Chapter 217: Between Fire and Water

On the first day of the eighth month, beneath the walls of Ningzhou City.

Dust-covered and travel-worn, Tri-Border Supreme Commander Yang He reined in his horse below the city walls. His crimson official robe with its subtle-pattern peacock rank badge was thick with grime. Raising his riding crop toward the battlements, he shouted, "Open the gates and set up the porridge stations!"

Behind him, hundreds of Ningzhou's common folk cowered and shrank back, not daring to approach within bowshot range of the walls.

They were terrified. Never in their lives had they seen an official in crimson court robes, riding with mounted guards who dragged them out of their burrows and herded them beneath the walls of Ningzhou. None of them knew what awaited them.

Soon, cauldrons were set up below the walls, and golden millet gruel began to simmer. For a full half-watch, Yang He stood beneath the walls without uttering a single word.

Only when the gruel was ready did he ladle out a bowl, take a sip, and then beckon to the starving people. Seeing they would not come, he sent his guards to call them over. At last, someone ventured forward tentatively, took the bowl heedless of the scalding heat, and poured it down his throat.

"Drink slowly — don't scald yourselves."

Yang He's brow furrowed. Pity and helplessness lashed his heart like whip after whip, yet beyond this, there was nothing he could do.

These past few days he had not been idle. Leading his mounted guards, he had circled the outskirts of Ningzhou several times and gained a very clear understanding of what it meant to lack clothes on one's back and food in one's belly.

Yang He had braved the risk to go out and observe the people's plight not out of compassion, but because of Liu Chengzong's conditions.

He had anticipated Liu Chengzong's demands — they were certain to be higher than the posts of Garrison Commander or Assistant Regional Commander that he could offer.

In truth, Yang He had never expected this pacification effort to succeed on the first try. In his mind, he had prepared two official posts for Liu Chengzong.

One option was to grant him a full regiment's establishment — he would not have to participate in bandit suppression, but would be sent to guard the Great Wall with the rank of Assistant Regional Commander.

The other, also a full regiment's establishment, was a promotion to Deputy Regional Commander, serving as the Supreme Commander's own vanguard general, tasked with dealing with those bandit chieftains who refused pacification and stubbornly resisted.

Which of these two posts to offer depended mainly on what kind of man Liu Chengzong turned out to be.

But the news that Zhou Riqiang's men brought back shattered the limits of Yang He's imagination.

Qinghai Pacification Commissioner.

Yang He was himself a man of Wuling and had once served as an inspecting censor in Guizhou, where he had specially collated records of the tusi domains — their lands, households, tribute obligations, chieftains, headmen, official titles, and lines of succession. He was deeply versed in the tusi system.

He could not fathom it. How had several thousand Han fighting men come up with the idea of going to Qinghai to become a Pacification Commissioner?

Never mind that there was no Pacification Commission in Qinghai — even to go there, one would first have to beat the native tribes into submission before one could call oneself Pacification Commissioner.

More to the point, this was a complete demotion for themselves. Forget Pacification Commissioner — what of the Shunyi Prince himself? Was not the Third Lady still compelled by court-appointed officials to marry off her son when they demanded it, to marry off her grandson when they demanded it?

Southern barbarians, northern Di, eastern Yi, western Rong — the officials of the Central Dynasty stood innately at the very apex of the world's chain of contempt.

The Ü-Tsang realm was filled with heavenly gods and Buddhist Dharma Kings, yet their quality of life fell short of a wealthy householder's in Jiangnan.

After pacification, Liu Chengzong would also be an official — the equivalent of a war-zone deputy commander laid before him, yet this man asked instead for the captain of a Gambian guerrilla squad.

This left Yang He utterly baffled, like a monk who cannot find his own head.

Yang He reflected that Liu Chengzong had come from a licentiate background — he was not uneducated. Could it be that he did not know he could simply say he wanted to be the Supreme Commander of Qinghai?

Zhou Riqiang had spoken with the utmost gravity: this must be reported to the imperial court and left for the Emperor to decide, for if blame came down, he feared Yang He would not be able to bear it.

Had he not feared Liu Chengzong shaving his head, Yang He would even have been tempted to petition the throne on Liu Chengzong's behalf for a Nurgan Pacification Commissioner post — send him beyond the passes to launch operations against Hong Taiji.

It was because he had not thought this question through that Yang He had been observing the people's condition in the surrounding area, trying to see what kind of man Zhou Riqiang was, and then weigh his words.

After this round of inspection, he concluded that Zhou Riqiang was a do-nothing official.

On this patch of land called Ningzhou, "do-nothing" was a term of praise.

