Chapter 3
Chapter 3: Even If I Had to Crawl, I Would Crawl to Chang An
Under a storm of startled stares, a gaunt young scholar stepped into the hall.
Long years of shame seemed to have bent his spine. He did not dare lift his head. His steps were weak and uneven, and when he reached the edge of the crowd, he stopped there as if he wished he could melt into the wall.
Women and children turned their faces away in disgust.
Kucha City had only one coward.
The Liu family.
The scholar was named Liu Shang. His grandfather had served as Kucha City’s registrar, managing the city’s affairs—harvest schedules, rationing, the minting of coins that kept their closed world from collapsing.
In those years, the walls still held more than ten thousand soldiers of the An Xi Army. No one needed a clerk to pick up a spear.
But when Liu Shang’s father’s generation came—when the white-haired soldiers on the wall dwindled to barely a thousand—his father still hid behind “busy duties” and refused to fight.
Liu Shang was worse still. He spent his days crouched in a thatched hut with books, as if reading could shut out the scream of hooves and the smell of blood. It was less study than self-numbing.
Kucha City had only two young men left.
One bore the darkness alone—not broad-shouldered, yet carrying the weight of a lone city across ten thousand miles, carrying Shen Zhou’s last frontier mark on his back.
The other had been a disgrace.
Could a saint’s books save the common people?
Could a saint’s books keep a lone city standing?
“I’ll go.” Liu Shang’s face was pale, but his eyes—this time—held an iron steadiness.
The old woman’s gaze cut into him. Even bent with age, her voice carried authority. “The desert is boundless. Even eagles don’t cross it. You sickly scholar—what will you use to walk out of the Western Regions?”
She tapped the map with a trembling finger. “Across hundreds of thousands of miles, only this lone city still flies the Great Tang banner. How much courage do you have?”
In her heart, only Chang An had the ability to cross that murderous sand.
Liu Shang clenched his fists until the knuckles went white. His voice came out low, strained—and fierce.
“Even if I have to crawl, I’ll crawl to Chang An.”
The words landed like a vow hammered into stone.
“I will tell the Central Plains: the An Xi Army held for sixty years. I will tell all people: the frontier soldiers did not retreat a single step. I will tell the descendants of the heroic dead—they did not abandon their homes and children. They bled their last drop for the civilization of the Central Plains!”
His voice broke, then rose again, shaking. “Let a court historian write it down exactly as it was. The An Xi Army must not be forgotten. We must blaze in the records forever!”
His eyes reddened. Tears spilled, hot and unstoppable.
Last night, Gu Chang An had stood alone on the wall. Blood mist drifted. The figure against the desert had been so lonely, so stubborn, that it had burned Liu Shang’s shame into him until he could barely breathe.
He was a scholar.
He could not keep running.
He could not lift a bow or swing a spear for long, but he had two legs that still worked, two hands that could still grip.
Even if he had to crawl, he would reach Chang An.
One year. Two years. Three years.
No matter how long it took, he would carry this thin thread of hope across the sands to the capital and shout to the Central Plains:
In the darkest corner of the Western Regions, someone had held the line for Hua Xia for sixty years. How could you sit and watch barbarians grow stronger while Shen Zhou drowned? Please—rebuild Prosperous Tang!
The women watched him cry until his face was wet. Their expressions softened, slowly, unwillingly.
They all wanted Gu Chang An to leave.
But his resolve was immovable. He would live and die with this strip of land.
So there was only one choice.
Liu Shang would go alone.
Did Liu Shang have selfish motives?
Of course.
If he survived and reached Chang An, his life might finally open. He might study in peace. As someone from An Xi, he might even scrape out a minor position.
After seeing the map, everyone understood: Great Tang could not send reinforcements. It had no strength to reopen the He Xi Corridor.
A lone city was a lone city.
They would never return home.
“You can’t do it,” the old woman said flatly, eyes fixed on Gu Chang An, the words almost a plea. “You go.”
Why refuse to live?
Chang An was clever. He was strong. He would survive the desert. He would fight his way into the Central Plains. One day, becoming a great general or a minister might not be a dream.
