Chapter 622: The Patterns of Plague

The seventeen thousand-strong Later Jin army that had crossed the Yellow River staged a grand, four-day battue hunt in the northern Ordos, with banners flying and drums beating.

They swept up virtually every game animal they could catch, reaping a bountiful harvest.

In truth, this was Dorgon venting his fury; his sense of defeat burned intensely inside him.

For one, he dared not plunge into the Mu Us Desert to strike at Yulin Garrison — the desert held too many variables, and if enemies closed in from front and rear, he had no confidence in handling both Yang Qi and the Yulin Garrison Ming troops at once.

For another, with Yang Qi refusing to leave the city, Dorgon also lacked the confidence to storm Guihua City, which had ample defenders, without heavy cannon and siege equipment.

Guihua City was not hard to take — it had already been breached three or five times — but it had never had a defending commander who knew how to hold a city; invariably, the Mongol army would march out for field battle, lose, and the city would fall right after.

But Yang Qi clearly would not fight that way.

Third, Dorgon truly had no time to waste in a stalemate with Yang Qi here; before the Liao River froze over, this army absolutely had to return to Shenyang.

But when all was said and done, the most crucial factor was this: the hares and pheasants of the Ordos had given Dorgon a way out.

Only with a way out did he have the leeway to consider whether his plan was too reckless.

Without this way out, even if Dorgon were a thousand times unwilling in his heart, regardless of whether he faced the Southern Mongol armies or Yulin Garrison, and no matter how he would later have to fight his way out of Yulin Garrison under the risk of being cut off by Yang Qi, he would have had no choice but to steel himself and keep pursuing.

Otherwise, whether the Eight Banners troops, the banner slaves, or the vassal Mongol armies... none of them wished to starve to death. At worst, they would simply scatter and flee toward Ningxia, Southern Mongolia, and other places to beg for food — and if things went badly, they might even do him in first.

Not to mention that the army still contained some fellows whose brains were not entirely clear.

Yes, we're talking about you, Hooge, with your retinue of guards wearing that wokou-style armor!

On this campaign, Dorgon had truly discovered that this fellow Hooge had something wrong with his head.

Faced with the risk of running out of provisions, men like Gürüsibü, Sahaliyan, and Badari offered the conservative suggestion of temporarily withdrawing and raiding Xuan-Da instead — after all, they had already entered Xuan-Da the year before, so they now knew both the terrain and the people there.

Loot one wave and return to Shenyang — that wouldn't count as coming back empty-handed.

The more radical ones merely proposed that if Guihua City was too tough to crack, they should launch a surprise attack on Ningxia and open up a new front.

In short, everyone was very anxious. Only Hooge, uniquely odd in his thinking, was not the least bit worried. He even told his subordinates: if the great army runs out of food and cannot return, don't any of you go running off on your own — stick with me, I have a way to get you provisions, and might even secure a place to rest and recuperate through the winter.

When his subordinates asked him what method he had, he refused to say.

Dorgon thought this kid seemed like an idiot.

Who couldn't guess that lousy method of his? It was nothing more than leading that handful of men from the Bordered Yellow Banner under his command on a westward stroll to beg some food from Old Master Liu.

Of course, Dorgon did not doubt that Hooge could pull this off — he definitely could.

If Liu Chengzong had a son who brought a thousand-odd men to Hong Taiji to scrounge a meal, Hong Taiji would be overjoyed and would entertain them with fine food and drink.

The question was, was this a plan any normal person's brain could come up with?

Wasn't that just walking into a trap, damn it!

But Hooge saw absolutely nothing wrong with thinking this way. Although Dorgon was his uncle, this uncle was a sickly weakling.

Like many Jin nobles, he looked down on Dorgon.

Of course, there was also a tiny psychological reason: the name Hooge meant "little earlobe."

The Jurchen Jushen were no less superstitious than the Han; the size of one's earlobes was directly linked to one's fortune. Hooge figured, you all keep saying my small earlobes mean I have no luck, but my sickly little uncle, who's been ill since childhood, is the truly luckless one.

So, having followed Dorgon on this campaign, Hooge was full of grievances from the start, constantly muttering morale-sapping nonsense like "We'll soon run out of food and starve," or "How come the Chahar Tatars got so formidable after joining the Marshal's Office?"

