Chapter 502: Only One

In the end, Bai Yiqing did not take the luck Liu Chengzong wanted to give him.

He told Liu Chengzong that Ganzhou was not his Lingdingyang, yet he felt as terrified as if he stood on Panic Shoal, and hoped Liu Chengzong would permit him to leave lay life and become a Daoist priest in Ganzhou.

Liu Chengzong thought to himself that Old Master Bai was a man of some refinement, following the story of Wen Tianxiang.

When the Southern Song fell, Wen Tianxiang was captured by Zhang Hongfan. Zhang Hongfan ordered him to persuade Zhang Shijie to surrender. Wen Tianxiang said, "I could not even protect my own parents — now you want me to persuade another man to betray his parents? Is that possible?"

Zhang Hongfan insisted he write a letter urging surrender, so Wen Tianxiang wrote for him, "Since olden times, who among men has escaped death? Leave a loyal heart to shine upon the annals of history," to make clear his own resolve.

Later, Wen Tianxiang was escorted to Yanjing, where he fasted for eight days without dying. Wang Jiweng told Kublai Khan that none of the Southern Song's ministers could compare to Wen Tianxiang, so Kublai Khan sent him to persuade Wen Tianxiang to surrender.

Wen Tianxiang refused to take office. He said, "My nation is already destroyed; my duty is simply death. If the Emperor is magnanimous and allows me to return to my hometown as a Daoist priest, and later serve as an advisor in the capacity of one beyond worldly ties, that would be acceptable. But if you immediately appoint me to office, not only would I be incompatible with the other scholar-officials of a fallen state, I would also cast aside my lifelong aspirations and endeavors. If I were that kind of man, what meaning would there be in employing me?"

Kublai Khan thought there was reason in this, but Liu Mengyan, a minister who had surrendered to the Yuan even earlier, felt otherwise. Damn your lofty virtue — saying such things, where does that leave those of us who willingly surrendered to the Yuan and urged former colleagues to do the same? A Daoist priest, you say? Go die!

Liu Mengyan told Kublai Khan, "If you release Wen Tianxiang, the moment he returns home he will rally Jiangnan to rise in revolt. What will become of us then?"

In the end, Wen Tianxiang was executed.

Both being educated men, the moment Liu Chengzong heard Bai Yiqing's words, he understood his meaning: I can surrender, but the hurdle in my heart has not yet been crossed — taking office is not my wish for now. If you force me into office, then I have no choice but to die. If you permit me to become a Daoist priest, and there is anything you wish to know, I would not be averse to serving as an advisor.

Commander Liu thought the man very clever — with just that one sentence, using Wen Tianxiang as an example, he had said everything, both good and ill.

If I cannot tolerate you becoming a Daoist priest, wouldn't that make me even less magnanimous than a foreign ruler like Kublai Khan? Fine, go be a Daoist priest then.

There were many temples in Ganzhou. The first commander to enter the city was Zhang Tianlin. Before he became a soldier, Zhang Tianlin and his brothers had all been tenant farmers for a temple, and he had loathed monks his entire life. Back in northern Shaanxi, whenever he saw a Buddhist temple, he would let his troops tear it down and burn it — no temple along his path was ever left standing.

The sole exception was when they crossed the Qilian Mountains and seized the weapons, armor, and warhorses of Tahazhike, chieftain of the Five Yellow Barbarian Tribes, on the northern side. Because Tahazhike was a friend of Wang Ziyong and bore no ill will toward the Marshal's Headquarters, Zhang Tianlin felt deeply apologetic, and so he made a promise: once the fighting was over, he would certainly give Tahazhike an accounting.

He wanted to repay the man, but to his utter surprise, Tahazhike wanted nothing more to do with someone like him. He said, "I am a Buddhist. If you wish to repay me, then when General Zhang is enfeoffed and made a commander in the future, build a temple for me."

Zhang Tianlin thought to himself that a true man cannot alter his resolve — asking him to build a temple was absolutely out of the question. The most he could do was stop tearing temples down from now on. Every temple he saw that remained standing in this world would count as your merit.

Zhang Tianlin was an honest man who kept his word. Having promised Tahazhike he would stop tearing down temples, he truly stopped. But one thing was one thing and another was another — the temples could stay, but all temple lands and incense offerings were to be confiscated.

