Chapter 210: Yang He

On the official road from Fuzhou toward the Central Shaanxi Plain, Shaanxi Grand Coordinator Lian Guoshi was deeply troubled.

He was descended from a famous minister — the eighth-generation grandson of Lian Zining, a key official under the Jianwen Emperor during the Yongle reign.

Back then, his ancestor had bitterly denounced Zhu Di after the latter ascended the throne, and his tongue was cut out for it. Zhu Di had said: "I wish to be the Duke of Zhou, assisting the young King Cheng."

Lian Zining thrust his hand into his own mouth, dipped it in blood, and wrote: "Where is King Cheng?"

Zhu Di flew into a rage. He had Lian Zining's body torn apart, slaughtered all one hundred fifty-one members of his household, exiled three hundred seventy-one of his in-laws, and four hundred eighty households from his home region were massacred to the last — only a single young grandson survived by sheer luck.

Just half a month ago, Lian Guoshi had sensed that the bandit threat in Yan'an Prefecture was weakening, with many outlaws vanishing to who knows where, and his heart had stirred with excitement.

Of the three most savage and unruly bandits, Wang Jiayin was besieged at Fugu, the Dashing King was still in Shanxi, and Liu Chengzong had disappeared without a trace.

The ones still lurking around Yan'an Prefecture now were all small fry.

Lian Guoshi realized the window of opportunity was fleeting — the moment to counterattack had come!

He immediately dispatched Lingzhou Regional Commander Zhang Quanchang, garrisoned at Qingyang, to advance into Yaozhou, and together with Yaozhou Regional Commander Zhao Yin, personally led the two generals northward, intent on reclaiming Yan'an Prefecture, long plagued by banditry.

Right now, Shaanxi faced two thorniest problems. The first was a lack of generals.

The commanders worth fielding had either been defeated or were men like Du Wenhuan who put self-preservation above all else. The officers being appointed were all promoted from the lower ranks, possessing neither the experience to command troops nor the forces to do so.

The second was that the imperial court refused to mobilize the nation's resources for disaster relief.

Lian Guoshi had risen through the ranks as a Presented Scholar and served as a Censor. Supervising officials and governing officials are different — the former spot problems, the latter solve them.

He had no way to demand whatever he lacked; he could only solve problems with what he already had on hand.

He could only muster two Regional Commanders, each leading five hundred men, and enter Fuzhou.

His first enemy was a chieftain called the Lone Wolf, who roved the mountains around Luochuan with over two thousand followers.

Lingzhou Regional Commander Zhang Quanchang led five hundred soldiers in battle for three days and nights, took over three hundred heads, and dispersed more than twelve hundred captives, resettling them around Yijun.

The situation could be called excellent — it was only a matter of pushing into the heart of Yan'an, sweeping away the bandits, and restoring peace to the land.

Just then, word came from Xi'an Prefecture: the great Yan'an bandit Liu Chengzong had entered Qingyang, and Three Borders Supreme Commander Yang He had gone to Ningzhou.

Lian Guoshi was scared out of his wits. He hurriedly withdrew his troops from Fuzhou into Xi'an Prefecture, then diverted his forces toward Binzhou, while simultaneously writing a letter urging Yang He to leave Ningzhou at once.

He can't fight and has no generals — what business does he have getting in the way!

But Yang He turned out to be far cleverer than he had imagined.

Shaanxi was a complete mess. Whether for the Three Borders or the Shaanxi local authorities, the situation was the same: no generals to speak of, no soldiers to speak of, no grain to speak of, no money to speak of.

Under these circumstances, how do you quell a rebellion?

You can't quell it. Fighting is unwinnable — even if you worked every military officer to death, you still couldn't finish them all. The only option is to offer amnesty.

Every man has a historical mission for his particular stage. Perhaps later, once the court comes to its senses, it could dispatch troops to exterminate the bandits — but in the stretch of time Yang He occupied, apart from offering amnesty, there was nothing he could do.

And besides, the one who had entered Qingyang was no ordinary man — it was Liu Chengzong.

Yang He had granted amnesty to several bandit leaders and had gained some understanding of the Shaanxi outlaws. He had always been deeply wary of this man, and now he dared not send troops to strike Liu the Lion again.

The more you fight, the fewer government troops remain, and the more men Liu the Lion gains. Soldiers clearly dispatched to exterminate bandits end up becoming bandits themselves in the process.