His thinking at this moment was: rampaging straight ahead was your order, Dorgon. Now that we can pursue into the desert, you won't pursue. If this leads to a food shortage and Father Khan lays blame, all the problems are on you, old uncle.

I only need to preserve the men and horses of my Bordered Yellow Banner.

So it was hardly surprising that he came up with the idea of going to scrounge food and drink off Liu Chengzong's old man after a defeat.

But regardless, now that they had this batch of game, Dorgon could at least continue to control this army and lead it home — at worst, he could just carve his own Imperial Seal on the road.

As for what went on in that silly boy's head, let him do whatever the hell he wanted.

What Dorgon did not know, however, was that on the other side of the Yellow River, atop the Ula Mountains, Yang Qi had watched the Later Jin army's battue hunt and breathed a sigh of relief as if he had just survived a calamity. He dusted off his backside and returned to Guihua City to prepare his defenses.

The Grand Commandant Yang of Southern Mongolia was not nearly as cocksure as his letters suggested; in truth, he was so panicked his calf muscles were cramping.

He was absolutely terrified that Dorgon would muster all his strength and chase southward.

Because he knew this region well.

If Dorgon's troops really entered the Mu Us Desert, navigating by the sun, it was a matter of four or five days, with no risk of running out of water — it would not be as terrifying as it looked.

They all knew their own situations best. Although Yang Qi had issued his orders, his Southern Mongol Command was not a monolithic entity; whether the Mongol troops would obey his command, driving their livestock and breaching the border walls into Ming territory... he truly could not be sure.

Moreover, if men like Erinchen really did throw their livestock and people to Yulin Garrison, Yang Qi had no confidence he could get them back or seize them back.

If Dorgon truly plunged southward, the orders had already been given, and to a certain extent, things would definitely proceed that way — but that was not Yang Qi's original intent.

He was simply bluffing Dorgon.

Best if you don't pursue; if you really do, then we'll hurt each other — if I lose out, don't expect to profit either.

Conversely, as long as Dorgon did not plunge into the Mu Us Desert, he could do whatever he pleased — a battue hunt was fine, charging at Ningxia Garrison was no big deal, and even if he came to besiege Guihua City and gave Yang Qi a sound thrashing...

For Yang Qi... that would be just splendid too!

Whether the Later Jin army lived or died, whether they could seize livestock and people, whether they returned to Shenyang laden with spoils — he did not care in the slightest.

Yang Qi cared only about the livestock and people his Southern Mongol Command had seized from the Kharchin tribe.

Because these things were the foundation of his next plan: the Southern Mongol Command was going to build a string of earthen-walled cannon forts along the Lang Mountains, the Yin Mountains, the Daqing Mountains, and even from Jining to beyond Zhangjiakou.

The locations and the system had already been planned out; they only awaited the Later Jin army's withdrawal to begin implementation.

With these in place, should the Later Jin army ever try to reach into Southern Mongolia again, their advance would at least not be so effortless.

But that was all for later. In reality, Dorgon's battue hunt on the spot posed an even greater danger to Yang Qi, who was currently in Guihua City.

After all, putting himself in the other's shoes, if he were facing such a situation, he would certainly be unwilling to have launched a grand campaign and return with nothing to show for it.

It was just that Yang Qi's preparations were not in Guihua City; instead, he had once again begun casting his spells at Yang Sichang, the Supreme Commander of Xuan-Da and Shanxi.

During the days Dorgon conducted his battue hunt, the dispatch riders between Guihua City and the Shanxi border practically formed a continuous line, knocking at the passes day and night without pause.

Yang Sichang was currently at Datong.

When Dorgon led his troops westward via Jining, the Ming court was naturally on high alert and strict defense. Emperor Chongzhen, drawing on the experience of the previous year's invasion, had also spent a fortune to assemble an army specifically for dealing with the Jurchen, and now they were somewhat eager for a fight.

Meanwhile, Yang Sichang's main task in Shanxi over these months was inspecting the state of border defenses.

How to put it… as far as border garrison troops go, they were barely passable.

The defensive pressure on Shanxi's border wall was never that great to begin with. In the Ming dynasty, the Shanxi border wall was divided into two sections. The section east of Ningwu Pass and Yangfang was called the Slow Border, because it was shielded by the Datong and Xuanfu garrisons beyond it.

