Chapter 90: Good News from the Front

After burning down the houses in Blind Mountain Village, Heifu and the others went back to the county seat the next day to report and receive their rewards.

They had entered the official temple empty-handed, and came out laden with rewards as usual, everyone still laughing and congratulating Little Tao.

"That arrow Little Tao shot truly saved our lives. Had he been a moment slower, we would not be standing here right now." That was Dongmen Bao praising him.

"You'd never guess it from how quiet he usually is, but when it counts, he's utterly reliable." That was Ji Ying praising him.

"Little Tao's Gongshi rank is well deserved." That was Li Xian speaking, though his eyes held a trace of loneliness and envy.

Little Tao was a dull, taciturn young man who rarely spoke and always blended into the background. Now suddenly the center of attention, he was so flustered his face went bright red. Touching the Gongshi headscarf on his head, he could hardly believe it was real. After leaving the official temple, he immediately knelt before Heifu and said:

"I owe... this, this day, all... all thanks to you, Chief."

Heifu hurriedly helped him up. "Little Tao, you earned this rank entirely through your own skill. If you hadn't shot the village gatekeeper and used that bronze whistle to bluff and intimidate the villagers, things could have gone badly. We should be thanking you."

As the head of the station, Heifu had been completely fair when reporting the case, truthfully recounting everyone's performance and holding nothing back. Especially with Little Tao — perhaps because expectations for this young man had been low, his courage and cleverness always came as a pleasant surprise.

In the end, the authorities judged Little Tao the foremost meritorious contributor. They counted the village gatekeeper who had incited the villagers to kill officials and flee as a decapitated head, granting Little Tao the rank of Gongshi.

Though Blind Mountain Village had many people, they were merely unruly commoners, neither bandits nor fugitives, so determining rewards was difficult. In the end, aside from Little Tao being promoted to Gongshi, the group was collectively rewarded thirty jin of gold, equivalent to fifteen thousand coins. Heifu received over five thousand coins, and the rest was divided according to each person's contributions.

Thus, Ji Ying and Li Xian, still mere common soldiers, could not help but gaze at Little Tao with envy. Li Xian kept his feelings bottled up, but Ji Ying sighed openly, saying he had no idea when he might ever earn a rank.

The thief-catcher Dongmen Bao was the one who took it in stride. He clapped them both heavily on the shoulder and laughed. "With Heifu leading us, are you really afraid there'll be no chance to earn merit and rank? Think about it, you lot — just in this last half year, how many coins in reward have you each received?"

Better he hadn't mentioned it. Once he did, everyone thought it over carefully and realized it was true. Ever since Heifu took up his post in the snow, though they had only cracked two cases, both had been major cases that shook the entire county.

Qin ranks were not so easy to earn, but the coin was very real and not insignificant. Before, none of them came from well-off families: Dongmen Bao had hauled loads for a living; Little Tao's family were hired farmhands in utter poverty; Ji Ying and Li Xian's families were slightly better off, but only at subsistence level.

With those reward coins to relieve their straits, all four now lived at the level of middling households. Their clothes were no longer shabby, and they could even think about getting themselves a decent sword or blade. With that, they lacked only a fine horse to complete the essentials a man of this age must possess.

All of this they credited to Heifu. Anlu County had no shortage of stations — a full twenty or so — but not every station had such good fortune. It still took a capable chief to lead his men to earn merit...

"It is not my achievement alone, but the combined effort of everyone," Heifu said, full of modesty.

Earning such trust from his subordinates was certainly a good thing, but this incident also made Heifu realize that his own path to higher rank would likely not be as smooth going forward.

Why? Not because anyone in the county was deliberately suppressing him, but because... the experience bar for leveling up had gotten longer.

When he first arrived in this era, Heifu had once mused: "Since a common soldier who takes one enemy head earns one rank, does that mean killing twenty enemies earns the twentieth rank?"

He quickly dismissed that foolish notion. Ranks were not so easily earned. If it were truly like that, Qin would surely be a place where "marquises roamed the streets and senior ministers were as common as dogs."

