Tiger Guards

Chapter 628 Longxi Surnames
The next day, Xin Pi followed Zhao Pan to a hay storage yard near the outskirts of Didao City.

The hay storage yard is built at the foot of the hillside, and it stores the hay harvested this year.

Although the Zhao family is not considered a prominent clan in Longxi, they are a prominent clan in Didao County. Not counting their sheep, they have nearly 8,000 head of cattle, horses, and camels alone.

At its peak, the grasslands controlled by the Zhao family could support and sustain more than 30,000 large livestock through the winter.

The consecutive droughts and locust plagues of the previous years had drastically reduced the size of all of Zhao's animal herds, leaving them only able to maintain breeding stock and female livestock as much as possible.

In the past two years, while Zhao Ji's career has developed rapidly, the strength of powerful clans in various regions, such as the Zhao family of Didao, has also been rapidly recovering.

Population growth and expansion are difficult to achieve due to the long birth and growth cycle.

Cattle and horses are different, and sheep flocks are even faster; ewes that gave birth the year before last can give birth this year.

Xin Pi dressed as a retainer of the Zhao family and followed Zhao Pan around, watching Zhao Pan exchange hay with the envoy sent by Ma Teng.

The handover took place right in the hay yard. The handover began by pointing to the cylindrical, cone-shaped hay piles covered with straw hats. The other party would then take a few bundles of hay from the pile to check their quality. If the hay was not damp or rotten, the handover was considered complete.

Once the Zhao family handed over all the hay piles here, they would have completed their quota assignment for the county.

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, Ma Teng's herd will set up pens near the hayfield for easy access to hay. After grazing, they will move on to the next grazing area until they survive the winter.

After the handover was completed, Xin Pi followed Zhao Pan to Didao City.

The city was already filled with the atmosphere of war. The Ma clan's troops, who used to roam freely, were no longer seen on the streets. Instead, there were squads of infantrymen patrolling with armor and spears.

Inside the Zhao family residence in the city, after changing his clothes, Xin Pi stood in the arrow tower behind the wall and looked out over the city. The military camps and Ma Teng's Anxi General's Mansion in the city had taller and denser arrow towers, while the residences of local noble families like the Zhao family generally only had one anti-theft arrow tower at each of the four corners of the residence.

However, the Zhao family was powerful and possessed a sturdy mansion inherited from their ancestors, with walls made of planks, each five feet wide, sufficient to withstand any impact.

The wall was eighteen feet high, and inside the wall was a wooden walkway that was thirteen feet high, which could be used by archers to shoot.

When battles broke out, Zhao's servants in the mansion would don armor and weapons, and follow the warriors raised by Zhao to defend themselves.

The Zhao family has a long history and is not a newly emerging powerful family that has expanded rapidly through mergers and acquisitions in recent years; therefore, the warriors within the Zhao family are mostly strong and capable people who are related to the Zhao family; even the servants are trustworthy people who have followed the Zhao family for generations.

There are powerful families like the Zhao family everywhere... As long as a place has not experienced the ravages of war, there must be such powerful families with solid foundations.

Such families no longer need to send people to the prefecture or county to act as spies or mouthpieces.

Any Taoist priest coming to Didao to take up a post must give the Zhao family enough face in order for the Zhao family to reciprocate.

The same applies to Didao and Longxi County. When a new prefect takes office and wants to gain the support of the powerful clans in various counties, he will naturally recruit officials from families like the Zhao family when he establishes the new prefecture.

Even if the Zhao family members refused to take the imperial examinations, they would still recruit their close relatives in order to unite and curry favor with the local powerful clans.

Therefore, the better a family like the Zhao family developed, the fewer registered residents there were in the area, and the less power the county government could directly mobilize.

So much so that for anything, they had to rely on the power of these local clans.

The increasingly scarce registered households had to share the financial, material, and human resources required for the normal operation of the county and prefectural governments. Under this heavy burden, the already few registered households could only flee to other places and become refugees or thieves, or rely on noble clans like the Zhao family to become their servants or retainers.

This is a vicious cycle: the fewer registered households there are, the more the burden is spread among the counties, making it even harder for the existing registered households to bear.

The fewer registered households a prefecture or county controls, the less power the prefecture or county officials can directly mobilize, and naturally they cannot suppress powerful clans and local magnates.

In Liangzhou, the pressure of war, caused by the Qiang rebellion during the reign of Emperor Huan and the Western Liang rebellion during the reign of Emperor Ling, had long since overwhelmed the household registration system.

The powerful clans in eastern Liangzhou had expanded rapidly due to their involvement in the war, their consumption of war funds, the demographic dividend from registered migrants, and the availability of vacant land. They were no longer able to be weakened or suppressed by administrative orders from the county and prefecture levels.

