Chapter 63: Blood and Fire at Wuni City (Part One)

The palace tent of the Zhongyun King Sanpoba in Wuni City — its great gate had not yet opened. This was the rule: it was locked at the beginning of the hai hour (nine in the evening) and opened at the end of the chen hour (nine in the morning). At any other time, not even a matter of heaven and earth could get it opened.

This strict regulation was dictated by Wuni City's geographical position.

It sat at the edge of the great desert. Although it held only six or seven thousand people, it was absolutely the largest city in the vicinity, and a thousand li of yellow sand restricted the size of any outside army — the best of barriers.

So Sanpoba needed only to keep two or three hundred armored soldiers within his palace tent. Unless it was a great empire like the Great Tang, Tibet, or the Turks, capable of mobilizing tens of thousands or even over a hundred thousand troops, no matter who else came, once he locked the palace tent, few could do anything to him.

Thus, when the turmoil outside the city reached the inner city, Sanpoba was only just slowly climbing off his beautiful consort. Being disturbed in his favorite morning exercise left Sanpoba extremely displeased.

Outside the bedchamber, a guard captain wearing Tibetan-style lamellar armor came scrambling over, tumbling and crawling.

"Great King! Over a hundred armored soldiers have appeared outside the palace tent. They look very much like men of Tang or Tibetan slaves come down from the mountains. There is unrest in the Sheep-and-Horse City, the Inner North City, and the South City. The bandits have already begun building a battering ram outside the gate!"

Sanpoba was a middle-aged man with a high nose, deep-set eyes, and brown hair. When he heard the words "men of Tang," his brow furrowed involuntarily.

For although he was very enthusiastic about paying tribute to the Central Plains court, in truth Sanpoba had no good impression of the men of Tang at all.

And the root of all this lay in his appearance.

High nose, deep-set eyes, brown hair!

Heh! In later ages this might be considered exotically handsome, but in the time when the Great Tang flourished —

Hmph! If a face like this fell into the hands of the Anxi Tang army, you could congratulate that soldier, because he had just acquired a "draft animal" worth about as much as an ox or a horse!

High nose, deep-set eyes, brown hair — in the Tang dynasty this was the unmistakable mark of a foreigner! Unless you could climb to the high rank of men like Qibi Heli, this face meant you were basically a "draft animal"!

Wait! The look of a son of Tang? Tibetan slaves? Sanpoba suddenly remembered something. He cast a dark, sinister glance toward the left side of the palace tent.

"Where are the Left Queen's people? Has there been any movement from them?"

The Left Queen? The guard captain lowered his head at these words, then slowly shook it.

"Reporting to the Great King, there has been no movement from the Left Queen's side. It does not appear that anyone from Khotan has come."

Only then did Sanpoba nod with satisfaction. As long as no one from the Left Queen's maiden family had come, all was well. Now fully dressed, he picked up a treasured sword, and his face actually showed a trace of eagerness for battle.

"Moduo! Go summon the warriors within the palace tent, signal the men on the tower, and have the North City warriors come to the palace tent to defend the king. Then have the Left Rear Chancellor go out of the city and summon the traveling merchants of Sheep-and-Horse City — one silver coin for every three men. This king wants to conscript them!"

Outside the palace tent, shouts of "Heave-ho! Heave-ho!" rang out. Dunzhu was in front, and behind him a stout fellow nicknamed Savage Bear. The two of them pushed a simple battering ram at flying speed, while four or five men around them raised long shields to cover them.

These men all wore silk undergarments next to the skin, then padded cotton robes, then a layer of interlocked ring armor, and over that another layer of lamellar armor. Their heads were wrapped in cotton cloth and topped with a helmet with a broad neck guard. Ordinary arrows and stones could not harm them at all.

"Thud! Thud!"

What they were violently ramming was the right gate of the Zhongyun King's palace tent.

Under the full-strength shoving of the two bear-like stout men, this simple battering ram posed a tremendous threat to the right gate. Almost every impact made the entire gate shudder uncontrollably and creak and groan.

On the tower above the right gate, warriors kept rushing to the top of the gate, trying to drop logs and other objects onto Dunzhu and Savage Bear below.

