In the study of the Commander-in-Chief's Manor, a secret letter delivered three days ago was spread out on the desk, its edges already frayed from Tie Lanshan's grip.
The letter was sent by a hidden contact in the capital, and every word was piercing:
The Ministry of Revenue, citing "temporary suspension of disbursement during the account verification period," had withheld the military grain silver for the Central Route Prefecture of the Northern Frontier this month.
Temporary suspension.
Two politely written words, but to Tie Lanshan, it meant someone was reaching into the military's pot.
It meant someone was holding down the rice spoons of tens of thousands of soldiers.
Tie Lanshan stared at that line of text for a long time, then suddenly raised his hand and slapped the letter onto the table with a smack.
The brush washer on the desk jumped from the impact, spilling a half-circle of water.
"Son of a bitch."
The personal guard on duty at the door twitched his shoulders, not daring to make a sound.
Tie Lanshan wasn't satisfied after cursing. He grabbed the paperweight on the table, wanting to smash it, but stopped abruptly in mid-air.
The bluestone paperweight turned a half circle in his palm before he slammed it back onto the desk with a bang.
He had fought wars for twenty years.
In front of him were Helian cavalry, behind him were military rations and forage.
He had buried people in snowstorms and gnawed on dry flatbreads on barren beaches.
When arrows grazed past his ears, he couldn't even be bothered to frown.
But this time, the blade didn't chop at his neck, and the arrow didn't shoot into the camp gate.
A civil official sitting in the capital, holding a pen and writing a few bureaucratic phrases on paper, had choked the throat of the Northern Frontier?
This feeling was more frustrating than taking a blade head-on.
Deputy General Zhao Heng stood below, lowering his head and speaking, "Commander, should we have the grain depot transfer from surrounding prefectural storehouses to cover it first? The Central Route Prefecture's accounts can still support for about ten days, if we save a bit more..."
"Save?"
A thunderous roar.
"The scouts up front go out of the pass every day, the medicine pots in the wounded soldier camp haven't stopped, the sabotage battalion is trading lives for battle results on the grassland.
"You want me to tell them, the Ministry of Revenue is checking accounts, cut the food in half first?"
Zhao Heng shut his mouth.
Tie Lanshan snatched up that letter and read it again, getting more annoyed the more he looked.
So he directly stuffed the letter into his sleeve and strode out.
"Prepare a horse, to the Imperial Envoy's place."
The personal guard quickly led a horse over.
Tie Lanshan mounted, flicking his horsewhip.
...
In the backyard of the Imperial Envoy's temporary residence, Xu Qinghuan was looking at the medicine and grain distribution ledger sent from the Jiangning workshop.
The inventory numbers were all listed on the paper, with a family letter from Xu Youde in the capital clipped next to it.
It exhorted her that the medicine and grain accounts must be detailed to every package, every cart, and every escort.
When Tie Lanshan entered the door, he still carried the heat from outside. He didn't even take the tea, directly slapping the letter onto the desk.
"Lord Xu, your father and Shang Qitai are fighting in the capital, how did the fire burn to the stoves of my Northern Frontier?"
Xu Qinghuan put down her pen, picked up the letter and scanned it, her eyebrows showing no unnecessary movement.
Seeing her like this, Tie Lanshan felt even more stifled.
"The Ministry of Revenue temporarily suspended disbursement, this month's military grain silver is stuck."
"I know."
"Know?"
Tie Lanshan slapped the edge of the table, making the teacup rattle.
"I have tens of thousands of people here opening their mouths to eat, and that Shang Qitai uses the Northern Frontier's military grain as a bargaining chip, pushing it onto the court's card table.
"Heh! Just hoping the border army starves for a few days, so the whole court of civil and military officials can curse your Xu family for bringing up old accounts and getting in the way!"
Xu Qinghuan put the letter back on the table.
"This move won't last past seven days."
Tie Lanshan furrowed his brows.
Xu Qinghuan picked up her pen and wrote the words "seven days" on a piece of paper beside her, then drew a horizontal line underneath.
