Chapter 40: Each Seeking Their Own Livelihood (Part VIII)

A deathly silence filled the tent, broken only by the faint crackling of charcoal in the brazier.

Guo Tiannu’s chest heaved violently. The murderous intent in her eyes was gradually replaced by a deeper, suffocating sense of despair. "Father, are we just going to accept our fate like this?"

Her gaze swept over the shifting shadows of the patrolling soldiers outside. "Are we to be fish on a chopping block, waiting to be slaughtered? To be ordered about and guarded like common thieves? Father, look at this camp, look at the eyes outside watching us! These mountain barbarians don't see us as human beings! At any moment, they could invent some excuse to kill us like stray dogs! I... I cannot accept this!"

"Cannot accept it..." Guo Yaoshi chewed on these words, his lips curling into a smile of utter bitterness.

He rose slowly and walked to the edge of the tent, lifting a slit of the heavy fabric to peer at the encampment, which was guarded by Jin soldiers as tightly as an iron barrel. His gaze became distant and unfocused.

"Yes, it is hard to accept!"

"Do you still remember what the Resentment Army was?"

"I remember! How could I forget?" Guo Tiannu clenched her fists. "We were starving refugees from Liaodong, hating everyone who kept us from having food or a decent life! The Khitans recruited us under the banner of 'avenging ourselves against the Jurchen,' but they treated us as nothing more than cannon fodder to fill trenches! Two bowls of thin gruel a day, never enough to eat; if we lost, we lost our heads, and if we survived, we suffered lashes and humiliation. So, we rebelled! We took our revenge!"

When the Khitans organized the starving Liaodong refugees into an army, the "rations" they issued were moldy grain mixed with sawdust, and their armor was nothing but tattered hides bound with hemp rope.

During the night, some would never wake up—having frozen or starved to death—only to be pushed into the trenches as fill the next morning.

Later, when Yelü Chun died shortly after ascending the throne, his wife, Xiao Puxiannu, took over the government. She was deeply suspicious of non-Khitans. Since Guo Yaoshi’s Ever-Victorious Army was formidable and composed entirely of non-Khitans, they naturally became a thorn in her side, and she planned to mobilize troops to annihilate them.

Sensing the danger, Guo Yaoshi decided to surrender to the Great Song for his own survival.

"She wouldn't give us a way to live, so we had to surrender to the Song," Guo Yaoshi sighed. "The Song Emperor really treated us well." He closed his eyes, and visions of that dizzying, extravagant life flooded his mind uncontrollably:

Zhao Ji, in the Yanchun Hall of Bianjing, personally helping him up as he knelt. The Emperor was so close that the scent of dragon-saliva incense hung in the air.

The praise, "In gaining Yaoshi, I have gained a Great Wall," still echoed in his ears. The beaded robe draped over his shoulders, the heavy gold basin that weighed down his hands—the warmth of the Emperor’s touch still lingered on them.

What an honor for a starving refugee from Liaodong!

The soldiers of the Ever-Victorious Army received a monthly salary of three strings of cash! A regular Song garrison soldier received less than one. His own salary was boundless, ten times that of the Grand Preceptor Cai Jing! They were even permitted to withhold a portion of the taxes from the Yanyun region for their own use—that was the foundation built upon mountains of gold and seas of silver.

Outside the city of Yanjing, thousands of acres of fertile land were forcibly designated as "merit fields," exempt from all taxes for generations. His old comrades of the Resentment Army held private property in Yanjing, Zhuozhou, and elsewhere, living lives of abundance and security.

Guo Yaoshi was enfeoffed by Zhao Ji as "Grand Marshal" and "Pacification Commissioner of the Yanshan Prefecture Road," ranking among the Three Ducal Ministers and sitting as an equal with the central ministers of the Song Dynasty.

In Bianliang, the Song Emperor bestowed upon him a sprawling mansion comparable to the imperial palaces of the Liao—a symbol of immense wealth and favor.

He appointed his own officials, held the power of life and death over his territory, and his subordinates were immune to the interference of local authorities. Clad in purple and gold python robes, with a retinue modeled after the twelve banners of the Khitan, he was practically a state within a state.

His contemporaries called him the An Lushan of the Great Song.

This Resentment Army, which had fought its way out of the starving masses of Liaodong, had been so grand and spirited! Fifty thousand elite troops, one hundred thousand auxiliaries—strong in both men and horses.

With fine armor and issued weapons, the Ever-Victorious Army’s gear and warhorses were prioritized by the Song court. Their armor was brighter and their weapons sharper than even the Imperial Guards, and most of their warhorses were fine steeds from the north, far surpassing the equipment of other Song units.

His old brothers wore Liao-style clothing, drank fine wine, ate fatty meat, and walked through Yanjing with their heads held high! Who dared to stop them? Who dared to question them?

That immortal-like Emperor on the dragon throne granted their every request! That was what it truly meant to be alive! The brothers of the Resentment Army had leaped from being starving corpses in Liaodong to the most unbridled and prosperous warriors on this land!

"Happy, heh." The look of nostalgia on Guo Yaoshi’s face faded, leaving only bone-chilling mockery and bottomless sorrow.

"A fickle, treacherous man!" "A traitor to the Liao, a traitor to the Song, and now just a dog that can’t be tamed for the Jin!"

These words had not ceased since the day he led the Ever-Victorious Army to lay down their arms.

At first, he had tried to defend himself, wanting to roar that "the times made it so," but later, he lost even the strength to open his mouth. He knew that the spittle of the masses could drown a man, especially when it came from the mouths of those who were once his "own people."

When he first surrendered to the Jin, scouts reported that his old brothers in the Yanzhou camp—the men who had fought their way out of the Resentment Army with him—had secretly packed their bags and headed south under the cover of night.

