderland commoners to go and farm there, bringing tens of thousands of Han people to Tumed Plain.

They reclaimed fields and built houses, calling them Baisheng, and helped Altan Khan construct a city on the steppe — the Blue City, pronounced Kuku Khoton in Mongolian, which would become Hohhot in later times.

"The Han uncles and Tartar uncles went to war. My mother took me and fled into Han territory. At Datong, we were swindled by border officers. We fled to Yulin and bought a few mu of wasteland. My mother fell ill from the cold, and we borrowed money from a wealthy household for herbal medicine. The illness wasn't cured and the debt couldn't be repaid. We lost the land. I was ten that year."

Chen Qindai's words made Liu Chengzong think of Sixteen. A child could hardly have survived to the present on his own. He asked, "Later, you met General Meng?"

"I stuck a straw marker in my collar four times to sell myself. Each time, I never got enough to eat. The last time, when I wanted to leave, the blacksmith wouldn't let me. I knocked him down with an iron bar, stole his horse, took his knife, and robbed."

As Chen Qindai spoke, he pressed his lips together. His expression grew complicated — not shyness but embarrassment. "Robbed for a few years. Then, then I robbed General Meng Ruhu."

Several squad leaders cheered. Someone asked, "Did you fight him?"

"Didn't fight him. If I had, I wouldn't have become his soldier."

Liu Chengzong clapped his hands and laughed too. So this Chen Qindai had been beaten up by Meng Ruhu, and that was how he ended up serving under him.

He waved toward the others and asked, "What about you all? Tell me — where were you soldiers before, and how did you become soldiers? Don't stand, sit and talk."

With Chen Qindai having gone first, the squad leaders around the campfire were no longer self-conscious. Following his lead, they introduced themselves one by one.

Only this time, they were no longer introducing themselves to each other, but to Liu Chengzong.

"This humble one is Li Qianlong. Served in the Yulin Garrison for two years. In the sixth year of Tianqi, I returned home and became a post-station runner. The general raided the post station and said he could let my parents eat their fill. Now I'm the Second Squad Leader, First Squad, Mounted Scout Company."

"Your subordinate, Qi Yunxiang. Killer of the Second Division, Left Sentinel, Guyuan Battalion. The court wouldn't pay our wages. It didn't starve me to death, but my mother went blind from hunger and hanged herself. My wife was so starved she took the baby and remarried. I know the court has no money."

When Qi Yunxiang spoke of this, the look he gave Li Bei was frightening. "But my family is all gone now, so what is there left to fear... I am now the Fifth Squad Leader, Rear Company, Vanguard Sentinel. General, whenever we fight our way to Guyuan, I want to retrieve my old mother's remains and give her a proper coffin before laying her back to rest."

"My turn. Your subordinate, Jin Pu. Third Squad Leader, Left Company, Right Sentinel. Before, I was a selected vanguard among General Lu's household retainers in Yulin Garrison. I was the one who carried the general's body back to his hometown. After burying him, I didn't know where to go. Staying in Yulin meant not eating enough, and I truly didn't want to be a soldier for the court anymore."

Jin Pu liked to smile, but now his smile was very bitter. He glanced cautiously at Liu Chengzong and said, "General, the truth is, it wasn't that we couldn't beat you. We trained and fought every day on half-full stomachs, yet when we marched out, we first had to rob the commoners' grain."

Only after Liu Chengzong nodded, showing no sign of anger, did he dare to continue. "Later, I headed south and ran into Commander Yang from Guyuan, so I joined up under the general again. I figure this is fate — Heaven won't let me be a law-abiding subject."

Liu Chengzong smiled. "It's also destiny."

They had let you go in the first place, and after burying your general, you circled around and came right back.

The last squad leader to speak had a trace of guilt in his words. "My name is Zheng Hu. I was General Li's soldier — elite cavalry. Two hundred riders, and we chased Old Huihui from Yellow Dragon Mountain all the way beyond the passes."

Liu Chengzong had been observing Li Bei the whole time. With the previous men — whether Li Qianlong, Qi Yunxiang, or Jin Pu — Li Bei's eyes had held sympathy and sorrow. But when this Zheng Hu began to speak, Li Bei's eyes filled with fury. He struggled to stand, but the household retainers behind him held him down.

Seeing him like this, Zheng Hu was also very afraid, but times had changed after all. He still said, "General Li treated us well. Whatever we ate, he ate. However much we ate, he ate the same. Sometimes when food was scarce — one chicken not enough to share among the squad — he wouldn't eat, and gave it to the best-trained or the thinnest soldier."

