Chapter 568: To Win a Name in Life and After Death

To be honest, the intelligence Gao Yingdeng had gathered was somewhat disappointing.

Originally, Liu Shizi had harbored a faint, private hope — he'd thought that with Shaanxi and Ningxia mounting a joint operation, the court might stockpile a batch of grain and fodder at Qingyang Prefecture.

But the intelligence Gao Yingdeng provided showed that, just as the Marshal's headquarters commanders had long estimated, the Ming army had placed its main grain depot at Xi'an Prefecture city.

Once the intelligence was confirmed, Liu Shizi flew into a rage, cursing furiously in the central army's command tent in the dead of night.

Hong Chengchou and Chen Qiyu have no shame whatsoever — what do they mean by putting the supply depot at Xi'an Prefecture city? Five hundred li from the grain depot to the front is already considered far — where exactly do they imagine the front line is? The Liupan Mountains line!

Clearly, these damned officials have no resolve whatsoever to recover lost territory!

They just want to watch the Marshal's headquarters sit trapped in a besieged city, waiting for Grandpa here to run out of grain first and then drop dead.

Their intent is utterly vicious.

At the same time, another matter mentioned in Gao Yingdeng's intelligence was of equally great significance to Liu Chengzong.

The Chongzhen Emperor was getting serious.

The Chongzhen Emperor's preparations for this campaign were more earnest than ever before — he had decided to release two hundred thousand taels from the inner treasury and one hundred thousand taels from the Court of the Imperial Stud, a total of three hundred thousand taels of silver, now being transported to Xi'an Prefecture; he had also ordered Shanxi, Henan, and Sichuan provinces each to retain one hundred thousand taels of bandit-suppression funds for contingencies.

These two pieces of news — the grain depot's location and the release of inner treasury funds for war preparations — both basically matched Liu Chengzong's assessment of the government forces, and he felt they did not seem like false intelligence.

Yet the source of Gao Yingdeng's intelligence was a bit reckless — his reconnaissance riders had crossed Qinzhou and entered Longzhou territory in Fengxiang Prefecture, advancing with extreme caution the whole way, simply scouting the route ahead, when they ran headlong into thirty-two Sichuan troops beside the narrow Sanqiao River.

Reportedly, that scout was terrified at the time, slowly retreating while waving his flag, but the Sichuan soldiers on the mountain path ran very fast, shouting as they ran, their Shu-accented speech rapid and urgent — the scout couldn't understand a word, and it took a great deal of effort to figure out that these men wanted to surrender.

Gao Yingdeng had come overnight this time not only to deliver intelligence, but also to request commendation for that scout, a man named Ma Changli.

Liu Chengzong felt the intelligence was sound, but this group of Sichuan troops surrendering was exceedingly strange, so he ordered Gao Yingdeng to escort them to Longxi for custody, kept separate from the army, lest they be court spies.

"Is the Grand Marshal worried that court spies are mixed in among them?" Gao Yingdeng thought the likelihood was small and shook his head. "This humble officer believes that even if they sent spies, they'd use Shaanxi locals — at least they'd be easier to trust. We have ** entire battalions of Shaanxi men; a squad of Sichuan troops as spies would be far too conspicuous."

"Eight. Eight Shaanxi battalions, plus two that count as mixed Gansu-Shaanxi formations. Proper Gansu battalions, only two."

Liu Chengzong knew his troops like the back of his hand and rattled that off casually, but his expression remained cautious. "But what if they're doing the opposite on purpose?"

In truth, if you insisted these Sichuan troops were spies, Liu Shizi also thought it unlikely, but right now he knew full well that Hong Chengchou and Chen Qiyu were both busy scheming against him — at the slightest rustle of wind or stir of grass, he couldn't help but think deeper.

Still, since he truly couldn't figure this matter out, Liu Chengzong simply waved his hand and said, "It doesn't matter anyway. Send the men to Longxi first and keep them under watch. If verbal communication is difficult, give them paper and brush — things like why they surrendered and how they know the grain depot's location and about the inner treasury funds, have them write it down first. I'll transfer an A-jia over from Ju'erwan to talk with them; we'll get the full story out eventually."

The mistress of the pot-house at Dajianlu was skilled in the languages of the southwest and adept at being a broker — a master at reading expressions and soothing hearts. If these Sichuan soldiers, years from home, heard their native accent, presumably whatever the inside story was, it would be pried out.

