HLnovel 013 Trust hasn't disappeared; it's been replaced by a more "efficient" system.
013 Trust hasn't disappeared; it's been replaced by a more "efficient" system.
As Zhen Xiaosi stroked the faded annotation at the end of the "Supplement to the Book of Turkic Surrender," she seemed to touch the very heartbeat of a dynasty at its very beginning. Back then, the Tang Dynasty was brimming with fresh, clear water—confident and daring to turn the most dangerous enemies into the finest wine.
With her eyes closed, she could picture that night at Shuntian Tower: the chains of the Khan of the Khaganate gleamed coldly in the lamplight, while the gilded cup filled by Emperor Taizong reflected the entire grassland. It was not the ostentation of a conqueror, but the true magnanimity of the "Heavenly Khan"—he did not want groveling slaves, but brothers who could drink with him.
But now?
On the north bank of the Huangshui River, Shi Siming built a "Jingguan" (a mound of skulls), where the heads of thirty-seven Khitan chieftains decayed in the wind. Those empty eye sockets gazed at the same Chang'an, but could no longer reflect the shadow of the word "brother."
Zhen Xiaosi closed the old book, and the oil lamp cast her slender figure on the cellar wall, like a question mark of an era.
"Because the source of the water has changed."
This thought pierced her heart like an ice pick. No, it wasn't just Xuanzong's fault; over the past eighty years, the entire riverbed had long been clogged with the silt of power.
She recalled the old translator from the Honglu Temple she had met the other day. The old man had white hair and beard and could speak seven foreign languages, but he had not been summoned to translate the covenant documents for ten years.
“During the Zhenguan era, the interpreter had to sit between the Khan and the Emperor.” The old man gestured on the table with his withered fingers. “Every oath had to be translated into Tibetan first, and then translated back into Chinese in front of everyone—to ensure that the meanings of both ends were as perfect as mirrors reflecting each other, without the slightest error.”
He opened a tattered copy of "Translation Standards" and pointed to a line of red annotations: "The rule set by Emperor Taizong: the four words 'never betray each other' in the covenant must be translated into Turkic as 'until the white camel grows two humps and the black horse grows horns.' The people of the grasslands believe this—they have seen camels and horses, and they know that this oath is heavier than mountains."
"And now?" Zhen Xiaosi asked.
The old man smiled wryly and pulled a brand-new document from his sleeve. It was a "covenant" with the Uyghurs from the first year of the Tianbao era, filled with ornate parallel prose praising the Tang Dynasty for its "virtue matching heaven and earth" and the Uyghurs for their "loyalty shining as bright as the sun and moon."
“The current alliance treaty is written by Hanlin scholars in Chang’an and sent to the border by express courier, so that the military governor can find someone to ‘translate’ it into the Tibetan language.” He pointed to a passage, “Look at this phrase ‘harmonize all nations’—where is the concept of ‘nation’ on the grasslands? A tribe is a tribe. But you can’t translate it directly; you have to translate it as ‘let all the felt tents have smoke rising from their chimneys.’ But what does this smoke represent? Is it peace or submission? Nobody investigates it anymore.”
His last words kept Zhen Xiaosi awake all night: "The translators of the Zhenguan era had to swear an oath to the grasslands: 'If I mistranslate even half a word, may the Eternal Heaven take away my tongue.' The translators of today only need to promise the military governor: 'If the barbarian chieftains don't understand, just say they are stupid and uncivilized.'"
Trust hasn't disappeared; it's been replaced by a more "efficient" system that "doesn't include useless things"...
Zhen Xiaosi began to consciously compare documents in the western cellar. She placed the documents from the Zhenguan, Yonghui, Kaiyuan, and Tianbao dynasties side by side on her desk, as if dissecting the skeleton of a giant beast.
Documents from the Zhenguan era often contain phrases like these:
"Tuli Khan complained: Xueyantuo seized three hundred li of my grassland, please let the Heavenly Khan decide."
The red inscription was written by Emperor Taizong himself: "I have dispatched Li Jian, the Vice Minister of the Court of State Ceremonies, to the northern desert to meet with the tribal chiefs at the source of the Orkhon River, where they will 'swear an oath of blood to demarcate the border' according to the old custom of the grasslands. The Great Tang will not take an inch of land, but only wishes that the smoke from cooking fires can be seen from the south and north of the desert, and that there will be no sound of arrows flying."
However, the tone of documents from the late Kaiyuan period completely changed:
The military governor of Pinglu reported: "The Xi tribe is spying on our borders. Please increase our military strength."
