The sun was slanting westward, the last light of the late afternoon skimming along the ground, painting the empty well square west of Zhenbei Pass in a murky yellow glow.
An old veteran named Old Man Qin, dragging his crippled leg, limped over to the cold-bean-milk vat and shoved a piece of firewood underneath it.
The stall itself was nothing more than a few uneven flagstones propping up a meager countertop.
Looking closer, one could see a layer of yellowish bean-milk skin floating on the surface of the vat.
Three idlers were squatting on the stone steps by the well, each holding a coarse clay bowl in their hands.
The bugle calls of the garrison soldiers reached this spot only in fits and starts, drifting into this pocket of everyday life.
After a few gulps of the cold brew, the men fell into the rare, idle chatter of Zhenbei’s ordinary folk.
Their gossip, of course, couldn’t avoid the seven plumes of smoke that had pierced the sky over the battlements just yesterday—an ill omen.
A young salt peddler, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, set down his bowl on the ground and spoke with the flippant, bloodless bravado of someone who’d never seen real war:
“Pops, seven streams of smoke going up all at once—what kind of bad omen is that, huh? Maybe some gate tower caught fire and the whole thing burned down to cinders down below?”
Old Man Qin gripped the long-handled wooden ladle he used to scoop the bean milk, clacking it twice against the vat’s rim as usual to shake off the beads of water.
He tilted his clouded, one-eyed gaze upward, and his voice, weathered by wind and sand, rasped out:
“When common raiders gallop into our pasturelands, the signal fires on the wall go up in pairs. Seven plumes rising together means the Army’s highest death knell has been sounded—Deep Peace Commands.”
“It means the enemy’s main force has packed up their camp and is on the move. They’re stepping on our border, and could be under the walls any moment now.”
An old peddler squatting by the base of the wall smacked his lips, then spat a mouthful of grainy bean milk onto the dirt.
He looked up at the pale yellow sky and picked up the thread:
“Sixty years ago, the White Wolf River Battle—I was barely waist-high. Same thing: sky full of smoke pillars like that.”
“In that fight, inside and outside the pass, fifty thousand lives went into the pit. The wild dogs ate their fill till they went blood-blind.”
When those words hit, the well platform fell dead silent.
Into that heavy quiet, a wooden bucket poked out from the mouth of an alley.
It belonged to a woman passing by with a load of water, whom the neighbors called Sister Li.
Dressed in a thorn-wood hairpin and coarse cotton skirt, her temple hair dusted with gray chimney soot, she looked every bit the ordinary housewife of the pass.
A little child clung to her side, maybe four or five years old.
The tot’s hair was tied in two little buns, tiny chubby fists gripping the rough cloth of his mother’s skirt.
A pair of bright black eyes peeked out shyly, sizing up the rough-handed men gathered by the well.
Old Man Qin saw the child’s clean, dignified face, and the old taste of blood from the White Wolf River in his heart dimmed a little.
He wiped his hands on his black apron, then bent down.
Reaching into a coarse porcelain bowl under the counter, he scooped out a big handful of fried soybeans and pressed them into the baby-fat palm of the child’s hand.
Then, on purpose, he widened his one eye until it bulged, creasing the wrinkles on his face into a fearsome glare, and teased in a booming voice:
“Hey, kid! Out there beyond the pass, a bunch of iron-armored black-faced beasts just showed up—they call them the ‘Iron Buddhas.’”
“Those Iron Buddhas, man and horse both, wear cold-forged black iron heavy armor, with only a pair of blood-red wolf eyes peeking out!”
“Ordinary swords and knives just bounce off ’em, leaving white scratches.”
“When they charge in formation, it’s like a wall of iron that eats people! Hooves as big as bowls, mowing down any man in the way—they stomp bones and all right into bloody mud!”
“They pick on little kids like you who won’t mind their elders or eat their meals properly to swallow whole!”
The young salt peddler, glad to finally have a way to vent the gloom that had been hanging over them, chimed in right away.
