Chapter 338: Grand Immersive Drama

From the first day of the first month of the sixth year of the Chongzhen reign, the tusi of Xining acted as though they'd all been handed a Qinghai Grand Marshal trial card.

Every day at the fourth ke of the yin hour, the morning bell hanging in the new city's bell-and-drum tower would toll, and the entire city would shake as if an earth dragon were turning over.

That was the Grand Marshal's waking hour. The four battalions and twelve sentry posts within the city would form ranks along the main street, each led by their guard officers, and begin running with thunderous momentum.

Qi Guoping had been so frightened the night before that he was restless and uneasy, unable to close his eyes until the yin hour, when he finally drifted off and dreamed a nightmare of being dragged to the execution ground.

Half-asleep, he was woken by the guard outside his door. He touched his neck and thought, thank goodness it was a dream — then immediately heard the clatter of armor outside and the guard urging him and his wife to get up, which scared him half to death.

Only when he ran outside did he realize the pitch-black streets seemed to hold the entire city's population. People were arrayed in military formations along the main street. The tusi were terrified; some even thought this was a campaign and cursed inwardly at the excess — attacking our homes, and now they're drafting us into the army?

But afterward, when everyone ran from the main street up onto the city wall and began circling this five-li city at a run, the tusi finally relaxed.

Over the next few days, Qi Guoping joined the morning run every day and gradually began to see the pattern.

The new city's Children's Camp, prefectural academy teachers and students, soldiers, and kitchen staff — over three thousand people in all — rose every day at the fourth ke of the yin hour and began their morning run at the sixth ke. Each battalion had a fixed running route and formation, accompanied by military music and drums, a truly spectacular sight.

The Children's Camp alone was divided into three formations by age. The smallest children only had to run in formation from the Children's Camp to the city gate and back. The kitchen staff and slightly older children would go up onto the wall at the east gate, run to the north gate, descend, and return to camp to get busy.

The elderly, women, and the prefectural academy's junior school students just beginning their basic education followed the column up onto the wall at the west gate and ran to the east gate before descending.

The remaining students and teachers of the academy's middle and upper schools, along with the city garrison, would mount the wall at the west gate, run two full circuits along the wall, then descend at the west gate and return to their respective camps and academy to eat.

After staying a few days in the new city, Qi Guoping discovered that Liu Chengzong was not a normal person, and by extension, no one in the entire city could manage to be normal either.

In the whole new city, there were no wine shops or tea houses, no theaters or poetry societies, let alone gambling dens or dance halls or any place of pleasure — nothing at all. The people in the city did different jobs, but the ones managing them were all military officers.

Even the old men and women in the city had to join the morning run.

For the first three days of the sixth year of Chongzhen, Qi Guoping accompanied Liu Chengzong in handing out New Year's money to the children and students who came to pay their New Year's respects, all led over by their teachers to kowtow.

Qi Guoping was curious to see the Grand Marshal's generosity with New Year's money, but as it turned out, the Grand Marshal hadn't minted any lucky copper coins for the children at all. When someone came to pay respects, he simply gave them a second- or third-hand Tibetan bow or Mongol bow, tied with a red cord and accompanied by two forged iron arrowheads.

Liu Chengzong said that if evil spirits dared to come, they should just shoot them dead.

Whether in the Children's Camp or the academy, the city's population was overwhelmingly young. With ample manpower outside the city, they weren't needed for production, so their main daily task was study — there was almost no one who was illiterate.

But none of them had much real scholarship either. The vast majority's cultural level was limited to just beginning the Four Books and Five Classics and having a rough grasp of the Arithmetic Classic. Their specialty, however, was reciting and writing out the *Practical Record of Military Training* from memory; as long as there weren't too many wrong characters, mastering that counted as completing basic education.

This wasn't even something Liu Chengzong had mandated. Fortunately, the Grand Marshal's residence guards were quite approachable, and upon asking, Qi Guoping learned that when the Marshal's residence first arrived, they lacked grassroots instructors, so all the basic-education teachers came from the Zuantianmao Academy.

