Chapter 719: Chaos in Shanxi

Outside the borders of Yunzhou in April.

Vultures circled above the Yan Mountains, occasionally casting vast shadows onto the grasslands.

At the field encampment, Fu Renxi, dressed in a crimson round-collared official robe, sat astride his horse outside the camp gate, flanked by over a dozen household retainers and clerks.

Watching Grand Marshal Liu Chengzong emerge from the command gate to receive him in the near distance, Fu Renxi felt prickly all over; inside his wide sleeve, his hand clutched a face-covering black cloth.

He didn't know why, but psychologically he always felt that when meeting Liu Chengzong, he ought to have that face cloth properly on.

This meeting, however, was official business — dispatched by Governor-General Liang Tingdong — so there was no need for skulking and hiding.

Liu Chengzong came out to greet him without showing much warmth, simply handling it as official business, indifferently having someone put away the gifts Fu Renxi had brought.

This left Fu Renxi inwardly somewhat surprised — not even catching up on old times?

But moments later, Liu Chengzong sent someone to invite him into the tent.

Once inside the command tent, Liu the Lion's expression finally came alive; he clapped Fu Renxi on the shoulder and laughed, "Not bad, this official robe — you've made it to crimson. Outside just now, it wasn't about being distant; with those household retainers and clerks behind you, I had no way of knowing how many were the Governor-General's men, and I worried about bringing you trouble."

"That's hardly—"

Fu Renxi hadn't taken it seriously at first, thinking to himself: what Ming general these days didn't have a few quirks?

He, Fu Renxi, in these three garrisons of Shanxi along the central three frontiers, commanded the finest troops — it was foreseeable that over the coming year, he would be the foremost warrior.

Never mind that he was merely fairly familiar with Liu Chengzong; even if he were Liu Chengzong's former subordinate, the court, and Governor-General Liang Tingdong in particular, wouldn't do anything to him over it.

But the boast reached his lips and Fu Renxi still swallowed it, smiling sheepishly and cupping his hands. "Many thanks for the Grand Marshal's consideration."

He smiled. "Governor-General Liang overthinks things; it's no trouble for me. It's just that the household retainers are all my esteemed father-in-law's family soldiers — he doesn't understand the Marshal's character."

Liu Chengzong had already heard from Gao Xian about Fu Renxi marrying a daughter of the Sun clan. He nodded and smiled. "So, not drilling firearms troops anymore, but using landlord militia instead? You, Marshal Fu, are a man of many talents."

The two exchanged a few jokes, and the estrangement of years without meeting melted away; Fu Renxi relaxed.

With an expression that said "you don't get it, Marshal," he spoke in earnest. "I've come solely on Governor-General Liang's orders, hoping the Marshal will give me an honest answer: are these tens of thousands of troops encamped beyond the frontier meant to strike Shanxi?"

"Me, strike Shanxi?"

Liu Chengzong looked at Fu Renxi as if he were a fool. "If I wanted to strike, I'd have done it long ago. The border wall can't even stop the eastern raiders — you think it could stop me?"

Hearing this, Fu Renxi was completely reassured.

In truth, he believed those words even more than Liu Chengzong did.

What Liu the Lion was thinking was that every trade has its specialty — the border wall couldn't stop the eastern raiders, but it might very well stop him.

The Eight Banners troops were specialists in storming walls, each man equipped with thick-backed mountain-cleaving blades and axes, iron hooks, four steel chisels, and forty ropes for scaling and tearing down fortifications — his Marshal's Army truly hadn't made such preparations.

What they drilled was mounting horses and crossing mountains and rivers as if on level ground; the Great Wall had never even entered their consideration as a hypothetical enemy.

In fact, back when Liu Chengzong was in Shaanxi, that secondary border wall the Ming had built had at one point helped him obstruct the frontier army's movements.

What proper man spends his days scheming to tear down the walls his ancestors built? What, am I trying to get out?

Even now, with Liu the Lion outside the Great Wall, deep down he didn't feel the Wall was there to stop him. In fact, after spending so long in the wilds, glimpsing the Wall in the distance even stirred a faint sense of security in his heart.

Home was on the other side.

Seeing the Great Wall, he knew he wasn't far from home.

For Fu Renxi, his visit this time was actually because Liu Chengzong had previously sent word to Liang Tingdong, requesting court gazettes and intelligence reports under the name of Prince of Obedience Yang Qi.

