Chapter Ninety-Two: Arrival on the Great Prairie

The sky stretched boundless above the grassland, the plains endless and misty; where the wind bent the weeds low, cattle and sheep would appear.

“Ahhh! Hahaha! So beautiful!”

“Good Lord, look at all this green! It’s unbelievably gorgeous!”

“This is practically a pot of spinach soup, green as can be!”

Bayan Nuur—this was the place where Wu Xiang was to film his great war epic. The moment Zhang Jingchu, Huang Haibo, and Xiao Mingge arrived, they all broke out with such exclamations.

Truth be told, anyone who saw this boundless sea of green would feel the same way; it was only that each person expressed it differently.

As for Wu Xiang, the moment he beheld such a majestic and beautiful scene, it felt as though a key had opened something inside him. His chest cleared at once, as if a great burden had been lifted, and even breathing seemed easier. Yet he showed no excitement on his face, wearing instead an expression that said: nothing special.

Well, he was the director; he had to keep up appearances.

Originally, Zhang Jingchu, Huang Haibo, and Xiao Mingge had already finished their scenes, and this war film had nothing more to do with them. But the two of them insisted on coming along. Their reason was rather bizarre: since they had nothing else to do anyway, they might as well tag along and treat it as a paid trip.

Wu Xiang was stingy, all right, but he still agreed to cover their food and lodging. As for their insistence on following along, fine—he would cover their train tickets too. He couldn’t be too much of a miser, after all.

“Come on, everybody, lend a hand and help set up the tents!”

Since they were here, they couldn’t just spend all their time sightseeing, could they?

Needless to say, Wu Xiang was met with another round of contempt.

Coming to the steppe meant shooting battle scenes, but before the fighting there were also some dramatic scenes, namely the Hun scenes. You couldn’t just cut straight from nowhere to chopping off heads, after all. Besides, later on a large portion of them would come over and merge with us, in the process of ethnic integration.

Setting: the great tent. Characters: Jin Midi and the King of Xiutu.

“Father! The Han dynasty is mighty beyond measure. Its people are educated, and they live in peace and plenty. Our people would be better off going over than wandering the land with our herds day after day.”

“You fool! All day long you do nothing but read those useless books. If you had time, you’d be better off practicing your horsemanship, finding a good woman, and giving me a son sooner rather than later!”

“Father! The Han grows stronger and stronger, while the Chanyu grows weaker and weaker. We cannot ignore the situation any longer.”

“What is there to investigate? If we do not follow the Chanyu, are we supposed to follow the Han people? You really have read yourself stupid!”

...And then, quite displeased, the King of Xiutu strode off with his whip in hand.

“Okay, that’s a wrap!” Wu Xiang called out. That scene had turned out pretty well.

This was the grassland drama sequence, telling chiefly the story of Jin Midi. He was a Hun by birth and did not originally bear the surname Jin. Later, because Emperor Wu of Han remembered how Huo Qubing had captured the golden statue used in the Xiutu King’s heaven-sacrificing ritual, he bestowed that surname upon him.

That man was no ordinary figure. He later became a trusted and highly valued minister entrusted with the emperor’s son, and he was utterly loyal to the Han court.

What Wu Xiang particularly wanted to show in this segment was the idea of ethnic integration. In history, the Chinese people had always possessed such breadth of mind.

Jin Midi was played by Du Chun of the class of ninety-nine from the Film Academy, naturally another one Wu Xiang had coaxed into joining for a payment of fifteen hundred. He had also managed to coax in the man’s father—none other than the famed Du Zhiguo.

When speaking to Teacher Du, Wu Xiang was even more sincere. He said, “Please, sir, come make a cameo. It’s only a few scenes. Besides, this is for your son, isn’t it?”

And so Teacher Du cameos as the King of Xiutu for zero pay. Wu Xiang couldn’t help but marvel: truly a first-rate artist, both morally and professionally impeccable.

All right, there’s no need to dwell on how Wu Xiang had talked them into it; anyway, it had all been shamelessly underhanded and bottomlessly low, all to save money.

What mattered now was filming. The coaxing and scheming were unimportant.

Where there was longing for ethnic fusion, there was also opposition. The Chanyu was about to appear.

It was still the same great tent, still the same old method—changing a few small details, replacing the tables and such, making it look more imposing and refined. Thus it became the Chanyu’s tent.

“Actors in place!”

The King of Xiutu was still there, only his costume had been slightly altered. Then the actor playing the Chanyu entered. His dress was, of course, carefully chosen. The Hun costume had been designed by Wu Xiang together with several students from the Academy of Fine Arts, mainly by referring to the clothing styles of the Tibetan people, since historical records suggested the two were roughly similar. A few minor changes were all it took.

