Gu Moran didn't stop and continued up the stone steps.
Fifteen points.
He did the math in his head: hanging his men upside down would only cost him fifteen points, so it was a pretty good deal.
At the end of the stone steps, Tuoba Mang was squatting on the threshold eating his second pancake. When he saw him come up, he stood up.
"Your Highness, I will watch those vagrants squatting down and wiping, brick by brick."
"Hmm, make him clean it properly." Gu Moran. "Cleaning until late afternoon, then have him replace the wooden basins under those eight thieves."
Tuoba Mang agreed and scratched his head.
"Your Highness, those eight thieves have been hanging all night, their faces are all purple. Could they have hanged themselves?"
"They won't die." Gu Moran walked towards the front yard. "They're more robust than we thought."
In the dungeon, Pu Yunshan wiped away the last puddle of water and straightened up.
The leader of the assassins hung upside down three feet above his head, and the two locked eyes.
He raised his hand, slowly pressed it to his mouth, and then pointed to the rope on the beam.
The meaning is clear: endure it, don't admit it.
The leader of the assassins closed his eyes.
Pu Yunshan picked up two buckets and walked out of the prison area.
He walked up the stone steps and into the sunlight in the courtyard before finally exhaling.
Gu Moran.
He repeated the name to himself three times, his teeth grinding until they ached.
The old road outside Song Prefecture North Post has no moon at night.
Chisang dispatched three thousand light cavalrymen to travel south in the dark. The horses' hooves were covered with anti-slip cloth, and the ironware was smeared with oil. They didn't even shout commands, relying solely on hand signals from the guides at the front.
The leader of the team, a centurion named Damu, had fought alongside Chisang for nine years and traversed this road eleven times.
The snow wasn't deep, and the wind in the mountain pass was favorable, blowing south.
Damu tied the leather rope of the lasso around his wrist and looked up at the snow-capped peaks on both sides.
The slope was so steep it looked like it had been cut by a knife, and a layer of snow covered the gravel, making it impossible to see any trace of footsteps.
"Have you spotted any scouts from Great Yan?" he asked the guide beside him in a low voice.
The guide listened for a while, his head resting on the horse's neck.
No. There's no horse manure or campfire for the next three miles.
Damu snorted.
After that madman Lalong returned to Silver City, he kept talking about heavenly fire, witch soldiers, and black-clad ghosts crawling out of cesspools, scaring half the army so much that they dared not leave their tents at night.
Damu didn't believe it.
Over the past nine years, he has traveled to every pass along the Jiannan Circuit, and he knows the Great Yan garrison like the back of his hand.
With insufficient food and troops, even the sentries on the watchtowers had to sleep huddled up in the cold winter nights.
Right now, this road is as quiet as an empty mountain.
"That prince of Yi Prefecture is a sickly man." Damu waved to the centurion behind him.
"He's busy repairing irrigation ditches and building outhouses, so no one's guarding this old road."
"Reach the pass before dawn, take advantage of the troop rotation to capture the gate, and wait for Chisang's grain convoy to arrive."
The centurion laughed so hard he couldn't stop.
"I heard that their prince has six wives; he's quite something."
"What's wrong with the six wives? They're in Yi Prefecture; can they hold the gates of Song Prefecture?"
"They definitely can't hold out. At this hour, they're probably still tormenting that sick prince, hahaha!"
"Keep your voice down!"
The leading cavalry continued their journey further in.
As dawn broke, the wind whipped snowflakes at people's faces.
Damu lay on the horse's neck and looked ahead. The road at the entrance of the valley was so narrow that only three riders could pass side by side. The slopes on both sides were covered with a layer of snow, and underneath the snow were gravel.
There was a sudden noise ahead.
It was the creaking sound of a wooden shaft grinding against the snow, one after another, interspersed with the sound of someone breathing.
The guide lay down and listened for a while, then raised his head and pointed forward.
"It's like a grain cart that's stuck."
Damu raised his hand to stop the group behind him, then moved forward half a mile and lay down behind a snow hollow to watch.
