Chapter 233: Corrupted

West of Xiao Pass, the drought vanished.

But the conditions along the way struck Liu Shizi as eerily familiar.

He still had not emerged from the mountains — merely crossing one peak to reach the next, mountains above when he looked up, mountains below when he looked down.

Passing through villages, though he was clearly two thousand li from northern Shaanxi, every village carried the flavor of his homeland; the common folk lived without joy.

They were just one straw short of despair.

"General, no need to memorize them — you can't memorize them anyway, and even if you did, they're none of your concern."

Cao Huachun rode a gentle little horse, glanced down at the Xining tusi roster he had brought from the palace, and said to Liu Chengzong, who was riding alongside him: "It's enough to know that Xining has twenty-five horse-tribute Tibetan households."

Liu Shizi frowned slightly, pursed his lips, and said: "That can't be right — I'm the Qinghai Pacification Commissioner, they're tusi, how can you say they're none of my concern? Besides, if they're none of my concern... why is Eunuch Cao telling me about them?"

Cao Huachun glanced at him and smiled: "You'll all be colleagues from now on, so the Grand Commander ought to know them. Xining's tusi belong to Shaanxi, not under Qinghai's jurisdiction."

Liu Chengzong nodded: "True enough — all colleagues, we should look out for one another going forward."

Cao Huachun was so alarmed he waved his hands frantically; had it not been for the riding skills he'd honed while accompanying the Tianqi Emperor on hunts, he would have tumbled off his horse and met an untimely end. He said rapidly: "No need to look out for them — let them fend for themselves in the mountains. General Liu, don't go robbing..."

Having accidentally blurted out his true thoughts, Cao Huachun grew so flustered — as if his mouth were borrowed and he was desperate to return it — that he spoke in a rush: "Just... just leave them be, that's all."

Truth be told, before he came, the Chongzhen Emperor had given Cao Huachun a great many instructions.

At the time, Cao Huachun had thought it all through so perfectly!

A learned and principled xiucai, loyal, filial, benevolent, and righteous — forced by circumstance into banditry and rebellion — would, with every word from the heart, do everything in his power to write His Majesty a sincere and moving letter, begging to be enfeoffed in Qinghai, that bitter, frozen land beyond the edge of the world.

In Cao Huachun's mind, he had constructed a figure akin to Xu Huang — a man who in his early years had emerged from the Bobo Bandits, only to later repent earnestly and achieve meritorious deeds.

Once inside Qinghai, backed by the Hehuang Valley, the richest region in the northwest, there wouldn't be much that the Qinghai Pacification Commission needed to do.

Relying on Hezhou, Lanzhou, and Xining, all it had to do was thoroughly enforce the national policy of isolating the Tibetan and Mongol barbarians on behalf of the imperial court.

In a way, Liu Chengzong's father and elder brother were roughly what Cao Huachun had imagined.

The father was a deeply shrewd old juren who had served as a local grassroots chief official for the court; the elder brother also had the bearing of a young military officer. Father and son alike were orderly, rule-abiding, scrupulously proper men of integrity.

It was only when it came to Liu Chengzong himself... he had let his guard down. And he'd thought of him as one of the Five Elite Generals — what Xu Huang? This was clearly Dong Zhuo.

The thing was, Liu Chengzong hadn't actually done anything — yet he still made Cao Huachun afraid, never knowing what he might do next.

Deep down, this man held no respect for the court, nor any fear — it felt like Anda sealing a tribute treaty.

And they had expected him to isolate the Tibetan and Mongol barbarians.

Cao Huachun thought to himself: from now on, in Gansu and Hehuang, they would need not only to isolate the Tibetan and Mongol barbarians, but also to isolate the Tibetan and Mongol barbarians from Liu Chengzong.

"Where's Zuo Guangxian?"

Eunuch Cao was just mulling this over at his side when he saw several bandit soldiers run over and hand up a few paintings. Liu Chengzong immediately had someone call for Zuo Guangxian.

Zuo Guangxian, dispatched by Yang He, had not had it easy either. With only those four or five hundred troops under his command, he had to shield the front and guard the rear, and from time to time, when they encountered officials looking to squeeze them, he had to wheel out Cao Huachun to scare them off.

It really was quite amusing — there were actually officials who tried to extort grain from Liu Chengzong.

