Chapter 294: Dragon Rock Battle Record (17)

Li Xiechun stood at the entrance of One Line, brandishing his long sword as his face twisted into a savage snarl: "I'm going in first. Anyone who dares run — when we get back, your whole family dies!"

At the same time, the dozen or so personal soldiers under his command were also slashing empty air with their blades, cursing and shouting, trying to drive the 200 cowering "drilled" troops into One Line.

Though these 200-odd garrison "drilled" troops were dressed in rags, they still drew a wage and rations in normal times, underwent "drilling," and had seen battle against bandits — basically, they were Dragon Rock Garrison's main force.

Now, driving everyone into One Line was something Li Xiechun did out of sheer desperation — if he didn't sacrifice these 200 men, his old self would be sitting in a Zhangzhou prison.

Standing on tiptoe to peer ahead, and finding that the several lords who had entered earlier had already vanished, Li Qianhu couldn't help but feel a massive headache and immediately began driving the "drilled" troops forward with even greater urgency.

After Li Qianhu had been taught a lesson yesterday, early this morning he brought his main force to the Rear Palace to await orders. And the Rear Palace was currently so busy no one had a moment to spare: the Red Spear Camp was sharpening weapons and readying horses, clearly preparing for something as well.

Wei Yuan was naturally very busy at this moment, so he only came out to meet Li Qianhu briefly; all other matters were left to Ding Liqiu.

Ding Liqiu's side was also very simple: he directly assigned five soldiers wearing green coats to join the garrison unit, and that was that. Li Qianhu understood that his unit would now be taking orders from these few men.

The leader among the five was called Squad Leader Wu; the most conspicuous of the remaining men were the two signalmen carrying the radio set and wire.

By noon, these garrison troops had eaten a good meal at the Rear Palace and set out. Yet after the unit departed, some men kept muttering darkly to each other: the last meal.

Li Xiechun understood this situation perfectly well, but he didn't dare suppress it too harshly, afraid someone might mutiny... Nothing to be done — every man alive knew that Yantou Stronghold simply couldn't be taken with this little manpower, so it was no surprise that the unit's morale was rock bottom.

Li Qianhu's only thought now was to lead the unit to Yantou Stronghold, and then whether they threw away their armor and fled, or suffered total annihilation, as long as his old self could escape safely, that would be enough — a defeated general was still better than being framed, arrested, and beheaded. Besides, the Short-Hairs had also agreed he could flee the battlefield, though no matter how you looked at it, that seemed like a trap.

By now he believed he had figured out the situation: his unit was meant to draw the attention of the Yantou Stronghold bandit gang, buying time for the Red Spear Camp to wipe out Lin Shiwan's bandit gang.

And so, the bandit-suppression army — each man harboring his own thoughts, utterly devoid of morale — set out just like that.

The unit's march was very slow the whole way, and by the time they dragged themselves to the foot of Yantou Stronghold's mountain, they even took a long rest break. This rest, however, was ordered by Squad Leader Wu, and the men also got to watch a free tree-climbing show: a signal soldier strapped a pair of "iron sickles" onto his feet, then stepped onto the tree trunk and went swishing straight up.

Once he reached the treetop, he let go with both hands, pulled the wire out from behind his back, and began adjusting the direction according to the instructions coming from below.

Everyone stared up at this scene with mouths agape; only after the radioman finished sending and receiving the telegram did the signal soldier climb down from the treetop. The Qianhu had originally wanted to ask what this was all about, but seeing that Squad Leader Wu had no intention of acknowledging him, he let it go.

The unit rested for over forty minutes; it wasn't until past three in the afternoon that Squad Leader Wu ordered them to move out again.

When the men, hearts filled with dread, climbed the mountain and reached the entrance of One Line, every single one of them stopped in their tracks: this place was a famously treacherous spot, a perfect place to lay an ambush, and no one knew how many bandits were lying in wait overhead.

Yet the unit eventually moved: under Squad Leader Wu's cold stare, the Qianhu first loudly announced a reward of two taels of silver per head, then drew his blade and, together with his personal soldiers, began "driving the livestock."

The "livestock" were naturally unwilling to go in and throw their lives away. But just as the two sides were locked in a standoff, on the verge of scattering entirely or erupting into a shootout, Squad Leader Wu and his men took the lead, parting the crowd and walking into One Line.

At this, everyone was dumbfounded.

And the Qianhu seized the moment to roar furiously: "To hell with you all! If the overseers die, your mothers and fathers get beheaded too — now charge in there for me!"

After shouting this, Li Qianhu, cursing furiously, took the lead and charged into One Line.

Under this double threat, the "drilled" troops finally crowded and jostled their way in after him.

One Line lived up to its name; as the "drilled" troops entered this narrow mountain crevice where light could only be seen overhead, cold sweat poured down their bodies.

The trembling Li Qianhu now kept his eyes wide open, constantly watching the sky above and the path ahead: he was deathly afraid that the peerlessly fierce Fortress Master Ma would come charging out with his great blade and skewer them all like meat on a stick.

Yet the world is full of surprises — until the Qianhu walked out of One Line, he still hadn't spotted a single trace of the bandits.

Standing at the sunlit exit, Li Qianhu couldn't help but exhale deeply. Then he grew uneasy again: beyond One Line lay a narrow ridge about fifty meters long. The five overseers had already covered two-thirds of the distance, and at the end of the path stood the main gate of Yantou Stronghold.

