Chapter 412: Deepening Knowledge

Liu Chengzong would never have dreamed it — the court's Grand Coordinator of Gansu had come right into his territory to observe the people's condition.

Bai Yiqing had not left Wild Fox Fort. Using the alias Yuan Su, he posed as a provincial graduate from Liangzhou Guard, claiming he was on his way to Lanzhou to teach students. After hearing what the Wild Fox Fort centenary had to say, he grew very interested in the Marshal's headquarters.

He said he hoped to gather more information, so that in the future he could inform his good friends and prevent them from developing misunderstandings or antagonism toward the Marshal's headquarters.

The simple-hearted centenary of the Marshal's headquarters was completely won over by this line of reasoning. In a daze, he led the court's Grand Coordinator of Gansu up the winding riverside mountain path and straight into his own nest — Wild Fox Fort.

He was originally the centenary of Hekou East Pass. Why had he come sixty li out here to garrison? Wasn't it precisely to protect the Grand Marshal's good name, to keep those scoundrel government troops from ruining the Grand Marshal's reputation?

Now here was a learned gentleman curious about them, willing to understand them, who would later go to Lanzhou and help spread the Grand Marshal's good name — wasn't this a heaven-sent blessing for him?

Wild Fox Fort was not large. Built on high ground in the mountains east of the Zhuanglang River, it was a small rammed-earth fortress with four corner watchtowers and walls eighteen chi high. The mountain had been cut into two terraces each a zhang high; to reach the fort, one first had to circle twice within the firing range of its bows, crossbows, and firearms.

Easy to defend, hard to attack.

Once inside the fort, Bai Yiqing looked left and right and could not help thinking the place was completely unscathed — except that in some spots the rammed-earth walls were not uniform in color, though those clearly were not recent.

This made him curious, and he asked, "Commander, judging by the look of this fort, it doesn't seem to have seen battle?"

Earlier, the centenary had been full of pride, because when you ask nothing of a man, you stand as his equal. But now that he wanted something from Bai Yiqing, that pride had vanished from his expression. Quite the opposite — he had become very amiable.

Tossing his reins to a civilian militiaman who came forward inside the fort, the centenary took off his vermilion-lacquered helmet with the character for "Bravery" and tucked it under his arm. Raising a hand to point at Bai Yiqing, he grinned. "No rush. Come up with me."

With that, he led Bai Yiqing up onto the fort wall. Standing on the high ground, the entire Zhuanglang River valley spread out before them. Facing the mountain breeze, the centenary stretched out his arms and gestured around him. "Take a look at this place — damn, it's beautiful!"

Twenty or thirty li south of this fort lay Kushui Post Station. Due west of Kushui Post Station, dark-red gravel soared up from the strange terrain; steep, imposing peaks and blue sky with white clouds set each other off, forming a magnificent and wondrous Danxia landscape.

The centenary pointed at the land between Kushui Post Station and Wild Fox Fort, but the delight on his face gradually faded, replaced by melancholy. "From Kushui Post Station to the north, this river valley — three or four li wide, thirty or forty li long — is all good land for growing grain. The harvests are heaven knows how much better than back in my hometown!"

After he finished, he turned his head to look at Bai Yiqing. "You're a learned Liangzhou graduate. The banner troops of Zhuanglang Guard have over a hundred thousand mu of military farmlands this good — would they still need to live by stopping passing merchants and travelers and extorting road taxes?"

"This…" Bai Yiqing shook his head. "Perhaps there are bad elements — banner officers with crooked intentions?"

"You've hit it."

The centenary nodded. "There are indeed bad elements, but not just the banner officers. Let me tell you, these thousand-odd qing of land — some belongs to princely estates, some to generals, some to officials and gentry. The one thing there isn't is military farmland. Not a single mu."

"The banner troops don't own a single mu of military farmland here, yet they're the ones who farm all this land. You're a man of learning — can you tell me why those banner troops had to fight me to the death in this fort? Counting their families, they had over three hundred people. I brought only fifty-five civilian militiamen. We surrounded them at the foot of the hill for half a shichen, and they ran."

The centenary was immensely proud. With a dismissive wave of his hand in front of him, he said, "Not a single arrow fired, not a single musket shot. All of them ran."

