Xu Youde had not slept a full night's sleep in three days.
The account books of money and grain for the autumn imperial examination piled up half of his desk. The notes allocated by the Ministry of Revenue came one after another, and the replies from various provincial capitals flew to the capital like snowflakes.
He was already overwhelmed by this errand, but this morning, the gatekeeper sent in another secret letter sealed with wax.
There was no signature on the envelope, only a tiny word "Huan" drawn in charcoal in the lower left corner.
When Xu Youde saw this word, he didn't even have time to put down his teacup steadily, and the tea spilled over half of his sleeve.
He was completely unaware of it, immediately bolted the study door from the inside, and personally stuffed the gaps in the window lattice with cotton handkerchiefs.
The wax seal was intact.
He used a paper knife to open the seal, unfolded the letter paper, and first briefly glanced at the opening polite formulas reporting safety.
"Your daughter is safe and sound, and Second Brother is also unhurt."
He then turned it over and directly read the following text.
The first two lines were about military agricultural colonies in Hetao.
Xu Youde's hand stopped.
He laid the letter paper flat on the desk, leaned close to the oil lamp, and read word by word.
The letter explained the predicament of grain and forage in Zhenbei City in great detail:
The military grain allocated by the imperial court every year started from the capital, went through the canal and transferred to land routes. Along the way, officials at all levels exploited it layer by layer, coupled with natural loss on the way. If three out of ten stones of grain could be transported to Zhenbei City, it would be considered a blessing from Heaven.
The 30,000 defenders were crying piteously for food, entirely relying on this little grain to hang on to their lives. Once the Helian people cut off the supply line, the Zhenbei Army wouldn't even last three months.
The second paragraph of the letter suddenly changed the subject and mentioned the Hetao Plain.
Xu Youde had stayed in the Ministry of Revenue for most of his life, and he was thoroughly familiar with the geography, mountains and rivers of all states and prefectures in the world. Of course, he knew that place in Hetao.
South of the Yin Mountains, inside the "ji"-shaped bend of the Yellow River.
But wars had been fought in that place for decades, and the common people had long run away. The fertile fields had all been deserted into white saline-alkali beaches.
Xu Youde's throat moved, and he continued reading.
The third paragraph of the letter made him even more restless.
Dehydrated vegetables.
These four words were written very heavily, and the ink smudged a small area, showing how much effort the letter writer used when writing.
The letter clearly described the five processes of "washing, blanching, smoking, drying, and sealing", and even drew simple diagrams of the dimensions of the kiln, the direction of hot air circulation, and the ratio of quicklime sealing at the end of the letter.
After Xu Youde read the last line, he propped his hands on the desk and let out a long breath of turbid air.
He paced back and forth in the study for seven or eight times, his footsteps getting faster and faster, and finally stopped abruptly.
He turned around and sat back on the armchair, reading the letter from beginning to end again.
"What guts."
Xu Youde muttered softly, not knowing whether these words contained more praise or lingering fear.
Military agricultural colonies in Hetao meant growing crops on the edge of the Helian iron cavalry's blades.
If it succeeded, the Xu family would have a lifeline to establish themselves in the world; if it failed, it would be resisting imperial edicts, deceiving the emperor, arbitrarily expanding territory, and privately hoarding military colonies.
With any of these charges, the heads of the hundred or so people in the Xu family would not be enough to chop off.
But in his days muddling along in the Ministry of Revenue, what accounts hadn't he calculated?
The imperial court allocated more than a million taels of silver for military grain in the northern border every year, but what actually ended up in the mouths of the soldiers was less than thirty percent.
The emperor knew about this wasted money, and the aristocratic families also knew it, but no one exposed it.
Because there were too many people tied to this interest chain.
Now that his daughter wanted to grow grain herself in Hetao, it was equivalent to bypassing this interest chain and directly stabbing a knife into the heart of the entire system of water transport gangs, local grain circuits, and military supply purchases controlled by aristocratic families.
This stab would offend more than just one or two people.
But Xu Youde sat in the armchair for half an incense stick of time, the sweat on his forehead drying and seeping, seeping and drying, and finally felt out an inkstone from the drawer and personally ground the ink.
He took up a brush and wrote three names on a blank sheet of Xuan paper.
The first one.
Chen Sitian, an old hand who retired from the Court of the National Granaries. This person had planted official fields all his life and knew the grain seeds for dry land in the north like the back of his hand. Three years ago, he was dismissed for offending his superiors and now made a living by selling vegetable seeds in the suburbs of the capital.
The second one.
Liu Bansheng, the head craftsman of the Bureau of Forestry and Crafts in the Ministry of Works. This person was proficient in ditches and water conservancy. When the Yellow River burst its banks back then, he followed the river-taming minister to build dams, and his craftsmanship was top-notch. Now he was ostracized by his superiors and only in charge of the idle errand of repairing latrines.