"What His Majesty wants is for Shang Qitai to pay out of his own pocket to make up the deficit, what he wants is for the Ministry of Revenue to spit out clean dossiers, naturally he won't really let the Northern Frontier run out of grain. Shang Qitai holding up the military grain can only force the blade before the Emperor to fall faster."
Tie Lanshan paced back and forth a couple of times.
"I understand the reasoning.
"But understanding is one thing, being disgusted is another."
Xu Qinghuan didn't reply.
Tie Lanshan turned around, his chest still heaving.
"I, Tie Lanshan, have led troops for so many years. If I can't beat the enemy, that's my lack of skill.
"If the rations and forage can't be transported up, that's because the roads are bad, the snowstorm is heavy, the horse caravans can't move. But now? The silver is in the Ministry of Revenue's accounts, the grain is in the granaries, the roads are also open.
"Just because Shang Qitai can't cover up the rotten accounts under his ass, he dares to hold down the military grain and not give it.
"Lord Xu, tell me, what is this?"
Xu Qinghuan pushed the tea on the table over.
But naturally, Tie Lanshan was in no mood to drink.
"Those soldiers under me, they guard the city walls in winter, patrol the barren beaches in summer. Licking blood from the edge of a knife, injured or crippled, and when they look back they have to hear a capital official say 'temporary suspension of disbursement during the account verification period'?
"On what grounds!"
Xu Qinghuan looked up at him.
"That's why I want the medicine and grain to be recorded in the ledger, make the clean water decree a military regulation, and have the black stone mining and fire thunder pots written into the Commander-in-Chief's Manor's charter.
"Things that can be held in the hands of the Northern Frontier, don't let that group of people in the capital easily manipulate them."
This sentence hit the mark.
Tie Lanshan wasn't afraid of running out of grain.
Zhenbei City still had grain depots, military farms, and old storehouses of border merchants.
If they really had to endure for seven or eight days, he had plenty of ways to keep the soldiers fed.
What angered him was that the Northern Frontier was being treated as a piece on the edge of a chessboard that could be pushed or discarded.
Tens of thousands of lives, tens of thousands of mouths waiting for food... in Shang Qitai's document, it was reduced to a mere "temporary suspension."
Tie Lanshan put down the teacup, not having drunk the tea.
"Within seven days, if the Ministry of Revenue still dares to drag this out, I will personally submit a memorial to curse them."
Xu Qinghuan picked up her pen again.
"You can curse, but don't be in a hurry to curse.
"First, let the grain depot open the granaries as usual, don't let rumors spread wildly in the camp.
"As for the silver, Jiangning has money, I'll first transfer thirty thousand taels to the Central Route Prefecture to hold them over."
Tie Lanshan was startled.
"That's your Xu family's money."
"If the military grain is cut off in the accounts, the fire will burn to my side."
Xu Qinghuan wrote on the approval slip, and after finishing, handed it to Li Sheng.
"Go find Jenny Huang, tell her to delay the military equipment directorate's iron materials account for two days, first secure the stoves and grain depots.
"Also pass word to Lao Sun, don't skimp on medicine and grain in the wounded soldier camp these next few days. Whoever dares to use the Ministry of Revenue's matter as an excuse to dock the sick soldiers, report their names."
Li Sheng took the approval slip and ran out as if his feet were oiled.
Tie Lanshan watched her dismantle the matter with a few sentences, and that ball of fire in his chest finally had a place to land.
But though the fire landed, the anger was still there.
He sat in the temporary residence for half an hour, finishing all he had to say and adjusting all he had to adjust.
It was just that when he stood up, he was still very annoyed.
Seeing he was about to leave, Xu Qinghuan added a sentence: "If the Commander doesn't want to return to the manor, you might as well take a walk outside the city."
Tie Lanshan's footsteps paused.
Xu Qinghuan lowered her head to flip through the ledger, not looking at him again.
"The Camp Field Department over there, there should be some movement today."
Tie Lanshan frowned.
"Yanmen Wasteland?"
"En."
Tie Lanshan didn't ask more, just waved his hand and left the temporary residence.
He really didn't want to go back to the Commander-in-Chief's Manor.
