The morning sun had just risen as Li Yuangui, dressed in plain attire and a formal hat, ascended the steps of the Wanchun Palace one by one, his thoughts restless and agitated.
The past few days had been chaotic—after successfully intercepting the fleeing Tuyuhun captives in Qinzhou with Kang Su-mi and others, he had already packed his belongings, ready to continue the journey northwest to Gaochang. Unexpectedly, an urgent edict arrived from Chang'an, ordering their special envoy group to "halt the journey and return to the capital immediately."
It seemed something had changed again in the capital, and the Son of Heaven and his ministers had altered their plans. Li Yuangui questioned the couriers and local officials who delivered the edict, but none could explain the reason. Kang Su-mi, the old merchant, didn’t seem bothered at all. Instead, he laughed heartily and advised Li Yuangui, "Just go back for a while—it won’t delay things much."
Of course, it wouldn’t delay you—it might even let you make more money, Li Yuangui thought, rolling his eyes inwardly. The Hu merchants had managed to acquire some horses for free in Qinzhou and had even struck a deal with the local horse overseers. They were more than happy to return to Chang'an first to settle their business affairs. At Kang Sabao’s command, the camel caravan cheerfully turned back.
No outsider would notice the young foreigner with a Hu hat pulled low over his face—Sang Sai, son of the Tuyuhun King Sky Pillar.
The sight of that dark-skinned youth made Li Yuangui seethe with anger. On the day of the interception, Kang Su-mi had informed him that he had captured Sang Sai on the battlefield. Li Yuangui had intended to send this important captive back to camp along with the Tuyuhun queen and others to be escorted to Chang'an, submitting a memorial to explain the circumstances. But Kang Su-mi had stubbornly refused, first saying, "This kid has deep ties with my family—Fourteenth Young Master, please spare him for my sake," then arguing, "He caused us so much trouble—we can’t just let him off easy." In the end, he insisted on keeping the boy secretly to deal with himself.
With the debt of fifty thousand bolts of silk still in Kang Su-mi’s hands, Li Yuangui had no choice but to relent. He understood Kang Su-mi’s motives well—the old merchant had invested heavily in Sang Sai and wasn’t about to let it all go to waste. He wanted to squeeze some profit out of the boy before handing him over to the Tang court for judgment.
They weren’t Tang subjects to begin with, and Li Yuangui had never expected Old Hu Kang to be truly loyal to the Tang—his allegiance lay with his Zoroastrian god and, more likely, silk and gold. To be fair, Kang Su-mi had already done him a great favor this time.
After discovering the Tuyuhun captives’ escape attempt, Li Yuangui had struggled to coordinate with the Qinzhou prefect and officers like Zhang Shigui. With only a handful of men, he had no choice but to lead a small force to intercept them. Meanwhile, Kang Su-mi had used his network of Hu merchants to alert nearby military garrisons in advance, ensuring they were prepared to suppress any unrest. Thus, when Zhang Shigui received confirmation that the captives had stolen horses, he was able to immediately mobilize local troops, organizing several hundred men overnight to remedy the situation before it spiraled out of control.
Since the special envoy group was also returning to Chang'an from Qinzhou, they simply joined Zhang Shigui’s escort of captives and tribute horses, effectively bolstering the convoy. The tension between Li Yuangui and Zhang Shigui remained, and the journey was smoothed over only by Kang Sabao’s constant joking and laughter. The return trip, being downhill, was faster, and within days they reached the capital’s Kaiyuan Gate. At the courier station, Li Yuangui received an imperial decree ordering him to enter the Wanchun Palace early the next morning after the city gates opened to attend a court council.The Hall of Eternal Spring was situated between the Hall of Two Principles and the Hall of Established Governance. Though modest in size, it was where the Son of Heaven routinely convened his chancellors for discussions. While its scale paled in comparison to the regular court sessions at the Hall of Two Principles, let alone the grand assemblies at the Supreme Polarity Hall, its significance far surpassed both. Li Yuangui naturally understood the principle—the fewer the participants in a decision, the more crucial the matter at hand.
The last time he had been summoned to the Hall of Eternal Spring for deliberations was under the auspices of Crown Prince Li Chengqian, where he endured a triple tribunal and ultimately secured his chance to clear himself of treason charges and embark on a marriage alliance to the Western Regions. This time... what could it be? In any case, he harbored no illusions of any favorable fortune befalling him.
Outside the courtyard of the Hall of Eternal Spring, he encountered the Left Vice Director of the Department of State Affairs, Fang Xuanling. This famously amiable chancellor greeted him with warm inquiries and a genial smile, deferring politely. But when pressed about the day's agenda, Fang Xuanling evaded the question, revealing nothing. The two entered the hall in mutual deference to take their places. Scanning the room, Li Yuangui noted the presence of several chancellors, along with officials from the Ministry of War and the Court of Diplomatic Reception. Most conspicuous was the hulking figure of the Minister of Works, Duke of Qi, Zhangsun Wu-ji.