Halfway through writing the third name, Xu Youde's brush paused, and he crossed out those few words.
Too many, the commotion would be too big.
Right now, the errand of the autumn imperial examination was on the crest of a wave, and all civil and military officials in the court were staring at the Ministry of Revenue.
If he recruited agricultural talents with great fanfare, in less than three days, Xie Miheng and that bunch of old foxes would be able to pass the news to the emperor.
Xu Youde gritted his back molars, folded the slip of paper with two names on it into three, stuffed it into his close-fitting lapel, and put his daughter's secret letter to the candle flame, burning it into ashes bit by bit.
The ashes fell into the copper basin, and he stirred them to pieces with fire tongs, then poured half a cup of cold tea into it.
Ensuring that not a single word could be seen, he then reopened the study door bolt.
The newly promoted steward Xu Fuji was squatting under the corridor dozing off. Hearing the door sound, he quickly bounced up and came forward with an apologetic smile.
"Master, Vice Minister Wang of the Ministry of War sent a greeting card, saying he wanted to invite you to Zuixian Restaurant for drinks tonight."
"Decline it, just say my throat hurts and the doctor told me to abstain from alcohol."
Xu Youde waved his hand and turned to walk towards the backyard. After taking two steps, he stopped and ordered without turning his head.
"Go to the vegetable seed stall at the corner of Niushi Street in the south of the city, and invite Old Man Chen who sets up the stall to the mansion."
"Just say the peonies in my flowerbed can't survive, and I want to invite an expert master to take a look."
"The one selling vegetable seeds?" Xu Fuji was stunned for a moment.
"Ask less, go do it."
Xu Youde's back disappeared behind the moon gate.
Xu Fuji scratched his head. Although his belly was full of doubts, he didn't dare to speak too much, turned around and trotted out of the side door.
...
Thousands of miles away, north of the Yin Mountains.
The sun had already fallen behind the ridge line, and a large patch of dark red clouds burned in the sky, reflecting on the rolling grassland.
The campsite of the Helian Royal Court spread out in a valley surrounded by mountains on three sides.
Thousands of felt tents were scattered like stars and chess pieces. The domed grand tent in the very center was fully eight or nine times the size of an ordinary tent. A gray wolf flag was planted on the top of the tent, flapping loudly in the evening wind.
In the open space outside the tent, thirty armored personal guards stood in two rows, their hands resting on their scimitars, unmoving.
The tent curtain was lifted, and the Right Luli Prince Ashina Gudu bent down and walked in.
His two hands held a wooden box wrapped in three layers of cowhide, no different from holding an ancestor's memorial tablet.
A roaring fire burned right in the center of the tent, and animal fat crackled in the copper basin. The firelight shone so brightly that the whole tent was resplendent with gold and jade.
Ox horn wine vessels, eagle bone ornaments, and stuffed wolf heads cast swaying shadows on the tent walls.
The Helian Great Khan sat on the throne in the deepest part of the tent.
It was a wide chair carved from a whole old elm tree, with a whole white tiger skin spread on the seat.
The tiger head hung at the front end of the armrest, and two amber-colored fake eyeballs gleamed with a faint light in the firelight.
The Great Khan's figure was not considered burly, and could even be called lean.
He looked to be only in his early thirties, his face sharply chiseled and cold as if carved by an axe, with a prominent brow ridge.
His narrow eyes revealed a pure, untamed lupine ferocity and arrogance.
He simply leaned casually against the tiger-skin back of his chair; without needing any external support, he exuded an aura capable of subjugating the entire grassland.
Ashina Gudu's knees struck the carpet heavily as he raised a wooden box high above his head.
"Great Khan, this is what was dug out from the sand dunes outside Zhenbei City."
The Khan did not speak. A guard beside him stepped forward to take the wooden box, peeled back the cowhide cover, and presented it before the throne.
Inside the box lay a layer of dried grass. Resting on the grass were several shattered and deformed iron shell fragments, over a dozen bloodstained caltrops, and a small pinch of broken porcelain shards.
The sharp spikes of the caltrops were caked with blackened blood and shredded flesh.
The Khan reached out his right hand, plucked a caltrop from the box, and turned it over and over between his thumb and index finger.
The spikes were incredibly sharp. In a moment of inattention, it pierced the pad of his index finger, and a bead of blood seeped out.
The Khan brought his bleeding finger to his lips, sucked on it, and looked up.
"Speak. What happened?"
Prostrating himself on the ground, Ashina Gudu reported the military intelligence from the outpost camp in full detail:
Huyan Ba's hundred-man ranger cavalry was ambushed in the sand dunes northeast of Crow Spring. These iron shells were buried under the sand.
