Chapter 6
Chapter 6: I Have One Sword to Borrow the Lone City’s Spirit
After Old Madam Guo was buried, the women and children slipped into the underground pits one by one. Unless the Lone City itself was destroyed, the invaders would never find them.
Sixty years of defense had taught them what to build. The pits had what they needed—cover, concealment, simple protections.
Only the food grew thinner by the day.
Gu Chang An stood on the wall and played the konghou his grandmother had left behind. Rust ate at the strings. The sound was no longer clear and airy; it rolled out heavy and low, like an avalanche coming down a frozen mountain.
Days passed in dull repetition.
Then, beyond a hundred li, yellow sand surged like a tide. Iron hooves thundered like drums, shaking the horizon beneath the dying sun.
Horns blared without end, as if deliberately sounding a death knell for the Lone City.
Banners swallowed the sky. Three thousand soldiers poured forward like a black wave—arrogant, unstoppable.
At the front rode a commander in pitch-black heavy armor. In his hand was an iron halberd that weighed nearly a hundred jin, making him look like a giant carved out of dusk.
“Lift the coffin!” he roared.
Troopers heaved up the nanmu coffin from the Shu Heartland and hurled it toward Kucha City with all their strength.
“In the Western Regions, only the great barbarian emperor’s state remains,” the commander called through wind and sand, eyes fixed on the walls. “Go die in peace.”
Among the ranks, Tuo Ba Wei Yang rode in armor with a sword at her side. She stared at the white figure on the watchtower and told herself, again and again, that surrender would come only once. The empire’s heavenly troops had arrived. The only road left was death.
“Thank you for the coffin.” Gu Chang An leaned on the parapet, calm as water. He fastened his armor, wiped his blade with steady hands, and then pulled up the red battle standard planted atop the wall.
His long hair whipped in the mountain wind. From far away, he looked like a solitary banner—lonely, stubborn, doomed.
Against the black tide of killing intent, the Lone City seemed unbearably small.
“Attack the city?” Tuo Ba Wei Yang rode forward and asked in a low voice.
The commander cut her a cold glance. If not for her commandery princess status, he would have cursed her as a blind, stupid woman.
The battle standard that symbolized the army’s soul was in Gu Chang An’s hands. He clearly meant to leave the city.
Tuo Ba Wei Yang opened her mouth to speak again—and froze.
The city gate boomed open.
One man stepped out, sword in hand, banner on his shoulder.
The air itself seemed to tighten. A true one-man army, alone before three thousand iron-cavalry elites.
Even as an enemy, the commander felt his blood stir. That was why Sanction Officer Zhe Lan Su had sent a coffin.
To die for faith and frontier without flinching—such spirit could outshine race and nation.
“A soldier swears to die for his country,” the commander said, voice hard as iron. “You do. So do I.”
He snapped his arm up. “Form up!”
The cavalry split into three directions. Bows, crossbows, and shields unfolded in practiced order. On the left wing, heavy-armored shock troops lowered into a posture of charge.
The greatest respect for an enemy was total annihilation—full strength, no hesitation.
The first volley came like rain.
Gu Chang An walked into it, step by step. Dark bolts crowded his vision until the world seemed made of arrows.
A man forged by battle since the age of ten moved with a predator’s sense. What should have killed him skimmed past by a hair—scraping armor, biting metal, burying itself in sand.
He did not slow.
“You dog barbarians!” he snarled, and his bronze sword split a heavy cavalryman clean in half—rider and horse torn apart as if they were cloth.
The crossbows halted in a heartbeat.
Discipline snapped into place. Dozens of spears lunged out together. More elites drew sabers and charged without a word.
Gu Chang An surged forward, carving out space with every step. His bronze sword fell like a flattened mountain, thick sword force sweeping out in a single arc.
Ten men died in one strike, each cut clean at the waist.
Blood burst into the sand. The blade passed, and flesh became ruin. His momentum climbed to a terrifying peak.
Tuo Ba Wei Yang’s face drained white. She clamped her thighs around her horse, knuckles whitening on the reins. The sight sickened her—worse, it frightened her.
The armored man slaughtered alone like a beast made of cold iron, tearing into the battlefield with brutal calm.
“Our army is collapsing…” she whispered, eyes darting to the commander beneath the banner.
