Chapter 274: The Iron-Chain Bridge

The wind-horse flags snapped and fluttered; vultures circled in the misty clouds of the valley.

Old Qijia dragged his weary body, braced his hands on his knees, and lifted his head to gaze toward the mountaintop.

The summit was not far now. His chapped, red cheeks were whipped an iron blue by the cold wind. He panted out thick white plumes, wrapped his balding tiger skin tighter around himself, and gripped a round stone in a hand like old tree bark as he began climbing once more.

The jars and bottles on his body clanked and rattled; his knife and axe knocked together without pause.

Little Qijia was so exhausted his eyes had gone blank. His head sweltered under his sheepskin hat, and when he took it off, the sweat rose in a puff of white vapor. The moment the wind touched him, he shivered so violently he hurriedly jammed the hat back on and followed his master forward.

At last, the old man and the boy crested the summit. Old Qijia placed the round stone he had found today upon the peak, knelt in the year-round ice and snow, and bowed in devout prayer.

Little Qijia stood behind him, leaning on his six-foot hunting spear, staring blankly and stupidly as his master prayed.

The meaning of Qijia is dog shit.

Just as with Han customs, a lowly name helps a child survive, embodying the parents' hope that the child will not die young.

Old Qijia was born forty years ago in the Gongjo estate. In his youth, he became a monk at Champa Ling Monastery in Chamdo. Because the Khenpo who tonsured him was named Jampa, he was also called Jampa.

Life in the monastery was austere. Amid the endless daily chores, what the monk Jampa envied most were those rich sons who had endless tsampa to eat.

Later, war came. To support the Rinpungpa in their war against the Tsangpa, the three thousand monks of Champa Ling took up weapons and advanced into the snow region alongside Mongol reinforcements.

The chaos in Ü-Tsang began from that time. Two Depas, two sects, two Mongol armies — they slaughtered each other until the rivers ran red through the highland deep valleys. All the nobles, monks, commoners, and slaves were dragged into the quagmire of war, unable to escape.

Twenty years of war, as long as a man's entire life.

He renounced his vows during the war, married, had children, and struggled bitterly just to survive. When there were battles to fight, the family ate a little more; when there were none, they tightened their belts and ate a little less.

His eldest son grew to manhood, marched to war for a mouthful of tsampa, and died on the battlefield. His youngest son reached the far shore the moment he was born, was placed in a bag, and hung from a tree. His wife died in that difficult childbirth, and her body vanished without a trace down the river.

His daughter was snatched away by a passing army to who knows where. Even if she still lived in this world, it would be no better than being separated by death.

Because of the war, the monk Jampa became Qijia, hero of the Gongjo chieftain.

Yet this tiger skin, the symbol of a hero, was utterly insignificant compared to what he had lost in the war.

But the war did not end there. When the army of the Gelug sect was defeated by the Tsangpa, the King of Beri in Kham once more stirred up conflict.

Old Qijia sharpened his axe and spear in the dark of night. His heart was full of fury, fearless and unafraid. War could no longer take any family from him. He believed war would surely take his body and send his soul to the far shore to reunite with his family.

Yet he had still underestimated the cruelty of war.

This time, he lost his homeland and became a man of Beri.

The King of Beri was magnanimous, granting generous rewards — enough to feed a family — to those warriors who had resisted him but laid down their arms.

Old Qijia had endless tsampa to eat, clothes that would not wear out, and butter he could never use up. But there was no one left in the world to share these things with.

Even donating them to a monastery or repaying his old master had become a vain hope.

The Khenpo who had tonsured him had died an imperfect death, and the lord who had granted him the tiger skin had died terribly.

Old Qijia's age still advanced, and strength steadily drained from this body without end. This filled him with fear and agitation. At this moment, he found he could not calmly accept reaching the far shore.

He did not know what meaning his life held, aside from learning a body of skills and getting a crowd of people killed.

