Chapter 49: Can the Dayuan Kobolds Defeat the Fourth Wild Boar Prince? (Part 1) (Bonus chapter for Alliance Leader "Luanhai Shaiyu")

After Cao Jian raised his question, the crowd began to discuss it animatedly. Lama Wang and Zhao Liang had no choice but to pause temporarily and wait for them to reach a conclusion.

This issue involved not only military difficulty and the feasibility of trade route construction, but most troublesome of all, it touched upon the long-standing and sensitive factional dynamics within the Purple Pavilion Khanate.

Back in the day, the founding ancestor of the Khanate, Bayan Timur, had engaged in extensive discussions spanning several days with Guo Gai, the ancestor of the Guo family. This meeting established the early state-founding strategy of the Khanate.

Guo Gai believed that beneath the apparent prosperity of the Golden Horde, signs of decline were already emerging, and preparations should be made early to capitalize on the situation. He suggested finding an opportunity to go to Bulgaria and establish a stable base.

The various archives of the Purple Pavilion Khanate contained detailed records of the situation at that time, and Guo Kang was well aware of the historical context: back then, the powerful Khan of the Golden Horde, Uzbeg, was attempting to reconquer Bulgaria.

Khan Uzbeg was a very capable ruler. He managed the trade routes in an orderly fashion and brought prosperity to the Khanate. However, during the administrative process, Uzbeg realized that while the people under his command were good at business, their production capabilities were rather inadequate. The royal court had to purchase massive quantities of supplies from merchants every year, and even imported grain. Continuing this way would not only result in the loss of hard-earned revenue but also posed security risks.

Initially, Khan Uzbeg hoped to rely on the nearby Russians. However, the civilizational level of the Russians was simply too primitive, making effective administration nearly impossible.

Since the era of Batu, the Golden Horde had attempted to transplant the Mongol thousand-household system to register and organize the Russian populace, but the effort had to be abandoned shortly after because it was completely unfeasible—though perhaps this could not entirely be blamed on them, given that even by Guo Kang’s present day, the Russians had still failed to establish a household registration system.

As for their farming proficiency... frankly speaking, it was inferior to that of the Mongols themselves.

Khan Uzbeg had no opportunity to read future historical texts and could not foresee the state of agricultural and organizational proficiency among the Russians. Historical records on Guo Kang's side indicated that Russian villages did not begin to undergo enserfment until the seventeenth century. Even as late as the nineteenth century, numerous collective farming communities imbued with primitive societal traits still dotted that land.

The administrative system of the Mongols was simply too advanced for them. In most other places, the Mongols were typically assimilated by the local populations, but here, the Russians were being Mongolized—yet because their civilizational foundation was too thin, the Mongolization remained incomplete.

Not to mention their generation, even the family of the Grand Prince of Moscow did not live to see it—the region of the lower Volga River was not fully cultivated until the eighteenth century, thanks to the German compatriots brought over by Catherine.

With the Russians completely unreliable, the Golden Horde had to shift its perspective and set its sights on the Greeks to the south. Consequently, Khan Uzbeg launched multiple southern invasions, capturing Greeks and taking them back to till the land. The Palaiologos Dynasty was entirely powerless to resist the Mongols, and Greek scholars recorded that the farmers and plow oxen in the Thrace region had been entirely seized by them.

Bayan Timur seized this opportunity to propose to the Great Khan that he could lead people to farm.

In the Golden Horde, Bayan Timur was merely a minor official. His family was said to be descendants of Batu, having fled to the Ilkhanate due to internal strife over the succession. Later, turmoil erupted in the Ilkhanate as well, forcing Bayan Timur’s family and friends like Guo Gai to flee once again, this time to the Golden Horde.

Even if this was true, his lineage was far too distant from the direct imperial line of the Khanate. Therefore, he had always kept a low profile at court.

However, he also possessed a very valuable skill—perhaps due to his checkered experiences or his close association with Guo Gai and others, Bayan Timur was deeply knowledgeable about agricultural production. Among all the royal kinsmen, distant or close, he was by far the most proficient at farming.

That being the case, he was naturally the ideal candidate. Khan Uzbeg approved Bayan Timur’s request, allowing him to lead a thousand tents of followers to manage agricultural affairs.

Bayan Timur further elaborated from a professional standpoint on what kind of people and which regions were best suited for farming. Delighted by his sensible and articulate discourse, the Great Khan allocated a large number of the previously captured Greek farmers to his command. They demarcated a tract of land in the Bulgarian region and, with the help of these Greeks and locally recruited Bulgarian peasants, began producing grain for the Great Khan.

To help his old friend with farming, Guo Gai used his personal connections to bring in numerous technical talents to assist.

Guo Gai, originally named Guo Yuanting, had previously been a renowned knight-errant in Persia. Many people in the Ilkhanate and the Golden Horde knew his moniker of "Hero Supreme." Many Persians found this long Chinese sobriquet difficult to pronounce and simply called him "Guo Gai." Over time, as everyone became familiar with it, he adopted it as his formal name.

Word of Guo Gai recruiting men spread, and many rushed to join him. For instance, the ancestor of Li Xuanying was a water-conservancy engineer at the time; the ancestor of Cao Jian was slightly wealthier, working as an accountant... These individuals formed the pioneering core of the Purple Pavilion.

Of course, the backgrounds of some were less than orthodox. For instance, Shi Shoudao, the ancestor of the Shi family, was at the time a down-and-out mercenary who made a living as a caravan guard, hauling goods from Tabriz to sell in Sarai.

While passing through a town in the Caucasus, Shi Shoudao went out for a drink and began boasting, only to be overheard by a few Turkmens. Hearing him claim his ancestors were Turks, the Turkmens laughed uproariously, saying that no Turks looked like that. They judged him to be a mixed-breed tribal commoner from the east posing as a Turk to swindle people, and promptly exposed him as a fraud.

Flushed with alcohol, Shi Shoudao argued with them, which eventually escalated to physical blows. In a fit of rage, Shi Shoudao cut down several of those Turkmens. The patrons panicked and fled, spreading the news, and Turkmen tribesmen from outside the city flooded into the town to kill him in revenge. Shi Shoudao scrambled over a wall and fled in panic, daring not return, and could only head west all the way, thus being recruited wholesale by Guo Gai.

At that time, they probably had no idea what kind of enterprise they would eventually accomplish.

Li Xuanying recounted that his ancestor later recalled never having imagined that he would end up leading troops into battle and becoming a renowned general—back then, the agreement was that Guo Gai, Shi Shoudao, and others were in charge of construction site security, while he was clearly supposed to lead everyone in digging irrigation canals. Heaven only knew how things ended up the way they did...

Yet, despite numerous subsequent adjustments to the division of labor, two distinct factions had already faintly emerged from this period: those who farmed, and the thousand tents of followers brought by Bayan Timur, forming two political forces that endured to this day—namely, the Southern Office and the Northern Office.

It could be said that ever since their ancestors struggled through hardships to build their homeland, the Purple Pavilion Khanate had been imbued with dual elements. This inherent contradiction was likewise inherited in all subsequent questions regarding how the Khanate should develop.