Chapter 342: Westward Advance

Mo Yujing put down the rebellion in a most awkward fashion.

Once they entered the Hehuang Valley and once more turned their blades, bows, guns, and cannons on rebellious commoners and deserters, the combat strength of the veterans who had followed him through a year of campaigning in Shaanxi plummeted.

The common people loathe war, but those who loathe it most are soldiers — especially when killing brings no reward money, no merit, no chance of promotion, and not even much plunder to seize; at such times, soldiers are the most war-weary creatures under heaven.

Mo Yujing's predicament lay precisely here. The Lutang Battalion troops he led were all battle-hardened men who had cheated death countless times, but they had killed too many people, and too many of their own kin and friends had been killed; every man's spirit was more or less broken.

One group of soldiers turned their torment inward — not only unwilling to kill again, but unwilling to do anything at all. Without orders, they were either irascible and quick to anger or shambled about like walking corpses; when orders came, they no longer carried them out with the same iron resolve as before.

Another group turned their torment outward — they were perfectly willing to keep killing, to the point of wanting to kill anyone they laid eyes on. On the march, the sight of passing famine refugees and displaced people made them want to kill for sport; if the army was not made to yield the road to civilians, serious trouble would erupt.

As luck would have it, those willing to kill had all stayed behind at Lutang Camp. Most of the men Mo Yujing had with him were unwilling to kill. Not every man was sick — the half-mad ones numbered only a few dozen — but the war-weariness had infected the entire army.

It was a mercy there was no army inspector, for the farce this army had made of suppressing the rebellion would have been enough, if reported to the imperial court, to get Mo Yujing executed eight times over.

In the battle to retake Gushan Fort, Mo Yujing fought for two full days. A fortress that large — his fourteen small Frankish culverins fired seven full salvos, over a hundred cannonballs, and not a single one struck the battlements.

The shot-holes were arrayed in seven neat rows on the curtain wall below the battlements.

In the end, Gushan Fort was still retaken, because the rebels inside the fortress concluded that these government troops were utterly useless — over four hundred men charged out of the fortress!

At the moment of life and death, the artillerymen dropped the act. One round of solid shot, one round of grapeshot — the rapid fire was lethally precise, cutting down over a hundred men. The rebels scattered and fled, and the veterans sank back into listlessness.

They did not even bother to feign tripping and falling. They simply stood where they were, drew their blades, shouted a couple of war cries, then sat down on the spot, sighing and groaning, until Mo Yujing issued the order to pursue. Only then did they form up by squads and shuffle out two hundred paces in pursuit — by which time the bandits had already climbed an entire mountain.

Mo Yujing could not even muster any anger. On one hand, the soldiers had not violated any specific article of military law; everything they did fell into gaps the regulations never addressed. On the other, he himself was weary of war. Leading troops to quell the rebellion was merely his duty.

All his passion as a military officer had been ground to nothing during the campaigns across northern Shaanxi... The timing and the region of his entry into the war were both wrong.

Had it been two years earlier, when the great uprisings of the chaotic era were just beginning, the great households of northern Shaanxi still feasted and sang, and villages everywhere still held a little grain to save their lives — back then, plunder was everywhere, and not only were government troops willing to suppress bandits, even someone like Liu the Lion had motivation to do so.

Had it been a different place — Shanxi or Guanzhong at this moment — the situation would have been similar to northern Shaanxi two or three years ago. Of course, soldiers fighting for a year would still grow war-weary and their spirits would still fray, but it would not have been this severe.

But in northern Shaanxi at this very moment — where was there anything left to plunder? The rebels who stayed in northern Shaanxi had all taken to storming cities; princely estates were nearly impossible to find. If, in the past, fifty percent of the people could survive without rebelling, by the time Mo Yujing led his army into the northern Shaanxi theater, only twenty percent could survive without rebelling.

And crucially, that remaining twenty percent were either high officials and nobles or the hereditary servants of high officials and nobles. Not to mention the common rank-and-file soldiers — even Mo Yujing himself could not find any common ground with the Junior Prince of Han squatting inside Pingliang city.