He arched his back and suddenly lunged at the child, mimicking the sound of heavy cavalry hooves with his mouth:
“Stomp! Stomp! Stomp! It’s going to eat you!”
The child trembled with fright, his little hand jerking, sending the handful of fried soybeans clattering to the ground.
Twisting his small body, he ducked behind Sister Li, clutching his mother’s pant leg and refusing to let go.
At the scare, a group of men gathered around the well burst into laughter.
“Ha ha ha ha!”
Old Man Qin laughed so hard that he choked on a gulp of cold water, doubling over beside the vat and coughing until his spine ached.
Sister Li raised her eyelids and shot them a sharp glare, scolding with feigned anger:
“A bunch of grown men, all adding up to eighty or ninety years old, teasing a baby who’s still nursing—no shame at all!”
Even as she nagged, she bent down herself, a trace of a smile curling at the corners of her eyes.
The suffocating desperation that had hung in the air just moments ago was broken up by this comedic sparring, and a fresh heat of vitality welled back up.
The laughter still lingered around the well, but the child poked his whole head out from behind his mother’s leg.
His dark eyes swept over Old Man Qin, the salt peddler, and the old street hawker one by one, but the retreating fear had vanished from his gaze.
His little lips twitched, and he squeezed out a sentence with his soft, childish voice:
“You… aren’t you afraid?”
The laughter was cut off midair.
By the well, the young salt peddler’s half-open mouth just hung there frozen, the brave mimicry of horse hooves draining dry.
The men looked at each other, none knowing how to answer.
Strip away the tough mask adults wore, and the terror of iron hooves pressing down on the city was like a horsefly biting into their bones.
Now it was pierced by a child’s tender words, laid bare without even a scrap of tattered cloth to hide it.
Old Man Qin tossed his long ladle into the vat, water splashing over the rim.
He leaned on his stiff, peg-like broken leg, bent with difficulty, and squat down.
His one battle-scarred eye held not a trace of coddling as he looked levelly at the child before him.
“Afraid? What’s there to be afraid of?”
Old Man Qin raised his hand, pointing toward the city gate.
“Inside Zhenbei Pass, there sits a true god right now—General Xu, a man who earned the title of the Living Hell King from the point of his blade.”
“Boy, you never heard of him?”
Seeing the child’s blank look, he started to perform.
The old man suddenly thrust up his other good arm, swinging it hard through the air, his sleeve tearing with a crisp sound:
“That General Xu, he’s also got only one arm!”
“Outside the pass, he charged into the enemy lines alone, taking on twenty of the barbarians’ hardest Iron Buddhas and smashing them all into a pulp of bones and flesh you couldn’t tell apart.”
Telling this, Old Man Qin’s face flushed red, and his eye burned bright.
Back in White Wolf Valley, the leftover blood—like that which had boiled when he scrounged for rations amid the bugle calls of assault—kindled within him again.
The old street hawker took a drag on his tobacco pipe, blowing out a bitter blue puff, and added from the side:
“Ain’t that the truth! General Xu strode through the hellish battlefield like a river-crossing dragon—one arm worth a thousand soldiers.”
“The barbarian outriders are already spreading the tale, calling him the ‘Iron Mace of Death.’ Their own camps are in an uproar, saying this Living Hell King can drag even the dead from their graves and flay them alive!”
These bits of gossip, passed through streets and alleys, often carry the stench of muddy dirt and lose their truth.
But it was precisely this rawness and ferocity that drove the fearsome name of that butcher deep into the people’s hopes.
The child listened, mesmerized, forgetting even to clutch his mother’s trousers.
He lifted his chin, staring at Old Man Qin’s intact left arm, and asked in a baby voice:
“Really just one hand?”
“Absolutely true!”
Old Man Qin nodded heavily, slapping his thigh with a hand as big as a winnowing fan:
“The day he returned to the pass, this old man saw it with his own eyes, right here at the foot of the city wall.”
“On that single meteor-iron rod, blood and yellow sand had long since crusted into a thick black sheath; when it struck the bluestone slabs, sparks flew!”
“With that killing god standing in front, those iron-armored men eating people outside are nothing but gristle for his teeth.”
