In mid-September, Liu Cheng, now bearing the seal and ribbon of the Marquis of Zan, set out from Chang'an with a party fully five or six hundred strong. Over two hundred belonged to the court delegation sent to convey imperial greetings to Huan Wen; Huan Wen had also assigned the customary thirty Black-Clad Guards, a hundred and fifty Armored Cavalry, and a hundred and fifty laborers. Carrying gifts and escorting the yak-tail staff, with dozens of carts and horses prepared, they had every ceremonial accoutrement. In grand procession, they began their long journey.
It was long indeed.
From Chang'an to Shan County was over four hundred li; continuing to Luoyang made it seven hundred.
Liu Cheng took twenty days to cover those seven hundred li, walking straight out of autumn into winter at a pace comparable to a large army on the march.
It was not that he was dawdling. Rather, even the vital Shaan-Luo corridor was practically uninhabited along its length.
There had to be people. In such a vast region, there had to be people. Otherwise, where had Wang Meng and Xue Qiang eaten their lice before? But after the upheavals of the past few years, marauding armies had plowed back and forth between Shaan and Luoyang countless times. Whatever people remained had hidden in the mountains and formed fortified manors, waiting for someone destined to find them to write "The Peach Blossom Spring."
There must have been people on the road, too, but those bands of a few or a few dozen bandits and refugees hid as soon as they spotted the procession in the distance.
At any rate, from Liu Cheng's perspective, there was virtually no sign of human habitation along what might have been the most important route through China's heartland over the preceding five