Chapter 585: Five Days

By the time Liu Chengzong reached the siege lines outside Qianzhou, it was already dusk on the second day of the fifth month.

The central army and the three main battalions were encamped ten li south of the city; the three minor battalions from Gansu were deployed east of the city; the Mongol brigade was deployed on the outer perimeter; and closest to the walls on the south side was the main assault force, the Lintao Brigade — forty thousand troops had Qianzhou surrounded so tightly not a drop of water could leak through.

Yet Qianzhou still had not fallen.

On the contrary, Shi Xiang's Lintao Brigade had left over two hundred corpses behind in two days of fierce attacks without even touching the foot of the city wall.

In the central army encampment, Shi Xiang, bringing Yang Guodong with him, knelt in obeisance outside the command tent and explained to Liu Chengzong: "Commander, outside the southern gate, the west side was originally the flower market and the east side the pleasure quarters — both were areas of dense civilian housing. But just before the battle began, Duan Fuxing carried out a scorched-earth policy and had them all demolished into rubble."

"The bricks, stone, and timber were all hauled inside the city. Outside the walls are two deep moats. Along four hundred paces of wall they've placed thirty-two divine muskets and cannons, including two newly cast red-barbarian cannon. Our troops' assault musketry was ineffective. Yesterday, every time we pushed forward we were pinned down by their defensive musketry two li out and could not advance an inch."

Having spoken, Shi Xiang begged for punishment: "I ask the Commander to impose due penalty."

This was Yang Guodong's first time meeting Liu Chengzong. Hearing Shi Xiang finish, he too hastily clasped his fists, bowed his head, and begged for punishment.

Liu Chengzong neither approved nor disapproved; he merely studied the city defense map that Shi Xiang had submitted, drawn by the army's artist from an earthen hill overlooking the city.

Only after a long while did he shift his attention to the two men and speak, his tone betraying neither pleasure nor anger, asking: "Since their defensive musketry is stronger than our assault musketry, do you have a solution?"

It was rather laughable, really — it had been seven years since Liu Chengzong raised his army, and in those seven years, rampaging across Longyou and sweeping through Yongliang, this city of Qianzhou was the first time he had ever seen a fully prepared defensive fortification.

The strategies for defending a city never stray far from the fundamentals, but at the very least, this city had undergone repairs just two years prior. Morale, troops, muskets and cannon, ammunition, provisions, equipment — it had everything.

As for those two newly cast red-barbarian cannon, there was no need to speculate — they were most likely cast by a scholar or a Westerner who had converted to the Western Faith. There were quite a few Westerners in Guanzhong; on Lion Liu's march from Baoji toward Qianzhou alone, several had already died.

Lion Liu had originally intended to keep one or two missionaries by his side. Although he knew the missionaries harbored ulterior motives, they genuinely knew a great deal, and he could spare that extra bowl of rice. Keeping them around as a resource was no bad thing.

But alas, never mind the missionaries — even the scholars who had converted to the Western Faith met certain death when they encountered his army.

Because the scholars in Guanzhong who had converted to the Western Faith and learned some genuine skills were, almost without exception, members of the gentry with a certain social standing and wealth, and with an interest in military affairs and technology. This group overlapped almost perfectly with the local Ming militia leaders who had risen in arms to attack the Marshal's headquarters.

Not every landlord militia leader who rose in arms had converted to the Western Faith, but those who had converted to the Western Faith invariably rose in arms.

One might call it putting learning into practice.

In Baoji, something rather interesting had even happened.

There was a missionary there who was reported by the common people to Luo Rucai, citing the Great Ming Code, on the charge of practicing sorcery and heresy.

The Great Ming Code contains explicit provisions for the crime of sorcery and heresy:

"All shaman-masters who falsely summon evil spirits, write talismans, conjure spell-water, practice spirit-writing, invoke sages, style themselves Duangong, Taibao, or Shipo, or falsely claim affiliation with Maitreya Buddha, the White Lotus Society, the Mingzun Sect, the Baiyun Sect, and all such assemblies of heterodox and subversive arts — or who conceal images, burn incense to gather crowds, assemble by night and disperse by dawn, feign the performance of good deeds, or incite and delude the people..."

