Chapter 419: Peeping

By the shore of Qinghai Lake, the black silk three-tiered canopy atop the Silver Stupa was unfurled.

Liu Chengzong and Baatur Khong Tayiji sat on folding chairs in the canopy's shade, while not far away the crack of gunfire mingled with the boom of cannon.

Baatur Khong Tayiji was a man of considerable chieftainly bearing; he didn't even glance at the firearms and cannon shipped from the arsenal, simply waved his personal guards off to test them, and invited Liu Chengzong to sit with him by the lake.

Liu the Lion was equally forthright — he instructed Shi Chengwo that once the Dzungar guards had finished testing the weapons, they should just let them fire freely: eight hundred rounds for the bird guns, five hundred for the cannon, until the weapons were shot to ruin.

Khong Tayiji had little interest in testing firearms, but he was very taken with this unfurled canopy.

Liu Chengzong raised a hand, pointed at the canopy, and laughed: "You want this? I'll have someone make you one exactly like it later."

Baatur Khong Tayiji waved his hands repeatedly: "Can't be the same, can't be the same. I've heard that all these things in the Great Ming have ceremonial regulations. The Grand Marshal comes from the Central Plains and must have his own ceremonial rules — one must not overstep."

"Tch, overstep — you flatter yourself. This is a Second-Rank ceremonial item."

Liu Chengzong let out a laugh and said to Khong Tayiji: "You know my background. I didn't make this canopy. Years ago I fought a Provincial Commander of the imperial court; he fled, and when my men reached his position, everything had been left behind — all fine materials, a shame to waste, so I picked it up. I've been using it for a few years now."

As the two talked and laughed, an old Cossack riding an Ili horse, a lock of hair bobbing on his head, came over and reported the firearms situation to Baatur Khong Tayiji.

Liu Chengzong had asked Khong Tayiji about this man before — the old fellow looked seventy, his face a mass of wrinkles, yet he could still ride a horse and fire a gun; anyone who saw him would be curious, figuring he must have been a fierce warrior in his youth.

But to their surprise, upon asking, they learned the man was only forty-seven this year.

The old fellow was called Chiban, born in a small town in southwestern Russia, probably named Kromy — at least, from Dai Daozi's description, the place's strategic position was basically equivalent to Yulin's role for the Great Ming.

He was a hard-luck case too, a foreign counterpart to Huang Shengxiao — their name was the Streltsy, also divided into capital garrison and local troops. Dai Daozi reckoned Chiban was just like a hereditary garrison soldier in a frontier guard post.

It was uncanny.

Over here, the Wanli Emperor slacked off, refusing to hold court or fill official posts; over there, for years on end no one even knew who the Tsar was.

Over here, garrison troops farmed military colonies and were driven to labor, neglecting military skills; over there, soldiers were denied pay, sent off to farm, and arbitrarily used as servants by the nobility.

Later, over here they established the camp-brigade system, starting fresh; over there they also formed standing army regiments, striking out on their own.

Even their fates were the same — over here, uprisings broke out, and the starving garrison soldiers were the main force; over there, uprisings broke out too, and the ubiquitous Streltsy were also the main force.

Over twenty years ago, a peasant rebel army reached the city Chiban was garrisoned outside of; they surrendered on the spot and followed the rebels to attack the next city. The massive campaign lasted less than two years before the rebellion failed due to noble betrayal and defection.

Afterwards he ran off and became a Cossack. Dai Daozi said the Cossacks actually lived pretty much like their own peasant armies, especially like the Marshal's Manor — run off to some wilderness and beat up whoever you run into.

Chiban knocked around among the Cossacks for a few years, until one time he was captured in a failed raid on the Tatars. Illiterate, he was sold and resold all the way to the Ottoman Empire, where he became a rowing slave on a galley warship.

For a soldier from the lower classes of Tsarist Russia, going to the Ottoman Empire, spending a few years as a white slave, and coming back alive — that counted as advanced education.

