Chapter 8
Chapter 8: Panic and Rage
“Draw me a throne,” Zhe Lan Su said lazily.
At his gesture, the concubine’s cheeks burning, she lifted her hips as ordered and covered her face with both hands, as if that could hide her shame.
The pen tip moved across her snow-white skin, stroke by stroke. There was a perverse amusement in treating a living body like a seat of power.
“My lord!” A guard’s voice burst from outside the room, breathless with urgency. “Terrible news—General Cai Qi Li’s army has been wiped out!”
Clatter.
The pen slipped from Zhe Lan Su’s fingers and hit the floor. For a heartbeat, he froze, as if the words had turned him to ice.
“How is that possible?” he roared. “Impossible!”
“Move!” He yanked up his trousers, kicked the concubine hard enough to send her sprawling, and stormed out.
In the corridor, he seized the guard by the front of his armor and stared into the man’s ashen face. The Sanction Officer who ruled Seven Thousand Li tilted his chin—and slapped the guard so hard the man spun and crumpled unconscious.
“False battle report!” Zhe Lan Su bellowed, fury shaking the walls. “I’ll fuck your mother!”
Several advisers stood at a distance, not daring to take even half a step closer.
The air was suffocating. Silence dragged on until Zhe Lan Su finally forced his breathing to steady.
When he turned, the ruler’s composure had returned—but his face was dark and dull, like iron eaten through by rust.
“Confirmed?” he asked coldly, eyes sweeping over the men.
One adviser lowered his head and chose his words carefully. “My lord, it isn’t complete annihilation. Nearly three hundred deserters survived. Gu Chang An is also gravely injured—barely alive.”
“So by your meaning,” Zhe Lan Su said, smiling without warmth, “we won again, right?”
No one dared speak. The losses were catastrophic, a humiliation that burned the tongue.
“The details,” Zhe Lan Su said flatly.
“According to the surviving soldiers…” The adviser recounted the battle.
When he described blood-red sword energy spreading like flames across the desert, and a single strike carving an abyss into the earth, his voice began to shake despite himself.
That Gu Chang An—what was he? Man, or monster?
A voice drifted from the room behind them, naïve and impatient. “Master… keep going.”
Zhe Lan Su didn’t even look back. “Chop her up and feed her to wolves.”
Then he strode into the garden and sat on a stone bench. Cold wind cut into his nose and throat, clearing his head by force.
“Two thousand seven hundred troopers,” he muttered, each word bitten off. “A capable general. An imperial commandery princess.”
A humorless laugh scraped out of him. “Heh. I’ve lost all face.”
“My lord, please calm down,” an adviser said quickly. “This is not your fault. Gu Chang An is simply too monstrous.”
Another adviser spoke with theatrical grief, hands clenched. “To defend a worthless faith, he became a mad butcher, a bloodthirsty devil. How pitiful.”
“Stop trying to save my face,” Zhe Lan Su rasped. “Humiliation or not, I still have to swallow it whole.”
He snapped his gaze up. “Seal the news.”
A man swallowed hard. “My lord… I fear it will be difficult. The news has already spread.”
Zhe Lan Su’s fist slammed down.
The stone table cracked and collapsed under the blow.
His rage rose like a flood. “Whoever spreads it—kill their nine clans and dig up their ancestors’ graves!”
He leaned forward, voice shaking with fury. “Do you understand what it means if the battle report reaches the empire and Central Court? If it reaches Shen Zhou and the Central Plains?”
The advisers went pale.
It was like hearing nine bolts of thunder.
One man guarding the Lone City. One sword slaughtering three thousand. Just the rumor was enough to make bones turn cold; the truth would shatter minds.
If it reached Central Court, His Holiness the Heavenly God would strip Zhe Lan Su of his position. It was even possible his entire family would be cast into Purgatory.
And the Eastern Lands, the Central Plains—those broken lands would blaze with life again.
They all knew how stubborn that ancient civilization was. It had tasted glory and endured ruin. If it awakened and surged, the great barbarian emperor’s state would no longer be able to suppress it.
“We’re all on the same boat,” Zhe Lan Su said, voice low and vicious. “If the man at the helm drowns, the passengers won’t live either.”
“Understood,” the advisers answered as one.
At any cost, mouths had to be sealed. In the sparsely populated Western Regions, with enough ruthlessness, it could still be done.
“As for that idiot commandery princess,” Zhe Lan Su continued, grinding the words, “I’ll find an excuse to report to Holy City.”
He drew a sharp breath and forced his thoughts back into order. “Now—how do we deal with the Lone City? That empire graveyard.”
He paced, half furious, half helpless. “If I could move the city through the air, I’d beg Gu Chang An to go to Mo Bei, to the Grasslands—anywhere but my territory. Let him defend the Central Plains as he pleases. Just not here.”
The advisers exchanged looks that were almost tearful.
Gu Chang An had driven them toward madness. It was exactly as the saying went—easy to invite a god, hard to send one away.
Zhe Lan Su inhaled and let the breath out slowly, voice sagging for the first time. “I should have a sorcerer read my fate. See whether I’ll end up falling to Gu Chang An.”
