Yang Jian, Shen Yang, Zheng Hui and the others also advocated entering the city first, with stabilizing the Tanzhou situation being of paramount importance. Next, they would need to prepare as soon as possible for the next phase of offensives against Shaozhou and Hengzhou.
Subsequently, they had Guo Liang first lead over a thousand cavalry guards from the Personal Guard Bureau and Inner Guard Bureau into the city to take up residence in the original Tanzhou Military Governor’s Residence, conducting security inspections. The others would first accompany the Third Prince and the Shu emissary, Marquis Changxiang Wang Yong, in ascending Mount Yuelu for sacrificial rites, before formally entering the city in the afternoon.
Although the Ma clan had ruled Xiangtan for over a hundred years, during the Ma clan’s internal strife, Tanzhou City had suffered through a military catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands of houses were destroyed by fire, and countless civilians in the city had died or been injured. Ma Yin had no choice but to request Emperor Tianyou to dispatch troops. Tanzhou had nominally submitted to Great Chu, and it had already been nearly ten years.
The aristocratic families, local clans, and common people of Tanzhou had more or less formed a certain sense of identification and belonging toward Great Chu. The Ma family’s raising of the rebel flag this time, seeking to plot separatist rule, did not win popular support.
In several hard-fought battles, the casualties were mainly among the direct military forces that the Ma family had controlled for many years. The combat effectiveness of the local militia was extremely weak. After Ma Yin proclaimed himself King of Xiang, many officials in Tanzhou even abandoned their seals and fled into the deep mountains.
The Tanzhou rebellion being rapidly suppressed within half a year was also particularly beneficial for winning over people’s hearts.
Under the slanting rays of the setting sun, Han Qian accompanied the Third Prince into the city.
The main street from the city entrance to the Military Governor’s Residence was already packed with onlooking civilians until not even water could trickle through. In the eyes of the vast majority of civilians, there was no fear; rather, there was a sense of relief and reassurance at the war being so quickly suppressed.
Marquis Changxiang Wang Yong and the fake youth beside him drew away many gazes, but the Third Prince Yang Yuanpu was undoubtedly the most eye-catching. He did not sit in a more securely protected carriage but insisted on riding into the city on horseback. Under the gaze of ten thousand people, he passed through the stone-paved main street and entered the magnificent and splendid Military Governor’s Residence (Prince of Xiang’s Residence).
The Ma clan’s separatist control of the Dongting Lake and Xiang River regions, at its peak, governed twelve provinces spanning the Dongting Lake, Xiang River, and Yuan River basins. The Military Governor’s Residence, where several generations of the Ma family had lived and continually expanded, was also grand in scale and extremely magnificent and splendid.
Even though part of the Military Governor’s Residence buildings had been destroyed during the internal strife, after ten years had passed, they had already been repaired and restored to their former appearance.
The Tanzhou Military Governor’s Residence occupied approximately four to five hundred acres, even more massive than Dragon Fang City.
The front administrative section of the Military Governor’s Residence had three great halls, which were where Ma Yin deliberated and handled military and political affairs. The inner residence had even more than a thousand rooms. Pavilions, terraces, and towers stood in dense rows. They had even enclosed a small hill occupying over a hundred acres called Lion Mountain within the residence, transforming it into a private garden. The scale was several times more grand than the Prince of Linjiang’s residence in Jinling City.
The Tanzhou Military Governor’s Residence inner residence also had long established the tradition of having private eunuchs for service.
After Marquis Xinchang Li Pu led his troops into the city, besides detaining over four thousand captured soldiers and more than three thousand members of the Ma clan’s kinsmen and female dependents who had not managed to flee south, the eunuchs and palace maids employed in the inner residence of the Military Governor’s Residence had also been detained—over two thousand people.
If one counted all the several hundred civil and military officials of various ranks that Ma Yin had appointed in Tanzhou City, along with their family dependents and household slaves, they would probably account for nearly half of Tanzhou’s population.