“Stop trying.” Gu Chang An’s voice stayed calm, as though he had already burned every softer part of himself away. “I will live and die with the lone city.”
He looked toward the wall as if it were the only truth in the world. “There is only one god—Death God. If it wants to descend on me… it’s not time yet.”
He had been born in Kucha City.
If he died, it would be in Kucha City.
This was faith.
This was conviction.
This was the backbone of the Central Plains—this was the honor of Hua Xia.
He wanted the histories to record it: land must not be lost, civilization must not be extinguished, the backbone of the Han people must stand across the ages like a bridge over a long river.
Besides…
More than twenty thousand grandfathers were watching from above.
Sixty years of battle had left only one seedling.
How could he retreat?
“Liu Shang,” Gu Chang An said, voice cold and clear, “remember what you just said. Even if you have to crawl, crawl to Chang An.”
Then he turned and walked into the inner rooms.
He dug out a heap of copper coins—coins they had minted themselves. The two characters Jianzhong were still stamped into the metal.
Coinage was not for luxury. It was for order. In a city sealed off for sixty years, people still needed something to trade, something to keep life from dissolving into chaos.
But on trade routes controlled by the Barbarian State, copper would be refused.
Only gold would pass.
Gu Chang An searched through an iron chest. In the end he found only a little more than twenty gold beans—trophies saved bit by bit over the years.
…
Outside Kucha City, wind tore at the sand. Moonlight lay pale over the desert.
Liu Shang stood with a fine horse, its back loaded with bundles. He stared at the broken city wall for a long time, eyes shining with tears he could not wipe away fast enough.
“You know their language,” Gu Chang An said, watching him. “Disguise yourself as a barbarian. Slip into towns, find work as a caravan hand in a shop. Use any trading run through the He Xi Corridor—when the chance comes, escape to the Central Plains.”
He held Liu Shang in his gaze for a long moment, then turned away without expression and walked back into the city.
“Safe travels,” he said, voice low. “Reach Chang An alive. Use your learning to make something of yourself.”
He paused.
“And… never come back to the Western Regions.”
Bang.
The city gate shut.
A single wall of stone.
On one side: freedom.
On the other: hell.
Gu Chang An chose hell without hesitation.
Liu Shang dropped to his knees and knocked his head to the ground three times. The skin split. Blood smeared his forehead.
He knew more than twenty thousand An Xi spirits were watching from above.
“Even if I have to crawl,” he whispered, “I will crawl to Chang An.”
That was his vow.
His mission.
Sixty years. Year after year. Day after day.
The An Xi Army could not be forgotten by the Central Plains. They had used their whole lives to guard Great Tang land.
And Gu Chang An—
The man named Chang An had never seen Chang An. He did not even know how the streets of Chang An smelled, or how its people spoke.
But his name could not be buried in endless yellow sand.
Huo Qu Bing of the Han Dynasty, who sealed the wolf at the mountain. Emperor Tai Zong, the emperor who campaigned in all directions. The Empire’s twin pillars Li Jing and Li Ji—names that thundered through the history books.
Yet in a certain way, Gu Chang An was no worse than any of them.
In a dark abyss, he held alone the last mark the Central Plains had left in the Western Regions, turning his life into a light.
That light had to be carried forward—passed to all of Hua Xia.
Liu Shang lifted his head, blood streaking down his brow. He pulled on clothes taken from barbarian corpses, cut off his long hair with shaking hands, and buried it in the sand like he was burying the last piece of his old life.
He mounted.
In the dim night, he looked back again and again.
Then the lone rider took the long way around and vanished into darkness.
On the watchtower, Gu Chang An leaned against the stone and watched him go.
A mission of nine deaths and one life.
Crossing the desert alone was hard enough for a strong man. For a frail scholar, it would take nothing less than stubborn will.
How fierce that will became would decide whether Liu Shang could make it past Yumen Pass, whether he could set foot on a handful of soil from the Central Plains.
Or…
Whether he would die on the road, his identity token buried in the sand, never found.
…