Chapter 2093 - Fire Attack on Wuzhou
Before long, a shop hand appeared at the door. "The Brother-in-law has arrived, Master."
"Show him in."
This "brother-in-law" wasn't his wife's sibling but rather the brother of the concubine Luo had taken after settling in Wuzhou—a minor boss among the dock porters, a local tough with useful connections. Luo Yangming had taken the man's sister as a concubine partly to exploit precisely this sort of relationship with someone "who could get things done anywhere."
The "brother-in-law" was surnamed Wen, nicknamed "Iron Head." According to local lore, during a brutal dock turf war years ago, he'd taken a blade straight to the skull—blood streaming down his face—yet kept swinging his cudgel with murderous intent anyway. That incident had earned him his fearsome reputation. Now he commanded over thirty porters and ranked as one of Wuzhou's somewhat notable "hard men."
Wen Tietou stood short in stature but had developed a powerful, compact physique from years of brutal dock labor. He'd clearly arrived in great haste; his short jacket was covered in dust and bits of straw.
Luo Yangming invited him to sit. Wen Tietou waved the courtesy aside dismissively and simply asked for tea.
"A-Chun, bring tea!" Luo Yangming called out quickly.
"No need for the good stuff!" Wen Tietou shook his head impatiently. "I'm parched from running—can't drink scalding hot tea. You've got that lukewarm tea for the servants, right? Just bring me a big bowl of that."
They brought a large ceramic bowl of cooled tea. Wen Tietou seized it and drained it clean in long gulps, then glanced around carefully. Seeing no one else present in the room, he leaned forward and whispered urgently:
"Brother-in-law—there's serious trouble brewing!"
Luo Yangming felt his pulse quicken. "What?! What's happened?"
Wen Tietou lowered his voice to barely above a murmur. "Brother-in-law, do you know exactly what's been getting shipped out through the docks these past few days? Word is, besides the official granaries being emptied, it's the high officials' private property going out by the boatload."
Luo Yangming nodded slowly. "I'd heard rumors. They're saying it's all being shipped to Guilin Prefecture for safekeeping..."
Wen Tietou shook his head with grim certainty. "Ah, but you don't know the whole story, brother-in-law. The officials' personal property is indeed going to Guilin—that much is true. But the government granaries' grain and cloth stores? Those are being shipped upstream to Teng County instead."
Luo Yangming felt confusion flood through him. Teng County was merely a subordinate county of Wuzhou Prefecture, located just upstream on the West River—hardly a defensible strategic position. If Xiong Wenchan actually planned to abandon Wuzhou and retreat to Teng County, what could he possibly hope to accomplish there? And if he didn't intend to defend Teng County as a fallback position, why bother shipping the public treasury's grain and cloth there at all?
Wen Tietou continued. "I've been puzzling over it myself—trying to figure out what game Governor Xiong is playing." He slapped his thigh emphatically. "Only this morning did I finally work it out!"
"What game?" Luo Yangming pressed, leaning forward intently.
"He's planning to burn Wuzhou to the ground—the entire city!"
"What?!" Luo Yangming nearly cried out loud.
Like most seventeenth-century Chinese cities, Wuzhou's buildings were constructed primarily of wood. Roofs—except for those belonging to wealthy households and government offices—were mostly thatch. Partition walls frequently used woven bamboo strips and paper. Everything was essentially combustible. Once a fire started anywhere, it spread with terrifying speed through entire neighborhoods. A single major blaze destroying ten or even a hundred homes was far from unusual. Fire prevention was therefore normally treated as paramount civic concern.
And now Xiong Wenchan was actually planning to deliberately burn Wuzhou?! In an instant, Luo Yangming felt ice water flood through his veins. This was a major prefectural city housing over ten thousand households! One massive conflagration—how many thousands would die trapped in their homes? How many families would be rendered homeless and destitute? Property losses would be utterly beyond reckoning...
