Chapter 666: The Weight of Distinction

The lucky always get what they wish for.

Chen Qiyu was exactly that kind of person, though he himself didn't know it.

He yearned and regretted that Ren Quan'er hadn't been able to serve under him as a Deputy General of the Inspector-General's Standard.

He still clung to the daydream that if Ren Quan'er were here, he could strike Cui Erda dead right in the city on the spot.

And Ren Quan'er really did come to help him launch a surprise attack on Cui Erda.

Though the process wasn't quite what he had imagined.

The letter Chen Qihuang wrote was sent out of the city, and in barely half a shichen a reply came back.

The reply's format was perfectly standard, but the handwriting was bold and unrestrained, not the formal academy style, and the wording was rather arrogant — clearly written by a military officer well-versed in official correspondence.

The letter said that the Xi'an garrison was stubborn and unyielding, and according to the Marshal's Headquarters regulations, none of the personnel in the city were permitted to communicate directly with the Grand Marshal.

The letter had already been forwarded to General of the Swift Cavalry and Commander of the Second Field Brigade, General Ren, at the Marshal's Headquarters — and that was all.

This thing was less a reply and more a receipt of delivery.

Whether they agreed or not, he had no idea; whether troops would be sent or not, he also had no idea.

That afternoon, Chen Qiyu brooded atop the city gate tower for a long while, and even sent his household servants through the chaotic streets of the prefectural city to the Censorate yamen to haul back three cartloads of official documents, searching for intelligence on the Marshal's Headquarters.

But search as he might, he combed through the rosters of the early rebel army leaders who had followed Liu Chengzong, the lists of appointments when the Qinghai Marshal's Headquarters was established, and the registers of officers from both sides during the He-Huang Campaign.

He could not find a single general surnamed Ren.

If that were all, it would be one thing.

The crux was that Chen Qiyu had actually found the Marshal's Headquarters' system of martial merit ranks and honorary grades.

The term "general," from the moment of its inception, literally meant the leader of an army.

Through the dynasties, as military organization grew more complex, the status of the general's title had in fact been steadily sinking.

By the Ming dynasty, anyone with a few hundred men under them could be addressed with the title of general in most formal documents.

Yet even so, the official title of General of the Swift Cavalry remained difficult to shake in status; in every dynasty, it had been the general's title with the most weight.

The Marshal's Headquarters was no exception — this was the third rank of the first class within the three-class, nine-rank general tier.

Above it stood only the Dragon-Tiger General and the General of the Official Army.

In other words, given Liu Chengzong's current status and the situation on the eve of the Marshal's Headquarters' leap through the dragon gate, General of the Swift Cavalry was very likely the highest military rank at present.

And yet, a man holding such a high title, commanding the second-ranked military garrison, this man surnamed Ren seemed like someone who had popped out of a rock — and the imperial court actually knew nothing about him?

What unsettled Chen Qiyu even more deeply, in truth, was that receipt of delivery.

That reply had a standard format, and naturally bore a signature — the signature was of the Deputy Commander of the Second Field Brigade, a man called Ouyang Gun.

This man, Chen Qiyu knew him well.

A man of Ganzhou, originally a Deputy General, who a few years ago was about to become Deputy Commander of Lintao — at that time Chen Qiyu was still the Grand Coordinator of Yansui.

How the hell had he run off to serve as a Deputy Commander under Liu Chengzong!

Oh, right — first Lanzhou and Lintao were lost, leaving Ouyang Gun with no post to take up, and then Gansu fell soon after, so a perfectly good pillar of the Great Ming was dismantled and grafted onto Liu Chengzong.

But where had this Commander Ren come from?

It was, of course, the very Ren Quan'er he yearned for so dearly.

In truth, it wasn't that Liu Chengzong was putting on airs and refusing to accept Chen Qihuang's letter.

It was simply that by the time Chen Qihuang sent this letter, Liu Chengzong had already left Xi'an Prefecture.

With the reorganization of the two field brigades complete, Chen Qiyu inside the city had no choice but to cooperate with the Marshal's Headquarters and begin confiscating the property of the wealthy households in the city.

