Chapter 556: - Surname

The Chu formation was strong in front and weak in the rear, or perhaps one could say hard in front and soft behind.

His own troops had descended like divine soldiers and landed at Jing City’s docks. Liang Cheng and Jin Shuke, the two strongest fighting generals under his command, had attacked a completely unprepared enemy after even disguising their men in Chu armor.

They broke the Chu reinforcements in a single battle.

Was that really so surprising?

Count Pingye genuinely did not think there was anything shocking about it. Wasn’t this normal?

The men he had brought this time were all elites. Elite soldiers under fierce generals producing this kind of result was only natural.

If they had failed to do so, that would have been shocking.

So Count Pingye had not been putting on some profound act earlier. He truly had not thought much of it.

But when he handed his soup bowl out and saw the gazes of the generals around him, the admiration in their eyes was so thick it nearly seemed ready to drip like water.

Only then did Count Pingye realize that his earlier composure and request for another bowl of soup had somehow recreated the air of, “The youngsters have utterly routed the enemy.”

Smiling, he shook his head slightly.

Only now did he finally understand.

In the past, the Prince of Jingnan truly had not been showing off either.

The man had probably been exactly like Zheng Fan was now. Something had seemed perfectly normal to him, so he had responded in a perfectly normal way.

But because they stood on different levels, that ordinary reaction made everyone else feel as though they were gazing up at a mountain too high to climb.

It had nothing to do with a person’s movements, posture, expression, or any of those tiny details people loved analyzing.

At the root of it, everything depended on status.

And the word “status” contained a great deal, though broadly speaking it could be divided into three parts: the past, the present, and the future.

Applied to Count Pingye, that meant his past victories, his present position, and where everyone believed he would go next.

Fourth Lady brought over the fish soup.

Count Pingye accepted the bowl, looked at the cilantro floating on top, gently blew across it, and took a small sip.

Then he said:

“This Count is not trying to pour cold water over everyone. What I mean is that we suffered for so long, squeezed together in those ship cabins until we could barely breathe, all so we could finally gain a foothold here. The situation before us is indeed excellent, but it ought to be excellent. Otherwise, wouldn’t all the hardship we endured these past days have been for nothing?”

There were some things Count Pingye could not conveniently continue saying.

It was not only they who had suffered.

What of the civilian laborers conscripted to build the riverworks?

What of the Jin people living downstream along the Wang River, displaced when the dike was breached?

Were they supposed to have suffered for nothing too?

Of course, if those people had actually been given a choice, they certainly would not have volunteered.

But who had given them a choice?

The fact that Count Pingye still remembered their selfless sacrifice already proved he had a conscience.

He set down the soup bowl.

Then continued:

“We have only just opened the situation. What comes next is when we truly need to settle on a plan. I walked through Jing City one step at a time when I entered earlier and looked at it carefully. I imagine all of you have looked as well. This city does not seem particularly easy to defend.”

Not merely difficult to defend.

It was almost impossible to defend.

Jing City did possess walls, but they had fallen into serious disrepair over the years.

The funniest part was that when the Savages had wanted to move their plunder back to the snowfields as quickly as possible, they had simply punched openings through the walls of Snow Sea Pass.

Now, almost the exact same spectacle had appeared here.

The southern wall looked as though civilian and military use had been fused into one.

Partly that was because the city had expanded.

More importantly, for the past half year enormous quantities of grain, fodder, and military supplies had needed to pass through here every day.

For convenience, the Chu had not only expanded the warehouses inside the city but had deliberately opened several additional gates.

Yes.

More city gates.

That was where the Chu proved superior to the Savages.

The Savages only knew how to smash holes, which made them barbaric.

The Chu smashed holes and then thoughtfully installed gates over them.

But what fucking use were those gates now?

How had Zheng Fan broken West Mountain Fort?

Hadn’t he simply driven straight into that one gate over and over again, used a single point to break the whole surface, and ripped the position open?

Now it was even better.

This wall did not have one gate.

It had a whole row of them.

And repairing the defenses at this point was impossible.

Back at Snow Sea Pass, Zheng Fan had been able to patch the walls for two reasons.

First, the Savages had not arrived quickly enough, giving him enough time.

But obviously, taking Jing City was equivalent to ramming a fist straight into Great Chu’s backside.

