Xu Province Conflict (3)
Governor of Xu Province Tao Qian collapsed, vomiting blood. Tao Shang, the mastermind behind the attack, met his end by suicide moments before the soldiers could seize him.
Then galloping disaster arrived: his second son Tao Ying had been murdered by Commandant Zhang Kai.
Half a day.
Everything collapsed in less than half a day.
Aide Sun Qian and Mi Zhu summoned the local gentry and debated countermeasures. This heaven-outraging atrocity, erupting in an eyeblink, had reduced the Tao Qian army—poised for full-scale war against Liu Chong's forces—to a crippled husk.
"I still cannot believe it. The Young Master Tao Shang, who revered his father above all others... to commit such an atrocity. Too much does not add up. Young Master Tao Shang was the heir the Governor of Xu Province himself backed without reservation—was he not? I cannot fathom why that same Tao Shang would plot assassination."
He was the eldest son. The heir. His birthright was wealth, rank, and splendor, all guaranteed.
So,
why, for what possible reason, would he try to murder his own father—his lord and patron?
Tao Shang was mild and indecisive by nature, but he was no fool. He had to know that his entire exalted station, all of it, flowed from the authority his father wielded over Xu Province.
Unfilial monster.
Traitor.
Tao Shang, until now hailed by the people of Xu Province as a sage lord of boundless promise, was branded in a flash as the unfilial wretch who tried to kill his own father. The common folk, when they heard, convulsed with raw fury and spat betrayal upon this degenerate of the age.
"Had the old lord and the Young Master been at odds of late?"
"Impossible. The old lord entrusted Tao Shang alone with everything—meals, garments, all of it."
There was simply no reason to plot rebellion.
And the plot itself was amateurish, doomed to be exposed at once.
The hastily assembled gentry beat their heads against a riddle that would never unravel. With Tao Shang, the hand behind the assassination attempt, already dead by his own hand, no path to the truth remained.
"Zhang Kai! Where is this heaven-outraging brigand!"
"Already fled to Jiangnan with his gang of cutthroats. It seems... he had long planned to murder Young Master Tao Ying and plunder his colossal wealth."
For years Tao Ying had trafficked offices to Xu Province's scholar-officials and gentry. He hawked prefectural and county posts without scruple, amassing a mountain of embezzled fortune.
Zhang Kai.
A lowborn bandit who seized the blade by the wrong end.
In broad daylight he murdered his own master Tao Ying and fled with his men. Proof that the crime had been coldly planned for days: every last coin of the enormous fortune Tao Ying had piled up through selling offices had been scraped clean and carried off.
"After the old lord collapsed, the city fell into such chaos... we could not lay hands on Zhang Kai and his gang! We only managed to learn that they escaped to Jiangnan."
The eldest son dead by his own hand, the second son murdered.
The bloodline of the Danyang Tao Clan was extinguished entirely.
And with its lord Tao Qian himself stricken, the fate of the whole faction stood before a gale-force wind with a candle in its hand.
"The soldiers are fleeing en masse!"
"Their commanders as well! Word is that the main army of Liu Chong—the force that stormed Donghai Kingdom—has already reached Lanling County!"
No lord.
No heir to inherit the mandate.
No regent even to hold military authority in the interim.
The high command had collapsed.
The Tao Qian army in this moment was nothing more than a beast with its head struck off.
Veterans who had survived every trial of this chaotic age knew with certainty that Tao Qian's faction was, in fact, finished. When the next urgent dispatch hammered home that Liu Chong's forces had breached Lanling County, the soldiers abandoned even their armor and weapons and fled for their homes.
"What will you do now?"
No method remained to oppose the southern rebels.
The gentry were still trapped in fruitless, circular debate
when a beauty with flowing snow-white hair appeared alongside her sworn sisters.
Liu Bei's army.
The valiant captains who had delivered Xu Province.
The desperate gentry of Xu Province bowed their heads to Liu Bei at once.
"Major of a Separate Command...! What in heaven's name do we do now!"
"We have no means to oppose the southern rebels! Several thousand soldiers still remain, it is true... but the moment Liu Chong's host reaches Pengcheng they will scatter like dust!"
The troops' morale had struck bedrock.
Even if a desperate, all-out last stand were proclaimed, the city would fall before holding three days.
Scorched Earth Tactics?
Liu Chong would overrun the granaries before anyone could set them ablaze.
The gentry already understood that "unconditional surrender" was, in truth, the only course remaining. They had merely hesitated to voice the word surrender aloud because they were vassals sworn to Tao Qian.
"I will defend the people of Xu Province here at Pengcheng. I know full well the battle is hopelessly outmatched, but how could I turn my back on the people who placed their trust in a foolish, unworthy girl like me? If Liu Chong's invading army tries to harm the people of Xu Province... then I shall fight to the very last woman."
She was nothing more than a guest general, dispatched as reinforcements.
Not a soul would fault her decision if she withdrew to Beiping this very hour.
But,
she declared she would stay—gladly—for the people.
If Liu Chong's forces persecuted and crushed the folk of Xu Province, she would fight them with a resolve that welcomed death. At Liu Bei's ringing declaration—I will fight to protect the weak—the scholar-officials and gentry of Xu Province nodded, their faces brimming with deep emotion.
