The sun was shining brightly, casting a golden glow over the wilderness. In the distance, banners fluttered in the wind from the west, and military tents stretched for miles, looking like a golden city.
In the middle was a large indigo felt tent. At the entrance, a bright red general's flag, several zhang high, fluttered in the wind, with the character "Feng" embroidered in gold thread on it.
Xiao Jingnan lifted the curtain of the general's tent and stepped inside. He saw an old general in fine iron mountain-pattern armor staring silently at the sand table in front of him. His graying temples were particularly eye-catching in the shadow.
On the seven-foot-square bronze base, finely ground river sand was piled up to form the mountains and rivers of southern Xinjiang. Small red and black flags were stuck among the sand dunes and model cities like pine needles.
At the place where the flags were the most concentrated, there was a marker made of dark blue clay with two characters clearly written on it: Yan Chuan.
"Yan Chuan must be taken," Xiao Jingnan said right away. "And then Qingzhou."
He walked straight forward, pulled out a small red flag, and stuck it on a model city to the southeast of Yan Chuan.
"Qingzhou..."
Feng Yuanji didn't even look at him. He said coldly, his voice hoarse with the exhaustion of a long journey.
"Qingzhou is the granary of southern Xinjiang and a place heavily guarded by the An Luo army. The young prince has come back from the brink of death, and his ambition has grown. He actually dares to say that he wants to capture Qingzhou..."
"No matter how heavily guarded it is, there are only eighty thousand troops there," Xiao Jingnan said indifferently. "General Feng has two hundred thousand troops, three times that number. Why worry about not being able to take it?"
Feng Yuanji didn't say anything this time. His gaze fell back on the sand table, and his eyes became even darker, like an old eagle taking one last look at its valley.
After a long time, he said slowly, "Do you know... I only have two hundred thousand troops?"
Two hundred thousand was not a small number... but for him, it was far from enough.
In the heyday of the Great Sheng Dynasty, there were as many as four hundred thousand troops stationed in southern Xinjiang alone!
At that time, the Great Sheng's iron armor shone in the sun, and its war horses neighed in the wind. Wherever the banners pointed, all countries bowed their heads.
But later, the former emperor fell ill, and his condition became serious. Undercurrents surged in the court, and the country went through four years of turmoil and panic.
After that, Empress Dowager Kang came to power.
This woman was outwardly lenient but inwardly jealous. She was good at power politics, timid in foreign wars but proficient in internal strife.
Over the decades, she had been extremely suspicious of the old generals in the army. She promoted them in name but demoted them in reality, and tried every means to cut the army's strength and seize power. Gradually, the once mighty army withered away.
If it weren't for General Feng's battle in the northwest two years ago, where three thousand iron cavalry defeated one hundred thousand enemies, scaring the barbarians and leaving the battlefield littered with corpses, and winning back a little dignity for the Great Sheng, it would have been difficult to preserve even the current two hundred thousand troops...
"Southern Xinjiang... is the heart's blood of us military roughnecks," Feng Yuanji stood up. His thin and big hand wandered over the sand table, slowly stroking the winding curve of the mountain ridge, as if stroking the still-warm corpses of the soldiers.
"So even though I knew this battle was a trap, I still had to come!"
His voice was hoarse, like the rough gravel rubbing against each other on the frontier.
"I thought that even if I couldn't recover the six lost cities, I could at least drive the An Luo people out of Yan Chuan and find a buffer zone for Lingxi County..."
"But I didn't expect that they would be so crazy! In order to make me lose, they actually burned the granary in Shou An!"
He punched the sand table hard, and the stone chips flew everywhere.
"That was the largest granary in Lingxi, storing a full one million and three hundred thousand dan of grain, which was the rations for the people of Lingxi for several years!"
"Didn't they think about what would happen to the hundreds of thousands of people in Lingxi if there was a natural disaster or a famine after they burned the granary..."
Outside the tent, the military flags were fluttering violently in the strong wind. General Feng clenched his fists tightly, and the veins on his hands popped out. He looked at the fluttering military flags outside the tent, and there seemed to be a fire burning in his eyes.
But when he turned around, the fire in his eyes had turned into ashes, and even the spine that had supported him for half his life became a little hunched.
How many loyal and brave soldiers didn't die on the battlefield but died in the calculations of the court? How many hot-blooded young men didn't lose to the enemy but were killed by their own people?
— How humiliating! And how absurd!
But he was completely helpless...
This absurd court situation was more corrosive to people's souls than the cold wind on the frontier.
...
"So, General Feng—"
Xiao Jingnan's voice was like a snowflake falling on a blade, with a chill that made people's bones cold. "Are you sober now?"
"You..."
Feng Yuanji looked up in surprise, his two graying sword-shaped eyebrows knitted together. "What did you say?"
Xiao Jingnan said calmly, "You dislike the power struggles in the court. You haven't been involved in the court affairs all these years and think you're clear-sighted. But it's precisely because of your aloofness that the Empress Dowager's hand has been reaching out further and further."
"When the Empress Dowager cut the strength of the Huo family's army, you remained silent; when the Empress Dowager transferred my father away from the front line on the pretext of recuperating, you still remained silent... Well, do you still think that the army and the court can be separated now?"
"I... I did this for the sake of the soldiers in the army!" Feng Yuanji gasped. "The young men should shed their blood on the battlefield, not be trapped in the dirty calculations of the women in the deep palace! Rolling around in those shady private schemes every day!"
"Well said," Xiao Jingnan clapped his hands and smiled lightly. "Over the years, our Xiao family has been biding our time and planning carefully. We've always been walking on the edge of a knife in the court. Naturally, we can't compare with General Feng's heroic deeds on the battlefield. But if we hadn't done so, how could we have protected the one hundred thousand old troops of our Xiao family?"
"What!" Feng Yuanji's eyes suddenly widened, and his thin fingers tightly grasped the edge of the table. "What did you say?"
Xiao Jingnan slowly took out a bronze token and a thin roster from his bosom.
"The Empress Dowager thought that by getting the roster of our Xiao family's old troops, she could control the Xiao family's army."
"But she didn't think that if a battle-hardened army could be controlled just by a list, then any good-for-nothing with a thick head could come to be a prefect or a military supervisor!"
Feng Yuanji took the roster tremblingly, and his rough fingertips rubbed over the densely written names on it. "The roster you gave to the Empress Dowager... was fake?"
"Real," Xiao Jingnan raised his sword-shaped eyebrows slightly, and a sarcastic smile appeared on his lips. "The names were of course real. We wouldn't dare to deceive the emperor... It's just that the positions, native places, and resumes were all mixed up."
Seeing the look of shock on Feng Yuanji's face, he added with a light smile, "The Empress Dowager has frequently transferred troops over the years, and the soldiers no longer recognize their generals, and the generals no longer recognize their soldiers."
"It's normal that the names on the list don't match the real people. It's just that none of the Kang family members are familiar with military affairs. So my father had already determined that even if we gave her this list, she wouldn't be able to find the people."
"You... You... You're really so bold..."
Feng Yuanji's voice was hoarse, and cold sweat slid down his wrinkled cheeks.
Xiao Jingnan suddenly showed a bright smile. "General Feng is wrong. We did hand in the roster as it was. The troops in the army have been transferred frequently, and the Empress Dowager can't find the people herself—" He spread out his hands innocently. "What can we do?"