Chapter 87: Old Friend
The merchants left with their goods after they got out of danger. Before leaving, they offered gifts as thanks and asked Buddha’s son to accept them.
Several monks stepped forth to tactfully turn down the offerings. They spoke gently and comforted the merchants, and performed a puja for the dead merchants in the name of Tumoroga.
The merchants were moved to tears.
Yaoying and her personal soldiers were temporarily placed in the ranks of the Royal Court’s Central Army.
The Northern Rong and other tribes she had seen in the West had hair draped over their left shoulder. Most of the Royal Court cavalry also had braided hair trailing down their back, but they were dressed differently from the Northern Rong.
The Central Army’s cavalrymen wore blue jackets, light armor, white robes, and wielded long swords and curved bows. The white robes were embroidered with intricate patterns, and each of them had personal servants who ran errands and did odd jobs for them.
Unlike the brave and warlike soldiers of the Northern Rong, they seemed to have a good sense of etiquette. Although they were disgusted by Yaoying’s public desecration of their Buddha’s son and glared at her, they did not insult her to her face.
However, Tumoroga’s two personal soldiers treated Yaoying much worse; they had her horse taken away, and ordered her to travel with the most low-class slaves.
The most important point: she was not allowed to mention Tumoroga’s name, and she was not allowed to look at Tumoroga.
The chubby, round-faced soldier pointed at Yaoying and shouted, “You shameless Han girl. One more look at our king is a desecration of our king!”
Yaoying looked at the beginning of the procession. The large snow-white banner fluttered and rose in the wind. Tumoroga was riding at the very front, and she could only see a thin back.
Among the whole army, only he wore a vivid maroon kasaya, his figure pure, cold, and solitary.
Looking like a god.
The soldiers in the Central Army were clustered behind him, looking at his back with fervor and devotion.
The personal soldier followed Yaoying’s line of sight and was so angry that his face turned red, shouting and blocking in front of her: “Han girl, don’t look at our king! Not even a single glance! Look again, and I’ll gouge out your eyes!”
The corners of Yaoying’s mouth twitched and she withdrew her eyes.
The soldier glared at her and called for the soldiers, “Keep them at the end of the ranks! Don’t allow this Han girl to come one step closer to the king!”
Yaoying followed behind the Central Army with her personal soldiers and looked back at the valley.
Sand and dust rolled across the horizon as Haidu Aling left with the Northern Rong soldiers.
Yaoying and her men walked at the end of the Central Army. The soldiers’ slaves, all men, saw that she was a lovely-as-a-flower young Han girl and looked at her curiously, treating her fairly well.
From their mouths, Yaoying learned that this place and Sha City were very close to each other. Tumoroga has just sworn the alliance with Wakhan Khan in Sha City, and the moment the army had left Sha City, a scout reported that Haidu Aling intercepted and killed some of the Royal Court’s caravans. He immediately led the army to deter the Northern Rong people.
Yaoying had lingering fears.
Haidu Aling went to Sha City, giving them a chance to escape. They ended up escaping from the camp and got lost, actually running the whole way towards Sha City!
Simply walking right into a trap.
Fortunately, Tumoroga scared off Haidu Aling.
The Royal Court army marched fast. Only at nightfall did they stop beneath a cliffside full of overgrown grasses to rest.
The Central Army was stationed around Tumoroga’s tent, while several other armies, dressed in clothes in distinctly different colors from the Central Army, were on guard surrounding them.
Yaoying had been given dry cakes that were hard enough to be a weapon and divided it to the other slaves.
While gnawing on the cakes, the slaves told her that the majority of the Central Army’s soldiers were the sons born from the nobles of the Holy City. Loyal to the royal family, valuing honor, obeying only the orders of the monarch, they were the royal guards of the royal palace and the Buddhist temple. The other armies were loyal to several great nobles. The Royal Court had a regent who acted on behalf of Buddha’s son in the political and mundane affairs of the court, while officials of the court were all of great noble origin. Although he was the monarch, Tumoroga was sometimes subject to the nobles.
Speaking of the last sentence, the slave was indignant: “Buddha’s son is Ananda’s reincarnation: compassionate at heart, delivering all living creatures from suffering, a truly great good man. He wanted to free us, the captured slaves, and let us be commoners, but the nobles did not agree.”
Yaoying gave the slave a silver coin.
While the Chinese traded in coins and silk, in the West, gold, silver, and cloth were popular.
Pleasantly surprised, the slave took the silver coin, thought about it, and urged Yaoying, “You are a Han Chinese. It is better to stay here in the Central Army, and never go out alone. The soldiers of the Central Army obey the king’s orders and will not bully Han women.”
Saying that, he raised his eyes and looked at her face.
“A beauty like you must be liked by the nobles of the Royal Court when they see you. Their men have robbed the beauties of the various tribes for their masters when they are in battle, in order to be rewarded. You ought to be careful.”
Yaoying looked surprised and asked in a whisper, “The Royal Court hates the Han people?”
South of the Tianshan Mountains, north of the Kunlun Mountains, and east of the Congling Ridge, there was a vast and endless desert wasteland with a blistering hot and arid climate. It was almost a no-man’s land, with only small and large rivers originating in the Tianshan Mountains flowing through to form an oasis.
This long and narrow oasis area has emerged as a small country relying on the river. Scattered with small and large city-state tribes, the smallest numbered only one or two thousand people, the largest with a hundred thousand people.
Yaoying had some understanding of the Northern Rong’s royal family, but she was completely unfamiliar with these large and small tribes of the Western Regions. She only knew that the Royal Court was a Buddhist country that believed in Buddhism and would be destroyed under the Northern Rong’s hooves in a few years. If she didn’t know Tumoroga’s general life story, she wouldn’t have remembered the name Royal Court.
After being taken captive to the Western Regions by Haidu Aling, she had been imprisoned in the camp, surrounded by Northern Rong soldiers, and had no way to find out what was happening in the various countries of the Western Regions.
She knew that the Northern Rong treated all the other tribes they conquered as less than human, but she did not know that this was also true in the Royal Court. Moreover, from the slave’s hints, the Royal Court people were extraordinarily hateful to the Han Chinese.
The slave bowed his head to wipe the silver coins and said, “The nobles and common people of the Royal Court hate the Han Chinese. Once upon a time, we were also subjects of the Central Plains empire, but then the Central Plains empire did not care about us, leaving other tribes to rule the Western Regions. In the Western Regions, the Han people became the lowest of the lowly pariahs.”
Yaoying’s brows knitted lightly.
She didn’t expect that after losing the Western Regions, the status of the Han people in the Western Regions was so low.
Speaking of which, Tumoroga was also a Royal Court noble, and he was a royal prince, so he could serve as both the secular and religious leader of the Royal Court. If the Royal Court people, from the nobles to the commoners, hated the Han people, the words she shouted in public would not only be of no use to him but, on the contrary, might be a taboo in the Royal Court.
Why would he help her?