Chapter 450: Heart Without Hindrance

Liu Chengzong dispatched Basang to lead the Western Tibet Camp to garrison West Datong River Fort because this region is called Maya Mountain, and the native people living in the mountains are all Western Tibet tribes — seventeen tribes in total.

In any place where war is fought, the locals are either an enormous help or an enormous hindrance. Since the entire Marshal's Headquarters regime had yet to establish relatively friendly relations with the various tribes of Maya Mountain, he chose the Western Tibet Camp for the western mountain reinforcements of Zhuanglang Garrison.

The objective was for Basang to win over the Maya Mountain tribes through offers of surrender, punish the evil-doing noble chieftains, recruit the usable chieftains, and gather and consolidate the vast Western Tibet tribes of the mountain region — conscripting soldiers, requisitioning horses, and registering households to organize the populace.

Basang's initial thinking was also very simple: whatever Liu Chengzong arranged, he would carry out — it had always been this way.

Only, in this particular matter, it would have been useless no matter whom Liu Chengzong sent, because the seventeen tribes of Maya Mountain had four grievances with him.

The various tribes of Maya Mountain all trace their origins back to the same group of people. The vast majority are descendants of the military regiments dispatched to the Hexi region during the period of Tibetan rule, and therefore they call themselves Huarewa or Huarui, meaning the clansmen of the Hero Tribe.

After the An Lushan Rebellion, Tibet seized the Hexi region. The Guiyi Army briefly overthrew Tibetan rule, and after the Jinshan Han Kingdom disintegrated, three small regimes rose in Hexi — one of them, located in Liangzhou, was a Tibetan regime.

The Liangzhou separatist regime had a history of roughly two hundred years. Its early ruling group was the Wenmo tribe, with the local Liangzhou Tibetan powerful clan, the Zhebu clan, as its leader. In the later period, power was peacefully transferred to Pan Luozhi, chieftain of the Six Valleys Tibetans.

The "Pan" in Pan Luozhi is the same "Pan" as in Songpan Garrison. The name means "King of Panzhou." The Song dynasty named Songpan as Panzhou because of Pan Luozhi.

The reason that small Liangzhou Tibetan regime was able to exist back then was, on the one hand, because the Western Xia under Li Jiqian was sprawled right next to them, and on the other hand, because the Great Song could accept the small Helong regimes acknowledging its legitimate succession while mutually refraining from interference.

Helong acknowledging the Central Plains' legitimate succession was a tradition. Even when those various messy little states of the Five Dynasties took turns occupying the Central Plains, the various Helong regimes were still willing to obtain titles from them.

But in the eyes of the petty kings of Helong, the Tangut Western Xia would not do — that thing was just like the rest of us brothers, skulking along the edges. On what grounds should you enfeoff me?

The Western Xia's founding ancestor Li Jiqian ultimately died at Pan Luozhi's hands. Pan Luozhi was later killed by Li Deming. The Tibetan Six Valleys tribe that occupied Xiliang Prefecture subsequently disintegrated, and the various tribes fled into the mountains. From then on, they never again regained the magnificent sight of dominating Helong.

Throughout history, the strength of various ethnic groups has constantly shifted. In the Ming dynasty era, it was a period of unprecedented expansion of Han power unseen in the thousand years since the Wei and Jin dynasties. In the early Ming, across the vast Gansu Hexi region, there were only thirty thousand Han people; now that number is one and a half million.

The ancestors of the garrison officers in places like Lanzhou, Liangzhou, and Suzhou can, for the vast majority, only be traced back to the era when Xu Da, Feng Sheng, and others campaigned westward. Their more distant forebears all have ancestral registries on the banks of the Huai River.

Under this ebb and flow, the Western Tibet common folk in the mountains naturally became scattered tribes ruled by the great unified dynasty through the policy of establishing many enfeoffments and governing according to local customs. Over the more than two hundred years of the Ming dynasty, they all submitted to the Ming Emperor's agent in this mountain region: the Lu Tusi of Liancheng.

In the great Hehuang battle, responding to Lu Tusi's conscription, they dispatched four thousand native troops to assist in the defense of Liancheng, resisting the assault of Liu Chengzu and Li Wanqing.

Although Liancheng ultimately fell, Lu Yunchang, who was both a tusi and an imperially appointed official, was still alive, and the defeated native soldiers mostly withdrew back into the mountains.

