Chapter 848: Opening the Granary, Distributing Grain, Burning the Land Deed

The Iron Armor Square Formation of the Five Hundred Beiwei Death Guards turned from stillness into a charge the instant the city gate opened.

The black iron flow was like a bladed broad saber, slicing through the city gate's crack; the front‑row death guards wielded strange swords, blades longer than a person and as heavy as a small shield, and when they cleaved down they produced a sound of armor and bone shattering together.

The loyal private soldiers of the Helan clan who tried to form a formation in the city gate passage were cut down two ranks by the first horizontal slash of the strange swords; severed limbs and shattered armor splashed onto the stone walls, and plasma seeped down through the cracks.

Before the second slash fell, the rear‑row private soldiers had already thrown their swords and crouched on the ground.

Ye Zhuxi's figure cut out from the right wing of the death guard formation; the long spear in her hand spun a silver storm in the city gate passage, the spear tip pried apart three incoming long spears, and the shaft, while turning, swept two armored soldiers attempting a side ambush, kicking them off the stone steps of the passage.

Her steps did not pause, her whole body like a javelin thrown, she flew along the interior stone steps of the passage toward the city wall.

Hongye was faster than her.

The moon‑white sleeve flashed once in the firelight, and she had already climbed up the protruding arrow slots on the inner side of the city wall.

The sound of a fine‑steel short sword being drawn was drowned by the melee and roars inside the fortress, but the sound of the blade slicing a throat could not be covered.

Helan Bo's dozen‑plus close‑combat experts were desperately protecting him on the city wall as he retreated toward the secret tunnel at the northeast corner; the expert at the rear of the line suddenly staggered forward, hand covering a throat cut as thin as a hair, collapsing beside the wall before a sound could escape.

Hongye's figure swept past him from behind, the short sword twirled in a flourish, the sword tip precisely severed the tendon in the second expert's knee pit, the man knelt on the city wall, and before he steadied, Hongye kicked him down the three‑zhang‑high wall.

Helan Bo turned his head and looked back.

He saw that moon‑white‑sleeved figure weaving among his guards, leaving a corpse each time.

His legs went completely limp.

He pushed aside the last two guards before him and, like a madman, lunged toward the secret tunnel entrance.

"Quick! Open the secret tunnel! Quick!"

The secret tunnel entrance lay at the base of a fake stone hill; beneath the stone slab was a hidden passage leading three li outside the fortress to an Abandoned Mill, which the Helan clan had dug for a full forty years.

Helan Bo's fingers dug into the stone slab at the hill's base bearing a secret mark, pulling desperately outward.

The stone slab did not budge.

Someone had blocked the exit from the other end of the secret tunnel.

Gao Jiong's voice rose from beneath the city wall, carrying a chilling cold that made one's spine shiver.

"Lord Patriarch, Shuyi sealed the far end of the secret tunnel with stone and mud three days ago; you need not waste any effort."

Helan Bo's fingers slipped off the slab, three of his ten fingernails broken, blood seeping from the tips.

He collapsed beside the fake stone hill, mouth open, his eyes filled with genuine despair.

Hongye stepped before him.

She twirled her short sword half a circle, the hilt aimed at Helan Bo's face.

Then she sheathed the sword.

She did not kill him.

She bent down, one hand grasping Helan Bo's back of the neck, lifted him from the ground, and dragged him toward the edge of the city wall.

"The Chancellor said, he'll leave you a breath and cut you down right here."

Helan Bo was dragged by her from the city wall to the stone steps on the inner side of the wall, and then from the steps to the center of the Xiaochang inside the fortress.

Iron chains wound around his wrists and ankles, binding him three times tighter than Zhao Tiezhu had been bound in the Fifth Camp years ago.

The battle from the city gate opening to its complete end lasted less than half an hour.

Three thousand private soldiers surrendered, over two thousand four hundred of them; fewer than three hundred were killed or seriously wounded; the remaining Helan loyalists were divided and surrounded by the Beiwei Death Guards and the defected private soldiers, disarmed and pressed to the ground.

