Chapter 147: A Live Tongue

Du Qiao'er, led by Liu Chengzong, found the murderer among the captives.

In Liu Chengzong's eyes, a rather clever and brave little girl now walked timidly through the ragged ranks of captives, her body suddenly freezing as if struck by a body-holding spell.

"Found him?"

Du Qiao'er seemed jolted by his voice; her body stirred, and she raised a hand to point at a banner soldier at the front of the ranks.

Liu Chengzong looked over. It was an old banner soldier past forty, his weathered face crisscrossed with deep wrinkles, looking utterly honest. One arm was severed, his back hunched as he sat cross-legged at the very front of the ranks.

Being singled out, a look of bewilderment surfaced on the old banner soldier's face. He glanced at Fan Sanlang, then raised his eyes to Liu Chengzong. "You thieving scum, if you want to kill someone just draw your blade — don't go slinging filth. I don't even know this person."

Truth be told, Liu Chengzong had been quite suspicious that Fan Sanlang might have identified the wrong man.

But hearing this banner soldier call him thieving scum, he tilted his head, scratched the back of his head, and ran his tongue across his teeth.

Since entering Shanxi, Lion Camp had wiped out eight bands of bandits including those at Yatou Mountain, surrounded Huo Family Fort where only Gao Xian's unit fired a few arrows, and apart from that, had only fought the banner troops of the Fenzhou Guard.

And this very banner troop, right under the eyes of the pond cavalry, had plundered and burned two villages — Stove King Mountain and Fan Family Hollow — slaughtering at least two hundred households of common folk.

And now he had the nerve to call him thieving scum.

Then there was absolutely no mistake.

Before he could say anything, Fan Sanlang tore off her headscarf. "You killed my brother-in-law, killed my little brother, and dragged away my elder sister — see if you recognize me now!"

"It was you! What gave you the right to kill my brother-in-law, kill my little brother, kill my elder sister!"

Du Qiao'er had only glanced at the old banner soldier's face once, but it was a face she could never forget.

Even after spending two whole days fantasizing in her head about revenge, she had only dared to look once.

With just one look at that face, her heart was seized tight by terror.

These banner troops were all man-eating demons who didn't even spit out the bones; half her family had died at this man's hands.

But now this man was a prisoner in shackles, and no one feared him in the slightest. These bandits from Shaanxi couldn't even be bothered to waste rope tying him up.

"So it's you, little girl."

The old banner soldier's face flickered with some emotion. He turned his head away, refusing to look at her, and only said, "I've killed so many people, how would I remember which one was your brother-in-law and which was your little brother?"

That was enough.

Liu Chengzong watched as the old banner soldier used his remaining arm to push himself up. The banner soldiers around him unconsciously edged away, but the man's face showed no fear of death.

His gaze settled on Liu Chengzong's face. No longer calling him a bandit, he put on an ingratiating smile. "General, even with just one hand, I can still kill for you... You said it yourself — Lion Camp spares those who inform. You can't kill me."

The old banner soldier pressed his lips together, turned to the girl and bared his teeth in a grin, then turned his head back and said, "I want to inform."

Liu Chengzong let out a snort of laughter through his nose. "Quick-witted, I'll give you that. Living to this age and still just a banner soldier — what a waste. Does this even mean anything?"

The old banner soldier was not using the rules to fight the one who made the rules.

He looked left, then right, then nodded again at Liu Chengzong.

The meaning was clear: since death was at hand regardless, either don't kill me, or if you do, the rule you made is worthless dogshit, no one else will inform, and the captives won't just sit and wait to die.

In this world, few people will truly sit and wait to die.

Those who do sit and wait to die all believe that what they're sitting and waiting for is not death but life.

If what awaits is death, then what is there left to wait for?

Liu Chengzong could only raise his hand. "Inform. I won't kill you."

The old banner soldier wore a triumphant smile and turned around to start pointing people out.

