Chapter 246: A Straw Rope

Two months shy of the new year, Xining's weather was bitterly cold. Parts of the Huang River at Ju'er Bend had already frozen over. The first snow of this winter left a very bad impression on Liu Shizi.

Before winter set in, the central-army commander's tent He Huchen had gifted him was fitted with thick felt — warm enough, but it couldn't withstand the first snow.

The heavy snow collapsed the tent. Had Little Wind-Scout not woken him in the middle of the night, a fine tale of "Commander Lion Strips Naked and Wrestles the Blizzard" would surely have been left behind at Ju'er Bend.

But luckily, he was long accustomed to tent living. A foot of snow draped Ju'er Bend in silver-white, nearly burying every dugout's above-ground window.

If Liu Shizi hadn't run outside in the middle of the night, his troops might all have been trapped in their dugouts the next day, unable to get out.

For two days after, the Lion Army soldiers did nothing but shovel snow.

They used the snow to build a half-man-high snow wall outside the camp.

As the Lion Camp's hero, Little Wind-Scout was rewarded with one felt den, one sleeveless loop-button felt jacket, and four little fur loop-button boots. It raced wildly through the snow, a dog putting on human airs.

Chief of Ten Eyebrows didn't get such good treatment. The day the snow crushed the tent, it had run out early and sat watching as Second Master Liu greeted approaching danger in his sweet dreams.

When Liu Chengzong dashed out draped in a tiger skin, it just looked at him innocently and meowed.

Damn it. Second Master Liu was so furious he docked its pay for three months — no dried little fish for the whole winter.

After profound ideological re-education, Chief of Ten Eyebrows finally recognized its mistake.

But just as docking pay doesn't affect a Ming official's daily life, docking pay didn't affect Chief of Ten Eyebrows' standard of living either.

While the Lion Camp soldiers were out clearing snow, Chief of Ten Eyebrows roamed the camp's lanes, trespassed through empty doors, caught mouse after mouse, and laid them out neatly outside the dugouts, trading hard work for a few meager snacks from the soldiers.

Without Old Master Liu's dried little fish, this fellow not only failed to lose weight — it visibly fattened up.

Despite the lesson of the snow-collapsed tent, Liu Shizi still hadn't learned his lesson. He stubbornly kept living in the central-army tent, though this time it was reinforced with logs — even if stones fell from the sky, his tent wouldn't collapse now.

Mainly, the Lion Army's dugouts were all accounted for. When they built them, no one had prepared one for him. Now the ground was frozen solid, so digging a dugout on short notice wasn't easy.

Inside the central-army camp, apart from the commander's tent, he didn't have many choices.

The dugouts were all built to sleep three. The army's smallest unit was three men, and any supernumerary personnel had also freely grouped up to fill every room.

For instance, Sanlang shared a room with Bai Liuxi and Yun Jiaoyue — no spot for him.

There were actually two dugouts that still had space, but he wasn't willing to go.

The two dugouts belonged to Li Bei and Zuo Guangxian, and Wu Panlong and Ma Ke — both were one person short.

Li Bei and Ma Ke were dangerous characters. Liu Chengzong figured if he shared a room with them, it wouldn't be many days before one of them ended up dead.

Besides, sleeping alone in a big central-army tent was spacious.

A few days after the heavy snow, Chen Shifo came running back from Xining, bringing the Tibetan Sixteen Laws that he and six Xining licentiates had translated together.

Liu Chengzong found legal codes a very interesting thing.

Reading a set of laws, you could see the will of the ruler, and even more, you could see what had once happened on a piece of land.

Just like his own military code, which had a specific rule forbidding soldiers from tearing down commoners' door planks and wall bricks. Why would there be a rule like that?

Of course, because someone had actually done it.

More importantly, when Liu Shizi established his regulations, his starting point was safeguarding the soldiers' combat effectiveness while protecting the common people from the scourge of military disaster.

Not wantonly harming the weak was, of course, the baseline of being human, but it was also a way for Liu Shizi to safeguard combat effectiveness.

In northern Shaanxi, where there was no distinction between front line and rear, barely creating a bit of a stable environment for the soldiers greatly helped their mental health.

Whether military law or civil law, you could see what a ruler's base of support was.

In other words, this military law proved that within his domain, soldiers were the subjects of the law, but at the same time, it recognized that houses were the private property of commoners, with the right not to be violated.

Inside the central-army tent, his father Liu Xiangyu and his teacher Yang Dingrui, both well-versed in the Great Ming Code, sat beside Liu Chengzong around the charcoal stove, studying the Sixteen Laws that Chen Shifo had translated.

Chen Shifo sat across from them and explained, "This legal code can be traced back to the Twenty Laws of the Tubo period. After several rounds of cuts and revisions, the laws used by the Western Tribes from Qinghai Lake to Ü-Tsang are now a mess — they use a bit of everything."

"Out there, I've seen people using the Thirteen Laws, people using the Mongol Altan Law, and people using the old Northern Yuan laws."

