Chapter 562: You Call This a Marshal's Mansion?

Stubborn Bandits Main Text Volume Chapter 554: You Call This a Marshal's Mansion? Ningxia Grand Coordinator Wang Ji lowered his head to look at the map.

He raised his head to look at Supreme Commander Hong Chengchou and Military Defense Circuit Ding Qirui, then lowered his head to look at the map again.

It wasn't that Wang Ji couldn't read a map; he just couldn't understand this particular map that Hong Chengchou had brought.

The map was titled "Complete Map of the Marshal's Mansion," and Wang Ji recognized the handwriting as Hong Chengchou's own.

But the map was drawn far too intricately, as if many regional maps from different eras had been pieced together, and even then, large swaths of blank space remained.

Every place marked on the map was labeled with a place name, a personal name, and a tribal name; some even included the tribe's origin and history, and the territory it covered was too vast—so vast it felt unreal.

This Complete Map of the Marshal's Mansion, combined with the earnest expressions on the faces of Hong Chengchou and Ding Qirui, struck Wang Ji as profoundly absurd.

It was as if two very serious men had suddenly started joking, producing a fantastical map and claiming it was real.

Wang Ji, in truth, had always held a favorable impression of Liu Chengzong.

This was tied to his own experience; as a high-ranking official serving as a Grand Coordinator for the court, he had personally lived through and survived the Ningyuan Mutiny.

He was a native of Tai'an in Shandong, a student of Song Tao, one of the Three Masters of Mount Tai, a presented scholar of the forty-seventh year of the Wanli era, initially appointed magistrate of Zhecheng County in Henan, then transferred to Anyi in Shanxi, later promoted to Secretary of the Ministry of Revenue, responsible for managing military pay at Shanhai Pass.

When the Ningyuan Mutiny broke out, the Grand Secretary and the Circuit Intendant both died in the mutiny; he alone was unaffected, so the Chongzhen Emperor promoted him, reasoning that if the soldiers clamoring for pay bore him no resentment, he must have been a man of great integrity in his post.

Wang Ji was indeed talented and had a reputation for incorruptibility, but the Ningyuan Mutiny happened in the first year of Chongzhen, when both the natural disasters and the intensity of the pay riots were relatively mild; as someone who lived through it, he understood the situation far more clearly.

The circumstances of the Ningyuan Mutiny were not complicated; in fact, they were quite simple. At the time, any official in Liaodong knew a mutiny was inevitable.

Because the court was busy changing emperors. The new emperor ascended the throne, purged Wei Zhongxian, reorganized the cabinet, and reshuffled the personnel of the Six Ministries and Seven Chief Ministers—they simply could not attend to Liaodong.

And at that time, Liaodong itself could not attend to Liaodong. The Supreme Commander and concurrent Grand Coordinator was Wang Zhichen, a man of Wei Zhongxian's faction, living in constant terror. By the time he had lost Xingshan, Tashan, and Jinzhou and was dismissed by the Chongzhen Emperor, it was already the fifth month. The newly appointed Grand Coordinator was Bi Zisu.

Bi Zisu was the biological younger brother of Bi Ziyan, the Minister of Revenue, and he knew that the grain and pay for Liaodong could not fall into arrears.

Pay could fall into arrears anywhere along the Nine Border Garrisons—so why not in Liaodong? Because elsewhere, the soldiers, in the narrowest sense, were locals; in the broadest sense, they were all fellow townsmen. Take Liu Chengzong's Yuhe Fortress, for example: every single person in the entire fortress was from Shaanxi.

When native soldiers had their pay withheld, they could find ways to get by from their home communities, or even borrow from fellow townsmen, and could always hold out for a while longer.

Liaodong was different. Ever since the Guanning Army was formed by summoning the empire's finest troops, Liaodong had men from everywhere. A battalion of Sichuan men sent to the northeast to fight—if their pay was a month late, they'd explode. They had no other means besides collecting their military wages.

From the fifth month to the seventh month, in just two months in office, Bi Zisu sent nine reports to the court requesting grain and pay. The court ignored them and simply dragged its feet.

