Chapter 845: Grain Shops Run Dry, the Living King of Hell Rips Open the Dark Granary at Night

The next morning.

The sky over Huile City was pressed down low by a layer of lead‑gray clouds; sunlight squeezed through the gaps, falling on the street where crushed rice grains and smashed door planks lay, reflecting a gray‑white hue that choked the heart.

The rice‑shop street was packed with families; some bore empty rice sacks, some clutched wailing children, some crouched at the base of walls gnawing the last half of a hard rice cake in their hands, their faces numb and desperate as if driven to a dead end.

The doors of the three largest rice shops in the city were shut tight, each bearing a wooden plaque with four crooked characters.

Ten strings per dou of rice.

Zheng Hall of the Lingzhou Inspector's Office.

Dou Luling's eyes were blood‑red, the dark blue beneath them so thick it seemed about to bleed, a stack of ledgers cradled in his hands, his voice rasping heavily as it emerged from deep in his throat.

"State Pillar, Prince, the situation is three times worse than Subordinate General estimated."

He opened the ledger and ran a finger across the numbers.

"The Helan clan led, followed by the Tuoba, Dugu, and Yang families; the four great houses jointly blocked all grain routes within Lingzhou, they bribed the merchants outside the city, and the grain convoys were intercepted thirty li away, claiming bandits plagued the official road and refusing to proceed."

He turned to the second page.

"After the Changping granary was burned, the army's remaining grain would only last three days; the civilians in the city have even less, and some districts ran out of food last night."

Yuwen Ze stood at the desk, the cuffs of his Purple Robe twisted into a knot, his voice raised to a level that made the entire Zheng Hall roof tremble.

"Three days! After three days, what will the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians in Lingzhou eat? Drink the north‑west wind?"

He struck the desk with his sword, the blade cleaving a half‑inch deep crack in the rose‑wood surface; a tea cup rolled off the edge of the fissure and shattered on the blue bricks.

Dou Luling's voice dropped another two tones.

"And worse, the great houses sent a joint petition to the Inspector's Office this morning."

He drew a petition edged with gold powder from his sleeve and handed it to the desk.

Yuwen Ze snatched it, scanned three lines, his complexion shifting from iron‑blue to a ghastly pallor that tightened Dou Luling's nerves.

He slammed the petition onto the floor.

"They say that if this king abolishes the land‑allocation edict and hands over the murderer of Helan Xiong, they will immediately open the granaries to stabilize prices!"

His voice broke into fragments on the last two words.

"Hand over the murderer— the murderer they speak of is A Xiong!"

Helian Shi's fists clenched at his sides, the Armor creaking, his voice erupting from the depths of his throat.

"Prince, Subordinate General will lead troops to raid their houses! No matter the four great houses, Subordinate General will make them know that steel is harder than silver today!"

Yuwen Ze's hand had already pressed back onto the sword hilt, and the color of blood rushed back to his face.

"Helian Shi is right! A Xiong, I will lead troops to raid their homes!"

Chen Yan sat on the chief seat of Zheng Hall, his right hand on the armrest, his left holding a cup of tea, leisurely using the lid to skim the foam floating on the surface.

He skimmed the foam three times, each swipe slow and meticulous, as if the urgency and anger of everyone in Zheng Hall were of no concern to him.

"A Ze, sit down."

Yuwen Ze's hand paused on the sword hilt.

Chen Yan placed the lid back on the cup and lifted his eyelids to glance at him.

"If you now lead troops to raid their homes, they will burn all the grain."

Yuwen Ze's fingers tightened on the hilt a little more.

Chen Yan's voice dropped another half tone.

"When tens of thousands of civilians in the city starve, the Court will sentence you to death for forcing a rebellion, and all the covert arrows your father shielded you from in Chang'an will have been in vain."

Yuwen Ze released his grip on the hilt, and his whole body collapsed onto the chair as if his spine had been pulled out.

His voice emerged from between his teeth, carrying a heartbreaking helplessness.

"Then what should we do? Bow to them?"

Chen Yan lifted the cup and took a gentle sip.

"Bow?"

He set the cup back on the small table beside the armrest, and the curve of his mouth slowly rose.

"My dictionary contains no such words."

His gaze shifted from Yuwen Ze's face to Gao Jiong, who had been standing silently in the corner.

"Dog nose of the Mingjing Office, did you smell something?"

Gao Jiong stepped out of the corner, the dark‑red insignia on his Armor flashing in the light, the curve of his mouth forming a line that sent a chill down one's spine.

He pulled a scroll of silk rolled into a tube from his chest, unfolded it with both hands, and laid it beside the crack Yuwen Ze had split in the desk.

It was an extremely detailed map of Lingzhou's city defenses and surrounding terrain, with seven or eight secret spots circled in vermilion, each annotated with dense tiny script.

Gao Jiong's finger rested on a spot thirty li from Huile City, where the outline of a fortress was drawn.

