Chapter 121: Li Qilang

"Please send for Lord Zhang, the Commandery Duke, and Fan Quan, Fan the Elder. Only when I have seen them will I tell the truth."

South of Shule city, in the auxiliary camp where Zhang Zhao's troops were stationed, inside the tent used for identity screening, Zhu Qingquan could not help shaking his head.

He too had now been conscripted into Zhang Zhao's force, because he could write and do sums, and Zhang Zhao was exactly short of such talent.

And before him stood a crowd of men and women whose features looked Han.

These were the cannon fodder first pushed out by the holy warriors of Shule, several hundred of them in all; after Zhang Zhao had shown mercy, most had lain flat in the trenches and survived in the end.

Zhang Zhao had kept behind all those with Han features, wanting to screen them and see whether he could find a few descendants of the old Anxi Army's Shule garrison, yet at the very first screening, Zhu Qingquan had run into a snag.

"I am Zhang Zhao, Commandery Duke of Fengtian, and this is Fan Quan, Fan the Elder. If you have something to say, say it now!"

Zhang Zhao had heard the fellow's shouting even before he reached the door, and he directly lifted the cloth curtain and walked in.

The one clamoring to see Lord Zhang was a somewhat short Tang son with a slightly odd accent; he looked at Zhang Zhao with burning eyes, then glanced at Fan Quan behind them.

"Fan the Second was right after all — the Commandery Duke truly is a dragon among men!"

Li Qilang gave Zhang Zhao a solemn bow with hands clasped. "I am Li Qilang, sent out of the city to deliver a letter for Fan Shun, Fan the Second."

"How is Fan the Second now?" Hearing Fan Shun's name, Zhang Zhao grew somewhat anxious too.

Fan Shun had been inside Shule for so many days without a single piece of news coming back, and Zhang Zhao had begun to regret sending him into the city.

Seeing that Zhang Zhao first asked how Fan Shun was, rather than directly asking what letter he carried, Li Qilang could not help nodding in satisfaction.

"Have no worry, my lord. Fan the Second is safe for now. It is only that I should have found you long ago, but had bad luck and was seized by Shule's garrison, wasting several days."

Hearing that this fellow had been among that driven-out cannon fodder, Zhang Zhao felt rather fortunate too; it was a good thing that the day before yesterday he had not ordered the shooting of those pushed out by the holy warriors to fill the trenches, or he would never have found this man.

This was a key figure who knew Zhang Zhao's plans and was very likely a descendant of the Anxi Tang troops.

"My lord, please wait a moment!" Li Qilang had already confirmed that the man before him was surely the Zhang Erlang mentioned by Fan Shun, because the Fan the Elder beside him looked very much like Fan the Second in the city.

After speaking, Li Qilang felt around inside his mouth, and before long he wrenched out one of his own teeth.

It was a false tooth cast from silver and copper, and wound around the tooth was a fine thread; tied to the other end of the thread was an extremely thin fish bladder, and inside the fish bladder was, unmistakably, a wad of paper.

What a ruthless man! The fish bladder already showed signs of being digested, and it had not much affected his speech just now; most likely this Li Qilang had tied the fish bladder with a fine cord and hung it at the top of his throat.

This was not something just anyone could do; it must be the result of long training.

"I must trouble the Commandery Duke to turn around, lest I soil a noble man's eyes!" Li Qilang, looking slightly embarrassed, urged Zhang Zhao to turn away.

Zhang Zhao nodded and signaled old Zhang Zhong to keep watch.

As old Zhang Zhong watched, he suddenly drew a sharp breath.

It turned out that Li Qilang, right in front of him, began taking off his trousers, and then Zhang Zhong saw Li Qilang, his face flushed red and somewhat pained, pull out from his anus a thin cord, and tied to the other end of that cord was another large fish bladder.

Zhang Zhao, now knowing the truth, was shocked too!

There was a fish bladder in his throat, and a fish bladder in his anus, which meant that while carrying these two fish bladders, he could neither eat nor drink.

He could not even eat or drink before setting out, because if he had eaten or drunk, he would inevitably have needed to relieve himself.

"How many days have you gone without food or drink? I'll have someone bring some food. Who passed this skill on to you?"

