Chapter 34: Lengquan Post (Cold Spring Post)
“Jiejie, what do we do?” Daneng’s voice trembled with sobs as looked at her helplessly, eyes full of fear. “The post is on fire, what do we do now?”
Was it an accident? Had the place caught fire by chance? Or had someone set it ablaze? Has something terrible happened?
Chun Tian gazed toward the distant blaze, pursing her dry and cracked lips. “I don’t know either.”
“Papa, Mama…” Daneng wailed and threw his arms around her, sobbing uncontrollably. “Jiejie, I want my papa and mama…”
She stroked the top of his head, but her heart was a mess of confusion and worry.
They were both utterly spent by now, exhausted to the bone. Huddled together on the slope, they watched the flickering light from afar. Chun Tian didn’t dare get any closer, not with the boy in tow. If something had gone wrong at Lengquan Post, it might not be safe.
Daneng, no more than seven or eight, had been terrified, forced to walk with her through the night, and was hungry and tired. After a few more sniffles, he collapsed into her lap and quickly drifted into sleep, still clutching her sleeve, tears glistening at the corners of his eyes.
Chun Tian held him close in the chill wind, eyes fixed on the distant glow.
In the dead of night, the flames continued to crackle, casting eerie shadows and sending tendrils of smoke into the sky. The air carried the acrid stench of scorched earth, faintly mingled with the sweet fragrance of blooming sand date blossoms. Ash floated through the wind, tiny specks of black carried across the sand.
By the time the flames dimmed and the sky began to pale, the stars and moon had already lost their luster. A soft gray gloom settled across the horizon.
Chun Tian gently shook Daneng awake. “Daneng, the fire’s dying down. Let’s go check before dawn comes.”
They quietly clasped hands and crept forward, careful not to make a sound.
About halfway there, under the faint pre-dawn light, they could make out the mess left behind: hoofprints scattered wildly in the sand, and random items strewn across the ground: bits of cloth, broken sandals, splintered wood.
Chun Tian’s expression darkened.
Daneng followed her gaze and spotted what she was staring at–fragments of carts, and a jumble of deep footprints.
“Jiejie.”
Chun Tian scuffed the ground with her toe, murmuring, “These hoofprints, they’re facing outward.”
Had something happened at Lengquan Post, forcing the people inside to flee? Or were those the merchants who had already arrived, now suddenly escaping back the way they came?
Just then, the sharp sound of hooves echoed in the distance. Chun Tian and Daneng exchanged a startled glance, then hurriedly ducked behind a sand dune. As the riders drew near, they saw four or five traveling merchants wrapped in coarse cloaks, galloping out from the direction of the post.
Realizing they were fellow travelers, relief flooded her. Daneng scrambled out from behind the dune first, waving his arms wildly and shouting, “Da-ye! !”
Startled, the men reined in their horses. Carefully looking and seeing it was only a young boy and a young girl of fourteen or fifteen, they relaxed a little.
“Are the Da-ye from Lengquan Post?” Chun Tian bowed quickly. “We were attacked by bandits on the road yesterday and hoped to seek refuge at the post, but saw it on fire from afar. Not sure what happened.”
“You two were with Master Yingsha’s caravan?” asked a stout, round-faced man in a green tunic.
It turned out these men were also merchants who had fled from the bandits’ assault yesterday. They had headed straight for Lengquan Post, hoping the garrison there could offer safety. But by the time they approached, the post was in ruins. They had waited hidden in the wild until the flames died down, and crept forward to scout. What they found was worse than they’d imagined: at the foot of the fortress, there were soldiers dead outside the gates, the fortress gates thrown wide open, and several Turkic marauders camped there, drinking, feasting, and laughing amidst the corpses, laughing loudly as they played drinking games. The men had dared not stay. They turned and fled again, terrified.
Chun Tian and Daneng stood frozen, horrified.
Daneng’s eyes welled up, then burst into tears. “Then where’s my Papa? My Mama? Where did they go?”
The caravan had been raided. The outpost was destroyed.
And what about Li Wei?
One of the merchants offered a mule for Chun Tian and Daneng to ride together: “Let’s find a place to hide first. I know there’s a rocky stretch a few li from here, we can take shelter there.”
Daneng, still a child, couldn’t help burying his face in Chun Tian’s arms and sobbing. Her heart ached seeing him like that. “Daneng, don’t cry. When those Turkic men leave, I’ll go with you to find your parents. Don’t cry, they’re definitely still alive, don’t cry…”
About five li outside Lengquan Post, there was a stony expanse where wind-eroded hills had formed jagged gullies and hollows, enough to hide people. The group made their way there, and as dawn broke, they unexpectedly ran into Mishinian.
