Chapter 36: The Renowned General Duan Jiming

Duan Jiong was a renowned general of his time. He had crushed the Xianbei, pacified Langya, and served on the frontier for over a decade, quelling the Qiang tribes of the east and west. Over the course of his campaigns, he had beheaded more than sixty thousand Qiang warriors, earning him the title of Marquis of Xinfeng. With such a military record, he was certainly qualified to take his place at court as Grand Marshal.

He had held the position of Grand Marshal twice, though neither tenure lasted long. The first was in the second year of the Xiping era, when he was dismissed due to illness after only three months. Now, in his second term, he had lasted only a month before being thrown into the imperial prison following an eclipse.

In truth, Duan Jiong’s imprisonment had little to do with Yang Qiu; he had essentially impeached himself due to the solar eclipse. When the eclipse occurred, Liu Bei had just been thrown into prison and was busy bullying Wang Meng. Because the cells were devoid of daylight, he hadn't seen it, and even if he had, he wouldn't have cared—after all, to a modern mind, such phenomena are hardly extraordinary. But people in this era were schooled in the theory of "Heaven-Human Correlation," where events like solar eclipses were invariably linked to a ruler's moral failings.

Duan Jiong’s self-impeachment claimed that he lacked talent and virtue, that he was unfit to hold the high office of Grand Marshal, and that he was merely a soldier who should return to the frontier to continue suppressing the Qiang tribes. Essentially, he was requesting a transfer to the border to command troops—his old line of work—and had no desire to occupy a seat among the Three Lords at court.

But in reality... this was primarily because being Grand Marshal at court was far from pleasant. One could not command troops and was forced to bow to the whims of others. Especially with the current Emperor on the throne, where eunuchs could defecate on the heads of the Three Lords, what was the point of holding such a title? For a court official stripped of military authority, what did a high rank matter? Whether one was promoted, dismissed, or whether an entire clan lived or died, it was all just a matter of a single imperial decree. But if one were commanding an army on the frontier with tens of thousands of soldiers under their command, whether or not to acknowledge an imperial decree was entirely a matter of one's mood.

Furthermore, being Grand Marshal was expensive. As one of the Three Lords and the nominal supreme military commander of the country, the price of the office was steep—it was tagged at one hundred million cash. Given Duan Jiong’s distinguished service, he might have been granted a discount, but it would still cost at least fifty million. Duan Jiong was not an incorruptible official, and he could actually afford the price, but the question was, why waste such a massive fortune to buy an office he didn't want? Hence, he used the eclipse as an excuse to resign.

However, the Emperor, Liu Hong, had Duan Jiong thrown directly into the Luoyang prison. To others, this seemed normal; the Emperor was clearly just shaking him down for money. Appointing him Grand Marshal only to throw him into prison to extort the payment for the office—if he didn't pay, he died—it was a classic case of forced buying and selling, just as the wealthy merchants did. The salesperson for this transaction was Wang Fu.

***

In theory, Duan Jiong’s situation had little to do with Wang Fu’s downfall, but the problem was that Duan Jiong and Wang Fu were quite close—Duan Jiong was a long-term client of Wang Fu. His successive promotions at court over the past few years had all been handled by Wang Fu. Duan Jiong had killed many people while pacifying the western Qiang, offending countless powerful clans in the Guanzhi region. To keep his position, he had bribed Wang Fu repeatedly over the years—a fact revealed by Wang Ji, and one that was undeniably true.

Moreover, Duan Jiong had aided the eunuchs—or more accurately, he had assisted the Emperor in suppressing the literati, having personally led troops to quell the protesting scholars at the Imperial Academy. In the eyes of a scholar like Yang Qiu, Duan Jiong was part of the Eunuch Faction.

Thus, Yang Qiu faced a major dilemma. How should he deal with Duan Jiong? Should he execute him directly, just as he had with Wang Fu’s nephews? That was impossible. Duan Jiong was a Grand Marshal who had commanded armies for years; his prestige in the Guanzhi and Longyou regions was legendary. If he were killed, the Qiang and Hu tribes would surely rise in revolt.

Could he ignore him and pretend he wasn't there? That wouldn't work either. Yang Qiu had caused such a stir in the prison, using irregular methods—torturing people into false confessions and killing them privately without legal sentencing. If all the influential members of Wang Fu’s faction were dead, it wouldn't matter; dead men tell no tales, and the crimes of Wang Fu and his family were indeed real. At most, people would just say Yang Qiu’s methods were brutal.

