Chapter 288: Longyan Battle Record (11)

At the same time Du Dewei's squad departed north on reconnaissance, over forty li south of Longyan County seat, inside Yantou Stronghold, a meeting concerning the entire stronghold's future was also underway.

Yantou Stronghold had long been one of the region's notorious bandit gangs. The perilous terrain of One Line was easy to defend and hard to attack, and it also straddled the trade route from Meizhou and Shanghang into Western Fujian, so for centuries bandit gangs had emerged there in an endless stream.

Currently running the toll station at Yantou Stronghold was a group of toughs led by Ma Shixia. Ma Shixia was a huge, ferocious man, highly skilled in martial arts, and a former Border Army soldier in his early years. Later, after his superior falsely claimed credit for his achievements, he hacked that superior to death in a fit of rage, then fled back to his old home and set himself up as a mountain king.

All in all, Yantou Stronghold's style was somewhat similar to Pingfeng Mountain's after its transformation: both focused primarily on setting up checkpoints and collecting tolls, with robbery as a secondary activity.

The Duima Ridge Bandit Gang to the north, which focused primarily on robbery, naturally did not see eye to eye with Yantou Stronghold, so relations between the two sides had been very tense for a time.

This situation was perfectly normal: colleagues are rivals; swindlers look down on robbers, seeing robbery as lacking technical skill, and robbers likewise look down on swindlers — what's with those sneaky bastards acting all high and mighty?

In fact, the two sides had clashed in a Fire Merge before. Duima Ridge had more men, but Yantou Stronghold's Great Boss was a warrior who could overcome three armies. The two gangs ultimately fought to a draw, so now everyone used Longyan County seat as the boundary and had no dealings with each other.

This situation had been shattered not long ago by the Transmigrators. After the Recruitment and Amnesty notice — backed by the instant destruction of Chen Family Fortified Village — was posted, the major bandit gangs nearby could not afford to ignore it.

Now, at least in theory, one of the two treasures of bandit gangs, "defending a strategic strongpoint to the death," was no longer viable. Of course, a direct head-on confrontation was also pointless — bandit gangs could not even match Battalion Troops, let alone two hundred Red Spear Camp elites.

And short of absolute desperation, who would be willing to abandon their own money-making lair and shift to grueling Mobile Corps Commander warfare?

So, facing enormous strategic pressure, Lin Shiwan of Duima Ridge had no choice this time but to break with convention and send his Seventh Master, surnamed Shi, to establish communication with Yantou Stronghold.

In fact, upon meeting Ma Shixia, Seventh Master said only one sentence: "Facing an army this strong, if we brothers of the road do not join hands, then we shall all meet again on the County Yamen's city gate — it is merely a matter of whose head gets hung up a few days earlier. Chief Ma is highly skilled in martial arts, so his might be delayed a few days."

Ma Shixia of course understood the gravity of the situation, so after sending Seventh Master off to rest, he convened a high-level meeting in Yantou Stronghold's main hall to study countermeasures.

The seven heroes attending the meeting were all core figures of Yantou Stronghold, and Ma Shixia — dressed in sturdy attire, powerfully built, with a round face and thick eyebrows — was at that moment sitting with imposing authority in the head chair, his famous Nine-Ring Great Blade, which had shaken the underworld, standing beside him.

"Grand Steward, if you ask me, we don't need to pay any mind to Shi Laoqi's bullshit." A hot-tempered headman, seeing everyone present with furrowed brows and gloomy faces, could not suppress his irritation and said loudly, "That Red Spear Camp is bent on flattening Duima Ridge to make a name for itself. The one in trouble is Lin Shiwan — why should we stick our necks in? No point in being made scapegoats."

"Nonsense!" A man leaning on a crutch, in his forties, his face full of wrinkles, heavily thumped his crutch on the floor. This man was Yantou Stronghold's Third Master, Chen Youshou. He had injured his leg some days ago and had been using a crutch recently.

