Since Wang Chong was recruiting the Wushang, he naturally needed to give them the best horses. After all, in his plans, the opponents the Wushang Cavalry were to face were the Arabian cavalry. Only the high-quality steeds of the Turkic steppe could match the huge and sturdy Arabian warhorses.
"No problem! Leave it to me!"
Patting his chest, Hulayeg agreed with astonishing speed.
"With regards to the warhorses, there's nothing I can't do on the steppe. But… the matter of money?"
As Hulayeg spoke, he rubbed the thumb and index finger of his right hand together, a gesture that everyone in the world could understand.
"There's no problem with that. For this first transaction, I require one hundred thousand warhorses. To express our sincerity, we'll first make a deal for ten thousand warhorses. In one month, I want to see ten thousand high-quality steeds at my City of Steel. At that time, I will hand over the payment for those ten thousand horses.
"Just ten thousand warhorses shouldn't be a problem for the great number one Turkic horse merchant, right?"
Wang Chong glanced at Hulayeg.
"Haha, what are you saying? It's just ten thousand high-quality warhorses. In twenty days, I can get them to Wushang for you."
Hulayeg heroically patted his chest.
If Wang Chong wanted one hundred thousand horses in a single month, Hulayeg really wouldn't have been able to do it. After all, it took time to gather these horses from the various tribes.
But just ten thousand high-quality steeds, with Hulayeg's connections and relationship to the chiefs of the various tribes, wasn't a big problem at all.
Moreover, ten thousand high-quality warhorses was one million taels of gold, enough for him to start paying bribes and prepare for the rest of this historic deal.
The two parties quickly reached an agreement. According to the customs of the Western Regions, when signing the contract, both sides bit their thumb and used their blood to leave behind a fingerprint.
"Oh, that's right, Hulayeg, I heard that you have a steward called Yalug?"
Wang Chong suddenly raised his head, a faint smile on his face.
"What of it?" Hulayeg asked, his heart beginning to thump.
Hulayeg truly had found a few stewards to handle his financial affairs, but vanishingly few outsiders knew of this.
Hulayeg never brought them with him when conducting business, and these stewards never showed their face in public.
Hulayeg had some deep apprehensions of the matter and so intentionally kept it hidden.
Not even old friends who he had known for decades had ever met them, much less outsiders.
Hulayeg had no idea how Wang Chong, who had come to the Western Regions for the first time and was meeting him for the first time, knew about his stewards. He even knew that one of them was called Yalug.
"Haha, it's nothing. I'm just asking. But it's difficult to know what's in a man's heart, so Sir Hulayeg should pay a little more attention."
Wang Chong turned and left, a smile on his face.
Hulayeg was still perplexed, but when he saw Wang Chong raise three fingers behind his back, his face instantly lit up in understanding.
Wang Chong quickly left Hulayeg's residence.
Chapter 724: Fumeng Lingcha's Warning I
Chapter 724: Fumeng Lingcha's Warning (I)
Translated by: Hypersheep325
Edited by: Michyrr
"Young Master, can that Hulayeg really be trusted?"
While working through the crowd of Hu, Solitary Wolf suddenly asked this question to Wang Chong. Although he had been abroad for more than a year and Wang Chong had already been made a marquis, Solitary Wolf still had the habit of addressing Wang Chong as 'Young Master'.
"It has nothing to do with trust. Profit alone is enough. And besides, in this matter, he doesn't have the power to decide who is the trustworthy one."
Wang Chong smiled, but his mind was thinking about that strange expression Hulayeg made as Wang Chong was leaving.
Yalug was Hulayeg's most trusted and closest steward, controlling more than seventy percent of his finances. In Hulayeg's mind, he was definitely a devoted subordinate.
Alas, Hulayeg would have never expected that in just three or four days, this 'devoted subordinate' would abscond with both his money and one of his concubines.
The string of large mistakes Hulayeg made afterward that resulted in his beheading by the Western Turkic Ishbara Khagan was most likely linked to this event.
