Jingzi Pass was a small, elongated fault basin situated between mountains and water, backed by mountain ranges and overlooking rushing rapids. Both the Dan River waterway and the Shangyu overland route passed through Jingzi Pass, making it a strategically contested military position since ancient times. During the previous dynasty, it had also been a flourishing commercial hub.
The basin stretched about twelve to thirteen li along the Dan River, with depths of one to two li on both banks.
Although most of the buildings had been destroyed by war, with traces of burning everywhere, from the ruins one could still see the prosperity of this ancient settlement during the early to middle periods of the previous dynasty. Within the town one could even see the remains of two wooden bridges.
The Dan River’s channel at Jingzi Pass was quite narrow, but still measured fifty to sixty paces wide with swift currents. That bridges could be built in this small basin in earlier periods to connect both banks showed how prosperous and flourishing the town had been then.
Though this was said to be a forward defensive line guarding against Liang’s Guanzhong forces, the battalion stationed here was not at full strength—only over three hundred veteran soldiers garrisoned Jingzi Pass.
The garrison commander Zhang Bao was a Xiangzhou veteran, nearly fifty years old, his dark weathered face like old tree bark. Leading his soldiers in defending the ruined city through heavy snow and bitter cold, he exuded the faint severity of a great blade sheathed.
Even though Han Qian was a trusted confidant directly under Third Imperial Prince Yang Yuanpu, until the Dragon Sparrow Army entered Xiangzhou and defenses were reorganized, Zhang Bao, as a Xiangzhou military officer, need not defer to Han Qian in any way, much less follow his lead.
As a guest commander, Han Qian led several dozen men to occupy a ruined tower on the northern bank of the Dan River. He couldn’t even enter the fortress where the garrison was stationed. Zhang Bao merely sent a deputy out from the fortress to verify Han Qian’s credentials and seal, with no intention of personally hosting Han Qian inside the fortress for a banquet or cultivating their relationship.
Han Qian and Zhang Bao maintained peaceful coexistence. After all, whether the Third Prince could take command of defenses along the Dan River line and lead the Dragon Sparrow Army into the depths of the Qinling Mountains still depended on the results of Li Zhigao’s negotiations with Du Chongtao.
For now, they still needed to map the terrain along the route more precisely, ascertain the distribution of bandits and brigands in the southeastern Qinling foothills, while simultaneously monitoring the movements of Liang forces garrisoning the old Wuguan city several dozen li away.
The southern foothills of the Funiu Mountains and the southeastern foothills of the Qinling Mountains had all belonged to Dengzhou’s jurisdiction during the previous dynasty, with three counties established. These three counties had recorded sixteen to seventeen thousand households. Though not matching Xinye, Wancheng, and Fangcheng deep within the Nanyang Basin, compared to Xuzhou they could still be called populous.
After all, the territory occupied by the three western Deng counties didn’t even amount to a quarter of Xuzhou’s area.
Having endured decades of wartime devastation, only one or two percent of households remained in the Nanyang Basin. The county seats and commercial towns of the three western Deng counties along military routes had been ravaged beyond recognition. However, in areas removed from strategic locations like the ancient Shangyu Road where armies contended, the population hidden deep in the Qinling Mountains, according to preliminary investigations, might be far greater than imagined.
The ruined dwelling Han Qian occupied still had scorch marks on its beams and pillars. Half the building had collapsed and been temporarily covered with reed mats to block the cold wind, but snowflakes still drifted in through the gaps.
“Not counting the mountain ranges controlled by Liang forces, there may be as many as forty to fifty thousand refugees hidden in the deep mountains!” Tian Cheng exclaimed in great surprise after reviewing the compiled intelligence.
Han Qian wasn’t particularly surprised.
Nanyang stood right at the north-south strategic corridor. Especially in the late previous dynasty, there was a major battle every three to five years and a minor battle every three to five months. Though it was a land of fish and rice with a thousand li of fertile fields, ordinary people couldn’t withstand such turmoil. Who would cultivate fields and build houses on open plains?
