20demayo Chapter 28 Dividing the Troops and Heading North
Chapter 28 Dividing the Troops and Heading North
November 7th, the fifteenth year of Chongzhen's reign, at the end of the Wei hour.
The thin ice on the official road outside the north gate of Yangzhou was shattered by the trampling of two thousand iron cavalry. The sound of hooves rolled over the frozen earth like muffled thunder, startling crows into flight. Li Ce led the way, his black cloak billowing in the north wind, revealing the dark chainmail underneath.
He had been running continuously for three hours.
The journey from Yangzhou to Huai'an was 180 li, and the horses were changed four times along the way. The old postmaster at the post station trembled as he led out the six best horses and knelt by the roadside, not daring to raise his head—the emperor himself had come to change the horses, something that had never happened in the 270-year history of the Ming Dynasty.
"Your Majesty," Zhou Zhen, the captain of the personal guards, caught up, his voice faltering in the wind, "Brothers...it's time to rest! The horses...the horses are about to die!"
Li Ce reined in his horse.
The warhorse reared up, let out a long neigh, and spewed out large puffs of white vapor from its mouth and nose. He looked back and saw that the cavalry formation behind him had stretched out in a long line, with some riders panting on their backs and some horses foaming at the corners of their mouths.
Two thousand men and two thousand horses, the once orderly formation that set out from Yangzhou, now shows signs of fatigue.
"What's ahead?" he asked.
"The boundary marker of Gaoyou Lake." Zhou Zhen wiped the ice from his face. "Ten miles further... there's an abandoned post station that can be sheltered from the wind."
Li Ce looked up at the sky. The leaden-gray clouds hung low, and the north wind was stronger, whipping up the fine snow from the ground, which stung his face like needles.
"Give the order," his voice hoarse, "to rest at the delivery post for half an hour. Feed the horses, give them dry rations, and do not light any fires."
"Yes, sir!"
At 2:45 PM, the abandoned delivery station at Gaoyou Lake.
This place was originally a transit point during the heyday of the Grand Canal transport, with three courtyards and a stable that could hold a hundred horses. Now, the walls are half collapsed, and rubble is everywhere, with only the beams and pillars of the main hall barely holding on.
The cavalrymen huddled in the dilapidated hut, loosening their armor to reveal their sweat-soaked and frozen undergarments. Some pulled cold, hard flatbreads from their saddlebags and ate them with cold water from their leather pouches. No one spoke, only the sounds of chewing and suppressed coughs.
Li Ce sat on the threshold of the main hall and untied the leather pouch from his waist. The water had frozen into a thin layer of ice; he shook it vigorously and tilted his head back to gulp it down. The icy cold stung his throat, but it cleared his groggy mind somewhat.
Zhou Zhen brought over a slightly warm flatbread—warmed by his body heat.
"Your Majesty, please have something to eat."
Li Ce took it, broke off half, and handed it back: "You eat some too."
The two ate their flatbreads with cold water. The flatbreads were brought from Yangzhou; they were mixed with bran and were rough and chewy. Li Ce chewed slowly, his gaze fixed on the dry well in the courtyard. The moss along the well's edge had long since withered, and the rope of the well pulley was broken in half, swaying in the wind.
"Zhou Zhen," he suddenly asked, "how many years have you been with me?"
Zhou Zhen was taken aback: "In the eighth year of Chongzhen's reign, His Majesty promoted me to the rank of centurion in the Embroidered Uniform Guard. This year... marks seven years."
"Seven years," Li Ce repeated the number. "In these seven years, do you think I've been a good emperor?"
Zhou Zhen's hand trembled, and he almost dropped the pancake. He hurriedly knelt down: "Your Majesty! Your subject..."
"Get up." Li Ce raised his hand to help him up. "There are no outsiders here. Tell the truth."
Zhou Zhen slowly rose, head bowed, and after a long while said, "Your Majesty... Your Majesty is not good at speaking eloquently. I only know that in the eighth year of Chongzhen's reign, Shaanxi suffered a severe drought, and Your Majesty allocated 100,000 taels of silver from the Imperial Treasury for disaster relief. I was the one who escorted it. I personally witnessed those people kneeling by the official road shouting 'Long live the Emperor!'"
He paused, his voice even lower:
"But I also witnessed... In the eleventh year of Chongzhen's reign, the Xuanfu Mutiny occurred. The garrison commander withheld military pay, forcing the soldiers to rob grain stores. Your Majesty ordered the execution of the garrison commander, but those soldiers who robbed the grain... also killed thirty-seven of them."
Li Ce remained silent.
