Since suspicion was unavoidable and staying uninvolved was ultimately not a solution, it would be better to make each other wary—that might enable peaceful coexistence.
With Han Qian’s attitude transformed, Feng Liao, along with Dou Rong who had served as Battalion Commander and Deputy General in the Chishan Army and Left Guangde Army, contacted Han Donghu and first carried a batch of money and grain to rush to the stronghold at the northern foothills of Fuyu Mountain south of Guangde to meet with Su Lie and other leaders secretly preparing the uprising.
Han Qian had the willingness to receive the uprising leaders. Su Lie and the other uprising leaders naturally wanted to first meet Han Qian before discussing other matters.
Han Qian and over a hundred attendants were not suitable to remain at Maoshan too long. The location ultimately chosen for the meeting was Sitian Dun, situated at the junction of Huzhou and Guangde Prefecture, among the southeastern foothill branches of the three boundary ridges—Jinzhong Ridge, Jinji Ridge, and Xuanjiao Ridge.
Sitian Dun had originally been where Marquis Xinchang Li Pu led the Lishui great clan troops of the Wei, Liu, and other families along with their kinsmen to take shelter.
After the Guangde Military Commission Office was formally established, the Right Guangde Army—composed mainly of Marquis Xinchang Li Pu and young men from Xuanzhou and capital southern powerful houses—was primarily stationed in the region west of Langxi confronting the An’ning Palace rebel forces. Nearly twenty thousand women and children from Lishui’s Wei, Liu, and other families all moved to places like Xuancheng where it was easier to obtain provisions to escape the war.
After recovering Jinling, these people also basically all moved back to Lishui County.
After the Guangde Military Commission Office was formally established, because the old forces at Sitian Dun had been cleared out most cleanly, Han Qian had once established over ten village strongholds at Sitian Dun and in the surrounding mountain ridges to settle retired Left Guangde Army officers, soldiers, and their families. But precisely because of this, Sitian Dun suffered the fiercest counterattack from the great clans.
Not only did people come back with old land deeds and title deeds to seize the old fields at Sitian Dun, even newly cultivated slope terraced fields and new fields in the valleys were partially forcibly reclaimed by Anji County to serve as public fields. The original tenant farmers were only allowed to rent and cultivate them, ordered to pay four or five times the field tax as rent. At the same time, the three coal mines and one iron mine opened within Sitian Dun were even more forcibly requisitioned by Anji County as official property.
During the most frenzied period of the great clans’ counterattack, nearly three thousand households throughout Guangde Prefecture had their properties seized, with approximately over one-quarter concentrated at Sitian Dun.
These were still just the households that directly had properties seized and suffered persecution.
Those harboring discontent with seeds of resistance buried within numbered countless thousands.
The court thought sending Chen Jingzhou over had already eased the contradictions, not knowing that blazing magma had already silently ignited burning underground, waiting at any time for a more appropriate moment to erupt and destroy everything around.
The ancient courier road at Xuanjiao Ridge, located in the eastern foothills of the Jieling Mountain range, connected the land passage between Yangxian in Runzhou and Changxing in Huzhou. East of the courier road, the mountain terrain continued endlessly, extending all the way to the shores of Lake Tai.
The terrain of this mountain ridge area in Xuanjiao Ridge’s eastern foothills—the peaks and ridges couldn’t be called particularly high, but the ridges were treacherous with deep valleys, the terrain rugged. However, at that time, to facilitate harvesting fish and shrimp from Lake Tai’s waters to supplement food, several small paths and five villages making a living from fishing and hunting were still forcibly opened, settling over a thousand people.
Han Qian had very early planned to arrange for some veteran soldiers to retire from the ranks—not to preserve strength or for any other ambition or intention, but purely because at that time hundreds of thousands of women and children needed to be settled, requiring large amounts of able-bodied laborers to participate in various heavy physical labor.
The meeting location was in one of these villages called Dingjia Gully.
Han Qian ascended the mountain peak behind the village stronghold. Under dense green tree shade, the exposed soil and mountain rocks were reddish-brown in color—also called Red Cliff Peak. The eastern cliff over forty zhang high faced directly onto Lake Tai’s waters.
