Headmaster Gao did not for a moment believe that Xiahou Zuo had come to ask about the Youshan kingdom out of genuine scholarly interest — because he felt Xiahou Zuo had absolutely nothing to do with anything academic.
However, it was precisely here that Headmaster Gao’s character shone. If a student asked, he would always explain, with thorough care and detail.
Headmaster Gao had said: a teacher who grows impatient with students’ questions has no right to call himself a teacher. Having chosen that role, one must uphold it and be worthy of it.
“When speaking of the Youshan kingdom, one must first speak of a certain people of the steppe.”
Headmaster Gao sat down; Xiahou Zuo quickly poured him a cup of tea. Seeing such attentiveness from Xiahou Zuo, Headmaster Gao felt a quiet pleasure.
In all his years at the Academy, Xiahou Zuo had never once asked a single question about scholarship — or anything else, for that matter. He’d probably barely attended a single lecture.
Xiahou Zuo settled into the seat across from him, his face arranged in an expression of sincere and devoted attention.
“Have you heard of the Tiehu — the Iron Crane — a people of the steppe?”
Xiahou Zuo nodded. “I’ve heard of them. Sovereign rulers of the steppe. They held dominion over the north; no other tribe could stand against them.”
Headmaster Gao had not expected Xiahou Zuo to know of the Iron Crane people, and was rather pleased.
“The Iron Crane people built a mighty empire on the steppe. In time, they grew unsatisfied with life there — they knew the splendors of the Central Plains, and so they began pushing southward again and again.”
“The Iron Crane forces even drove as far as the north bank of the Nanping River. Regrettably, their armies were poor in naval warfare, and so they suffered defeat in the great battle of the Nanping River — and a khan was killed.”
Headmaster Gao sipped his tea and continued. “That defeat and the death of the khan fractured the Iron Crane people. The khan had two sons; neither would yield to the other, and so each led his followers to war against the other.”
“The elder son, Tuoba Chen, was defeated in battle and retreated to the steppe. The younger son, Tuoba Ling, founded a state on the lands north of the Nanping River — and that state was named the Youshan kingdom.”
Headmaster Gao smiled. “Much of what is said about Youshan today is inaccurate. They are said to have been a small state, but in truth they were nothing of the kind. The Youshan kingdom’s territory encompassed roughly half of what is now our Dachu — everything north of the Nanping River was theirs.”
“The Youshan kingdom dominated the north for several centuries. Its founding emperor, Tuoba Ling, was a man of keen scholarly appetite. He decreed that all his people must study Central Plains culture. However, because they had slaughtered Central Plains people so violently in their campaigns, the learning did not go smoothly. Youshan encompassed Jizhou, Youzhou, Yanzhou, and part of Qingzhou, extending all the way to the eastern coast.”
Headmaster Gao said, “After Tuoba Ling, this branch of the Iron Crane people gradually transformed into Central Plains people — they adopted the written language, the customs, and came to regard themselves as a great Central Plains state. Meanwhile, the other branch — Tuoba Chen’s line, who had retreated to the steppe — never accepted their loss and launched multiple southward campaigns, each time returning in defeat.”
“Over the following centuries, Tuoba Chen’s line dreamed ceaselessly of pushing south. And Youshan, for its part, came to see them as savages — a pack of untamed beasts, without a trace of civilization — while Youshan itself became the bulwark shielding the Central Plains against the Iron Crane invaders.”
Xiahou Zuo was listening in a daze. He truly hadn’t known any of this. He’d only known that the steppe had a dominant tribe called the Iron Crane.
Headmaster Gao continued. “In the end, the Youshan kingdom defeated the Iron Crane people, breaking them into two halves. One part fled northeast, the other northwest.”
“The part that fled northeast — a routed and scattered remnant force — found themselves utterly invincible in the then-disorganized lands of the Black Wu. They plundered Black Wu women wholesale to continue their bloodline, and gradually formed eight tribes, known as the Ghost Moon Eight Clans.”
