Chapter 222: The Little Fort

Liu Chengzong discovered that a person's status really was quite interesting.

The same situation — if he truly were a court general, he probably couldn't even enter Pingliang City.

Yet now, the great bandit of Yan'an had already been lodging eight days in his loyal Prince of Han's estate.

In the Wave-Viewing Pavilion at the center of Willow Lake, Prince of Han Zhu Danji tugged at the hem of his coarse cloth short jacket, his face full of distress as he sighed.

Noticing that Liu Chengzong, who was reading nearby, had glanced up at him, he hurriedly stuffed a handful of parched grain into his mouth and gulped down five mouthfuls of water.

These past few days, the Prince of Han had cursed himself over eighteen thousand times — perfectly fine, so why on earth had he invited Liu Chengzong into the city? Now he spent every day in constant fear.

Liu Chengzong looked down at the Hydraulic Methods of the West from the Prince of Han's library and asked without raising his head, "Not to your taste?"

The Prince of Han froze for a moment, then hastily shook his head. "I can eat it… ahem, it's fine."

Although Zhu Shaoming was a few years older than Liu Chengzong, Liu the Lion felt this prince was just a big child.

The past few days he had become somewhat normal, but when he first returned to Pingliang City, the Prince of Han had been extremely strange.

When the granary was robbed, he was furious; when the silver vault was seized, he was enraged; yet when his bedchamber was burned, he was so heartbroken he wept for days on end.

Only after asking did one learn that he had grown up in the Eastern Palace — his father, the old Prince of Han, had passed away before he could remember. At that time he was too young to manage affairs, so palace matters were reported to the throne by the Princess Dowager of Han, State Mother Lady Dong, who petitioned for the Prince of Gaochun to administer the fief on his behalf.

The bedchamber had stood unoccupied for over a decade, its furnishings unchanged. To the Prince of Han, the word "father" was this vast, empty bedchamber.

Now the hall had been destroyed, and the last of his memories were gone with it.

From their interactions these past days, this young Prince of Han was not a particularly bad person — exceptionally clever, but all the wisdom in his head was used solely to swindle his relatives out of money.

He also had psychological issues.

He had no friends of similar standing his own age; only three kinds of people surrounded him.

Either fawning estate officials who flattered and entertained him like toadies, or ordinary people he wouldn't even notice walking past him, or local officials he dared not offend.

He had hardly ever stepped beyond the palace walls his entire life, so when dealing with people, he was either condescending or timeserving — he simply had no idea how to interact with others normally.

But when it came to handling proper business, he was passable. Now their memorial had already been sent to the court. Liu Chengzong had not asked them to seek office for him; they had merely reported the facts of this defense of the fief, appending a petition for office ghostwritten by Yang Dingrui.

The memorial contained nothing novel — all truths that even the rebels of Lion Camp understood, though the Emperor might not.

It was simply that the drought in Qin could no longer sustain so many famine victims, and insufficient army provisions could no longer support so many starving soldiers, so people could not survive and sought food everywhere. If they were resettled inland, the lack of grain would still send them roaming for food. Since the court had no grain now either, robbing wherever was still robbing, so they might as well go rob elsewhere.

"If you can't stomach it, don't eat it."

Liu Chengzong raised his head and glanced at the Prince of Han. "Proper princely cuisine you won't eat, yet you come scrounging my army rations."

Just an ordinary remark, yet it made the Prince of Han ponder for a long while. He looked outside the Wave-Viewing Pavilion at Fan Sanlang, whose main duty was sightseeing and side duty was guarding, then asked with utter seriousness, "General, is rebellion especially fun?"

Liu Chengzong: "Hm?"

Was that something a feudal prince ought to say?

"I have been at your side for three days."

The Prince of Han raised three fingers. "Three days. You watched drill three times on the parade ground — twice in the morning, once in the afternoon. Twice you distributed grain to the commoners. The other day was the Pingliang Prefect's seventh-day rites. In your spare time you read, and in the evening you performed plays and sang with your soldiers. Quite interesting."