"Is this truly certain?!" He stared tensely at his "brother-in-law," desperately hoping the man had misread the situation.
"Absolutely certain!" Wen Tietou whispered with conviction. "You're my brother-in-law—my own sister's husband. Why in the world would I lie to you about something this serious? Truth is, I only pieced it together definitively this morning."
Over the past several days, while government officials had been frantically shipping grain and treasure out of the city, they'd simultaneously been moving large quantities of straw and pottery jars into the city under heavy guard. All the dock porters had found it deeply strange—what exactly was Xiong Wenchan preparing for?
"I made some quiet inquiries among people I trust and discovered the pottery jars are filled with gunpowder and sulfur—supposedly siege defense materials, nothing inherently unusual. But the soldiers transporting them have the unmistakable look of men preparing to flee at a moment's notice. They've already shipped several cannons out of the city to safety. So why bring in all these incendiary supplies now? Add to that all those boatloads upon boatloads of straw being hauled in—damn me to hell if this isn't preparation for deliberate arson!"
Luo Yangming nodded slowly, his mind racing. Wen Tietou's deduction made perfect tactical sense—no wonder people said hardened street men often possessed remarkably sharp minds beneath their rough exteriors.
Wen Tietou wasn't finished. "Because of all this suspicious activity, my curiosity got the better of me. You know I'm on friendly drinking terms with Liu the Clerk from the county yamen's Military Affairs Room. So I went to squeeze information out of him. At first the old bastard hemmed and hawed and wouldn't say anything concrete, but when I pressed him harder and reminded him of certain favors owed, he finally dropped a significant hint: 'The wise man doesn't stand beneath a crumbling wall.' Then I did some more discreet poking around the alley behind the yamen and discovered something chilling: plenty of minor officials and clerks have already taken their entire families and quietly fled the city! Damn them all—they've kept the common folk completely in the dark about what's coming!" He paused to catch his breath. "That's why I came straight here to warn you: while the gates are still open during daylight, get your family out to the countryside immediately to wait things out in safety. Otherwise you'll be trapped inside the city—and once they light it all up, you can cry out to heaven or prostrate yourself before earth and no one will answer!"
After Wen Tietou departed, Luo Yangming paced the counting room in agitated circles, his mind churning. There could be no doubt about it—Xiong Wenchan was plotting something catastrophic. Based on his "brother-in-law's" account and his own intelligence training, Xiong very likely intended to use Wuzhou itself as a gigantic trap, luring the Fubo Army's main force deep into the city, then setting the entire urban area ablaze in a massive conflagration.
This tactic was ancient, documented in countless military chronicles; that Xiong Wenchan, cornered and desperate, might resort to such extreme measures wasn't particularly surprising from a strategic standpoint.
But this intelligence meant the Fubo Army was advancing into serious, unanticipated danger!
He had to get this critical intelligence out to them immediately!
His standard intelligence transmissions went through the established courier network. Because Wuzhou hadn't been designated a priority intelligence collection area before the campaign, couriers had visited only once monthly in the past; after the Guangdong offensive commenced, that frequency had increased somewhat to once weekly.
But only three days had passed since the last scheduled courier visit. Once the Fubo Army's main force actually reached the city walls, the gates would certainly be sealed shut, and no courier could possibly get through. He wasn't even confident the courier would risk approaching the city in four days given the military situation.
His only viable option now was exactly what Wen Tietou had suggested—leave the city immediately with his family. Once safely outside the walls, he'd have a fighting chance to make his way directly to the Fubo Army's forward camp and report his critical intelligence to the commanding officers in person.
But leaving the city required somewhere safe to go. Luo Yangming owned no farm property outside the walls where his family could shelter. Wen Tietou's own family home was technically outside the city, true, but located right at the busy riverside docks—itself a major danger zone during any siege. After considerable thought, he recalled that his warehouse manager's ancestral home was located in the mountains some twenty li north of the city, in a small village. He'd already temporarily dismissed all his local workers several days ago as a precaution. It would be far better to take his family and seek refuge there until the situation clarified.