The oldest person present, the one who had been "in the trade" the longest, and a man of considerable standing in the stronghold, Chen Youshou now said fiercely, "That Recruitment and Amnesty notice lists Duima Ridge first, and us right after. Once Duima Ridge is wiped out, the Official Army will turn around and come for us riding the momentum of a great victory — how will we deal with that?"

"Hmph, at worst the whole gang crosses the mountains and lies low for a bit. How long can the Official Army keep up? Isn't that how the old-timers always got through?" The headman, still defiant, invoked the bandit gang's ultimate inherited trump card: enemy advances, we retreat.

"Enough."

Just as Chen Youshou opened his mouth to retort, Ma Shixia, sitting in the seat of honor, extended a palm and pressed it downward. Seeing the Grand Steward speak, the others fell silent.

"As for this matter of abandoning the stronghold and heading into the mountains, let's first hear the news Wu brought back."

At Ma Shixia's words, everyone turned their gazes toward a man sitting at the lower end.

This man was short, dark-skinned, and had an honest, simple-looking face — it was none other than the man who had been the very first to run to the Rear Palace to peddle hens to the Transmigrators: Lin Dajin.

Upon hearing the Grand Steward speak, "Lin Dajin," who had been sitting there looking wooden and dull-witted, instantly changed his expression. A shrewd, cunning face appeared.

"Everyone knows about the coal pit at Heipi Gully, right?" The man using the alias Lin Dajin, whose real name was Wu, did not dive straight into the topic but instead brought up something completely unrelated.

Seeing everyone present slowly nod, Wu continued, "In recent days, that bunch of Short-Hairs shipped over ten thousand jin of Dynamite from downstream. The ground at Heipi Gully was completely blown open by the Short-Hairs. Now those poor wretches digging coal no longer need to go down into the pit."

"The Short-Hairs have silver, limitless amounts, and they've been shipping it in boatload after boatload lately." Wu paused here for a moment. Seeing that several people present had caught on, he continued, "The information I gathered from the Short-Hairs' cookhouse is: if the monk runs, blow up the temple. No matter whose stronghold it is, any strategic strongpoint will be blown to bits."

Wu pointed toward the stronghold gate as he spoke. "If we leave this time, when we come back, One Line will be cut off."

"The sheer gall!"

Someone in the room immediately cursed.

After hearing Wu's account, everyone present knew that Mobile Corps Commander warfare was apparently off the table — once this bunch of Short-Hairs occupied the stronghold and then blew up the One Line at the entrance, Yantou Stronghold would be completely ruined.

The same logic extended further: the government troops would never need to wage Mobile Corps Commander warfare across mountains and plains again. Wherever a bandit gang settled, they would only need to attack the stronghold. If the gang fled, they would simply keep blowing things up.

An old nest with a suitable location — one that was strategically defensible, could accommodate the gang, and also required constructing buildings to store grain and goods and erecting barracks — was not so easy to find, let alone a place that also straddled a vital transportation artery to facilitate toll collection.

Although mountain bandits were adept at traversing mountains and forests, that was only a means; setting up checkpoints to collect tolls, or launching raids from a fixed base to rob wealthy households and merchant caravans, was the goal. If the bandit lair was gone, what was the point of sleeping rough and eating in the wind?

After Wu's explanation, those present suddenly felt a wave of fear wash over them: the tricks passed down by the old-timers for centuries were useless against this strange Official Army?

Once they grasped the perilous situation they currently faced, those who had just been clamoring about sitting on the mountain and watching tigers fight, and about the enemy advancing while they retreated, immediately shut their mouths.

This was precisely the effect the Transmigrators intended to achieve.

To be honest, both sides were now somewhat cautious, like rats wary of breaking the dishes: what the Transmigrators least wanted was actually to launch a protracted Mobile Corps Commander war.

