Jiuli Pass, also known as Huangxian Pass, bordered Yingshan County of Suizhou to the south and connected to Luoshan County of Guangzhou to the north. Together with Wusheng Pass (Wuyang Pass) and Pingjing Pass to the west entering Yiyang County territory, they were collectively called the Three Passes of Yiyang, constituting the second major passage between Jingxiang and the Central Plains besides the Nanyang Basin.
Huangxian Pass was flanked by mountains on both sides, forming a natural gorge—narrow at both ends and wide in the middle, easy to defend and difficult to attack—a place military strategists of successive dynasties had contested.
In early in the second month, dozens of cavalry escorted several horse-drawn carriages, slowly traveling through the Huangxian Pass gorge.
Yao Xishui sat inside a carriage. Lifting the curtain, she looked at the mountain ridges on both sides covered in ice and snow, seeing no signs of melting yet.
“Just ahead is the Lingshan military camp. Elder Brother and Li Xiu are at the Lingshan military camp right now.”
Li Chi reined in his horse. When the carriage drew near, he turned to the side and said to Yao Xishui through the carriage window.
Huangxian Pass City belonged to Yingshan County and had long been located in the Great Chu heartland. Not only had it fallen into disrepair over the years, but restricted by the steep mountain cliffs on both sides, the interior of the pass city was extremely narrow. With just over a hundred buildings, garrisoning a thousand-plus elite troops was already the limit.
After Li Zhigao led his forces out of Tongbai Mountain and failed to capture the heavily defended Luoshan City one hundred miles north of Huangxian Pass, he built a fortified camp at the northern mouth of the Huangxian Pass gorge, at the foot of the western slopes of Meihua Mountain, based on the earlier Lingshan Stockade, so that it could form mutually supporting positions with Yiyang City forty miles to the west, overlooking the waterways and coastal areas of the upper Huai River from an elevated position.
Yao Xishui called for the carriages and horses to stop. She, along with Chun Thirteenth Niang and her attendant maid Ye Feiying, lifted the carriage curtain. At this moment they could already see at the end of the post road the faintly visible rammed earth walls of the fortified camp—the yellow-brown earthen city was especially conspicuous beneath the gleaming ice and snow. In the mountain valleys on both sides, they could also see newly opened mountain roads extending in all directions.
The mountain areas within Yiyang and Luoshan territories produced abundant coal and iron. Li Zhigao had conscripted large numbers of laborers from the interior to enter the mountains to mine coal and iron, and built smelting and casting workshops in Yiyang and Lingshan. In less than a year, they had achieved initial results.
Seeing everything before her eyes, Yao Xishui’s heart surged with complex emotions.
Once upon a time, the resources secretly controlled by the Wanhong House and Marquis Xinchang’s mansion were many times greater than what the Han father and son possessed, yet now they were being suppressed by the Tangyi army. One major reason was that they had never been able to control a stable base area.
Although they had early on taken over Qiuhu Mountain from Han Qian and managed it quite well, maintaining nearly three thousand craftsmen at its peak, it was destroyed in one stroke during the Jinling Incident. Even though some engineers and master craftsmen survived afterward, because Han Qian seized power, most of these people chose to relocate with their families to settle in Xuzhou after the Jinling Incident.
After the war, under Shen Yang’s insistence, the Palace Construction Bureau ultimately took over Qiuhu Mountain.
The subsequent annihilation of the Right Divine Martial Army was an even greater blow.
After Emperor Yanyou’s enthronement, Duke Changguo Li Pu devoted all the vast resources under his control to building up the Right Divine Martial Army.
Just in terms of cavalry, besides having an independent cavalry command, the Right Divine Martial Army additionally had over six thousand military horses.
However, in the end, the Right Divine Martial Army, whose combat capability had once been regarded as the best among all Imperial Guard units, saw only Li Xiu and Li Chi lead over a thousand officers and soldiers to escape from Zhongli City. Even the thousand-plus warhorses they brought back were shamelessly intercepted by Han Qian.
Currently the combined elite forces of the three Imperial Guard units—Left Martial Guard Army, Left Vermillion Bird Army, and Left Divine Martial Army—had no more than five thousand military horses total, making it difficult to even form an independent cavalry force.