To make matters worse, Liu the Lion's entry into Qingyang was an attack on a target he was compelled to relieve.

From his position in Guyuan, Yang He reckoned that Liu the Lion's push into Qingyang was likely aimed at Pingliang — the Han Prince's estate was the closest princely fief and the easiest to strike.

Yang He turned the situation over and over in his mind. A dead end.

If he sent weak troops against Liu the Lion, the weak troops couldn't hold him off. If he sent strong troops against Liu the Lion, he'd just be delivering another batch of frontier soldiers into his hands.

No matter what, he would be guilty.

For the past half year, Yang He hadn't slept a single comfortable night. Every evening he felt his life was nearing its end.

Dispatching troops to suppress Liu the Lion would undoubtedly just speed up that process.

Yet he couldn't simply ignore Qingyang Prefecture either.

In the end, Yang He gave up. He came up with a solution — toss this agonizing calculation of gains and losses onto someone else. Wasn't he, the Three Borders Supreme Commander, someone others were compelled to relieve?

I won't send troops; I'll go myself. If you don't want to lose your posts and suffer the consequences, then hurry up and come rescue me.

Clinging to this notion, Yang He led three hundred Governor's Guard cavalry, riding without pause, passing through Pingliang into Qingyang, and took up station at the Ningzhou government office.

He nearly scared Ningzhou Magistrate Zhou Riqiang into wetting himself.

Zhou Riqiang was already terrified. Ever since Heshui County had been set ablaze, he had been firing off eight letters a day begging for reinforcements from the surrounding prefectures, departments, and counties, pleading with everyone high and low to send Ningzhou relief troops.

Relying on Ningzhou's own strength alone — even though it was a stronghold city backed by mountains and ringed on three sides by rivers — it was impossible to hold.

Pooling together the three shifts of yamen runners and the Xiangyue Patrol Office, the city had a total garrison of one hundred twenty-six men.

And that one hundred twenty-six even included Zhou Riqiang and his two sons. On average, each man had to cover eight battlements — how could they possibly hold it?

For days and nights, Zhou Riqiang's heart had wavered between defending the departmental city to the death and abandoning it to flee.

Now it was settled.

Three Borders Supreme Commander Yang He had relocated to Ningzhou — he could no longer run.

The setting sun blazed red across half the sky.

Ningzhou Magistrate Zhou Riqiang, dressed in a blue official robe embroidered with a silver pheasant rank badge, his back slightly stooped, stood with hands tucked in his sleeves atop the gate tower, his brows knitted into a fretful grimace. Watching the retreating figures of his youngest son and old servant riding south, he let out a weary sigh.

He looked like a careworn old farmer.

His eldest son, beside him, said: "Father, let's go back. The Supreme Commander is still waiting at the yamen."

"Being an official is truly hard. And you still want to be an official — do you think serving the court is easy?"

Zhou Riqiang shook his head in distress and said to his eldest son: "If we survive this, you go back to Baoding. Read, paint, do whatever you like — just don't sit the civil exams again."

He was a native of Li County in Baoding Prefecture. He had served as a county magistrate in Shandong and Henan, and had done well in both posts. He never imagined that his promotion to department magistrate would land him in Ningzhou.

The moment he first took office, he knew his official career would go no further than this.

When he was magistrate of Lijin in Shandong, a county of just over twenty thousand people, he taught the common folk to diligently plant crops and strive at fishing — he could even use his learning to help fishermen improve their boats.

When he was magistrate in Henan, a county of over forty thousand people, fertile fields stretched as far as the eye could see. The biggest problems were wealthy households hiding commoners from the registers and the occasional tax resistance.

By the time it was his turn to be department magistrate in Ningzhou, his rank had risen, but on this patch of land, there was nothing he could do.

The Yellow Registers listed over seventeen thousand people, but when it came time to collect taxes, they could only find a little over thirteen hundred.

The taxes in arrears from past years spanned nearly every reign title the Ming had used since the Hongwu era — never missing a year, never missing a debt.

With the black gauze cap on his head, he had to register households and organize the common people so he could collect taxes for the court.

Take off the black gauze cap, and he was still a man — how could he watch common folk flee to the hills and dig burrows in the earth like rats just to survive, and still manage to open his mouth to demand taxes?

Being an official — what a load of crap.

