Chapter 121: Give the Order

Under the night sky, the government troops stretched into a long column along the mountain path, inevitably caught in an encirclement and ambush.

Ahead, a large force of bandit soldiers blocked the road; behind, Wang Wenxiu's elite troops pressed in pursuit. In the middle, a single whistle rang out, and Feng Rang's elite troops rose up as one, sprinting across the hillsides and through the fields, loosing arrows as they tore the government formation apart from within.

Liu Chengzong did not join the pursuit. He halted with the Han brothers and other government soldiers on a hillside behind the bandit forces, waiting only for the government troops to scatter so they could snipe isolated enemies with precision marksmanship.

This idea had come to him moments ago at the battle line, when he saw the government soldier who had shot an arrow at his face.

He planned to establish a sharpshooter unit in the future — fed well in peacetime to hone their skills, then dispersed into the vanguard during battle to specifically target petty officers and squad leaders carrying banners, breaking the enemy's will from the grassroots up.

Before long, scattered government soldiers burst out of the formation, but before they could even reach this spot, Feng Rang's men intercepted them on the road — some were pinned down and surrendered, others resisted stubbornly and were killed.

The terrain outside the village was unsuited for deploying large formations. Soon the government troops were cut apart again, breaking out in successive waves only to be ambushed mid-column by bandit soldiers rushing in from every direction.

Some fought to the death and refused to surrender; some scattered and fled in all directions after being routed; still others threw down their weapons and surrendered halfway through the fight. When asked what happened, they said they had no strength left.

And there were quite a few like that — all tough, unyielding men. It was just that this day had been far too long for them.

From Nine Linked Mountain to Cannon-Mount Mountain, then crossing forty li of mountain terrain, the soldiers were already utterly exhausted. Before they could even rest, the bandit soldiers launched wave after wave of attacks. Spent arrows at the end of their flight — that was all they were now.

Standing in formation to resist the bandits' charges was still manageable, but once they really started running and fighting Liu Chengzong's frontier troops, both sides were armored elites. Short of using armor-piercing arrows, it was hard for either side to kill the other.

But after fighting for a while, they simply ran out of strength.

Just then, a small squad of a dozen or so men finally broke through the layers of encirclement and fled onto the government road at the foot of the slope where Liu Chengzong stood.

The night was dark and the wind fierce; they could not make out who these men were, only that the pursuers behind them were closing fast and they were fleeing in great panic — yet they still held their formation. Liu Chengzong reckoned there was an officer among them.

He exchanged a glance with the Han brothers. "Breakout officers — hit them hard, to the death."

The three of them simply estimated where the faces would be, drew their bows, and fired. Several household retainers, led by Zhong Bao, also charged down the slope to intercept them.

Liu Chengzong had a mind to recruit frontier troops, but as for the officers and field commanders among the government forces — he could forget about that.

Ordinary frontier soldiers had no food or clothing; going to war to cut off a few heads and improve their lives could still give them some morale. Once the fighting ended, a wretched life was still better than a good death.

Perhaps their parents had already starved to death, their wives and children long since sold off — nothing left to tie them down.

The promise of a full belly still held considerable allure for government soldiers who had lost the will to fight. Over on the government side, they saw no hope of improving their lives anyway; with the righteous army, at least they could eat a few full meals before dying.

But for any officer above the rank of centurion — unless the defector had committed a capital offense that left him no choice — there was basically no hope of recruiting him. Liu Chengzong was very clear on this point.

After all, he didn't even have a scrap of territory.

A defecting officer's family would get no protection, there was no possibility of promotion in rank or title, and he could offer no hope of bringing glory to their ancestors.

Quite the opposite — joining the righteous army would only harm their families, cost them their official posts and salaries, and even their ancestors beneath the springs, if they knew, would flip their coffin lids and leap out to throttle them.

Dying in battle at least earned a pension for the family.

If their positions were reversed — if Liu Chengzong were a government field officer — if he wanted to rebel, he would secretly contact the righteous army. If he didn't, he would rather die in battle and bring glory to his ancestors than surrender on the battlefield to rebels who might vanish at any moment.

