Chapter 191: Joy

Source of *The Stubborn Bandit*:

Joy.

Joy is getting what you wish for, a pillow delivered just as you're nodding off.

But for two people standing opposed, it's very hard for them to be joyful at the same time.

Especially when those two are Gao Yingxiang and Du Wenhuan.

Inside Yan River Pass, Du Wenhuan was not sleeping. He was waiting for the bandits on the opposite bank to cross the river — this was exactly the kind of battle he loved to fight.

Killing anyone counts as merit, doesn't it? Taking two hundred heads from Liu the Lion is merit; taking two hundred heads from this rabble is merit too.

The reward silver and the merit tally are the same, but the risk you pay is vastly different.

Du Wenhuan would rather circle around and fight every single roving bandit in Shaanxi than fight Liu the Lion once — unless he could strike Liu the Lion down so hard in one blow that he'd never get back up.

If you had to vote for the roving-bandit leader that the officers of Yansui Garrison least wanted to provoke, Liu Chengzong would absolutely top the list right now.

Liu the Lion's thirst for revenge is just too strong.

No one who's crossed him has met a good end.

Li Bei goes without saying — in the minds of the Yansui Garrison officers, he doesn't even have a grave mound.

Ai Mu, in that battle at Wen'an Relay Station, truly barely escaped with his life, and that matter still isn't over. Before Du Wenhuan marched out, Ai Mu was already a defeated man bearing guilt and awaiting punishment. Who knew that once Hong Chengchou investigated, he'd pin another charge on him: ordering his household retainers to rob the capital-transport silver.

Any clear-eyed person knew that silver couldn't possibly have been robbed by Ai Mu's household retainers.

Never mind that Ai Mu had always commanded his troops with his father's bearing — the Ai family had held military command in the bitter, cold land of Dingbian Camp for two generations. If they'd wanted to rob silver, would they have needed to wait until after a defeat?

But was there proof?

No. On the contrary, there was proof that it was Ai Mu's household retainers who robbed it. Yet those retainers couldn't be found; only the Fuzhou soldiers could be found. The Fuzhou soldiers' testimony all said they were General Ai's defeated household retainers, trying to rob money to help General Ai rally his forces again.

Everyone thought Liu Chengzong did it. Even the official designation was that Liu Chengzong robbed the silver.

But the civil officials and military officers of Yansui Garrison all knew: there was no silver on the western route — inside were only eight thousand jin of stones, which Liu Chengzong had robbed at the time.

The silver was on the eastern route, robbed almost at the same time. In the whole vast Yan'an Prefecture, who else could it be but Liu Chengzong? No one.

Now Ai Mu couldn't explain it clearly and couldn't wash away the injustice. The Chongzhen Emperor in the Forbidden City was furious and strictly ordered Hong Chengchou to escort Ai Mu and Zhang Nian to the capital.

If the same thing happened to another general, it would actually be nothing to fear. After all, even if you turned everything upside down and tore his house apart, you couldn't dig up twenty or thirty thousand taels, let alone a hundred and thirty thousand.

The key thing was, if you turned the Ai family upside down and tore them apart... they really did have it.

After all, this truly was not a good time. First the Later Jin invaded, then the relief army mutinied, and in the capital, a Ministry of Revenue clerk's brush slip miswrote over a hundred taels of silver, enraging the Emperor so much he wanted to kill someone.

Now even the Prefect of Yan'an had colluded with bandits. The Emperor had no intention of handling this matter through the Shaanxi local bureaucracy at all — he was directly sending the Embroidered Uniform Guard and eunuchs into Mizhi.

They wanted to make the Ai family prove that the Ai family's silver was the Ai family's.

The Embroidered Uniform Guard might be manageable, but what decent person becomes a eunuch?

Once they arrive, the silver might not end up belonging to the court — but could it still belong to the Ai family?

Du Wenhuan sighed inside the official residence at Yan River Pass.

What does "Heaven's course is constant" mean? What does "Man can conquer Heaven" mean?

Heaven sends rain; striking Liu Chengzong brings misfortune — the harder you try, the faster you die. That's "Heaven's course is constant."

