The Longest Day in Chang'an

Chapter 36: Shen Chu (15:00-15:59) P5

Translator: DragonRider

Cao Poyan’s movement briefly paused due to this sudden change. Zhang Xiaojing brandished the Zhang Dao (A barrier dagger about 15-20cm long) and slashed at his throat. With his extremely quick reflexes, Cao Poyan rapidly drew back and narrowly dodged this strike, but the necklace made of colorful stones around his neck abruptly bounced up and got hit by the edge of the blade.

The chain of the necklace was severed and all the stones scattered, falling to the ground. At this moment, Cao Poyan made an unexpected move: he stamped on the ground and with the reactive force, leaned forward, stretching out his hands to grab those colorful stones. With a squelch, Zhang Xiaojing’s saber penetrated his abdomen, the tip of the saber revealed behind his back.

But Cao Poyan didn’t pause, waving his arms trying hard to grab those stones – even a single one of them would be enough for him. However, those colorful stones had fallen to the ground and were beyond his reach. He raised his head and uttered an incomprehensible Turkish syllable. It sounded like someone’s name, but unfortunately nobody could understand it.

Cao Poyan’s head slowly drooped, his body impaled by the Zhang Dao.

Zhang Xiaojing was startled. He couldn’t afford to let Cao Poyan die, since this guy had the answers to so many questions. Not daring to pull the saber out, he held the hilt with one hand, clutched Cao Poyan’s shoulder with the other, craned beside his ears and urgently yelled, “Where did you take the woman?” But there was no response. Zhang Xiaojing suddenly noticed that part of the hair on the top of this Wolf Guard’s head had been cut, revealing the scalp.

By Turkish custom, cutting the hair on the top of someone’s head was synonymous with collecting their soul in advance. No wonder Cao Poyan seemed to be ready for death – he had been dead for a long time.

Zhang Xiaojing shook his shoulders angrily, trying to wake him up, but the Wolf Guard’s body limply fell down.

Beside them, large numbers of Lubi Army soldiers were rushing squarely towards the warehouse.

“Break the door!”

A sonorous voice came from the courtyard. Cui Qi’s spirits had recovered. In his eyes, Cao Poyan was just a petty minion whose life was totally insignificant. The person who really mattered was in this warehouse.

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This warehouse was reconstructed from a kiln producing bricks and tiles, and all its doors were made of fragile pearwood, which were very vulnerable. A dozen Lubi soldiers dashed over. The one at the head of the team pushed the gate and found that it was bolted from inside, and there was also an external lock. They didn’t wait for the door-breaking timber to arrive but just inserted the saber into the crack in the gate and started hacking heavily. They first broke the lock, and then nearly severed the horizontal wooden bolt on the other side of the gate before the steel saber broke.

Another soldier started giving hard kicks on the gate. With a great crash, the gate was forced open. In pairs, side by side with crossbows in their hands, they advanced into the warehouse.

The moment they entered, they were greeted by a smell so pungent that they could barely keep their footing. The soldiers paused a while to collect themselves before observing the situation inside. This was a spacious, empty warehouse, in the middle of which stood two vats with stone lids. The vats were placed on a primitive range made of stones, in which logs were burning briskly. Black stains could be seen all over the vats and the surface of the range, and there were a lot of shavings of bamboo.

At the end of the warehouse, there was another gate which was open. At the gateway was an unloading platform about four feet high, but there was nobody around. The soldiers exchanged an eye contact with one another, faces full of suspicion. They horizontally held their crossbows and advanced with caution.

