The Interloper of Pure Love (2)
Dong Zhuo wore a terrifying smile. I felt like I might piss myself, but I didn't look away. I smiled right back. If I yielded to him, I would lose my life, lose Lü Bu... lose everything I had built in the ten years since transmigrating.
"I never expected the Xiongnu Khagan to start talking prophecy. Are you telling this Dong Zhuo to found a Wei that will replace the Han?"
Emperor Wu of Wei, the dynasty's founder, was Cao Cao — but imagining Dong Zhuo as Emperor of Wei was entertaining in its own way. Of course, there was no guarantee he would take the bait.
In the Romance, Dong Zhuo is tricked by a forged edict claiming Emperor Xian, Liu Xie, intends to abdicate, and dies after entering the palace. In the official histories, he simply goes to congratulate the Emperor on recovering from illness — and dies there instead.
"I don't pretend to know how far the Grand Administrator's ambitions reach. But you're not a man who'd be satisfied winning glory on the frontiers of Liang or Bing Province, are you?"
"You don't even know what ambitions I harbor, and you're offering to help me achieve them? You want to make a deal?"
"If I were the sort of man who weighed and measured how dangerous those ambitions were, you wouldn't deal with me at all."
"And if I wanted to become like Huo Guang or Liang Shang of old?"
Both men, like Dou Wu — whom Liu Hong had purged — were emblematic figures of the consort clans.
"Even if you aspired to rise above them — to become another Wang Mang — I would still cooperate."
And coincidentally, in the old mnemonic of usurpers — Wang, Zhuo, Cao, Yi — the first two names were Wang Mang and Dong Zhuo.
Dong Zhuo shook his head.
"No. If a man is going to harbor ambition, he must not end up like Wang Mang. Is the Xiongnu Khagan telling me to be torn limb from limb?"
"Then you'll have to surpass Wang Mang."
The man seated behind Dong Zhuo looked ready to burst, desperate to restrain his lord. Lü Bu shot me a glance that said, Do you really need to go that far? But this table was becoming a conversation between Dong Zhuo and me alone.
"And if I say I'll surpass Wang Mang, you'll help me? With what?"
"Cavalry. What else? The moment you enter Luoyang and become so much as Grand Commandant, the memorials will pour in — 'How dare some Liang Province ruffian reach for one of the Three Excellencies?' Are you going to hunt down every last petitioner and talk them around? 'Please, I beg you, look kindly on this humble Dong Zhuo'?"
I picked up my chopsticks and waved them in front of Dong Zhuo, the way Zhang Liang once had before Emperor Gaozu, Liu Bang.
"You crush them. When the great clans and celebrated scholars drag their private armies and retainers from every corner of the realm because they can't stand a Liang man sitting above them — Xiongnu cavalry is exactly what you need to grind them underfoot."
"Raising that cavalry costs money. So tell me how to make some."
Dong Zhuo let out a long breath, then barked a laugh. He turned to the man beside him.
"Wenhe. Bring me the bamboo slips on salt."
Wenhe... As far as I knew, the only man who used that courtesy name was Jia Wenhe. Jia Xu?!
While Jia Xu fetched the slips Dong Zhuo had demanded, Dong Zhuo himself swept the dishes from the table onto the floor. For the briefest instant, regret flickered across Lü Bu's face — I should have eaten more. I felt much the same, but hunger could wait.
Dong Zhuo unrolled the bamboo slips Jia Xu had brought with a clattering rush.
"Taiyuan's iron you already know how to handle."
He pointed to a place on the slips.
"The salt comes from here — Hedong Commandery. Mostly around Haixian."
Huh...?
I'd meant to leave Guan Yu's affairs out of this. Why did his hometown keep coming up?
"Ever since Emperor Wu's time, it's been the same argument, back and forth for hundreds of years. Monopoly the salt. No — that throws the price into chaos and the people starve. Let the court monopolize salt and fill the treasury... On and on. Regardless — every grain of Hedong salt belongs to this Dong Zhuo now."