There was absolutely no chance the Chu would leisurely wait while he repaired the walls and strengthened the fortifications.

Second, Snow Sea Pass had contained a large number of Jin slaves whom the Savages had not yet had time to transport back to the snowfields.

Here, the people who could be killed had mostly been killed already.

The rest had fled in every direction.

And they certainly could not deliberately capture those people now and force them into labor.

The Chu would be counterattacking soon.

Keeping a mass of forced laborers inside would be the equivalent of poking countless additional holes through an already broken wall with his own hands.

That would be... having water in the brain.

Count Pingye narrowed his eyes.

Then continued:

“The brothers of the Secret Intelligence Department already did their work very well. Jing City being in this condition is not their fault, nor anyone else’s. After all, if Jing City truly had been impregnable, perhaps we would never have broken in. And even if we had, there is no chance it would have been as easy as it was today. So in this Count’s view, whether we should actually hold Jing City is still worth discussing.”

Tian Wujing was not a god.

No battle plan could truly be seamless.

Fortunately, Count Pingye already occupied a position in the Great Yan army somewhat like a spokesman for the Prince of Jingnan.

Other generals naturally did not dare violate military orders personally laid down by the Prince.

But Count Pingye possessed the “right of interpretation.”

“Count, just give the order. We will do whatever you command,” Gong Wang said.

This army had been pieced together from many different forces.

Yet it was scattered without being chaotic, because from beginning to end Count Pingye’s will could still be carried through the entire force.

“Then we start like this. Fourth Lady, have San’er take some men across the river and feel out the situation.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Gong Wang.”

“This subordinate general is here!”

“This Count orders you to take your soldiers through the city. Burn everything that can be eaten. Destroy everything that can be used. Do not leave the Chu a single grain of rice or a single suit of armor.”

“This subordinate general obeys!”

Even catching several tens of thousands of pigs would take tremendous effort.

Jing City stored enormous quantities of Chu military grain. Burning every last bit of it properly was not some simple task.

As for armor, that was easier.

Pile it together and burn it with the rest.

Once burned, it would be ruined.

“Gongsun Zhi.”

“This subordinate general is here!”

“This Count orders you to work with Ruan San and sort out the ships at the docks, both ours and the ones we captured today. Seize more boatmen and question them carefully about the waterways.”

“This subordinate general obeys!”

Count Pingye then looked at Gou Moli.

“The First Command leaves the city and goes to receive Liang Cheng and Jin Shuke’s forces.”

“This subordinate obeys!”

Count Pingye rose.

His gaze swept over every general present.

Then he said with unusual seriousness:

“Gentlemen, whether we fight, defend, or shift elsewhere, this Count must wait another two days for the Chu to give me a definite answer. But one thing is certain. There is no option called retreat. To our north stand several hundred thousand of Great Chu’s finest troops. Along the river route we used to come here, Chu naval ships may already have appeared. In truth, we no longer have a road back. But that is fine. We came here to win in the first place.”

“Ten thousand victories!”

“Ten thousand victories!”

...

The military meeting held around the dining table ended.

Every force inside the city began moving again under its respective commander.

At that point, Count Pingye also summoned Jing City’s Garrison Commander for interrogation.

The Garrison Commander acted extremely unyielding.

Though bound and forced to kneel, he still held his neck stiff.

But one could notice that his eyes were not truly filled with indifference toward death.

Instead, they kept stealing glances at Count Pingye’s expression.

His body was trembling slightly as well.

For a civil official, getting even this far was already fairly respectable.

Count Pingye could almost guarantee that a little torture or a deeper layer of intimidation would turn Lord Garrison Commander into a defector as surely as a nail driven into wood.

But Count Pingye deliberately ignored him.

He treated the man’s performance of “loyalty to Great Chu” as though it did not exist.

Because he had intended to release him from the beginning.

Perhaps he could even take advantage of the situation and play a little “Jiang Gan steals the letter” trick.

Most importantly, this fellow was not actually useful.

If he had been a capable Chu official who refused to turn, and Zheng Fan lacked time to persuade him, Count Pingye would already have cut his head off.

But Jing Suyuan?

Count Pingye wanted to “release him back into the wild.”

Keeping the man here meant wasting another bowl of rice every meal.

Toss him back to the Chu, and perhaps they would even praise him for “preferring death to surrender,” despite the fact that he had lost Jing City.

