Chapter 76: Today We Sing Together the Song of Everlasting Sorrow

Drums and music sounded in waves, sheng pipes and reed organs playing. Nearly every building in Khotan, including the royal palace, was built with its main gate facing the eastern gate.

And the eastern gate, the Xuan'en Gate, was the largest city gate of Khotan and the site of its most prosperous market.

Unlike other Anxi and Hexi cities, which were all built with the sheep-and-horse enclosure outside, followed by the outer wall and then the inner city,

Khotan's sheep-and-horse enclosures lay to the east and west of the main city, each existing as a satellite town.

So Khotan entirely lacked the thick stench of cattle, horses, sheep, camels, and other livestock that other cities had; instead, the air was remarkably fresh.

Crossing the iron-chain bridge over the moat, Zhang Zhao caught the faint scent of sandalwood drifting from Xuan'en Gate. A powerfully built man dressed in a Tang-style purple robe but wearing a Khotan-style long cap sat waiting on horseback, surrounded by several dozen Khotan riders, all elite heavy cavalry with both man and horse armored.

"This is Li Ruoyu, Honorary Minister of Rites of my Great Treasure Khotan Kingdom and Prefect of Luzhou. Lord Ruoyu's ancestor was the son-in-law of Li Yu, Prince of Hanzhong, and the Great Tang Commandery Prince of Wudu, Lord Yuchi Sheng!"

Ma Furong, fearing Zhang Zhao did not know the man was a descendant of Yuchi Sheng, had made a point of introducing him.

But Zhang Zhao certainly knew who this was!

His nominal maternal cousin, in practice his convenient elder brother-in-law — the elder brother of Li Ruoliu, who wanted to become Queen of Zhongyun.

Although the two had never met, Zhang Zhao had already sent men to contact Li Ruoyu back when he was still in Yuechang (Qiemo).

Li Ruoyu had even risked sending twenty men to back his own younger sister, which was why Zhang Zhao could safely recall Yan Jin and the others.

"Commissioner Fan, by order of the Great Sage Son of Heaven, I am here to welcome the Guiyi Army's Great King of Tuoxi, the Military Governor. Please follow me into the city!"

Li Ruoyu merely swept his eyes over Zhang Zhao's face, then rode over to Fan Running and extended a hand to lead the way.

And although Fan Running's office and rank were far lower than Li Ruoyu's, at this moment he unhesitatingly rode forward in the very center.

Zhang Zhao thoughtfully rubbed his chin. Given Fan Running's status, and with a preliminary envoy party of only thirty or forty men apart from his own people, why would Li Shengtian have summoned Li Ruoyu back to receive them?

The two sides' statuses clearly did not match! Could Li Ruoyu have already told Li Shengtian what had happened in Zhongyun?

Once the Guiyi Army procession began moving, the drummers and musicians of the wind band Li Ruoyu had brought split up, some in front and some behind.

Dressed in roundel-pattern robes and riding tall, piebald horses, they began playing the ceremonial music for welcoming guests, and the drum and sheng music that had already been sounding grew even louder.

Khotan was built in imitation of Chang'an. The royal palace stood in the inner city due north on the central axis, and the outer city was likewise divided into eastern and western markets, with many residential wards between them.

The scale, of course, was far smaller. Zhang Zhao had asked on the way here: the entire population of Khotan was around fifty thousand.

Huh! That was actually not small. Guiyi Army Dunhuang had only twenty or thirty thousand people, and the Zhongyun capital of Wuni had only seven thousand.

When the sun-moon-star tricolor banner symbolizing the Great Tang appeared on the outer city's main street, an extremely fervent cheer erupted. On both sides of the street, countless Khotanese crowded forward with enthusiasm.

Zhang Zhao glanced over. The residents were clearly mostly of Indo-European white, specifically Scythian, features, but there were also quite a few who at a glance looked like Central Plains Han — like Li Ruoyu's appearance.

The procession was led by twenty Khotan heavy cavalrymen, followed by the Guiyi Army envoys, with Fan Running in the very center and Li Ruoyu in his purple robe on the right.

Zhang Zhao, on the left, wore his extremely flashy fine-steel mingguang armor, the armor that in several bloody battles had drawn most of the arrows and blades his way.

I, Zhang Erlang, had even deliberately, pretentiously, put on the face guard shaped like a Buddhist vajra guardian.

Even more exaggeratedly, although Fan Running was in the center, he looked somewhat isolated.

But behind Zhang Zhao, a great banner bearing the character Zhang plus the sun-moon-star tricolor banner symbolizing the Great Tang flew high. Fan Quan and Yin Yaozi guarded behind him, the three forming a triangle as they advanced — the whole scene made Zhang Zhao look like the protagonist.

And on the left and right in front of Zhang Zhao's horse, Man Xiong and Dunzhu wore infantry armor weighing dozens of jin, one hand holding a modao glaive glaive glaive and the other leading his horse.

