Wind Rises in Western Longxi

Author: Ma Boyong / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: On the sixth day of the second month in the third year of the Wei reign, in Shangbang City of Tianquan County, Wei Kingdom. Chen Gong stepped out of his door at the sound of the morning bell at Chen time. He wore a conical hat and a faded but clean navy-blue long gown, with a cloth bag tied around his waist containing brushes, ink, paper, and inkstones. Chen Gong carefully checked his equipment, then locked the door and opened the courtyard gate to go out.
"Master Chen, are you leaving so early?" Chen Gong's neighbor, who saw him coming out, greeted him.
"Yes, it's an extraordinary time," Chen Gong replied with a smile.
Last year, the two kingdoms of Shu and Wei fought two major battles, and war could break out at any moment in the future. This made Shangbang City, located on the front line, constantly threatened by the enemy and forced to prepare actively. Naturally, the officials in charge of guarding the city were busy.
"Is this your attire for a long journey?" the neighbor asked.
"Oh, there's a market today. The Magistrate of Ma has sent me to buy a batch of donkeys and mules for military use," Chen Gong explained.
The neighbor sighed, and the two chatted for a few more moments before parting ways.
The street was crowded, with a large proportion of them being Wei soldiers clad in black armor. They marched in long lines, patrolling the streets and reminding passersby that it was wartime. Shangbang, located north of Qishan in Tianquan County, was the throat of the Wei Kingdom leading to Liangzhou and held a strategically important position. To prepare for possible attacks by the Shu army, the Wei army had shifted the focus of its defense in Longxi to here—currently, 12,000 soldiers under the command of Governor of Yongzhou, Guo Hui, were stationed here, while the population of Shangbang itself was only over 20,000.
Chen Gong bypassed the soldiers and went directly to the horse market in the eastern exchange area, where horse traders from Western Liang and Shuobei gathered. They had sensed the war and knew their goods would fetch a good price.
As soon as he approached the donkey and mule market, he could smell a pungent odor of horse manure. Horses of different breeds were kept in wooden enclosures, snorting loudly. Wooden signs made of tree bark hung on the fences, inscribed with the horses' origins, gender, and age. The traders stood with folded arms, shouting the merits of their horses to passersby.
In a simpler enclosure nearby, donkeys and mules were sold. These places were far less luxurious than the horse enclosures. The horse sellers were mostly Qiang and Xiongnu people, with rather strange appearances, while the donkey and mule sellers were mainly Central Plains merchants.
Faced with these animals, Chen Gong seemed somewhat absent-minded, walking back and forth between the enclosures again and again, unable to make up his mind.
Finally, he noticed a peculiar sign on a donkey enclosure. The sign had a faint ink dot lightly placed above the character for "donkey," as if it had been accidentally dripped while writing, almost invisible without close inspection.
After circling around a few more times, Chen Gong asked the price at the fourth enclosure to the right of the donkey enclosure he had just seen. After asking from one enclosure to another, he finally arrived in front of this one.
"Does this donkey belong to someone?" Chen Gong asked loudly. The donkey owner hurried over, nodding and flattering him repeatedly.
He was a thin, withered Central Plains man, not old but with a wrinkled face and straw dust on his hair.
"Sir, I'm selling this donkey for five bushels of millet, or two bolts of silk."
"That's too expensive. Can you lower the price a bit?" The donkey owner quickly put on a pitiful expression, spreading his hands: "Sir, please have mercy. This is Longxi, it's not as prosperous as our old capital."
Hearing this, Chen Gong's eyes flashed with sharp insight, a glint that vanished almost instantly. He asked slowly, "Which old capital are you referring to—Luoyang or Chang'an?"
"Of course, Chang'an—the residence of the Red Emperor," the donkey owner replied.
Hearing this, Chen Gong subconsciously glanced around and noticed no one was paying attention to their conversation. He then asked the donkey owner to lead the donkey to a quiet corner and removed the saddle from its back.
The saddle was trapezoidal, with a frame woven from willow wood on the inside and covered with tanned leather on the outside, sturdy enough to withstand long journeys. Chen Gong reached into the base of the saddle and rubbed along the seams, quickly discovering that one side of the leather could be lifted.
Seeing no one around, he carefully lifted a corner of the leather and reached into the hollow of the saddle, taking out a folded piece of hemp paper.
Chen Gong tucked the paper into a hidden pocket in his robe and then replaced the leather as it was, walking out as if nothing had happened.
Next, he visited a few more donkey and mule enclosures and bought three donkeys, two mules, and two horses. By the time the sun set, Chen Gong drove the animals to the magistrate's stables and declined his colleagues' invitation to drink together, returning directly to his home.
He was currently single, and his neighbors knew his wife had died before he moved to Tianquan County, and he had no intention of remarrying. Now, he had only an elderly servant who was both deaf and mute to help with household chores.
After returning home, the old servant brought Chen Gong a bowl of lamb soup with coriander and broad beans, along with two cooked sweet potatoes. Chen Gong took the bowl, waved the servant away to rest, and then entered his bedroom, closing the door.
The bedroom was small, with bookshelves on both sides of the room, filled with scrolls of varying thicknesses. Near the window was a bed, next to which stood a red lacquered desk and a screen depicting dancing girls performing the "Seven Plates Dance."
After confirming that he was the only one in the room, Chen Gong pulled the screen behind him and knelt before the desk to light a candle. He took out the hidden hemp paper from the pocket of his clothes.
The paper was densely covered with small regular script characters, listing over twenty pieces of intelligence on Wei Kingdom's political affairs, foreign relations, military garrisons, economic reforms, personnel transfers, and public sentiment fluctuations. The information was quite detailed, with many of them being classified documents of a high level of secrecy.
These kinds of documents, which were usually accessible only to high-ranking officials in the Secretariat and the Chancellery, were now laid bare before the eyes of this humble Master Chen.
In fact, apart from being the Master of the Tianquan Magistrate's Office, Chen Gong also had a secret identity—he was a spy from the Censorate Bureau of the Shu-Han Prime Minister's Office, stationed in Tianquan, responsible for gathering intelligence on the Guanlong region under the Wei Kingdom.
The Censorate Bureau was a special secret intelligence department of Shu-Han, subordinate to the Prime Minister's Office, known for its professionalism and efficiency. Its function was to gather, transmit, organize, and analyze information about the enemy.
Shu-Han had always placed great importance on intelligence work, as Zhuge Liang believed that good intelligence could compensate for the numerical disadvantage of the Shu army. Therefore, as early as during the Southern Expedition, Zhuge Liang had assigned Ma Su, a military aide, to Hanzhong to personally guide intelligence work against Wei.
Ma Su, based on the old team from Liu Zhang and Zhang Lu's era, established the Censorate Bureau and gradually built a meticulous intelligence network targeting the Wei Kingdom.
Chen Gong, however, was engaged in a much riskier undercover operation. Spies like him, who operated in enemy territory with false identities, were known as informants.
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