Chapter 387: Grand Lord

In the sixth month, war clouds gathered thick over the sea. Xining Prefecture mobilized one hundred thousand herders; yak teams hauling artillery rumbled along the roads, and forty-two wheeled boats shuttled supplies back and forth.

Hooge was frantic as an ant on a hot pan, pacing all day through the new city reeking of donkey and horse dung. In three days he sought an audience with Liu Xiangyu nine times. On the fourth day he waited an entire morning outside the prefectural office gate before finally meeting the Liu Laoye he had been yearning for.

"Grand Lord!"

Hooge's courtesy was thorough. Upon meeting, he stepped forward, then retreated one step, bent his left knee, lowered his right hand, inclined his body forward in a salute, and only then rose and asked urgently, "How did it come to blows?"

Liu Xiangyu, leading Red Banner, paused for a moment, raised his hands in a cupped-fist bow in return, and said, "Come into the residence with me."

Having spoken, he sighed, and only then nodded gently. "It has come to blows after all."

Red Banner was not exactly an old horse. By its age, it was in its prime and should have served another three years, but during the seven years best suited for campaigning with the army, three were spent malnourished and bearing heavy labor, which left its body far weaker than before.

The last time it saw battle, Liu Chengzong felt it struggling to carry him, so he gave it to his father, who wore no armor in daily life, to ride as a mount. In another two years it would be sent to Dragon Colt Island out at sea to live out its remaining years in comfort.

Once inside the office, after Liu Xiangyu took the main seat, Hooge stood waiting to one side and began pouring out his grievances. "Does Grand Lord not know that your young nephew has come? You have made your nephew wait in such bitter hardship."

On this matter, Liu Xiangyu said little. He had not deliberately avoided Hooge; it was simply that with a great war brewing, affairs were so numerous he could not attend to him at all.

He shook his head and said, "Do you have any idea how many wedding banquets this old man has attended of late? Only yesterday I returned from Hehuang, and by evening I was taking part in the wedding of twenty-nine officers in camp. This morning at dawn I saw them off on deployment. You ought to understand as well — when a major battle is to be fought, every critical matter must yield to the war effort."

"Yes!"

Hooge's face brimmed with smiles as he chimed in, delighted. "I knew it — Grand Lord certainly was not deliberately avoiding me... Now that Grand Lord puts it this way, I understand. The Marshal's headquarters is so much like our state. After the Battle of Dalinghe, my father the Khan likewise attended the marriages of surrendered officers and officials one after another. There was even a day when fifteen officers wed together."

A faint frown flickered across Liu Xiangyu's face and vanished. Without betraying any reaction, he feigned keen interest and asked, "Oh? How do you arrange marriages for surrendered officers?"

"Not just surrendered officers and officials — our state has its own statutes. A Han official of the first rank who surrenders to us is given the daughter of one of the realm's beile as wife; a second-rank official is given the daughter of a beile or a high minister. As for surrendered soldiers, the widows of the various tribes are checked and assigned in marriage. If there truly are no widows, the state treasury disburses funds to marry them to women among the common folk."

"'Disburses'?"

Liu Xiangyu cared a great deal about this word and asked with emphasis. Receiving Hooge's affirmative reply, he stroked his beard and slowly nodded. "Your father is a very formidable man."

Having earned praise from Liu Laoye, Hooge felt proud on his father's behalf as well. He raised his face in a smile and said, "Indeed — otherwise, with so many sons among my ancestors, how is it that my father became Khan?"

Hooge had not forgotten why he came. After speaking, he hurriedly asked, "Grand Lord, the Khoshut Güshi Khan has already declared himself a vassal and paid tribute to my father the Khan. Why is the Grand Marshal determined to go to war with the Oirats? Could the benefits of our alliance truly be less than those of the Chahar?"

"This matter has nothing to do with you."

When it came to serious business, Liu Xiangyu's face still wore that same kindly, good-natured look, but his words became exceptionally earnest. "Suppose my Qinghai Marshal's headquarters dispatched troops four thousand li and stationed forty thousand soldiers at Tieling Garrison, demanding Tashan, Tieling, Taining, Duoyan, and Fuyu from your father as grazing lands — could your father swallow the humiliation and cede territory?"

"That — that is absolutely out of the question. It would cut off Khorchin."

