Chapter 241: Disrupting the Market

Source of *The Stubborn Bandit*:

On the northern slopes of Sun-Moon Mountain, south of Kuer Bay, lived many tribal folk.

Among them was a chieftain named Gongbu Duoji, the most revered leader within fifty li of this mountain range.

His followers and troops were few — just one branch among the many horse-tribute tribes, delivering forty fine horses to the imperial court each year.

His standing as the acknowledged leader of the mountain's tribal folk rested on a single thing: seniority.

Gongbu Duoji was born in the ninth year of the Wanli reign and was now forty-nine — a rare long-lived man on this land, which earned him the alternate name Cirang Duoji.

Yet on this mountain, those who had lived as long as he had were not entirely without precedent.

Gongbu Duoji's prestige stemmed mainly from the year he turned fourteen, when he followed his father into battle in the emperor's service.

That year, the court dispatched troops to suppress the sea bandit Huoluochi. Twenty-two tribal divisions of Xichuan contributed nine hundred elite riders and seven thousand foot and horse troops to aid the government army in attacking the Mongols.

Back then, Gongbu Duoji's people still lived on the southern slopes of Sun-Moon Mountain, where a large tribal settlement stood.

Upon receiving the court's mobilization order, his father mustered four hundred troops and marched to the lands south of the Yellow River. Joining the great tribal host, they struck from all sides across Xichuan, fighting all the way to White Stone Cliffs, sending Huoluochi wailing for his parents.

Now, on Sun-Moon Mountain, no one else remained who had taken part in that great battle.

His stockade, too, had moved from the southern slopes — with their richer fields and ample sunshine — to the resource-scarce northern slopes. In the scattered clashes after the great war, his clansmen had died or drifted apart; barely more than seven hundred souls remained.

Among them were a few households of Han people who had fled Xining to escape the summer tax and autumn grain levies.

These years had not been easy for them.

For as long as Gongbu Duoji could remember, life had never been easy — it was just that these years had brought an exceptional share of hardship.

As "cooked barbarians" living at the very edge of the Son of Heaven's reach, they had to deliver tribute horses to the court each year; and closer to home, they likewise had to pay *tianba* — a tenth of their harvest — to the resurgent Mongol chieftain Little Lazun.

It was... an unbearable burden.

People were helpless against this situation. All seven of their official stockades, rallying every man who could fight, could barely scrape together a force of just over a thousand.

Of those thousand-odd men, perhaps only two hundred could truly be called soldiers.

Yet just days ago, the headmen of the mountains had rushed one after another to visit his stockade, recounting what they had seen below the mountain — as if overnight, an endless sea of tents had sprung up in the river valley, spreading like wild grass on the high plateau, stretching to the limits of sight.

That government troops were encamped in the river valley was not what mattered. What mattered was that they were not government troops.

A man who called himself "Knife-Carrier" had climbed the mountain into the stockade. After asking about their population, horse tribute, *tianba*, and the surrounding tribal divisions, he left behind a single sentence.

From this day forward, all the land here belonged to his commander — a man named Liu Chengzong.

No one knew who Liu Chengzong was. People tried to seek out the banner troops of the Kuer Bay Hundred-Household Station — in the past, they had often bribed those banner troops to buy the tea they paid as tribute to Little Lazun.

But those banner troops had been transferred away.

All that remained were these well-armed, sturdy soldiers, and the dugout shelters that sprouted day after day in the river valley.

But the headmen had a way to deal with this Liu Chengzong they had never met.

At least, they believed they had a way.

Gongbu Duoji stood on the long veranda of his stockade's three-story stone tower, leaning on a wooden railing tied with colorful ribbons, gazing up the mountain in melancholy unease.

His stockade was a great stronghold built on the sloping ground of a mountain pass, where several wooden blockhouses and dozens of dwellings clustered around the towering stone tower.