The monks said, "General, if you confiscate all the lands and incense offerings, we will have no means to support the monks."

Zhang Tianlin clapped his hands in great delight. No means to support them is perfect. Three roads lie before you: join the army, return to lay life, or get lost.

Liu Chengzong himself had no habit of paying respects to Buddhist or Daoist temples. After entering the city, he had been wandering between the Grand Coordinator's yamen, the city walls, and the streets, and had never visited any temple.

Once he understood Bai Yiqing's meaning, he told Zhang Tianlin that Old Master Bai wished to leave lay life and become a Daoist priest. Find a Daoist temple and put their family inside. Zhang Tianlin said there were no Daoist temples — would a Buddhist temple do? Ganzhou had quite a few empty Buddhist temples.

Hearing this, Liu Chengzong was also quite pleased. So you, Guo Tianxing, the little temple-demolishing expert, still have temples left under your very nose? He took the opportunity to advise him: not tearing down temples is good. These things are the wisdom of our forebears in architectural craftsmanship, famous historical sites that can be left for future generations. Since you've stopped tearing them down, don't tear them down anymore in the future.

He made the decision on the spot: "Good, then find a temple and put Old Master Bai inside. Later, we'll put up a statue of the Zhenwu Emperor."

Bai Yiqing's family of six was thus placed in the Great Buddha Temple. The Great Buddha Temple of Ganzhou was a Buddhist temple built in the first year of the Chongzong Emperor's Yong'an era during the Western Xia — it was enormous in scale.

In normal years, the city would not be too quiet even at night, but now the Marshal's army had just taken Ganzhou, matters were still unsettled, and a curfew was being enforced. Zhang Tianlin had also driven all the monks away. The walls were deep and high, many trees had been planted, and the wind in Ganzhou was very strong — at night, it rustled and whispered, shadows of ghosts everywhere, gloomy and terrifying.

Bai Yiqing was so frightened he dared not sleep the whole night through. Every night in the temple's side rooms, he lit the small candles and oil lamps the soldiers had not confiscated — two or three candles, eight or nine oil lamps — making the room brilliantly lit. His heart full of regret, he sat there blankly, waiting for dawn.

Bai Yiqing thought to himself, If I'd known you were going to dump me in this Great Buddha Temple without a single soul in sight, I wouldn't have shown off by quoting Wen Tianxiang. Wouldn't it have been so much better to just ask for a two-courtyard house in the city? In this godforsaken place, I'll end up frightened into an early grave.

In truth, for Bai Yiqing, leaving lay life was merely a pretext — it was not what mattered.

When Wen Tianxiang returned home to become a priest, if he wished to do something, he could rally Jiangnan to rise again; if he no longer wished to struggle, he could retire to a Daoist temple and ignore worldly affairs. After all, the Southern Song was already destroyed.

But the Great Ming was not yet destroyed, and Bai Yiqing dared not return home — not just to his hometown, he dared not even set foot on Ming soil again.

Over this long period, he had thought it through. At first, he had wanted to flee Ganzhou because he feared the Marshal's Headquarters more than the imperial court. After all, the Marshal's Headquarters was a regime cobbled together from roving bandits, rebel armies, plus the attributes of sea pirates and northern barbarians — who knew how they would treat former Ming officials?

Now that he had met Liu Chengzong, he more or less understood his aspirations. One could say the impression Liu Chengzong left on him was extremely complex. On the surface, this was a domineering warlord who believed from the bottom of his heart that he with the strongest soldiers and fiercest horses ought to be the Son of Heaven, yet he was not a blind, rash autocrat who worshipped military force alone.

In the final analysis, Bai Yiqing felt that Liu Chengzong's outward expression was that of a military man, but his inner logic was that of a scholar-official.

He was not using "my soldiers are strong and my horses fierce, so I ought to be the Son of Heaven" to explain his actions — otherwise, he would not need to restrain himself. Moreover, in his speech, he was full of contempt for the present Great Ming, yet whenever he mentioned Zhu Yuanzhang, he invariably referred to him as the Taizu Emperor.