People's thinking had already been reshaped by drought and war. Earlier, when word came that rebels were marching on Pingliang, people's hearts filled with worry, and all nearby armies rushed back to relieve Pingliang at once.

But now, when word came again that rebels were marching on Pingliang, the first thought of officers and men alike was not concern for the safety of His Highness the Prince of Han — it was regret.

Regret that they had not struck first and seized this year's stipend grain from the Prince of Han's estate themselves.

After a bout of heavy sighs and bitter lamentation, they would muster their troops and race urgently toward Pingliang, only to watch the battle from afar. Their entire state of mind was exactly the same as Liu the Lion's when he watched White Eagle besiege the earthen fort.

Thus, after taking Gushan Fort, Mo Yujing dared not push his soldiers too hard. He garrisoned the fort to rest and regroup, while sending men far and wide with letters summoning the Huangzhong tusi to bring troops and help suppress the rebellion.

Before his letters even arrived, urgent reports came from the west: the Nianbo Battalion had been stormed by Liu Chengzong. The fleeing routed soldiers said that Liu Chengzong had not used the title of Qinghai Pacification Commissioner, but instead proclaimed himself Grand Marshal of Qinghai, commanding tens of thousands of troops, and after seizing Nianbo was now advancing eastward.

In an instant, the garrison of Gushan Fort fell into chaos, and Mo Yujing hastily led his army away from the fort.

He understood with absolute clarity that his army could barely manage to suppress a rebellion; to fight Liu Chengzong would most likely end with them all defecting to the bandits.

He could afford to abandon Gushan Fort, but he absolutely could not leave these seven hundred elite soldiers to Liu Chengzong... What if these soldiers were not unwilling to kill, but merely unwilling to kill for the imperial court?

As their commander, did he dare to dwell on that question?

What infuriated him most was that Mo Yujing received the Nianbo Battalion's plea for help only the day after he received word that it had already fallen.

Before the siege began, the Nianbo battalion commander had sent men east to seek aid. They rode all the way to Lanzhou before learning that the Western Ning Regional Vice Commander Mo Yujing had led his troops to his new post, and only then did they double back to find him.

In his hands, the timeline was scrambled: Nianbo Garrison had been stormed first, then besieged.

Mo Yujing had always thought the earlier chaos in Hehuang, with bandits rising everywhere because they could not afford grain, was already bad enough; he never imagined that only after he emerged from the valley at Gushan Fort would Hehuang truly descend into chaos.

He had originally intended to withdraw to the river valley and rely on the local powerful families to hold out while awaiting reinforcements, but there were not many powerful families left in the region.

Runners and peddlers, scholars and merchants — people bundled up their families and valuables, loaded small carts, and clogged the official roads fleeing eastward in panic. Strings of wagons carved deep ruts through the farmland.

Defeated soldiers fleeing from the west blocked the roads with drawn blades, mounted other men's horses, shouldered other men's packs, clasped other men's wives, and whipped their reins and vanished. Everything had fallen apart.

When the mud-legged peasants rose in arms, the landlords and gentry of Hehuang did not panic. But when they learned that Liu Chengzong was advancing east, everyone was terrified, hastily snatching up luggage they had packed two years ago and fleeing.

In the three days it took for the news to spread across Hehuang, the phrase repeated most often was probably, "I always knew this day would come." Everyone had long been prepared.

Thanks to Liu the Lion, the wealthy households of Hehuang had been living much more frugally these past two years. In many estates, the luxurious furnishings that could be moved were moved, and those that could be sold were sold; some people had long since transported their furniture to their residences in Lanzhou.

When Liu Chengzong first came, people had not yet had time to learn what he was about. By the time everyone realized, he had already swept past like a gust of wind to the lands west of Xining.

As the saying goes, if a man has no long-term worries, immediate troubles will find him. The consensus across the Hehuang Valley was that Liu Chengzong would sooner or later burst out again.

