Chapter 376: Heaven Unleashes the Impulse to Kill

At the northwest pass of Chaka Salt Lake, goshawks wheeled in the sky. Guards bearing the Great Khan's nine-tailed white banner stood at the pass. Mongol drummers sat astride camel humps, beating the war drums to left and right. Company after company of Chahar cavalry spread out from the pass toward the lakeshore.

Ligdan Khutugtu Khan spurred his warhorse and raised his telescope, glaring fiercely southward.

At the edge of the boundless salt-alkali Gobi, beneath the snow mountains, a camp was faintly visible — that was the Oirat encampment. Khoshut cavalry and Dzungar camel-gun formations watched with predatory intent.

The envoy of Güshi Khan had just been sent off by Ligdan Khan. The blood was still warm — the body stayed here, while the head was being carried south by the Khan's death-defying warrior, gripping it by the queue.

Beneath the war banners, Haibei County Magistrate Chen Qindai's expression was solemn. He rode up beside Khutugtu and sighed. "When two armies clash, envoys are not to be killed. Why must the Great Khan slay his envoy to vent his anger?"

Khutugtu shot him a glance, opened his mouth as if to speak, but said nothing. He merely furrowed his brow and raised his whip northward. "Since you've taken office under that little Southern Dynasty king, go look after my wife and children for me. Other matters are none of your concern."

What he could not abide most was Mongols calling themselves Khan. He had always believed that just as the Southern Dynasty had only one emperor, the north should have only one Great Khan — how could every corner have its own king?

He attacked this one, campaigned against that one, making moves that outsiders saw as the left hand chopping at the right. More than half of his inner drive came from being pushed by the Ming Dynasty.

Because in the Ming Dynasty's eyes, the great chieftain ruling the Mongols was the Tümed, was the Prince of Shunyi.

As for him — Borjigin Ligdan Baatur — when he was a youth, the Southern Dynasty people at least called him the Little Prince. Once he was past thirty, they just called him the Tiger Chieftain.

They would not even call him the Great Khan of Northern Yuan.

Who wouldn't be furious?

From the Han perspective, Mongols were all Mongols. Each tribe being its own tribe was the normal state of Mongolia — whoever was strongest got more tribute horses and more rewards, and the Tümed got the most.

But in Ligdan Khan's view, a scattered Mongolia was not the normal state of Mongolia. Long ago there was Genghis Khan, more recently Dayan Khan — a unified Mongolia was the normal state of Mongolia.

Once you have tasted the elixir of centralized power, generation after generation of rulers will never forget its exquisite flavor.

For him, reversing the Khanate's decline was a destiny he was born into. All Mongols who dared call themselves Khan were open enemies; those who did not call themselves Khan but paid no tribute were enemies covertly challenging his authority; those who paid tribute but disobeyed were potential enemies.

Divided this way, there was no left hand or right hand.

The Khanate's situation was perilous — the legs were gone, so where would the hands be?

What Khutugtu had always wanted was to establish authority over all Mongol tribes, and the Southern Dynasty's emperor had to acknowledge him as well. As for the Later Jin… what even was the Later Jin?

Even though the Later Jin army scared me so badly that I fled as soon as I heard they were coming, even lost my capital — those Jurchens are still just the little creatures who raised birds for the Ulus. I simply look down on you. If you've got the guts, wait until I unify Mongolia, then we'll fight.

This was the core idea behind his campaigns against the Mongol tribes in every direction.

The Southern Dynasty could unite into one — why couldn't Mongolia?

Comparatively speaking, all the Khans and all the kings under heaven — Khutugtu acknowledged none of them. In his heart, the only one who could match his status was the Great Ming Emperor alone.

He had watched with his own eyes as the Tümed grew powerful after establishing tribute markets with the Ming. He too needed to use the Ming Dynasty's strength to enrich his nation and strengthen his army. Only, he had not caught the best era. The Southern Dynasty's attitude toward him was to reward him sometimes and not others, and his attitude toward the Southern Dynasty was to submit sometimes and rebel others.

