“I don’t know who instigated this rebellion, nor do I have the interest to know. The Ju Wentai family is already finished. His son is dancing for Our Majesty in Chang’an, which means their family is done for.”
“You are common people. Who becomes emperor has nothing to do with you. Calculate for yourselves—were your lives better when Ju Wentai was here, or are they better now? What you’re doing is actually causing trouble for us and for yourselves. Even if you kill all of us today, so what?”
“The army will arrive in an instant. Your villages, your parents, wives, and children—I guarantee not one will survive. So I just can’t understand why you would do such a stupid thing.”
“I know you hate us Tang people. To be honest, I hate you too. My home is at the foot of Qingyun Mountain. My family circumstances are fairly prosperous. The grain at home is more than we can eat in a year. I’m also an official. If I stayed home, the life I’d live would be a hundred times better than now. There’s no wind and sand there, no bandits, and no packs of wild wolves. If His Majesty hadn’t sent me here, who would want to stay here eating sand?”
“So I won’t lecture you about grand principles. You just obediently go back and continue picking cotton, complete this year’s corvée labor, and then you can go home and live with your wives and children. Those who should tan leather should tan leather, those who should prepare dried fruit should prepare dried fruit, those who should take out cotton to dry should dry it. Remember to remove the cotton seeds—cotton with seeds removed and cotton with seeds not removed fetch different prices.”
“The merchant caravans will arrive come spring. Households should be getting busy now. The trading season is only that one month. Instead of preparing your family’s affairs, what are you doing pointing forks at me? Hurry up, go to work. Once all five of my fingers curl down, you won’t have the chance to work even if you want to.”
Tian Yuanyi held out one hand. One finger had already curled down. The barbarians before him were somewhat hesitant. Tian Yuanyi’s second finger also curled down. In the distance, barbarians had already begun walking toward the cotton fields. By the time all five of Tian Yuanyi’s fingers had completely curled into a fist, only two white-bearded old men remained before him.
“Bandits! Cowards! There are no more heroes beneath the snow mountains.” The old men looked at their tribesmen with grief.
Tian Yuanyi understood the old men’s meaning very well. The first two words referred to the Tang people; the last two words referred to their own tribesmen. He looked at the two old confused fools and said melancholically: “We are bandits, your tribesmen are cowards. What do you want to do? Do you hope to see our heads cut off? And then watch as your tribesmen’s heads are also cut off? Once everyone is dead, will you feel very satisfied?”
“Let me guess—your sons must have been killed by the army, right? Neither of your families has many people left, right? Haven’t you yourselves already tired of living?”
“Old bastards, look at those people working. They still have people at home, still have parents, wives, and children waiting to be fed. They’re different from you. You can kick up your legs and die without any attachments, and before dying, you can vent your anger. What about them?”
“The heroes praised on the snow mountains are all selfish bastards. If they could lead their tribesmen to better and better lives, such heroes would of course be worth praising. But from Balahei to Molihei, which one has brought benefits to their tribesmen? The Demon King lived nicely on the snow mountain, occasionally beating drums, singing songs, amusing himself—I’ve never heard of him snatching anyone’s children to eat. Even if he liked to lock up princesses to admire them, what business was it of Balahei’s? Balahei wanted to kill him just to show off his martial prowess, and the result was that the snow mountain collapsed. Balahei did kill the Demon King, but his village was also buried by the snow mountain.”
“I just find it strange—how is it that you only praise Balahei for rescuing the princess, but no one thinks about whether those people in his village who were crushed to death by the snow mountain were willing or not?”
“Go. I don’t want to kill anyone today. You can continue going to the village to deceive those fools, make them continue doing stupid things while you hide in the shadows and snicker. Go, continue deceiving your tribesmen to go to their deaths. This has little to do with me. Today’s cotton must be handed over—not even one tael less will do. This is your punishment.”
After Tian Yuanyi finished speaking, he didn’t even look at those two disgusting old men. He lay back down in the cotton pile to continue thinking about his affairs. The veterans guarding him on both sides smiled and shook their heads, continuing to patrol the surroundings holding their long sabers.
The old men still went back to pick cotton. When Tian Yuanyi spoke, his voice was very loud, and many people heard him, especially some women who tightly held onto their men, making them pick cotton with them and not daring to let them leave.
Tian Yuanyi squinted and secretly glanced at the two old men, discovering that wherever they went, the crowd would disperse. In a large empty space, only the two old men were picking cotton themselves—a miserable fate.
Tian Yuanyi had said these words at least five times already. Whenever he encountered resistance, he would say this. Dividing the enemy was much easier than eliminating the enemy. No one would know that the fifty veterans beside him were the most formidable existence in the entire army.
On the second day of work, those two old men didn’t appear. The temporarily elected village chief told Tian Yuanyi that the two old men had died—one hanged himself at the village entrance, another slit his throat at his son’s grave.
Tian Yuanyi closed his eyes in pain. After a while, he opened them and said to the village chief: “Send a few people to bury them. I’ll pay for it. Now that we’re not fighting, we should see fewer corpses whenever possible. Count the few people burying them as having reported for work.”
