Chapter 45: A Mother's Heart

A letter from his mother — for Zhang Zhao, this was an experience he had never had before.

He suddenly thought of the mother from before his transmigration, a sharp-tongued but attentive township junior-high teacher who had given most of her energy to her school and her students, so that the bond between mother and son had been rather thin.

Growing up, Zhang Zhao had hardly ever eaten a meal cooked by his mother; he had mostly eaten in the school cafeteria. Once he was grown, the words between mother and son seemed even fewer, their contact reduced to a few brief words on WeChat.

Perhaps that was for the best — at least she could probably bear the pain of her son suddenly vanishing.

But this letter, from Zhang Zhao's birth mother, Lady Song, he read over and over again, back and forth, an indescribable feeling lingering in his heart.

The letter's contents were simple: Lady Song said she had not seen her son in five years, and that now Cao Yuanzhong, the Chief Clerk of Shazhou, had stood guarantor, asking Zhang Zhao to return to Dunhuang so that mother and son could be reunited for a time. She had also enclosed a copy of the Heart Sutra, which she had transcribed by hand and recited constantly.

"When the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara practiced the profound Prajnaparamita, he illuminated the five aggregates and saw them all empty, and crossed beyond all suffering and hardship. Shariputra, form is not different from emptiness, emptiness is not different from form; form is emptiness, emptiness is form. The same is true of sensation, perception, volition, and consciousness."

Zhang Zhao took out the Heart Sutra transcribed by Lady Song and recited it without pause, and in his mind flashed the kindly face of a woman.

"My son, since ancient times when emperors have fallen into misfortune, their descendants have rarely met a good end. In the future you must heed the words of the loyal old man. If you miss your mother, then recite the meaning of my Buddha's sutras. You must remember this above all: if your mother sends you a hand-copied sutra, a great calamity is surely approaching. Be very, very careful!"

Be very, very careful! Zhang Zhao sighed, and a tear suddenly appeared at the corner of his eye.

In truth, he and Lady Song had never met. The original Zhang Zhao had only a faint impression of Lady Song, and even harbored some resentment toward her.

Yet at this moment, countless memories of the past suddenly surged into his heart, and that long-blurred, loving face suddenly appeared before his eyes.

Registrar Yang, watching the tear slide from the corner of Zhang Zhao's eye, felt a surge of inward delight. As a trusted confidant of Cao Yuanzhong, the Chief Clerk of Shazhou, and the head of the Registrar's Office, which controlled the Guiyi Army's household registers, maps, and personnel secrets, he of course knew exactly what Cao Yuanzhong was scheming.

Once Zhang Erlang went to Dunhuang, he would have no way to escape. The little brat had actually dared to have someone stab him — the pain had nearly made the Registrar faint. You deserve to be hacked to pieces by a mob of blades!

As for Cao Shisi, he was Cao Yuanzhong's man. The life or death of Cao Yuande's son could not exactly be called unimportant, but since the Great King of the West had washed his hands of it, all that remained was to leave it to fate.

"Ma Yaozi!" Zhang Zhao, eyes brimming with tears, shouted toward Ma Yaozi in the distance.

The moment Registrar Yang heard the name Ma Yaozi, his rear clenched tight. But looking at Zhang Zhao's reddened eyes, he felt somewhat reassured again. Crying like that, he must be about to go to Dunhuang, right?

"Quickly now, give the Registrar another cut on his right shoulder. This looks awful! One side bandaged, the other not — completely unbalanced." Zhang Zhao pointed at Registrar Yang's uninjured shoulder.

"Young lord, spare—!"

"Aiya! The pain is killing me!"

Registrar Yang's face twisted in agony. What kind of person was this! The tears on his face had not even dried, and he had ordered someone to stab him.

"Registrar, go back and tell my elder brother Yuanzhong to stop stirring up trouble. Have him send someone from the Cao family to speak with me. If Cao Shisi wants to live, he had better show some sincerity, and quickly.

I will set out for Khotan in ten days. If this drags on any longer, I truly cannot guarantee what will happen."

With that, Zhang Zhao waved his hand. Dunzhu took a four-layer hemp cloth and bound it over Registrar Yang's eyes. Then this deputy of the third squad, who had been promoted up from a herding slave, hoisted the emaciated Registrar Yang onto his shoulder and went flapping and bouncing down the mountain.