When it rains, you hold up an umbrella; steer clear of Liu Chengzong, slack off, and you'll live a long life. That's "Man conquers Heaven."

As soon as word came that the bandits returning from Shanxi were attacking the pass, Du Wenhuan hastily donned his armor.

Du Wenhuan's cavalry, lying in ambush inside Yan River Pass fully equipped and ready to move, filed out in a stream. Dividing into five columns, they pursued Gao Ying'en's troops. The pounding of hooves exploded through the night.

The moment Gao Ying'en turned his troops and ran, Du Wenhuan knew there was an ambush waiting. But he still chased them toward the riverbank.

The cavalry on the left and right wings kept watch on the two hills for any ambushing troops that might appear during the charge. The vanguard column pursued fiercely and directly; the center column served as a reserve; the rear column made a flanking detour, preparing to strike the ambushers lying in wait at the riverbank from the side.

Du Wenhuan was a veteran commander, after all. He knew the terrain around Yan River Pass intimately and could name every spot that could hide an ambush like counting his family's valuables.

Regarding the bandits' troop strength, Du Wenhuan's view was much the same as Li Bei's: he didn't fear many bandits, only feared too few.

With over ten thousand bandits, even if four thousand were elite troops, once you smashed the six thousand rabble, you could sweep the four thousand elite along and crush them too.

Bottle them up at the riverbank, and no one would escape.

Gao Ying'en had never run so fast in his entire life.

The more he ran, the more frantic he became; the more frantic, the more he panted; the more he panted, the less he could run.

The government troops behind were like madmen, driving them as they fled toward the Yellow River bank.

Even Gao Ying'en himself couldn't say clearly whether their running right now counted as a rout or a retreat.

In any case, everyone knew the goal was to reach the Yellow River bank.

Under the night sky, the bandits raised torches that traced a line of fire through the air, the torchlight tugged so small by the wind it was nearly invisible.

This scene stirred Du Wenhuan, commanding from the rear, to rare excitement, as if he had returned to his youth.

Yet despite exercising great caution the whole way, no bandit ambushers appeared among the hills.

This made Du Wenhuan even more vigilant. It was very unusual. Even peasant soldiers should know an ambush could be set here — could it be that these were bandits who had blundered into Yan River Pass for the first time by sheer accident?

Thinking this, Du Wenhuan ordered the left and right wing cavalry called back, to guard against the bandits circling around behind them once they reached the riverbank. Only then did he continue pressing toward the bank.

By the time he neared the river flats, the vanguard was already fighting the bandits.

So the ambush was here.

Reaching the river flats, battle cries erupted. Several hundred bandits rose from the flats. Bows and firearms fired in unison, and in one volley they knocked twenty or thirty of the government vanguard from their horses, men and beasts sprawling. Then, with swords, shields, and long spears, they charged headlong.

Though they met a slight setback, this was within Du Wenhuan's expectations. His rear column had already circled around from the mountain path to the north side of the river flats — one charge would be enough to drive these bandits leaping into the Yellow River.

Just then, Du Wenhuan spotted some dark, blackish earthen mounds beside him.

He said to a household retainer holding a torch: "Go shine a light — what are those things?"

He didn't remember any graveyard by the river flats at Yan River Pass!

The retainer raised the torch and shone it to the side. He saw no gravestone, only an earthen mound piled up just like a grave.

Looking around, every ten paces there was a little grave mound, stretching all the way to the cliff wall by the riverbank.

It baffled him — when had these things appeared here?

They couldn't serve to conceal ambushers either. Could it be the bandits dug trenches here and just piled the extra earth outside?

Du Wenhuan, like Fu Renxi, never thought of cannon either.

The Western Army had always been the empire's strongest, taking resistance against the northern caitiffs as its duty. Even the limited heavy cannon they were equipped with mostly fired grapeshot; assaulting cities and breaching passes was not their strong suit.

What they excelled at were swift horses, light sabers, soft bows, and long arrows — three-eyed guns and general cannon, stuffed full of grapeshot specifically to blast fast-moving targets.

If one really had to name another specialty, it was probably setting fire to tribal felt tents.

