Two hundred or so sturdy refugees, stripped to the waist, each carrying a load of a hundred and fifty catties of broken stone, had to haul it from the South Barracks to the breach in the northern section.
A scrawny man shuffled along in the middle and rear of the column, his straw sandals worn clean through, leaving bloody, wet prints on the frozen ground as he walked.
Two fierce-looking soldiers carried whips of raw cowhide, patrolling back and forth along the route.
The tips of the whips never struck flesh; they landed only on the burlap sacks.
When a torn sack split, lime powder scattered across the ground, followed by a kick straight to the lower back of the laborer responsible.
In a place like Zhenbei City, few would say that the common folk were treated like human beings.
Here, refugees were expendable. If you died hauling rocks, you were rolled straight into the sand pit—not even a straw mat to cover you.
In the crowd, a young soldier who had just arrived watched this scene, his face turning pale.
He instinctively shrank his neck and muttered in a low voice:
"Is it... really necessary to treat the people this badly?"
His voice was quiet, but someone nearby still heard it.
An old soldier leaning against a wooden cart shot him a sidelong glance, spat a mouthful of blood-tinged saliva, and sneered:
"Treat them badly? Little brother, with a heart as soft as yours, you won't last long in this place."
"The lash lands on the sacks, not drawing blood—that's already the overseer's 'Bodhisattva heart.' Here, they're not called 'common folk.' They're called 'breathing stones.'"
"If the walls of Zhenbei City don't go up, and the barbarians break through the pass, we all die. Then who'll be 'sorry' to who?"
Hearing this, the young man fell silent.
...
In the dead of night, the cold bit to the bone.
The scrawny man clutched a straw rope. Seizing the moment when he crouched down to pretend to adjust his pants, he pressed himself into the darkest corner of the old northern wall.
An ancient locust tree, dead for who knows how many years, stood stripped of its bark.
Under its bare, crooked branches squatted a one-eyed blind man. Before him were a dozen or so pairs of broken straw sandals, pulled from the feet of the dead.
The scrawny man said nothing. He tugged at the hem of his padded inner jacket, shoved his fingers into the cotton lining, and pried out a bronze plaque and a rolled strip of coarse paper. Without looking, he tossed them backward into the filthy straw-sandal basket in front of the blind man.
Cold sweat beaded the scrawny man's forehead. In all his years, he had never stooped to such tricks; he had no skill at leaping rooftops or scaling walls.
If a night patrol spotted him, the mere commotion would be enough to get him killed.
But he had no choice. The gold leaf Chen Changfeng had given him was still stitched inside his undershirt. If he failed the task, being eaten by prairie wolves would be his only end.
The one-eyed blind man didn't move. He let the bronze plaque clatter against the worn-out basket bottom.
Only after the scrawny man had hobbled back into the line of laborers and rejoined the patrol did the blind man sweep his single eye across the snow-caked mud, then reach down and grip the basket.
...
At the Hour of the Tiger, in the military tent of the West Gate Night Patrol Deputy General.
The oil lamp flickered down to a single pea-sized flame.
Zhao Cheng sat on a camp stool, holding the green-rusted bronze plaque close to the light.
The front bore the two seal-script characters "Zhenbei." The back was carved with fine lines marking his official rank.
He ran his thumb across the rust, scraping off the shallow layer to expose a tiny, narrow notch—barely half a grain of rice in size.
Five years ago, on the execution platform at the parade ground.
He had knelt before the blade, his neck already numb from the cold wind, waiting for the drop.
It was the owner of this bronze plaque—this very pass—who had saved his head with thirty of the finest horses from beyond the Great Wall.
When that man had handed over the pass during the transaction, its corner had struck the iron-clad edge of the platform table, leaving this long, thin notch.
That was a blood debt from the frontier.
Zhao Cheng was nearly forty now, having spent half his life in the northwest. He had not forgotten whose hands had spared his neck.
He set the bronze plaque on the corner of the desk and turned to lift a gap in the tent flap.
In the black night, the new gray-white cement wall of the northern section stretched out like a serpent that had suddenly emerged from the earth.
This one wall had endured two days of battering by thousands of Khitan heavy infantry, shoving massive logs against it.
The wall didn't crack an inch—instead, it drove the Left Luli King's ten thousand elite iron cavalry back thirty li beyond.
Imperial Commissioner Xu, sent by the court this time, wielded fire-crackers and that gray-white mortar, shattering the ironclad rules of offense and defense that the Dagan border soldiers had followed for half a century.
Looking at that wall, Zhao Cheng felt a vein pulse at his temple.
To repay the Han man's favor, he would have to open the gate. But opening a fortress wall like that would send his entire clan to the chopping block in the capital.
He had just withdrawn his hand when the clatter of iron armor rang out from outside the tent.
Sergeant Old Sun kicked open the tent door, followed by four armed soldiers. They dragged a man bound in thick rope and dumped him on the earth floor.
"Brother Zhao, the reconnaissance unit down in the trench camp turned up something wrong," Old Sun said, wiping ice water from his face.
"This bastard claims to be a clerk from the Qingfeng Trading Company's Shuntian Prefecture branch. He's got a fair bit of the capital accent under his tongue."