"No! Ugh! No! Ugh!" The suffocating stench of sweat and filth, plus Dunzhu deliberately jabbing his shoulder into Registrar Yang's stomach and bounding and leaping as he descended the mountain, caused Registrar Yang to cry for help and vomit at the same time. By the time they reached the bottom, he would probably have thrown up his gall.

"Second Cousin-Uncle! It's burning! It's burning! Whoa! So these bits of charcoal, sulfur, and ground-up stone really can burn!"

Cao Shisi — the one Zhang Zhao had said he could not guarantee what would happen to — cried out joyfully the moment he saw Zhang Zhao come in.

This silly child! His face was blackened with soot, and the hair on his forehead was nearly singed, yet he was still utterly absorbed in it, looking as though he had discovered a new continent.

"What 'ground-up stone'? You don't even recognize saltpeter? I truly wonder what your Cao family has been teaching its descendants. Surely they haven't spent all of it teaching you to worship Buddha and chant sutras?"

Zhang Zhao looked utterly speechless, but this was not feigned — he was genuinely astonished.

What Cao Yanming was playing with now was none other than gunpowder, one of the Four Great Inventions of Chinese history. As one of the three great tools of a transmigrator, Zhang Zhao naturally had to "invent" gunpowder too — though in his case, "invent" should probably be called "improve."

Do not think that gunpowder was some rare thing in the Tang dynasty. In fact, it was not rare at all.

More than twenty years earlier, when Yang Xingmi of Huainan attacked Yuzhang, gunpowder had already been used. Of course, at that time, because its burn rate was insufficient and its reaction not violent enough, gunpowder could not be used for blasting, only for setting fires.

But no matter how you put it, for Cao Yanming, a son of a great clan, not to recognize saltpeter was simply absurd! Zhang Zhao walked up without ceremony and grabbed him by the ear.

"Have you not read the Secret Formula of the Golden Elixir of the Supreme Ancestor? Have you not heard of the Essentials of the True Origin and Wondrous Way? Do you not know the Method of Subduing Fire?"

"Aiya! It hurts, it hurts, it hurts! Cousin-Uncle, the things you mention sound like Daoist classics, don't they? But our Dunhuang is a Buddhist land! Where would one find Daoist texts here?

But if Second Cousin-Uncle can name them, then he must have them. Quickly, bring them out and let your nephew study them!"

Damn, he had forgotten about that. Why couldn't those eminent monks have also studied elixir refining and pill making? At least they could have trained some chemistry talent!

Looking at Cao Yanming's eager face, Zhang Zhao spread his hands. "I have only heard of these. Where would I get the books for you to study?"

"Then Cousin-Uncle must remember some of it, surely. Tell your nephew about it!"

"I don't remember. I read without seeking deep understanding!" This was true — he really did not remember. The only reason Zhang Zhao could recall the names of those two Daoist texts was that years ago, when he went abroad for full-contact armored combat, an idiot who insisted gunpowder was invented in India had angered him so badly he suffered internal injuries, and he had memorized the names then.

He had planned to use them to refute that idiot the next time he met him, so he had only memorized the names. He had indeed never read the books.

However, Zhang Zhao did still remember the ratio for black powder: ten percent sulfur, fifteen percent charcoal, seventy-five percent saltpeter.

But while the idea was good, once he tried to put it into practice, Zhang Zhao discovered it was no ordinary difficulty.

First, he had no precision weights and measures, which meant the proportions could not be accurate.

Second, the purity of sulfur and saltpeter varied, and the fineness and degree of carbonization of the charcoal also differed. He knew the ratio for black powder, but what he produced came out in all manner of strange results.

Damn it all. So mixing gunpowder required first establishing standards for the purity of the sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal. But where was Zhang Zhao supposed to find the time? He was busy winning over the hearts of this band of followers and had no time for research.

"Cousin-Uncle, a text that so seizes the creative power of heaven and earth, and you read it without seeking deep understanding? That is simply throwing away a gift of nature!"

Cao Yanming tilted his head and looked at Zhang Zhao with an expression that said "I truly despise you," which so infuriated Zhang Zhao that he gave him a kick in the rear.

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