Chapter 439

The autumn and winter of the sixth year of Chongzhen were an especially sensitive time.

Within the Marshal's Manor, calls for an eastern campaign grew louder by the day, and the Three Frontiers of Shaanxi in the Great Ming felt the massive shockwaves as well — the first to bear the brunt of that shock was Hong Chengchou, seated in the position of Supreme Commander of the Three Frontiers.

Hong Chengchou was a genius born of an impoverished family.

In his youth, Hong Chengchou's life experience was much the same as that of the vast majority of poor children — his father and grandfather were both genuine farmers from a village in Fujian.

When it came to him, he first studied at a village school for five years, but after beginning his education, his family was too poor to afford further schooling; at the age of eleven, he dropped out and followed his mother making dried bean curd, hawking it through the streets and alleys. Had nothing unexpected happened, he too would have lived out his life as a peasant.

But at that time, a very accomplished person emerged in his clan — his clan uncle Hong Qiyin was a young licentiate, and after passing the licentiate exam, he set up a study hall at home, working as a tutor while refining his own scholarship.

Because there was a drainage ditch in front of the gate, this village school was called the Water Ditch Academy.

In this world, there are thousands upon thousands of kinds of people.

Some lack ability, have opportunity, and strive to rise — like the Chongzhen Emperor in the Forbidden City.

Some lack ability, have opportunity, and do not strive to rise — like the children who study in the academy but are obsessed with play.

And then there are those who have ability, lack opportunity, and strive to rise — that was the peddler Hong Chengchou, selling dried bean curd outside the academy and listening in from just beyond a single wall.

Since they were of the same clan and the boy was clever and eager to learn, Hong Qiyin took this bright, studious little hawker as his disciple, waiving the tuition fees and teaching him with devotion for five years. Five years later, in the thirty-seventh year of Wanli, Hong Qiyin passed the provincial exam, went to Shandong to serve as a county director of education, and recommended Hong Chengchou to study at the Quanzhou County School.

Another five years on, Hong Chengchou passed the licentiate exam; in the sixth year, he passed the provincial exam; in the seventh year, the dried-bean-curd peddler, now twenty-four, left home for the capital to sit the metropolitan examination, and in one stroke won second-class, fourteenth place in the palace examination of the bingchen cohort, receiving the title of Presented Scholar.

As the saying goes, at thirty one is old for the Classics degree, at fifty one is young for the Presented Scholar degree.

At the threshold of Presented Scholar, Hong Chengchou was four years younger than Gao Gong, one year younger than Yan Song, and one year older than Zhang Juzheng.

Thereafter, in Jiangxi, Zhejiang, and Shaanxi, he successively served as a bureau director in the Ministry of Justice, an assistant administration commissioner, an assistant commissioner for grain transport, and Grand Coordinator of Yansui, assuming the post of Supreme Commander of the Three Frontiers at the age of thirty-nine.

Yuan Chonghuan was already dead, so Hong Chengchou was the youngest frontier governor in the realm — a position he owed not to anyone's favor, but to the fact that he could solve problems others could not, pacify troubles others could not pacify, and kill surrendered bandits others could not kill.

A crimson robe earned through a string of severed heads.

There was still one great trouble in Shaanxi that no one else could solve, and he was going to solve it.

As for Hong Chengchou's arrival, Gansu Grand Coordinator Bai Yiqing and Regional Commander Yang Jiamo dared not be remiss; even though they had received orders that they need not come to meet him, the two men still led their standard battalions to the Gulang Defense Thousand-Household Post to receive him.

From afar, they could already make out the Supreme Commander of the Three Frontiers' ceremonial banners and great standard, along with the standard-battalion soldiers crowding around him front and back.

The moment Yang Jiamo saw Hong Chengchou's standard battalion, he unconsciously furrowed his brows.

Both supreme commanders and grand coordinators had standard battalions for their own protection, and the officers of those battalions were usually the trusted confidants of the commander or coordinator — but Hong Chengchou's standard battalion was a breed apart. His standard-battalion regional commander was Cao Wenzhao, who had been punished for the defeat at Ningzhou, but the Liaodong troops under Cao Wenzhao had been relentlessly pursued and struck hard over the past two years, and not many remained.

So from the battalion-commanding officer Bai Guang'en on down, the main force of the standard battalion was all surrendered bandits.