“My lord!” An adviser stepped forward, voice ringing. “One deserter swore that if we’d had a thousand more elite soldiers to steady morale, we absolutely would have taken Gu Chang An’s head.”
More bodies meant less fear. Endure that one sword, and the exhausted Gu Chang An would become fish on a cutting board—trapped, helpless.
Zhe Lan Su stared at him, face dark. “Do you think soldiers fall from the sky? Training an elite army costs grain and money.”
He spat, bitterness raw. “Don’t be fooled by the glory of ruling Seven Thousand Li. If my troops are wiped clean, when I return to Holy City I’ll be a dog everyone kicks.”
The adviser swallowed his words and stepped back.
Rage vented did not mean the problem vanished.
Whether for the nation or for personal survival, the Lone City had to be erased. That was a red line.
The problem was that Zhe Lan Su could not bear to spend his own troops. If ten thousand marched to the Lone City, the white figure on the wall would die—of that he had no doubt.
“What about persuading surrender?” a short, fat adviser with a goat beard ventured. He hurried to add, “Since he wants no women, wealth, or power, perhaps we offer Martial World manuals, or send him to the Holy City Abyss, where the Heavenly Dao first descended, to comprehend the law—”
Zhe Lan Su’s gaze sharpened like a spike. “One man faced three thousand elites. Would you surrender? Lie, and I’ll kill you.”
The goat-bearded adviser went pale. After a long moment, he forced out a broken whisper. “I… would.”
Facing that kind of despair, surrender was not shameful. How could an ant dare to shake a towering tree?
Zhe Lan Su’s eyes turned icy. “Gu Chang An met the sword head-on. That resolve shakes heaven and makes ghosts weep. If we go persuade him, we only humiliate ourselves.”
He paced once, then stopped, eyes narrowing as something clicked into place. “But your mention of the Martial World did wake me.”
He turned back to them. “I will personally invite Fu Shang to act. I’d rather owe a lord a favor than allow the Lone City to remain a disaster.”
Relief flickered across their faces.
Peach Blossom Sword Fu Shang—his swordsmanship was famous even in Holy City. Rumor said he was a fourth-rank master. Two years ago, he had been tempering his sword force on the cliffs of the Western Regions.
Even if Gu Chang An were uninjured—even if he were at his peak—he would not be able to touch Fu Shang.
Owing a favor in the Martial World was dangerous. You never knew what it would cost to repay.
But at this point, there was no room left to worry about later.
“Prepare the horse,” Zhe Lan Su snapped. He couldn’t wait another moment.
…
A town lay under dim yellow light. From a shop’s eaves hung a banner marked “grain.” Several caravan hands hunched over bowls, eating in silence between low murmurs.
“I heard Kucha City has a demon,” one said. “Black scales and fangs like a Tao Wu. It squats on the wall and devours the world’s essence. Two thousand seven hundred troopers died in its bloody maw.”
“Yeah,” another muttered. “I thought the Heavenly Dao upheaval didn’t reach the Western Regions. Now it seems the whole world is caught in it. Who knows if the monster will walk out of that city?”
“People are panicking,” someone sighed. “We can only trust Sanction Officer Zhe Lan.”
They spoke with gloom on their faces, unsure whether it was rumor or truth—only that the story had spread like wildfire.
At the end of the table, a sallow-faced man with heavy eye bags kept scooping thin cabbage soup from a soot-black pot. Spoonful after spoonful disappeared into his mouth, dull and mechanical.
“Shang Liu,” a companion nudged him with an elbow. “What do you think?”
Shang Liu didn’t react. Even when his bowl was empty, he kept scooping, repeating the motion as if his body had forgotten the world.
“Hey!” A blue-eyed, curly-haired companion slapped his shoulder and laughed. “You’re possessed too?”
“Ah…” Shang Liu startled awake, blinking hard. “I’ve just been tired lately.”
The others exchanged looks with a pitying kind of amusement.
Serving Boss Lady would exhaust anyone.
“I’m going to piss,” Shang Liu muttered, face tight. He set down his bowl and left the shop, weaving through a few narrow alleys until he could no longer hear their voices.
There, he pressed his back to a wall and began to shake.
Not a demon.
It had to be Chang An.
Chang An did it.
Tears flooded out of him, hot and endless. No matter how he wiped his face, they kept coming.
He couldn’t imagine that despair. Couldn’t imagine how Chang An had held the Lone City—or how he had killed two thousand seven hundred invaders.
“To turn the tide when all is falling, to hold up the roofbeam when it breaks,” he whispered, voice breaking into laughter and sobs at once. “Spring winds green Shen Zhou again, and our people bathe in dawn once more.”
Chang An had suffered too much. But no matter how long the night, that small light had never gone out.
“I’ll cross Yu Men Pass,” Shang Liu swore, clenching his fist until his nails bit skin. “I’ll go to the Central Plains.”
He had managed to mix into a caravan. Even if he had to serve a two-hundred-jin Boss Lady every day, even if he had become a humiliated male slave—what was that compared to will and faith?
Even if the road ahead was full of ravines, even if ten thousand li of desert meant nine deaths and one life, as long as he remembered that white-robed figure on the wall, courage would not run dry.
The next trade run was his only chance.