Movement (4)
Once again, right on schedule, our soldiers were laughing and hollering as they traded stones with Gongsun Zan's army—stones with no hope of landing on anything.
"Aw, another dud today."
Watching that same scene play out for a month straight now, I shook my head. Perhaps because I had seen nothing else for so long, I had reached the point where I could gauge the day's accuracy just by watching where the first stone thrown went on to land. Today's opener had dropped limply out of the sky without even coming near the walls, so no real damage would be dealt today.
Even when a stone did somehow reach the walls, clearing ramparts of a monstrous five to six zhang—twelve to fourteen meters—was a far-fetched hope. Considering that city walls in the Three Kingdoms era generally stood around five meters, this was a height that simply ruled out comparison. Even Xiangyang Castle, where Liu Biao had once barricaded himself, hadn't boasted walls anywhere near that tall.
"Whoa, those guys threw up even more watchtowers while we weren't looking?"
Even Lü Bu, who at first had eagerly joined the stone-throwing and hurled rocks of her own, shook her head as if her spirit had been cowed by Gongsun Zan, who was giving us a hands-on masterclass in the fine art of turtling.
"If the walls were lower, we could've at least tried sneaking over."
"…And if we had, we'd never have ended up in a mess like this."
"You think?"
Obviously. If the walls had been low, I'd have committed our soldiers long ago and simply shoved Yijing Tower over by brute force. That demented fortress was far beyond the realm of anything strength alone could overrun, which was exactly why we were sitting tight and quietly letting time do the work for us.
From what I remembered, the walls of Constantinople—famed for their triple rings—stood only about twelve meters. That impregnable city, which had repelled foreign invasions dozens of times over, fell only after the Ottoman Empire hauled cannons up and blasted away, detonated gunpowder beneath the ramparts, and threw every last trick it knew at the place.
…Of course, the wall-building craft of that age was in a different league from anything we had, but the siegecraft of the attackers was every bit as primitive, so both sides were flailing in equally thin gruel. Our stone-throwers weren't even counterweight-powered; we were barely managing the traction kind, hauled down by teams of men. What more could anyone expect?
"…My lord."
Just then, as if on cue, Seo Yeo called to me in her quiet, level voice. I met her usual expressionless gaze and nodded.
"All right. I'll head inside and rest."
Once the weather turned warm, I had barely managed to talk the talents around me into setting up camp near Yijing Tower—only to have my active hours strictly rationed from then on. I was hardly a child being put under a curfew. What even was this?
Even with the Divine Physician Hua Tuo and Zhang Jue having devotedly nursed me back to a normal state of health, the worry around me showed no sign of letting up. You could collapse again at any moment. Didn't the doctors tell you to rest for at least a few months? And on and on it went.
The nearby generals, who had seemed ready to truss me up in rope to keep me from going anywhere, went round-eyed when an unexpected figure spoke up in favor of an idea. For the well-connected socialite with threads running to every mysterious luminary in the land had said this:
"If fortune favors us… he may yet be cured."
…
At this claim from the Great Good Master—a woman acquainted with Hua Tuo and Yu Ji, and, if my hunch was right, quite possibly with Zuo Ci as well, the one who had once graced that banquet hall—I floated a question mark above my head.
Even those who didn't know Zhang Jue's true identity knew how extraordinary her connections were, so they had nodded, if grudgingly. As I'd mentioned before, Zhang Jue ranked among the most senior members of our entire faction. Aside from those who had been with me since her days as a native of Bing Province, she was a woman no one dared treat lightly. To put it more crudely: she was simply in a different weight class altogether.
But what puzzled me wasn't why everyone had nodded along to Zhang Jue's proposal. I'd already laid eyes on every famous Taoist Romance of the Three Kingdoms had to offer—was there really anyone left for me to meet?
Yu Ji was, true to his reputation, a kindly Taoist who freely bestowed his superb medicine upon those in need. Though when it came to Go, the man truly couldn't play to save his life. Never could I have imagined that his healing art and his Go game would stand in inverse proportion.
Zuo Ci, for his part, had unleashed such staggering Taoist sorcery at that banquet that even Confucius—the very sage who preached the expulsion of prodigious strength and spirits—would have clutched the back of his neck in shock. According to Zhang Jue, he'd apparently done it all out of sheer boredom. Honestly, that gentleman was a strange one too.
Having met Yu Ji and Zuo Ci, and even Hua Tuo—who to this day remained a mystery as to whether she was a Taoist or merely an ordinary physician—I could safely assume there was no one further left to meet.
