Chapter 62 Persuading the Anxi Army

Such bizarre behavior left the Anxi military soldiers guarding the city walls staring at one another in blank dismay.

Guo Xin tightened his grip on his horizontal blade, the coiled-dragon pattern on the scabbard growing faintly warm beneath the sunlight.

"Be on guard!" the deputy general barked in a low voice, and the crossbowmen atop the ramparts immediately drew their strings and nocked their arrows.

The iron arrowheads gleamed with a cold, piercing luster in the daylight.

Amidst the wind and sand, a tattered Tang banner whipped and snapped fiercely atop the battlements.

The soldiers held their breath, fixing their intense gazes upon this group of strangely dressed people who had appeared out of nowhere.

While the Anxi army stood in strict battle array, Jiang Ye occasionally checked the countdown timer while keeping a close eye on the activity near the city wall.

When the very last piece of supplies was heaved out of the vehicle, everyone breathed a long sigh of relief.

Just as they caught their breath, time was up!

The moment the final second ticked away, the body of the coaster suddenly rippled like water. The metal shell took on eerie undulations, refracting halos of light under the setting sun.

Chen Xuelin and the others had mentally prepared themselves beforehand, but witnessing the vehicle blur and dematerialize right before their eyes still felt utterly surreal.

Though the five modern people all reacted this way, the people on the city wall not far away were even more astonished than they were.

A brief commotion swept across the ramparts.

Zhao Qi's knuckles turned pale and taut against his horn bow, yet the arrowhead remained completely motionless; the one-eyed veteran's shoulder guard collided with his companion's with a crisp, echoing chime; the youngest garrison soldier rolled his Adam's apple, swallowing the word "miracle" down along with the grit of sand.

Even generals as steady as Guo Xin and Zhang Qian were shaken by the scene before them.

"It—it vanished..." Zhang Qian's voice was as heavy as iron, though the trailing edge betrayed a trace of tremor.

Guo Xin's narrowed eyes were as sharp as a falcon's as he stared intently at the group not far away. Having campaigned in the Western Regions for over twenty years, he had seen the cavalry of Tubo and encountered the sorcery of the Arabs, yet he had never witnessed anything so bizarre.

While the Anxi army remained caught between shock and vigilance, Jiang Ye turned to Chen Xuelin, Yang Fang, Tong Yi, and He Xu. "The four of you stay right here and don't move. I'll go have a word with them first."

On this trip to the Tang Dynasty and the Anxi Protectorate General, the system mall had already unlocked items related to Tang Dynasty clothing, hair buns, and the like.

However, Jiang Ye chose not to purchase any of them this time, as it was unnecessary.

Before coming, Jiang Ye had weighed the pros and cons. The Anxi army was unique; unlike the Qin Dynasty, they did not have much time to waste.

Therefore, he needed to make the Anxi army believe them right from the start. Fortunately, the system was generous, dropping them directly beneath the walls of Kucha just in time to stage a display of a "miracle" arriving and vanishing, which would spare him a tremendous amount of trouble.

Jiang Ye turned his gaze to Wang Zhengqing. "Brother Wang, come with me."

Wang Zhengqing nodded.

Yang Fang glanced at the city in the distance and warned, "Director Jiang, their bows are all aimed right at us! You guys must be careful."

"Don't worry." Jiang Ye patted his black backpack and pulled out a foldable megaphone from within. "I'm prepared."

Wang Zhengqing followed in silence, a soldier's instinct calculating every step of the distance with precision, stopping just at the outer edge of the effective range of a Tang bow. He could clearly see the cold, glittering arrowheads behind the battlements, with at least twenty bows pointed directly at them.

"We cannot go any further," Wang Zhengqing reminded him in a low voice.

In truth, even without Wang Zhengqing's warning, Jiang Ye would have stopped. Possessing the "hundred-pace arrow-piercing" skill, he was naturally well aware of the range of traditional bows and crossbows.

Their current position was just outside the firing range of the Tang bows—a relatively safe distance.

Once they stood still, Jiang Ye slowly unfolded the megaphone.