I'd heard this kind of story before. Jiaozhi and the Nanhai coast were still poorly developed as farmland, so the people there made their living gathering coral and pearls rather than tilling the soil. The problem was officials who coveted those profits. They seized the people's workshops by force, then browbeat them: don't look elsewhere — farm, and farm hard.
If the common folk weren't producing grain — if they weren't supplying the army with crops — the officials called them lazy. A man could rise before dawn every day and risk his life plunging into the sea, and still be "lazy" if he didn't grow grain. Confucians and Legalists were no different on this point. In any age, when someone blames the people's poverty on laziness, the real cause is almost always the man doing the blaming. He's the one with bloodshot eyes, desperate to strip the people of every means they have to escape poverty.
The salt Dong Zhuo was talking about was no different. Ordinary farming along the Yellow River was never enough to climb out of poverty — not even in a commandery like Hedong that sat right on the river. Because...
"We could ship the salt up the Yellow River waterway, all the way to Wuyuan Commandery. If the river freezes in winter, we'd have to use the overland route — but then crossing the Yellow River gets easier, so there's an upside. The catch is when the river, frozen longer in the north and thawing later than the south, floods. Then we'd have to take the Taiyuan road."
...because of the Yellow River's floods. Those floods could enrich the surrounding land, but they also scrambled property lines and wrecked irrigation works people had spent years building. So the folk of Hedong and the other river commanderies needed a livelihood beyond farming. Guan Yu himself might have worked the salt flats around Haixian.
Come to think of it, Chinese history had its share of rebels who started as salt smugglers. And a salt smuggler, put another way, was someone who couldn't endure the state's monopoly on salt.
Whether it was Dong Zhuo himself or one of his men — if they'd threatened the livelihood of Haixian's salt-sellers... And if they'd gone further, using salt authority as a pretext, or the excuse that someone wouldn't leave the salt trade and take up farming, to try to violate Du Ying... I could reassess Dong Zhuo as more than a simple brute. That didn't make him any less of one.
"I get a market for my salt. The Xiongnu Khagan brokers the trade and makes his money — even better. Add Taiyuan iron to the enterprise, and today's meeting between the Khagan and myself might just rival the Discourse on Salt and Iron, wouldn't you say?"
The Discourse on Salt and Iron that Dong Zhuo mentioned was the debate held after Emperor Wu's death, over what to do with the state monopolies on salt, iron, liquor, and the rest. A wartime economy, forced into being to fund the wars against the Xiongnu in Emperor Wu's reign. A conference on whether to end that system or keep it. And here I was, a Xiongnu prince, holding something uncomfortably similar — with Dong Zhuo, of all people. Wasn't that a joke?
"If you sell the salt through me, then..."
"Then I earn the war chest to arm my retainers."
Here, thanks to me, Guan Yu and Du Ying had held a happy wedding. In the original history, had Dong Zhuo been the one who destroyed both their lives?
"...If I buy the salt from Your Excellency, how would you have me dispose of it?"
"Salt goes in food. Nobody lives without eating. So there'll be no shortage of men willing to buy it from you and sell it dearer. The Xiongnu Khagan could sell it in You Province or Ji Province..."
Dong Zhuo leaned a little toward me.
"Or you could sell salted meat and the like to the north."
"You're telling me to trade with the Xianbei?"
"Use the salt money to buy iron in Taiyuan, then sell the iron north as well. Or sell horses. Salt, horses, iron... meaning weapons made of iron. Ah — and Taiyuan produces fine timber, doesn't it? Then spears and arrows too."
Lü Bu and I both stared, speechless. Dong Zhuo cocked his head.
"The Xianbei are desperate for all of it right now, aren't they?"
Dong Zhuo knew. He knew that Mobei, the Xianbei included, had plunged into savage civil war!
"Grand Administrator Dong!"
Lü Bu's voice rang out.