And so he found Little Qijia, a war orphan with the same name as his and a similar experience.

"Aba, didn't you say the fighting would never end?"

After Old Qijia rose, Little Qijia asked, "Then why do you still pray to the Buddha every day to stop the war?"

"I never pray for the war to stop. I only pray that the next peace lasts a little longer."

Old Qijia had long realized that war would never cease. The fighting would not go on forever, nor would it stay away forever.

And Little Qijia, born into war, had never seen what peace looked like for as long as he could remember.

The two made a patrol on the mountain, confirming that the valley on the other side of the Gequ River showed no unusual signs and still had cooking smoke rising. Only then did they traverse the difficult mountain path and return to their crude tent on the mountainside.

They were sentries of the Beri army on the mountaintop. Ever since the two armies faced off across the Gequ, every mountain pass had men like them — raising a flag if anything happened, with someone coming up the mountain every few days to deliver grain.

As early as when they were transferred from the rear to the front lines, they had heard that a Depon unit crossed the Gequ and was completely annihilated near the Danba estate.

The King of Beri was very displeased and threw a great tantrum in Markham, berating the nobles for being unable to do anything right.

He then ordered all army Depons to advance no further, to hold the defensive line, and to drag the war into the first snowfall.

But in recent days, Old Qijia, stationed high on the mountain, did not know what had happened. Military movements in the rear grew increasingly frequent, and the men bringing grain up the mountain came more often.

It was as if the Depon did not trust them, sending men up the mountain every day to ask whether there was still cooking smoke on the other side.

Old Qijia had asked many times, and today he finally got an answer from the soldiers below. They said word from the rear reported that the Han army had advanced northeast, crossed the Maqu River into the Lingtsang estate, and was now marching southeast along the Jinsha River, seemingly aiming to strike directly at the Beri heartland.

The frontline commanders did not know whether to turn back to reinforce. The twelve Depons deployed on the front line had originally wanted to discuss whether to return or stay, but after seven Depons decided to return, the remaining five, to avoid being encircled and annihilated, had no choice but to retreat.

Only now did Old Qijia, who had been stationed on the high mountain for a full month, understand: the cooking smoke he had seen these days was all made by those free slaves of the Danba estate. The Han army and the Mongol army had long since left this place.

His Depon was a commander determined to stay, but at this very moment, he too had no choice but to withdraw.

Because the Mongol army was massing toward Chamdo. Since their leader, Banyan Taiji, believed in the Yellow Hat sect, he reached an agreement with the monks of Champa Ling Monastery guaranteeing their safety. This allowed the Mongol army to occupy Chamdo, at the confluence of two rivers, without shedding a drop of blood, directly threatening the Beri army's left-rear supply route.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Liu Chengzong had encountered a problem he had fully expected: the Jinsha River.

The Beri army occupied every mountain pass, their defenses tight and their knowledge of the terrain thorough, making frontal maneuver difficult for the Lion Army. To thrust through the flank, there was only one choice: enter the Lingtsang estate on the eastern bank of the Jinsha River, which had not joined the war.

The Lingtsang estate's internal name was the Kingdom of Ling, founded by King Gesar. During the Northern and Southern Song dynasties, this estate had been the most powerful native chieftain in Kham.

In the Yuan dynasty, it became a tusi. In the early Ming, it surrendered the seal of authority granted by the Yuan court to Xu Yunde, a Vice Director of the Bureau of Appointments from Shaanxi, and pledged allegiance to the Ming dynasty.

The ancestor of the Dergé tusi had once been a military officer of the Lingtsang family. Because his daughter was born beautiful, she married the king, and the betrothal gift he demanded was the land a plow could furrow in one day. In the end, the great genius of the Dergé family drove an ox at a mad gallop, and the plow tip traced sixty li of land in a single day.

Thus came the present-day Dergé tusi.

