Chapter 634: White Impermanence

The Golden-Winged Great Peng swooped down in a glide, its golden radiance fading completely the moment it touched ground.

They hunched their shoulders, craned their necks, and poked their bald heads forward, scanning the walled pass with wary, vicious eyes as they slowly approached the heap of corpses outside the east gate.

Meanwhile, by the banks of the Wei River west of Tong Pass, columns of armored cavalry dismounted and formed ranks, shed their armor, and sturdy, barrel-chested men one after another climbed into bathing tubs, soaking themselves through and through with sulfur powder, each downing a bowl of sulfur liquor.

After that, they took their clothes and pulled them on — inner robes, thin trousers, cloth socks — all bound tight at the cuffs and trouser legs with thin cord; on their heads they wore plain hemp hoods with two small holes cut out for the eyes, on their hands five-fingered gloves, and on their feet cowhide army boots; once done, they threw plain hemp over-robes on top.

From head to toe, they were wrapped up more tightly than a funeral procession.

The messenger walked below the pass wall and happened upon a soldier from Wei Qian'er's camp who was digging his own grave outside the city.

The scene was uncanny: beside a wooden grave marker, a pit half a man's height had been dug, and sitting inside the pit was a red-eyed monster with a swollen face and thick neck, while beside the pit stood a humanoid shape entirely shrouded in white hemp cloth.

Four eyes met across the gap.

It was just like Liu Chengzong and Zhang Xianzhong staring at each other — both thought the other didn't look human.

The messenger was still a bit green; he'd steeled himself mentally, but there was still a small gap between that and truly facing death with equanimity. Seeing the wretched state of the camp soldier in the pit, he opened his mouth but simply couldn't figure out how to greet him.

It was the camp soldier sitting in the grave who took it more in stride. He lifted his head, glanced at the blazing sun high above, then looked at the white silhouette before him, scratched the swollen lymph nodes on his neck, and muttered to himself, "Well, I'll be damned — broad daylight and I've run into a ghost."

Then came three rapid-fire death-demanding questions: "You back for your first seventh-day return? Which squad were you in before you died? The Great Commander handing out gear down below too?"

The messenger caught on and quickly said, "What Great Commander down below — the Great Commander up above issued this. Living man, cavalry camp messenger. Hurry and tell General Wei, the Great Commander has sent us to reinforce Tong Pass."

The messenger spoke in a tone that was light and excited.

But the camp soldier sitting in the grave showed no great stir of emotion. He merely glanced back at Tong Pass and sighed. "You people... came too early."

Ever since Wei Qian'er collapsed from high fever, the main camp inside Tong Pass had entered a plague outbreak period. Men lost their fighting strength one after another, and in the blink of an eye the entire camp lost all organization and collapsed in on itself.

Plague, the enemy, military law, slaughter, death, officers — within a few short days, everything that could bind these desperate warriors together had vanished completely. Wei Qian'er's collapse was merely the last straw that crushed the soldiers' spirits.

Within two shichen of Wei Qian'er's collapse, quite a few soldiers moving freely inside the city met unnatural deaths.

Some lit fires to burn houses, and as they burned, they walked right into the flames themselves; others saw comrades burning with fever, delirious, groaning as they lay in their tents, and went over and strangled them with their own sashes.

Still others ate inside the city, gorging themselves wildly, and died right in the middle of eating.

So many died this way that no one had the leisure to tell whether they were so gravely ill that they succumbed during the meal, or whether they ate so much they literally stuffed themselves to death.

In any case, someone like this camp soldier, who dug his own grave and lay down in it to wait for death, already counted as a remarkably eco-friendly normal person.

They had long since gone mad.

Over a thousand men, including the Canjiang Wei Qian'er, would die within days until only one or two hundred remained, and the remaining thousand-odd soldiers who had yet to show symptoms would not escape the next wave of outbreak either.

No one would leave this city alive.

The messenger reported the situation before the closed gates back to the central army, and it left Zhang Tianlin, who had been fully prepared and at ease in camp, utterly dumbfounded.

To be honest, faced with a situation so utterly unheard-of, anyone who had not witnessed it with their own eyes — except for Liu Chengzong — would misjudge the circumstances.

Zhang Tianlin was no exception. Having received Liu Chengzong's warning, he had come with extreme caution and had prepared contingency plans on the road to provide support for Wei Qian'er's camp.

But only upon arriving here did he discover that the situation at Tong Pass was still so dire it exceeded his imagination.

The supreme commander Wei Qian'er was down sick, over half the mid-level officers had lost the ability to function, the rank-and-file soldiers had utterly no will to survive, and the entire camp had disintegrated — it existed in name only.

