Chapter 240: Ju'er Bay

In mid-September, a light rain fell in Xining, and then the temperature plummeted.

Liu Chengzong sat cross-legged on a tiger skin, wearing the khaki soldier uniform made back in northern Shaanxi, yet the chill still seeped up relentlessly from the ground.

It had turned cold earlier than he had imagined, and probably much colder too.

A guard removed the tent flap, and Chengyun hung up a felt blanket, his cheeks flushed red from the cold. Rubbing his hands, he came in, sat cross-legged beside him, warmed himself by the fire, and said, "Brother, it's only September and the grass is already frosted in the morning. It's so much colder than home."

Liu Chengzong set down the roster of chiliarchs submitted by the three Regional Commanders and nodded to Chengyun. "Yes, the mountains are high and the land is cold. We need to hurry the reorganization, march west to Ju'er Bay, and build dugout shelters. If we wait another half-month, the ground will start freezing."

Ju'er Bay lay ninety li west of Xining City, at the westernmost edge of the Xining Guard's jurisdiction. Marching further west would enter what was nominally the Xihai Tumed territory.

"Brother, have you decided? Right at Ju'er Bay?" Chengyun asked, then nodded. "Then let's rotate the garrison. Have Eldest Brother replace the troops at that battalion post in Ju'er Bay. While the camp is still full of men, I'll send a shipment of grain ahead to that post."

After the reorganization, Liu Chengzong now had six battalions: his own Central Army Battalion, the Xining Garrison Battalion, the three training battalions for infantry, cavalry, and artillery, and Chengyun's Logistics Battalion.

The three training battalions were still selecting soldiers and officers; those not yet chosen were temporarily assigned to Chengyun's Logistics Battalion. The craftsmen under Shi Chengwo had also been incorporated into the Logistics Battalion, so Chengyun currently commanded the largest number of troops.

Liu Chengzong's reorganization of the army stemmed from the fact that the old company-post formation could no longer meet their present needs. The company-post formation was good for fighting, easy to maneuver, and highly mobile.

But it lacked the capacity for garrison duty, training recruits, or even improving conditions. It was like a bird without feet, forced to fly without rest until it dropped dead.

Everyone had developed excellent marching ability, but the scholars could teach very little knowledge on the march, the officers had little time to instruct tactics and drill the soldiers, and the craftsmen had no chance to produce weapons and equipment in batches.

Everything had to be taken by force, fought for, until the day there was nothing left to plunder. At that point, either their overwhelming military strength would cause them to collapse from within, or they would be routed by the enemy in a single blow during their self-destruction.

In other words, they were a blade, but only a blade.

And war requires more than just a blade — it requires a vast and precise machine.

"Ju'er Bay it is. Actually, Beichuan isn't bad either, but you said marching west from Beichuan means a detour of over ninety li and crossing two mountains."

Chengyun nodded. "Right. Within a hundred-li limit: one man on foot driving a donkey cart hauling nine hundred jin takes two days, consumes thirty jin of fodder and four jin of grain. Six men pushing wheelbarrows hauling nine hundred jin takes two days, consumes thirty jin of grain. The northwestern mountains aren't suited for large draft-animal carts."

"So Ju'er Bay it is. Fodder is plentiful here — even buying it in Xining to eat is perfectly viable. But grain is hard silver and gold, and it determines how far west we can push."

As he spoke, Liu Chengzong pulled over the map, drew a circle around Ju'er Bay, and said, "Once we occupy Ju'er Bay, we can control a hundred-li radius. Eastward, we can reinforce Xining in time. Westward, we can push into Haibei. To the south, there's a desert where we can seek saltpeter. To the north, we can prospect the great mountains for ore, and also scout the situation to the west — feeding ourselves at the enemy's expense."

Chengyun raised an eyebrow. "Brother plans to strike that Daiqing?"

"Ha, feeding at the enemy's expense isn't just about plunder. From the news Chen Qindai sent back, the various tribes of Qinghai — whether Tatar or Tibetan — are far from monolithic internally. If we rashly attack one faction and can't quickly subdue the majority in a short time, it will only push them to unite."

Based on current intelligence, the Lion Army might not be the force with the most mobilized troops in Qinghai, but the quality of their soldiers was likely the highest in Qinghai at present.

Liu Chengzong raised two fingers and tapped lightly on the map. "Divide them. Win over the weak, nibble away at the strong. Do not lightly start a war unless forced. But once war begins, thoroughly erase one faction from Qinghai."

He said, "Appearing harmless has its benefits; inspiring fear has its effects too. Fighting here is different from the interior — a battle usually runs at a loss. We must calculate carefully."

Grain was the most critical factor constraining their actions. Although they had seized the Prince of Han's estate in the east and obtained a great deal of grain, for an army his size, consuming six thousand to ten thousand shi per month, it was enough for three years.

But that was only counting the men. One large draft animal consumed as much grain as eight men. During wartime, warhorses were difficult to graze, and daily grain consumption would surge to unbearable levels as expedition distances increased.