The three of them loosed several arrows — whoosh, whoosh — and shot down two men. Then Zhong Bao led his men, wielding sabers, shields, spears, and lances, to block the escape route.

The skirmish lasted only a moment. No one knew who had been shot, but the government squad that had just broken through collapsed in an instant.

Liu Chengzong heard someone shout: "The general is dead!"

The three of them were overjoyed, but then looked at each other — none of them even knew whose arrow had done it.

Liu Chengzong shouted from the slope: "Your general is dead — will you not surrender? Lay down your weapons and you shall live. Resist stubbornly and death is your only road!"

At these words, the remaining eight or nine frontier soldiers looked at one another. Starting with the first man who laid down his weapon, one after another they dropped their arms, clattering and ringing in a chorus.

Only one man, clutching his waist saber and unable to make up his mind, actually dared to charge alone at Zhong Bao, shouting as he came.

But he never even got close to Zhong Bao before an eight-chi short spear pierced his throat.

He breathed his last in moments.

Once they had all laid down their weapons, Liu Chengzong leaped down from the slope, pointed at the corpses, and asked, "Which one is your general? What was his name?"

A surrendered soldier pointed at a body on the ground with a broadhead arrow through the throat and said, "The general is Liu Guozhen, chiliarch of the Divine Wood Camp."

Liu Chengzong saw the massive wound torn by the arrowhead and said to the Han brothers with a grin, "Check whose arrow that is — someone's earned great merit."

At first he wondered if he himself had shot the enemy commander, but he did not have arrowheads like that.

The two brothers pulled out the arrow and examined it. The elder clapped the younger on the shoulder. "General, this is my younger brother's arrow."

"Good. Then let Shiyou go — go and call for their surrender. Let him have his moment of glory!"

Han Shiyou clasped his fists with a grin, accepted the order, lifted his leg, and ran toward the village.

Only then did Liu Chengzong turn to question the prisoners. "Your general was an officer of the Divine Wood Camp — how did he end up mixed together with Li Bei?"

He knew of the Divine Wood Camp; its commander was Ai Wannian of the Mizhi Ai family.

The surrendered soldier explained, "General Li had no troops when he took up his post, and with military operations urgent, he borrowed a unit from the Divine Wood Camp. All of us are Divine Wood Camp soldiers. General Meng was also borrowed over to serve as a commander."

Liu Chengzong asked, surprised, "The Fierce Tiger pair is here too?"

Meng was a very rare surname, and even rarer among soldiers. At least in Liu Chengzong's mind, the only Meng officer in the Yansui Garrison was Meng Ruhu.

"General Tiger didn't come, only General Meng. He and General Li are garrisoned at Hequ."

After gleaning some more intelligence from the surrendered soldiers, Liu Chengzong had their weapons confiscated and led his men toward the village to take a look.

As they walked, Zhong Bao came over carrying a three-eyed gun. "General, look — this is probably what wounded my brother."

Three-eyed guns were nothing rare in Shaanxi.

Cao Yao's unit was accustomed to using the old-style signal cannon; Liu Chengzong had handled one before. But this gun, held in his hand, was clearly far finer in workmanship — and longer, too.

The barrel of Cao Yao's signal gun was one chi long; this gun's barrel was three cun longer than that.

Liu Chengzong then examined the powder flask. Its specifications were also different from Cao Yao's — the powder charge and shot weight had both changed. It had clearly been modified by someone.

He said to Zhong Bao, "Bring a torch over to light it up."

With light, the inscription on the gun body became clearly visible: Made in the second year of the Chongzhen reign by the Yulin Guard. The smith who forged it was named Zhang Qile.

A new model this year.

Liu Chengzong pointed at the inscription. "This smith's gun-making skill must be excellent."

The family line was flourishing — just having sons had made his father happy at least seven times. Exchange a bit of forging experience within the family, and perhaps the technical challenges they faced would be overcome.

A longer barrel naturally made the gun heavier. Liu Chengzong hefted it, then handed it back to Zhong Bao. "Do you know how to use firearms? If not, never mind — give it back to Squad Leader Cao when we return."

