Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Last Soldier

Yellow sand swallowed Kucha City.

At the foot of the mountain, tombstones stood packed in tight ranks. A hunched old woman smiled as she tipped a pot of wine over the stones, letting it run in thin streams across weathered names.

No one wept here.

Only laughter.

She had done the same thing for sixty years. Any tears she might once have had had long since dried up.

A crude mud house stood nearby. From it, more than a dozen hollow-cheeked women carried out five white-haired bodies.

Inside, the squad leader with frost at his temples was breathing his last.

His armor was spattered and caked with blood. An arrow had punched clean through his chest. Each breath came in a trembling thread, as if the wind itself might snap it.

“Chang An… Chang An… only you’re left.” His hand tightened around the young man’s arm, fingers digging in as though grip alone could keep the world from slipping away.

“Grandpa Qin.” The youth’s features were fine, his skin bronzed by sun and sand. But the sharp, star-bright eyes that had once cut like blades were empty now, glazed with numbness.

“Remember.” Squad Leader Qin’s lips shook, yet his voice struck like a nail driven into wood. “A loyal soul, a pure heart—though ground through countless calamities, it still shines like cinnabar.”

He coughed. Blood surged up, bright and wet, spilling from his mouth as he clutched his chest and shook with the effort of breathing.

“Prosperous Tang may be gone,” he rasped, “but the spirit of Hua Xia remains. It will not die. It will not end. We will reclaim what was lost. We will restore—restore our might!”

He dragged the words out with everything he had. His eyes flared wide, almost furious, as though he could shout the world back into place by sheer will.

When he finished, tears flooded his eyes. They slipped down the furrows of his wrinkled face, hot and helpless.

Sixty years ago, he had been a boy full of ambition. He had left the Central Plains and come to the Western Regions to guard the frontier.

That one departure had lasted his whole life.

After the An Lushan Rebellion, Great Tang was broken and scarred. The Central Plains no longer had the strength to command the Western Regions. Even the vital He Xi Corridor had fallen into the hands of the Barbarian State.

The An Xi Army was cut off completely. Across the vast Western Regions, only one battered, ruined city remained—alone, stubborn, and half-buried in sand.

They could not contact the outside world. They did not even know which emperor sat the throne now. The only thing that kept them fighting was a single, burning truth:

The land beneath their feet belonged to Great Tang. They would die before they gave it up.

“A city of white-haired soldiers,” Squad Leader Qin murmured, breath thinning, “dying without dropping our weapons. Holding out alone for sixty years, never daring to forget Great Tang… I did not fail the nation’s grace. I did not fail my people… I only failed Little Yun.”

His voice faded into a whisper. A smile tugged faintly at his lips.

In his blurred vision, a delicate girl appeared again, standing beneath a locust tree, looking out toward the endless sands.

“Husband, why are you going?”

“To guard the border. To fight the enemy.”

“When will you come back?”

“Next year. Or the year after.”

“And if you don’t come back?”

“Then remarry.”

“Husband… I’ll wait for you. As long as it takes.”

The door creaked open. A few women, faces numb as worn stone, stepped in and carried Squad Leader Qin’s body away to burn.

Gu Chang An stood in the corner, silent.

The An Xi Army had only him left.

…

By the graves, more than a thousand women and children stood on crippled legs and worn feet. Not a single strong young man remained.

Some children were dark with sun, their faces set and hard. When they grew tall enough to match a spear, they would climb the walls too.

“Only Chang An is left.” The old woman’s voice was hoarse, scraped raw by grief she no longer had the strength to feel. Her clouded eyes drifted to the Great Tang banner fluttering in the distance.

Sixty years without falling.

They had tried their best.

They truly had.

The bitter part was this: the Central Plains believed the Western Regions had long since been lost. Not once had they sent an envoy.

And really—who would believe anyone could hold a lone city for sixty years?

They planted their own grain. They minted their own coins to keep trade and life from collapsing into chaos. They received no reward, no praise, no relief—only the heat of their own blood, poured into an impossible miracle.

And now the An Xi Army had dwindled to one.