Chengyun nodded in agreement with his second brother's views on army provisions. Then Liu Chengzong asked, "What did you come for?"

"Three things. First, to ask where to set up camp — the dugout barracks need to be designed. Second, the craftsmen are under my command now, and I've never led craftsmen before. I came to ask how you want them to work going forward and where to station them."

Chengyun waited a moment, and seeing that Liu Chengzong had thought it over, continued, "Third is setting the army grain ration. Now that the garrison will have a camp, brother, should each battalion come collect grain monthly, or should I deliver it? And how much grain should officers and soldiers at each rank receive per month?"

Liu Chengzong nodded and smiled. "All important matters."

The decision to set camp at Ju'er Bay was made, but designing the camp still required an on-site survey.

Liu Chengzong said, "Tell Dai Daozi to take a hundred riders and a painter to Ju'er Bay. Scout the situation there and find a suitable place to set up camp."

"The three training battalions shouldn't be too far apart or too close — they need to graze horses. At most twenty li apart. The Central Army camp and the Logistics camp should be in the middle of them. The Logistics camp should be close to the riverbank to make it easier for the craftsmen to set up the Armory Bureau."

Chengyun nodded. "Then the craftsmen will be organized into the Armory Bureau afterward. What if there are commoners there? Indigenous people, Tibetans."

"Isn't having commoners a good thing?"

Liu Chengzong smiled briefly and said, "Tell Dai Daozi not to fight them, and no need to say much. Just ask if they've been paying tribute to the Tatars, or paying grain and horses to any tusi of the Xining Guard. Do his job and come back."

"We'll talk once the army moves over. Then others will naturally speak nicely. Those who paid tribute to the Tatars won't have to pay anymore. Those who paid grain and horses to the court won't have to pay anymore either."

Liu Chengzong said, "Tatar, indigenous, Tibetan — none of that matters. To me, they're all commoners. When the time comes, gather everyone in the army who has served as a local official, compile a set of laws and a tax code, and create a tax-exemption regulation specifying how many family members a soldier or officer can exempt from grain levies."

Chengyun gave a wry smile upon hearing this. "That will be very difficult."

His reaction was within Liu Chengzong's expectations. Most people were like him — they knew Xining would be cold, but never imagined it would turn cold so early; they knew it would be chaotic, but never imagined the chaos of so many entangled factions.

Everyone knew establishing a regime was hard, but no one knew just how hard it was to establish one in this chaotic place.

"Of course it's hard. That's precisely why I led the army into Qinghai."

He extended his hand toward his younger brother and said, "Plundering princely estates and great landlords, defeating government troops — that's simple for us. In the past, seizing territory was very hard, and holding territory was tying our own hands, because we'd have to face more than just warfare."

"Now, in this corner, we have troops and grain. On the surface, we've made a show of yielding to the court and secured a truce in substance. We can take territory and hold it. So the harder problems have arrived... What is territory? It is a base for development."

"We have workshops, pastures, villages, and towns. We have commoners and commerce. We have a front and a rear, and with that comes time, distance, and depth. Most importantly, the army."

Liu Chengzong looked at Chengyun's dazed expression and smiled. "You once said that commoners are all fence-sitters. They don't believe in us because we ourselves aren't safe. On what grounds should commoners believe we can bring them safety?"

Chengyun felt this deeply. He nodded. "Right. Commoners want land, money, grain, and tax resistance — all to survive. In the past, we gave them land, gave them money and grain, helped them resist taxes, but we couldn't keep them alive. Helping us was putting the cart before the horse."

Having said this, Chengyun's face lit up with joy. "Times are different now. We are safe, so commoners won't be fence-sitters anymore. In contending for the realm, the realm is the realm of people. If we are better than the Great Ming, we will surely win!"

But to his surprise, Liu Chengzong shook his head. "You can't put it that way."

"Take the indigenous people of Ju'er Bay. Suppose they've always paid grain to the court. We go there and tell them to stop paying grain to the court. From the court's perspective, they're fence-sitters. Why is that?"

Chengyun thought the answer was obvious. He spread his hands. "We're close, the court is far. Just as Brother Lion said earlier — the court can't protect them, and we can make them unsafe."

A smile on his face, Liu Chengzong guided him patiently. "But are we the ones closest to them?"

Chengyun looked puzzled at first, then suddenly understood. His expression grave, he nodded. "I understand. Brother wants to make an example of those tribal chieftains?"

"Can't make an example of them."

Liu Chengzong spoke with absolute certainty. He raised his hand and pointed east, then south, then west in turn. "The bureaucratic landlords of the Han lands, the tusi chieftains of Xining, the tribal headmen and nobles — they're all more or less the same."

"We can easily lump thousands of people like them under a simple label, but taken as individuals, there are good and bad among them too. They just share the same status. The difference between individuals might be as great as that between me and Bai Yingzi. Forget it..."

Halfway through, Liu Chengzong suddenly recalled that beating up Bai Yingzi had happened on their way home from Fish River Fort. "You don't know Bai Yingzi. Simply put, take the tusi of Xining — if Luo Rucai came, he'd probably kill them all the moment he entered Xining. If it were our father, he'd probably cooperate with them."