The Nanyang Basin was surrounded on all sides by the Qinling, Tongbai, Funiu, and Daba Mountains, all extending for thousands of li with deep mountains and dense forests. Even if survival was harsh, it was the unavoidable choice for refugees seeking to hide and take shelter.
In fact, in Zhai Xinping’s memories, if no intervention occurred in this world, the Xiang-Deng region would remain sparsely populated for decades to come, plagued by banditry. Only when the situation of fragmented warlords finally settled down and the newly unified dynasty truly decided to resolve the bandit troubles in the Deng-Xiang region did they once manage to recruit four to five hundred thousand mountain dwellers from the surrounding mountains and wilderness to move into the plains to cultivate fields and settle down.
Therefore, Han Qian wasn’t at all surprised that Fan Dahei and Lin Haizheng had investigated and found forty to fifty thousand escaped civilians hidden in the mountain depths of the three western Deng counties. He even felt their groundwork investigation wasn’t thorough enough.
Although the deep mountain forests of the southeastern Qinling foothills held extremely numerous refugees—enough to organize an entire Dragon Sparrow Army—these refugees were either defeated soldiers and generals who had fled into the deep forests from dozens of battles in Deng-Xiang over recent decades, or were controlled by such defeated remnants.
They had established fortified mountain strongholds in deep forests where roads didn’t reach, living half by farming and half by banditry, fierce and unruly. Han Qian absolutely didn’t expect that after Third Prince Yang Yuanpu arrived, a single decree could make them come running to submit.
Who knew when the war between Liang and Chu on the western front would settle down? Who would willingly run out to become cannon fodder for no reason?
What he could do now was to ascertain as clearly as possible the large and small mountain strongholds along the Dan River waterway and their distribution. Everything else would have to wait until the main Dragon Sparrow Army forces arrived before decisions could be made.
Of course, to truly accomplish this, Han Qian felt they needed to focus on considering the attitude of the local power, the Deng-Xiang Defense Commissioner and Xiangzhou Prefect Du Chongtao.
Even though Du Chongtao was currently Emperor Tianyou’s trusted nephew-in-law, the Third Prince’s cousin-in-law, and a great general as renowned as Zhang Xiang who had worked diligently over the years and made outstanding contributions to Great Chu’s founding, and had been conscientious and diligent during his two years garrisoning Deng-Xiang, Han Qian knew that among all the great generals and military men from the end of the previous dynasty through the division of the realm among Chu, Liang, Jin, and Shu, truly few were decent people.
Otherwise, the era he now lived in wouldn’t be rated in a thousand years as one of the three most chaotic periods in thousands of years of history.
Currently the three states of Liang, Jin, and Chu were newly established, their three emperors had not yet died, and could barely control those fierce and unruly great generals and military men. This was also why, despite constant warfare among the three emperors during this period, it was relatively the calmest period in over a century.
As a founding general as renowned as Li Yu and Zhang Xiang, Du Chongtao had served as Xiangzhou Prefect and Deng-Xiang Defense Commissioner for two years now, but in his official reports submitted to Jinling, he had never mentioned information about large numbers of escaped households hiding in the mountains surrounding the Nanyang Basin.
Although Du Chongtao commanded Deng-Xiang and had spent these two years rebuilding Xiangcheng and recruiting refugees and encouraging agriculture between the Dahong Mountains and the Han River, with his limited energy focused on consolidating defenses at the southern entrance of the Nanyang Basin, Han Qian absolutely wouldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed the large numbers of escaped households hiding in the mountains of the central and northern Nanyang Basin.
Perhaps Emperor Tianyou’s frequent impulsive moves to reduce great generals’ military authority in recent years had made Du Chongtao wary. Rather than hastily enrolling large numbers of escaped households under Xiangzhou’s banner and arousing Emperor Tianyou’s suspicions, it would be better to proceed gradually.
No one was an easy target.