In front of the gate, amid the bleak mountain wind, sat a ghostly, grotesque figure with a green face and bared fangs.

Li Qianhu had been about to shout: "Careful, ambush!" But just as he opened his mouth to cry out, someone shoved him from behind and he stumbled... A large mass of "drilled" troops surged out behind him — there was no room left to stand.

Seeing this, the Qianhu could only steel himself and charge forward. But when he was halfway there, he suddenly realized that the five overseers and that ghostly figure had disappeared inside the stronghold gate.

In the end, trembling, bewildered, and lost, following step by cautious step, the brave bandit-suppression warriors, pushing and shoving each other, finally shuffled to the wide-open gate of Yantou Stronghold — and then they saw corpses strewn all over the ground.

The Qianhu leaned on his sword, standing in the square, watching his men sitting among the corpses eating chicken, and finally understood what Ding Liqiu had meant before they set out: "You're being sent to pick up the scraps."

They really had come to pick up scraps: after 200 brave warriors charged into Yantou Stronghold, having gone through a living hell, the men — after such extreme swings of terror and relief — suddenly found their appetites wide open. Without waiting for any orders, they began sweeping through the feast's pigs, sheep, chickens, and ducks, not even bothering to clear away the corpses.

By the time the dumbstruck insiders reacted, five or six men were already gulping down wine from the jars.

The next moment, Li Qianhu, upon being told the truth, immediately jumped up and hacked down a fool who was chugging wine... The situation was brought under control, but those few who had already drunk the wine were like people in later generations who had ingested paraquat — they looked perfectly lively, but in truth they were beyond saving... unless they could instantly teleport to the Hospital on Dayuan Island.

The farcical and absurd bandit-suppression operation thus began amid a bizarre chorus of chewing. These "drilled" troops, whose rank only qualified them as "Joint Defense Team members," the moment they realized they had become the owners of this place, instantly metamorphosed into bandits.

Not only did they stuff ready-made food into their mouths, they also broke open the bandit stronghold's grain storehouse, taking out white rice, salt, and chickens and ducks to boil in large pots, acting completely at home.

Additionally, one group of men tried to storm the Public Storehouse — this was where the silver and valuables were kept.

And the five-man squad, watching coldly from the sidelines, along with the masked Nan Wang, apart from sending reports down the mountain, made no move whatsoever to stop these people. If Li Qianhu couldn't keep them in check, that was his incompetence — someone would settle accounts with him when they got back.

Fortunately, the Qianhu was also perfectly clear about how things were developing, so he and his personal soldiers promptly used chopping blades and bird blunderbusses to halt this brainless looting of the Public Storehouse. The phrase "steal one coin and your whole family dies" helped everyone cool down.

After eating and drinking their fill, the "drilled" troops' spirits relaxed. Only at this point did the Qianhu dare to assign them tasks.

As mentioned earlier, the garrison military system of the Late Ming had degenerated into a de facto semi-serfdom; officers at every level exploited the military households under them with extreme cruelty.

Going hungry, wearing rags, and selling the bodies of wives and daughters had become the norm. Over the years, military households had fled in droves, and the "cadre-masses" relationship had escalated to the level of "hatred."

The farcical thing was, many times the garrisons still needed the military households' labor. This wasn't a big problem when defending their homes — after all, if the bandits got through, everyone would suffer.

But in offensive operations like today's, the commanders' control was actually very weak: the unit could collapse at any moment, and the commander himself was constantly in a state of potentially being "shot in the back."

So Li Qianhu didn't dare push too hard now. After securing the most important Silver Vault, he let these men eat and drink as they pleased. Only once the situation stabilized did he begin issuing orders.

The first step, naturally, was clearing away the corpses.

The heads of Ma Shixia and several ringleaders were chopped off and wrapped up, ready to be taken back to claim credit.

The other bandits weren't so lucky. The ragged military households, chuckling heh-heh, stripped these men completely clean, then hurled their bodies off the rear cliff, leaving them exposed to the wilderness.

Anyone who could go out and become a bandit at least wore thick, homespun cloth — these clothes, to the impoverished military households, were rare and excellent material.

After looting every scrap of clothing and personal item from the bandits' bodies, the sky had darkened. The 200-odd men thus camped right there in the stronghold for the night.

That night, Yantou Stronghold blazed with light; huge piles of firewood were brought out to build bonfires, and when that wasn't enough, there were always the buildings — they couldn't take them with them anyway.

Early the next morning, just as the military households were happily eating white rice boiled with cured meat, the support unit from down the mountain arrived.

These men were all troops dispatched by Ding Liqiu — a joint force made up of guards from various merchant houses and activists from among the laborers. The nearly 300-strong unit brought pack horses and firearms; the moment they arrived, the "drilled" troops became irrelevant.

Soon, the Qianhu, under the overseers' direction, fulfilled his promise: he gave every "drilled" soldier two taels of silver in cash, and in addition, allowed each man to take away twenty jin of rice and a bit of salt.

And so, laden with bulging bundles of loot, the military households who had come and scored big were happily sent home, leaving only Li Qianhu and a few personal soldiers on the scene.

Oh, right — the military households also carried away the corpses of their own men. They had died before nightfall, sacrificed at the wine table. Workplace fatalities.