Chapter 635: Go Eliminate Liu Chengzong

The plague was upon them.

The two main camps relocating to Tong Pass made the Lion of Xianyang, Liu, increasingly irritable.

He wished he could gouge out his own eyeballs, have a vulture carry them aloft to hover over Tong Pass, and watch the situation there with his own eyes.

But with the Marshal's Army's main force shifting east, someone in Xi'an Prefecture was even more on edge than he was.

That person was Chen Qiyu, squatting inside the prefectural city.

Ever since Wei Qian'er had seized the outskirts of Xi'an, every slight increase or decrease in the besieging army outside the walls had kept him in agonized suspense.

There was no helping it — Xi'an city had nearly three Guard units of Banner troops garrisoned inside, and the military grain wouldn't last until winter. He was just praying for Liu Chengzong to hurry up and attack; the longer this siege dragged on, the worse it was for the Ming army inside the city.

Yet Liu Chengzong's movements, in Chen Qiyu's eyes, seemed like sleepwalking.

One moment he'd hold a Xianyang Banquet for the Xi'an Prefecture gentry, the next he'd be requisitioning supplies across the region, then he'd be casting cannons and transporting gunpowder — in short, he did everything except actually assault the city.

The besieging army, too, would shrink one moment, swell the next, then shrink again.

First, Wei Qian'er's single camp occupied the countryside.

Then, with great fanfare, several camps advanced close to the city walls — rank upon rank of half-barded armored cavalry, clearly elite, well-drilled troops. Yet after bivouacking for only a short while, five thousand were transferred east.

Two days later, another five thousand were transferred east.

Without a single battle fought, it looked outside the city as if the siege was about to be lifted. Though the siege trenches were still being dug, the men casting cannons had dwindled by sixty percent, let alone the besieging troops themselves.

Chen Qiyu had very few channels to contact the outside world. The situation in all of Xi'an Prefecture, even the whole of Shaanxi, was basically a blind man groping an elephant — pure guesswork.

His head was nearly exploding from thinking, yet he still couldn't figure out what in the world was so damn good about the east.

What could be worth ten thousand armored cavalry hauling cannons, even bringing rocket carts as they raced over, with boat after boat and raft after raft of sheepskin and oxhide crossing back and forth on the Wei River to ferry supplies?

Chen Qiyu's biggest guess was that the Emperor had dispatched another army and they had fought their way to Tong Pass.

To be honest, he'd been half-skeptical of this guess that had flashed through his mind — until Liu Chengzong sent men to shout beneath the walls that plague had broken out in the east. Only then did he confirm it: the Emperor must have sent reinforcements!

Who in this day and age hadn't seen a plague?

Even those with the narrowest experience had at least heard of plagues.

Not to mention Chen Qiyu was from Shanxi. Due to its complex terrain, proximity to the frontier, and severe ecological damage, Shanxi would suffer a plague every ten or twenty years even in times of good weather and favorable conditions.

After the Wanli Emperor took personal rule, the Great Ming's grassroots descended into anarchy — waterworks fell into disrepair, forests were recklessly felled, mines were haphazardly dug — and the frequency of plagues skyrocketed.

Specifically, during the Wanli Emperor's forty-eight-year reign, Shanxi was hit by plague nineteen times.

When Chen Qiyu was twenty, his hometown suffered a diphtheria outbreak — called throat obstruction in the Ming — and it was terrifyingly contagious.

It raged from the ninth month all the way to the second month of the following year. In Taiyuan city, eight or nine out of ten households had the sick; six or seven out of ten people were infected. They would die within a day or two of catching it. Even the Prince of Jin inside his princely city died.

So he had a very profound understanding of plague, and very easily concluded that this so-called plague was definitely a stalling tactic by Liu Chengzong.

Simply put, it was a lie.

Because the most normal response to plague is prevention.

Prevention lies in dispersal, not gathering — relatives and friends must cut off all contact; the sick cannot be visited; the dead cannot be mourned.

And the army is undoubtedly the form of human organization that values gathering above all else.

Without organization, there is no army.

In ancient times, the vast majority of plagues were brought by armies.

Therefore, in reality, not only can an army not contain a plague, but in the face of one, it is even more vulnerable than the common people inside a city.

As for the common folk in the countryside and villages, if there were no chaos and ravages of war, given the transportation conditions and population mobility of this era, plague was actually not so terrifying.

