Chapter 690: The Two Princely Seals

When Liu Chengzong saw Yang Qi, he almost didn't recognize him.

This Commander-in-Chief, who had ridden a thousand li beyond the frontier wielding authority to appoint Chiliarchs, had spent three days swapping horses and racing over a thousand li through wind and dust — he barely looked human anymore.

His whole body was like a ball of dirt, the caked grime on his face cracked open, both legs chafed to a bloody pulp by the saddle so badly he couldn't even walk, and in the end he was carried into the Prince of Qin's mansion by the Feathered Forest Guard.

Though Yang Qi kept shouting that he was fine and wanted to see the Grand Marshal directly, when word reached Liu Chengzong, he still had the Feathered Forest Guard press him into a side room first, where Tiger Guard Camp medics washed his wounds and applied medicine; only then did Liu Chengzong go in to see him.

"You raced fifteen hundred li just for these two gold lumps? I'd have thought the whole Southern Desert was gone."

Liu Chengzong held two gold camel seals in his hand. As he spoke, something struck him as fishy; he hefted them, then looked at one with utter disgust. "And one of the damn things is fake."

Yang Qi had spent three days and three nights half-asleep, half-awake on horseback, enduring the agony of the jolting ride. Now, seeing Liu Chengzong, the weight finally lifted, and with breath faint as a thread, he managed: "Grand Marshal, the sun and moon bear witness — your humble general has never harbored a disloyal thought."

With that, his spirit could hold out no longer; he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

Liu the Lion curled his lip in exasperation.

He asked the accompanying army physician about Yang Qi's condition, and once he knew the man was all right, he ordered the attendants to look after him well, then turned and left the side room.

Liu Chengzong stood beneath the eaves of the Prince of Qin's mansion corridor, breathing the crisp, cold air, arms folded as he looked up at the sky and locked eyes for a while with a vulture crouched on the main hall's eave-ridge, pretending to be a roof beast.

With the Marshal's army shifting positions everywhere, few vultures remained in Xi'an Prefecture. Even those that stayed mostly flew south to the Qinling Mountains to scavenge; only a dozen or so lazy ones were left in the whole city of Xi'an.

They were exceptionally lazy, so they often crouched on the eave-ridges of great halls and government offices, imitating roof beasts.

Because those places were high, but not too high — they could take off without effort, flap their wings a few times, and reach the even higher gate towers, then glide on the air currents just as they did in the mountains.

Liu Chengzong had observed them for a long time and finally understood why vultures looked majestic in the air but ugly on land: their wings were too big.

A vulture's wings, unlike other birds' wings that fold only once and tuck against the body, didn't work that way.

They folded twice — like a person bending their elbow in, then folding their wrist again and stuffing it under their armpit.

So when they crouched on the ground, they were always hunched at the shoulders with a rounded back.

After a long while, Liu the Lion sighed softly. "The Emperor... has gotten smarter."

The reason Yang Qi had bolted down the road as if his backside were on fire was that the Great Ming had granted him a princely title.

Prince of Shunyi — the same princely title Tumed Altan Khan had once held.

This made Liu Chengzong sigh with feeling: the Emperor had a true genius at his side.

What the hell kind of lunatic — your emperor's ancestral tombs are about to be dug up by rebels, and you still have time to play estrangement ploys on me?

I'm squatting in the northwest minding my own business — what's it to you? With skills like that, why not make Hooge a prince instead?

Still, this kind of painfully obvious estrangement ploy was effective — hadn't it just sent Yang Qi racing back like a fool?

In truth, Liu Chengzong knew Yang Qi hadn't raced back to prove his loyalty. Those three days of desperate riding were just Yang Qi putting on a show for himself.

The Commandant of the Southern Desert had been made a prince — the people who truly wanted to kill him were all in the Southern Desert.

Once the Great Ming's princely title was bestowed on Yang Qi, he couldn't have lasted a single day longer in the Southern Desert.

It was just... how to put it. Liu the Lion figured that if the Chongzhen Emperor wanted to make someone Prince of Shunyi in the Southern Desert, making it happen would have been simple: just don't give it to Yang Qi. Give it to anyone under Yang Qi's command, and there was a high chance it would throw the Southern Desert into civil war and split them from the Marshal's headquarters.

Only giving it to Yang Qi was completely useless.

Just look at the material he had under his command.

Wang Cheng'en — the best-performing Northwest Relief Army commander during the Great Ming's Jisi Incident, and he already looked down on everyone else.

Back when they were fighting Liu Chengzong, he'd spouted off in the command tent, giving the other four Route Commanders contemptuous four-character nicknames.