His mind made up, he moved immediately toward the door to call for someone to begin preparations. Suddenly the street outside erupted in a cacophony of noisy footsteps and panicked screams—as if a simmering pot had suddenly boiled over into chaos.
Before he could summon anyone to investigate what was happening, a shop hand came stumbling through the door, his face pale with terror, shouting breathlessly: "Disaster! The pirates are attacking the city!"
Atop the Nanxun Gate tower of Wuzhou, a guard named Yang Yi stood his tedious watch.
Yang Yi was an ordinary soldier conscripted from the Wuzhou Guard Battalion. Though Guard soldiers theoretically served military functions, in practice they spent far more time farming their assigned military colony lands than drilling or actually fighting. He held his issued spear with all the familiarity of someone gripping a farm hoe. Still, he had at least seen some form of action in his service—participating in raids against mountain settlements, though admittedly only as a baggage carrier trailing far behind the actual combat troops.
The spear weapon they'd issued him wasn't remotely handy to wield, and it was far too old to be reliable! Yang Yi examined his weapon with disgust: the wooden shaft was relatively new, recently replaced, but the metal spearhead was badly rusted—obviously ancient stock pulled from some forgotten armory warehouse. Whether the corroded blade would even hold up during actual combat was anyone's guess.
Of course, whether it held up or not hardly mattered to him personally. Yang Yi had already made up his mind with absolute certainty: the precise moment the officers' attention wavered or they disappeared from view, he would bolt for the nearest exit. Whoever wanted to "die loyally for the nation" in some glorious last stand could go right ahead and do it—he certainly wasn't about to throw his life away for nothing. After an entire year of backbreaking labor on the military farms, he'd barely received a few meager coins of pay and minimal grain rations, worked to utter exhaustion yet perpetually hungry. Only a complete fool would actually fight and die for treatment like that!
Damned pirates! Looking out into the pitch-black night beyond the walls, he cursed silently with bitter resentment. If not for their attack and this emergency mobilization, he'd be sleeping peacefully in his own bed right now. Tomorrow morning he could pick up his farming hoe and tend his own small fields properly—instead of being dragged up here to fight and stand miserable watch in the middle of the freezing night.
Though Yang Yi had technically accompanied military units on multiple punitive raids against various "Yao and Dong" tribal settlements over the years, he'd only ever tagged along at the very rear of the column, waving banners and shouting to make the force seem larger—he couldn't actually wield weapons with any competence and had certainly never killed anyone. His current assignment defending Wuzhou was purely to fill out the garrison numbers and make the force look more impressive on paper.
He'd been assigned to this night watch rotation atop the Nanxun Gate tower for several consecutive miserable days now. No one had come to properly relieve them from duty.
Looking around at his fellow unlucky watchmen sprawled about—damned officers!—Yang Yi cursed again viciously in his heart.
Yang Yi felt desperately, overwhelmingly sleepy; his eyelids seemed weighted down with solid lead. Several other night-watch soldiers had already given up any pretense of vigilance and now leaned heavily against the stone battlements, propped precariously on their spears, fast asleep and snoring. Yang Yi didn't quite dare fully sleep himself—because just last midnight the baihu officer had made a sudden surprise inspection and caught him dozing at his post. They'd initially declared he was to be beheaded on the spot as an example. Absolutely terrified for his life, the entire watch group had immediately dropped to their knees, kowtowing frantically and begging for mercy until the draconian punishment was eventually reduced to a still-brutal forty strokes of the heavy rod. Even now, days later, his buttocks and lower back still stung and ached as if they'd been burned with hot irons.
Damned officers!—Yang Yi cursed once more in his heart with impotent fury, fighting to keep his burning eyes open.
Tomorrow's update—Volume Seven, Guangzhou Offensive, Section 298
(End of Chapter)