What this camp needed was not support. The damn chain of command was gone — support whom?

Zhang Tianlin drew a deep breath and looked at his deputy general Zhao Zhirui. "Back when you were a Canjiang, did you ever see anything like this?"

Zhao Zhirui shot Zhang Tianlin a glare on the spot, thinking to himself: Wasn't my old Suzhou Camp beaten into exactly this state by you, you whelp?

And you still have the nerve to ask me!

But experience was experience. Zhao Zhirui's eyes were full of regret as he nodded and said, "The men's hearts are beyond use — they've collapsed. General, proceed according to the protocols for rallying routed troops."

Zhang Tianlin shook his head pensively, but he adopted Zhao Zhirui's suggestion all the same. "Do as you say... an entire camp. Who would have thought!"

As a fellow Canjiang of the three camps, he felt a pang of sympathy for one of his own kind.

In truth, Zhang Tianlin had always thought very highly of himself, believing that their three great camps were just like the court's Three Great Camps.

In private, he and Wei Qian'er had even argued over who deserved the title of the Three Thousand Camp.

Gao Yingdeng wasn't even in the running, because both he and Wei Qian'er thought that that fellow, so adept with firearms and cannon, ought to be called the Divine Machine Camp.

Zhang Tianlin felt that he himself was the foremost cavalry commander under Liu Chengzong, and that the Three Thousand Camp was a title well-deserved, but Wei Qian'er stubbornly insisted that a fellow who pulled rockets out of his crotch the moment they met was of impure cavalry blood.

He had imagined one of the Three Great Camps being annihilated on the battlefield.

Though the possibility was vanishingly small, he had indeed imagined it — had even devised for himself an incomparably heroic annihilation scenario.

It would have to be a great battle worthy of the history books: facing encirclement, buying time for friendly forces, forced to launch a charge against an enemy ten times their number, and in the end, at the cost of the entire camp's destruction, inflicting massive casualties upon them.

But never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that here at Tong Pass, because of a bit of plague, a superbly equipped and rigorously trained camp would thus exist in name only.

Turning the staunchest warriors soft, their hearts devoid of the will to fight.

When Zhang Tianlin entered the city and saw Wei Qian'er, the latter was not yet dead — merely buried up to his waist in yellow earth.

Buried up to his waist in yellow earth, in the most literal sense.

Zhang Tianlin saw Wei Qian'er in the courtyard of the Tong Pass Guard headquarters. The courtyard had been bombed; it was a mess everywhere, the broken walls and rubble still scorched black.

Amid the wreckage, the Grand Camp Canjiang of the Marshal's Headquarters was like a sapling that had been planted — set neatly into the ground, with only his head exposed, being fed medicinal broth by his bodyguard.

The styling was quite distinctive.

The moment he saw that Wei Qian'er was still alive, still breathing, still able to drink broth, Zhang Tianlin immediately clapped his hands in delight, exclaiming from his mouth what a pity it was.

What a pity the Western Barbarian Brigade had not accompanied them on this campaign — otherwise Ah Wang, the mute of shaman origin, upon witnessing this scene, would surely have been astounded by the Han sorcerers' unique approach to ritual!

Wei Qian'er, in the middle of photosynthesizing, took one look at Zhang Tianlin emitting that bizarre, uncanny cackle and flew into a rage. "Drag him off and beat him! Where did this freak come from?"

"Who, who, who — Guo Tianxing, Zhang Tianlin! The Great Commander sent me to save you. I knew you had the lifespan of a turtle — you can't die!"

Zhang Tianlin, shrouded head to toe in hemp cloth, crouched down and poked Wei Qian'er's head with a hand clad in a deerskin five-fingered glove. "What are you up to here? What, being a Marshal's Headquarters Canjiang not good enough for you, getting ready to switch careers and become a tree immortal?"

Grinning happily, Zhang Tianlin rubbed sulfur powder between his gloves and said, "Once we break through the prefectural city, I'll clear out a Buddhist temple, rip the Buddha statue down, and move you over there, pot and all, to plant you in its place."

"From this day forward, when the common folk of Xi'an Prefecture pray to the gods for sons, they'll have to come find my good brother Tree Qian'er — no, Tree Immortal!"

Half-dead, Wei Qian'er rolled his eyes repeatedly. The plague hadn't done him in, but Zhang Tianlin's ribbing was about to anger him to death.

Just then, the camp's military physician Zhang Jingxiao stepped forward, saluted Zhang Tianlin, and said, "General Zhang, perhaps say a little less. General Wei has yet to recover from his grave illness — do not let him get agitated."