"The ringleaders shall be punished by strangulation; the followers shall each receive one hundred strokes of the heavy bamboo and be banished three thousand li."

This missionary who was reported had, the previous year, used the locust plague as a pretext to go among the fields and villages to terrorize the common folk, telling them it was the Lord of Heaven's punishment. He told the people whose grain had been devoured that if they only converted to his sect, the Lord of Heaven would bestow blessings and dispel the calamity. He incited the people to join his faith, sprinkling spell-water, making them kneel and chant scriptures, until the locusts flew away.

This year, the locusts came again. The people demanded an explanation from him, and he said it was because the people had forgotten his teachings and their hearts were insincere, incurring the Lord of Heaven's punishment, and so the locust plague had returned.

Most absurdly, he even put on airs. The people who had already converted begged him to go perform his rites again, but he refused, forcing them to plead and drag things out for two days. Only when the locust swarms began to diminish and the people agreed to build a church did he go back and sprinkle his spell-water again, then usurped Heaven's achievement, crediting the extermination of the locusts to his Lord of Heaven.

Without a second word, Luo Rucai dispatched troops to arrest the man and delivered him directly to the yamen of Li Jiayan, Prefect of Fengxiang, along with a message: find a charge and kill this man.

Li Jiayan, newly surrendered to the Marshal's headquarters, dared not offend Luo Rucai in the slightest and could only report the matter in full detail to Liu Chengzong, who was on the march.

Lion Liu took one look and was amused. He knew exactly why Luo Rucai wanted the man dead.

Baoji and Dasan Pass were Luo Rucai's designated area of responsibility.

At present, Ningxia border troops were indeed filtering southward in successive waves, but Li Zicheng's four Chuang Army battalions and Zhang Yichuan's five Henan battalions could still hold them north of the Wei River. Therefore, before Ming forces entered Guanzhong, the primary mission of Wang Wenxiu's three Regional Commanders in Fengxiang Prefecture was to exterminate local militias, requisition provisions, consolidate villages and household registers, mobilize the populace, and exterminate locusts.

The eggs laid underground during last year's locust plague had already overwintered and were now emerging from the earth in vast swaths to ravage the crops. However, Guanzhong's dense population and the relatively thorough extermination efforts of the previous year meant the pressure was lighter. From what Liu Chengzong observed on the march, he had basically encountered no sky-darkening locust swarms.

The greater difficulty lay in the areas where the Ningxia Ming army was currently active.

Even so, large locust swarms were still frequently sweeping across various parts of Fengxiang Prefecture. Thus, Luo Rucai, Yang Chengzu, and Li Wanqing were under immense pressure. On one hand, they had to guard against landlord militias, dispatching troops to exterminate them the moment word arrived. After exterminating them, they still had to muster the common people in their designated areas to exterminate the locusts.

They were utterly exhausted.

After Luo Rucai had swept clean the militias operating in his area of responsibility, he led soldiers and civilians, bone-tired, in exterminating locusts across the entire jurisdiction of Baoji every single day.

The earth had to be turned over and trampled repeatedly under the hooves of mules, horses, cattle, and sheep. The locusts that flew out had to be burned with fire and buried with earth. Swarms flying in from outside had to be driven off with great nets. Eggs in every nook and cranny had to be doused with chemical solutions. Only thus had they managed to kill off the vast majority of the locusts in the vicinity.

To anyone else, this missionary's deception was merely usurping Heaven's achievement. To Luo Rucai, it was a very real theft of his own toil and merit!

How could Luo Rucai not be furious? He was hardly some pious devotee. Before joining camps with Liu Chengzong, even in Yan'an Prefecture, which teemed with ruthless men, he had been a bandit chieftain of considerable rank, and his efficiency at breaching earthen forts and slaughtering wealthy households was a race against time itself.

It was only later, after suffering a catastrophic defeat at the hands of government troops and nearly being killed by Ai Mu, that, faced with the threat of utter annihilation, he joined camps with Liu Chengzong, submitted to military law, and embarked on the path of regularization into a proper army.

But military law, after all, is not magic. It could not possibly make a slaughter-hardened man like Luo Rucai instantly achieve Buddhahood; at most, it could place a set of shackles upon him.