This was simply not something a human being could do.

Returning to the prefectural office, he found Supreme Commander Yang sitting in his paint-chipped chair, leafing through a register. Seeing him enter, Yang raised a hand, pointed at a poem on the page, and said, "Is this 'Reflections on Guarding Ning' by Tai Meng? Every word rings with genuine feeling."

That was a poem Zhou Riqiang had written — there wasn't much else for him to do here.

The poem read: Barren soil, mountain town, land half desolate; folk fled, homes ruined, all a cause for grief. Officials like me, scarce as a five-day bloom; taxes heavy, ten post-stations scramble to supply. Clerks heed not the three-foot law; village lanes owe years of grain in arrears. On whom can I call to summon Lord Liang and ask, to teach me then the remedy for suffering?

Lord Liang referred to Di Renjie, who had once served as Prefect of Ning. The problem he had faced back then was corrupt officials and neglected irrigation works.

The problem Zhou Riqiang now faced was the court's crushing taxes. He would have liked to punish a few corrupt officials and venal clerks, but after Ning Prefecture had been crushed by heavy taxes, drought, and bandits, where was there any room left for corrupt officials and venal clerks to survive?

"A work of mere grumbling."

In the past, if a superior had noticed his poem, Zhou Riqiang would have been overjoyed, but now he could not muster the slightest enthusiasm. He said, "Your Excellency, please return to Guyuan. The bandits drift in search of grain. Ning Prefecture does not have the grain they seek; they will not come to attack Ning."

"But with Your Excellency here, that is no longer certain."

Yang He deeply empathized with the helplessness in Zhou Riqiang's poem, even though the source of their helplessness differed.

The so-called Supreme Commander of the Three Borders was in truth nothing more than a scapegoat after military funds, provisions, coin, and grain had been diverted to the Liao garrison. That Wu Zhiwang — such a good man — had he not been driven to death by precisely these things?

Yang He was equally at his wits' end. He asked, "If not in Ning Prefecture, where else can I go?"

Zhou Riqiang said nothing, standing to the side with his hands at his sides.

Then he heard Yang He say, "Tai Meng, the roving bandits of Yanqing now point their blades toward Ning Prefecture. What good strategy do you see?"

"In reply to Your Excellency, if they were mere roving bandits chasing food, we might yet use Ning Prefecture's poverty to persuade them away, bribe them away, or even settle them here on the spot to farm — after all, Ning Prefecture has vast tracts of wasteland. But Liu Chengzong is a rebel leader. This humble official has no brilliant scheme."

Zhou Riqiang spoke with utter audacity, making Yang He raise his eyebrows — had he actually just suggested bribing the bandits?

He said angrily, "You bribe him to leave, so he can go plunder somewhere else, and that makes it not plundering?"

"Reporting to Your Excellency, this humble official is no expert in military affairs; all I know is sowing and reaping. Ning Prefecture has barely a hundred soldiers. If even mighty walled cities cannot stop him, then if the death of this humble official alone could make the rebel leader withdraw, I would not begrudge my own life."

Zhou Riqiang said, "But given the court's profound affection for the people of Ning — taxing them at triple the rate — I fear it will be impossible to achieve a city-wide martyrdom. Instead, they will likely vie with one another to join the rebels."

He was not the least bit afraid of Yang He, and once again urged, "Therefore, Your Excellency should still return to Guyuan. When the rebel army attacks the city, the people within will probably race to defect to the rebels."

A man who cannot solve the problem, placed in a position where he must solve it, has no recourse left but to flee.

Dying to be done with it is also a form of flight.

Simple and effective.

Yet Yang He was not angry. Instead, he seized on Zhou Riqiang's earlier words and asked, "You said 'roving bandits chasing food,' but that Liu Chengzong is a rebel leader — what do you mean by that?"

Was it not obvious enough?

Zhou Riqiang said, as if it were self-evident, "He uses his real name. This humble official has surveyed all the bandit groups of Yanqing, and those who use their real names number only a handful. Some are recognized because they gathered a mob to rebel and committed many lawless acts, but Liu Chengzong has never used a false name, from the Yan'an Prefectural jailbreak onward."

"A man who does not use a false name is naturally not the sort of petty thief who seeks a few full meals, a little coin, and then hopes to bury his name in obscurity."

Yang He clapped and laughed. "Well said. Are you truly not afraid to die?"