And then, naturally, the pay riot broke out. Thirteen battalions mutinied; only Zu Dale's Liaodong battalion did not. For one, four months of back pay had less impact on locals than on outside troops. For another, the outside troops were wary of these locals and wouldn't pull them into the trouble.

Soldiers who had come from Sichuan and Huguang stormed the headquarters, seized Grand Coordinator Bi Zisu, Regional Commander Zhu Mei, Deputy Prefect Zhang Shirong, and Assistant Prefect Su Hanchun, tied them up, and hauled them to the Drum Tower, demanding they hand over the pay silver.

Bi Zisu had only been in office for two months, and the court hadn't allocated him any funds. Even if the mutinous soldiers had turned his residence upside down, they wouldn't have found more than a few coins. In the end, he was beaten until his face was covered in blood.

Later, Military Defense Circuit Guo Guang diverted twenty thousand taels of reward silver meant for the Mongols and borrowed another fifty thousand from merchants and civilians, and the mutinous soldiers then dispersed.

In the end, Bi Zisu could not bear the humiliation; the more he brooded, the angrier he became. He first went on a hunger strike, then hanged himself, and died.

Wang Ji did not die in that upheaval. First, because he truly had not embezzled any money—there was no money for him to embezzle at the time. Second, because his rank was too low; he didn't even qualify to be tied up on the Drum Tower.

In any case, that mutiny broadened Wang Ji's experience, helped him catch the emperor's eye, and brought him higher office and power. At the same time, because his promotion came too easily and the Ningyuan Mutiny was too straightforward, it left him a bit naive.

This experience made him feel that mutinies were not so terrifying, and he even harbored a persistent illusion: he felt that if he had been the Grand Coordinator of Guyuan back then, the Guyuan mutiny would not have happened; if he had been the Grand Coordinator of Yansui, perhaps Liu Chengzong would never have risen in revolt.

He did not know that while native soldiers had a high tolerance for withheld pay, when their tolerance ran low, a mutiny was just about demanding money, cursing in the streets, and at worst, punching the Grand Coordinator three times, beating his face bloody, getting a bit of money, and then dispersing.

But when their high tolerance was pushed past the breaking point, these local soldiers had long since had nowhere left to retreat. Even if they got the money, they could never go back to being soldiers again, so they would go all the way.

Still, even though he held a favorable view of frontier-army-born rebels like Liu Chengzong, the map Hong Chengchou produced was simply too absurd for him.

Wang Ji studied the expressions of Hong Chengchou and Ding Qirui intently, trying to find some telltale sign that this was a joke, but all he could see on their faces was solemnity. Finally, he asked in disappointment, "By bringing out this map, does the Supreme Commander mean to tell me that the Marshal's Mansion's northwestern border is not Jiayu Pass, but Beshbalik?"

The moment he asked the question, he himself found it absurd.

Beshbalik was Tingzhou. Although Wang Ji had always served in the east, the territory of the west was common knowledge for a Grand Coordinator. That place was not some northwestern frontier of the Marshal's Mansion, but the territory of the Khoshut tribe, the leader of the Oirat Mongols.

"The various Mongol tribes have acclaimed Liu Chengzong as Great Khan, signing and issuing a proclamation. The Oirat State Preceptor of the Khoshut tribe is ranked third on it."

As he spoke, Hong Chengchou pointed to a location northwest of Tingzhou on the map and said, "The leader of the Oirat Dzungar tribe entrenched here, Baatur Khong Tayiji, is ranked fourth."

In truth, no further detailed introduction was needed, because Military Defense Circuit Ding Qirui had already spread out before Wang Ji the proclamation of the Khan's acclamation, as analyzed by the Trilateral Governor's Office. They had analyzed every single name left on the proclamation.

Wang Ji merely glanced at it; the string of bizarre personal names on it was only made clear thanks to the detailed introductions provided afterward by Hong Chengchou, Ding Qirui, and others.

However, before he could express his approval for Military Defense Circuit Ding Qirui's intelligence work, his eyes were already dazzled by the string of "Borjigin" names in the list.

To a border official of the Great Ming, the surname Borjigin was nothing special; the "Wang" in our Lord Wang Ji's own name, after all, also originated from the Ji clan.