Although they could now barely claim to have brought the states of Xiang, Deng, Jun, Sui, and Ying under their control, these states had suffered the most severe destruction from warfare over the past century. Just during the Jingxiang warfare several years ago, nearly two hundred thousand people were slaughtered and plundered by the Liang army.
Although after the Jingxiang warfare, Emperor Tianyou forcibly conscripted a group of households from Tan, E, and other states to settle the borders and fill Deng and Jun, by the end of last year when the Xiangbei Regional Defense Command was formally established, the total registered households in the five states numbered only one hundred twenty thousand households with over seven hundred thousand people.
The destruction of warfare meant that over the past several decades, not only had the population of these five states not increased by the slightest bit, it had been drastically reduced by over seventy percent.
One must know that during the middle period of the previous dynasty, the Nanyang Basin alone had one hundred twenty to thirty thousand households with nearly a million residents.
Regardless of how vigilant and wary Yao Xishui was toward Tangyi in her heart, she had to admit that in recent years they had learned far too much from the Han father and son. Their understanding of population was much more profound than the so-called civil and military officials of this era.
After Li Zhigao took office as Regional Defense Commander, he focused on suppressing local powerful households, promoting rest and recuperation for the people’s livelihood, and reducing the exploitation suffered by bottom-tier poor people. She also advised Lu Qingxia to fully support this.
Even not counting power and influence at court, currently it appeared that the Xiangbei Regional Defense Command controlled five states with less than eight hundred thousand people and nearly fifty thousand regular soldiers, compared to the Tangyi Pacification Command’s control of three states with around six hundred thousand people and thirty thousand regular soldiers—by any measure they should be considerably stronger. But Yao Xishui knew in her heart that Xiangbei was already at a disadvantage.
Tangyi’s navy numbered only four thousand-plus soldiers, seemingly not a large scale, but under Han Qian’s control, the Chishan Association possessed over three hundred merchant cargo vessels large and small. Through large-scale trade in cloth, iron, tea, medicine, tung oil, porcelain, and other bulk commodities produced in Xuzhou and Tangyi, its reach extended into every prefecture and county of Great Chu, employing over five thousand boatmen and sailors who were all former members of the Left Guangde Army—truly a semi-armed force not to be ignored.
Because Tangyi had relatively ample financial resources, even though Huaidong and Prince Shou’s mansion had become vigilant, they could not prevent Han Qian from using money and grain to reclaim new fields and build houses within Tangyi territory, selling them to households and refugees from Jiangnan who had lost land or had little land at prices far below cost.
With the Chishan Association’s secret assistance, they could even directly bypass provincial and county supervision to directly transport bottom-tier poor people and slaves into Tangyi. Even if ordinary prefectures and counties noticed, who would obstruct the enormously powerful Han family and Marquis Qianyang’s mansion?
Although not as exaggerated as last year, Tangyi had approximately two to three thousand new population additions each month.
Just on this point alone, Xiangbei could not remotely compare.
The Weaving Bureau, which supplied textiles and silks to the palace, collected weaving tribute from local areas, and had the authority to monitor the realm on behalf of the Palace of Benevolent Longevity, was naturally one of the eight bureaus under the Palace Attendant Department and possessed far greater authority than the Chishan Association, which didn’t even have formal status.
And Yao Xishui and Chun Thirteenth Niang, as Weaving Commissioner and Vice Commissioner, held official ranks of fourth grade and junior fourth grade, acting under the Empress Dowager’s edicts, with authority above provincial governors in local areas.
However, the Weaving Bureau had only two to three hundred people available outside the Imperial City, mainly used for gathering intelligence from various places, lacking the capability to recruit refugees for Xiangbei on a large scale.
And in Xiangbei’s various states, currently every copper coin and every grain of rice that could be squeezed out had to be used to improve soldiers’ armor and military equipment. There was also no surplus capacity to reclaim wasteland or build garrison stockades on a larger scale.
Speaking of which, it was also tragic. Over the past year, they had even been forced to squeeze out limited funds and grain to purchase hundreds of thousands of bolts of cotton cloth and millions of pounds of raw cotton from the Chishan Association to improve the military uniforms and winter clothing of nearly fifty thousand officers and soldiers in the Left Vermillion Bird Army, Left Martial Guard Army, and Left Divine Martial Army, to enhance the army’s field combat capability in cold seasons.