The Xiaochang was filled with kneeling bodies.

Chen Yan rode his black horse slowly into the city gate passage, hooves stepping over the uncleaned shattered armor and bloodstains.

Yuwen Ze followed closely, a few drops of blood spattered on his Purple Robe, his sword still unsheathed, blood dripping from the blade.

Chen Yan tightened the reins in the center of the Xiaochang.

He looked down at Helan Bo, bound by iron chains at his feet.

Helan Bo's forehead banged the broken stone ground, skin torn and bleeding, his voice forced out of his throat, altered in tone.

"Chancellor, spare me! Chancellor, spare me! I am willing to surrender all my estates, fields, grain, and silver, just ask the Chancellor to leave me a dog's life!"

Chen Yan flipped off his horse and stepped onto the broken stones with his boot soles.

He did not look at Helan Bo.

He turned, facing the civilians pouring in from the city gate outside the fortress wall.

Tens of thousands of faces twisted by hunger and anger squeezed in through the city gate passage, a black mass of people filling the entire fortress Xiaochang.

Chen Yan stood in the center of the Xiaochang, his Great Cloak flapping in the wind.

He stepped on Helan Bo's back, grinding his face into the broken stones.

"Helan Bo, you burned thirty thousand shi of military grain, killed thirty brothers guarding the granaries, sealed the city's food stores, and forced tens of thousands of Lingzhou's people onto a road to death."

His voice rolled out from his chest, pouring into every ear in the Xiaochang.

"This account is not settled between me and you."

He lifted his boot from Helan Bo's back and gestured toward the nearby Beiwei Death Guard.

"Drag him outside the city gate."

Two death guards hauled Helan Bo from the ground, the iron chains scraping the broken stones with two harsh screeches.

"Let the people themselves judge him."

Helan Bo's wail echoed from the center of the Xiaochang all the way to the city gate passage.

Outside the city gate, tens of thousands of civilians heard the words.

A gray‑haired old farmer stepped out of the crowd, clutching a rusted sickle, his voice trembling like a dry branch in the wind.

"I've owed the Helan family thirty years of debt all my life, never repaid it; my wife had her leg broken by them, my son was taken as a slave; today, no one stop me!"

He raised the sickle.

Chen Yan did not look.

He turned around and strode toward the direction of the three underground granaries deep inside the Fortress.

Gao Jiong had already, with the Ti Cavalry of the Mingjing Office, pried open the iron gate of the granary; the heavy iron gate let out a muffled clang on the winch chain and swung open to both sides.

The granary's entrance was a set of stone steps descending downward; at the end of the steps lay a massive semi‑underground chamber, its height over two zhang and its length stretching into darkness beyond sight.

The chamber was piled high with food.

White rice was packed in burlap sacks, sack after sack, layer upon layer, piled from the floor up to the vaulted ceiling, dense and endless, with no edge in sight.

Helian Shi stood at the granary entrance, his mouth gaping so wide his jaw seemed about to drop.

"This—this is at least several hundred thousand shi!"

He slammed his fist onto his thigh, and when his voice squeezed out between his teeth it carried a fierce hatred.

"The people of Lingzhou are on the brink of starvation; they have hidden several hundred thousand shi of grain underground!"

Yuwen Ze stood on the stone steps at the granary entrance, his whole face etched with an absurdity that even anger could not suppress.

"Brother A Xiong, this food could feed all of Lingzhou for a year."

Chen Yan pressed his palm against the stone wall at the granary entrance, his fingers lightly tracing a line on the stone.

"Send the order down: open the storehouses, release the grain."

When those four words left his mouth, his tone was as flat as if stating something utterly ordinary.

But when those four words were passed from one militia on the Xiaochang to another, reaching the Outside City, the tens of thousands of civilians there fell silent for two breaths.

Then the roar exploded.

Crying, laughing, the sound of people kneeling and kowtowing, and a voice—who knows who—shouting the next line.

"Long live the Pillar of the State!"