Most of Count Pingye’s attention fell instead on the illegitimate son beside him.

The young man had a melon-seed face and naturally seductive eyes.

Later generations had indeed gone through periods when androgynous beauty became fashionable.

But those manufactured, effeminate little fresh-meat idols could not remotely compare with the all-natural specimen standing here.

Count Pingye waved.

A personal guard immediately took Jing Suyuan back to where he was being held.

With Fourth Lady making the arrangements, Jing Suyuan’s chances of successfully escaping later would be fairly high.

Of course, if the man still proved hopelessly incompetent and could not even climb a wall when someone put a ladder beneath him, then Yan soldiers would simply have to dress themselves as righteous Chu patriots and raid the prison to rescue him.

“What is your name?” Count Pingye asked.

“Replying to the Count, this slave’s surname is Zhao. My name is Zhao Qi.”

As he answered, Zhao Qi deliberately cast Count Pingye an incomparably aggrieved glance, his eyes rippling with flirtatious autumn waves.

“I hear you’re an illegitimate son. From which family?”

“Count, this slave does not know. Otherwise, how could the first half of this slave’s life have been so miserable?”

As he spoke, tears actually began falling from his eyes on their own.

“Sigh. How pitiful,” Count Pingye said sympathetically.

“Isn’t it, Count? A rootless, unsupported person like this slave truly has such difficulty surviving in this world.”

“Indeed.” Count Pingye nodded.

“Then please, Count. Please help this slave. Boohoohoo...”

“Fine. I’ll help you.”

“Count treats this slave far too well. This slave will surely...”

“Since living is so exhausting, I’ll help you die.”

“...” Zhao Qi.

Count Pingye looked at Fourth Lady.

“Kill him.”

Threads and needles were already winding around Fourth Lady’s fingertips.

“Master, no torture?”

Very few people could endure Fourth Lady’s methods of interrogation.

“Don’t waste the effort.”

Zhao Qi panicked the moment he heard this.

He immediately shouted:

“Count! My surname should originally have been Qu!”

Count Pingye turned his head in some surprise and looked back at Zhao Qi.

“Really?”

“Absolutely true. If Count does not believe me, you can have Jing Suyuan brought back and ask him. He actually knows as well.”

“You should have said that sooner. I’m familiar with the Qu Clan. We have an excellent relationship.”

Zhao Qi smiled bitterly.

“Count, there is really no need to toy with this slave anymore. Who beneath Heaven does not know that Qu Tiannan died at your hands? And the Princess whom his son Qu Peiluo was supposed to marry is presently being kept at your Snow Sea Pass.”

Hatred between men came down, in the truest sense, to two things: hatred between states and hatred between families.

Unfortunately, Count Pingye had managed to collide with the Qu Clan on both fronts.

“You hate the Qu Clan?”

“No.” Zhao Qi shook his head. “Although the people of the Qu Clan regard me as a disgrace, I have in truth benefited greatly from their name. If I had been born into some ordinary nameless family, I would probably have been sold into a brothel long ago.”

A beautiful woman could become a calamity because of her face.

A man who was too beautiful could also be guilty merely for possessing it.

Count Pingye smiled.

“With the man from earlier?”

“Heh.”

He had personality, at least.

Count Pingye looked toward Fourth Lady again.

“Bury him.”

“Count, I have military intelligence to report! I came here earlier by boat from the Mi River into the Wei River, then followed the Wei River to Jing City with my traveling song troupe.”

“First, I am short on time, so I have no time to judge whether your intelligence is true. Second, I have my own people investigating military matters. I trust them rather more.”

Zhao Qi did not want to die.

Generally speaking, people who were beautiful did not want to die young.

They usually had the chance to taste the sweetness of life earlier and more easily than the overwhelming majority of ordinary-looking people.

“Count, your army came by ship. You brought no warhorses, did you? Without horses, can Great Yan’s iron cavalry still gallop? Eighty li east of Jing City along the Wei River stands a Chu horse farm. Chu warhorses are raised there. Before I came here, while I was still at the Mi River, a man told me he would be leaving in a few days for the horse farm in Shanggu Commandery. Several batches of warhorses transferred there from other farms across the country have already gathered at that place!”

Warhorses were a strategic resource.