Han Qian stood at the cliff’s edge, gazing at the vast and mighty Lake Tai waters. Dotted green peaks stood throughout the lake, among which were also distributed some fishing villages and water strongholds. Some made a living from fishing, some worked in boat transport, but some were both merchants and bandits. However, since Great Chu’s founding, there had always been strengthened severe crackdowns on the Lake Tai bandits so close beside the pillow and headboard. The water stronghold forces were just not as frenzied as those in Poyang Lake.
“Han Donghu and Su Lie have arrived.” Feng Yi walked over with two attendant guards and spoke to Han Qian.
“Good, let’s go over.” Han Qian said.
This side was narrow and couldn’t accommodate too many people. Ahead in the forest was a hunting shelter that could be somewhat tidied up to serve as a deliberation venue.
Han Qian walked toward the forest ahead with Xi Ren and Guo Rong.
Kong Xirong and He Liufeng led personnel responsible for outer perimeter security. Feng Liao and Dou Rong had already brought Han Donghu, Su Lie, and seven other uprising leaders to wait before the hunting shelter.
“Your Lordship…”
Aside from Han Donghu and Su Lie, the other seven uprising leaders were all military officers retired from the Left Guangde Army. Seeing Han Qian, they all became so emotional they choked up.
When Han Qian returned to Xuzhou on the pretext of marriage matters, the numerous military and civilian personnel remaining in Guangde Prefecture had pretty much all been arranged with livelihoods. Large-scale terraced slope and lake reclamation was also proceeding in full swing. Xuzhou craftsmen didn’t withdraw the last batch until April of the following year.
Apart from the several thousand military and civilian personnel who migrated to Xuzhou with Han Qian, those who remained had logically already severed relations with Xuzhou.
However, as long as they were human, they always had dependency.
Especially during the fiercest period of the great clans’ counterattack, when so many innocents were implicated and imprisoned, suffering cruel torture—dead or maimed—when so many people had the properties they relied on for settling down and making a living seized, restrained by the elite Imperial Guard forces of the great clan troops stationed nearby from daring to rise in armed resistance, harboring towering resentment toward the court and great clans, how could they not also feel the sense of loss from being abandoned by Xuzhou?
“Guo Xiao, Guo Quan, Zhou Zhu, Lin Jiang, Lin Sheng…”
Among those military officers who retired from the Left Guangde Army and chose to remain in Guangde Prefecture to settle down, these seven—Guo Xiao, Zhou Zhu, and others—were all backbone members. Therefore, it was only possible for these seven to take the lead in organizing with Han Donghu and Su Lie in preparing the uprising. Han Qian had impressions of them all. He greeted them to enter the hunting shelter to sit and talk, no need to be constrained by etiquette.
These seven were filled with excitement, even somewhat unable to contain themselves. They closely followed Han Qian into the low hunting shelter, bowing their bodies, willing to stand there in such an awkward posture listening to Han Qian’s instructions.
Su Lie was somewhat hesitant and uncertain. He followed Han Donghu into the hunting shelter, his expression also quite unnatural.
Han Qian didn’t mind. He invited Su Lie and Han Donghu to sit beside him and asked Han Donghu: “This must be Master Su of the Twin Blades?”
“Before Marquis Qianyang, Su Lie is a nameless nobody, not daring to accept such an appellation.” No matter how arrogant Su Lie’s mentality, he had long heard of Han Qian’s nearly legendary past.
And never mind Han Qian—which person beside Han Qian, speaking of their reputation, wasn’t ten times, a hundred times more illustrious than his? How could the seats beside Han Qian be his turn to occupy?
“Leader Su, don’t be polite. Sit down to talk. Otherwise, with everyone bending their bodies like this, their waists can’t bear it.” Dou Rong said with a smile, pushing him and Han Donghu to sit beside Han Qian.
Feng Liao mixed among the various leaders, moving a tree stump to sit on.
These past few days, Feng Liao and Dou Rong had been together with Han Donghu, Su Lie, and the others. They could more accurately grasp Su Lie’s mentality.
Su Lie’s blade technique was extraordinary. Having been at Shang Wensheng’s side for many years, he was roughly literate and his insight was also not ordinary. The escaped slaves who fled the Shang family with him were all elite Shang family guards.
