Chapter 54: The Piano of the West and the Erhu of the East

Tuman City had originally been called Slaughter-the-Barbarians City.

If one removed the most recent hundred years from the history of the State of Yan, what remained was practically one long chronicle of war against the barbarian tribes.

During those centuries of warfare, Tuman City had stood at the very front line of Yan’s struggle with the barbarians.

No one could count how many sons of Yan had departed from this place to campaign deep into the desert.

Some returned wrapped in horsehide.

Others returned carrying barbarian heads.

A large reason the states of the Central Plains had been able to live so uselessly was that Yan, through its own strength, had blocked the northern threat from the desert outside the Central Plains and given the three great states within it the opportunity to spend their days in song and dance.

Of course, it was not as though generation after generation of Yan rulers had selflessly devoted themselves to guarding the frontier for Central Plains civilization.

Their geography was simply too terrible.

Unless a Yan emperor had grown tired of sitting on the dragon throne and wanted to move into the desert, crown himself some sort of khan, and live as a rancher eating cheese and wearing sheepskin, there was absolutely no possibility of bowing to the barbarian tribes.

Still, the smoke of war had been absent from Tuman City for almost a century.

The city that had once been the foremost military stronghold of the northern frontier had now developed into the military, economic, political, and cultural center of all Beifeng Commandery.

Compared with Tuman City, Tiger Head City really was nothing more than a little brother.

Even the commercial economy Tiger Head City took such pride in was merely drinking a little of the soup spilled from Tuman City’s table.

Foreign merchants were everywhere here.

They treated the city as a great transit hub.

Merchant caravans from the desert tribes, the Western Regions, and even the far more distant lands of the West all converged here.

At the same time, merchant caravans from Yan, Jin, Qian, Chu, as well as countless smaller eastern states, maintained a year-round presence.

Calling Tuman City the “Shenzhen” of this world would not be much of an exaggeration.

At this moment, on one of Tuman City’s busy streets, a middle-aged man with a neat mustache and a white Western-style coat was strolling along while leading a dog.

The leash was very thin thin enough that a clever woman could probably take it home and weave it into clothing.

But the dog attached to it was enormous.

Its fur was black and white.

Its tail was long.

If it rose fully onto its hind legs, it would stand taller than an ordinary adult man.

Even the well-traveled residents of Tuman City instinctively kept their distance from such an enormous beast.

Some children were less afraid.

They followed behind the dog, chasing and playing.

But ask them to step close enough to pat its head, and those same children would immediately lose their courage.

Viewed through modern eyes, the giant dog looked very much like a husky.

Except its sheer bulk was comparable to a fully grown, heavily built Alaskan malamute.

Man and dog wandered the streets for half a day.

Then they returned to their guest compound.

Tuman City was enormous, but its overall style remained rough and unrestrained.

Unlike the capital of Qian, it was not divided into countless carefully separated wards and markets.

People, however, naturally clustered together.

Rich districts.

Commoner districts.

Property prices alone produced an unspoken division.

There were also guest compounds built by merchants from various states.

Placed in a later era, every one of those compounds would have become a tourist attraction for people to photograph.

The courtyard of this particular compound was very large.

There were no openly designated military attachés like the ones stationed at embassies in later generations, but private guards for a major merchant caravan were naturally indispensable.

The defenses were accordingly quite strict.

Tuman City’s authorities permitted this.

Because outside the city stood a major Zhenbei Army camp.

One of the Zhenbei Army’s six great garrisons fifty thousand troops was stationed there.

No one dared behave too recklessly beneath their eyes.

As for the enormous husky, the city guards had originally refused to let it inside during the entry inspection.

Demonic beasts existed in this world.

The Great Marsh of Chu, the Heavenbreak Mountains of Jin, and the deep desert north of Yan were all places where demonic beasts appeared.

Some armies even fielded tamed demonic beasts in battle.

The Pi Beasts issued to Yan officials and generals belonged to the same broad category, though they were artificially bred and domesticated.

Once a demonic beast went berserk especially inside a city the destruction and chaos it could cause would be enormous.

However, on the day they entered Tuman City, this particular giant husky had performed a little circus routine, proving itself to be nothing more than a very large dog that knew tricks.

Only then had the guards allowed it into the city.

Inside the room, a charcoal brazier burned warmly.

Winter removed his outer coat.

Two blonde, blue-eyed maidservants approached carrying hot towels.

Each crouched on one side of the husky and carefully wiped its paws.

Once they finished, the two maidservants withdrew.

Winter poured tea.

Two cups.

The husky walked over to the table.

It rose upright, sat itself in a chair, and used one paw to stick to the teacup and raise it toward its mouth.

Its long tongue extended.

It tasted the tea.

“Qian tea really is excellent,” Winter praised.

“Indeed.

