Chapter 423: Borrowing a Path

In the golden autumn of the eighth month, just days after Liu Chengzu and Chengyun returned to New City, the three brothers were chatting about marriage when word came from the east — a letter from Song Shouzhen. The messenger was beaming with joy: "Grand Marshal, wonderful news! The east has lost sixty li of land!"

The Marshal Manor's four forts and three watchtowers along the Zhuanglang River valley, from Wild Fox Fort to the river mouth, were all lost.

Liu Chengzong had only learned last month that those sixty li of river valley belonged to the Marshal Manor. Barely half a month had passed, and that fine land was already gone.

Yet it truly was good news, because although the land was lost, not a single grain of the harvest was missed. Nearly forty thousand mu of fields yielded over thirty thousand dan of grain. Song Shouzhen mustered the township soldiers from the five garrisons of Hehuang and the surrendered troops of the Yongdeng chieftain. In six days and nights, he split the grain into three routes and transported it all into Marshal Manor territory.

The commander guarding Wild Fox Fort, Centurion Jing Xiaoliu, did not take part in this massive operation. He did something far bigger — something that directly prompted Song Shouzhen, whom Chengyun had entrusted with full authority over the military and civilian affairs of East Pass Town, to order the abandonment of the land and pull the defense back to East Pass's five sharp-angled watchtowers.

Jing Xiaoliu led the banner troops of the Zhuanglang Guard and harvested their military farmlands. He brought back to East Pass Town seventeen thousand dan of grain, fifty-four hundred dan of flaxseed, and even lured away over two hundred households of banner troops.

Liu the Lion laughed: "After pulling off something that grand, who would dare keep squatting by the Zhuanglang River?"

Song Shouzhen wrote in his letter that the matter had actually spiraled out of control. Their original plan had only been to harvest two or three thousand mu to weaken the Zhuanglang Guard banner troops' fighting strength.

But while harvesting, Jing Xiaoliu was discovered and surrounded by the banner troops. In the end, the two sides reached an agreement. The banner troops figured: if you Marshal Manor people want to harvest grain, fine — but our military farmlands have already been seized and plundered down to this last scrap; those absolutely cannot be touched.

However, we can take you to find the military farmlands seized by powerful officers. We'll harvest those and split the grain fifty-fifty. You, Jing Xiaoliu, take your share back to the Marshal Manor; we'll take ours and turn bandit in the hills. We'll pin the whole grain-seizing business on the Marshal Manor.

Jing Xiaoliu felt he'd escaped with his life and gained a whole pack of accomplices. The two sides hit it off at once. More and more banner troops kept joining in, the scale of the operation kept swelling, and in the end they harvested tens of thousands of mu.

In truth, had Jing Xiaoliu been willing, with the banner troops' swelling numbers, a bit of incitement might even have made storming the guard city possible.

But on one hand, he lacked that skill; on the other, the thought genuinely never crossed his mind... Wasn't grain far sweeter than some useless city? Take a city and you have to garrison it. Feeding a garrison of two thousand, this grain would only last until next summer.

And once it lasted until summer, they'd still have to farm next year. With the city taken, wouldn't he be the one stuck planting those fields?

Jing Xiaoliu figured it was still best to haul the grain back to East Pass.

So for Liu the Lion, this was indeed happy news. He immediately wrote back to Song Shouzhen, ordering him to move the grain into Nianbo, record the township soldiers' merits and compile the rosters, and have Jing Xiaoliu bring the merit ledger to New City.

Yet despite his delight, Liu Chengzong did not let down his guard. That very day he summoned Wang Wenxiu, who had just led his troops back to New City. After discussion, he ordered Wang's subordinate, Regional Commander Yang Chengzu, to take his own battalion and reinforce East Pass.

Autumn had arrived, after all.

This was always an extremely dangerous season, especially at East Pass, where the Yellow River and the Zhuanglang River converged at the three-way river mouth. To the southeast lay Lanzhou Guard, to the west the Marshal Manor's East Pass Town, to the north Zhuanglang Guard.

Even without this incident, that place was a powder keg.