Neither Qian nor Chu was naturally suited to raising horses.

Yan had the desert.

Jin had the snowfields.

Both produced fine warhorses.

More importantly, for eight hundred years the people of Yan and Jin had deeply understood one lesson: without enough cavalry, they could not solve the enemies facing them.

Thus Great Yan’s iron cavalry had been born and developed.

Thus the cavalrymen of the Three Jin lands had achieved their glory in driving out the Savages.

Compared with Qian, Chu’s horse situation was somewhat better.

When Chu’s local nobles expanded their private armies, they spared no effort.

That created enormous enthusiasm for horse breeding in the provinces.

The Great Chu Imperial Clan Guards themselves could not mobilize very many cavalry units. The few ten-thousand-man cavalry forces they did possess were treasured so dearly that they hated to use them.

But if all the cavalry in noble hands could be gathered together, Chu’s mounted troops would at least be substantial in sheer numbers.

They were fully capable of fighting Great Yan’s iron cavalry in one large-scale cavalry showdown.

Of course, only one.

As for Qian, the flatlands stretching from the Three Frontiers all the way toward Chu Commandery were actually well suited to raising horses.

Northern Qiang tribes also lived inside Qian territory.

Legend said the Northern Qiang were close kin to the Barbarians, and they too excelled at raising horses.

Qian had once established a horse administration of its own and poured enormous tax revenue into it.

But gradually, the horses inside court horse farms became fewer.

The sheep became more numerous.

Places that were supposed to raise warhorses began raising sheep instead to supply the great households of Shangjing.

Qian’s lack of cavalry was, to a large extent, self-inflicted.

A century ago, when Qian’s Emperor Taizong launched his northern expedition, his army had still possessed a sizable cavalry component.

Now, the country had somehow managed to move backward the longer it lived.

If Emperor Yan’s foundation were not Great Yan but the rich and fertile State of Qian, perhaps His Majesty would wake laughing from his dreams every night.

That too was one reason Emperor Yan had always yearned to attack Qian.

The Qian could not be given an opportunity.

If they truly awakened, the war potential they could release would be terrifying beyond measure.

“A horse farm... warhorses...”

Count Pingye was tempted.

He did not expect to acquire too many.

That was unrealistic.

But even two or three thousand horses would be enough.

More than enough, perhaps, to change the larger situation.

Jing City before him was truly difficult to defend.

But he could not simply abandon control of this region.

The soldiers under his command were genuine elite cavalrymen.

Give them horses and they could immediately unleash their full combat strength.

At that point, Liang Cheng could remain in Shanggu Commandery and command several thousand cavalry in continuous harassment.

Meanwhile, Zheng Fan could take the main force aboard ships, follow the Wei River, search out the Mi River, and let the people and nobles of Great Chu’s Ying Capital witness what Yan romance truly looked like.

Back at Snow Sea Pass, Xiong Liqing had once told Zheng Fan that she still... missed home a little.

Count Pingye was a good husband.

Whenever conditions allowed, he was willing to help his wife go back and see whether her family was doing well.

Zhao Qi clenched his teeth.

When he did so, he had a habit of quickly running an extraordinarily agile tongue across those white teeth.

Then he said:

“Count, I can take my traveling song troupe and trick the guards at the horse farm into opening the way. That young lord I mentioned holds no small amount of status there.”

If a beautiful woman stood in front of him discussing a honey trap, Count Pingye would not have found anything strange about it.

Unfortunately, the seductive creature before him was a man.

“Your traveling song troupe stood in the very first row when this Count came ashore. Seventy or eighty percent of them are already dead.”

Zhao Qi showed no particular reaction to the news.

He said very casually:

“Isn’t that even better? Count can dress Yan soldiers in different clothes and have them follow me inside. We coordinate from within and without and seize the horse farm as intact as possible.”

“What do you want?”

“To live.”

Count Pingye shook his head.

“More than that.”

Zhao Qi covered his face and shook his head helplessly.

“If I say revenge, doesn’t that sound far too clichéd? But I truly do not hate the Qu Clan.”

Generally speaking, illegitimate children suffered enormous injustice.

Their mothers usually lived bitter lives as well.

“What is your mother’s surname?”

Count Pingye suddenly asked.

Zhao Qi licked his lips.

Then answered:

“Also Qu.”

[End of Chapter 556]