Chengyun curled his lip. "Can't cooperate. Even Chen Shiwen — he seems like a decent man, but sitting in that tusi seat, all he can do is torment the commoners. Paying people wages and then cheating them back — is that something a human being does?"

"On this point, I think much the same as you."

Liu Chengzong chuckled lightly. "Our family, truth be told, could have used some crooked ways and avoided rebellion altogether. It's because we want to set the world right that we're determined to fight the court to the end and seize the realm — not rebelling for the sake of seizing the realm."

"If it's the latter, I could easily outdo them in squeezing the common people. After all, the divine vessel does not necessarily go to the virtuous — he with strong soldiers and sturdy horses becomes the Son of Heaven."

"But to deliver the realm from its misery, we must make some progress. Eliminating landlords, chieftains, and nobles is our responsibility."

Having said this, Liu Chengzong quickly raised a hand and stressed to his younger brother: "Chengyun, I said eliminate this class, not eliminate the people who hold this status. They were born into it — it may not be their fault. It is simply that these statuses obstruct the development of history."

Chengyun did not fully understand, but he could roughly grasp his meaning. He did not know why, but when he heard the word 'history,' his eyes lit up. He thought Second Brother's words made sense and were very impressive.

At the same time, he felt that Second Brother had entrusted him with an extremely important historical mission.

But immediately after, Liu Chengzong shifted his tone: "As things stand now, however, we cannot yet eliminate the chieftains. We can only adopt a cooperative approach — win over one group, suppress another."

Chengyun stared wide-eyed and asked: "Why?"

"Because we lack men of talent."

Liu Chengzong spoke with great helplessness. He said: "The He-Huang region has a hundred thousand native people. If our power were great enough to seize the lands around the Western Sea, north of the sea, and occupy the He-Huang valley, we could abolish the chieftains. But if we abolish the chieftains, who will govern the common people?"

"Take back the landlords' fields, equalize land and remit taxes — who will directly govern the common people? If ten thousand soldiers are dispersed into the countryside, each man governing ten civilians, they become a new nobility. Is that our original intent?"

"We need a professional corps, every person like you, able to go among the common people and know what they want. In the army we have Discipline Officers. A qualified Discipline Officer can understand the hardships of fifty soldiers and correct deviant tendencies within the unit. The civilian world must be the same."

Liu the Lion spread his hands as he spoke: "Otherwise, if we eliminate these classes but cannot penetrate deep among the common people, the positions left vacant in civilian life will quickly be seized by powerful thugs and rogues. Those are the true fence-sitters."

Chengyun deeply agreed with these words and felt he had been thinking too simply. But immediately after, his face filled with distress: "Brother, I thought you were talking to me to ease my mind, but why do I feel... this matter is even harder? To govern a hundred thousand people requires two thousand such men. Where do we select them from? And how great would the expense be to maintain them?"

"The expense is not small, but the returns are enormous. Suppose a hundred thousand people can pay a hundred thousand taels in tax silver each year. Spending twenty thousand to support two thousand people doing this work is very worthwhile. Do you know what it means? We would be the first people in history capable of fully mobilizing the common people."

At this point, Liu Chengzong's expression suddenly became very serious, even tinged with regret: "I once asked Zhou Riqiang a question. I asked him, once the Great Ming is dead, does he know where we stand in history."

"At that time I was trying to win him over, and he answered that he might stand in the position of a historical sinner."

As Liu Chengzong said this, his face was full of disdain. He then asked: "Chengyun, do you know?"

Chengyun thought and thought, then shook his head: "I don't know."

"Given how righteously the Great Ming won the realm, and how strong its control over the localities was, even as heaven tilts and earth overturns, it is still very difficult for a situation like the late Tang and Yuan, with regional warlords carving up the land and fighting among themselves, to emerge. If we lose, it will be called a land overrun by mutton stench. The place history leaves for us will be behind Huang Chao."

"Impossible!" Chengyun shook his head very decisively. "We are far better than Huang Chao! We don't smash people to pieces and eat them."

Liu Chengzong, on the contrary, regarded this very lightly. He spread his hands and said: "We also fight on the move. You know how to handle dead warhorses — bleed them, cut them up, smoke and air-dry them, so they keep longer."

"My craftsmen don't even have time to stop and cast gate-cannons. Could he, Huang Chao, have built hundreds of stone mortars for pounding people? If he had that kind of time, he'd have long since built a few counterweight trebuchets and smashed the military governors to death."

"So if we lose and die, how much cleaner could we be than him?"

"But think about it." He gave a laugh full of mockery, then said with a solemn face: "If we win, and take one step forward — who are we?"

Liu Chengzong looked at Chengyun and nodded slightly, his skin prickling: "We are a powerful Central Plains empire, where both the preceding and succeeding dynasties raised armies to comfort the people and punish the tyrant, with no great division or great chaos — just like the Western and Eastern Han, stretching on for six hundred years!"