These words landed with solid force.
The men around the well, who moments before had felt their hearts waver, now felt their blood boil again and unconsciously straightened their backs.
The sun gradually dipped lower; half the sky sank behind the parapet, and a sudden cold dusk wind swirled over the well.
The corner of linen cloth weighing down the cold drink jar lifted, slapping noisily against the wooden table.
The young salt seller finally came to his senses. He craned his neck and pointed at the newly built broad wall not far away.
“Talk about General Xu’s blade being sharp, folks—just look at that wall!”
His voice back full of confidence:
“That section was just tamped down this spring.”
“They mixed something in with the earth—hot lime and glutinous rice paste. You could hack at it with a saber and only leave a white scratch; you couldn’t even peel off a fingernail-sized piece of plaster.”
“Those barbarians’ rotten wooden trebuchets would break against it till next year and get nowhere.”
The crowd nodded and chimed in:
“No lie—this new wall is tougher than the old brick city gate tower, which has stood for decades!”
“Now we’ve got a way out. The new wall protects us from outside, and General Xu holds the inside.”
“Tell the barbarians to bring a million horses—they’ll just shatter their teeth against the pass!”
“Hahahahaha!”
As they spoke, they couldn’t help soothing their own fears.
The whole small city treated this earthen bulwark like a talisman, their words growing heated with praise.
But the more they found comfort in dead things, the colder and more oppressive became the silence of the ten thousand cavalry pressing close beyond the pass.
Old Man Qin looked up, his gaze sliding along the smooth tamped-earth wall. Suddenly, his heart lurched.
In his youth, he had served in the ranks, building defensive stakes and tamping platforms.
This spring, when they began digging the foundation trench for this wall, he had watched every day.
He remembered a runner for the overseer letting slip that an official had come from the capital, personally delivering an directive from the Ministry of Works.
The old adhesive yellow mud used to seal the joints had been removed and replaced with a strange grout.
And they had inserted iron rods here and there.
This founding method, departing from all precedent—Old Man Qin, who had eaten military rations for a lifetime, had never seen the like.
He decided to stop thinking about it.
Such weighty matters were better left to high minds like General Xu.
So he grabbed the long wooden ladle again, gave it a fierce stir in the vat of soy milk, and roared dryly:
“Still got some hot brew left for cooling down! Last call for a bowl to warm the belly—just step up!”
The child, who had only just been afraid of being eaten, was now crouched on the stone steps, his chubby little hands scrabbling on the ground.
He picked up two or three soybeans that hadn’t touched dirt, wiped them carelessly on his torn sleeve, and popped them straight into his mouth.
Both cheeks bulged, his little jaw working fast, crunching the beans with crisp sounds.
Bending over, Sister Li lifted the heavy bucket full of water, turning her head to thank Old Man Qin for the fried beans he had given her.
Freeing one hand, she took her child, who was chewing on the beans, and pulled him along as they walked into the alley.
After just a few steps, the boy tugged at his mother’s sleeve, glanced back at the towering battlements, and asked in a clear voice:
“Mother, are the iron men really not coming to eat me?”
Sister Li shifted the bucket to her other hand, smiled, and lightly slapped the back of his head.
“You silly boy, with General Xu guarding the gate, no one can even set foot into our pass.”
“But Mother, General Xu is just one man!”
Sister Li was momentarily at a loss for words.
It was true—Xu, the Roaming General, was brave, but he was only one man…
Still, the fear that flickered in her heart vanished almost as soon as it appeared.
She tugged her son hard and said, “You little one, you’re worrying about big matters now, aren’t you? We still have General Xu, don’t we?”
…
One large shadow and one small shadow stretched along the rough ground, growing longer and longer under the setting sun, gradually sinking into the deep, dim twilight of the alley’s mouth.
Soon, the idlers who had been squatting by the well all dispersed, heading home for their evening meals.
On the small empty plot, only Old Man Qin remained, bent over as he gathered and washed the coarse earthenware bowls.
The wind and sand began to rise, veiling the dying sun above the city walls.