Even if you procured heavy cannon that fired twenty-jin shot and handed them to Du Wenhuan, he wouldn't know which unit to assign them to. A thing that marches fifteen li a day across the great desert — what would you even shoot with it?

Even if you wanted to bombard a city wall, the Forty-Two Tribes of the Hetao didn't have a single city.

No cities, and they won't form battle lines against you — cannon firing solid shot were practically useless here.

Du Wenhuan simply couldn't conceive of such a thing.

Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a mass of flashes erupt on the opposite bank.

"Huh?"

Patch after patch of light flickered on the far shore.

Du Wenhuan had just let out an instinctive, puzzled "Huh?" when, amid the roar of the Yellow River in his ears, he heard one muffled thump after another.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

On the opposite bank, Gao Yingxiang was covering his ears and bending at the waist, yet he kept twisting his head to look across the river, the corners of his mouth practically splitting to his earlobes.

Beside him, the priming powder on a Little Lion cannon's vent was burning, emitting smoke amid a hissing sound — then with a "Bang!", the cannon body recoiled violently, and the shot whooshed through the gun smoke, hurtling toward the opposite bank.

Thirty-six Lion cannons, large and small, sent two-jin and three-jin shot arcing one after another in parabolic trajectories, booming toward the far shore.

In the drifting gun smoke beneath the night sky, this old man's eyes were glittering, as delighted as a child watching firecrackers for the first time at New Year.

Cannon?

Du Wenhuan's mind was still puzzled; his subconscious insisted there shouldn't be cannon here.

But the cannonballs were indeed flying over, landing squarely among his troops.

Then the ground vanished beneath his feet — his warhorse's neck was struck by a cannonball, bending at a grotesque angle. His mount suddenly collapsed beneath him, and before Du Wenhuan's mind could even react, his body had already braced against the saddle and leaped, crashing to the ground.

On the river's far side, Shi Chengwo was waving his arms to drive away the gun smoke before his face, straining to observe where the shot was landing.

But it was hard to tell. The torches of the government troops at the front line on the opposite bank showed no change; it was the torches further to the rear that had become disordered.

This made him pound his fist into his palm in exasperation, shouting beside Gao Yingxiang: "Chief Gao, we miscalculated again! With this earthen embankment, the cannon sit too high — we're hitting too far to the rear!"

Gao Yingxiang couldn't care less about any of that. His head was buzzing from the cannon blasts; he couldn't hear a thing.

Turning his head, he only saw Shi Chengwo's mouth moving, unable to make out what was being said. So he kept grinning, beaming with joy, nodding continuously, and shouting at the top of his lungs: "Right, another round!"

What did accuracy or inaccuracy matter?

The joy was all that counted.

The cannon bombardment gave Gao Yingxiang a feeling of unparalleled power. Raising the Brow-Point Blade planted beside him, he bellowed to cheer on his men on the opposite bank: "Kill! Kill!"

Gao Yingxiang had always been dissatisfied with this blade. The Guan Dao he yearned for had been snatched away by Ma Ke.

Later he'd found several long blades, but none handled as well as that one had.

But at this moment, to him, whatever blade it was no longer mattered. Cannon.

Cannon mattered most. He'd heard the Lion Battalion had a cannon outpost.

Gao Yingxiang made up his mind: this time when he returned to Shaanxi, he absolutely had to have a good talk with Liu Chengzong.

His own craftsmen had studied under Shi Chengwo for two months. It wasn't that Shi Chengwo hadn't taught them diligently — they just couldn't learn it.

As long as Shi Chengwo stood beside them, the craftsmen knew exactly how to cast cannon; but the moment Shi Chengwo wasn't there, they had no idea how to cast the cannon.

They'd tried casting two in Xiangning. Useless. What came out were indeed cannon, but bizarrely misshapen — thin where it should be thick, thick where it should be thin.

So Gao Yingxiang gave up. Anyway, after thinking it over, the matter was easily solved.

Copper wasn't the problem, silver wasn't the problem, grain wasn't the problem either.

But one of those three things could always solve Liu Chengzong's problem.