Liu Chengzong lowered his head and glanced at Fan Sanlang. She had been crying the whole time.

He turned around and beckoned toward someone not far away.

The old banner soldier was acting as if it were a game, a smile on his face as he swept his outstretched arm across the crowd. His finger seemed to carry immense power — wherever it swept, the banner soldiers' expressions changed drastically.

In that moment, the old banner soldier suddenly wanted to ask: what does "innocent" even mean?

In a place like a guard post, where the same few families had taken turns serving as commander for two hundred years, and the same countless people had been military households for two hundred years — were people even still people?

The commander was the sun in the sky; the banner soldiers were chives on the ground.

They were upright livestock with surplus males to fill the gaps when they died, human-shaped tools. What the commander wanted done, they had to do even if they didn't want to; what the commander forbade, they couldn't do even if they wanted to.

Morality and propriety, justice and right and wrong — whatever the commander said, that was what counted.

Guard posts — weren't guard posts just for fighting the emperor's wars? As long as they could fight, that was enough.

A thousand men against Lion Camp's fifteen hundred — swap the terrain, and even the Xuan-Da border troops wouldn't necessarily have fought much better than them.

Suddenly, other people's expressions cut short the old banner soldier's fantasies.

Those banner soldiers he was pointing at no longer feared his hand; instead, they looked past him with expressions of anticipation.

He turned his head. Liu Chengzong was holding a Frankish hand cannon, explaining something to the little girl.

Chengyun had thought his second brother called him over for something important and had jogged all the way there, only for his second brother to say not a single word to him — just casually plucking the cannon from his waist.

Outrageous!

"A blade's not easy for you to kill him with. Use this. Don't let your hands shake — one hand grips, the other supports. Shove it right up close and pull the trigger."

The old banner soldier roared, "You can't kill me!"

"Dragging your feet on informing. I won't kill you — grievances have their heads and debts have their owners. Why can't she kill you? She's not going to inform on anyone else."

With that, he fitted the match cord and handed it to Fan Sanlang.

The hand cannon in the girl's hands, front hand supporting and rear hand gripping, as if she were holding a long-barreled bird cannon. Step by step, she advanced toward the old banner soldier.

Bang!

Gunpowder smoke sprayed out in front of Fan Sanlang. In the instant before the flames burst forth, Liu Chengzong saw the old banner soldier sigh.

Then he collapsed to the ground, shot in the chest, stretching his sole remaining arm toward the sky as if trying to grasp something.

Fan Sanlang turned and ran back, placing the bird cannon into Liu Chengzong's hands.

She wiped the tear streaks from her face, then turned back around and drew her blade. She had misjudged the length; her movements were clumsy, her arm fully extended, yet the blade tip was still caught in the scabbard.

She had to tug the scabbard further back before she could grip the waist saber in her hand.

The girl no longer feared the old Banner soldier. She walked over, raised the blade above her head, and hacked — once, again, and again.

Over nine hundred Banner soldiers sat there. No one stood up; they simply watched, faces blank.

Strange to say, when the old Banner soldier said he would identify them, with that look of having him dead to rights, Liu Chengzong had felt no stir in his heart.

Yet the old Banner soldier's dying sigh carried a tremendous sense of weight, and it made him grieve.

He raised his head and glanced at the deep blue sky, then stepped forward, grabbed Fan Sanlang by the back of her collar, and lifted her out like a small flailing animal.

This one was simply not soldier material.

In truth, Liu Chengzong placed great importance on having a female soldier come to join him.

He was very excited about it — a female soldier.

Everything is hard at the start. With a female soldier, he could then use her as an example to rally the common people, and the potential pool of recruits would increase by at least thirty percent.

But the kind of female soldier he wanted was actually the sort like Qin Liangyu — one meter eighty tall and one hundred eighty jin in weight — not this little thing he could lift with one arm, barely over a hundred jin.

Set the ideal against reality, and reality was a clucking, cackling little quail.

