The Longest Day in Chang'an

Chapter 30: Wei Zheng (14:00-14:59) Part 4

Translator: DragonRider

Fangs in Chang’an were all arranged in the pattern of a chessboard, thus each corner of the street intersection was connected with a Fang. That was to say, the four corners of each Fang would be adjacent to a cross street. As a result, residents in Chang’an preferred to call the cross street by the east-west diagonal Fangs’ name, which gave each cross street a unique name that wouldn’t be easily confused. This cross street, with Guangxing Fang in the northeast and An’le Fang in the southwest, was named Guangxin An’le.

This was the south end of the West Street I on Rosefinch Street, only a Fang away from the city wall. Although the hound couldn’t guide them to the specific direction, Zhang Xiaojing was already able to deduce what these Turks were up to in the south city.

Chang’an was densely populated in the north but sparsely in the south where most of the Fangs were spacious and desolate, unfrequented and grassy.

Cui Qi’s eyes lit up, “I’ll call up some men to search all the Fangs over! I’ll see where these assholes can get into.”

Zhang Xiaojing shook his head, “This is only the place where the fragrance of the incense stops, not necessarily the place where wolves hide. Turks have too many places to hide in this area.” He reached out and drew a circle in the air as he spoke, which basically included the whole southwest corner of Chang’an. Turks could be in anywhere in the sixteen or so desolate Fangs.

“We can’t alarm the wolves at this critical moment...” Zhang Xiaojing suddenly slowed down and stressed every word. Cui Qi immediately got his hint. Ever since Sicheng Li got the news that Wang Zhongsi’s daughter was kidnapped, he personally issued an order that tough raid like that in C 6 Warehouse must be avoided. They must exercise extreme caution when taking action in case Wang’s daughter might be put in danger.

“If only my brother were still alive...” Cui Qi sighed but then hurried to explain, “He grew up in the west city and was extremely familiar with the whole city. I’m not complaining about you.”

“That’s why Turks would ask him to draw Fang map, right?”

“Aye!” Cui Qi’s eyes reddened as he clenched his fist tight. His elder brother’s death had left him in a state of confusion and flurry, causing him to make many mistakes. So he was more eager than anyone else to catch this Cao Poyan.

Zhang Xiaojing suddenly knitted his brows as he just sensed something wrong. But that feeling vanished in a fleeting second. He shook his head and followed Cui Qi’s gaze to look ahead. At this point the sun had started its course to the west. And the grey colored walls of Fangs extended far out of sight. Cui Qi smashed his helmet to the ground, annoyed. This was the first time he felt Chang’an so annoyingly large.

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The hound, busy chewing dried meat, was scared by his move and hurried to hide behind Zhang Xiaojing.

Yao Runeng ventured gingerly, “Can’t we just call together all on duty at neighboring watchtowers, the scouts and Fang Guards and ask them if they have noticed anything abnormal?”

Zhao Xiaojing and Cui Qi both sighed, helpless. South city was unpopulated with slack management. Guards assigned here were few and inferior. It would be easier to let monks in Ci’en Temple eat meat than expect them to notice something.

But it was a thing that had to be done, so Cui immediately called up fifty soldiers from Lubi Army. They went into the nearby Fangs in pairs, without weapons or armor, carrying only smoke balls and horns to see if they could find any clues.

As for Zhang Xiaojing, he took the hound in his left hand and brushed the dust from his eye socket with his right hand, looking at the several nearby watchtowers. He had formed the habit of checking the watchtower now and then to see if there was an update. But he was somewhat contradictory as he had only received bad news from the watchtower ever since taking over the matter.

“Let’s hope something good happens once in a while...” Zhang Xiaojing sighed. He then whispered something strange as he stroked the thick neck hair of the hound. The hound did not understand human language at all, so it only barked in response. It did not know that if this sentence was heard by other human beings, it would cause a stir.

Daning Fang was on the fourth street to the east of Rosefinch Street, with Yanxi Gate of the imperial palace on the west and only a Fang away from Daming Palace to the north. Therefore, most residents here were officials. Funny thing was though the residents all enjoyed high status, their mansions were not luxury as those in An’ren and Qin’ren Fang. Most of the mansions were green and tile-roofedwith seven rooms and three layers of yards. That was because this place was too close to Daming Palace and Xingqing Palace where the emperor could easily get a view of all the houses as long as he climbed up to the palace walls. And demonstrating extreme extravagancy under the emperor’s eyes was apparently not a wise choice.

In the time of Lantern Festival the emperor would celebrate the day with commoners, so officials were not bold enough to do otherwise. Therefore, all Fangs were decorated with lanterns with a lantern shelf standing in every ten houses. However, the decoration looked a bit restrained, and the scale of lanterns was only of medium level, which led to only a few to appreciate the lantern show. And the streets were not as crowded as in other Fangs.

