Chapter 201: Old Man Xu

Evening, the thirteenth day of the seventh month.

East of Heshui County in Qingyang Prefecture, among the loess hills, gullies, and streams, lay a hamlet called Luping.

After four days' march, Liu the Lion had led his troops from Fu Prefecture across the Ziwu Ridge into Qingyang; his forces were far larger than expected.

Besides the over five thousand seven hundred men of the Lion Battalion, there were also over four thousand in the Yu-Character Battalion, which created enormous difficulty for the billeting work of Yang Yao and Feng Rang's advance party in Qingyang.

"Commander, what's this Yu-Character Battalion doing here?"

"Can't you tell from the name? My old man's battalion."

Yang Yao's expression cleared in understanding, then he asked, "How does the Old Master have over four thousand troops?"

At the mention of the Yu-Character Battalion, Liu Chengzong felt a little helpless and explained to Yang Yao, "Back at Lion Bay, Chief Gao reorganized his eight thousand men into three battalions."

"When we were about to leave, we sent word to the Prince of Qin's Manor, Prince of Qing's Manor, Cao Cao, and the others, telling them they could rely on Chief Gao from now on. In the end, they all wanted to come with us, bringing their own troops, horses, and provisions."

Liu Chengzong spread his hands. "So my old man lumped them together into a battalion. But I have to say, this battalion fits our organization perfectly."

"My eldest brother, Shooting Star, Cao Cao, Sky-Collapsing Cao, Old Jackal Li — exactly five sentry companies of battle troops; Lin Wei's blacksmiths and stonemasons from Apricot Stream form the work sentry company, and Sky-Collapsing Chuang's outfit is hauling the baggage train."

As soon as he finished, Yang Yao said, "Chuanchuan's back?"

"You know that name too?" Liu Chengzong shook his head. Apparently Ren Quan'er's nickname for Liu Guoneng was even more widely known than Sky-Collapsing Chuang. "He's back. Brought a batch of cloth into Apricot Stream. We were thinking of making winter uniforms with it — he brought the whole lot along."

The moment he heard it was the Old Master who had formed this unit, Yang Yao dropped the subject and simply nodded. "Then I'll move some more grain to the supply stations."

Yang Yao and Feng Rang had set up four supply stations along the two-hundred-forty-li Ziwu Ridge mountain road so the Lion Battalion could rest on the march.

"No need. They're moving fast, and they've all brought their own grain. Just find a place nearby for them to camp."

Speaking of the Yu-Character Battalion's name, Liu Chengzong could not help but want to laugh.

While they were marching along the Ziwu Ridge road, Old Master Liu had Song Shouzhen pass a little slip of paper forward.

The slip was covered with characters: 'Hero, Strive, Divine, Weft; Wing, Calm, Settle, Radiant; Dragon, Manifest, Solemn, Declare, Stalwart; Charge, Courser, Brave, Defend, Swift; Martial, Mighty, Luminous, Pacific, Cultivate.'

When Liu Chengzong first saw it, he thought it was a riddle, but then Song Shouzhen told him those were battalion names.

It was because Gao Yingxiang had reorganized his troops and called it the Chuang-Character Brigade. Old Master Liu thought that sounded bad and feared that Liu the Lion might one day come up with a Lion-Character Brigade, so he had Song Shouzhen bring over the battalion names.

They were indeed all superb characters, perfectly suited for military battalion names.

But after Old Master Liu handed him this slip, his own troops raised a banner with the character 'Yu' on it.

Proof that no matter how much learning you have in your head, you still hope your troops can be named after your own title. Old Master Liu was no exception to that.

Those fine characters could be saved for when they reorganized into brigades in the future.

Leading his horse along the hamlet's dirt road in Luping, Liu Chengzong often saw gaunt, ragged figures on the dry terraced fields, watching the troops pass with numb expressions.

Liu Chengzong looked at Yang Yao and asked, "Why are there refugees even in this remote wilderness?"

