Chapter 49: The Tiger's Roar Echoes Across Yanzhou

The spring wind of the third year of Jian'an carried shards of ice, tearing fine splits into the dragon-patterned banner atop the ramparts of Chenliu City. Cao Cao's five fingers dug deeply into the crevices of the battlements, his knuckles turning white with exertion. Below the city, Ji Ling's grand army was assembling trebuchets; those wooden frames painted with Bagua symbols reminded him of the unfinished siege engines in the Xuchang Armory. As Cheng Yu climbed the city tower, stepping over the scattered splinters of ice, he caught sight of his lord hurling the imperial secret decree into the beacon fire, the sheepskin curling in the intense flames to leave a lingering silhouette that read: "Xuchang is undefended."

"The urn city of the East Gate has been modified according to the blueprints." Cheng Yu shook the ice crystals off his heavy cloak, the dark fabric bearing scorched yellow marks from gunpowder smoke. He unfurled a sheepskin scroll to reveal bizarre trenches outlined in vermilion ink, the iron caltrops planted upside down at the bottom gleaming with a faint blue, cold light. "Yet this zigzag tunnel..."

Before he could finish speaking, a cyan-purple fire blossom erupted above the urn city. Fragments of pottery jars mixed with iron caltrops poured down like rain; the guards' leather armor caught fire upon contact, and the pungent stench of burning mixed with the smell of sulfur pierced straight into the nasal cavities. Cao Cao's pupils reflected the distorted human-shaped torches, while in his ears rang the laughing words Liu Xie had uttered while playing with a fire striker on the eve of his departure from the capital: "Does Mengde know that the fiercest fire must be saved for the maddest dog?" Abruptly, he drew his ring-headed saber and slashed the flagstaff in half, the battle flag embroidered with the character "Yuan" tumbling into the moat wrapped in sparks.

"In the end, His Majesty foresaw everything..."

A thousand miles away, deep beneath the Southern Palace in Luoyang, the muffled sound of bronze gears interlocking awakened the wall lamp in the secret chamber. Sun Ru instinctively pressed her hand against the gilt dagger at her waist, watching Liu Xie rotate the model of the Yellow River on the sand table. The water flow diverted according to the mechanism, washing the red flag representing Yuan Shu straight into a preset pottery jar. Suddenly, she noticed that the wooden city walls of the Runan mountain range concealed intricate mechanisms; a gentle touch caused three rows of iron crossbows to pop out.

"This is a death trap designed by the founding Mohist giant for assassinating Qin." Liu Xie's fingertips brushed across the territory of Qingzhou, and the black-armored cavalry in the northwest corner of the sand table suddenly began to move. "Zhang Heng added the armillary sphere, and I added a few new things."

The crisp sound of horseshoes striking against bluestone slabs coincidentally matched the real sound of hooves coming from the direction of Wuguan. A sharp pain pierced the back of Sun Ru's neck—the searing heat from the cellar of the Marquis of Yue's estate seven days ago swept over her entire body once more, and amidst the burning roof beams, the patterns of the Mohist Giant's Token distinctly flashed past.

The roar of the stone door turning interrupted her recollection. Jia Xu's shadow seeped into the secret chamber like ink, and the fire-wax seal on the confidential letter in his hand bore the flying swallow mark of the Mi mercantile caravan: "Liu Bei traded thirty boatloads of refined iron for the trebuchet blueprints, and Jian Yong also demanded two hundred catties of refined sulfur."

Liu Xie chuckled softly, half of a gilt tally sliding out from his sleeve to be tossed into the sand table: "Send twenty more boatloads of sulfur, and use the newly built storied ships to travel via the Guangling waterway." As he turned around, the flickering candlelight cast subtle shadows across his profile. "Does Lady Sun still remember the stolen alchemical formula from three years ago? I increased the proportion of niter by thirty percent."

The tips of Sun Ru's ears instantly grew hot. That night, the mechanisms of the alchemical chamber had clearly locked off all retreats, and the sound of pursuing troops' footsteps was dangerously close, yet the secret door in the southeast corner had suddenly loosened. Thinking back now, how similar was the slender silhouette cast by the moonlight on the lattice window to the fingers now toasting the sand table? Unconsciously, she stroked the engraving "As If I Were Personally Present" on the hilt of her dagger, only to catch sight of the Xuzhou model in the corner of the sand table slowly sinking.