Their leader, Wang Kuan, who had once taken an arrow for him under the walls of Xianzhou (in modern-day Kaiyuan, Liaoning), still bore a scar the size of a bowl on his arm.

Now, Wang Kuan would tell others: "Captain Guo? He hasn't been our captain for a long time! To follow him and eat a man's food only to smash his bowl—I can’t bring myself to do such a thing. It would shame my ancestors for eight generations!"

Lü Yihao was even harsher. Before the soldiers of both armies, he brought up the time Guo Yaoshi had wept in the Funing Hall, saying, "My Emperor, hearing of the Zhao Emperor is like hearing of the heavens," and sneered, "The Zhao Emperor in the heavens is still there, yet you are groveling on the ground like a dog for the Jin! Guo Yaoshi, are your knees made of mud? You bend them for anyone!"

What stung him most, like thorns on his back, were the eyes of the Jin.

Wanyan Wuqimai had granted him a surname and a golden tablet, but every time they discussed matters, the Jurchens looked at him as if he were a venomous snake that might strike at any moment.

Once, when he offered a strategy regarding the weak points of Bianliang’s defenses, Wanyan Chang immediately mocked him: "You are certainly familiar with the affairs of the Song. Could it be that you are still thinking of returning to be your Grand Marshal?"

Even those Liao soldiers who had also surrendered to the Jin walked around him, curling their lips in a disdain deeper than what they showed the Han people. In their eyes, Guo Yaoshi wasn't even a pure traitor to the Liao or the Song.

Guo Yaoshi took a deep breath, forcefully suppressing his boiling emotions. He reached out with a rough hand toward his daughter, as if to pat her shoulder, but eventually let it rest heavily on her tense arm.

He knew that he would likely never be able to wash his name clean in this life.

From the Resentment Army to the Song army, and then to the Jin army, he was like a grain of sand blown by the wind, rolling wherever he could find a foothold. But as he rolled to the end, he realized he had lost even the qualification to be stepped upon.

"Tiannu, put away your temper," he said with a weariness that bordered on pleading. "Do not go around hitting and scolding the soldiers lightly. Do you think your father can still protect you as he once did? I can barely protect myself now."

He pulled his daughter to sit by the charcoal fire. The dancing flames illuminated two faces, both etched with the weathering of time and the bitterness of unfulfilled desires.

"Let me tell you an old story."

"It happened a long time ago, back in the Great Liao of the Khitans."

Back then, the eldest son of the Liao Emperor Taizu, Yelü Bei, should have inherited the vast empire. But because his mother, Shulü Ping, favored her younger son, Yelü Deguang, he was stripped of his position as heir in a bloody power struggle!

He was sent far away to the old lands of Bohai (the Eastern Dan Kingdom) to serve as a king, though he was truly a prisoner.

The suspicion of his mother and brother followed him like a shadow, and his power was whittled away inch by inch.

He lived every day on thin ice, his very breath filled with fear, constantly dreading the fatal strike from his own kin. In the end, to save his life, the deposed prince had to abandon everything and flee across the sea to seek refuge in the Later Tang.

But how cruel is fate?

Even in his exile in the Central Plains, he could not escape the shadow of his homeland. The Later Tang was attacked by Shi Jingtang, a puppet emperor supported by his brother, the Liao Emperor Taizong Yelü Deguang. In the end, the exiled crown prince was murdered!

"Look," Guo Yaoshi said with endless desolation, looking into his daughter’s shocked and bewildered eyes. "A dignified crown prince, of the blood of Liao Taizu Abaoji, a man chosen by destiny, still met such an end! Brothers slaughtering each other, drifting in a foreign land, and finally being beheaded! He didn't even have a place to be buried! How tragic is that!"

Guo Tiannu sat in a daze. The fate of the deposed prince Yelü Bei, as told by her father, felt like a giant boulder crashing onto her heart. If a figure as noble as a crown prince was merely an ant under the crushing weight of fate, what was she, a woman in a chaotic age?

"A slave to three masters? A fickle, treacherous villain?" Guo Yaoshi muttered to himself, his voice so soft that only his daughter, who was inches away, could barely hear. Every word sounded like blood squeezed from between his teeth.

"They curse well. They are absolutely right."

Guo Tiannu looked up suddenly, staring at her father in disbelief. She had never expected to hear such words from him.

Guo Yaoshi looked out into the endless, dark night, where the wind howled with murderous intent. He looked toward the long-vanished homeland of Liaodong, toward the dream-like palaces of Bianliang, and toward the Jin camp that now imprisoned his very existence.

"But who among them knows that we wretches from Liaodong would do anything to stay alive!" His voice carried a hunger and fear buried deep in his marrow, spanning decades. "When we first picked up our blades, putting our heads on our belts and crawling through piles of corpses, what was it for?"

"It was only to survive in this damned chaotic world! To be able to eat a full meal! To wear a pair of trousers without patches! To ensure that the old brothers who followed us died of starvation a little less often!"

"Whoever gave us a bowl of rice, we gave them our lives. The Khitans wanted us to be vengeful ghosts... so we rebelled! The Song people bought our blades with mountains of gold, so we fought! The Jin's blades are sharper, so I dare to gamble on them too!"

"We are not loyal ministers or virtuous generals; we are just people who don't want to die of hunger! In this world, is there any way to live that doesn't invite resentment?" The golden tablet that symbolized his "Wanyan" status slipped from his loosened hand.

"Survive, Tiannu! Do whatever it takes to survive!"

Guo Tiannu was struck as if by lightning, standing frozen in place.

To survive... these three words, in this desperate moment, were heavier than a thousand pounds.