Chapter 30: Recruiting the Miao People
To get the latest news about Hu Sheng, Zhao An would go to the bookstore every day. By now, the bookstore manager already recognized him. He no longer needed to show the jade pendant Hu Sheng had given him as a token. When the manager saw him, he would just smile and shake his head, indicating there was no new message, but he would say, “The book you wanted, sir, is currently out of stock in our shop.”
Zhao An didn’t even have the heart to pick up a storybook and pretend to look at it. He could only manage a perfunctory reply, “Then I’ll come back tomorrow,” and walked out of the bookstore.
Hundreds of miles away, in the continuous green mountains, Hu Sheng, the object of Zhao An’s concern, finally met the enemy he had been waiting for. Hearing the urgent call of a cuckoo, Hu Sheng waved his hand, and ten men simultaneously lit the fuses in their hands. After several crude experiments, Hu Sheng felt that burying these gunpowder jars in a shallow layer of soil for an ambush was far more effective than throwing them to blow people up.
A dozen or so breaths later, Hu Sheng heard the sound of horse hooves in the distance. The sound of several hundred horses running together covered the crackling of the burning fuses. Everyone hiding behind the trees held their breath. A few more breaths passed, and a series of booming explosions sounded, like thunderclaps from the horizon.
After the sound, plumes of black smoke rose from thirty zhang away, followed by the neighing of horses and the screams of men. The people ambushing in the surrounding woods no longer hesitated. They tied the cloth scarves over their faces, picked up their sabers, and charged into the black smoke.
Hu Sheng was the fastest. In an instant, he arrived at the site of the explosion. A horse suddenly charged out of the black smoke, carrying a panicked man. Judging by his attire, he should be one of Zhao Nanyu’s personal guards. Hu Sheng leaped up from the ground and swung the long saber in his hand, but he didn’t kill the man. Instead, he struck the horse’s head with the flat of the blade. The immense force directly caused the galloping horse to fall sideways, pinning the man on its back.
After the first person who fled, several more people rushed out of the black smoke, all with varying degrees of injuries. This time, Hu Sheng ignored them, because the people behind him had also charged up. He dodged these panicked men and horses and rushed into the black smoke.
It was hard to say whether Zhao Nanyu was lucky or unlucky. When the explosion occurred, more than half of the men lost their ability to move. He, being surrounded by his personal guards, was only grazed on the cheek by a flying stone and suffered a minor flesh wound. But it was precisely because he was surrounded that he had nowhere to flee when the explosion happened. Even though his martial arts were formidable and he had immediately sensed something was wrong, in his desperation, he could only choose to hide under his horse’s belly. But he was buried at the very bottom by the several personal guards who were tightly protecting him, causing the remaining men in the team to lose control and flee in all directions.
When he pushed aside the bodies and unconscious men and horses and climbed up, he looked up and met a pair of blue eyes. Zhao Nanyu’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t know why this damned mixed-blood was here, but he understood that his ambush this time was most likely the other’s doing.
Zhao Nanyu’s body reacted faster than his thoughts. When Hu Sheng’s long saber swung up, he had already picked up a nearby corpse to block in front of him, and with his other hand, he drew the saber from the corpse and slashed towards Hu Sheng.
Naturally, Hu Sheng would not be injured by the move Zhao Nanyu used in his hasty evasion. He leaped up again, flipped over Zhao Nanyu’s head, and in a turn, delivered another horizontal slash.
The sound of the wind whistled past Zhao Nanyu’s ear. He threw down the corpse in his hand and rolled on the ground like a gourd, narrowly escaping Hu Sheng’s killing move. However, his topknot had already come loose, and he was in a state of panicked flight, as if he could be killed by Hu Sheng at any moment. Just as his left leg was cut by Hu Sheng and he was about to die in the next moment, he suddenly raised his head and stared straight at Hu Sheng. His blood-red eyes narrowed slightly, as if he had seen something good.
In the dust stirred up by the fight, a two-inch-long short arrow flew out from the sleeve of Zhao Nanyu’s raised left hand. The arrow was like a ghost, flying straight towards Hu Sheng’s chest.
This was a hidden arrow fired suddenly in the middle of a fight. By the time Hu Sheng noticed it, the saber in his hand was about to cut Zhao Nanyu’s saber-wielding right hand. The distance between them was very close. In an instant, the ghostly arrow, glinting with a blue light, was close to Hu Sheng. He gritted his teeth and finally gave up the attack, spinning to dodge the hidden arrow.
When Zhao Nanyu used his trump card, he had already thought of a way to escape. Taking advantage of Hu Sheng’s dodge, he slapped the ground with both hands and flew up, but he didn’t continue to attack Hu Sheng. Instead, he retreated quickly and grabbed a man with a silver headdress next to him.
“Hu Sheng, you son of a bitch!” he cursed, venting the anger in his heart. Only then did he say, “Let me go this time. I promise I won’t pursue this, and I’ll give you two hundred thousand liang of silver as a reward.”
Seeing Hu Sheng stroll towards him, it was as if he were seeing a soul reaper. He squeezed the hostage’s neck even harder, causing the man’s dark red face to turn blue. Zhao Nanyu’s voice began to tremble. “Don’t kill me. If you kill me, you won’t get a single penny.”
