Chapter 61: Kucha

Jiang Ye pushed open the car door, and scorching sand grains immediately poured into the gaps of his shoes.

He narrowed his eyes and looked toward the horizon. A yellowish-brown city stood abruptly at the end of the sea of sand, its rammed-earth walls glowing with a dark red light under the setting sun. On the battlements, a tattered flag vaguely bore a faded character: "Tang".

System prompts had already emerged in his field of vision, and he whispered softly, "Kucha."

Behind him came a succession of intakes of breath.

Wang Zhengqing was the first to follow him out of the vehicle. The moment his shoes sank into the sandy ground, his muscles tensed all over, and his vigilant gaze swept the surroundings.

This was no film set. The weathered traces of the city walls and the scent of camel dung mixed with cooking smoke in the air were terrifyingly real.

"Oh my god!" Yang Fang covered her mouth with one hand while shielding her eyes from the scorching sunlight with the other.

That afternoon, she was still helping her parents mind their grocery store, but now, she found herself in the middle of a desert. Not far away, a yellowish-brown ancient city stood majestically, its mottled walls slightly distorted in the heat waves like a mirage.

Chen Xuelin jumped down from the car, his polarized sunglasses reflecting the gilded light of the entire desert.

When he took off his glasses, his usually carefree eyes surged with unprecedented shock. "This is incredible."

Tong Yi and He Xu followed behind Chen Xuelin, their two young faces frozen in stupefaction.

A gust of wind and sand carrying historical dust suddenly swept over, the fine sand grains whipping against everyone's faces.

Only then did they truly realize that this was indeed the Anxi Protectorate in the year 789 AD.

Director Jiang could genuinely transport them across a millennium!

On the city tower, the old veteran Zhao Qi was leaning against a mottled battlement, yawning sleepily. Forty-two years of guarding the border had made his eyelids thicker than cowhide.

Suddenly, a faint tremor came from the rammed-earth wall beneath him.

"Hmm?" His turbid eyeballs moved, and his cracked palm instinctively felt for the horn bow beside him.

This standard-issue bow issued during the Kaiyuan era had now been worn to a glossy sheen.

When his gaze swept across the western sand dunes, his relaxed eyelids suddenly tightened.

In the distant sea of sand, a ginger-yellow iron "colossus" was sprawled out, the setting sun gleaming across its smooth outer shell and refracting an eerie light.

"Enemy attack—!" Zhao Qi's roar sounded like sandpaper scraping, spraying spittle from his missing front teeth.

He tremblingly raised the ox-horn bugle, his withered chest heaving violently.

The wailing bugle blast pierced the blazing sun, startling a flock of sand sparrows on the city battlements.

On the adjacent beacon tower, a one-eyed veteran stumbled to his feet, half of an arrow wound exposed beneath his tattered leather armor. He narrowed his remaining right eye to look at the sand dunes, and suddenly screamed, "Light the beacon! Quick, light the beacon!"

Several grizzled border soldiers lunged toward the beacon tower, their chapped soles treading across the city wall bricks.

A thirty-five-year-old man, considered young among the Anxi army, trembled as he fished out a treasured flint. However, his hands shook violently due to chronic malnutrition, and he failed to strike a spark.

"Step aside!" Zhao Qi snatched the fire striker, his right hand—missing its ring finger—expertly giving it a strike.

The moment the flame flared up, it illuminated the arriving Protector Guo Xin, who had rushed over upon hearing the commotion.

This elderly general, whose hair and beard were white as frost, wore black armor covered in the scars of swords and halberds, walking slowly across the yellow sand.

With every step, his armor emitted a heavy clanging of metal and iron, as if recounting the vicissitudes of guarding the border for over twenty years.

The wind and frost between his brows were deeper than the sword scars on his armor, and those turbid yet still sharp eyes retained the edge of a warrior forever ready to charge.

