Chapter 413: Grand Ambitions

The Mongol Great Khan ultimately did not survive this summer.

The fortunate thing was that by the time the Great Khan ascended to Heaven, his eight consorts and Ejei had all been inoculated with the smallpox vaccine; his wife and children had all passed through the pox and were able to stay by his bedside to see him off on his final journey.

To arrange the location of the Great Khan's mausoleum, Liu Shizi assembled the Han and Mongol officers under his command for a council. He had expected some debate over the burial site, but to his complete surprise, the meeting proceeded with exceptional simplicity.

This matter was certainly for the Mongol generals to decide; none of the Han army commanders under Liu Chengzong had any intention of throwing their weight around.

Sechen Taiji, seeing that no one spoke, proposed sending Ligdan Khan's coffin to Ordos, saying he could take a thousand mounted troops to accomplish this mission.

But Baatur Khong Tayiji vetoed it outright, saying: "Aren't you afraid the Jin Khan will dig your brother up? Bury him in the Tianshan Mountains — I'll go back and tend your brother's grave."

Sechen Taiji thought to himself, tend the grave my ass — the moment you bastard leave Golmud you'll toss my brother into the great desert.

Finally, Canjiang Aqai Daiching spoke up: "Just bury him here. Our Khalkha soldiers, officers, and taijis are all down below. West of the city, beside the Western Xia Granny, a spot is kept for the Great Khan. Burying him here is good — they'll have company down there, and when we come to make offerings, we'll have company too."

The nobles of Chahar and Oirat looked at each other in dismay; people vied to whisper among themselves.

Liu Chengzong was no exception. Tilting his head toward Aqai Daiching's direct superior, Mo Yujing, he said: "This baldy Qiang's not bad — he's done his research on Bajiao City's funerary traditions."

"The Grand Marshal is right." Mo Yujing's expression was complicated. Lowering his voice, he said: "When smallpox broke out in the city, he begged me several times, saying that when he died, he absolutely must not be buried to the east, and that I had to fight to get him buried in the west... That was the spot he reserved for himself."

Liu Shizi thought it over briefly and understood.

The graves of these Khalkha nobles around Bajiao City had all been dug on his orders. Aqai Daiching had been the standout of that internal feud back then, bringing several heads to surrender to him. At the time, he said those men had killed each other; he had only killed one and picked up quite a few heads.

Now it seemed most of the Mongol nobles buried east of the city had been victims of his blade — otherwise, Baldy Qiang wouldn't have a guilty conscience, nor would he be pondering the funerary traditions of Bajiao City.

Burying the Great Khan at Bajiao City was an outcome neither Baatur Khong Tayiji nor Sechen Taiji was particularly happy with, but relatively speaking, compared to the other's proposal, they could more readily accept this result.

Most importantly, it saved Liu Chengzong trouble as well. He immediately settled the Great Khan's burial ground and sent people everywhere looking for the Tusi of Bajiao City, Chen Shiwen.

Chen Shiwen was Bajiao City's biggest winner. He was a tusi, and because the Grand Marshal had not summoned him to battle, he simply did not fight. From the very start of the war, he had taken his Han soldiers out to recruit tribal soldiers, enlisting several hundred tribal soldiers from the various tribes of the Sun-Moon Mountains, and never returned to Bajiao City.

Chen Shiwen was shrewd to the extreme. Watching Sechen and Aqai lead swarms of Mongol troops into Bajiao City, and then stuck with a Han army commander like Mo Yujing, he figured that when the Oirat Tatars attacked the city, chaos inside was certain.

So he planted his rear end at Dongshankou as if it had taken root, showing no intention of entering the city at all.

When he heard the Grand Marshal had encircled the enemy's main force at Muge Flat, he immediately came trotting over with his subordinates — tribal soldiers in tattered rags — to pay his respects, shamelessly asking to equip and arm the tribal soldiers with Mongol weapons.