On the distant mountain, gongs, drums, and bells rang out. Lamas and shamans donned their ancestral robes of bright satin, strapped command flags to their backs, put on masks and helmets made of skulls, and brandished all manner of weapons as they danced around several criminals soon to be executed.

A dozen-odd tribal soldiers in thick, heavy robes raised their matchlocks skyward and fired. The vast clouds of gunpowder smoke scattered swiftly on the mountain wind.

Those matchlocks were nearly as old as Gongbu Duoji himself.

They boasted the finest forged barrels made during the Wanli years, paired with bizarrely shaped stocks whittled by the bare hands of northwestern mountain folk.

Some barrels had been crudely grafted onto crossbow bodies, and a few had, in the course of modification, regressed from matchlocks to touchhole guns.

Those were weapons brought back from campaigning for the imperial court.

They were beseeching the gods to send down hailstones, to drive back these soldiers encamped in the river valley.

The red-furred pony squad leader, absorbed in patrolling his domain, had no idea how many shamans in the dense mountain forests thirty li away were straining every sinew to pelt him with chunks of ice.

Liu Chengzong sat on horseback, fingering the red tassel on his red-flag riding vest, his gaze sweeping from the boundless azure sky down to the ever-snowcapped peaks, marveling at the beautiful scenery.

Apart from the cold, everything was splendid.

Best of all, there was military farmland here belonging to the Xining Guard. Since the military households couldn't farm it all anyway, he had already sent men with some choice highland barley seeds to his elder brother. Sown before winter set in, they would yield a harvest by the sixth month next year.

Now he was on his way to his own Armory Bureau.

The so-called Armory Bureau was still just a plot of demarcated land — not even the dugout shelters were finished — but Cao Yao was impatient to start producing weapons.

He had already run off with his half-finished drawings of the Wind-Chasing Lance to find Shi Chengwo. Unable to bear his pestering, Shi Chengwo had sent someone to call Liu the Lion over to jointly make an important decision on armory standards and specifications.

Soon, he would be able to see the dugout shelters of the Logistics Battalion.

A so-called dugout shelter was a square pit dug below ground level, with walls built up from brick, stone, or plastered earth on all four sides, roofed over at the top, and fronted by earthen steps — a crude dwelling meant to save timber.

With winter approaching, there was not enough time to build barracks for the entire army, so they had no choice but to resort to this. Still, they took enough care in construction to ensure that the large *kang* sleeping platforms inside the dugouts were all heated by flues with chimneys.

The native chieftains' monopoly on Xining's commerce had its advantages for Liu Chengzong — at least it meant sending Chengyun to negotiate with the chieftains could secure bulk goods.

In Liu Chengzong's mind, this was simple, and he believed he could get a very favorable price. But before he could even enter the Logistics Battalion, he spotted Chengyun riding back from the direction of Xining with four guards.

"Well? What price can they offer for the grain and coal we need?"

Chengyun wore no armor, only a Guanning Army helmet, relying entirely on the fur lining inside the neck guard to keep out the cold. Seeing Liu Chengzong waiting for him, he dismounted and shook his head. "They can't offer anything."

"Why? Couldn't agree on a price?"

"It's not about the price. There's none in the city — none even with a knife to their throats."

Rubbing his hands in frustration and hopping on the spot, Chengyun walked with Liu Chengzong toward the camp and explained the whole story. "I met Li Tianyu. For over a decade now, the grain passing through Xining's markets each year has hovered around ten thousand *dan*."

"In places far from the city, the common folk are self-sufficient. Ten thousand *dan* of grain are brought to market to sell, and ten thousand *dan* are bought to eat."

"Over time, each household plants a portion of their land with grain, and the rest with fruit, vegetables, or oil-seed rape and hemp, which they can press for oil to transport and sell farther afield."

Chengyun said, "That's all the grain in the city. We've already bought up everything that could be bought. Now the grain market is empty, and the merchants are discussing with Li Tianyu about going to Lanzhou to buy grain."

