Chapter 44

Bai Lang's reward had come through. It wasn't just his, either. This time, the Qing forces had broken through the pass but then turned back halfway, suffering a "great defeat" beneath Yanzhou City—a rare Ming victory since the eastern raiders first appeared. Especially after the catastrophic defeat beyond the passes earlier that year, which had wiped out the last elite troops of the Nine Border Garrisons and cost the life of a Supervisor and many other officers, and after the Ming Army had been soundly beaten by the rebel bandit Li Chuang at the Battle of Zhuxian Town, with Kaifeng Prefecture falling as well, this victory over the eastern raiders had come as a tremendous relief. The court was overjoyed, and even the current Emperor Chongzhen had eaten a few extra bowls of rice.

Officials from the Ministry of War soon arrived to verify the military achievements, and the eunuch sent to proclaim the emperor's praise hurried over at His Majesty's urging. More than a hundred enemy heads had been taken in the victory, and the Qing forces hadn't managed to carry off a single man or woman. They had certainly suffered a heavy loss. Everyone in Yanzhou Prefecture was promoted, though getting rich was out of the question—the court was desperately short of money, so it could only offer greater rewards in the form of official posts.

And since their strategic planning had brought about such a great victory, Emperor Chongzhen, in his desperation, was even considering promoting Yanzhou Prefecture's senior officials into posts in the capital, where they could govern a region, suppress the rebels, or defend against the eastern raiders. The civil officials, from the prefect on down, didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Getting promoted beyond their rank was one thing, but what came afterward would be no easy matter. Bai Lang had no time to worry about their dilemma. The eunuch before him seemed to hold a fairly high position, yet he hurried over a few steps and reached to grasp Bai Lang's hand. "Oh, when the report of victory reached the capital, hardly a soul among the court officials believed that our Great Ming could produce such a mighty warrior. But I believed it! I even congratulated His Majesty on Heaven granting our Great Ming a valiant general. And now that I see you, Brave warrior Bai, you truly look like the martial god Guan Yu reborn!"

The speech left Bai Lang blinking in confusion. All he remembered was that the eunuch called himself Du, though he hadn't caught the man's given name. He had quite a strong accent, too. Eunuch Du began reading the imperial edict. It was indeed written in a tone of fervent excitement. The emperor must have had the Grand Secretary responsible for drafting it revise it again and again. In any case, it painted Bai Lang as a man of peerless loyalty and courage, then appointed him Battalion Commander of Yanzhou, with the rank of Garrison Commander.

Bai Lang had gone straight from being a commoner to becoming a hereditary Battalion Commander of the Yanzhou Guard. Yet he still had no soldiers under his command. Though the imperial edict and the Ministry of War's records both listed his battalion, there were no men to fill it. The next document was a Ministry of War order assigning a Battalion Commander of the Yanzhou Guard, together with his crack troops, to serve under Governor Deng and suppress the rebels. "Prefect Deng got promoted? He jumped straight to Governor-General?" Bai Lang was taken aback. He hadn't expected beheading enemies to lead to such rapid advancement.

By now, he had also lost his pair of maces to the Qing forces. He might have to wait a while before he could retrieve them. Bai Lang sighed. Governor-General Deng had offered to have the Ministry of War make him a pair of iron maces, but Bai Lang had declined. "I'll use a saber this time. The way you use an iron mace is fairly similar to the way you use a saber, anyway. But to make it easier to control, I'd rather have a two-handed greatsword made." Before that, however, Prefect/ Governor-General Deng and the others had to go to the capital to meet the emperor. Bai Lang would naturally go with them, since the emperor had specifically requested to see such a peerless warrior.

In truth, hardly anyone believed the report claiming that one man had charged into the enemy ranks and killed dozens of officers. Bai Lang had read it, and even he didn't believe it from an objective standpoint. Yet it was still the feat he had accomplished. Bai Lang wasn't some freakishly huge, powerfully built man, nor was he a nine-foot-tall general. In this era, he was certainly tall, but there were plenty of men about his height. He was only a little over 1.8 meters tall, after all, and there were many men like that in Great Ming.

Bai Lang wasn't broad-backed and burly, either, though he did have a strong back and a lean waist. His upper body had a textbook inverted-triangle shape, but he hardly looked like the sort of general who could swing a sixty-four-jin Purple Gold Mace. Generals in those days tended to have big bellies, while Bai Lang could feel the faint outlines of six-pack abs beneath his shirt. Training in martial arts required strength; having the lowest possible body-fat percentage wasn't the goal. Shandong wasn't all that far from the capital, especially by water, which made the journey easier.

Looking at Beijing City from horseback, Bai Lang found it quite impressive. When he had visited BJ in his later life, the city walls had already been torn down. Now he could see them in all their grandeur. "It's not that impressive, is it?" He didn't feel moved, nor did he think it was a tragedy that the walls had been demolished in the future. Architects in later generations could talk easily about preserving the walls and building a new city elsewhere, but if asked how to solve people's livelihood problems, where the money for a new city would come from, or how to gather so many building materials, they wouldn't care.

After entering the city, Bai Lang found it quite decent. Later generations had tales of Beijing being battered by sandstorms in droughts, with mud everywhere when it rained and heaps of manure all over the place. None of that seemed true now. "If it is, it's the Manchu Qing's doing!" Bai Lang muttered, though no one nearby could hear him. The city had residences where officials visiting the court could stay. Prefect Deng wanted to win Bai Lang over, so he had specifically arranged for him to stay at his residence. That was the kind of treatment one could expect at a Governor-General's rank.

Bai Lang didn't mind either way. All he did each day was train his strength and practice martial arts; where he stayed didn't matter. He already had an official robe, blue with a bear embroidered on its badge, as befitted a fifth-rank official. But after he had settled in and before the audience with the emperor, someone from the Ministry of War brought him a new robe: a red one with a leopard on its badge. "A fourth-rank robe? Aren't I a fifth-rank official?" Bai Lang couldn't make sense of it, but he didn't try to. He had come to hone his skills through slaughter, and killing rebel bandits was much the same as killing Tartars. Until the Jade Fish recovered, Bai Lang felt he could carve out a bright, peaceful world with his own hands.

Bai Lang attended the court assembly, but his place was far out to the side, so he could barely make out what the emperor looked like. Afterward, though, he followed the newly appointed Governor-General Deng to Lantai to meet Emperor Chongzhen. The emperor looked older than his actual age. His hair had already begun to gray, and his clothes couldn't be called luxurious—rather, they were simple, though not so threadbare as to have patches. When Bai Lang met the emperor, the Han generals and young eunuchs barely bothered to check whether he was carrying a weapon. If the stories about a warrior of his caliber were true, he could kill someone easily even without a weapon.

A few young eunuchs simply stood between Bai Lang and the emperor, but Emperor Chongzhen took the initiative and told them to withdraw. "He is a loyal and valiant soldier of Great Ming. Why should we treat him this way?" After speaking with Governor-General Deng, Emperor Chongzhen found himself encouraged once more. This happened several times each year; the impatient emperor was always like this. The emperor had found hope again, and now he wanted to meet the mighty warrior described in the report. At first sight, Bai Lang could see a hint of admiration in the emperor's eyes.