Chapter 63: The Enemy Is Very Powerful, Extremely Powerful
Chuyun City truly lives up to being a Prefectural City; it is extremely large.
The city walls stretch across the ground. Standing at the City Gate, one simply cannot see where the walls on either side extend to. In short, within the range of vision, it is all city walls.
The city walls are thirty meters high, and the gate tower is at least fifty meters high.
The city walls of Xi’an are only about twelve meters high. The city walls of Nanjing’s China Gate are considered the tallest, also only twenty-one meters. Chuyun City’s battlements are absolutely over thirty meters high.
From this, it can be judged that the climbing ability and martial power of people here are generally higher than those on Earth. Otherwise, why build such high city walls.
Chuyun City’s walls are so high for a reason. Walls shorter than this definitely cannot stop enemies, so they have this height.
The city walls are clearly built by stacking boulders, with very small gaps between stones. One really cannot insert a blade, unlike the pyramids that boast so much. When Yun Ce went to see them, he could fit his fat palm in, and even his wife’s hand.
Each stone is two feet thick, four feet wide, and six feet long. No one knows what method the people here used to stack so many boulders together.
Yun Ce really likes studying the construction engineering here, because this thing is closely related to war potential. On the battlefield, it emphasizes higher, faster, farther, and greater lethality. To achieve these goals, the tools must be powerful.
In Hekou Village, Pingyuan City, and Sheyang City, these three places, one cannot see the true development level of the Great Han Dynasty. Moreover, these three places are actually the most remote cities in the Protectorate Prefecture, without even agriculture. Their livelihoods all come from gathering and hunting, not much better than primitive society.
1 The so-called engineering consists only of the city walls of two cities. The pavilions that Pingyuan City is proud of are just what ordinary merchants use in the Prefectural City.
1 Having lived on Earth for a long time, he always felt that building city walls so high was purely superfluous and hindered city construction and development. But ever since seeing pigs as big as elephants and bears eight meters tall, Yun Ce believes that building a tall city wall to isolate a safe living environment is still very necessary.
1 The worst thing about the Great Han is that entering the city requires paying an entrance tax. The amount is not much, two green money per person. It might be because there are many people entering the city, same price as in Sheyang City.
1 People without travel permits must leave when the city gates close in the early morning after entering. Otherwise, they will be caught as little thieves.
1 E Ji has money.
1 She just doesn’t want to spend it. Buying a greasy, grimy thing fried in oil, and still wanting to share it with Yun Ce. He naturally won’t compete with the little girl for a snack.
1 Seeing E Ji leading the red date horse and engrossed in looking at cheap jewelry.
1 Yun Ce saw a colorful thing cut with a saber, tasted pretty good, so he bought two saber’s worth in one go. Who knew, seeing him dressed shabbily, they charged one hundred green money per saber, three hundred money for two. Yun Ce wanted to back out, but they refused and called two burly strong men to beat him.
1 No choice, Yun Ce begged them that beating someone on the street doesn’t look good, better to drag him to an alley where no one is and then beat him.
1 After taking a beating from fists, Yun Ce came out of the alley feeling refreshed, pressed down the guy selling the colorful cakes, and wanted to buy more, one money for ten saber’s worth.
2 The cake seller refused, so Yun Ce bent the knife in his hand. The cake seller had good eyesight and very happily sold all the cakes on his stall to Yun Ce, costing him exactly two money.
2 E Ji, who ultimately didn’t decide to buy jewelry, saw Yun Ce buy a huge board of tasty cakes for two money, and insisted that Yun Ce take her to buy more. She felt that with so many girls at home, one board of soft, glutinous, sour and sweet cakes might not be enough.
2 When Yun Ce led the red date horse and came to the cake stall again, the cake seller started crying, took out another board of cakes, and gave E Ji a good price, one money per board.
2 The red date horse is also known as the Thunder Smoke Beast. This thing is generally only supplied to the military. No one in the civilian world who can ride this thing is to be trifled with. The burly man selling cakes saw E Ji leave and immediately packed up his stall, deciding to hide for a few days and see how the wind blows.
2 To avoid this pair of man and woman coming to buy cakes again.
2 Having lived in remote places for a long time, seeing so many normal people at once, even Yun Ce was shocked in his heart. He felt like a fish that had finally returned to the school of fish.
2 Naturally, all sorts of things happen in a school of fish. Even after being blackmailed, he was still happy. When wandering alone in the wasteland, he couldn’t even get such interactions.
2 That cake seller who liked blackmailing wildmen instantly unlocked all his memories of cities. With a casual glance, he saw swindlers, thieves, robbers, prostitutes, unscrupulous merchants, scoundrels in the crowd. The appearance of these characteristic city people made him somewhat teary-eyed.
2 Pingyuan City doesn’t even count as a city; it’s just a slightly larger outpost. The people there are divided into only three kinds: one called slave owners, one called wildmen, and the rest are all slaves.