Had Luo Rucai felt he could take it upon himself to kill the man, he would have done the deed personally.

Because by now, none of the commanders in the Marshal's headquarters had any goodwill toward these so-called Western Scholars. These people were helping local militias and Ming garrison forces cast guns and forge cannon.

The reason Luo Rucai did not take matters into his own hands was entirely because of one problem with the commoners' report: they had cited the Great Ming Code.

When the Marshal's headquarters first arrived in Qinghai, they had implemented the Great Ming Code for a period, but now they used the Grand Marshal's Code. And in the Grand Marshal's Code... the crime of sorcery and heresy had been explicitly deleted.

It was not that Luo Rucai had memorized the Grand Marshal's Code by heart, but rather that back when Liu Chengzong wanted to delete the sorcery and heresy statute, he had specifically convened all the commanders to discuss the matter.

Our Marshal's headquarters has a severe shortage of decent folk!

Whether commoners or soldiers, believing in Maitreya Buddha, spreading White Lotus teachings, setting up a mandala to perform rites, burning incense as if it were a meal, drinking spell-water as a beverage — these bizarre behaviors, even if not standard practice, were hardly anything to bat an eye at.

If the sorcery and heresy statute were brought down, every last man in Wang Ziyong's Three Tribulations Battalion would have to be beheaded, and it would also eliminate half the senior officers of the Western Barbarian and Mongol brigades. The armies of both brigades could be dispatched wholesale to the Tianshan Garrison — a perfect sentence of three-thousand-li banishment, with not a single unjust case among them.

Liu Chengzu might well emerge as the biggest winner.

Lion Liu had no choice either. Keeping that statute would undermine the credibility of the entire Grand Marshal's Code; deleting it merely meant having to worry about those sectarian societies among the populace.

In any case, he was not afraid of popular sectarian societies.

Lion Liu had risen up in rebellion. Scholars turned to banditry, refugees turned militarized, roving bandits turned northern-barbarian-like, gentry turned entrenched bandits, government troops turned roving bandits — he even had someone like Wang Ziyong, who straddled the Three Teachings and moved between the underworld and the establishment. What kind of monstrous freaks and evil spirits had he not seen?

What were mere popular sectarian societies compared to that?

To him, popular sectarian societies were merely a very low-level form of organization. The underlying logic was easy to dismantle. His Marshal's headquarters was a society of the entire populace. As long as the common people had food to eat, their defense against feudal sectarian societies was invincible.

If the people under his rule could not find food... if they couldn't even eat, why worry about sectarian societies? The top priority would be finding food. If they could eat, Liu Chengzong would even be willing, as a reluctant compromise, to personally assume the role of sect leader.

By reporting this matter to Fengxiang Prefecture, Luo Rucai had played a little sly trick — neither violating military law nor needing to shoulder any responsibility.

And Liu Chengzong did not resent such petty cleverness.

In fact, he was quite certain that Li Jiayan knew this missionary to some degree. After all, Li Jiayan had previously been the Magistrate of Baoji. During last autumn's locust plague, there was no way a magistrate could have been completely unaware of a character pulling miracle stunts in his jurisdiction.

That was precisely why he had reported the matter to Liu Chengzong; otherwise, he would surely have killed the missionary directly in Fengxiang Prefecture.

Liu Chengzong hadn't even wanted to bother with this matter.

But since Li Jiayan had surrendered only recently, and this was the first question he had asked, Liu Chengzong wrote a reply on horseback and had someone deliver it to Li Jiayan, telling him to ask the missionary two questions.

First, could he cast cannons.

If not, then according to the Great Ming Code's crime of sorcery and witchcraft, he would be executed by strangulation.

The second question was whether he was willing to be conscripted into the Marshal's headquarters army to cast cannons.

If willing, he would be conscripted into Wang Wenxiu's army as a cannon caster, placed under strict guard by military artisans.

If unwilling, then according to the Grand Marshal's Code's crime of producing heretical books and heresies, he would be sentenced to beheading.

As for other matters of right, wrong, and reasoning, Liu Chengzong felt that people whose fundamental worldview was too divergent weren't worth communicating much with — just like how he only discussed methods of rebellion with Wang Ziyong and never talked about anything else.

