Chapter 742: Blood Is the Last Dignity

The Purple Tenuity Palace.

As the Zhang Zhou dynasty was built from the ruins of two hundred years of war and was not yet fully unified, it naturally lacked the means to rebuild the Purple Tenuity Palace on the scale of the Sui and Tang eras.

In Sui and Tang times, the Purple Tenuity Palace comprised four walled cities — Luocheng, Xuanwu, Yaoyi, and Yuanbi — covering more than twice the area of Daming Palace. Though called a palace, it was larger than most ordinary cities.

The Zhang Zhou Purple Tenuity Palace, however, was in fact only the original imperial city of the old palace, that is, Luocheng. It occupied less than a third of the Sui-Tang palace's area.

As for the other three walled cities, the ground remained, and roughly a third of the original buildings were still barely usable. Zhang Zhao intended to restore them only once the realm had been brought to full order.

Thus, when Li Renshu, dragging Shi Chongmin along, burst into the Purple Tenuity Palace with the help of inside collaborators, he quickly drew near the Qianyuan Hall, foremost of the palace's three great halls.

According to their intelligence, the Noble Consort Cao, Cao Yannai, and the Eighth Prince Zhang Xianzai resided in the chambers to the left of Qianyuan Hall.

Li Renshu was, after all, battle-hardened. Though his battles were not necessarily grand ones, a ruthless bandit who had long skirted the edge of life and death still possessed an extremely keen sense of danger.

The moment he stepped into the square before Qianyuan Hall, Li Renshu sensed something wrong. The place was too empty. If troops with bows and crossbows formed ranks on all four sides, his few hundred men would not even be enough to serve as targets.

Besides, with such a commotion in Luoyang, a great number of palace guards, eunuchs, and others had gone out to fight the fires. How could the area around Qianyuan Hall, the most important place in the palace, remain so quiet?

Therefore, just as the whole force was about to reach the center of the Qianyuan Hall square, Li Renshu stopped. He abruptly darted to Shi Chongmin's side, hengdao saber in hand, and glared ferociously at the Uyghur.

"You dog-fucked wretch, you dare betray me?"

Shi Chongmin stared at Li Renshu in bewilderment. Had this Huaibei bandit lost his mind? There was not a single soul around — what betrayal was he talking about?

Ah. No! Shi Chongmin was suddenly jolted.

Right — why was there no one at all? It was too quiet. Something was definitely wrong. He abruptly looked toward a group of armored soldiers in the distance to the left.

"Yin Silang, you motherfucker — you betrayed me?"

Twang!

What answered Shi Chongmin was not a human voice, but an arrow loosed by Yin Silang's raised hand.

Shi Chongmin screamed. It was a bolt from a short hand-crossbow. Though it could not pierce his padded armor, the tremendous impact still made his vision go black with pain.

"Fuck your mother — Hexi barbarian scum truly cannot be trusted!" Li Renshu roared in fury. He drew the stiff bow from his back and shot at the twenty or thirty armored soldiers in the distance who were supposed to be their inside men.

But the other side had long been prepared. Iron-faced great shields were already raised. A clatter of ringing noise followed — lively to the ear, but with scarcely any screams.

Yin Silang, hiding behind a great shield, laughed wildly. He lit a tube of signal fireworks in his hand.

"Shi Chongmin, you thieving barbarian — did you really think a thousand strings of cash could buy your granddaddy?

You dog-fucked cur, I am the own grandnephew of the Sage Son of Heaven's grandmother, the Gracious and Illustrious Empress Dowager, a fine son of the Yin clan of Wuwei. Would I join in rebellion with a barbarian like you? Hahaha!"

Boom — that was the sound of the palace gates dropping. Shi Chongmin was so terrified his heart nearly stopped.

Yin Silang was the highest-ranking inside collaborator they had won over in the Purple Tenuity Palace, yet he had long since turned against them — no! It would be more accurate to say he had never been on the same boat with them at all.

"Feather Forest! Feather Forest!" The familiar shout rang out. Dense footsteps sounded from all around. Torch after torch flared alight. At least seven or eight hundred men in heavy armor, bows and crossbows in hand, closed in on Shi Chongmin, Li Renshu, and their followers.

Li Renshu gritted his teeth. Seeing that the enemy was not all that numerous, he was, for the moment, not particularly flustered. He looked at his panicked companions behind him and shouted.

"Since these Hexi barbarians mean to ambush us, their numbers cannot be too great. In my judgment, it is only a few hundred men. Do not panic, lads — victory and defeat are not yet decided. Form ranks with me and fight our way through!"

Li Renshu's words did make sense, because the Purple Tenuity Palace was only so large and could not conceal too many armored soldiers. Setting aside supplies, too many men and too many eyes would have made secrecy impossible.