"They're not refugees. They're Qingyang locals. From the west all the way to the Ziwu Ridge — if they have the strength, they go into the mountains to forage; if they don't, they rest here."

Yang Yao glanced at the people on the terraces and said to Liu Chengzong with deep feeling, "When I came out of the mountains, I walked ten li and buried no fewer than a hundred corpses. I saw more wolves and wild dogs than people."

Liu Chengzong said nothing. He looked sideways at a figure sitting dully on the hill and frowned. "Scholar Yang said Qingyang is a granary. Why does it feel worse than Yan'an?"

"Qingyang is a granary."

Yang Yao echoed the words with a sigh.

The seat of Qingyang Prefecture was at Anhua City. Near Anhua lay a great tableland where Buzhu, chieftain of the Zhou tribe during the Xia dynasty, once farmed. In many places there, years of constant fertilization had formed a black loess soil exceptionally suited to cultivation.

But such land was scarce. Here the mountains were high and the climate cold, with frequent drought and little rain — ultimately a land where evaporation was ten times the rainfall.

Intensive farming could not withstand a single frost or drought. This drove the common folk to pursue sheer acreage, but with more fields, there was never enough manure. They sowed widely and reaped thinly — ten mu of land yielded less than someone else's single mu.

Besides, in times like these, drought was not the most terrible thing.

Yang Yao said, "Drought is nothing."

"Yan'an is at peace because, of all the many chieftains, the only two commanders who can stand against government troops are in Yan'an. Government troops cannot enter Yan'an Prefecture, and they can also keep the bandit gangs in check. The common folk just have to endure the drought, and they can recover."

"Qingyang is different. Here it's all petty bandits. These next few days, the Qingyang chieftains will come one after another to pay their respects to you, Commander. When government troops come, they just hide."

"First there was Wu Weifan, then later He Huchen. When a large army passes through, they scatter in fright without even needing to attack. Scattered petty bandits can't storm forts. For a mouthful of food, what can they do?"

"Either the local bandits and roving bandits are all driven out and no new bandits appear, or the government troops and officials are all driven out and no new troops move in."

"Otherwise, in a place where soldiers pass and bandits follow, ah…"

As Yang Yao spoke, he spat on the ground and ground it out with his foot. "Compared to men, drought is nothing."

Liu Chengzong felt Yang Yao had put it wrong.

It should be said that drought is terrible, but men under a drought are more terrible still.

This area was still mountainous. The nearest small stream lay two loess hills away. Worried that if they went over they would drink the stream dry, Liu Chengzong split the two battalions by sentry companies and quartered them across a dozen deserted villages within an eight-li radius.

If a stream ran dry, the water would still come back — but it would cost time.

So each sentry company faced another across a mountain gully.

More men meant more trouble. Water-fetching alone was already beyond what the villages could provide.

Normally, a village had only a single well. Relying on one well for all their needs, they would not have their morning meal even by nightfall.

Yang Yao had said that over these two days, the chieftains who had taken to the hills or risen in revolt in Qingyang Prefecture would all come to pay their respects. Liu Chengzong had nothing else to do, so he strolled around the village and struck up conversations with the locals.

There were not many people left in Luping to begin with, and even fewer dared speak with him. Only one old man, looking well past seventy, sitting on a little stool by his door, gently waving a small fan as he took in grain as tax payment, was unafraid.

Liu Chengzong pulled over a little stool too, sat down beside him, and asked, "Old sir, you're not afraid of people like us?"

The old man glanced at him and said, puzzled, "Hey, this young fellow, how come your mouth is moving but no words are coming out?"

Liu Chengzong asked again, louder this time: "You're not afraid of us?"

"Afraid? What damn use is being afraid or not? That family under the tree — Old Bastard Wang was stingy as hell, died before me. His son was afraid. When the bandits came, he ran. Didn't get to eat a hot meal, died on the back hill."