Liu Chengzong held off on granting it — not that he didn't want to, but simply because the spoils of war hadn't been tallied yet at the time.

After the war, the agricultural-pastoral boundary in Qinghai became even more distinct. Once the pastureland distribution was complete, the area south of the Sun-Moon Mountains, from Bajiao City to Golmud, would be filled solid with tribal grazing lands and tusi fiefs.

By then, Tusi Chen, the first to pledge allegiance to the Marshal's Manor, would instead become the weakest tusi in the pastoral region. Letting him recruit some tribal soldiers to bolster his strength would do no harm.

In any case, the Marshal's Manor's regular army had no use for much of the captured leather armor and long spears. Besides, Liu Chengzong needed him to build a temple for the Great Khan.

A City God Temple.

Liu Shizi intended to enfeoff the Great Khan as a City God; the stele inscription was already written.

Throughout the entire funeral, Sechen Taiji and the other Chahar nobles were lost and uneasy, and the Oirat chieftains were no better off — everyone was filled with the grief of a fox mourning the hare's death.

Except for Baatur Khong Tayiji.

Liu Chengzong felt this fellow was already doing his utmost to suppress his excitement, yet he was still practically jubilant, as happy as if it were New Year's. The joy radiated from his whole body — even with a straight face, it would still spill out.

Liu Chengzong, for his part, seemed somewhat distracted. Ligdan Khan's death stirred no emotion in him, and the funeral could hardly be called sorrowful. All day he read reports on the army's smallpox vaccinations; aside from that, what consumed the most mental energy was selecting personnel to send to Gansu.

Amusingly enough, on this matter, Liu Chengzong and the Grand Coordinator of Gansu had thought of the same thing.

The Grand Coordinator of Gansu intended to send him some licentiates, and he planned to send Gansu some military physicians.

Throughout the entire funeral, Chen Qindai, the Magistrate of Haibei who bordered Gansu, stayed by Liu Chengzong's side, reporting in detail the intelligence the Marshal's Manor had gathered on the Three Tribulations Society.

Wang Ziyong's Three Tribulations Society was less a cult and more a mutual-aid society — a paramilitary organization cloaked in a religious guise, with virtually none of the usual spirit-summoning trickery.

Chen Qindai had obtained the Three Tribulations Society's latest regulations. Compared to the earlier simple rules, the current regulations contained far more organizational elements.

For instance, they stipulated that the Langtou, Tudi, Panguan, and Xianfeng spread across various regions must, among the congregants under their respective jurisdictions, enforce the rule of three households jointly raising one donkey or camel, and ten households jointly raising one horse.

And select warriors at a ratio of one man per ten able-bodied males, with training on the 3rd, 6th, and 9th day of each ten-day period. Two of those days were to be spent at the nearest local private school, for basic literacy instruction and the study of military law and regulations, respectively.

The remaining day was for group drill. The drill location was decided in advance by the Langtou and Tudi, and only announced to the warriors under their command that very afternoon — the sites were mostly desolate wilderness.

They would hide by day and travel by night, reaching the location before nightfall to study commands, formations, and weapons training, then return home the next morning.

Looking at these regulations, Liu Chengzong... how to put it — he very much wanted to laugh.

Little Sixteen definitely had a hand in this, because it was almost a carbon copy of the Black Dragon Mountain Militia Training Regulations he had drawn up back home when he first returned to Black Dragon Mountain.

He never imagined that the militia training regulations he had created at Black Dragon Mountain in Yan'an Prefecture, northern Shaanxi, would be carried forward and flourish in Gansu.

Reading these regulations, Liu Shizi could clearly sense that the Three Tribulations Society had already completed the early stage of spreading throughout Gansu.

That these regulations could be implemented without a hitch clearly indicated that the Three Tribulations Society held a fairly high degree of control over the villages where the rules were enforced.

