Wang Chong actually felt that a romance without marriage was not necessarily a bad thing; it was just that in this world, custom did not permit it, so he could only heave a long sigh and gaze wordlessly at the moon.
Oh, oh, oh—by now it was dawn, and the moon was already gone.
After breakfast, Wang Chong was in no hurry to break camp. Instead, he taught another shichen of “Chinese.” He had discovered that telling story scripts was a wonderful way to bind the army's hearts together. The day before, once he finished a tale, the whole camp was soon full of people discussing it; even at breakfast some were still arguing over it, and the mood was so harmonious that none of the estrangement that usually surfaced when two separate forces were pressed together had appeared.
Once he finished, Wang Chong called over the dozen or so men with the finest martial arts among the Yaglakar clan and asked what each had learned. None of them could learn the Ice Soul Finger, and as for the Ice Soul Divine Art, which only the clan chief was permitted to read, they had no chance of even laying hands on it. They had only picked up scraps here and there, each learning a few incomplete fragments and then patching them together with their own wits.
Wang Chong gathered these martial arts together and spent the entire morning working over them, and from them he created a set of Iron Cavalry, Frozen River Eighteen Strikes. He taught it first to the twenty squad leaders, and ordered them to pass it on to the soldiers under their command once they had learned it.
Seeing that he had created a whole martial art in a single morning, Su Luo Yan was intensely curious. She asked to see it, studied it for a while, and could not help saying, “This martial art is far too brutal.”
Wang Chong gave a sly laugh and said, “In the ranks of an army, staying alive comes first. If a technique is a little over the top, there's simply no helping it.”
Into this set of Iron Cavalry, Frozen River Eighteen Strikes he had also folded a bit of the inner methods of the Army-Breaking Bodhisattva Aspect and the Ice Serpent Divine Aspect. It was just that these two inner methods were originally extremely hard to cultivate, and Wang Chong could not lower the difficulty of cultivating these two Buddhist aspects out of nothing. So he had only picked out the crude methods that stirred up one's potential and made the true qi icy cold—they could be used, but they lacked the crucial element, and the hidden dangers were grave.
Su Luo Yan sighed, at a loss for words, for she knew Wang Chong was right.
Still, she offered a few suggestions, giving the moves of this martial art some targeted pointers.
Wang Chong accepted them all gladly and made a second revision. He did not teach it out right away, though; he wanted to wait until he could save it up for a big “version update.”
After noon, once they had eaten lunch, the force finally broke camp and set out.
Marching this slowly, it was not until seventeen or eighteen days later that they at last entered the borders of Bazhou—and by then Wang Chong had completely taken control of this force.
With the original men of good family as its backbone and a batch of obedient steppe warriors of the three surnames Yao, Ge, and Luo as its support, and with Wang Chong mixing a bit of private doctrine into his storytelling besides, though a mere ten-odd days could not thoroughly reverse these men's ways of thinking, he had at least laid down the roots of a “core doctrine”: only unlimited loyalty to him, Wang Chong, offered them all a way out.
This was all the more so because his ideas, matched with his actions, could not only win merit for his subordinates—he was also willing to yield his own credit to them—which was powerfully persuasive. Even the newly subdued steppe warriors of the three surnames Yao, Ge, and Luo admired him without reservation, let alone the original two or three hundred men of good family from Tongzhou.
Half a day into Bazhou lay Hejian Prefecture ahead of them, one of Bazhou's twenty-four prefectures. The place was famous for its grass donkeys. Because Tongzhou Prefecture lay directly opposite, it kept no real troops—only a xiangjun. The current dynasty's armies were divided into six kinds: the Divine Strategy Army, the Northern Palace Guard, the conscript troops, the xiangjun, the fubing, and the yabing. The Divine Strategy Army was under the emperor's own command, while the Northern Palace Guard was under the court. The conscript troops were levied hastily in time of war. The xiangjun were the rabble of the towns—petty merchants, craftsmen, artisans, and the like, who made their living in peacetime and were soldiers in wartime. The fubing were farmer-soldiers. And the yabing were the troops that the military governors and grand commanders of the frontier prefectures raised for themselves.