Turtle-in-the-City He Huchen, Peasant-Chief Commander Yang, Sick-and-Decrepit You Shilu, Smallpox-Poison-Man Wang Xingshan.

A military officer of real talent — he saw his allied armies as dirt clods and clay dogs, and now one of those dirt clods had become Commandant and outranked him.

He Huchen, a very honest military officer, had worked with Yang Qi more times than anyone — and got sold out every single time. He loathed that clever little weasel.

The one and only time Yang Qi was ever honest was when he promised Liu Chengzong that if trouble broke out in the Southern Desert, He Huchen could bring back his head.

Shadut Taiji — that one went without saying. In terms of bloodline, background, timing of submission, and political influence, he was the one who ought to be the Marshal's headquarters' Prince of Shunyi.

Then there was Ombul, Chiliarch of the Tumed. Yang Qi lived in his Guihua City and commanded his tribesmen — that was bad enough, but now, to top it off, he'd even taken the man's ancestral title of Prince of Shunyi from the Great Ming's Golden Kingdom.

Not to mention all those mud-legged Chiliarchs and Centurions in the Southern Desert, who wanted even more to present Yang Qi's dog head to the Grand Marshal.

The only noble on the steppe utterly indifferent to the Prince of Shunyi title was Erinchen, Chiliarch of the Ordos and the former Mongol Jinong.

But Yang Qi hadn't come running solely because of the Great Ming.

This was exactly what struck Liu Chengzong most deeply. Although the Chongzhen Emperor seemed to have gotten much smarter in his decision to make Yang Qi a prince —

his luck was still just as terrible.

The newborn Daicing Gurun had also made Yang Qi a prince.

And Hong Taiji had given Yang Qi the exact same title, just reversed: Prince of Yishun.

The most dramatic part was that Daicing Gurun's envoy had arrived before the Ming envoy. He was already at the Commandant's residence in Guihua City, meeting with Yang Qi, when the Great Ming's envoy showed up.

The Great Ming's envoy was called Ma Shaoyu, a fellow Sichuan native of Xuanfu Grand Coordinator Chen Xinjia and a Provincial Graduate from Suining.

The Daicing envoy was called Ma Mingpei, a Licentiate from Liaoyang. His father had served as an Instructor in Liaoyang and was killed when Nurhaci took the city; now he was doing quite well in Hong Taiji's Literary Institute.

The moment the two envoys met, while they were still at the cupped-hands greeting stage, Ma Shaoyu, clutching the Prince of Shunyi seal, lunged at him. The two scholars, gripping the princely seal, hammered each other over the head in a savage flurry.

By the time Yang Qi's guards pulled them apart and pinned them down, Ma Shaoyu, having struck first, was basically fine, while Ma Mingpei was already drawing more out-breaths than in-breaths and had simply been bludgeoned to death.

Liu the Lion felt this matter was... hard to judge.

Either Yang Qi had done it on purpose, using a borrowed knife to kill, or Yang Qi had no brains.

Otherwise, there was no way he'd have let two envoys with the exact same mission meet face to face.

An envoy, an envoy — their one and only task is to accomplish the mission.

With both men on the same mission, only one was destined to fulfill the task their sovereign had assigned.

So, thinking about it with a normal scholar's logic, the answer was simple: physically eliminate the competitor across from you.

Wasn't that exactly what the venerable Ban Chao did? A diplomatic tradition.

This time, Ma Mingpei was purely a victim of his own status. It's like if Liu Chengzong's envoy went to the Great Ming — unless the mission was to cause trouble, they'd mostly likely not proactively stir up conflict and attack.

Because they'd definitely want to show the Great Ming's ruler and ministers the etiquette and civilization that the Duntan barbarians supposedly didn't possess.

The Ming envoys had no such scruples, so despite being at a disadvantage in weapon weight, they launched a sneak attack and bludgeoned Ma Mingpei to death.

In the end, Ma Shaoyu was placed under house arrest by Yang Qi. The two king-conferring edicts and the two royal gold seals both fell into Yang Qi's hands — so hot to handle that he promptly fled with the items all the way to Xi'an.

The funniest part was that the Shunyi Prince gold seal given by the Ming was actually a fake.

Though it looked just as glittering gold, the moment Liu Chengzong took it in hand he knew the weight was off.

Daiqing's gold seal weighed sixteen jin; this Ming one was only seven or eight jin — probably a gold-plated copper seal.

It was this very seal that left Liu Chengzong unable to fathom what the Chongzhen Emperor was really trying to do.

Putting himself in the other's shoes, the Emperor's decision to enfeoff Yang Qi at this moment was extremely shrewd and well-justified — it could achieve at least the effect of killing two birds with one stone.

