Chapter 373: Division

Two hundred paces outside the Xiuchuan Gate directly west of Lanzhou.

It was the season when ice and snow melted on the upper reaches of the Agan River, mountain torrents swelling and surging beneath the Wo Bridge, spray flying and waves roaring; on both banks, grasses and trees flourished, the scenery like a painting. Dozens of enormous watermills and water-powered grindstones turned slowly day and night, forming the wondrous sight of the Rainbow Bridge Spring Floods.

Upstream, pear blossoms at Xingyuan Temple were in full bloom, their fragrance drifting everywhere. In such charming scenery, there should have been a bustling market on the riverbanks for bulk trade — grain shipped from Lintao, watermelons from Xigu, and timber brought by Yellow River boatmen.

But war had made all of this vanish without a trace.

Zhang Quanchang, the Central Army Commander of the Shaanxi Grand Coordinator's Standard Battalion, stood beside a pavilion, his face ashen as he watched Standard Battalion soldiers in motley armor drag cannons and trail banners, retreating from the west bank of the Agan River toward Lanzhou City.

In the secret letter he had sent to Grand Coordinator Lian Guoshi, he mentioned that someone in Lanzhou City had leaked military intelligence.

In a single day, hundreds upon hundreds of the Marshal's Headquarters' skin rafts had accurately bypassed the mine-laid defensive line, landing on Xigu City's north, west, and east sides, rendering his ambush completely useless and nearly trapping him at Lama Ridge.

Had his experience not been ample, and had he not resolved to retreat before the encirclement closed, Lanzhou's last intact elite unit would also have been buried outside the city.

Now, although he had preserved this army, he had lost the initiative for field battle by evading the encirclement. Whether this was ultimately a gain or a loss, Zhang Quanchang himself did not know.

All he knew was that until the spy was rooted out behind the lines, his Standard Battalion absolutely must not leave the city to seek battle recklessly.

He Renlong, atop the city wall, was likewise ashen-faced.

Among all the defending commanders in this city, he was the one who grasped the most intelligence about both sides on the battlefield.

The way the Marshal's Headquarters army evaded the minefield to land, and the fact that Zhang Quanchang was recalled by Lian Guoshi before he could even spring his ambush — linking these two events together, it was not hard for him to reach a conclusion that half-scared him to death and made him so furious he was practically steaming!

He Yong had leaked military intelligence to Liu Chengzong.

Still, He Yong was, after all, the brother who had taken arrows and risked his life for him since childhood. Besides, the city wall was crowded with eyes and ears, hardly a place for talking. He Renlong merely shot He Yong a sour glare: "Just wait till you get shelled!"

He Yong, still unaware of what was going on, leaned in and whispered, "General, we can plant the flag."

He Renlong tilted his head back and shut his eyes in agony, then turned and looked at his household guard captain with despair, lowering his voice: "Still on about planting the flag? Plant my ass! Do you think everyone else is an idiot?"

He Renlong cursed inwardly. How had he never noticed before that when Liu the Lion and He Yong got together, they had eight hundred tricks between them?

Liu the Lion had eight hundred and one; He Yong had negative one.

Grieved by his failure to make iron into steel, he said: "You've been played!"

Those two together were truly something — one was a damn fool, and the other was damn rotten.

When he sent He Yong to find Liu Chengzong, his original intent was that, realizing Lian Guoshi and Zhang Quanchang's ambush would inflict heavy losses on Liu Chengzong,

he feared Liu the Lion would go mad and slaughter the city, so he sent He Yong over to let the Lion think of their old incense-fire bond.

After all, there was no deep grudge between the two sides; each merely served his own master. I cannot possibly surrender, and you cannot possibly retreat. An old commander leading his brothers to earn a living — there was no need to exterminate them utterly.

This message was only half-spoken. If Liu Chengzong was smart enough, he would act cautiously, carefully scout the terrain around Lanzhou, and reduce casualties; if he was a big fool, that was fine too — the old commander had warned you, after all.

In the end, no matter what, He Renlong would come out looking good. To put it bluntly, even if he were wounded in battle and captured, at least he'd get medical treatment. Each served his own master — that was enough.

