Was Zhang Jiao going to die?
Seeing Zhu Yuanzhang's words in the group, Liu Bang froze for a moment, then recalled the animated song Zhang Jiao had received back then.
[Liu Bang: You mean that in the original history, Zhang Jiao would soon die in battle during the siege of Guangzong?]
[Zhu Yuanzhang: Not quite-in the original history, Zhang Jiao died of illness about a month after being trapped in the siege of Guangzong.]
Guangzong City.
Zhang Jiao sat in his study.
When he saw the words "Zhang Jiao is going to die," his heart leaped into his throat. Then, like Liu Bang, he assumed that in the original history, he must have died in battle soon afterward.
But when he saw Zhu Yuanzhang say he had died of illness, a great knot formed in his heart.
If he had died in battle, foreknowledge could help him avoid it.
But if he had died of illness, could he escape that fate?
Just then, the group stirred.
[Liu Bang: Of illness? Do you know what illness killed him? If it was an ordinary fever or a battlefield wound, taking precautions should prevent it.]
[Zhu Yuanzhang: The histories only say that he died of illness during the siege of Guangzong, not what illness it was. They do not even give the exact date of his death, only that it happened in the eighth month.]
The eighth month.
Zhang Jiao's heart sank further.
It was already nearly the middle of the seventh month.
If he could not avert this fatal illness, it meant he had little more than a month left at most.
[Liu Bang: Zhang Jiao, what year and month is it where you are? What is the current situation of the Yellow Turban Rebels you lead?]
Seeing Liu Bang call the Yellow Turban Army rebels fighting for a righteous cause, Zhang Jiao, who had involuntarily sunk into despondency upon learning of his approaching death, felt an inexplicable surge of strength that lifted his spirits.
[Zhang Jiao: In the second month of the Seventh Year of Guanghe, also known as the First Year of Zhongping, the traitor Tang Zhou reported our plans for a righteous uprising to the court, forcing me to order the Yellow Turban forces everywhere to rise ahead of schedule.]
[Zhang Jiao: In the third month, the current Han emperor, Liu Hong, appointed Lu Zhi General of the Northern Household and made Zong Yuan, General of the Household Protecting the Wuhuan, his deputy, ordering them to lead the Five Battalions of the Northern Army into Ji Province to attack our Yellow Turban Army.]
[Zhang Jiao: Lu Zhi is one of Great Han's renowned generals today, while most of our Yellow Turban Army are starving commoners, lacking weapons and armor as well as training, and are no match for Great Han's elite Northern Army. Thus, after Lu Zhi reached Ji Province, our Yellow Turban Army suffered defeat after defeat at his hands. We lost over ten thousand elite troops, and tens of thousands of the remaining Yellow Turbans scattered.]
[Zhang Jiao: Forced by the circumstances, I led the remaining tens of thousands of Yellow Turban soldiers and over a hundred thousand Yellow Turban followers into Guangzong. We took a defensive stance, waiting for the Yellow Turban Army in other provinces and commanderies to break the stalemate and relieve our predicament.]
[Zhang Jiao: Yet by the sixth month, the Yellow Turban forces in those other provinces and commanderies had not only failed to gain ground, but had been wiped out one after another by Huangfu Song and Zhu Jun, those two renowned generals of Great Han, along with troops from the powerful local clans and great families assisting the court. Only my second brother, Zhang Bao, remained at Xiaquyang with a contingent of troops, forming two horns of mutual support with Guangzong.]
[Zhang Jiao: Before long, Lu Zhi's trenches and fortified camps confined my Yellow Turban Army to an area two or three li around Guangzong City, cutting us off from the outside world. Today is the ninth day of the seventh month. By my reckoning, we have been trapped in Guangzong for nearly a month.]
Zhu Yuanzhang had already learned how Zhang Jiao's Yellow Turbans had been trapped in Guangzong from the relevant histories, so he remained perfectly calm.
Liu Bang's feelings were far more complicated after hearing it.