The Lanzhou banner troops were on high alert, patrolling the riverbank daily. That Lanzhou Regional Commander, Shi Xiang, sent someone to find Chengyun every two days. When he couldn't find Chengyun, he'd seek out Song Shouzhen, imploring them not to misunderstand — the Lanzhou troops would not cross the river, but the Marshal Manor's troops must not come to seize Lanzhou either.

The Marshal Manor's militiamen at East Pass were equally on edge. The militiamen from the five Hehuang garrisons had all been pushed to the front lines. Some were guarding East Pass's five watchtowers at the river mouth; the remaining township soldiers were mustered at East Pass and sent westward to help the various village wards rush-harvest the fields.

Even the ferries on the Yellow River had stopped running.

Having fought two major battles in a row, Liu the Lion planned to let the Marshal Manor's officers and soldiers rest this winter, spend a few comfortable months between New City and Xining, and along the way, hold the weddings for the three brothers.

Shaanxi customs differed from those of the grasslands, and the Marshal Manor's structure differed from the tribal alliances of feudal nobles. After some discussion among the three brothers, they finally decided: all eight of Ligdan Khan's consorts would go to Liu Chengzong, while the eldest brother would wait for the Oirat nobles to send their daughters for marriage — eight as well.

There were also Mongol nobles who supported Liu Chengzong's claim to the khanship whom he could not attend to personally, so Chengyun could not remain idle either. Currently, six were set. If the three Khalkha khans in the northeast learned of the Khitan Khan and sent envoys with tribute, then two more would be added for Chengyun.

Before all that, however, Liu the Lion had to formally marry the three ladies who were already with him.

So from this autumn until the start of spring next year, Liu the Lion's schedule was nearly packed. He would hold the imperial examinations in Hehuang, establish the Six Ministries, marry, and make babies.

Liu Chengzong wrote two letters to Cao Yao and Yang Dingrui in Kangning Prefecture. Besides informing them that he and his elder brother were soon to marry and asking them to return, he also inquired about their recommendations for successors to take over Kangning's military and civil affairs.

As the Marshal Manor's operations sprawled ever wider, Liu the Lion increasingly felt stretched thin — not because their foundation was shallow, but because the Marshal Manor's fragmented territory was simply too difficult to govern.

He carefully pondered his own needs and realized that when dispatching officials to Kangning, the first thing to consider was not their political talent for local governance or their military talent for leading troops, but their capacity to rule... This was utterly absurd.

Talent — many of the Marshal Manor's officers and officials had that in abundance. But the capacity to rule? Few in the Marshal Manor possessed that skill.

And the crux of it was, you either had it or you didn't. If you didn't have it yet, well, that was actually for the best — they dared not cultivate it anyway.

No matter what, Liu the Lion was determined to pull Cao Yao and Yang Dingrui out of Kangning. Commanders who could hold their own and frontier governors who could rule a territory alone were the prerequisite for their armed group to advance into the Central Plains.

As for their replacements, Liu Chengzong had candidates in mind. The difficult tasks in Kangning Prefecture had essentially all been handled by those two over the past two years. Local matters now had precedents to follow, so the demands on talent were not actually very high.

Liu Chengzong planned to send Liu Guoneng and Liu Jiusi to replace Yang Dingrui; Huang Shengxiao, along with A Liu and Basang — two officers from Kangning Prefecture — would return to replace Cao Yao, Luo Rucai, Li Laochai, and his maternal uncle Cai Zhongpan.

Liu Guoneng had done fairly well in Haixi County. He might fall a little short of governing an entire prefecture, but Kangning's affairs were also easier to handle than Xining Prefecture's.

Sending Liu Jiusi, the Flying Monkey, to Kangning as a vice-prefect would, on one hand, give Liu Guoneng some help; on the other... Liu the Lion also figured that after two years of preparation, Kangning's agriculture should be self-sufficient by now.

The Marshal Manor's policy in Kangning was not tax exemption. Kangning had been taxed all along, and at a rather high rate. Liu Chengzong had originally proposed a one-in-two tax, but in the end Yang Dingrui, considering the actual situation, recommended one-in-three. The rate was set accordingly.

