Chapter 19: Rotten Luck

"Son of a bitch, Geng Jimao's gone too far!"

In Luoding, inside the former Ming Luoding magistrate's yamen, Kong Guoliang, a Battalion Commander of the Green Standard, had just finished reading the letter his elder brother Kong Guozhi had sent from Guangzhou.

Fury instantly blazed up in him, and on the spot he smashed the teacup in his hand to pieces and kicked over several stools.

Shao Jiugong, the Company Commander sitting across from him, was so alarmed he hurried forward to placate him: "Calm yourself, Battalion Commander, calm yourself!"

"Calm myself? You think I can swallow this?"

Shao Jiugong's attempt to soothe him only made Kong Guoliang angrier, and he opened his mouth and cursed: "Goddamn it, why do Geng Jimao's troops get to feast on fine food and drink in Guangzhou while I'm stuck gnawing cabbage in this godforsaken hole!

When we took Chaozhou, Geng Jimao and the Manchus wouldn't let us into the city. Our brothers could only watch wide-eyed while they looted the place clean, and in the end they tossed us Jiangxi troops a few thousand taels of silver.

Then before we'd even got back to Guangzhou, they packed us off to this godforsaken place. Damn it all, there's screwing a man over, and then there's this!"

"The Prince of Jingnan was indeed in the wrong, but you mustn't let it eat at you, Battalion Commander. One rank higher crushes a man, let alone a prince of the realm."

Shao Jiugong felt just as humiliated inside, but Geng Jimao was the Prince of Jingnan, enfeoffed by the court, and you can't twist a thigh against an arm. Even if they had ten thousand grievances, could they really take a court-appointed prince to court?

This anger could only be swallowed down into their bellies, with nowhere to vent it!

"If his father hadn't died young, would that brat Geng Jimao ever have become a prince?

If it weren't for us two brothers, could he have taken Chaozhou? There's burning the bridge after crossing the river, and then there's this!

You saw how he was at Chaozhou, trailing behind General Hahamu like a dog — not a shred of a prince's bearing. If our Jiangxi troops hadn't fought to the death at the front, those two or three thousand men of his wouldn't even have been enough to fill Hao Shangjiu's teeth!"

Thinking back to the Battle of Chaozhou, how Geng Jimao, with Hahamu backing him, had used the Jiangxi and Guangdong troops as cannon fodder, and how after the city fell he'd led his own princely troops and Hahamu's Manchu soldiers in butchering the entire city, slaughtering more than a hundred thousand of Chaozhou's people, Kong Guoliang ground his teeth with hatred.

But what he hated wasn't that Geng Jimao and Hahamu had massacred the city — he hated that he'd had no part in it, that he could only watch helplessly as Geng and Ha hauled off the wealth Hao Shangjiu had accumulated over many years, along with the property of Chaozhou's commoners, in several hundred carts back to Guangzhou.

Others got to eat the meat, and he couldn't even gnaw a bone. How could he not hate it!

Shao Jiugong was just as frustrated about the Battle of Chaozhou, but he didn't dare curse the prince the way Kong Guoliang did. He could only change the subject and ask, "What did the Regional Commander say?"

"Don't bring up my brother. Every letter he sends tells me to endure, endure, endure, endure. Goddamn it, when the hell does the enduring end!" Kong Guoliang slapped the letter onto the table, his cheeks puffed with rage.

"The Regional Commander is only thinking of you and the brothers.

We Jiangxi troops are guest soldiers here. If we truly offended the Prince of Jingnan, the brothers would be left drinking the northwest wind."

Shao Jiugong's head wasn't muddled; he didn't need to guess why Kong Guozhi urged his brother to swallow this anger. It was simply that there was no other way.

If there had been a way, would they be enduring it?

But Kong Guoliang wasn't having it: "Can a living man let piss drown him? If this place won't keep me, there's somewhere that will.

I say my brother should just lead us straight back to Jiangxi. What's the point of taking this abuse in Guangdong for nothing?

Even when we win merit, it goes to the Manchus and the two princes. We Jiangxi troops don't count for shit in their eyes — they wouldn't feel a twinge even if we all died!"

Good heavens!