Hooge's words had barely fallen when Liu Laoye gave a cold laugh. "Hmph. The Oirat Tatars have likewise cut off my Kangning Prefecture, and they even have the delusion of demanding land for fifty thousand troops to rest and recuperate. Is that not daydreaming?"

Hearing this, Hooge's face showed difficulty. He thought to himself that the Khoshut had just sent envoys to the Jin state to offer tribute. The very first step toward overawing all under heaven had just been taken, and now the Khoshut were about to go to war with the Marshal's headquarters. The matter was extremely troublesome.

Putting himself in their shoes, if he stood from the perspective of the Oirat allied army, the present situation was exceedingly thorny.

For one, the Chahar Ligdan Khan was not yet dead, so the allied army had failed to achieve its expeditionary objective, and a hasty withdrawal would damage their prestige. For another, even if they wished to return, the provisions and baggage for fifty thousand troops were a headache.

In any case, judging by the Oirat allied army's current disposition, they did not look like they intended to turn back.

Hooge shook his head, at a loss for words.

It was Liu Xiangyu who, stroking his beard, smiled and said, "I have heard it said that these days you are always sitting on the roof ridge, staring blankly. What have you discerned?"

"Ah?" Hooge started, then feigned ignorance. "The sunsets at the new city are beautiful."

Liu Xiangyu said nothing, only watching him with a faint, ambiguous smile.

Hooge had followed his father on campaign since childhood. Young as he was, the judgment he had honed was exceptionally sharp. All this time he had been living outside the new city, and the Marshal's headquarters' massive war preparations could not be hidden from him.

Amid the whinnying of carts and horses, he sat on the roof ridge for half a shichen every day, mentally tallying the number of donkeys and mules passing from the east through the new city and turning south. Coupled with the mountains of large livestock dung piled along the roads outside the city, there was far too much he could discern.

For seven days straight, the Marshal's headquarters had been moving no fewer than three thousand donkeys and mules southward through the new city each day. Add to that the tens of thousands of livestock already being shipped to the grazing lands west of the new city after the victory, and the total number swelled to a terrifying figure.

Because he had seen it — the Marshal's headquarters' army used carts to transport supplies. Donkeys and mules were led carrying baggage on their backs. Mobilizing this many donkeys and mules meant that the roughly twenty thousand surrendered Ming troops from the Hehuang campaign had essentially all been absorbed and integrated.

Meeting Liu Xiangyu's gaze, Hooge felt a little uneasy inside and gave a hollow laugh. "The Marshal's headquarters' troops march extremely fast."

Liu Xiangyu let out a chuckle. He knew his own household's affairs — in truth, the Marshal's headquarters did not have that many livestock.

Perhaps before the Hehuang campaign, all kinds of domestic animals had been raised in great numbers, but faced with the current reality of consuming meat, a swelling population, and expanding military forces, the ratio between the Marshal's headquarters' livestock, commoners, and soldiers had widened further.

Even after plundering the outskirts of Lanzhou, their numbers of sheep and pigs on hand were extremely tight; and there were not even enough plow oxen to distribute to the common people of Hehuang.

Of the more than twenty thousand donkeys and mules requisitioned this time, many were the very mules that Hehuang households used to pull plows and till their fields.

When the Marshal's headquarters needed to transfer livestock from Hehuang, there was no bypassing Chengyun. The moment Chengyun heard that his second uncle wanted to buy livestock in Hehuang, he immediately advised against buying donkeys and urged buying only mules.

In the entire Hehuang valley east of Xining, the total number of horses, donkeys, and mules on hand was only around one hundred fifty thousand. That figure was already dangerously low, and the majority of them were mules.

Mules were excellent, but mules could not breed. The problem in Hehuang now was that if this batch of mules died, the number of horses and donkeys would shrink to forty or fifty thousand. When that happened, impacting production would be the least of it — in the future, the Marshal's headquarters would have no mules left to use.

The reason large livestock were scarce was precisely the war. On one hand, the fighting had killed donkeys and mules; on the other, when wealthy households fled earlier, they had taken their large livestock with them.

Liu Xiangyu had originally wanted to buy donkeys, partly because donkeys were cheaper than mules, and partly because the Marshal's headquarters had just established the Court of the Imperial Stud, and after the war donkeys could still be used to breed mules.

Chengyun was the person who best understood how good mules were, and he was even more unwilling to see donkeys die in wartime. He therefore proposed that Liu Laoye allow him to rent mules and buy donkeys in Hehuang — send the mules to war and the donkeys out to sea.