The beacon smoke rose straight up from the battlements of Kucha. Guo Xin rested a hand on the city wall, narrowing his sharp eyes as he looked toward the sand dunes.

The yellowish iron monster lay dormant in silence, casting a cold gleam under the setting sun.

"Protector, this subordinate has never witnessed such a behemoth," said Deputy General Zhang Qian in a low voice. "It looks nothing like the works of the Uyghurs, nor anything forged by Tubo."

Guo Xin's white beard trembled in the wind as he gently tapped his fingers against the wall bricks, "Have you seen any traces of the enemy army?"

"Scouts report that not a single soldier has been sighted within a ten-li radius," Zhang Qian said, tightening his grip on the cross-blade at his waist. "Only a few people in bizarre attire are standing beside that behemoth."

The sound of colliding iron armor rose from beneath the city as a squad of veteran Anxi soldiers had already formed ranks and awaited orders.

These warriors, averaging over forty years of age, wore hemp garments beneath their armor that had long been washed white, yet they still straightened their spines.

Guo Xin knitted his dark eyebrows and said in a deep voice, "Why were they detected only when they were within arm's reach?"

At this moment, that massive alien object was barely a hundred paces away from the city. If it came any closer by even half a step, it would likely reach the very base of the city wall.

The border soldier Zhao Qi knelt on one knee, cupped his fists, and reported, "Reporting to the General, three breaths ago the ground beneath the city was completely empty. Who could have expected that in the blink of an eye, this object would appear out of thin air..."

By this point, his voice grew lower and lower, as he himself found it too preposterous to believe.

Such words sounded absurd, akin to a mere excuse.

However, Zhao Qi had always been honest and loyal, and everyone in the army knew his words could never be false.

Such eerie occurrences made the hearts of the soldiers on the city tower tighten involuntarily.

"This matter is far too bizarre," Zhang Qian frowned deeply, unable to tell whether this portended good fortune or disaster.

On the city wall, Guo Xin's hand gripping the battlement tightened unconsciously. His eyes were fixed on every move of those strange people beneath the sand dunes, his brows locked into a deep vertical crease.

While the Anxi army atop the Kucha battlements was on high alert, Jiang Ye and his group had fallen into another kind of tension.

"Everyone, pay attention!" Jiang Ye spoke up, pulling the others' attention back. "We only have fifteen minutes of unloading time. After fifteen minutes, the vehicle will disappear."

True to his military background, Wang Zhengqing was the first to react. With a bound, he dashed back into the carriage, his arm muscles taut as he carefully lifted an iron crate marked "Flammable and Explosive".

The others sprang into action as well.

Jiang Ye pulled open the car window, picked up a bag of flour, and threw it out without a second thought.

The flour bag traced an arc in the air, landing on the sand with a "thud" and kicking up a cloud of white dust.

"This method is brilliant!" Yang Fang's eyes lit up, and she immediately followed suit.

Her slender arms erupted with surprising strength as she tossed bottles of cooking oil out of the window one after another. The oil bottles rolled across the sandy ground, shimmering with a warm glow under the setting sun.

Chen Xuelin and He Xu formed a temporary transport team, one passing items from inside the car while the other received them outside.

First-aid kits, compressed biscuits, and canned food were transferred rapidly like an assembly line.

Occasionally, an item would drop, but there was no time to pick it up as they raced against the clock to continue moving goods.

Outside the car window, various supplies had already piled up into a small mountain.

Bags of rice, bags of flour, and cooking oil formed a peculiar scene in the desert.

Their actions naturally caught the attention of the Anxi army on the city wall.

Zhang Qian looked on in astonishment, "They are extracting items from inside that behemoth."

Several figures in bizarre clothing were continuously hauling various strange objects out from the belly of the colossal entity. Colorful woven bags were tossed casually onto the sandy ground with dull thuds, while those metal boxes reflecting a cold light were handled with the utmost care, like precious treasures, reflecting dazzling glares under the scorching sun.