The other section, west of Ningwu Pass, ran along the line of Old Camp, Shuiquan, Pianguan, Hequ, and Baode, bordering the Hetao. It was called the Urgent Border.

By regulation, regardless of whether it was slow or urgent, there was one beacon tower every five li, each manned by five beacon-soldier households. Every household had five or six mu of land, built a hut nearby to call home, tilled and harvested there, born there, raised there, buried there. All beacon tower procedures were compiled into songs and mnemonics, taught to the young beacon soldiers from childhood, so that when trouble came they could relay the alarm by rote.

This system was handed down by Qi Jiguang in Ji Garrison.

But regulations are one thing; reality is another.

The only place that still preserves this system intact today is Shanhai Pass.

In the past, both Gansu and Ji Garrison preserved it fairly well, but both had historical reasons for that — it didn't have much to do with the people.

Gansu preserved it well because, like Liaodong, it remained the purest kind of military garrison. The military household system there hadn't decayed much, right up until Liu Chengzong entered Gansu.

The entire garrison had no one but border troops and banner troops; the common folk were all military dependents or supernumeraries — hardly any ordinary civilians. Even if it decayed, generation after generation had done this same work, so the decay could only go in the direction of poverty. The military system itself was very hard to ruin.

But Gansu's military structure — commander-in-chief, vice commander, regional commander, mobile corps commander, garrison posts, guards, and battalions — was abolished by Liu Chengzong.

He had no time to maintain beacon troops. Defend against whom?

All the camp soldiers, banner troops, and beacon troops who could be reorganized were folded into the combat army by Cao Yao. Those who stayed in Gansu have already had their guards converted into counties — where would any beacon troops still be?

As for Ji Garrison, its beacon tower tradition decayed because the beacon troops Qi Jiguang had used were relocated Yiwu soldiers and southern troops. Recruiting replacements for the southern troops was fairly expensive. Later, when the Ming court's finances deteriorated, they recruited border folk or used convicts pressed into military service to fill the beacon troop ranks.

This meant the new beacon troops would not, like the relocated southern troops, station themselves on the beacon towers generation after generation.

The Wanli Emperor neglected governance — he didn't even fill vacant official posts, so who was going to fill beacon troop vacancies?

Shanhai Pass, on the other hand, had always been given great importance, so its beacon troops remained descendants of the relocated southern troops. The system was preserved extremely well — you could call it a legacy left behind by Qi Jiguang.

The situation here in Shanxi was rather unique. The system still existed, and most of the beacon troops were still there — all convicts pressed into service or border folk. The beacon fields belonging to the beacon troops varied in size, but by and large they still had them.

What was a bit awkward, though, was what Yang Sichang discovered… the beacon towers were gone.

From Shuiquan Camp Fort on the Urgent Border south all the way to the provincial capital Taiyuan, there was supposed to be a beacon tower every five li along the road. Some had collapsed, some were abandoned, and some had been torn down during the peasant army wars. In short, the beacon fires from the border passes could only relay toward Beijing — the Shanxi provincial capital could no longer receive them.

The beacon troops, however, were all still there, near the abandoned beacon towers, farming only the official beacon land and doing none of the beacon troop work for the authorities.

Yang Sichang had originally thought the matter of rebuilding the beacon towers could be put off for a while.

After all, the beacon towers all lay along the official road, and the plague still raging across Shanxi made him afraid to recruit civilian laborers on a large scale.

As long as he didn't recruit civilian laborers on a large scale, the plague, fierce as its momentum was, still hadn't become a prairie fire.

This lump plague was simply too vicious, and people's normal range of movement was very limited. Places untouched by it generally stayed untouched; places hit by it were usually emptied of people very quickly.

But the Later Jin army's advance toward the Hetao had Yang Sichang worried again. Without beacon towers, whether it was the Later Jin army or Yang Qi's gang of fake Tatars in the Hetao, if they broke through the border wall, he, Governor-General Yang, was a dead man.

Without beacon tower fires, you wouldn't even know the enemy was invading. If they charged to the walls of Taiyuan and the government troops resisted in haste, they would most likely be routed. If the city fell, Governor-General Yang wouldn't live.

If the city didn't fall, and the Chongzhen Emperor held him accountable afterward, Governor-General Yang would still have trouble keeping his head.