However, Liu Chengzong hadn't expected that before the A-jia from the Ju'erwan market even arrived, the Sichuan soldiers had already confessed everything.

There was indeed something going on, and it was something Liu Shizi could never have imagined — Deng Qi was dead.

Last year, Deng Qi's battalion had mutinied right at Jingningzhou, and only through the protection of Grand Secretary Wang Yingxiong did he escape court punishment. In the months since, he had lived on tenterhooks, terrified of committing any further offense.

This meant that when news of the Chongzhen Emperor releasing inner treasury funds reached the front, other commanders all sent men running to Xi'an Prefecture to demand pay and silver — only he, because of the mutiny, was too ashamed to send anyone, probably figuring the pay would be distributed sooner or later anyway, so joining the scramble was pointless.

Halfway through reading the Sichuan troops' report, Liu Shizi slapped his thigh and thought: Why be polite with the Emperor! You're all government troops — if you don't go ask, don't you know in your heart whether the court will give you pay or not?

He had already lost control of that battalion of Sichuan troops. In Deng Qi's eyes, the soldiers' mutiny and looting kept him in constant fear — a whole battalion of officers and men were nothing but unruly rabble-rousers; and in the eyes of the officers and men, he was a liar who spouted nonsense and broke every promise.

In the second year of Chongzhen, he had led them out of Sichuan, saying that once they drove out Hong Taiji, he would take them home. Hong Taiji left, Deng Qi was promoted to Zunhua Regional Commander, with hereditary rank of Battalion Commander for his descendants — they did not go home, but were transferred to Xifengkou to trade blades with the eastern caitiffs.

The Wuqiao Mutiny broke out, and they were transferred to Shahe to resist the rebels. Deng Qi said once they finished off the rebel army, he would take them home — they went and fought the rebels in bloody battle. The rebels were gone, but then roving bandits entered Hebei. Deng Qi again said once they finished off the roving bandits, he would take them home — they continued fighting the roving bandits from Shaanxi, and had it not been for Zuo Liangyu's rescue, they would have been annihilated entirely in southern Ji.

Deng Qi could never fulfill his promises. Time and again he gave them the hope of returning home, and time and again, under the court's life-or-death transfer orders, he broke his word.

By now, the mood in the Sichuan battalion was a single spark away from igniting. The court was about to transfer them again to garrison Longzhou as the frontline troops defending against Liu Chengzong — the Sichuan soldiers were nearly going mad. This Emperor truly had no intention of letting them live!

Then the news of Chongzhen releasing inner treasury funds reached the troops. The soldiers rose in uproar, and under the leadership of Wang Yuncheng, a Liaodong officer under his command, they went to Deng Qi demanding pay, resentful of his withholding of their silver.

In truth, by this point, for the Sichuan soldiers, silver or no silver no longer mattered. Gazing around them, in the murky future of the Great Ming, they saw no path to survival that the court had left for them.

But Deng Qi was not killed by Wang Yuncheng.

Wang Yuncheng wouldn't have dared to kill him either. He was of Liaodong origin and had only joined this unit when Deng Qi was garrisoned at Zunhua. Because he excelled at commanding cavalry, Deng Qi relied heavily on him — even if he killed Deng Qi, he would have no way to rally this predominantly Sichuan force.

Yet events defied all expectations. This commander who had been away from Sichuan for years, who had fought from Shanhai Pass to Sanguan, undefeated in hundreds of battles great and small, did not die on the battlefield in the end — he didn't even die at the hands of his own soldiers. Deng Qi ultimately met his end in the most ironic way: while fleeing the mutiny, he climbed a tower and scaled a wall, lost his footing, and fell to his death.

With the commanding general dead by accident and the ringleader being an officer of Liaodong origin, the entire Sichuan battalion was in ideological chaos, and quite a few men deserted.

The thirty-some Sichuan soldiers who fell into Liu Chengzong's hands were ones who had fled from Longzhou at that time.

Liu Chengzong looked at the letter, his fists clenched tight, his face showing a complex expression layered with multiple emotions.

First, he felt sorrow for the manner of Deng Qi's death. As one of the key opponents in this campaign, Liu Chengzong had done a great deal of preparation, so much so that although he had never met Deng Qi, he knew the man's life story with exceptional clarity — as if he truly knew him.

The end of life's journey is death, so death itself is not a sorrowful thing; what matters is what one did while alive.