Liu Chengzong's column was staggeringly huge, moved slowly on the road, and carried an especially enormous quantity of military provisions, wealth, and goods.

Even now, Cao Huachun had no idea exactly how much coin and grain Liu Chengzong possessed; all he knew was that several thousand mules and four thousand horse- and donkey-carts could not move it all in a single trip.

The vanguard had been stopping and starting the whole way, while the wagon train in the rear shuttled back and forth hauling loads.

With so much coin and grain at this time of year, it was bound to draw envy and covetous eyes.

Cao Huachun had already dealt with similar incidents twice — one was someone trying to extort grain, and another was some sixth-rank official who didn't know his place and tried to solicit a bribe from Liu Chengzong.

When he met Cao Huachun, he even had the shameless gall to say something like: "Eunuch, why are you protecting him?"

Cao Huachun thought to himself: you foolish child — we're protecting you. If you push him too far, don't be surprised if not only your ancestral graves, but mine as well, get dug up and scattered.

"General, General Zuo is opening the road up ahead — what's the matter?"

"Look at this road — where the hell is Zuo Guangxian leading us? We've passed Anding, Lanzhou is just ahead, so why is he veering south toward Gongchang?"

Cao Huachun was momentarily tongue-tied — the route change had been discovered.

Lanzhou was the northwest's great grain-storage headquarters; now that autumn had arrived, all of Gansu's military grain was there. Yet, as it happened, there were no troops there — only a single Lanzhou Battalion, commanded by the Shaanxi Lanzhou Canjiang.

After what happened at Pingliang — where a single 3,000-man Guanning battalion was wrecked in three days, minus one day for marching — how could Cao Huachun dare let Liu Chengzong march toward Lanzhou?

Take the Gongchang–Lintao route into Xining, bypassing Lanzhou — there was a Regional Commander's headquarters there, and although the Regional Commander himself was away, the troop strength was at least sufficient.

Cao Huachun said: "Grand Commander, let's just head for Gongchang, to avoid any further misunderstandings at Lanzhou."

"Don't give me that — when you want something, it's 'Grand Commander'; normally it's 'General'; once you're back in the Forbidden City, I'll just be 'that Liu fellow'... What misunderstandings could there possibly be?"

Liu Chengzong said: "Eunuch Cao, think carefully — does Lanzhou have more military grain than I do? I'm not interested in robbing them. My people and animals consume two hundred dan a day. A ten-day delay on the road, with grain at five taels of silver per dan — how many places would I have to loot just to earn that money back?"

The moment he heard that word "rob," Cao Huachun's heart began to pound. He hurriedly dispatched a Purified Army soldier to the front to fetch Zuo Guangxian and tell him to obediently proceed via Lanzhou.

Cao Huachun was very frustrated — the prices inside Liu Chengzong's head were not the same as his own.

He had originally figured: take a detour, grain at nine qian of silver per dan, the extra consumption wouldn't be much. But in Liu Chengzong's mind, grain was five taels of silver per dan — that was an enormous sum.

Once the Purified Army soldier had left, Cao Huachun said: "Grand Commander, there's also a princely estate in Lanzhou — under no circumstances must we alarm the Su Prince."

"It's precisely the Prince of Su I'm looking for."

The moment Liu Chengzong said this, half of Cao Huachun's heart went cold. But then he heard him continue: "His Highness the Prince of Han has asked the Su Prince's estate to help prepare some bowl sugar — that's something we absolutely need for going to southern Qinghai."

Having said that, Liu Chengzong shot him a glance and said: "You didn't want me going to Lanzhou — were you hoping I'd just sit tight in Xining?"

Cao Huachun was relieved. As long as Liu Chengzong had no intention of robbing the Su Prince's estate, everything was negotiable.

Up ahead, Zuo Guangxian was eating his meal, deeply troubled.

He now understood perfectly why Liu Chengzong wanted to go to Qinghai. If he were Liu Chengzong, hauling two or three hundred thousand dan of grain, he wouldn't want to fight either.

Forget fighting — lately, the four-hundred-odd soldiers of Zuo Guangxian's mobile brigade didn't even want to follow him anymore.

They were all Yulin troops — in the past, they'd followed him drinking wind and eating dust every day, so gaunt their bones showed through the skin.