With their commander dead and themselves surrounded, the remaining border troops soon surrendered in droves. Even those few who fought stubbornly to the end were no match for the border soldiers under Liu Chengzong.

What surprised Liu Chengzong, however, was that after the battle, the bandit troops, organized in hundred-man companies, were all busy gathering up their own dead. Those not doing that simply sat resting at the edges of the fields. Not a single one went to strip the armor off the border troops.

He asked and learned that Flying Monkey had given an order earlier forbidding them from touching the border troops' corpses.

That was truly remarkable.

In Liu Chengzong's experience, of all the bandit chiefs he had ever encountered — probably even including Gao Yingxiang — none possessed the kind of control Flying Monkey had. "Where is your chief?"

He was asking this at the village entrance when he saw Flying Monkey approaching with a squad of men not far away. The moment they met, Flying Monkey gave him a fierce embrace. "We finally won."

Liu Chengzong said, astonished, "You... you actually... took off your armor?"

What he meant, of course, was not the armor, but that Flying Monkey had bathed.

Not only was he scrubbed completely clean, he had also changed into fresh clothes.

Flying Monkey spread his arms and spun in a circle before him, then raised a thumb. "Well? Did you only discover today that I, Liu Jiusi, am also a rather handsome young fellow?"

He burst out laughing at his own words, and only when the laughter ended did his expression turn serious. "I didn't just bathe — I also ate half a jin of meat and drank two bowls of wine. These were genuine elite border troops. Old Huihui was driven into the desert beyond the frontier by that same Li Bei. And no one told me you were coming. If I had to go down below and meet my parents, I couldn't look too wretched."

Having said this, Flying Monkey shook his head. "I was already forming ranks here when I found out you were coming. Had I known earlier, I wouldn't have bathed."

At first, these words struck Liu Chengzong as funny, but after thinking them over carefully, he could no longer laugh.

Among all the chiefs, he was probably the only one qualified even to consider how to annihilate government troops.

With a single casual message sent through a subordinate telling Flying Monkey to block this government force, Flying Monkey had prepared himself to be completely wiped out, even to die in battle.

This grim reality made him force a dry laugh. Changing the subject, he asked, "What are your casualties like?"

"Haven't finished the full count yet. I was just about to come find you about this — can you get medicine in Yan'an city? I've already got over forty dead on my side..."

Just as he was speaking, a young bandit runner came up and whispered something in Flying Monkey's ear. Flying Monkey raised his head. "It's now over sixty dead, and more than three hundred wounded. With medicine, half of those will still die. Without medicine, all the wounded will die."

Liu Chengzong was inwardly astonished. What a talent!

Forty plus twenty — he worked it out in an instant.

This was a simple matter for someone who had studied, or for someone with money who frequented markets, but Flying Monkey had never studied and was, moreover, dirt poor.

How to describe Flying Monkey's poverty? It was a kind of poverty you could see just by looking at him.

As Cao Yao put it: "If this man went into town to drink, he couldn't even pay."

If he didn't pay, and the tavern keeper was kind-hearted, nothing might come of it.

Otherwise, with his appearance, the moment he stood at the counter and slapped down fifty Tongbao coins with a crack, the keeper would dare report him to the authorities, claiming the money was ill-gotten.

And yet he could calculate that fast.

Then it dawned on Liu Chengzong — the man was a gambler.

The subject was a heavy one. Liu Chengzong sighed. "Terrible losses."

"Just have to accept it. No other way." Flying Monkey showed no grief over this. Shaking his head, he said, "If they hadn't followed me, they wouldn't have lived this long. While they were alive, I treated them well. Dying is fate... How are your casualties?"

"One dead, sixteen wounded. Two of them probably won't pull through."

Liu Chengzong's words made Flying Monkey tilt his head and crane his neck, narrowing his eyes with an utterly baffled expression. "Three men — three men dead, and what do you have to be upset about? Looking all regretful — and to think I was consoling you to take it easy!"

