When a leopard dies, it leaves its skin behind; when a person dies, they leave their name. When wild geese fly across the sky, they leave shadows. This old leopard Du Ruhui now wanted to leave something behind in this world. After growing tired of playing cards, he picked up his books again. As he read, he sought out Yun Ye, who was equally idle.
“This old man was just leafing through a book on the scholarly study of ancient bronze and stone artifacts, and suddenly felt that what this person said was quite biased. Look here—the ‘Illustrated Catalog of Ancient Vessels’ has long contained discussions of bronze tripod cauldrons from the Shang and Zhou dynasties, yet this book has a different view. This old man believes that such chaotic viewpoints are not worthy of being passed down to posterity. We need to correct the source and establish the proper foundation.”
Upon hearing these words, Yun Ye immediately broke out in a cold sweat. Since the Western Han Dynasty, people had been studying ancient scripts, examining ancient bronzes, organizing bamboo slips, and recording ancient sites. But there were few researchers, no monographs had been published, and it hadn’t formed into a scholarly discipline.
This field didn’t attract the attention of literati and scholars until the Song Dynasty, and they along with their descendants had struggled for over a thousand years, still groping about in the mist. And this old fellow wanted to correct the source and establish the proper foundation right now?
Did Du Ruhui plan to fill in this historical gap during his lifetime? Although Master Jinzhu and his colleagues were also working on this, they were few in number and limited in strength. If someone like Du Ruhui, who knew people throughout the world, were to preside over this work, could they perhaps accomplish such a great pioneering achievement? After all, finding evidence in the Tang Dynasty would be far easier than looking for it thirteen hundred years later.
With this idea in mind, Du Ruhui completely came alive. Every day he buried himself in the pile of spoils on the Camel City, rummaging everywhere looking for all bronze and stone artifacts, and tyrannically declared these things to be his own.
The head of Du Ruhui’s personal guards couldn’t understand it at all. The room was filled with gold pearls and precious treasures that he didn’t bother to take, so why did he specifically choose broken bells and damaged cauldrons? Whatever looked old and worn, Du Ruhui would take it.
After bringing them back, he personally washed them with clean water, and constantly examined them with a magnifying glass. The rubbings he’d made already filled a large chest, and the trend was toward a continuous increase.
Sun Renshi took his troops to Gaochang. Before leaving, he once again entreated Yun Ye to give him a bit more time—no matter what, he should wait until news arrived from Chang’an before dismantling the Camel City.
Now the entire Western Region’s military forces all hoped to gain benefits from the Western Expedition Army that was about to enter the interior. When the Camel City reached Luanshi City, Xue Rengui came up to meet them. The gifts he brought were shabby, but his appetite for requesting things was quite large. He directly proposed that defending Anxi required large quantities of fire oil and gunpowder, and he wanted to request Yun Ye’s support. In return, he signed his name on Yun Ye’s merit ledger—as a witness, he would bear risks.
The Camel City also needed to reduce weight now, so Yun Ye agreed to his request. If he wanted these things, it absolutely could only be done through Wuli Sima—there could be absolutely no private exchanges between commanders.
This merit ledger, which had now been exaggerated by thirty percent, still needed some people’s signatures and co-signatures. For instance, Li Jing’s signature would be extremely important because he was famously incorruptible. For decades he had never claimed false credit, so his credibility was extremely reliable. Yun Ye was now waiting for Li Jing, who was stationed at Blackstone Pass eating sand, to make requests of him.
Military forces also had divisions between rich and poor. Especially Yun Ye’s army—throughout the entire Great Tang, it was famously wealthy. Due to different combat philosophies, this created an enormous contrast in army equipment. Yun Ye’s combat philosophy was to destroy the enemy on their path of attack. This ran completely counter to Li Jing’s tactical thinking, which emphasized flexible advance and retreat and versatile tactics.
Obviously, this was a rich family’s way of fighting. The lives of soldiers were more important than silver. If weapons could kill the enemy, it was best not to use hand-to-hand combat. Li Jing’s tactics were clearly poor man’s tactics—using the commanders’ wisdom and the soldiers’ bravery to compensate for their numerical disadvantage.
Speaking of it made one’s heart ache. Since the Great Tang’s founding, in terms of numbers for external military campaigns, the Great Tang always seemed to be at a disadvantage. To win a war, defeating the strong with the weak and the many with the few was the minimum requirement. Therefore, looking at all dynasties throughout history, only the Great Tang’s military personnel had achieved this.
Large armies like those of Wei Qing, which required mobilizing the entire nation’s strength to supply, had almost no precedent in the Early Tang. This was fundamentally an era that made enemies tremble in fear through lives and hot blood.
Li Jing didn’t come, but Cheng Yaojin, who was confronting Songtsen Gampo at Greater Feichuan, dispatched his deputy general Zhou Chong, who hurried over. He had rushed here from Khotan. Yun Ye only looked at Zhou Chong once, and his heart sank. When Cheng Chumo, who had rushed over, saw Zhou Chong, he burst into tears…
Zhou Chong was also a man of iron and blood. Upon seeing Yun Ye and Cheng Chumo, his entire person immediately went limp on the ground. Pointing to the frostbite on his body, he told Yun Ye that in the entire army, you couldn’t find more than a few with intact skin—the Grand Commander was the same.