Precisely because of this, the various tribes of Maya Mountain did not submit upon the proclamation of peace after the war's end. Instead, they stubbornly hid in the mountains, refused to contact the Marshal's Headquarters, and actively prepared for battle.

Liu Chengzu and Li Wanqing had killed over nine hundred of their young men in the war — this was the first grievance between the seventeen tribes of Maya Mountain and the Marshal's Headquarters.

Their preparations for battle were not to fight another war with Liu Chengzong, but to deal with the aftereffect brought by the war: bandits.

Maya Mountain had bandits before, but those were mostly formed by destitute households who could not survive. So poor that even their axes were stolen, they naturally had no fighting strength to speak of. The native tribes could deal with them without even requesting troops from the authorities — a few stockaded villages mobilizing their young men could send them fleeing wildly all over the mountain.

But ever since the Hehuang great battle ended, bandits had sprung up in over a dozen groups. The large ones numbered no more than a few hundred, the small ones only thirty to fifty men, yet all carried blades and wore armor. Even a tiny bandit den of just over thirty men could carry more than ten bird guns and wheel out a cannon.

Deserters and routed soldiers from the five garrisons of Shaanxi's border army had enormously strengthened the bandits' power. After more than half a year of fighting, with casualties on both sides, the remaining bandits had all merged into one force, becoming an army the Tibetan people could not handle.

Former allies who had once together campaigned against Liu Chengzong had become mortal enemies. The seventeen tribes of Maya Mountain naturally added this blood debt to Liu Chengzong's account as well — this became the second grievance between them.

As for the third grievance, it indeed had something to do with Basang.

The monks of high virtue and prestige in the mountains had historically mostly lived in Hehuang. Ever since the war in Hehuang ended, Basang, following Liu Chengzong's orders, had opened a "Buddha Express Line" between Hehuang and Ü-Tsang, inviting monks to go to Ü-Tsang for advanced study. Those unwilling to go were forced by him, with a blade at their throats, to return to lay life.

Had this happened anywhere else, the Tibetan tribes might very well have simply gone back to their old ways and returned to believing in the Bön religion. But in this mountain region of Maya Mountain, Bön had been left with practically nothing under the impact of various cultures over several centuries.

The common folk picked and chose, selecting one relatively reliable deity from among the gods they believed in, and prayed for the awe-inspiring and illustrious True Lord Erlang to descend to the mortal world and strike Liu Chengzong dead.

Actually, praying for King Gesar to descend would also have worked, but people's hearts are not what they once were. In recent years, in the portraits of King Gesar that have circulated from Ü-Tsang, Kangning, and Xining, the warhorse beneath him has been dressed in a third-rank official's robe.

Below Song Mountain there is an Erlang Pool. Legend has it that when Erlang Shen fought someone, his horse's hoof stamped out an imprint, and a drop of sweat from Erlang Shen fell into the hoofprint, forming Erlang Pool. Every year, the common folk go there to worship and pray for blessings, hoping the summer weather will be a bit better.

In the nearby belief system, the quality of summer weather is a matter under Erlang Shen's responsibility.

With the monks gone and the common folk's fury having no outlet, naturally they blamed this on Liu Chengzong as well.

And with summer just in sight, asking Erlang Shen to drop a few hailstones on Liu Chengzong's head was right in his professional domain.

As for the fourth grievance, it was because the deserters who had fled into the mountains had brought smallpox to the seventeen tribes of Maya Mountain. Now, although they are still called the seventeen tribes in name, in reality only thirteen tribes remain.

With these four grievances — war, soldier rampages, faith, and plague — all lumped together, the name Liu Chengzong was no less than that of a devil to the various tribes of Maya Mountain.

Never mind that the person he sent was Basang — even if he had brought over the former King of Nangchen, Gama, no one would have listened to a word he said.

In these days of garrisoning West Datong River Fort, after Basang had continuously tried and failed to establish friendly relations with the seventeen tribes, he had been sending infantry and cavalry to drive away the nearby tribes, pushing them northward to avoid trouble in the coming battle.

However, it was precisely because his troops had dispersed to the north that as early as the day the Liangzhou army set out from Gulang Gorge, the Western Tibet Camp had already obtained intelligence of the Ming army's southward advance.