He remembered that incident. After the mutiny was quelled, the commander-in-chief of Xuanfu reported that the thirty-seven mutinous soldiers had been executed according to military law, and their heads displayed publicly. He wrote two words on the report: "Understood."
Three words, thirty-seven lives.
"Do you think I made a mistake in killing him?" he asked.
"Your Majesty, I dare not." Zhou Zhen shook his head. "Military law dictates that we must kill them. But I was in Xuanfu at the time and heard those soldiers shouting before they died... shouting, 'My mother at home is starving to death. We soldiers don't get enough to eat, and we'll die even if we steal grain. Either way, we're going to die.'"
The wind blew in through the broken window, causing dust to fly everywhere in the room.
Li Ce's hand, holding the pancake, tightened slightly. Crumbs fell through his fingers.
"Zhou Zhen," he said softly, "believe it or not, I had a dream."
"Dream?"
"In my dream, I hanged myself on an old locust tree on Coal Hill. Below me was Beijing, a city ablaze with fire, and the rebel leader's flag was raised above Zhengyang Gate." Li Ce's voice drifted on. "I looked down and saw that Jiangnan was still in a state of peace and prosperity, that Yangzhou salt merchants spent three hundred taels of silver on a single banquet, that the Suzhou textile bureau's newly arrived silks were piling up in warehouses, and that in the painted boats of the Qinhuai River in Nanjing, scholars were still debating how to break down the eight-legged essay..."
He paused:
"I've been thinking, for whom am I, the emperor? For the starving people? For the soldiers who died in battle? Or... for these people who live in a life of pleasure and revelry?"
Zhou Zhen opened his mouth, but couldn't say a word.
Li Ce laughed, a bitter laugh: "So this time on my southern tour, I'm determined to personally tear away the veil of beauty that is Jiangnan. I want to show those people just how red the blood in the north truly is; and to show them where all that silver and grain should go."
He stood up and brushed the dust off his robe:
"Send word to continue the journey. We must cross the Huai River before midnight tonight."
At the same time, in the backyard of the Yangzhou Salt Administration Office.
Empress Zhou pushed open the window of the east wing. The wintersweet outside the window had bloomed, its pale yellow buds crowned with frost and snow, gleaming in the twilight. She reached out and plucked a branch, placing it in a celadon vase on the table.
Yunniang brought in a food box and saw the Empress standing by the window in a daze. She said softly, "Your Majesty, please have some dinner."
The food box contained only a bowl of white rice, a plate of stir-fried bean sprouts, a plate of pickled cucumbers, and a bowl of steamed egg custard.
The Empress sat down but didn't touch her chopsticks: "Has the price of rice in the city come down?"
"It's gone down," Yunniang reported. "This noon, the official price of rice at the eight major markets was one tael and two mace per shi. By late afternoon, seven rice shops had quietly lowered it to one tael and one mace. Zhao Laosi's shop simply lowered it to one tael."
"What about the price of salt?"
"The official salt, which costs ten coins a pound, sold three thousand pounds today. Smugglers don't dare to come openly, but secretly... there are still people selling it for fifteen coins a pound."
The Empress picked up a bean sprout with her chopsticks and chewed slowly. The bean sprouts were crisp and sweet, sprouted from local Yangzhou soybeans. She recalled that when she was in Beijing, the only vegetables available in winter were stored cabbage and radishes, and green was a rare sight.
"Yunniang," she suddenly asked, "what exactly do you think the people want?"
Yunniang paused, then said, "This servant is foolish... perhaps it means being well-fed, clothed, and living in peace and contentment?"
"Yes, it's that simple." The Empress put down her chopsticks. "But even something as simple as this has become increasingly difficult to accomplish in the 270 years of the Ming Dynasty."
She stood up and walked to the desk. On the desk were three lists: one was the "List of Candidates for the Salt Industry Supervision Committee," with twelve names, all of whom were small and medium-sized salt merchants who had a grudge against the Wang family or had been suppressed; another was the "List of Representatives of Yangzhou Saltworkers," with thirty-seven people, divided by salt fields; and the last was the "List of Representatives of Canal Workers," which had just been delivered this morning, with eighteen people, two selected from each wharf.
"Pass down the message," she said, circling five names on the supervisory committee list. "Tomorrow morning at Chenshi (7-9 AM), I will meet with these five families in the second hall of the yamen. Also, have representatives from the saltworkers and canal workers come, entering through the side door, without making a sound."
"Yes," Yunniang hesitated. "Your Highness, seeing so many people at once, wouldn't that be...?"