"I think you, General, are someone who can accomplish great things."

The Prince of Han licked his lips and said, "If His Majesty does not grant you office, take me along?"

Liu Chengzong smiled and pointed at the coarse cloth clothes on the Prince of Han and the parched grain in his hands. "So you're testing first whether you can stomach the food and endure the clothes?"

The Prince of Han nodded eagerly. "I think it's alright. The coarse clothes are passable. The food isn't great, but I hear you often eat donkey-meat baked buns — surely tastier than this."

Liu Chengzong adjusted his posture, closed the book, and looked up at the Prince of Han for a long moment.

Not until the Prince of Han grew uneasy under his gaze and averted his eyes did Liu Chengzong say, "Don't be afraid. If the great enterprise fails, I will simply lead my troops west and leave. I won't kill you to vent my anger."

Having his thoughts seen through, the Prince of Han smiled sheepishly, then pressed further: "If I don't agree, you'll just take your troops and go, and won't harm my fief's relatives either?"

Liu Chengzong nodded, sighing inwardly.

This Prince of Han was extremely clever — especially on matters of life and death, he had a knack for drawing inferences.

A pity he was an imperial prince. Had he been a Commandant with a modest stipend, properly educated from childhood, passing the civil examinations would not have been out of the question.

"Tch!"

Hearing that he would not harm the imperial clan, the Prince of Han instead looked somewhat disappointed and shook his head. "I just knew it…"

Liu Chengzong was amused. "What, you actually want me to harm a few imperial clansmen?"

The Prince of Han nodded, then shook his head. His posture relaxed, and with a sigh and a smile he said, "Hard to say. You don't understand our Han fief. Looking at other fiefs, their ancestors all did plenty of absurd things. Our Han fief — we're just so poor we have to torment ourselves."

Liu Chengzong gave a cold laugh. "You can't fool me. My men helped you tally the losses; I know the accounts perfectly well."

"Your fief was robbed and burned — over four hundred thousand dan of grain, more than three hundred thousand taels of gold and silver looted, not even counting all kinds of goods. Enough to sustain the entire populace of Pingliang Prefecture for years. You call that poor?"

The Prince of Han hastily waved his hands and shook his head. "That much grain belongs to all the commandery princes and generals in the city — it's not all mine. Do the math: with so many commandery princes splitting that grain, each household's stores aren't much."

"Especially my princely estate — we can't collect rents, yet every year we still have to deliver grain to the court. We lend out some stored grain, but defaults are many and repayments few. The Prince's stipend grain has never been paid in full."

"I have governed the state since childhood, nearly twenty years now." He jabbed a thumb at himself. "An imperial prince — a prince with a ten-thousand-dan stipend — and I've only saved up less than a hundred thousand dan of grain and a few tens of thousands of taels of silver. Is that excessive?"

Liu Chengzong blinked. "Are you saying imperial princes like you are poor?"

"Of course!"

The Prince of Han wore an expression that said you've seen nothing yet. "In all the empire's fiefs, only I and the Prince of Su in Yinchuan compete for who's poorer. In the years my mother the Consort governed, trade and commerce kept income and expenditure passable. These past years it's been worse year by year."

"So you don't understand the situation of my fief. It looks splendid on the outside, but sometimes I truly envy people outside. I'd give anything to just leave, yet I'm afraid of starving to death. Let me tell you what kind of characters our fief has produced before, and you'll understand."

The Prince of Han counted on his fingers. "In the Chenghua reign, a eunuch of ours thought the fief too poor, couldn't endure the hardship, and ran away. But with that skill set he couldn't do anything else, so he entered the Forbidden City and became a eunuch there. Later he was found out and sent back for my ancestor to deal with."

"My ancestor thought, this godforsaken place is so poor I want to run away myself — a eunuch running off isn't strange. So he didn't punish him and let the matter drop."

