Chapter 38: Government Troops

Strictly speaking, Cao Yao and the bandits entrenched at Old Temple Village were on completely different paths.

The former wanted to be local brigands, the latter were roving bandits.

Neither type engaged in production; their sole means of acquiring survival resources was plunder. On the surface they seemed easy to merge into one gang, but in reality they were utterly different.

Herein lies the cruelty of the world: the reason they rose in revolt was none other than the especially fierce class contradictions within the Great Ming Empire at that time.

Their common enemy was clearly the Ming imperial clansmen who seized vast lands and grain, squeezing out their living space; clearly the Ming emperor sitting high in the Forbidden City, constantly raising taxes; clearly the corrupt officials running amok locally and the local bullies and evil gentry who monopolized the farmland.

But they could not reach those enemies.

Though those people breathed the same air as them, and some even lived on the very land beneath their feet, there was absolutely no intersection, as if they existed in parallel worlds.

The great households had fortified earthen compounds, the landlords were in the city — how could a righteous army just bursting out of the wasteland have any proper siege capability?

To survive, they could only plunder the countryside villagers, or resort to brigand-eat-brigand.

It was as if their world was merely a chessboard: though the hand moving the pieces was right before their eyes, they could forever only grapple and slaughter the opposing pieces, until rivers of blood flowed.

They were not necessarily enemies, yet they could only swing their blades at each other.

Because they were all the weak. The weak can only devour the weak to become strong, and only then earn the right to cross moves with the strong.

Liu Laoye was such a weakling too. Though he held the rank of Provincial Graduate and could travel freely anywhere under heaven, he could only trap himself on Black Dragon Mountain, fighting a desperate, cornered battle.

On the surface the choices seemed many, but in truth there was no plan to execute.

The calamity at Old Temple Village was a warning still fresh; the hearts of the people in Xingping Hamlet were restless. The village's women and children were shrouded in an atmosphere of terror. No one knew when the bandits would come, only that they would be very hard to defeat.

After that day, Liu Chengzu set up seven sentry posts on Black Dragon King Temple Mountain, each manned by battle-hardened veterans leading villagers on duty. The farthest post, atop a peak, could overlook Coiling Dragon Stream.

Under existential threat, everything in Xingping Hamlet developed toward military defense — except for a few households determined to flee, whose entire families, young and old, vanished into some night.

The nearly one hundred households that remained transported timber and stone to the Liu Family Ridge earthen fort every day without pause.

Even villagers going to Coiling Dragon Stream to fetch water had to descend the mountain in groups of three, carrying bows and arrows.

On the seventeenth day of the fourth month, Liu Chengzong stood on the mountain digging a foxhole for himself to sleep in. This sentry position was extremely well concealed by him; the excavated earth was piled beside an old tree nearby. Standing here, day or night, he was very hard to spot.

Limited by the era's technological level, the division of troop types could not yet be as clear-cut as in later ages. Earthwork, an essential skill, was a craft possessed by both infantry and cavalry in the border armies.

Now that the weather had warmed slightly, Liu Chengzong planned to dig a single-man trench on the mountain. That way he could stand guard here by day and sleep in the trench at night, still able to hear any movement on the nearby mountain path.

The Xingping Hamlet sentry posts operated on a three-man system. Seven posts, plus those relaying messages and delivering food and water, used up nearly thirty hands. Beside Liu Chengzong were the tenant farmer Shi Wanzhong and Guo Zhashi, whose leg wound had not yet healed.

At the moment, it worked out perfectly with two men laboring, while Guo Zhashi sat on a camp stool on the mountain keeping watch.

Liu Chengzong had just set down his shovel to rest briefly when he heard Guo Zhashi's suppressed, startled cry: "Master, troops are coming from the south!"

That one sentence made his heart suddenly leap into his throat. He hurriedly parted the piled dead grass and lay prone on a small earthen slope, gazing south.