Uncle Changsun currently held no official post. Despite his lofty rank, his daily duties consisted mainly of attending the Emperor in the palace and handling ad hoc assignments. His presence suggested this council was both confidential and of great importance...
Before Li Yuangui could finish this thought, the outer chamber announced the Emperor's arrival. The assembled officials performed the grand obeisance. As a prince, Li Yuangui stood near the front. Rising from the prostration at the base of the vermilion steps, he stole a glance upward and saw his imperial elder brother's stern expression, his taut face betraying suppressed anger.
Led by Fang Xuanling, the ministers first presented several critical matters of governance, to which the Emperor uniformly decreed "Approved," ordering the Secretariat to draft the edicts. Then came the main agenda. At the Emperor's signal, the Supervising Secretary Liu Ji stepped forward holding several scrolls of documents and began:
"The Celestial troops have achieved great victory in the campaign against Tuyuhun. The details are known to all present, so I shall not belabor them. The staff officers under the Grand Commander of the Western Sea Route collected archives from Fuqi City, discovering correspondence between Tuyuhun and Gaochang that involved the repatriation of our Tang subjects—matters too cruel to recount. Dai Guogong specially dispatched these documents by fast horse for imperial review. The Sage Sovereign then ordered the interrogation of informed captives from the Tuyuhun royal family, who were brought to Chang'an days ago. Duke of Qi and I conducted the examination by decree, confirming the truth of these matters. Our Lord, whose compassion embraces all and whose grace is as vast as the sea, cannot stand idly by while foreign tyrants brutalize our Central Kingdom's people. I invite your deliberations."
As he spoke, he handed the documents to palace attendants, who circulated them among the senior ministers. Li Yuangui hastily perused several letters and registry records. Caught unprepared, he initially only grasped that they contained rosters of Han Chinese names assigned to labor at various locations. Then he noticed multiple annotations of "detained persons," and a chill ran down his spine.
Liu Ji, standing below the steps, elaborated further. It turned out that after the Tang army's northern campaign annihilated Jieli Khan in the fourth year of Zhenguan, many Han Chinese who had been displaced beyond the frontier during the Sui turmoil sought to return home—to their native places where they could reestablish household registries, receive land allotments, and rebuild their lives. For those who had been sold into slavery, the court even disbursed treasury funds to help them buy their freedom and return. This should have been mutually beneficial for both state and people. However, the northern routes were long and arduous. While those scattered in eastern regions fared better, Han Chinese near the Western Regions, separated by deserts and snow-capped mountains, often had to pass through Gaochang before returning to the Central Plains via the Yumen Pass and Liangzhou Road.King Qu Wentai of Gaochang, partly under pressure from the Western Turkic Yehu Qaghan and partly out of greed, had been secretly detaining many Han Chinese attempting to return home over the past few years, confident that the Tang court couldn't reach him. Their personal belongings were confiscated, men and women were enslaved, and particularly skilled craftsmen were often castrated and made into royal artisan slaves, sometimes even gifted to neighboring rulers like the Tuyuhun. These rumors had vaguely reached the Tang court before, but without concrete evidence, neither the Son of Heaven nor his ministers paid much attention.
After the great victory over Tuyuhun, generals like Li Jing discovered related documents in their royal tents, realizing the severity of the situation and immediately reporting to the Emperor. The Emperor ordered trusted officials to investigate, confirming the truth. Just from what the Tuyuhun official in charge of foreign relations knew, there might be tens of thousands of Han refugees suffering in Gaochang.
"Tens of thousands?" Li Yuangui exclaimed in shock.
Before his journey to Gaochang, he had thoroughly studied all the court archives about the Western Regions, memorizing every detail. To his knowledge, the sparsely populated Western Regions struggled with agriculture. Though Gaochang governed three prefectures, five counties, and twenty-two cities, its registered population was only thirty to forty thousand. If they were truly detaining tens of thousands of Han returnees, that would mean nearly every household had a captive slave—an astonishing proportion.
"The Tuyuhun prisoner I interrogated, named Murong Xiaojuan, was once enfeoffed by Fu Yun as 'King of Gaochang'..." Liu Ji's explanation was cut short by the Emperor from the Imperial Bed:
"How many of our Han subjects Qu Wentai has enslaved can be verified later. Even if it were just one, could I, as father to the people, stand idly by? And Fourteenth Brother—"
The Emperor's dark eyes turned to Prince Wu standing below the steps. His tone was cold, yet to Li Yuangui, it was the warmest and kindest words he'd ever heard:
"There's no need for you to rush into becoming Gaochang's son-in-law. With Qu Wentai already enslaving tens of thousands of our people, he certainly doesn't need one more!"
Not... not going to Gaochang?
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