Seven carts were parked at the confluence of two valleys, their flatbeds covered with coarse burlap. Underneath the burlap, a large bulge appeared, shaped like a full grain sack.
About twenty laborers from Great Yan were pushing the cart around the front. Their cotton-padded coats were tattered and the lint was showing, and their heads were wrapped in old cloth. Some of them were cursing as they pushed, but the words were indistinct, only the soft, weak tone could be heard.
An old laborer squatted by the cart shaft, rubbing his hands together. His hands were cracked from the cold and were red and shiny.
Damu stared for a while, then turned back and smiled at the centurion.
"They're not scouts, they're grain transporters."
The centurion craned his neck and counted twice.
"Seven cartloads, enough for us to eat until we reach the pass."
"More than that." Damu tightened the leather strap around his wrist. "The fact that they're still delivering grain in this weather shows how severe the food shortage is inside the pass. This is our opportunity."
He raised his hand, and the two hundred riders in the front dispersed, bypassing the snow pass and pressing towards the valley entrance.
The snow crunched dully under the horse's hooves, but the wind, blowing south, carried the sound away.
The laborers pushing the cart didn't notice at first.
When the first row of riders emerged from the snow and mist, the old laborer who had been squatting and rubbing his hands looked up, glanced at them, and suddenly jumped up with a roar.
" Tubo-- "
That shout was as hoarse as a duck's.
About twenty laborers threw down the cart shafts and ran away.
In Damu's view, they were clearly local people who had lived there for a long time and were familiar with the terrain.
Because they didn't run forward, but split into two groups, one half darted up the left slope and the other half climbed the right slope, using both hands and feet, they ran extremely fast.
"Don't chase them!" Damu in his horse. "Surround the grain carts first!"
Having fought for nine years, he knew that chasing after laborers at this time was the most useless thing to do, since people couldn't be eaten; grain was the most important thing.
Three hundred riders quickly surrounded the seven carts, swung out lassos to snag the cart shafts, and some riders dismounted, drawing their knives to cut the hemp cloth.
Pull the linen apart.
But it wasn't a grain sack underneath.
It was a row of bamboo tubes, as thick as a child's arm, with the openings sealed with yellow mud. A wick was inserted into the mud, and the wick had been burned down to only an inch.
The Tubo soldier who was cutting the cloth paused for a moment, then leaned closer to look at the tiny spark.
Damu's hair stood on end.
"Scattered--"
The word was still stuck in my throat.
The first vehicle should be blown up.
A low, deep thud came from under the cart, turning the entire cart into a pile of sawdust. Then came the second, the third, and so on, one after another. The fuses had been buried in order, and the sounds came one after another, with very even intervals.
After the seven vehicles exploded, the sound from the valley entrance hit the left slope wall, bounced back, hit the right slope wall, bounced back again, and rolled back and forth seven or eight times, getting heavier and heavier with each roll.
To the ear, it sounds like a buzzing sound.
The snow on the slope moved first.
The entire snow layer split open horizontally from the halfway point, and that crack quickly spread to both ends, all the way down to the bottom of the peak, where the snow that had accumulated above all sank down at once.
Damu looked up and felt as if half the sky had collapsed.
The snow waves had no shape; they only made a sound when they rushed towards us, a sound that engulfed the neighing of horses, the shouts of men, and the clanging of metal, leaving nothing behind.
The vanguard of hundreds of cavalry didn't even have time to turn their horses.
The snow surged over the valley entrance, burying more than two hundred horses and about three hundred people.
At the top of the slope.
The last two "laborers," who were fleeing with their backsides sticking out, lay in the earthen pits they had dug beforehand, their heads buried under their arms. Only after the tremors beneath them had subsided did they dare to lift half of their faces.
One of them spat out a mouthful of snow foam.
"Your ignition technique is quite skillful."
"That's right, but what word did the prince use in his letter? It's called... what kind of sound wave?"
꒰⑅°͈꒳°͈꒱
[Thanks to Xiaorao and Chenglin for the update reminder charms, Wangyou and Mieshen for the flowers, Jiangzuo for the love letter, Weifeng for the update reminder charms x2, and everyone for their love and support!]