After this brief introduction, Chen Shifo said to the three, "The various legal provisions are largely similar. The code that Lhazang sent has sixteen articles. Commander, read it first, and if anything is unclear, I'll explain."

Liu Chengzong nodded and began reading from the front together with his father and teacher.

The Sixteen Laws opened with a very long passage describing the events in Ü-Tsang over the past few decades — mainly the story of how the Mongols brought war and how the Tsangpa Khan family exterminated the brutal enemy and founded a great enterprise.

In particular, the current Tsangpa Khan's father had been like a deity from childhood, leading eight armies to attack hostile forces at the age of twenty-five.

When the Mongols occupied the entire Tibetan territory, the Tsangpa Khan led his army in resistance, descending like a heavenly god to defeat the Mongols and reclaim Ü-Tsang's Four Ru and Dokham's Three Ridges.

As for the current Tsangpa Khan, he was the incarnation of a deity, shining upon the human world like sunlight. If the divine incarnation did not obtain the throne, it would bring war and chaos.

Liu Xiangyu read a few lines, then turned to look at Yang Dingrui. The two of them were basically reading and laughing the whole time.

Liu Chengzong had already inquired extensively about the events of recent decades in Qinghai and Tibet, so his expression remained rather serious. He said to the two, "Apart from the divine right of kings, the events are basically true."

But when he reached the end of the family introduction, Liu Chengzong couldn't hold it in either — not because it was absurdly written, but because it was written too truthfully.

It described in detail the locations of the Tsangpa Khan's four most important fortresses, and through the first law, the Heroic Tiger Law, it laid out exactly how they waged war.

The best strategy was to not let the lotus petals wither on the outside, nor let the lark's nest be damaged on the inside — to take the eggs without startling the birds, meaning to subdue the enemy without fighting.

The middle strategy was to divide territory and sow discord, to make a noise in the east and strike in the west, but casting spells and poisoning were forbidden, while observing the terrain and gathering intelligence were required.

The worst strategy was to reorganize military affairs, appoint officers, manage supplies, and engage in battle.

What to do in what place — everything was written out clearly. In simple terms, even a chieftain who knew nothing of military affairs could take this legal code, follow it point by point, and get things more or less done.

As he read, Liu Chengzong said to the two, "Their army is divided into left, center, and right wings, with military banners as the guide and drum music as the signal, using long horns and thighbone trumpets."

"Each wing arrays its troops: matchlock soldiers at the left front, archers at the right front, spear-halberd-battleaxe bearers in the center, iron-chain wielders behind them, and a mixed horse-infantry formation bringing up the rear."

Having said this, Liu Chengzong looked up and asked Chen Shifo, "They border India — do they have bird guns?"

Chen Shifo didn't know.

His father Liu Xiangyu said, "Writing military tactics into the legal code — there aren't many people over there who know warfare."

Yang Dingrui added, "This is a legal code meant for local chieftains to read. There aren't many literate people over there."

Liu Chengzong kept reading very seriously, gradually gaining an understanding of the customs over there.

But Bai Yan had said that if he used this, Lhazang would give him the land north of the sea.

He didn't understand what Lhazang's intention was. Aside from the frequent appearance of corporal punishments like eye-gouging, knee-severing, tongue-cutting, limb-hacking, cliff-casting, and slaughter, this legal code had nothing else particularly novel about it.

Until he saw the blood price.

The blood price was based on the status of the deceased, high or low, noble or base, divided into upper, middle, and lower grades, each further subdivided into upper, middle, and lower, sorting people into nine total ranks.

From upper-upper to lower-lower, nine ranks in the upper grade, the highest blood price was the body's weight in gold, while the lowest for vagrants, women, blacksmiths, butchers, and beggars was a single straw rope.

Slaves were not included among them.

And in the laws of injury and atonement, when a lower person harmed an upper person, hands and feet were chopped off; a master harming a servant required no compensation; if a noble was harmed, the injurer had to pay one quarter of the noble's blood price as compensation.

Minor nobles, in matters that could not be clearly explained, could use oath-swearing to distinguish right from wrong, but golden geese, crows, black snakes, and bitches could not swear oaths.

Golden geese were monks, crows were the poor, black snakes were sorcerers, bitches were women — they needed to distinguish right from wrong by seizing stones from boiling oil or seizing stones from boiling mud.

This felt extremely familiar to Liu Chengzong; evidently, the customary law here had been heavily influenced by India.

He asked Monk Chen Shifo, "Regarding this part about blood price, are the other legal codes the same?"

Monk Chen Shifo replied with great deference, "The thirteen laws used by the Yellow Sect are basically the same. The difference is that after a person dies, an additional sum for Buddhist rites must be paid on top of the blood price. In the sixteen laws, this sum is included within the blood price."

Liu Chengzong did not look at this legal code again. He rose and paced inside the tent, then lifted the heavy felt tent flap. Cold air from outside poured into the tent, sweeping away all warmth in an instant. The distant snow mountains were blindingly white.