Kong Guoliang's words nearly made Shao Jiugong tremble. He thought to himself: if you Kong brothers really led your troops back to Jiangxi without a court order, you'd be rebels.

You'd probably be wiped out by the troops of the Princes of Pingnan and Jingnan before you even got out of Guangdong, and then your whole families would be executed. If your Kong family gets exterminated, fine — but don't drag us underlings down with you.

Fortunately, Kong Guoliang's words were just hot air. The two brothers had brought three thousand troops to Guangdong the year before, and the Battle of Chaozhou had cost them more than half.

Now, apart from the two hundred men under Kong Guozhi in Guangzhou, these four hundred-odd men were all he had left. With so few troops, you had to endure even the greatest grievance — who told you to lack strength?

If they'd truly had three thousand men intact, would Geng Jimao have fobbed them off with a few scraps and packed them off to Luoding so casually?

Kong Guoliang cursed Geng Jimao a few more times, then fell silent, head lowered.

Shao Jiugong considered for a moment and said, "Shall we submit another transfer request to the higher-ups?"

At that, Kong Guoliang snapped, "Submit my ass! If Geng Jimao really meant to approve our transfer, my brother wouldn't have been barred from even entering his princely residence!"

With that, he kicked the stool in front of him aside, picked up the horsewhip from the table, and said, "Come on, walk out with me. Stuck in this broken-down yamen, I'm suffocating to death."

"Ah, all right!"

Shao Jiugong hurried out the door first and ordered someone to saddle a horse for Kong Guoliang.

After Shao Jiugong accompanied Kong Guoliang out of the yamen, he had no idea where to go. All he could see were dilapidated streets with no scenery to speak of, and the pedestrians were pitifully few.

At the sight of a group of Qing soldiers emerging from the yamen, the commoners at their stalls had long since packed up in fright and fled — who would dare stay?

The crumbling houses and the cold, deserted streets exuded deathly stillness everywhere, making one feel even more suffocated.

The Ming and Qing sides had fought in Guangdong for seven or eight years, and not a single prefecture or county had escaped the ravages of war. The provincial capital Guangzhou had even been massacred by the Qing army.

The hundred thousand people slaughtered in Chaozhou were nothing compared to the provincial capital — a minor witch before a great one. For after the Qing army entered Guangzhou, they killed everyone on sight.

Whether old people, infants, or women, all were slaughtered clean by the Qing troops, who butchered more than seven hundred thousand of Guangzhou's people, emptying the great city entirely. Its horror was no less than the Yangzhou Ten Days.

If even the provincial capital was like this, the rest of the region can be imagined. By comparison, Luoding was better off.

At least the Qing army had not carried out a large-scale massacre there, making Luoding the only city in Luoding Prefecture still inhabited.

This was probably because the Qing army needed to enslave the commoners — otherwise what would they eat and drink, and where would they get laborers to drive?

Kong Guoliang actually had no particular destination. He was simply too stifled cooped up in the magistrate's yamen, his chest blocked with anger, and wanted to go out for a walk.

Where he went didn't matter at all. After wandering through the city and arriving at the East Gate, Kong Guoliang stood there watching for a while.

Apart from two Daoist priests and a few villagers coming into the city to sell firewood, no one else came or went.

He immediately found it dull and cursed inwardly that Luoding was a place where birds didn't even shit, so poor that even merchants refused to come, leaving him without a scrap of profit to squeeze.

Seeing the Battalion Commander approach, the Qing soldiers guarding the gate hurried over to salute. Kong Guoliang waved them off impatiently, signaling them to get on with their duties.

As for the commoners in the distance who dodged away at the sight of him, he truly couldn't muster the interest to ride over and give them a few lashes.

Bored out of his mind, Kong Guoliang decided to head back. He called out to Shao Jiugong, then turned his horse around to return. Just as the horse turned, he saw a shaven-headed monk in a tattered robe walk in through the city gate.

"Bah — two Daoist priests just passed, and now a bald donkey shows up. What goddamn rotten luck. I need to go back and find that little lass to wash the bad luck off me."

At the thought of the daughter the Lin family had offered him, Kong Guoliang's interest stirred at once, lust burning within him. He spurred his horse forward, startling the pedestrians in the distance into shrieking and scattering.