Chapter 16: Resentment

The battle lasted less than an hour. Leaderless and utterly disorganized, the bandit soldiers quickly scattered under the cavalry's charge.

The mounted troops made two back-and-forth passes before withdrawing from the fight, leaving Liu Chengzu and Cao Yao to lead the arriving infantry in finishing off and driving away the remaining bandits.

After the battle ended, Liu Chengzong tied the red flag to a grain cart, tore a strip of cloth from White Eagle's body, and carefully wiped the blood from his goose-quill saber. The most valuable skill he possessed was not any weapon technique, but the blade-sharpening craft he had learned from the executioner in Mizhi.

The master who taught him to sharpen blades said that a saber must never be sheathed with blood on it. Blood is the essence-spirit of a person's soul; sheathed with blood too long, it will breed resentment.

Of course, most people would be half-skeptical of such a claim, and Liu Chengzong simply did not believe it at all.

Another set of memories in his mind knew perfectly well that bacteria existed in this world. If a bloodied blade was not carefully treated and was sheathed without air circulation, bacteria would breed, rusting the weapon and leaving behind a foul stench.

That foul stench was the resentment. By that point, the saber would be unusable.

At times like this, good sharpening technique was crucial. The blades Liu Chengzong sharpened could serve as mirrors — blood would not cling to them. As long as he wiped them clean with a cloth, no rust marks would remain; he only needed to apply a little oil later.

If not for He Renlong, outside the provincial military examination grounds back then, making the treatment of household retainers sound far too appealing — perfectly matching his six years of martial training — Liu Chengzong had originally planned to open a blade-sharpening shop in Yan'an Prefecture.

With his sharpening skill, great wealth and high rank might be out of reach, but supporting a family would be no problem at all.

The infantry were now sweeping the battlefield, tallying spoils and valuables.

Cao Yao, now idle, searched around the village. Spotting Liu Chengzong over here, he came up excitedly and asked, "You got him?"

"Dead."

Liu Chengzong finished cleaning his saber, ran his thumb along a tiny nick on the blade's edge, and sheathed it. He jutted his chin toward the ground to one side and pointed at the bridge of his own nose. "Arrow hit here. He didn't suffer. His bow and saber are on Red Flag's back, and there's seven or eight jin of gunpowder. See if anything there's yours?"

Cao Yao was overjoyed at this. He walked over, crouched down, and looked at the corpse for a good long while before turning back and clapping Liu Chengzong on the shoulder. "Well shot, well shot! What more could I want? I don't want a thing — it's all yours. Did your blade taste blood?"

Liu Chengzong had just nodded, not yet able to speak, when Squad Leader Cao had already taken over the conversation. "When your sister-in-law gets here, I'll get you a pot of blade oil. We've hauled in a big catch this time. We'll get on the road soon, find a place to settle, and once we've divided things up, your big brother here is going to treat you to a proper meal!"

As he spoke, Cao Yao found the saber that had originally belonged to White Eagle on Red Flag's back, drew it out to look, and then turned back to curse at the corpse. "This scum actually used a pretty fine blade — patterned steel. If the cavalry hadn't been bogged down, not one of these bandits would have gotten away."

It was a goose-wing saber. Compared to Liu Chengzong's goose-quill waist saber, the blade curve was similar, but the tip had no back edge and featured three small wing-like waves.

The grip was also an inch longer, falling between a one-handed and two-handed saber — suitable for both single-handed slashing and a two-handed grip.

As for the "patterned" that Cao Yao mentioned, it referred to the blade's folded and forged pattern-welded steel craftsmanship. The blade bore serrated patterns, hence the name "horse-tooth steel," and it looked identical to what was called bintie steel.

Because people believed genuine bintie came from the Western Regions, while the horse-tooth steel blades common across northern Shaanxi mostly came from Shanxi smiths, they were also called counterfeit bintie by the world.

Though called counterfeit, their market price was still very high.

A blade made to this standard was no longer just a practical weapon; it was also a collector's piece for appreciation.

Listening to Cao Yao's words, Liu Chengzong chuckled lightly. "How could that bandit deserve such a fine saber? It was the personal blade of a respectable youth in that stockade. He'd had it for less than an hour."

