Chapter 58: Wang Manor

Wang Manor lay on the north bank of the middle reaches of the West River, where three counties met.

Liu Chengzong and his party rode west along the river. The villages along the way were all desolate — crumbling cave dwellings and collapsed walls were everywhere, along with traces of deliberate arson.

In a mere ten li, he came upon two groups of refugees brawling over pottery in the ruins.

He also saw several beggars kowtowing along the road.

He once heard a woman's faint cries for help from the ruins, but by the time he spurred his horse over, the dying nursing mother had already breathed her last. Only the infant in her arms still clung to life, its face gone blue with hunger inside its swaddling clothes.

The men could not bear the sight and instinctively mounted up to leave.

Thirty paces out, Liu Chengzong covered his face and cursed: "I really am your father!"

All four men sprang into action. They ran back to the ruins. Liu Chengzong scooped up the infant; Cao Yao kicked the broken door plank to splinters; Liu Chengzu lit a fire.

Cai Zhongpan galloped off and traded a flatbread for a pot and bowl, then used his musket to scare off refugees whose greed had gotten the better of them.

They boiled only half a small flatbread.

It lived.

They continued on their way to the sound of loud wailing, and only then realized the West River had not run dry.

An earthen dam stretched across the river. Beside the dam grew a green tree. From the tree hung a dried human husk — its head on the tree, its entrails on the ground. On the ground lay a pile of skulls, fat maggots crawling all over them. Crawling to the side, there stood a stone tablet, two words written on it in cinnabar.

Wang Fields.

Against the yellow earth, they looked extraordinarily blood-red.

Along both banks of the river, a golden expanse of fields stretched as far as the eye could see. They didn't grow millet — they grew wheat, and it was growing splendidly.

He didn't know why, but although Liu Chengzong did not recognize a single one of those skulls, he stubbornly felt that he ought to.

A few days ago, they would have been called roving bandits, in league with the ones who had stormed Black Dragon Mountain. And from a few months to two years ago, they had another name.

Common folk.

The head steward of Wang Manor had no need to present heads for merit, so he left them here to terrorize the refugees.

The four men halted their horses before the stone tablet and stood there a long time.

Liu Chengzong did not know what the others were thinking; he simply wanted to gaze a while longer at this already ripened wheat field.

It had been a long time since he had seen such a heart-gladdening sight.

He believed that even his father, a man of lifelong integrity, would, upon seeing such a beautiful sight, want to slaughter every last steward of the prince's manor inside.

At last Liu Chengzu spoke: "This dam is good. No one downstream. If we blast the east side with gunpowder, no one will go report it to the authorities either."

Cao Yao sighed: "That's a lot of gunpowder. We'd have to dig down underneath — one night probably wouldn't be enough. Let's head up the mountain. Don't go further in. This baby won't stop crying; it'll draw people over soon."

Liu Chengzu laughed. "Why dig a tunnel — you think we're laying siege to a city? There's no one defending it. Just blow the rear door bolt from the front gate and it's open. I refuse to believe some shabby Wang Manor uses an iron portcullis."

The four men crossed from the north bank to the south bank, then led their horses up the undulating hillside. At last they laid eyes on the fortress Song Shouzhen had called hard to assault.

Liu Chengzong had only one thought: being rich really is nice. This could no longer be called an earthen fort — it should be called a stronghold.

The earthen stronghold was built against the cliff to the north, with high walls on three sides and a single gate to the south. It had four reinforced corner towers, like a small walled town four hundred paces around.

Outside the stronghold, an orchard lay to the west and a drying ground to the east. Before the south gate was an open space, surrounded on three sides by a moat. Fortunately, even with the dam, the West River had not stored much water, and the channel leading to the moat had also been blocked by a dam.

The stronghold walls were over two zhang high — any thought of climbing them was basically out of the question. They were also brick-faced, so even if one tunneled to blast the walls, the amount of gunpowder needed was daunting.

From the outside, it looked extremely intimidating.