"Huile's State Pillar, the great houses have sealed the official granaries, but my Hidden Agent has tracked the caravans carrying night incense."

Dou Luling knit his brows.

"Night incense carriage?"

Gao Jiong's mouth twitched slightly.

"The Helan clan uses horse‑drawn wagons carrying night incense to mask grain transport, pulling over thirty wagons out of the city each night via the Hidden Door in Chengxi, then turning north after leaving the city."

His finger drew a heavy line across the fortress outline.

"My Hidden Agent trailed them for three days and three nights, finally confirming they hid hundreds of thousands of shi of grain underground in this abandoned fortress. The fortress, called Helan Fortress, is the ancestral land run by four generations of the Helan clan; its walls stand two zhang high and three chi wide, with interconnected tunnels inside, a deep well, and three granaries."

He turned to the second page of the map, which detailed the internal defensive layout of the fortress.

"Inside the fortress are three thousand Private Soldiers of the Helan clan, well‑armed with complete bows and crossbows; the gate is a double‑layered iron‑bound wooden door, and a three‑zhang‑wide moat has been dug around it."

Helian Shi stepped to the map, his thick fingers tracing the fortress outline twice, his coarse voice revealing an unhidden bitterness.

"State Pillar, this fortress is easy to defend but hard to assault; Subordinate General has been in Lingzhou for three years and knows its details. If we launch a massive attack, it will take at least ten days to half a month to take it down."

His fist hammered once on his thigh.

"But our rations only last three days; in ten days to half a month, everyone will starve to death."

Yuwen Ze's fingers clenched the armrest until his knuckles produced a series of crackling sounds.

"A Xiong, is there no other way?"

Chen Yan stood up, and the hem of his Great Cloak swept across the chair leg as he rose.

He walked to the topographic map and pressed his finger heavily on the spot marking the Fortress.

He did not look at Helian Shi.

He did not look at Yuwen Ze.

He turned around, his gaze falling on the fifty figures that had just been standing silently in the corridor at the entrance of Zheng Hall.

Fifty Political Commissar cadres brought from Xiazhou each wore that dark‑red badge on their left chest, the two crossed swords and two drooping wheat ears glinting with a steady sheen in the overcast light.

Zhao Tiezhu stood at the front, the whip scar on his shoulder—inflicted in the Fifth Camp by Liu Biao—already scabbed over, the scar faintly visible through the gaps of his Armor.

Wang Erniu stood beside him, the boots on his feet, once holed, now replaced with new ones, yet the fingers gripping his spear still bore the scar of a frozen sore.

Chen Yan looked at them, the curve of his mouth widening.

That curve was not a smile.

It was something that made everyone in Zheng Hall feel as if they were standing beside a blade about to be drawn.

"Who said we should launch a strong attack?"

Helian Shi's mouth opened slightly.

Chen Yan withdrew his finger from the Fortress marker and pointed at the fifty Political Commissars at the entrance.

"This Duke will use the One Heart Society's method, from within, to blow this Fortress sky‑high."

His voice deepened, each word bitten down heavily.

"Three thousand Private Soldiers are also people; they have fathers and mothers, wives and children, and the suffering of being ridden on the heads of their masters to have blood sucked."

His gaze turned to Zhao Tiezhu.

"Zhao Tiezhu."

Zhao Tiezhu's back stood straight as a spear, his voice coarse yet steady.

"Shuyi, present!"

Chen Yan traced an arc in the air with his finger.

"This Duke gives you two days, take ten men, infiltrate the Fortress, and find the group inside who suffer the most and hate the most."

His tone dropped another half step, each word sounding as if hammered from an Iron Anvil.

"This Duke does not need you to fight a war; this Duke needs you to bring the fire seed inside, letting them burn from within."

Zhao Tiezhu's right fist slammed heavily onto the dark‑red badge on his chest, the muffled thud echoing through Zheng Hall three times.

"Shuyi is the fire seed of the pillar of the state; wherever it is thrown it will burn, and if it fails to ignite Shuyi will not return to face the pillar of the state!"

Chen Yan lifted his hand from the hilt of the Horizontal Blade.

"Go."

Zhao Tiezhu turned and strode out of Zheng Hall, ten Political Commissar cadres following closely, their footsteps disappearing in unison into the darkness at the far end of the corridor.

Yuwen Ze stood at the desk, watching those figures vanish into the darkness, his voice rolling from his throat with a scorching heat he himself could not articulate.

"A Xiong, how did these people train to become like this?"

Chen Yan returned to the main seat, sat down, and tapped the armrest lightly with his finger.

"They were forged beside the campfire."

His gaze passed over the threshold of Zheng Hall, landing on the sky outside, pressed down by lead‑gray storm clouds.

"Once the fire seed reaches the woodpile, ignition is only a matter of time."

His voice on the final sentence dropped to a level only red leaves could hear.

"This Duke awaits their good news."