The identifications ended that afternoon. Four hundred and twenty-two Banner soldiers of the Fenzhou Guard, steeped in evil, were executed.

One hundred and thirty convict soldiers were organized into a left and a right squad. That evening they drank a meal of millet gruel, were issued round shields, swords, and blades outside the fort, and began scaling the walls.

The remaining six hundred-odd Banner soldiers, according to the severity of their crimes, were sent either to dig earth pits or to haul and drag goods.

Among them, over two hundred men, after extensive testimony was gathered from within the Banner ranks, were confirmed to have merely been swept along, never proactive in carrying out the late Commander's orders, and were ultimately released.

Liu Chengzong even gave each of them two jin of dry rations for the journey.

This made them profoundly grateful; these men had never expected to leave alive in the first place.

They were the last people to believe in "spare the surrendered, don't kill the surrendered" — besides, they were captives, not men who had surrendered.

In this world, there is only cause and effect; there is absolutely no such thing as retribution.

If retribution truly existed, Liu Chengzong was theirs.

Fu Renxi also came from Yonghe Pass to observe the two convict squads assault the fort.

Liu Chengzong's murderousness frightened Squad Commander Fu, but this man also considered matters from a very practical standpoint: "Things being what they are, why did you still let those two hundred go? You should have killed them all in the valley."

"Among those two hundred-odd I released, there may be some who did inhuman things, but I believe more of them did not act like beasts."

Fu Renxi was momentarily speechless. His hand, not daring to rise too high, pointed at Liu Chengzong from the waist. "You are a strange one. Let two hundred go, and the Fenzhou Guard lot will fight you again — they'll never surrender unless they absolutely must."

"If they don't surrender to me, they'll surrender to someone else. They'll have to find someone to surrender to anyway. A cat that squeezes into a rat hole gets its head stuck; a rat that crawls into a cat's den dies."

Liu Chengzong regarded the matter with indifference. "We're not the same sort. They don't want to surrender to me, and I don't want to accept their surrender either."

A volley of gunfire crackled atop the fort wall. The two convict squads entered the range of the Huo Family Fort, hoisting scaling ladders and raising shields as they quickened their pace.

Fu Renxi gestured toward the Huo Family Fort. "Then, are you and I, General, the same sort?"

"You want to go to Liaodong. I can see you part of the way there, but once you arrive, I'll be of no further help. The world has already come to this."

Liu Chengzong watched as two scaling ladders were set against the fort wall and slowly shook his head. "Everyone in this world seeks mere survival; that is what makes ambition so rare and precious."

He was very gratified that, during the battle with Zhang Zhan at Lion Camp, Fu Renxi had not led his troops to stab him in the back.

Fu Renxi spat with a bitter laugh. "This world — I have only four hundred men under me. The General can help me. If I were a Regional Vice Commander or Deputy Regional Commander, the moment I opened my eyes each day, ten thousand mouths would be demanding grain from me. What fucking ambition could I still have?"

Liu Chengzong turned his face and glanced at Fu Renxi. "Deputy Regional Commander — give me some time to think it over. How many times would you have to exterminate me to earn a Deputy Regional Commander post? By the time you've become Deputy Regional Commander, I reckon that anywhere I go in Shaanxi and Shanxi, I'll be able to support you."

"Ha!"

Fu Renxi clearly did not believe it, taking it only as a joke from Liu Chengzong. He clasped his fists and laughed along. "Then this humble officer shall borrow the General's auspicious words. If the day ever comes that I go to Liaodong, I'll have my child take you as godfather."

Liu Chengzong was not joking.

In his mind, a rough route had already taken shape.

Barren regions like Shaanxi and Shanxi were not without grain; it was simply that the best land was all in the hands of princely estates. Many common people had been displaced, and the number of those who remained was far less than before.