To a great extent, the very fact that the people of Ningzhou, living like feral cats and wild dogs in the burrows they dug into the hills, had not risen in rebellion was due to Zhou Riqiang's do-nothing approach.

Dry tinder and seething oil, lacking only a single spark — the local officials, at the cost of their own career prospects, had played the role of extinguishing that spark.

And so Yang He took Zhou Riqiang's words very seriously. Pondering them carefully, he chewed over the implications and grasped the flavor: what Liu Chengzong valued was not the lowly social status of the Pacification Commissioner post, but the power of a Pacification Commissioner as a native king.

In other words, these people had no intention of submitting to authority. This was merely a ceasefire and peace agreement.

That changed everything.

And it also involved another problem — the concealment of He Huchen's defeat at Yellow Dragon Mountain.

Yang He knew full well how formidable Liu Chengzong was, but the imperial court did not.

Just as he was wavering, the court's affection for Yang He arrived.

Shaanxi Grand Coordinator Lian Guoshi, leading Assistant Regional Commanders Zhang Quanchang and Zhao Yinchang with over a thousand troops, reached Ningzhou and encamped west of the city, establishing two strongholds.

Close on their heels, Yansui Grand Coordinator Hong Chengchou also sent word — he had dispatched Mobile Corps Commander Zuo Guangxian with five hundred men from Yansui Garrison into Huan County as reinforcements, and Cao Wenzhao's division, which had entered Shanxi, had already cut straight across Shanxi and entered Shaanxi.

This news greatly heartened Yang He. If you wanted to pacify someone, you ought at least to defeat them once first. Otherwise, the terms you offered would be this sort of Qinghai Pacification Commissioner — a ceasefire agreement that was entirely a peace dictated by war.

In the Ningzhou yamen, he told Lian Guoshi about the matter of the Qinghai Pacification Commission. To his surprise, Lian Guoshi thought it was actually not a bad idea.

"Supreme Commander, the chaos in Shaanxi right now stems entirely from the lack of grain. Surrendering today and rebelling tomorrow is also a headache. Send him to Qinghai, and the mere struggle against the native sea-bandits of the Western Sea will exhaust all his energies."

Lian Guoshi continued, "Earlier, you yourself submitted a memorial to the Emperor, Supreme Commander, saying that since the defeats and loss of control in Liaodong, Guizhou, and Sichuan, the frontiers have lost their vitality; with the additional levies imposed below, public and private finances are both strained, and the common people are exhausted. Now, with this drought upon us, it is precisely when we have no strength to spare that petty villains rise up and cause trouble."

"In a few years, when the drought passes and the court recovers its vitality, Liu Chengzong will be in the Western Sea region with his back against the court, fighting the sea-bandits. Why would he then harbor rebellious thoughts and cut off his own supply lines?"

That was how the argument went, but Yang He was not optimistic about how things would develop. Shaking his head, he said, "If the drought continues and the state's strength remains exhausted — in the Han dynasty, Zhao Chongguo established the Western Sea Commandery beyond Xining for military colonization. If ten or twenty years pass and Liu Chengzong rises in rebellion again, what then?"

Lian Guoshi clicked his tongue, shaking his head and waving his hand. "Supreme Commander, you think too far ahead. Now is a time to leave things to Heaven. If the drought stops and we rest and recover, all the realm's troubles can be solved with ease. If the drought continues, the court does not stop collecting grain taxes, and the people reap not a single grain — then even the immortals cannot save us."

"Does the Supreme Commander truly expect to hold out for twenty years under such circumstances?"

Hearing this, Yang He laughed once and said to Lian Guoshi, "The situation may not truly turn out so dire. However, to pacify Liu Chengzong, I believe we must at least besiege him within the city, or trap him on the tableland, leaving him no road to heaven and no door into the earth — only then speak of pacification."

"Pacification is the virtue of Heaven that cherishes life, the heartfelt love of His Majesty for his innocent children, a measure to spare them from death by war and strife. To speak lightly of pacification now, without having won a single battle, will only make him hold the court in even greater contempt."

Who could have known that just when the situation was looking favorable, Hong Chengchou would send another letter?

Yang He unfolded it and read — his expression turned grim. He said to Lian Guoshi, "Cao Wenzhao is not coming."

"Ah?" Lian Guoshi asked, "Why is that?"

They had placed their hopes on this Guanning Army not for any other reason — it had nothing even to do with Cao Wenzhao himself. Cao Wenzhao had previously been nothing more than a Mobile Corps Commander of Shanxi origin, hardly a seasoned veteran of the battlefield.