On this point, Deng Qi had lived heroically. He joined the army in the first year of Tianqi, suppressed An Bangyan, marched to the king's aid at Xifengkou, fought Kong Youde at Shahe, and went to the Central Plains to suppress peasant armies — fourteen years of military life, fighting at a rate of one battle every half-month through hundreds of engagements, and he had lost only three times.

As of the eighth year of Chongzhen, he was a troubleshooter who had fought across the entire realm and could rank among the top.

Liu Chengzong felt it was a pity. Deng Qi was just one step away from becoming a first-rate famous general — truly just one step, and a very simple step at that: run over here and let Liu Shizi put an arrow in him.

That arrow, planted in his face, toppling from his horse in the formation and dying on the spot — then Deng Qi would have been a first-rate famous general that no future account of the late Ming could bypass.

Now that wouldn't do. He hadn't died heroically, and he'd probably be reduced to a nameless nobody on the level of some third-rate junior officer.

A man as ferocious as Li Rusong — on the twenty-fifth of the twelfth month, he led thirty-five thousand troops in a sworn oath to cross the Yalu River; by the seventh of the first month, he was at the walls of Pyongyang; at dawn on the eighth, he launched an assault on Pyongyang, defended by Konishi Yukinaga with twenty-four thousand men, breached the city by noon, and before midnight that very night, had driven Konishi Yukinaga out of Pyongyang, chased him across the Daedong River, and burned, cut down, or drowned over ten thousand of the enemy.

From storming the city to pursuit, the whole thing took less than eighteen hours.

At the Battle of Byeokjegwan, Zha Dashou's three thousand Liaodong cavalry, fighting in the open field and besieged by thirty-six thousand Japanese, held out from the twenty-fourth all the way to the twenty-fifth.

Yet for all his ferocity, after the Pyongyang campaign, it would hardly be an exaggeration to say his name shook all of East Asia — and people still referred to him as "Li Chengliang's son." Why? Precisely because he died too easily. Had he returned from Korea, reported on his mission, and immediately fallen ill and died, posterity would say he was the Wanli Emperor's limited-time divine general trial card, and his evaluation would jump two whole tiers.

Even Xiang Yu back in the day — if he had decided to cross the Wu River and drowned halfway across, then that godlike Hegemon-King of Western Chu would not exist in later ages, and even Liu Bang, who drove Xiang Yu to his death, would lose some of his luster.

Every step in life determines the future — what you do today decides what you have tomorrow, and what you do before death decides what you are after death.

Yet in Liu Shizi's heart, beyond the pity and regret over Deng Qi's accidental death, there was even more excitement.

The battle hadn't even started, and already a Regional Commander had fallen to his death — this was terribly inauspicious for the Ming army. More crucially, Deng Qi's death had opened a gap in the Ming army's Liupan Mountains defense line.

Suppressing pity, delight, and excitement all at once while simultaneously staring at the sand table, searching for the enemy's weak point — that was the main reason for the complex expression on Liu Shizi's face.

He didn't linger on it too long, however. His mind quickly turned, and he ordered the Feathered Forest Cavalry to summon Ma Xiang, the reconnaissance cavalry commander of the central army, and commanded him to deploy all reconnaissance riders at full strength, devoting every effort to screening the three Ming garrison positions at Qinzhou, Longzhou, and Zhenyuan, cutting off their communications and movement.

Ma Xiang had joined the Marshal's headquarters during the Hehuang campaign as a surrendered Ningxia reconnaissance centurion, and ever since had served as Dai Daozi's deputy. After Dai Daozi went to the Tianshan Mountains, he succeeded him, leading Liu Chengzong's central army reconnaissance cavalry.

He and Dai Daozi, however, were two extremes.

Dai Daozi had not come from a reconnaissance background — he was an officer, and a minor leader among the Ningxia surrendered troops, so he had strong initiative. Doing reconnaissance work, he always wanted to go back to his old trade, using recon soldiers as line troops to fight it out with people, and he handled tasks outside his official duties with ease too.

Ma Xiang was different — he came from the Night-Not-Returning scouts. After He Huchen's defeat at Yellow Dragon Mountain, he had been tasked with forming the reconnaissance troops. During the great He-Huang campaign, he surrendered to Liu Chengzong and had worked diligently ever since, doing nothing but scout cavalry work. This mission carried great significance, so Lion Liu admonished him: "Your objectives on this journey are two. First, confirm that Deng Qi is indeed dead. Second, keep eyes on those three encampments — see who moves."