If more and more officers commanding troops could, like Fu Renxi, form a symbiotic relationship with him —

he could further ease the military pressure and gain the time to accomplish the water conservancy projects the Great Ming could not, restoring at least a trace of vitality to this land.

Even if that still could not solve the grain problem, it would be enough to radiate influence to the Northern Metropolitan Region, the Central Plains, and even the doorstep of the Land of Abundance.

But plans always look beautiful on paper. Last winter, he had still been thinking that this year the Apricot River would yield a bumper harvest. Then after the New Year, a single frost struck, and the princely estate's harvest was not even enough to cover their military rations for a year.

The two convict squads fought with desperate effort, scaling the fort wall under bows, crossbows, and firearms, and entering the close-quarters battle to seize the ramparts.

The younger generation of the Huo family had no shortage of capable fighters, but defending the fort wall made victory hard to achieve.

This battle essentially decided the outcome.

Soon, the defenders atop the earthen fort grew fewer and fewer. The fort gate was forced open, and Gao Xian's infantry filed in and stormed the interior.

Not long after, the commoners, the old, the weak, the women, and the children who had earlier taken refuge inside the fort slowly emerged. The younger generation of the Huo family withdrew into the residence and held fast.

Those who would surrender had surrendered; those who would fight were still fighting.

But since the fort gate was open, the remaining fight was merely a matter of mopping up those holding out to the death — no longer a major problem.

This let both Liu Chengzong and Fu Renxi breathe a sigh of relief.

It seemed only at this moment that Fu Renxi noticed a young woman was actually following behind Liu Chengzong. He laughed. "General, is this a newly recruited household retainer?"

He meant it as a joke — who would believe that a woman in the retinue of such a great bandit chief was a soldier?

But, as it happened, Liu Chengzong disappointed him yet again, nodding with utter seriousness. "I find it troubling too."

He glanced back at Fan Sanlang and said, "She came to join me. I originally wanted to put her somewhere away from the fighting, to cook and wash clothes for the soldiers — even learning some medicine would have been fine. But she insists on fighting. Look how thin she is. I was sturdier than her when I was twelve or thirteen."

It was just as well that Master Gao wasn't here, or he'd have died of rage.

Wasn't it only natural that you were sturdier than her? With that diet in the autumn, no decent person could compare.

How many heroes and bold spirits eat only one executioner's meal in their entire lives — and you went and wolfed it all down, spending the whole autumn packing on fat and training martial arts.

Put a rock in your place, eating the spiritual energy of heaven and earth and gnawing on the essence of the sun and moon like that every day, and even it could wreak havoc in the Heavenly Palace.

"Assign her to another unit, and she'll be dead by the next battle — might even drag them down. Of those two villages, she's the only one who lived. Her life should be cherished."

Du Qiao'er truly found it hard to offer any advice.

She thought for a long time down in the well. Sanlang had long ago dug a hole in the well wall, and the old lady had already passed away — there was no need to go out and fight to the death with anyone.

Fan Sanlang gave her everything he had — his weapons, his clothes, his army pay, his spoils of war, even his very life.

All so she could live on, and live well.

That was why she had set up a door plank as a grave marker on Sanlang's burial mound, and written on it: Tomb of Du Qiao'er.

That night was wrong.

The banner troops should not have killed. Big Brother should not have left the village. Second Brother should not have jumped the wall. Eldest Sister should not have tripped. Second Sister should not have run wild... Everything that happened was wrong.

The one lying on the ground should have been Du Qiao'er. The one walking with hand on blade should have been Fan Sanlang.

She had to learn Sanlang's skills as quickly as possible, and set things back to the way they should have been.

Wielding Sanlang's blade, bearing Sanlang's bow, living on under the name of Fan Sanlang.

Liu Chengzong turned his head. The little quail, who had been eavesdropping with both ears pricked up, hurriedly averted her eyes. He let out a long breath through his nose. "Survivors are nothing special or rare. Here, every single person you see — we are all survivors left behind by heaven's disasters and man's calamities."