Chapter 198: A Touch of Mystery

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On the twenty-eighth of the sixth month, Gao Yingxiang sent a letter asking Liu Chengzong to help him find boats on the Yellow River.

He had just raided again and had more grain carts than he could handle. Government troops had blocked the way at Hancheng, so his long train of carts and horses couldn't get through.

Liu Chengzong mulled it over. He had originally wanted Gao Yingxiang to come through Yanshui Pass so he could also ask Fu Renxi why he hadn't come by for a while.

He sent two guards to Yanchuan to check, only to find the pontoon bridge was gone — Gao Yingxiang had destroyed it.

Just then, the wounded soldiers were all able to walk, so Liu Chengzong mustered his forces and led his troops out of Shiziwan, heading southeast.

Yang Dingrui, hearing he was taking troops to Hukou to see the waterfall, tagged along as well.

Passing through Yunyan Town, he let the Gansu soldiers take a look at the battlefield where they had defeated the Fuzhou troops, as well as the ancient city ruins east of town and the cliff carvings inscribed with "Cloud-Capped Emerald Cliffs."

Even though it was just a column of wounded soldiers passing through, it still scared the people east of Yichuan County badly. Liu Chengzong hurriedly sent the Han brothers ahead to reassure the populace along the route.

Otherwise, at this rate, by the time they reached the Yellow River, all the civilians would have fled, and borrowing or renting boats would turn into outright seizing them.

When the troops reached Hukou, Liu Chengzong gazed at the towering mountains and the mighty, surging river, and only one feeling filled his heart.

Anger.

Angry at himself for not being on the opposite bank of the Yellow River, and angry at this drought for making the river's flow so much weaker.

Hukou, viewed from the opposite bank in Shanxi, is absolutely spectacular, but seen from the Shaanxi side, it's somewhat less impressive.

Still, to the Ningxia recruits among the wounded, the sight was quite fascinating: Hey, amazing! The Yellow River has something like this!

After watching for a while, Liu Chengzong ordered the Han brothers to ride along the river south of the waterfall and commandeer civilian boats.

He asked Yang Dingrui, "Sir, why was no bridge ever built here?"

"There was a bridge here long ago. In the early Yuan dynasty, when Mongol troops captured Shanxi, they conscripted laborers to build an iron-chain bridge for crossing west to launch an offensive. The bridge was destroyed in the early years of our dynasty. Afterward, ferries were used instead, and it was never rebuilt."

With bandits everywhere these days, boats were hard to find. On the Shaanxi side, they only managed to find six boats. On the Shanxi side, there was a Hukou Ferry with considerably more boats.

Eight li south of Hukou, there was a cove with a broad river surface and gentle current called Boat's Hollow — a ferry crossing run by Shanxi merchants.

Yang Dingrui added, however: "In the Spring and Autumn period, the opposite bank was thick with mulberry groves, so it was anciently called Mulberry Ford. 'Boat's Hollow' is what the common folk call it nowadays."

They searched several more li south but still found no suitable boats. Gao Yingxiang grew so impatient he simply crossed over by boat himself.

It had been quite a while since they last met. Master Gao looked both excited and anxious. "Just these thirty-some small boats — how long will it take my men to cross!"

Liu Chengzong laughed and asked, "Master Gao, how many men do you have that thirty boats aren't enough?"

"Not enough!"

Gao Yingxiang swept his hand grandly, his face brimming with pride. "Right now, my force has eight thousand soldiers, twelve thousand donkeys and mules, and over three thousand double-axle carts alone. Think about it — how long would that take to ferry across?"

As he spoke, Gao Yingxiang's expression turned smug, and he whispered to Liu Chengzong, "There's even more grain — three trips with these carts still won't move it all."

Liu Chengzong did the math. Gao Yingxiang must have seized at least eighty or ninety thousand dan of grain to dare claim three cart-trips wouldn't suffice.

Gao Yingxiang watched him calculate, his face showing irrepressible pride, but even more, weariness. "This is all thanks to your idea back in Qingjian about dividing zones for grain raids. Left Hanger and King of Chaos didn't enter Shanxi, and you came back to strike Ai Mu. Half the landlords and powerful families in Shanxi..."

Liu Chengzong was amused by the way he said this.