Even if there really was a plague in the east, what use would it be for Liu Chengzong to throw two camps at it?

The Plague God doesn't fear your iron horses, sabers, and spears.

Even if Chen Qiyu racked his brains to the point of bursting, he could never have imagined that all of this was because Zhang E'you, the Commander of Tong Pass Guard, had borrowed the plague to intimidate the Marshal's Army.

Yet, aside from the Grand Marshal being a man who clung dearly to life, the Marshal's Army from top to bottom was full of short-lived wretches with minds set on ending it all in one go. Not only did they not fall for it, but their fear transformed into repaying it all tenfold.

Ultimately, this triggered Liu Chengzong's passive skill as an orthodox Ming army of the Chongzhen era: Calabash Brothers Saving Grandpa.

This misjudgment of the situation drove Chen Qiyu mad with the desire to contact the outside world, and he soon put it into action.

On the second night after Zhang Tianlin led his troops away from the Xi'an prefectural city, Xi'an city formed five hundred-man squads to sally forth as ghost troops and raid the camps.

There was also a death squad that carried no letters or tokens, memorized all of Chen Qiyu's demands, and used the chaos to break through the siege camp and deliver the verbal message to various departments and counties.

That happened to be the moment when the Marshal Army's siege camp was at its slackest. Liu Chengzong was still outside the city, but he was planning to depart the next day for Xianyang to oversee the gathering of supplies, while Wang Wenxiu, who was in charge of the siege, had spent half the night in the command tent listening to Liu Chengzong talk about key siege points, plague prevention, and such.

When the Ming army's ghost troops came out of the city and struck wildly outside, neither Liu Chengzong nor Wang Wenxiu took it seriously — they even felt a bit of scorn in their hearts.

Ghost troops — the Marshal's Army was very familiar with them. As long as you were on guard and they couldn't achieve surprise, no matter how many came out, that's how many would die.

They even captured a few of the soldiers delivering messages for Chen Qiyu, but since they carried no tokens or letters and only claimed they couldn't endure the siege and were seizing the chance to defect, they were simply assigned as support troops under a company commander.

But there was still one man who, amid the chaos, jumped into the Wei River, hid and fled eastward all the way, and delivered Chen Qiyu's verbal message to its destination: Hancheng.

The magistrate of Hancheng was Zuo Maodi, a formidable man from a scholar-official family in Laiyang, Shandong.

For three generations — his grandfather, father, uncles, and cousins — all were provincial graduates, metropolitan graduates, and civil and military officials. His uncle was the Guard Suppressor of Dengzhou Guard, and his brother-in-law was a Mobile Corps Commander in Dengzhou.

In Shaanxi, everyone knew he could really fight.

In the second year of Chongzhen, Dong Dacheng, the head of the Lotus Society in Laiyang, raised troops. Five thousand White Lotus followers besieged Laiyang city. Zuo Maodi, then still a licentiate, mounted the walls to join the battle and fired cannons at the enemy. But the cannon's quality was poor, and it burst at the breech.

Zuo Maodi was wounded by the explosion. He hastily bandaged himself, switched to another cannon, and kept firing, killing a Lotus Society leader.

In the third year of Chongzhen, he passed the provincial exam as second-place laureate. In the fourth year, he passed the metropolitan exam and became a presented scholar. In the fifth year, he was appointed as the magistrate of Hancheng, Shaanxi.

When Zuo Maodi arrived in Hancheng, before he could even hand over official duties with the previous magistrate, the roving bandits arrived too. So from his very first day in office, he began gathering grain and livestock, strengthening defenses and clearing the countryside, conscripting troops, allocating provisions, guarding the river, and defending the city.

In the fifth year of Chongzhen, after the roving bandits were repelled by his defenses, they fled into the mountains and set up stockades. Zuo Maodi reasoned that with bandits in the mountains, the common folk wouldn't dare farm the outskirts. So he organized eleven columns of civilian braves, led troops into the mountains to suppress them, and kept fighting until he drove them out of Hancheng, across the Yellow River, and into Shanxi.

In the sixth year of Chongzhen, Zuo Maodi called on wealthy households and gentry to donate money and grain and restore production. The roving bandits came again, and he again supervised troops, pursuing them fifty li into the mountains, finally winning a battle on the river and routing the remaining enemy.

In the seventh year of Chongzhen, the roving bandits came once more. He again donned his armor and took the field, continuing the fight, pursuing them in victory for one hundred and twenty li.