Liu Chengzong leaned on his saber, standing atop a high peak, his expression grim as he gazed out at the Jinsha River. Across the broad river stretched an iron-chain bridge.

There were many iron-chain bridges on the Jinsha River, and a great number of them had been built by Tangtong Gyalpo, the founder of Gönchen Monastery and the teacher of Monk Wang's teacher.

Seeing how the common people struggled to cross the river and how many were swept to their deaths by the raging currents, the monk Tangtong Gyalpo, who had neither power nor wealth, went everywhere begging donations from nobles. In his lifetime, he used this money to build sixty wooden bridges and fifty iron-chain bridges across Kham, like a living saint.

But at this very moment, the owner of this bridge was making trouble for Monk Wang.

On the opposite bank of this iron-chain bridge were the assembled troops of the Lingtsang tusi, their sentry posts, and the fortress guarding the bridgehead.

Fighting between two rivers, Liu Chengzong had no choice but to cross the Jinsha River. Therefore, as soon as the strategy was set, he had sent men to contact the Lingtsang tusi to request passage.

This King of Ling, when Liu Chengzong had led his army south, had sent his headmen to offer him tribute.

So in Liu Chengzong's mind, getting Lin Cong to mobilize troops and fight the Béri for him would be difficult, but simply borrowing a path shouldn't be a problem.

The negotiations went fairly pleasantly. The Lin Cong chieftain demanded that Liu Chengzong grant him official seals and titles for his territory, and in return he would allow passage.

During the march of Liu Chengzong's army, he even dispatched Monk Wang to visit the Lin Cong King bearing gifts.

No one expected that once Dai Daozi's advance scout riders reached the riverbank, the other side had gone back on their word.

The Lin Cong King had already mustered troops over there and stockpiled mountains of timber and stone, planning to build fortifications.

Now the main army had arrived, only to be blocked by a single river, all of them halted near the noble estates in the southern bank valley. The nobles here were headmen under Gama, far more sensible than the Lin Cong King across the river.

Liu Chengzong stood atop a high mountain gazing at the opposite bank. The Lin Cong King also stood on the mountain across the way, looking out at the Lion Army across the Jinsha River.

The reason he had changed his mind was very simple — so simple it was almost laughable: Liu Chengzong was no longer the Liu Chengzong he had known.

At first, the Lin Cong King had no idea who Liu Chengzong was. During his southward march, his forces were so formidable that the King sent headmen to offer tribute, seeking peaceful coexistence.

Later, when Liu Chengzong took the city of Nangqên in a single day and seized the Nangqên Qoimo Palace, the King thought this man was far too overbearing — but admittedly, his army was just as overbearing.

After that, the standoff between Danba and Surmang was a bit far from the Lin Cong King's territory. He was busy cursing the Degé family and paid it no attention.

When word of Liu Chengzong came again, it was to request passage. He assumed Liu Chengzong had finished fighting and was heading home, so he happily agreed to let him through.

Up until this point, the Liu Chengzong in the Lin Cong King's mind was still the Liu Chengzong he believed him to be.

But then things changed. He sent men across the Jinsha River to inquire about the course of this war, and received an answer he never expected.

Liu Chengzong had barely clashed with the Béri King's army. He had only been busy confiscating noble lands in Gama's territory, and was calling on all slaves to join his army in exchange for grants of farmland.

The Lin Cong King was dumbfounded.

He had no personal grudge against Liu Chengzong. In fact, deep down — whether in terms of military strength, culture, or technology — he very much desired Liu Chengzong's help, because he could not suppress the local headmen, with the Degé family chief among them.

But Liu Chengzong confiscating noble lands and calling on slaves to join his army — that was different.

This was digging up the very roots of the nobility!

Even at this point, the Lin Cong chieftain still had no intention of going to war with Liu Chengzong. He merely hoped that by offering this help, he could secure from Liu Chengzong a promise that Lin Cong would remain unchanged for ten thousand generations.