For the convenience of guarding and deliberating, Han Qian, Shen Yang, Zhang Ping, and the Shu emissary Marquis Changxiang Wang Yong also temporarily moved into the Military Governor’s Residence with the Third Prince.
With idle persons already confined in the prisoner camp, and the Military Governor’s Residence inside and out replaced with guards from the Prince’s Residence, the massive Military Governor’s Residence appeared much more spacious.
After Han Qian and the others moved into the Tanzhou Military Governor’s Residence, the principal rebel criminals Ma Yin, Ma Xun father and son, were also directly imprisoned in the dungeons of the Military Governor’s Residence.
To guard against any loyalists to the Ma clan still lurking in the city to carry out assassinations or rescue Ma Yin and Ma Xun father and son, Han Qian also did not bother to catch his breath. He personally deployed the elite scouts that Jinyun Tower could currently organize around the dungeon area, making up for the insufficiency of guards from the Personal Guard Bureau and Inner Guard Bureau.
The dungeon was located in the northwest corner of the Military Governor’s Residence. It appeared to be a very unremarkable small courtyard, yet it was heavily guarded.
Going around an artificial mountain, one reached the extremely inconspicuous entrance to the dungeon.
The terrain within Tanzhou City was flat. The dungeon built by excavating several meters underground appeared extremely dank, with walls bearing mottled old bloodstains, filling the dungeon with a pungent bloody smell.
Various torture instruments were placed there.
Han Qian personally walked through once with Jiang Huo and Yuan Guowei, confirming there were no secret passages inside the dungeon leading elsewhere, before returning to the main hall of the dungeon.
Ma Yin and his son Ma Xun were imprisoned in a cell on the east side of the main hall.
Ma Yin was over fifty years old, with a gaunt face that at this moment appeared extremely aged. His temples were frosty white, making him look even more lifeless and decrepit than Emperor Tianyou, who was ten years his senior.
Ma Xun still wore his python-dragon robe, but it was filthy and wretched. His nose and face were bruised and swollen, and he had several knife wounds on his body, apparently left when he led guards to resist Ji Zhongqi’s men who came to arrest him. At this time, they were only simply bandaged.
Ma Yin sat in the corner like an old monk in meditation, neither hearing, asking, nor seeing Han Qian and the others’ arrival. Ma Xun’s eyes looked over sinisterly, his heart full of unwillingness.
Han Qian smiled and offered a salute: “Dragon Sparrow Army Inner Guard Bureau Vice Commander Han Qian, pays respects to the Military Supervisor.”
This was the first sentence Han Qian had spoken when he escorted his father to take up office in Xuzhou and stopped to pay respects to Ma Xun along the way.
Thinking back to when on the enormous bow deck of the Five-Fang Tower Ship, Ma Xun sat centered in a high-backed official chair, with over ten strategists and subordinate generals standing on both sides—what imposing majesty and authority!
Han Qian thought that at that time, Ma Xun absolutely never imagined there would come a day when he would become a prisoner.
A flash of angry resentment passed through Ma Xun’s eyes, burning intensely like a man-eating beast, but then it dimmed.
“Lord Han, shall we interrogate them now?” Jiang Huo bent slightly and leaned over to ask.
When Marquis Xinchang Li Pu had captured Tanzhou City, he reported to the Third Prince that the Military Governor’s Residence had very limited stores—grain stocks insufficient to thirty thousand shi, and silks, satins, gold, and silver vessels worth less than two hundred thousand strings of cash when converted.
When Marquis Xinchang Li Pu captured Tanzhou City, the chaotic troops hadn’t even managed to rush into the Military Governor’s Residence. Jiang Huo and Yuan Guowei both suspected that Ma Yin and his son Ma Xun had secret caches elsewhere. They wanted to use interrogation to force out information about these secret caches to serve as military provisions for the Dragon Sparrow Army.
In Jiang Huo and Yuan Guowei’s view, when Ministry of Revenue Vice Minister Feng Wenlan and the Kong and Zhou families were raided, the Dali Temple and Prince’s Residence side confiscated the Kong and Feng families’ estates, manor houses, and private caches valued at several million strings of cash.