He Yong, on the other hand, had gone and laid out Lian Guoshi's entire military deployment in full detail.

And Liu Chengzong was an even bigger bastard — he didn't even bother to disguise it. His army crawled up from the Yellow River like ghosts, bypassed the minefield, and directly split into three routes to surround Lama Mountain.

And they didn't even manage to encircle it, letting Zhang Quanchang run back to Lanzhou City without a fight.

He Renlong did not believe for a second that Liu Chengzong, who could crush the border armies of three garrisons in a head-on battle, would be so inept as to lack the confidence to encircle and annihilate the Grand Coordinator's Standard Battalion. Following this line of thought, he easily reached a conclusion: Liu the Lion had done it on purpose.

He had deliberately driven Zhang Quanchang back into Lanzhou City.

It was just that He Renlong could not figure out at first what Liu the Lion's purpose was in doing this — but he would figure it out very soon.

From the evening of the second day of the fourth month, the rumble of cannon fire from the direction of Xigu continued until the early morning of the third day, when the cannon fire finally ceased.

By late morning, on the field ridges across the river west of the city, first came hundreds upon hundreds of commoners driving carts and donkeys, fleeing eastward. Then came an endless stream of refugees on foot, raising a sky-filling dust cloud over the field ridges as they fled toward Lanzhou.

People climbed onto the Wo Bridge, which could only accommodate foot traffic, leaving all their carts and carriages on the west bank.

Lian Guoshi had originally wanted to burn this Wo Bridge down, but Zhang Quanchang said that once the bridge was burned, it was gone — the western bandits could cross the river however they wanted anyway. Better to keep the Wo Bridge as a place to block the enemy troops.

Thus Zhang Quanchang left a few soldiers to guard the Wo Bridge, checking passersby to prevent bandit spies from infiltrating Lanzhou's city defenses.

But by now, there was no need for such precautions. Several thousand people were fleeing across, and there was no time to check them at all. Worse, a Battalion Commander stripped down to nothing but his undershirt ran up to the city wall to report the news of Xigu's fall.

Zhang Quanchang had no time for anger. The fleeing commoners were not entirely a bad thing — he could just conscript them as civilian laborers to build ram-and-horse walls two hundred paces outside the city to bolster the defenses.

Lanzhou had once had ram-and-horse walls built under the direction of Yang Yiqing, but that was back in the Zhengde and Jiajing reigns.

This place had been at peace for so long that even when the Song pirates and sea raiders were at their fiercest, the disasters of war never reached Lanzhou City. The ram-and-horse walls that had once hindered commoners from enjoying the scenery and crossing the river had long since been torn down.

Yet this perfectly normal conscription and reorganization of refugees caused an uproar among the fleeing commoners. The gentry figures of standing among them protested one after another: How could you government troops be worse than the bandits?

Even Zhang Quanchang was dumbfounded.

Only after pressing them for details did he learn that these commoners had fled east not to escape bandit slaughter, nor to escape famine — they had fled precisely to escape corvée labor.

A venerable elder among the refugees, tears streaming down his face, denounced the evil deeds of the Marshal's Headquarters army. Those troops had besieged Xigu City from the front while sending out scattered riders to every village and stockade, inciting the commoners to attack and kill the gentry, opening granaries, distributing grain, and proclaiming peace everywhere to beguile the people's hearts.

Wherever there were fortified stockades built by the lijia gentry families, orders were given to tear down the palisades. They made the tenant farmers point out the wealthy households and good families accused of being uncharitable amid their riches. Once a family was pointed out, they swarmed into the stockade, smashed the manor, and emptied it of coin and grain.

They gave only twenty percent of what they plundered to the neighbors, then forcibly conscripted the commoners to transport the coin, grain, and supplies to the vicinity of Xigu.

People spent the entire night in terror and fear. The cannons bombarded the battlements until dawn. When no one could stand on the city wall any longer, they set up long ladders and scaled it — Xigu City fell shortly thereafter.

