Taiheiki

Chapter 245 Buffer Zone

"If that's really the case, then it's terrible!" Wen Sheng's face darkened immediately: "If the court summons you to Luoyang, obeying will be like a tiger falling into the plains, a dragon entering shallow waters; disobeying will be considered rebellion. It's truly a dilemma! My lord, since you've thought of this, you should already have a plan, right?"

Wei Cong did not answer, but instead bit his right thumb. Wen Sheng had followed Wei Cong for a long time and knew that this was a sign that his lord was facing a difficult decision. He dared not say more, but silently vowed in his heart: "Whether it's Jiaozhou or Luoyang! I have received great kindness from Marquis Wei, and I can only repay it with my life!"

"Lord Wei! A report has come from outside that the leader of the Moth Bandits has been captured!" A guard entered to report.

"The leader of the Moth Thieves?" Wei Cong frowned. "What's his name? How did you capture him?"

"His surname is Qi, given name Tie, and he is the second disciple of the bandit chieftain, the Great Sage Teacher, who has usurped the title of General of the Warships! Yesterday, seeing the unfavorable situation on the battlefield, he switched to a small boat, rowed to the shore, and hid in the reeds. He then fled overnight, but got lost in the darkness and fell into a mud pit. He was discovered and captured by villagers who were gathering vegetables and lotus roots early in the morning. They found that the clothes and utensils they were carrying were not those of ordinary people, so they were taken to the camp. Once he arrived at the camp, he revealed his identity and said that he could be dealt with as he pleased, but he was starving and wanted some wine and meat to fill his stomach first!"

"Want some wine and meat? Heh!" Wei Cong laughed, "Even in death, one should die with a full stomach. This guy is quite something. Alright, let's send him some wine and meat first, and bring him here after he's eaten his fill!"

"Here!"

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boom!
"Eat your fill! This is a reward from Marquis Wei!" The guard placed a tray on a table outside the fence, on which were a pot of wine and two earthenware plates containing half a pig's head and a fish.

"Thank you, Marquis Wei!" Qi Tie cupped his hands in greeting, brought in the earthenware plate and wine pot, sat down cross-legged, placed the wine and meat in front of him, and beckoned, "Come on, you must be starving! Let's eat something together!"

Liu Kun looked at Qi Tie with a strange expression, and after a long while, he walked over and said, "How can you still eat this? Aren't you afraid it'll be your last meal before you're executed?"

"We should definitely eat our last meal before we're killed! Otherwise, we won't get to eat it!" Qi Tie laughed. "Besides, I think Wei Cong won't kill us, at least not now. Escorting us to Luoyang would be a greater contribution!"

"Alright!" Liu Kun reached out and picked up a piece of pig's head meat, stuffed it into his mouth, and said indistinctly, "That's still a dead end, it'll just be a few days later, and you can still eat it!"

"A few days later is fine!" Qi Tie took a big gulp of wine, stuffing fish into his mouth as he said, "Maybe our people will win the next battle and turn the tide?"

"A comeback?" Liu Kun swallowed the meat in his mouth and spat out a mouthful of saliva. "You don't really think that way, do you? Just based on the fire dragons that spewed from the Wei army's ships yesterday, which could still burn on the water, you still think you can turn the tide?"

"As long as Master was here yesterday, we wouldn't have lost!" Qi Tie said. "Master can summon the wind. If the wind had suddenly blew towards the enemy yesterday, the fire spewed by the Wei army would have only burned themselves. In that case, they would have been the ones who lost, not us!"

Liu Kun was stunned by Qi Tie's words, which sounded rather supernatural: "Are you serious? But if the Great Teacher of Virtue really has such great abilities, why doesn't he just march straight to Luoyang?"

"The Great Teacher does not yet possess that ability, because the world's situation has not yet reached that point!"

A sudden female voice rang out, and Qi Tie subconsciously turned his head to find a familiar figure standing at the cell door. He instinctively stood up: "Aunt Lu, is that you? What are you doing here?"

"Why can't I be here?" Lu Ping looked at Qi Tie with a smile: "Well? Now you know your place, right?"

"Who is this woman?" Liu Kun looked at the beautiful Kun Daoist in front of him warily. Clearly, she was no ordinary person to be able to appear here.

"This is the foremost martial artist of the current generation of the Celestial Masters Sect in Sichuan, and also the sect's Holy Maiden!" Qi Tie was blinded by ecstasy: "With her here, we are saved!"

