Chapter 116 — Tianshui Stockade
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 4 of 6
Xiaobai looked at him, her gaze brushing his face like water. "Qili Tong is the largest settlement of the Miao people in the southern borderlands. From what I remember, twenty li on from here is a lively place where several clans live mingled together, called Tianshui Stockade. From there a perilous little path runs south—that is the road to the Miao's Qili Tong." Then she gave a soft, bitter laugh. "Though I cannot say whether in these three hundred years the state of things here in the south has changed."
Ming Li nodded silently and unconsciously quickened his pace.
Xiaobai followed behind him, her gaze lingering on him a few moments before turning to the road ahead, to the ranges of mountains linked one to another, towering and steep, majestic and perilous, like giants gazing down at these few small figures on the ancient road between heaven and earth...
In the past ten years, Ming Li had come to the southern borderlands many times on Bilu's account, and he knew something of the local customs.
The southern borderlands were vast in extent and sparse in people. Apart from the savage tribes of the Ten Thousand Wild Mountains that stretch ten thousand li at the far south, the people who had lived for generations along the southern frontier belonged roughly to five principal clans: the Miao, the Tu, the Zhuang, the Li, and the Gaoshan.
By population, the Zhuang were the most numerous, making up nearly four tenths of the southern borderlands' people; by territory, the Miao were the strongest, holding the broadest and richest lands; by sheer temper, the smallest clan, the Gaoshan, were the fiercest.
These five clans had lived for ages along the southern frontier. Each had its own tongue, but by and large, when they spoke with one another they used a common speech akin to that of the Central Plains, though tinged more or less with local flavor.
Over the years there had of course been times of mutual understanding and amity, but no less of scheming and strife. Through the long ages there had gradually formed a state of affairs in which the five clans each held their own ground, their territories interlocking and overlapping.
Where the territories of the clans met, there were often villages and stockades where people of several clans lived together; in the largest, folk of all five clans dwelt in one place, mingled together.
The Tianshui Stockade of which Xiaobai spoke stood where the lands of four clans—Miao, Zhuang, Tu, and Gaoshan—met, and was a lively and well-known spot in the southern borderlands.
As the light gradually failed and dusk drew near, Ming Li, Xiaobai, and Xiaohui—two people and a monkey—at last walked into Tianshui Stockade.
Though the name contained the word "stockade," it was nothing like the mountain strongholds commonly built on hilltops in the south. Tianshui Stockade was built on a broad stretch of level ground, with a road leading out of it to each of the four directions. According to Xiaobai's explanation on the way, the place had originally been built by the Tu clan, and not on this site at all, but on a hill not far to the west. Because of a clear spring on that hilltop, it had been called Tianshui Stockade—the Stockade of Heaven's Water.
Later, however, as the four clans' territories came together and the people multiplied, the place became one of mixed population.
And as traders and travelers increased, living up on the hill became inconvenient—the site was cramped, and coming and going was difficult. The folk of the southern borderlands might be hardier than the people of the Central Plains, but no one cared to climb a mountain every day for exercise.