Mishinian had brought Kang Dolu and his remaining men to Lengquan Post just before nightfall. After reporting the ambush to the post’s garrison officer, they’d barely had time to sit down for half a cup of tea and for the garrison officer to call for reinforcements, when chaos erupted. The adjacent courier lodge suddenly went up in flames. While the garrison rushed to draw water from Lake Mozi, the Turkic riders struck, breaching the gates and setting the post ablaze. In moments, fire and slaughter engulfed the town.
These weren’t ordinary bandits. Their blades and arrows were military-grade, and they numbered well over a hundred, clearly a rogue detachment sent to raid Lengquan Post. The caravan had merely been a windfall, a fat sheep that happened to cross and be delivered to the hungry wolf’s mouth on their path. Even after the massacre, the raiders still loitered at the outpost, drinking and feasting atop the dead.
It had been a night of disaster upon disaster. With no way to fight and nowhere to run, the surviving merchants were left with only retreat.
Kang Dolu’s group had just settled among the stone outcrops when Mishinian went out again to gather news. He hadn’t gone far when he saw Chun Tian and Daneng on the path. Relief flooded his face.
“Little miss, thank the heavens, you’re still alive.”
Wiping sweat and dust from his forehead, he said, “I settled Master Yingsha and the others, then meant to head back for you. But just as I left, your elder brother caught up with me, he’d heard you were missing. His face went pale as a ghost; didn’t say a word before galloping back to search for you. I followed him all night but couldn’t find any sign of you. I came back to scout ahead.”
He had felt extremely sorry for Li Wei and had been deeply uneasy all night, “You wait here for him, don’t go wandering off.”
Li Wei… Li Wei was here too!
She nearly burst into tears.
At the rocky outcrop, more and more merchants had gathered, some who’d escaped from the caravan, others who’d fled from the burning post station. Everyone was exhausted and uneasy.
“The Turks slaughtered the caravan outside the beacon post, then stormed the city and burned the whole thing down, even killing all the envoys from Gaochang. That can’t be a coincidence. The Turks must’ve done this to take revenge on the King of Gaochang for siding with the dynasty after swearing allegiance to them and changing his mind according to the wind.”
“The road to Yiwu just reopened not long ago. Wasn’t the court supposedly negotiating peace with the Turks? Is this war breaking out again?”
“The Turks are wolves in human skin. Last winter they lost so many pack animals to the cold. Of course they’d come south again to plunder.”
“I put everything I had into buying that silk. Now the Turks have taken it all. How am I supposed to live now?”
Daneng weaved through the crowd, searching desperately for his parents, but they were nowhere to be seen. His eyes filled with tears, and he finally couldn’t hold back anymore. In the middle of the crowd, he pursed his lips and wailed at the top of his lungs: “Papa! Mama!”
Chun Tian’s heart ached at the sound. She held him tightly, trying her best to console him. A woman nearby who recognized him handed over a small piece of flatbread, saying gently, “Don’t cry, child. Your parents might be on their way here. Just wait a little longer.”
Not long after, as the sun rose fully over the horizon, Chun Tian suddenly heard a distant horse’s whinny, familiar, somehow. Her breath caught. She stood up with a start and saw another group of twenty-odd riders approaching from afar. She stumbled forward anxiously.
Then one rider broke away from the group, spurring his horse toward her.
The moment she saw the gray cloak fluttering in the wind, her eyes stung and blurred with sudden tears. She took two unsteady steps forward, looked up with a choked sob, and called out his name: “Li Wei.”
Li Wei finally caught sight of her. The heavy weight on his chest lifted in that moment, he exhaled with true relief. Dismounting in one swift motion, he strode toward her and scanned her up and down, voice low and soft: “Are you alright?”
Her hood had fallen off. Wind-tangled ebony black hair framed her dust-streaked face. Her eyes shimmered with twinkling tears. She looked up at him and nodded, rasping out a faint, “Mm.”
That night had been filled with danger and chaos, Chun Tian hadn’t dared dwell on it, too afraid the memories alone might overwhelm her. But now, seeing him standing before her, she finally let herself feel the exhaustion that had gripped her bones, nearly collapsing from sheer relief.
Li Wei exhaled a long, heavy breath, about to speak, when a child suddenly dashed out from beside Chun Tian and shouted toward the group behind him, “Papa! Mama!”