Liang Tingdong knew the message was from Liu Chengzong, and Liu Chengzong knew that Liang Tingdong would know it was him.

Using Yang Qi's name was simply a pretext to make both sides comfortable.

But Liang Tingdong hadn't just prepared a pile of intelligence reports and court gazettes to help the news-starved Liu Chengzong catch up — he'd also conveniently sent Fu Renxi along.

Just to see whether Liu Chengzong was trustworthy, and whether he had any intention of attacking Shanxi.

If not, all the better.

If so, then let him take grain, take silver, take medicinal supplies, and instead of fighting, just come straight in to provide disaster relief.

"The Marshal may not know — never mind the immobile border wall; even the mobile frontier army couldn't stop you."

Fu Renxi's words sounded somewhat fawning, but to Liu the Lion's ears, the tone held more sorrow: "The bubonic plague has devastated the central three garrisons and Shanxi."

At present, Xuanfu, Datong, and Yunzhou together had twenty-four battalions of mobile forces. Fu Renxi's Governor's-Standard Battalion ranked in the top three by troop strength, and because of its numbers, people called it the 'Great Battalion.'

Yet his 'Great Battalion,' at full authorized strength, numbered only two thousand four hundred and forty men.

In terms of combat power, his Governor's-Standard Battalion — cobbled together from the landlord militia provided by his father-in-law and the other gentry of Daizhou — was the finest in the three garrisons, purely because they'd eaten their fill and had ample strength over the past year.

The remaining battalions, nearly twenty of them, had all been reduced to fifteen hundred men due to shortfalls. Even so, over a dozen battalions couldn't meet that number — the least were short forty or fifty men, the worst short three or four hundred.

As for mounts, they had to count mules and camels just to scrape together the regulation ratio of seven infantry to three cavalry.

Compared to those battalions, Fu Renxi's Governor's-Standard Battalion had both his veterans who'd followed him through feast and famine, and the Daizhou gentry's militia. Over twenty-four hundred men on the roster, more than a thousand long muskets, fourteen hundred warhorses alone — counting mules, it came out to one mount per man.

With that, of course they were the finest in the three garrisons.

This wasn't because he was strong, but because others lacked the support of landlords and gentry. Once the bubonic plague wreaked its havoc, supplies fell short everywhere — everything was in chaos.

By his estimate, at this point, never mind Liu Chengzong — even if some random person pulled together three thousand men, they could rampage across Shanxi.

Fu Renxi brought up the bubonic plague and sighed heavily. "The north is in chaos, the south is finished too — the White Lotus Sect has risen in Pingyang and Lu'an prefectures..."

The White Lotus Sect?

Liu Chengzong unconsciously raised an eyebrow; it sounded like the chaos in Shanxi owed something to his own handiwork.

Hearing the situation, he asked with a complicated expression, "The bubonic plague in Shanxi — it hasn't ended yet?"

He thought to himself, that shouldn't be. Tong Pass was a choke point and should have been worse than other places, yet even so, around the New Year, the plague on both sides of the pass had gradually subsided.

According to Zhang Tianlin's observations, the bubonic plague had vanished from the plateau east of Tong Pass not because the plague feared spring, but because the infected fleas, rats, and people had all basically stayed still around the New Year.

Those that stayed still forever were dead; those still alive didn't run around during the New Year either. It was bitterly cold outside, and with bandits and local ruffians roaming everywhere, everyone stayed inside the fortified villages. Once the source of infection was gone, the disease was gone.

By all rights, the situation in Shanxi should have been about the same.

"It ended, but last year's fields went fallow."

Fu Renxi spread his hands. "Landlords, gentry, even tenant farmers — they were all inside their estates and fortified villages. It all depended on how well they'd managed in previous years. If they'd managed well, they could still scrape by now; if they'd managed poorly, they couldn't go on."

"But the peasants who owned their own land..."

Fu Renxi shook his head. "Last month, Grand Coordinator Wu sent a memorial to the court — multiple counties reported cannibalism. He hoped the Emperor would allocate funds for disaster relief. The Emperor just allocated thirty-five thousand taels, and damn it, before it even arrived, the eastern caitiffs breached the border."

Listening to his account, Liu Chengzong's brow furrowed tightly. He asked, "The Grand Coordinator is Wu Sheng?"