The Qin authorities were no fools. Shang Yang, who devised this merit-rank system, was shrewd indeed!

Only gradually did Heifu learn that the merit calculations for officers and soldiers were vastly different. For example, he was now a Shangzao, which in the army would make him at minimum a squad leader, or even a platoon commander.

In war, he would lead fifty men into battle. First, he had to ensure his platoon's death toll was lower than the number of heads they took, or he would face punishment. The platoon commander had to lead from the front, charging ahead of his soldiers to kill the enemy and take heads. If he himself hung back in cowardice and took no heads, he would be executed!

But even if he took several heads, the platoon commander still could not advance in rank, because military law stipulated that only after his hundred-man company took thirty-three heads could the company commander and platoon commander earn merit and rank.

In short, soldiers advanced by individual merit, while officers advanced by collective merit.

Furthermore, to prevent senior officers from neglecting their duties and stealing glory from common soldiers, Qin law explicitly decreed that those of the rank of Dafu and above must properly command their troops in the assault and were forbidden from suddenly stopping to take heads. Violators would be exiled!

So it was no surprise that Wu'an Jun Bai Qi, every time he engaged the enemy, was so obsessively fixated on the head count. At Changping, had Wu'an Jun not hardened his heart and taken the heads of four hundred thousand Zhao soldiers, officers and soldiers at every level below him would likely have found their efforts in vain for lack of sufficient heads...

Though the surface pretext was "fearing they would cause disorder," the true purpose was still the heads. Thus the fate of those Zhao soldiers was no longer decided by Bai Qi alone, nor even by a single thought of the King of Qin, but was pushed inexorably beneath the butcher's blade by Qin's military merit-rank system, by the hundreds of thousands of Qin soldiers' desperate hunger for rank and merit...

What held true in wartime held true for officials' merit evaluations in peacetime as well.

When Heifu was still a common soldier or a Gongshi, one major achievement basically meant one rank up. But now that he was a Shangzao, it was a different matter.

The clerk in the county told him that this achievement had been recorded on his merit tallies, but he would need to perform another major deed before he could advance to the third rank, "Zanniao."

"For one little station to crack two major cases in half a year is already incredible luck, and I certainly don't want any more trouble in my jurisdiction. At this rate, the road to higher rank seems endlessly far..."

With these thoughts, Heifu led the men of Huyang Station to the market gate of Anlu County. The embers of Blind Mountain Village had not yet cooled, and here, a brutal execution was about to begin...

Qin did not yet have the later practice of "carrying out executions only in autumn and winter." Trials, sentencing, and punishment were generally completed within two months, and the death penalty was no exception. When they even begrudged the food provided to officials, how could they allow condemned prisoners to eat for free in jail?

The thirteen principal offenders in the Blind Mountain Village case were to be executed today outside the market. The people of Anlu County gathered to watch, forming walls of onlookers.

The ten who suffered dismemberment had it somewhat better — merely beheading followed by the splitting of the corpse. Though the dead body was humiliated, they did not suffer too much.

Quartering was different. As the horses and carts began to slowly pull away, the criminals' piercing shrieks and pleas for mercy, along with the sound of snapping bones, rang out across the Anlu market. The scene was so bloody and brutal that even several of the clerks overseeing the execution vomited bile.

Little Tao, Ji Ying, and the others were pale as iron. Li Xian turned his head away, unable to watch any longer.

Dongmen Bao, by contrast, watched with great excitement. The man was born with an unusual taste for bloodshed.

Heifu's face also turned somewhat pale, and before long he withdrew from the execution ground. Though he felt some physical discomfort, for some reason, compared to when he had first arrived in this era and felt a trace of pity for the executed bandit Pan, his compassion was no longer so easily stirred.

Perhaps it was because, whether ancient or modern, all policemen's experiences share common ground. From the greenness of a newcomer to the numbness of routine, half a year of exposure had hardened Heifu's heart considerably...