As regional lords, the Ma clan having operated along the Dongting Lake and Xiang River and Yuan River areas for nearly a hundred years couldn’t possibly be inferior to the Feng family.
Even someone like Feng Changyu, merely a local gentry household from the mountain hollow of Xuzhou, after being destroyed by Han Qian, still had sixty-plus thousand shi of grain and other goods worth sixty to seventy thousand strings of cash confiscated from Jingyun Stronghold.
Han Qian shook his head. He didn’t think the Ma family could have any more secret caches, and even if they did, definitely not much.
The Ma clan had experienced internal strife ten years ago, and their vitality had been severely damaged. Even if there had been some recovery within ten years, there was still a large gap from their peak period.
The Ma clan’s extravagant habits remained unchanged. Within ten years, they built a large number of halls, terraces, pavilions, and towers for their own enjoyment. The Military Governor’s Residence inner residence alone employed nearly three thousand eunuchs and palace maids. And to maintain Tanzhou’s semi-independent status unchanged, they had to pay tribute both openly and secretly to the high officials and nobles in Jinling City.
Moreover, Tanzhou had to maintain a massive military force of over twenty thousand elite troops year-round. During the Jingxiang war, they had lost over four thousand men. And this rebellion, dragging Shaozhou and Hengzhou down with them, rapidly expanded their forces to nearly ninety thousand men, with expenditures reaching enormous sums.
The remaining stores in the Tanzhou Military Governor’s Residence matched Han Qian’s prior judgment, and he didn’t want to become the villain for a useless endeavor.
Of course, if Jiang Huo and Yuan Guowei wanted to interrogate the Ma father and son, Han Qian absolutely wouldn’t obstruct them.
In fact, judging by the Military Governor’s Residence stores, even without Wen Ruilin, Gao Long, Miao Yong and others accelerating the progress of the feudatory reduction campaign, with Han Qian and his forces capturing Hanshou and completely controlling the middle and lower Yuan River region, cutting apart the rebel-held territories, it would take at most two or three months to plunge the rebel forces into a desperate situation of lacking grain and pay.
Even though it would soon be the autumn grain harvest season, with the Wuling Army together with an elite portion of the Dragon Sparrow Army stationed at Hanshou, they could very conveniently raid the heartland along the Dongting Lake shores, also preventing the rebel forces from requisitioning grain locally.
However, in most people’s eyes, the capture of Baimao City and Tanzhou City would be considered the two most critical battles determining victory in the feudatory reduction. Thus Marquis Xinchang Li Pu naturally held the primary merit, followed by generals like Zheng Hui and Li Zhigao.
At this moment, Xi Fa’er, who was guarding outside the dungeon, came to report that scouts sent to investigate intelligence in Shaozhou and Hengzhou had returned. The rebel generals Zhao Sheng and Luo Jia’s forces, upon learning news of Tanzhou’s fall, gathered thirty thousand troops and coerced tens of thousands of family dependents, fleeing south along the Xiang River toward Yongzhou territory. The Third Prince was convening a military council in the front administrative hall and requested Han Qian and the others to come.
Han Qian hurriedly left the west courtyard dungeon with Yuan Guowei and Jiang Huo, rushing to the front administrative hall of the Military Governor’s Residence. He saw that everyone hadn’t rested yet and, after learning the latest intelligence from Shao and Heng provinces, had all rushed over immediately.
Han Qian exchanged salutes with the Third Prince and the assembled group, then walked to sit at the long desk below Shen Yang’s position. He noticed Wen Ruilin seated between Chai Jian and Li Chong and smiled inwardly—it seemed Wen Ruilin, after continuously achieving great merit, had been completely regarded as a trusted subordinate by Marquis Xinchang.
Han Qian quietly asked Shen Yang: “Lord Shen, does everyone know that the rebel forces from Shao and Heng provinces have fled south?”
Shen Yang nodded and said: “This matter was just mentioned.”