"But General, we weren't full. We'd rather you ate more — that you stuffed yourself, ate one bowl and dumped out two — and let us eat our fill."

Zheng Hu sighed. It seemed a thousand words filled his heart, yet he could say nothing. "Fighting Old Huihui, we ate our fill for a few days. We brought back so many dead horses, but the Yulin officers seized them. All the spoils were handed over — they said the pay would be distributed later. The bounty silver for the heads we took, they also said would be handed out later. None of it came. They just gave out a few official posts — a few posts weren't enough to feed the brothers."

"I know the General was good. When the General fled, I fled too. But the General didn't make it out — he let Commander Ma flee on his own. What were we supposed to do? Dying is easy. We brothers had no weapons or armor left. We were all ready to fight when the bandits came at us with blades — to fight it out."

At this, Zheng Hu could no longer go on. He shifted his sitting posture, this big, burly man burying his head in his knees. When he raised his head again, his face was streaked with tears, and he shouted at Li Bei with a sob in his voice, "But they came carrying porridge! Ah!"

Li Bei's struggling stopped.

It was as if Zheng Hu's wailing had pulled the spine right out of him.

At first, no one knew who had been stirred to recollection by his crying. Liu Chengzong heard someone at the campfire on his other side also sobbing quietly.

Then the sound of weeping and lament grew more and more, rising and falling in waves.

Hunger, it seemed, had become the shared bitter memory of the border troops from both the Yulin and Guyuan garrisons.

"Your General Li did nothing wrong. Everything he did was right — don't blame him. And he won't blame you either."

Liu Chengzong patted Li Bei, then stepped over the brazier to comfort Zheng Hu. Only then did he say to the group, "My name is Liu Chengzong. You all know that. But you don't know that in the first year of Tianqi, I was already a certified student. How old was I that year? I was the youngest certified student in Yan'an Prefecture — a child prodigy."

"My father served as an instructor at the Confucian school, as a clerk in Mizhi, and later as a tax official in Yan'an Prefecture. He was thrown in prison because he couldn't collect enough taxes. The common people were all poor — who could you blame? I couldn't take the provincial exams. I went with my brother to take the military exams, but we were driven out halfway and ended up enlisting in the Yulin Garrison."

"From the day I enlisted to the day I returned home, I never once received my soldier's pay. I was terribly hungry. But I never thought of rebelling. In the end, the fort had no food, so they released us. Released, I went home. My family wouldn't let me go hungry — our whole family had eaten the court's stipend grain. Whoever rebelled, we couldn't rebel, right?"

"The villages to the north were plagued by bandits. The Yan'an Guard battalion commander went into the mountains to extort grain — demanded one thousand five hundred tons of dry rations. We scraped it together for him. He took our grain, went north, and let the bandits cut off the commoners' heads so he could take them back and trade them for merit."

"Hey, stop crying. Did you guys fight a Tiger General who raided a Prince's Estate?"

Hearing Liu Chengzong ask this, Zheng Hu stopped weeping, still aggrieved and gasping for breath. He nodded: "Ganquan. We chased him for a hundred and seventy li."

"You killed the wrong man. That Tiger General was me. Starving refugees surged into my family's mountain land and ruined our fields. A captive said there was a Prince's Estate nearby, very wealthy. At that time, I still didn't want to rebel. I only wanted to grab some grain so my clansmen could survive. But guess what?"

Liu Chengzong looked around. Even Li Bei couldn't help following him with his eyes, then glanced aside when he saw Liu looking back.

Zheng Hu and Li Bei were both dumbfounded. Killed the wrong man?

Liu Chengzong let out a laugh and said to those around him: "The villages along the way were all utterly ruined. The villages in Yan'an Prefecture that still have people living in them now are all near a stream or a river, and even then, they barely scrape by."

"That Prince's Estate was different. I haven't seen fields that fertile in days. I'd always thought the Xichuan River had dried up. Only when I got there did I learn that the estate had built a dam and blocked the river. When we broke into the Prince's Estate, do you know how much grain there was?"

Liu Chengzong raised a single finger, inviting guesses.

Chen Qindai guessed a hundred dan, and was ridiculed by Qi Yunxiang: "At least a thousand dan!"

"Ten thousand dan!"