"The Prince of Hanyin fell ill and died. Before dying, fearing his commandery prince title would be revoked for lack of an heir, he brought in a wild bastard child from outside to inherit. Later the news leaked, and he was blackmailed by relatives for half his life. In the end, the fief was abolished."

"In the Jiajing reign, the Prince of Jianning was so poor — ah, this one was disgraceful. No money, living by pawning things. Guess what he finally pawned? Even the gold investiture tablets were pawned. Discovered by the court, stripped to commoner status, fief abolished."

"There were also generals and commandants who masked their faces and became highway robbers, plundering their own relatives' merchant caravans — things they were perfectly capable of. The most outrageous was in the Jiajing reign: because the Prince of Xiangling wanted to seize the fields of the monks at Kongtong Mountain, the monks, in desperation, donated the fields to the princely estate. The Prince of Xiangling then rallied over two hundred sixty clansmen and petitioned the Emperor to indict the princely estate."

The Prince of Han raised his thumb. "Accusing us of annexing mountain fields and market stalls, murdering the innocent, gathering riffraff, and various illicit and concealed activities — in other words, accusing us of plotting rebellion."

"Fortunately, the Emperor investigated. And that Jin Chanzi —" The Prince of Han gestured outside. "Outside the city, the reason I wasn't in a hurry to have you kill him — we're both of the Dan generation. He's my brother. My own brother."

Liu Chengzong paused, looking at the Prince of Han. "I can tell — it's been a long time since anyone talked with you. Your brother should be a commandery prince. How did he become a commoner?"

The Prince of Han gave a rueful laugh, then said, "I was still young back then. He was born of a concubine, and his mother tried to bribe the then-Prefect Fan. That frightened my mother into rushing to bribe Prefect Fan as well. Lord Fan, whose given name was Lichao, refused bribes from both sides. In the end, I succeeded to the title as heir apparent."

"Now I am the great prince, and he, having seized plenty of coin and grain, has also made himself a great prince." The Prince of Han smiled miserably. "Good for him."

Liu Chengzong had once thought Golden Cicada was Luo Rucai; only later did he discover that the Black Donkey Rider was Golden Cicada.

And the second-generation Golden Cicada at that.

He had little interest in the grudges within the Prince of Han's household, except that the prince's fond hopes for his elder brother were likely nothing but flowers in a mirror or the moon's reflection on water. Golden Cicada had been busy hunting him down and had not managed to seize much in the way of wealth or goods.

That man had recently led troops to Ningzhou, where Lian Guoshi hammered him, and he fled into the mountains.

Seeing Liu Chengzong remain silent, the Prince of Han shifted the topic. "Could you tell me what you plan to do by leading troops to Qinghai?"

"Farming, fishing, herding, hunting, building forts and fighting. Whatever Han people can do, we can do; whatever sea bandits can do, we can do too. To survive."

In truth, Liu Chengzong felt he was not much different from a nomadic tribal chieftain — except nomads follow water and grass to dwell, while roving raiders follow army provisions to dwell.

Words that Liu Chengzong spoke with genuine uncertainty about the future sounded to the Prince of Han like a bold, grand adventure. Rubbing his hands together, the prince asked, "General, once you've gained a firm foothold beyond the frontier, what if I submit a memorial to the Emperor requesting my fief be transferred there?"

Please, refuse!

Liu Chengzong raised a hand directly to stop him. "Don't. Your Han princely estate receives one hundred ten thousand dan of stipend rice every year. My two battalions, not counting warhorses, couldn't eat that much in a year."

The Prince of Han clanged his wooden bowl of fried flour and said, "I don't eat much. Let the rest of them stay here and fend for themselves. I'll bring my princess consort and go with you."

"Shut your mouth this instant!"