To their surprise, this action was met with several arrows that hissed through the air and embedded themselves into the sandy ground right in front of them as a warning.

"Soldiers and officers!" Jiang Ye's voice exploded across the wasteland through the electronic amplifier. "We are all subjects of the Great Tang!"

Atop the battlements, an old one-eyed veteran squinted his remaining eye, his weathered fingers resting steadily on the bowstring. The young soldier beside him opened his mouth to speak, but was silenced by a single look from the old soldier. Across the ramparts, battle-hardened troops exchanged tacit glances, their weapons remaining completely motionless.

"General Guo, please see the truth!" Jiang Ye continued to shout through the megaphone. "We have brought rations, medicinal herbs, armor, weapons, and other supplies!"

As he spoke, he pointed to the pile of supplies on the sand dune behind him, then instructed Chen Xuelin, "Open a bag and show it to them!"

Hearing this, Chen Xuelin immediately ran to the nearest bag of flour.

He clumsily untied the knot, struggling due to both his unfamiliarity and applying too much force with his hands.

"Whoosh!"

The entire bag of flour was overturned by his tug, and a small portion of snow-white flour spilled out, spreading an eye-catching patch of white across the yellow sand. The fine flour gleamed with golden light in the setting sun, kicked up into a misty cloud by the hot wind.

"Damn it!" Chen Xuelin scrambled frantically to scoop up the flour, only to grab handfuls of fine sand mixed with the yellow earth.

In the eyes of Chen Xuelin, a wealthy second-generation heir, this spilled flour was utterly negligible. In modern times, he wouldn't even furrow his brow if an entire truckload of flour were spilled. But now, they were in the Tang Dynasty, and what he held in his hands was meant to be given to the desperately supplied Anxi army.

This inevitably filled the sheltered youth with a shred of guilt.

His careless spilling of the flour caused the soldiers on the city wall to furrow their brows, their faces revealing looks of heartache.

Guo Xin stood atop the ramparts, his falcon-like gaze sweeping across the pile of supplies on the sand dune. His calloused fingers gently stroked the bricks of the wall; over twenty years of defending the border had taught him to maintain an instinctive vigilance against any anomaly.

"General, it is indeed top-grade wheat flour," Zhang Qian said in a low voice, his tone laden with restrained excitement. The scar on the deputy general's face twitched slightly, yet his hand holding the blade remained steady.

How long had it been since they had eaten a single full meal, let alone consumed top-grade wheat flour?

Jiang Ye raised his hands in a solemn, respectful salute toward the city wall, grains of sand pelting his face.

"General Guo, please discern the truth," his voice pierced through the howling wind and sand. "We are neither enemies nor raiders, but descendants of Huaxia from a millennium later, blessed by the legacy of the Great Tang."

At the mention of the words "a millennium later," the Anxi soldiers looked at each other in bewilderment, as if listening to some unimaginable fairy tale.

Guo Xin exchanged a glance with Zhang Qian, their eyes holding doubt as well as a probing curiosity.

Jiang Ye continued, "The colossal behemoth that you soldiers just witnessed is a vehicle of later generations. This machine can travel three thousand miles a day without tiring and carry ten thousand pounds without faltering. We have come this time to deliver supplies to you brave soldiers."

"We, your descendants of later generations, hold every single soldier of the Anxi army in the highest reverence. It is you who have guarded the borders of the Great Tang, you who have defended the nation's might with your hot blood, and you who have let us descendants of later generations understand what it means when it is said: *'Ten thousand miles away, a solitary city, nothing left but white-haired soldiers!'*"

Jiang Ye's voice, calm at first, gradually took on a hint of choked emotion. The genuine feelings naturally revealed in his tone actually moved the Anxi soldiers atop the city wall.

Jiang Ye took a deep breath, speaking again at an unhurried pace, "What has just been said may sound even more absurd than ancient legends of ghosts and monsters to you generals. Yet that massive, iron-armored leviathan—you all saw it with your own eyes, and witnessed firsthand how it came from nothingness and returned to nothingness."