Transporting military supplies from Hexi was truly too difficult, and the civilian laborers had countless casualties. The supplies transported from the Jiannan Circuit were limited by the roads, and there was simply no way to transport on a large scale. So for the past two years, Cheng Yaojin’s army had been gritting their teeth and struggling bitterly, forcibly dragging Songtsen Gampo’s army firmly at Greater Feichuan.
This was what created the scene of Li Daozong and Yun Ye leading their armies to sweep away all opposition. Now Li Daozong had already taken Jade Dragon Snow Mountain—this was Gar Tongtsen’s old lair—while Gar Tongtsen was dragged at Blackstone Pass by Li Jing, unable to move. Now was the time when both armies began competing in willpower, and the first to feel they couldn’t hold on was Cheng Yaojin’s Greater Feichuan battle line.
“I want to eat noodles, just noodles, served in a basin!” Sitting in the steaming hot large wooden tub, Zhou Chong still didn’t forget to turn around and instruct Cheng Chumo, who was going to prepare food for him.
“We lack everything, Commander Yun! We lack everything. This subordinate is also a dignified Cloud Banner General, yet I eat worse than beggars. In the morning, a bowl of meat broth with floating oil slicks, but you can’t see even a shred of meat in it, paired with a steamed bun hard enough to break your teeth—that’s breakfast. At noon, we get some radish strips with a bowl of thin congee, and that’s like celebrating New Year.”
Zhou Chong picked up a wine flask from the copper basin floating on the bathwater surface, took a fierce gulp, and continued speaking to Yun Ye.
“I remember my dear wife wrote in a letter that she sent the old master a lot of field rations, and I heard she also sent quite a lot of canned goods and various preserved meats. How are you still living so miserably?”
When this matter came up, Zhou Chong’s face was full of heartache. He raised his arm covered in sores for Yun Ye to see.
“Commander Yun, look at this—this is Greater Feichuan. We’re all military men who need to don armor for battle, but after wearing iron armor all day, when we remove it at night, we discover that all the tight places have become red and swollen. After one day, they fester. You fundamentally can’t touch the armor plates with your hands—touch them once and they’ll stick. When taking a piss, if your member accidentally touches the iron armor, it’ll stick fast to it. You need to pour warm water to get it off. That place is fundamentally not suitable for people to stay.”
“The Tubo people attack, we defeat them, and when we chase forward a few li, the soldiers’ heads split with pain. They gasp with open mouths but feel the air isn’t enough. At this time, the Tubo people take the opportunity to charge down, and our soldiers suffer heavy casualties.”
“The things Madam sent were truly lifesaving treasures, but there’s not enough to distribute. The entire army has over forty thousand men. The Grand Commander ordered the clerks to seal these things up and only supply them to the wounded, the sick, and members of suicide squads. The Grand Commander and this subordinate’s treatment are the same. Many times I discovered that old man suffering from stomach pain, groaning constantly, yet still gritting his teeth and slowly gnawing on dry steamed buns.”
“Water won’t boil there. You can see the water bubbling, but stick your hand in and it won’t even burn you. Think about it—what kind of decent food can you make with water like that? Moreover, that godforsaken place is barren, not a blade of grass grows, and you can’t even find firewood.”
Listening to Zhou Chong ramble on about the situation at Greater Feichuan, Yun Ye could imagine the conditions there. At high altitude, water’s boiling point was low. Seventy-some-degree boiling water had no way to thoroughly cook food. Not eating well led to malnutrition, and combined with altitude sickness, this completely stripped this army, which relied purely on physical strength to fight, of their morale. That Cheng Yaojin had persisted until now was already a miracle. Without some spirit of sharing hardships, collapse was inevitable.
Cheng Chumo watched Zhou Chong, bare-backed and eating noodles, and looked at Yun Ye. “I plan to personally lead supplies around Blackstone Pass to Greater Feichuan. It’s only eight hundred li total—nothing to speak of. Help me think of a way. How can I bring the most things over? I just calculated—Old Zhou brought two thousand cavalry, plus my household guards here and your personal troops, we can gather three thousand men. How can three thousand men transport the most supplies? This is a difficult problem. Help me plan it out.”
Yun Ye shook his head. “In the military, there’s no principle of having father and son both as important generals, so anyone can go except you. If I weren’t the commander, going once would be best, so in the end, neither of us two can go.”
“I naturally have a way to send supplies over. The army’s hot air balloons are the best tool. Right now the wind blows from the Gobi toward the plateau—the hot air balloons can go with favorable wind and water. As long as they don’t fly too high, we can still bring quite a lot of things.”
“Add three thousand soldiers, and we can completely accomplish a fierce round of supply delivery. To leave Zhou Chong with ample transport time, what we need to do is fiercely attack Gar Tongtsen once, so he has no strength to harass Zhou Chong.”
Cheng Chumo was about to argue when he heard Zhou Chong, who was eating noodles, say: “Chumo, the Grand Commander said you’re not allowed to go over, Commander Yun is not allowed to go over either, and you’re absolutely not to drain away the household guards and personal troops at your sides. Rest assured, you just prepare the things. Old Zhou here will definitely bring these things back safely.”
Yun Ye smiled. “Many weapons here you won’t know how to use, especially some long-range weapons you’ve never even seen. If I don’t send people over, you’ll be completely lost. Rest assured, I won’t go, Chumo won’t go either. You just focus on recuperating and eating. Only two days’ time. Apart from sleeping, you don’t need to worry about anything. I’ll arrange everything properly.”