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As far as Huang Cheng was concerned, Fei Qian genuinely hoped that he could mature into a commander capable of leading an entire front, not merely someone confined to the role of a general guarding his own headquarters.
Fei Qian ordered his personal guards to prepare some ginger tea. While drinking it to ward off the chill, he continued the earlier conversation.
Huang Cheng took a few sips of the tea broth, then set the bowl down and said, "My lord, if you wish for us to teach… this is not particularly difficult in itself. However… on the battlefield, blades and spears show no mercy… One may teach a man well, and then he is simply…"
Fei Qian understood perfectly what Huang Cheng meant. It was not that Huang Cheng feared blades himself or clung cowardly to life. At his level of martial skill, so long as his personal guards remained with him and he was not trapped in a deep encirclement, cutting a path to safety posed little problem. What Huang Cheng was primarily getting at was the nature of warfare in this era. In close-quarters cold-weapon combat, casualties were often catastrophic. Under such circumstances, the soldier you taught today to add and subtract from one to ten, or to recognize a few characters, might very well be hacked to death on the battlefield tomorrow. Time spent on such instruction might as well be spent drilling martial skills and strength, which could at least offer a greater chance of survival.
This situation was intrinsically linked to the military system of the Han dynasty as it currently stood.
Initially, the Han employed a conscription system, which meant compulsory military service. It began at the age of twenty-three and ended at fifty-six. Apart from two years of legally mandated active service, one was also subject to recall at any time if the exigencies of war demanded it, functioning essentially as a national reserve force. However, this system quickly proved unsuitable. By the time of Emperor Wu of Han, large numbers of smallholding farmers were going bankrupt and becoming refugees. The households of the powerful and wealthy often enjoyed privileges exempting them from military service.
Meanwhile, warfare was incessant, and the demand for troops was immense. The conscription system simply could not meet the needs of war. Consequently, a voluntary recruitment system was simultaneously implemented. Furthermore, convict soldiers, slave soldiers, and hereditary military households were also widely utilized. By the present day, voluntary recruitment had become the mainstream.
But Fei Qian knew where this recruitment system would ultimately lead. Because of the horrendous casualties of the coming chaotic wars, it would eventually devolve into a peasant militia system of forcibly press-ganged men—in other words, an organized version of the Yellow Turban style of soldier. This was how the mighty, grandiloquently proclaimed eight hundred thousand troops of Lord Cao—actually numbering around three to four hundred thousand—were transformed by a single fire from a suave, composed figure into a ragged, shell-shocked survivor.
Thinking of this, Fei Qian nodded and then asked, "If one were to train an ordinary soldier into an elite fighter, approximately how much time would it require?"
Huang Cheng replied, "To truly train an elite unit, it would take at least a year. Tempering their physical strength, familiarizing them with weaponry, coordinating with one another, recognizing commands, advancing and retreating with proper discipline—all these must be slowly drilled before they can be mastered."
"We only have half a year," Fei Qian said. He dipped his finger in some tea broth and began sketching on the surface of the desk, gesturing for Huang Cheng to draw closer. "...Look here. This is Yong'an, adjacent to the Lüliang Mountains. Whether in terms of minerals, timber, or water sources, it is relatively convenient. I intend to establish a large-scale raw material—that is, a crude smelting workshop—southwest of Yong'an. Then, the crudely smelted iron and steel can be transported downstream via water power along the Xinshui River, to a point east of Beiqu, where we will open an armaments and armor workshop..."
"...And then, to ensure the security of this armaments workshop, the vast majority of our troops must be concentrated here for training." Fei Qian tapped a point east of Beiqu.
"Pingyang here will focus primarily on scholarship and commerce, with garrison troops stationed to both farm and serve as a defensive guard. As for Puzi, it will serve as the defensive line against Hu incursions from the north. All of these points are extremely weak. Therefore, right now, within this half-year window, we must first erect the basic framework. Otherwise, the situation later on may grow increasingly dire…" Fei Qian did not elaborate on future events, but even such a rough sketch was sufficient for Huang Cheng to grasp the overall strategic layout and thereby sense the critical importance of this matter.