The Zuantianmao Academy was founded in Yan'an Prefecture in northern Shaanxi. Its teaching staff was weak, its enrollment scope was narrow and relied entirely on recommendations from roving bandits, and it was a specialized academy with guaranteed job placement upon graduation — though the employment prospects were rather narrow, with the matching job being a rebel squad leader.

This was all they knew, so this was all they could teach for basic education.

The entire city was like one big military camp. The recreational activities for men and women, young and old, consisted of archery, horseback riding and hunting, wrestling and hand-to-hand combat, and listening to stories and watching plays.

Qi Guoping went to listen to the stories. They were all tales from the northern Shaanxi drought, urging people to cherish those around them, train diligently, be able to protect themselves and their families when trouble came, and be ready for war at all times.

In this respect, generals were generals and commoners were commoners. Qi Guoping couldn't put himself in the shoes of northern Shaanxi famine victims and impoverished commoners, so he found it rather dull.

The play performed on the sixth day of the first month, however, was extremely good. It was nothing like the things they used to watch in tea houses and theaters. The scale was enormous — Liu Chengzong mobilized the entire city to stage a grand immersive drama of the Jisi Incident.

Liu Chengzong cast actors on the spot. Shatu Taiji, who had come as an envoy, was seized to play the Later Jin's Hong Taiji invading the border; deserters from the Nine Garrisons played Nine Garrisons reinforcements. The tusi were each assigned roles as officials and military officers involved in the Liaodong relief campaign, complete with attack-and-defense drills.

The children of the Children's Camp and the city's old, weak, women, and children played the commoners of Beijing, practicing fleeing from disaster, with military officers beside them telling them what to bring when evacuating and marching.

Students wore dragon robes in the streets to play the Chongzhen Emperor imprisoning the Liaodong relief ministers. The whole bunch of tusi didn't even need to rehearse — after all, there wasn't much they could do anyway. It was just frontier troops shouting at them about hunger, mutinying, deserting, and waiting for the court's punishment. The immersion was intense, and by this point, everyone was already getting angry.

Whether in their real identities or their roles, none of them could produce grain or make the frontier troops obey.

Of course, some things also diverged from historical fact. Although everyone had character scripts, none of the ministers played by these tusi could last until the stage where they were thrown into prison by the Chongzhen Emperor.

The minor tusi Li Hongyuan played Wu Zimian, who didn't care about the soldiers starving, leading to a mutiny of the Yansui Garrison's frontier troops. In the process of suppressing the mutiny, the frontier troops put a scabbard to his neck and finished him off.

Tusi Zhao Yu played Hou Shilu, who spent the entire day running around the city with no grain to eat, exhausting his mount until it foamed at the mouth. According to the script, he still had to lead troops beneath the city walls to let a Later Jin soldier land a mace blow on his head. He threw down his hat, refusing to go on, and was finished off on the spot by the Embroidered Uniform Guard.

Li Tianyu got a script for Man Gui. He wanted to win and knew that Man Gui had called for the defenders on the wall to fire cannons, which caused friendly-fire casualties, so he didn't dare fight beneath the walls and was directly thrown into prison. He tried to cheat and demanded a do-over, but as a result, for straying too far from the city wall on his own, the academy student playing Huai Zong suspected him of colluding with the enemy and strictly ordered the Ministry of War not to dispatch reinforcements. He was surrounded and annihilated by Shatu Taiji playing Hong Taiji, and in the end, his corpse wasn't even collected, nor was he posthumously honored or promoted.

Qi Guoping played the Shanxi Grand Coordinator Geng Ruji. He endured it when his personal guards shouted about hunger, ran to two mound-platforms outside the new city to demand grain from the county magistrate, and when the magistrate refused, he shot the magistrate with a mound-platform arrow in a fit of rage.

Then, upon hearing that the Chongzhen Emperor was going to throw him in prison, he incited a mutiny on the spot, used a scabbard to take down the Sixteen playing the eunuch, and even wanted to lead troops to attack Beijing, becoming the only major official in the game to be torn apart by chariots by the emperor before the battle was even over.