"In addition, Young Master… one hundred thousand horses is no small number. With our abilities, can we really purchase them?" Solitary Wolf worriedly said.
Based on the price Wang Chong had given of one hundred taels of gold, one hundred thousand quality steeds would cost ten million taels of gold. The construction of Wang Chong's City of Steel was being paid for with loans from the more than one thousand great clans of the capital. Buying this many horses with the Wang Clan's abilities alone was simply out of the question.
"Hahaha, I saw you coming out of Hulayeg's residence with such a somber and worried face, your brows tightly furrowed, but this is all you were worried about. With the Wang Clan's abilities, we naturally wouldn't be able to buy one hundred thousand warhorses, and besides, what does the Wang Clan need with so many horses?"
Wang Chong smiled, a carefree expression on his face. He had never thought about how much gold the horses would cost, nor had he ever cared.
"Then Young Master is buying all these warhorses for…" Solitary Wolf tilted his head in confusion.
He had always believed that Wang Chong had come in disguise to the Western Regions to buy so many warhorses for his own purposes, but now that he was hearing that this wasn't the case at all, he was instantly perplexed.
Even though he had followed Wang Chong for so long, he still felt he couldn't keep up with his thought processes.
"Haha, of course, it's for the Great Tang," Wang Chong immediately said.
Of the one hundred thousand horses, he would leave at most ten thousand for himself, perhaps in the future working with an intermediary to obtain an additional thirty or forty thousand. The rest would all be gifted to the Imperial Court.
Raising these warhorses would be an enormous expenditure that only the Imperial Court could afford. As for the gold needed to buy the horses…
Whether it a few million or tens of millions of taels of gold, it was just a fine drizzle to the Great Tang that barely counted for anything.
The Great Tang might have been militarily on the decline, its people thinking only of peace and no longer as valiant and aggressive as they once were, but the many years of prosperity and commerce with the surrounding foreign countries had truly allowed it to accumulate a vast fortune.
If it weren't used now, when would it be used?
Wang Chong quickly took his leave of the Western Regions with just as little fanfare as he had arrived. The moment he left, a messenger bird with golden claws took off into the air at a speed much faster than ordinary messenger birds, leaving the Western Regions for the capital of the Great Tang.
Several days later, the messenger bird flew through a window and into King Song's study.
"This is… a letter from Wang Chong?"
King Song extracted the letter and immediately began to read through it. The more he read, the brighter his eyes shone, and he finally couldn't help but give an excited laugh.
"Hahaha, one hundred thousand high-quality steeds! Wang Chong, this an enormous feat you've achieved for the Imperial Court. No matter how much gold you need, this king will submit a memorial to the court and do his utmost to handle it for you. I'd like to see just who would dare harbor selfish motives and oppose this motion which will be of such great benefit to the country!"
With these last words, King Song's face turned frigid. Matters were divided by their level of importance and urgency, and while King Song might have been able to disregard interference in ordinary concerns, if there was anyone who
dared to make trouble when the Imperial Court was facing such a dire need for warhorses, he might have to kill a few imperial censors or officials.
King Song took Wang Chong's letter and immediately left his estate.
……
Wang Chong quickly returned to the City of Steel. The entire excursion had taken ten-some days, and by now, the City of Steel had taken on a completely different form.
Massive walls forty meters high towered up from the ground, smooth and steep. Any siege ladder or other siege weapon could only lament before these walls.
With the construction of the outer walls complete, nearly 150,000 workmen were now building the inner circle of walls as well as the various restaurants, tea houses, and inns of the city.
The various clans had dispatched their own crews to begin constructing their own restaurants and stores. The entire city was abuzz with masons and carpenters at work.
Wang Chong's fief was on track, and no one would be able to stop it at this stage.
"Lord Marquis, the steel and modules for the initial phase have all been used up. The construction speed from now probably won't be as fast. The sword shops and sword smiths of the various prefectures and provinces still need to finish the rest of the wall modules and send them to Wushang, and I'm afraid that this will take quite some time."