He was naturally pleased to hear Zhang Jiao say that Great Han still had at least three renowned generals in that era. Yet he knew full well that when a dynasty reached its twilight, renowned generals could not turn the tide.
At the end of Qin, had Wang Li, Zhang Han, Sima Xin, and Yang Xiong not all been hailed as renowned generals? Wang Li's grandfather had even been the illustrious general Wang Jian, yet had they not all fallen to the various rebel armies of Qin's final years?
Besides, he had already picked up some clues from Zhang Jiao's brief account.
The Great Han court of that era must have lacked troops, money, and provisions, which was why it had allowed powerful local clans and great families to train private armies to help suppress the Yellow Turban uprising.
It was easy to imagine that even if the Yellow Turban uprising were quelled, the Great Han court of that era would probably lack the strength to control those private armies.
The subsequent wars between rival lords, and likely the Three Kingdoms themselves, had arisen from precisely this.
As someone who had emerged from the chaos of Qin's final years, Liu Bang grew ever more certain as he considered this that he should do his utmost to help Zhang Jiao and the Yellow Turban Army escape their destruction in the original history.
Of course, he had another consideration in helping Zhang Jiao, but now was not yet the time to mention it.
Coming back to himself, Liu Bang immediately typed a message.
[Liu Bang: Zhang Jiao, avoiding death from illness rests with you alone. So long as you remain vigilant, you should be able to escape this calamity. Old Zhu, for now, let us first discuss how to help the Yellow Turbans at Guangzong break the siege. Since you know the original history, can you not find an opening in it?]
[Zhu Yuanzhang: That was precisely what I was about to discuss-the histories record that after Lu Zhi surrounded Guangzong, he intended to wait for an opportunity to take the city in one stroke. But just then, Emperor Ling of Han, that is, Liu Hong, sent the eunuch Zuo Feng to inspect Lu Zhi's army.]
[Zhu Yuanzhang: After failing to extort a bribe from Lu Zhi, Zuo Feng returned to Luoyang and falsely accused him of shirking battle and keeping the rebels alive to inflate his own importance. Emperor Ling of Han flew into a rage and issued an edict dismissing Lu Zhi. He sent men to escort him back to Luoyang for interrogation and appointed Dong Zhuo to replace him.]
[Zhu Yuanzhang: Dong Zhuo could also be counted among the renowned generals of Later Han, but he was far too self-serving. The histories record that after taking over as General of the Northern Household, he overturned Lu Zhi's strategy of "besieging the city without attacking, waiting for its provisions to run out." He sent troops to storm Guangzong for more than ten days, failing to take it and suffering heavy losses instead.]
[Zhu Yuanzhang: Afterward, Dong Zhuo pulled back his troops and camps and requested reinforcements from the court, only for the Yellow Turban Army to raid his camps at night and completely break the siege of Guangzong.]
[Zhu Yuanzhang: Seeing that he could not take Guangzong, Dong Zhuo led his main force north to attack Xiaquyang, where Zhang Bao defeated him head-on. When the news reached Luoyang, Emperor Ling of Han was furious. He dismissed Dong Zhuo and ordered him punished, then put Huangfu Song in charge of the fighting at Guangzong.]
[Zhu Yuanzhang: By the time Huangfu Song arrived at Guangzong, he learned that Zhang Jiao had already died of illness. Yet even after Zhang Jiao's death, his Yellow Turbans held Guangzong for nearly two months under Zhang Liang's command. In the end, they fell for Huangfu Song's strategy of "resting the troops until the enemy grows lax," and the Han Army stormed the city in a surprise attack at dawn.]
Zhu Yuanzhang stopped there.
He felt there was little point in recounting what happened afterward for now.
[Liu Bang: If it happened as you say, then when Dong Zhuo turned to attack Xiaquyang after his defeat at Guangzong, that was the Yellow Turban Army's best opportunity to break the siege and even turn the situation in Ji Province around.]