A man of the material world and a god of the superstitious world are like a chicken talking to a duck in speech, and like playing the lute to a cow in action — investing time and energy into such a matter is a waste of life.

With a great battle looming, compared to a siege that could cost hundreds or even thousands of lives at Qianzhou City, the life of a single missionary was a trivial matter, no bigger than a sesame seed or a mung bean.

However, in the great camp outside the city, neither Shi Xiang nor Yang Guodong grasped the intent behind Liu Chengzong's questions.

Liu the Lion's question was: since defending guns were stronger than assaulting guns, what methods did they have? But Shi Xiang answered, "I request that the Grand Marshal lend us thirty central-army battle guns to suppress the cannons on the city walls. The officers and men of my Lintao Brigade will fight with desperate valor and seize the city!"

Liu Chengzong glanced outside the tent with some disappointment, then turned back and said, "What I'm asking is, if I hadn't led the army here, what could your eight thousand troops do against this city?"

Shi Xiang and Yang Guodong looked at each other. Neither of them had siege experience, and this wasn't really their fault — after all, since the Zhu Yuanzhang era, over more than two hundred years, the Ming army had fought sieges only a handful of times.

And among those few cases, instances where the defenders' artillery was stronger than the besieging army's were even rarer.

Normally, it was the Ming army's artillery that was stronger, achieving total suppression on the battlefield — for example, during the Wanli era's Korean campaign, at the Battle of Pyongyang against the Japanese, they surrounded the city on the sixth day, attacked on the eighth, and took Pyongyang that very day, with Konishi Yukinaga's force losing eleven thousand three hundred men in a single day.

In siege warfare these days, when one side had cannons and the other didn't, the exchange ratio was simply staggering. Even Hong Taiji of the Later Jin, leading the Eight Banners against a well-defended city, could only repeat the process of burning corpses and retreating in Liaodong.

And as of five years ago, the Later Jin Eight Banners themselves had been the most siege-experienced force across the Two Capitals and Thirteen Provinces over the past two centuries.

Yang Guodong had wanted to show off in front of the Grand Marshal, racking his brains to recount every siege method he had heard of or learned in the past, but Shi Xiang stopped him.

Shi Xiang, coming from a hereditary military officer background, knew far more about sieges than veterans like Yang Guodong. If he were allowed to speak, he could talk from day until night, but he felt he must not.

As the saying goes, know yourself and know your enemy. Shi Xiang believed his own knowledge of siege warfare was no greater than that of other commanders, while Liu Chengzong before him was the preeminent siege commander of the era — in the entire Northwest, no mighty pass or strong city had ever stood before him.

At this moment, anything Shi Xiang said about siege warfare would be like showing off one's axe skills before the master carpenter.

So Shi Xiang lowered his head and clasped his fists with seamless ease, his tone utterly sincere: "Please forgive this humble officer's dullness. I beseech the Grand Marshal to impart to me the methods of siege warfare!"

How to put it — Liu the Lion felt this Shi Xiang was very much like a large-scale, enhanced version of Ren Quan'er.

Before Liu Chengzong could speak, Zhang Xianzhong, standing to the side, could no longer contain himself. He lifted his official robes and knelt, saying, "Why use an ox-cleaver to kill a chicken? The dog-official inside the city dared to kill our Marshal's headquarters envoy. Since Brigade Commander Shi's siege experience is still shallow, why not let our Ministry of Rites seek justice in this matter!"

In Liu Chengzong's view, Zhang Xianzhong's expression was simply reaffirming his earlier judgment: Brigade Commander Shi had no real ability.

But however unpleasant Zhang Xianzhong's words might be, it was also a fact that before surrendering to the Marshal's headquarters, he had been the commander who had breached the most cities in the Northwest.

In the matter of sieges, the commanders of the Western Brigade indeed had more experience than the Marshal's headquarters' own direct-line commanders.

"If I were to assign Minister Zhang to besiege this city, what would you need? How long until it falls?"

"In reply to the Grand Marshal, I need nothing else — just two thousand-man battalions from the Mongol Brigade and these six thousand men of the Lintao Brigade will suffice." As he spoke, Zhang Xianzhong raised a hand and spread his five fingers. "Five days. I will assuredly take this city for the Marshal!"