Liu Chengzong said: "The grain in the mountain cellars had all turned to wine. The entire estate was filled with the fragrance of rotting grain. Northern Shaanxi isn't without grain — the grain is right there. That single Prince's Estate could feed a thousand border troops for a year. Is this a natural disaster, or is it not also a man-made calamity?"

The orderlies sitting around several nearby fire basins also noticed Liu Chengzong here. They sat down one after another on the outer edge, listening to what Liu Chengzong had to say.

"Is Shaanxi suffering drought for the first time? In the Hongwu era, the Yellow River ran dry — you could walk across the riverbed to the opposite bank. In the fifth year of Chenghua, the land was barren for a thousand li, and the court waived four hundred fifty thousand dan of summer tax. From Chenghua to Hongzhi, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Shandong, and Northern Zhili suffered drought for seventeen consecutive years. Major droughts in the Zhengde era, in the Jiajing era, in the Wanli era."

"Only this time, the court did not waive taxes. The court is raising taxes. Is it that the court doesn't know what the common people have become? The court knows."

"General Li said he'd recommend me for a Battalion Commander post. Word's spread to every post, hasn't it?"

Liu Chengzong looked around at everyone. Chen Qindai, Qi Yunxiang, and the others nodded. In truth, people were still a little hopeful inside.

If he became Battalion Commander, those under him would also receive official posts.

But immediately after, Liu Chengzong doused them with a bucket of cold water: "If I become Battalion Commander, or if someone in the camp kills me and trades my head to the court for a Battalion Commander post — the court is already like this. The officials eat their fill. Can you eat your fill?"

Zheng Hu was the first to speak: "Can't eat our fill. Even General Li can't eat his fill!"

Qi Yunxiang also said: "Whoever wants amnesty can go get amnesty. I won't accept amnesty. If the General doesn't accept amnesty, I'll follow the General. If the General accepts amnesty, I'll go elsewhere. Following the court means never eating your fill!"

After that, more orderlies echoed the sentiment one after another, and finally they raised their fists and shouted: "No amnesty! No amnesty!"

"No amnesty — that's exactly right!"

By this point, Liu Chengzong could no longer remain seated while speaking to everyone. Dozens of orderlies had gathered around him, and even more orderly officers were converging on this spot.

He stood up, raised a hand to stop the shouting, and said: "You are orderlies. In the government army, this post is one per platoon. Here, it's one per squad. Your job is to monitor morale, unite the soldiers' bonds and loyalty, and understand the situation within your squad. Those of you who can read, raise your hands — let me see."

Now this was truly interesting.

People looked at each other. No one raised a hand.

Qi Yunxiang said: "General, what counts as literate? I know some characters, but I can't write many. Does that count or not?"

A chorus of agreement rose around him. This was the general level of education among them.

As for recognizing characters, they knew some, but could write very few. After all, most were former rank-and-file soldiers. Nothing to be done about it.

Liu Chengzong waved his hand: "No matter. When that batch of scholars returns from Zuantianmao, you'll study first. From now on, you will all come to see me once a month. Your work, besides training, also includes observing the thoughts of the combat troops, support troops, squad leaders, and company commanders."

"When you see support troops being bullied, or squad leaders acting unjustly, you must speak up for others. You are my mouth in the camp, my eyes in the camp, my hands in the camp. You must tell the combat troops and support troops why we do not accept amnesty. Amnesty benefits a few men, but it is a betrayal of everyone."

The orderly officers all responded in unison. Liu Chengzong, however, felt very helpless at this scene.

The building of the Lion Camp was a long road ahead. Without senior officers, and with the grassroots officers also lacking education, whether recording orders or fulfilling missions, effectiveness would be greatly diminished.

One can only eat a meal one bite at a time.

Just then, Li Bei began struggling again. Liu Chengzong truly didn't know what he had to struggle about, so he walked over and loosened the gag, asking: "General Li, what do you want to say?"

But in truth, Li Bei had been struggling out of habit and never expected Liu Chengzong to actually loosen it. He paused, then said: "You are all border troops of the court, loyal and honorable for generations. Rebellion will only cause more people to die miserable deaths!"

"Heh, those words, General Li — you should go say them to the Chongzhen Emperor."

Li Bei froze: "Say what to the Emperor? I'm talking about you."

Liu Chengzong looked straight into Li Bei's eyes: "Tell him to go to the Imperial Ancestral Temple and ask his ancestors. Ask the Hongwu Emperor why the subjects of the Great Yuan rebelled!"