Through his contact with Liu Chengzong, Bai Yiqing concluded that this man's concept was: when the realm is in upheaval and the nine provinces are torn asunder, the divine vessel must go to he who possesses virtue. I possess virtue — that is why my soldiers are strong and my horses fierce.

And what did Liu Chengzong consider to be virtue?

Not the martial force he displayed in rampaging across the land, but the capacity to rebuild order, protect the borders and pacify the people, and achieve lasting peace and stability.

Such a Marshal's Headquarters was not frightening to Bai Yiqing in the slightest. So now, what truly terrified him was the Chongzhen Emperor's fury after the loss of Gansu.

The real disaster was that Yang Jiamo had died for his country. If Yang Jiamo were still alive, the Chongzhen Emperor would certainly deal harshly with Yang Jiamo and thus vent his anger. But Yang Jiamo was gone — if he, Bai Yiqing, were still alive and went back, what good end could await him? Better to be a Daoist priest in Gansu for now.

However, during those days when Old Master Bai was too frightened to sleep in the Great Buddha Temple, he did not merely chant sutras to bolster his courage. Just as he had expressed to Liu Chengzong, he hoped even more to serve as an advisor who did not take office in the Marshal's Headquarters, to play a small role in the rebuilding of order in Gansu, and to handle some matters.

Over four days, Liu Chengzong inspected the camps and reviewed drills in Ganzhou every day, and upon returning, he would bury himself in the Grand Coordinator's yamen, poring over the situation in Gansu as it appeared on paper. He read with immense pleasure, unable to tear himself away.

The population of the various guards in Ganzhou was very small — just over ten thousand households in total. The household registry in the prefectural yamen recorded just over twenty-five thousand people... but this figure made Liu Chengzong's heart pound with alarm. On the basis of this population, Yang Jiamo had recruited seventy-two hundred troops from Ganzhou — that was also why Ganzhou, for all its mighty walls, could not stop the rampaging soldiers.

The reserve of able-bodied young men in this oasis had been drained dry by his single campaign.

So how many people were in Ganzhou now? Liu Chengzong did not know. His army had so far only tallied just over six hundred households within the city, totaling sixteen hundred people, mostly the old, the weak, women, and children.

How many were outside the city, he also could not say — it was not work that could be completed in a short time. But he estimated, at an optimistic estimate, at most twenty thousand people.

Yet in agriculture, the official figures alone filled Liu Chengzong with excitement.

The Zhangye Oasis was the largest oasis in Gansu, possessing the most complete irrigation system. Across the entire oasis, there were over one hundred and ten irrigation canals, with irrigated land amounting to one million one hundred seventy thousand mu, and total arable land exceeding one million five hundred thousand mu. Normal wheat yields could reach one hundred twenty jin per mu.

Moreover, Ganzhou's technical accumulation in handicrafts was also formidable. The various guards had many hereditary craftsmen, with very strong foundations in textiles, shipbuilding, military industry, coal, smelting, and construction.

In brickmaking alone: in the second year of the Wanli era, Gansu petitioned to reinforce the Ganzhou defense zone. From the second day of the third month to the end of the ninth month, they fired seven million six hundred eighty thousand medium bricks, four million seven hundred eighty thousand large bricks, fashioned over nine thousand stone blocks, and fired seventy-five thousand dan of lime, completing the brick cladding of the eastern and southern city walls.

By the end of the following year, using roughly the same quantity of brick and stone materials, the brick cladding of the western and northern walls was also completed.

But this good news gleaned from paper also meant one enormous problem for Commander Liu: the present situation of the Zhangye Oasis was vastly different from what these official documents suggested.

This could not help but remind him of the Song dynasty, when Zhepuyou Longbo, Vice Commissioner of the Left Wing of the Western Army and a Tibetan chieftain, went to Kaifeng to pay tribute and said to Emperor Zhenzong of Song: "In the past, Xiliang Prefecture governed five counties, with a total of twenty-five thousand six hundred ninety-three households and one hundred twenty-eight thousand one hundred ninety-two people. Now, there are three hundred households of Han people."

People — people are everything. Without people, what development can there be?

Looking at the official documents on the foundations of farmland, water resources, and handicrafts, Liu Chengzong could be so happy he'd fly to the heavens. But the moment he thought of Ganzhou's population, Liu Chengzong was so furious he wanted to flip the table.