In the blustery winds atop the high walls, Zhang Shouzhi reported the current situation.
"In addition, besides walls, a few narrow alleyways and parapets for soldiers to hide behind are required. These can't be constructed quickly, so the speed won't be comparable to that of the early stages."
"It's fine. With the City of Steel at this stage, we have a firm ground to stand on. This was my initial goal, and we've already reached it!"
Wang Chong stood on the walls, his clothes flapping in the wind.
There were tasks that were slow and tasks that were fast. The modular construction of the city had proceeded so quickly that it seemed miraculous, but many people had failed to notice that preparing the steel modules had required a great deal of time, manpower, and resources before the actual construction.
If he had not borrowed the resources and capital of the great clans and mobilized the forging capability of the entire Central Plains, he would have never been able to pull of his stunning feat of the one-night construction. This was an unimaginably massive engineering project, one that would be only a dream for many factions.
But even though this accomplishment had shocked so many people, the incredible speed of construction concealed a massive flaw of modular construction.
All the shock and awe came from the fact that all the modules for construction had been prepared in advance. Now that all the modules were consumed, one had to wait for the rest of the modules to be finished, resulting in a drastic drop in speed. This was also the reason for the City of Steel's current state.
The frenzied construction had exhausted those mountains of wall modules, leading the speed of the rest of the construction to naturally slow.
But Wang Chong had already reached his goal.
Rumble!
While he was speaking with Zhang Shouzhi, the ground suddenly began to quake and a rumbling like the crashing of the tide came from the north. Shocked, Wang Chong turned to see what was happening. A thick cloud of dust had emerged over the horizon, countless black dots within charging forward with an astonishing momentum.
"Enemy!"
A sharp cry tore through the sky, and the several thousand elite cavalry that Wang Chong had brought from the southwest, as well as the experts the great clans had dispatched, immediately responded. In a few moments, the guards had gathered together into formation, prepared to attack the foe.
Buzz!
Nearby, there was a metal clattering as two massive gates of steel opened, ready to receive friendly cavalry and also to close and keep enemies out so that the thick and sturdy walls could do their duty.
Thwickthwick! Wang Chong heard swishing sounds as the master archers dispatched by the great clans rushed up to the walls and nocked arrows to their bows, aiming them northward.
In a few moments, the City of Steel that had been bustling with activity immediately became fully armed and equipped, bristling with weaponry.
Buzz!
The 'enemy army' grew closer and closer, the dust clouds growing thicker and thicker. Just when a fierce battle seemed about to take place, Wang Chong suddenly sneered, his eyes widening in surprise.
"Halt!" Wang Chong raised an arm and issued a cold order. "All soldiers, await my orders. Maintain defensive positions. Archers, put down your bows! Until you receive my order, no careless actions are permitted!"
So sudden was this order that everyone was left dumbfounded.
"Sir Zhang, wait here. I need to leave for a while to deal with this matter!"
As Wang Chong stood on the wall and looked into the distance, he sneered at the approaching cloud of dust.
"It seems that a good friend of ours has come!"
Wang Chong turned and began to head down the stairs. Behind him, Zhang Shouzhi had a perplexed and dazed expression.
But after squinting in the blazing sun, Zhang Shouzhi suddenly understood, slight shock appearing on his face.
"So it was him!!" Zhang Shouzhi said in surprise, and he looked with deep concern at that war banner that had suddenly been thrust out of the churning cloud of dust.
"Bai Siling, Zhao Yatong, stand guard in the city. Don't come out!
"Cheng Sanyuan, Su Shixuan, come with me!"
"Yes, Lord Marquis!"
……
A set of horses left a trail of dust behind them as they galloped out of the city.
Cheng Sanyuan and Su Shixuan were two elites that had battled together with Wang Chong in the southwest, two of the one thousand experts Wang Chong had recruited from the great clans.