His cavalry had also clashed several times in the mountains with the Ming army's reconnaissance riders. The small-scale skirmishes yielded no advantage; the noble cavalry from Kangning Prefecture were equally helpless against those Ming reconnaissance riders carrying flag-lances, waist sabers, three-eyed guns, and bows.

Fortunately, Basang was very familiar with the reconnaissance riders' tactics. He employed simple containment methods, doing his utmost to prevent the control line from being pushed back under their harassment.

Truth be told, there was no good way to deal with reconnaissance riders at equal troop density. The containment Basang could achieve was merely: you use one reconnaissance rider to control a square li, I'll use two or even three Western Tibet infantry and cavalry to control one li.

You have a three-eyed gun, I'll use two musket-wielding Tibetan soldiers to shoot on foot against you. You charge over, I'll use noble cavalry to counter-charge. You retreat, I absolutely will not pursue.

But this method was nothing more than an expedient to stabilize the outer line, entirely reliant on Basang knowing that the Ming army's main operational direction was the river valley and that they would not mass heavy troops against him in the mountains for a decisive battle. Otherwise, if the reconnaissance riders received support, he would still have no other recourse.

It was not until the beacon fires blazed at Zhuanglang Garrison City that Basang's long-suspended heart finally settled. He left a Battalion Commander under his command to hold the fort and led the Western Tibet Camp out in full force toward the mountain pass northeast of Liancheng.

That very night, carrying torches, they passed through Tongyuan and reached Linping, fifty li east of the West Datong River. The five thousand Tibetan soldiers surrounded the Tibetan village that occupied Linping. Fortunately, their numbers were overwhelming; the village had only a little over six hundred people, with fewer than two hundred able-bodied men, and no thought of resistance.

Basang then detached five hundred troops to escort every man, woman, and child from the village to Hehuang, requesting the local militia of the five Hehuang towns to guard them, leaving the matter of winning them over for after the battle.

Afterward, the main force rested at Linping for two double-hours, then the war drums and clapper-bells rose again, and by dawn the next day they reached Qingling Mountain Pass, eight li northwest of Zhuanglang Garrison City.

In the pale blue glimmer before sunrise, Zhuanglang Garrison City had not yet been breached, but its appearance was utterly wretched.

Jing Xiaoliu, who had not slept all night, stood atop the city wall with reddened eyes wide open. Two broken arrow shafts were lodged in the cloth-faced armor on his chest. His iron helmet had been swapped for a bowl-shaped helmet scavenged from who knows where, and the helmet plume had been hacked off.

On both sides of the wall, wounded soldiers lay sprawled in every direction. The two barbican walls on the north side were both scorched black. The burned gate tower emitted wisps of blue smoke. A dozen or so soldiers still able to move were piling the corpses of the assaulting troops onto small wooden carts and transporting them to either side of the battlements where breaches had been blasted open.

Everywhere was the acrid stench of smoke, fire, and boiling night-soil.

Jing Xiaoliu was hauling a small wooden cart. On the cart, Brother Dao had taken a cannon shot to the chest, blasting a large hole through him, yet he still maintained a full and vigorous mental state. Fully armored and helmeted, he held a torch high, casting a patch of light for the defending soldiers.

His gaze passed over the large cauldron boiling night-soil and urine and fell upon his subordinates resting against the battlements.

Just one day ago, they had been carefree civilian conscripts from the eastern villages, who had together with neighbors' elder brothers and uncles and elder male relatives seized the harvest of Zhuanglang Garrison's banner troops' fields, taken several watchtowers through threats and intimidation, and even followed the Marshal's Headquarters' Mongol captive cavalry to seize this most majestic great city in the Zhuanglang River valley.

When the enemy troops pressed the border and small-caliber cannonballs streaked overhead like a skyful of pebbles, people had wet their pants in terror, screamed in fright, wailed for their parents, and even madly tried to force open the city gates to flee.

But in a mere eight double-hours, everything had undergone earth-shattering change. The neighbor's younger brother, in a mad frenzy during the battle, tried to flee, jumped from the thirty-foot city wall and broke his leg, and was beheaded by the frenzied Ming troops.

The brave neighbor's elder brother, in towering fury, fired a Frankish cannon seven times in succession. Amid a thunderous roar, the red-hot cannon barrel exploded, blasting him to pieces.