On the official road along the riverbank, dust and smoke billowed. First, five mounted scouts charged out carrying war banners. A moment later, an endless-seeming column of Guard Battalion troops, led by officers, marched in formation — some bearing weapons, some not — looking northward, travel-worn and dusty.

Standing beside him, Shi Wanzhong shaded his brow with a hand but had not yet made anything out before Liu Chengzong yanked him down and pressed him onto the slope: "Get down!"

"Young Master, government troops from Yan'an Prefecture? So many of them."

Shi Wanzhong and Guo Zhashi — one calling him Young Master, the other Master — were both utterly illiterate and understood even less of military regulations. At this moment, all they could tell was that there were quite a few government troops.

But in Liu Chengzong's eyes, the situation of this government army advancing from south to north was laid bare at a glance.

"Stay quiet. They're too far. Wait till they get closer and let me look. Hmm... the numbers don't add up."

Mounted scouts were reconnaissance cavalry; their function was scouting and communication — the ears and eyes of the army. In the north, their organization was five riders per scout squad, each carrying a banner. In the mountainous south, a scout squad combined infantry and cavalry with greater numbers.

Liu Chengzong had briefly served as a scout squad leader under He Renlong, so he knew the functions and capabilities of northern mounted scouts like the back of his hand. As he understood it, these scouts should be dispersed, not clustered together carrying five directional banners.

The scale of the scouts was largely proportional to the size of the force. In the past, when the border armies went beyond the passes to burn the grasslands, each column had twenty-four scout riders. When the great army advanced, the scouts spread out twenty li ahead to reconnoiter the entire route, each squad relaying information so that nothing could go wrong.

But now, on the official road, there was only one squad of mounted scouts. They looked nothing like the bold and highly skilled proper scouts; they were timid and shrinking, poorly trained, utterly incapable of fulfilling their mission according to the Ministry of War's drill manuals.

Even judging by Liu Chengzong's eye, the distance they advanced each time could not possibly reach one li.

The main troops behind looked even less the part, filling Liu Chengzong with immense confusion.

These people, lined up in formation and wearing padded battle jackets over their armor, did not look like soldiers.

This feeling was very vague — just his first reaction upon seeing them.

Looking closely, they wore quite a few sets of concealed armor with rivets, and carried many weapons in hand — fire lances, three-barreled fire lances, bows and arrows all present. They were indeed arrayed in a rectangular formation, and carried war banners.

The soldiers' shoulders were hunched, their backs stooped, as if carrying invisible back-baskets filled with stones; their steps were unsteady, their bodies frail, as though they might collapse prostrate under an unbearable burden at any moment.

There were also officers riding on horseback whose heads he had just counted. The hundred-man commander's armor was better — bright armor showing no trace of shoddy workmanship. Brandishing a horsewhip on the official road, he shouted and cursed loudly, from time to time lashing the whip — meant for the large beasts of burden — onto the bodies of the banner troops walking beside him.

He looked just like an overseer.

The ranks of Guard Battalion junior officers could be identified by the helmet plumes and the back banners. After a thorough tally, Liu Chengzong found this force had three chiliarchs and vice-chiliarchs, twenty-six centurions and vice-centurions, thirty-seven platoon commanders, and seventy squad commanders.

Based on the number of mid-level officers, this unit's troop strength should be between one thousand and three thousand three hundred sixty men.

Based on the number of junior officers, this unit's troop strength should be at least seven hundred seventy-six men.

But no matter how Liu Chengzong looked, he could not see how this unit had the appearance of seven hundred men.

At most, two hundred fifty.

Seeing the government troops advancing north, his face showed not the slightest joy; instead, an increasingly bitter and worried look deepened. He stood up, removing his armor as he said to Shi Wanzhong: "Go pass word to my brother — a chiliarch is leading over two hundred banner troops northward."

"Tell my elder brother to get the clansmen to hide the horses, oxen, donkeys, mules, armor, valuables, and the good-looking womenfolk of the village. Prepare the grain."