Liu Chengzong shook his head. "The one who died was called Piece of Meat. Just a few days ago, when I seized Prince Qing's estate caravan heading for Gansu, he was a banner soldier from the estate who surrendered. He wasn't too keen on following me. Said that turning bandit made him nothing but a piece of meat under my hand. So I casually called him that, and now, to this day, we still don't even know his real name, and he's gone."

"Seems having crack troops isn't always good — you know every single man."

Flying Monkey chimed in, "I'm different. I just feed and water them. I don't know them. I get to know them after they're dead — I dig the graves, look after the parents and little ones they leave behind."

Seeing the topic grow even heavier, Liu Chengzong wanted to talk about something more cheerful. He asked, "I asked your men, and they said you gave orders not to let them touch the border troops' corpses or spoils. Why?"

"Waiting for you to divide them, why else? Your men are fierce. If you don't divide the spoils, you expect me to do it?"

Flying Monkey wore an expression that said, 'You don't look too bright.' Rubbing his hands together, he said, "So tell me, how do you plan to split it?"

Liu Chengzong truly had not thought about it.

He felt Flying Monkey had more men and had indeed contributed more effort. Without Monkey's thirty hundred-man companies taking turns charging, this battle would not have been so easy for them.

"Since you're letting me divide it — my men are fierce, your men put in more work. I think we should do this: split it evenly between us. My troops need to refill their arrow quivers. Of what remains, you pick first, and whatever you leave goes to me."

Liu Chengzong had only gotten halfway through his words when he added, "But the over three hundred surrendered troops are all mine... It's not that I won't give you any — I'm afraid they'll turn around and kill you to claim merit."

Weapons and armor, in Liu Chengzong's view, were what Flying Monkey urgently needed.

His men were very obedient — that was the peasant army repaying the goodwill Flying Monkey had steadily accumulated. The chief and his bandit soldiers were all good people. Good people needed arms and armor to survive.

In Shaanxi of these times, everyone was accustomed to life and death. Yet there was still a long distance between being accustomed to the deaths of strangers and being accustomed to the deaths of blood-soaked comrades.

For surrendered troops, the muddled, utterly simple goodwill of someone like Flying Monkey could not hold them in check.

For Liu Chengzong, on the other hand, arms and armor were not the most important thing in his mind.

His five outposts of border troops were already fully armed. Besides, the Mule Camp now had no mules. Even if he gave all the arms and armor to him, his men had no hands free to carry them.

What he lacked was talent — men who possessed combat skills and were familiar with military affairs.

Although he too needed to guard against the surrendered troops, the threat they posed to him was not as great as it was to Flying Monkey.

"Give..." Flying Monkey was overjoyed, so much so he could barely speak. He made repeated scooping motions toward his own chest. "Give me half? Truly?"

He clapped loudly and drew close. "The surrendered troops are all yours. You are far more generous than Overlord King Heng or King Chuang Gao. I originally thought you'd just give me silver. Don't worry — since you're so honorable, I absolutely won't pick out all the best things for myself!"

Heaven and earth bear witness, Flying Monkey had never expected Liu Chengzong to give so much.

In the river valley to the east, there was still Li Bei's force of crack troops and fierce commanders. Flying Monkey had fought this battle to the death purely out of a fellow roving bandit's sense of duty.

In these times, aside from Wang Jiayin, Gao Yingxiang, and the defeated Left Hanger, who else had the strength to defeat government troops? Who else could defeat government troops and get their hands on good weapons and armor?

Who wasn't short of arms and armor?

He had let Liu Chengzong divide the spoils only to test the waters, to see what he might get and how much.

With over three hundred dead and wounded, getting thirty sets of armor would already be considered honorable.

Right up until the second before Liu Chengzong said "split evenly," Liu Jiusi had been thinking to himself: if he was given one or two hundred taels of silver, he would simply take his banner and go back to Fuzhou, set up a defense there against the Qingyang Guard banner troops, and stop playing around with these people.

But still... Liu Chengzong gave far too much.

The very next second, Flying Monkey turned into a bootlicker. He slashed his hand through the air before him. "Give the order, General Liu! What shall the brothers do next!"