Chen Shiwen, on the other hand, had a great time. He played the Minister of War, ordering these great tusi — whom he could previously only look up to — to run around frantically like dogs. He was absolutely delighted. Whoever disobeyed, he'd send eunuchs to arrest them. The orders he issued were more or less tinged with personal feelings, and he single-handedly propped up the Ministry of War's performance during the Jisi Incident.

In any case, after playing through this chaotic great battle, few of the tusi were happy. Every one of them was exhausted as a donkey and hadn't even met a good end. Each sank into deep thought, especially when considering the current situation in He-Huang — they couldn't even muster the energy to eat.

The city's soldiers, students, children, women, and elderly were also worn out. For them, this kind of battle reenactment didn't have much of a game element; it was more about using the game to conduct a large-scale camp drill, evacuation exercise, and march training.

Shatu Taiji, however, was overjoyed. This fellow was genuinely playing and had never played such an exhilarating game in his life. At dinner that evening, he kept pestering Liu Chengzong, asking if there was a chance to play another round — one about Ligdan Khan attacking Guihua City, and he wanted to play his older brother.

Partly, Shatu Taiji genuinely enjoyed this novel form of entertainment, but partly, this Mongol princeling had his own scheme: he deliberately cultivated an image at the Grand Marshal's residence of being clumsy and obsessed with fun, to leave himself a way out.

Outsiders didn't understand the Chahar's current state, but Shatu Taiji did. In truth, ever since the western campaign against the Tümed, the Mongol Khan's court occupying the Tümed Plain was no longer truly Chahar.

The so-called Eight Banners of Chahar were the Kesigten, Khuuchid, Aokhan, Naiman, Sünid, Üzemchin, Alagchud, and Jüyid tribes.

Among them, the Kesigten were the descendants of the former Kheshig. Their leader was called Sonom, and although he had also been beaten up by Khutugtu Khan, he still followed him.

The former leader of the Aokhan tribe was Little Daiqing, who was mistakenly killed by Ming forces a few years ago. The leader now was Little Daiqing's son, Sonom Dügüreng.

The Naiman tribe was the old Naiman tribe of the past. Their chief was Günchüg Taiji, who was both of the Borjigin clan and Khutugtu Khan's second brother-in-law.

With the Five Great Camps of Chuwa having been pincered and annihilated, and the Khorchin having submitted to the Later Jin, the Aokhan and Naiman tribes were caught between the Later Jin and the Chahar. Hoping to mediate a ceasefire, they sent envoys to the Later Jin.

Hong Taiji sent an envoy back to Khutugtu Khan, saying he wouldn't negotiate with his subordinate tribes — if they wanted to exchange envoys, it had to be between the two of them directly. Khutugtu Khan accurately extracted the message Hong Taiji wanted him to receive: the two tribes had betrayed him.

He raised his army in fury. Of the Eight Banners, the Aokhan and Naiman tribes defected to the Later Jin.

The leaders of the Sünid and Üzemchin tribes, put off by the Khan's erratic behavior — his forceful religious conversions and self-destructive infighting — decided they'd had enough of him and led their tribes far away to the northern deserts and beyond, far from the conflict. The Chahar painfully lost four banners.

The Alagchud and Jüyid tribes were shattered during the Khan's western campaign against the Tümed in the Mongol civil war. Khutugtu Khan painfully lost six banners.

By this point, aside from the former Kheshig Kesigten and the Khan's personally led Khuuchid tribe, the Mongols still around Khutugtu Khan had been replaced more than once. Many were minor chieftains picked up along the way, captured and surrendered troops from the Three Tümen of the Right Wing, and the like.

Shatu Taiji had watched in a daze as this grand situation crumbled into what it was now. The Five Great Camps of Chuwa were disobedient — attack them! Victory. Two tribes wouldn't submit — attack them! Victory. Westward to strike the Tümed — victory. Winning and winning, until he looked around and there was no one left.

To this day, he still didn't understand why things had turned out this way, but he knew one thing: the Chahar had never been as weak as they were now.

Shatu Taiji had originally thought he would go back and advise his elder brother to attack the Grand Marshal's residence, but the situation here… how to put it… it seemed, it seemed that even the cooks, old men, and children in the new city could hold their own against the Chahar.

