Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Sun and Moon—The Rivers and Mountains Still Stand; Don’t Cry, Everyone. Walk on Slowly.

A pavilion of carved beams and painted rafters stood beside a murmuring stream. By the water, a five-hundred-year-old locust tree cast a shadow so dense it seemed to swallow the light. Beneath it, a middle-aged man stood motionless, like stone.

“Reporting, Sanction Officer—persuasion failed,” Tuo Ba Wei Yang said, careful and respectful.

The man’s features were broad and cold, his brows heavy, his forehead wide. Three long strands of beard hung down to his chest. This was Sanction Officer Zhe Lan Su—also known as Seven Thousand Li.

Across the Seven Thousand Li under his rule, he held life and death in his hands.

Even a commandery princess of the imperial clan, a so-called heaven-born noble, had to lower her head on his land.

“You know I don’t like hearing that.” Zhe Lan Su’s brows drew together, a deep crease cutting between them.

“I nearly died in Kucha City.” Tuo Ba Wei Yang kept her face rigid, but fury leaked through her voice. “That man refuses kindness and insists on meeting King Yama.”

Zhe Lan Su did not even blink. “A woman’s sharpest weapon lies between her legs. Did you use it?”

“Sanction—” She almost snapped. Humiliation surged up her throat, and she crushed it back down. When she spoke again, each word sounded ground out between her teeth. “Reporting, my lord, he refused to marry me—and he nearly took my head off with a single sword!”

Zhe Lan Su looked past her, gaze fixed on some far distance, quiet as a cliff. When he spoke again, it sounded half for her and half for himself. “Women, wealth, and power—he wants none. A man who won’t move for fame or profit is always more decisive.”

There was regret in that tone.

Back in the Central Plains, they had a phrase for it: a wound that never closed.

What a dazzling piece of uncut jade. If Gu Chang An served him, then in the struggle at Central Court, he would have gained another blade—sharp enough to decide life and death.

The empire was favored by the Heavenly Dao. Its borders expanded without end. Wherever a Sanction Officer was posted, they hunted talent like starving wolves. In a chaotic age, the stage belonged to those with ability.

The mediocre deserved only obedience.

Zhe Lan Su stayed silent for a long time. At last he let out a low sigh, as if exhaling something heavy from his chest. “If he wants to be the last flash of brilliance beneath a dying sun, then grant him that.”

His voice hardened into iron. “Kill him. Kill him. If Kucha City stays, I’ll lose what little face I have left.”

The previous Sanction Officer had sealed the truth away. When Zhe Lan Su took office, he continued the old policy. Even now, the empire and Central Court still believed the entire Western Regions were barbarian land.

If His Holiness the Heavenly God discovered otherwise, Zhe Lan Su would be finished—his name trampled into mud at court.

“How many troops?” Tuo Ba Wei Yang asked.

Zhe Lan Su stared at her for a long moment. Then, without warning, he slammed a fist into the locust tree. Bark burst under his knuckles.

“Disgusting,” he spat. “Disgusting. Fucking disgusting.”

Tuo Ba Wei Yang did not flinch. She was used to the Sanction Officer’s temper. The disgusting part, of course, was Kucha City.

To the empire, the city had lost all strategic value. If taking it would win the Western Regions, then even five hundred thousand heavenly troops would be worth the price.

But the Western Regions were already empire land. Only one lonely dead city remained.

Sending too many troops would be waste. Every soldier burned grain and pay; every mobilization poured wealth straight into the sand.

The cost dwarfed the gain.

Yet if they ignored it, and Central Court dispatched an inspector one day, exposure would bring punishment at best and the loss of office at worst.

Zhe Lan Su narrowed his eyes. Authority rolled off him in a cold, heavy wave as he spoke. “This city now concerns dignity. It is the dignity Gu Chang An defends for Hua Xia, and it is the empire’s dignity—one we will not allow a petty upstart to defy.”

He raised his voice. “Raise three thousand. Depart today.”

“Yes!” a distant armored attendant shouted.

“An absolute advantage…” Tuo Ba Wei Yang lifted her pale chin, murmuring as if tasting the words.

“My lord, I wish to go with the army.” She sounded almost eager.

Zhe Lan Su gave a short grunt and did not refuse. A commandery princess was not a princess. If a commandery princess died in the sand, then she died—nothing more.

“I want to see Gu Chang An die,” Tuo Ba Wei Yang said, hatred coiled tight beneath her calm. “I want to see whether that proud head finally bows. Whether he’ll wag his tail and beg.”

Zhe Lan Su flicked her a glance. Women held grudges like hooks sunk into flesh. It probably wasn’t only the near-death that burned her—it was the refusal. Being offered marriage and turned away.