Feng Dalun rode a horse toward his own mansion, dodging the galloping carriages of varying sizes. In the dark, he was the boss of Fires Gang that ran amok in Wan’nian County while back in this place, he was just a ninth–ranked official of Ministry of Work who was in charge of Yu Ministry affairs. Thus he must follow the rules and etiquette.

Head of Yu Ministry, though a low ranked official, was in charge of the renovation, repair and construction in the whole Chang’an. His duty included the selection of workers, purchase of materials and supervision of the construction, which was quite a profitable post. Feng Dalun was born of a humble family but more far-sightedthan the average. He, by virtue of the convenience his position provided, established his own force, Fires Gang, that could help to complete many of his filthy goals that could not be achieved publicly. With him in the light and the gang in the dark, he managed to control the projects of nearly half of Wan’nian County.

If not for the case last year, he would have had been promoted. Bah! Just forget it. It was all over and whoever stood in his way had been cleaned up.

This day Wen Ran reminded him of old grudge. She was the only person in the case who had not been imprisoned. So he sent some of his men to punish her a little. The punishment process didn’t matter. What mattered was to let everyone know that anyone who offended him had to pay a price, even if the matter was over.

‘Now I bet that little bitch is crying!’

As he thought of this, his brows unknitted with an evil smile hung by the corner of his mouth. Just as he was about to dismount his horse by the door of his mansion, there jumped out a man glaring his toad eyes. The man held the rein of his horse and shouted, “Curator Feng! Curator Feng!”

Feng looked down and saw the warder of the condemned prison of Wan’nian County. Face drastically changed, he asked, “What brings you here?”

The warder hurried to say after a long and anxious wait, “Yama Zhang left the prison!”

Feng was almost scared off the horse. He hurried to sit tight on the horseback and asked with a sullen face, “How did he escape?”

The warder cried, “He didn’t escape! Someone came to take him out!”

“Taken out?” Feng quickly ran all the departments that had the right to fetch the detainee in his mind. Dali Temple? Ministry of Penalty? Or Palace Library?

“No, Jing’an Department did it. All documents complete. So I couldn’t even refuse.”

“Jing’an Department...” The name sounded a bit familiar so he tried to recall the Tipao(similar to political newspaper) of the past half year, his eyes suddenly narrowed into two sharp needles.

“When?”

“About four hours ago. I’ve been waiting here for really long.”

“Why did Jing’an Department take him out?”

The warder shook his head, “Not stated. The document only mentioned for official matter. His shackles were removed the moment he was out and instead in a prisoner’svan, he rode a horse away with an envoy from Jing’an Department.”

With trembling hands, Feng pulled the horse to turn around and whipped the horse to leave. The warder hurried to shout, “Curator Feng, where are you going?” Feng Dalun paid no attention to the words and galloped away in the direction he had just returned.

The warder froze at the place and not until then did he recall that this Chang’an bigwig in the dark was actually trembling when holding the rein.

Feng Dalun galloped all the way south to Jinggong Fang at the easternmost of Chang’an. Adjacent to the city wall, this Fang enjoyed quite a name in Chang’an for the polo field called, Yousa Land (Oil Spill Land) that had been constructed by Yang Shen, the husband of Princess Royal. This was the biggest polo field second only to the one in the imperial palace in Chang’an where received mostly the aristocrats and royal members.

He was greeted by the cheers afar the moment he entered the field. A spacious polo field came into view at the foot of the hill as he crossed a hill slope with nicely trimmed bushes. The khaki colored field was about 150 steps wide and 400 steps long, surrounded by rails decorated with colored silks and banners. Outside the field stood over ten tents of heavy fleece that were built around the willows, and the flags with different family name were randomly placed beside each tent. Each stood for an influential family in Chang’an.

In the field several riders were engaged in a fierce race. And the small ball kept jumping around in the dusts as the horses galloped. All of a sudden, a rider in brocade rushed out and held his stick high, hitting the ball right through the dragon ring and against the board behind it. The female guests in the tents all cheered and applauded as the rider galloped round the field with his stick in a proud manner.

This was the polo racenormallyheld on Lantern Festival, also called Spring Welcoming Race. Behind the dragon ring must set a board with cloud pattern and the ball must be replaced by one embroidered with golden Fu pattern for this day. Whoever scored first was said to be a dragon through the clouds, which was regarded as a good omen for a prosperous and smooth new year.

At this point there came several sounds of the gongs signaling the end of the first half of the game. The riders all stopped their horses to greet each other before they went back to their own tent.