Chapter 13: Internal Strife

Flames licked their tongues up onto the rooftops. The bandits hauling grain and plundered goods out of the walled fort were jubilant, utterly unaware that on a nearby loess ridge, a pair of eyes had witnessed the entire raid.

The wealthy households inside the fort had fought with extraordinary valor to protect their property, especially that man with a flower pinned in his hair, who shot and killed or wounded seven men, then knocked down three more in the melee after the walls were breached.

In the Han Dynasty, a man of his background would have been a "good family son" of the Six Commanderies.

On a battlefield where two small bands clashed, such desperate fighting would have been enough to shake the enemy's morale, perhaps even turn the tide of battle.

But the clansmen, servants, and even tenant farmers around him were no warriors — they put up only token resistance, with no killer instinct.

When resistance becomes not a stand against the enemy but a means to flee — the harder you try to run, the more surely you die under blade and club.

In the end, even that martial "good family son," outnumbered, fell to a deserter wearing a mandarin-duck battle jacket inside-out, who cleaved him from the right ear to the left shoulder with a broad-bladed fodder knife. He breathed his last before anyone could strip away his clothes, boots, bow, and blade.

On the ridge, Liu Chengzong watched, growing more anxious by the moment.

So anxious he bit his nails: "Damn it, every one of them just wanted to run — if only they'd held them off long enough for me to avenge you!"

Having no chance to save them gave him the perfect excuse, free from the condemnation of conscience.

He had to admit, even setting aside the objective fact that the main force hadn't arrived and rescue was impossible, in this moment he was a selfish, self-serving villain.

He only wanted to kill bandits — especially a band of bandits laden with spoils.

The corpses strewn everywhere had all wanted to flee this hell on earth before they died, yet the living saw it all as paradise, even as black smoke billowed skyward for an hour.

The bandits, emboldened by their impunity, hauled a great cauldron out of the village and into the earthen fort. Before long, several trails of cooking smoke rose from within the fort.

He fixed his stare on that wooden cannon, calculating how to seize it with the fewest losses.

But soon enough, he no longer needed to worry about that.

While he waited anxiously for reinforcements, a new development unfolded in the village.

Several bandits wrapped in plundered cloth gathered by the wooden cannon at the gate — the one that had already been fired once — and, unbelievably, began loading it with gunpowder again.

Some noticed their strange behavior and started cursing, running into the earthen fort to alert their comrades, but before they could pass through the shattered wooden gate, a knife was driven into their backs.

The bandits in the village had turned on each other again.

The shouts of killing lasted for a spell. Two deserters and seven or eight others, supporting the deserter who had been shot by an arrow earlier, fought their way out, only to be surrounded again in front of the earthen fort gate.

Suddenly, a thunderous blast erupted at the gate — cobblestones and wood splinters exploded skyward in all directions.

Before the earthen fort gate, dust and smoke billowed as wails of agony rose unceasingly.

When the dust settled, the deserter bandits all lay wounded, strewn across the ground before the gate. Liu Chengzong's eyes swept left and right — the wooden cannon was nowhere to be seen.

It had exploded.

Blown to pieces. He searched a long while before spotting what seemed to be the cannon's breech driven into the chest of the bandit who had lit the fuse. Three others were killed instantly in the blast, the deserter in cowhide boots among them.

The earth-shaking boom drew the bandits looting in the village. While others still stood stunned, someone lunged forward and pulled off one of those cowhide boots — but had only gotten one off before the other boot was snatched away by someone else.

In an extremely short span, several more fights erupted outside the gate over the belongings on the dead. More than why the wooden cannon had exploded or why the deserters had been killed, these loosely organized bandits cared far more about who got the cowhide boots, the waist saber, and the two battered suits of brigandine.

Liu Chengzong was the same — he only cared about the grain and plunder laid out in the village.

This was perhaps the first time in his heart that he had ever felt such greedy, covetous desire for something that did not belong to him, something that had an owner.

The sound of voices drew nearer from behind. On the mountain path, his elder brother Liu Chengzu led the cavalry, horses in tow, while Cao Yao brought the infantry sprinting ahead.

As they drew close, Cao Yao waved a hand: "Pass the word — rest a moment, wait for the horse troops behind."