Coming to guide Liu Chengzong's force was indeed a bitter assignment. To prevent Liu's troops from clashing with other government forces, guarding the front and preparing for the rear, the entire column stretched across twenty or thirty li of mountain road. The mounted soldiers might cover a hundred li in a day along the mountain post roads just to deliver a message.

But that wasn't why the Yulin troops were unwilling to follow him. His crafty veteran soldiers were absolutely delighted — what did a hundred-li ride in a day matter? Never mind that they got to ride horses; even if they had to run on their own two feet, they'd be happy to drop dead from exhaustion.

Right at this moment, several of his household retainers were sitting on a tree stump beside the post road.

Each man held a wooden bowl in one hand, filled with broth steeped from a dab of vegetable paste, a strip of vinegar-soaked cloth, and a chunk of smoked horse meat; in the other hand they clutched a rolled flatbread — each cake weighed two ounces, a dead-dough flatbread fried in mutton fat the day before yesterday, left two days until it was rock-hard.

Yet the Yulin soldiers were absolutely delighted, dipping their flatbread into the broth and eating with gusto — two bites to roll up a cake and swallow it down, then reaching for another.

One of the household retainers said between mouthfuls, "Grand Marshal Liu treats everyone equally, hasn't shortchanged us Yulin brothers — ten times better than Du Wenhuan."

The surrounding retainers and the Yulin soldiers from the guerrilla division nodded in agreement and ate with even greater relish.

They ate this every day and never tired of it; every day the corners of their mouths glistened with grease. After half a month on the march, every man had put on six or seven jin.

Every three to five days they were also issued two jin of parched flour, meant for times when marching made cooking inconvenient — but in the entire guerrilla division, no one touched the stuff.

Zuo Guangxian had given no order whatsoever, yet every one of them hoarded the parched flour. By now each man had stashed away five or six jin, treasuring it like a precious object and hiding it where no one else could find it.

They planned to save the parched flour until they returned to Yulin; stockpile ten jin, enough to eat for two months.

This scene made Zuo Guangxian feel dizzy and lightheaded.

He was a military juren of Yulin Garrison and had served in the army for many years, yet at this moment he felt that all the military texts and battle manuals he had studied were nothing but nonsense.

Even if Yue Wumu were resurrected, he could not make his troops form ranks and charge Liu Chengzong.

Zuo Guangxian viciously bit off a mouthful of dead-dough flatbread — the dry, hard cake made his jaw ache. What had become of this world?

The swaggering Pure Army riders came on horseback and, looking down from on high, relayed the message that there was no need to take the detour; the soldiers of the guerrilla division immediately burst into a chorus of complaints.

"General, we're not taking the detour?"

The soldiers' eyes shone with disappointment as one of them voiced what was in everyone's heart: "Then, then doesn't that mean ten fewer days of army rations?"

Zuo Guangxian sighed inwardly.

At a single command, the soldiers drained the meat-and-sauce broth — which they had been reluctant to dip their flatbread into — into their bellies at top speed, wiped their wooden bowls clean with the rolled flatbread and stuffed it into their mouths, and readied themselves to march.

One household retainer shook his head and said, "Before, I thought Xining was far; now I only hate that Xining is near. I truly wish this road would never end."

Then another retainer said something unknown, and the crowd promptly burst into a wave of raucous laughter, shoving that retainer toward Zuo Guangxian's position.

Zuo Guangxian placed the saddle hanging from a tree branch back onto his mount's back. A smile lingered in his eyes, but he deliberately put on a stern face and barked, "What's all this racket!"

Then his tone softened as he urged, "Hurry up and pack — we're about to set off."

"General, he said why don't we, hahaha!" The retainer beside him wore a sly grin. "He said, why doesn't the General just lead us and surrender to the Qinghai Pacification Commissioner!"

Zuo Guangxian, who had been steadying the saddle, froze. The smile slowly faded from the corners of his eyes, and his entire face turned cold.

The atmosphere, visibly, dropped to freezing point.

One retainer hurriedly tried to smooth things over, shoving the man. "Your parents are gone, but the General still has his family back in Yulin! Do you want to get the mistress and young master killed? Put your helmet on properly."

The retainer stole a cautious glance at Zuo Guangxian and hastily begged forgiveness: "General, quell your anger!"

Then each of them ran off to pack their gear.

