Chapter 28: Silver

It was not until noon that the death toll from the previous night was finally tallied.

The result was far better than Zhou Shixiang had expected: only a little over a hundred Luoding residents had died in the fire, while more than three hundred were injured, and another hundred or so had been killed by the Qing army and the bandits.

This figure fell well short of the thousand casualties he had estimated beforehand, which at least made him feel somewhat better.

On the Qing side, the bodies carried out of the military camp ruins alone numbered a hundred and fifty or sixty, most burned beyond recognition.

Elsewhere in the city, more than a hundred additional corpses were found one after another — some with heads, some without — and all were carried to the same place.

Combined with the number of prisoners who had surrendered, the total roughly matched the Qing troop strength, with a discrepancy of only twenty or thirty men, who were presumably hiding among the common people.

Among the Dajiao Mountain group, Zhao Sihai was the more meticulous one, so Zhou Shixiang sent him with some men to screen the civilians, making sure to ferret out every Qing soldier hiding among them, so that none would have a chance to slip out of the city and report.

To keep the search from alarming the people, Zhou Shixiang also had Song Xianggong send over a few minor clerks to assist.

Compared with the Qing soldiers hiding among the civilians, the nearly one hundred Qing prisoners in the prefectural magistrate's yamen were the real threat.

Therefore Boss Hu handed over the affairs of the city to Song Xianggong and Zhou Shixiang, while he himself stayed in the yamen with his men to stand guard, maintaining secrecy the whole time so that the prisoners, led by Shao Jiugong, could not learn the truth and would be kept from stirring up trouble.

To heighten the intimidation, Zhou Shixiang also brought a squad of able-bodied men in and out of the prefectural yamen several times, and had Ge Wu and the others, in places the prisoners could not see, address this one as "General" and that one as "Regional Commander" from time to time, putting on the act to the fullest.

As a result, the prisoners dared not make any rash moves, believing the city was truly occupied by the main force of the old-bandit Li Dingguo. One and all, they sat obediently in their cells, not even daring to whisper among themselves.

In Boss Hu's view, since the prisoners outnumbered their own men several times over, keeping them in the city was too dangerous, and killing them all was the only safe course.

But Zhou Shixiang firmly refused, and Song Xianggong likewise said that killing prisoners was inauspicious. With the two of them urging against it, Boss Hu could only set aside the idea of killing and press them to settle the city quickly, then discuss what to do next.

When Peng Dazhu led men to search the prefectural yamen, he found a room piled with Ming army uniforms and banners. He called over a minor clerk to ask, and learned that these uniforms had been left behind when Li Dingguo's troops withdrew at the beginning of the year.

There were only three or four hundred of them in all, and because they were badly damaged, Li Dingguo's army had discarded them.

After Kong Guoliang led the Jiangxi Green Standard troops to garrison Luoding, apart from taking over the temporarily ownerless prefectural yamen as a place to sleep, he had paid little attention to the other things in the yamen, much less bothered about a pile of tattered clothes.

The minor clerks, having no superior to give them direction, felt uneasy every day facing this Battalion Commander Kong, a mere soldier, and naturally would not say anything more. That was how these Ming army uniforms had been left behind.

The clerk, seeing Zhou Shixiang staring at those tattered clothes, assumed he found them disgusting and hastily offered to have them cleared away. Zhou Shixiang stopped him, then went into the room and picked up a few pieces to examine.

The uniforms were indeed badly damaged; some still had bloodstains on them, black and crusted, giving off a rank, fishy stench — presumably worn by wounded soldiers. The banners were also damaged, some torn with holes, some missing corners, not a single one intact.

But with a little mending, these clothes and banners might not be unusable after all.

At present, the Dajiao Mountain group still had not shed their bandit ways. To remake them into true soldiers, the first step was to give them proper uniforms; only then could they gradually shift into the role of Ming troops.

Otherwise, if they all still dressed like bandits, no amount of preaching in their ears day after day would make these men see themselves as Ming soldiers.

Clothes make the man, as gold makes the Buddha.

Moreover, Dajiao Mountain's strength was too weak and its manpower sorely insufficient. It could not take the initiative against the Qing army, nor could it hold Luoding with these men alone.

Therefore they would certainly have to recruit new soldiers in Luoding and expand their forces. That being so, uniforms became all the more important and indispensable — after all, no decent family's son in this world would be willing to follow a pack of bandits.

Having made up his mind, Zhou Shixiang stepped out of the room and instructed the clerk to find some women skilled at needlework, then have all these clothes boiled in hot water in a cauldron, dried in the sun, and mended with needle and thread.

As for the cloth needed for mending, he was to ask Magistrate Song for it.

"Yes, sir! This humble one will see to it at once!"

The clerk had no idea what this young "Ming army" officer wanted with mending those ragged clothes, but since the man had given the order and had fierce-looking men with blades at his side, he dared not be negligent. He answered promptly and went off to find people.

The Luoding prefectural yamen occupied quite a large area. With the front yamen, the rear yamen, and the prison cells, there were nearly a hundred rooms great and small, some empty, some piled with goods.

Zhou Shixiang could not inspect them all one by one for the time being, so he put Peng Dazhu in charge of the task, instructing him that anything useless need not be bothered with, but anything useful must be recorded in the register by a clerk.

Zhou Shixiang had originally hoped to find a large sum of silver in the yamen treasury, but despite Peng Dazhu's repeated searches, nothing was found. Left with no choice, he went to Song Xianggong in a foul mood and told him about it.

To his surprise, the other man wore an expression that said "I knew it all along." Puzzled, Zhou Shixiang asked him what was going on.

Song Xianggong told him with a smile that Luoding had changed hands from the Ming army to the Qing army only three months ago.

Whatever silver there had been was long since carried off by the Ming troops, and whatever little remained had been seized by the Qing troops who came after. How could there be any silver left waiting for them now!

Zhou Shixiang thought it over and agreed — the place had been looted several times over; it would be strange if there were still silver left!

Yet on further thought he still felt unwilling. If no silver could be seized from the yamen, Ge Wu and his men would surely start clamoring to rob the common people — and that was the last thing Zhou Shixiang wanted to see.

To stop Ge Wu and the others from plundering the people, he needed enough silver to feed them; otherwise, anything he said would be empty words.

With no silver and no more time to delay, Zhou Shixiang grew anxious.

Seeing him like this, Song Xianggong did not keep him in suspense, and said with a smile, "There is none in the treasury, but others have some."

At these words, Zhou Shixiang's spirits immediately lifted. "Master Song, don't keep me guessing — my heart is burning with impatience."

Song Xianggong said, "I heard from the people in this yamen that when Kong Guoliang and his men came to Luoding, they brought a sum of silver with them. It was said to be transfer funds issued by the Prince of Jingnan, Geng Jimao, in Guangzhou.

Originally the silver should have been distributed to the soldiers, but Kong Guoliang, relying on his elder brother Kong Guozhi being the Regional Commander of Southern Jiangxi, swallowed the silver and kept it in his hands without ever paying it out."

"There's such a stroke of luck!" Zhou Shixiang was overjoyed. "How much is there?"

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