Chapter 112

The world outside the post-house was like the moment heaven and earth first split apart. Rain poured in torrents from the dense, heavy clouds, swallowing every last hope in the world and drowning all paths of escape for the conscripts and convict laborers.

In the torchlight, dark, sun-blackened faces lifted one by one. They opened their mouths and shouted words of despair and grief-stricken fury…

"Miss the deadline — by law, all are beheaded…"

"The realm has long suffered under Qin's cruelty…"

"To flee now means death; to rise up in great revolt also means death!"

Despair drove them to cut wood for weapons and raise poles for banners. The crowd clamored, shouting, "Are kings, lords, generals, and ministers born into their rank?" They surged into the post-house and kicked open the door of the guest quarters.

Inside, the Qin officer escorting them was fast asleep. Startled by the noise, he looked up in shock — and that face, who else could it be but Heifu!?

…

"To have such a dream — what rotten luck."

Heifu woke drenched in sweat and found that he was indeed in an unfamiliar guesthouse. When he pushed open the door, the weather outside was cold but clear, with only a few wisps of cloud drifting in the sky. Where was the torrential downpour?

And the fifty convict laborers from Anlu County whom he was escorting were at this moment still sleeping soundly, leaning against the eaves of the guesthouse. This group was thinly clad, casually covered with a bit of straw against the cold, shivering in the frost and dew of early morning…

"Chief."

Little Tao, who had been on night watch, saw that Heifu was awake and hurried over to stammer out his report: "La… last night, all was peaceful, nothing happened."

"You've worked hard." Heifu patted Little Tao on the shoulder in encouragement. Li Xian, who had stood watch with Little Tao, also came over with red-rimmed eyes to greet Heifu.

It was now the twenty-second year of King Zheng of Qin, the twenty-third day of the tenth month, and the third day since they had left Anlu County seat.

The five men of Huyang Post had to escort fifty convict laborers and ten conscripts to Fangcheng in Nanyang Commandery, several hundred li away, to perform corvée labor. The deadline was the first day of the twelfth month — that was Heifu and his men's task.

Before they set out, Heifu had already learned that more than half of the convict laborers in this group had been thrown into prison by his own hand: there was the merchant Bao, who had been involved in framing him the year before; two grave robbers who had plundered the tombs of the Ruo'ao clan; and quite a few residents of Mangshan Village who had been implicated by collective punishment and reduced to convict status. Every one of them could be counted as his enemy.

For the County Left Commandant to make such an arrangement — one could truly call it malicious in the extreme.

Still, the Left Commandant probably did not expect these convict laborers, burning with hatred for Heifu, to rise up in a mob and kill him, just as in the dream.

This was not the end of Qin, and they were deep in Qin's heartland. The difficulty of killing an official and rising in revolt was, in truth, no small matter.

Moreover, around each of these men's necks hung the mark of a convict laborer: a wooden cangue. Hemp ropes were attached to the cangues and tied during rest periods, binding all their wrists together and restricting their movement.

This was the standard arrangement for escorting convict laborers — one could not expect this bunch of penal laborers to behave obediently. In contrast, the post conscripts were fully armed: every man carried a sword and wore armor, and they were also equipped with two crossbows. It was highly unlikely that figures like Chen Sheng or Wu Guang would emerge among the convicts to seize a sword and kill Heifu and his men…

So Heifu guessed that the Left Commandant's arrangement was made in the hope that these convicts, who bore grudges against Heifu, would escape midway!

Convict laborers were different from conscripts. They were already criminals, and their families had mostly been confiscated and reduced to bondservants. With bare feet, they had no fear of those wearing shoes; these men had no more worries to hold them back.

And traveling a thousand li north in the dead of winter was truly a bitter hardship. Southerners were full of dread toward the north, especially the northern winter. In the "Songs of Chu," the Chu people's image of the north was: "Layer upon layer of towering ice, whirling snow for a thousand li," and "In the north there are cold mountains, the far-off dragon glows red. The sky is white and vast, the cold congeals and freezes."

In short, to those living along the banks of the Yangtze and Han Rivers, the north in winter was simply no place for humans, and one must avoid going there at all costs. This fear of the weather and bitter toil could at any moment spur the convict laborers to seize a chance and flee.

Qin imposed extremely severe punishments on convict laborers who fled while performing corvée duty, and corresponding punishments on the escorts who let them escape.

"It likely won't cost us our lives, but my post as Chief will come to an end. If more than ten men escape, I myself will even be reduced to a wall-builder. And all of you, as fellow escorts, will also be punished…" Heifu thus explained their situation to the men.

Over ten years later, that Chief Liu of Pei County, precisely because too many of the convict laborers and conscripts he was escorting had run away, understood that he too could hardly escape punishment, and so hardened his heart and took the remaining men to become outlaws in the wilds…

Once he put it this way, the men of Huyang Post also realized the gravity of the problem. The County Left Commandant was truly insidious — this was clearly killing with a borrowed knife, seeking to use the convicts' flight to convict their whole group and drive them all out of the ranks of Qin officials!