“In the past, by the time tea leaves were transported all the way to our homeland, the journey had already robbed them of their freshness.

“And after crossing the vast desert, it always felt as though the tea itself had absorbed some of the sand’s astringency.”

The husky spoke human language.

“The finest tea.

“The finest porcelain.

“The finest silk.

“Even the most beautiful women.

“All of them are in Qian.

“Qian really is an enviable state.”

Winter drank his tea as he sighed.

“Yan has the barbarian tribes of the desert outside its borders.

“Chu has the Great Marsh within its territory, along with the Shanyue people of the marsh constantly causing unrest.

“Within Jin’s Heavenbreak Mountains there are not only demon races, but also settlements of wild men.

“Only Qian possesses territory almost entirely suitable for human habitation.

“Its land is fertile.

“Its resources abundant.”

Winter nodded.

“Perhaps because its geography is simply too good, Qian is actually the weakest among the four great eastern states.”

The most famous military disaster in Qian’s history was naturally the battle that made the first Marquis of Zhenbei famous.

But that was hardly the only example.

When Qian faced Jin and Chu, it was usually the one getting beaten.

Few victories.

Many defeats.

The husky placed its teacup back on the table with one paw.

“I very much like a saying from one of the East’s wise men:

‘One thrives in adversity and dies in ease.’”

“A pity.

“The East truly is covered in gold.

“But it lies far too distant from us.”

“It isn’t only the distance.

“Do you remember the Barbarian Calamity?”

The Barbarian Calamity referred to an event a century earlier.

After years of warfare between the barbarian tribes united beneath the Royal Court and the State of Yan, the khan of the Royal Court had finally been forced to admit one thing:

Yan and Yan’s iron cavalry were simply too hard a stone to chew.

Time and again, the people of Yan had smashed the barbarians bloody.

With no way southward past Yan, the khan of that generation turned west instead and led the cavalry of the barbarian tribes on a massive campaign of plunder.

First, they swept across the states of the Western Regions and forced them into submission.

Then the barbarian cavalry continued driving westward.

They charged directly into the lands of the West.

The barbarians who had spent years being beaten black and blue along Yan’s frontier suddenly rediscovered all their confidence before the western states.

They broke kingdom after kingdom.

The entire western world shook.

Perhaps the khan—who had spent his whole reign being suppressed so badly by Yan that he could barely breathe—had been stifled for too long.

Once he invaded the West and saw how smoothly things were going, he began getting carried away.

He personally led the elite of the Royal Court together with the armies of the Left and Right Wise Kings, hoping to strike directly at the heart of the enemy.

His blade pointed toward the capital of the greatest western empire of that era.

He wanted to shatter the spirit of the entire western world in one blow and turn the West into a new pasture for the barbarian tribes.

Then, the Church intervened.

In that battle, the Knights Templar rode out in full force.

The elite armies of the western kingdoms gathered together.

Great mages.

Great battle-qi practitioners.

They appeared in numbers beyond counting.

It was even said that forces belonging to the western dark factions had entered the battle to help.

That campaign ended with the khan, who had penetrated too deeply with an isolated army, and the most loyal, most elite forces of the Royal Court around him completely annihilated!

The barbarian tribes still possessed tremendous military strength afterward.

But without a leader capable of commanding them all, the western kingdoms gradually drove them back.

From then on, the barbarian Royal Court already crippled by catastrophic losses slowly declined into something resembling the Japanese emperor of later generations: a symbolic mascot.

It no longer had the strength to unite the desert tribes and command them as one.

A century ago, when the ruler and ministers of Yan first received this news, they had been equally astonished.

The barbarian tribes that had fought Yan for so many years had actually lost their Royal Court to westerners?

Just how terrifying were those western states?

And in the eyes of the western world:

Good God.

These terrifying barbarians had only attacked us because they were first defeated by that eastern State of Yan.

And yet even weakened like this, they were still so horrifying that their iron hooves nearly trampled western civilization into oblivion.

God above just how terrifying must that empire called “Yan” be?

As a result, once the desert tribes settled down, something resembling a Belt and Road was gradually established.

East and West each came to believe the other side was terrifying and not worth provoking.

And with that attitude, the two civilizations had somehow maintained an extraordinarily cordial honeymoon period of exchange for an entire century.

Yan attached tremendous importance to commerce.

Compared with the other three eastern states, its territory truly was poor.

And because the Yan imperial house also had to contend with powerful local aristocratic clans sucking blood from the empire, the court had even more reason to protect its commercial interests.

“A hundred years have passed.

“And yet the Zhenbei Army here is still powerful.”

Winter sighed.

In recent decades, the Roman Empire had risen once again, becoming unquestionably the greatest power in the western world.

Winter had originally assumed that after such a long period of peace, Yan’s terrifying war machine should have rusted.

Reality told him otherwise.

The army called the Zhenbei Army remained horrifyingly strong.