His method was simple. The twenty township-bao administrations in Hehuang were already fully established. Have the bao chiefs of each township-bao act as middlemen, sign contracts to borrow mules from the common people, and pay five qian of silver per month.

After the war, if the mule survived, it would be returned; if it died, the government would pay compensation of eight taels of silver for the mule and one tael for the saddlebag.

The price Chengyun offered was not high. In the past, the cost of renting a mule for travel or buying one outright was far more than this, but the advantages were that no person needed to accompany it, the Marshal's headquarters covered its fodder, and compensation was paid if it died. Thus, as soon as the decree was issued, every township posted conscription notices, set up conscription desks, and began registering mules.

Households everywhere hurriedly groomed and spruced up their mules, fed them their fill of the best fodder, and sent them off to the township-bao offices to sign contracts and affix their marks.

To the common people of Hehuang, what was this talk of 'renting mules'? Before departure, the mule's body was checked for illness, lameness, or weakness. After going, it received military pay, went to war, was fed army rations, and if it died, there was a pension.

Other than the fact that the recruits were not people but mules, how was this any different from conscripting soldiers? So they beat gongs and drums, and the scene was exactly the same as sending their own children off to the battlefield.

As for donkeys, Chengyun also purchased a batch — over three thousand head, all selected for good appearance and large stature, both jacks and jennies, bought at high prices.

It was just the right season for mating. He would have Cui Cong watch over them carefully and strive to get them bred this year, producing eight hundred horse mules and hinny foals.

The Marshal's headquarters' horse stud was established in the lands around Qinghai Lake. The primary reason was that the breeding grounds could be placed out on the sea — the genuine sea, the Heart of the Sea Mountain at the very center of Qinghai Lake.

The fleet of the Naval Office had discovered that mountain during a voyage. Zhou Riqiang went back and pored over books for days, cross-referencing, then personally sailed to the mountain and climbed it. He found ancient city ruins on top and confirmed it was the Dragon Colt Island of the Tuyuhun, the original breeding ground of the Qinghai steed.

In summer, Qinghai Lake experiences waterspouts, giving rise to the legend of a white dragon in the sea. During the Tuyuhun period, they would often wait until winter when the sea froze over, then drive robust mares to Heart of the Sea Mountain to graze and mate, calling their offspring 'dragon seed' — that was the origin of the Qinghai steed. Hence, Heart of the Sea Mountain was also called Dragon Colt Island.

When Geshu Han of the Tang dynasty moved the Divine Strategy Army to the island to build a citadel, it was initially named Divine Might Citadel. Later, after a white dragon was sighted, the citadel was renamed Responding Dragon Citadel.

For this reason, Liu Chengzong's Court of the Imperial Stud was also called the Dragon Colt Court. The office of Dragon Colt Court Minister Cui Cong was established at Responding Dragon Citadel, with three subordinate studs: Haibei, Haixi, and Hainan. They were allocated three million mu of grazing land, one hundred twenty thousand mu of mountain wilderness, recruited three thousand herdsmen and one thousand six hundred cultivators, and were specifically tasked with pasturing and breeding horses, mules, donkeys, and cattle.

Cui Cong had previously been the Supervisor of Qingping Stud in the Guyuan Herd Supervisory Office of the imperial court. He was captured when Zhenyuan fell and had been brought all the way to Qinghai by Liu Laoye. For a very long time, the work he did at Liu Laoye's side was that of a horse groom.

Still, this was indeed a talented and good man. Back when Old Master Liu was scouting intelligence in Zhenyuan County, he was even mistaken for a famine refugee and nearly recruited to Qingping Stable as a grace soldier, eating horse fodder just to survive.

This man could never have dreamed, even in his wildest dreams, that a single moment of kindness would earn him the same rank as Zhou Riqiang.

Cui Cong's Dragon Colt Temple Minister was also conferred the title of Huaiyuan Colonel. The Marshal Manor's loose ranks were divided into three grades — General, Colonel, and Commandant — with nine levels and twenty-seven steps. Huaiyuan Colonel sat at the first-grade colonel's third step, equivalent to the court's lower fourth rank.

So for Zhou Riqiang, Huaiyuan Colonel was actually a bit low, but for Cui Cong, who had once been a Directorate Head of the upper ninth rank, it was a single step to heaven.