The Gao Yingxiang he knew was stern, taciturn, and sparing with words. He had never seen him so talkative and self-satisfied.

A rare sight.

Gao Yingxiang, having crossed over from the Yellow River, looked at the wounded soldiers around him — even Liu Chengzong himself was injured — and thought to himself: Lion Camp must have suffered heavy casualties fighting He Huchen.

Wanting to offer comfort, he asked, "How many troops does Lion Camp still have? Don't worry, you won't lack provisions. There's plenty."

"Ah."

Gao Yingxiang sighed and patted Liu Chengzong on the shoulder. "Next time — next time the government troops launch another campaign, I'll do the fighting, and you do the grain-raiding."

Grain was a fine thing, and so were riches and goods.

But this time, Gao Yingxiang had truly been sickened by raiding. He never wanted to raid for grain again in his life.

Liu Chengzong sighed. "Lion Camp lost many good men. Once the work scouts return, we'll have fewer than six thousand soldiers."

"Hmm?"

Gao Yingxiang glanced sidelong at him, blinking. "I remember when you led your troops back to Shaanxi to strike Ai Mu, you had just over thirty-five hundred men. Recruited new soldiers? Quite a few, too."

As he spoke, he shook his head. In the current conditions of northern Shaanxi, recruiting two or three thousand more men was nearly impossible.

If it were some other leader recruiting several thousand, taking anyone and everyone regardless of quality — that might still be possible.

But from what he knew of Liu the Lion, who had always adhered to an elite-troop policy, as long as Liu Chengzong didn't change his recruitment standards, he simply couldn't recruit over a thousand men in northern Shaanxi.

Under normal circumstances, even among ten thousand famine refugees, there would barely be five hundred who met Lion Camp's recruitment standards.

And now, south of Suide and north of Jinsuo Pass, within Lion Camp's sphere of influence, where were there still ten thousand refugees?

Those who could flee had long fled. Those who couldn't — those who should have died and those who shouldn't have — were all dead. The rest were under the command of various leaders.

This wasn't like the first two years of the drought.

Gao Yingxiang's face was full of doubt. How was it that after twice crushing powerful foes, Lion Camp's troops had only grown in number?

What answered his puzzlement was Liu the Lion's casual remark: "He Huchen's Ningxia troops — fewer than two thousand. They surrendered."

At these words, Gao Yingxiang temporarily exited the conversation.

He had spoken lightly, but in truth, he had fought plenty of battles in Shanxi too.

When he first entered Shanxi, he had over ten thousand troops under his command. A hailstorm scattered them, and afterward, he gradually gathered his forces, recruited along the way, and his numbers grew.

Before he seized the grain, the government troops hadn't much wanted to bother with him and only fought a few skirmishes.

But after he seized a great deal of grain, government troops appeared endlessly from all directions. They wouldn't engage him in battle — they only went for his supply train.

Some units didn't even form up against him. Their cavalry would charge straight in to snatch the supplies, hefting sacks of grain weighing over a hundred jin onto horseback and leading the horses away at a run.

This forced Gao Yingxiang into fighting several foolish battles.

He couldn't leave. With that much grain and wealth, how could he just abandon it?

Besides, even if he had to abandon it, he'd sooner throw it into the Yellow River than let the government troops have it. So even knowing that standing still and fighting was stupid, he had no choice but to do exactly that.

And here was Liu Chengzong, casually mentioning that not only had he defeated the commander-in-chief of the Ningxia border troops, he had also accepted the surrender of two thousand of his men — when the total force sent against him had been how many?

After a moment, Gao Yingxiang steadied his emotions, nodded, and asked, "Lion, let me ask you something — tell your master the truth."

Liu Chengzong asked, "What?"

Turning his head, Gao Yingxiang frowned with utter seriousness: "When you were born, were there any heavenly signs descending from the sky?"

The question completely baffled Liu Chengzong.

In truth, Gao Yingxiang was not as serious as he appeared; it was just that steadying his emotions a moment ago had been genuinely difficult, and he had taken too long. Afraid of seeming awkward, he had tossed out this question as a bit of jesting banter.

He never expected Liu Chengzong to nod quite naturally and say, "There was. I'm one month older than the Emperor. He was born on the fourth day of the twelfth month of the thirty-eighth year of Wanli; I was born on the first day of the eleventh month."