The circulation of talent in Shaanxi was growing increasingly regularized: frontier troops surrendered to the bandits, bandits surrendered to the frontier troops, frontier troops surrendered to the bandits again, bandits were amnestied again, surrendered again and rebelled again — it had become a normalized developmental trend.

The common people and soldiers learned warfare through warfare: on the government troops' side, they received training in regular army discipline and endurance; on the bandit troops' side, they ate and drank their fill while cultivating long-distance forced-march capability.

In the end, they died in one fierce battle after another, or, if fortunate enough, survived round after round of advanced training until their abilities reached the acme of perfection, the pinnacle of mastery.

People climb toward higher ground; the Dao moves through reversal — the dynamic shifts of the situation's development were a trend of rebel forces growing weak while government troops ran short of grain, something no one could alter.

But Hong Chengchou broke that trend. Once someone surrendered to Hong Chengchou, rebelling again became very difficult — because of the pledge of allegiance.

Surrendering was easy; the Supreme Commander of the Three Frontiers, Hong Chengchou, had always accepted surrender with an open door. But do not think you can fool him the way you fooled Yang He — surrendering and then disbanding to return to farming was out of the question. Surrendering meant becoming a soldier. If you wanted to return to farming, you did not need to surrender. Therefore, those who surrendered and returned to farming were all false surrenders, to be captured and executed on the spot.

And if you surrendered and wanted to be a soldier — very well. First, your surrender would not be accepted. Go attack the righteous rebels, bring back the head of a rebel leader, and then you would be given rank and reward.

Hong Chengchou knew that the Shaanxi roving bandits had three bases. The first was the Qinghai Marshal's Manor entrenched in Xining. The second was Yan'an Prefecture... but Yan'an Prefecture was watertight, impenetrable. Hong Chengchou knew something was wrong there, but since the mastermind behind the scenes had not yet revealed himself, Hong Chengchou put Yan'an Prefecture last.

The third was Iron Horn City.

Iron Horn City, located north of Huachi on the West River of the Ziwu Range — that had been the largest rebel nest in plain sight since the first year of Chongzhen.

As far back as the era of Liu the Fifth and Liu the Sixth, Iron Horn City, ringed by mountains, had already broken away from central control because the mountains were high and the emperor was far away. By the time Liu Chengzong went west and the Shen brothers became the great chieftains of the rebel western front, they had thoroughly "barbarized" Iron Horn City.

Back then, after his elder brother Shen Yiyuan died, Shen Yikui, in order to break the siege, colluded with the northern caitiffs to raid the border. On the day the pact was sealed, the entire army shaved their heads and changed their clothing. Later, for a time, the Mongol queue became the hallmark of the northern Shaanxi rebels, and every captive taken in storming cities and forts had their head shaved.

By the time Soaring Sky He Chongwei and Hao Lin'an occupied Iron Horn City, the place had returned to normal. Its population already exceeded one hundred thousand, with land divided for farming and herding.

Yet as they say, the truly skilled warrior achieves no dazzling merit — no matter how brilliantly He Chongwei and Hao Lin'an managed Iron Horn City, they did not last a single round against Hong Chengchou before becoming the traitor Bai Guang'en's pledge of allegiance.

In truth, Hong Chengchou's pledge of allegiance and Shen Yikui's head-shaving and clothing-change were the same thing — both demanded a symbol.

Shen Yikui's soldiers shaved their heads into Mongol queues. The queue was only a means; the goal was that anyone who saw it would know at a glance that these were northern caitiffs, and any government soldier who saw it would know at a glance that this was a head to be taken — thus, naturally, they could never surrender again.

And Hong Chengchou's pledge of allegiance was likewise only a means; the goal was to proclaim to the world that every one of the surrendered troops working for Hong Chengchou had the blood of the righteous rebels on their hands, and that between them and every one of you, there was a blood-deep vendetta.

In other words, Hong Chengchou believed that the government troops of the time were unreliable, because government troops could at any moment surrender to the rebels. Only these surrendered rebels, stained with the blood of the righteous rebels, were reliable.

Because it was very hard for them to surrender to the rebels again. At the same time, the proper commanders and officers who were their colleagues looked down on them. They could only rely on Hong Chengchou, and they had to win every battle and take every objective — for if they ever failed, their fate would be too ghastly to behold.

Bai Yiqing and Yang Jiamo escorted Hong Chengchou into Gulang Post, where the standard battalion garrisoned and rested.

Gulang was a small place, named for the Gulang Gorge. It bordered the Wushao Ridge of the Qilian Mountains to the south and the Tengger Desert to the north — its complex terrain was a microcosm of Gansu.