The old man glanced at him again, then pointed to an empty courtyard next door. "That household's surnamed Qi. Fled here last year from the fighting elsewhere. Wasn't afraid of bandits, got a meal, then followed them to attack the county seat and died outside the city. His wife took the kids to the North Gully woods and hanged herself."

"Being afraid or not, it's all damn useless. I'm seventy-eight."

The old man raised a hand to show the number and smiled at Liu Chengzong. "All my great-grandchildren are dead and gone. You Yan'an folk come to Qingyang, trip after trip. Each one that comes stays a night. Sooner or later, we'll all be dead and gone."

Liu Chengzong chatted with the old man for a while.

The old man probably hadn't had anyone to talk to in a long time; he went almost door to door recounting how every person in the village had died.

Through these deaths, Liu Chengzong pieced together what this place had endured over the past two years.

The old fellow was called Old Man Xu. He said that in his youth he had looked old for his age — by his twenties people were already giving him the nickname Old Man Xu. In the blink of an eye it had stuck for over fifty years, more his name than his real name.

Back when he first got called Old Man Xu, the Wanli Emperor had just ascended the throne.

Now all those who called him Old Man Xu were gone.

He had already outlasted three emperors and was currently testing whether he could outlast a fourth.

The village used to have a lot of low-yield mountain fields. It sat along the official road linking Qingyang and Yan'an prefectures, and at the foot of the hill there was a market that opened every six days.

Most of the common folk farmed, but there were also craftsmen and merchants. Living off the mountain, they were responsible for selling the pelts, bones, medicinal herbs, and flowers the mountain folk gathered to Qingyang prefectural city along this official road, so the place was fairly prosperous.

But from an agricultural standpoint, the village was also very poor — so poor it was immune to land annexation.

Because there was not a single mu of good farmland, only over twenty thousand mu of mountain fields. The hill ridges where Liu's two battalions had detached their sentry posts — what they considered the village's territory — more than half of it was the cave dwellings they used to dig into the ground to live in.

There had once been a landlord here, a merchant from another region who saw the commercial value of the place and began buying up land.

In an ordinary village, farmland was very important; it wasn't something you could just buy on a whim. Unless the village's own people no longer wanted the land, it couldn't be sold to an outsider.

But here it was different. The moment the landlord said he wanted to buy, as long as the price was right, the villagers sold immediately — and they wouldn't let the landlord back out.

Because in a normal year, one mu of this land could only produce twenty or thirty jin of wheat. Relatively speaking, it didn't need intensive cultivation and made few demands on the soil. If you bought this plot, I'd just go farm somewhere else.

The landlord couldn't hire any tenant farmers. In the end he calculated that the money he'd spent buying land wouldn't be recouped even in five years, and he angered himself to death.

The land went back to the villagers.

But the year before last, the drought came, and the nightmare began.

The first to die was the traveling merchant who sold mountain goods to Qingyang prefectural city every market day. He went out and never came back.

People heard that because of the drought, bandits often appeared along the roads.

Grain harvests shrank, and there was no gentry in the village to take charge.

Some people began trying to find solutions — opening up more land, planting more grain. Many worked themselves to death before the new land was even cleared.

A few others got wicked ideas. They wanted to wipe out a family line, bullying the widow and orphan left behind by the traveling merchant. The orphan was thrown into a mountain gully, and the widow jumped into the well the following night.

Those men said what rotten luck, they'd ruined the village well.

After that, some became refugees, some became bandits, some joined the army, and some just idled away waiting to die, eyeing when they could wipe out another family line.

In short, everything changed.

Until last year, when a mobile corps commander, Commander Wu, arrived and garrisoned at Luping.

The ones who had turned bandit were killed. The remaining few who had wiped out families were reported by the villagers, and somehow those people just disappeared.

Everything seemed as if it might return to normal. Though the drought persisted, the newly cleared fields — paid for with human lives — were still there. With fewer people in the village, they could survive.