It was only when Liu Chengzong sent Monk Wang bearing gifts to visit that the Lin Cong chieftain finally could endure it no longer.

Liu Chengzong had actually already made contact with the monks of the Degé family!

Furious beyond restraint, the Lin Cong King launched a massive mobilization of nobles within his territory, dispatched troops to blockade the iron-chain bridge, and on the other hand sent men to contact Döndrub Dorje in Markham, hoping the Béri army could annihilate Liu Chengzong on the banks of the Jinsha River.

He feared the ambitious Degé family above all else. This family, once loyal headmen to his ancestors, had now ceased paying him tribute. Instead, by being neighbors with Döndrub Dorje, they had procured large quantities of weapons and armor from Sichuan and organized a terrifyingly formidable armed force.

Of course, that armed force was nothing compared to Liu Chengzong's army — but Liu Chengzong was on the other side of the Jinsha River, while the Degé family stood on the same soil beneath his own feet.

It was all the Lin Cong King's sensitive and fragile inner drama.

Liu Chengzong was utterly baffled by his behavior, but in truth, if not for the Lin Cong King's strange actions, the Béri army likely would never have known of his movement at all.

Before leaving Danba, Liu Chengzong had Basang's slave army cook meals every day at the standoff front line... this was his habit. In his view, even a repositioning meant to draw the enemy out required deliberately laying decoy troops that would eventually be seen through.

Delay them by a day or two, three or five days — only when the enemy discovered the ruse would they take the bait.

But as it happened, because the Dainba Depön army had been completely annihilated, Döndrub Dorje had issued orders to the front line forbidding any advance by even a single inch. As a result, at every mountain pass along the four-hundred-li defensive line, no one had any intention of moving forward.

Naturally, no one crossed the Gé River to probe his true strength either.

People simply watched the cooking smoke. They watched until Master Basang had nearly eaten through all the grain Liu Chengzong had left him, and still the anticipated enemy had not launched a major frontal breakthrough.

On the mountain.

Cao Yao shook his head. "We can't use the cannons. If we elevate the barrels, we might hit the enemy troops on the far bank, but this river is three hundred paces wide. The Lion Cannons can't hit accurately at this range — what if we destroy the bridge?"

Liu Chengzong pondered for a moment, then said, "If we find a way to send troops across to the other bank, how many men do you estimate it would take to seize the bridge?"

Cao Yao sized up the four or five hundred defenders on the opposite bank and frowned. "A hundred and eighty men for a forced crossing, and we'd need at least one boat to get the firearms across and up onto that mountain."

He pointed to a hilltop on the far bank. "That spot — it's perfectly positioned to fire down on their fort. No one would be able to come out."

Liu Chengzong nodded and ordered his guards, "Have Dai Daozi search north along the riverbank for boats. There are too many hidden reefs in this river — if he finds a boat, don't bring it by water. Drag it overland. As for Monk Wang... never mind, have Gama come instead."

Liu Chengzong had originally wanted to send Monk Wang over again, but he sensed that the Lin Cong King was deeply annoyed by Monk Wang, who hailed from Degé territory. He decided instead to have Gama send someone to the far bank to deliver an ultimatum to the Lin Cong King: "I am giving him one last chance. Pull his troops back ten li and clear the bridgehead. Otherwise, he had better pray I never make it across for the rest of his life."

The man Gama sent quickly crossed the bridge to deliver the message. Moments later, he came rushing back like a gust of wind, his expression terrified, and relayed the reply to Gama, who then passed it on to Liu Chengzong through Monk Wang.

"Commander, they say they have already informed Döndrub Dorje. The Béri King's army will soon trap us here."

Gama spoke with great urgency, and Monk Wang translated with equal haste.

Liu Chengzong's expression was a sight to behold. He looked at Cao Yao, then at Wang Wenxiu. All three of them broke into grins, mouths agape. "No need to cross the river — there's actually such good news?"