But Duan Jiong was also part of Wang Fu’s faction... What would happen once he was released from prison? It might well spark a rebellion, and this directly concerned the lives of the thousands of men in the Office of the Colonel of the Capital. Viewed in this light, whether from the perspective of silencing witnesses or partisan struggle... political conflict has no right or wrong, only life and death. Yang Qiu dared not gamble the lives of the three thousand cavalrymen of the Office of the Colonel of the Capital on someone else’s character.

Yet... although Duan Jiong was no saint—having frequently massacred Qiang civilians during his campaigns and executed many scholars in the Guanzhi region who were suspected of having ties to the tribes, many of whom were surely innocent—that was war. It was done for the sake of fighting against foreign tribes. One could only say that Duan Jiong’s methods for pacifying the Qiang were harsh; they could not be called a crime. If one were to truly debate the wrongs committed by Duan Jiong, they boiled down to nothing more than clinging to the eunuchs and having once arrested and killed Imperial Academy students. But clinging to the eunuchs was done to maintain his status—Yang Qiu himself had bribed eunuchs when he was in trouble years ago, and Zuo Jing had also sent gifts to them. The Emperor was selling offices; which official in the Great Han hadn't done business with the eunuchs? As for the arrest of the students, that was long in the past, and Duan Jiong had already been imprisoned and stripped of his rank at the time; he had already been punished.

What was to be done? If he secretly murdered a renowned general who had rendered such great service to the country while in prison, then how would he, Yang Fangzheng, be any different from Wang Fu?

***

"Lord Jieming, I have a question for you." Yang Qiu was still quite courteous toward Duan Jiong.

"Aren't you busy interrogating the Attendant Wang? Have you tortured him to death yet?" Duan Jiong’s attitude was somewhat hostile. "With such methods, Yang, where exactly did you get this reputation for uprightness?"

"If not for such methods, how could the wicked be purged?" Hearing this, Yang Qiu’s tone also grew cold. "It seems you are intent on defending Wang Fu, Lord Jieming?"

"I simply feel that your methods are somewhat too brutal, Colonel. Why not send them to the execution ground for a public trial, instead of torturing them to death in this prison?" Duan Jiong, a man who had weathered countless battles, was naturally unafraid. "How is this any different from the summary execution of a high minister?"

"Duan Jieming, when you were massacring Qiang civilians and hunting down the students of the Imperial Academy, you were far more brutal than I..." Yang Qiu retorted sharply. "Summary execution of a high minister? You are well-acquainted with Wang Fu. Are you telling me you were unaware that Wang Fu colluded with the Xianbei to cause the deaths of tens of thousands of soldiers? If you knew nothing, why did you not lead the army yourself two years ago, but instead let your subordinates, Tian Yan and Xia Yu, lead the troops?"

Having commanded armies for many years, Duan Jiong had many former subordinates in the military. The generals who had led the campaign against the Xianbei two years ago, Tian Yan and Xia Yu, were both his former men. When the expedition against the Xianbei was launched, his subordinates had led the troops beyond the borders, yet Duan Jiong—a renowned general of his time—had been unwilling to lead the charge. Yang Qiu certainly had reason to suspect that Duan Jiong knew the inside story and was complicit in the conspiracy.

"Is this something the Emperor sent you to ask?" Duan Jiong countered.

Yang Qiu remained silent. The Emperor? The imperial decree had only authorized Yang Qiu to interrogate Wang Fu; it had said nothing about interrogating Duan Jiong...

"It is the tens of thousands of commoners and frontier soldiers of Shanggu Commandery who sent me to ask." Seeing that Yang Qiu was silent, Liu Bei stepped forward to take up the conversation. "Zhang Sheng, the Military Sima of Shanggu, colluded with the Xianbei leader Tanshihuai, slaughtered innocent people to claim merit, and murdered the Administrator and Commandant of Shanggu. Does Lord Duan know this man?"

In truth, Liu Bei saw the internal struggle Yang Qiu was facing, but Liu Bei himself felt no such conflict. To him, what mattered more was to find out who else in You Province was an accomplice like Zhang Sheng, so that he could either round them up or take precautions early on.