They could control the private schools around the villages, and they could also control dozens or even over a hundred people suddenly vanishing from the village one night, only to return home the next morning, faces full of exhaustion, collapsing into bed to sleep.

Although the regulations made no mention of weapons, training required weapons — perhaps even armor, for all one knew — it was simply that such things obviously could not exist in the written rules and regulations.

Add to that the rule of ten households jointly raising one horse and three households jointly raising one donkey or camel.

Their ambitions are enormous!

To be honest, Liu Chengzong had never taken Wang Ziyong very seriously, because in the early days of their cooperation, Wang Ziyong's force had extremely poor cohesion and exceedingly weak combat effectiveness.

Back in the day, within that peasant army coalition centered on the Lion Camp, the force Liu Guoneng had pulled together through blood and marriage ties was slightly inferior in combat strength to Liu Chengzu's Black Dragon Mountain militia; Li Wanqing's recruited famine victims, orphans, and vagrants were even worse than Liu Guoneng's force.

Luo Rucai went without saying — that band of famine victims only stood out among the Yan'an Prefecture peasant armies purely because, though Luo Rucai couldn't fight, he absolutely did not fear death, forever standing stiff-necked at the front line.

As for the men Wang Ziyong brought, they couldn't even be called a force — they were more like a crowd that had come to watch the excitement.

To this day, the bravest men Liu Chengzong had ever seen on the battlefield were the Eight Warriors of Cannon-Mounting Hill under Li Bei. They had been routed at first, and Wang Ziyong's thousand-plus men were chasing them down — who would have thought that the moment those eight men turned around, the thousand-plus men started running, and were chased for several li.

And most crucially, Liu Shizi truly could not understand how Wang Ziyong recruited his people.

He always felt like this fellow could summon soldiers from scattered beans — whoosh, and the men just appeared.

Seeing his amused smile, Chen Qindai smiled too, and said: "The Grand Marshal has surely seen it — he's using the Black Dragon Mountain militia's training methods."

This rather surprised Liu Chengzong: "You know the Black Dragon Mountain militia's training rules too?"

Chen Qindai had formerly been a soldier under Meng Ruhu, had followed Liu Guozhen to fight in northern Shaanxi, and after surrendering to Liu Chengzong, had basically never been to Black Dragon Mountain. Logically, he shouldn't know about the militia training.

But Chen Qindai smiled and said: "I don't know them, but Wang Ziyong's side has people from Black Dragon Mountain. Aren't his subordinate officers all former banner troops of the Yan'an Guard?"

This news was something Liu Chengzong had not expected — so the Three Tribulations Society in Gansu also had relatives of his over there.

He recalled when he first drilled the civilian conscripts — his idea had been to train all his clansmen as reserve officers. But later, because he'd always led his own direct troops, the plan was shelved.

As it turned out, some things are meaningful simply because you did them, even if in the end it's a case of planting willows and getting shade by accident — for instance, later on, his clansmen really did become officers, only they became officers for the imperial court at Yan'an Garrison.

And now, a whole other group of people is still using his methods to keep training new reserve officers.

"Haibei is close to Gansu. Small squads can get through via the Qilian Mountain route. You'll be in charge of this, then."

Liu Chengzong thought for a moment, then said to Chen Qindai, "Haibei County is to establish a medical school — you know about this?"

Chen Qindai nodded. "I am aware. It is already being arranged. What instructions does the Grand Marshal have?"

"Pick some reliable men. You should have quite a few Gansu people over there, right?" Liu Chengzong searched his memory, then said, "I recall you were suppressing bandits in the Qilian Mountains early on."

Chen Qindai smiled at that. "The Grand Marshal still remembers that. I did indeed recruit and accept the surrender of some deserters and refugees in the Qilian Mountains — several hundred of them."

At the time, Liu Chengzong had just taken control of the maritime region, and Haibei had only just been established as a county. The place had nothing but a few Mongol and Tibetan stockades seized from Daiqing. Meanwhile, in Gansu, quite a few deserters had gotten word that a market had opened at Gulf Bay.