Xiahou Zuo’s eyes snapped wide.
Headmaster Gao saw his expression and was gratified. To stun and awe a student with the breadth of one’s learning — that was a scholar’s pride.
Xiahou Zuo said, “The largest tribe currently on the steppe is also called the Iron Crane. Could it be that they are in fact the very—”
“Yes.”
Headmaster Gao nodded. “The branch that fled northwest — after a century of growth, they swept back through the steppe and rapidly expanded their territory. By now they should have no rivals left on the grasslands. Their true opponents, in fact, have not changed at all across the centuries — they are still themselves, in a sense: that other branch which fled away, the one that built the Black Wu Empire.”
Xiahou Zuo felt his understanding of the world shift beneath him. He had never imagined that Black Wu, too, was descended from the Iron Crane people — only that, after countless generations of mingling with the women from those lands, they had grown markedly different in appearance from the steppe people.
And yet, thinking about it, the bone-deep love of war — that was exactly the same.
On the steppe today, the Iron Crane people were nearly on the verge of uniting the entire grassland. The three great powers had formed the Crane-Wolf-Deer Alliance, with the Iron Crane as its head. The other two major tribes were the Geqin and the Fulu.
Headmaster Gao lowered his voice. “Even up through the founding of the Great Zhou dynasty, the borderlands still harbored many descendants of the Iron Crane people — only, after countless generations of mingling with Central Plains people, they no longer bore much outward resemblance to the original.”
Headmaster Gao sighed. “The Youshan kingdom was destroyed by the Great Zhou. Because of Youshan’s bloodline connections to the steppe, the Zhou dynasty very nearly obliterated every trace of Youshan’s cultural heritage — burning their historical records, and putting their capital city to the torch.”
Xiahou Zuo immediately asked, “I believe I’ve heard some mention of this — that Youshan’s capital was originally called Baocheng, and that it stood where Jizhou now stands.”
“Correct.”
Headmaster Gao said, “By the time of its fall, the Youshan kingdom was already at its twilight — yet it still had seven fearsome generals, the Seven Divine Commanders. The Youshan emperor styled himself the Purple Tenuity Star, and the Seven Divine Commanders were his Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper. But even the most formidable generals were of no use against internal strife and external assault. They were utterly crushed in the end. The accounts say the Seven Divine Commanders protected Youshan’s last emperor, Tuoba Zheng, as he broke through the encirclement and escaped — his whereabouts afterward were never known.”
Xiahou Zuo’s heart gave a sudden lurch. So the last Youshan emperor hadn’t broken through the city walls at all — he had been shielded by the so-called Seven Divine Commanders into an underground chamber to hide. How many years he had hidden there, no one could say; eventually, all of them had died beneath the earth. Which meant the underground chamber beneath the Carriage and Horse Inn still had a great deal left to be uncovered.
The Great Zhou dynasty founded its capital at Jizhou — burned Baocheng, renamed it, and undertook massive construction. And they had never discovered that the Youshan emperor lay hidden beneath their feet all along.
Xiahou Zuo asked, “Where exactly was the old Youshan palace located?”
“Roughly.”
Headmaster Gao thought for a moment, then answered, “In the vicinity of the northern quarter of the city.”
He considered further and added, “The Carriage and Horse Inn that Li Chi operates also falls within that area — though there are no longer any historical records detailed enough to confirm it precisely.”
Xiahou Zuo thought that half the trip had been wasted, in a sense — as it turned out, what they had found was the palace’s underground chamber.
The other half had not been wasted at all: he had learned this much.
Xiahou Zuo rose to take his leave. Headmaster Gao asked why he had taken such an interest in the Youshan kingdom. Xiahou Zuo felt he needed a plausible reason — fortunately, he had thought to bring a shell before coming.
He produced the shell and handed it to Headmaster Gao, saying, “When Li Chi and his people were leveling the ground at the Carriage and Horse Inn, they dug this up. I asked Mister Yan about it; Mister Yan said it might be currency from the Youshan kingdom, though he wasn’t certain, and so he asked me to come and consult you.”