A hound chained outside the courtyard suddenly barked. Zhang Xiaojing took a few sniffs and then hurriedly loosened his grip on Cao Poyan’s body, yelling madly at Cui Qi, “Fall back! Now!” Cui Qi was confused, “Commandant Zhang, don’t worry. I think–”

Before he could finish his sentence, a deafening explosion came from inside the warehouse. For an instant, the whole house abruptly expanded and with that furious flames violently surged out of the gate and windows, waves of scorching heat sweeping in all directions making the whole place like the alchemy oven of the Taishang Elder (An immortal in Chinese mythology who specializes in alchemy). Unprepared, those soldiers outside the warehouse were thrown to the ground by the blast. Those who were further away from the warehouse also felt burning pains in their faces, grimacing.

All people in the courtyard were transfixed by this unexpected explosion and nobody reacted for nearly ten Tanzhi (1. Tanzhi is a unit of time used in ancient China. A Tanzhi equals around 7.4 seconds). Everybody just stood where they were like wooden barrels, their ears buzzing. It was not until Cui Qi let out an angry roar of despair resounding through the whole courtyard that they collected themself and rushed to the rescue of the injured in a flustered manner.

In horror, Cui Qi looked in Zhang Xiaojing’s direction. Since Zhang Xiaojing yelled at them warning them to fall back before the explosion, he must know the reason for it. Zhang Xiaojing’s face was pale, as if a gust of northerly wind from the desert had just blown past him. Lips quivering, he uttered three words, “Fierceflame Bomb.”

At the time when Gao Emperor was in power, alchemists of Tang Dynasty had discovered that flames could be produced by mixing nitri, sulfur and honeylocust-seed charcoal, and they called it “Fierceflame”. During an intense war against the Western Regions, a craftsman working for the Tang army, with some ingenuity, concocted some fossil oil using a secret formula, stirred it into sawdust and white phosphorus, heated the concoction and then fixed a glob of Fierceflame mixture near the opening of the pot before sealing the pot up. He then stuck one end of a length of dried, castor-oil-soaked vine through the sealed opening into the concoction, leaving the other end of it outside.

To use it, one was to lit the dried vine, which would set off the Fierceflame when the flame reached the opening of the pot. The blazing Fierceflame would then react with concocted fossil oil mixed with flammable materials and produce a huge blast. Since the blast sounded like a thunder, so people called the bomb “Fierceflame Bomb”.

Normal fossil oil could not be detonated. It had to be concocted following the secret formula before it could be used to make a Fierceflame Bomb. Craftsmen who knew the secret formula were very rare, since the technics were too complicated. Besides, Fierceflame Bombs were prone to cause friendly fire, so Tang Army stationed in the Western Regions didn’t use them very often. Nobody had expected that these savages from the grassland who had only archery and riding skills would find craftsmen capable of making Fierceflame Bombs. And they had actually managed to produce such dangerous things in the middle of Chang’an city.

Fortunately, Zhang Xiaojing used to be in the Western Regions and was an experienced veteran who reacted the moment he smelled the familiar odor of sulfur. Otherwise the casualties would have been much heavier.

Judging by the force of the explosion, there had been a considerable amount of Fierceflame Bombs in the warehouse. It was very likely that they had anticipated the Jing’an Department’s raid operation and thus laid such a lethal trap for them. Cao Poyan, who was guarding at the front of the courtyard, had been a disposable camouflage for those Fierceflame Bombs all along.

In front of staff members of the Jing’an Department, the whole warehouse was fiercely aflame like a burning, smoky torch. Its frame didn’t collapse for the moment. Looking through the window and the open gate, they saw that it was like a flaming hell inside the warehouse. They could only imagine what miserable deaths those ten plus Lubi soldiers, who had been the first to rush into the warehouse, had died.

This scene was so shocking that even the bravest soldiers turned their heads back, faces full of wretchedness. With a livid look, Cui Qi asked in a quivering voice, “Was this a... bait to lure us into the trap?”

Zhang Xiaojing shook his head, “It wasn’t. Killing us is meaningless to them. They did this to stop us from pursuing them, so that they could transfer finished Fierceflame Bombs.”