The prime minister commented: "Approved. Order Youzhou to cooperate in the suppression. Those who behead more than a thousand will be rewarded."
By the early years of the Tianbao era, even the form of documents was simplified—becoming the "Victory Report" uniformly printed by the Ministry of War, with only blank spaces for filling in numbers:
"Beheaded ____ people, captured ____ people, and seized ____ cattle and sheep."
Zhen Xiaosi discovered that in the gaps between these changes in document format, a key official position quietly disappeared: the Pacification Commissioner.
She unearthed the outline of this official position from the surviving records of the Ministry of Personnel: it was a regular position during the Zhenguan era, a fifth-rank official, whose duties included mediating disputes among the tribes, proclaiming imperial edicts, and presiding over alliance meetings.
Those selected had to be fluent in Tibetan languages, understand Tibetan customs, and even be able to live in felt tents and drink dairy milk on the grasslands. They were the most sensitive tentacles that the Tang Dynasty extended to the four barbarian tribes.
In the ninth year of the Kaiyuan era, this official position was officially abolished. In its place was the newly established "Rewards and Merits Office" under the Ministry of War—responsible for calculating the heads presented by border generals and awarding rewards according to their rank.
The "tentacles" have become an "abacus".
On the third day after she figured out this connection, while sorting through a batch of old files from Anxi, she discovered a secret document wrapped in oil paper.
That was the original secret memorial written by the Protector-General of Anxi to Emperor Taizong in the second year of the Yonghui era. The paper was brittle and yellowed, but the handwriting was sharp as a knife:
"I have heard that the two Western Turkic tribes are fighting each other, and Khan Yipi Shekui has requested assistance. Some generals have suggested that this is a golden opportunity to help one side destroy the other and reap the benefits. I humbly believe this is unwise—the Tang Dynasty's presence in the Western Regions is not for territorial expansion, but for establishing trust. If we help A to destroy B today, tomorrow C and D will see the Tang as a wolf in sheep's clothing and will no longer have any genuine allegiance. Therefore, I have already sent envoys to the two tribes to mediate. Although it will take time and effort, in ten years, the kingdoms of the Western Regions will know that the Tang is impartial and will naturally be sincerely convinced."
At the end of the memorial, there was a vermilion comment from Emperor Taizong, consisting of only two characters:
"Great kindness."
Zhen Xiaosi held the page, her hands trembling. She suddenly realized which bend in the dried-up river had caused it to lose its way.
It wasn't on the day Emperor Xuanzong ascended the throne, but much earlier—when the empire's bureaucracy discovered that "establishing trust" took ten years, while "profiting" only required one war; when prime ministers discovered that the merits of mediating disputes could not be quantified, while the number of beheadings could be recorded in performance evaluations; when border generals discovered that pacifying the barbarian tribes might lead to impeachment for "colluding with foreign vassals," while conquest and slaughter would only result in promotions and titles...
The entire ruling machine, through countless subtle choices, collectively turned to the path of "least resistance".
That road didn't lead to peace on the frontier, but rather to the orderly accounts of Chang'an.
In April of the second year of the Tianbao era, a heavy rain flooded half of the Honglu Temple's library. Zhen Xiaosi was assigned to salvage the damp archives. While moving a batch of "Records of Tribute Goods from Various Circuits During the Kaiyuan Era," she accidentally dropped a thick volume.
The booklet unfolded, and a hidden silk painting slid out from inside.
She unfolded it and took a look, then her breathing stopped.
It was a map comparing the population and tribute of the Tibetan tribes in Hebei Province, the ink still fresh, clearly drawn not long ago. The map was covered with dense annotations, but she immediately grasped its core meaning:
The "Five Tribes of the Xi" are marked with two different numbers.
The small characters on the left read: "In the 25th year of the Kaiyuan era, the Ministry of Revenue recorded: 8,000 Xi tribe settlements, 42,000 people, and annual tribute of 500 horses and 1,000 hides."
The right side of the red text reads: "Report from the Pinglu Army in the first year of Tianbao: There are 50,000 strong and capable Xi tribesmen. If we launch a campaign, we estimate that we can behead 8,000 and capture 20,000 people."
Next to the character "朱" (zhu), there is a smaller annotation, written in a messy, illegible hand:
"In fact, the Xi people number no more than 30,000, and more than half of them are old and weak. However, according to the Ministry of War's reward system, the reward for beheading a barbarian is ten bolts of silk, and the reward for capturing a single enemy is five bolts of silk. If the reward is requested according to the 'military report', one million bolts of silk can be obtained—enough to cover three years' worth of military expenses in Fanyang."