Liu Chengzong genuinely had not anticipated this problem, but it was easy to grasp. He nodded. "Then next year. We'll talk to the chieftains later and encourage the common folk to plant more grain. We'll buy it... No coal either?"

Chengyun nodded with the same wry smile. "Same as Yan'an. There's some shallow coal in the mountain forests — nearby villagers dig enough for their own use. The only properly worked coal pit is at a place called Qiaoyu Fort, up by the Beichuan Great Wall, not far from Chieftain Chen's territory."

"Over fifty households mine that seam together, producing about ten million jin of coal a year? Basically, that's enough to cover the common folk in Xining who specifically buy coal."

Chengyun then rattled off a calculation with great confidence: "If we lay out six thousand dugout shelters, three men per shelter, burning five to ten jin of coal a day, and figure on the low side for a hundred days, that's three to five million jin. We'd need to stockpile at least six million jin of coal for one winter."

"Still, coal is easier to sort out than grain."

Chengyun nodded with a very capable air: "This deal runs five thousand to eight thousand taels a year at the official price. I sounded them out — they'd take seven thousand. Add another five hundred taels as a reward, make it sixty-five hundred, and they'll find a way to get it to us no matter what."

Liu Chengzong nodded slowly, then smiled: "Money is no problem. Having somewhere to spend it is a good thing. As long as we can get the money out the door, sooner or later we'll get it all back."

"Ha, brother, you'll have somewhere to spend it soon enough."

Chengyun laughed at that: "Iron and sulfur — we can use both, right? On the east bank of the Beichuan River, farther east from Chieftain Chen's territory, that's where the old Xining Beishan Ironworks stood. Built in the twenty-fourth year of Wanli, it smelted thirty thousand jin of iron a year. They can smelt sulfur there too."

Thirty thousand jin a year?

Liu Chengzong shook his head. That could hardly be called much.

He asked, "Can it go higher?"

"I asked around a bit. It can, but it's tricky. There's actually quite a lot of iron around here, it's just mixed with impurities, so not many people want to work it. We'll keep looking — many grains of sand build a pagoda."

Liu Chengzong pursed his lips and nodded, his face full of dissatisfaction.

In his vision, the Lion Camp's troops were to gradually transition from mainly using cold weapons to mainly using firearms.

After all, they had come to the Great Northwest — they would never lack gunpowder again in this lifetime. Firearms offered decent power and were easy to operate, which made them relatively more suitable for the Lion Army after its expansion.

But Xining's total iron-smelting output was only this much, and the local area still needed to supply everyday items like farming tools for the common people. What could be allocated to him was probably only thirty percent.

Enough to arm one squad-leader unit a year.

Before arriving in Xining, he had always worried that his craftsmen might be shorthanded, and had even thought about having them train new skilled artisans.

Turned out he had been overthinking it — their production capacity was already in surplus.

To meet his troops' iron needs, he would have to set up at least two more ironworks of this scale that belonged entirely to him.

As the two were talking, Cao Yao had already come out and shouted, "Commander! Chengyun! You're both here — what are you standing outside chatting for? It's freezing, come in quick!"

Lion Liu answered and led Chengyun toward Shi Chengwo's chiliarch dugout.

The supply battalion now had two chiliarchs: one was Shi Chengwo, in charge of ordnance, and the other was Lin Wei, who helped Chengyun manage supplies.

Lin Wei had once run Wangzhuang single-handedly; he had rich experience managing people and farming colonies, and handling supplies posed no great problem for him either — he was a versatile man.

A chiliarch's dugout was built a little larger than an ordinary one, but at the moment Shi Chengwo's place was crowded with men like He Xin, the musket-making squad commander, and when Lion Liu and Chengyun went in, it felt rather cramped.

Several men were sitting on the ground around a wooden table, arguing over a few drawings on it. When they saw Liu Chengzong, they all rose and saluted.

"Sit. Looked like you were having a lively discussion — what were you talking about?"