Only then did the western bandits reveal their true colors, driving the tens of thousands of commoners gathered from all around to tear down bricks and dig up earth, leveling the city to the ground.

Quite a few people had been perfectly happy when they were sharing out the grain and money, but when it came time to work, they were no longer willing. They hadn't slept well all night to begin with, and now they were being made to do the heavy labor of leveling a city — how could the commoners not run?

Fortunately, the western bandits did not stop them, and several thousand people fled to Lanzhou City with the coin and grain the bandits had given them.

Back in Xigu, the bandits had forced them to do manual labor, but at least they'd been given coin and grain. Who would have thought that upon reaching Lanzhou and finding the government troops, not only were they given no coin or grain, they were even made to do this heavy labor for free.

Who could bear that!

Zhang Quanchang was very helpless — both angry and amused.

What angered him, naturally, was that Liu Chengzong wanted to level Xigu City. A fortress like this was easy to tear down but hard to build. With enough manpower, a city could be leveled in two or three days, but rebuilding it would take at least a year or more.

As for what amused him, it was mocking Liu Chengzong.

Zhang Quanchang had followed Lian Guoshi in campaigns across Shaanxi for two years and was well accustomed to what northern Shaanxi looked like.

This whole routine of Liu Chengzong's — if it were anywhere west of the Taihang Mountains and east of the Liupan Mountains, the commoners who weren't robbed would be absolutely overflowing with gratitude deep in their hearts. From then on, every New Year, they'd set up an offering to Liu Chengzong's portrait on their kitchen hearth.

But this was Lanzhou — Lanzhou, where apart from a single great rain in the first year of the Tianqi reign that flooded and ruined the fields, for the next twelve years, year after year, the weather had been favorable, the harvests abundant.

For Liu Chengzong to think he could beguile the people's hearts here with this set of ancestral northern Shaanxi tricks was utterly unworkable.

Ordinary folk were sitting peaceably at home when suddenly rebel soldiers came killing, murdering their neighbors, landlords, even their own relatives — and as if the killing weren't enough, they handed out the blood-stained grain and silver to the village neighbors.

To put it bluntly, in Lanzhou even an idle day laborer wasn't short those two months' grain, let alone a tenant farmer.

The same action had an essential difference in Lanzhou versus northern Shaanxi.

But the foolish grin on Zhang Quanchang's face soon froze as well.

These Lanzhou commoners had run from the west all the way to the east, only to hear that country folk weren't allowed into the city and had to dig trenches and build walls — the food was worse than in the west, and on top of that, the remnant soldiers guarding the city were extorting and plundering our grain and silver!

Within a single day, ninety percent of them went right back the way they'd come, all fleeing westward again.

Apart from the old, the weak, the women, and the children, the able-bodied young and middle-aged who remained couldn't be stopped no matter what.

Zhang Quanchang realized it belatedly — Liu Chengzong truly had a hard time buying hearts and minds in Lanzhou with petty favors, but the court, it seemed, was even less popular.

Standing in the commoners' shoes, sure, the western bandits had robbed the richest neighbor near their home, but a blade cutting someone else doesn't hurt — while the three levies collected from their own heads truly felt like a knife twisting in their own fingers.

The one in charge of leveling Xigu City was Wang Wenxiu. At first, seeing several thousand villagers from the surrounding countryside flee, he had no good solution either.

Before crossing the river, Liu Chengzong had given clear instructions: they could slow the pace of leveling cities and seizing territory, but military discipline must be strict — let the common people know that the Marshal's Headquarters coming didn't bring many benefits, but for most people, the harm wasn't great either.

Those willing to obey and work would be given grain and wages as hired laborers; those unwilling to obey or work would be left to their own devices.

The commoners who had fled returned to Xigu. Some hid in the southern mountains, while others steeled themselves and approached the Marshal's Headquarters soldiers to ask whether they were still hiring people to level the city.

When the infantry camp soldiers reported the situation to Wang Wenxiu, he couldn't help laughing aloud: "Hire them! Same pay, same rations — level that city!"