The commander did not move. The heavy halberd in his hands stayed still.
This was expected. If Gu Chang An fell easily, he would not deserve the nanmu coffin, nor be worth three thousand troopers marching into the sand.
But human strength had limits.
It was a truth repeated in the empire, in Shen Zhou, and in the Martial World: no matter how unmatched the powerhouse, there would come a moment when even he bent.
“Advance!” the commander roared, swinging his halberd.
The horns sounded again.
The formation shifted like a living beast. Barbarian elites swapped positions in ruthless rhythm, closing in—one at the tip, two behind, three behind—layer after layer, squeezing the space around him.
Gu Chang An’s sword force shattered armor. Heads flew. Bodies fell.
And still they came.
A simple tactic, merciless as mathematics: sacrifice a few to force movement, sacrifice more to tighten the net, until the final weight pressed down and trapped the prey in a corner.
Tuo Ba Wei Yang’s heart pounded hard enough to hurt. On the battlefield, life was less than grass.
And she saw it—Gu Chang An’s movements beginning to slow. His steps grew heavier. His breath, once steady, began to drag.
He was nearing collapse.
At least five hundred troopers lay dead by his sword. He was finally running out.
He yanked his blade free from an invader’s neck with a wet, stubborn sound—and for the first time, it didn’t take the head.
The commander caught that tiny flaw like a wolf catching scent.
“Hear my order!” he bellowed. “Ram him to death!”
Heavy cavalry roared, voices shaking the sand. The commander himself surged forward with the halberd, and hundreds of riders shot out like a released crossbow.
They hit like a giant dragon of iron.
Gu Chang An was thrown as if struck by a mountain. He flew seventy zhang and slammed into the wall; a corner of stone collapsed under the impact.
He spat a mouthful of black blood. He planted his sword into the ground and forced himself upright, shaking but unbroken.
“Magnificent,” Tuo Ba Wei Yang breathed, whipping her arm in sharp triumph. “A general who leads three thousand is no ordinary man.”
Gu Chang An’s death felt certain now. She removed her helmet and rode along the front of the formation, her clear voice carrying far.
“Do you regret it?”
One more charge, and the Lone City—late by sixty years—would finally become empire land.
Power. Wealth. Women. He had refused them all, choosing instead to be buried under Kucha City.
Gu Chang An’s lips were stained red. His eyes stayed calm, empty of ripples. “You’re not qualified to ask me that as a victor.”
He turned his head toward the watchtower.
Every inch of those stones had been under his hands. He had even counted the bricks once—out of boredom, out of stubborn love, out of a kind of quiet madness.
He could not lose it.
Without hesitation, he drove his sword into his own chest.
Inch by inch the blade sank in—until the blood-slick tip burst out through his back.
The battlefield went dead silent.
Even the barbarian elites shivered at the sight. Horrifying. Yet, in a strange way, inevitable.
To die with the city was the most dignified end.
“Good death,” Tuo Ba Wei Yang muttered, and to her own surprise she felt little joy.
He was a lonely hero. And the extinguishing of a hero always tugged something deep in the heart.
Then she felt it—wrongness, crawling up her spine.
Gu Chang An’s eyes flared red, as if a phoenix rebirth burned inside his pupils.
Blood streamed from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth in thin, violent lines. Something invisible swallowed the wind—no, it poured into him from heaven and earth.
He drew the sword out of his body.
There was no blood on the blade.
Only a fire-red glow, as if it had been pulled from ancient magma.
“Kill!” the commander screamed, face twisting. For the first time, fear flickered in his eyes as he urged the full army forward.
Gu Chang An leaned against the wall, staring at the hole in his chest as if it belonged to someone else. He ignored the tearing pain in his organs.
The first time he killed, he had felt something take root inside him—a Fireseed.
With every head that fell, the Fireseed grew.
Today, he had pierced it.
He had pierced himself.
He only wanted to hold this Hua Xia land. Nothing more.
Hooves thundered closer. Bolts and spears covered the blood-soaked man like a storm.
“This sword will sweep away the invaders,” Gu Chang An said, voice steady as an abyss. “This sword will not shame the Central Plains.”
He swung the fire-red bronze blade and spoke two words—quiet, final:
“Heaven-Sundering Slash.”