The three encampments Liu Chengzong referred to were Tang Jiuzhou's force stationed at Huating, Deng Qi's force at Longzhou, and Zuo Liangyu's force at Qinzhou.

"Grand Commander, your humble subordinate has one matter he does not understand."

Ma Xiang had originally cupped his fists to accept the order and was about to withdraw to assemble his men and set out for the front. After hearing Liu Chengzong's instructions, he thought it over and could not grasp the reasoning, so he voiced his question: "Even if Deng Qi is dead, will these three encampments definitely move?"

"Correct. If these three encampments do not move, then the so-called death of Deng Qi is certainly false news. Conversely, if Deng Qi is dead, someone among these three encampments will definitely move." Liu Chengzong spoke with absolute conviction. "I want to see — between Tang Jiuzhou and Zuo Liangyu, who can absorb this Sichuan troops encampment!"

The latter part of the mission, tracking the movements of the three encampments, was very simple for Ma Xiang. But confirming the news of Deng Qi's death was considerably harder for the reconnaissance soldiers.

"What if the court promotes his deputy general to lead the troops, and they remain garrisoned at Longzhou?"

Liu Chengzong waved his hand dismissively. That problem did not exist. He said, "Deng Qi is dead, and if he truly died by falling, then this encampment is finished."

To say Deng Qi died by falling was, in truth, to say he was hounded to death — hounded to death by the soldiers under his own command. For the court, this encampment could no longer be allowed to exist.

Because no matter what Deng Qi's final cause of death actually was, as long as it was not illness or old age, in the court's eyes there would be only one cause of death: embezzlement and corruption, lax discipline, and mistreatment of his soldiers.

The court would compensate the Sichuan troops, then hand this unit over to someone else, diluting the clannish influence of the Sichuan soldiers.

If they promoted Deng Qi's deputy general to continue leading the troops, the prestige he gained from demanding backpay for the soldiers would mean that once he took command, he would discover that Deng Qi's true cause of death was an unsolvable problem. As long as the Sichuan troops were still alive and able to fight, any successor would end up walking Deng Qi's same path. By then, this encampment would no longer belong to the court.

Of course, there was another possibility — if the successor was rather 'capable,' performing a white crane spreading its wings between suppressing roving bandits and becoming roving bandits themselves, skillfully balancing the line between plundering and causing chaos versus solving the court's practical problems, then this army might possibly be preserved. But that would not be the kind of army the court wanted either.

Therefore, the court would definitely reassign this encampment to another Regional Commander. Although this was merely a stopgap measure of mutual checks and balances, it was at least better than letting Wang Yuncheng — the man who had hounded Deng Qi to death — take command.

And the reason Liu Chengzong had Ma Xiang keep his eyes on Tang Jiuzhou and Zuo Liangyu, and no one else, was because they had coordinated with Deng Qi the longest and most seamlessly, and thus had the potential to absorb the Sichuan troops.

Very soon, the brigade commanders and assistant regional commanders from the various divisions of the Marshal's Army received word and all hurried to the field headquarters. For a moment, Zhang Tianlin and the others, upon hearing that Deng Qi was dead, all felt as if they were dreaming.

Here they were still racking their brains searching for an opening to strike, and the government troops had already created the opening for them!

Soon the forward reconnaissance cavalry verified the truth of the news. The Sichuan troops stationed in the direction of Longzhou had already struck camp in complete disarray and were moving via Baoji to converge on Qinzhou... but they failed to converge. Midway, they ran straight into Ma Xiang's reconnaissance cavalry. With the battlefield shrouded and visibility obscured, they mistakenly believed the main force of the Marshal's Army had already reached Qinzhou, and so they retreated back along their original route to Baoji County.

This news was tantamount to confirming that Deng Qi was already dead.

"Swiftly relay to the entire army: strike camp."

Liu Chengzong received the news Ma Xiang had sent back during the war council. He immediately slammed his palm onto the table, startling the assembled officers into sitting bolt upright, only to see him rise and declare: "We march on Baoji. If Zuo Liangyu moves to relieve Baoji, we strike Qinzhou; if Zuo Liangyu squats motionless in Qinzhou, we head for Longzhou — the moment they tear open a gap, we slip into Guanzhong to have some fun!"