Put it this way: great Ming commanders like Zuo Liangyu, Deng Qi, and Tang Jiuzhou, when facing roving bandits entering the mountains, generally didn't dare pursue desperate enemies into the mountains. On the rare occasions they did, they suffered more defeats than victories.

The reason Zuo Maodi could be like a god of war in Hancheng was, on one hand, that he truly had the skill.

On the other hand, arriving in Hancheng on his very first day and leading the defense against the enemy before even formally taking over official duties had won him unparalleled popular support in the city.

The gentry gave their full backing and the common people fought with fierce obedience, which allowed them to accomplish feats more formidable than many regular government troops.

Hancheng had four great families: the Su, the Niu, the Xue, and the Zhang.

The Su and Niu families were merchants. The former were descendants of Su Wu; in early years they ran pawnshops, and later opened the "Hehe Su" Silk and Satin Shop in Suzhou. Business boomed, and as soon as war broke out they donated tens of thousands of taels of silver to the city.

The latter ran a money shop, and when the fighting started they burned debt receipts by the handful.

The Zhang family could trace their ancestry back to the Marquis of Liu, Zhang Liang. They operated two Yellow River ferries and a timber business, with several hundred rafts and boats. When bandits were being suppressed, they transported troops swiftly and with great mobility, contributing enormous effort.

As for the Xue family, they were descendants of Xue Rengui, a lineage of officials and gentry. They did not quite see eye to eye with Zuo Maodi, but neither did they hinder him.

Those with money gave money, those with strength gave strength — it all relied on unity of purpose. That was how Hancheng, whose city walls were not even faced with brick, withstood every assault over three years.

Earlier, when the Marshal's Manor Colonel arrived in Hancheng bearing Liu Chengzong's orders, Zuo Maodi laid a Hongmen Banquet for them at the Su Wu Shrine outside the city.

His words were soft but his resolve was iron. Everything he said was pleasant, but the meaning was crystal clear: surrender? Not up for discussion.

The Marshal's Manor Colonel and Commandant went back to summon reinforcements, calling in Mi Layin, who was garrisoned at Yaozhou. Just as they had surrounded this earthen-walled city, Wei Qianer discovered the plague outbreak over on his side.

Mi Layin reported to the central command. Liu Chengzong assessed the situation at Hancheng and, for the moment, could not spare attention for such a minor city. He simply ordered Mi Layin to lift the siege and focus all efforts on gathering supplies in preparation for the plague.

Still, Liu the Lion wrote Zuo Maodi a letter.

To be honest, when Zuo Maodi, in his office at the Hancheng yamen, heard that Liu Chengzong had written him, his first guess was that it would be full of persuasion to surrender and the like.

Instantly, a torrent of curses sprang to mind.

He was a Presented Scholar, after all — widely read and quick-witted, a formidable master of invective.

Yet when he actually unfolded the letter and read it, well… Zuo Maodi's feelings grew rather complicated.

The Grand Marshal always wrote as if no one were an outsider. He opened right up by praising Zuo Maodi for the fine job he had done these past few years.

Next, he reminded him to carry out a thorough land survey and population census — both population and farmland must be clearly accounted for. Not only must production be restored, but attention must also be paid to locust eradication and the construction of water conservancy works.

Then he urged him to continue drilling troops and preparing against bandits, to prevent the routed soldiers and bandit gangs brought by war from disturbing public order, and at the same time to guard against the plague from Shanxi, continuing to protect the region and keep the people safe.

Finally, the strangest part came.

The Grand Marshal Liu declared that because you, Zuo Maodi, have performed so well as Magistrate of Hancheng, Hancheng shall be exempt from taxes for one year. The gentry, officials, and commoners who defended the city shall all receive commendations. Keep up the good work, and later the Personnel Office will record your merit and recommend you for an Outstanding distinction.

After reading the letter, Zuo Maodi's head buzzed.

Never mind all those curses he had been thinking of — he did not even know how to write a reply.

He mused that this bird-brained Grand Marshal had a serious malfunction in his self-awareness. He was actually urging him to drill troops and prepare against bandits — who exactly was the bandit here?

And how had he simply skipped the step of attacking Hancheng and, with the posture of a ruler, unilaterally declared a tax exemption?

And he was dead serious about it, too.

So serious that as Zuo Maodi read the letter, he himself suffered a massive deviation in self-perception. He could not utter a single word, and could only pass the letter, his face full of question marks, to the four-family gentry of Hancheng to read in turn.