Bai Yiqing drew a sharp breath, pressed his lips tight, and clenched his teeth. He knew his expression right now must be terrible.

The matter was not entirely as this centenary of the Marshal's headquarters described it — not that extreme.

He knew there were estates belonging to the Prince of Su here. The Prince of Su had over three hundred qing of renamed fields, two waterwheels, and a boat mill here. He also knew there was land belonging to generals, officials, and wealthy households. But there were supposed to be six hundred qing of military farmland here.

Every past audit of the accounts — Zhuanglang Guard had never had a problem.

He did not know whether the officials under him knew and kept it from him, or whether they too were kept in the dark, or whether this low-ranking officer of the Marshal's headquarters before him was deceiving him — or whether everyone was deceiving him.

Whatever the case, Gansu's military problems were far more severe than he had imagined.

To avoid losing his composure, Bai Yiqing changed the subject and asked the centenary, "Commander, you mentioned your hometown just now. Are you not from He-Huang?"

"He-Huang?"

The centenary smiled. "Do you know Yanchuan? Yanchuan in Yan'an Prefecture."

Bai Yiqing nodded, and the way he looked at the centenary immediately changed. "Commander, you and Marshal Liu are from the same hometown?"

Of course he knew Yanchuan. From the first year of Chongzhen, he had served as Administration Vice Commissioner of Shaanxi, and he had seen Liu Chengzong's name in the newspapers plenty of times. One could say they had long been acquainted at a distance.

The newspapers were the court gazettes. Liu Chengzong's name always appeared alongside tremendous destruction — demolishing this post station, annihilating that government force, popping up in the west one moment, stirring trouble in the east the next. It made restful sleep impossible.

"Not the same hometown — a bit farther away, still in Yan'an Prefecture." The centenary shook his head, then smiled. "And stop always calling me 'Commander.' I'm no commander. If I hadn't joined the Marshal, I'd just be a miner from Yanchuan."

"My name is Jing Xiaoliu, centenary of East Pass Garrison under the Marshal's headquarters. I live in Jingjia Gully, Yanchuan. No harm in letting you know — my whole family's dead anyway, thanks to those 'commanders' you speak of."

Bai Yiqing's expression was less surprise than grim expectation. "Government troops killing civilians to claim credit — Du Wenhuan?"

He remembered it very clearly. In the fourth year of Chongzhen, Du Wenhuan had been imprisoned and stripped of his post because his subordinate Li Chongrong had killed one hundred and ninety-nine civilians in Yanchuan, passing them off as bandits.

To his surprise, Jing Xiaoliu gave a scornful laugh and shook his head. "What you're talking about — that was already winter of Chongzhen three. Where we were, we never even made it to the third year."

As he spoke, Jing Xiaoliu's gaze lost its focus. A look of reminiscence came over his face. "My home, Jingjia Gully, was a poor place with hardly any farmland. You had to follow the ridge, twisting and turning for over a dozen li, just to reach the official road. But it had coal mountains and iron mountains, and pasture grass and medicinal herbs."

Speaking of his home, a regretful smile appeared on Jing Xiaoliu's face. "In the second year of Chongzhen, probably a little earlier than now, someone called Monk Wang rose up in our area. It caused quite a stir, but our little mountain gully was so remote and poor — all we felt was the drought, that life was getting harder."

"Then a rain came. We conserved the soil moisture and planted. Everyone worked like mad, digging coal and mining iron, digging up the seeds that hadn't sprouted the year before. We said grain prices were bound to fall the next year. But as it happened, the Marshal struck Yan'an Prefecture, tearing down post stations all the way to Yanchuan."

Even now, when Jing Xiaoliu brought this up, his face was still full of utter despair. "The Marshal came. He helped us resist taxes, drove off the runners sent by the government, and even helped us overturn the grain chief's house. Everyone had a few good days. But when the Marshal came, the government troops came too… I'll remember that day for the rest of my life."

Bai Yiqing looked at the man before him — in his eyes, a petty bandit leader — and listening to him talk about all this, he found it simply inconceivable.

When the roving bandits reached Jingjia Gully, Jing Xiaoliu felt they had a few good days. When the government troops reached Jingjia Gully, it left Jing Xiaoliu utterly despondent.