Liu the Lion was now completely at ease about Xi'an Prefecture.

He knew very well that in all of Shaanxi, the greatest threat to the Marshal's Headquarters was not Chen Qiyu, but the office of the Five-Province Supreme Commander of the Great Ming.

This was one of the primary issues the Marshal's Army had to deal with in this eastern campaign, second in priority only to the Ming army's heavy troop concentrations in Shaanxi.

It would be no exaggeration to say this office held power enough to overturn the realm; if he did not pen him up inside Xi'an's prefectural city and cut off any possibility of transmitting orders outward, Liu the Lion could not sleep soundly.

After all, the campaign he had organized was fought on the principle of a focused breakthrough, not an advance along the entire front — this would inevitably leave Shaanxi still dotted with independent military commanders and local officials after the campaign ended.

These people lacked the ability to oppose the Marshal's Army head-on, but they were more than capable of feigning compliance while defying orders, or simply each looking after their own people.

Without a Five-Province Supreme Commander to integrate them into a single force, they were all minor problems; but if Chen Qiyu could communicate with the outside world, overturning the heavens would be hard, yet inciting commanders and officials to disgust Liu the Lion would be all too easy.

Before Chen Qiyu carried out the confiscations, he was the Five-Province Supreme Commander; after that, he was merely an official with some civil and military talent.

Once he had broken his own backbone, what was there left to fear?

So Liu Chengzong simply handed the siege to Ren Quan'er and Gao Yingdeng, and took two battalions back to his hometown to pay respects at the ancestral graves.

Liu the Lion had just stepped beyond the borders of Xi'an Prefecture when Chen Qihuang sent his letter out right after; Ren Quan'er, who received it, naturally would not reveal the truth, and merely said they were unworthy of corresponding with the Grand Marshal.

But in his heart, Ren Quan'er was willing to cooperate with Chen Qiyu.

Because he knew very well that Liu Chengzong's journey to Yan'an Prefecture was not merely to pay respects at the ancestral graves — more of it was to accept the surrender of Qingyang Prefecture.

Under the governance of Prefect Ju Sirang, Qingyang Prefecture was like a peach-blossom paradise amid the chaos.

Against such a man, even Liu Chengzong had no good solution.

After all, the Marshal's Army he had painstakingly forged was, at its iron core, a righteous army.

The "righteous army" here did not mean a peasant army, but rather an army composed of both civilian militias and frontier troops, whose common ground could hardly be called ideals — at most, they shared similar values.

Namely: I want to stay alive, and if I have the ability, I'll help others stay alive too.

From the army's founding, their distinction between friend and foe had been rather blurred, referencing not factions but actions.

Thus they fought both roving bandits and government troops.

Over time, this allowed the army to rampage unchecked across a land where the people could barely survive, possessing an immense morale boost when targeting corrupt officials, marauding soldiers, and ruthless local gentry and landlords.

Even when they encountered a rare honest official, it didn't matter — in this world, to do good, luck, ability, and ideals were all indispensable, and lacking any one would not do.

But the moment they ran into people just like themselves, they grew weary of fighting.

It was like two civilian armies fighting side by side suddenly erupting into fratricidal conflict — the vast majority of soldiers would grow weary of battle.

This top-down trait directly led to the current situation in Shaanxi: nominally under the Marshal's Office, but in reality a patchwork of independent military chiefs and independent officials everywhere.

As long as a person is capable of doing proper work and has no intention of attacking Liu Chengzong, the Marshal's Army will only feel goodwill toward them, never hostility.

Though the whole lot, top to bottom, are all brash and reckless, they're not bad — they're reasonable.

But in this era, even if a Shaanxi official had heaven-defying ability, it was still very hard to keep a single corner safe.

After all, even if you don't cause problems, others still will.

Take Qingyang Prefecture, for example. Ju Sirang had earlier resettled refugees and recruited outlaws, creating a rare scene of rebuilding from ruins at places like Huanma Ridge and Fengchuan.

But as luck would have it, He Renlong marched into Qingyang with three thousand troops, garrisoning at Zhenning County in the south of Qingyang Prefecture.