It was simply that the Guanning Army was one of the few combat-effective forces the court could still mobilize that actually got enough to eat.

This single point alone allowed them to deliver a dimensionality-reducing strike against all the armies in Shaanxi.

Even if the same rations were provided, the Guanning troops, who had always eaten their fill, would still be stronger in combat than the western troops who had starved for three or four years and only just had a couple of full meals.

Yang He pointed at the letter and sighed. "Hong Hengjiu says in his letter that Wang Jiayin at Fugu still hasn't been taken. Somehow or other, he's colluded with several thousand Mongol soldiers who are raiding all along the Yansui border walls. Yansui Garrison could only spare Zuo Guangxian's single unit to come to our aid."

"All the other troops must return to hold the forts and border walls. Fugu also needs Cao Wenzhao's army to maintain the siege. They have no strength to spare for us."

Lian Guoshi's expression turned extremely grim at these words. The total troop strength had just shriveled from sixty-five hundred to fifteen hundred — the situation had reversed in the blink of an eye.

He said, "Supreme Commander, if it won't work, let us still submit a memorial to the Emperor, laying out Liu Chengzong's terms, and request His Majesty's decision."

"This matter naturally requires His Majesty's sage judgment."

But Yang He's hesitation was not because he was reluctant to tell the Emperor about this; he was hesitating over how to write the memorial.

His son Yang Sichang had once compiled his experience managing finances in the Ministry of Revenue into the *Diguan Ji*, which the Emperor had read and liked immensely.

Because the Emperor had a very good relationship with his son, Yang Sichang had told him that the Emperor was fiercely principled and placed great weight on ritual propriety. When submitting a memorial on the same matter, how the memorial was written determined whether the Emperor would permit it.

Following Liu Chengzong's line of thought, the meaning Zhou Riqiang had conveyed to Yang He was entirely a condescending push for peace through war, even implicitly offering the court a face-saving way out with thinly veiled contempt.

If this were reported to the court that way, never mind Liu Chengzong rampaging through northern Shaanxi with a few thousand men — even if he had tens or hundreds of thousands and fought his way to the walls of Beijing, the Emperor would never bow to brute force.

It did not conform to ritual propriety.

Fighting was no longer an option.

Yang He knew how the memorial ought to be written, but before writing it, he wanted to meet Liu Chengzong first.

With this mindset, he sent Zhou Riqiang's messenger back, instructing Zhou Riqiang to convey his intent to Liu Chengzong: to arrange a face-to-face meeting near Ningzhou City.

From Ningzhou City to Liu Chengzong's encampment was only a few dozen li — a messenger sent one day should have returned the next. Yet two days passed with no return.

The first to come back instead was Zuo Guangxian, who had come from Huan County and smashed through Han Chaozai up on the plateau.

Zuo the Mobile Corps Commander arrived in high spirits. Seeing the Supreme Commander, he prostrated himself and saluted: "This humble officer has come late, but the siege of Ningzhou is now lifted. I beg the Supreme Commander to give the order — where shall this humble officer strike next?"

Yang He was stunned. Gazing at the burly, barrel-chested Zuo Guangxian, he could not close his gaping mouth: "You routed Liu Chengzong's ten-thousand-plus men?"

Good heavens — this was no mere Mobile Corps Commander arriving; this was the God of War himself!

Zuo Guangxian's face was a mask of question marks. Not grasping what was going on and not daring to claim credit he did not deserve, he asked in bewilderment, "Liu... Liu Chengzong? Supreme Commander, the plateau encampment held over four thousand troops. I believe the bandit chief was called Han Chaozai."

Yang He was equally baffled. Han Chaozai?

Zuo Guangxian had just released his prisoners, then sent troops to chase them down again. Two captives were hauled back and interrogated, and only then did they learn that the plateau had held a mere eight hundred men under Liu Chengzong, commanded by Wang Wenxiu; behind them were Han Chaozai and the local Ningzhou bandit Hu Sanzha with over three thousand men.

At the sight of them, Wang Wenxiu had immediately withdrawn his troops west. Han Chaozai's force was slower to move and thus engaged in battle, then retreated after a minor defeat.

Yang He was frantic as an ant on a hot griddle. Then where was Liu Chengzong?

Zuo Guangxian led his troops searching the plateau for two days without finding him when Zhou Riqiang's messenger returned: "Supreme Commander! The bandit Liu has seized Zhenyuan County, plundered over two thousand horses from the Qingping Enclosure, looted the great houses and scattered their wealth to relieve the poor, set up officials and appointed clerks, distributed grain to feed the starving — and now he is heading for Guyuan!"