So weighing the two evils, these demons and monsters outside the border were far more terrifying than the lump plague. He had no choice but to recruit civilian laborers and get the beacon towers repaired first.

Yang Sichang had already discovered two patterns.

First, whenever the plague broke out, rats would jump into the Yellow River in droves.

Second, whenever the plague broke out, Yang Qi would send someone to deliver him a letter.

Sure enough, no sooner had Yang Sichang recruited civilian laborers to repair the beacon towers than Yang Qi's fake Tatars came riding up on horseback with a letter.

Yang Sichang was rather stout to begin with, like a Maitreya Buddha in an official robe.

Now, seeing the letter stamped with the Angel's seal, his broad, plump cheeks twitched involuntarily, and the corners of his eyes were creased with worry.

He had figured it out — that dog Yang Qi had no good intentions. He wouldn't rest until the Plague Marshal had struck down a Ming governor-general in fury.

But when he unfolded the letter, there was actually something Yang Sichang wanted to see.

For instance, Yang Qi was asking for reinforcements, saying he might get killed by Dorgon.

As Yang Sichang read the letter, his plump cheeks quivered involuntarily — he was smiling quite happily.

Yang Sichang didn't dislike being fat. He was quite comfortable with his physique. Back when he was an instructor at Hangzhou Prefecture, he had already given himself the sobriquet "Fat Old Man."

Later, when he went to the Nanjing Imperial Academy as an erudite, he became enamored with vegetarianism and chanting Buddhist sutras, which distanced him a bit from the common crowd, so he changed his sobriquet from "Fat Old Man" to "Fat Layman."

Yang Qi and Dorgon — those two fighting it out beyond the passes was, to Yang Sichang, nothing but dogs biting dogs. Best if both died on the battlefield; that would be Heaven having eyes.

Yang Sichang couldn't even be bothered to reply. He treated it as a joke and thought no more of it. He never expected that after entering Datong City, before his chair had even warmed, another letter from Yang Qi arrived.

This time, not only was Yang Sichang thoroughly disgusted, but Ye Tinggui, the Grand Coordinator in Datong, was also frantic. Slapping the table, he said, "How did that mangy dog get hold of the Angel's seal? Fat Old Man, I say we tell the Emperor that from now on, the border passes should forbid this man's letters from entering!"

On the entire Shanxi–Xuan–Da defense line, the one who detested Yang Qi the most was this Ye Tinggui.

Ye Tinggui's loathing wasn't really directed at Yang Qi, but at Yang Qi's direct superior, Liu Chengzong.

Ye Tinggui was a man accomplished in both civil and military affairs. As early as the seventh year of Tianqi, he had served as Military Defense Circuit in Shanxi, fighting the first wave of peasant armies for three months, not retreating even when an arrow struck his chest.

Later in Shaanxi, he was Hong Chengchou's successor, serving as Supervising Secretary for Grain Transport in Shaanxi. He quickly caught the appreciation of Lian Guoshi, who recommended him to the roving censor Wu Sheng, sent by the Emperor for disaster relief. Later, when Wu Sheng took up the post of Grand Coordinator in Shanxi, he brought Ye Tinggui along as Surveillance Commissioner.

In two months, Ye Tinggui cleared over three hundred backlogged cases, earning him the nickname "Thunderbolt Hand" from Wu Sheng.

But he never forgot that he had become a high provincial official thanks to Lian Guoshi's recommendation. Now that word had reached Shanxi that Lian Guoshi had been paralyzed with rage by Liu Chengzong in Xi'an Prefecture, Ye Tinggui had been looking for a chance to avenge Lian Guoshi.

"That won't be necessary."

Outwardly, Yang Sichang was as disgusted as ever, but inside, his mind was clear as a mirror. Unfolding the letter, he said with a beaming smile, "Having Yang Qi beyond the passes is far more useful than our beacon troops."

As he spoke, his expression suddenly froze. The relaxed look slowly faded, and he read the letter with grave seriousness.

Ye Tinggui hurriedly asked, "Commander, what does the letter say?"

"It says Dorgon will certainly withdraw his troops within two months. Their morale is already spent. If Shanxi and Xuan–Da send troops now, they can annihilate him at Fengzhou Shallows!"