Perhaps this great chaos in Hebei and alarm in Liang Kingdom was currently their best opportunity to decisively suppress Tangyi and regain the advantage?
But how could they better seize this opportunity without letting Tangyi reap the benefits?
Thinking of this, Yao Xishui felt an intense headache.
After the battle at Wujin Ridge, the Weaving Bureau had sent even more elite agents, disguised as hunters and herb gatherers, to infiltrate deep into Huaiyang Mountain.
From last winter until now, the Tangyi army’s mobilization of bottom-tier poor people to stage uprisings everywhere in the upper river valleys of the Baishui River, Guan River, and Bailu River systems, as well as opening plank roads between the upper river valleys of Baishui River and Yanzi River—they were completely clear about all this. But the Tangyi army’s mountain warfare capability and ability to mobilize poor people’s uprisings was too strong.
Never mind their dozen elite agents—even though the Shouzhou Army had detected this early on, in the harsh winter with mountains sealed by heavy snow, they had no way to deal with the Tangyi army.
Once the Liang army suffered severe setbacks on the northern front or the situation reversed, forcing the Shouzhou Army to contract its defense lines again, by any measure it would be the Tangyi army that would take advantage to emerge from Huaiyang Mountain with even greater geographical advantages.
How could they divert that scoundrel Han Qian’s attention?
For the moment Yao Xishui had no good schemes to consider. She thought perhaps after seeing Elder Brother, they would have some good ideas.
…
…
Just as Yao Xishui and her group entered the Lingshan military camp, before the carriages and horses reached the command tent, through the carriage window she saw Feng Yi looking over furtively. Her delicate brows furrowed slightly as she asked Li Chi, “Why is he here?”
Li Chi had previously been sent by Li Zhigao on official business to Lishan County. It just happened that Yao Xishui and Chun Thirteenth Niang were passing through, so he traveled with them. He had been away from Lingshan military camp for two or three days and didn’t know why Feng Yi would be here now.
Seeing Yao Xishui reveal half her beautiful, charming face from the carriage, Feng Yi came forward with a shameless grin and bowed, saying, “Weaving Commissioner Yao, esteemed Yao official, it’s been quite a while since we last met. Feng Yi has been missing you terribly.”
Although Feng Yi’s temperament was carefree and he wasn’t as diligent in his duties as others, most of Tangyi’s important contacts with the outside world were conducted through him.
Moreover, the outside world also recognized that he could represent Han Qian’s views.
Seeing Feng Yi at Lingshan military camp, Yao Xishui naturally instinctively guessed that Han Qian had some urgent matter to discuss with Elder Brother.
Feng Yi had also just arrived at Lingshan military camp, not much earlier than Yao Xishui and her group, and hadn’t yet seen Li Zhigao. But he didn’t play coy with Yao Xishui either. Accompanying them toward Li Zhigao’s command tent, he said as they walked, “Palace Commissioner Yao must be very curious why I’ve run to Luoshan for no reason? The Weaving Bureau has been sending far too many agents into Huaiyang Mountain lately. If you Palace Commissioner Yao and your people don’t restrain yourselves now, or at least give us a heads up, if someone gets accidentally hurt, it won’t look good for anyone. I’ve come this time because we captured over a dozen suspicious individuals in the deep mountains of the upper Guan River, Bailu River, and Baishui River valleys. I’ve specifically brought them over to ask Regional Defense Commander Li to identify them, lest we mistakenly kill officers and soldiers who are utterly loyal to our Great Chu…”
“Hmph…” Yao Xishui let out a soft snort. Now nearly half the population of Huaiyang Mountain’s north slope was under Tangyi army control. Moreover, when Han Qian was in Xuzhou, his capability for controlling and investigating mountain areas was already extremely high, which made it increasingly difficult for the Weaving Bureau’s secret agents to infiltrate Huaiyang Mountain.
Facing Feng Yi’s veiled threatening words, Yao Xishui felt very displeased in her heart. But regarding the dozen-plus people who had fallen into Tangyi’s hands, she couldn’t help but try to rescue them, so she just kept a cold expression without speaking.