"I plan to take this saber home. It's excellent everywhere except the fittings are ugly. I'll swap the fittings when I get back and make it a family heirloom. As for using it —"

Liu Chengzong pushed open the plum-blossom-shaped, four-petaled red copper guard with his thumb and drew out the goose-quill saber he had just wiped clean, extending it. "Our official-issue is still more handy. That Shanxi blade — a nick on it would hurt too much."

Even the finest weapon is a consumable. Combat technique can minimize blade wear, but nicks in battle are still extremely common; even priceless treasure sabers are no exception.

In truth, deep down, Liu Chengzong was very reluctant to use higher-quality weapons.

Battle is a deadly affair where you stake your life and home to take another's. You must commit fully, with no distracting thoughts. The moment you start worrying about damaging or protecting your weapon in a fight, you are not far from death.

After wiping, the goose-quill saber's blade returned to a mirror finish, clearly revealing two small nicks on the edge that had been repaired by grinding — remnants from last year, when he followed the troops beyond the frontier to burn grasslands and unexpectedly crossed blades with Ordos Mongols in a skirmish.

As for this battle, although he had also used his saber after shooting White Eagle dead, few of the bandits had any formal training. Moreover, they had been utterly cowed by the cavalry charge bearing down on them and were far too panicked.

Even if you told the bandits he was about to strike and let them try to block, they could not have stopped it. He just had to drag the blade from horseback as he passed; there was no need to put deadly force into chopping at bone.

The goose-quill saber had only been stained with a little blood, and perhaps some unlucky soul who took a slash had an iron object hanging on him, leaving two minor, harmless scratches on the blade's mirror finish.

Cao Yao was still basking in the joy of killing White Eagle. He looked the goose-wing saber over again and again, muttering all the while. "I don't see anything wrong with this Mongol cross guard. What a fine saber, and it fell into that bandit's hands."

"Lion, tell me, isn't this world strange? The poor have to sell even their wives and little daughters just to stay alive, yet they still can't get enough to eat, and might die without ever leaving descendants."

He held up the goose-wing saber, squinting as he carefully admired the horse-tooth forging patterns on the blade, and glanced at Liu Chengzong. "But these rich households — they don't even have to be official-gentry lineages, just a wealthy family in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. Look at their saber —"

"Back in Baoding, in the hands of those useless capital garrison nobles who never went to battle, with this blade's forging work, you could easily polish it up and sell it for fifty taels."

That was not what Cao Yao wanted to say. He lowered the blade, slowly sheathed it, and looked at Liu Chengzong. "How can the poor not be envious? How can they not be resentful?"

As he spoke, he slid this saber — worth forty taels of silver by his own estimate — back into its scabbard, hung it securely on Red Flag's back, and even patted it twice. "The common folk still alive are already furious. Once the moment comes, today's village will be every village tomorrow."

"Liaodong is in chaos, Shaanxi is in chaos again, and the whole realm will fall into chaos. The world will only get worse. Thinking you can survive as a law-abiding subject, like that post-station runner brother of yours named Li Hongji — that way only leads to starving to death."

"If you wait until you're too weak from hunger to think of anything else, starving to death is what you deserve. While you still have strength, you should be out plundering others."

Liu Chengzong laughed and nimbly hopped down from the grain cart. This Squad Leader Cao was still working on the united front.

Today's battle had proven one thing beyond doubt: these two squads of border troops, even as problem soldiers from Yühe Fort, still held absolute superiority over two or even three times their number in a disorderly mob.

To put it bluntly, one squad of chronically underfed border troops had crushing combat power against three hundred rabble. Once they had their fill of food, the things they could do would be far greater.

Taking a county seat might not even be impossible.

Liu Chengzu thought this fellow just wanted to hit a county seat. He laughed heartily and waved his hand. "Better to head back to Black Dragon King Temple Mountain first. It's perfectly normal for poor commoners to envy the rich. Everyone envies those better off than themselves and wants to become better too — to some degree or another. That's not the problem."

"The problem is, nowadays, the poor can't become better anymore."