Chapter 53: The Fall

Jiao Guozha, He Xianya, and Pang Ding reached the temple doors, hearts trembling with fear as they took in the scene before them. Inside the dim main hall, corpses lay strewn in every direction, the stone floor stained crimson with blood, the air thick with the heavy stench of gore.

Even though Jiao Guozha had visited several murder scenes during his time in the Fast Squad, he had never imagined anything like this.

The three of them had waited all night on a hill below Yunji Temple, knowing only that Pang Yu had brought poison, but utterly unsure whether it could deal with so many rioters. They passed half the night in anxiety before the signal finally came.

In the original plan, Jiao Guozha was supposed to deal with the two rioters standing watch at the mountain's foot to prevent them from escaping to raise the alarm. The three men, blades in hand, searched the mouth of the mountain path for a long while, yet saw not a single soul. Then they came upon several corpses on the mountain path, which nearly sent the three of them fleeing in panic.

Fortunately, the lure of tens of thousands in silver was great enough to sustain them as they made their way up the mountain with pounding hearts, arriving at this Buddha hall that resembled a hell of carnage.

"Y-young Master... did you kill all of them?"

Pang Yu sat leaning against the wall. He did not answer Pang Ding's question, merely lifting a coconut ladle and drinking on his own.

During the time he had waited for the three, he had treated the wounds on his shoulder and arm, cutting away the cloth around them to reduce the chance of infection. He had also rinsed them briefly with water. The bleeding had not fully stopped, but it was much better than before. Now, with his own people present, his mental spirit had relaxed considerably, and after replenishing some water, both his energy and physical strength had recovered a fair amount.

Jiao Guozha skirted a pool of blood on the floor and came to the door of the side hall. After a cautious glance at Pang Yu, he picked up a silver ingot from the ground.

"Second Brother, this silver..."

Pang Yu also felt one by the wall. These were the ones Wang Guohua had thrown out at the start, of various sizes, scattered all over the ground before the side hall door.

The ingot-shaped piece of silver was stained with some blood. The one Pang Yu felt weighed a full fifty taels, enough for an ordinary family's living expenses for three to five years. Pang Yu rubbed his hand over the ingot and felt some unevenness on its surface — it seemed to be some kind of writing.

Pang Yu held the silver ingot before his eyes and, by the light of the nearby fire, saw that it was indeed engraved with dense, fine intaglio characters.

"Huaining County, levied for the eighth year of the Zhengde reign, Changping rice price, fifty taels exact. Presenting official Zhou Zhengyi, the urging associate, silversmith Pang Qiaoyuan."

Pang Yu stared at it, his mind wandering. He murmured, "The silversmith was also surnamed Pang. How long has it been since the eighth year of Zhengde? Fate."

Jiao Guozha stood frozen in place holding that silver ingot. Cautiously, he said to Pang Yu, "I say, Second Brother, could I... could I take this ingot?"

Pang Yu turned the silver ingot over in his hand, still lost in thought. "Why were Song Dynasty silver ingots flat and block-shaped, yet our Great Ming insists on making them into these ingot shapes? Whose brainless idea was this? How much extra space does this waste during transport?"

He Xianya picked his way on tiptoe through the bloodstained main hall and finally reached Pang Yu's side. "Second Brother, if there's silver, we should start moving it."

Pang Yu closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his gaze had regained its clarity. He pushed hard against the ground to brace himself, and He Xianya hurriedly supported him. With effort, Pang Yu stood up and strode toward the side hall, the three men quickly falling in behind him.

Before the statue of Samantabhadra in the side hall, chests large and small were piled high. Pang Yu threw open the largest chest on the top layer, and the three men instantly froze.

The chest was densely packed with silver ingots of varying sizes, their silver light shimmering under the torchlight. Pang Yu opened all the chests on the top layer, and wealth the three had never seen in their lives lay before them without the slightest obstruction.

Pang Ding collapsed to the ground with a thud. He Xianya gasped for breath, nearly unable to breathe.

"How much silver is this!"

A long strand of saliva hanging from the corner of his mouth, Jiao Guozha took a step forward, wanting to reach out and caress those beautiful silver ingots.

"Tap, tap." Two sounds rang out.

All three started. They saw Pang Yu holding a crossbow bolt, tapping its head against the silver chest.

Pang Yu swept a cold gaze over the three of them. "Third Brother and Pang Ding, move the silver. Eldest Brother, you go to the main hall first and finish them off. Ensure that not a single soul who was in this temple today is left alive."

In an instant, Jiao Guozha's forehead was drenched in sweat. He let out a dry heave with a retch.

Pang Ding lifted a back-basket and helped Pang Yu hoist it onto his back. Inside was a hemp sack filled with silver ingots.

Both the back-basket and the hemp sack had been prepared by He Xianya at the very last moment today, so that their hands would be free to carry torches, and they would not need two people to lug the unwieldy silver chests.

He Xianya and Pang Ding also set down their back-baskets. Neither of them had much strength; each could probably only carry fifty or sixty jin, which amounted to less than a thousand taels of silver per trip.