“Ah!”
Headmaster Gao’s eyes went wide. Both hands reached out, trembling slightly, and he received the shell with immense care. He examined it from every angle for a long while, visibly overcome with excitement.
“From the Zhou dynasty to the Chu — over a thousand years — this may well be the first unearthed Youshan coin ever recovered. Its value is beyond reckoning. Beyond reckoning!”
Headmaster Gao’s hands were shaking more than ever.
Xiahou Zuo said, with offhand casualness, “If you like it, consider it a gift.”
Headmaster Gao grew even more agitated, his face flushing slightly.
“This — this wouldn’t be right.”
Xiahou Zuo could hardly admit that beneath Li Chi’s inn the things came in cartload quantities — that if this item was “beyond reckoning,” Li Chi could buy the entire Central Plains with it.
“I’ll hang on to this for now. You may not realize it, but every Youshan coin is said to bear Youshan script. When I speak of its value being beyond reckoning, I don’t mean how much silver it’s worth — I mean its incalculable significance for recovering that lost chapter of history.”
Xiahou Zuo said, “Then I’ll go back and look for more — maybe there are others.”
Headmaster Gao said, “Do you think these are pebbles to kick up from the road? That you can just rummage around and find several at a time? That even one has come to light is already an extraordinary stroke of fortune.”
Xiahou Zuo thought: Headmaster, you have no idea — these things are easier to gather than pebbles. If it weren’t for fear of alarming you, and the difficulty of explaining where they all came from, I’d go back right now and bring you a whole cartload.
A thought suddenly struck Xiahou Zuo. He asked, quite sincerely, “Headmaster — do you know much about the Youshan Seven Divine Commanders?”
Headmaster Gao’s gaze had remained fixed on the shell throughout, but at Xiahou Zuo’s question he set it down with careful deliberation.
“The Seven Divine Commanders — each was said to possess a suit of armor impervious to any blade, which is why they were invincible on the battlefield and no weapon could touch them. But more remarkably still, the seven of them together devised a martial art — the name of it I don’t know. The legend is that anyone who mastered the martial art they created would be, without question, unrivaled under heaven.”
Xiahou Zuo was on his feet at once. “Headmaster, I’ll take my leave now.”
Headmaster Gao was startled. “Why so suddenly?”
Xiahou Zuo said, “I — my stomach has started aching all at once. I can’t hold on. I need to get back.”
Headmaster Gao said, “This is the Academy — there are dozens of outhouses here, large and small. I have one right in my quarters. Why do you need to rush all the way back?”
Xiahou Zuo said, “I — I have my own spot. Can’t manage with other spots.”
Headmaster Gao stared.
He couldn’t quite bring himself to say what was on his mind, and let it go. He understood what it meant to be particular about one’s bed — but a preferred spot for relieving oneself — what conceivable part of the anatomy could object to a different one?
“Your student takes his leave.”
Xiahou Zuo found nothing more to say. He turned and ran.
Watching Xiahou Zuo’s retreating figure, Headmaster Gao murmured to himself, “It shouldn’t be… there’s no logical reason for it.”
—
Back at the Carriage and Horse Inn, Xiahou Zuo relayed everything he had heard from Headmaster Gao in careful detail, leaving Li Chi and the others rather astonished. It all made sense now — why the Youshan people had valued placer gold so highly, and why the Iron Crane people today valued it just the same.
A single lineage. No strangers among them.
“We have to keep digging.”
Xiahou Zuo mused, “From the look of the map, the underground chamber is no smaller than the palace above. What we’ve seen is probably just one hall. If the whole thing is unearthed, the treasures within may be considerable — and there’s also that martial art capable of making someone unrivaled under heaven.”
Yu Jiuling’s eyes were practically shooting stars. He cared nothing for being unrivaled under heaven — what he cared about was how much more treasure they could dig up.
“Let’s do it!”
Yu Jiuling shot to his feet. “We start now!”