Before conferring the titles, Liu Chengzong had carefully pondered everyone's mindset. For Zhou Riqiang, he couldn't grant a higher rank — the next two colonel ranks up would correspond to third-rank civil officials in the court, so it had to be kept a little lower, making it easier to transfer him to a Vice Minister post when the Six Ministries were established later.

As for the next rank up, Zhaoyong General, those were basically all men who had risen from Battalion Commander to Regional Commander during the He-Huang campaign — people like Zhang Tianlin, Huang Shengxiao, Gao Yingdeng, and others.

That bunch of bastards, when they drank, called Commissioner Zhou the "Salted Fish Workshop Boss." Putting them together was absolutely out of the question.

Cui Cong, on the other hand, was someone everyone respected. After all, they were all men who led troops into battle — apart from Old Jackal Li, who wouldn't like a Horse Warden?

Old Jackal Li was a different story. That fellow had a blood feud with the Zhenyuan County garrison — they'd shot him through the buttocks. He disliked anyone who'd ever been part of that garrison, let alone Cui Cong, their commanding officer.

Liu Xiangyu had just mentioned the mules to Hooge when Hooge suddenly asked, "Grand Lord, since the Marshal Manor is determined to go to war with the Oirats, your nephew is powerless to stop it. However, I have two requests, and I hope Grand Lord can relay them to the Grand Marshal after the war."

Old Master Liu asked, "What requests?"

"I hope the Marshal Manor will open trade with our state in the Mobei region, permitting merchants to travel to mutual markets — for all goods."

Hooge paused here, clenching his fist, then raised his little finger, ring finger, and middle finger in succession. "Our state will purchase everything at three times the market price."

The New City guarded the Juerwan market, and over these days Hooge had inquired about Juerwan's prices. They weren't high — in fact, to him, they were remarkably low.

The situation in Juerwan was that silver was scarce, but it held the era's pinnacle of handicraft technology from the Prince's Manor artisans, capable of producing nearly everything. Raw materials were also exceptionally abundant here. Silver, on the other hand, had only reached normal reserve levels after the He-Huang campaign, and circulation in the market was still thin.

In the Jin state across the river, the situation was exactly the reverse.

They could produce very little. Liaodong, as a traditional military zone, meant the high-level technology available for plunder was mostly military in nature, offering little help for civilian livelihoods.

The Ming dynasty had poured vast military expenditures into Liaodong, and with their military defeats, a great portion of those precious metals flowed into Jin state territory — with nowhere to trade them. Under such conditions, the more silver people plundered, the higher prices soared, until silver became cheap and goods dear.

Famine and crop failures likewise afflicted the Jin state, and it was precisely for this reason that Hong Taiji had chosen, in that difficult moment, to override all objections and launch a war into the Ming heartland, triggering the Jisi Incident.

Purchasing all goods at triple the price — it was an extremely tempting proposal, but Liu Xiangyu neither agreed nor disagreed, merely asking, "And the second matter?"

Hooge truly hadn't expected Liu Xiangyu to react that way. He had assumed the Marshal Manor would be desperately eager for silver. But after only a moment's pause, he said solemnly, "My father the Khan is planning to abolish the name Jurchen and merge the Mongols and Han into a new people. I hope Grand Lord will relay the alliance proposal to the Grand Marshal at the earliest opportunity. If we all join together as one people, all calling ourselves Manchu, wouldn't that be a fine thing?"

All calling themselves Manchu?

Liu Xiangyu fixed his gaze on Hooge for a moment, then reached down, fumbling on the table, and lit his pipe with a fire striker. After a pause, he asked, "Have you ever heard a poem?"

Hooge froze, blinking. "What poem?"

"Have you not seen, by the shores of Qinghai, the ancient bones that none ever gathered?"

Liu Xiangyu did not tell Hooge what this line of poetry meant.

Just this morning, word had arrived: the Grand Marshal of Qinghai's central field headquarters had relocated into Yingpan City, mobilizing civilian laborers to gather the remains of Tang dynasty soldiers who had died in the battle for Stone Fortress City, and to demarcate land for a cemetery.

Even Tang soldiers from nine hundred years ago — his son considered them their own people, deserving of proper burial. Such towering ambition — how could he ever join some "Manchu"? Utter nonsense.

Through the pale blue smoke, Liu Xiangyu said, "Hooge, it's far too early. Wait until you become Khan yourself — perhaps then we can discuss all calling ourselves Huaxia."