Chapter 42: Long Smoke and Setting Sun, The Isolated City Gates (Part 1)

After finishing his meal, Li Xiao walked down the main street. With a severe shortage of manpower, the others had been assigned to defend the city walls.

At this moment, Li Quanwu popped out from somewhere, an old wine gourd hanging from his waist, complaining as he walked: "Sigh! You still have the leisure to go for a stroll! Ten prime Khitan horses! Iron-hoof horses that can stride across the frozen surface of the Fen River! Not those packhorses that start shivering at the sight of snow."

When the two of them stepped onto South Main Street, treading over a sea of shattered tiles, blood was seeping through the gaps of the bluestone slabs. On the ruins of a rouge shop collapsed by a stone catapult, half of a shop banner reading "Suzhou and Hangzhou Silks" was stuck obliquely between the roof beams, fluttering loudly in the wind.

The old man used his fingers to flick away the ice shards: "You borrowed two from General Sun, and those are fine breeds standing four feet and six inches at the shoulder, which cost thirty strings of cash each when bought! You insisted on risking your life that day, and look at how things turned out when you came back: two ended up lame, and one was pierced through the belly by a stray arrow and died on the spot! Now there are only five left, all covered in injuries. If they turn out to be mere packhorses, this entire business venture will be a total loss!"

"You spend other people's money without a care in the world, and all that silver was saved up by your father as the foundation of our family. Besides, what are we even striving for after enduring wind and frost all the way?"

"This old man was counting on saving some money for my old age!"

The old man muttered relentlessly, his fingers moving rapidly inside his sleeve like an abacus: "If we successfully resell them, each horse yields a profit of fifteen strings of cash, making one hundred and fifty strings for ten horses. Once we reach Luoyang and bypass the Inspectorate, we can make at least five more strings of cash per horse, which pushes the total well past two hundred strings!"

He spat fiercely onto the ground. "And now? The Jin dogs have surrounded the city like an iron barrel. Forget about transporting them out; whether we can even charge our way out is questionable!"

The old man wore an expression of utter exasperation, mixed with profound confusion. How could such a great fortune just fly away like that?

Speaking of profitable businesses in the Great Song, aside from the traditional staples of salt, iron, liquor, cloth, and tea, the one that stood out with profit margins even greater than these was the trade of warhorses.

Due to the loss of the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, the Central Plains lacked horse-breeding grounds.

The Yanshan region was a traditional production area for top-quality warhorses. With its cool climate and combination of grasslands and mountains, it was suited for cultivating warhorses with strong endurance and explosive power.

As misfortunes never come singly, the northwestern horse-breeding grounds were occupied by the Tangut Xia people. Lingzhou (Lingwu) in the northwest and the Hexi Corridor were vital horse-breeding regions. During the Tang Dynasty, the Longyou Horse Pasture Inspectorate was established there, producing tens of thousands of horses annually. However, after Li Yuanhao founded his state, these regions fell under Tangut control, severing the Song dynasty's connection with the Western Regions and cutting off the channel for acquiring warhorses from the Hexi Corridor.

The Song people had also considered breeding their own horses. For instance, in the early Song dynasty, they emulated the Tang dynasty by establishing "Pasture Inspectorates" (state-run horse farms) distributed across Hebei, Henan, Shaanxi, and other places.

However, by the reign of Emperor Renzong, these pasture inspectorates had degenerated into inefficient bureaucratic agencies. Officials engaged in corruption, falsely reporting horse numbers, embezzling feed funds, and even secretly reselling horses, causing the actual inventory to fall far short of the ledger records.

Furthermore, neither the Central Plains nor the south was suitable for horse breeding. The middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River basin were dominated by agriculture. The climate was humid, vast tracts of land had been reclaimed as farmland, and the south was filled with paddy fields and hills, to which warhorses struggled to adapt.

Even if they were forcibly raised, they were mostly "packhorses" (small in stature with poor endurance), which could not meet the demands of cavalry combat. Although Qingtang (Xining) had been retaken, the time was too short, and the yield simply could not satisfy the massive demands of the army.

Therefore, trafficking warhorses from the Liao and Xia dynasties had always been a pathway to making a fortune, and the old man was still counting on this trip to rake in a huge profit and take the money back to Shuzhou to make a comeback.

"And another thing! What happened that day?"

Li Xiao was gazing at the tattered military flags fluttering atop the city wall, and upon hearing this, he turned his head.

"Your spear technique!" Li Quanwu's voice trembled. "That Mountain-Cleaving Spear I taught you—you usually practice it as if you're just playing with a stick, making a laughingstock of yourself. But that day, you flicked away a Jin soldier's helmet with a single thrust, and your spear tip spun like a cartwheel—it was so crisp and clean! And your archery! Piercing armor seams from twenty paces away, with such precision! When did you acquire this kind of martial prowess?"

The old man had been a martial artist in his youth, and his spear and staff skills were genuinely formidable. Li Xiao's saber techniques and archery had been taught to him hand in hand. He knew his own disciple's capabilities better than anyone else.

During routine practice, being able to swing the spear shaft in a smooth circle was already considered passable. Yet that day, it was as if he had transformed into a completely different person, executing such brilliant spear techniques that it left people staring in blank astonishment.

