Chapter 42: Mao'er Ba

Mao'er Ba is not very high, and since this path has been used by horse bandits for years, it is not difficult to traverse; they slowly climbed the mountain.

When Wu Zhuge and his group had walked only halfway, several horses had already run out to greet them; the man who came was Liu Jianchen, the second leader of the bandits, indicating that there were indeed some hidden sentries within the forest.

"Oh my, Second Leader Wu has not been seen for a while; your physique has become even more robust!"

Liu Jianchen was not tall, riding a large chestnut horse; this horse was extremely tall, with a shoulder height of about five chi, its coat glossy as if coated with oil, its chest broad, its hindquarters round, its four legs slender and powerful, truly majestic and spirited.

"You damned dog, spouting nonsense while holding a stick? Grandpa has never made a living relying on his body, but on his brain; do you think Grandpa's title 'Wu Zhuge' was blown here by the wind!"

Wu Zhuge laughed and scolded.

"Yo, look at my mouth; I flattered the horse's leg instead of its face; Sir, you are scolding me..."

"Haha..."

"Hehe..."

Liu Jianchen was a standard talkative smiling tiger; this speech, combined with his gesture of slapping his own face, caused people on both sides to burst into laughter.

The crowd merged into one group and advanced together toward the mountain ravine; when Liu Jianchen turned his horse's head, he noticed Li You, who looked like a scholar, glanced twice at the quiver on his back, and asked no further questions.

Most people's gaze on the road was fixed on Liu Jianchen's group of chestnut horses; his horse was named "Nine-Spotted Leopard," belonging to the Hequ horse breed, indeed a rare treasure horse.

In these times, men loved fine horses just as people in the previous era loved luxury cars; the difference was that horses in this era were often far more expensive than luxury cars of that time, let alone Hequ treasure horses like Liu Jianchen's.

Whenever fine horses were mentioned, most people would always think of the various blood-sweating treasures of Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan, but never China.

But Li You knew that China's horse breeds during the Han and Tang dynasties, especially during the Great Song period, had always looked down upon surrounding nations; the Han Dynasty's Dunhuang recorded a stud king horse standing six chi and three cun tall.

Six chi and three cun in Han chi, approximately one meter and forty-five centimeters; such a horse, recorded in the annals of the Han Dynasty, would only be considered a third-grade or so horse by the standards of locally produced horses in the early Song.

According to "History of Chinese Horse Breeding" and "History of Ming," the Ming Dynasty had about seven hundred thousand official horses at its peak, mainly concentrated in Hebei, Henan, and Jiangzhe; by the Middle to late stage, the situation was turbulent, the horse administration was neglected, and horses became much scarcer.

During the Tianqi reign, official horses numbered only about forty or fifty thousand, but private horses were at least twice that of official horses, though all were used by roaming bandits and peasant armies.

At the peak of the Qing Dynasty, just the two provinces of Henan and Hebei totaled eight hundred thousand horses; in 1935, it reached one million four hundred thousand.

However, the later generations' perception that China had no horses came from the 1980s hype about the Song economy's prosperity, rooted in the Japanese, with the main point being that even the wealthy, prosperous, and civilized Great Song could not raise good horses to resist barbarians; facing Japan, which was infinitely more powerful than barbarians, what could you resist?

Then this group imagined that the Central Plains were fundamentally unsuitable for raising horses, citing contradictions between large populations and scarce arable land, concluding that only Britain and France were suitable for raising horses; this fallacy was similar to the "China is oil-poor theory" that flew everywhere in the early days of our Party's founding.

In the early 20th century, the famous Japanese historian and political commentator, one of the founders of the "Kyoto School," Naito Konan, his "Theory of the Movement of Cultural Centers," "Theory of the Eastward Shift of Earthly Qi," and "Song Dynasty Modernity Theory," along with Miyazaki Ichisada's "Theory of Simple Nations," all ultimately concluded that the Japanese conquest of China was heaven's mandate.