Precisely because of this, now that he had fled to the Western Sea, his connection with the Southern Dynasty emperor was completely severed. But with Liu Chengzong — this little Southern Dynasty king — present, for him, the Marshal's Manor could substitute for the Southern Dynasty and become the key to the Northern Yuan Khanate's flourishing enterprise.

So toward the Marshal's Manor, he outwardly held his nose, put on a look of disgust, and accepted it. Inwardly, he was even a little secretly pleased, going so far as to directly call Liu Chengzong the little Southern Dynasty king in his speech.

Hey, I'm not the only one losing face — the Southern Dynasty's got kings popping up everywhere too, damn it.

For this reason alone, Ligdan Khutugtu did not lose his temper at Chen Qindai. He was a Great Khan who held the power of life and death, yet for Liu Chengzong's sake, he pardoned Chen Qindai's offense of verbally acknowledging the Oirat Güshi Khan's status. He considered himself very magnanimous.

But Chen Qindai was thoroughly displeased. What era is this, and you're still putting on Great Khan airs based on the bloodline your father sired and your mother bore? Our Marshal's Manor doesn't even acknowledge the emperor — do you think this works here?

Besides, the Mongols under your command are only a few more than our Grand Marshal's. What kind of Great Khan does that make you?

But Chen Qindai dared not show his displeasure in front of Khutugtu. After all, this damn Great Khan didn't play by reason. He killed Güshi Khan's envoy on a whim and sent the head back to the Oirat — and the most absurd part was that someone actually dared to carry the head over there.

Chen Qindai did not want his own head delivered back to the Marshal's Manor. Mainly because this time, one mace blow wouldn't solve the problem — otherwise, he really would have liked to give Khutugtu a good whack with his mace.

If he knocked the Great Khan dead right now, the Chahar army would all fall into the Oirat's hands for free.

He could only put on an expression of having misspoken, hurriedly bow and take his leave. He did not stay to observe the battlefield, merely tossing Khutugtu a parting line: "The Grand Marshal said that if the military situation turns urgent, the Marshal's Manor will provide the Great Khan with aid. The Great Khan may shift eastward — there are Marshal's Manor fortresses there to rely on."

Khutugtu nodded silently, merely waving Chen Qindai away.

This little Southern Dynasty king of the Marshal's Manor was not much more generous than the Great Ming Emperor. The Oirat attacked — they asked him to send troops, he sent none; they asked him to supply grain, he supplied none… Khutugtu brooded: doesn't this count as me guarding your border?

After all the pleading, only after sending a third batch of envoys was he permitted to temporarily leave the Chahar's thirty-thousand-plus women and children on the sea.

And even that was because Chen Qindai was easy to talk to. He had him send the women and children from the north to Haibei County. When he sent an envoy east to Nanshan Fort, the Nanshan Fort commander would not let anyone approach — not even the women and children were allowed to pass through there.

Khutugtu thought to himself, he had sent men over to look — it was just a vast stretch of wasteland. And they threatened war if he went over. Who'd want to go there anyway?

What he did not know was that Zhong Hu forbade Mongols from approaching Nanshan Fort not because he begrudged the newly sown fields, but because at this very moment, Liu Xiangyu was at Nanshan Fort.

On the hillside outside the fort, Commander Zhong Hu led his horse ahead. Liu Xiangyu, dressed in a long blue robe, stood with his hands behind his back on the cliff, gazing westward. Twenty li away, the salt lake lay like a spread bolt of blue silk, reflecting the sky's color, hidden in the halo of the mountains.

They could not see the battlefield where the two sides faced off, yet they could feel the war close at hand.

Zhong Hu asked, "Grand Lord, will the Tiger Chieftain place his family dependents on the sea?"

Liu Xiangyu shook his head and said indifferently, "If he does, it's good for him — he can fight with his hands free. If he doesn't, it's no harm to the Marshal's Manor either. Grain for thirty thousand women is no small sum. Besides, your Grand Marshal is unwilling to let the Tiger Chieftain's people pass inside the pass."