Fei Qian finally said, "...My thinking regarding the soldiers currently under our command is this: even an ordinary soldier must be trained as though he were a reserve squad leader. When necessary, we can replenish our forces and expand our ranks at any time without falling into such disarray that our overall combat effectiveness plummets."
Fei Qian watched as the expression on Huang Cheng's face slowly shifted from its usual protective veneer of simple, honest stolidness into one of deepening gravity, and knew that Huang Cheng had likely grasped his unspoken meaning.
A couple of days earlier, when Huang Cheng was reorganizing the troops and the official seal of General of the Household had just been issued, Fei Qian had deliberately not summoned him to the meeting where work assignments were being discussed. His purpose was to find an occasion just like this one, to privately share certain matters with Huang Cheng. Fei Qian and Huang Cheng—or rather, the Huang clan represented by Huang Chengyan—needed to maintain a relatively close cooperative relationship, one that had to be built on a certain foundation of shared information. Therefore, this occasion was not merely Fei Qian explaining his entire plan and arrangements to Huang Cheng; it was also a communication passed through Huang Cheng to the entire Huang clan.
From among the letters and documents beside him, Fei Qian drew out a personal letter and a travel pass issued in his name as General of the Household. He handed them to Huang Cheng, saying, "This is a family letter for my father-in-law. Assign a few men to travel through Henei, and then proceed south..."
Huang Cheng accepted the task, receiving the items with both hands.
When waging war—unless one is determined to live as a roving bandit—one must first consider whether one can afford to fight before dispatching troops. In other words, any military action divorced from economic reality is nothing but hooliganism. Emperor Wu of Han had taken the Xiongnu, who had long been grinding the Han people into the dirt, and first pummeled them with a combination of blows, then flipped them over and ground them into the dirt in turn.
He had, in fact, done so by spending down the reserves left behind by the Reigns of Wen and Jing. And then he had gone on to domineeringly monopolize the salt, iron, and liquor trades, and on top of that, in the fourth year of the Yuanshou era, he imposed the "calculation of strings of cash."
The "calculation of strings of cash," to put it plainly, was a property tax levied on the wealthy. But in truth, the grandly ambitious Emperor Wu could not even be bothered with such a paltry tax. His true aim was to pave the way for the "denunciation of strings of cash." Using the prevention of concealing or underreporting property as a pretext, he encouraged the common people to inform on one another, seizing the opportunity to confiscate the entire fortunes of merchants and rich magnates. He even established special commoner ranks of nobility available for these wealthy gentlemen to purchase. Only thus could he sustain the three to four decades of war against the Xiongnu, dragging the once-overwhelmingly powerful Xiongnu alive into exhaustion, fragmentation, and ruin.
Yet the coming struggle of the Three Kingdoms would also last thirty to forty years. Fei Qian did not possess such deep reserves, nor could he be as overbearingly powerful as Emperor Wu, extracting wealth from the entire empire. At present, he only had this impoverished corner of the northern lands. Thus, he had no choice but to blaze a different trail, cutting expenses as much as possible while training troops—much like post-World War I defeated Germany, cultivating soldiers as if they were officers, so that the forces could be expanded at a moment's notice when necessary.
Huang Cheng tucked the letter into his robes, cupped his hands, and said, "In that case, regarding the matter of instruction within the army, allow me to first draft a set of regulations and then present it for your guidance and correction, my lord."
Fei Qian nodded and watched as Huang Cheng departed. Lowering his head, he looked at the marks on the desk surface, now nearly dry. In this patch of northern territory, it was as though he faced a blank sheet of paper. Not only did he have to compose an essay within this tiny, confined space, but it also had to be a splendid, intricately woven tapestry of words, all to ensure that in the future, he could exercise a relatively free choice.
Whether as an independent regional warlord or as the architect of an enduring hegemony, it was truly no easy task. Did he himself not yearn to simply roll forward in an unstoppable advance and have the entire realm submit at the mere rumor of his approach? But that could only remain an occasional flight of fantasy. Achieving it in reality was far from so simple.
In truth, there was still one more matter—something that could not even be spoken of to Huang Cheng, something that could only be done in secret. Indeed, it must be done under a changed guise, clandestinely...