"What're you standing around out here for? Wind's picking up—inside, now!"
"…It's warm, though?"
…
Under Lü Bu's expression—which plainly read, A patient… talking back?!—I had no choice but to meekly fall in line.
Gongsun Zan had been in a superb mood of late, and the reason was a very simple one. Someone had appeared before him without warning.
Back in the days when Gongsun Zan had sealed himself away in his fortress, refusing audience with every outsider—
"Hmmm… I do sense talent in you."
"Wh-what did you say?"
An old man had come flying in on a cloud from beyond the tower and let those words drop, and Gongsun Zan, meeting the old man's gaze, had been utterly dumbfounded. Talent? Appearing out of nowhere and saying what, exactly? When he responded with nothing but a dazed blankness, the old man's face twisted in open displeasure.
"Judging by that ill-mannered display, it seems I was mistaken after all. I shall simply take my leave."
"…Wait! Please, wait just a moment!"
A human being soaring through the heavens astride a cloud—an utterly uncanny spectacle. By everything Gongsun Zan knew, only a single class of being could perform such a feat. A Taoist immortal. A legendary existence said to stand beyond all suffering and disease, one who would never die.
Gongsun Zan had always snorted at the notion that cloud-riding immortals working every manner of Taoist marvel actually existed—but confronted with this impossible scene before his very eyes, he had no choice but to change his tune.
"Venerable elder! This humble man will kneel and beg! Please, deign to grant me your instruction!"
"Hm?"
At the sight of Gongsun Zan's attitude swinging about so completely within those few short breaths, the old man's interest rekindled.
"At the very least, the posture with which you seek learning is commendable."
"It is an honor!"
Gongsun Zan had memories of receiving instruction alongside many others under Lu Zhi in days past, and so he felt no shame in such a posture.
"Heh heh, my disciple. Your expression is rather sour."
"N-no, Master!"
"What do you mean, no? If showing courtesy to your teacher displeases you, pack your things and go home this instant."
…Though to be precise, the truth was that he'd never even been given the chance to feel humiliated. Standing a full eight chi two cun tall—some 194 centimeters—his teacher was a mountain of muscle whose cauldron-lid hands looked fit to crush a man's skull without effort. No disciple alive would openly defy such a man.
Thanks to that lesson-that-was-no-lesson, Gongsun Zan could bow his head without a flicker of hesitation.
"Very well."
His earnestness must have gotten through, for the old man perched atop his cloud nodded sedately and spoke.
"I shall impart to you the knowledge that countless men of power have coveted through the ages."
…
"And should you follow it faithfully, even eternal youth and deathless longevity will not be beyond your grasp."
"I—I can only repay such grace with boundless gratitude!"
The power to live out a lifetime without ever growing old. Forbidden knowledge that even Qin Shi Huang, the first man ever to unify all under heaven, had failed to obtain—told that he could learn it, Gongsun Zan could not contain his euphoria.
"Yes! If I can live forever, what worth is this paltry power by comparison!"
Having once again spent this day carrying out his master's assorted commands without fail, Gongsun Zan flashed a grin. He had been swallowing the elixirs required to become an immortal, and for days on end now he had sat in a sweltering room so that their potency would course through every corner of his body.
"…My lo— My lord!"
"Uh, uhhm? …What is it?"
"Are you quite well?"
"Yes… I'm perfectly fine."
Gongsun Zan had noticed his consciousness dimming more and more often of late, but he thought nothing of it.
"…He did say this was a phenomenon that naturally arises as the flesh steps beyond the flow of time, did he not?"
It happened, the old man had explained, because the mind could not keep pace with a body that was slowly transforming. Endure this well, he had said, and Gongsun Zan too would one day ride the clouds and roam the heavens as immortals did.
The secret art of alchemy said to be known to immortals alone. The elixir of eternal life it produced, worth more than a thousand gold. A month into swallowing them, Gongsun Zan was already past the point of judging his surroundings rationally.
"Listen… the fortress… outside…"
"…As you wish. As you wish."
Even then, Gongsun Zan—faithful as ever to his elixirs of eternal life, reeling as he went—had nodded along to the proposal the immortal brought. Partly because another person's words no longer properly reached him, and partly because he feared that if he refused and the immortal drifted away, every ounce of his effort would turn to foam.
And so, the day after Gongsun Zan nodded along to the immortal's proposal—
WAAAAAAAH—!!
The fortress of transcendent scale that, under Gongsun Zan's command, could have held out unassailed for years upon years to come. Yijing Tower had fallen—in the most absurd way imaginable.