Liu Chengzong was utterly baffled. Spreading his arms, he said, "Pingliang is such a fine place, such a large city. To come with me and brave wind and dew, sleeping rough — not to mention I'm a complete stranger to that land. At worst, I might only manage to lean on Xining and build a little fort by Qinghai Lake. I think you're just sick of an easy life."

"General, I, the prince, will be completely candid with you. A city that can be breached once can be breached a second time."

The Prince of Han spread his hands. "This time, you saved me. Next time, who will save me? What's more, you are an amnestied rebel army. Once we reach that place far from the Emperor's reach, you won't impose restrictions on me either. I might be poor, but I'll be free and safe. I feel you won't harm me… And furthermore!"

As he spoke, he lifted his chin. "Requesting a transfer of fief to leave Pingliang is a tradition of my Han princely line. We should never have been stationed in Pingliang in the first place. From the first generation begging for a transfer up to now, none of the four ancestral houses have been good people — none of them would let us leave!"

Silly child, when your ancestors begged for a transfer, none of them begged to go to an even poorer place like you are.

Liu Chengzong laughed. "You do remember I'm a rebel army. What if I revolt again someday? You'd be trapped instantly."

"So what if you're rebels? Didn't the four ancestral houses also pacify the realm? Think back — if my Han line ancestors had been enfeoffed at Kaiyuan, just supplying us would have kept those eastern brigands from ever rising. They'd have died of poverty."

The Prince of Han dismissed this with a wave, sitting ramrod straight and even deliberately scooting forward. "Revolting again? Isn't that easy to handle? Just enthrone me!"

Liu Chengzong waved his hands repeatedly. "Just stay put in Pingliang and don't make trouble for me. Your ancestors also backed the Little Ming Prince, and in the end, wasn't he thrown into the river and drowned? So many paths to survival, and you insist on picking the one that gets you killed."

The Prince of Han slapped his leg in frustration. "No, Pingliang is a dead end too! The city walls look tall, but they're utterly useless — breached the moment someone attacks."

Liu Chengzong could see it now: this Prince of Han had an immense will to survive. With proper guidance, it might even turn out to be a good thing for the people of Pingliang Prefecture in the future.

So he smiled genially and asked, "Do you want to know why it was breached? Do you want to know how to keep it from being breached? Help me with a few things, then listen to me, and I have a way to make it impregnable."

The Prince of Han was overjoyed. Nodding rapidly, he asked, "What things? Tell me. If it can be done, I, the prince, will do them all for you."

Liu Chengzong smiled with great satisfaction and said, "I've looked over the princely estate's accounts. Your income comes mainly from four sources. First, stipend rice. The grain for this stipend rice mostly originates from Pingliang County, Zhenyuan, Jingzhou, Huating, and Lingtai within Pingliang Prefecture."

"Second is the rent and tax from your own princely fields farmed by tenants, and the interest on silver and grain loans. Third is those official inns and shops you run in Pingliang's eastern city. Fourth is the tea-horse trade moving east and west, which hasn't done well in recent years."

Liu Chengzong asked, "Have you never noticed that, aside from the merchant caravans, all your earnings come from the poor? The more you earn, the poorer the common people become, and the more hatred and resentment they bear toward you."

The Prince of Han was deeply puzzled. "What? Tenant fields have tenant fees, loans have interest, and commoners must pay grain tax. Is that not the natural order?"

"You're right, that is the natural order. But when people can't survive, they revolt. Revolts kill people. Kill whom? Whoever has coin and grain gets killed — that is also the natural order."

"This has nothing to do with good or evil. It's just that now heaven and earth are overturned, and the natural order treats everyone equally. If Heaven wants you dead, and you are poor and follow the natural order, you starve to death. If you are rich and follow the natural order, you are killed. You want to live? That is defying Heaven."

The Prince of Han's expression turned ugly. He clapped his hands and said, "I wanted to earn money from the rich. I almost did, too… It's all Golden Cicada's fault. He came too early. If he had come a bit later, I tell you, General —"

He raised four fingers. "If the city had fallen just one shichen later, I, the prince, could have wrapped up forty thousand taels earned from the imperial clan and fled."

