Chapter 196: Night Journey Sharpening the Blade

"Where are you going?"

"Before word can travel ahead of us, my brothers and I must get to He Village as fast as we can," Zhao Jin answered gravely.

Zhao Jin had told only Zhao Zhentang what the ambushers had confessed about He Weiyuan. Zhao Zhentang understood perfectly well what Zhao Jin meant to do. His face hardened at once, but he opened his mouth and then closed it again. In the end, all that came was a long sigh. His voice, strangely dry and rasping, dropped low. "Xiao Jin, even without this silver you've earned, our family would still live perfectly well. Stay inside Xuzhou City, and no one will dare touch you. Why must you..."

He broke off halfway. He saw the utterly calm expression on his son's face. Zhao Zhentang knew he could not persuade him, yet after a moment's hesitation he spoke again. This time his voice trembled.

"Xiao Jin, your mother and I have only you, our one and only child. You cannot afford another mishap. If anything really happened to you, I... your mother and I..." Zhao Zhentang could not finish. His voice choked into a sob.

Zhao Jin stepped forward, grasped Zhao Zhentang's arm and shook it gently. "Father, you needn't worry. I've already killed this many men. One hollow, unprepared He Village is nothing at all."

Every word Zhao Zhentang had meant to say was stopped dead by that reply. He thought of the corpses he had just seen and suddenly shuddered. His own son's words rang with a murderous, chilling edge.

Seeing his father offer no further objection, Zhao Jin gave his instructions. "Father, as soon as it's light tomorrow, take the horses and go back into the city. Leave the bodies here for now. Then you personally take charge at the distillery. Send Shitou with a hundred household guards to He Village. Have Lei Cai take fifty men and surround Li Shun's house. After that, wait for word from me."

Zhao Zhentang opened his mouth, closed it, and in the end merely nodded. Zhao Jin spoke again. "Father, please have someone guide us and drive the carts. We need to leave now."

Having finished with Zhao Zhentang, Zhao Jin turned and said, "Thank you all for your hard work today. Please let my father make the arrangements for you. Once this night is past, I will see that you are richly rewarded."

He cupped his fists and bowed. The dozen or so yamen runners scrambled to return the salute, a chorus of "Of course" and "Not at all" tumbling from their lips. The slaughter and corpses they had just witnessed had utterly shaken them. In their eyes, this blood-drenched Zhao Jin was a demon of slaughter, a monster. Who among them would dare disobey his words?

Zhao Jin walked back to where Chen Sheng stood beside a piled heap of gear. Chen Sheng rose and said, "The city gates are about to close. We can't go back to change. But these mounted bandits came well prepared. There are leather jackets, whetstones, fire-starters, that sort of thing. We picked out whatever looked useful. Pity there are no long spears. You've got nothing that suits your hand."

The desperate bandits who ambushed Zhao Jin had ridden over from Three Immortals Terrace. They had certainly made preparations. They wore the leather jackets for warmth on the ride and stripped them off for the fight. Whetstones and the like were standard kit — they needed to maintain their weapons, after all. With a whetstone, sharpening and repairing a blade was easier. Chen Sheng did this often himself.

Zhao Jin hefted the broken half of his long spear, gave it a flourish, and said, "This half will do. I'll find a replacement at He Village."

Men who used the long spear fell into two extremes. The common long spear was cheap to make — only the tip was iron — so ordinary conscripts, village braves, and common soldiers all used it. But mastering it was hard. As the martial saying went: "A month for the staff, a year for the saber, a lifetime for the spear." To truly train the long spear took years, even a decade of work. For that very reason, many men of the jianghu never learned the spear. They had to roam, to seek fortune, to use their martial skill to win a quick and easy life, so what they trained in was mostly saber, sword, axe, and staff.

All three carts stopped on the road were usable. They led a few horses out from the woods, harnessed them to the shafts, and began feeding them fodder. Zhao Jin's cart still held a good amount of dry provisions, which the yamen runners brought out to feed the animals. As they put it, a beast needed hard dry rations before a journey, or it wouldn't have the strength.

Wrapped in sheepskin jackets, Zhao Jin and his men boarded the carts separately. The yamen runners had far more experience traveling by night. They searched the saddlebags of the ambushers' horses, then chopped a pile of branches and loaded them onto the carts as well. One of them even warned, "In cold like this, you sleep in shifts. Someone has to keep talking to the driver at all times. Every so often you shake the sleepers awake, or they'll freeze to death on the road."

Once everything was ready, the two runners who knew the way and could handle a cart shouted the animals into motion. Zhao Zhentang and the others stood to the side, none of them knowing what to say.

"Master! This servant is going too!" Zhang Hubin, who had barely made a sound the whole time, burst out.

"Stay here and keep watch. Sleep tonight, and come with Shi Manqiang tomorrow!" Zhao Jin called from the cart.

Zhang Hubin nodded forcefully. Zhao Jin looked at Zhao Zhentang, whose face was full of worry. He wanted to speak but did not know what to say. The cart slowly drew away. Zhao Zhentang took two steps forward and shouted in a voice that was nearly hoarse. "You must be careful!"

On the cart, Zhao Jin raised the broken half of his long spear but made no sound in reply.

The cart traveled through the night at no great speed, so there was little biting wind. Three men to a cart, with felt mats spread beneath them, each wearing a leather jacket and covered by another. The smell was none too pleasant, but they were reasonably warm.