Specifically, the Gulang Gorge, twenty li in length from south to north, was the most convenient place for north-south travel, and at its widest, this place was two hundred paces across, while at its narrowest, only sixty-five paces.

And from here northward, the vast oasis of Liangzhou suddenly opened wide before the eyes.

Thus, the Gulang Gorge, where the post road linked the Three Adjuncts and the gorge gate commanded the Five Liangs, was a pass fit for tigers and wolves. Ever since it was incorporated into the empire's territory in the Han dynasty, it had been a place contested by every strategist for safeguarding Longyou and linking to the Western Regions.

At the yamen of Gulang Post, Hong Chengchou did not even wash off the dust of his journey before summoning Bai Yiqing and Yang Jiamo into the yamen to discuss matters.

What they discussed was the repair of fortifications. In the past, Gulang had been a border pass without a single day of peace, always a prolific source of frontier-fortress poetry, but by the Ming dynasty, Gulang had become a peaceful interior region. The border forts had long gone without repair, and Hong Chengchou had come this time precisely for this matter.

He said to the grand coordinator and the regional commander, "Earlier, I already discussed this in detail with Brother Yuxuan, the Shaanxi Grand Coordinator, regarding the matter of Shaanxi and Gansu combining forces to resist the enemy. Gulang lies in the critical path of the bandits; we should transport troops, grain, firearms, and cannon into the city, hold the strategic pass, and prepare for any contingency."

Behind Hong Chengchou was an enormous network of connections. As far back as his posting in Zhejiang, he had arranged a marriage alliance between his newborn son and the daughter of Lin Yuji, the former Minister of Rites from Jinjiang, who was then home on leave; his eldest daughter, too, had been betrothed to the grandson of the then-Zhejiang Surveillance Commissioner Chen Liangcai.

And Yuxuan was the current Shaanxi Grand Coordinator, Chen Qiyu. He and Hong Chengchou were Presented Scholars of the same year, and the two were extremely close.

Bai Yiqing asked, "Does Your Excellency also believe that a battle is inevitable next year?"

"Old brother, please, call me Hengjiu."

Hong Chengchou came from humble origins and had achieved success in his youth. In his official career, he had never met a superior younger than himself, but he had seen many instances of subordinates older than himself — he was well practiced at handling it.

He first smiled and cupped his hands in salute, then said, "When the fighting starts is not for us to decide, nor is it for Liu Chengzong to decide."

He raised his hand and pointed to the bracket sets on the ceiling: "Heaven decides. This year, Xining and Lanzhou have had no snow all winter. If there is no rain in spring, this war is one no one can avoid."

Bai Yiqing thought the same. He cupped his hands and said, "To be frank, I once sent spies into Hehuang, but to this day I have heard no word of those men being employed by the bandit Liu, nor has any intelligence come from the west. However, I estimate that once he has finished his wedding and the imperial envoy returns, there should be word from the west."

"Spies?"

Hong Chengchou's brow twitched involuntarily. He nodded gravely. "Excellent. I've heard that in recent years Qinghai has been watertight — not a shred of news has come back from He-Huang. What I know of the Liu bandit's intelligence is still old information from years ago."

As the saying goes, know yourself and know your enemy. He knew the court would sooner or later go to war with Liu Chengzong, so he paid particular attention to gathering intelligence — but the difficulty of this task was immense.

The situation was rather paradoxical when he thought about it. Liu Chengzong was clearly the first to rise up, the first to succeed, the first to carve out a separatist regime — yet his intelligence was, for Hong Chengchou, a dense fog.

Because too few people had ever seen Liu Chengzong and the Lion Army.

The vast majority of those people had been taken into Qinghai. Even those who weren't taken into Qinghai had become major chieftains in the local regions — they either died in the wars or fled Shaanxi, beyond Hong Chengchou's reach.

To gather intelligence, he had even sent men specifically to Pingliang to seek out the Prince of Han. Twice.

Pingliang Prefecture had always been restless. The first envoy Hong Chengchou sent never even entered Pingliang city before being kidnapped by roving bandits.

The bandits were outrageously brazen, sending a ransom demand letter directly to the Three Border Supreme Commander's office, signed with the name Great King Golden Cicada.

When Hong Chengchou saw that signature, he nearly had a stroke. His troops had already killed six Golden Cicadas in two years — Cao Wenzhao alone had slaughtered two of them.