However, what they collected was the Marshal Tongbao coin minted by Kangning Prefecture itself. The government set an official price for grain, the county offices purchased at that price, and then collected copper coins based on the yield per mu.

But at the Marshal Manor level, Kangning Prefecture was practically tax-exempt.

The goods shipped to Xining Prefecture each year amounted to only sixty or seventy thousand jin of gunpowder and fifteen hundred jars of pickled vegetables. The year before last, about a hundred sets of armor and weapons were sent. This year, no armor was shipped — because fighting was underway in the north and they feared the equipment would be seized — so it was distributed to the couriers at the relay stations along the route, letting them arm themselves.

All in all, the value of the goods Kangning Prefecture shipped to Xining over two years roughly equaled one year's normal tax revenue from a large county in the Central Plains.

The distance was vast and transport costs enormous — nothing anyone could do about that.

But now, Liu Chengzong believed this problem was solved.

Liu Jiusi, the Flying Monkey, had overseen the establishment of an ironworks at Ju'erwan. Huang Shengxiao had experience supervising musket production and casting cannons. Liu Chengzong intended to send the two of them to Kangning Prefecture to prospect for ore, build ironworks, and expand the Kangning Armory Bureau.

The Western Tibetan blacksmiths of Kangning were hardly lacking in forging skill. With some guidance, they were fully capable of forging matchlock muskets. Besides, the local timber and mineral resources were abundant.

Under normal circumstances, the transport costs of these items made Liu Chengzong view them as barely worth the trouble. But now, with the arms trade to the Tianshan Mountains, as long as they could manufacture matchlocks there and ship them over, the high profits would more than offset the losses along the route.

Yet although Liu the Lion had decided to send A Liu and Basang with troops to replace Luo Rucai and Li Laochai, he still could not make up his mind about whether to actually bring Luo and Li back with their troops.

Liu the Lion had always imagined the Sichuan Basin as a vast plain. But now, with Chen Min — a certified student from Bazhou who had the characters for "Heavenly King" tattooed on his face — by his side, he had gained a deeper understanding of Sichuan.

Sichuan's plains were at Chengdu. Entering Sichuan from the north, even if you took Hanzhong, the six prefectures of Long'an, Baoning, Kuizhou, Shunqing, and Chongqing were all mountains.

If the loess ridges and gullies of northern Shaanxi were divided by dirt paths, then Sichuan's mountains were taller still, and they were cut off by river after river.

That was the difficulty of entering Sichuan. As long as you were stopped before reaching the Chengdu Plain, with a river ahead and mountains behind, being bottled up meant total collapse.

In truth, Liu Chengzong knew that the nearest strategic objective before his eyes was not Sichuan, but the Yong and Liang lands west of Guyuan.

It was Gansu, Lintao, and Gongchang.

Seizing these places was already immensely difficult for the Marshal Manor — hard to take, and even harder to hold.

This meant either not attacking, maintaining their current, dangerously marginal self-sufficiency and waiting for the realm to change; or, if they did attack, the war could not possibly end with the capture of Yong and Liang.

Once Yongzhou and Liangzhou were taken, the Marshal Manor's hardest days would be over. In Gansu, Lintao, and Gongchang, there were roughly over two million people and around sixty thousand troops. What did that ratio mean?

That ratio might be very high, but for Liu Chengzong, it was a ratio that could dilute the Marshal Manor's degree of exhausting its people for war.

His Hehuang had seven hundred thousand people, half of whom lived self-sufficiently in the mountains, yet the remainder supported nearly seventy thousand troops.

Taking the territory west of Liupan Mountain would mean the Marshal Manor's population composition would return to a normal range. By then, even if Liu Chengzong didn't want to keep fighting, would the soldiers under his command and the officers at his side just sit and stare at the Guanzhong Plain, the Sichuan Basin, and the Ningxia Hetao right before their eyes and halt the troops?

Impossible.

Not to mention the Chengdu Plain held an incomparable allure for Liu the Lion as well.

The territory he occupied was as large as six or seven Sichuans, but the population, grain output, production capacity, and arable land of all those places combined could not match a single, tiny Chengdu Prefecture.