The armored infantry brothers, winded and bedraggled after running several li, felt as if granted a great reprieve. At once, each leaned on his weapon, sitting or standing to rest.

Cao Yao was a squad leader after all, so he looked considerably better. Forcing himself up the loess ridge, he then dropped all decorum, propping himself on his saber in a crouch, one hand bracing his helmet as he cursed under his breath in his hometown dialect: "Damn your mother, it's been half a year since I've run like this!"

"Brother Cao, where's your horse?"

"You think it can carry me? What do you take it for — it's not even as good as that Red Banner of yours!"

Liu Chengzong looked at him, then at the scrawny horse on the ridge path, and thought to himself that it truly couldn't carry Cao Yao.

The horse wasn't of poor stock — just starved thin, but its frame was as sturdy as Red Banner's.

The main difference lay in the riders. Both horses' masters were of middling, robust build; only the weight of their armor differed.

Both wore cloth-faced iron armor, but cloth-faced iron armor was not all the same.

Liu Chengzong's cloth-faced armor was like a red sleeveless military overcoat. The plates inside were not thick, nor were there many of them — from neck to knee, it had only one hundred and seventy plates. With the helmet, the full weight was a mere sixteen and a half jin; he could practically wear it as casual dress.

Even so, counting himself and his other weapons and gear, Red Banner had to carry over two hundred jin when ridden.

Old Cao, on the other hand, had money, wealth, and connections. His armor looked the same as Liu Chengzong's sleeveless military overcoat, but in truth it had over four hundred plates, a pair of iron arm-guards from shoulder to back of hand, and small plates sewn into his thick cowhide boots — essentially representing the frontier army's equipment at the peak of Ming military power.

None of the warhorses had eaten their fill in a very long time. Liu Chengzong had ridden Red Banner here, so at least his horse had rested all this while. Not so for them — coming straight into battle, they hadn't dared ride their horses on the road.

After catching his breath, Cao Yao took a few steps forward and crouched down, looking at the chaos in the village nestled in the ravine below. "So that's them? Where's the wooden cannon? I heard it fire just now."

"It exploded. They had an internal fight — another dozen or so killed, and a few wounded who probably won't last long either."

Squad Leader Cao nodded, his eyes darting about the village that would soon become a battlefield, searching for useful details. "Plenty of grain, weak opponents. We'd better listen to your brother on this one — aim to rout them with no losses... Eagle?"

The moment he spotted the banner, his hand pressed against the ground and his eyes went wide. He cursed under his breath: "Screw his mother, that bastard White Eagle still isn't dead?"

Liu Chengzong had been studying how the bandits set no camp sentries, learning from his brother's practice of always establishing sentries no matter the situation. Hearing Cao Yao's reaction, he asked curiously, "You know him?"

"Not just know him — I know him well. That son of a bitch used to be a gang boss over in Suide, had a hundred or two hundred men under him. No idea how he ended up here."

"His blade work's real pretty." Cao Yao's face hardened with malice as he ground his teeth. "When you face that little bastard cripple later, don't let him get close. Shoot him dead with an arrow!"

It sounded like there was bad blood.

"I thought he'd gone south with Left Hanger. Turns out he didn't dare go do anything big — still out here raiding homes and plundering houses."

At this, a rare look of grievance crept onto Old Cao's face. "When I was crossing the Yellow River, that bastard robbed me, even threatened me with his blade. If my men hadn't scattered crossing the river, I'd have killed him long ago."

Ignoring Liu Chengzong, who was struggling to suppress a grin, Cao Yao counted the bandit numbers and suddenly raised an arm to point. "That's him — that cripple with the flower in his hair. I'd know him even if he were ashes."

Liu Chengzong followed his gesture. There before the breached gate, a bandit in a bloodstained, torn satin jacket was stepping over the corpses, a flower — taken from the fort's earlier archer — pinned in his hair. He limped out, patting his waist saber and the plundered soft bow as he strutted in circles before his men, utterly self-satisfied.

Squad Leader Cao spoke: "I asked around about him later."

"If not for the drought in the Tianqi years, he'd have just been an honest, simple farmer. That post-rider brother of yours, the one called Li Hongji — he's walking the same path now."

Cao Yao spat on the ground and pressed his lips into a smirk. "Though his luck might not be quite as bad!"