Gu Chang An—who had stepped onto a battlefield at ten years old, fierce beyond measure. A child born in Kucha City, raised in pools of blood and fire.

Kucha City had held for sixty years.

What did it mean?

“Chang An… surrender.” The old woman said it again, and again. “Chang An… surrender.”

Women wept openly around her.

Surrender.

He was only twenty. Still young. He could not die on the walls too.

What was the point of holding on?

They had been forgotten by the Central Plains. No one knew what they had done. No one would ever clap for them, or sing their names.

Gu Chang An stepped forward. His face was calm, as if carved from stone. “I won’t.”

The old woman’s gaze snapped sharp. Her voice rose, cold and commanding. “As the widow of Grand Protector-General Guo Xin of An Xi, I order you to leave Kucha City.”

Guo Xin—nephew of Guo Zi Yi, once Protector-General of the An Xi Army—had died on these walls thirty years ago.

“For sixty years,” Gu Chang An said, looking straight at her, his voice ringing like iron struck hard, “the An Xi Army never surrendered and was never captured. Grandmother, do you think I can be the first? Do you think I can be that coward?”

“You’re different,” she shot back. “You’re unmatched. The Barbarian State has tried to persuade you again and again, promising you a valiant martial general’s post. Tribes across the Western Regions have begged you to defect. If you die here, it means nothing!”

Her voice cracked with rage. “Great Tang—Great Tang—where the hell is Great Tang? Is it dead? Does anyone here even know?”

From the crowd, a white-haired old man with both arms severed roared until his throat tore. “We’ve done our best! Even Heaven can’t blame us!”

This child had grown up eating hundred-schools meals, fed by the whole city. His name was Kucha City’s wild, desperate hope.

Chang An.

Chang An.

They lifted their heads to the sun—and still did not see Chang An.

“This city has held for sixty years,” Gu Chang An said quietly. “So what if I hold it for a lifetime? As long as I’m here, this Tang banner will not fall.”

He turned and left, walking toward the wall as he always did.

The city walls were mottled and broken, stained everywhere with old blood. The Great Tang battle standard snapped in the wind, fierce and lonely.

Gu Chang An removed his armor and stood alone on the watchtower, letting wind and sand claw his cheeks.

In one life, he had crossed into this world as a newborn in Kucha City. His father had died in battle. His mother had died in childbirth.

He had grown up on hundred-schools meals. He had joined the army at ten and climbed the walls. Ten years had passed, and now he was twenty.

It seemed every transmigrator had a “cheat.”

He did too.

Grow stronger by killing enemies.

In ten years, his personal skill had risen into a transcendent realm. He did not even know what level he truly stood at.

But what did it matter?

White-haired comrades had died one by one beside him. He would keep this lone city until his own life bled out slowly into the sand.

In this life… would he ever see the imperial capital, Chang An, even once?

“Only me,” he murmured, a bitter curve at the corner of his mouth. “Will the histories remember me? Will later generations sing for me?”

He stood there a long time. Then, facing the sinking sun and the cold evening wind, he asked softly, “Is Great Tang still there?”

He knew the records. He guessed Tang De Zong or Tang Su Zong sat the throne—either way, a puppet lifted up by eunuchs.

But what if history had already changed?

“The palace gates under nine heavens once opened wide,” he whispered. “Ten thousand nations bowed in robes and crowns. Your glory will be admired a thousand years later; your ruin will make Hua Xia descendants sigh and clench their fists. Great Tang… Great Tang… and still some fool keeps watch for you.”

His gaze drifted, unfocused. He stood as still as a statue.

In his previous life, he had read about the white-haired soldiers of An Xi guarding the lone city. Each time, he had been moved to tears—proud of the backbone of the Han.

Only after becoming one of them did he understand how unbearable it was.

Despair without end.

Tang would lose the Western Regions for a thousand years. When the land was seen again, it would be under Kang and Qian.

A full thousand years would pass before the Western Regions returned to the embrace of the Central Plains.

No reinforcements would come to Kucha City. The Barbarian State had cut the trade routes clean. Even a single merchant could barely pass, much less carry a message. Much less bring an army.