Amidst the sound of the surging waves at the Yellow River ferry crossing, Liu Bei caressed the newly forged pair of companion swords. Hidden dragon shapes were carved within the cloud patterns on the blade, forged using the novel steel-making method brought by the Mi mercantile caravan. Jian Yong held a ledger of sulfur, wanting to speak but hesitating, his sighs eventually swept away by the river wind. Bundles of the *Jijiuzhang* primers on the cargo boats were absorbing moisture, and the vermilion stamp reading "Imperial Grace is Boundless" bled outward, looking remarkably like the bloody sunset over the ramparts of Chenliu.

"Divide them into two portions." Liu Bei suddenly severed the mooring rope, the clashing sound of refined iron startling the birds into flight. "Send ten boatloads each to Xuchang and Shouchun."

He gazed at the clouds on the opposite shore dyed red by the firelight, as if he could see the young emperor placing a black piece on the chessboard. The seal of the Governor of Xuzhou at his waist suddenly grew scorching hot—the dragon-patterned bronze piece embedded in the secret compartment at the bottom was precisely the one Mi Zhu had "accidentally" dropped three days ago.

The sound of the explosion beneath the Chenliu urn city shook the ice crystals off Cao Cao's helmet. The iron-cased thunder bombs he had personally ignited tore a bloody gash through Yuan Shu's army, but the flying iron caltrops suddenly veered, pinning Ji Ling's personal guards to the burning scaling ladders. Cheng Yu noticed that the arsenic-soaked spikes were volatilizing, the toxic smoke mixed with sulfur causing the enemy troops to collapse in swathes. Amidst the chaos, a runaway warhorse charged toward the modified trench; the ground suddenly collapsed to reveal a pit over ten zhang deep, and the poison-tipped bamboo stakes at the bottom instantly pierced through the horse's belly.

"My Lord! Urgent dispatch from Xiliang!" A blood-stained messenger knelt and presented a bamboo slip.

Wiping the bloody mist from his eyes, Cao Cao burst into laughter the moment he read the five characters "Huangfusong breached Wuguan." He laughed until the corners of his eyes split open, blood and tears mixing with melted snow to freeze into ice beads on his chin. He finally understood the emperor's chess game—Yuzhou was the quenching anvil, while he himself was the iron billet being hammered repeatedly. On the distant horizon, Yuan Shu's red banner was moving toward Guandu, looking precisely like the red marker washed into the pottery jar by the Yellow River on the sand table.

At this moment, the underground palace in Shouchun was collapsing. Zhang Kai's poisoned needle pierced through the lingering shadow of the Grand Commandant, only to have his lungs pierced by a Western Regions scimitar the very next moment. Coughing up bloody froth, he looked toward the altar where the cracks in the tortoise shell had somehow pieced themselves into the divination hexagram reading "May the Emperor Live for Ten Thousand Years."

A sneer came from behind the gilt mask. The instant the blade churned his heart, he heard his own vow made three years ago in the Sun family's cellar: "The Yellow Sky shall be established..." The secret compartment in the stone wall suddenly sprang open, and crates of gilt tallies tumbled onto the ground—each engraved with the official seal of a different prefecture and commandery, save for the missing one of Yuzhang Commandery.

In the morning mist of the Fengyi Pavilion in the outskirts of Xuchang, Sun Ru's reins nearly slipped from her grasp. Half a face protruding from the gilt carriage overlapped with the brows and eyes in her own bronze mirror to form a terrifying reflection. An infant's cry lifted the carriage curtain, and that plump arm bearing a plum-blossom jade pendant pierced her eyes—it was the exact token she had tied to her younger brother's swaddling clothes years ago. Beneath her older cousin's fox-fur coat, burn scars were faintly visible, the marks left behind when the Yellow Turbans bathed Runan in blood.

"When the Shadow Guards rescued the mother and child from the cellar, the fire had already burned through the roof." Liu Xie's voice mingled with the sound of hoofbeats; a parasol of oil paper had somehow appeared in his hand, its ribs forged entirely of fine steel. "Would you like to guess what is hidden inside the sulfur jars the Mi mercantile caravan is transporting to Shouchun?"

The parasol surface suddenly unfurled, blocking a cold arrow shot from the southeast. Amidst the crisp sound of the iron shaft nailing into the parasol ribs, twenty crimson streaks cut across the darkness before dawn.

Sun Ru gazed at the falling embers hurtling toward Shouchun, suddenly recalling the red flag washed into the pottery jar by the Yellow River on the sand table. As the first ray of sunlight pierced through the clouds, her fingers gripping the dagger slowly relaxed, much like letting go of some lingering obsession held for years. In the wheat fields beside the imperial highway, a new-style curved-shaft plow was turning over the frozen earth, the inscription "Made in the Second Year of Jingyuan" on the plowshare gleaming with a cold light—farm tools forged from the scrap metal of the armory, yet equally a wedge driven into the lifeblood of the aristocratic clans.