We young people must deeply understand what it means that imperialism's heart to destroy us never dies.

Putting aside his wild thoughts, Li You quickly followed the crowd to the outside of the Shanzhai...

The Mao'er Ba mountain bandits, in nature, belonged to water bandits; their leader was named Liu Jianbao, and Liu Jianchen was his clan brother; they were originally fishermen who occasionally ferried people, but mostly engaged in the simple business described in "Jianghu Haokan Zhuan" (Water Margin): "When reaching the center of the river, ask whether you want to eat board-knife noodles or wontons."

Later, when the world was too chaotic, they specialized in looting along the riverbanks; later they grew bigger and gradually became a force; in short, according to the "Great Ming Code," except for the cover, they had basically committed every crime.

In recent years, they also began raiding dry roads, massacring the entire household of a Jinshi magnate in Da'an, which provoked the government's siege, causing them to lose many of their own brothers, and they fled to establish themselves at the border of Mianxian.

Because they dared to fight and had many men, becoming hard-core veteran bandits, relying on their ruthlessness in this area, they gradually grew stronger along the dry and water roads of Jushui, Da'an Shui, and Yangshui, becoming the third power after Longmen Zhai and Qiguan Mountain.

Furthermore, they colluded with Qingyang Station Keeper Xing Youdao; their information was the most timely, and they often went out to raid and split the spoils with Pig Boss and Wu Zhuge.

In the late Ming, mountain bandits were mostly insignificant, mainly looting wealthy households and harming common people; secondly, there were not few internal conflicts and firefights among them.

As the saying goes, one mountain cannot hold two tigers, but at the junction of the three counties southwest of Hanzhong Prefecture, there were no fewer than twenty large and small mountain bandit groups; besides Guanzi Mountain, the larger ones were Pig Boss and Wu Zhuge; the two sides had long disliked each other, but since their strengths were evenly matched, they had always restrained themselves.

This summer, the arrival of the unreasonable Liu Jianbao brothers created a subtle three-way standoff; both sides wanted to win over Liu Jianbao while fighting to eliminate the other.

As they gradually entered the Shanzhai, the Mao'er Ba bandit stronghold gradually appeared in Li You's field of vision.

The Mao'er Ba Shanzhai was located on the north bank alluvial plain formed by the accumulation of river deposits between two mountains and the river channel; it was not sufficiently dangerous; on two mountain ridges, wooden pavilion towers were built; fortunately, this place was extremely flat.

Compared to Longmen Zhai and Qiguan Mountain, Mao'er Ba was the most inhumane; what they loved most was massacring villages; Longmen Zhai and Qiguan Mountain generally left villagers alive to shear like sheep.

But Mao'er Ba left not even a chicken or dog; women and children were all killed; the young and strong were generally sold to Cao Er, so relatively speaking, Mao'er Ba made the people of Mianxian tremble with fear.

Passing through the relatively strict wooden gate of the Shanzhai, a smell of horse urine and musk hit them; Li You rode his horse and looked; on the south side were two rows of low grass houses, with a brick-and-earth house in the middle, dull gray, looking like it had been there for some years; judging from the eaves and roof tiles, it was probably once a small Taoist temple.

The east end was the stable; the west end had cooking smoke, presumably the kitchen; the area in front was trampled neat, with piles of earth, horse stakes, firewood piles, arrow racks, and other messy objects, likely serving as obstacles for daily horse-riding training grounds.

The layout was very simple; after all, the total number of people in Mao'er Ba was only thirty or forty.

Wu Nai and Wang Qiong were obviously not visiting here for the first time; they were extremely familiar with the terrain here; leading their horses, they went first to the western stable, where Mao'er Ba bandits quickly took them over.

"Go, go, go; today the weather is good; the top of the ridge is currently sieving."

Liu Jianchen invited Wu Zhuge, then glanced at Li You and interjected: "This brother looks unfamiliar; he seems like a scholar?"