Chapter 148: A Living Witness

Source of *The Stubborn Bandit*:

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, then suddenly froze, as if struck by a body-immobilizing spell.

"Found him?"

Du Qiao'er seemed jolted alert 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 — a banner soldier past forty, his weathered face deeply lined, looking utterly honest and simple. Missing an arm, he sat cross-legged at the very front of the ranks, his back hunched.

Being singled out, the old banner soldier's face showed bewilderment. He glanced at Fan Sanlang, then lifted 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 had simply identified the wrong man.

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

Since entering Shanxi, the Lion Camp had wiped out eight bands of bandits including those at Yatou Mountain, surrounded Fort Huo where only Gao Xian's unit loosed 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 their outriders, had plundered and burned the two villages of Zao Wang Mountain and Fanjia Valley, 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 eldest sister — take another look and 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 eldest sister!"

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

Even after two full days of imagining revenge in her head, she had only dared that single glance.

The moment she looked 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.

Yet now this man was a prisoner in chains. No one feared him at all — 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 merely said: "I've killed so many people, how would I remember which one was your brother-in-law or your little brother?"

That was enough.

Liu Chengzong watched as the old banner soldier used his remaining arm to push himself upright. The other banner soldiers around him unconsciously edged away, yet 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 — the Lion Camp spares those who identify others. You can't kill me."

The old banner soldier pressed his lips together, glanced at the girl and grinned, then turned his head back and said: "I want to identify someone."

Liu Chengzong let out a laugh through his nose: "Quick-thinking, aren't you. To live to this age and still be just a banner soldier — what a waste. Does this even mean anything?"

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

He looked left, then right, before facing Liu Chengzong again and nodding.

The meaning was clear: he was at death's door anyway. Either don't kill me, or the rule you made is worthless dogshit, no one else will identify anyone, and the captives won't just sit and wait to die anymore.

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 them is death, then what is there left to wait for?

Liu Chengzong could only raise a hand: "Go ahead and identify. I won't kill you."

A triumphant smile on his face, the old banner soldier turned around and began pointing people out.

Liu Chengzong glanced down at Fan Sanlang; she had been weeping the whole time.

He turned around and beckoned toward someone not far away.

As if playing a game, the old banner soldier wore a grin and 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 battalion, where the same few families had rotated the post of commander for two hundred years, and the same multitudes had served as military households for two hundred years — could people here even still be called people?

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

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

Morality, ritual, law — right and wrong, justice — whatever the commander said, that's what counted.

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

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

Suddenly, the expressions of others shattered the old banner soldier's fantasy.

The banner soldiers he pointed at no longer feared his finger; instead, they looked behind him with expectant faces.

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, only for his brother to say not a single word to him — just casually pluck the hand cannon from his waist.

Outrageous!

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

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

"Dawdling around with the identifications. *I* won't kill you. A grudge has its debtor, a debt has its owner — why can't *she* kill you? She's not going to point out 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 steadying, rear hand gripping — she held it as if it were a long-barreled matchlock, walking step by step toward the old banner soldier.

Bang!

Gun smoke sprayed before Fan Sanlang. In the instant before the muzzle flash erupted, Liu Chengzong saw the old banner soldier heave a sigh.

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

Fan Sanlang turned and ran back, placing the matchlock 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; the motion was clumsy — her arm straightened, but the tip of the blade was still caught in the scabbard.

He had no choice but to tug the scabbard further back before he could grip the saber in his hand.

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

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

Strange to say, when the old banner soldier demanded the identification, with that look of having him utterly cornered, Liu Chengzong felt no stir in his heart.

Yet the old banner soldier's dying sigh carried a tremendous sense of power, and it made him feel sorrow.

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 flailing little 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 — a female soldier!

The first step is always the hardest. With a female soldier, he could take it further and use them as models to rouse the common people, which would increase the potential recruitment pool by at least thirty percent.

But the female soldier he wanted was the Qin Liangyu type — one meter eighty tall and one hundred eighty catties — not this little thing he could lift with the strength of one arm, barely over a hundred catties.

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

The identifications concluded that afternoon. Four hundred twenty-two banner soldiers of the Fenzhou Guard, steeped in every imaginable crime, were executed.

One hundred thirty convict soldiers were organized into a left and a right squad. At dusk they drank a meal of millet gruel, were issued round shields, swords, and sabers outside the fortified camp, and began scaling the walls.

The remaining six hundred-odd banner soldiers, according to the severity of their crimes, were sent to dig pits or haul cargo.

Among them, over two hundred men — after extensive testimony was gathered from within the banner ranks — were confirmed to have been merely swept along, never enthusiastic about 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 left them profoundly grateful; these men had never expected to leave alive.

They were the ones who least believed in the saying "no killing of those who surrender," and what's more, they were captives, not men who had surrendered.

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

If retribution truly existed, Liu Chengzong was theirs.

For the two convict squads' assault on the fort, Fu Renxi also came over from Yonghe Pass to observe the battle.