People trickled in continuously. Haibei County was short-handed then, so anyone who made it over was taken in. But there were also some fleeing Mongol soldiers, Tibetan tribal leaders, and a few bold deserters from the border garrisons who banded together and became bandits and robbers ranging north and south of the Qilian Mountains.

There were no large bandit gangs in the area, but small-scale banditry was a constant, serious problem.

Chen Qindai had been busy suppressing bandits the whole time. It was only after Wang Ziyong gained real momentum in Gansu, and traffic north and south of the Qilian Mountains increased, with both sides cooperating to root out the bandits, that the situation gradually improved.

Liu Chengzong nodded. "Right. Pick some trustworthy ones from among them. Have them take smallpox doctors and vaccine into Gansu to help Shiliu inoculate the society members. I expect smallpox will be raging fiercely in Gansu too. Producing vaccine at a time like this will benefit the Three Tribulations Society... Also, take a message to Wang Ziyong for me. It's been a few years since we last met. Tell him to make time to come to New City."

Chen Qindai nodded his assent. Liu Chengzong then said, "Alright, I have nothing else for you. Tell Taiji Batur Khun not to stand around celebrating over there — have him come to my command tent."

Chen Qindai obeyed and turned to leave. Liu Chengzong watched Ligdan Khan's burial ceremony from a distance, solemnly bowed his head slightly in a gesture of respect, then mounted his horse and rode off with his guards.

Ever since reading his father's reply, Liu Chengzong had been considering candidates to send to the Tianshan Mountains. Since his father intended to send his elder brother to Tianshan, he naturally would not object — besides, his brother really did stand to gain a great deal there.

After all, the journey was five thousand li. If anything went wrong in Tianshan, the Marshal's Manor would not be able to send support in time.

The garrison at Tianshan would therefore need a commander with very strong leadership and autonomy. His elder brother was a good choice. In combat, he might not be as fierce and swift as Yang Yao or Wang Wenxiu, but his strength lay in reliability.

Dai Daozi would certainly go along as deputy commander as well.

With that settled, the only thing that could provide support for his brother would be migrants from Gansu.

Migration required the support of the Three Tribulations Society, but after reviewing the society's rules and regulations today, Liu Chengzong realized that this might not be so easy to pull off.

Because Wang Ziyong was building an army. His regulations already made that very clear.

The overall ratio was designed to create an army similar to the mule-and-horse-mobile Lion Battalion — an all-cavalry force.

The backbone of this army would inevitably be the Gansu border troops. For the Marshal's Manor to pull these border troops out as migrants... how was that any different from poaching men?

Liu Chengzong needed this army Wang Ziyong was building, but he had no intention of stripping him of his authority. So he planned to meet with Wang Ziyong and discuss inviting him to Tianshan as well.

After all, compared to working with him, Wang Ziyong had actually cooperated with his elder brother Liu Chengzu for a longer time, and they had gotten along fairly well.

Let Wang Ziyong be the vanguard, opening up new territory in Tianshan; Shiliu would be the rear support, continuing to recruit society members in Gansu and funnel fresh troops to Tianshan — forming a migration chain.

In just a few years, once his elder brother had a firm foothold in Tianshan, they could use Tianshan as a springboard to push south and recover the Western Regions. With Dai Daozi taking over the Marshal's Manor's forces in Tianshan, the grand strategy of stabilizing the northwest would be set.

When the time came, if Wang Ziyong wanted to lead troops back, he would certainly be given a position as a top general. And if he could expand westward or northwestward, Liu Chengzong would not mind enfeoffing him as a king beyond the frontier.

Back at his command tent, Liu Chengzong let out a soft sigh. He sat inside and waited quietly for Taiji Batur Khun to arrive.

He wanted to ask this Tianshan chieftain about the Russians in the northwest — what exactly the situation was.

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Good evening!