"But when I handed out two pieces of pickled turnip just now, he reached with his left hand."
"The Qingfeng Trading Company in Shuntian Prefecture values courtesy. Any clerk after three years must pass things with the right hand. The shopkeeper would break the finger bones of anyone who reached with the left. And tucked in the seam of his travel pass, he's carrying red-dust stains that only come from the shady side of the Yin Mountains—a route far off anyone's legitimate return path!"
The scrawny man shrank in the mud, trembling so hard he could barely force out a word.
Zhao Cheng looked first at the torn jacket, then at the man's flimsy cover story. A shock of cold clarity ran through his mind.
What a move!
Chen Changfeng hadn't sent any encrypted signal at all. He hadn't intended to let this failed traveling merchant complete the task.
This crude decoy was nothing but a loud gong slammed against his ear.
Chen Changfeng had deliberately planted two tells into this man—the Shuntian Prefecture route and the red mud—so he would die in the West Gate interrogation and be sent, straight through the chain of command, directly to Zhao Cheng the Deputy General's prison cell.
The Han Chinese strategist was telling him: I can see every hole in the West Gate defenses.
I can send a man to whichever spot I choose.
"Lock him in the earth prison on the west side," Zhao Cheng said flatly. "Without my word, don't even bother bringing him to court."
Four camp guards dragged the man away like a dead dog. Zhao Cheng picked up the long-burning lamp from his desk and followed them straight down into the dank, chill underground dungeon.
The iron bars wore a heavy lock.
Zhao Cheng stood outside, staring at the scrawny man curled up in the corner.
That man had made his choice. By keeping such a live witness within his own garrison, once the morning shift change came and the staff officer put a few lashes on him, the man would cough up the blind sandal seller, and the Zhao clan's dozen-plus mouths would bloody every inch of Caishikou Market in the capital.
Chen Changfeng wanted Zhao Cheng to save the man, to decide his own exit route—but that scheming man had left no backup plan at all.
"Strip all the hemp and rags off him," Zhao Cheng ordered the warden, his face impassive.
Two turnkeys tore off the prisoner's remaining inner garment.
Zhao Cheng reached down and took up the soiled Qingfeng Trading Company travel pass, pinching one corner between two fingers. He held the paper three inches above the oil lamp's flame.
The fire didn't touch the paper; only the heat steamed it.
He did it three times. Where the coarse cotton paper had been white and frayed, a glossy, oily sheen now appeared across the surface.
On the back of the sheet of paper, where no writing had been visible at first, a series of fine characters now emerged as yellow stains under the heat. They had been written with a base of sheep suet, common beyond the frontier, mixed with alum water and then heated to set. It was a message that would surface only when exposed to fire.
It did not order him to open the sluice gates and let the troops in. Nor did it mention any agreement on dividing the spoils.
Only nine words, brutally short and ruthless: "Kill this man, report a great victory. We arrive the day after."
According to this plan, once he had killed the man and reported it as a meritorious defense of the pass, the elite troops of the Helian Right Army Commander would arrive two days later to take control of the gate through a secret internal response.
Zhao Cheng pinched the steaming, heat-emitting paper, and in his heart, an old account suddenly became crystal clear. This Han Chinese military advisor was using his hand to kill prisoners and take credit. Once the credit was claimed, the severed head would become a death warrant delivered to him personally. Then there would be no choice but to board the Helian army's ship.
If the pass truly could not be breached, the imperial court would investigate; the whole nest would be wiped out. If the pass were truly broken, when the barbarian troops swept through, who would care about the life or death of a former deputy general?
"Everyone out." Zhao Cheng rolled the paper into his sleeve.
The jailer and the guards retreated thirty paces away.
Zhao Cheng reached around and drew the heavy-backed military dagger from his waist. Without wasting a single word, he didn't even open the cell door. Instead, he kicked a horizontal kick against the wooden bolt between the bars.
He stepped inside and chopped downward with the blade.
The lean, dry man managed only half a cry. His head rolled off his neck onto the ground, and hot blood splattered all across the iron cage.
"Get half a stone of quicklime."
Without even wiping the filth from his hands and face, Zhao Cheng pointed at the head on the floor.
In the time it took half a cup of tea to brew, Zhao Cheng wrapped the head, now thickly covered with white quicklime, in coarse sackcloth. With one hand holding that bundle, and the other carrying the traveling pass—with its hidden characters revealed by the fire—along with the rusted military token, he walked straight to the deputy general's training grounds.
He swung a leg onto the big, blue-gray horse he had raised for five years at West Pass, pulled on the reins, and rode straight toward the commander-in-chief's headquarters in the center of the Northern Defense Pass.
The hoofbeats of this lone cavalryman disrupted the three checkpoints along the road.
It was nearly the end of the Tiger Hour. The cold wind cut like iron.
The main gates of the Northern Defense Pass headquarters stood shut. Two rows of armored personal guards, holding long spears, stood guard on both sides of the steps.
Zhao Cheng brought his horse to a stop. Man and blade in boot, he dismounted in a single leap.
With a flick of his hand, he tossed the blood-stained sack, holding the head, directly in front of the headquarters. He raised his voice and announced: "Treason brewing at West Pass. A deputy general comes to surrender his loyalty!"