Zhang Tianlin looked up and saw it was Zhang Jingxiao.

This skilled physician from the Prince of Han's household, who had once taught at New City Academy, he did recognize.

Zhang Tianlin then put away his smile and asked with a stern face, "Physician Zhang, what sort of treatment is this — how did you end up planting him in the ground?"

Zhang Jingxiao shook his head as well and explained, "This was not my idea, but Kang Yaomin's. Ah, Kang Yaomin is the newly surrendered Commander of the Xi'an Left Guard. He said he himself survived this way."

"Isn't that utter nonsense!"

Zhang Tianlin had been joking with Wei Qian'er just moments ago and was in good spirits, but he had no kind face for others — especially when he heard this idea came from a surrendered general. He said angrily, "Even a healthy man buried in the dirt will rot, let alone one who's already sick."

Having said that, he looked at Zhang Jingxiao with undisguised displeasure. "He's been buried in the dirt — how come you're fine?"

Zhang Jingxiao could only smile bitterly to himself.

These damn soldier-types at the Marshal's headquarters — apart from Liu Chengzong, not a single one of them had a good temper.

What could Zhang Jingxiao say? He raised a hand and pulled aside his face cloth, revealing the lymph node lumps on his neck that had not yet subsided, and said, "General, I am also infected."

It was purely luck — he had fallen ill early, the infection was mild, and he had not been commanding troops while sick like Wei Qian'er, so recovery came easier.

Wei Qian'er, however, took the matter quite calmly and said, "Guotianxing, don't take your anger out on others. Commander Kang said this works, so I tried it. If it really works, it can save many brothers."

Although Wei Qian'er was a rough man, he held men of learning in the highest esteem — his rose-tinted glasses were exceptionally strong.

Because his own Grand Marshal was a certified scholar — that man knew everything under heaven and earth, within the six directions, omniscient and omnipotent.

Kang Yaomin, though a Commander, came from a scholarly noble clan that had produced two Ministers of State in a single generation, and he himself held the rank of certified scholar. So for Wei Qian'er, all the elements were complete, his goodwill maxed out, and he instantly felt they had met too late.

Just then, Kang Yaomin, stripped to the waist, came over.

When the Marshal's army entered the city, Kang Yaomin had surrendered very smoothly — for no other reason than that he was in the jail of the guard headquarters at the time.

Because his views differed from those of Zhang Eryou, Sheng Yida, and the others, and he had been spreading anti-war sentiment among the troops, Zhang Eryou in a fit of rage had thrown him into a cell to recuperate.

But it actually had nothing to do with ideology — it was really a matter of native place.

Kang Yaomin was a man of Wugong in Xi'an Prefecture. He had opposed Zhang Eryou's plan to send sick and wounded soldiers west to fight from the very start — such an action was, in his view, extremely dangerous.

The slightest misstep, and Xi'an Prefecture, with its population exceeding a million, would fall to the plague. What they were doing was an offense against Heaven's harmony.

The crux of the matter, in his eyes, was not that his own family was in Xi'an Prefecture, but that the families of Zhang Eryou and those others were not in Xi'an Prefecture.

They could, of course, speak of grand principles and necessary costs — Kang Yaomin could not accept it.

He felt that since the Marshal's army had dared to attack, life or death no longer mattered; this army was already finished, and they, the defenders of Tong Pass, had already fulfilled their duty to the utmost.

Because on the larger strategic scale, the wildly ambitious Liu Chengzong would ultimately be stopped by the plague west of the Yellow River–Tong Pass line, and the Great Ming could never retake Shaanxi anyway.

For a bunch of dying men like them to fight to a conclusion here would contribute nothing to the overall situation.

Better for each man to think about his own affairs and figure out how to cure the disease on his body.

But unfortunately, this kind of thinking had no market at Tong Pass.

Whether Ming troops or Marshal's troops, everyone was in a desperate, run-wild-then-die frame of mind — no one listened to him at all.

It was only because by the time the Marshal's army broke open the jail and released him, Wei Qian'er had already collapsed with illness, the soldiers had lost all organization, and no one could be bothered with him.

Otherwise, they would have locked him right back up.

Kang Yaomin walked out, trembling and unsteady, and cupped his hands in salute — giving Zhang Tianlin a real fright.

The man was stripped to the waist, his entire upper body without a patch of good skin. From his waist to his face, everywhere was red swelling, running pus, blood scabs, and scars.

His whole person looked like a corpse that had crawled out of a grave.

