Even with oil shops, distilleries, and charcoal stores in the city, and all the buildings being timber structures, burning down an entire city with so few hands was still a monumental undertaking. They had to gather as much kindling and accelerants as possible.
Once the others had departed, He Lingchuan doubled back, slipping back into the Zhong residence and lightly vaulting into an empty room.
The room was quite spacious, furnished with two beds—one large and one small—two stools, and a dressing table.
Earlier, after National Preceptor Sun fired off the signal arrow, He Lingchuan had taken advantage of the time while the preceptor gathered his companions to make a circuit around this set of official quarters, looking all over.
He hadn't found any useful clues at the time, but after their discussion just now, he suddenly felt compelled to take another look.
Each suite of official quarters was modest in size and simple in function, just places to eat, live, and sleep. Therefore, this room ought to be the bedroom of Zhong Shengguang and his wife.
On the large bed, the bedding was clean, with quilts neatly folded. On the wall above the head of the bed hung a precious saber adorned with a flood dragon clamping a ring in its jaws.
Hanging a deadly weapon over the head of the bed he shared with his wife was likely something only a fierce military man would do. As for the small bed beside it—
It was presumably for their daughter, Zhong Wuhan.
The cot was only three chi long; an adult couldn't lie in it even curled up. At the head of the bed sat a small wooden horse and little wooden soldiers brandishing wooden swords, facing what appeared to be a somewhat ferocious cloth tiger.
No, a cloth leopard—crafted in the likeness of a sand leopard, complete with round spots.
Set together like that, the three pieces told a story.
He picked it up and saw a few small characters embroidered on the leopard's belly:
*My child, no regrets.*
At the foot of the bed, a little cloth doll was also tucked away.
He Lingchuan walked over to the large bed. Upon the dressing table sat a set of cosmetic powder and a bronze mirror, all neatly arranged.
He picked them up one by one to inspect them, discovering that a comb was slotted into the back of the bronze mirror—it was actually a matching set.
*What's this?* His eyes lit up. He held the comb up to the light and muttered, "So it was here all along."
It was an unadorned wooden comb, simple in design and singular in function, with only a small, pale-blue flower painted on its crest.
This pigment came from fine powder ground from a type of seashell, capable of producing a blue identical to the sky.
By this floral ornament alone, He Lingchuan was certain that when Panlong City fell in the past, the keepsake of its master that the sand leopard carried away was this very item!
It was also what had sparked the feud between the He family and the Grand Marshal's official residence.
Only, this comb had not yet been half-consumed by fire.
"Zhong Shengguang's wife passed away shortly after giving birth to their daughter. He truly did keep this comb as a memento." He Lingchuan glanced at the small bed and murmured to himself, "No, at this point in time, Zhong Wuhan hasn't been born yet. Zhong Shengguang didn't know if his wife would give birth to a son or a daughter, yet he had already prepared the crib."
Otherwise, Commander Zhong wouldn't have placed toys meant for boys at the head of the bed, which looked as though he had whittled them with his own hands.
"This was probably the happiest time of his life." A promising career lay ahead, and his beloved wife was about to give birth.
He casually pulled open a hidden compartment in the dressing table. Inside lay a few pieces of jewelry, all made of very ordinary materials, but as He Lingchuan's gaze swept over one of them, it froze.
It was a necklace with a crescent-shaped pendant.
It looked so familiar that He Lingchuan instinctively pulled out the necklace around his own neck.
They were fundamentally the exact same thing! It was just that one existed in the illusion and the other in reality, and even their appearances differed.
In other words, before his daughter was born, Zhong Shengguang was already the owner of this divine bone necklace.
With a flash of realization, He Lingchuan carefully returned the comb to its place and exited the room.
Just as he stepped out of the official quarters, he found someone standing outside.
Maotao.
Startled, He Lingchuan couldn't help snapping, "Creeping around without making a sound—are you trying to scare me to death?"
"Young Master, let me come with you. I'll do all the work," Maotao said with an ingratiating smile. "It feels like someone's always watching me from the shadows, waiting for me to be alone so they can make their move."
"Even if someone is, it's not human." He Lingchuan didn't refuse. He felt that prickling sensation on his back as well; traveling together was indeed safer. Maotao pointed ahead. "I remember there's a pretty large tavern over that way."
He Lingchuan glanced back at the Zhong residence. "This is too close; leave it for the siege weapons on the city wall. We're heading farther out."
Both knew some martial arts, so they circulated their qi and sprinted the entire way.
Half an hour later, the roads grew narrower and the buildings sparser. Sprawling commercial warehouses, post stations, and even grain-drying grounds began to appear.
Such places were far from any city gate. Even if the artillery atop the walls could reach them, a single strike couldn't ignite broad swathes of buildings here.
This required manual labor.
The two slipped into a workshop, found a handcart used for unloading goods, and loaded it with more than a dozen barrels of tung oil. They then tore apart two suitable pieces of wood to fashion torches before hauling the oil out.
They set fires as they went, splashing oil over timber, cotton quilts, thatch, and anything else that could burn.
Proceeding like this for several li, they looked back to see soaring flames engulfing the sky.
Maotao pointed west. "Black smoke is rising over there. Looks like the National Preceptor is working hard too."
He Lingchuan spared it only a glance before returning to work. "Looks like that's not the crucial spot either."
Maotao asked in surprise, "Crucial spot? What crucial spot?"
"We only decided to burn down the entire city because we couldn't find the critical point to break this deadlock, so we had to resort to this crude, clumsy method. Otherwise, a single fire bolt would have sufficed." He Lingchuan's mind was clear. "Conversely, burning other places is useless. Only when we burn the crucial spot can this illusion be undone."
Maotao shook his hands, sighing mournfully. "How much longer will this take?" He was exhausted, as He Lingchuan had made him act as the donkey pulling the cart.
Even an actual donkey would drop dead of exhaustion after hauling a cart packed with oil barrels for ten li.
Just thinking about burning down an entire city made him shudder all over.
"You should be glad," He Lingchuan said grimly. "That the point of breakthrough isn't in our sector is a blessing you earned in your past life. Think about how Tao Bo ended up—could you bear the consequences of the illusion shattering?"
Tao Bo's final fate had been no better than his companions'; not even his bones remained. Maotao shuddered. "Then let's rendezvous with the National Preceptor as soon as possible."
He Lingchuan gave a dry chuckle. "Thanks to you, we won't be done anytime soon."
Because Maotao had slipped away to join him, the entire northern sector of Panlong City remained untouched. "Now you can tell me: why did you really come looking for me?"
Maotao froze. "I... I was just scared."
He Lingchuan couldn't be bothered to entertain his excuses. "Scram back to the north."
"Wait, I'll talk! I just couldn't make up my mind." Maotao wiped his sweat with a towel. "When the National Preceptor was reading Tao Bo's journal earlier, he didn't know that before I followed Boss Situ, I lived in Tong City in the Baling Kingdom for twelve years. I even went to school there until my stepfather was killed during a business dispute..."
"Stop. Get to the point!"
"...I can read a bit of the Baling script myself."
He Lingchuan stopped in his tracks. "What did the National Preceptor hide?"
He knew it—that old man was concealing something for himself!
Chapter 53