Men of insight reached this conclusion based on the fact that Hehuang had no defensible terrain. There were many places that could be called easy to hold and hard to attack, but all required large numbers of full-time soldiers. Hehuang did have eight thousand garrison troops stationed at various points.

But that count included Zhenhai Camp and Fuqiang Fort — and before the fighting even started, those five thousand garrison troops were already eating from the Liu family's granary. Fight, my foot.

The common people reached the same conclusion on even simpler grounds: there was no farmland out on the sea. The Grand Marshal was holed up out there — what was he supposed to eat?

For ordinary folk, however, even knowing that Liu Chengzong would burst out again meant little. When the masters fled east, that was, at best, a sightseeing trip to Lanzhou.

The kind-hearted ones, while on their trip, would waive the tenant farmers' land rent and let the hired hands live in their big houses. Those who did not waive the rent — well, coming back and making the tenants pay up afterward still counted as doing their duty.

After all, the masters carried their title deeds with them. As long as Hehuang did not fall for good, they would still be masters when they returned. Even if it did fall, whenever the imperial court fought its way back, the masters would still be masters.

For the common people, it was different. A tenant farmer could not lease land in Lanzhou; for a yeoman farmer or a small peddler, leaving this patch of earth meant abandoning home and livelihood.

Five mu of land, plus a chicken coop and a pigsty — worth only a few taels of scrap silver. To some, that was lighter than wind, something to be made into paper foil and blown into the sky.

But to many more, those few taels of silver weighed heavier than life itself — worth the risk, worth clinging to the land and gambling on a sliver of luck.

What if the bandits never reached their home? What if the Marshal's Mansion did not slaughter the innocent?

In Mo Yujing's heart, the gentry could not be allowed to flee.

Precisely because they were the ones who could flee, they must not. As local leaders, the backbone of the common people, the established households who held the land — honored and revered in peacetime — in wartime they had to stay in the region and lead the people.

Under normal circumstances, it was they who decided for the people whether to fight or surrender; they who organized the people whether to flee or stay; even if they had to run and take refuge, they had to lead the people in flight.

Even if the enemy was brutal and rapacious, and the gentry surrendered only to face the blade where they stood — that, too, was the responsibility and duty of the gentry and village worthies.

With them standing in front, the common people would not suffer too terribly. Otherwise, if they fled and left the people behind, would the people not become the outlet for a brutal and rapacious enemy's rage?

But Liu Chengzong was different. Liu Chengzong was simply too terrifying.

The gentry of Hehuang found it very hard to see him as a normal regime. Instead, they viewed him either as a roving bandit of the old sort who killed the rich to aid the poor, or as a Han-blooded Tibetan Tsenpo concurrently serving as a Mongol Khagan version of Nurhaci.

In short, the kind of man who left no path to survival for wealthy and gentry households.

Every move the Marshal's Mansion had made over the past two years tugged at people's thoughts. Ever since Liu Chengzong established the prefectural school in Xining, the vast majority of Hehuang's gentry had not dared to imagine sharing wealth and glory with him.

Of course, some stayed in Hehuang. These people had long since sent the clever children of their households to study at the Xining Prefectural School. Hearing that the Field Marshal's headquarters was advancing troops, those who had sent them early congratulated one another, while those who had sent them late wrung their hands and sighed.

Mo Yujing led his troops at a frantic pace toward the river mouth. With only three li left to go, the official road and the riverbank were already jammed solid. Broken and abandoned horse carts and donkey carts alone were strewn across a full li of ground.

Both banks of the Yellow River were everywhere clogged with wealthy households and scholars in sumptuous fabrics and exquisite ornamentation, crowding there with fine horses, beautiful consorts, servant boys, and maids. Money was no longer money in this place. Along the bank, people waved silver taels, shouting curses and urging the boats on the river.

Yellow River ferrymen shuttled back and forth trip after trip. Even the ox-hide rafts and sheepskin rafts were crammed full of people. The crowd, like driven livestock, now waded to the water's edge, now retreated toward the crossing, punctuated now and then by a startled shriek.