A room full of official documents, military reports, transfer orders, and grain ledgers; he wanted to curse at whichever one he looked at.
The personal guard led over the piebald horse. Tie Lanshan didn't wear armor, only changing into a coarse cloth casual outfit, still hanging a sword at his waist.
"Don't follow too closely."
He dropped a sentence, mounted the horse, and left the city.
On a summer afternoon in Zhenbei City, the heat waves outside the city gates churned with an earthy smell.
The official road was baked hard, and when the horse's hooves stepped down, broken earth rolled away from the edges of the hooves.
Tie Lanshan first walked slowly. Three miles out of the East Gate, the reins in his hand loosened, and the piebald horse spread its four hooves and charged forward.
The wind hit him head-on, blowing his lapels up.
It had been a long time since he rode a horse like this.
Back in the day when he wasn't yet the Commander-in-Chief, he could run from early morning to sunset.
When hungry, he would gnaw on flatbread on horseback; when thirsty, he would scoop a handful of ditch water to drink. As long as there were enemy cavalry ahead, his bones never felt fatigue.
Later, when he took the position of Commander-in-Chief, the horse was still the same horse, but the path had changed.
Stacks upon stacks of military reports waited for his approval in the manor.
Which beacon tower lacked arrows, which fortress had a collapsed wall, which battalion's captain had bungled matters due to drinking.
Which batch of winter clothes was moth-eaten—it all piled up on his desk.
Sitting for too long, his temper had not diminished, but his hands and feet were bound by official documents.
Tie Lanshan leaned over his horse's back, letting the black steed gallop east along the dirt road.
They ran past two ruined beacon towers and bypassed an abandoned military farm. The boundary markers by the road leaned askew in the grass, their bodies still bearing the old insignia carved by the Agricultural Bureau ten years ago.
He reined in his horse and cast a glance at that plot of land.
A stark white crust of salt spread across the ground, crisscrossed with cracks. Not even the lowliest weeds were willing to take root there.
Ten years ago, the imperial court had allocated silver to build canals and treat the soil's alkalinity. When the documents reached his desk, they were written in flowery prose, claiming that fertile fields could be restored in three years, and military rations could be grown in five.
The silver was spent, and a few canals were built, but then a massive flood washed through.
The ditches collapsed, and the fields were completely ruined.
The Agricultural Bureau reported a single sentence, stating that the alkaline soil was untreatable, and the matter was buried in the old archives.
Tie Lanshan had believed it back then.
He did not know how to farm, and fighting wars in the Northern Frontier was far more urgent than tilling land. Since the Agricultural Bureau said it could not be treated, he could only continue to rely on water transport and merchant caravans for his army's rations.
Looking at this dead land now, he suddenly remembered the words Xu Qinghuan had spoken in the study that day.
Whatever can be held in the hands of the Northern Frontier, do not let those people in the capital easily manipulate.
Tie Lanshan tugged at the reins, letting the horse continue forward.
The further east they went, the thicker the salt crust became. The distant canals were dry and cracked, and the old water gates were reduced to half-broken wooden stakes jutting out of the mud at an angle.
A few crows perched on the stakes, only fluttering away when they saw the horse approaching.
His personal guards chased after him, sweating profusely. From about twenty lengths away, they shouted, Commander, further ahead is the Yanmen Wasteland!
Tie Lanshan did not look back.
Let us go take a look.
The guards did not dare to stop him and could only follow.
As the sun slanted westward, the terrain ahead rose. The dirt road curved past a shrub-covered slope, and suddenly, human voices drifted up from below.
Tie Lanshan reined in his horse.
Sitting at the top of the slope, he looked down.
Some five hundred raggedly dressed veteran soldiers, women, and children were crowded along the ridges of the fields.
A patch of fresh green sprouted from the yellow mud in the fields, spreading out densely. In the distance, wooden stakes and hemp ropes marked a seed preservation area.
Tie Lanshan's hand rested on the hilt of his blade, and the black steed beneath him snorted.
He narrowed his eyes, finally seeing clearly that in this alkaline wasteland he had thought was long dead, something had actually grown.