Hu Sheng’s voice was calm, like an old friend discussing the past. “I remember you didn’t bring anything when you left the northern border. It’s only been three short years, and you have two hundred thousand liang of silver. How many people’s lives is that worth?”
It was clear that Hu Sheng was not moved by money. Zhao Nanyu then said to the others around, “That’s two hundred thousand liang of silver, not twenty liang. Are you just going to watch it slip through your fingers? And this man in my hands, he’s your brother, isn’t he? Are you going to watch him be buried with me?”
His words were indeed very inflammatory. The movements of many people swinging their sabers became slack. Fortunately, a middle-aged man in a long robe with a goatee shouted, “Be careful! Don’t capsize in the gutter.”
Although many people came to their senses in time, two reckless young men were still injured by the remaining men under Zhao Nanyu’s command.
At this time, Zhao Nanyu still had dozens of men under his command. While they were fighting with the men Hu Sheng had brought, they were also trying to get closer to Zhao Nanyu. However, although Hu Sheng couldn’t kill Zhao Nanyu for the time being, no one could get close to him.
This time, Hu Sheng was not in a hurry to kill Zhao Nanyu. Instead, he attacked the people next to him. Zhao Nanyu saw this and was anxious. He knew that if all his men were killed, he would be a turtle in a jar, with no possibility of escape.
Just as Hu Sheng turned to cut off the head of a personal guard with a blood-covered face, Zhao Nanyu could no longer hold back. He threw down the man in his hand and, ignoring the wound on his leg, pushed off with both legs and flew up, slashing down at Hu Sheng’s head.
But he didn’t expect that this was a deliberate opening that Hu Sheng had sold him. If Zhao Nanyu’s mind were still clear, he would never have fallen for it. But his heart was already in chaos. When he attacked Hu Sheng, he left himself wide open, giving up all possibility of evasion and blocking. Hu Sheng turned his head and threw the saber in his hand, easily piercing through Zhao Nanyu’s body.
The flying saber carried Zhao Nanyu’s body backward. His eyes were wide open, but he was no longer breathing. He had died with extreme unwillingness.
“Zhao Nanyu is dead! Surrender and you won’t be killed!” The middle-aged man with the goatee, Li Dake, who was being protected by several people in the back, immediately shouted upon seeing this scene.
A ke later, from the direction Hu Sheng and his men had come, another thousand or so people ran over. Many of them were skin and bones. Judging by their attire, they should be Miao people. A slightly more robust middle-aged man walked to the front, knelt down and kowtowed to Hu Sheng upon seeing him. “Thank you, General Hu, for helping me avenge my father’s death. From now on, I will follow you through fire and water without hesitation.”
“Get up first. Have your men take these bodies away.” Hu Sheng did not refuse Ma Chuan’s allegiance. He helped the man up and then continued to instruct, “Send a few trustworthy men out to gather the scattered Miao people as much as possible. I will take you to a safe place.”
Hearing that there was a place to settle, Ma Chuan was naturally even happier. He quickly had his men collect the bodies. Seeing the horses that had been killed by the explosion, he began to drool.
Hu Sheng, seeing these busy people, also felt a sense of unexpected joy. He had not expected to encounter these rebellious Miao people on his way to ambush Zhao Nanyu.
But it was also to be expected. Zhao Nanyu had been pursuing the Miao people in the first place. He had even deliberately herded them together, not letting them scatter too far. As long as these people passed through a city, he could enter the city and collect a tax.
Hu Sheng had his men clean up the bodies on the scene as much as possible. Although it was inevitable that traces of the fight would be left, by the time the government officials remembered to investigate, they would only get the news that Zhao Nanyu and his troops had mysteriously disappeared, not that several hundred government soldiers had been killed.
The government would sometimes create something out of nothing to make money, but when they sensed danger, they would rather pretend to be turtles in their shells. Hu Sheng had also been part of this system, which was why he dared to openly intercept and kill Zhao Nanyu.
And because Hu Sheng had taken in a large number of Miao people, when everyone in Changxi County learned of the military conflict, apart from the skyrocketing prices in the city for the first two days, on the third day, when the yamen runners led by Feng Shaoping captured two Miao people during their patrol, there was no major chaos.
Zhao An’s mood was already good upon hearing that Hu Sheng was safe and would be back soon. He was even happier when the kiln fired six more sets of bathing pipes for him. Although the shops in the market were all closed now, he felt that life should soon return to normal.
A competition had just been held, and the mouth-watering pig and those chickens had all been distributed to the trained militia. The villagers’ training had become a bit slack.
But unexpectedly, when Feng Shaoping and the yamen runners were galloping on the official road and passed by Zhaojia Village, he called out to a few children playing by the roadside, “Go back and tell Young Master Zhao that the Wang family of the neighboring Wangjia Village, including Scholar Wang, has been massacred. More than half of the people in the village are also dead. Tell him to be careful.”
Hearing this news, the heart that Zhao An had halfway put down immediately leaped into his throat.
How could he have forgotten? When he had first asked the villagers to start training, it was not because of the military conflict at all, but because of the famine that the drought would cause. Now, because the military conflict was not as serious as he had imagined, his act of letting down his guard was really too foolish.
However, now was not the time for self-blame. Seeing that even Scholar Zhao had come to find him, Zhao An could only put aside his previous grievances and say to him, “Have each Zhao household send one person to participate in the training. From now on, we will arrange for twenty people every night, divided into two shifts, to patrol the entire village.”
