That night everything unfolded exactly as it had for the past few days.
Tubo soldiers drove the captives to light the bonfires.
Once the civilians withdrew, Jin Feng sent his escort guards down to extinguish them.
Tubo cavalry gave chase, but the extinguishers had already fled.
The same routine repeated countless times through the night. Both the harassing escort guards and the Tubo troops on night watch grew numb to it.
Even Danzhu and Wu Zhe began to believe Jin Feng had run out of tricks and gradually lowered their guard.
Yet in the depths of this very night, Danzhu was suddenly roused by the thunder of war drums.
He rushed out of his tent to find the entire camp ablaze with soaring flames and cries rising on all sides.
“What is happening?” Danzhu bellowed at his personal guard.
“Reporting to the general: the captives have rioted and seized the horse camp!” the guard replied in panic.
“What?!” Danzhu’s face drained of colour.
The greatest reason he dared attack Xichuan city with only twenty thousand men was his cavalry.
And the greatest strength of that cavalry lay in its warhorses.
Both riders and mounts needed rest.
Thus at night, unless an emergency arose, all horses except those of the standby patrol units were sent to the military horse camp north of the main camp, where dedicated grooms fed and tended them.
“What is the situation now?” Danzhu asked urgently.
“The horse camp… is gone!” the guard said with a pained expression.
“What do you mean, gone?” Danzhu demanded.
“There were only a few dozen brothers on watch. The rioting captives were far too many; they could not be stopped!” the guard explained. “The captives overran the horse camp, led away the warhorses, and set fires everywhere. The fodder stores have also been ignited!”
Danzhu nearly collapsed to the ground.
Cavalry without horses were no different from tigers without claws or fangs.
“Send men to pursue them at once!” Sweat beaded on Danzhu’s forehead.
“There were too many captives. After they broke out they scattered in every direction. It is pitch black; we cannot catch them…”
“Useless! All of you useless!” Danzhu jumped in rage and cursed. “What are the guards at the captive camp good for? They only know how to throw their weight around with women! And Ciji, good-for-nothing who ruins everything, go chop him down for me!”
Anyone could see the captives had not rioted spontaneously; someone must have organised them.
Ciji, the officer in charge of the captive camp, bore inescapable responsibility.
Ciji was Danzhu’s own cousin. In the past when Danzhu grew angry he had threatened to kill Ciji before, but it always came to nothing.
The guards had no idea whether this time was serious.
If they really executed him and Danzhu later regretted it, they would be the ones to lose their heads. That would be too unjust.
The guards stood frozen, unsure whether to obey.
“What are you waiting for? Go chop Ciji down!”
Danzhu flung his own sabre at the guard.
The man’s eyelids twitched. He caught the blade and hurried off.
He knew Danzhu was truly furious this time.
“Uncle, please forgive me. The disaster Ciji has caused this time is too great!”
After the guard left, Danzhu closed his eyes slightly and whispered.
His father had died early; it was his uncle who had practically raised him. His present success was inseparable from that uncle’s guidance.
Ciji was his uncle’s only blood descendant. Before dying, the uncle had made Danzhu swear to look after him.
Danzhu had promised.
Over the years he had kept Ciji at his side and given him the best of everything.
Under Danzhu’s protection, Ciji became ever more arrogant.
Earlier, while Danzhu still needed the captives for siege work, Ciji had exercised some restraint and not been too brutal.
But after Jin Feng reached Great Python Slope and Danzhu grew wary of traps, the assault on the city was suspended. Ciji then threw off all restraint.
Every day he dragged groups of girls from the captive camp; the next morning several would never return.
Those who did came back covered in wounds.
His pack of lackeys followed his example.
They treated the captive civilians as less than human.
Rations in the captive camp were reduced from one meal a day to one every two days.
Han Feng and Zhou Youda had been able to organise so many civilians to rise up smoothly precisely because of Ciji and his cronies.
Danzhu commanded ten thousand cavalry, which meant more than ten thousand warhorses.
The amount of fodder those horses required was enormous.
Once the fodder stores caught fire there was no extinguishing them.
Moreover, the captives had led the horses away.
In the dead of night, with captives fleeing in all directions, Danzhu dared not send everyone out to chase. If they recovered even one tenth of the horses it would be a blessing from heaven.
The mess Ciji had created this time was too big; even Danzhu could not shield him.
He had no choice but to steel himself and kill his own cousin.
“This must be Jin Feng’s real objective!”
Wu Zhe walked over from the side and said helplessly, “We both guessed wrong.”
He and Danzhu had long suspected Jin Feng’s exhaustion tactics hid another purpose, but both assumed he was targeting some strategic point outside the camp. Lately they had been guarding every such place with extra care.
It never occurred to them that Jin Feng would strike inside the Tubo camp itself.
Looking back now, all of Jin Feng’s earlier harassment had probably been to draw attention away from the captive camp.
And Jin Feng had succeeded.
Precisely because Wu Zhe and Danzhu’s attention was diverted and they ignored Ciji’s excesses, Ciji had grown worse.
Otherwise, with Wu Zhe’s character, he would never have tolerated such behaviour.
Han Feng’s plan would not have gone so smoothly.
And Ciji would not now be facing death.
“I would rather have handed Jin Feng two strategic locations than face this!”
Danzhu shut his eyes in agony.
The present situation was far worse than the most disastrous scenario he and Wu Zhe had imagined.
Wu Zhe sighed, about to offer some words of comfort, when suddenly bursts of white light flashed in the north, turning the sky bright as day!
Immediately afterwards the same white light appeared in the east!
The muffled sound of war drums and shouts of killing followed.
Although Xichuan prefecture in this era was not as vast as later Chengdu, it was still considerable.
The Tubo camp lay northwest of the city; hearing fighting from the north wall was normal, but hearing shouts of battle from the east, across the entire city, showed how fierce the combat was!
Wu Zhe had been about to console Danzhu, but now he could not utter a single word.
He merely stared at Danzhu in disbelief.
Your mouth must have been blessed by the gods! The moment you said you would give Jin Feng two locations, trouble erupts in the east and the north?
Of course Wu Zhe knew it was mere coincidence. He silently cursed once, then clapped Danzhu on the shoulder.
Danzhu opened his eyes and stood completely stunned.
He had only closed them for a moment, had he not?
How had fighting broken out in both east and north?
Was there something wrong with the way he opened his eyes?
Danzhu began to question his entire existence.
But he quickly recovered and roared at a nearby guard, “What is going on?”
The guard: “???”
He had been standing outside the tent half the night; how could he know?
Yet he also knew Danzhu was livid and dared not retort. Bowing low, he answered cautiously, “This… this subordinate does not know!”
“Then why are you still standing there? Send men to find out at once!” Danzhu bellowed.
“Yes, sir!” The guard dashed off to summon scouts.