The balance between the government, registered households, and powerful families has long been broken, and has gradually developed into a situation where powerful families dominate, the government has to cater to the whims of powerful families, and registered households have nowhere to stand.

Although the Xin family moved to Yingchuan, they had already risen to prominence in Didao, Longxi. Currently, the ancestral home of the Xin family is in Longxi, not Yingchuan.

Xin Pi hid under the patronage of the Zhao family in Didao, naturally not wanting to implicate the large and deeply rooted Xin family of Longxi.

The main base of the Xin clan is in Didao. Currently, because Xin Ping was accidentally killed by Zhao Ji with a single seal, this huge Xin clan is keeping a low profile, fearing that Ma Teng will find fault with them.

Therefore, Xin Pi would rather risk being betrayed by the Zhao family than go to his own branch of the family, for fear of implicating them.

At this moment, Xin Pi surveyed the city, his gaze fixed intently on the Anxi General's Mansion... This was the office space that the Xin family had offered for Ma Teng's temporary use.

The Zhao family of Didao were protégés and former officials of the Xin family. Economically, the Zhao family was independent; however, politically, whether they took office or expressed their stance, they would follow the Xin family of Longxi.

It wasn't that Zhao was particularly obedient, but rather that Xin had connections with high-ranking officials.

Following the Xin family doesn't guarantee you'll eat much meat, but if you don't follow them and betray them, they'll have ways to deal with you.

For example, Xin Pi was an extension of the Xin clan of Longxi's network of contacts outside the region.

If the situation changes rapidly, Xin Pi can appear before the various Xin families in Longxi and persuade them to make a crucial choice.

This is also the source of Xin Pi's confidence, and the reason why he remained neither humble nor arrogant even after joining the Zhao family.

He observed for a moment and saw a group of knights in full regalia emerge from the military camp. They were all riding tall horses, and their banners and armor were predominantly purple. He also noticed their horse armor and their uniquely designed gleaming armor.

Xinpi's eyes narrowed: "Iron Cavalry?"

Zhao Pan, who was also looking out from the side, followed Xin Pi's gaze after hearing the sound and saw more than fifty heavily armored cavalrymen emerge from the military camp, turn a corner on the main street, and appear in the middle of the street.

Zhao Pan was not surprised: "Sir, these are Ma Chao's personal cavalry. Most of them are Qiang cavalry followers, and the armor and horse armor they wear were all gifts from Grand Tutor Zhao as a reward for their merits."

Xin Pi raised his hand and gripped the railing of the arrow tower, his voice low and serious: "The Zhao family favors purple, but what about the Ma family...?"

He realized that the Maoling Ma clan were descendants of Zhao She, the Lord of Mafu. If Zhao Ji was pleased, he could link Ma Teng and his son Ma Chao to the same clan.

Although they share the same surname but different clan names, Zhao Ji had already established a kinship with Xu Huang, the Governor of Zhenbei, so it was not surprising that there were more members of the Ma family, father and son.

Zhao Ji took the lead of the Zhao clan, and who among the Zhao clan in the world dared to oppose him?
At that time, if other clans of the Zhao family gain Zhao Ji's favor and are listed as minor branches of the common lineage, who can object?

At this moment, the cavalry marched arrogantly through the streets, their armored warhorses also in high spirits, trotting and dancing, their hooves making a dense and crisp sound, as they headed north, close to the courtyard wall of the Zhao family in Didao.

The leader of the cavalry was Ma Dai, who was also dressed in gilded armor and wore sleeves with embroidered crimson and purple embroidery, carrying a long spear in his hand.

However, he was not wearing a helmet, but a round-topped felt hat with embroidered patterns, which made Ma Dai look very dashing and debonair, attracting the attention of officials and commoners on both sides of the street.

Ma Dai also smiled broadly, waving and greeting acquaintances, displaying an air of wealth and elegance as if returning home in triumph.

Inside the Anxi General's residence, Pang De, a county official, was waiting in the corridor outside the hall for Ma Teng to summon him.

Inside the hall, Ma Chao showed off some of the spoils of war that had been transported back with the army. The gold and silver were all taken away by Zhao Ji, who wanted to cast them into gold bricks to build the Golden Terrace in Jinyang.

Therefore, Ma Chao was rewarded with some rare and precious items, but he wanted to show Ma Teng the iron cavalry that was on its way.

The troops that participated in the campaign against the Hu were no longer the hastily assembled force they initially had, but rather an elite army.

This army is no longer capable of obeying Ma Teng's orders.

They would obey Ma Chao's orders, which were authorized by Grand Tutor Zhao, so that one day, after Ma Chao was ennobled, they could also refer to themselves as Zhao Chao on formal and solemn occasions.

(End of this chapter)