"What kind of heavenly sign is that… Wait, the thirty-eighth year of Wanli."

Gao Yingxiang thought for a moment, then suddenly his eyes widened: "You mean the Heavenly Dog devouring the sun?"

"Master Gao, you know of it?" Liu Chengzong grinned. "Right. My mother said that before I was born, the sky went dark for a full two-hour period. The midwife was so frightened she couldn't find the road. It wasn't until I let out my first cry that the sky brightened."

Gao Yingxiang looked at Liu Chengzong and nodded repeatedly. His memory of that solar eclipse was extremely vivid.

Winter had already set in by then. Gao Yingxiang had just entered the horse-smuggling trade and was trekking south across the desert.

He had already bribed the officers at the border wall and was only thirty li from safely entering the pass. But his luck was poor — he ran into a squad of Night-No-Return troops heading out beyond the border wall.

Getting caught in such a matter meant certain death. Just when all hope was lost, the sky went dark.

The reason Gao Yingxiang's memory was so deep was not simply because that eclipse saved him.

It was also because, right around the time Liu Chengzong was born, Gao Yingxiang was kowtowing to the Old Lord of Heaven.

Gao Yingxiang pieced together four known conditions.

First, that hailstorm in Yonghe County — he felt that Liu the Lion was, in all likelihood, the Old Lord of Heaven's own son.

Second, on the day the Old Lord of Heaven begot his son, he, Gao Yingxiang, was kowtowing to the Old Lord of Heaven.

Third, the Old Lord of Heaven made him the son's master.

Fourth, his final meal before execution was eaten by Liu Chengzong.

After draping a layer of mystical color over his master-disciple relationship with Liu the Lion, Gao Yingxiang felt that he too was now someone under the Old Lord of Heaven's protection.

Dying in this lifetime might prove a little difficult.

Having thought this through, Master Gao's mood lifted greatly: "I just knew it. In the future, you should tell people about this sort of thing sooner."

"What's there to tell people about this sort of thing so early?"

Faced with Liu Chengzong's retort, Gao Yingxiang waved his hand, inscrutable: "You wouldn't understand."

What did the surrender of the Ningxia troops amount to?

A person born with heavenly signs descending from the sky — right? — that no meteorites fell from heaven to smash you all dead, that is called Heaven's mercy in sparing life.

Invigorated, Gao Yingxiang watched the thirty-odd small boats ferrying troops and supplies back and forth across both banks of the Yellow River and clapped his hands lightly: "When are we next entering Shanxi? I've arranged everything. In the prosperous areas south of Taiyuan, I've placed our own people everywhere."

"The next time we go to Shanxi, we'll have inside collaborators."

At present, his force of eight thousand troops was composed mainly of famine refugees from Shanxi; the Shaanxi men among them now numbered fewer than three thousand.

The mountain folk of western Shanxi were almost exactly replaying the famine deaths of northern Shaanxi from two years prior — a sight too wretched to bear.

Nearly everything was identical.

In poor, hardscrabble places, people feared death, so they joined the bandits by the hundreds and thousands; in wealthy places, people feared the bandits, so they tried every means to exterminate them.

The hardships northern Shaanxi had endured, Shanxi suffered not one fewer — indeed, it was even harder than Shaanxi. After all, when Shaanxi suffered drought back then, it did not have so many seasoned, veteran bandits running rampant in all directions.

Gao Yingxiang thought to himself, it was only because Liu Chengzong had divided up territory in Qingjian; otherwise, who knew what chaos Shanxi would have descended into this time.

But he had not expected Liu Chengzong to say, "I'm not planning to go to Shanxi. I'm planning to go to Guyuan."

"Guyuan? I know that place well. What for — to seize grain?"

In his youth, Gao Yingxiang had run back and forth among Shaanxi's military garrisons and was familiar with every region. He said, "Though that area is full of princely estates and pasturelands everywhere, it's still a military garrison. How can it compare to the wealth of Shanxi? And you're not short of horses either."

"What's more, the Supreme Commander's Office of the Three Frontiers is there. If you go, won't the court have to deploy a massive army to suppress you?"

"Let them suppress."