Fu Renxi nodded.

"Tough. Back then he requested a hundred thousand taels of silver for Shaanxi relief, and the moment it reached the localities it was carved up clean... but even a drop in the bucket, you still have to relieve. If a single dan of grain reaches the mouths of the starving, it's still a good deed."

Liu Chengzong was fairly clear on Wu Sheng's disaster relief work in Shaanxi five years ago; he knew the man was a capable official.

But the disaster in Shaanxi back then was not something a hundred thousand taels of silver could solve at all.

To put it bluntly, although the drought was severe, drought was something human effort could address.

What truly made things worse for Shaanxi back then were mutinous starving soldiers like themselves, who smashed Shaanxi to utter ruin.

In fact, of Wu Sheng's hundred thousand taels, four thousand were specifically allocated to repair the post stations Liu Chengzong had wrecked. In the end, although Liu Chengzong left, Gao Yingxiang subsequently emerged from Lion's Gully and destroyed the post stations all over again.

Fu Renxi was about to speak when he heard Liu Chengzong ask, "What's the price of grain in Shanxi?"

"In Taiyuan city, one dou of millet is seven qian of silver."

That's seven taels per dan.

Five thousand dan of grain, at the relief ration of three dou per adult and one dou five sheng per child, would be enough for roughly twenty thousand famine victims for one month.

Fu Renxi didn't take these words seriously, just shook his head and said, "It was originally five qian per dou. The moment news broke that the eastern caitiffs had broken through the pass, grain prices flipped and surged upward. They don't even look — what is there in Shanxi worth looting right now? Even the eastern caitiffs don't bother looting it, and they still raise grain prices."

"From what you're saying, Ajige didn't pillage Shanxi after breaking through?"

He had remembered Ajige.

This fellow had finished spouting threats at him outside the border, then turned and bolted inside the border. Liu the Lion really wanted to catch him.

"They pillaged. Entered the border from Yunzhou, ravaged the countryside along the way, but didn't get much."

"They attacked the forts at Yunzhou, Chicheng, Yangtian, and Changzhongdi but couldn't take any of them — except Diaoyao Fort."

Fu Renxi shook his head. "They lost many men to cannon fire. The eastern caitiffs were enraged, combined three columns to attack, set fire to the gate tower, used tube-carts to breach the walls while scavenging refugees, seized the chance to scale the walls, and massacred the fort."

"Diaoyao Fort?"

Liu Chengzong had never heard the name. He turned to search the map in the tent, tracing the forts Fu Renxi had named in sequence, and said, "The eastern caitiffs wanted to enter Huailai?"

Diaoyao Fort lay west of Longmen River, guarding Huailai's northeastern gate and also holding the vital route from Yanqing to Xuanfu.

"They may have wanted to go through Xuanfu into Yuzhou in Shanxi, but they were badly hurt. After taking Diaoyao Fort, they burned the corpses beneath the walls, packed the ashes into sacks, turned east, and headed for Yanqing."

"Used sacks to pack the ashes?"

Liu the Lion thought to himself, those looting sacks sure are multi-purpose.

Fu Renxi nodded, not understanding why Liu Chengzong was so astonished by this, and simply said, "They lost men and didn't want the government troops to claim the heads, so they burned the corpses on the spot, divided the ashes into sacks, and each took their own back."

"I've heard that if the battle is urgent and there's no time to set fire and burn the corpses, the eastern caitiffs will cut off the heads of their battle-dead and take them away."

Fu Renxi shook his head, a complicated expression on his face — wanting to laugh but too pained to do so — and said, "Wang Pu told me. He said he once fought a minor victory. The eastern caitiffs took the corpses and fled. He pursued them to their camp, and all that was left were dozens of headless bodies. When it came time for the Ministry of War to record merit, seeing no clothes and no heads, they said he killed civilians to claim false merit."

"Whether it was killing civilians to claim false merit, or the eastern caitiffs cut off their own heads — anyway, those headless ones can't speak. Only Wang Pu himself knows."

As he spoke, Commander-in-Chief Fu sighed and suddenly asked, "I've heard that the Grand Marshal's side doesn't count merit by heads. How then do you assess the merits of officers?"

"It's different. We've been expanding continuously here. Recording merit mainly relies on... making do." Liu the Lion thought for a moment, weighing his words, but couldn't find a better term. "As long as you can win."

