Chapter 32: A Narrow Encounter
The congee, cooked with eggs stir-fried in lard, soon wafted its fragrance. The ten people who had participated in the battle were the first to receive a share of the egg congee, followed by the twenty-odd people who had chased after the bandits.
Even though Zhao An had eaten his fill tonight and hadn’t participated in the battle, the adrenaline rush from learning of the bandit attack had consumed a lot of his energy, so he also got a bowl of egg congee to drink.
By the time all the villagers who had followed them to the training ground had drunk their congee, half of the dozen or so injured bandits had already died.
Zhao An took the not-so-round bowl, a product of the Zhaojia Village brick and tile kiln, to the shed set up as a kitchen next to the training ground. A diligent woman was already washing the bowls.
“Have you eaten?” Zhao An asked, looking at the clean large pots and addressing the woman in charge, Auntie Hu.
Auntie Hu smiled and nodded. “We’ve eaten, we’ve eaten. How could we who cook let ourselves go hungry?” Her square face softened a lot when she smiled.
This woman was the daughter of the old hunter in the village, Liu Laohu. She had once set traps with her father and killed a tiger, so she had changed her name to Auntie Hu. Later, she brought a man who had been a soldier back home. He was now one of the two hunters in the village, skilled in archery, and was the one who had shot arrows at the wolf from Zhao An’s wall.
When the villagers brought in a son-in-law, it just meant he would come and live with the family. There was no property to inherit, nor was there the issue of changing surnames. The main reason was to avoid leaving a record in the government archives, as that would be a great disadvantage during conscription for labor and military service.
Zhao An had first noticed her because she was the strongest of the dozen or so women who came to work at the brick and tile kiln. When she rolled up her sleeves, she actually had muscles on her arms. This was also because she and her husband went up the mountain to hunt with bows and traps, but only had to pay the fur tax for one person, and they could often eat meat and supplement their protein.
She had previously been in charge of making greenware at the brick and tile kiln and was very efficient. She was also very lucky to have drawn the bricks and tiles. She had hired more than twenty households in the village to build her house, and it only took less than eight days to erect a new brick and tile house. Her whole family had long since moved in.
Later, when they needed to provide food for those participating in the training, the two women who had originally cooked for his kiln workers couldn’t keep up. Zhao An had hired three more people, including Auntie Hu. She was a master at stir-frying in a large wok. Mainly because she was strong enough and could stir-fry quickly, the dishes she made were more delicious than others’.
So she quickly became the leader of these few kitchen helpers, earning three strings of cash a month. Sometimes, when the men were practicing the Mandarin Duck Blade formation on the training ground, she would also stand by and watch, looking like she really wanted to try it herself.
In fact, Zhao An had also considered whether to include some women when training the militia. In his memory, some female warriors were also very formidable. But he quickly realized the inappropriateness of it. During the great cataclysm at the beginning of the spiritual energy revival, for various reasons, the mortality rate of women was almost four to five times that of men. It was only later, when everyone had various abilities, that the situation eased, and there were female warriors.
In this world with martial arts, there were also female heroes in the storybooks. But for ordinary women, their strength was ultimately weaker than men’s. It was definitely not feasible to have them train together.
However, there were only a few hundred people in the entire village. With more than a hundred people already drawn for training, the remaining women had already taken on heavier labor. It was no longer feasible to specially select a group of women to participate in the training. So they could only wait until after the autumn harvest to organize a village-wide military training activity for all ages. This way, not only women but also children could receive basic training.
If Zhao An had been afraid that this proposal might cause dissatisfaction among the villagers before, after tonight’s bandit incident, he believed that no one would refuse anymore.
Zhao An came out of the kitchen shed and ran into Liu Huan and Scholar Zhao. The two of them were together, clearly having come to find him specifically.
Although one of them had a panicked expression and the other an excited one, they said in unison, “Should we send someone to report to the authorities?”
The two of them naturally looked at each other because of their tacit understanding, then turned their faces away in disgust. Scholar Zhao felt that Liu Huan was an ignorant country bumpkin, and Liu Huan felt that Scholar Zhao’s grandson was about to get married, yet he was still fantasizing about passing the imperial examinations, a complete idiot. The two had long disliked each other. Now, forced to walk the same path, they were mutually repulsed.
Zhao An had long known about the conflict between the two, but now was not the time to consider such trivial matters. He nodded. “We do need to report to the authorities, but let’s go find Young Master Feng first and have him take people to the yamen.” He also knew that the current yamen was not easy to enter. To see the county magistrate directly, unless you beat the complaint drum, you would have to take a beating on the buttocks. Otherwise, you would have to pay money to have the yamen runners and clerks pass on the message layer by layer. This was their legal gray income, legal and gray at the same time.
“The Eldest Young Master is right. It’s good to have connections in the court,” Liu Huan agreed with Zhao An’s point of view and was about to call Liu Hu, who had been following Zhao An, to go find Feng Shaoping.
At this time, Scholar Zhao finally caught Liu Huan’s slip. He said with a sneer, “It’s the middle of the night. It wouldn’t be good to disturb Young Master Feng’s sleep. Let’s go first thing in the morning.”
A small inland city like Changxi County had no city walls, let alone a curfew. It wasn’t impossible to go find Feng Shaoping now, but Zhao An still took Scholar Zhao’s advice to find him in the morning.
In that case, they couldn’t just leave the injured bandits. Zhao An thought for a moment and said to Liu Huan, “Get some pot soot to stop the bleeding for those people. We can’t let them die now.”
If there were no survivors, although the whole village wouldn’t be convicted, it would be a bit hard to explain. As for whether using pot soot to stop the bleeding would cause infection, that was not a problem Zhao An needed to consider.
Fortunately, Zhao An didn’t rush to send someone to the city to find Feng Shaoping, because he would have only found an empty place if he had gone at that time.
At this time, Feng Shaoping had taken the dozen or so trusted subordinates that Hu Sheng had left in Changxi County and was transporting ten carts of grain into the mountains with wheelbarrows, intending to welcome Hu Sheng, who was returning with several thousand people.
The people from Banpo Village, who had fled into the forest and found their hidden old and weak, saw Feng Shaoping and his men with torches from a distance.
This group of bandits, who had just lost more than a dozen lives in Zhaojia Village, were also a little scared. But after sending someone skilled in tracking to investigate, the news they got was that the other side only had a dozen or so people. Although they were armed, their skin was fair and tender, and they looked like young masters from the city.
With the temptation of ten carts of grain and the enemy looking weak, the people of Banpo Village once again had evil intentions. Their entire village was mobilized, with two hundred able-bodied men. Even if it was twenty against one, how could they possibly fail?
The people of Banpo Village, who had not learned their lesson from one failure, rushed towards Feng Shaoping and his men like a pack of wolves. They needed a victory to erase the blow they had received in Zhaojia Village. Only then could they consider either leaving first or regrouping to retaliate against Zhaojia Village.
But when they rushed into the firelight, they saw another group of countless black figures standing like ghosts, and more than a hundred men in full armor, dressed as soldiers, charging towards them.
Hu Sheng had returned with his men. This group of bandits, formed from villagers, naturally had no strength to fight. Without even suffering too many casualties, this group of people became Hu Sheng’s captives and would, along with the soldiers he had captured, become the main labor force for expanding Daqing Stronghold.
