Chapter 713: Jasaghtu Khan

In truth, before Jasaghtu Khan Subadi even entered Inner Mongolia, Liu the Lion already knew he was coming.

Inner Mongolia in this era had been through Lindan Khan's westward retreat, the Tiancong western campaign, the Khitan eastern campaign — three great khans wrestling for power — and then the 230,000 households' eastern campaign to annihilate the Kharchin. Four massive shifts in power had ultimately produced a strange configuration.

West of Ulanqab, everything belonged to the Marshal's Manor; east of the Greater Khingan Range, it was still the Later Jin's territory.

And the vast expanse of fine pastureland east of Jining, west of the Khingan Range, north of Kaiping Garrison, and south of the Kherlen River had become a buffer zone that none of the four powers governed.

It wasn't that no one reached for it — that land was once the territory of the ten Chahar tribes, top-tier good land. Forces from all four sides were reaching in, only none had the ability to hold it long-term without launching a major war.

Of course, among these four forces, the only ones actually trying to seize territory were the Marshal Manor's Shatai Taiji and the Later Jin's Gürü Sechib.

Both were fighting over their old lands, frequently sending troops across the border. The Kharchin tribe sent troops to try to ambush and kill the Marshal Manor's men, while Shatai Taiji had his soldiers escort herders in so their cattle and sheep could eat a mouthful of grass from their homeland.

To the north, Sholoi Khan instructed several tribes that had submitted and were nomadizing along both banks of the Kherlen River to cross to the south bank to graze whenever they had the chance, and to retreat north the moment they spotted enemy troops, doing their utmost to recuperate and avoid stirring up trouble.

As for the Ming army at Kaiping Garrison to the south, their intentions were far simpler — they didn't care at all about the pastureland here or who occupied it.

They just came out with light sabers, fast horses, soft bows, and long arrows to collect heads.

And the Marshal Manor's Inner Mongolia Commandery, which occupied the most expansive territory in Inner Mongolia, differed most from the old Khan's court in its personnel composition. It was no longer as sharply divided from the three northern tribes as before.

After all, of the Inner Mongolia Commandery's twenty-three chiliarch nobles, eighteen had previously been centurions of the three northern tribes.

So much so that as soon as Subadi sent someone to make inquiries, the intelligence that he was coming to Inner Mongolia was relayed by the Commandery's chiliarchs, each racing to be the one to report it.

Like madmen, people brought this news to Liu Chengzong. In a single day, seven separate routes of messenger cavalry relayed the intelligence into his various battalions.

The reason was simple: this was the closest Liu Chengzong had ever been to the chiliarchs of the various Inner Mongolia tribes — he was right there in Ordos.

Only, when he received the news, Liu the Lion was still on the far side of the Mu Us Sea, directing his army's attack on Yansui Garrison.

Actually, "directing" was an overstatement. Half the troops accompanying him on campaign had been apportioned out in small, scattered groups to the four towns and two tribes of the Inner Mongolia Commandery to find their own food.

Even so, his own core troops were just spectators. The only ones truly participating in the Yansui Garrison campaign were twelve battalions, including the Yanqing Brigade.

Resistance at Yansui Garrison was very low; morale had long since crumbled.

Skirmishes of a dozen, a few dozen, or at most a hundred men happened every day, but a proper battle of over a thousand men never occurred even once.

Most of the border forts surrendered at the mere rumor of his approach; a minority surrendered when the main army arrived. Only Yulin Garrison City showed a very resolute will to resist.

At the very start of the war, retired veteran generals had summoned their old subordinates from various regions into the garrison city, clearly preparing for a fight to the death. Liu Chengzong sent letters urging surrender, but no one responded.

So later he granted their wish, turned around, and dispatched troops to encircle them from north and south.

To the south were Zhang Zhen's Yanqing Brigade, Ding Guodong, Mi Layin, Dorji Taiji, plus the troops of Hun Tianxing Hui Dengxiang and Man Tianxing Zhou Qing from Hengshan.

To the north were Liu Fangming, Ma Xiantu, Xu Yong, and Wang Yuncheng from Ningxia, plus three battalions under Ren Quan'er of the Second Brigade standing watch.

Of course, with so many men surrounding the place, they weren't just standing idle. The key rear-area grain transport hub was being relocated from Pingliang Prefecture to Qingyang Prefecture to ship grain to Yansui Garrison. These troops, along every small path and military fort, also served to open roads through mountains and build bridges across rivers.

Liu Chengzong, in Yansui, basically didn't get involved in the fighting.

He brought over Chen Qiyu's younger brother Chen Qihuang, established Jingbian County in Hengshan, and made him the county magistrate, organizing manpower and resources to solve the draft-animal problem along the grain route through the Mu Us Sea.