Jing Xiaoliu raised two fingers. "At that time, the government troops weren't so bad yet — really, not too bad. The court had transferred them to suppress the bandits, but they didn't have much provisions. The county seat was plagued by bandits and couldn't supply them either, so they could only go to the villages to requisition grain. Two hundred government troops — they only wanted grain."

Jing Xiaoliu clapped his hands, a relaxed but complicated smile on his face, his chin slightly raised. "I ran a long mountain road to bring word to the Marshal. Those two hundred government troops were wiped out. Later, their Mobile Corps Commander was wiped out by the Marshal too."

Listening to these old tales from northern Shaanxi, Bai Yiqing was momentarily speechless, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Earlier, he had assumed Jing Xiaoliu was an officer from a government-troop background. He never imagined… the man was an out-and-out troublemaker.

"Why? How much grain did the government troops requisition from you, for you to hate them so much?"

"I don't hate them. They didn't take much grain either — maybe a thousand jin or so? And a few horses."

Jing Xiaoliu said it as lightly as wind and cloud, but Bai Yiqing involuntarily stepped back half a pace, and even the way he looked at Jing Xiaoliu changed.

Bai Yiqing did not understand. He was a presented scholar of the forty-seventh year of Wanli, and his official career had been less that of a civil official than that of a civil-affairs officer attached to the military.

He had first served in the Ministry of War. In the second year of Tianqi, the Xi Emperor had even issued a special decree to cast a seal for him to manage new military funds at Shanhai Pass and other places. Later, he went to Shaanxi to oversee the military defense circuits of both Xining and Guannei, and then became the current Grand Coordinator of Gansu. One could say that of his decade-plus in government, more than half had been tied to the military.

Only in Anyang, Henan, had he served for a time as Prefect of Zhangde Prefecture, and there he had come into contact with the common people of Henan.

The times were already not good back then. The court needed money to fight wars on every front. The Wanli Emperor had imposed an additional levy of nine li of silver everywhere except Guizhou, and it was only upon his death that a posthumous edict abolished the mining tax eunuchs who had caused unrest in four places.

But the common people back then were not like this.

Paying taxes and delivering grain to the court was an unquestioned law of heaven. When government troops marching near the front lines passed through, without any official requisition, the gentry would, on behalf of the people, bring them a meal or two — that too was the will of the people.

Later, when he came to Shaanxi as an official, first as the Military Defense Circuit Intendant of Xining, then in charge of the Guannei Circuit — in Xining and in Guanzhong, what he saw was scholars and commoners living in peace. Especially in Sanyuan County back then, gentry and commoners were united as one, making guns and casting cannons to defend their villages, beating the bandits coming down from the north until they fled in utter disarray.

So how did it come to this in your Jingjia Gully, Jing Xiaoliu — as if the bandits were far dearer than the government troops?

For just seven or eight dan of grain — just that little bit of grain — you passed word and caused the deaths of several hundred government troops?

What a ruthless heart!

"That was the third year of the great drought in northern Shaanxi. We had long stopped eating grain."

Jing Xiaoliu said quietly, "For two years, not a single grain was harvested in the mountains. We borrowed everything we could, sold everything we could. Aunts went begging beyond the mountains, uncles gnawed tree bark in the hills. We should have fled to Guanzhong long ago, but then it rained in Yanchuan, and we wanted to gamble on the seeds... They steamed buns, boiled noodles — did they deserve to die?"

Bai Yiqing was speechless.

In truth, before this, he had always believed the root of the problem lay in the decay of the Great Ming's moral principles and rites.

Moral principles and rites are not some intangible, elusive, mystical thing. To put it plainly, they are common justice — the sense of common justice that exists in the heart of every person in society.

The Great Ming today has no common justice, only each person's own reasoning. Different stations, different people — all have their own grievances and justifications, defying common justice and each going their own way.

But now it seemed that the decay of moral principles and rites was not the deep cause, but merely the surface.

What the deep cause was, Bai Yiqing wanted to do something about it, but he could not probe it out from everything he had grown so accustomed to.

Even as Grand Coordinator, he could not single-handedly reverse Gansu's decline. To put it bluntly, he could not even accomplish something as simple as clearing the military farmlands.

On the surface, clearing the military farmlands ought to have the army's support, but in reality, the people holding power in the army were precisely the targets of his clearance.