"I don't have time to talk to each family individually," the Empress shook her head. "Although the Wang family has fallen, there are still countless eyes watching the salt fields, the docks, and the shops. If we act quickly, these people will feel at ease sooner; if we are slow, some may take desperate measures."
She paused, then took out the half of the tiger tally from her bosom, rubbing its cool bronze surface:
"His Majesty entrusted Jiangnan to me, and I cannot allow him to turn back and find a mess to be found."
At 7 PM, the Shaobo section of the Grand Canal.
Three hundred cargo boats formed a winding ribbon of light in the night. Lanterns at the bows swayed in the cold wind, reflecting shimmering light onto the river. Chen Zizhuang stood at the bow of the lead boat, his scarlet robe now replaced with dark blue cotton armor—to avoid being noticed while sailing at night.
"Sir," the boat captain leaned closer, lowering his voice, "the Shaobo Lock is just ahead. According to the rules, it closes at 9 PM and opens at 5 AM tomorrow. We..."
"No, we won't wait," Chen Zizhuang said decisively. "Tell the gatekeeper to open the gate."
The boatman looked troubled: "Sir, Liu, the gatekeeper at Shaobo Lock... is a notorious miser. He charges two taels of silver per boat to pass through, and if you don't pay, he can make you wait for three days."
Chen Zizhuang didn't speak, but took something from his robes and handed it to his personal guard: "Take this. Tell him that if the gate isn't opened within an incense stick's time, I'll chop off his head and hang it on the gate tower."
It was a gilded bronze plaque, with "Imperial Envoy" engraved on the front and "As if the Emperor were personally present" on the back.
The guards jumped onto the small boat and sped away. A short while later, lights came on in the lock tower, and figures rushed about in a panic. About half an incense stick later, the heavy lock slowly rose with the creaking of the winch.
The fleet passed by in single file.
As Chen Zizhuang passed the sluice gate, he saw a short, stout official kneeling on the bank, kowtowing repeatedly. He ignored him and instead focused his gaze on the row of small boats beside the sluice gate—seven or eight fishing boats with figures on board, seemingly holding long poles and iron hooks.
"Who are those people?" he asked the boatman.
The boat captain's expression changed: "Sir...that's a 'water ghost'."
"A water ghost?"
"We make a living on the canal... we specialize in scuttling boats at night to steal goods." The boat captain's voice trembled. "We usually only dare to target merchant ships, but tonight, with this kind of operation..."
Before the words were even finished, a dark figure suddenly leaped out from a fishing boat!
The dark shape darted into the river like a fish entering water, disappearing without a sound. Immediately afterward, a grain ship in the middle of the fleet jolted violently and began to list!
"Someone's scuttling the ship!" the lookout shouted hoarsely.
Chen Zizhuang's pupils contracted sharply: "Musketeers! Aim underwater and fire freely!"
Twenty newly trained musketeers rushed to the ship's side and raised their flintlock pistols. But the river was pitch black, and they couldn't see anything underwater. Some fired wildly, the muzzles spitting out flashes of light, and the lead bullets hitting the water only splashing up a few drops.
Another muffled thud.
Another grain ship also began to take on water.
"Sir! This won't do!" the boatman cried urgently. "The water monster is underwater; the muskets can't hit it! We need fishing nets and iron hooks—"
Chen Zizhuang gritted his teeth. He knew, of course, that muskets couldn't hit people underwater, but he couldn't just watch the grain ships sink. This grain was the lifeblood of tens of thousands of soldiers at Tongguan!
"Put the small boats down! Anyone who can swim, go down! Fifty taels of silver for each one caught alive! Twenty taels for each one dead!"
Enticed by the generous reward, more than a dozen men from the canal workers leaped out, took off their shirts, and, with short knives in their mouths, jumped into the icy river.
The water suddenly began to churn.
Blood-red bubbles rose intermittently from the murky river surface. People surfaced to breathe, then plunged back down. Corpses floated to the surface, indistinguishable as either water ghosts or canal workers.
Chen Zizhuang stared intently at the river. The third and fourth grain ships were hit one after another. The boatmen frantically bailed water, but the water was coming in too quickly, and the cabins were already half-submerged.
"Sir!" the guard suddenly pointed ahead, "The gate... the gate is about to close!"
Chen Zizhuang looked up sharply—and saw the heavy gate slowly descending! And half of the fleet hadn't even passed yet!
"Liu, the gatekeeper! You're asking for death!" he roared in fury. "Archers! Aim at the gate tower!"
Thirty archers drew their bows and nocked their arrows. However, the gate tower was too far away, and it was dark, so most of the arrows missed their mark.
The gate continued to descend, leaving only a gap about the height of a person.