But looking down at the stronghold's full layout from the mountain, the walls were not as thick as they appeared — probably one zhang wide at the base and five chi wide at the top.

The stronghold's actual height was probably only about one zhang two or three chi. The remaining eight chi of wall was extremely thin — a wooden parapet for defending against arrows, with firing slits every two or three paces.

Cao Yao's expression turned troubled. "Not easy to take. Chengzu is right — we can only blast the gate. But there's a second gate inside. Blast it again?"

The stronghold interior was divided into front and rear courtyards. The front courtyard had a well and a large yard with a rainwater collection pool, a dozen or so servants' quarters on the left and right, and pigsties and stables. In the center, the festooned gate directly facing the main entrance also had very high walls, and its gate was equally thick and solid.

Moreover, it looked brand new — either freshly lacquered, or newly replaced after the Crop Management Brigade's siege of the stronghold had frightened the Wang Manor steward.

The granary was probably beneath that mountain. To prevent rot, it was likely a mountain cellar or even an underground cellar structure.

Liu Chengzu pointed at the cliff the stronghold backed against across the way. "Could we rappel down?"

"The mountain isn't too high — rappelling is possible." Cao Yao shook his head. "But it still looks like seven or eight zhang. If there's even one guard on the wall, rappelling down makes you a live target."

After saying this, Cao Yao added: "Lion, what are you doing? You've been quiet ever since we came up the mountain... what are you drawing?"

Only then did he notice that Liu Chengzong, behind them, had taken out paper and brush and was sketching the layout of the stronghold. He leaned in for a look. "Hey, that's drawn quite nicely!"

In truth, it wasn't drawn well — just that with help from another set of memories, it came out fairly smoothly.

Without raising his head, Liu Chengzong said: "Earlier I thought ten men would be enough to take an earthen fort. Now it seems ten isn't enough — we'd still need to detach men to control the village outside."

"Control what — just set a fire." Cao Yao said easily. "They'll be too busy putting out their own fires to bother with us."

Liu Chengzong raised his head, set his brush aside, and let his gaze sweep over the surrounding villages. He said seriously: "They're all people who've suffered enough. Don't make trouble for them. Their homes have already been burned once."

The villages outside the stronghold did indeed bear traces of burning — most likely from the Crop Management Brigade's arson during the last siege.

But for those Crop Management Brigade men, this stronghold was indeed far too difficult to assault.

They had numbers, but they would inevitably be discovered on the approach, and without heavy firepower, relying on two or three hundred armed starving peasants to take this stronghold was nothing short of a fool's dream.

That dam had undoubtedly shattered Liu Chengzu's imagination. Liu Chengzong could sense that after seeing that scene, his elder brother's attitude had shifted markedly.

Just like now, Liu Chengzu crouched at the cliff's edge, racking his brains as he stared at the stronghold across the river, and suddenly said: "What about making a feint to the east while striking in the west? We have military uniforms and know the commands. We pose as Yan'an Guard relaying bandit intelligence, and at the same time, a squad rappels down from the cliff."

He turned his head, delighted with the idea. "Or we quietly creep over, blast the main gate — the stronghold guards will be drawn to the front — then the men at the rear rappel straight down to the main residence and seize that steward."

Liu Chengzong picked up: "Block the front so no one gets out, disarm them, and the stronghold is taken."

This kind of speculation was enjoyable, but it relied too heavily on coincidence and wasn't very practical.

In the end, they still had to prepare for the hardest scenario.

Liu Chengzong had more or less finished his drawing. He said to the three of them: "I've sketched the place. Let's look it over again. If there's nothing else we need to note, we can also scout the retreat route and find a few places to cache the grain — we definitely can't haul it all back in one day."

Just then, Cai Zhongpan, who hadn't managed to get a word in, said: "Hey — did you all see that? There are a few people on the mountain across the way too. I get the feeling they're planning to do the same thing we are."

The three men looked out at his words. It took them a long while before they spotted several figures moving furtively among the mountain woods, who soon vanished over the hill.

They were not the only ones with designs on this Wang Manor.

We must strike as soon as possible!