The Marshal's Manor recorded merit based on victorious battles, while for rank-and-file soldiers, the three commanding officers of their squad were responsible.

This rather crude method of recording merit was actually less scientific than the head-count system.

The very existence of the phrase "killing civilians to claim false merit" shows there was a system, laws, investigations, and punishments.

The Marshal's Manor was different — institutionally, they guaranteed the army's efficiency at looting.

After all, the environment and circumstances they faced were different. If the Great Ming used their methods, it would collapse immediately; if they used the Great Ming's methods, they'd be finished just as fast.

Fu Renxi seemed deeply stirred by this matter and asked, "And what if you can't win?"

"A battle you can't win — why fight it? Then don't fight. Run. If that won't do, scatter and flee."

Liu Chengzong took this matter in stride. Ultimately, he had the confidence to control his army — confidence that came not only from his own strength, prestige, and ability, but also from the external threats to the Marshal's Army that never ceased.

Fu Renxi laughed at this, cupped his hands, and said, "Haha, the Grand Marshal speaks bluntly — never fight a battle hard to win. Similar to the tactics of Datong's Commander-in-Chief Wang Pu."

Liu Chengzong was just taking down the map to deduce the Jin army's direction of advance and said offhandedly, "You're close with Wang Pu?"

"To be honest, he's the commander I most wanted to serve under before."

"Oh?"

Liu Chengzong said, puzzled, "I've never heard of Wang Pu having any special qualities. Doesn't seem he's achieved any great merit."

Fu Renxi disagreed and explained, "He's also a fellow townsman, from Suide Garrison. His father was Wang Wei, Commander-in-Chief of Datong during the Wanli reign. He joined the army young to fight the northern caitiffs. By the Tianqi reign, he was already camp commander of Shanxi's Main Army Camp. Later he went to Liaodong and the Capital Camp, never fought in Shaanxi — it's normal the Grand Marshal isn't familiar with him."

"This man is very skilled at war, and he bears hardship without complaint. Wherever the court points, he goes."

Liu the Lion laughed. "Isn't that Cao Wenzhao?"

"Not the same."

Fu Renxi laughed too and shook his head. "Neither of them deliberately wastes time on the road, but Cao Wenzhao fights the moment he arrives. Wang Pu arrives, looks around first, and only fights battles he can win. If the odds aren't good, he'll shoulder the blame and avoid battle. If there's a chance, he withdraws on his own and waits for another opportunity."

What he didn't say was that this habit was actually something Wang Pu developed after taking command of the Capital Camp.

Because the camp was full of nobles and their kin in droves. As long as those soldiers didn't die, even if they ran or retreated, there'd be ten thousand uncles and relatives pleading for leniency.

If they fought and half died, would he even dare return to the capital?

"So being his soldier is comfortable. You suffer some marching hardship, but don't have to fear throwing your life away in vain."

Of course, Fu Renxi's relationship with Wang Pu now was that of colleagues; he no longer liked Wang Pu quite so much.

He much preferred ruthless types like Cao Wenzhao, Deng Qi, and Zuo Liangyu as colleagues — the kind who pounce and fight, and if they can't win, die.

Liu Chengzong made marks on the map and looked up. "If he keeps this up, sooner or later his fate is to be sliced to death. How to fight a war isn't up to him — this is courting death... Don't you learn from him."

Having said that, he pointed at the map. "The eastern caitiffs have entered Yanqing, so next they'll strike Juyong Pass and enter the capital region. They most likely won't exit via Xuan-Da. I'll also shift my forces eastward."

"All you Shanxi troops should be redeployed to the capital region to serve the king. Go back and tell Grand Coordinator Liang that I have no intention of attacking Shanxi. Let him focus on defending against the caitiffs. Also."

Liu the Lion tapped the desk with his hand. "When you return, send someone on my behalf to find Shanxi's Grand Coordinator Wu Sheng. He's a capable disaster-relief official. Have him give me a set of Shanxi disaster-relief regulations, or compile the relief affairs into a book and send it to Hancheng. Have Zuo Maodi deliver it to me."

"In exchange, if Shanxi needs disaster relief, you can have him send his fleet to Hancheng to buy grain. Disaster relief is a good deed. Though my grain stores are not plentiful, I can spare thirty or fifty thousand dan. Three... forget it, make it two taels per dan."