Cui Qi gasped in horror. Since two Fierceflame Bombs were already powerful enough to cause such extensive damage, if there were dozens of them... He said urgently, “But, after we entered the Fang, we came here directly, and we didn’t see any of them.”

Zhang Xiaojing raised his hand and pointed in the direction of the end of the flaming warehouse. Thick as the smoke was, it could still be vaguely seen that there was another exit on the opposite side. They could even see the contours of the unloading platform.

This place used to be a highly productive kiln producing bricks and tiles, which wagons went in and out of frequently. It was very inconvenient for those wagons to go through the fang gate of the Changming Fang, so the kiln owner sent an application to the Yu Ministry which made an exception and breached the fang wall opposite the kiln to make another gate, which thus made the street conveniently accessible to wagons – Those Turks had been driving the wagons through that gate all along, so those beggars in the Changming Fang naturally couldn’t see them.

Previously, Zhang Xiaojing had asked Jia Shiqi, and the latter said that he didn’t see many wagons enter the fang this day. Zhang Xiaojing became suspicious right at that moment, and now the fact had proved his speculation right.

He couldn’t blame anybody. It had been a very long time since the bricks kiln closed down, and nobody could have remembered these details.

Those Turkish Wolf Guards had Cao Poyan guard the front and then sneaked out of the courtyard from this exit. Unfortunately, this exit was blocked by fire and nobody could get close to it before the fire went out. The Jing’an Department was so close to their targets, but those Turks still managed to escape yet again.

Ashen-faced, Cui Qi knew that once the other bombs exploded in Chang’an, his life would come to an end.

“No. We still have a chance!” a piercing look flashed across Zhang Xiaojing’s eyes. “Fierceflame Bombs can’t be prepared in advance. They have to heat the mixture and set off the bombs on site, which means they couldn’t have gone far away! The speed of wagons shipping fossil oil is not very fast, so we should be able to catch up with them if we get going right now.”

A glimmer of hope appeared in Cui Qi’s eyes when he heard this. He stood up and said in a deep voice, “I’ll inform those watchtowers and have them beat the Jiuguan drums!”

“Um. I’m counting on you!”

Zhang Xiaojing turned his head aside and ran to the foot of the fang wall nearby. Cui Qi was confused about what he was going to do. When Zhang Xiaojing reached the foot of the fang wall, he opened his arms, took a leap and swiftly climbed to the top of the fang wall by alternately stepping on a couple of protruding bricks. Then he twisted his head back and yelled:

“Tell Sicheng Li – all units nearby take action on my smoke signal!”

After making this remark, Zhang Xiaojing whistled. Before long, on the street outside the wall, a purplish red horse galloped over. Zhang Xiaojing leaped down and steadily landed into the saddle. Without any pause, he shook the rein and galloped forward, followed by Yao Runeng who was on another horse.

It turned out that Zhang Xiaojing had just had Jia Shiqi deliver a message to Yao Runeng, telling him to lead two horses and walk along the outside of the wall towards the northwestern corner. Under this circumstance, time was more precious than gold and jade. There was not enough time for him to detour to the fang gate, and getting over this wall was the quickest way.

The situation on the street was somewhat chaotic. More and more civilians were getting into the city and they all stopped to look on when they saw the sudden outbreak of black smoke in the direction of the Changming Fang. Mules, wagons, camels and chattering lookers-on were all over the street. Zhang Xiaojing kept galloping forward and there were several occasions when he nearly knocked down foreign merchants. There was a laborer of a camel caravan who swore at him, refusing to make way. Zhang Xiaojing heavily lashed him in the back and the laborer gave a jump due to the pain. Seeing this, those lookers-on got scared and quickly moved to the sides of the road.

They had to stop when they arrived at the Guoyi Guiyi, which was the intersection with Guoyi Fang at the east and Guiyi Fang at the west. Zhang Xiaojing looked around in all four directions yet didn’t find any suspicious traces. He restlessly pulled the reins, his horse snorting impatiently due to the long pause.