So the men dared not be careless and followed Heifu's arrangement, splitting into two shifts to take turns keeping watch at night.

On the first and second days after setting out, Heifu had not dared to close his eyes, staying by the bonfire the whole time, watching the figures of the convict laborers.

And so, after two days without shutting his eyes, Heifu finally could not hold out on the third day. When they reached this post-house in Xinshi County to rest, he slept inside the lodge all the way until daybreak…

Fortunately, apart from that nightmare, everything was as usual.

By this time, the convict laborers had also risen one after another. They brushed the straw off their bodies, rubbed their aching necks, and watched Heifu, who was squatting on the ground rinsing his mouth with a willow twig, their eyes full of hostility. Heifu knew that over these three days, many of them must have been thinking day and night of escaping. After all, if they didn't run, their fate wouldn't be much better. Winter corvée service meant three or four out of every ten convict laborers dying was commonplace. In the face of cruel reality, Heifu had no skill to fool these desperate men into idiocy.

During rest it was manageable, with ropes tying everyone to the roof beams, but while traveling it was a big problem.

Although the provisions for Heifu and his four men could be supplied as public grain by the post-houses along the way, the food and expenses for the sixty convict laborers and conscripts had to be brought by themselves. So each convict laborer had to carry a dan of grain on a shoulder pole, making it impossible to tie everyone together.

If, while on the road, these fifty men exchanged a glance and suddenly scattered in flight, Heifu and his five men alone could never catch them all.

So after eating the morning meal at this post-house, Heifu had Ji Ying and Li Xian cut the long hemp ropes they had prepared into several sections and made the fifty grim-faced convict laborers step forward. First he picked one convict who had a grudge against Heifu, then another convict he didn't know. Pairing them two by two, he had a hemp rope tied to one foot of each man, knotted tightly…

"Two men to a group — whether walking, resting, eating, or relieving yourselves, you must move together. If one man escapes, the remaining one will also be considered an accomplice and punished by collective liability!"

In this way, although it slowed their pace of advance, they no longer had to fear a sudden escape while on the road. Anyone who tried to flee would most likely trip each other up due to lack of coordination and be easily captured.

Not only that, Heifu also summoned the ten conscripts, who were free men, and assigned them tasks.

"You are all commoners of soldier rank, good citizens with parents, wives, and children at home. You ought to know what fate awaits those who flee and shirk corvée labor…"

"I will not treat you unfairly either. I will ensure you are well-fed and warmly clothed along the way and can sleep soundly indoors. But you must also help me guard the convict laborers. When on the road, every two of you will watch over ten convicts. After we reach Fangcheng County in Nanyang Commandery, if no convict has escaped, I will give each of you a hundred cash, plus a pair of cloth shoes…"

At these words, the ten conscripts could not help but be overjoyed. When going out to perform corvée labor, the greatest expense was footwear. By the time they reached their destination, their shoes would have long been worn through. Heifu covering the cost of their shoes let many of them breathe a sigh of relief. And that hundred cash was also enough to buy a rough winter coat.

Heifu was not short of money. After a year as a post chief, he had received many rewards for repeatedly capturing criminals. Added to the harvest from his family's several hundred mu of land, even after buying an ox and a horse, he still had over five thousand cash left. So when he set out this time, he had exchanged the remaining copper coins for easily portable gold cakes, about ten liang in total.

He calculated inwardly: "If spending just one or two thousand cash makes these conscripts help me watch the convict laborers, that is truly a bargain."

Although Heifu had made many arrangements and felt absolutely certain nothing could go wrong, on the fifth day after setting out, when they were passing through a stretch of wooded, hilly terrain dozens of li long between Xinshi County and Ruo County and camped for the night, an escape still happened…

"Chief! Heifu! Terrible trouble!"

Shaken awake hurriedly by Ji Ying and Dongmen Bao, who had been on night watch, Heifu rushed to the scene. Looking at the rope on the ground that had been frayed through by a hard object, and the two discarded wooden cangues, Heifu's expression was grim.

Li Xian, holding the roster, counted the number of people and reported: "It's a petty thief who was serving as a wall-builder, who took a grave robber with him — they've both fled!"

After questioning the nearby convict laborers, Dongmen Bao, sweating profusely, also reported: "That petty thief — it seems he knows how to pick locks. He undid the wooden cangue in just a few moves. I was too tired at the time and dozed off; when I woke up, it was already…"

"Pursue them!"

Heifu glared at Dongmen Bao and Ji Ying. Looking at the tracks heading south into the woods, he gave the order: "We must chase them back! I want them alive or dead!"

PS: Begging for a wave of recommendation votes. Also, this book will go on sale on March 1st; the exact time will be announced later. I hope to still see everyone in the chapter comments after it goes on sale!

(End of chapter)