What's more, the training of these children and old men was even more professional than the Chahar's. Right now, the Chahar's warhorses were so starved their ribs were showing. They'd thrown away their pots on the road precisely because the horses were either dying of hunger or being eaten by starving men — there was simply no need to even think about drilling troops.

Most crucially, Shatu Taiji had also accompanied Liu Chengzong down to the camps to inspect drills twice. The troops Liu Chengzong had stationed outside the city were all elite units. There were no intimidating charges or musket and cannon drills — it was purely marching practice.

Liu Chengzong and Shatu Taiji marched along with them, leading warhorses, donkeys, and mules on foot for a hundred li a day. When they reached their destination at night, they made camp, ate as they normally would, rested as they normally would, as if it were nothing.

Even marching along the flat river valley, walking from dawn until night, Shatu Taiji was nearly dead from exhaustion — and that was with him riding a horse for part of the way.

When it was time to eat, he stared even harder — he had always thought the lavish fish and meat were the Marshal's manor New Year's Eve feast, but in reality the soldiers ate more meat than their New Year's Eve dinner.

The New Year's Eve dinner at least had millet rice; the soldiers' rations had literally not a single grain of rice — only two ounces of flour per day, and beyond that nothing but meat, butter, and milk. Only one camp, the Shoot-and-Hunt Camp made up entirely of western tribal soldiers, ate meat mixed with tsampa.

He thought Liu Chengzong was treating the Shoot-and-Hunt Camp poorly, but to his surprise, Lion Liu said it was because they could not stomach an all-meat diet.

In the Marshal's manor, wanting meat was easy, wanting flour was a bit harder, pickled vegetable rations were very small, and as for fresh vegetables — you needed to earn some serious merit, and then you could eat them two months later.

Attack, my ass. If not for the fact that beyond the Gansu border there was nothing but desert and gobi, Chötu Taiji even felt like going back to warn his elder brother not to enter Qinghai.

On the evening of the eighth day of the first month, Chen Qindai brought Chötu Taiji to see Liu Chengzong — Chötu needed to return beyond the Gansu border to report back to Khundulen.

Chen Qindai said, "Marshal, Chötu Taiji has a request. Could a residence be built for him in the new city — nothing too large — and could a patch of pasture be set aside for him north of the lake, just enough for two thousand men to encamp and graze? He'd like to come visit in the future, and always staying at the Marshal's manor is a bit inconvenient."

Liu Chengzong:???

Who the hell said you could keep coming over to visit, and always staying at the Marshal's manor is a bit inconvenient?

A man in his mid-thirties — how does he have no sense of being an outsider at all?

He thought that way, but in truth it was hardly a demand. Encamping and grazing didn't require Lion Liu to provide meals — he had never intended to provide meals for Khundulen's tens of thousands of men.

Naturally, he had no intention of building a house for Chötu Taiji either.

Liu Chengzong's expression was perfectly natural. "There's land north of the lake for encamping and grazing. If he wants to settle a home here, I'll set aside a plot for him later. When the time comes, he can come himself and hire laborers, build it however he likes — bricks and tiles are all ready at hand."

The moment Chötu Taiji heard Liu Chengzong was letting him encamp and graze, he immediately said the Grand Marshal was a true friend, and even blurted out rashly, "I have six hundred heavy cavalry. If the Marshal needs them, once we switch horses they can go to war!"

As soon as he said it, he realized he'd misspoken and hastily changed the subject. "When the time comes, I'll have my khatun stay here — the Marshal must put on another grand opera performance!"

But the change of subject was utterly pointless. Liu Chengzong laughed inwardly — the Marshal's manor's military movements could not be hidden from others; Chötu Taiji knew they were going to war. Yet that remark also leaked another piece of information: the Chahar warhorses were terribly emaciated and could no longer carry heavy cavalry.

Liu Chengzong agreed with a beaming smile, while inwardly calculating the Chahar march speed southward and reckoning the timing of the eastern campaign. He said to Chötu Taiji, "For the Taiji and his guards to cross Gansu and return, it's only ten days to half a month. In my view, you might as well go back a bit later — come with me on a trip to the east, and wait until the dust settles."