"We've only been arrested for a short time, how did she know we were arrested and how could she find us? Don't you find that strange?" Liu Kun asked anxiously.

"This—" Qi Tie also realized something was wrong, but his survival instinct made him ask Lu Ping, "You're here to save us, right?"

"Unfortunately, no!" Lu Ping laughed. "Because you don't need me to save you, Wei Cong probably won't kill you, and will most likely let you go back. Why would I bother?"

"You won't kill us? You'll let us go back? How do you know?"

At this moment, an officer entered from the outer room, followed by seven or eight soldiers. To Qi Tie's surprise and dismay, the officer, upon seeing Lu Ping, not only did not shout the alarm, but instead respectfully saluted him: "Chief Lu, you're here!"

"Yes!" Lu Ping nodded. "Are you here to take someone away?"

"That's right, the general ordered me to escort these two men to him!"

"No need for all that trouble. Just leave them to me, and I'll take them to Marquis Wei!"

"I understand!" the officer replied, then waved for his men to open the gate and pull Liu Kun and Qi Tie out, bringing them to Lu Ping's side: "Would the Chief Minister like me to leave a few men to help escort them?"

"No need, leave it to me!"

"Then I shall take my leave!"

The officer left with his men, leaving only Lu Ping, Qi Tie, and Liu Kun in the open space. The distant sounds of soldiers drilling commands added to the eerie silence. Qi Tie looked at the woman before him, unsure what to say.

"Let's go!" Lu Ping turned around. "Wei Cong has a good temper, but given your current status, it's not appropriate to keep him waiting!"

Although it was daytime, candles were still lit in Wei Cong's tent. The candlelight illuminated the thick books and bamboo slips on the table. Wei Cong, dressed in a plain silk robe, held a letter in his hand and was dictating something to his secretary beside him. From the outside, this general, who had just won a battle that determined the fate of the Yangtze River, looked like a proofreader working in the Imperial Library. Behind him, a burly guard, as large as a bear, leaned on his sword, watching him menacingly.

"My lord!" Lu Ping smiled at Wei Cong, "I just happened to run into the man you sent to take these two prisoners, so I had him hand them over to me!" "Hmm, tell them to wait a moment, I'll be done here soon!" Wei Cong quickly finished the last paragraph, took the letter he had dictated from his secretary, confirmed it was correct, and then signed it with his brush and stamped it firmly with the seal on his ring: "Send it out as quickly as possible!"

"Here!" The secretary took the letter and left. Wei Cong beckoned to Lu Ping, gesturing for her to sit to his right, and Lu Ping sat down affectionately. Seeing all this, Qi Tie suddenly felt as if he had made a mistake.

"Did my men give you wine and meat?" Wei Cong asked first.

"Give it!"

“Very good!” Wei Cong smiled. “At least I have met your requirements, and now no one can accuse me of neglecting my guests.”

Qi Tie licked his lips and asked cautiously, "What do you plan to do with me?"

“You’ve got one thing wrong. You’re the one who lost the battle. Now it’s my turn to ask you, not the other way around!” Wei Cong pointed at Qi Tie, then at himself.

"Alright!" Qi Tie sighed. "Ask away, I'll tell you everything truthfully. But since Fairy Lu is here with you, there's not much more you need to know from me!"

"That's not necessarily true! For example, I'm not very clear about your situation in fighting the northern government forces!" Wei Cong then raised several questions, such as the battles between the Moth Rebels and the government forces in Xiangyang and Wancheng, who the government generals were, how many troops they commanded, their equipment, and their morale. Wei Cong asked very detailed questions, even many trivial ones, and he didn't just pick up a pen to write anything down. This gave Qi Tie a strange feeling. This Wei Cong seemed to care more about intelligence on the government forces than on the Moth Rebels. Was he preparing to deal with the government forces instead of the Great Teacher of Virtue?

"In my opinion, you don't need to ask such detailed questions!" Qi Tie said, "Our navy is finished. Without a navy, the hundreds of thousands of troops on the Jingxiang and Han Rivers are nothing but a pile of rotten flesh. As long as you block Xiakou, everyone will only face death!"

“I’m afraid you’re wrong!” Wei Cong put down his brush, blew the ink off it, and set it aside. “Since I didn’t attack Xiakou in the first place, I’m even less likely to go now!”