And under his command were three hundred ruthless Huaibei bandits — his sworn brothers through life and death, fully equipped with armor and stiff bows.

The other two hundred were fierce bandits from all corners of the realm, plus failed yabing guards who were born killers, and several dozen more were the proud Hexi soldiers recruited by Shi Chongmin and his lot. In a fight, they would not flinch.

"They do have some courage, after all. A pity they have walked the crooked path."

Amid the rumbling war drums and marching feet, a military officer appeared, clad in mingguang armor and dazzlingly conspicuous in the torchlight.

"Lads, raise my great banner and my command standard! Tell those bandits opposite who it is they are about to die to."

A great banner with the character Liu on a silver-white ground edged in gold rose up, and facing it, a tall command standard of silver-white with golden tassels.

"Liu Zaisheng — what are you doing here?" Shi Chongmin's eyes bulged. At his cry, the proud Hexi soldiers who had joined his rebellion all turned pale with shock.

So the man facing them was none other than Liu Zaisheng, Duke of Tianguo — among the Zhang Zhou generals, ranked just below Yan Jin, Bai Congxin, Murong Xinzhang, and a few others, a great general of the East-Returning faction.

These men were simply unlucky. Liu Zaisheng had been recuperating at home for years because of a stomach ailment and had all but vanished from the "spotlight" for nearly a year. Thus, when Shi Chongmin and the others had reckoned up the realm's great generals, they had never counted Liu Zaisheng at all.

But Empress Cao Yanxi had not forgotten! She had long since transferred Liu Zaisheng to the divine capital, Luoyang. The main force of the troops appearing here this time was likewise the two hundred personal retainers under Liu Zaisheng's command.

A man's name is like a tree's shadow. The appearance of a great general like Liu Zaisheng, who had guarded a region and enjoyed towering prestige, was a shot in the arm for his own side — and for the enemy, like the King of Hell come to claim their lives.

"You dog-fucked cur! The Sage's greatest mistake was letting you bear the surname Shi. You Uyghur have defiled the fine Cangjie surname!"

Liu Zaisheng glared at Shi Chongmin with towering rage, for Shi Chongmin, like him, came from the kingdom of Khotan and counted as a member of the East-Returning faction. This dog's rebellion made Liu Zaisheng's face burn with shame.

"Beat the drums! Leave not a single one alive!"

Liu Zaisheng bellowed. The war drums thundered, and several hundred armored soldiers closed in from three sides. In the flickering torchlight, the twang of bowstrings was like a swarm of bees leaving the hive.

Li Renshu unhesitatingly threw away the stiff bow in his hand, drew a long spear instead, and called on his accomplices to charge toward the right, where the line looked weakest.

There was no help for it. Smuggling several hundred sets of armor into the divine capital Luoyang had already taken a herculean effort; there was absolutely no way they could also have brought in several hundred crossbows.

Now the enemy was only slightly more numerous than they, yet dared to encircle them from three sides. That meant the numbers on each side were naturally fewer than their own. If they could summon their courage and charge one side with full force, it was still possible to break through.

However, events proved that Li Renshu had thought too much. He was a Huaibei bandit, skilled in hiding his tracks. Real battlefield slaughter was not so easy as his days in Huaibei.

Of the seven or eight hundred armored soldiers in the Purple Tenuity Palace today, fewer than a hundred were true palace guards.

The rest included a hundred men that Qiong Re Duojin had desperately squeezed out from the three-thousand-strong Hanshan Capital inner guard protecting the Empress, while the main force was Liu Zaisheng's two hundred trusted retainers, who had fought from east to west.

These four hundred alone were far more than these few hundred Huaibei bandits and a rabble of mountain brigands and river pirates who only knew how to bully common folk could withstand.

Crossbows loosed in volleys, and blood mist filled the sky. At seventy or eighty paces, the high-energy bolts from the arm-drawn crossbows could not be stopped by any armor. In a single volley, dozens of the Huaibei bandits charging at the front fell.

They might have been fierce when brawling across the countryside, but before such cold-blooded slaughter they simply could not hold. After charging only twenty or thirty paces, many of them lost heart.

The Hanshan Capital troops and Liu Zaisheng's retainers, however, were like emotionless machines. After one crossbow bolt, they instantly loosed two more in succession, then advanced shoulder to shoulder, iron-clad, long spears in hand, like a moving wall.

At this, even Li Renshu lost the courage to keep charging. Only the rebel armored soldiers from Hexi — lured by Cao Renzun and the others with talk of a glorious future, and knowing they had no way out — still had some ferocity left, and only they still dared to step forward and fight.