It could both raise up an enemy for the Later Jin and reduce an enemy for himself; it might even thoroughly disgust Liu Chengzong and make him cut off his own right arm.

Of course, the third effect was very hard to achieve, but that was not the Chongzhen Emperor's fault — mainly, the Ming court had no clear grasp of Yang Qi's military strength and force composition.

For the Monan Commander-in-Chief to turn against Liu Chengzong over an illusory royal title would be no different from suicide.

But if you're going to confer a kingship, then do it properly — a camel knob is one thing, but if you're going to use copper, just make it solid copper. Deliberately plating it with a layer of gold...

Was the court really that short of two thousand taels of silver?

Look at Hong Taiji by contrast — that Yishun Prince gold seal, though crudely cast, you could tell at a heft it weighed over ten jin, the materials more than ample.

Now that was truly impressive!

But this was only because Liu Chengzong did not know the full backstory.

Back when Anda Khan was first enfeoffed, no seal was given at all. It was not until the early Wanli reign, when Anda Khan petitioned for a seal, that the court finally granted the Shunyi Prince gold seal according to the commandery prince regulations.

By protocol, it should have been a gold-plated silver tortoise-knob commandery prince seal. The court deliberated and decided on a gold-plated jade seal, but somehow, what ultimately ended up in Anda Khan's hands was a gold-plated copper camel-knob seal.

Anda Khan kicked up a fuss several times. The Ming viceroy had no idea how the seal had turned out that way, knew he was in the wrong, and feared the khan would use the seal to stir up trouble, so he muddled through and brushed it aside each time.

In other words, the gold-plated copper camel-knob seal was the genuine Shunyi Prince seal, passed down from the Wanli era to the present.

Both sides' enfeoffments of Yang Qi were absolutely sincere.

The Ming's Chongzhen Emperor brought out the genuine Shunyi Prince seal, abandoned the already weakened Tümed, and recognized the turncoat rebel commander Yang Qi as the master of Monan.

Daiqing Hong Taiji was equally earnest, producing a princely title of qinwang rank to win Yang Qi over.

But this goodwill was clearly a brilliant pearl cast into darkness.

"Yuanheng, take this one and melt it down. Put that one away for now; we'll give it to Yang Qi later."

Liu Chengzong first tossed the Yishun Prince seal to Zhang Yuanheng, then after a moment's thought gave him the Shunyi Prince seal as well. Walking as he spoke, he said: "Summon Zhao Jifang. Have him draft two documents. The first: send word to the Monan Myriarch Erinchen and the three Regional Commanders He Huchen, Wang Cheng'en, and Chaotu — they are to jointly manage Monan affairs for the time being."

"Also, send someone to bring that Ma Shaoyu to me."

"The second: write a letter on Yang Qi's behalf, thanking His Majesty for the Shunyi Prince enfeoffment, professing loyalty and resolve to resist the Later Jin, requesting an annual stipend of ten thousand shi of rice, demanding the opening of border markets to sell horses, and whatever other odds and ends — don't be petty, ask big. The Emperor has money."

The two men, accompanied by the Feathered Forest Guard, were just heading toward the military headquarters when they saw two figures approaching together from the Duanli Gate.

One was a big-bearded man draped in red and green, a saber at his waist and bow and arrows on his back; the other was a young man in a red-tasseled hat and spectacles, a hand cannon slanted at his hip and an abacus hanging from his belt.

No introduction needed — it was the Marshal's Mansion's Minister of Rites, Zhang Xianzhong, and the Minister of Revenue, Liu Chengyun.

Before they had taken many steps, Zhang Xianzhong, his face full of schadenfreude, exclaimed in feigned astonishment: "Marshal, I heard Yang Qi took over ten arrows and fled back inside the pass, covered in blood and nearly dead. Shall I go prepare the funeral arrangements and have someone knock together a nanmu coffin?"

What kind of talk was that?

Liu the Lion shot him a look of disgust.

Chengyun also stepped forward and asked worriedly, "Brother, how is Commander Yang's condition?"

"See, now that's proper talk."

Liu Chengzong jabbed at Zhang Xianzhong with that remark, then said to Chengyun: "Yang Qi is built like an ox. He didn't dismount for three days and three nights and chafed his legs raw. Other than that, he's just a bit filthy. Nothing serious."

Having said that, he added: "But he got quite a fright, and he's dead tired. He'll probably run a fever for a couple of days."

"That's truly a sha... a fright?"

Zhang Xianzhong had been lamenting that Yang Qi hadn't died, when he suddenly heard it was from fright. He was utterly baffled, wondering what on earth could have happened to scare the Monan Commander-in-Chief out of his wits.