Liu Chengzong's murderous intensity frightened Squad Commander Fu, but this man also considered matters from a very practical standpoint: "Things being what they are, why let those two hundred go back? Just kill them all in the valley."

"Among those two hundred-odd I released, there may be some who never did a decent thing, but I believe the greater number never acted like beasts."

Fu Renxi was momentarily tongue-tied. His hand, not daring to rise too high, pointed at Liu Chengzong from waist level. "You're a strange one. Let two hundred go back, and the Fenzhou Guard lot, when they fight you again, will never surrender if they can help it."

"If they won't surrender to me, they'll surrender to someone else. They'll have to surrender to someone eventually. A cat sticking its head into a mouse hole gets stuck; a mouse burrowing into a cat's den dies."

Liu Chengzong took the matter very lightly. "We're not the same breed. 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 Huo Family Fort's firing range; they hoisted scaling ladders and raised shields, quickening their pace.

Fu Renxi gestured toward Huo Family Fort. "Then, are your humble subordinate and the General the same breed?"

"You want to go to Liaodong — I can see you part of the way there. Beyond that, I won't be able to 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 felt deeply 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 became Regional Commander or Vice Regional Commander, the moment I opened my eyes each day, ten thousand mouths would be demanding grain from me. What fucking ambition could I possibly have left?"

Liu Chengzong turned his face and glanced at Fu Renxi. "Vice Regional Commander — let me mull that over. How many times would exterminating me earn you a Vice Regional Commander post? By the time you've made Vice Regional Commander, I reckon that anywhere I go in Shaanxi and Shanxi, I'll be able to keep you fed."

"Ha!"

Fu Renxi clearly did not believe it, taking it only as a joke from Liu Chengzong. He clasped his fists with a grin. "Then your humble subordinate shall borrow the General's auspicious words. If the day ever comes that I go to Liaodong, I'll have my boy acknowledge you as his godfather."

Liu Chengzong was not joking.

A rough route was already taking shape in his mind.

Barren regions like Shaanxi and Shanxi were not without grain — it was simply that the best land all lay in the hands of princely estates. Many common people had been driven from their homes, and those who remained were far fewer than before.

If more and more officers commanding troops, like Fu Renxi, entered a symbiotic state with him,

he could further ease the military pressure and gain the time to undertake the water conservancy projects the Great Ming could never complete — to at least restore a trace of vitality to this land.

Even if that still could not solve the grain problem, it would be enough to extend his reach to Northern Zhili, the Central Plains, and even the doorstep of the Land of Abundance.

But plans always look splendid 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 planting could not even cover their army provisions for one year.

The two convict squads fought with desperate effort, scaling the fort wall under bows, crossbows, and arquebus fire, and entering the blade-on-blade struggle to seize the ramparts.

The Huo family's younger generation had no shortage of capable fighters, but defending a fort wall was hard to turn into victory.

This battle had 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 common folk — the old, the weak, the women, and the children who had earlier taken refuge inside the fort — slowly emerged. The Huo family's younger generation withdrew into the residential compound to make a stand.

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

But now that the fort gate was open, the remaining fight was merely a matter of mopping up the diehards — no longer a serious 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 grinned. "Is the General newly recruiting household retainers?"

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

Yet, as it happened, Liu Chengzong disappointed him again, nodding with utter seriousness. "I'm quite troubled by it myself."

He glanced back at Fan Sanlang and said, "She came to join me. I originally wanted to put her somewhere away from the fighting — cooking and washing clothes for the troops, even learning some medicine would be fine — but she insists on fighting. Look how thin she is. When I was twelve or thirteen, I was already sturdier than her."

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

Wasn't it perfectly natural for you to be sturdier than her? That autumn diet of yours — no decent person could compare.

How many heroes and gallants eat that one final beheading meal in their entire lives, and you went and wolfed it all down, clang-clang-clang, spending the whole autumn packing on fat and training martial arts.

Set a rock there, feed it heaven-and-earth spiritual energy and let it gnaw on the essence of the sun and moon every day like that, and it could raise havoc in the Heavenly Palace.

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

Du Qiao'er was truly not easy to persuade.

She had thought long and hard at the bottom of the well. Sanlang had long since dug a hole in the well, and the old lady had already passed away — there was no need to go out and fight to the death with anyone.

Fan Sanlang had traded her everything of his — his weapons, his clothes, his soldier's pay, his spoils of war, even his very life.

So that 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: Grave of Du Qiao'er.

That night had been wrong.

The banner troops should not have killed, Eldest Brother should not have left the village, Second Brother should not have jumped the wall, Eldest Sister should not have fallen, Second Sister should not have run wild... everything about it was wrong.

The one lying on the ground should have been Du Qiao'er, and 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.

To live on under the name Fan Sanlang, wielding Sanlang's blade and bearing Sanlang's bow.

Liu Chengzong turned his head. The little quail, who had been eavesdropping with both ears pricked, 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 natural disaster and human calamity."