Zhen Xiaosi stood frozen in place.
The rain pattered against the paper windows of the library, like the lamentations of countless wronged souls.
She finally touched upon the coldest truth: the difference between Emperor Xuanzong's frontier policies and Emperor Taizong's lay in the transformation of the empire's financial and military systems.
Emperor Taizong implemented the Fubing system, which combined soldiers and farmers, resulting in low costs for warfare. Although pacifying the barbarian tribes was time-consuming, once successful, it could secure the stability of a vast frontier at a minimal cost—truly a case of "a small investment yielding huge profits."
During Emperor Xuanzong's reign, the militia system collapsed, and the conscription system emerged. The massive border armies became money-guzzling monsters. Military governors needed to constantly "achieve merit" to justify the huge military expenditures, and the court also needed constant "victories" to appease taxpayers and prove that the money was well spent.
Thus, a bizarre cycle was formed:
Due to financial pressure, the imperial court needed border generals to "save money." To curry favor with the emperor, these generals fabricated military achievements and killed innocent people to claim credit. To reward these "merits," the court allocated more rewards. Border generals used a portion of these rewards to bribe court officials in exchange for more tacit approval. Court officials, having accepted bribes, turned a blind eye to the corruption in the border generals. The border generals became even more unscrupulous and eventually grew too powerful to be controlled.
In this cycle, everyone rationally chooses the link that is most advantageous to them.
Did Emperor Xuanzong not know? Perhaps he did. But under the dual pressures of vanity and financial gain during a prosperous era, "ambition and a love of grandiose achievements" became the most convenient fig leaf. It covered not only the bloodshed on the frontiers, but also the degradation of the entire empire's governance capabilities—from the complex art of "winning people's sincere allegiance" to the simple transaction of "buying heads with money."
Zhen Xiaosi carefully folded the silk painting and put it back in its original place.
When she emerged from the library, the rain had stopped. The setting sun pierced through the clouds, bathing the thousands of rooftops of Chang'an in a startling golden-red hue, like gilded skeletons.
She suddenly remembered what the old translator had once said, the oldest proverb on the grasslands:
"A customer who's been fooled once will come back. But a brother who's been fooled once will never return."
Emperor Taizong won countless "brothers," even those who had once been his rivals.
And what about Emperor Xuanzong? He used mountains of gold and seas of silver to cultivate a group of shrewd and calculating "guests." These guests were carefully weighing the price of "loyalty" and "betrayal" in Youzhou, Fanyang, and all the border towns.
Zhen Xiaosi knew that when the price was settled, the messenger who would arrive would not be an envoy with a letter of alliance, but a creditor wielding a sword.
Zhen Xiaosi seemed to hear her uncle's teasing tone, tinged with Yingzhou accent: "Xiaosi, remember this—living water breeds fish, stagnant water breeds mosquitoes. If we don't clean the silt out of Chang'an soon, we'll be covered in mosquito bites!"
She tightened her official robes and stepped into the thick darkness of the Honglu Temple. The dusty scrolls in the archives still waited silently, waiting for someone to salvage the lost conscience of this empire from between the decaying pages.
What Zhen Xiaosi didn't know was that, far away in Yingzhou, her uncle's joke about "living water and dead water" had been sent intact to Fanyang through clandestine channels.
An Lushan, toying with a newly acquired gold-inlaid dagger, paused for a moment upon hearing this, then burst into laughter, his brocade robe billowing with each laugh.
"That boy from the Zhen family still has such a sharp tongue! But what he said is brilliant... It's time to dredge up the silt from that well in Chang'an."
After the laughter subsided, his gaze gradually turned cold as he gently plunged the dagger into the golden pear on the table.
"I wonder if what we'll pull out will be mud or piles of bones?"
The blade sank into the fruit flesh silently.
She looked north, where evening clouds gathered and the world was shrouded in darkness.
Once upon a time, just one word "brother" from Chang'an was enough to make countless sons of the grasslands willing to shed their blood on the battlefield for the Tang Dynasty.
Now, only countless eyes remain, coldly calculating the price of replacing this capital.
The flowing water has become stagnant, and beneath the stagnant water, undercurrents are converging into a colossal wave that will swallow the sky.
And she, a humble registrar who glimpsed the light of day amidst the dust and old scrolls, could do nothing more than carefully record every crack on this fragile embankment in the annals of history, which would never be read, before the floodwaters raged...
The night wind howled, billowing her wide official sleeves like banners or a summoning flag!