"Major of a Separate Command...! No—Lady Liu Bei!"
"I too will join you, and I will bring my household troops!"
The soldiers who had sworn loyalty had already fled.
But this mere guest general, dispatched as a reinforcement, volunteered to remain to the end.
Just as Tao Qian had once shattered a Yellow Turban host that invaded Xu Province and been acclaimed Governor, so now Liu Bei's resolute choice—to stay, to shoulder the full responsibility to the last—moved the scholar-officials and gentry to show they would welcome her as Xu Province's new lord.
"Major of a Separate Command, are you truly determined to stay? With the troops you command you will not hold even half a day."
"I know. But how could I abandon the people and leave? Tell the Governor of Beiping that your younger sworn sister remained behind for the sake of Xu Province's people."
Liu Chong's sixty-thousand-strong army was already bearing down.
If they did not withdraw at once, every last one of them would be taken prisoner.
Should Qing Province cavalry become detained in Xu Province, Gongsun Zan's whole force would suffer a blow from which it could not recover. Tian Kai, though full of worry for Liu Bei who insisted on staying, gave his commanders the order to hasten the withdrawal.
* * *
The sixty thousand troops of Liu Chong—split apart to strike Donghai Kingdom and Guangling Prefecture simultaneously—now coalesced once more and tightened their grip around Pengcheng.
Inspector of Qing Province Tian Kai's forces had pulled out.
And the tens of thousands of Tao Qian's troops garrisoned at Pengcheng had scattered in every direction.
Three thousand.
Three thousand—that was all that remained to defend a sprawling fortress-city.
Even including Liu Bei's entire force, the garrison numbered no more than five thousand. If a siege battle erupted at Pengcheng, the gates would be smashed open by overwhelming violence in less than half a day.
"Pengcheng has raised a white flag."
"Mm."
Liu Bei's forces and the gentry of Xu Province hoisted a white flag above the walls of Pengcheng.
Surrender.
The inevitable outcome.
Had the Tao Qian army proclaimed a fight to the death I would have laughed at their reckless bravado.
Negotiations would proceed now, with guarantees for the people's safety as the condition. I was hardly the kind of filial paragon to use all those lives in Xu Province as fuel for some Human Sacrifice ritual, so I fully intended to accept with good grace.
"This humble servant is called Chen Gui, Chancellor of Pei. I come before the Crown Prince in place of the Governor of Xu Province, the rightful lord of this province."
"Well met."
The scholar-officials and local gentry of Xu Province arrived as an embassy to announce unconditional surrender.
Chen Gui, Chancellor of Pei.
Head of the Xiapi Chen Clan and a renowned scholar of distinguished lineage.
And his son Chen Deng, along with the Xu Province gentrymen Mi Zhu and Sun Qian, were part of the delegation.
"I dare to speak words that lie beyond my station, yet I must: a heaven-outraging calamity has struck. A depraved, unfilial monster attempted to slay his own father. The Governor of Xu Province, having swallowed a virulent poison, hangs between life and death. His firstborn son, who plotted against his father, has taken his own life. His second son was murdered by a villain seduced by wealth. In a moment, Xu Province has become an Undefended Territory, its master lost. We offer every prefecture and every county of Xu Province to the Crown Prince, whose martial renown shakes all beneath heaven. We beseech you: bestow mercy as vast as the ocean, show magnanimity as boundless as the sea... and we pray, do not suffer the people of Xu Province to sink into an abyss of misery—grant them your compassionate protection."
What in the hell had happened here.
What kind of diabolical plan had unfolded?
The security around Pengcheng had been too tight; I'd remained ignorant of the particulars.
Tao Qian had collapsed.
His eldest son Tao Shang dead by suicide, his second son Tao Ying murdered by Zhang Kai.
I absorbed the flood of information in a single instant, listening closely to the scholar-officials and gentry as they poured out their plea. And through it, I came to understand fully what schemes the S-rank ruler with that Indomitable Will trait had set in motion.
"Then where are Liu Bei and the Peach Sisters?"
I asked Chen Gui.
Chen Gui's shoulders trembled and he spoke.
"Th-the Major of a Separate Command fought desperately to protect the people of Xu Province—nothing more...! I beg the Crown Prince, show clemency toward this defeated commander of peerless repute!"
"..."
Some misunderstanding was clearly at work.
I hadn't the slightest flicker of intention to interrogate Liu Bei.
Quite the opposite—I wanted to shower Liu Bei with a mountain of gold, silver, and jewels as a reward for working from within to deliver a bloodless entry into the city. Thanks to Liu Bei's handiwork, I had just seized all of Xu Province, its ample resources and its entire populace, without ever fighting a pitched battle.
'Ahem! No one can ever know Liu Bei was a traitor on the inside...! I have to handle her and the Peach Sisters with the sternest face and gravest voice I can manage. If I let slip a guffaw by accident, the scholar-officials and gentry of Xu Province will start connecting dots about her real relationship with me.'
They told me Liu Bei's forces were currently overseeing the disarmament of Tao Qian's remaining troops.
I nodded and had Liu Bei's force summoned in.