"The old, weak, women, and children" was just a nice phrase. Having followed Khutugtu through twists and turns over four or five thousand li — and not even a prepared march, but fleeing and scattering, defeat after defeat — how could the old and weak have survived to this point? There were not many children either. They were all women.

Zhong Hu deeply agreed. In the past, when he had no part in farming, he had not known — cultivating thirty thousand mu of land in a normal year only fed three thousand people. To support thirty thousand people required three hundred thousand mu. For people like them just to stay alive, they already had to fight with everything they had.

Any larger population meant you had to reduce mouths. If you didn't reduce your own, you had to reduce someone else's.

He asked, "Then the Grand Marshal… what does he mean to do?"

Liu Xiangyu said nothing. He turned his head, looked at Zhong Hu, and sighed.

Taking in the women and children was not Liu Chengzong's idea — it was an order issued by Old Master Liu.

Liu Xiangyu carefully replayed in his mind the letter Liu Chengzong had sent back. Liu Chengzong's meaning was that if Khutugtu changed his attitude, they could ally; and since Güshi Khan was not easy to fool, a fight was inevitable sooner or later.

But for Liu Xiangyu, this was the outcome he least wished to see.

Deep in his heart, he hoped Liu Chengzong could talk with the Oirat, make some compromises, and bring a stable rear area to Qinghai… stable for at least one year.

Old Master Liu was deeply frustrated by the situation.

If his sons' operation in Lanzhou went smoothly, the short-term grain shortage would be resolved, and Hehuang would gain a large population and farmland. They could breathe, and walk out of their predicament.

As for the Great Ming's threat in the east alone — as long as they could win, with the Hehuang grain-producing lands in their hands, their logistics burden was very low. They could afford the cost of a long-term standoff.

But who could have expected that from the west would come Tartars again — and two bands of Tartars at that.

If it were up to Liu Xiangyu, if war could be avoided, he could accept giving up part of the grazing lands and even the route into Tibet.

This was a question of trade-offs. Choktu and Khutugtu both had no rear area and dared not flee into uninhabited regions — they could easily be surrounded.

But the Oirat had grazing lands north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, and a force so vast it was difficult for the Marshal's Manor to encircle. If the first engagement could not annihilate them, the Marshal's Manor would inevitably be harassed in turn, forced to station heavy troops in Haixi and Haibei just to cope.

Even if they only garrisoned ten thousand troops, they would still need to establish five corresponding relay granaries and supply routes from Xining City to the areas north and south of the Qinghai Lake. And the grain lost in transit would be the least of their worries — their main enemy was not the Mongols, but the Great Ming.

Stationing ten thousand more troops in the west meant ten thousand fewer in the east. Once they were caught between two fronts, both enemies would very likely choose the same moment to attack — around the autumn harvest.

No matter which side broke through, the land they had toiled over for a year would be lost. This was especially true after Liu Chengzong decided to unify crop cultivation across Hehuang; it was an expedient to close the grain gap, but it also made the Marshal's Office's agriculture fragile.

Liu Xiangyu rarely considered problems from a military angle because he could not think them through clearly. To him, however, the political and economic dimensions were crystal clear at a glance.

By his calculations, the absolute limit of full-time officers and soldiers that Xining Prefecture could sustain was thirty thousand. Making enemies on two sides and defending east and west would stretch Xining Prefecture to its breaking point.

Even a bow will break if it is kept drawn all the time, let alone in times like these, when the heavens seemed to be flinging flying knives — no one knew when drought would strike the Hehuang Valley.

Therefore, in his view, rather than confronting the Oirat State Preceptor Khan, it would be better for each to take what they needed. At the very least, judging from the State Preceptor Khan's envoy, this Mongol noble was someone they could communicate with.

Let the Mongols graze their herds on the hundreds of li of uninhabited land stretching from the Salt Lake to Nangqên. Ideally, the two sides would achieve symbiosis, even if only for a single year.