One exhausted, hopeless soldier.

One soldier no one would ever cheer.

Gu Chang An could see his own ending. He would grow weary from killing, again and again, until two fists could no longer fight ten thousand hands—until he collapsed, strength spent.

He did not fear death.

He feared betraying sixty years, and the spirits of twenty thousand fallen of An Xi.

He wanted Chang An to know. He wanted the entire Central Plains to know.

An Xi had not retreated.

In the Western Regions, there was still a strip of land that belonged to Great Tang.

A land soaked in blood, held for sixty years without changing hands. The An Xi Army had not lost its territory.

Not one surrendered. Not one was captured.

“This is my mission,” he said, voice low and steady. “It is the whole meaning of my life. As long as I live, the city stands. I will never retreat.”

He took off his helmet, hair falling loose, and went down from the watchtower to check the defenses along the wall.

For sixty years, the An Xi Army had built and reinforced these walls into something stubborn and hard. It was one of the reasons they had endured so long.

He began to sing, softly at first, the border song An Xi had made from an old poem:

“Bright was the moon in Qin, the pass stood in Han;

Across ten thousand miles, the marchers never came home.

If the Flying General still guarded Dragon City,

No barbarian horse would cross Yin Mountain.”

The tune drifted far on the wind.

He remembered the year he was born—thousands of voices on the wall, roaring together until the sound seemed to shake the sky.

At ten, he could still hear over a thousand singing with him, and see faint smiles on the faces of the white-haired grandfathers.

At fifteen, only two hundred remained. They held wine flasks, drank, and sang, their voices still loud enough to challenge the desert.

At twenty, only his voice remained—clear, calm, answered by the hard echo of stone.

Then—

From far away came wild shouting. Hooves thundered, making the ground tremble and flinging sand into the air.

Gu Chang An’s eyes stayed steady. He put on his helmet and armor and wiped his bronze longsword, slow and calm.

Born of the desert, he knew the sound. About three hundred enemies were coming.

Bright yellow flags appeared on the horizon. Three hundred riders tore through the sand, skirted a long river, and swept toward Kucha City with unstoppable force.

One by one they looked up, eyes full of wariness—and, strangely, respect.

Yes. Respect.

The Western Regions had nothing to do with Great Tang anymore. The He Xi Corridor was gone. Great Tang was a sick tiger, old and staggering.

Forget reaching into the Western Regions—what person from the Central Plains still dared approach Yumen Pass?

And yet this lone city had held for sixty years.

In the beginning, the Barbarian Emperor’s nation had poured heavy forces into siege after siege—and met stubborn resistance.

Now it barely spared Kucha City a glance. The city was a tasteless bone, and the white-haired soldiers were long dead, so each assault brought fewer troops than the last.

But taking it had become an obsession.

And if Gu Chang An would not surrender—

Then they would break him.

“Gu!” the blond, blue-eyed commander bellowed in rough, awkward words. “Surrender or not?”

He had come to conquer this Great Tang city stranded alone in the Western Regions.

But the man on the wall was worth more than the city a thousand times over.

A true terror of war. A strength that could only be called monstrous.

“I won’t retreat.” Gu Chang An did not even look up. He kept wiping his sword.

Two plain words.

An absolute refusal.

The barbarians traded glances. Their eyes hardened. Fine, then—capture him alive. And if he fought? Kill him.

“Climb!” the blond captain roared.

Catapults and burning oil were useless now. One man could dodge. One man could vanish between stones.

The only way was to climb the wall.

No single person could stop three hundred from swarming up.

The knights dismounted together, lowering black spears until they formed a dark, bristling forest—like the fangs of the Death God.

“Hah!”

With grunts and stomping feet, they hauled up two ladders. The barbarian army climbed fast, and no arrows fell from above.

Of course. There was only one man. How could he answer a climbing line that never ended?

Boom.

Boom-boom-boom!

Gu Chang An seized a mallet and hammered a great drum until the sound rolled across the city like thunder. One man’s roar of rhythm, enough to face an army.

No one to beat the drum?