Just then, a small boat shot towards the lock like an arrow! There were three boatmen on board, two of them rowing frantically, and one standing at the bow, holding a thick bamboo pole with a burning oil can tied to the top!
"Stop them!" someone screamed from the gate tower.
Arrows whizzed towards the small boat. One boatman was struck by an arrow and fell into the water, while another, with three arrows lodged in his back, continued rowing. The man at the bow roared and, as the bamboo pole was about to break, hurled it with all his might!
The oil canister traced an arc and smashed precisely into the gatehouse window!
"boom--"
Flames erupted, instantly engulfing half of the gate tower. Amid screams, the winch went out of control, and the gate stopped falling.
The fleet took the opportunity to pass through at full speed.
Chen Zizhuang took one last look at the small boat—it was engulfed in flames and slowly sank into the river. None of the three canal workers came ashore.
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and when he opened them again, his eyes were filled with icy coldness.
"Order the entire team to speed up. Anyone who obstructs us, whether government officials, soldiers, civilians, or bandits, shall be killed without exception."
At midnight, on the north bank of the Huai River.
Li Ce stood on the riverbank, his horse reined in, as two thousand cavalrymen crossed the river one after another. The Huai River was not wide in this section, but due to the severe cold of the past few days, a thin layer of ice had formed on its surface. Engineers used sledgehammers to break the ice and clear a path, the ice cracking as the horses' hooves trod across it.
There are lights on the other side of the river.
It was a small ferry crossing, with two or three thatched huts and a tattered signboard that read "Zhang's Tea Shop" hanging under the eaves. Even so late, the lights were still on inside.
Zhou Zhen led his men forward to investigate. They returned a moment later with a strange expression: "Your Majesty... there's an old man in the room who says... says he wants to see the Emperor."
Li Ce frowned: "Who is it?"
"He claims his surname is Sun, and he was originally a centurion in Xuzhou Guard. He retired in the 47th year of the Wanli reign and has been running a tea stall here for forty years." Zhou Zhen paused, "He said... he has something he must tell the Emperor in person."
Li Ce dismounted and entered the teahouse.
The shop was small, with only three old tables. A hunchbacked old man sat by an oil lamp, wearing a cotton-padded jacket patched upon patched, holding a chipped ceramic bowl in his hands. When Li Ce entered, he slowly rose, intending to kneel.
"No need for such formalities, sir," Li Ce said, offering a gesture of support. "You said you wanted to see me?"
The old man looked up. He was very old, his face etched with deep wrinkles, but his eyes were still clear and bright. He stared at Li Ce for a long time, then suddenly said:
"So similar...so similar."
"Who does he look like?"
"He resembles Emperor Shenzong," the old man said in a hoarse voice. "In the 28th year of the Wanli reign, Emperor Shenzong made a southern tour and drank a bowl of tea here when he crossed the Huai River. At that time, I was only sixteen years old and had just joined the Xuzhou Guard as a soldier."
Li Ce was taken aback. Wanli's southern tour... that was fifty-four years ago.
"How old is the elderly person?"
"Seventy years old." The old man grinned, revealing his sparse teeth. "I should have died in the Battle of Sarhu in the forty-seventh year of the Wanli reign. But I was lucky; I only lost an arm, rolled down a ravine, and survived."
He raised his left sleeve—it was empty.
Li Ce was silent for a moment: "You said you had something to tell me."
The old man put down the earthenware bowl, walked shakily to the wall, and pulled out an oilcloth bag from behind the stove. He opened it; inside was a booklet, its pages yellowed and brittle, its edges worn.
"These are what I've seen at this ferry crossing over the past forty years since I retired." He handed the booklet to Li Ce. "I've written down everything about the people who crossed the Huai River to the north: what they did, where they went, what they said..."
Li Ce opened it.
The handwriting is crooked, yet each stroke is executed with utmost care:
"On the seventh day of the third month of the first year of the Tianqi reign, twenty-seven people from Liaodong crossed the river, saying that Shenyang had fallen and their fathers and brothers had all died. Women and children wept all day long."
"On the nineteenth day of the tenth month of the third year of Chongzhen's reign, more than a hundred refugees from Shaanxi crossed the river, saying that their hometown was suffering from a severe drought and that people were resorting to cannibalism. There was a woman carrying an infant who was already dead, but she still refused to abandon him."
"On the second day of the twelfth lunar month in the seventh year of Chongzhen's reign, more than thirty defeated soldiers from Xuanfu crossed the river, saying that their commander had embezzled their pay and that the soldiers had not eaten for three days, so they mutinied and looted grain."
Page after page, year after year.