After pausing a moment, he turned to the few people and said, "Before this, I could never figure out why the Yellow Sect's Lhatsun would give me a copy of the Tsangpa Khan's legal code. Now I understand his intent."

Yang Dingrui was still studying the legal code very intently, saying as he read, "This was not written for ordinary people. If several legal codes are all largely the same, it means the locals have been using this kind of customary law for a very long time."

"No matter who holds power, they must give protection to nobles, headmen, and monks, ensuring they stand several grades above others."

Old Master Liu lit his pipe by the stove fire and asked Liu Chengzong, "What does the Lion think Lhatsun's intent is?"

Liu Chengzong said, "He wants to turn me into a slave master."

Shaking his head, he sat back down and laughed. "When I hadn't read these sixteen statutes, I thought Lhatsun wanted to set rules for me."

"But now it seems, perhaps in Lhatsun's view, he truly did give me a gift — a gift of legally enslaving the native tribes and Tibetan people."

As long as he accepted Lhatsun's investiture, he would don the outer garment of divinity. This army could integrate into the system, whether the sixteen laws or the thirteen laws, and the entire Lion Army would become slave masters of the upper three and middle three ranks.

Every man would gain immense power, exploiting the piety of others to wantonly squeeze out wealth.

Every noble, official, and monk on this land who benefited from the customary law would protect their power as if protecting themselves, forming a tight, vast net.

Ensuring that the common people, pious to the point of giving everything, would never be able to rise again for all eternity.

One could even say that Lhatsun had pointed out a bright road for him: merge into this system, do whatever he pleased in Haibei, and even if he could not defeat a stronger outside enemy in the future, he could still try to use this set of tools to absorb the enemy, making them degenerate.

Even if others would not merge in, he himself could still retreat to Ü-Tsang.

Liu Chengzong said nothing. His father only slowly held the pipe in his mouth, while his teacher focused intently on the legal provisions, trying to find something within them.

Only Monk Chen Shifo sat to the side, thought it over and over, and then spoke: "Commander, there's really no need to make it sound so ugly. It's hardly enslavement… it's quite suitable. The Tibetan people don't feel there's anything wrong with it either."

Liu Chengzong looked at Monk Chen Shifo as if looking at a monster.

"Commander, don't look at me like that. This thing can't be rooted out. No one has a way."

Monk Chen Shifo said, "And don't think that if you go and tell a slave to be a person, he'll actually become a person, become your soldier and work for you — impossible. Do you know what the last thing my father did before he died was? He took a whip and lashed me."

"He wanted to give all the family property to the monastery. I told him to leave a little for my eldest brother. The old man was so sick he couldn't even walk, but he still had the strength to whip me. Do you know why?"

Monk Chen Shifo pointed at his own heart, smiling miserably. "He believed his whole life, spent the family fortune. I said it was useless — who else would he whip but me?"

"It'll be the same when you go there. The Tibetan people won't believe you. He's had his hands and feet broken, sent his daughter off to worship Buddha. You say it's all false? He has no road back. He can only tell you to get lost, don't hinder his cultivation. You can save him in this life, but you can't save him in the next. The gods and Buddhas filling the snow mountains can save him in every life."

Liu Chengzong raised a thumb. Truly impressive.

He had still been oversimplifying things. Having someone knowledgeable at his side was indeed a tremendous help.

"You're right. Damn it, specialized skill in its craft!" Liu Chengzong's praise was not for Monk Chen Shifo. "All those people, generation after generation, studying the human heart — the human heart, they've truly figured it out completely."

Monk Chen Shifo nodded and said, "And you can't just look at the bad side of things. There are also many virtuous and respected good monks who build bridges and repair roads. Besides, monasteries are the only place where some of the lower-class people in the western Tibetan regions can change their fate. They can learn to read and study at monasteries."

Liu Chengzong laughed. "That, I don't agree with. Perhaps that was true on this land before, but now that I'm here, it won't be that way anymore."

"I know, many monks can do good deeds. But the good deeds they do are things anyone can do. Yet the evil deeds — the vast majority of those can only be done by exploiting the identity of a monk."

"You can also build a community school to impart knowledge. I can open civil examinations to let common people change their fate, establish government offices to build bridges and repair roads… They have their experience, and I have my experience. When I was a bad man, just by becoming a little better, even the Emperor could accept me."

Monk Chen Shifo's words brought Liu Chengzong no resistance whatsoever.

Quite the opposite — because of this sixteen-law code, Liu Chengzong became extremely energized.

"This truly is a wonderful place. Anyone who uses this thing, greedy for pleasure, is soft and easily bullied."

Liu Chengzong turned and pointed at the sixteen laws before Yang Dingrui, laughing wildly. "To expect that a place where slaves don't count as people, where a blacksmith's life is worth only a straw rope, could stop my army? A joke!"

Note:

The Sixteen Laws, referenced from Selected Ancient Tibetan Legal Codes: The Sixteen Laws and Thirteen Laws, 1994 edition.