And on the other side of the Yellow River, at White Pagoda Mountain where he had set up his command tent, Liu Chengzong watched people fleeing and people walking on the opposite bank, a satisfied smile spreading across his face.

The destruction that war itself brings to production and public order was unavoidable. The drought's impact on Lanzhou was slight, the commoners were still subjects of the court, and here he was branded a rebel chieftain and great bandit — he could not harbor too many extravagant hopes for the common people.

He didn't need people to stand on his side, to abandon home and livelihood and follow him in rebellion, still less could he expect the common folk to welcome his righteous army with baskets of food and pots of drink.

As long as he could make the majority of commoners still living in peaceful times watch and wait, even make them think to themselves: Liu Chengzong truly isn't good, but he doesn't seem all that bad either.

That was enough for him.

Coming from a small landlord background himself, Liu Chengzong knew best in his heart: the people whose contradictions with him ran deepest were the gentry, landlords, civil officials, and military officers — and these very people were also the greatest stumbling blocks and the greatest aids to his eastward advance.

Because he lacked grain, and these people happened to have grain; the commoners lacked land, and these people happened to have land.

And these people happened to be the weakest and most bluffing group of all — they merely held power above and could communicate with the commoners below, so they appeared immensely strong, but in truth they were only a tiny bit stronger than ordinary folk.

This strength was borrowed, its source the fears and hopes of the teeming masses.

Commoners harbor fear toward death and yearning toward survival, and a single person or family cannot accomplish anything, so in times of upheaval they attach themselves to whoever can lead them to stay alive.

Attach to a great gentry household, and they become a fortified stockade resisting in self-defense; attach to a rising hero, and they become roving bandits foraging in all directions; attach to an army for food, and they become government troops campaigning east and west.

The strength of one man is wild grass drifting with the wind; the strength of ten thousand men is a mighty torrent that shapes the realm.

Liu Chengzong was a beneficiary of this very strength. He knew clearly where this strength came from, and he knew clearly how to strip it away.

People should not fear death. Without the fear of death, naturally there is no yearning for survival either — they ought to be alive in the first place.

As long as the Marshal's Headquarters could keep the common people from feeling fear, and at the same time let everyone know that following the gentry and great households was actually less safe, then division could be achieved. Gentry who could not gather men's strength would be nothing but lambs awaiting slaughter.

Liu Chengzong stepped out of his command tent and gazed across the mighty Yellow River at Lanzhou City, towering majestically against the mountain and beside the water. A smile of proud satisfaction rose on his young face.

Xigu City was about to be leveled, Anning Fortress had already fallen, and next were the more distant cities of Jin County, Hezhou, and Lintao.

When all those cities had been leveled and only this enormous, solid Lanzhou City remained, the divided wealthy families would naturally come to realize that building forts and stockades in the rural countryside was no place to settle and preserve their lives — only this Lanzhou City could protect their wealth.

All wealth and grain would converge into this great city eighteen li in circumference, and people would mistakenly believe this city was impregnable.

By next year or the year after, once he had fully digested the Hehuang Valley and the surrendered troops gained from this war, all it would take was a single natural disaster — and Liu Chengzong, not so benevolent in Xining, would in the blink of an eye become Lanzhou's savior.

By then, the wealth and grain within this great city could save countless people on the brink of death.

Looking at the Zhenyuan Pontoon Bridge spanning the Yellow River outside Lanzhou's northern Water North Gate, Liu Chengzong turned his head and said: "Sanlang, have the guards tell Wang Wenxiu to pick out men with parents, wives, and children from among the surrendered Lanzhou Guard banner troops who are relocating their families, and send them over in separate batches."

Fan Sanlang nodded and acknowledged the order. Only after relaying it to the guards did she ask: "Does the Grand Marshal intend to use spies?"

"Yes. I will give their parents, wives, and children the best care in Xining. But as for them, for now they will have to stay in Lanzhou for a year or two as wretched banner soldiers whose families were abducted by the western bandits... In the future, this city —"

Liu Chengzong's arm pushed forward level before his chest, pointing toward the majestic Su Prince's Royal City: "I want it to fall without a fight!"