The Longest Day in Chang'an

Chapter 23: Wei Chu (13:00-14:59) Part 2

Translator: DragonRider

Li Bi at this moment had returned to Jing’an Department. He summoned Xu Bing and others to whisper the discussion before the sand table. On the outer periphery, secretaries, servants, message senders, and private servants were all fully occupied, giving a hustling busy scene to the whole lobby of Jing’an Department.

At this moment, one low-ranked official was holding an hourglass bottle and standing on one side. Waiting until the thin sand was drained, he overturned the bottle and counted loudly, “One, two, three...” Every four-times of counting, an elder next to him would put a few red paper-patches between Fangs. On the sand table, now there were more than thirty patches of red paper, covering over a dozen Fangs in the city north. They grouped and clustered up, forming a huge lot of patch at a distance look.

After a short while, Xu Bin raised his hand to gesture a halt of timing and made a salute to Li Bi, “Forty times of leak; thirty-seven Fangs.”

The numbers turned everyone’s face sullen.

The purpose of this sand-table-based deduction was to figure out what on earth the Turks wanted to do.

Zhang Xiaojing went all out to investigate, yet Li Bi didn’t like to wait passively. He decided to take the initiative. The Turks claimed that Chang’an would become a Kailu Hodo, but what Kailu Hodo stood for was still unclear. Therefore, Li Bi had convened a batch of officials who were experts in the city conditions and gave them a subject, “How to cause the greatest damage to Chang’an City in shortest time span?”

The officials quickly came up with the conclusion—arson.

Other means would be either too complicated or yield limited effect. To plan an arson was easy at a low cost. As long as choosing the right place and timing, a few people were able to cause a big trouble.

For the wolf guards who had no backup force in Chang’an City, this seemed to be their only best choice.

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Nevertheless, Li Bi was still discontent with this answer. He wanted more details: Where should the fire be set? In which direction should it spread? How fast? Thus, he invited a few scouts who were familiar with fire safety and conducted a deduction using this big sand table.

During the deduction, every overturn of the hourglass was counted as a quarter of hour and one patch of red paper suggested the fire around three-hundred steps away. The numbers “forty times of leak and thirty-seven Fangs” that Xu Bing had reported meant that once the fire started, within eight hours, the fire could spread to reach thirty-seven Fangs, and all of them were bustling places in the city north as well as essence of Chang’an City.

And this was the simulation of fire ignited at one place. If they were attentive enough to set up simultaneously at many places, the result would be several times horrible.

At the sight of the densely-distributed red patches, the on-lookers all summoned up in their minds an appalling picture of a purgatory city. Was this what they called Kailu Hodo?

Li Bi frowned, “It spreads so fast? Are the fire protection methods taken into consideration?”

Xu Bin replied, “Usually, different Fangs are separated by walls, and there are river channels within to divide them, so that...yet, don’t forget that today is the Lantern Festival when each Fang will hang lanterns on streets. I’m afraid that there will be millions of lit-up candles. In addition, the lantern husks are made of bamboo or wood, linking one to another ceaselessly to cover a lot of Fangs. This spring is dry and windy. Once there is fire, it can hardly be stopped from burning...”

Everyone came to the realization. Little wonder that the Turks were obsessed with the Fang map. With the map in their hands, they could easily figure out where were the furthest places from river channels, what places were at high altitude from where gale came, where the key places located that would let the fire spread at the highest speed.

Cui Qi asked loudly, “We have watchtowers! Can’t we send out fire fighters to put the fire out the moment we see fire?”

Xu Bin’s expression was bitter, “Alas, General Cui, things aren’t that simple. Tonight, millions of folks and soldiers will go out to watch lanterns which may even cause congestion. How can we mobilize scouts? What’s more, once the fire starts, the folks will definitely be startled. With so many people running and stepping on each other, should we save people or put out fire?”

Cui Qi shut up. He knew from inside and out how terrifying a chaotic army was. The two people simultaneously shifted their eyes to the minister. Li Bi pinched his chin, silent.

The best way to cope with it was certainly to cancel the festival and resume the night ban—which was hardly possible; the second-best was to investigate households one by one—which was also impossible. Li Bi shook his head helplessly. Being held back by the elbow from both inside and outside and with unfulfilled wishes, Jing’an Department was really dancing with shackles.

In fact, there was another way, that was to let the official mark out the most suitable places for arson and allocate people to ambush in advance. However, this move was no less than a gamble. Once there was one mistake in the guessing, the whole would collapse. Li Bi didn’t appreciate such a passive attitude.

But if this move wasn’t to be taken, what else could they do? Could they solely count on Zhang Xiaojing?

At this time, a white-bearing elder official advised, “It would be better to check material than Fangs.” Li Bi’s eyes lit up and indicated him to go on. The elder official replied respectfully, “I used to be a farmer. Back then, I often set fire on withered stalks. In order to produce a titanic fire, the first is to set up a big fire and second, make it spread fast. The former relies on oil and the latter on burning material. If the wolf guards want to set fire on the whole city, they need both of them, in large amount.”

“You mean that the wolf guards must have stored a huge batch of oil and burning material in Chang’an City?”

“Yes, minister, you’re wise. In my opinion, as long as we keep an eye on these two kinds of things, the result definitely will be fruitful.”