As for the man himself, he was tall, his features composed, his swordlike brows seeming almost ready to fly into his temples. His gaze was sharp, and he possessed an air of authority without even needing to display anger. It was none other than the renowned actor Teacher Zhang Guangbei!

No need to say it—this was once again Wu Xiang making use of the legacy of Three Kingdoms. Since playing Lu Bu in that series, Teacher Zhang had not had any especially outstanding roles. This time, summoned by Third Master Han, he naturally came.

“Start!”

There was more than one person in the tent, of course. Several other Hun nobles, glittering with gold and silver, were also present. The scene chiefly concerned discussing raids to the south.

“I say, Chanyu, last winter was far too cold. So many cattle and sheep died, and we can barely survive as it is!”

“Exactly! It’s not just cattle and sheep—there’s no salt, no iron. If this goes on, how many of our young men are going to die?”

“Chanyu! Let’s head south. The Han are rich and prosperous; if we take a little from them, they won’t even care.”

It was all a clamorous jumble of voices, and Wu Xiang had specifically asked for it that way, because at the time the Huns were still a slave society and could not possibly have any sort of laws or ritual order. Although there are no detailed records on this point, Wu Xiang remembered that while reading the history of the Jin dynasty, he once saw that Jin Taizong, Wuqimai, had been surrounded and beaten by a group of nobles over some matter.

That was more than a thousand years later. But in some ways, slave societies could actually be quite democratic: even if you were the chief, if you did something wrong or unfair, everyone could still beat you. So here, Wu Xiang deliberately had them act a bit chaotically, to fit the history.

But things could not remain that disorderly forever. The Chanyu spoke.

“A southern campaign is no problem in itself. The Han commoners are weak, and their emperor is but a child; they are easy enough to crush. The question is, if we go south, how many of you are prepared to send your sons?”

“This...”

In fact, even among themselves they had disagreements. Otherwise why would they eventually split into a southern and a northern faction? The northern branch even fled all the way to Europe, contributing to the collapse of the Roman Empire.

After some bargaining, these men finally made up their minds: they would go south and raid.

“Good! Same old rules: the horses are our own, any man with a blade must not hide it, and those without blades will use bone spears. Next month, we march south!”

“Father!”

At that moment, someone walked into the tent from outside. She was dressed much like the Hun men, though in brighter colors. Tall and slender, with a little braid and a slightly dark complexion, she was still undeniably beautiful. Her large eyes darted about constantly, while her mouth was even larger, strikingly sensual. It was none other than Yao Chen, now playing the Chanyu’s daughter—the Hun princess.

“What are you doing here?” The Chanyu’s expression darkened.

“Father, give me a thousand men and two thousand horses, and I’ll ride straight down south right now!”

“Nonsense!”

Naturally the Chanyu would never agree to let his daughter go to war, but the others all praised the princess for her bold spirit.

“Okay! That’s a wrap!” Fine, there had never been too many demands for this scene anyway, especially since the actors in it were all highly experienced, many of them having taken part in the filming of Three Kingdoms.

“That scene just now was pretty good. Very much like a minority girl,” Wu Xiang said in praise.

“Spare me the sudden kindness. If it isn’t a scam, it’s theft!” Yao Chen had already made up her mind to stand absolutely, decisively on the opposite side of Wu Xiang.

“...”
Wu Xiang was speechless. “Can’t I say something nice about you?”

“No need!”

What a personality...

The dramatic scenes on the grassland were not many. Wu Xiang had come here to shoot a war film, not to watch a bunch of roughnecks bicker. But now he had run into a problem, and it was a thorny one.

That problem was horses.

In order to remain faithful to history, Wu Xiang had studied this period very carefully. The reason the Huns were able to harass the Han so often was chiefly because of their horses.

Horses were nothing unusual in themselves. In the age of cold weapons, they were the main equipment of war. The Han had them too; nothing special there. What made the Huns formidable was their mastery of horses—more precisely, their horsemanship.

Horsemanship sounds simple enough, but combining all its elements is not easy. And what was even harder was that in this era, there were no stirrups. Stirrups were, in mounted combat, practically a revolutionary piece of high-tech equipment. But the Han dynasty did not have them yet.

Without them, riding a horse was far more difficult. The Huns were strong precisely because of this: they had lived on horseback since childhood, and when they rode they needed no extra equipment at all. They could mount and be off immediately, needing nothing more than a saddle pad—or even no pad at all.

In other words, the muscles on the insides of their thighs were incredibly powerful, capable of generating a crushing grip. That was the problem Wu Xiang was facing now, because among everyone in the crew, not a single person had muscles like that—not even Wu Xiang himself.

So how were they supposed to film a great mounted battle without stirrups?