[Zhu Yuanzhang: Exactly. But the situation was so plain that I do not believe the historical Zhang Jiao could have failed to see it. I suspect there were two main reasons the Yellow Turban Army remained at Guangzong afterward.]
[Zhu Yuanzhang: First, there were too many women, children, elderly people, and infirm people among the Yellow Turban Army for them to evacuate Guangzong quickly. Even if they left, without another large city to shelter them, they would have been even easier for the Han Army to defeat.]
[Zhu Yuanzhang: Second, Zhang Jiao was probably already too ill to attend to affairs by then, or perhaps had even died-the histories record that he died in the eighth month, but that may merely have been when the Han Army learned of his death.]
Reading Zhu Yuanzhang's words, both Liu Bang and Zhang Jiao frowned in thought.
Liu Bang thought that once this group chat ended, he must find a suitable explanation and tell Lou Jing, Chen Ping, and even Zhang Liang about the situation in Later Han's final years and the Yellow Turban Army's predicament.
That way, when the Rebel Army Group next opened, he could ask them for advice-if he hastily went to consult Lou Jing and Chen Ping now, explaining everything would take far too long. There was certainly not enough time.
Zhang Jiao, meanwhile, felt that Zhu Yuanzhang's conjecture most likely reflected the circumstances he had actually faced then.
[Zhang Jiao: My Yellow Turbans truly would have nowhere to go if we left Guangzong. Only by repeatedly defeating the Han Army around Guangzong and Xiaquyang, then seizing the chance to capture other cities, could we truly free ourselves from this predicament.]
The Forbidden City.
The Western Warm Chamber of the Palace of Heavenly Purity.
Zhu Yuanzhang fetched a military map kept in the chamber and studied the mountains and rivers of the Beiping Provincial Administration Commission-although a thousand years separated his era from the final years of Later Han, and place names and cities had changed greatly, the lay of the mountains and rivers had changed relatively little.
At the same time, he did his utmost to recall and analyze the historical events he knew, looking for anything that might offer guidance.
After studying it for only a short while, he had an idea.
[Zhu Yuanzhang: If I were you, when Dong Zhuo led the Han Army's main force against Xiaquyang, I would try sending out the main Yellow Turban force from Guangzong to strike him from both sides. That could crush the Han Army, after which you could seize nearby cities and divide your troops among them as garrisons, rather than letting the Han Army trap you in one place again.]
[Zhu Yuanzhang: Of course, if the Yellow Turban Army cannot use this opportunity to crush the Han Army, insisting on holding cities in plains like those of Ji Province would be no different from waiting to die. Better to follow the example of the later Yellow Turban remnants, the Black Mountain Army, and enter the Yan Mountains or Taihang Mountains. You could use the rugged mountains and rivers to cling to survival while awaiting changes in the realm.]
[Zhang Jiao: The Yellow Turban remnants, the Black Mountain Army?]
[Zhu Yuanzhang: The leader of this Yellow Turban force was called Zhang Yan, also known as Chu Yan. He could be counted as a minor regional lord in the final years of Later Han. At its largest, his Black Mountain Army claimed a following of a million and could field anywhere from tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand troops.]
[Zhu Yuanzhang: But that was probably mostly bluster-when he later submitted to Cao Wei, his actual following numbered only a little over a hundred thousand.]
[Zhu Yuanzhang: Still, I reckon the Yan Mountains of that era should have been able to support two or three hundred thousand people. The Taihang Mountains could have supported even more, but life in the mountains would have been extremely harsh, making it difficult to grow stronger. If all contact with the outside world were cut off, things would be harder still.]
[Zhang Jiao: Do you know where that Zhang Yan is now? Is he already serving under me?]
Zhu Yuanzhang thought back for a moment, only to see activity in the group.
[Administrator: This group chat has now ended. Please look forward to the next session.]
Zhu Yuanzhang did not actually know Zhang Yan's whereabouts or circumstances in the Seventh Year of Guanghe.
As he pondered how to answer, he discovered that the Rebel Army Group had already closed and vanished from sight...