After the shock came excitement. Zhang Zhao knew very clearly that this skill was absolutely not something achievable merely by being hard on oneself; it must have a lineage, and it required a great deal of practice.

The existence of this lineage further proved that the descendants of the sons of Tang in Shule city, the ones holding Great Tang Jianzhong coins, were still organized.

"Today happens to be the fourth day. I must trouble you, young lord, to have someone bring me a little lightly salted water. If I were to eat heavily now, I fear I would die on the spot.

As for where these trifling tricks come from — on the day Shule falls, everything will be made clear before the Commandery Duke."

"Very well! Since Qilang finds it inconvenient to say, I will not press further. When we reach Shule, you and I shall drink ourselves drunk together. For now, let us settle the location for digging the tunnel!"

As he spoke, Zhang Zhao, suppressing his disgust, spread out the two sheets of paper from Li Qilang's fish bladders. These were the defense maps of Shule city that Li Qilang and the others, under Fan Shun's guidance, had drawn according to Zhang Zhao's mapping requirements.

"Bring our map!" Zhang Zhao called out.

His map had been drawn from the initial drafts made by Wu Yuan'er and Ma Yaozi, then cross-checked against the Shule city map in Li Shengtian's possession.

As soon as the two maps were in hand, Zhang Zhao, together with Fan Quan and the newly arrived Bai Congxin and others, began examining them closely.

After a long while, by comparing this map with the one he had taken from the fish bladder, they worked out the most suitable place in Shule for digging a tunnel.

The boulder-strewn slope west of the city!

"Young lord! This place is the junction of the city's west and south sides. We people are infidels in Bughra Khan's eyes, so we dug cellars here long ago, and in some places the cellars connect with one another.

The original purpose was to save our lives, but since the young lord has heavenly fire and divine thunder, we can cooperate from inside and outside and give those thieving barbarians a vicious blow!"

Li Qilang, somewhat excited and also gnashing his teeth, pointed to several places marked with X's on his map.

For other people to dig cellars in Shule, especially near the city walls, cellars that could hide people, was absolutely impossible.

But for locals like them who had lived here for decades, surrounded by fellow haters of the Heavenly Creed, digging a few cellars under mutual cover was still doable.

"Summon Shi Chongmin and have him bring his tunnel route map. We'll adjust the direction according to Li Qilang's map!"

Beneath the walls of Shule, battle cries shook the heavens. After Li Shengtian's great army arrived, they rested only one day before the two sides launched into a great battle beneath the city walls.

For this battle, Khotan had prepared large numbers of battering rams and siege towers, and three observation towers had been raised to their full height, keeping watch over conditions inside Shule at all times.

Besides these, there were wooden screens for defense against arrows and stones from the battlements, and simple covered assault carts to shield archers as they rushed to the foot of the walls to exchange fire with the defenders.

Although this war had been launched somewhat hastily by Li Shengtian under Zhang Zhao's urging, from the present look of things, the preparations were still quite thorough.

But atop the walls of Shule, Itihad, who did not need to leave the city to fight, displayed his proper ability as well. Under his command, the Shule garrison loosed volleys of arrows, hurled boulders, hacked scaling ladders with great axes, poured boiling oil on men, and burned the covered assault carts with fire oil.

The walls of Shule were over five meters high, and since the city was built on a hill with a natural rock foundation, strictly speaking Shule was nearly eight meters high.

With eight-meter walls, water on the east, mountains on the south, and the boulder-strewn slope on the west where a large army could not deploy, only the north side could be attacked. Even in the Central Plains, this would count as an absolute stronghold.

Terrified wailing came from the distance. Zhang Zhao climbed to a height and looked out: it turned out the Khotan army had tried to fill in the moat by carrying earth.

But just as they were about to cut off the flow, the diversion channel was finished, and they were preparing to fill the river, a flood suddenly poured down from upstream.

It turned out Itihad had long ago had a dam built on the Red River upstream. As soon as Shule sent the signal, the dam was destroyed and the man-made flood came pouring down.

Li Shengtian was so furious he snapped the riding whip in his hand. In one stroke, not only had half a month of blocking the river and half a month of digging the diversion channel been wasted, but over a hundred laborers had been lost as well.

More importantly, the cloth bags placed by the river had all been washed away. Now they wanted to continue filling the river, but there were no bags left to hold earth.

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