But there were far too many Borjigins on this list—several dozen—so many that he almost couldn't recognize the surname anymore.

Starting from the very first name: Borjigin Ejei Khongghor, heir to the Chahar Khanate, Crown Prince Ejei of the Great Yuan; the second was Borjigin Choghtu Taiji, that is, Chahar's Choghtu Taiji; the third, Borjigin Türo Bayikhu, the State Preceptor Khan of the Oirat Khoshut tribe.

After that, two Choros finally appeared: the Dzungar Baatur Khong Tayiji and the Dörbet tribe's Dalai Taiji. But after those two, it was the Borjigin's world again, with Guru, Bayan, and Lhamo Lozhui respectively—the last being the younger Lozhui.

Then came their friends and relatives; if not Borjigin, then Choros. Each name represented a Mongol chieftain, interspersed with the Marshal's Mansion's actual power-holding generals, and occasionally a name or two of a Tibetan local leader would pop up.

This list was not appearing before Wang Ji's eyes for the first time, but it was the first time it had been analyzed so seriously and meticulously. The territory and population behind each name ultimately produced this extraordinarily strange map, on which the land occupied by the Marshal's Mansion was half again as large as the Great Ming.

This even made Wang Ji look at Hong Chengchou with a strange expression. "Surely the Supreme Commander doesn't... truly believe this is the Marshal's Mansion's territory?"

Hong Chengchou said nothing, merely looking at Wang Ji very seriously.

The meaning on his face was obvious: I truly believe it.

Wang Ji laughed involuntarily. "Are you saying that Liu Chengzong ran off to sea for a few years and beat up everyone within three thousand li and beyond the Great Ming?"

He had looked: Lhasa, Beiting, Chahar—all were at least three thousand li from Xining, and even that "three thousand li by road" was an underestimate. For the entirety of last year, Liu Chengzong had been fighting in Gansu, meaning he only had two years. To dispatch troops, reach a place, and return alive would be a stroke of incredible luck.

What's more, the court's intelligence clearly stated in black and white that when Liu Chengzong entered Qinghai, he had barely over ten thousand troops in total. On what basis could he accomplish such a grand undertaking?

And that wasn't even the most absurd part. In Wang Ji's view, the most absurd part was the three brothers of the Kholochi family.

Kholochi—this man hadn't ranked highly back in his day; he was a Tümed otog lord squeezed out to Qinghai. But it wasn't that Kholochi lacked ability; rather, that era was full of titans clashing everywhere.

Among his peers who could sway the world's situation were men like Altan Khan and Zhang Juzheng; those who could coordinate with these men to set the world's pattern were even more numerous: Qi Jiguang, Li Chengliang, Ma Fang, Zhang Chen, Khutughtai Sechen Khong Tayiji, Tümen Khan, and Suhua. Any one of these men was a ruthless figure capable of bringing peace to a region for decades or plunging it into chaos for just as long.

Many of them were talents who exceeded the norm.

Take the Ordos lord Khutughtai Sechen Khong Tayiji, for example. In his entire life, he only did a few things.

Culturally, he was proficient in Mongolian, Chinese, Uighur, and Tibetan, and personally wrote the memorial of thanks upon being enfeoffed as Prince Who Subdues the Righteous. Militarily, he led troops west against the Oirats, conquering the Torgut tribe, and campaigned west against the Kazakhs, defeating Aksar Khan at Suyab. Economically, he brokered the tribute and trade relationship between Altan Khan and the Ming dynasty. Politically, as the representative of the Right Wing, he became one of the Five Regents of Mongolia.

In that era of dazzling stars, Kholochi seemed like a hapless wretch driven from his homeland.

Because his tribe was an otog subordinate to the Right Wing Tümed Tümen, the Dolon Tümed, one of the Twelve Tümed. Their pastureland was on the Fengzhou Plain. As far back as when Altan Khan was still garrisoned at Kaiping, that was already the Kholochi family's territory. At that time, his father had a fairly good relationship with the Great Ming, with regular border markets year-round.

