Chapter 1006: Journey to Nanjing (6)

A single Mongol warrior led five horses.

Three of them were warhorses. He rotated mounts constantly, so the horses’ stamina stayed high.

And two were packhorses. Each warrior carried the baggage load of two packhorses—one of the reasons Mongol mounted warriors could march endlessly without supply lines.

So ten thousand Mongol warriors—fifty thousand riders—were violent beyond words even in pure movement.

Fifty thousand riders, two hundred thousand hooves hammering the earth... it wasn’t just noise. It was a massive vibration, closer to an earthquake that shook the ground itself.

Mongol enemies felt that earth-rumble through ears and skin and soles, instinctively grasping the enemy’s overwhelming force—and trembling in fear.

Just like the Gate Garrison Commander of Geumju County.

“Gate Garrison Commander” wasn’t a person’s name. It was the title of the military officer who supervised the city gate.

“Close the gate! Hurry! Hurry!!”

“But Gate Garrison Commander, there are still so many commoners outside trying to get in!”

“Are you going to let those northern bastards in because you got swept up in petty feelings?! If they get in, everyone dies!!”

The cities built along Liaodong were fortresses as much as they were cities—citadels meant to block foreign enemies, specifically the Mongol barbarians.

Of course, since the Mongol barbarians had been too busy fighting each other and only raiding like border bandit gangs near the frontier, a long peace had spread homes outside the walls until it formed the shape of a proper city.

But now—an ocean of men and horses rising suddenly over the horizon, a barbarian host surging in black like an angry wave—

The civilians outside the walls all flooded toward the gate at once.

A true hellscape erupted—people shoving and crushing each other, trying to force their way inside no matter what, just to live.

If they shut the gate now, the crowd that had gathered would all be slaughtered without mercy.

But if they didn’t shut the gate?

Those cruel northern barbarians would butcher every single person inside the city.

Whether this was nothing but cowardly self-justification to hide terror in the face of barbarians pouring in like a landslide, or whether it was a decision for the greater good—who could say.

But the Gate Garrison Commander ordered the gate shut, and because the gate closed inward, the surging crowd ended up helping to seal it.

A moment later—THUD. The gate slammed shut, firm and final.

No one even remembered when the last gate-sealing drill had been, but the moment the enemy arrived, they somehow remembered what to do—because they were desperate too.

They set the inner braces, reinforced it with iron plating, shoved the gate-bars into place, and kept strengthening the closed gate.

The frantic pounding—THUD-THUD-THUD—was the wailing of commoners screaming, begging to be saved.

Inside that living, raw scream—inside the crushing guilt of having driven them all into death—the Gate Garrison Commander squeezed his eyes shut and raised a fervent prayer.

Please... Heaven, Buddha, Immortal Lord... if you protect us, make those barbarians withdraw on their own...!

And then.

A miracle happened.

Far away, the barbarian warhorses that had been charging as if to sweep everything away split left and right.

An endless procession of men and horses—detouring far around the city on both sides.

As if an invisible wall guarded the city, the Mongol barbarians tore apart and flowed around it left and right, like a river splitting around a boulder.

The Gate Garrison Commander’s strength left him, and he collapsed, legs giving out.

Was it real...? Did Heaven truly protect them?

Then the Gate Garrison Commander’s mind snapped clear.

As if! Those barbarians are speeding up to drive into Hebei! They’re aiming for the capital!

And the Gate Garrison Commander screamed until his throat was about to burst.

“Beacon fire—light the beacon fire! Hurry!! We have to inform Shanhai Pass!! The northern barbarians—the northern barbarians have invaded!!”

*****

Staring at the fortress city with black smoke climbing into the sky, Suh—the son of Chinggu—ground his teeth.

Now that brothers of blood who had infiltrated the Central Plains had seized Shanhai Pass, what he needed to take Beijing was only speed. Speed, and nothing else.

With a force of ten thousand, he could sweep aside a city like this in a single strike—but even if he did, he still wouldn’t be able to stop the beacon fire from rising.

No cavalry, no matter how hard it pushed, could outrun a beacon.

But cavalry was faster than infantry.

Central Plains cavalry might come galloping once they saw the beacon fire, but weak Central Plains cavalry would never be able to handle Mongol warriors.

So all he had to do was enter Beijing first and surround the region.

Supplies? He could just loot the abundant stores piled inside Beijing.

So the only thing to be careful of would be the Central Plains’ cannons—except warriors with the Forbidden City at their backs meant they couldn’t fire cannons with the Central Plains king behind them.

So they would surround, loot, then abandon their horses and climb over the walls.

Capture the king of the Central Plains, force surrender—done.

Then even those arrogant Golden Clan bastards, and even the powerful Oirat, would have no choice but to acknowledge that a Great Khan had been born from the Erukt Clan.

And so Mongol cavalry ran.

Toward Shanhai Pass.

*****

As days passed, the Yangtze grew wider, and its flow grew richer.

And finally, the Seol Family Trading House’s pleasure boat entered the lower Yangtze.

From far away, a massive cityscape formed the horizon—and yet no matter how much time passed, it simply wouldn’t get any closer.

Just how big was the city, that you could see it so clearly from this far?

Even after the Seol Family Trading House’s pleasure boat entered Nanjing—no, entered the river running through it—the city on both banks still showed no sign of ending.

Colorful flags fluttered all along the waterfront. Everywhere, long decks and docks stretched out like arms, tempting boats to come moor.

With the sails furled and speed reduced, the pleasure boat drifted slowly down the Yangtze.

The crew—already familiar with the docks after many trading runs—carefully guided the boat toward the dock owned by the Gongryeong Merchant House and the Gongsun Gong Clan.