"That's profiteering off the calamity of war!"
Dong Zhuo made no sound. He pursed his lips in a silent oh, then smiled, intrigued.
"I never knew Fengxian worried about Xianbei lives too."
"If I didn't believe every life was worth the same, I never would have believed the Hu and the Han should live together!"
"But consider this, Fengxian. I use the Qiang, and the Qiang use me to survive. Likewise — if the Han or the Xiongnu use the Xianbei, and the Xianbei trade with Han and Xiongnu and use them in turn, and that using becomes dependence — what then?"
Lü Bu's words died in his throat. It was the same problem Zhang Min had raised in Taiyuan Commandery, before we came here to Hedong. Zhang Min had believed that lively trade between Han and Xianbei could prevent war. He'd approached several Xianbei chieftains, proposing to buy horses and sell Han goods... and Tanshihuai had blocked every attempt. With Tanshihuai gone, there was no one left to stop such trade.
"Call Mobei's wars Mobei's own affair. If they buy our goods and we buy theirs, and that exchange runs long and unbroken — what's left to fight over? Even living apart, if they depend on each other — isn't that its own kind of living together?"
Dong Zhuo didn't wait for Lü Bu's answer. He snapped his head toward me. His eyes gleamed.
"Xiongnu Khagan. Be honest. When you and Lü Fengxian crushed Tanshihuai at Yinshan, it wasn't for defense. A man thinking of defense would have held Duman City and Shouxiangcheng and stayed beyond the Wall, puzzling over how to trade with the Western Regions. You spoke of my ambitions. Let me speak of yours. The Xiongnu Khagan wants to unify Mobei under his own banner, doesn't he?"
If I'd thought Dong Zhuo liked people who spoke plainly, I should have guessed he'd return the favor.
"But you're still too weak to march north, and too young! So while you grow into your years and your strength, isn't it better that Mobei stay fractured? Send merchants to spy out the situation. Judge who's strong and who's weak. Help the weak resist the strong, and no one will ever unify Mobei. Then, when the moment comes — the Khagan strikes."
Export weapons so no one can seize hegemony of the steppe. Keep them divided, keep them at war. And when they're exhausted, I smash them all and take the hegemony myself. Lü Bu would hate every word of it. So why did it sound so seductive?
Lü Bu seized my shoulder before I could answer and leaned forward as if to shove Dong Zhuo back.
"Don't teach my disciple underhanded methods."
"Fengxian — but while Mobei is split, You, Bing, and Liang Provinces will all know peace. Grab the common folk who suffered Tanshihuai's raids and ask them. Do they want Mobei to find peace and unite? Or do they want those people bleeding each other so their own lives stay quiet?"
"Enough of that nonsense. By that logic, tempting my disciple to become Mobei's future master doesn't make sense either."
"That's right. 'Fengxian's disciple.' You can teach him, can't you?"
A disciple shaped by Lü Bu's teaching, Lü Bu's thinking — as master of the Xiongnu. Lü Bu hesitated a moment at the idea Dong Zhuo had planted, then found another gap.
"Everything you say sounds like it's all for me and my disciple. There's nothing in it for you. A war chest, at best. When you seize Luoyang the way that black ambition of yours intends — what good is a Xiongnu who holds Mobei? In the end, you just mean to use us."
"I'll make my own profit. And it sounds like you're talking about trust..."
This was probably Jia Xu's scheme — the man who hadn't spoken a word until now. Because at this exact, perfect moment, a charming child who barely looked half my age — so sweet you had to wonder if she was really Dong Zhuo's blood — came running into the room.
"Grandfather!"
A granddaughter who called Dong Zhuo grandfather... As far as I knew, she was one of the few women in history who had left behind a name.
"Oho, Bai's here."
Dong Zhuo scooped the girl — Dong Bai — onto his knee. Then he turned to me with a smile I'd never seen on him before. Not so much sly as shamelessly pleased with himself.