The Marshal's Mansion's militia officers and surrendered Ming officers already looked at each other with mutual disdain.

The militia thought the Ming troops were all defeated underlings; the Ming troops thought the militia were all problem youths riddled with bad habits.

But both factions were fringe figures in the Marshal's Mansion. Few among them could even get along with their own kind; more often than not, their relationships were a mix of mutual contempt and grudging respect.

The only ones in the Marshal's Mansion who truly qualified as a faction were Liu Chengzong's own mutineer soldiers.

Though he looked down on him, Zhang Xianzhong did know Yang Qi after all — both had crawled out of mountains of corpses. He was not so easily frightened.

Just as he was puzzling over it, he heard Liu Chengzong speak: "The Ming enfeoffed him as Shunyi Prince, Daiqing enfeoffed him as Yishun Prince. With two royal seals in his hands, tell me, should he be afraid or not?"

"Hiss!"

Zhang Xianzhong sucked in a sharp breath.

The Ming court did not understand the situation in Monan, but did he? Yang Qi was a commander without an army. Any chiliarch in Monan might rebel, but this Yang Qi alone could not.

Never mind anyone else — just take Yang Qi's own subordinate, Colonel Bai Wenxuan. He used to be Zhang Xianzhong's man; he knew him well.

The very day Yang Qi announced he was changing banners, that night Bai Wenxuan was already on his way to Liu Chengzong with a head in hand to claim his reward.

Just then, Zhang Xianzhong spotted the eunuch Zhang Yuanheng carrying two glittering gold royal seals, and his eyes went wide: "Marshal, those two are the royal seals?"

Seeing his expression, Liu Chengzong laughed and said to Zhang Yuanheng: "Yuanheng, let Minister Zhang have a look at those two rocks."

The moment Zhang Xianzhong held them, his reaction was exactly the same as Liu Chengzong's — he instantly knew one was copper. He examined it over and over: "Why does Daiqing's seal have barbarian script carved on it? Marshal, should we carve barbarian script on our seals too?"

"Absolutely unnecessary."

Liu Chengzong shook his head. As former border soldiers, they had all picked up a bit of Mongolian written in the Uyghur alphabet. He said: "They have a spoken language but no script, so they borrow letters to spell out sounds. Since we already have our own script, why go to all that extra trouble?"

Liu the Lion, seeing Zhang Xianzhong utterly captivated by the gold seal, smiled and said: "Daiqing's Yishun Prince seal — want it?"

"No no no no no."

Zhang Xianzhong's head shook like a rattle. The delight that had filled his face moments before vanished instantly, and he tossed the gold seal back to Zhang Yuanheng as if it had burned him: "Better give it back to the old gonggong. This bastard turtle seal is pretty ugly anyway."

"Hahaha!"

Hearing Zhang Xianzhong call the bixi a bastard turtle, Liu Chengzong burst out laughing: "No matter. I'll have one made for you later. Whatever knob you want, we'll make it with whatever knob you want."

"Is the Grand Marshal serious about this?"

Liu Chengzong nodded very earnestly. "The six bureau ministers ought to have seals."

"Well then..." Zhang Xianzhong pursed his lips, tilted his face up, and looked blissfully toward Zhang Yuanheng and Liu Chengyun. After a moment's thought, he said, "Your humble servant's early alias was Yellow Tiger. When the time comes, Grand Marshal, grant me a seal with a tiger knob."

Once Liu Chengzong agreed, Zhang Xianzhong grew greatly excited, as if the tiger seal were already in his hands.

Then his eyes darted about rapidly, and Liu Chengzong asked, "What have you thought of now?"

"Ah, Grand Marshal, this seal looks rather valuable. Yang Qi may be out of mortal danger, but he won't be able to manage affairs for a while. How about sending me to the Southern Desert to ask them for a couple more seals?"

This young man!

Liu Chengzong pointed at Zhang Xianzhong, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. You're treating the Southern Desert Protectorate like a repeatable instance.

Take office for a spell, and the final rewards are one gilded bronze seal of the Ming's Shunyi Prince and one gold seal of Daicing's Yishun Prince, is that it?

"Alright, enough idle talk. Hong Taiji isn't spending silver for no reason. His granting Yang Qi this gold seal must be to relieve pressure on his flank. This year, he will certainly march from the Southern Desert to invade the Ming."

The smile on Liu Chengzong's face withdrew entirely. He raised an arm toward the military headquarters and took the first stride. "Perfect timing, Chengyun is here. Come, let's look at our grain supply route!"