For the sake of carrying silver, they had originally been prepared to push themselves to the limit. But Pang Yu had calculated the time — tonight was destined to be an endurance race, so he could only let them maintain a normal load. Pang Yu himself was injured, and the wound was on his shoulder, so he could only use one side to carry the basket, bearing even less than He Xianya.

After finishing the killing, Jiao Guozha would need to drive the horse cart, transporting the silver sacks from the mountain's base to that house outside the market town. He would have to complete the moving process alone, an enormous amount of labor, making it impossible for him to take part in this stage of carrying the silver down the mountain.

Pang Yu's head felt somewhat muddled, his thinking far slower than usual. It took him a good while to focus. He did a rough calculation: if it was over forty thousand taels of silver, that was nearly three thousand jin. The three of them would need to make over twenty round trips. At an estimated quarter-hour per round trip, even without resting, it would take five or six double-hours. But given the three's physical strength, rest would certainly be necessary, so time was still extremely tight.

Because they were using back-baskets and hemp sacks, the speed would be faster than previously estimated, but exactly how much faster, Pang Yu had no real idea, and right now he had no watch or anything to keep time.

Pang Yu tested the weight. He knew full well that carrying a load downhill was not easy at all. After a few more trips, the efficiency of their legs would quickly decline.

He recalled the peasants he had seen carrying loads on shoulder poles at the city gate — each man bore over a hundred jin and still walked as if flying. If any of them were standing before him now, he would gladly pay a hundred taels to hire them. But that was nothing more than wishful thinking.

Jiao Guozha, waist saber in hand, entered the main hall. The ghastly scene made his hands go weak, but Pang Yu's earlier instructions were very clear. For some reason, tonight Jiao Guozha did not dare disobey any of Pang Yu's orders. Relatively speaking, hacking at corpses was probably the easier task.

Gritting his teeth, he steeled his courage and raised his waist saber high above a corpse at his feet.

Pang Yu's weary voice sounded from behind. "Don't hack at the body. Either cut off the head, or stab toward the heart. Both save effort and are effective. Hacking at the body is the least efficient."

Jiao Guozha had no choice but to lower his blade. He turned to look at Pang Yu and saw him covered head to toe in bloodstains, a back-basket on his back, propping himself up with a long spear, staring coldly at him — like a ghost in the firelight.

Jiao Guozha shuddered all over. Not daring to delay any longer, he gripped the saber with both hands, let out a great shout, and stabbed fiercely down at the corpse's heart.

"Eldest Brother, kill Wang Guohua first."

Pang Yu stood where he was, intending to watch Jiao Guozha finish off Wang Guohua before moving the silver. Wang Guohua had left a deep impression on Pang Yu tonight. Until he saw this man dead with his own eyes, Pang Yu would find it hard to rest easy.

Wang Guohua, on the ground, laughed twice with great effort, trying to say something, but only produced a few indistinct syllables.

Jiao Guozha seemed to have grown somewhat bolder. Waist saber in hand, he strode toward Wang Guohua.

Just then, Pang Yu heard He Xianya's anxious voice from outside. "Second Brother... Second Brother, look what's coming over there."

Pang Yu and Jiao Guozha started. The two of them hurried out of the courtyard gate. Outside the gate was a broad platform. He Xianya and Pang Ding both stood at the edge of the platform — this was the spot with the best vantage point at Yunji Temple, overlooking the undulating hills to the southeast.

Following the direction of He Xianya's pointing finger, they saw a line formed by points of light appearing in the distance. Those points of light flickered in the pitch-black night.

"It's torches." Jiao Guozha studied them carefully. "Coming from the southeast."

He Xianya said doubtfully, "Looks like quite a few people. Why would so many be traveling at night?"

Pang Ding said nervously, "Could it be Huang Wending coming back? He has a lot of men, doesn't he?"

Pang Yu frowned and asked, "Huang Wending went to Tongcheng, which is to the northeast. Why would he come from the southeast? What place is over there?"

"It's from the Liantan direction."

Jiao Guozha said hesitantly, "Liantan... originally had the Chizhou Troops, but the Chizhou Troops have already left."

He Xianya suddenly exclaimed, "Could it be the Chizhou Troops didn't leave?"

Pang Yu's legs suddenly went weak, and he nearly collapsed to the ground. The hope that had been sustaining him shattered almost in an instant.

People at this time were rarely willing to travel at night. For a group to be hurrying from the Liantan direction toward Guache River in the middle of the night, he truly could not think of anyone else besides the Chizhou Troops.

Pang Yu had personally heard Yang Fangzao say that the Chizhou Troops had already withdrawn. Clearly, Wang Gongbi had deceived the Tongcheng county yamen. Pang Yu had not yet fully worked out the reasoning behind it, but the Chizhou Troops' motive was easy to guess — they wanted both to quell the rebellion and to take the silver. Their timing was also impeccably chosen.

If the Chizhou Troops were already within visible range, then no matter what, they wouldn't have enough time to move the silver — they couldn't even take a small fraction of it. One careless slip and the Chizhou Troops would cut off their heads as rioters.