Yang He felt the sky spin and the earth reel. Gripping the table corner, he nearly fainted. He thrust a finger at the messenger, opened his mouth several times, and finally managed: "He... he deceived me?"

The messenger cupped his hands: "Prefect Zhou says the bandit Liu saw through the Supreme Commander's plan to stall for time and summon General Cao's troops. He does not fear General Cao — he only fears General Cao going after someone else. This bandit is currently preparing for battle, simply waiting for General Cao to bring his troops."

"How is that possible? Zhenyuan is a strong-walled city. It has only been a few days — could it be the county magistrate surrendered?"

The messenger said, "Supreme Commander, the Zhenyuan magistrate defended the city, but his forces were far too few. The bandit Liu did not even besiege it — he prepared for a five-day siege, and on the very day of the assault, the city fell."

Yang He was practically dying of rage at Liu Chengzong. Only one thought filled his mind: summon Cao Wenzhao, and deal with Liu Chengzong!

That day, Yang He not only wrote to Hong Chengchou, explaining the grave consequences of Guyuan being captured and the loss of contact east and west of Long Mountain, insisting that he must dispatch Cao Wenzhao for reinforcement and suppression — he also sent another letter to Liu Chengzong.

In the letter, he told Liu Chengzong to cease operations immediately, lead his troops back to Ningzhou, and under no circumstances attack Guyuan City.

At the same time, he pledged that the matter of the Qinghai Pacification Office would be reported to the Emperor at once, but that to attack and breach cities while this was being memorialized was a gross violation of decorum, and he feared the Emperor would not consent. Come to Ningzhou, submit a statement acknowledging your error, and we will discuss further how the memorial should be written.

By the time Liu Chengzong received this letter, he was already in Guyuan Prefecture.

He had never felt this exhilarated since the uprising began. Crossing Liupan Mountain into the Qingshui River valley, his troops galloped north and south across Guyuan Prefecture. The starving troops manning those defensive forts surrendered at the mere rumor of his approach, vying to pledge allegiance.

The three forts north of the prefectural city and Heishui Enclosure even sent men directly to ask whether he had grain. The day the answer came back yes, two Company Commanders from the three forts came over with their warhorses and pledged allegiance.

The remaining forts, even if they did not surrender, kept their gates firmly shut — some even had starving soldiers come over to beg for food.

There was only one exception: Yanglang Fort, where the old soldiers and local militia of the nearby Mu family and Mujiatan area had formed ranks and fortified themselves against him.

Liu Chengzong took Yang Yao's advice and paid these people no mind.

All the land around Guyuan had once been Mu Ying's fief. During the Longqing reign, the Emperor had reclaimed the Mu family fiefs in the north to meet border supply needs, leaving only fifty qing of land. Mu Ying's northern descendant Mu Zhu had then built Yanglang Fort.

The City God enshrined in that fort was none other than Mu Ying.

Liu Chengzong was having the time of his life seizing horses north and south of Guyuan Prefecture, and seeing the letter Yang He had written to Zhou Riqiang made him even happier.

He took the letter to find Teacher Yang and asked, "Sir, Governor-General Yang says the terms I offered do not conform to ritual propriety and the Emperor will not agree. What does that mean? We're already in rebellion — how exactly does one conform to ritual propriety?"

Yang Dingrui thought for a moment, then said, "That is indeed a question. I understand what Yang He means now... Don't worry, Lion. Your teacher will draft a memorial for you. Ritual propriety is sovereign and subject, father and son. Equalizing the fields is rooting out the violent and bringing peace to the good. Attacking cities is exterminating corrupt and venal officials. Resisting government troops is suppressing soldiers to bring peace to the people."

Having said this, Yang Dingrui looked at Liu Chengzong: "In any case, we never planned to attack Guyuan. Since Yang He says not to attack, we won't attack Guyuan. But I feel that suppressing soldiers to pacify the people, punishing corrupt officials, and rooting out the violent to bring peace to the good is still not enough to get you to Qinghai. You still need to rescue the Prince of Han."

Yang Dingrui's suggestion was so jarringly abrupt that Liu Chengzong could not react for a moment: "Rescue the Prince of Han?"

"Yes. Guyuan is in chaos right now. There is a band of Guyuan soldiers whose leader is called Golden Cicada. They will attack Pingliang City, and after breaching the walls, they will besiege the Prince of Han's mansion."

Yang Dingrui narrowed his eyes, the very image of a prophet: "Liu the Lion, who happens to be gathering warhorses, just happens to receive word of this, drives them off, and rescues the Han fief from fire and water. And when this event occurs, Prefect Zhou just happens to be present."

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