Taking the Ningxia Hetao would be a profit; taking the Guanzhong Plain would spread the battle lines wide; but taking Sichuan... he would strike it immensely rich.

Though he knew it would be difficult, he still wanted to prepare in advance. If an opportunity to enter Sichuan arose and he failed to fight his way in and got beaten back out, that would be truly unbearable.

Therefore, he wanted to keep the Luo and Li armies near Dajianlu. If a chance to enter Sichuan appeared, the northern route would use Hanzhong as a forward base to take Long'an Prefecture and Songpan Guard. A messenger could travel the mountain paths through the territory controlled by the Jinchuan chieftains to deliver word to Dajianlu.

By then, even if the ten-thousand-strong Kangning Prefecture army could only send three battalion commands from Ya Prefecture to fight into the plain, it would still provide powerful support to the campaign.

Beyond this, there was still one critical node left unopened: Sichuan's own elite troops and strong generals had been transferred by the court to the Central Plains and Liaodong. The government troops left in the basin were not worth worrying about. Only Sichuan's chieftain soldiers were truly fearsome.

If his army entered Sichuan from both the north and south routes, it would likely be difficult for elite cavalry and heavy artillery to cross the mountain roads. Infantry formation fighting was the chieftain soldiers' bread and butter, and what was worse, by then the Marshal Manor army would be unable to use its cannons, but the government troops would still have theirs.

So Liu Chengzong still needed one more person: Zhang Yuanheng.

That dickhead—no, that dickless man had been sent by Liu Chengzong to Songpan Guard years ago to incite the banner troops. Later, he went to Dajianlu to find Liu Chengzong but missed him. His uncle, Cai Zhongpan, seeing that he had a Xiucai degree, kept him around to handle affairs at the Luhuo County office.

Liu Chengzong wanted Cao Yao to bring him back as well.

This man had only been a proper eunuch for a few days, but he had served as a banner soldier at Songpan Guard for a very long time. If they took Long'an Prefecture, there was no one more suitable than him to handle the pacification of Songpan Guard.

Taking Songpan Guard would not only allow contact with Dajianlu and facilitate a pincer attack from north and south; most critically, Songpan Guard had military artisans and the capability to cast cannons.

As long as they could station at Songpan Guard for a month and a half, they could cast a batch of cannons and cannonballs and knock down every single battlement on the walls of Chengdu.

Judging by how Songpan Guard was bullied by the Baicao Qiang, Liu Chengzong estimated that if they took Long'an Prefecture, Songpan Guard would very likely surrender at the mere rumor of their approach. Then the only remaining problem would be time.

The Songpan grasslands are only traversable between May and August each year. That meant if the Marshal Manor could push the battle line on the northern route to Liupan Mountain and occupy Hanzhong on the southern route before June of next year, then he could try entering Sichuan.

That meant war would begin as soon as spring arrived.

Inside the Marshal Manor office, Liu Chengzong looked at the old Shanxi licentiate Che Cai before him and asked, "The officials of Lanzhou are truly capable, to have actually found you to come here. Who sent you?"

Che Cai had already been terrified upon entering the Marshal Manor office. Hearing this, his heart sank—the Grand Marshal suspected he was a spy!

Frightened, he hastily shook his head: "Grand Marshal, see clearly—I was not found by the Lanzhou officials. I sought out the officials myself. It happened that Master Bai of Gansu was in Lanzhou. Hearing that I knew General Fan of the Marshal Manor, he had me bring a few licentiates over."

"Master Bai of Gansu, who is that?"

Che Cai's eyes widened. Your enemy, and you don't even know who he is? He said, "The Grand Coordinator of Gansu, Master Bai Yiqing."

Liu the Lion thought to himself, this has to be fake. He gave it up that easily?

But to his surprise, Che Cai bowed with great respect and said, "Grand Marshal, I have come firstly to express my gratitude for the kindness you showed years ago in avenging my family. Secondly, I am entrusted by the Western scholar Gao Yizhi of Shanxi. Two Western scholars wish to pass through the Marshal Manor's territory on their way to India, and I ask the Grand Marshal to grant them passage."

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Good evening!