met free Chapter 215 Qian Guan truly lives up to his reputation as a money-making machine! Cheng Qi's ex
Chapter 215 Qian Guan truly lives up to his reputation as a money-making machine! Cheng Qi's ex
In the early spring of the second year of the Kaiyuan era (714), the walls of the Beiting Protectorate were still covered with frost that had not yet melted.
At dawn on the seventh day of the second month, a cloud of yellow dust suddenly rose on the horizon. Thirty thousand iron cavalry, personally dispatched by the Western Turkic Khan Mochuo, swept across the northern foothills of the Tianshan Mountains like a black tide, carrying the bloody wind of the northern desert.
The golden wolf banner of Yijiang Khan fluttered in the wind, while the scimitar of Etler gleamed coldly in the morning light. Huobajielifashiashibi's black-armored cavalry stood in formation like a forest, and the three powerful armies surrounded the lonely city like hungry wolves, turning it into a precarious boat in a vast sea.
On the city wall, Guo Qianguan, clad in gleaming armor, tapped his knuckles against the blue brick battlements.
This is a little-known general in Tang Dynasty history, whom I have read about.
Guo Qianguan gazed at the Turkic yurts, faintly visible amidst the smoke of battle outside the city, and suddenly sneered: "Order all camps to soak the drawbridge ropes of the barbican in tung oil."
As he turned, his scarlet cloak swept across the arrow stacks, startling a few crows into flight.
That night, three hundred swordsmen, gagged and fleeing, lay in ambush among the willow bushes west of the city. The cold moonlight reflected the frost on their blades, making it look like the Milky Way had fallen to earth.
The following day at dawn, as expected, he led three thousand elite cavalry to launch a surprise attack on the west gate.
This fierce Turkic general, wearing a snow leopard tail feather crown and riding a Ferghana horse, actually leaped across the remaining ice of the moat all by himself.
The moment the drums and horns on the city wall fell silent, the ambushing soldiers rose up like dragons from the ground, unleashing a rain of arrows from the willow thickets.
But then Guo Qianguan personally wielded a powerful three-stone bow. As the string twanged, white feathers pierced the clouds, and blood blossomed from the throat of the Russian, causing him and his horse to plunge into an icy abyss.
Upon witnessing this scene, the Turkic vanguard's warhorses reared up in terror, and their formation crumbled like sand in an instant.
As the setting sun stained blood, the Turkic envoys piled up mountains of gold and silver below the city walls, pleading with mournful cries for the return of their commander's body.
Guo Qianguan ordered his soldiers to hang the leopard-tail crown of the Russian eagle high on the city tower. The feathers danced wildly in the cold wind, as if the dead eagle was still struggling.
Upon witnessing this scene, the 30,000 Turkic soldiers wept so bitterly that the snow on the city walls shattered. They broke camp and fled westward overnight, leaving behind scimitars that gleamed with tears in the moonlight.
Shi Asibi sat alone in the yurt, the bronze lamp casting his shadow on the wolf-skin tent, swaying like a trapped beast.
The mare's milk wine in the golden cup on the table had long since frozen, reflecting his wife's terrified face... little did he know that he would one day become the Princess of Jinshan.
“Returning to the Khan’s court is death, surrendering to the Tang court is also gambling with my life…” he muttered to himself, when suddenly the mournful cry of a wild goose swept across the cold sky outside the tent.
At dawn on the 25th day of the intercalary second month, this Turkic nobleman removed his armor and sword, and knelt before the south gate of Beiting with his trembling wife and children. As the city gate creaked open, he saw Guo Qianguan's gleaming armor, more dazzling than the rising sun.
On the day the good news reached Chang'an, the morning bell of Hanyuan Hall in Daming Palace shattered the spring chill.
The imperial edict, with Emperor Xuanzong's own vermilion annotations, was sent to the border by express courier. The gold characters "Champion General" on the brocade complemented Guo Qianguan's newly acquired seal of the Duke of Taiyuan.
At the Protectorate's victory banquet, the wine from the Western Regions rippled with blood in the luminous cup, while the newly built mound of Jingguan outside the city stood silently under the moonlight—there stood broken spears of the Russians, with half a tattered golden wolf flag still hanging from their tips.
It turns out that Princess Jinshan was originally a little princess of Li Shimin who died young, but she was not as favored as Xiao Sizi.
The so-called marriage alliance was actually a temporary arrangement where a prince's daughter was used as a substitute, given the empty title of Princess Jinshan. In reality, naming the princess after someone who died young truly demonstrates the lack of sincerity on the part of the Tang Dynasty.