2 Sheyang City is the same, just with a few more commoners.
3 The Chuyun City before his eyes finally had a bit of a city’s appearance in Yun Ce’s view.
3 What is the most important mark of a city?
3 It is the diversity of the economy.
3 Although the most luxurious pavilion on the streets is a brothel, and the shop with the largest facade is a gambling house, at least it let Yun Ce know that the commoners here have spare money to visit brothels and also money to gamble at casinos.
3 Yun Ce loves city life to death.
3 So, he spread his arms, stood in the middle of the street, and fully breathed in the polluted air belonging to the city. He had long breathed enough of the fresh, cold, clean air of the wasteland. Now, he just wanted to plunge headlong into the bustling world and re-experience all the sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy aspects of being human.
3 At the street corner, he saw Miss Hong holding a broken bowl, having made herself filthy, very similar to Pei Chuan’s attire, like a loving pair of beggar spouses.
3 Although many people were vaguely watching the two of them, Yun Ce still walked over and generously tossed five green money into Miss Hong’s broken bowl.
3 The green money fell into the broken bowl with a crisp sound, drawing sidelong glances from the surrounding beggars.
3 Miss Hong looked at Yun Ce with a half-smile. Yun Ce smiled and said, “So many people died in Sheyang City, how come you didn’t die?”
4 Miss Hong said, “We seriously underestimated the enemy’s strength. Failure was inevitable. However, our two riots in Pingyuan City and Sheyang City still let the people on the wasteland know one thing: to live a good life, one must seize it with one’s own hands.”
4 Yun Ce shook his head and said, “It’s not seizing with one’s hands, it’s creating with one’s own hands. After getting used to robbing, there won’t be a good end. In that case, you wouldn’t be insurgents, but thieves.”
4 The reputation of insurgents and thieves is worlds apart. You must unite all the forces you can unite, persist in doing things beneficial to your class, endure loneliness, withstand setbacks, not compromise, not give up, persist in armed struggle, and only then can you ultimately see the dawn you want.
4 Miss Hong listened very seriously, but after hearing it, her mouth carried heavy sarcasm.
4 “Your class? Liu Chang’an, what class are you, and what class am I? You’re just a wasteland wildman; how much higher can you be than me?”
4 Yun Ce laughed and said, “In Hekou Village, I tried diligence leads to wealth and failed. Now, in Chuyun City, I want to test the truth of the saying ‘a farmer boy in the morning, ascending to the emperor’s hall by evening.'”
4 Miss Hong laughed and said, “What if you fail again?”
4 Yun Ce frowned and said, “Then I’ll try the truth of the four words ‘sealing a marquis on horseback.'”
4 “You plan to keep trying like this without preparing to solve these things from the root?”
4 Yun Ce laughed and said, “Do you have the ability to solve these problems from the root?”
5 Miss Hong laughed along. Despite her face full of filth, she still smiled brightly and firmly said to Yun Ce, “If you don’t try, how do you know we can’t do it?”
5 Yun Ce grabbed a handful of gold beads from his bosom and put them in Miss Hong’s broken bowl, saying, “This is my personal sponsorship.”
5 Miss Hong poured the green money and gold beads from the broken bowl back into Yun Ce’s hand and said, “Since we’re already so poor that only a bit of backbone remains, we’ll rely on that bit of backbone to fight them.”
5 Yun Ce looked at the gold beads in his hand and said to Miss Hong, “On the wasteland, I encountered a cavalry of three thousand men. Such a cavalry could easily kill ten thousand of you.”
5 Miss Hong chuckled and said, “Black Armored Cavalry, I’ve already experienced them. My team of five hundred only held out for thirty breaths. They are indeed elite, but we have numbers. Those three thousand elite cavalry can’t always be together every day.”
5 “Kill one today, one tomorrow. As long as we persist, three thousand isn’t many. We have the will and confidence to kill thirty thousand.”
5 Yun Ce straightened his body, put away his fake smile, and said coldly, “I’m waiting for that day.”
5 Seeing Yun Ce storm off from Miss Hong, Pei Chuan held his broken bowl, squatted in front of Miss Hong, and said, “Did you make him angry?”
5 Miss Hong laughed and said, “He is a born rebel. I just wanted to spark the origin of rebellion in his heart.”
5 Pei Chuan puzzledly said, “He’s going to participate in the Grand Competition. If he succeeds, fine wine and women will turn him into a pile of rotten mud. What rebellion then?”
6 Miss Hong shook her head and said, “A person like him thinks highly of himself, likes to act as a superior pointing out the world. Those already in high positions hate people like him the most. Even if he succeeds in the exam, with his temperament, how could he tolerate the petty intrigues there? His resistance at that time would only be more intense.”
6 Pei Chuan looked at the gold beads Yun Ce left on the ground, picked them up one by one into his own broken bowl, and said to Miss Hong, “Really don’t want them?”
6 Miss Hong sneered and said, “I’m just disgusted that he gave too little. When there’s a chance, I’ll ask for more. This money already has our share in it. If we hadn’t desperately attacked Duke Yu’s Mansion, where would he get the chance to obtain so much gold?”