This plan had been calculated a thousand ways, originally thought to be flawless. Yet from the moment Pang Yu went up the mountain, nothing had gone smoothly. And now, after enduring every peril, tens of thousands of taels of silver lay right before him — he felt his life was about to reach its peak. But then the situation instantly plunged again.

Very likely, because of the simplest transport problem, they would be unable to take the silver and would instead end up benefiting the Chizhou Troops who had come from a distant place. Wang Gongbi had only rushed a few dozen li, yet he would not only take the silver here but also harvest a heap of rioter heads as military merits.

The four of them stared dejectedly at the distant points of light, unable to speak for a moment.

After a long while, Jiao Guozha murmured, "At the very least, we take the basketloads on our backs. A few hundred taels each — it won't be a trip for nothing."

He Xianya said, panting, "Second Brother, no matter how much silver we take, we absolutely cannot let anyone know we were here."

Pang Yu understood He Xianya's meaning. Most of those dead in the hall were people from Tongcheng. Even if these people were rioters, they still had close kin and good friends. If anyone found out the four of them had been here, the friends and family of those people would think they had killed them, and the local gentry would think they had plundered the wealth — endless trouble thereafter. He Xianya's meaning was that time was pressing; they would rather move less silver but must first ensure no survivors were left.

After a moment of silence, Pang Yu said dejectedly, "Let's go back into the hall and finish off those people."

Crestfallen, the four set down their baskets and returned to the main gate of the great hall. Wang Guohua was still lying in the same spot.

Holding his long spear, Pang Yu said to Jiao Guozha, "I'll go kill Wang Guohua. You first finish off that Fang Bazong, then go one by one through the others."

"Which one is Fang Bazong?"

Pang Yu pointed to the right from memory. "The one wearing chain mail..."

Pang Yu's movement suddenly froze. Where Fang Zhongjia had fallen, only a pool of blood remained — there was no sign of Fang Zhongjia at all.

The four were terrified out of their wits and hurriedly gathered around. They saw a trail of blood-stained footprints leading from the bloodstain out of the hall. Carrying torches, they followed it. The bloody footprints went out the courtyard gate and disappeared behind the grass on the left side. Beyond that was the pitch-black endless mountain forest. They spread out with torches to widen the search, but could find not the slightest trace.

The four returned to the courtyard gate, looking at each other in shock and terror. They were all Tongcheng locals, and everyone knew of the Fang Family, which had produced Presented Scholar for generations. This was a great aristocratic clan of Tongcheng — absolutely not something the four of them could handle.

Now they did not know when Fang Zhongjia had left, nor how much of the conversation in the hall he had overheard. But there was a very high chance he had heard Pang Yu and the others saying to leave no survivors. Although Pang Yu and the other three had thought he was already dead and were merely finishing him off to be sure, from Fang Zhongjia's perspective, the four were trying to kill him. Add to that the household retainers he had brought tonight were nearly all dead or wounded, and he himself was severely injured — this debt might very well be pinned on the four of them.

And earlier, Pang Yu had knocked away the torch to help Wang Guohua. If not for the chaos he had created at that moment, the household retainers would have pursued and killed them all the way, and Wang Guohua would never have had the chance to use the Jue Zhang Crossbow.

Pang Yu touched the arrow quiver at his waist. Although the Jue Zhang Crossbow had been left in the side hall, all the crossbow bolts were on him. He was not afraid of Fang Zhongjia ambushing him the way he himself had done.

Jiao Guozha's voice trembled. "I don't want the silver anymore. Let's go back to Tongcheng right now."

He Xianya said angrily, "You think giving up the silver will keep you alive? The Fang Family can quietly muster dozens of Da Hang men and launch a night raid on Yunji Temple. Dealing with the four of us would be like crushing a few ants."

Jiao Guozha froze, then collapsed to the ground, wailing, "Why the hell did I let you two talk me into this? I never should have! What do we do now... We can't get much silver, and we can't even go back to Tongcheng. Do we really have to flee to some foreign place?"

He Xianya turned to look at Pang Yu, his face somewhat twisted. "Second Brother, make a decision quickly. If you say we go to a foreign place, we'll leave at once. We can reach Huaining by tomorrow morning."

Pang Ding said, voice tinged with tears, "Young Master, Young Master, what should we do? Speak quickly! Or should we go find the Madam and Master and flee right now..."

The mountain wind howled. Beyond the courtyard gate, insects chirped ceaselessly in the dark thickets.

The torchlight dots far below the mountain flickered, drawing closer and closer to Yunji Temple. In the hall, Fang Zhongjia had slipped away. The entire silver-plundering plan had fallen short at the final step. They could not even return to Tongcheng — from now on, they could only wander in foreign lands.

Everything seemed to have plunged from heaven to hell in an instant. The three men breathed heavily. The Chizhou Troops were not far; time was extremely pressing. They all waited for Pang Yu's decision.

Pang Yu had only regretted his carelessness for a brief moment. Now his heart was strangely calm. His gaze hardened, fixed intently on the distant points of light, flickering unceasingly.

He said softly, "Until the very last moment, I will not admit defeat! There has to be a way. Let me think — the county yamen, Anqing Prefecture, the Chizhou Troops, the rioters, the silver, the Fang Family, Wang Guohua..."