Zhou Riqiang's mind raced. He thought, I was just saying that — do you actually mean to have me killed?

But since the words were already spoken, he stiffened his neck and said, "I am not afraid. What does Your Excellency wish me to do?"

"Do you dare go deep into the rebel camp, following the example of Duke Guo, who shed his armor and cast aside his spear to ride alone and turn back the Uighur army?" Yang He sat up straight, fixed his eyes on Zhou Riqiang, and said, "Bring him to accept amnesty."

This should have been a moment of stirring passion, but to his surprise, Zhou Riqiang shook his head like a pellet drum and declared with righteous solemnity, "This humble official dares not."

Yang He barely restrained himself from cursing and shot him a glare.

Just moments ago he had spoken as if he loved the people like his own children, but in truth it was all empty words.

Who can't talk big while standing safely on the sidelines?

But to his surprise, Zhou Riqiang was not finished. He asked, "Entering the rebel camp is no obstacle, nor is death. But this humble official truly cannot think of anything we could offer to make him accept amnesty. That would simply be throwing my life away, and this humble official dares not throw his life away."

Hearing there was still a chance, Yang He struck while the iron was hot and asked, "Is a court official post not enough? From Garrison Commander to Regional Commander — all can be discussed. Reason with him: what good comes from opposing the court?"

Zhou Riqiang fired back a volley of questions: "Would Your Excellency kindly inform me — where will the coin and grain come from, where will the garrison farmland be, where will they be resettled, and how many of his troops will be disbanded?"

He had always felt that Yang He's amnesty plan was a joke. They could not afford the coin and grain, dared not grant real official posts, and even after resettlement they would not be at ease — how could amnesty possibly succeed?

The most critical issue was that the court's forces had never once defeated Liu Chengzong. What did they have to negotiate with him, and what could they offer to set his mind at ease?

"The troops will be reduced to a thousand men. Military rations will come from Shaanxi's military grain supply. The common folk will be resettled between Yan'an and Qingyang. As for coin…" Yang He looked at Zhou Riqiang and asked, "He plundered a hundred thirty thousand taels of treasury silver — does he still expect the court to give him more money?"

Zhou Riqiang thought that was fair enough, so he asked, "And if the rebel Liu is not satisfied with the post of Regional Commander, what then?"

"Then stall for time. The Shaanxi Grand Coordinator's relief troops are already on the march and will arrive within days. The king's relief army is also returning from the capital. Once all forces are assembled, we will simply surround and annihilate him."

As Yang He spoke, he cupped his hands toward Zhou Riqiang. "Only, when that moment comes, Tai Meng will need to ponder a strategy for extracting himself."

The implication was clear: if the negotiations failed and things went badly, his fate would be to die a fitting death.

However, Yang He did not intend to send Zhou Riqiang to die alone. He said, "Tai Meng, if you can help me bring this about — he would be the first great bandit to submit — I will certainly recount your merits before His Majesty and recommend you for a rank-four official post in Shaanxi. What do you say?"

Zhou Riqiang's back remained slightly hunched. He sighed.

To be honest, he currently held a lower rank five post. A full rank four would mean a promotion of three grades, but after his experience serving in Ning Prefecture, promotion meant little to him.

Especially being recommended for a rank-four post in Shaanxi — that basically meant the next time bandits stirred up trouble, that rank four would be stripped away again.

He had long since recognized reality: the court was finished in Shaanxi. This was not something he could fix.

Right now, all he wanted was to return to Baoding Prefecture and live out the rest of his life in peace and stability.

He clasped his fists and said, "In that case, I ask that Your Excellency assign me a few attendants and grant me a letter. If amnesty is truly decided upon, this humble official will set out today to find Liu Chengzong."

"Good!"

Yang He was overjoyed, thinking the matter was as good as settled. He immediately took up his brush and dashed off a letter urging surrender for Zhou Riqiang. The letter bitterly laid out the pros and cons, stating bluntly that if Liu Chengzong stubbornly resisted from his corner, he absolutely had no path to survival.

Zhou Riqiang had been saddled with this task — a complete unprovoked calamity. Behind the government office, he tearfully bid farewell to his family, exhorted his eldest son to conduct himself well, and only then took the four trusted men Yang He had assigned to him. They led eight horses, raised torches, and rode out of the city, plunging into the deep black night.