Thinking of this, he could not help but ask Jing Xiaoliu, "General Jing, how does the Marshal's Manor solve the problem of army provisions? I see you don't collect road taxes either. Do you rely solely on raiding Lanzhou?"

Jing Xiaoliu shot him a glance, musing that this old Provincial Graduate was quite concerned with the Marshal's Manor's affairs, and gave a scornful laugh. "How could we count on carting off Lanzhou's things for everything? The Marshal's Manor may be a bit poor, but our official, gentry, and clerk governance is far more honest and clear than the imperial court's."

At this, he looked at Bai Yiqing and said, "Sir Yuan, could it be you're thinking of seeking some official post at the Marshal's Manor? The Manor is in need of capable men right now. You're an imperial Provincial Graduate — come over here and you'll surely be able to put your talents to full use."

Bai Yiqing forced back a laugh at these words. The idea was too absurd. A Regional Commander declining in power and surrendering might be somewhat excusable, but the court had given him the duty of a grand border official. Even if he died, he had to die at his post. How could he possibly defect to the Marshal's Manor?

Yet these words opened a window for him. Since the Marshal's Manor was in need of men, and now he had Jing Xiaoliu, this minor leader, why not go with the flow, recruit a few Licentiates, and plant spies in the Marshal's Manor?

He smiled and said, "This humble one is already quite advanced in years. I fear that even if I defected to the Manor, I'd have few years left to serve. But I do have some students who can't even fill substantive posts in the court. If the Marshal's Manor truly is, as the General says, a place of honest governance where men of talent and learning can put their skills to full use, I would like to send them to try their luck."

As soon as Jing Xiaoliu heard this, his eyes lit up. Delighted, he said, "That would be absolutely wonderful. When they come, have them find me, and I'll recommend them."

"However..."

"However what?"

Bai Yiqing put on a troubled expression and asked with evident misgivings, "This humble one has heard that the Marshal's Manor exterminates wealthy households and gentry without mercy. If they go, can they come to any good?"

"Who's exterminating anyone without mercy? The wealthy households and gentry of Hehuang all ran off on their own before the fighting started." Jing Xiaoliu laughed, then glared. "Is that how the court talks about the Marshal's Manor? The Manor has indeed punished some wealthy households who were rich but unkind, and has killed some gentry too, but every one of them deserved to die. I won't bother telling you all the evil things they did. They caused the deaths of over a hundred people, and we killed just one of them — was that wrong?"

"Those great households that occupy tens of thousands of mu of land — a dozen or so family members live well, while hundreds of other common folk can't eat their fill. The Manor took their land and spared their lives. What of it?"

Jing Xiaoliu spread his hands. "There are also some great households who stayed in Hehuang. Their families have farmed and studied for generations, and they treated their tenants well. The Grand Marshal took their land, but they still offer counsel and design irrigation channels in the villages and towns, and are deeply respected."

"Some people are just bastards who lie on the ground sucking blood, eating people, and violating their wives and daughters. They didn't even need the Grand Marshal's order — the tenants rose up and beat them to death on their own. Even if they took their case to King Yama, they'd have no leg to stand on!"

It must be said, even Bai Yiqing, the Grand Coordinator of Gansu, felt stirred hearing this. A fire seemed to ignite in his heart, and he itched to go back to Gansu at once and incite the tenants to kill such bastards.

He was not merely entranced by the thought — he already had a plan forming in his mind. In extraordinary times, one must use extraordinary methods. Against those who usurped the military farmlands in Gansu, conventional means left him utterly helpless.

He had already seen it clearly: the Marshal's Manor had not really solved any problems. It was simply that warfare of sufficient intensity had solved most of the problems for them.

This made him resolve to get a few Licentiates from Lanzhou, from Gansu, and insert them into the Marshal's Manor.

Advance — they could probe for intelligence on the Marshal's Manor. Retreat — after some deep training, he could win over some talents to bring back, and once they had learned enough, they could solve Gansu's problems too... What was wrong with Gansu was precisely that it had neither rebel troops nor troops that obeyed his orders.

But he could create them. Only, at this moment, he still did not know whether what he created would be a standard battalion that obeyed his orders, or a rebel army.

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Good evening!