Chapter 17: The Masterful Pen (I)

“Please rise quickly, brave sir, please get up at once.”
Li Kuo stepped forward and helped Lin Erlang to his feet, sighing, “In that case, you may join our army. But let me make it clear from the start—should you break military law, I won’t show leniency just because you’re new recruits.”
“Of course, General Li, rest assured! I, Lin Er, will never put you in a difficult position!”
With Li Kuo’s promise, Lin Erlang was overjoyed. He immediately patted his chest and vowed to be loyal.
“Your humble servant greets General Li!”
After saying that, Lin Erlang imitated other military officers by kneeling on one knee and saluting Li Kuo with clasped fists.
“You!”
Li Kuo shook his head with a wry smile, offering no response.
“Hehe, from now on, old Pu has another brother!”
Pu Dachui grinned widely and gave Lin Erlang a firm pat on the shoulder.
“Ah, brother, brother!”
Tears welled up in Lin Erlang’s eyes, glistening like jade…
In Tangzhou City, the governor’s residence.
Passing through the intricate corridors and around the artificial mountains by Taihu Lake, one could soon reach the governor’s study.
On a pearwood armchair sat a young man with untied hair and wearing clothes of the left-style.
Yet he was not the Tangzhou governor appointed by the Tang court, but rather a rebel general.
His name was A Lunchan, a adopted son of An Lushan. Ever since Tangzhou City fell, he had been stationed there.
An adopted son of An Lushan!
At first glance, this title sounded impressive, suggesting he held a high position among the rebels. But in reality, that was far from the case.
An Lushan, being a barbarian, valued familial ties even less than anything else. Even his own son, An Qingxu, would be severely whipped by him for making serious mistakes, let alone his adopted sons.
In fact, An Lushan had as many as forty or fifty adopted sons, to the point where he often mixed up their names. He did this entirely at the advice of his military advisor, Yan Zhuang.
Admiral Yan believed that since Fanyang and Pinglu were far from the capital, An Lushan could use the opportunity to cultivate his own loyalists, aiming to turn the entire Youzhou army into his personal force. An Lushan was naturally happy with this, but a major problem arose—how to cultivate them and what kind of people to cultivate?
Admiral Yan, known as the “Recluse Dragon” of his time, simply shook his feather fan and offered the best solution—adopting sons.
The people of the Central Plains valued emotions above all, especially family ties. Since the Zhou emperors began enfeoffing princes, the importance of blood relations had been greatly emphasized, and the idea of using relatives to govern regions had gradually been adopted by successive rulers.

Of course, An Lushan didn’t have enough sons to place in key positions, so he needed to adopt some foster sons to control every crucial role in the Youzhou army. Though not his biological sons, these foster sons still held a formal status and were clearly far more loyal to An Lushan than ordinary generals. It was through this strategy that An Lushan successfully took control of the Youzhou army, creating the necessary conditions for his rebellion. But as one of An Lushan’s foster sons, A Lun Can did not live a comfortable life. There were mainly two reasons for this. First, everything is more valuable when rare; with too many foster sons, their noble status lost its meaning. With so many foster sons under General An, which one should a general choose? Second, An Lushan was naturally suspicious. Even among his foster sons, as long as they held military power, he couldn’t fully trust them. After all, it was he who started the rebellion against the Tang Dynasty—how could he trust those in charge of the troops? With these two factors, A Lun Can lived in constant fear, worried about arousing An Lushan’s suspicion. What joy could there be in being a foster son to such a man? But since he was already stuck in this situation, he had to keep performing to survive. Reports, reports—this was all he heard these days! He really couldn’t understand why the people of the Central Plains kept creating so many problems, constantly submitting reports. Back when he and his foster father An Lushan were in the Fanyang military governor’s office, they hardly saw a few stacks of written orders throughout the year. Yet in just the past half month, the reports he had received could pile up into a small mountain! These matters were so complicated that if you tried to handle them, you’d end up passing them back and forth, unable to resolve them in days. Now it made sense why the Li Tang court was crushed by his foster father in just one month, with half of the country falling. Turning a simple matter into something complicated with verbose language not only confused those handling it but also wasted time with unnecessary wordplay. The people of the Central Plains lost because of their pretentiousness! “Speak up! What trivial matter is it again?” A Lun Can suddenly opened his eyes and slammed his hand hard on the desk in front of him. “Ah, General, I thought you were resting with your eyes closed, so I didn’t dare disturb you.” The speaker was a short, middle-aged man. He was fair and chubby, with slanted eyes, a flat nose, and an awkward-looking moustache on his chin. His dark purple robe trailed to the ground, wrapping his body like a zongzi.