If those two's body weight were added to the armor, one wondered whether even a Don horse could carry them, so the two simply walked on foot before Zhang Zhao's horse, leading it.

Behind Zhang Zhao, Bai Congxin followed closely with twenty-two riders. Twelve of them were likewise armored man and horse, awe-inspiring, while the remaining ten wore gaudy brocade robes, held lances crosswise, hung stiff bows, and Cao Shisi was among them.

This young lord dressed up even more handsomely and dashingly. After seeing a bout of blood and enduring the tempering of a thousand li of yellow sand, he truly had something of the air of a wandering swordsman of You and Bing.

These twenty-two riders were Zhang Zhao's Youyi Army.

Behind the Youyi Army came the Hanshan Capital men led by Yan Jin. After the storming of Wuni, their equipment had undergone another round of upgrades.

Now they all wore suanni helmets, with sleeveless red robes thrown over their armor, and carried three weapons — bow or crossbow, javelin or throwing axe, plus a long spear and a hengdao saber.

A few of them even wore double bow-cases, meaning two bows and the quivers for arrows, clearly experts who could shoot from either side.

The procession entering the city pressed on. In the distance, several great banners of various colors suddenly appeared, echoing the sun-moon-star tricolor banner behind Zhang Zhao. These banners were brown, blue, and black, and looked rather old.

Zhang Zhao recognized at a glance that these were the command banners used by the Tang army to issue orders. Then those raising these great banners were very likely descendants of the Great Tang's remnant subjects in the Anxi lands.

Judging from the fact that Ma Furong beside him could hold office in Khotan, there must be quite a few Tang remnant subjects in Khotan and even throughout the Western Regions.

"The Han emperor, enamored of beauty, longed for one who could topple a kingdom; for many years he ruled the realm and found her not."

Amid the clamorous drum and music, Zhang Zhao removed the vajra face guard he wore. He raised his long lance high and roared out the song with all his strength.

Ancient poetry was actually meant to be chanted with rhythm and music, and Bai Juyi's "Song of Everlasting Sorrow" was especially so — it was the classic long poem depicting the Great Tang's turn from prosperity to decline.

With the nation broken and the family lost, the "tragically beautiful" love between Emperor Minghuang and Yang Yuhuan, the death of Lady Yang at Mawei Slope, Yang Guozhong being beaten to death by the troops, and the Emperor Minghuang's loss of power — "Song of Everlasting Sorrow" was a first-rate long poem of this age, the most popular of all popular songs.

To an ordinary person of this era, if you wrote out "Song of Everlasting Sorrow," most would be illiterate and not know what it was, but as soon as you started a melody, everyone could hum along.

When Zhang Zhao sang the lines "In spring's chill he granted her the bath at Huaqing Pool; the warm spring waters slid over her creamy skin. Her maids helped her up, too delicate from the bath — this was when she first received the imperial favor,"

the surrounding Hanshan Capital armored soldiers and Youyi Army men all joined in, singing with clear enunciation and proper rhythm, because Zhang Zhao had been teaching them the whole way from Yuechang to Khotan.

Ma Furong and Li Ruoyu looked at each other, not knowing what Zhang Zhao was up to.

The chanting of over a hundred big men drowned out even the drum and music playing in the procession.

When they finally reached the crowd holding the brown, blue, and black Tang army banners, countless people, supporting the old and carrying the young, rushed to the side of the procession.

Sure enough, among these people, the men wore side-slit shirts, gauze caps or net caps, and Tang-style hengdao sabers and other Central Plains blades at their waists.

The women mostly wore blue-black shirts or short jackets made of hemp and kudzu cloth, quite different from the dress of other Khotanese.

Some of the elders, following Han custom, held up flat winnowing baskets filled with hu cakes or steamed cakes.

Others carried clay jars filled with grape wine or sour plum water. Hearing the song, most of these people could actually sing along for a few lines. Holding up their goods, they began running wildly alongside the advancing procession.

"The war drums of Yuyang thundered across the land, shattering the Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Coat Dance.

Smoke and dust rose over the nine-tiered palace walls; a thousand chariots and ten thousand horsemen fled southwest.

The emerald banners swayed, moving then halting; west of the capital gate, a hundred li and more."

A faint breeze brushed Zhang Zhao's face, and a tear slid from the corner of his eye. The Great Tang had turned from prosperity to decline right here. He had meant to move others, but somehow he himself had been moved.

Beside the horse, Ma Furong had already begun singing along. Li Ruoyu remained expressionless, but his lips kept moving silently.

"Who still remembers? The white-haired soldiers of a lonely city ten thousand li away! Does the Son of Heaven in Chang'an even know?"

An old man in a black robe knelt by the roadside, weeping and beating his chest and stamping his feet. The drum music had stopped! All that remained was heart-wrenching wailing, and among them were no few golden-haired, blue-eyed barbarians!

The dense black mass of people sang loudly in chaos, surging toward the inner city behind the Sun, Moon, and Stars banner following behind Zhang Zhao's horse!

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