One year would be enough for the Marshal's Office to catch its breath. Two years, and they could leave the State Preceptor Khan far behind.

But Liu Xiangyu did not have the final say.

Most critically, he himself could not be certain whether his thinking was right or wrong. For as long as the Marshal's Office had existed, only Liu Chengzong's ideas had ever been proven correct. No matter how wild or extreme the plan, it always succeeded in the end and kept everyone alive.

So Liu Xiangyu could only shake his head and say to Zhong Hu, "Stall. Until your Marshal returns, until the main army is back, the Marshal's Office cannot intervene against these nearly one hundred thousand Mongol troops."

Zhong Hu asked, "Stall?"

"Yes. Dragging this out benefits us. The Grand Marshal wants to make the Khutugtu Khan straighten out his attitude, but in my view, the Khutugtu Khan is no weakling easily manipulated. He must be headstrong, otherwise he could not be so willfully obstinate."

This war between the Mongols was something the Marshal's Office was powerless to influence in the short term.

Even if the sky fell — even if Mongol soldiers stormed into Gül'ün Bay and tore down the market, or even razed the New City and besieged the walls of Xining — the Marshal's Office's main army could not turn back to reinforce them. Transporting the coin and grain from Lanzhou had to take priority.

Even if the Mongols surrounded Xining City, it would not finish them; but if the Marshal's Office lacked the grain from Lanzhou, they would be finished before this autumn.

"That being said, it would actually be best if the Tiger Khan placed his family dependents into the lake region. We can scrimp and still find grain for thirty thousand people. Otherwise, if the Tiger Khan is defeated, the Oirat won't end up reaping all the benefits."

Old Master Liu could not change the overall situation. Two Mongol armies fighting a war on his turf filled him with simmering rage, so he could only scheme to collect a little interest from the Khutugtu Khan first.

Zhong Hu shook his head and said, "Grand Lord, I sent outpost riders to scout. The Tiger Khan's side has very little in the way of baggage and has been constantly asking us for grain. But the Oirat have a great deal of livestock; they should not be afraid of a protracted stalemate."

"They should be afraid. The Tianshan Mountains are also a battleground open on all sides. An allied Oirat force of forty thousand is a powerful army anywhere, and right now their elite troops are all deployed here."

On this point, Liu Xiangyu was quite certain. He explained to Zhong Hu, "Moreover, the State Preceptor Khan's envoy mentioned that all the great nobles of the four tribes have joined this southern campaign. I do not believe they will stay here for long."

"Grand Lord, are you saying they will withdraw?"

Liu Xiangyu shook his head, deeply pessimistic about the future. "If they go back, it will only be because we beat them back. There is a great deal of land in Qinghai that cannot be farmed — to us it is worthless as chicken ribs, but to the grazing Mongols, this place is no less than a land of abundance. If we do not fight them, they will not leave. And even if we fight but fail to annihilate them, they still might not leave."

Having said this, he shook his head. "Why does everyone keep running south? It never ends."

By now, Old Master Liu had long since seen the truth: all the Marshal's Office's troubles had always been tied to population, and all of it had been brought on by the heavens.

In normal years, having wave after wave of people delivered into the hands of a separatist regime would make any ruler ecstatic. Yet in this era, in this environment, this incomparably precious population was more poisonous than poison itself.

It all came down to grain... If the Tianshan region had enough grain to feed all the Oirat, why would these Oirat Tatars have to bolt five thousand li just to come here and fight a war?

Well, now they'd done it.

Liu Xiangyu shook his head gently and gazed to the northwest.

If his son was determined to go to war with the Oirat, then once hostilities began, in order for Xining to serve as a secure rear base for the eastern campaign against the imperial court, they would have to dispatch troops five thousand li as well — all the way to Ili.

The Marshal's Office could not accomplish this on its own. Liu Xiangyu had already set his sights on the next objective — Gansu.

Only when the sixty thousand starving Gansu border troops abandoned the desert and charged toward the oases of the Ili River Valley could they sweep the lands north and south of the Tianshan clean of the Oirat.