Ever since entering Jiayu Pass, they had fought their way across half of Gansu, yet the total population they had gained, added together, was still less than the number of troops Liu Chengzong now commanded!

Although this situation had long been within his expectations — it was also why, in his early years, he had occupied Hehuang but dared not make a move on Gansu. Gansu was full of soldiers; taking it was not difficult. What was difficult was that after taking it, there would be no people.

So much good land, and they had to rely on the people left in Ganzhou to farm it. It was not a question of whether he, Commander Liu, would distribute land or not. One million five hundred thousand mu of land, with at most twenty thousand people, most of whom were old men who could not even lift a weapon and children under fourteen — how were they supposed to farm it?

The history of military farming in Gansu began in the Han dynasty. This place had a rich culture and abundant experience in military farming. But even the military farmers of the Tang dynasty were not given seventy-five mu of land per person.

During the Tianbao era, the Tang dynasty placed great importance on military farming. Their strategy was: to protect Qinlong, one must secure Hexi.

Under the Zhangye military farm system, each household received seventy mu of land. The land was state-owned, and the government provided farming tools and plow oxen. Of this, sixty-three mu was planted with grain, yielding an average of 7,800 jin per household — every household could produce a super-soldier like Liu Chengzong.

For Liu Chengzong, the strategy had to be flipped: to attack Qin-Long, one must first secure Hexi.

But he had no men. Sending combat troops to farm was impossible; sending surrendered troops to farm — he dared not try that either.

With no one to farm, in a world where drought struck waterless places, floods drowned wet places, locust plagues ravaged places neither dry nor flooded, and great pestilence followed every locust plague — leaving two million mu of fine farmland lying fallow on the Gansu oases — Liu Chengzong would wake from midnight dreams and slap himself across the face: I deserve to die!

Liu Chengzong was out of options. When a man is out of options, what does he do? Tell his father.

A letter requesting aid, dictated by Liu Chengzong, was sent by relay at full gallop to Liyuan Fort in Sunan, then forwarded to his father Liu Xiangyu in Xining Prefecture.

First, it reported the battle situation and inquired about the He-Huang theater. Second, it asked his father to find people — to locate suitable routes, taking mountain paths if the mountains were passable, or going beyond the passes if they were not.

Two kinds of people were needed. The first: people with experience from the Kangning and He-Huang township-official work teams — three hundred of them, each assigned two guards, for a total of nine hundred.

The second kind: people who knew how to farm. Fewer than ten thousand households — as many as could be found without disrupting farming in He-Huang. He-Huang would cover provisions for the migration and winter rations; Ganzhou would handle resettlement and land allocation.

There was just one requirement: they must arrive before winter.

This letter should reach Xining Prefecture quickly, because now that Ganzhou had been brought under governance, the five Yellow Fan tribes of Tahazhike were under the Marshal's command. The western section of the Qilian Mountains' northern slopes and the southern slopes were now open. The only thing to consider was the environment — those narrow trails were hard for large troops, but for couriers, they posed no problem.

After all, in previous years when Chen Qindai suppressed bandits in Haibei County, the ones he caught were Gansu deserters who had fled along mountain paths into the Marshal's territory.

Just as Liu Chengzong was exhausting his mind over this matter, Bai Yiqing — Old Master Bai — had been shut up in the Great Buddha Temple for four days, so frightened and unsettled that he handed over his results.

A long letter of a full nine thousand-odd characters, detailing every entrenched abuse Bai Yiqing had witnessed in his three years as Grand Coordinator of Gansu: from military farmlands seized by officers great and small, to waterways blocked by officials and official households; from tax grain shifted onto others, to levies piled on top of levies; from the court's own rule that abandoned fields would never be taxed, to the local authorities' blanket retroactive collection — so that before the seeds even entered the soil, the land was already on the tax rolls, driving the settlers who had opened the wasteland to flee.

A great mass of material, written with great care. Liu Chengzong read it with equal care. Only when he finished did he look up with a smile and say, "Old Master Bai, the problems you describe existed in the past, but from this moment on, they are gone. They do not exist. The Marshal's Office has only one landlord… me."

Good afternoon!