But Zhang Zhao had placed Fan Quan, Fan Shun, and a group of crossbowmen here. Four divine-arm crossbows guaranteed the rate of fire, Fan Quan and Fan Shun guaranteed accuracy, and two great yellow crossbows guaranteed killing power.

Those Zhongyun warriors came over cautiously, holding shields and carrying bows, but before they could even raise their logs, Fan Quan, Fan Shun, and the others below shot them into howling chaos.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Yan Jin had brought twenty-odd men, also wearing heavy armor, in a fierce assault. The Zhongyun King's palace tent wall was only a little over one meter high, so Yan Jin had piled up a loess ramp twenty or thirty centimeters high at the foot of the wall, and then used long halberds to thrust fiercely back and forth with the Zhongyun warriors on the wall.

And behind him, a stout man named Wang Tongxin, clad in interlocked ring armor and holding two wrought-bronze maces, was already prepared.

This man was skilled at leaping and climbing, and loved breaking into formations and shattering armies. He was only waiting for the Zhongyun warriors above to be beaten back by Yan Jin and the others, and then he would jump up and open a breach.

So when Sanpoba hurried to the vicinity of the palace tent wall, this was the scene he saw.

Now he too began to panic, no longer treating the men outside as the Kucha bandits who had come a few years before.

Those Kucha bandits, though they numbered over a thousand, had perhaps fewer than fifty armored soldiers among them. But out here, the men wearing two layers of heavy armor, like bears and tigers, numbered in the dozens.

"Why have the North City warriors still not arrived? Why have the traveling merchants of Sheep-and-Horse City not been summoned yet? Moduo! Send men at once to kill and scatter the battering ram at the right gate — under no circumstances can we let them break the gate open!"

Sanpoba directed while loudly complaining, because when the Kucha bandits had come a few years before, the traveling merchants of Sheep-and-Horse City had blocked them from behind, and the North City warriors had swiftly come to support from the front.

Even the commoners of the South City had been organized to fight those bandits. Sanpoba's palace tent warriors had barely exerted themselves before the several thousand bandits were scattered.

But this time it seemed different. Sanpoba raised his eyes and looked out. Outside, Sheep-and-Horse City was utterly silent, giving off an eerie stillness.

The North City warriors' residential district was ablaze with fires everywhere — total chaos!

What were those unruly commoners in the South City doing? One moment they were running wildly everywhere! The next they seemed to want to bury their heads in the ground.

Zhang Zhao smiled. He knew what the Zhongyun King Sanpoba, standing far from the combat zone in his splendid armor, was waiting for.

But he was doomed to wait in vain, because when the Kucha bandits had last attacked, the whole city's residents and traveling merchants rising up to resist had not been Sanpoba's doing.

Rather, the man who organized that raid had been too stupid, and his control over the rabble below too weak.

As a result, before the main force even reached the Zhongyun King's palace tent, some men had disobeyed orders and scattered to rob the traveling merchants and North City residents.

The residents and traveling merchants had risen up to protect their own property.

Zhang Zhao would of course not make such a mistake, so the "outside help" Sanpoba was waiting for would likely not be coming any time soon.

The situation now was him leading a hundred elite troops in a "duel" against three hundred Zhongyun palace tent warriors.

"Qiongre Duojin!" Zhang Zhao shouted.

"Your servant is here!" Qiongre Duojin made a forked-hand salute and knelt on one knee before Zhang Zhao.

"Go relieve Yan Jin and Wang Tongxin. Make a big show of force to draw the Zhongyun King's attention. Once the gate is blown, come quickly to support!"

"Yes!" Qiongre Duojin sang out his assent, then led several men at a run toward Yan Jin's position.

Meanwhile, Zhang Zhao patted the shoulder of Cao Yanming, who was waiting for someone to help him put on his armor. Thirty jin of black powder had already been placed in five sealed small coffin-like wooden boxes, with dried yellow clay packed tight around them.

"Fourteenth Young Master! Your moment to win fame and glory has come. Blow open the Zhongyun King's gate, and I, together with Yan Jin and Wang Tongxin, can charge in. From now on, 'Divine Fire Thunder Cao the Fourteenth' will be a name to reckon with!"

Cao Yanming nodded heavily, his face flushed red with excitement!

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