“Ooh. Big.”

“Big.”

“Yes.”

Jayeo stood at the gunwale between Qing and Seol Iri, gripping their hands left and right, all three lined up as they watched the city’s shifting scenes slide past.

Women gathered in a cluster doing laundry, little kids splashing in the water, taverns and teahouses built right up against the river where refined patrons lifted cups while looking out—

And there were also little bastards casually dumping buckets of filth right into the river.

A landscaped riverside path where couples passed close together, elderly people sitting and watching, a group of exercisers gathered and waving around in something like a taiji routine—

And maybe there were building restrictions along the river, because every so often there were open stretches of bank packed with stalls selling fish and street food.

On the river itself were countless boats: water-transport vessels loaded down with cargo, idle rich idiots already partying with entertainers, tiny fishing boats pulling in their catch, and old fishing sages letting down lines from small skiffs just to kill time...

She’d heard Nanjing was big, but she hadn’t known it was this big.

She’d thought Wuhan was a huge city, but compared to Nanjing, it was just... a city. Just a city.

Because Wuhan was only a major city.

Nanjing was a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great city.

Eight “greats,” because Nanjing’s population was eight times larger than Wuhan’s.

A city where eight hundred thousand people lived.

That was Nanjing.

People often called Nanjing the city of the Six Dynasties.

It started when Sun Quan—unable to endure being outplayed and spectacularly wrecking his own state of Wu—set his capital in Nanjing, and called it Jianye.

After that, five more dynasties made it their capital and built states there, so it became known as the city where six dynasties rose—the city of the Six Dynasties.

But Nanjing people didn’t like that expression.

They insisted it wasn’t six but seven, so it should be the city of the Seven Dynasties.

Because when the current Son of Heaven drove out the Yuan Dynasty and founded the current dynasty, at first he chose Jianye as the capital—calling it simply “the Capital.”

An aside: in Qing’s hometown era, people also called Nanjing the city of the Nine Dynasties, because in a future that didn’t occur in this fake knockoff Central Plains, two more states would use Nanjing as their capital.

In Qing’s hometown era, some tiny island country they called Island China was in the laughable state of claiming Nanjing—a city that belonged to someone else—as their own capital.

Anyway.

This place was... really not nice to live in.

Winter was warm, so that was fine, but the problem was the summer—enduring the brutally suffocating heat was pure suffering.

On top of that, bugs swarmed, the lower Yangtze floods were so vicious that no matter what measures you took you couldn’t avoid flood damage, and when floods came, epidemics followed...

Even the Son of Heaven clicked his tongue.

Can’t live here, it’s too hot!

Hate the bugs!

And how much rain is this, anyway—so damp I’m going to die!

Unable to endure those murderous heat conditions and all the other quality-of-life killers, he moved the capital up north, where it was cool.

So a new capital of the Central Plains appeared in the north, called Beijing.

And the original southern capital became the southern capital—called Nanjing.

Anyway.

And so: Nanjing.

A dock operated by the Gongryeong Merchant House, under the Gongsun Gong Clan.

A single unfamiliar boat approached without an appointment—an impressive pleasure boat, but it flew a merchant house flag.

A sharp whistle shrieked out, and in an instant, armed martial artists came running, blades at their waists, taking up a guarded stance.

Because what shipowner navigating the Yangtze would dare casually bring a boat up to a merchant dock operated by the Gongsun Gong Clan?

And if someone did dare?

This fake knockoff Central Plains’ martial sects maintained their authority by punishing it—gladly—in the martial world’s way.

“Boss, a boat not listed on the roster is approaching.”

“Who are they? Seol Family Trading House? Those are the bastards the Nanjing Commerce Promotion Association blacklisted. Some outsiders with no manners, coming in and undercutting prices.”

The Seol Family Trading House didn’t win everywhere.

In particular, in cities where the merchant associations held all the interests in a tight grip, it was hard for a new merchant house to break in at all.

“Are they trying to lean on our main house because their entry into Nanjing got blocked? If so, they’re approaching with a lot of nerve.”

“What should we do?”

“Hm. Let’s hear what they have to say. And if it’s nonsense... we’ll have ourselves a nice dinner party tonight.”

He was openly saying they’d extort money—but if you tried to enter a dock run by a martial house in the first place, that was the kind of resolve you were supposed to have.

But that only lasted a moment.

Because hadn’t the guest come holding the guest token of the Gongsun Gong Clan’s Eldest Young Lady—Gongsun Yoye?

“It’s an honor to have you visit! We will escort you straight to the main house! What are you doing?! It’s the Eldest Young Lady’s guest! The Eldest Young Lady’s close friend!”

The fact that Gongsun Yoye had no friends was already an open secret inside the house.

Still, thankfully—maybe Gongsun Xuanyuan had protected her—she had made one close friend.

Wasn’t it that famous martial world rising talent, the Heavenly Flower Sword?

Thanks to that, she’d even achieved the great feat of joining the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society—the top-secret club at the highest level of the Martial Alliance, the famous society every rising talent dreamed of.

Gongsun Yoye was the pride and the very pride of the Gongsun Gong Clan itself, and the Heavenly Flower Sword was the one-and-only close friend who had looked after the Eldest Young Lady.

In other words—the clan’s benefactor.

And on top of that, with the Eldest Young Lady’s seclusion dragging on and everyone worried, she had appeared out of nowhere—

A truly auspicious person for the clan!

Soon, a luxurious carriage drawn by four white horses stopped at the dock.

It was the Gongsun Gong Clan’s carriage, sent to receive an honored guest.