As long as he could solve Liu Chengzong's problem, how could his Chuang Army ever lack cannon?

Gao Yingxiang was no stranger to cannon. His troops had quite a few pack cannon — breech-loading falconets, simply set on a little iron stool, normally carried on a mule's back. When needed, you set it on the ground, fired, and could run right after.

But those things could never produce this feeling.

These Lion cannons were absolutely thrilling.

Gao Yingxiang was still brandishing his blade and cheering when the gun smoke gradually dispersed. The support troops of the work outpost raised the cannon muzzles, poured in a bit of water to extinguish any unburned powder, then pressed the muzzles down to let the water drain, and picked up their tools to begin cleaning the bores.

His tinnitus had only just eased a little when he noticed — how had the government troops fallen into disorder, and then begun retreating? Even the government troops on the flank, who had been holding torches ready to charge, were heading into the mountains.

Overjoyed, Gao Yingxiang turned and pointed for Shi Chengwo: "Master Shi, look! A single volley and they've been driven back!"

Shi Chengwo was equally baffled, staring at the situation on the opposite bank, utterly unable to make sense of it.

He thought it shouldn't be so. Judging by where the shot landed, they hadn't hit the government troops' forward line.

His work-outpost support troops had no professional artillerymen; there was no talk of aiming. The shots they fired relied almost entirely on the cannon's quality.

The cannon were arrayed in a line, the muzzle angles all identical, so the shot fired should also form a line.

So there was no concentrating fire on any one part of the enemy — it was just a flat spread of fire sweeping across.

It shouldn't have made the government troops retreat just like that.

In truth, the government troops didn't want to retreat either. But suddenly hit by an utterly unexpected cannonade, everyone felt a bit panicked. The frontline officers watched cannonballs fly over their heads and turned to follow their path.

Then they saw a neat row of cannonballs slam straight toward the rear command post. Beside the torches, their Grand Commander's figure suddenly dropped — and vanished.

How could the front line keep fighting after that? They pulled back en masse.

Gao Ying'en's troops had originally been beaten back step by step; his men were already routed in the pursuit, saved from collapse only by the elite ambushers Gao Yingxiang had placed along the riverbank charging out.

They had barely managed to regroup their forces, and now their own men were nearly broken again by the cannon fire from the opposite bank.

They knew those were their own cannons, but no one trusted the gunners. In the darkness they couldn't see the shells' trajectories either — the moment the cannons roared, they panicked first.

Gao Ying'en was on the verge of crying out for the Dipper Star's protection when he suddenly saw the government troops retreating, and directly shouted to pursue.

In an instant, offense and defense reversed. Gao Yingxiang's elite troops hadn't moved, but Gao Ying'en's routed soldiers swarmed forward in a frenzy, seizing every advantage they could.

Truth be told, they didn't fight particularly well, but in the darkness they genuinely threw the government troops' large-scale retreating lines into chaos.

By the time his household retainers helped the fallen and injured Du Wenhuan back to his feet, the flanking cavalry, seeing the main force had all withdrawn and not knowing what had happened, also followed in bewildered retreat.

Du Wenhuan was so furious he limped and hobbled all the way back to Yanshui Pass. A perfectly favorable battle situation — he just fell off his horse, and when he got back up, it had turned into this.

On the river's eastern bank, Gao Yingxiang watched the enemy retreat, utterly delighted. However, he wasn't blinded by victory — in his heart he knew full well this hardly counted as a win.

It had merely fulfilled his wish of firing a full cannon volley once. When he would actually have this many cannons in his hands, he had no idea how long he'd have to wait.

With great effort, Gao Yingxiang closed his eyes and steadied his emotions, then ordered his trusted aide: "Go across the river and tell the Dipper Star — don't pursue them all the way to Yanshui Pass. Remember to bring back some government soldier corpses. Let One Box of Gold take a look and see if any are suitable."

After speaking, he let out a long breath, looked left, looked right, then broke into a beaming smile and laughed a while longer before finally saying: "We can't stay in this place. Dismantle the pontoon bridge. We're heading south — we'll return to Shaanxi through Hancheng!"