These two were far stronger than the other clan experts, and they were extremely loyal to Wang Chong.
In order to get in Wang Chong's good graces and pull closer to the Wang Clan and King Song, the clan they had originally served had gifted the two to Wang Chong to serve as his guards.
Wang Chong did not value them solely for their martial prowess, but also for their courage, ability to react on the spot, and decisiveness. During the southwestern war, when Li Siye was leading them back, the Tibetans had attempted to counterattack by intercepting their charge from an angle and disrupting Li Siye's formation.
But this pair had noticed the danger and led a small force to charge into the Tibetan cavalry while they were still forming.
The courageous charge of these ten-some people had scattered the seven or eight hundred Tibetan cavalry, shattering their offense.
Chapter 725: Fumeng Lingcha's Warning II
Chapter 725: Fumeng Lingcha's Warning (II)
Translated by: Hypersheep325
Edited by: Michyrr
Li Siye had personally spoken of the pair's accomplishments and was full of praise and appreciation.
After observing them for a while, Wang Chong also found them rather decent, so he had tasked Cheng Sanyuan and Su Shixuan with defending and guarding the City of Steel during its construction. So far, the two had performed quite well in their duties.
Rumble!
The cloud of dust from the north continued to approach, and everyone in the city could feel the trembling of the ground from the galloping of horses. All the workmen had long ago retreated within the walls, their work having already been halted.
It was suddenly eerily silent around the City of Steel, leaving only the sound of galloping horses from the north.
The atmosphere was fraught with tension.
More than one hundred thousand eyes nervously peered at the seething cloud of dust and the silent and oppressive figures within. Only Wang Chong on his horse silently waited with a pleasant smile on his face, his expression neither meek nor humble.
Buzz!
As they drew close, the warhorses began to sl
ow, and a massive banner, more than one zhang tall, was extended out of the cloud of dust. Over a black dragon was the common golden rock eagle of the Western Regions, its gaze sharp, claws like hooks, feathers seemingly made of steel. It was so lifelike that it seemed like it would fly out of the banner.
This was the first time since Wang Chong's arrival in the Western Regions that he had seen such a war banner.
While Wang Chong was inspecting the war banner, an extremely muscular and imposing figure rode out of the dust, appearing like some demonic god.
In this moment, everyone could clearly see this man's thickly bearded face, his swarthy complexion, and those bronze eyes, exuding a chilling and dreadful light.
And when this person emerged, a tide of awesome pressure began to come down. Other than Wang Chong and the two elite guards Cheng Sanyuan and Su Shixuan, everyone else in the City of Steel lowered their heads, not daring to meet this person's gaze.
"Wang Chong!"
The moment everyone lowered their heads, they heard a savage voice echoing in their ears, sounding like the whine of a trembling sword. It was fierce and lofty, majestic and oppressive.
When he heard this clearly hostile voice, Wang Chong broke into a smile.
"Lord Protector-General!"
With these words, Wang Chong immediately urged his horse forward without the slightest timidity. In all of the Great Tang, in all of the Western Regions, there was only one person with such a unique voice: Qixi Protector-General Fumeng Lingcha.
…You still couldn't hold it in!
Wang Chong inwardly grinned, though he showed none of this on his face.
Wushang was so close to the Qixi Protectorate that no activity could be hidden from Fumeng Lingcha. But it was clear that the sudden increase in the walls to fifteen meters in a single night, and the continuous increase in height, had made Fumeng Lingcha realize that he had miscalculated and become anxious to move.
The clopping of horse hooves echoed through the skies!
As everyone tensely watched on, Wang Chong led his horse forward, stirring his own trail of dust as he drew closer to Fumeng Lingcha. In the distance, the renowned Protector-General slowed his pace, the soaring cloud of dust gradually settling down to reveal an awe-inspiring army of black-armored elites, veterans of countless battles.
The Human Emperor c1-2382 Page 484