Li Ce turned to the most recent page:
"On the third day of the eleventh month of the fifteenth year of Chongzhen's reign, six secret agents of the Nanjing Imperial Guard crossed the river and reported that the Emperor had been assassinated during his southern tour and that Han Zanzhou had been executed. They also reported that the rebel Li Zicheng had captured Nanyang and that Tongguan was in grave danger."
That concludes the record.
The old man looked at Li Ce and said, "Your Majesty, I don't understand any grand principles. But I've watched this river for forty years and I've come to understand one thing—the Huai River is like the neck of the Ming Dynasty."
He pointed to the dark river outside the door:
"People on the south bank of the river feel that the wars, droughts, and deaths in the north have nothing to do with them. People on the north bank of the river feel that the south is prosperous, peaceful, and full of singing and dancing, a completely different world."
"But what's the reality?" the old man's voice was hoarse. "Blood from the north will flow here, and grain from the south will be transported there. If your neck is broken, your head and body will both die."
Li Ce closed the booklet and held it in his hand. The pages were light, yet weighed as heavily as a thousand pounds.
"Old man," he asked, "tell me, how should I govern this empire?"
The old man shook his head: "I'm just a crippled veteran, how would I know anything about governing a country? But I do know that when I was in the army, there were two things I hated the most: one was when officers withheld my pay, and the other was when the officials in the rear thought it was our duty to risk our lives."
He paused, his cloudy eyes fixed on Li Ce:
"Your Majesty, this time you are heading north to risk your life at Tongguan. But you must let those who risk their lives know that their blood is seen and their country is remembered."
Li Ce remained silent for a long time.
He took out a silver ingot from his pocket—it was given to him by Empress Zhou when he left the capital, ten taels per ingot, five in total, said to be "for emergencies." He placed the silver ingot on the table:
"Old man, I'll buy this teahouse."
The old man was taken aback.
"But this isn't for your retirement." Li Ce turned to Zhou Zhen and said, "Leave two literate brothers here to set up a 'military intelligence post.' From today onward, any refugees, defeated soldiers, or messengers coming from the north to the south can stop here, be given a hot meal, and record what they see and hear. Every three days, send a messenger by fast horse to Yangzhou, and then forward it to Nanjing and Beijing."
Zhou Zhen solemnly replied, "Yes, Your Majesty!"
Li Ce then looked at the old man: "Old man, if you were to serve as my postmaster, your monthly salary would be five taels of silver. Is that even possible?"
The old man stared blankly at the silver ingot on the table, then suddenly burst into tears. He knelt down with a thud, banging his head on the ground:
"Old man... Thank you, Your Majesty! Thank you for still valuing us disabled veterans!"
Li Ce helped him up, said nothing more, and turned to leave the teahouse.
Outside the gate, two thousand cavalrymen had already crossed the river and were lined up in the cold wind, awaiting orders. The horses puffed out white breath, and the soldiers' armor was covered in frost, but their eyes burned with a fire—a fire rekindled after they overheard the emperor and the old man talking outside the teahouse.
Li Ce mounted his horse and took one last look at the south bank of the Huai River.
The night sky over Yangzhou was dark and empty, without stars or moon.
He recalled what Empress Zhou had said in Kunning Palace before he left the capital: "Your Majesty, this southern tour is to tear open the brocade to see the wounds. But once the wounds are torn open, someone has to stitch them up."
Now, he needs to go north to stop the bleeding.
The needle and thread in the south were in the hands of the Empress.
"Let's go." He pulled on the reins, his voice as clear as a knife in the cold night. "Next stop, Xuzhou. We must get there before dawn."
The sound of horses' hooves rose again, rolling like thunder into the northern darkness.
The Huai River flowed quietly, its ice floes clattering softly. In the teahouse, an old man wiped away his tears, turned up the oil lamp, spread out a new sheet of paper, and picked up his brush to write:
"On the seventh day of the eleventh month of the fifteenth year of Chongzhen's reign, at the third quarter of the hour of Zi, the Emperor led two thousand cavalry across the Huai River northward to Tongguan. He left silver to establish a post station and ordered that what he saw on his journey north and south be recorded. An old man named Sun Dayong, aged seventy and a disabled veteran, was appointed as the post station manager by imperial decree."
After finishing writing, he walked outside and watched the smoke and dust in the north recede into the distance.
Despite the biting wind, he felt a burning sensation in his chest.
Forty years later, he finally found an emperor who was willing to cross the river in the cold night and risk his life in the north.
Finally, they found a court that was willing to let disabled veterans do something again.
He raised the oil lamp, faced north, and bowed deeply.
The lights flickered in the wind, yet never went out.