The village chief bowed gratefully and went to dispatch people, leaving Tian Yuanyi to look at this land with grief.
The veterans looked at Tian Yuanyi with contempt. Last night when he assigned them the killing task, this fellow’s expression had been ferocious, without a trace of kindness.
“Tomorrow we need to change locations. This place has already stabilized. As long as we don’t press too hard, the previous assassinations won’t happen again.” Tian Yuanyi shook the dust off his robe, spat out the sand in his mouth, cursed the damned wind and sand once more, and hurried back to his carriage…
The blueprints from the academy had been delivered, and along with them came a class of students. Their task was to properly install the Camel City’s chassis—that is, to position fifty thousand camels in appropriate places according to the blueprints’ requirements and to evenly distribute the weight on the Camel City across each camel’s body. This was complicated work. Gongshu Jia personally rushed over. The Camel City’s starting point would be Gaochang, and the endpoint would be Luanshi City. Only the gobi in this area met the requirements for the Camel City’s back-and-forth movement. This was also the key area where Tang forces needed to garrison. Once the Western Regions barbarians broke through Yun Ye’s defensive line, they would follow Yiwu Prefecture and infiltrate the Turkic grasslands belonging to Guannei Circuit, or they would break through Yumen Pass and strike directly at Longyou. If either of these two situations occurred, Yun Ye would have no path except suicide to apologize.
The Camel City was now the top priority. It had to be built as quickly as possible. Even if it couldn’t perform at maximum efficiency, it could still serve to intimidate enemy forces, or perhaps force the Turks to make up their minds to move west earlier.
Regarding Suiye City, Talas, and Almaty, Yun Ye had no solutions. His army couldn’t move there. As soon as they moved there, bandits would rise up behind him like a swarm, troubling him endlessly. At this moment, Yun Ye discovered he was very much like people from a certain country in later generations.
He had used appeasement methods, cage policies, and sweeping operations had become routine. Except for not kidnapping young girls, he had used every trick available, finally creating a stable rear for himself. This place finally displayed a healthy social order.
Yun Ye’s methods received strong affirmation from Li Er, who believed these were good methods that could be used as reference in the empire’s occupied territories. He ordered the Ministry of War to organize Yun Ye’s tactics and strategies and distribute them to the governors of various jimi prefectures as the first tactical choice.
Li Jing believed that Yun Ye’s ability to quickly open up the situation in turbulent Tingzhou, stabilize local affairs, and mix various ingenious ideas to achieve optimal results meant he could already be called a general. One must know that Li Jing’s previous evaluation of Yun Ye was that it would be good enough if he could lead a fleet well. On land, he was only fit to command a thousand men, and making him a lieutenant was already elevating him. Moreover, he himself only needed three hundred men to defeat Yun Ye’s thousand, and it wouldn’t take long. Even Cheng Yaojin hadn’t refuted this evaluation.
In Li Jing’s view, the reason Yun Ye could be invincible was that he relied on his clever brain, always able to think up some unexpected methods and use the weapons in his hands to their fullest. As for tactics and strategy, he didn’t believe Yun Ye had such things.
And a clever brain was the most unreliable thing. If one day his brain filled with water, tens of thousands of troops following such a fool of a commander would be entering the gates of hell. Li Er held the same view, which was why on regular battlefields he never deployed Yun Ye. Only in places requiring risk-taking, luck, and wisdom would he let Yun Ye have free rein. This was what military tactics called “using the extraordinary.”
If the five-thousand-li desert sea were handed to Li Jing, the old fellow said he’d need at least three hundred thousand elite troops—one less and the battle couldn’t be fought. When Li Er heard this, his eyes nearly popped out. The entire Great Tang only had five hundred thousand elite troops. If he gave Li Jing three hundred thousand, could he still sleep well? As for the several great generals of the Sixteen Guards, they always clamored that if given one hundred thousand iron cavalry, they would naturally sweep across the Western Regions to the edge of the sky.
Li Er believed these words. The Great Tang’s one hundred thousand elite cavalry killing their way to the edge of the sky wouldn’t be a big problem. But when it came to garrisoning the desert sea, every one of them shook their heads like rattle drums. This was why Li Er insisted against all opposition that Yun Ye replace Su Dingfang as commander of the Desert Sea Army.
The appearance of the Camel City made Li Er beside himself with joy. More than once he told Zhangsun that Yun Ye was like a bean—no oil comes out without crushing it. A mobile city appearing in the desert—what kind of person could think up such a method? Besides Yun Ye, there was no one else. Li Er had once used the Camel City to tease Li Jing, asking him if he had such a city in hand, could fifty thousand men lock down the border passes or not.
Every time he saw Li Jing’s helpless face, Li Er felt increasingly wise. With the Camel City, even if the enemy drilled around to the rear, it didn’t matter—it was just closing the door to beat the dog. Those who dared to bypass the enemy’s mighty city and penetrate deep alone numbered only a few like Huo Qubing. He didn’t believe those scared-witless Turks would have such courage.