Zhenning County belongs to Ningzhou, and Ningzhou's former magistrate was Zhou Riqiang.

Back then, Zhou Riqiang in Ningzhou had absolutely no way to deal with the common people. The people under his rule were so poor they went bare-arsed; to avoid the tax collectors, they abandoned their homes and lived in dug-out caves.

That place makes it easy to raise horses, but it's utterly impossible to sustain troops.

He Renlong garrisoned his troops there and tried every method, but still couldn't produce any grain or fodder. With no way to strike south for provisions either, he could only set his sights on Ju Sirang's Qingyang Prefecture.

But Ju Sirang was also a fierce character. Relying entirely on benevolence, righteousness, and virtue, he had recruited and resettled over ten thousand peasant soldiers in Qingyang Prefecture.

Set aside for a moment whether they can fight — just with this gang of desperadoes, how could it ever be easy to make them hand over the grain in their hands?

So He Renlong had been holding his temper and negotiating in good faith, until winter was about to arrive and the army provisions he'd racked his brains to scrape together were nearly exhausted. His demands to Ju Sirang for grain grew more strident by the day, and finally he resorted to threats.

He rubbed his fists and wiped his palms, intending to lead his troops and have a fight with the old bandits Ju Sirang had resettled.

As it turned out, Ju Sirang was even more fiery-tempered. He cursed him right back, and once he'd finished cursing, he called in his people.

He first sent word northwest to Hong Chengchou, who was stationed in Ningxia, demanding that the Ningxia Garrison and Yansui Garrison troops march south to exterminate the bandits.

Hong Chengchou, who was in the middle of recruiting new troops, nearly fainted when he received the letter.

He thought to himself: March south, my ass. The Ningxia five battalions marched south half a year ago — how many of them skipped thirty years of detours and marched straight down to the underworld?

He couldn't even make contact with the Yansui Garrison. The depleted Ningxia Garrison, meanwhile, was retreating step by step under Cao Yao's relentless lamb offensive, and at this point didn't even have a proper Colonel or Mobile Corps Commander to lead the troops.

He was building a new army, and the acting Colonel of the Supreme Commander's Guard Battalion had only been a Commander before this.

To him, this Ningxia army was fine in every respect — it just loved eating mutton a bit too much.

Hong Chengchou could only lament his inability to help Ju Sirang. All he could do was send a man with a bland, toothless letter to He Renlong, ordering him not to turn his blade against his own side.

He Renlong received the Three Border Supreme Commander's envoy at Zhenning County seat. With great deference and apparent sincerity, he invited the man up onto the city wall, then had He Yong push the envoy off.

He didn't die from the fall, so He Yong added an arrow from the walltop.

To He Renlong, never mind that Hong Chengchou was the Three Border Supreme Commander — even if the Chongzhen Emperor himself wrote a letter to dissuade him, he'd still have to fight if he had to fight.

If he didn't fight, the three thousand clamoring, starving Yanshui troops behind him would do him in first.

But what He Renlong didn't realize was that Hong Chengchou was merely Ju Sirang's stalling tactic.

The goal was to have Hong Chengchou delay He Renlong for half a day or a day, just long enough for his own envoy to reach Xi'an Prefecture and return.

Because a few months earlier, Ju Sirang, who had been peacefully farming in Qingyang Prefecture, had received a bizarre commendation from Lanzhou.

The messenger said the Grand Marshal's Office had elected him as one of Shaanxi's ten most outstanding and excellent officials for the eighth year of the Chongzhen reign.

Along with the official-looking commendation document came a sable coat, a suit of brocade robes, one hundred taels of silver, and an invitation to a banquet at the Rites Bureau in Lanzhou.

To be honest, the moment he received that commendation document, Ju Sirang's mind went *buzz* — as if a Red Barbarian cannonball had plowed right through it, leaving it full of holes.

The befuddled Prefect of Qingyang thought about it for a long time, then decided to specially dispatch one of the surrendered bandit petty chiefs to travel far to Lanzhou and sniff around.

To find out just what kind of underworld jargon this "outstanding commendation" actually was in the Marshal's Office's scheme of things.