But when Commander Wu led his troops away, the bandits grew more and more numerous.

Bandits from Yan'an passed through here when crossing the region; bandits from Qingyang heading to Yan'an also passed through here.

Bandits came and went, and the garrison troops from Qingyang prefecture chased back and forth after them.

By this year, just over forty households remained. Old Jackal Li came through, saw the villagers' wretched state, and said he would take them to raid Heshui county seat. The able-bodied young men from a dozen or so households all followed him — not a single one came back.

Of the wives they left behind, those with maiden families fled back to them, others ran off wherever they could, and two took their children into a mountain gully and hanged themselves together.

Later, routed soldiers came. They looted a few padded jackets and ordered the villagers into the mountains to gather medicinal herbs for them, saying it had rained to the east.

Before the herbs were even gathered, those few mounted soldiers had already fled, and they told the villagers to run too, saying the government troops had been defeated.

After that, the villagers fled, left, or died. Now only seven households remain.

Including the old man, the people of those seven households have seen too much and their hearts have turned to iron. They all share the old man's outlook — they've given up resisting hardship.

In fact, in the half shichen that Liu Chengzong had been chatting with the old man, the village had dwindled to five households.

One had been ill already and happened to die of his sickness. Another had gotten two mouthfuls of parched flour from the soldiers at Lion Camp, ate it cheerfully, then walked out of the village and dashed his own head in a dry canal.

Liu Chengzong did not know why he wanted to die, yet he also seemed to know exactly why he wanted to die.

The people who had once lived in this village were not only the scum who wiped out families. As farmers, without any help from the authorities, they had tried every possible way to survive.

Those who did good, those who did evil, those who joined the bandits, those who joined the army, those who farmed, those who traded.

All dead.

Old Man Xu, on the other hand, was the strangest of all. He was so old he could no longer run or fight, so he simply gave up resisting. Whether bandits came or soldiers came, he just sat right here.

After all, having lived so many years, going on living held no great appeal.

Yet as it turned out, whether soldiers came or bandits came, seeing his advanced age, they would all toss him a little grain. And so he made it through.

The strong young men all died off clean, and he was still alive.

Liu Chengzong wanted him to stay alive too. He had Cheng Yun take a few small sacks of grain to the old man and set them inside the house.

He said, "You mustn't die. Things will get better. I can make sure you all have full bellies."

Old Man Xu seemed not to hear him again. Sitting on his little stool, he smiled, frail and trembling. "There you go, mouth moving but no words coming out again."

"I said don't you die! I can make sure you all get food to eat!"

This time Liu the Lion was quite sure the old man had heard him clearly, but the old man just sat there trembling, saying nothing.

He thought to himself, he was probably not the first person to say such words to the old man.

With a long-lived elder like this, whether soldier or bandit, any normal person, upon learning of him, would offer a greeting, would encourage him to keep living well, and would likely all say, you will have food to eat.

Wu Weifan might have said it. He Huchen might have said it too. Even He Huchen's deserters and routed soldiers might well have said it.

And when each of them said it, they might all have meant it sincerely.

But a promise with no deadline and no conditions — how many could actually fulfill it?

In this life, who can be without regrets.

Liu Chengzong sat no longer. He rose and walked toward the army tent his bodyguards had set up. After a few steps he turned his head and said, "Old man, live well. Do your best to see Chongzhen off."

He had thought Old Man Xu would ignore him again, but to his surprise the old fellow chuckled.

Old Man Xu thought to himself, many years ago a county magistrate had said the exact same thing — telling this old man to live on well.

Now that county magistrate has been in the ground three or four years.

"Hold on a few more years, and watch closely how I make sure people survive."

Note:

According to the *Ningzhou Gazetteer*, the registered population of Ningzhou at the end of the Ming dynasty was sixteen thousand three hundred twenty. By the seventh year of the Shunzhi reign, it had decreased by eleven thousand nine hundred ninety.

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