Then he would.

In the streets below, the people stood and watched his silhouette on the battlements, backs straight, heads lifted. No one spoke. No one begged. They simply looked—quietly, fiercely—as if looking itself could lend him strength.

When the drumming ended, Gu Chang An curled his fingers around the bronze hilt. His gaze turned cold.

Like a butcher waiting for prey.

The barbarian army climbed onto the wall one after another, killing cries ripping the air.

A spear stabbed in like a falling star, angling hard toward Gu Chang An’s arm.

Clang!

Sparks burst. Gu Chang An snapped his hand sideways, and the force of his palm split the spear clean in two.

The shock ran straight through the attacker. The Uyghur soldier’s insides churned as if his organs had been shaken loose. He looked down and saw his palm torn open, blood streaming, the web between thumb and finger split wide.

He barely had time to feel horror.

A cold flash.

His head flew up into the air, severed in a single, merciless stroke.

Gu Chang An moved like a storm. He swept the enemy aside as if they were reeds, his killing intent pouring down in brutal, relentless waves.

Men froze. Minds went blank. Blood burst from punctures and cuts; bodies toppled.

“Get out.” Gu Chang An’s eyes went red. He slaughtered on the battlements, and no one could even touch him.

Not his armor.

Not a single strand of him.

The blond leader went pale. He had come with formations, with confidence, with plans.

And still he had underestimated Gu Chang An.

Was this damn thing even human?

It was like fighting a god of slaughter.

The battle raged. The barbarian army grew more frightened with every exchange. If they killed this one man, they would finally take the city they had failed to break for sixty years.

But Gu Chang An stood like an unmoving mountain, calm and merciless, telling the Western Regions with every cut—

He was not dead.

The city would not be lost.

“Retreat!” the leader screamed, fear tearing through him. He could not gamble with his life any longer. Better to flee and be punished than die here.

Uyghur soldiers scrambled back toward the ladders, half-mad with terror.

The leader threw away his spear and grabbed at the blood-smeared wall—

An arrow punched through his head.

Gu Chang An stared down at him, expression empty, then drew his bow and aimed at the fleeing tide.

At dusk, the battlements were soaked. Blood ran in broad smears across stone. Broken limbs and severed heads lay scattered like wreckage, the air thick with iron and dust.

…

Women came to pile the bodies and burn them. Ash drifted into the desert beyond the walls.

Enemy ash did not deserve to remain on Great Tang soil.

Gu Chang An sat on the watchtower and drank, stripping off armor stained black-red with dried blood. His robe was white. His hair, long and loose, whipped in the wind.

Night had not fully fallen, yet the moon already hung high in a pale sky. Cold gusts struck, and a thin mist of blood and dust rolled along the wall.

“Glorious Tang,” Gu Chang An suddenly roared, voice cracking open like something broken inside him. “Heaven granted us all nations!”

Then he lost control.

Tears poured down his face.

He had killed three hundred men without a single frown.

Now he was crying like a child.

He was too lonely.

He wanted to tell his comrades—he had cut down three hundred as easily as harvesting grass.

But there was no one left to listen.

Despair choked him. Three hundred, he could handle. A thousand, he might handle.

But thirty thousand?

In a lone city across ten thousand miles, he had not a single reinforcement. Behind him stood a thousand women and children, old and weak, waiting for the next scream of hooves.

“I’m only twenty,” he whispered.

He curled into the corner and hugged himself tight. His body shook.

He knew the formula for black powder. He wanted to blow the enemy apart.

But Kucha City did not even have the most basic materials.

A city sealed for sixty years. Food was already a miracle. What more could anyone ask?

They said a mortal body could stand beside a deity.

But he was still flesh and blood.

How long would this despair last?

He could not die. He had to hold. He had to make the Central Plains know—make them know the An Xi Army’s sixty years of blood and silence.

At last, he wiped his face with shaking hands and forced himself upright. The calm returned, the familiar steadiness settling back over him like armor.

Night fell.

He stood alone on the wall as moonlight spilled over his shoulders.

And for a moment, that cold light felt like home.