This suggestion struck out a new path for itself. Listening to it, the group of people all nodded secretly. Li Bi appreciated, “As an old maxim goes, the top priority is to prevent and the second to rescue. The method will solve the problem from the very root. Insightful!”

Seeing that their peers gained praising from the minister, others also became bold to speak up. One said, “The burning materials will be coming from the mountain folks living around the capital. They are scattered all around, which makes it difficult to investigate one by one, so let’s just focus on oil. This kind of goods is hard to produce unless it’s a big workshop. Therefore, all the sources are in the hand of the few tycoons, whom are much quicker to look into.”

Another low-ranked official added, “Oil in the capital depends on import from other places. As long as we check into the clearance records at the city door guards, to see whether there have been foreign merchants who carried large amount of oil raw materials such as pig fat, goat fat, peanuts or finished oil, so that we can track down to the places storing these...”

“Ridiculous. Do you think that the locals won’t be bought? If to investigate, do it thoroughly!” Li Bi pulled his face and corrected. The opinion he had always been instilling in the mind of his men was: Do not hold prejudice to foreigners, because all races are dangerous.

The clerks quickly wrote these suggestions down to make a dozen official letters, on which stamped the seal of Jing’an Department by Li Bi in person.

“Send them to all local offices and let them carry out immediately upon receiving. Within two hours, I need the list of places where oil and oil materials are stored.”

The message senders took the order and dashed out in a hurry. The clerks sat back to their chairs and started to get busy again.

Li Bi returned to his own seat, closing his eyes. Tanqi walked to behind him and began to gently rub his temples with the slender jade fingers. In a while, Tanqi suddenly heard the sound of light snoring.

He should fall asleep.

Tanqi recalled and found the lord hadn’t taken a nap for forty-eight hours.

*

Zhang Xiaojing regained his consciousness from coma and found himself tied up to a pillar, hands bounden up high. His nose still hurt from time to time with blood adhered around. Mag’er walked to him, shaking the identity plate “Jing’an Ceping” in his hand, a morning wood standing in his pant.

Mag’er now was in a horrible mood. The furuncle on his round nose tip swelled bigger, and some oil even spilled out.

He had been carrying out General Yousha’s instruction to drag these two girls to this safe house. General Yousha only said to keep them alive and nothing else, so Mag’er decided to enjoy himself. Ever since he came to Chang’an City from the grassland, he had been constraining himself to keep a low-profile. His desire was going to explore. He was no impassive man like Cao Poyan. He wanted fresh blood, massacre as well as shriek of women.

Mag’er had made a perfect plan that he would fuck both of the women and then keep the daughter of Wang Zhongsi alive while torturing the other one to death in the cruelest ways to vent out his thirst and to welcome the upcoming Kailu Hodo with his best self. At the thought of the woman, daughter of the renowned Dreadful King of Grassland, moaning under his body, Mag’er’s penis couldn’t help standing up high.

Unexpectedly, when he had just taken off his pants, here came an intruder, which annoyed Mag’er very much.

What upset him more was that this intrude should have an identity plate. Though Mag’er was illiterate, he knew that this heavy-looked plate wasn’t an ordinary thing.

Mag’er desperately wished to kill this intruder without any hesitation and go on to play the women. However, after all he was one of the wolf guards and had to consider another factor—this guy’s equipment was too advanced. Either the identity plate, the soft armor or the hand crossbow were high-end products, which very likely belonged to Jingzhao Office or Jinwu Guards or even the army.

Now that the guy was able to find him, it meant that others could too and that this safe house became unsafe now.

This question must be figured out.

“How do you know we’re here?” Mag’er asked in broken Tang language.

Zhang Xiaojing didn’t speak and just gazed at Mag’er with his cold only eye. Mag’er felt very uncomfortable, because the gaze looked exactly the same with that of a grassland wolf. A lone wolf would forever regard humans with that kind of sullen eyes whether it was trapped or faced with death.

Mag’er snorted, taking out Zhang Xiaojing’s knife, and gently cut off a slice of flesh on his throat, which instantly began to bleed like flood, “Tell me, or there will be more suffering.”

Zhang Xiaojing’s lips trembled, and Mag’er thought he was going to confess, but unexpectedly, he heard him asking, “Where are the women?” Mag’er’s eyebrows jumped and instantly, he gave a nasty punch into his lower abdomen, making him couldn’t help but vomit at once.

“Now I’m the questioner!”

But Zhang Xiaojing already knew the answer. Just now, Mag’er subconsciously took a glance at the room next to this, which meant that Wenran was there exactly. He was very familiar with the special fragrance.

“How do you know we’re here?”

Mag’er asked again, and, seeing that he made no response, stabbed the knife to Zhang Xiaojing’s armpit. The cold touch of iron made his skin shiver. Mag’er tightened his lips and deliberately moved the knife slowly like peeling a pear, neatly slicing off a peel of bleeding skin from his body. As the knife turned over, Zhang Xiaojing could no longer hold back a gruesome shriek.

This, in Turkish, was called making flesh money, because the slice of flesh was in the same size of a coin. To rotate a knife at this part of body wouldn’t be fatal but extremely painful. Only after a few flesh coins were made, any tough prisoners would confess everything.

However, although Zhang Xiaojing’s face distorted from pain, he remained clammed up and fixed his disdaining eye on him. Mag’er momentarily realized that this guy was trying to buy time! Probably a bigger squad was already on the way.

No. He must leave the place immediately!