The Empire wanted to extend its reach into the East.

The desert tribes themselves were not especially difficult to handle.

The real problem was distance.

A long expedition alone placed enormous strain on any army.

And after the Empire’s troops crossed the vast desert in an exhausted state and finally reached the East, could they withstand a charge from the six great garrisons of Beifeng Commandery three hundred thousand Zhenbei cavalry?

“Rome was not built in a day.

“We only need to do the work presently in front of us.

“Besides, hasn’t the residence of the Marquis of Zhenbei—and the Zhenbei Army beneath it—already become estranged from the Yan court?

“If we can obtain the Marquis’s promise and establish cooperation with them, then extending the Empire’s power into the East will no longer remain a dream.”

“Will those old fossils in the Senate agree?”

“Finish the work first.

“Worry about the Senate afterward.

“If we truly reach an agreement with the residence of the Marquis of Zhenbei, the Senate will agree whether it wants to or not.

“And if it refuses...

“Heh.

“Are they not afraid the generals beneath them might carry out another bloodbath of the Senate?”

“This cannot be rushed.

“That Princess has repeatedly refused to meet me.

“She has probably already guessed my identity.

“I’ll wait a few more days and try again.”

“These Easterners are all the same.

“They can fight and consume one another internally as brutally as they please, but the moment they see outsiders like us, they become extraordinarily wary.

“In their eyes, we’re probably no different from the barbarians.”

“Enough of that.”

Winter cut off the husky.

He reached into his pocket, took out a small porcelain bottle, removed the stopper, and inhaled deeply.

An expression of pure enjoyment appeared on his face.

Slowly, he asked, “What did you learn about that group?”

“They only came to us.

“They didn’t approach any other trading house.”

“Not even other western merchants?”

“No.

“Only us.”

“Why do I feel like... they’ve already seen through our identities?”

“You mean they’re agents of the Yan court?”

“No, no.

“What sort of agents would neglect their real work long enough to create something this miraculous?

“And as for that thing they call soap— haven’t you been using it every day?”

The husky replied, “I may have washed with it too many times.

“I’ve started shedding.”

“Heh.

“When you return home someday, wash with soap, spray this perfume all over yourself, and every female... dog in the Empire that has gained intelligence will be driven mad by you.”

The husky bared its teeth in a grin.

Clearly, it had been imagining and anticipating such a scene for a long time.

“Have you confirmed where that group is staying?”

“Not yet.

“Ever since they delivered this gift to us, they’ve deliberately hidden themselves.”

“Not complete fools, then.”

“They probably want something from us,” the husky said.

“They want to negotiate.”

“If they want to negotiate, they must first possess the qualifications to sit at the same table as me.

“Otherwise...”

At that moment, a dark shadow seeped in from beneath the door.

It condensed into a kneeling human figure.

“What is it?”

“Reporting to Your Highness, we have finally found the location of that group.”

Winter stretched lazily after hearing this.

Then said, “Go.

“Keep the disturbance small.

“Capture them alive.”

“Understood.”

The shadowy figure immediately dissolved and disappeared.

The husky raised one paw and pressed the small bell on the table.

“Jingle-jingle...”

Then it dropped back onto all fours, pretending it truly was nothing more than a dog.

Footsteps soon came from outside.

A man with the appearance of someone from the Western Regions entered respectfully.

“Honored Master, your loyal servant Maimuti awaits your command.”

Winter glanced at the husky lying on the floor and wagging its tail.

A smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

He said, “Among the mastiffs we bought from the barbarian merchants recently, choose a female.

“Give her to him.”

Winter pointed toward the husky beneath the table.

Maimuti nodded.

“Yes, Master.”

“Oh, right.

“I told you to search Tuman City for someone who knows how to play the piano.

“Any news?”

Winter had not truly held much hope for this request.

Even in the West, people who understood such an elegant instrument as the piano were extremely rare.

Never mind this distant East.

He enjoyed playing.

But just as the lofty mountains and flowing water needed a listener who understood, without someone nearby who knew the instrument, he always felt the music lost part of its original flavor.

“Reporting to Master, we found someone.

“He says he understands the piano.

“And he personally described its appearance to me.

“There were a few small discrepancies, but overall what he described is extremely similar to your piano.

“It’s only...”

“Oh?

“You genuinely found someone?”

Winter’s mood immediately brightened.

“Only what?”

“He is blind.”

“My piano teacher was blind as well.

“A blind man can often possess an even sharper perception of music than ordinary people.”

“Yes.

“Master is correct.”

“Where is he now?”

“He is already waiting in the reception room for Master to summon him.”

“Good.

“Invite him in.”

“Woof!”

Winter pointed at the husky lying on the floor with considerable disdain.

“Take him out first.

“Breed him.”

“Woof~~”

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(End of Chapter)