Either a raft had capsized in the river, or someone on the bank was seizing the chance to rob — all manner of chaos, too many to list.

The sight of these gentry fleeing in every direction infuriated Mo Yujing. He snatched a three-barreled hand cannon from a subordinate, fired a shot skyward, left men behind to watch for enemy movements, deployed troops to maintain order, and proclaimed regulations forbidding panic and robbery. At the same time, he dispatched two soldiers to the opposite bank to have the Lanzhou Assistant Regional Commander commandeer civilian boats and transfer troops across the river.

"First get Lanzhou's banner troops and garrison soldiers across the river, then summon all the chieftains from Taozhou, Minzhou, Lintao, and Gongchang. The river mouth must not be lost!"

For one thing, if the river mouth fell, Liu Chengzong could directly threaten Lanzhou and sever the connection between Gansu Garrison and Shaanxi. For another... Mo Yujing believed that the chieftains of the Hehuang Valley were already mustering troops and dispatching generals, and a massive military force would complete its assembly within half a month.

When the time came, government troops would advance on separate routes to root them out and would certainly smash the bandit Liu.

If the river mouth were lost, the chieftains would receive no support from the Lanzhou direction and, fighting in isolation, would surely struggle to prevail.

But very soon, Mo Yujing realized the problem was not so simple. Right at the Yellow River crossing, he discovered the sons and nephews of several chieftains.

Mo Yujing was himself a Xining man. As a military officer who had come out of Xining, he was on very close terms with many native-official colleagues. How had the family members of Chieftain Li and Chieftain Qi all fled?

Upon careful inquiry, he found that those chieftains had actually all been invited by Liu Chengzong to spend the New Year at Ju'erwan. When Mo Yujing learned this, he felt dizzy: "They... what are they doing at the Field Marshal's headquarters!"

News that one fortified town after another had been either uprooted and stormed or had surrendered at the mere rumor of approach kept coming from the west. With the chieftains absent from their domains, even if those native clans controlled large populations, they fell into a leaderless state. Every piece of news brought back by broken remnants and routed soldiers struck like grievous tidings, hammering heavily at Mo Yujing's heart.

The Hehuang Valley, he feared, was about to fall.

Lanzhou would become, like Shanhai Pass, a frontline directly facing the enemy's threat.

Matters had reached a point beyond Mo Yujing's control. He hurriedly dispatched men again to board boats for the opposite bank, to urgently report the military situation to Lian Guoshi, currently the Grand Coordinator of Shaanxi, requesting once more that the five garrison generals of Guanzhong be mobilized to lead frontier troops in a joint punitive campaign against Hehuang.

Just then, heartening news finally came from the west: the various scattered routes of surrendered troops and routed soldiers had been rallied, and the chaotic flight had been checked at Shangchuankou.

The one chieftain who had not gone to Ju'erwan — the old chieftain Ye Guoqi, formerly Vice General of Changping — had led twenty household retainers and twenty-seven native soldiers, carrying a coffin, into the Binggou Horse Ranch. He summoned the troops and people of every chieftain's clan, swore an oath to defend Hehuang to the death, and raised a great banner bearing the character 'Ming'.

One by one, the scattered stragglers who had been chased and sent fleeing through the Hehuang Valley by the Field Marshal's headquarters' army, scurrying like headless flies, found their backbone again and began converging on Shangchuankou.

Ye Guoqi sent word to the river mouth, asking Mo Yujing to request reinforcements from the imperial court and to march his forces west, to come to Shangchuankou and take charge of the overall situation.

Close on the heels of this, the Liancheng Chieftain and Assistant Regional Commander Lu Yunchang, whose clan had long dwelt in Hexi, led twelve hundred native troops into the West Datong Fortress, forming a distant mutual support with Ye Guoqi and vowing to hold the Datong River Bridge and Postal Relay Station to the death.

Mo Yujing was beside himself with joy. He immediately held an oath-taking ceremony at the river mouth to rouse and boost the troops' morale, likewise raised a tattered, fluttering great banner bearing the character 'Ming', and led seven hundred veteran soldiers westward.