Li Xiao raised a hand to brush the snow off his shoulder, the corners of his mouth curving into a half-smile. When he charged into the Jin camp that day, the spear in his hand seemed to have acquired a spiritual life of its own. Wherever the spear tip needed to pierce, or however his wrist needed to turn, it all happened without needing conscious thought, just like a seasoned veteran of decades of practice.

He certainly couldn't say that he had no idea what was going on either. Not only would that be inexplicable, but it would also diminish his own heroic performance and make the old man feel as though he were being fooled.

"Uncle Quanwu," he stood with his hands behind his back, his gaze sweeping past the broken walls and ruined remnants, and sighed: "After three days apart, one must look at each other with new eyes. You are clinging too stubbornly to appearances."

(To be continued)

(1/3)

Walking through the South City Street, the entire city appeared quite dilapidated with very few pedestrians. A dull, booming roar came from the northeast direction—those were catapult stones crashing into the city, and they came one after another.

"Hum—Boom!!"

The earth shook! Rubble and dust fell down in flurries, startling a chorus of piercing wails. At the street corner, a tea shed that was already tottering collapsed by half in response, kicking up a sky-full of dust and smoke.

"They're coming again! They're coming again!"

"Damn those murderers! Whose house did it hit?"

Civilians hiding indoors scattered instantly like frightened ants, their terrified shouts and children's crying blending together.

"Make way! Make way!"

A team of corvée laborers carrying heavy baskets filled with rubble pushed forward with difficulty under the urging of the city-patrolling soldiers. Someone was responsible for clearing the debris along the street, otherwise, blocking traffic would spell disaster.

Doing this kind of heavy physical labor in the freezing twelfth lunar month showed how difficult things were, which was why the men pushing handcarts had to rest every ten steps.

"Are you courting death?! If you miss the hour, don't blame us for enforcing military law!" the squad leader roared anxiously, his rattan whip swishing idly through the air. Seeing that manpower was insufficient, he simply joined in to help transport the rubble himself.

"Damned villains! My shop, my entire lifetime's hard work!"

By the side of the street, an old woman sat paralyzed before a pile of ruins, clutching a cracked pottery jar in her arms as a few grains of millet spilled onto the snow. Her clouded eyes stared in grief at the house smashed flat by a catapult stone; it had once been her grocery store, holding the memories of half her lifetime.

With just a boom, it was all gone.

Someone nearby who had suffered a similar fate patted her back numbly: "Old Aunt Wang, let it go. As long as you're alive, that's what matters. The authorities said they'll give you a new one when it's rebuilt." This statement lacked any conviction; no one could give a definitive promise.

Li Xiao trod over broken tiles deeper into South Main Street. The wind whipped snow flurries against his face, carrying a scent of herbs mixed with gunpowder smoke.

Turning the street corner, there was a pharmacy that had not completely collapsed.

Two door panels had been removed, revealing a dim, yellowish oil lamp inside. The fragrance of medicine mixed with the stench of blood drifted out from the doorway.

Some twenty people were gathered in front of the shop: soldiers clutching their arms, women holding infants, and militia members with broken legs dragging themselves toward the door using wooden staves.

An old physician wearing a green cloth robe squatted on the threshold writing a prescription, his brush sweeping across hemp paper to leave slanted characters. Two apprentices squatted on the ground pounding medicine, the mortar and pestle striking with a *thud-thud* sound that somewhat drowned out the sound of the catapults outside.

"Doctor Liu, my baby is shivering with fever." A woman pushed forward, the child's small face flushed red in her arms.

Doctor Liu took the child's pulse and pressed its tongue down: "Perhaps running a fever from extreme fright. Burning mugwort can ease it." He pointed to the side of the shop, where three brazier pots were burning mugwort, sending up dense smoke while several patients squatted nearby to inhale it, their coughing sounds rising one after another.

In the freezing depths of winter, with survival hanging by a thread, let alone children, even adults with weaker constitutions couldn't hold out.

Another physician was treating a militia member's wound. The militia member grinned and grimaced in pain, while the physician didn't even raise his head: "Endure it! The arrowhead is rusted; if I don't dig it out clean, your arm will rot."

Li Xiao's gaze swept past the pharmacy and landed on the draper's shop opposite.

The silks and brocades inside the draper's shop were long gone, leaving only a clerk squatting behind the counter, stuffing coarse linen into gunny sacks. At that moment, a group of women rushed over, their clothes covered in dried blood, and said anxiously: "Quickly, quickly! The wounded soldiers' camp is in urgent need of bandaging cloth, find all the clean ones and take them back."

The women separated to search, gathering all the ramie fabric left behind in the cabinets that they didn't have time to take away. By tearing them into separate pieces, they could be used as bandages for wounds.

Ramie fabric was breathable, absorbed pus and blood, and was easy to boil for sterilization, making it the most commonly used wrapping material for the army. Soft cloth (such as raw silk) was applied directly to the wound first, and the outer layer was tightly bound with ramie fabric to secure it.

In wartime, military uniform linings (plain white linen), grain bag linings, and even the clothing of the dead would be torn apart, using wood ash directly pressed onto wounds to stop bleeding.

Furthermore, regarding knowledge of sterilization, *Taiping Shengwei Fang* (Imperial Grace Formulary of the Taiping Era), compiled in the early Song dynasty, recorded: "Wound cloths must be boiled until thoroughly cooked."