They were numerous and strong. In mutually assisting Han Donghu to escape official pursuit, even being forced to flee deep into Fuyu Mountain, as well as in the early stages of gathering some persecuted former Left Guangde Army soldiers and families to become outlaws, he occupied quite a dominant position.
He even actively promoted organizing connections with more former Left Guangde Army soldiers who had their properties seized. Comparatively, Han Donghu was more worried about triggering even larger-scale, harder-to-contain upheaval, with a relatively much more passive attitude.
That is to say, before Xuzhou formally intervened, Su Lie was the de facto uprising leader.
Now that Xuzhou had formally intervened, with Han Qian’s influence and prestige, and with so many old comrades’ feelings toward and connections with Han Qian and the original Chishan Army, Su Lie was equivalent to being directly marginalized.
In anyone’s place, it would be impossible to have not a trace of thoughts in their heart.
Feng Liao saw that during deliberations, Han Qian intentionally arranged for Su Lie to sit beside him. He knew naturally this also considered his feelings.
Han Qian’s meeting with everyone was mainly to discuss the way out for so many elderly, weak, women, and children. But at the start, he also didn’t presume or condescendingly directly designate what plan they should accept or execute according to what plan. He mainly sat down to lay out the problems and discuss together.
They necessarily had to prepare for armed struggle, but they also had to clearly recognize that in the Jiangdong region where great clan power was strongest, adjacent to the imperial capital Jinling, their strength was weak—it could even be said insignificant.
Han Donghu and Su Lie’s initial plan mainly still involved relying on Fuyu Mountain, nearly four hundred li in span, for activity and survival after the uprising.
Such a large-scale mountain ridge, with deep forests and treacherous valleys, combined with previously having large numbers of Guangde Army officers, soldiers, and families taking root at Fuyu Mountain’s northern foothills—the mass foundation was excellent. A force of one or two thousand in elite combat strength hiding within would be no problem.
However, after the uprising truly swept more people in, compared to the able-bodied young men who could be organized into elite forces, the elderly, weak, women, and children numbering several times greater would make the uprising rebel army appear especially bloated and clumsy.
This was also the problem peasant uprisings had necessarily faced for thousands of years, and also the problem Han Qian tried every means to avoid after establishing the Chishan Army.
In deep mountain forests, the uprising rebel army would find it very difficult to advance and retreat freely, not to mention that every month they would need at minimum ten thousand dan of provisions and fodder supplies that they fundamentally had no capacity to solve. At that time, under the combined suppression of Imperial Guards and local forces, they would only fight weaker and weaker, ultimately unable to escape a tragic ending of annihilation.
And if Xuzhou truly wanted to participate more directly in this matter, they also couldn’t directly stage uprisings and revolts in the most violent manner.
Though Han Qian had decided to no longer be bound hand and foot in everything, deciding to seize the initiative and make Yang Yuanpu and the court ministers wary of him rather than thinking of all sorts of ways to clear himself of suspicion, he also would not bring chaos to Great Chu.
It could even be said that currently he was still far from qualified to bring chaos to Great Chu, much less replace it.
A more feasible alternative strategy was to imitate the Xuzhou Boat Guild from back then, religious organizations that had existed since Qin and Han times, and secret societies that flourished in Ming and Qing times in later generations—establishing semi-armed fraternal organizations, pursuing having certain self-protection capability yet also not directly breaking with the court.
Considering that after the Imperial Guards’ northern campaign captured Chaozhou, they temporarily still lacked the strength to directly attack Shouzhou, the region between Chuzhou and Yangzhou, as well as northward to the area adjacent to Hongze Lake’s main body—roughly equivalent to Shiliang County’s territory—with undulating hills and crisscrossing lake marshes and ponds, connected with giant marshes like Hongze Marsh and Fanliang Lake, would be a buffer zone where all three forces would be wary, difficult for any to fully control.
As long as he reached an agreement with Prince Xin, the fraternal organization they established could seek greater survival space there.
And as long as this step was achieved, they would be qualified to negotiate with the court. Han Qian could even directly appear to apply pressure, forcing the court to recognize their legitimate existence as a semi-armed force affiliated with Great Chu.
This was also the condition for Han Qian to stand up to meet everyone and for Xuzhou to directly intervene in this matter. He couldn’t possibly directly trigger large-scale revolts in the Jiangnan water country…