"You're not going to attack Xiakou?" Qi Tie was taken aback. "Really?"

"I'm not so idle as to deceive a prisoner!" Wei Cong retorted irritably. "Also, you may have misunderstood my relationship with your Great Teacher of Virtue. Let me put it this way! I don't want you to be completely wiped out by the imperial court, at least not now!"

Qi Tie was completely confused by Wei Cong's words. He looked at Liu Kun with a pleading look, only to be met with the same blank stare.

"Wei Hou is telling the truth!" Lu Ping finally spoke up: "To put it this way, he hopes that you will continue to control the prefectures of Yuzhang, Jiujiang, Lujiang, and Danyang. This way, the imperial court will not be able to directly send troops to attack Jiaozhou."

This time Qi Tie understood. He asked angrily, "Then why did you burn our fleet? If you hadn't interfered, we would already be attacking Wancheng!"

“Because you are already too powerful!” Wei Cong explained, “If you capture Wancheng, the imperial court will have to move the capital. Once the capital is moved, the entire north will be in chaos, which is something I don’t want to see. But if you capture Luoyang, you will become too powerful and may even threaten my position in Jiaozhou!”

"What he means is that you can't be too strong, nor too weak. If you're too strong, you'll threaten him; if you're too weak, you won't be able to withstand the power of the imperial court!" Lu Ping explained. "Now is just right!"

"Just right?" Qi Tie glared angrily at Wei Cong. "What do you take us for? Fried fish?"

"No, I see you as a buffer zone between Chengzhou and the imperial court!" Wei Cong said. "This way, I can do my own thing without being disturbed by the court. Of course, you can also get protection from me and do your own thing. The prefectures of Yuzhang, Danyang, and Jiujiang are flat and fertile. With proper management, they are enough to settle all of you. After all, didn't you want to live a peaceful and happy life when you started your rebellion?"

Hearing Wei Cong's words, Qi Tie was momentarily dazed, but he quickly regained his senses: "You will protect us? What a joke! You're just using us, aren't you? We're directly facing the imperial court; how can we possibly live a peaceful and happy life?"

"Protection and utilization are essentially the same thing! In this world, if you have no value to be utilized, who would protect you for nothing?" Wei Cong laughed. "As for whether what I said is true or false, you can judge for yourself in the future. I will write a letter for you to deliver to the Great Teacher of Virtue!"

"You'll let me go?" Qi Tie was taken aback.

"Yes, but it will have to be tomorrow. It's too late today. I will send a boat to take you to Xiakou to avoid any accidents on the way!" With that, Wei Cong raised his right hand and made a "step back" gesture.

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Inside the cell, Qi Tie paced back and forth in the cramped space like a donkey pulling a millstone.

Do you think that guy is telling the truth?

"Maybe!" Liu Kun shook his head helplessly. "At least I can't find a reason for him to lie to us!"

"Perhaps they'll gain our trust and then launch a surprise attack, catching us completely off guard!"

"Would you trust him?" Liu Kun asked with a wry smile. "You were just beaten so badly, and you think a few words can make you trust him? How could you be so naive?"

"Alright!" Qi Tie nodded. Indeed, even if he truly believed Wei Cong's "buffer zone" theory, he wouldn't let his guard down against this man. The lesson of this crushing defeat was simply too painful. Thousands of ships and tens of thousands of people were reduced to ashes in a single fire. From now on, he would probably sleep with one eye open, watching this man.

"Then he wasn't lying!" Qi Tie asked. "But if that's the case, isn't he afraid that we'll surrender to the government troops and hand his letter over to the imperial court?"

"Don't talk nonsense!" Liu Kun retorted, "His offer is the four prefectures of Yuzhang, Jiujiang, Lujiang, and Danyang; if we surrender to the court, we'll likely face the extermination of our entire families. Really, even if he stabs us in the back in the future, that's a matter for the future. The court wants us dead right now! And what's a mere letter? With his achievements and power, the court won't deal with him over a mere letter!"

Despite his immense pain, Qi Tie had to admit that his friend was right. Since the uprising of the Moth Rebellion, countless aristocratic officials had been killed. Their relatives, friends, protégés, and acquaintances were scattered throughout the empire's bureaucratic machine, and the empire would never forgive such a group. More importantly, the slogans raised by the Moth Rebellion had completely negated the Mandate of Heaven of the Han Empire; once they embarked on this path, there was no turning back.

(End of this chapter)