Chapter 151: Alive

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 pointed at, a look of bewilderment surfaced on the old banner soldier's face. 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 might have identified the wrong man.

But hearing this banner soldier call him thieving scum, he tilted his head, scratched the back of his scalp, 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 had loosed a few arrows, and apart from that, had only fought the banner troops of Fenzhou Guard.

And this very banner troop, right under the eyes of the pond cavalry, had plundered and burned the two villages of Zaowang 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 elder sister — now see if you recognize me!"

"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. She could never forget this face.

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

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

These banner soldiers 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 others weren't the least bit afraid of him. 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 rippled slightly. 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 and which was your little brother?"

That was enough.

Liu Chengzong watched as the old banner soldier used his remaining arm to prop himself up and stand. The banner soldiers beside him all unconsciously edged a little farther 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 name names. You can't kill me."

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

Liu Chengzong let out a snort of laughter through his nose: "Quick-thinking, aren't you. Living to such an 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 confront the one who made them.

He looked left, then right, before turning back to Liu Chengzong and nodding.

The meaning was clear: since death was at hand anyway, either don't kill me, or if you kill me, the rules you set are worthless dogshit, no one else will name names, and the captives won't just sit waiting to die anymore.

In this world, few people truly sit waiting for death.

Those who sit waiting for death all believe that what they sit 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: "Name them. 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 to glance at Fan Sanlang. She had been weeping 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 hanging on his face, his arm stretched straight as he swept it across the crowd. His finger seemed to carry immense power — wherever it swept, the banner soldiers there underwent drastic changes in expression.

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

In a place like a guard post, where the same few families had taken turns serving as commander for two hundred years, where so many people had been military households for two hundred years unchanged — did people still count as people?

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

They were upright livestock, human-shaped tools, to be replaced by surplus males when they died. 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 ritual law, justice and right and wrong — whatever the commander said, that's what counted.

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

One 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, the expressions of others interrupted the old banner soldier's fantasy.

Those banner soldiers he pointed at no longer feared his hand, but instead looked behind him with expectant expressions.

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 some big matter and had jogged all the way over, only for his second brother to say not a single word to him, simply reaching over and pulling the cannon from his waist.

Outrageous!

"A blade's not easy for you to kill him with. 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 raged: "You can't kill me!"

"Dawdling around naming names. I won't kill you — every grievance has its debtor, every debt its owner. Why can't she kill you? She's not going to name anyone else."

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

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

Bang!

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

Then he was struck in the chest by the shot and 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 bird cannon into Liu Chengzong's hands.

She wiped the tear stains from her face, then turned back around to draw her blade. She had misjudged the length, her movements clumsy — her arm straightened, but the blade tip was still caught in the scabbard.

She had to tug the scabbard back a bit farther 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 simply sat there. No one stood up; they only watched, faces blank.

Strange to say, when the old Banner soldier said he would identify people, 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 power, 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 genuinely thrilled — a female soldier.

Everything is hardest at the start. With a female soldier, he could take the next step and use her as an example to rally the common people, which would increase the potential recruitment pool by at least thirty percent.

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

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

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

One hundred 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 fortified camp, 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 been merely 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 as travel fare.

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

They were the last people to believe in "no killing those who surrender," and besides, they were captives, not turncoats.

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

If retribution truly existed, Liu Chengzong was theirs.

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

Liu Chengzong's murderous streak frightened Squad Commander Fu, but this man also considered matters from a very practical standpoint: "Since it's already come to this, why did you let those two hundred go? You should have just killed them all in the valley."

"Among those two hundred I released, there may still be some who did inhuman things, 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 the waist. "You're a strange one. Let two hundred go, and the Fenzhou Guard lot will fight you next time resolved never to surrender unless they have absolutely no choice."

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

Liu Chengzong regarded the matter with indifference. "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 range of the Huo Family Fort, hoisted their scaling ladders, raised their shields, and quickened their pace.

Fu Renxi gestured toward the Huo Family Fort. "Then, between you and me, General — are we the same breed?"

"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 went up 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 deeply gratified that, when he fought Zhang Zhan at Lion Camp, Fu Renxi had not led his troops to stab him in the back.

Fu Renxi spat 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 possibly have left?"

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 made Deputy Regional Commander, I reckon that wherever I go in Shaanxi or 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 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 boy acknowledge you as his 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 the princely estates. Many common people had been driven from their homes, and the number of those who remained was far smaller than before.

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

he could further ease the military pressure and find 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 Northern Zhili, the Central Plains, and even the doorstep of the Land of Abundance.

But plans always look wonderful 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 own military grain for a year.

The two convict squads fought with desperate effort. Braving bows, crossbows, and muskets, they scaled the fort wall and plunged into the hand-to-hand combat to seize the ramparts.

The younger generation of the Huo family had no shortage of capable fighters, but defending the fort wall was a battle they could not win.

This engagement essentially decided the victory.

Soon, the defenders atop the earthen fort dwindled. The fort gate was forced open, and Gao Xian's infantry filed into the fort in a steady stream.

Not long after, the commoners who had earlier taken refuge in the fort — the old, the weak, the women, and the children — slowly emerged. The younger Huo men withdrew into the residential compound and held fast.

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 holdouts. The issue was no longer serious.

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. "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?

Yet, as ever, Liu Chengzong disappointed him. He nodded 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 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 Master Gao wasn't here, or he'd have died of fury.

Wasn't it only natural that you were sturdier than her? With that autumn diet, 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 down every last bite of it, spending the whole autumn putting on fat and training martial arts.

Set a rock there, feed it that much heaven-and-earth spiritual energy and sun-and-moon essence every day, and even it could raise havoc in the Heavenly Palace.

"Assign her to another unit, and she'll be dead by the next battle — and 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 had thought about it for a long time down in the well. Sanlang had long since dug a hole in the well wall, and the old lady had already passed away. There was no need to go out and fight others to the death.

Fan Sanlang had traded everything he had to her — his weapon, his clothes, his military 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 grave marker at Sanlang's burial mound, and on it she wrote: Tomb of Du Qiao'er.

That night had been wrong.

The banner troops should not have killed anyone. Eldest 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 about it was wrong.

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

She had to learn Sanlang's skills as fast as she could. She had to set things back to the way they should have been.

Wielding Sanlang's saber, bearing Sanlang's bow on her back — she would live on under the name Fan Sanlang.

Liu Chengzong turned his head. The little quail, who had been eavesdropping with both ears pricked, hastily 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 cruelties."