As he spoke, Liu Chengzong sat down in the middle, glanced at the drawings on the table, and laughed.

On the length, in plain sight, a clerk from Cao Yao's side had written the characters for one zhang.

The Wind-Chasing Lance that Cao Yao could not stop thinking about — it was a jingal after all!

Shi Chengwo said, "Commander, this Wind-Chasing Lance from the Liao garrison is similar to the great Western barbarian musket described by Master Kuixin of Sanyuan. However, it does not use a matchlock, only a touchhole, and its construction is crude and clumsy. I think we would be better off simply making the great musket."

Cao Yao frowned and cupped his hands toward Liu Chengzong: "That's not how it is, Commander. It looks clumsy, but it's easy to load and fire — anyone can shoot it. It takes a heavy charge, the barrel is long, it shoots far, and the ball is big. I used one of these to drop a horse dead from beyond two hundred and fifty paces."

"When we enter Qinghai and fight the sea bandits, we dismount and form ranks, and they dismount and form ranks too. At nearly a hundred paces, before they've even drawn their bows, one shot from this punches through three to five men. We can't get a hundred cannons in a short time, but a hundred of these — we can have them by next spring, and they'll be ready to use right away."

Cao Yao held it in the highest esteem. Looking at Liu Chengzong, he said, "Just one volley — before the battle is joined, you kill three to five hundred men. Then fall back into the formation, load canister, and when you get the chance, move up close and blast them. If the enemy officers are in front of their lines, never mind anything else — a hundred lances firing together, one way or another they're dead."

To be honest, Liu Chengzong did not think there was anything wrong with Cao Yao's thinking.

Setting aside the memory of how feeble jingals were against dispersed troops in the nineteenth century, in this era, this thing genuinely served as a firepower supplement that fell between musket and cannon, between solid shot and grapeshot.

Applied properly, it could indeed play a role on the battlefield.

Besides, the Mongols were not only capable of riding around on horseback — they could fight on foot in formation just as well.

Seeing him lower his head to study the drawing in thought, Cao Yao wore a sly smile and urged, "Commander, this tactic works. I thought of it after observing the foot camp and the cavalry camp."

"The foot camp and cavalry camp?" Liu Chengzong looked up, surprised. "The three new training camps were set up to drill the specialized skills of infantry, cavalry, and artillery. What were you doing going to watch the other two camps?"

"Tch!"

Cao Yao curled his lip. "Training camps train skills. An artilleryman's skills are only so much — the key lies in tactics. Learning to fire a cannon or a musket is easy; learning when to fire a cannon or a musket, now that is profound learning!"

"Who does my artillery camp fight? The sea bandits and the Tatars don't have cannons, so isn't it the foot camp and the horse camp we'd be fighting? I call this deep infiltration of the enemy camp to gather intelligence, Commander."

Cao Yao gestured very seriously across the table: "Over at Wang Wenxiu's, they've summed up multiple experiences of infantry counter-charges. Most enemy troops start to quick-march between a hundred and fifty and seventy paces. Outside that range they conserve strength and move very slowly."

"The horse camp is about the same, just a bit faster."

With that, he patted the drawing lightly: "This thing — it's perfect for killing them all while they're still ambling along slowly."

Liu Chengzong raised a hand toward Cao Yao, a smile on his face but at a loss for words. He turned his head to Shi Chengwo and said, "Then make a few lances first. Master Shi knows artillery specifications — we need to work out a standard specification for the musket as well. Same ball and charge, what effect does barrel length have on range? Same barrel length, what effect does the charge have on range?"

"We have cannons, so the ball doesn't need to be too big — just make sure it can kill a man. One zhang is too long and too clumsy. We can test out suitable specifications for both the new bird musket and the new-pattern great musket."

Having said that, Liu Chengzong finally turned his head toward Cao Yao: "General Cao, I suggest you hurry up and train a suitable artillery camp commander for me, and get yourself to the central army camp as soon as possible. Training officers is what you ought to be doing."