Liu Chengzong did not know the ins and outs of that, nor did he care. In any case, that silver had all been sent to Zhenyuan by now. He waved his hand and said, "If you want to live, you first need the people's hearts. To win the people's hearts, reduce rents and lower interest. Only when the local commoners don't resent you can you survive."

"Secondly, this city is too large. The wall perimeter is nine li. One man per step on the wall would require five thousand defenders. The city wall is a permanent military formation. With your formation so sparse, how could it possibly hold?"

"Hmm…"

Listening to this basic military knowledge, the Prince of Han was dumbstruck. Suddenly enlightened, he said, "Is that how it is? So defending a city isn't about bigger and sturdier being better. I, the prince, always thought tall and solid meant impregnable."

As it happened, there was paper and brush in the Viewing Waves Pavilion. Liu Chengzong set his book aside, thinking that since he had taken so much wealth, goods, and grain from the Han estate, and the Prince of Han had this sense of crisis, he might as well go with the flow and help him — help him survive.

In these times, making sure a prince lived through the great wars of the coming decade and more would be no easy task.

He fetched the paper and brush, sat back down, and said, "Send some men to form a few merchant caravans. Load them with tea and go to Xining. Help me bring some people out to serve as an advance party and scout for intelligence. See what the conditions around Qinghai Lake are like now, which tribes are encamped there, and what native chieftains and officers are in Xining."

As Liu Chengzong spoke, the Prince of Han nodded along. "What's so hard about that? It's very simple."

"I'm not finished. Beyond that, sell the tea there, set up storage warehouses, and along the route purchase farming tools, timber, iron ingots, padded clothes, and the like. Bribe officials on my behalf. I can give you the money."

At this, a trace of difficulty appeared on the Prince of Han's face.

He was very bold at heart, and had even once genuinely considered following Liu Chengzong west. Even if he died out west after ten or eight years, it would still be a grand adventure — life would not be boring.

If Liu Chengzong could be persuaded to enthrone him and let him have a taste of rebellion, that would be even more thrilling.

Before Liu the Lion even realized it, he had gained a princely super-fan.

But the premise was that Liu Chengzong's army could protect him.

The Prince of Han was accustomed to seeing the soldiers of Pingliang Garrison and had once assumed all imperial court armies were like that.

In truth, the soldiers of Pingliang Garrison were not bad. Every year they had to go on autumn defense or be transferred elsewhere for rotational service, so there was a batch of battle-worthy men. It was just that years of poverty and hardship had left this army in very poor spirits.

Moreover, when suppressing the local populace, the soldiers had little will to fight. The milder ones would fire their guns, cannons, and crossbows into the sky; the more radical ones simply defected on the spot.

With uncles and maternal uncles shouting battle cries below the walls, which defender on the wall wouldn't be looking over his shoulder?

Seeing General Liu the Lion's mighty host under such circumstances, only four words filled the Prince of Han's mind.

Damn, sweeping the realm!

In any case, judging by General Liu's disposition, no matter where he went, as long as he himself did nothing wrong, he probably wouldn't be treated poorly.

But without Liu Chengzong's protection, the Prince of Han's courage shrank drastically. He said with difficulty, "Everything else is easy to say, but bribing frontier officers and soldiers — if it leaks out, I'll be in enormous trouble."

"You help me, I help you."

Liu Chengzong spread his hands. "To whatever extent you accomplish things, I'll help you to that extent. If you help me gain a firm foothold in Qinghai, I'll tell the chieftains I know not to make trouble for the Prince of Han."

The Prince of Han looked at Liu Chengzong, thinking it over again and again. Finally, rubbing his hands, he said, "You want me to reduce rents and lower interest, but what about when I run out of money later? I have a whole household to support… When you go to Qinghai, can you sell me horses?"