They exploded the moment a horse's hoof stepped on them—no fire starters needed, no fuses. The entire hundred-man unit didn't even have a chance to fight back. In mere moments, they were all killed or wounded, with only a single survivor escaping.
The tent fell silent for a long while.
The Khan rubbed his thumb back and forth over the caltrop, then suddenly threw his head back and burst into laughter.
His laughter was coarse and unbridled. The guards and kneeling nobles inside the tent exchanged nervous glances, none daring to speak.
"Good!" The Khan stopped laughing and tossed the caltrop back into the box, slapping his palm against the armrest of his throne. "The people of Daqian have cowered in their broken cities for all these years, only knowing how to build walls, dig trenches, and act like cowardly turtles. But now they've grown a bit of skill, actually creating these iron lumps that can kill."
Ashina Gudu lowered his head even further, his voice carrying a trace of apprehension. "Great Khan, this object can kill men and injure horses without a fuse. If the Daqian mass-produce them and cover all the passes of the Yin Mountains, our cavalry..."
"Are you afraid?"
The Khan's voice was not loud, but the interior of the tent felt as if it had been seized by an invisible giant hand; even the flames of the fire seemed to shrink by two inches.
Ashina Gudu's spine stiffened, and he sharply looked up. "This general only..."
"Go back and tell those brats under your command that no matter how formidable this thing is, it only works if it's buried in the dirt."
The Khan tapped his index finger against the iron shell fragments in the box.
"Across thousands of miles of grassland pastures, how many can their Daqian imperial envoy bury? A hundred? A thousand? Is it enough to fill even a single ditch?"
Ashina Gudu was stunned into silence by these words.
The Khan stood up, walked two steps around the fire, and paced back and forth in the tent, his hands clasped behind his back.
"However, the person who made this thing has some real skill. A lesson bought with a hundred lives—this Khan will remember it."
Just as the Khan's words fell, a strange sound suddenly came from outside the tent flap.
Someone was shaking a string of beads carved from the bones of small beasts. The bone beads clattered against each other, emitting a crisp rattling noise.
More importantly, it was accompanied by an old, hoarse voice chanting softly in the ancient Helian tongue.
The expressions of everyone in the tent changed.
Ashina Gudu shuffled back on his knees, yielding the center of the tent.
The tent flap opened without any wind.
A hunched elderly man slowly walked in.
On his head, he wore a massive headdress fashioned from goshawk feathers and wolf bones. His face was hidden behind a bronze mask, which bore the relief of a wolf with vertical pupils.
In his left hand, he gripped a staff wrapped in dried animal sinews. With every step he took, a bone bell inlaid at the bottom of the staff rang out.
The Great Shaman.
The highest priest of the Helian Royal Court, the earthly spokesperson for the Eternal Heaven.
The Khan watched this old man shuffle step by step from the entrance to the campfire, and the lingering smile caught in his teeth slowly faded.
"I did not summon you."
The Great Shaman's lowered head slowly lifted, revealing a pair of cloudy, aged eyes behind the bronze mask.
He did not answer the Khan. Instead, he planted his staff upright in front of him, rested both hands on its head, and moved his shriveled lips, continuing to chant in the ancient tongue.
The chanting grew increasingly rapid and piercing.
The Great Shaman suddenly let go of the staff, pulled a stitched sheepskin pouch from his robes, pinched it open with his skeletal fingers, and tossed a handful of grayish-white powder into the fire before him.
As the powder hit the fire, the flames shot up three feet, their color abruptly shifting from orange-red to an eerie, spectral green.
The air in the tent filled with a spicy, choking odor. A few nearby guards couldn't help but cover their mouths and noses.
The Khan did not move; he only narrowed his eyes slightly, staring at the dancing green flames.
The Great Shaman spun rapidly around the fire three times, his staff dragging along the ground with a harsh, grating sound. Suddenly, his feet planted firmly, and his entire body froze in place.
The green flames danced behind him, casting his hunched shadow onto the tent wall, twisted into something inhuman.
The Great Shaman slammed his staff heavily against the ground. His cloudy old eyes behind the mask stared straight southward through the flickering firelight.
"Great Khan."
His hoarse, dry voice echoed in the tent.
"The Eternal Heaven has sent down an oracle."
The Great Shaman struck his staff again. The bone bells chimed in unison, and the flames in the tent flickered in response.
"An ominous star of destruction has appeared in the south, encroaching upon the dragon veins of our grasslands."
The Great Shaman's voice rose half a pitch, carrying an almost frantic tremor.
"If this star is not struck down!"
The Great Shaman pointed a finger to the south.
"The sons of the grassland, for generations to come, will never let their horses' hooves cross the Yin Mountains!"