As for the rest, they fled in a frantic scramble through the gap deliberately left open for them.

But this was plainly a trap. If Liu Zaisheng could not even handle such a small matter, he would not deserve to be called the foremost general of the East-Returning faction.

No sooner had Li Renshu and his men rushed out through the gap than they heard the thunder of hooves. Outside the gap, a squad of fifty fully armored cavalry had long been waiting for them.

Though Li Ruotai was advanced in years, his ferocity was undiminished. With a single charge, the fifty armored riders utterly shattered the headless-fly Huaibei bandits.

Li Renshu opened his mouth wide in terror and raised his spear in despair. The armored riders around him, seeing that there was still one man daring to resist, charged at him from three directions at once.

A squad leader of the armored riders, his helmet plume painted silver-white, pulled a meteor hammer from his waist while still twenty-odd paces away, swung it twice, and hurled it in an instant.

In the flickering light and darkness, Li Renshu could not see it at all. By the time he heard the rush of wind, it was already too late. The meteor hammer, bristling with sharp spikes, slammed into his face, smashing his mouth, nose, and eyes into a mass of pulp in an instant.

Before he could even scream, before his body even hit the ground, the armored riders from three sides had already arrived. Three cavalry lances struck from three directions, and Li Renshu instantly became an irregular lump of flesh.

As for Shi Chongmin, he sat dazed amid a sea of corpses and blood. The armored soldiers coming and going paid him no heed; only two fierce warriors, built like bears and tigers, kept their eyes fixed on him to prevent him from suddenly fleeing.

Liu Zaisheng strolled forward at a leisurely pace. A battle of this level was child's play to him. He came forward for the sake of dignity — the dignity of the Eastward Return faction.

"Wretched slave! For two hundred years we have never forgotten our homeland. To return east with the Sage and revive the great dynasty — what glory! Yet from among us came a wretched slave like you."

Liu Zaisheng had not killed a man with his own hands in a long time, but the identity of Shi Chongmin before him — a member of the Eastward Return faction and a count of the Great Zhou — meant that only he could be the one to end him.

Shi Chongmin had just begun to raise his head to say something when — thud — an iron war hammer smashed down onto his skull.

Liu Zaisheng's face was dark and grim. Hammer blow after hammer blow, he did not pause for a moment, until he had pounded Shi Chongmin into a pulp of flesh. Only then did he stop, panting heavily.

"By the Sage Empress's decree: the criminal Shi Chongmin is guilty of monstrous crimes. His corpse shall be exposed in the wilderness and none may bury it. All males of his household shall be executed at once, and his wife and daughters shall be sent to the Music Bureau!"

Liu Zaisheng bellowed, then grabbed hold of a brocade-clad personal guard captain who was about to carry out the order.

"I ask that you leave some dignity. Do not send his wife and daughters to the Music Bureau."

The brocade-clad captain was silent for a moment, then nodded. Not sending the wife and daughters to the Music Bureau did not, of course, mean letting them go — it meant giving them a quick death.

At the same time, the unrest in the Jingzhao prefecture of Chang'an had largely been quelled.

Unlike the divine capital Luoyang, the Jingzhao prefecture of Chang'an had the eminent monk Cixian defecting at the last moment, Luo Yu'er's selfless disregard for the lives of her own family, and more than thirty inspection bureaus spread throughout Guanzhong to suppress the unrest.

That day, Murong Yanchao sought out the Ba Bridge inspector. He had just finished mobilizing troops when Chen Wu and the others dispatched by Luo Yu'er arrived.

After that, the inspection bureau troops around Chang'an were immediately mobilized in full. The city's rats and foxes, the guards of great households, the enforcers of merchant houses, and even the common people — led by ward elders and neighborhood heads — took up clubs and blades and searched street by street, ward by ward.

A few hundred desperate men could not withstand the full mobilization of all Chang'an. They were quickly rooted out and dragged into the streets like dead dogs, beaten into pulp.

And the group of former Meng Shu generals who went to incite the surrendered Meng Shu troops accomplished very little.

These Shu soldiers had long since been beaten into submission. More importantly, the work of repairing Tong Pass and dredging the canal was indeed harsh, but it had not caused widespread death or injury.

They had already served nearly a year, and in two or three more months they could return home. How many of them would be willing to rebel?

When Luo Yu'er arrived with the troops of the Three Guards, it took little effort to drag out the two or three hundred who intended to rebel, and all of them were beheaded by the canal with a single stroke each.

Afterward, the commander guarding Lantian Pass, having received Cao Yuanzhong's order, sealed off the roads to the outside world. Several thousand troops searched village by village, and of the bandits who had infiltrated Guanzhong, not a single one escaped.