Liu Chengzong laughed and glanced to his side — so entering the Prince of Han's estate had turned into business development after all.

"No idea. I can only scout for intel first. I don't even know what's over there. Originally I planned to go occupy land and start farming, see which khan is lucky enough to come rob me, then I'd rob him clean."

Liu Chengzong raised a hand toward the Prince of Han: "But if Your Highness the Prince of Han is willing to help me, it will make all this much simpler."

"Of course I'm willing — who wouldn't want Qinghai steeds? But if the officials over there impeach me, and I get hauled off to the high walls at Fengyang, what then?"

Liu Chengzong spread his hands and said nothing.

The Prince of Han added: "If I get locked behind high walls, you have to rescue me!"

"How would I rescue you? Your imperial clan's high-walled prison isn't in Lanzhou, it's in Fengyang. If I told you I could break you out, would you believe me?"

The Prince of Han thought it over — he had a point. He sighed helplessly, steeled his resolve, and composed himself. "Fine. I'll select men shortly and send them to Xining... how do they stay alive?"

Lion Liu saw that he'd agreed, and his mood lifted considerably.

He'd added another layer of insurance for himself. Now even if the Chongzhen Emperor refused to grant him an official post, the road west would be nothing more than a military problem — and he'd have an aboveboard route to buy and sell supplies.

He picked up a brush and drew as he spoke: "Now that the sleeping quarters are burned, this is the perfect time to renovate your estate. Tear down the useless sections of wall. Build a small fortress backed against Willow Lake — three hundred paces around is ideal, height matching the palace walls, nothing exceeding regulation."

"Two stories inside the fort, with a top level above. Place firing slits and shooting platforms on each. Set up sharp-angled bastions on all four sides and square projecting wall faces. Find out the specifications of the Pingliang Guard's cannons and their range. Position twenty-four cannons across the eight bastions and along the wall edges to protect your whole perimeter."

"Divert water from Willow Lake outside to make a moat. Put pavilions and towers on the far bank — do what you can to keep siege engines from being deployed. Store three to five thousand piculs of grain in the cellars, dig two wells. Two or three hundred soldiers holding it against two or three thousand won't be much of a problem."

"But you have to pay them."

Liu Chengzong raised a finger and pointed at the Prince of Han. "I heard from your Administrator that when battle broke out, you weren't even willing to give the troops a few thousand taels. You really are stingy!"

"Well, who knew the city would fall the moment it was attacked? I'd originally planned to give them ten thousand."

The Prince of Han watched Liu Chengzong's brush flow like clouds and water as he drew, and said in astonishment: "General, did you just sketch this off the cuff?"

"Off the cuff? I've been preparing this for a long time."

It was just that this kind of fortress wasn't intended for the Prince of Han's estate — and it was meant to be a bit smaller, too.

It was the unpermitted structure he'd been preparing for himself in Qinghai.

Big Wang and Little Wang very cheerfully agreed: before the emperor's reply arrived, Liu Chengzong would select the site within the Prince of Han's estate and complete the entire fortress design. In exchange, the Prince of Han would dispatch a party to Xining to make contact with the western frontier officials, including the Su Principality and the chieftains, and would procure the supplies Lion Camp needed and stockpile them in the granary.

Liu Chengzong likewise selected capable men from Lion Camp, ultimately choosing Chen Qindai, who was fluent in Mongolian, to lead a team of two squads of combat and support troops. They would join the Prince of Han's westward party to scout for intelligence around the Qinghai Lake region.

Standing atop Pingliang's western wall, Liu Chengzong watched the distant silhouettes of the departing party. In his chest, a fire seemed to burn.

He still couldn't fully trust the Prince of Han. But if their relationship deepened a step further, perhaps this intelligence route stretching two thousand li — from Fortress Gate Battalion, to the Prince of Han's estate in Pingliang, and on to Xining — could truly be established.