He was Dong Zhongfu, the clerk of Tangzhou County. After the city fell, a large number of civil and military officials in the prefectural and county offices were slaughtered by A Luncan. Blood flowed like rivers in front of the offices, and corpses piled up like mountains. After a purge, it was ultimately because the rebels needed someone to draft documents that Dong Zhongfu, who wrote neatly, was kept.

Having escaped death, Dong Zhongfu was naturally extremely grateful to A Luncan and the rebels, and obeyed them in everything.

A Luncan originally had a strong aversion toward the Tang people from the Central Plains and wanted to skin all the Tang officials in the city and turn them into dried meat. Unfortunately, his army consisted of ignorant brutes who couldn’t read a single character. In normal times, that might have been acceptable, but now that the army had just captured the city, they urgently needed capable people to govern it.

As the saying goes, it’s hard to conquer a land, but even harder to rule it.

Without being in charge, one doesn’t realize how precious daily necessities are. As the prefect of a region, A Luncan was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of documents that piled up like snowflakes every day.

In A Luncan’s mind, the most effective way to solve problems was through force—if you didn’t obey me, I’d beat you until you did.

It was impossible to expect someone like A Luncan to govern a province or county.

Looking around in despair, A Luncan spotted Dong Zhongfu copying documents in a corner. With a wave of his hand, he spared this clerk of Tangzhou.

From then on, Dong Zhongfu became A Luncan’s personal aide. All the documents submitted around him were reviewed by Dong Zhongfu, who would then select the important ones to report to A Luncan.

Dong Zhongfu’s life was in A Luncan’s hands, so he wasn’t worried that Dong Zhongfu might side with the Tang court and deliberately underreport.

“Stop talking nonsense! How the hell do you know if I’m sleeping or not? Spit it out quickly if you’ve got something to say!”

A Luncan glared at Dong Zhongfu with disdain.

Dong Zhongfu was used to such insults and smiled brightly. “Actually, it’s nothing serious. General Hubier, who went to the valleys near Linghe to collect military provisions, hasn’t returned after a day, so I’m a bit worried.”

“Damn it, bothering me over such a trivial matter—are you trying to get into trouble?”

A Luncan threw a purple clay teapot at Dong Zhongfu. Dong Zhongfu didn’t dare to dodge, and his head was struck, leaving a fist-sized bruise.

“Ow!”

Taking a deep breath, Dong Zhongfu forced a pained smile and apologized, “I’m worthless. I disturbed the general’s meditation. I’m truly despicable!”

“Hmph, good that you know it!”

A Luncan snorted and picked up a grape, chewing it loudly. After a while, he frowned and asked, “When exactly did Hubier and his men set off from Tangzhou?”

“Reporting to the general, it was at the hour of Mao yesterday.” Although Dong Zhongfu cursed Alen Can in his heart hundreds of times, he had to bow low and go along with Alen Can’s words at this moment. “What? They haven’t returned after a day and a night!” Alen Can seemed to realize the seriousness of the situation as well. Narrowing his eyes, he muttered to himself, “Tangzhou City is only a dozen miles away from Linghe. It takes two hours to go and back. Even if they spent some time collecting military provisions, it wouldn’t have taken this long. Could something have gone wrong?” “The general is wise! The general is wise!” Seeing that Alen Can had come to this conclusion, Dong Zhongfu finally breathed a sigh of relief and immediately started flattery. “Wise? Wise? I didn’t say anything—how can you claim to be wise?” Alen Can suddenly stood up and kicked Dong Zhongfu in the buttocks. The pain made Dong Zhongfu jump around, but he didn’t dare to dodge at all. After kicking him enough, Alen Can finally left this poor wretch alone, muttering to himself, “There are quite a few of them. Ordinary soldiers can’t deal with them. Could it be…?” Alen Can slapped his own forehead and rushed outside. Panicked, Dong Zhongfu quickly stepped forward to stop him, “Oh, general, where are you going? If you want someone to go, just tell us, and I’ll send someone. You mustn’t go by yourself. As the ancients say, a gentleman does not put himself in danger…” Before Dong Zhongfu could finish speaking, Alen Can grabbed him tightly. “Damn those so-called gentlemanly words! I’m not a gentleman, and don’t try to fool me with such talk. I’m leaving the city now. Hurry up and get my horse ready. If anything goes wrong, I’ll break your arms and legs and throw you outside to feed the wolves!”