Wang Chong's force clearly looked like foreigners, yet the people of Hejian Prefecture showed no fear at all; some merchants even came up to solicit business, plainly because steppe forces often passed through here.
Wang Chong frowned slightly and said to Su Luo Yan, “This military governor Shi Lüshan must often let the steppe light cavalry pass through freely—that's why the local people carry on like this.”
Su Luo Yan sighed, knowing he was not wrong, and said in a low voice, “The common folk are like grass—they only want to stay alive.”
Wang Chong shook his head and said, “The common folk are like water. They look soft and weak, but if you strike off their shackles, they can surely sweep away every emperor, minister, general, and mighty host under heaven.”
Wang Chong led his troops into the city, and no one tried to stop them, which made him look down on the Bazhou military governor Shi Lüshan all the more.
The man's so-called “governing” was probably nothing more than governing a single city, a single patch of land. It was just like when he read Water Margin and could never understand why the Liangshan heroes took so many cities, so many manors, so many mountain estates, yet never held on to a single one—once they had stormed a place, they would plunder it, set a fire, and then fall back to Liangshan.
Such good land—why on earth wouldn't they just seize and keep it!?
How many mouths could the Liangshan Marsh even feed?
Wang Qing, Tian Hu, and Fang La all understood how to seize cities and territory.
In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, even a third-rate general or a fifth-rate civil official would grab a patch of land for himself, and always wanted to scheme for someone else's.
Later, having read more, he finally understood: Shi Nai'an did it on purpose. He deliberately wrote this band of men as mere bandits who wanted only amnesty, rather than world-shaking heroes with designs on all under heaven. Otherwise, if Song Jiang had simply taken and held every place he captured, then it would have been the Liangshan Marsh granting amnesty to the Great Song emperor, and not the other way around.
Still, he did find it satisfying when the prodigal Yan Qing, holding the imperial edict, kicked Marshal Gao over with a single foot and cursed, “You filthy, thieving knave! Quick, tell that dog emperor to come out and receive my big brother's edict!”—but with that, it would never have become a great classic.
The prefect of Hejian came hurrying over. At the sight of Wang Chong he truly did not recognize this pale-faced man, and quickly asked, “Might I ask which young master of the Yaglakar clan this is?”
Wang Chong thought for a moment, then said, “Do you know Wen Ducheng?”
The prefect of Hejian was baffled, and answered, “Of course I know Young Master Wen Ducheng.”
Wang Chong asked again, “Do you know Pishaluo?”
This time the prefect of Hejian shook his head slightly and said, “Young Master Pishaluo wears an iron mask all year round; this humble official has never seen his true face.”
Wang Chong nodded and said, “I am Pishaluo!”
Beside him, Su Luo Yan hurriedly covered her cherry-red lips, her shoulders shaking little by little. This noble daughter of a great house suddenly understood why Lu Yaoniang had lost her composure—this little rogue Wang Chong really knew how to mess with a person's head!
The prefect of Hejian looked utterly bewildered. Though some suspicion stirred in him, could a thousand and more Yaglakar cavalry possibly be faked? Anyone who could make the fierce light cavalry of the great steppe obey him so completely had to be an important figure of the Yaglakar clan! He could rack his brains all day and never imagine that Wang Chong had actually subjugated and taken command of the Yaglakar cavalry. So he could only give an awkward laugh and say, “My military governor once made an agreement with the Yaglakar clan: when your forces pass through, they may not enter the city. I wonder if General Pishaluo would first lead his troops out and camp outside the city for the time being—this humble official will present grain and fodder at once.”
Wang Chong laughed and asked, “What is the population of Hejian Prefecture? How many troops does it have? How much coin and grain are in its storehouses?”
He fired off seventeen or eighteen questions in a row. The prefect answered the irrelevant ones readily, but hedged and stammered over the rest.
Wang Chong did not mind. When he had asked about all he needed, he simply reached out, scooped up the prefect, laid him across his saddle, and shouted, “This Hejian Prefecture is mine for a few days. When I've had my fill of playing, I'll give it back to you.”
Chapter 87