Everyone looked at each other in blank dismay. The Grand Marshal's mad ravings inflicted severe spiritual contamination on them all.

Some, in a daze, simply accepted Liu Chengzong's premise.

Others — for instance, a younger member of the Xue family named Xue Xing, a man of great resourcefulness but born with partial blindness. His vision was impaired, one eye was askew, and his appearance was already wildly unconventional.

Now, confronted with words even more bizarre than his own looks, his rebellious genes were triggered on the spot. He raised his arm and shouted, "Father-Mother Zuo! Whatever the bandit Liu tells us to do, we must do the exact opposite! We absolutely must not grant his wishes!"

Yet that was precisely the strangest thing about Liu Chengzong's letter.

From beginning to end, every single word in that letter was perfectly correct. Even the most determined faultfinder, someone deliberately looking for a bone to pick, could not find a single thing Liu Chengzong had actually said wrong.

The only thing wrong was Liu Chengzong's identity.

To Zuo Maodi, everything the man urged was right — on what grounds should he not listen?

Liu the Lion was certainly no clownish megalomaniac. He simply had his own logic of warfare.

He truly regarded Hancheng as something already in his pocket.

Because the persuasion to surrender had already begun.

Matters have their order of urgency. Hancheng was not a must-contest strategic point like Tong Pass. To expend manpower and resources to forcibly assault a city so united in purpose, and end up earning the hatred of its gentry and commoners — that held no benefit for him.

Liu Chengzong was very reasonable. Zuo Maodi could govern the region well and could shelter the common people, so he had no grounds to launch a punitive campaign against Hancheng.

This was mainly because the benefit of attacking Hancheng was not great enough. On the other hand, Zuo Maodi had not attacked the Colonel and Commandant he had sent, so matters had not reached the point of irreconcilable hostility.

On another front, the most important thing for the Marshal's Manor right now was stopping the plague and preventing it from spreading in Shaanxi. Second to that was capturing the prefectural seat of Xi'an.

Once the Xi'an prefectural seat was occupied, a small city like this, incapable of holding out independently, would gradually and imperceptibly shift from resistance to cooperation.

Exempt this year, then tax next year.

Exempt next year, then tax the year after.

If the year after that you still exempt, the court will transfer you away. Once you are transferred and the replacement does a poor job, this city will still be mine.

And if you, Zuo Maodi, are the Great Ming's super-loyalist, a full-fledged Presented Scholar who insists on locking horns over this seventh-rank post of Hancheng Magistrate for the rest of your life — then Liu Chengzong cared even less.

At worst, once the Chongzhen Emperor passed away, Hancheng could simply be renamed the State of Ming, and Zuo Maodi could be enfeoffed as Chancellor of Ming. Stuff in a couple of imperial clansmen as national treasures, and permit the use of the former dynasty's robes, caps, banners, and drums.

Not only would it make a fine tale, but whenever Liu Chengzong felt nostalgic for the motherland, he could also come visit the Hancheng Museum and see the remnants of the former dynasty.

What Liu the Lion could never have imagined, though, was that this idle move of his, casually played, would truly cause Zuo Maodi to waver when faced with Chen Qiyu's letter calling him to raise troops.

Chen Qiyu's envoy came to see Magistrate Zuo Maodi with a clear objective: to have Zuo Maodi call the fifteen counties north of the Wei River to arms, and while Liu Chengzong was fighting facing east, break the siege of Xi'an.

Zuo Maodi found it utterly absurd.

The Ming court's heavy troop concentrations had been utterly routed in Guanzhong. Hancheng had eleven routes of militia regulars totaling six hundred men; even counting the temporary volunteer recruits and village stalwarts from the winter months, they could not scrape together a single battalion.

Protecting the region and keeping the people safe was already a desperate struggle, and now you want me to take the initiative and march out to fight Liu Chengzong in the field?

He mused, this Viceroy Chen doesn't treat me as a human being at all!

The four great families of Hancheng likewise sneered at Chen Qiyu's messenger.

What difference was there between this and the Nine-Headed Beast sending Boboerba to eliminate Tang Sanzang and his disciples?

It directly caused their goodwill toward Liu the Lion to surge.

It was still that wall-eyed Xue Xing who shook his head and sighed: "Marshal Liu does not know himself, but knows his enemy; Viceroy Chen knows himself, but does not know his enemy. Shaanxi… is doomed!"