And the bandit gangs, not knowing their opponent's true capabilities, could only choose their response within the narrow confines the Transmigrators had laid out: they could neither defend nor flee, so their final option could only be to take the offensive.

Seeing that his brothers' thinking had been unified, Great Boss Ma Shixia turned his head and said amiably to a person sitting in a corner, "Mr. Lan, given the current situation, would you help us devise a plan?"

"Heh heh heh, 'devise a plan' is putting it too grandly. I can, however, suggest a few ways to respond, for everyone to consider together."

The person who stepped out from the corner with these words was a middle-aged scholar, a faint smile on his face, his features refined and composed, his entire bearing one of cultured elegance.

Mr. Lan had come up the mountain over a month ago; his guarantor was Lin Chaofeng of Longyan County.

Lin Chaofeng was a local rich man in Xiancheng. His family not only ran a pawnshop but also operated the mountain goods purchasing and sales business in the surrounding region. Both of these businesses required dealing with bandit gangs: the pawnshop could handle stolen goods, and the men collecting mountain goods often had to pass through toll stations. So Lin Chaofeng had quite a lot of dealings with the nearby bandit gangs; the two sides could be said to have a symbiotic relationship.

And this Mr. Lan he introduced, whose real name was Lan Da, was also a man of the underworld, albeit in a civilian role. Mr. Lan's specialty was feng shui geomancy, seeking dragon veins and locating burial sites.

The reason Lan Da had come to stay at Yantou Stronghold this time was to lie low and avoid disaster.

Last year, this Blue Great Master had helped a certain garrison commander at the frontier locate an ancestral burial site. After the new year, that garrison commander's fortune had surged, and he had now become a commander of a full army.

Of course, this sort of act more or less skirted the edge of leaking heavenly secrets, so according to the trade's conventions, Blue Great Master needed to go into seclusion and quiet cultivation for a period in the aftermath, to avoid heaven's backlash — thus he had come to Yantou Stronghold, far from the frontier.

Ever since Mr. Lan entered the stronghold, he had quickly become a highly respected authority figure to everyone, from top to bottom.

Mr. Lan, who was learned in both literary and worldly affairs, was not only rich in knowledge and broad in experience, but also a good person who never put on the airs of a scholar.

He would often tell everyone wondrous tales of seeking dragon veins and locating burial sites, and of exploring tombs and robbing graves, stories that mesmerized the stronghold's inhabitants and had them crying out in delight.

Moreover, skills the stronghold folk saw as miraculous — such as writing letters and telling fortunes, acupuncture and massage, prescribing and preparing medicine — were mere trifles to Mr. Lan. Usually, for ailments like colds, people would get better after swallowing a couple of pills Mr. Lan had compounded himself.

As for Grand Steward Ma Shixia, he was more interested in Mr. Lan's primary skill: seeking dragon veins and locating burial sites. It must be known that Ma Shixia himself had been a member of the Border Army in his early years, and the garrison commander Mr. Lan mentioned who had been promoted happened to be someone Ma Shixia knew — this set his heart itching with eagerness.

So Mr. Lan formally performed a planchette divination for Ma Shixia, then told him: if he could find an excellent burial site and relocate the Ma family ancestors' graves there, then securing a position as a garrison commander in the future would likely not be difficult. And once the world fell into chaos, given Ma Shixia's destiny, something akin to the destiny of one of the thirty-six stellar spirits of Mount Liang would activate, and Ma Shixia would certainly be fated to become a founding general of a new dynasty.

Mr. Lan's words left the Grand Steward immensely excited. Of course, this matter required long-term planning: locating a burial site was not so simple; it required time to travel and survey, the purchase of various Dharma Artifacts, and afterward, Ma Shixia would have to pay Mr. Lan a large sum of silver.

Thus, in recent days, Mr. Lan's status within Yantou Stronghold had risen sharply. Although he was a Guest Retainer, everyone now regarded him as the Military Advisor.