Liu the Lion appeared very relaxed, but inwardly he was not so calm.

Because he had made many preparations and done many things. Although he had pulled his army to Ordos, nominally to attack Yulin City from both inside and out, in reality it was to prepare for a conflict with the Later Jin.

Striking Ningxia first, then Yansui — both were to eliminate future troubles.

Now that those future troubles had been swept away, if Hong Taiji did not send troops, then he would be in a difficult spot.

With the swarming masses of surrendered troops from Ningxia and Yansui, continuing to expand his territory was already unstoppable. He had to fight a battle, and it couldn't be a low-intensity war like the one at Yulin.

If the Later Jin did not come, he would have to strike Shanxi, Henan, or places like Huguang.

In short, war was unavoidable. All he could choose was the opponent.

Right at this critical juncture, Subadi's arrival made Liu Chengzong exceptionally excited.

Upon receiving the news, he handed full authority for besieging Yulin Garrison to Ren Quan'er, the commander of the Second Brigade, and raced toward Guihua City with his core troops.

Although Yang Qi was not in the Inner Mongolia Commandery, Wang Cheng'en, He Huchen, Shatai Taiji, and Erinchen had together governed Inner Mongolia quite well.

At least everywhere Liu the Lion passed, though there was much desert and gobi, every settled tribe had dug canals, built forts, farmed, and herded. They were not destitute — they even looked somewhat more prosperous than Yansui Garrison south of the border wall.

But that was actually an illusion on his part.

The Jinong here, Erinchen, had been the ringleader of the 230,000 households' raid on the Kharchin tribe the previous year, and had reaped the greatest harvest from that campaign.

On Sechen Taiji's advice, that harvest had been bestowed upon the tribespeople. After a year of cattle and sheep breeding, of course the region would display tremendous prosperity and vitality.

Ordos's prosperity came not from anyone's governance or development, but was built upon the raid and plunder that nearly wiped out the Kharchin tribe.

In fact, this very scene likewise gave Jasaghtu Khan Subadi, coming from Outer Mongolia, a fright.

Liu Chengzong was visiting Inner Mongolia for the first time, so he was not deeply struck.

But Subadi had just left last year and was returning this year; he could see the development of the Inner Mongolia Commandery with his own eyes.

When he came last year, Guihua City, aside from being dilapidated from repeated wars, was almost unchanged from before.

And returning this year, Subadi didn't feel much either — it was no different from Outer Mongolia, the same rolling hills and gobi, the same vast land and sparse people.

It was just that the several chiliarch tribes he passed through were all settled and living in peace, with herds of cattle and sheep, looking slightly more prosperous and wealthy.

But it was spring, after all. As the saying goes, "February sheep, toss 'em over the wall" — meaning that without green grass through winter, spring sheep are so thin a man can casually fling one over a wall.

No matter how many livestock there were, seeing each one so gaunt and wretched, they couldn't be called much of a sight.

Only, Subadi knew very well that these changes, occurring among 18,000 Outer Mongolian soldiers, meant the Inner Mongolia Commandery possessed terrifyingly formidable creativity and cohesion.

They had practically built everything from nothing.

Of course, he wouldn't attribute all these changes to Yang Qi. At most, he could only admit that those southern barbarians under Liu Chengzong were truly formidable.

Weren't they barbaric enough? The Kharchin tribe, a legend of the Inner Mongolian steppe — a tribe that huge — gone, just fucking gone, like it was nothing.

Subadi knew very well the legendary story of Subudi building the Kharchin tribe.

It wasn't that they had any personal ties, but rather that their surnames were different, yet their names were the same — both meant "treasure."

It's hard for a person not to notice someone who shares his name.

Subudi's experience building the Kharchin was indeed legendary. He was like a Mongol version of Lü Bu — starting as a minor frontier official, weighing advantages and shifting allegiances, serving Ding Yuan only to kill Ding Yuan, serving Dong Zhuo only to kill Dong Zhuo, ultimately being enfeoffed as Marquis of Wen and controlling the court.

Subudi was the same: as the Kharchin son-in-law, he served the Kharchin Khan Laskhab, then later pushed Laskhab aside; received Ming enfeoffment as Duoyan Commander, yet sent troops to follow the Later Jin in attacking the Ming; formed an alliance with Hong Taiji, yet also dispatched troops to plunder Hong Taiji, ultimately making his son the Khan of the Kharchin.

Subadi's surname was Borjigin, while Subudi's was Uriankhai — and precisely because of this, Subadi, who came from great noble stock, appreciated Subudi all the more. After all, he was not his sovereign lord anyway.

It was just like back when Lü Bu was alive and everyone had "the valor of Dove-Tiger" on their lips.

Anyway, I'm no Ding Yuan or Dong Zhuo.