"You all sleep first. I'll keep watch," Zhao Jin said.

The others did not stand on ceremony with Zhao Jin. They seized the moment to rest at once. Only Chen Sheng, seated on another cart, scooped up a handful of snow and began sharpening his long blade with a whetstone. The sound of the grinding was monotonous. Heard long enough, it made a man drowsy. Even Zhao Jin could not help dozing off for a moment.

The runner driving the cart, perhaps afraid of dozing off himself, or perhaps just to break the tedium, suddenly spoke up. "He Village, now that's a fine place. Roads lead every which way. All the big markets are there. That Squire He has built himself a mighty big estate. Not to mention anything else, that distillery of his is something else..."

Zhao Jin's eyelids had been too heavy to lift. He was forcing himself to stay awake, catching only snatches of the driver's chatter. But at these words, he jolted upright in the cart. The movement was violent, yet Liu Yong and Wang Zhaojing beside him slept on soundly, utterly unresponsive — clearly exhausted beyond measure.

The driver glanced back in surprise, then turned forward again and went on with a chuckle. "His liquor is pretty decent, I'll grant. Can't compare to yours, of course, Master Jin. But he's got plenty of it, and he sells it all outside the prefecture. Us Xuzhou folk, we don't drink much of it ourselves. At New Year's or the festivals, if you want some, you've still got to find the right person to buy it for you."

Zhao Jin did not take in a single word that followed. What the driver had said, seemingly so offhand, made everything suddenly clear.

At the root of it all was profit. He made liquor; the other man made liquor. Fragrant Mist Distillery produced fine liquor, kept costs low, and had its methods of selling. Moreover, it was guarded with the strictest care — the formula and the craftsmen were well protected, and the distillery itself was practically a fortress, impossible to breach.

His own rise to prominence had cut off another man's road to wealth. Cutting off a man's road to wealth bred the deepest enmity. And this man was not just anyone — he was the Xuzhou Assembly Master of the Smelling Incense Sect, and a local magnate to boot.

Matters between the two sides had reached a point where reconciliation was utterly impossible. What was more, Fragrant Mist Distillery represented a mountain of gold and a sea of silver — enough to stir greed in any man's heart. All these reasons, layer upon layer, had led to today's death trap.

It truly was a case of darkness under the lamp. He Weiyuan was right there at Three Immortals Terrace, at He Village on the very edge of Xuzhou City, yet he had never been able to learn of it. The harassment of the distillery must have been He Weiyuan's doing. His own investigation had tracked down those two evangelists, and those two evangelists had then been silenced — that, too, must have been He Weiyuan's doing.

This He Weiyuan had kept his identity hidden the entire time. Even most of the evangelists on Xuzhou ground in the Smelling Incense Sect did not know of him. Yet all the while, he had been able to kill men to assert his authority, cowing everyone into submission. His cunning and his methods were truly formidable.

Zhao Jin sank into thought on the cart. This ambush aimed at him must have been set in motion before the new year. They had dangled Gao Village as bait, knowing he had no other choice, knowing his desire to relocate the distillery was urgent. In the end, he was bound to choose Gao Village, and then he was bound to come out of the city to see it.

Inside Xuzhou City, he had his brothers, he had his household guards. In a sense, the yamen runners and the government troops were also a form of protection. But the moment he left the city, he became a target.

Without those five years of relentless, unceasing training, without the coordinated tactics they drilled so often, without the combat they had experienced before — today, he would truly have died on that road.

But Da Lei... The thought of that brother who had thrown himself in front of him sent a wrenching pain through Zhao Jin's heart. The sacrifice of his household guards pained him as well, but Sun Dalei's death in battle was like a piece of flesh carved from his own body. Just thinking of it was an agony like having his heart gouged out.

Had he been too cautious, too bent on playing it perfectly safe, always staying inside the city and refusing to venture out? As a result, outside Xuzhou City, he was like a blind man, while inside Xuzhou City, where he thought he held control, all manner of deceptions had been worked right under his nose. He needed to be bolder, more self-assured.

To the monotonous rasp of the whetstone, Zhao Jin wrapped himself in his sheepskin jacket and fell into a deep sleep. His heart grieved and his body was spent. When he opened his eyes again, the sky at the horizon was just beginning to lighten. Though the sheepskin jacket held warmth, after a full night, there was little heat left in it.

"Another shichen or so and we'll reach He Village." The driver noticed Zhao Jin stirring and glanced back with a smile.

The men on the other cart were all asleep. The driver there kept yawning as well. Zhao Jin climbed down to relieve himself, then caught up again, but sleep would no longer come. Chatting idly with the driver, he learned that after he had fallen asleep the night before, his companions had taken turns staying awake. Once full darkness fell, they had switched shifts, walking ahead with torches to lead the way. They had even stopped partway to feed the animals and rest a while. Zhao Jin had sensed none of it.

He glanced at the long spear laid beside him and saw that the spearhead had been freshly sharpened. It seemed Chen Sheng had not been idle during the night. He alone had slept the whole night through. Zhao Jin shook his head, then drew the short blade at his waist and slit open the inner lining of his leather robe. With the strips of cloth, he began wrapping the spear shaft. The shaft was short now; he had to make absolutely sure it would not slip from his grip.