City Gate - (Top Middle Bottom)

Author: Zhang Weiming
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-06-01
Features: A painful history of the evolution from cold weapons to hot weapons, the final performance of the last grassland archer cavalry of China. They are people with flesh and blood, with edges, with love and hatred, with emotions, with honor and disgrace, with joy and sorrow, with suffering and happiness. They are great men, great heroes who endure great hunger, great thirst, great labor, great hardship, great wind, great snow, great laughter, great life and death. Their stories are not short of legends but free of, simple yet extraordinary, natural yet spectacular. They fight bravely against bravery, savagely against savagery, and strongly against strength. They are as real as life and death! The 22-year-old People's War of Independence and Liberation, starting from peasant-soldiers with sickles and hoes and pastoral soldiers with bows and long blades, is a condensation of thousands of years of weapon evolution from cold to hot weapons! No wonder "The City Gate" so yearns for the era of grand wars with cold weapons that bred strong warriors on horseback: military history truly shows modern humans the tragic compassion of the paradox between "weak weapons and strong people" and "strong weapons and weak people." The first military novel of the 21st century in China! "The City Gate" is a remarkable contemporary novel created by military writer Zhang Weiming after ten years of dedication! "The City Gate" presents a challenge to both Chinese literary creation and reading! With passion almost about to explode, the author writes the heroic spirit of the cold weapon era with heart-wrenching intensity, liver-quenching passion, and a will to burn to ashes. Reading it is as dizzying as the world spinning, as destructive as withering trees, yet as exhilarating as a release! "The City Gate" is a military epic forged with masculine strength, where riders are the artisans of pastoral hunting and the spirits of battle and killing; "The City Gate" is a great song of men forged with suffering, where archers are the crucible of blood and bone and the paradise of the soul.
Year after year, day after day. In a flash, it's the Year of the Ox again. Coincidentally, on this very day, it was the Year of the Ox when the ox's snout almost touched the tiger's snout.
Oink—At that time, Er Wang was on the second-to-last watch. Later, they knew that the howl was so fatal to Er Wang. The second-to-last watch on Er Wang was what the wolf soldiers called the "hell watch," the most hateful and helpless watch for them. No wonder the cause of Er Wang's death remained unclear for a long time. Some said the city shell was haunted by demons. Others said the city cave was malevolent. But the most insidious and cruel killer was probably the time when the ox's snout touched the tiger's snout.
If you think about it, breaking into a house to rob, digging graves, even bandits raiding watches, enemy armies stealing camps, prisoners breaking out, palace coups, or wolves attacking leopards—all of these correspond to the time when the ox's snout touched the tiger's snout. Later, the old people of the old capital said that on the Year of the Ox, the time when the ox's snout touched the tiger's snout, the heavens were dim with stars, and the earth was filled with miasma. Later, some said it was the ghostly hour when the King of Hell collected his toll.
Halfway through, they encountered a blockade on the northern foothills of the Yin and Yan Mountains, and with a roar, wild horses leaped into the air, their fierce, muddy-yellow manes spread wide—a strong northern wind from the Mongolian Plateau sweeping south. The strong wind suddenly rose into the sky, gliding smoothly through a long, long distance in the high atmosphere and then gradually descending over a long, long distance before landing on the small plain at the front of the North China Plain. Right below it lay the city of the capital. The heavy and sharp attack of the strong wind made the city shell tremble slightly, and the golden and blue tiles of the central island and the myriad thousands of surrounding gray clay tiles swayed like phosphorescent ripples.
For a moment, the Year of the Ox roared like a leopard. The first month of the Year of the Ox, the night of the wolf's heat, roared like a leopard. Inside the city cave, Er Wang and the others cursed and moved constantly because of their hunger, cold, exhaustion, restlessness, and the long duration of the second-to-last watch. Because Er Wang and the others kept changing positions, like the keys of an instrument shifting. As a result, a sharp cry broke through the roar of the leopard.
Oink—At that time, Er Wang already felt something was wrong. In that instant, his heart screamed, "Close it, close it!" Far and near, especially the closest, things kept happening, of course, not always good things. In any case, Er Wang felt it was extremely bad and told himself, "Close it, close it!" So his rectum tightened completely, tight, tight. Then he commanded it to sink, sink. The force that had been pushing horizontally outside his waist and abdomen changed direction and flowed downward, sinking past his crotch, past his knees, past his ankles, past his soles, and settled happily at his toes. Then he commanded all his toes to grip firmly, like the big toes on both sides, grip, grip. Before he could even doubt, two streams of coolness began to flow upward. The uncontrollable coolness continued to rise, floating lightly up to his heart. Er Wang sighed that he was ultimately shallow-rooted, sighing that he was like a lone grass, drifting helplessly in the vast and arrogant whirlwind.
Oink—Er Wang's ear flaps shrank the world. Oink—Er Wang's life spread like a rainbow. Oink—Er Wang's soul leaped against the wind toward the distant northern homeland, soaring toward the beautiful and warm Mongolian grasslands.
You, the noisy Year of the Ox. You, the collapsed city shell. You, you, you don't value Er Wang, but Er Wang looks down on you. You, you.
Look, how urinating Er Wang is. Listen, how Er Wang can bite gold: camel dung fire is slow, driving away the cold and warming. Ox dung fire is soft, boiling meat and burning milk. No bow. No arrow. Er Wang's song dart flies to the sky, screaming at you, the Year of the Ox, with grief. Screaming at you, the city shell, trembling and swaying.
Later, they knew that the "Oink—" came from Er Wang's life force, from the moment of his death. Although everyone thought it was a good thing that Er Wang died. Although Er Wang was even more revered by the people as the Ear God, receiving great posthumous honor. But none of this meant anything to the Year of the Ox. If you don't believe it, ask Ba. Ask Ling. Ba Gen's wolf master's cap, Ling Yanxiao's wolf master's cap, can all bear witness. Qing had already spoken beforehand. But it can't be said that when Zi Yu had an accident, Er Wang had an accident, and only then did Qing shoot across the mountains with an arrow and break a horse's rear end.