Zhang Tianlin raised a hand to scratch his hemp head-wrap, thinking to himself, I've killed plenty of men and seen even more corpses, but a corpse cupping its hands in salute — that's a first.

But what kind of man was Zhang Tianlin? He was someone who could throw an arm around a horse's shoulder and swear brotherhood.

Seeing such a creature, he was only startled for a moment and quickly returned to normal. Putting on a fierce face, he said, "So you're that Kang Something-or-other who spreads bewitching nonsense and planted my Marshal's headquarters general in the ground?"

In truth, Kang Yaomin had been startled too.

Suffering from diarrhea, he had just come out of the latrine when he heard someone in the headquarters saying that Guotianxing Zhang Tianlin — that ringleader who destroyed Buddhas and tore down temples in northern Shaanxi, whose ferocious name was known far and wide — was here, and utterly terrifying.

The partition wall had been wrecked by gunpowder. The moment he stepped out of the latrine, he saw the front courtyard of the guard headquarters filled with a crowd of White Wuchangs — they only lacked the words "At First Sight, Fortune Comes" written on their hats.

"General Zhang, this is not me spreading bewitching nonsense. I, Kang, fell ill earlier and lost all pulse. The soldiers buried me in the earth for three full days before I opened my eyes again. So it must have some effect."

Though Kang Yaomin was frail, his words were utterly firm.

Hearing this, Zhang Tianlin clicked his tongue inwardly in wonder, though his face still carried scrutiny and doubt.

Unlike Wei Qian'er, who was fond of the Ming court's men of letters, Zhang Tianlin, having risen from the rank-and-file officer corps, preferred the Ming court's military commanders.

The kind like Zhao Zhirui — pulling men who could once have been his superiors over to serve as his subordinates gave him a sense of conquest.

He looked Kang Yaomin up and down and noticed that his neck, unlike others', was not so terribly swollen, so he asked, "Your body — it looks like you don't have the same disease as them."

Kang Yaomin responded with a face full of bitter smiles.

It was the physician Zhang Jingxiao who spoke instead: "Commander Kang originally had the same infection, but after the soldiers buried him in the earth, perhaps because the soil was unclean, the filth within infected his sores and became tetanus. Yet fighting poison with poison caused the epidemic illness to recede."

As he spoke, Zhang Jingxiao's face showed puzzlement, and he slowly shook his head. "The reasons for this, I do not yet know. However, in the Tang-dynasty Sun the True Man's Invaluable Prescriptions, there is an ingredient called Dragon-Hiding-in-Earth — it is the earth from the core of a stove, smoked and fired by burning brushwood, blended with strong vinegar into a paste, spread on gauze, and used to treat abscesses and swellings."

"Perhaps the stove-fired earth, all its filth burned clean by the brushwood, no longer carries the risk of causing infection."

Having said this, Zhang Jingxiao said to Zhang Tianlin, "Commander Kang's tetanus is already resolved. The military physicians of Tong Pass Guard first used the Myriad-Efficacy Elixir to induce sweating, then applied Jade Truth Powder externally — it's Chen Shigong's formula. He does still have ailments like diarrhea… but in the end, that is far easier to treat than a plague never before seen."

Zhang Tianlin had no patience for listening to this stuff, nor could he understand it. He hurriedly waved his hand to stop Zhang Jingxiao's scripture-reciting and simply pointed at Wei Qian'er. "Physician Zhang, just tell me — the plague on Wei Qian'er, apart from planting him in the ground, can other methods cure it or not?"

"Cure it, we can. It's not some terminal illness."

Zhang Jingxiao's face showed difficulty. "My family has practiced medicine for seven generations. General Wei is robust of body — treat the symptoms with the right medicine, and curing him is not hard."

"But Tong Pass Guard is an epidemic. We must prevent the uninfected and control the already infected. This is absolutely not something a mere handful of physicians can resolve. In a day, we can only see a hundred or so patients, while new infections number in the hundreds or thousands — treatment cannot keep pace with contagion."

As soon as Zhang Tianlin heard this, he had a clear measure in his mind. He raised a hand and pointed at Wei Qian'er, ordering those around him, "Hurry up and dig the Tree Immortal out — he's too ugly. When the time comes, the Grand Marshal won't be able to bring himself to strike."

"The Grand Marshal said I'm to bring you back alive. He wants to give you two hard punches, to vent his fury over the lost army."

Having said that, he looked again at Zhang Jingxiao. "As for preventing the uninfected and controlling the already infected… Physician Zhang, those six words are very well put. They're mine now. You just go ahead and treat without restraint."

"I, Zhang Tianlin, brought troops here precisely to do this!"