But as the Tumed migrated west, Huoluochi's father couldn't afford to provoke Anda, so he had no choice but to lead his tribesmen to the borders of Gansu and continue the border markets. By the time Huoluochi took charge of the tribe, Altan Khan had already become a major power. As the Tumed entered Tibet to pay homage to the Buddha, Huoluochi also opened up a route southward and simply stayed in Qinghai for good.

Huoluochi was formidable in his own right, though. After occupying Qinghai, he attacked the Oirat to the north, campaigned in the Kham region to the south, and raided the Great Ming to the east — earning himself a thirty-year blockade decreed by the Son of Heaven of the Great Ming, stripping him of market privileges and rewards. This infuriated him so much that he even traveled a thousand li to Ningxia just to stick his nose into Bobai's rebellion.

People called him the Little Liu Chengzong.

Yet for all that he was a great scourge on the Great Ming's western frontier, after he passed away, his three remaining sons seemed to suddenly acknowledge their roots and return to the old Liu family fold.

Ever since Liu Chengzong entered and occupied Qinghai, Huoluochi's three fine sons never once fought a single battle against this man who was seizing their territory — they even helped him without stint.

When Liu Chengzong wanted to campaign south, the three brothers contributed troops. When the Mongol nobles of Mobei struck at the Grand Marshal's rear, the three brothers handed over their entire family fortune to Liu Chengzong and went off to Ü-Tsang to find another way to make a living.

They abandoned their homeland just to aid Liu Chengzong. Could they really be that amiable?

Even after entering Tibet, there were still rumors coming down from the snowy mountains that spread across the entire Mongol steppe, saying that the Daiqing Khitan Khan of Duntawulusi was the reincarnation of Genghis Khan and should rightfully inherit the throne of the Great Yuan Emperor.

Wang Ji suspected from the bottom of his heart — were those three men actually Huoluochi's sons, or were they Liu Chengzong's?

They were far too filial!

Wang Ji shook his head, cast the strange thought from his mind, and only then did he straighten his expression and ask Hong Chengchou, "Military Superintendent Hong, if this is truly the case, this map must be sent to the palace as soon as possible. Before summer, the Marshal's Manor will certainly launch a brazen war."

Having said this, he felt relieved instead.

Whether they could ascertain the Marshal's Manor's territory, population, troop strength, and financial resources was critical to the war.

But on the other hand, a Marshal's Manor that huddled in Hehuang and could defeat the Five Garrisons' allied forces with a small number of troops, versus a Marshal's Manor whose territory was half again as large as the Great Ming's and that had defeated the Five Garrisons' allied forces — the threat was clearly not on the same level.

At the very least, after seeing this map, Wang Ji knew what the Marshal's Manor most wanted to do — enter Guanzhong.

Because aside from Guanzhong, there was nowhere else that would allow Liu Chengzong to feed so many people.

Of course, Ningxia was also in great danger, but attacking Ningxia held the same significance as attacking Gansu — both were to create favorable conditions for advancing into Guanzhong. The ultimate goal was still to enter Guanzhong.

Hearing this, Hong Chengchou knew that Wang Ji's thoughts had reached the same place as his own. He immediately replied, "Half a shichen before Brother Wang saw this map, I had already dispatched men by fast horse to send it to the capital. Beyond that, copies will be sent shortly to Military Superintendent Chen and Grand Coordinator Lian. This is absolutely not a war that one garrison or one frontier can handle."

"The five provinces and three garrisons must, without fail, be united in purpose from top to bottom."

A great war unfolded clearly before the eyes of Wang Ji and Hong Chengchou. In their eyes, this war was, to some degree, the first time the Great Ming's army and the Marshal's Manor had been dragged onto the same level — both would be swept along by their armies and forced to fight.

The Ming army's provisions had completely broken down, and the Marshal's Manor was hardly any better off. Even if the Oirat Tartars and Huoluochi's three brothers in Ü-Tsang were all Liu Chengzong's sons, they couldn't give him fifty thousand sheep every year.

It was just that, as for being united in purpose from top to bottom — Hong Chengchou clasped his fists, his eyes burning bright, but what he was thinking in his heart was: You want to enter Guanzhong; I want to retake Gansu!