In the end, the vast estate a man as formidable as Subudi had built up over a lifetime was blown apart by those savages under Yang Yao.

Of course, everyone knew it wasn't actually the Han soldiers — "Liu Chengzong's southern savages" in Subadi's mind — who did it.

In truth, it was the retainers their own Three Khans of the Northern Desert had left in the Southern Desert who swept up Ordos Jinong Erinchen and went on a wave of burning, killing, and plundering.

But Subadi didn't believe it.

My own retainers — don't I know how much nerve and how much skill they have?

They could pull off something that big? Pure bullshit bragging!

It had to be those Han soldiers under Liu Chengzong who fear no gods or buddhas above and show no reverence for the emperor below!

After all, the ferocity of that bunch was plain for all the great nobles of the western Northern Desert to see. Even someone as hard-nosed as Baatur Khong Tayiji of the Oirats had been beaten into submission. That his men went and dealt with the Kharchin, who had the Later Jin backing them — wasn't that entirely expected?

Subadi even felt Liu Chengzong had the makings of a true lord. Just look — the cattle and sheep the Han soldiers seized on campaign were all distributed among our own retainers. This Han Khan really treats us Mongols well!

But when Subadi entered the river loop through the mountain pass in northern Wuyuan, the scene before his eyes truly stunned him.

As far as the eye could see, mountain roads hewn as if by axe and blade snaked through the ranges. Every commanding height on every peak looked like a small worksite; beside crude wooden stockades, men led mules hauling bricks and stone from the foothills up to the summits. Blockhouses and beacon towers were rising everywhere, all under construction.

The raw logs cleared from the mountain roads were piled at the foothills to season, and some had already been used to erect a sprawling wooden wall across the low mountain passes.

From Langshan to Yinshan, such works were everywhere — a colossal project that laid bare an ambition far beyond Yang Yao's means.

In reality, though, the scale of work at the Southern Desert Commandery was not as immense as it looked.

The river-loop region at the core of the Southern Desert Commandery, where the four garrison towns of Yunzhong, Wuyuan, Shuofang, and Yanmen lay, happened to overlap on its periphery with the ancient Zhao and Qin Great Walls.

Remnants of the Han Great Wall existed too, but the Han wall was rammed earth on flat ground. After a thousand years of wind, rain, heat, and cold, it grew no grass and made for comfortable travel, so it was constantly trampled by men and horses.

The surviving remnants today are mostly only one or two chi high. Everyone takes them as a gift of nature — roads naturally formed across the steppe.

They were merely clearing mountain paths, patching and mending along the long-abandoned traces of the ancient walls, building kilns at the foothills, and constructing a few fortresses and beacon towers in the mountains.

Even so, because of the Commandery's extremely low productivity and Yang Yao's flight back to Xi'an with his tail between his legs, in the western sector nothing was really finished except the wooden wall at the mountain pass — the beacon towers and blockhouses were basically all incomplete.

The Daqing Mountains defense line in the east, however, which was under the charge of Chogtu Taiji, was progressing quite well, since many Han people from Shanxi had fled beyond the passes last year to escape the plague, providing considerable manpower.

The whole business was, in truth, utterly fucked.

The plague's origin was most likely the former Kharchin lands. The war had left many dead; the survivors had nothing to eat. Fleas carrying the disease bit the rats, the rats were eaten by people, the infected people passed it to the soldiers beyond the passes, who were then bitten by fleas again, and finally swarms of rats followed the water sources south into Shanxi.

As a result, the common folk of Shanxi, fleeing the plague, in turn ran to the sparsely populated lands beyond the passes.

But however it happened, the wide-open, thinly peopled environment beyond the passes, and bodies that had not yet suffered a great epidemic, did offer a certain resistance to the disease's spread.

A common situation beyond the passes was that the plague would come and go without anyone ever knowing it had arrived.

After all, one infection, and a winter pasture was simply gone — the living and the dead parted forever.

And within the ring of mountain fortresses, vast tracts of wasteland along both banks of the Yellow River in the river loop had been opened up for cultivation. Everywhere were earthen forts, farmland, dwellings, and dugout pits. City walls were even being raised by rammed-earth construction. Felt tents spread across the land, cattle and sheep moved in herds — it all looked exactly like a settled life taking root beyond the frontier.

Even the breach in the city wall of Guihua City had been repaired.

In particular, after entering the river loop, every settlement they passed had a small, square garrison fort beside it. The forts used raw logs for palisades and rammed earth for walls. Red-barbarian-style lion cannons sat atop the walls, and inside the forts were stationed Han troops in bright, distinct armor, with coiled-dragon banners planted on the walls.

This sight truly shook Subadi to the core.