A middle-aged couple came running, tears streaming down their cheeks. “Daneng! Our son!”
They pulled the child into their arms, sobbing in joy. After surviving such peril, the reunion was wrenching to watch. Wealth and possessions could be replaced, life was what mattered. Upon learning that it was Chun Tian who had saved their son, the couple knelt before her again and again, kowtowing in heartfelt gratitude.
Behind Li Wei stood Chasing Thunder, his horse, and trailing behind was Chun Tian’s mount. After saving the women on the high cart, Li Wei had immediately raced after Chun Tian. But when he arrived at Lengquan Post, she was nowhere to be found. The fortress was ablaze and panicked townspeople were fleeing in every direction. He had run into Mishinian, who told him she’d turned back to save a fallen child. Dread seized his heart. He rode hard along the path, found her horse, riderless, and searched the area through the night in growing desperation. At last, he’d returned to the stone outcrop in hope.
And by some miracle, she was here.
Only now did he realize how tightly he’d been wound the entire night, how frayed his nerves had become. It wasn’t until this moment, that his heart began to settle.
Chun Tian spotted her own horse and breathed a sigh of relief. One of the bags had been pierced by an arrow, and she’d lost a string of Hu flatbread, but the waterskin and her spare clothes were intact. After a night of chaos with not a drop of water, she pulled out the waterskin to drink, then retreated to a quiet spot to wipe the dust and grit from her face.
Li Wei passed her a packet of dried meat. As she chewed hurriedly and drank the cold water, she heard him say, “Let me see your hand, I’ll put some medicine on it.”
Puzzled, she looked down and followed his gaze, only then did she notice the source of the throbbing pain she’d ignored. Two of her fingernails had been broken clean into the nail bed, blood crusted at the edges, fused with grime. She must have torn them during her frantic effort to haul Daneng onto the horse.
At the time, she hadn’t even noticed the pain, she had been occupied with survival.
Still holding the meat in one hand, she extended the other to him. He took it and placed it on his knee.
Li Wei poured a trickle of water from the waterskin and began to wash away the dried blood. Her brows drew together at the sting. He drew out a small brush, like a calligraphy brush, dipped it in clean water, and began to softly brush away the dirt and grit from beneath her torn nails using the soft bristles.
Li Wei rummaged once more through his pack and pulled out a small black medicine tin. Scooping out a dab of salve, he carefully applied it to her wounds. A faint sting bloomed first, then a cool, soothing sensation spread up from her fingertips, curling slowly through her veins until it reached her heart.
He tore a strip of soft cloth and wrapped her fingers, layer by layer. She said nothing, her gaze steady and solemn, fixed on the growing bandage. His voice was calm but resolute: “Don’t worry. From now on, I won’t leave your side. I’ll protect you.”
At those words, her nose felt sore and she murmured quietly, “There was a Turkic soldier chasing me, he shot arrows at me.”
He felt that those few words brimmed with silent fear and pent-up grievance. Li Wei turned to look at her. Her long lashes trembled like a moth’s wings fluttering beneath the lamplight.
“My whistle.” He took the copper whistle, the one she had returned to him back in Changle Mountain, and pressed it into her hand once more. “Keep it with you. If I ever stray too far, just blow this and I’ll come back.”
Elsewhere on the stony outcrop, Kang Dolu looked every bit as disheveled as the rest. He had abandoned his ornate carriage during the chaos and now sat huddled with his remaining guards. Podianlu brought over a waterskin. “Master, drink some water.”
The grape wine and golden goblets were long gone. He had only managed to grab a few valuables from the carriage before fleeing. His guards had saved perhaps one-tenth of the pack animals. The merchant caravan was devastated. Many traders sat slumped, wailing over their lost fortunes, too dazed to know what to do next.
Even so, Kang Dolu’s face remained calm. He turned to his boy servant. “Duoge, go check, has Mishinian returned yet?”
“Sabao, Sabao,” a merchant complained to Kang Dolu, near tears. “What are we supposed to do now? Everything I owned… it’s all gone!”
“To come out of this alive is already a great blessing,” Kang Dolu replied. He placed a small idol of the Ao God upon a rocky shelf, knelt down before it, and bowed deeply. “We offer up our gold, silver, and gems to Ao. May the god watch over us and grant us safe passage to the West.”
TN: Hi everyone!! Just got back from visiting my boyfriend and his family. Hope you guys have a good week!
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Twin Dragons Translations 