By the time he regained his freedom and returned to the Don Cossacks, he had vaulted into that tiny sliver of the most cultured men, able to speak fluent Persian and even write a few sentences.

The reason this level of literacy only barely put him among that tiny sliver was that there were quite a few Cossacks who had returned from their "advanced education" with stellar academic achievements.

With a bit of learning under his belt, Chiban no longer wanted to drift among the Cossacks and planned to go home and find a way forward. Who would have guessed that before he even got home, he ran into nobles building a long wall in the south, trying to press-gang him into labor on the wall.

China's Long Wall is in the north, because the Mongols are in the north; Russia's Long Wall is in the south, because the Mongols are in the south.

Their Southern Barbarians were the Crimean Khanate. Truth be told, Tsarist Russia wasn't afraid of them at all — the Tatars fought to plunder, and over the decades several million people had already been carried off as slaves. What was there left to fear from plunder?

Tsarist Russia, still in the era of feudal noble rule, simply used poverty to immunize itself against plunder.

You plunder the estate lord's manor farm — what does that have to do with me, the Tsar?

The Tsar didn't have that many hobbies; he had one duty: fuck up Poland.

To prepare for a major war, they bought over ten thousand outdated heavy muskets from Sweden, which had completed its military reforms, and marched their army west to war with Poland.

Never in their wildest dreams did they expect that just as the great army was bogged down before a strong city, the walls nearly breached, the Tatars swept through from the south in a wave of pillage. The noble lords led their troops back to defend their own property, and the offensive collapsed in an instant.

And so Tsarist Russia needed to build a Long Wall.

Chiban fled again, but this time he was not so lucky — he was caught and exiled to Siberia.

In Siberia, Chiban, already an old man, was once again captured in a raid against the Tatars and became the slave of Baatur Khong Tayiji, that very Tatar chieftain.

In the words of the Dzungar Tayiji, this Chiban was excellent in every way — except he only knew how to row boats, not build them.

Baatur Khong Tayiji was extremely satisfied with the bird gun's performance — though this was, of course, predicated on Liu Chengzong having told him the bird gun's situation beforehand, both its strengths and its weaknesses.

For Khong Tayiji, however, he didn't care about the weaknesses. For one thing, with cannon providing firepower supplementation, he didn't need every single musket to have the power to punch through heavy armor.

For another, he chuckled and told Liu Chengzong a secret: "Those barbarian Russian firelocks — once they're in my hands, they're deadlier than in theirs."

Liu Chengzong was thoroughly puzzled by this: "Why is that?"

Did you top up your account or something?

"Their gunpowder is no good," Baatur Khong Tayiji said with a grin, giving a thumbs-up. "My powder is mixed by the Muslims of Yarkand — good powder. They bought all those big-bore firelocks, and the shots still aren't as powerful as this bird gun of yours."

"I heard the reason they could buy so many firelocks was that the seller had developed better powder and made shorter, lighter muskets, so they sold off the heavy ones to them. Not like the Grand Marshal, who sells me the very best directly!"

Liu Chengzong mulled it over — that explanation actually seemed quite plausible.

They had a fixed gunpowder formula, which meant that, given the strength of the barrel allowed, with length constant, the larger the caliber, the greater the power.

But not everyone else in the world had a fixed gunpowder formula, which meant they might shoulder a large-caliber musket, suffer the hardship of its weight and clumsiness for nothing, yet be unable to bring its large-caliber power to bear.

Besides, power was mainly a matter of the opponent. If not for the trend toward increasingly heavy armor on the Liaodong battlefield, Liu Chengzong wouldn't have chosen heavy individual firearms either.

As for Khong Tayiji's flattery, however, Liu Chengzong didn't take it to heart at all. No one was a fool; he hadn't sold Khong Tayiji his active-service firearms, and both he and Khong Tayiji knew it perfectly well. So he just smiled and said nothing.