The grain was hauled out of the underground granary bag by bag, the white rice scattering across the ground in sunlight, each grain glittering like shattered gold.

The people, famished for days, knelt beside the sacks; some grabbed rice and shoved it into their mouths, some clutched the sacks and wailed, others clenched grains in their palms, the white fragments spilling out between their fingers.

Chen Yan stood on the stone steps at the granary entrance, watching the scene, his finger slowly drawing an arc on the handle of the Horizontal Blade.

Gao Jiong emerged from a Secret Chamber converted from the Helan Clan Ancestral Hall inside the Fortress, carrying three heavy Iron Chests; their locks had been pried open and the lids were ajar.

He placed the Iron Chests one by one onto the ground at the center of the Xiaochang.

Land Deed.

Servant Sale Contract.

Usurious Loan Note.

Inside the three Iron Chests were piles of yellowed paper and Bamboo Silk Scrolls; some papers were so old their edges were crumbling, while the ink on some scrolls was fresh, the pages densely filled with names and numbers.

Gao Jiong's voice sank to its lowest register.

"Pillar of the State, Shuyi has roughly counted: just the Land Deeds number over four thousand, covering sixty percent of the arable fields in 127 villages of Lingzhou."

He flipped through the papers in the Iron Chest containing the Servant Sale Contracts twice with his fingers.

"There are over three thousand Servant Sale Contracts; the youngest signee is only seven years old."

Yuwen Ze's fingers clenched the sword hilt, his knuckles cracking in a rapid series, his face contorted until even the knife‑sharp lines were warped.

"Burn it! Burn it all!"

Chen Yan reached out and pressed his shoulder.

"Brother A Ze, don't rush; let the people watch the burning with their own eyes."

He turned and raised his voice toward the city gate passage.

"Let the people outside all come in!"

Tens of thousands of civilians surged through the city gate, crowding the Fortress's Xiaochang so tightly that not even a needle could be inserted.

They saw the three Iron Chests at the center of the Xiaochang, saw the papers inside bearing their names and fingerprints; someone recognized the red handprint they had been forced to press years ago, their lips trembled three times, and tears rolled down their wrinkled faces.

Chen Yan ordered the papers from the three Iron Chests to be dumped onto the open ground at the center of the Xiaochang, forming a waist‑high mound of paper and Bamboo Silk Scrolls.

He drew a torch from a nearby fire basin; the flame danced in the autumn wind, its orange‑red light reflecting on his face.

He lifted the torch above the paper mound.

"From today onward, Lingzhou shall have no more noble families."

The torch fell.

Flames leapt from the base of the paper mound, the paper and Bamboo Silk Scrolls curling in the tongues of fire and turning to ash; the inked names and numbers twisted and vanished in the blaze, becoming thin wisps of gray‑white smoke carried by the wind toward Lingzhou's sky.

The ash drifted upward from the Xiaochang, passing over the Fortress's walls, over the Wilderness beyond the city, and into the distant wheat fields rolling in the autumn wind.

Yuwen Ze stood beside the fire, the flames reflecting on his Purple Robe, orange‑red sparks dancing across the silk.

He released his grip on the sword hilt, staring blankly at the fire growing ever brighter, his lips moving twice, and a voice rose from the deepest part of his throat.

"Brother A Xiong, I only truly understood today what it means to clean the blade's handle thoroughly."

Chen Yan withdrew his hand from the Horizontal Blade's hilt and patted Yuwen Ze's shoulder.

"Remember this fire, A Ze."

His gaze rose over the flames to the distant horizon tinged red by the evening glow.

"Lingzhou is only the first fire; Suizhou, Yinzhou, Yanzhou, Yanzhou, Qingzhou, Yuanzhou, and six other places await us to burn!"

His palm gave Yuwen Ze's shoulder one final pat, then he turned and walked toward the edge of the Xiaochang.

Yuwen Ze watched the figure recede into the evening glow, his fist slowly tightening at his side.

His voice squeezed out between his teeth, small yet each word bitten with great force.

"The younger brother will follow Brother A Xiong, burning it down piece by piece."