At this moment, Zheng Hui stood up and bowed to the Third Prince, saying:
“The rebel forces from the Shao and Heng routes are coercing tens of thousands of family dependents fleeing south. Their speed will inevitably be quite slow. If we lead naval and infantry battalions south along the Xiang River, we should be able to intercept and completely annihilate them in Yongzhou territory.”
Zheng Hui belonged to the war faction, especially with the feudatory reduction campaign going so smoothly and the rebel forces having no ability to fight back. There was no reason to let Zhao Sheng and Luo Jia’s rebel forces go south to join the Jinghai Army. He advocated leaving a small force in Tanzhou City while the rest of the naval and infantry forces could immediately gather twenty thousand elite troops to pursue south. They should pursue while victorious.
Both the Third Prince and Marquis Xinchang Li Pu were eager to try, both wanting to pursue while victorious and accumulate full military merit.
Han Qian sat behind his desk, looking toward Shen Yang and Yang Jian.
Yang Jian sat as steady as Mount Tai. Clearly, he had already thought things through. If the Third Prince wanted to dispatch troops to pursue, the Tower Ship Army naval forces would dispatch warships in coordination—there was instead no need to express any opinion.
Shen Yang’s expression was slightly contemplative, as if there were some crucial points he hadn’t completely thought through, seemingly worried that immediately dispatching troops to pursue might carry some unpredictable risks.
Of course, for this military council hastily convened overnight, the main commanding generals Li Zhigao, Zhou Dan, Zhou Shu, Gao Chengyuan, Zhang Feng, Zhang Han and others, as well as accompanying officials like Chai Jian, Li Chong, Zhang Ping, Wang Lin and others, had all rushed over to participate.
Now that Zheng Hui had first expressed his position with great enthusiasm, if others agreed that was fine, but if they opposed, they would need to carefully consider their wording so as not to give offense.
Seeing that Marquis Xinchang Li Pu looked triumphant and seemed about to speak, Han Qian guessed he hadn’t completely thought through some key points. He lightly coughed, cutting off his words, and smiled at Zheng Hui: “Lord Zheng should remain to assist His Highness in holding Tanzhou. The military merit of pursuing the fleeing rebels south cannot all be monopolized by Lord Zheng!”
Zheng Hui was slightly stunned. At present in the great hall, aside from him, the only one who could command twenty to thirty thousand troops to pursue south was Marquis Xinchang Li Pu.
Yang Jian’s status and position were high enough, but as commander of the naval forces, he wasn’t a suitable choice to lead troops south.
However, listening to the meaning in Han Qian’s words, it didn’t seem he wanted to争 争the opportunity for Marquis Xinchang Li Pu to lead troops south either. After all, the military merit Marquis Xinchang Li Pu currently had in his bag was no less than his own. Han Qian should be suggesting giving subordinate generals more opportunities to perform or rather stand on their own.
This actually meant reducing the scale of troops used in the southern pursuit.
Luo Jia and Zhao Sheng still had over thirty thousand troops. Although morale was in chaos, they could gather twenty thousand elite troops—why reduce the troop scale?
Wouldn’t this needlessly increase military risk?
Marquis Xinchang Li Pu’s skill at reading expressions and gauging intentions was absolutely strong. Now everyone had substantial merit to their names and was in good spirits. Even if Han Qian didn’t advocate for him to lead troops, he wasn’t annoyed. One couldn’t be too greedy. He smiled and asked Han Qian: “Who does Lord Han think should claim the military merit of pursuing south?”
“With Zhao Sheng and Luo Jia fleeing south, Prince of Yuzhang in Yuanzhou has most likely already received the report and should soon dispatch troops to enter Hengzhou. We should select a general to command five or six thousand elite troops to first enter Shaozhou. After His Highness meets with Prince of Yuzhang, they can then discuss strategy for campaigning south against Yongzhou—this might be more appropriate,” Han Qian said.
Right now there was an excellent opportunity to pursue while victorious, yet Han Qian actually suggested slowing the pursuit of Zhao Sheng and Luo Jia. Everyone was stunned.
Where was even half a trace of Han Qian’s usual style of conduct?
Yang Yuanpu also looked over with confusion filling his mind.