He knew Khong Tayiji must have more to say.

Because when he returned to the Naval Command, he had summoned Dai Daozi first, and only then Khong Tayiji.

Dai Daozi reported that during the Grand Marshal's absence from the Naval Command, Baatur Khong Tayiji's daily life had been very regular.

Every day he would punctually go to the seaside shipyard to check on the warship soon to be launched; the rest of the time, he shut himself in the post-station quarters at the Naval Command, puzzling over strange things.

Dai Daozi had run into it many times — the Dzungar Tayiji had broken a huge pile of little twigs and tossed them all over the table, as if he were casting divinations.

Sure enough, seeing Liu Chengzong's silence, Khong Tayiji spoke: "Grand Marshal, I've calculated it. With the goods I can currently provide, next year I can only buy equipment for a thousand-man unit. But I also need ships... so I was thinking, I'd like to owe you a sum of money."

Before he could reply, Baatur Khong Tayiji continued: "Don't be hasty, Grand Marshal. I can only control the Dzungar. If I had the arms for three thousand-man units, I could control all of Oirat."

In truth, the Dzungar already held the strongest voice within Oirat at present; it was just that after this defeat, their prestige would inevitably suffer upon their return. The arms for three thousand-man units would, in the shortest time, not only restore the Dzungar's standing but give them dominance over the other tribes.

He said: "If I can control Oirat, I can swap fifty thousand sheepskins for fifty thousand sable, fox, and stoat pelts."

Liu Chengzong raised an eyebrow: "That many?"

Khong Tayiji waved his hand: "Not many. In the marshes of the lower Irtysh River, there are many fishing and hunting tribes. The hunting season there runs from October each year to April the next; one seasoned hunter can take one hundred twenty to two hundred eighty sable pelts."

"We have our own hunting traditions. We won't force every person to hand over two hundred pelts the way the Rakshasa do. As long as those tribes resume paying tribute to me, I can produce twenty thousand sable pelts and three hundred thousand assorted furs every year. That's why the boats are necessary."

In truth, Khuntaiji had even wilder ambitions — not just the northern marshes, but also the Yenisei River basin northeast of the Tianshan Mountains, where the Kyrgyz tribe lives, and the vast lands stretching all the way to the Frozen Sea.

Even without hunting methods that drain the pond to catch the fish, this entire territory could yield two million squirrel pelts, two hundred thousand stoat pelts, and fifty thousand white fox pelts every year.

But what Batur Khuntaiji considered perfectly normal, Liu Chengzong worried would lead the man to slaughter every small animal in Siberia just for weapons and equipment.

He shook his head and said, "Khuntaiji, you needn't fixate solely on furs. Submit to the Marshal's Manor, and I won't treat you poorly. There's much more trade we can do — wool, for example. For sixteen jin of cashmere, I can give you one firelock."

"Or gold and silver. I can set clear, marked prices for everything here. I plan to mint a batch of gold and silver coins for our future trade. Your lands should have gold, silver, and copper."

"I'll send men to prospect. When they find a mine, my people provide the mining techniques, your people provide the labor. Fifty percent of what's mined goes to the government as mining tax; the remaining fifty percent is yours. Have your trade caravans bring it here, I'll mint coins for you, and you can take goods directly from me."

To be honest, Khuntaiji was finding Liu Chengzong's enthusiasm harder and harder to accept.

If the initial terms had already made Khuntaiji suspect that inside Liu Chengzong's Han hide dwelled an Oirat or Tatar, now he truly half-suspected he was facing the reincarnation of Genghis Khan — and that he himself was the chosen Mongol man handpicked by Genghis Khan.

He even found himself asking: Why? On what grounds?

It wasn't that Liu Chengzong's trade deals weren't profitable, but behind him stood the entire Marshal's Manor, while facing him was always just one man alone.

These were one massive pie after another, delivered right to his mouth.