Liu Chengzong said, "Master Gao, you've been in Shanxi a long time and may not know what's happened recently. Wang Zuogua has been lured into surrender by the government troops. Wang Jiayin has attacked and seized Fugu. Earlier, Du Wenhuan came to suppress me, but because of Wang Jiayin's actions, he was redeployed north."

"That's how you got the chance to blast him with cannon at Yanshui Pass."

Regarding Wang Zuogua's surrender, even though Gao Yingxiang had never received definite news, he had expected it in his heart. But Wang Jiayin's situation was something he truly had not known about.

Now, upon hearing that Wang Jiayin was besieged, Gao Yingxiang immediately wanted to lead troops to break the siege.

But on second thought: "That doesn't add up. Du Wenhuan was encamped at Yanshui Pass at the time. If he was heading north, wouldn't stationing troops at Yanchuan have sufficed? What was he doing running to Yanshui Pass?"

"He did it on purpose, of course. If you fought him, you'd be playing right into his hands. He probably didn't want to go to Fugu to fight Wang Jiayin in the first place."

Gao Yingxiang said, "Then what are we waiting for? There's no time to lose. You and I should combine forces and go to Fugu to help him."

Liu Chengzong waved his hand: "Can't do that, Master Gao. Wang Jiayin being besieged isn't the critical issue in the short term. But my friend who went from Ji Garrison to reinforce Liaodong sent word — the court seems to be preparing to bring the Guan-Ning Army into the interior to suppress the rebellion."

"The Guan-Ning Army…"

The name of a man, the shadow of a tree — a force formed of the nation's finest troops as officers and training corps, drawing the highest pay and stationed on the front lines — anyone who heard of it felt dread in their heart.

Gao Yingxiang was no exception. He asked, "Then what do you mean by going to Guyuan? Are we abandoning Wang Jiayin?"

"We're not. If we strike Guyuan, isn't that helping Wang Jiayin?"

Gao Yingxiang understood — besiege Wei to rescue Zhao.

The court's military strength was limited; it could not deal with everyone at once. The moment Liu the Lion struck Guyuan, the various frontier commanders would have to first rescue the Supreme Commander of the Three Frontiers, Yang He.

As for Wang Jiayin's side, you couldn't say the pressure would vanish entirely, but at the very least it was a remedy suited to the ailment.

"And after looting Guyuan? Looking at a map, that place seems large, but it's really just a river valley along the Qingshui River. The frontier troops only mutinied last year — Guyuan won't have a chance to recover for a while."

"Xiao Pass — you remember it. If we go to Guyuan, Xiao Pass must be held in our hands."

Xiao Pass lay on the valley road through the Liupan Mountains. To Liu Chengzong, this was self-evident.

If you went to Guyuan and didn't hold Xiao Pass in your hands, wouldn't the whole trip be for nothing?

He asked, "Are the cannons working well?"

"It works well, though it's not much use against enemies who don't form battle formations — you can never aim it right."

This was a disadvantage Gao Yingxiang had discovered in later battles on their side. He now understood why Qi Jiguang had insisted that the north must abandon individual strengths.

Concentrating strengths and weaknesses could indeed yield great gains with artillery in a short time, but artillery wasn't easy to come by — after all, only an accurate shot gave the chance of a single fatal strike.

"Good that it works. We don't have the chance to cast cannons over the long term — we must have an Armory Bureau, otherwise we can't even properly repair damaged cannons."

"So, I plan to lead troops toward the Lintao and Gongchang area, seize that region, open up farmland, and build up the army."

Hearing this, Gao Yingxiang shook his head and said, "Attacking Guyuan before heading to Lintao and Gongchang — that hardly looks like resting and rebuilding."

"Of course I'd like to rest and rebuild too."

Liu Chengzong said, "But with a Regional Commander's yamen that big in Lintao, no matter what, we have to strike it before we can rebuild. And routing one more Regional Commander — I don't think that's much less of an affair than simply looting Guyuan north to south into utter chaos."

"So it doesn't matter how we fight. Better to pull off something big before the Guanning Army arrives. I reckon the moment I set foot in Guyuan, the Guanning Army will be right on my heels."

Gao Yingxiang also felt this reasoning held, so he asked, "Then when do you plan to set out?"

"Tomorrow?"