He waved a hand. “Bring a nanmu coffin from the Shu Heartland. Born in Kucha, die in Kucha. He never once set foot in the Eastern Lands—so after death, let him at least taste their breath.”

“What?” Tuo Ba Wei Yang’s voice cracked. She could not accept giving such honor to an enemy.

Zhe Lan Su looked at her as if she were slow. “What kind of man do you think Gu Chang An is?”

“Self-righteous. Shallow. Stupid.” She answered without hesitation.

Zhe Lan Su gave a cold laugh, his voice dropping like a blade. “He is elegant and noble, standing apart from the world. Belittling an enemy does not make us greater.”

He spoke as if passing judgment. “Gu Chang An is destined to remain unknown, but he deserves the highest respect. A great husband who dies defending the frontier can walk sideways even in Yama Hall.”

“Yes…” Tuo Ba Wei Yang lowered her head, unwilling.

“Bury him and the coffin under Kucha City,” Zhe Lan Su added. Then he turned away, hands clasped behind his back.

Beyond that, he would tighten the blockade on information. The story of the An Xi Army could not be allowed into the Eastern Lands or the Central Plains. Gu Chang An’s lone courage must never be exposed.

If Shen Zhou learned that an army had held the Western Regions for sixty years—if Shen Zhou learned that a twenty-year-old man had guarded a city alone—what storm would follow?

The broken, collapsing spirit of the Central Plains might awaken, might rise, might ignite.

…

On the lonely battlements, a figure had always stood—sometimes at the watchtower, sometimes leaning on the parapet—watching the sunset tens of thousands of times.

But today, the wall was empty.

In the city, doors stood open. Women and children, the sick and the disabled lined the street like silent stones. Their faces twisted with grief; sobs rose and broke like waves.

Old Madam Guo was dying.

Perhaps it was the map. Perhaps the sight of what Great Tang had become finally shattered her will and crushed what remained of her strength. Past eighty, she was walking toward the end.

“I’ll die in my bed,” her voice called from the room, oddly bright—like a final flare of candlelight. “That makes me the only one left of the An Xi Army.”

Sixty years ago, she had followed her husband here to garrison the Western Regions. She had left behind the soft, delicate Jiang Nan and come to the bleak dusk of Kucha City.

Those sixty years had been bitter beyond words.

Yet at death’s edge, she could not find even a thread of regret.

“Chang An,” she whispered, gripping his arm with hands like dry roots. “You’ve suffered.”

“I haven’t,” Gu Chang An said softly, patting her forearm.

“In the Central Plains, you should have been a refined young master with flowing sleeves,” she rambled, her voice trembling with tenderness. “A match every maiden would dream of…”

“Grandmother.” He forced a small smile, gentle and strained. “Don’t say that.”

“Go.” Her gaze sharpened, desperate. “Even if you leave and come back—just once. Otherwise I won’t die in peace.”

Gu Chang An fell silent. He had always been firm on this point, but now his tone softened, as if trying to ease her pain without betraying himself.

“Unless I die, I cannot lose this city—not for a moment,” he said. “I would be unworthy of the more than twenty thousand An Xi spirits. I would be unworthy of my own conscience.”

He paused, then added more quietly, “I grew up here. I don’t want to learn another world.”

Her eyes clouded, dimming as if dusk were pouring into them. Relief softened her mouth. “Grandmother will bless you from the heavens,” she murmured. “You will always be the pride of the An Xi Army. You… you… you hold up the backbone of our people.”

Then she looked past him, straight at the faces crowded outside the door. With the last of her strength, she shouted, her voice tearing through grief like a bell:

“The rivers and mountains still stand, the Lone City still stands! Don’t cry, everyone. Walk on slowly!”

Her arm fell. Her breath slipped away.

Gu Chang An went rigid. He reached out and closed her eyes with careful fingers, then stepped into the corridor without a word.

Outside, the crying broke wide open. Women and children surged into the room, collapsing beside the bed, wailing until their voices turned raw.

For sixty years, Old Madam Guo had been a monument of An Xi’s endurance. With her death, it felt as if the An Xi Army’s spine had snapped.

Gu Chang An stopped. He turned and looked at the sea of familiar faces. When he spoke, it sounded like an oath thrown into the wind—and like words meant for his own heart.

“The Lone City still stands. I still stand. The invaders must not pass.”

Then he walked, steady as ever, toward the battlements.

The enemy’s fiercest assault could come at any moment. He had no time for grief—or perhaps grief belonged only in corners where no one watched.

He had witnessed too much death. Since infancy, because of his transmigration, he had understood what death meant with a clarity that never dulled. For twenty years, smiles he once knew had vanished one by one.

His heart had grown numb.

And resolute.

That was why he would hold the Lone City—never retreating, not until his last drop of blood ran dry.