At this rate, by next year he'd probably be the wealthiest taiji in all of Mongolia.

Before he could say anything, Liu Chengzong dropped another enormous pie: "When you become the true leader of the Oirat, you must settle down. Don't let people go begging for salt at the salt lakes anymore. Salt is too important — you should send men to guard it, have dedicated workers extract it, and set up official salt merchants in every tribe. Your horse teams will transport the salt for them."

"Once I've minted copper coins and silver coins, each person will need about two to three jin of salt per year. Set a price per jin — here, it's two hundred and sixty wen in copper coins per jin, roughly one sheepskin per jin. If you control the salt, you control a form of tax. However many people you control, that's how much they'll pay you every year."

Beneath the shade of the parasol, Batur Khuntaiji leaned back, tilted his head up, mouth slightly agape, staring blankly into the deep blue sky.

Mathematics was a rather complicated problem for him, but when it concerned wealth, it was worth pondering seriously.

A hundred thousand people meant a hundred thousand sheepskins a year; a million people meant a million sheepskins a year... Batur Khuntaiji shook his head. The Oirat had roughly that many people, but they could never bear to part with that many sheepskins in a year. He'd have to find an equivalent commodity.

But once he factored in Liu Chengzong's copper coins, he couldn't calculate it anymore. He only knew it amounted to an exceedingly vast fortune.

With utter seriousness and bewilderment, he asked Liu Chengzong, "Great Marshal, why do you treat me so well?"

Liu Chengzong was surprised by the question. "I thought I had made myself clear to you long ago. I need you and your descendants to guard the northwestern fence for me, generation after generation."

Batur Khuntaiji knew this too, but he felt that reason wasn't enough. He said, "Great Marshal, I know that. But the opponents aren't... compared to you, they're very weak. They aren't worth such a heavy investment. Does the Great Marshal intend for us to charge into battle for you in the Central Plains?"

"The Central Plains I will handle myself. But Khuntaiji, that way of thinking won't do. Weakness does not mean one cannot grow strong."

Liu Chengzong looked at Khuntaiji and raised his index finger, wagging it slightly. "You may not know the Dao. Laozi said, 'Returning is the motion of the Dao; weakness is the function of the Dao.'... Being and non-being give rise to each other; difficult and easy complete each other; fortune and misfortune lean upon each other. Everything is in flux."

"The transformation of things follows laws, and the rise and fall of nations is no different. What are these laws? The law is that the powerful grow lost and stagnate, the impoverished strive and grow rich, the weak fight desperately upward — and in the end, offense and defense trade places."

"Among the ten thousand things of this world, none is perfect in every way. Even the Han, the most numerous, after a spell of drunken luxury, wake from the dream to find their robes drifting south. Who creates something is not important; who uses it, who learns it, who spreads it — that is what matters."

"In the past, the world we saw was only this big, and Han and barbarian were enemies. But now the world has grown larger, and we have already decided victory and defeat. Look at your personal guard — he has traveled nearly half the world."

As he spoke, Liu Chengzong drew his goose-quill saber, startling Khuntaiji. But he simply gazed at the gleaming blade and said, "You and I use the same saber, and we are the same kind of people. But the people in those places he walked through — they are different from us."

"Different people create different cultures, with different strengths and different weaknesses."

"Whether you think them strong or weak, you must acknowledge that they can see you and spy on me, while you and I cannot see them. To learn, you must first see — only then do you know where they are weaker than us and where they are stronger. Then you go and learn. Those who can learn will grow strong. Stone from other hills can polish jade... I can give you all the support you want. Go west for me."

With that, he sheathed the blade and pushed the saber toward Batur Khuntaiji, who hurriedly rose and accepted it, dazed and bewildered.

Liu Chengzong looked into Khuntaiji's eyes, a cold ruthlessness hidden within his smile. "Go see them."

----- Off-topic -----

Good afternoon!