On a winter night in the seventeenth year of the Zhenguan era, frost fell like cotton wool over the Daming Palace. As a female official from the Shanggong Bureau carried a lantern across the Thousand-Step Corridor, the glazed palace lantern suddenly swayed—the copper bells on the eaves moved on their own without wind. Startled, she looked up and saw Princess Mingda of Jinyang, her small figure bent over a desk in the crimson gauze window of the Ganlu Hall. Drops of vermilion ink from the tip of her sheep-hair brush fell onto a copy of the Diamond Sutra, spreading out like red plum blossoms.
"That child is copying scriptures to pray for his deceased mother again." Zi'an pulled her snow fox fur coat tighter, recalling the whispers that had come from the inner palace three days ago. It is said that when Empress Zhangsun was dying, she held her five-year-old daughter Mingda tightly, her throat making hoarse sounds but unable to utter her last words. In the end, she bit off half of her tongue and sprayed her blood on her daughter's forehead, as if it had been dotted with a cinnabar mole.
No one expected that, even more bizarrely, when the female historians lifted the white cloth covering the corpse, the body turned into specks of black pearl powder, which were scattered into the nine layers of curtains of the Taiji Palace by the draft.
Zi'an saw it clearly from the shadows. Where the black pearl powder fell, a baby's cry suddenly came from the coffin of Princess Jinshan, who had already died young. The princess, who was destined to die young in the history books, had a red tear mole at the corner of her eye, just like the one on Xiao Si's forehead.
In the east warm pavilion of Ganlu Palace, the gilded Boshan incense burner emitted the fragrance of garland jasmine. Fifteen-year-old Li Chengqi was tuning his newly made five-stringed curved-neck pipa. He was the father of the little rhinoceros who had transmigrated to this world as the Princess of Jinshan.
On the sandalwood resonator box, a tribute from the Western Regions, the finished piece is inlaid with mother-of-pearl depicting a scene of music and dance from Kucha. The flying apsaras playing the pipa in reverse, with their robes fluttering in the wind, are just like the magnificent scene he saw on the Lantern Festival night at Anfu Gate.
"Does Father know what it means to imprison a dragon?" He suddenly stopped plucking the strings. The bronze mirror reflected the gaunt face of his father, Li Danqing—this "crown prince" imprisoned by the Empress Dowager in a separate courtyard, who was now teasing the caged pheasant with a whisk. Upon hearing this, the pheasant trembled, and its feathers fell one after another.
Memories of when he was six years old always tore at him in the dead of night...
The dragon throne in Hanyuan Hall was so large that it could drown a child, and the officials' court tablets looked like a dense array of swords and halberds.
When his grandmother, Wu Zetian, threw the golden book into his arms, he saw blood seeping through the hem of his father Li Dan's court robes—the wound from kneeling and breaking glazed bricks at the Wanshang Divine Palace the night before.
The first snow of the first year of the Civilization Era fell strangely. Li Chengqi remembered that on the day he was stripped of his crown as crown prince, the wild peonies south of Luoyang suddenly bloomed out of season. The purple-robed eunuch who came to deliver the imperial decree carried a golden birdcage, saying that it was a new favorite bestowed upon the "imperial grandson" by the Holy Emperor.
The golden sparrow in the cage had a red gold chain tied to its ankle; the slightest flap of its wings would draw blood. While the cries of the nine dragon sons echoed outside Xuanren Gate, Li Chengqi smiled at the caged bird.
He took off the Hetian jade flute from his waist and played a modified version of Kucha music. The flute's sound pierced through the clouds and split the rocks. The golden sparrow pecked off its own leg chain, broke through the cage door, and turned into a streak of ochre light, falling straight towards Zhongnan Mountain.
That night, he curled up on the cold, hard couch in the prince's mansion, his fingertips repeatedly tracing the Sanskrit inscriptions hidden on the jade flute—this was something a mysterious person had slipped into his window three days earlier, along with a letter from Zhang Xuetao, on which was written:
"The Tang court's ingenious plan concealed the flames of war, while the tribute of jade and silk was merely a pretext for a predestined relationship with the border regions."
The phoenix carriage hangs empty in the moonlit land of the barbarians, while the imperial edict is a false representation of the Han dynasty's rule.
The war has temporarily ceased, and the mountains and passes are silent; the allure of beauty cannot fill the deepest abyss of desire.
History records the fleeting image of the golden bracelet, while the yellow sands still weep, their beauty yet to be fully realized.
A peculiar tiger head emblem was printed in the corner of the letter: it turns out that in the previous life when Xiao Si married Qiu Rongmu, she gave birth to a "little tiger"—Qiu Xiaoyin...