The often-drunk uncle of the same surname, serving as a Company Commander, had one moment been passing on to the young men his experience of surviving on the battlefield, and the next moment had his windpipe nailed through by a stray arrow.

Not to mention those corpses already lying on the ground when the gun smoke cleared — people did not even know how they had died.

The cowardly died, the brave died too; inexperienced recruits died, seasoned officers died too.

The silent corpses with dark red bloodstains congealing in the gaps of the city wall's floor tiles no longer inspired fear, and the foul stench of boiling gold juice no longer felt unbearable.

Those who survived had ruined their voices amid the terrified screams and shouts of slaughter, left with no desire to speak at all. They simply lay back-to-back clutching their weapons like the lucky ones, or honed their blades and spears in silence, preparing for the next assault.

Jing Xiaoliu heard the orderlies from the four walls report to him: "General, the north wall still has forty-two defenders, sixteen lightly wounded, two gone mad; the west wall has sixty-four defenders, three lightly wounded; the south wall has seventy-nine defenders, eight lightly wounded; the east wall has one hundred and twenty defenders — the enemy over there never attacked."

Jing Xiaoliu nodded and said to the orderlies, "Understood. Have all the lightly wounded go down and tend the injured. Transfer thirty men over from the east wall."

He looked down beyond the wall. Smoke was already rising from the campfires of the besieging army. Once they finished eating, the next assault would probably come at once.

This night had changed more than just this army. Yesterday afternoon, Jing Xiaoliu had watched with his own eyes, one after another, as the village soldiers he himself had recruited died on the battlefield.

At the very start, for every soldier killed, an officer would tell him the name. Later, the officers no longer wanted to say the names, and he no longer wanted to hear them. Then, near dawn, the officers once again began telling him the names of the fallen soldiers.

His state of mind had already collapsed. If at the beginning, when he told the centurions to hold for two days and take his head to claim the reward, he had truly believed reinforcements would arrive within two days, then by this point, he actually no longer wished for reinforcements to arrive.

His command staff had basically collapsed. Of the six centurions, three were killed in action and one had a broken leg; of the twelve squad leaders, five were killed in action, one of whom had been promoted to acting centurion. Two entire century units had simply ceased to exist.

In truth, during a lull in the attacks last night, Jing Xiaoliu had intended to sleep. But when he closed his eyes, the parents, wives, and children of the fallen soldiers came at him from every direction demanding their men back, and he dared not close his eyes at all.

A horn blast sounded from below the wall. The Liangzhou army once again marched out of camp, pushing more war carts as they surged toward the wall and arrayed a line of cannon positions. The defenders atop the wall also rose at once, preparing to pour boiling gold juice onto the heads of the attacking troops.

Just after the cannons had fired two volleys in unison, Jing Xiaoliu heard the sudden clang of gongs sounding retreat below the wall.

He steeled himself and peered out past the battlements. He saw the infantry that had been poised to scale the wall suddenly, in every squad, hurriedly pushing their cannons back to camp and withdrawing their formation northward, then swiftly deploying into a vast, perfectly square wagon-fort formation.

There, farther north at the mouth of the Qingling mountain pass, dust and smoke blotted out the sky. Great drums rumbled like thunder. Two columns of Western Fan iron cavalry, their spiral-tipped lances adorned with tiger and leopard skins, appeared by the banks of the Zhuanglang River. One column swept downstream along the river like an earth dragon; the other galloped across the river and came to a halt in the north.

Right on their heels, horizontal ranks formed of heavy infantry clad in hoop armor and wielding long spears, along with lightly equipped arquebusiers, strode in great strides across the Zhuanglang River, pressing in from north to south toward the wagon fort.

Amid the roaring cannon fire of the wagon fort, cobble-sized stray shot sprayed across the battlefield in all directions around the advancing ranks, yet the Fan soldiers paid no more heed to the cannon blasts and the churning turf than if they were deaf, simply pressing forward with heads bowed.

Once they drew close, the Fan artillery officers set up their light cannons and fired back at the wagon fort's artillery. Right after that, guns and cannons roared in unison, cavalry charged and thrust, and thousands of Fan soldiers chanted scripture in a low roar that even drowned out the thundering guns.

"Because of reliance on the Perfection of Wisdom, the mind has no hindrance; having no hindrance, there is no fear... far from all inverted dreams, ultimate nirvana!"

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Good afternoon!