This thing clearly could reincarnate, because as far as he knew, the earliest Golden Cicada was a blacksmith who vanished without a trace a single day after rising up. The second-generation Golden Cicada was the Prince of Han's elder brother, named Zhu Danji — the government troops never even found him before the third-generation Golden Cicada ran right onto the tip of Cao Wenzhao's blade.

The third and fourth Golden Cicadas were both skewered on the tip of Cao Wenzhao's blade — deep-fried, they'd probably be nice and crispy.

The fifth generation entered Yan'an Prefecture and was sent sky-high by villagers using small landmines. The sixth-generation Golden Cicada was a god of war who routed Yang Qi's twelve-hundred-strong army with just five little brothers, only to be personally cut down by Yang Qi in the end.

The seventh generation entered Iron Horn City and died in an internal feud with Hao Lin'an. The eighth was killed by Pingliang's local militia. The ninth ran far — all the way into Shanxi — and came face-to-face with Fu Renxi, the newly appointed Assistant Regional Commander of Pingyang Prefecture.

Assistant Regional Commander Fu Renxi was also a rising star, a fourth-generation border-defense soldier from a respectable family. His standing in Pingyang Prefecture was equal to that of the war god Yang Yanchang in Yan'an Prefecture. He had successively routed major Shaanxi bandits like Zhao Sheng and Bu Zhan Ni. His only defeat was when he pursued the great bandit One Box of Gold, who had plundered Pingyang Prefecture — he failed to catch up.

Hong Chengchou had always thought: when would the court hand him military authority over Shanxi? Then with Shaanxi's Yang Yanchang and Shanxi's Fu Renxi, a two-pronged extermination campaign would surely send the roving bandits wailing for their mothers.

The ninth-generation Golden Cicada was unlucky to run into Fu Renxi and lost his life on the spot.

By his count, this letter-writer demanding ransom should be the tenth-generation Golden Cicada. Hong Chengchou wondered: was there any possibility that the man writing him letters was actually named Xuanzang?

Hong Chengchou had wised up. The second envoy he sent to Pingliang Prefecture was Cao Bianjiao. He thought to himself: my young General Cao has the valor to stand against ten thousand — if you Golden Cicada have any guts, try kidnapping him too!

Cao Bianjiao, of course, was not to be kidnapped. As hoped, he first met with Pingliang's Prefect Jiang Yingchang, then entered the princely estate to see the Prince of Han.

Regrettably, the Prince of Han was like a muddle-headed fool who knew nothing about anything, had forgotten Liu Chengzong entirely, and showed not the slightest interest in political affairs or the current situation.

He was, however, extremely interested in Cao Bianjiao, and vigorously urged him to stop building his career and instead stay in the Han fief as a son-in-law — sire a few more battle-worthy cubs, and who knows, maybe the Emperor would die without an heir someday, and then they'd promote him to Prince Consort.

This sent young Cao fleeing in utter panic.

Hong Chengchou didn't think much of it. That was simply the nature of feudal princes — eat, wait to die, and breed.

Fortunately, Bai Guang'en had surrendered. This was a minor leader who had followed Sky-Monkey in the early days, had observed Liu Chengzong up close, and had experience marching alongside him. He knew the state of the Lion Army at that time very well.

But as for the current Marshal's Manor, Hong Chengchou had absolutely no idea what to expect.

Moreover, the He-Huang campaign had already proven that fighting the Marshal's Manor in He-Huang offered not the slightest advantage. Therefore, in his mind, the battlefield was Liangzhou.

"If there is a battle next year, you must understand that the western bandits are not like those in Guanzhong. They excel with mules, horses, and cannons — they come like the wind and invade like fire."

Hong Chengchou shared what he knew of the western bandits' characteristics with the two men, then said: "Therefore, you two old brothers should strengthen the defenses of Gulang City to secure your foundation. At the same time, adopt a loose exterior but tight interior approach toward the Qilian Mountains — lure the enemy over the mountains into Liangzhou to plunder and attack."

"Strip away their advantage in cannons, mules, and horses. Use Gulang to seal off the enemy's retreat route, hold the Qilian passes, and make them turtles in a jar in Gansu. Annihilate their elite troops in one stroke, then press the victory to advance into Qinghai from the east and north — it will be as easy as turning over your hand."

Having said this, Hong Chengchou extended his hand: "We shall join hands to accomplish a deed of unparalleled glory!"

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Good morning!