Unfortunately, the capable man he sent, disguised as a traveling merchant, had just entered Lanzhou city. He hadn't even warmed the bench in a teahouse, had only just inquired about the prices of tobacco peddlers and Hequ horse colts in Hehuang, when he was seized by anti-smuggling troops who had rushed over upon hearing the news.

Ju Sirang just felt that these bastards in the Marshal's Office were truly sinister.

What kind of counter-surveillance ability was this!

Even if he'd sent a spy into Beijing to find out what the Emperor ate for breakfast, he wouldn't have been nabbed by the Embroidered Uniform Guard that fast.

The most infuriating part was, once they'd seized the spy, surely they should interrogate him for some intelligence, right?

No. Those bastards with Hehuang accents were greedy and vicious. They confiscated all the illicit money he carried, and once they had the money, they asked nothing — they just beat him.

Ju Sirang's spy got a thorough thrashing. His buttocks were lashed into swollen purple welts by a big iron rod; he couldn't even walk.

After they were done, those men dumped him in Jin County, saying that for a crime like his, according to the law he should be sent to the Gold Gully Silver Cave to work the mines. But considering the small amount involved, they let him recuperate in Jin County with no one watching him — if he could run, he could run on his own.

They also said that since he'd managed to find out what he wanted to know this time anyway, next time he came he should bring more of the things he wanted to bring himself.

Ju Sirang's envoy returned and thought about it for a long time, but still had no idea what things of his own he was supposed to want to bring to Lanzhou, much less what earth-shattering secret he'd supposedly uncovered.

Back in Qingyang, he could only report everything truthfully to the Prefect.

Even he didn't know — Ju Sirang himself was even more dumbfounded listening to it.

In the end, the two of them reached a consensus: the bizarre "outstanding" jargon, the spooky secret-agent guards — they couldn't understand it, but they were profoundly shaken. The Marshal's Office was full of lunatics.

As for the so-called banquet invitation, it was better not to go.

For all they knew, that hundred taels of silver was just meat-money, and it wouldn't be strange if the man went and got eaten on the spot.

They were crazy enough to nominate Ju Sirang for "outstanding" — what else wouldn't they do?

Originally, for Ju Sirang, this was just a little interlude in his farming and land-reclamation process. If no one brought it up, he'd have forgotten about it before long.

But, as luck would have it, He Renlong came knocking.

Ju Sirang thought to himself: I'm a Shandong man. If you won't let me be a proper official in peace, then damn it, you can forget about having a good time either.

I'll just call a few lunatics over to beat you to death!

Quick as could be, the outstanding official commendation document that Lanzhou had issued to Ju Sirang was handed by him to a subordinate.

And he ordered him to race at top speed to Xi'an Prefecture, find Liu Chengzong, and say nothing else but this one line: "Grand Marshal, there's a man called He Renlong who's going to lead troops to attack your outstanding official."

Ju Sirang, after all, had a special talent for recruiting amnestied bandits. He'd seen plenty of madmen among the roving bandit chiefs who passed back and forth through Qingyang.

He simply felt that this Grand Marshal Liu Chengzong was exceptionally spirited — his symptoms had already progressed to a rebel leader handing out prize money to court officials.

So in the Grand Marshal's mind, would a court official asking a rebel leader for help also seem perfectly reasonable?

Of course, if Liu Chengzong didn't send troops, then Ju Sirang could just die — before dying, he could still thoroughly humiliate this madman one last time.

As it happened, our Liu the Lion really did follow that logic.

Although Liu Chengzong didn't even know when his old man had sent a commendation for outstanding service to Qingyang, it didn't matter.

No one touches an officer of outstanding merit from my Grand Marshal's headquarters!

Liu the Lion directly took two battalions north to Yan'an Prefecture, to command Zhang Zhen, Chief Commander of the yet-unreorganized Yanqing Brigade, from close range — and went to intimidate his old superior.

Meanwhile, in the city of Xi'an Prefecture, in the pitch-black night, five hundred Yan'an soldiers crossed the moat from the south of the city, scaled the walls, and charged toward the Qin Prince's guard defense zone.