He pondered privately: given the Commandery's heavy emphasis on defensive measures, even if Emperor Chongde launched a campaign this year, he might not necessarily fight his way into the river loop. In that case, his Jasaghtu Khanate ought to head south and lend a fist.

Scrounging some army provisions to eat was secondary.

The key thing was that he could see the Southern Desert Commandery truly had the ability to hold the Southern Desert long-term amid the chaos.

Subadi was not like the others on the Mongol steppe — he had gone to Xining and met Liu Chengzong.

That young Duntai Khan commanded ten thousand tents of mighty warriors and possessed a shaman's arts to command smallpox. Though he humbled himself and lay low in a crude place, his heroic bearing was radiant, and he made no effort to hide his ambition to lead Han troops, unite the Mongols, and achieve a great enterprise.

He even, like a true shaman, uttered a prophecy with bewitching words: the day the Jurchen lorded over the Mongols would be the moment to seize real power and strike a fatal blow.

That prophecy was now coming true. The Khans of the Khorchin and the Kharchin had "voluntarily" shed their khan titles and accepted official posts and noble ranks from the Daicing Gurun.

To Subadi, of course, that prophecy was bullshit.

Let's be honest — didn't you, Liu Chengzong, also grant noble titles to all those Oirat nobles? And the titles you gave were low ones at that. The Daicing Gurun could enfeoff the Khorchin Khan as a prince of the blood.

And what title did you, Duntai Khan, give Baatur Khong Tayiji?

A mere count!

The only difference was that you didn't abolish noble titles like taiji.

Yet it was precisely because of this that, when Sholui heard the news that Emperor Chongde was going to mobilize troops, he immediately had Babu bring word to Subadi, and Subadi in turn passed it on to Liu Chengzong.

Whether Mongol titles were abolished or not mattered little to Subadi. The men directly under his own headquarters numbered only six thousand, but the retainers of the nobles under him could field sixty thousand troops. Even after leaving six thousand men in the Southern Desert, he could still march more than fifty thousand.

Even if he got a second-rank prince title from Emperor Chongde and his own core power was somewhat weakened under centralization, it could hardly be called a crippling blow or a loss of face.

Subadi had never enjoyed centralized rule to begin with. He was simply a noble confederation leader propped up by great and small nobles alike.

Sholui was different.

The Sechen Khanate had no great nobles, nor even any large tribes — only a few tribes that had once been subordinate to the Chahar. The Sechen were themselves a single tribe, and Sholui was the sovereign lord of forty thousand troops.

For Sholui, therefore, accepting the Later Jin's policy of abolishing khan titles, splitting tribes, and centralizing power was fundamentally impossible.

In fact, were it not for fear of Later Jin retaliation, and the Marshal Manor's territory being too weak to extend to the Greater Khingan Range and provide him reinforcements, the mere matter of the Khorchin Khan's title being abolished upon Emperor Chongde's enthronement would have been enough to make Sholui march against the Daicing Gurun.

Subadi, by contrast, who had long since allied with Liu Chengzong, was not particularly enthusiastic about this campaign.

He had merely come to see the situation in the Southern Desert and fulfill an ally's duty to the Commandery — lest Liu Chengzong and Yang Yao be caught off guard and let the Eight Banners of the Daicing Gurun seize Guihua City, which would then leave his own Jasaghtu Khanate unsafe.

But the further he traveled, the more Subadi's heart pounded with unease, because he was seeing more and more Han troops.

At Chilechuan beneath the Yinshan Mountains, he saw vast, sprawling encampments of Han troops firmly ring-guarding Qingcheng within them.

From a distance, a column of cavalry rode out from Guihua City, galloping ten li beyond the walls to welcome him.

The two men at the head dismounted. One, a big bearded fellow in an iron helmet with a bow and saber, said nothing. The other, Subadi recognized — it was the former Grand Jaisang of the Chahar, Goltu Sechen.

He watched as the latter dismounted and saluted: "Gao Letu, Jaisang of the Duntai Ulus Khanate Court and Squad Commander of the Tiger Guard Battalion, pays his respects to the Jasaghtu Khan."

Having said that, he gestured toward the iron-hatted man beside him and introduced: "This is the Ministry of Rites Minister of the Marshal's Mansion and Western Brigade Commander Zhang Xianzhong, sent by the Great Khan's order to welcome you."

Zhang Xianzhong then cupped his fists and gave a slight bow.

Before Subadi's mind could recover from the shock of seeing the Chahar Jaisang.

He saw Gao Letu turn aside, stretch out a hand toward the city gate, and say: "The Khitan Khan has been waiting for you in the Great Temple for a long time already."

Subadi's eyes widened even further: Liu, Liu Chengzong has come?

Such a massive mobilization — how did he know Huang Taiji was about to launch troops against the Southern Desert!

Could he really be a shaman?