At this scene, he suddenly recalled something a veteran officer who had lectured them on anti-trafficking operations had said in his previous life:

"The soft-hearted cannot command troops; the kind cannot serve as police!"

Though he had some reservations about Qin law's readiness to implicate dozens or hundreds by association, as for the men before him, Heifu knew what they had done. They deserved to die. Against the most vicious criminals, what other path was there besides meeting evil with even harsher evil?

To slay demons and monsters, one must first become a blood-stained Skanda!

Heifu had that resolve.

When the executions were over and they were walking toward the south gate, Heifu noticed that the common folk around him looked at him somewhat differently.

The first time, when he had captured the three bandits, he had made a small name for himself. The people of Anlu County had simply praised him — praise that did not last, fading after a month or so.

The second time, when Heifu had given four thousand coins to Gongshi Quji, his name for "righteousness" had spread throughout the county seat. The people of Anlu County had come to respect him — respect that lasted somewhat longer, but still only a few years.

But this time, Heifu had led the station's men to capture over a hundred people, nearly wiping out an entire village. On top of that, today's public execution, with thirteen men dying brutal deaths, served as a warning to the entire county: "Do not follow their example!"

And so the way the people of Anlu County looked at Heifu and his men became one of both respect and fear. Spotting them from afar, they would carefully bow and step aside.

Though he sensed the change in others' gazes, Heifu still smiled and nodded to everyone who saluted him.

Dongmen Bao was different. This was exactly the feeling of being looked up to and feared that he craved. Deeply gratified, he puffed out his belly and even his walk became swaggering...

Not everyone held them in awe, however. At the crossroads leading to the south gate, a rider on a galloping fine horse showed no sign of slowing, barreling straight past them. Not only did he startle Ji Ying into falling to the ground, he nearly bowled over Dongmen Bao as well!

"You wretch, are you blind?"

Dongmen Bao pointed at the horse's retreating hindquarters and cursed furiously, but the rider on its back only glanced back, and even grinned.

Dongmen Bao could not swallow his anger. Gritting his teeth, he said, "Heifu, shall we chase him down and see who has such gall? Charge him with galloping through the streets!"

Before Heifu could speak, Ji Ying scrambled to his feet and said, "Abao, don't go looking for trouble — look at that rider's gear. He must be a herald dispatched by Nan Commandery."

Being part of the postal relay system himself, he was naturally no stranger to the man's identity.

"When a herald carries an urgent dispatch, no one faults him even if he gallops through the streets. And besides — did you all see the bamboo tube dyed yellow strapped to his back?"

Heifu also asked curiously, "What is the significance of that yellow bamboo tube?"

Ji Ying said, "That color is used exclusively by the authorities to report victory! It must have been sent first from Xianyang to Nan Commandery, and then relayed county by county..."

"Report victory?" Everyone looked at one another, momentarily unable to grasp where a victory could have come from.

It was Heifu whose expression changed as he said, "Could it be..."

He turned around and gazed northward. In the northern sky, thick layers of cloud were being torn apart by a fierce gale...

Heifu had guessed correctly. Sure enough, the next day, the magistrate of Anlu County dispatched postal runners to every township and every ward to proclaim a great piece of news!

"Victory report from the north! By the King's command, the Supreme General has taken the Yan city of Ji and seized the head of Crown Prince Dan, the mastermind behind the attempt on the King's life! The great army returns in triumph! Rejoice for the King — Qin is ever-victorious!"

PS: That senior in the police world is named Chang Shuxin. I couldn't find more fitting words to describe him here, so I borrowed this — consider it a nod to Yu Zui. Meeting Teacher Chang last year was deeply rewarding.

"In battle, if a centurion or squad leader fails to take heads, he shall be executed; if he takes thirty-three heads or more and the tally is verified, the centurion or squad leader shall be awarded one rank of nobility." — The Book of Lord Shang, "Within the Borders"

Therefore, when a grandee takes heads in battle, he is promoted. — Yunmeng Shuihudi Qin Bamboo Slips, "Miscellaneous Excerpts of Qin Statutes"

(End of Chapter)