“You all go rest. Tomorrow you’ll go to Shaoxi Mountain and Blind Bear Valley to monitor Liang army movements there. Report immediately if there are any irregularities.” After roughly reviewing the intelligence gathered in recent days, Han Qian told Fan Dahei and Lin Haizheng to go rest first, keeping only Tian Cheng, Zhao Wuji, and Xi Ren—who had disguised herself as a man to follow him from Jinling—by his side to discuss matters.
With the money lending operation just established and many matters still requiring attention at the workshops before year’s end, Han Qian had left Zhao Ting’er in Jinling to handle these affairs this time. Additionally, Gao Shao remained in Jinling to oversee the Intelligence Bureau and coordinate communications.
Fan Dahei and Lin Haizheng had initially managed the Military Bureau, Intelligence Bureau, workshops and other affairs, but had suddenly become ordinary leaders under the Military Bureau, subject to Tian Cheng’s jurisdiction. Their complex feelings were easy to imagine.
However, the scouts they led were all veteran soldiers Han Qian had selected from the military household tenants. They had only been under Fan and Lin’s command for a few days before accompanying Han Qian west into Xuzhou, where they had been personally trained by Han Qian for several months. If these two couldn’t behave themselves, their positions as even ordinary leaders in the Military Bureau would be in danger of being replaced by other elite scouts.
“Zhang Bao has led a battalion of veterans to garrison Jingzi Pass for over a year and has gathered three to four hundred refugees to cultivate land at Jingzi Pass. Tomorrow you’ll go see Zhang Bao and tell him we want to hire over a hundred laborers to repair the ruined town.” Han Qian said to Tian Cheng.
Although Xiangzhou’s army had built a fortress using the ruined city at Jingzi Pass, it could only accommodate three to four hundred soldiers for defense. Even if the Dragon Sparrow Army’s main forces didn’t all deploy here, defending against Liang’s Guanzhong forces advancing south from Wuguan couldn’t be done with just three to five hundred soldiers.
Considering the needs for long-term garrison duty, a larger-scale defensive fortress still needed to be built at Jingzi Pass.
Han Qian didn’t have direct authority to conscript laborers on a large scale, but since he had already arrived, much preparatory work needed to begin immediately. He planned to first inform garrison commander Zhang Bao, initially hiring some laborers from Jingzi Pass to start clearing out the devastated town.
“I’ve already reached Jingzi Pass, and no fighting will occur in the short term. In a few more days, Yang Qin will send the first batch of Xi clan youths to Yingzhou. You take men to receive this group of youngsters and begin training them in the mountains and marshes.” Han Qian then instructed Zhao Wuji.
The money lending operation had just started—in half a month they had raised less than two million coins, still quite far from the original target of thirty million coins. But once word of the lending spread, as long as the money shop could pay interest normally, driven by human greed, the capital raised would snowball larger and larger.
Therefore, during the half month since entering October, the lending scale had further expanded.
However, these funds continued to be diverted by Han Qian to first fill the seemingly bottomless deficit of the Left Bureau.
Of course, the redemption of Xi clan youths was also proceeding at full speed, consuming considerable funds.
Although handsome young adult slaves in Xuzhou cost at most thirty to forty thousand coins at market prices, Han Qian intended from the outset to directly redeem promising Xi clan youths for rigorous training. At the same time, to avoid alarming the Four Surnames too early, he couldn’t openly go to strongholds that held Xi clan youths as slaves and redeem Xi clan youths by name. He could only secretly bribe intermediaries to handle matters, making redemption costs difficult to control.
Currently redeeming sixteen Xi clan youths had cost over a million coins, one of the Left Bureau’s largest current expenditures.
However, these Xi clan youths, together with the five selected earlier by Zhao Wuji, would temporarily not be entered into the Military Bureau’s roster, nor would more people—not even Tian Cheng or Gao Shao—be informed of this matter. Besides the fact that those two currently managed the Military Bureau and Intelligence Bureau, this also carried an implicit warning.