Zuo Guangxian was not angry — he simply felt as if all the strength had been drained from his body.

His loyal army had been corrupted — not by gold, not by silver, but corrupted by a broth of fermented paste and rolled flatbread.

In truth, Zuo Guangxian had long known the soldiers would say such things.

From the moment they called their own Regional Commander "Du Wenhuan" and another man's leader "Grand Marshal Liu," Zuo Guangxian had known that sooner or later, the soldiers would speak like this.

He did not vent his anger on anyone. Though his heart truly yearned to rage, he knew the imperial court owed the Shaanxi troops far too much — unleashing his fury would only further wound the army's morale.

So be it.

They continued westward, passing the Steelyard Hook Bay Courier Station and arriving at Jin County.

Following Cao Huachun's orders, the courier station dispatched men to Lanzhou and Xining to deliver messages, requesting that someone familiar with the intelligence on the Qinghai barbarians and tribes be sent over to brief Liu Chengzong on the situation along the way.

At the same time, they were to check on how the Su Prince of Lanzhou's preparations of bowl sugar were progressing, lest Liu Chengzong be provoked.

The closer they drew to Lanzhou, the more Cao Huachun feared that Liu Chengzong might suddenly order an attack on the city.

Fortunately, however, Liu Chengzong had no interest even in entering the city. After the Su Prince sent men to deliver two cartloads of bowl sugar, he directly set off to continue on to Xining.

Because Zuo Guangxian, up ahead, had sent word that the tusi of Xining had arrived.

Cao Huachun flipped through the tusi register, reading as he went: "Western Li, Eastern Li, Western Qi, Eastern Qi... Found him — Chen Shiwen, born in the thirty-third year of Wanli, ancestral home Shanyin. Still fairly young. Jurisdiction over fourteen fortified villages, over a hundred civilian households, six hundred-plus souls. Commands one native battalion commander, two native company commanders, and twenty-five horse and foot soldiers."

This drew a sidelong glance from Liu Chengzong: "Twenty-eight men in total, and he's called a battalion commander?"

"The northwest is not like the southwest. Here, Xining alone has fourteen enfeoffed tusi. Besides, tusi troops govern their own — when it comes to fighting, you still rely on the Xining Guard. Even the Eastern Li tusi, who governs the largest population of over twenty thousand, has a quota of merely three hundred horse and foot soldiers."

Liu Chengzong nodded at this. The Eastern Li tusi Cao Huachun mentioned fit Liu Chengzong's preconception of a tusi somewhat better, but this Chen tusi governed far too few people.

Before long, Zuo Guangxian led a few men through the troop formation from up ahead. One man behind him stepped forward and knelt in obeisance: "Chen Shiwen, Commander of the Xining Guard, pays respects to the Heavenly Envoy!"

Liu Chengzong had been waiting at the very front. Hearing this, he spurred his horse aside and said to Cao Huachun, "He's looking for you."

This left Cao Huachun deeply embarrassed. He hurried forward and said, "Commander Chen, that is Pacification Commissioner Liu."

Only then did Chen Shiwen realize Liu Chengzong was also present. His heart sank — he had assumed the man on the red-haired horse was a squad leader.

He hastily bowed again: "Chen Shiwen pays respects to Pacification Commissioner Liu."

Then he added with an ingratiating smile, "From now on, the Han tusi of the Western Sea will no longer be the Chen clan alone. I hope the Pacification Commissioner will look after me kindly in the future."

Cao Huachun furrowed his brow. "Tusi Chen, General Liu is the Pacification Commissioner of Qinghai — he has no authority over you tusi of Xining."

Chen Shiwen smiled apologetically at Cao Huachun, but his eyes kept darting toward Liu Chengzong as he said repeatedly, "The Heavenly Envoy speaks truly."

This made Liu Chengzong feel that this Tusi Chen likely had a favor to ask of him.

Just then, a mounted scout from Zuo Guangxian's unit up ahead rode over and reported, "General, another dozen or so men have arrived from the various tusi households ahead — tusi, clan kinsmen, battalion commanders, company commanders — all waiting up front."

Liu Chengzong and Cao Huachun both looked at Tusi Chen with puzzlement, and they heard Chen Shiwen say with a smile, "They walk slowly. I came on ahead."

"The Stubborn Bandits" — source: