A Foothold

With winter fast approaching, Liu Ren Gong and his Liu kinsmen finally departed from the camp. Truth be told, it was a distressing sight. Even though Liu Cheng and Liu Huzi had previously used both carrot and stick to urge many people to leave, the scene remained harrowing. Women and children wept everywhere, and numerous small families and dependents simply refused to listen, insisting on following Liu Ren Gong and his entourage. No amount of explanation helped. Telling them that no food or shelter had been prepared for them over there, and that they would likely be driven away by the authorities or garrison troops, was utterly useless. They insisted on trailing after Liu Ren Gong; they could not fathom how they could survive without their refugee commander. Liu Ren Gong, who naturally cared for his dignity, dared not even ride his horse. He merely kept his head low amid the crowd, using the people flanking him to shield his face as he walked out. Nor were his Liu kinsmen cheered by the fact that their households were about to be saved; instead, every one of them looked despondent, as if this journey were merely a continuation of their flight rather than setting off to gain a foothold in a new home. Under these circumstances, Liu Huzi could only let them follow, not daring to use force to bar them. Liu Cheng did not stop them either. This was not because he wanted to see them suffer. Quite the contrary—he fully understood their distrust of him and their reliance on Liu Ren Gong. Moreover, in his view, Jiangsheng was, after all, along the Jingkou Road and adjacent to Jiankang, practically a small city in its own right. And a city, no matter how small, possessed an ability to absorb scattered populations that far exceeded that of an open wilderness like this camp. If these people truly reached Jiangsheng, even without direct relief, they would still find many chances of survival, which might not be worse than staying behind in the camp. The only problem was that the dying Grand Commander had brought tens of thousands of refugees back from the Huai region this time, a great portion of whom were unorganized, scattered migrants. Now congregated around the Jingkou area, they would naturally drift along the Jingkou Road and the Grand Canal, meaning that those who tagged along would face fierce competition just to stay alive. After a turmoil that dragged on until noon, the departing crowd was finally gone. Thereupon, Liu Cheng and Liu Jili set to work—namely, reorganizing the mess units. A mess unit was the most basic and vital cell of any refugee collective. Banding together, they ate from one pot, slept beside one campfire, worked alongside one another, and entrusted their children to each other's care; its importance could not be overstated. Nor could the makeup of a mess unit be assembled haphazardly. The fair distribution of supplies required keeping headcounts as balanced as possible. Yet they could not rigidly imitate the military squad-and-platoon system of fives and tens either; they had to preserve family integrity and the cohesion of clans and neighbors, and ensure that women and children were cared for. They could neither dump the women and children together to fend for themselves, nor blindly cram them into random groups. At the same time, they had to consider establishing specialized units, such as a straw-sandal unit, a tiger-hunting squad, a laundry unit, or even a childcare unit dedicated to looking after young children. Fortunately, Liu Ren Gong's camp had previously been well organized and left behind a sound framework, making the cobbling together manageable. Fewer than a thousand people remained. Roughly divided into small mess units of ten and large ones of twenty, they amounted to some sixty or seventy units. Liu Cheng had already begun making deliberate adjustments a few days earlier when large numbers started leaving, so this ought to have concluded quickly. In reality, even such a straightforward matter ran into endless hitches: this person refused to eat from the same cauldron as that one, while that one complained that this unit had too many children. By the time the reorganization was finished, dusk had already fallen. Yet the work was not done. The camp had originally been built for three thousand people; with fewer than a thousand remaining, the shelters and campfires had to be rearranged. By that point, however, the two Lius were utterly exhausted. There was no time left for a proper division, so they simply allowed the refugees to pick whatever vacant spots they wished nearby, forbidding any brawling. Then the pair returned to the somewhat desolate central campfire. There was a mess unit here as well; as agreed beforehand, the two of them belonged to this unit, and food had already been set aside for them. Lifting his earthenware bowl, Liu Jili gulped down the porridge in a few mouthfuls. With a grim expression, he held the empty bowl and could not help grumbling, "We have far too few laborers. When there were nearly three thousand people, averaged out, every ten people had three or four male laborers and four or five female laborers—a total of seven or eight workers. Now, looking at the numbers, out of eight or nine hundred people, only three to four hundred count as laborers..." Hearing the specific figures, Liu Cheng, also bowl in hand, was visibly startled—not by the current proportion of laborers, but by what it had been before. "Were there really that many laborers before?" "Didn't you know?" Liu Jili was completely exasperated. "If your group hadn't had ample laborers, how could you have reached Jingkou so quickly, or built the shelters and gathered firewood so effortlessly?" Liu Cheng was about to speak, but a sudden jolt went through his mind. Unbidden, words spoken by a certain person surfaced, freezing him in place on the spot. Back then in the Huai region, Brother Qi, who was leading a sheep to join the Way of the Five Pecks of Rice, had sprawled over his sheep while being robbed, turning his head to tell Liu Cheng that his father had said he was the last person left in the family. At the time, those words had seemed muddled and nonsensical. But Brother Qi was never articulate to begin with, and having been robbed and beaten that day, Liu Cheng had paid little mind to his disjointed speech—besides, all Liu Cheng had cared about then was dispatching the attackers quickly, so he had not thought deeply about it. Yet now, piecing it together with Liu Jili's remark, Liu Cheng suddenly realized the truth: Why had Brother Qi's father been able to give parting instructions, yet insist that Brother Qi was the only one left in the Qi family? Why had he insisted that Brother Qi get married? Why had Old Qi never been seen along the road? And why had Brother Qi fallen so quickly for the grassroots insurance doctrine of the Way of the Five Pecks of Rice? It was because when the time came to flee, Old Qi, unwilling to burden his son, had chosen of his own accord to stay behind in their Huai homeland among the harvested fields of green stubble. It was precisely for reasons like this that the proportion of able-bodied laborers in the refugee column had been abnormally high before: only those backed by strong clans, neighbors, and kin had possessed the luxury to bring the elderly, weak, women, and children south with them. As for the consequences of insisting on bringing the frail and dependent on the road—bluntly put, without the straw-sandal unit that came later, Old Wang's family of four would have perished along the way. How absurd that, having plunged straight into the refugee column from the start, he had suffered from a blind spot under his own nose and failed to grasp this reality. "I actually accounted for this," Liu Cheng said, snapping back to reality and gulping down the last mouthful of porridge. His tone turned markedly calmer. "Don't forget, by our earlier deduction, plenty of laborers who left will probably have no choice but to return... When that happens, the proportion of laborers should still top fifty percent." Though Liu Jili noticed his momentary daze, he remained troubled by the present reality. "If so, our headcount might exceed a thousand again." "Did you expect them to leave us with exactly one thousand able-bodied youths, not one more, not one less?" Liu Cheng had regained his usual nonchalant tone. "If that were really the case, wouldn't it be better if we launched a night raid on that fortified manor of the Way of the Five Pecks of Rice and claimed it for ourselves?" "You think a thousand men can take that manor?" Liu Jili said, utterly speechless. "Let me tell you, never mind an outfit as tough as the Way of the Five Pecks of Rice—from Jiankang to Sanwu, every single fortified manor around here is something a thousand men wouldn't dare touch. Which of them hasn't learned bitter lessons from the Rebellions of Wang Dun and Su Jun? If you ask me, if we're really going to turn bandit or become mountain kings, we'd be better off heading to Kuaiji. Over there, the estates belong to famed gentlemen who crossed the river later. They have no defenses and wealth in abundance. If we could actually take one, three thousand people wouldn't have to worry about winter." With that, Liu Jili laughed at his own words, and Liu Cheng chuckled too. Both recognized their mutual tension and the helplessness of being pushed to such straits. Having finished eating, perhaps truly worn out, the two returned to their shelter by the straw stack before the sky had completely darkened. Winter nights fell quickly. Before long, dusk enveloped the entire camp. With more than half the campfires gone, the shadows cast by shelters and woodpiles stretched long, plunging the grounds into unusual dimness. What made it worse was that women and children, seeing no future and having no idea what to do, began weeping again. Blended with the light night breeze of late autumn and early winter, their sobs soon carried across the whole camp. Listening to these sounds and watching the flickering shadows, Liu Cheng could not help feeling a pang of sentiment. Although shouldering this responsibility was meant as a career pivot and venture capital, the trouble was that anything involving people brought complications. Human beings were not made of wood and stone; once a sense of responsibility and conscience truly took root, would he end up doing something foolish when the time came that he had to let go? Thinking of this, he began to somewhat believe the rumors: perhaps the Grand Commander truly had been driven to the brink of death by the weeping families of soldiers at the foot of Mount Beigu... Who was to say a timid imperial in-law couldn't possess some conscience and sense of duty at the same time? Judgments hidden beneath a calm surface, wasn't it? In truth, Liu Cheng could hardly be blamed for letting his mind wander; the atmosphere of the camp was just that somber, the long night was grueling, and he had no one to chat with. After an unknown stretch of time, he finally detected something unusual—the weeping near the valley mouth abruptly diminished. It was not a gradual fading, but a sudden, stepped drop into silence. Soon after, moving further inward before even reaching the core ring, a disturbance broke out near one of the midway campfires, accompanied by muffled cursing, making Liu Cheng shake his head in mild exasperation. Then, likely because they had already stirred up noise, the intruders stopped concealing their movements. Darting past the campfires, they rushed straight toward Liu Cheng's shelter. Judging by their motions, someone among them was intimately familiar with the camp's layout—fences, ditches, shelters, woodpiles, and fires were all second nature to him. He turned and leaped where needed, leading those behind without the slightest hesitation. Yet, once they reached the large central campfire, their pace visibly slowed. At the path leading to Liu Cheng's shelter, they hesitated, breaking into hushed arguments and even shoving one another. It seemed someone had gotten cold feet. Under these circumstances, a few bare-chested men actually turned around to warm themselves by the fire. At this, Liu Cheng, hiding behind a woodpile beside the campfire, could hardly watch any longer. He was on the verge of stepping out with his spanned crossbow and closing in behind them... He genuinely feared that if this continued, this mob—at least half of them bare-chested, mostly armed with wooden clubs, a few lacking even a decent stick, and carrying maybe two or three sabers at most—would turn tail and flee! At the thought that he had laid this trap days in advance, deliberately exposing so many vulnerabilities only to cast pearls before swine—and worst of all, that to lure these dregs in, he had delayed forming the camp management team, shivering in the wind all evening listening to weeping—he felt an overwhelming helplessness. Fortunately, the shoving finally produced a consensus. The leaders, evidently worried that delay would invite trouble, gritted their teeth, raised their sabers, and surged down the path. But moments after they entered, torches flared brilliantly inside, followed by a chorus of shouts: "Catch the thieves!" Evidently, Liu Huzi and his men, who had slipped back under cover of night to lie in wait, had also grown impatient; they immediately lit their torches and charged into the fray. The moment fire blazed and battle cries erupted, those trailing behind could not see what was happening inside, but far from charging forward or even providing backup, they broke into a chaotic rout, spinning around to flee back the way they had come. Yet just as they scrambled back to the campfire, they saw their bare-chested comrades who had stayed by the flames now squatting on the ground with hands clutching their heads. Across the campfire, a youth wearing a crimson headcloth, a winter green robe, and hemp sandals sat poised on a log, holding a crossbow leveled straight at the fleeing men. At least half of those who had turned and fled recognized this youth—the very target of their raid, said to be the camp's new chief steward, Liu Cheng. At this point, how could the thieves fail to realize they had walked into an ambush? "Nobody move! Anyone who thinks his hide is tougher than a tiger's is welcome to try!" Liu Cheng said coldly. "According to our camp rules, get over by the fire, hold your heads, and squat down!" The ones lagging behind and fleeing first had been the most timid to begin with. Faced with this, three or four immediately dropped down, and seeing them, the rest quickly caught on and squatted as well. Within moments, seven or eight were squatting. Soon, Liu Huzi and a dozen-odd able-bodied Liu kinsmen drove out the remaining dozen or so, herding them—including three or four wounded—before the central campfire under watch. Only then did Liu Cheng lower his crossbow and listen to the surrounding commotion. Sure enough, Liu Jili was already executing the plan, soothing the camp dwellers along the route from the valley mouth. Liu Cheng rose, roused the people around the central fire, and sent these firsthand witnesses out to comfort the rest of the camp, telling them that all the thieves had been captured and they could sleep peacefully... Those who were bold enough could come to the central campfire to watch the culprits being dealt with, but no one was allowed to head toward the valley mouth or wander aimlessly. Returning after a round of arrangements, Liu Cheng noticed Liu Huzi frowning and offered some self-criticism first: "My plan was flawed. I should have left a few men here to assist my rear guard. They nearly scattered and got away." "Your plan was flawed, all right," Liu Huzi grumbled, clearly annoyed. "Not because you lacked more guards at your back, but because you thought too highly of these bastards... All your baiting and ambushing, what good was it against this lot? We would've been better off taking my advice and sweeping out proactively from the start; we might even have scavenged some food and weapons. You have no idea, A-Cheng—if you hadn't repeatedly told me not to strike until they stepped inside your shelter, I would've leaped out right then to ask them: 'Are you thieves or what? How do you even rob someone? Standing right outside the door, not going in and not backing off—are you visiting relatives and feeling shy?'" Liu Cheng was speechless, because he had wanted to ask the exact same thing—if nothing else, even if they weren't robbing, shouldn't those bare-chested fellows have rushed in to snatch back their clothes? Was Jiangnan's winter not cold enough yet, or had his leak not been conveyed properly? Still, this was no time to ridicule the thieves for their lack of professionalism. After a while, seeing that a sizable crowd had gathered to watch, and with Liu Jili arriving to confirm that no fires had been set to the woodpiles and no unrest remained in the camp, Liu Cheng cleared his throat. Holding his head high, he walked over, sat back down on the log, and bellowed: "Who is the ringleader? Step forward and speak!" Now, although all these bandits were byproducts of the deteriorating security as this year's refugees lost hope of surviving the winter, they were clearly divided into two factions. One wore coarse short tunics—outsiders who had drifted into the vicinity a dozen days earlier and reportedly carried out several robberies. The other consisted mostly of bare-chested men without tunics, the product of a crackdown Liu Cheng had specifically asked Liu Huzi to carry out so he could smoothly take over the camp. At his shout, a stir rippled through the bandits. The tunic-wearing outsiders exchanged glances with visible hesitation, but the bare-chested men were far more direct. Soon, at least four or five of them pointed toward a tall, bare-chested man. The man stood bewildered and dumbfounded. Shivering beside the fire, he pointed at himself, his face a mixture of utter confusion and panic: "A-Cheng, you know me, don't you? I did just as you said—gathered them together, brought that other bunch over, and told them you had silver and clothes here! How did I become the ringleader?" Liu Cheng and Liu Jili were stunned as well. This was none other than the confidant they had sent out to pass information and reel the bandits in—the very first person who had sought out Liu Cheng to pledge allegiance back when it was only a rumor. He was the man who had stripped himself stark naked during the robbery on the Huai River, a fellow named Liu Yehu, who, despite bearing the Liu surname, was merely a down-and-out commoner. Everyone usually just called him Big Liu. "Big Liu!" Liu Huzi, having had no part in the scheme, caught on a beat faster and burst into laughter. "Among bandits like these, you passed the word, gathered the men, liaised between both sides, and just now you were clearly the one leading the way! If you're not the ringleader, who is?" Liu Cheng recovered quickly and waved his hand. "Every bandit's savagery is forged through repeatedly killing and setting fires! Just because they're clumsy now, are we not going to treat them as thieves? In my view, Big Liu did splendidly. Those outsider bandits are the real problem. Which one is their leader? Big Liu, point him out!" Still flustered, Big Liu quickly pointed at a figure on the ground. "This is Long-Neck Wang, the leader of that bunch. He's from Pei State." The crowd looked over and instantly understood why he hadn't stepped forward earlier. The fellow was covered in blood, clutching his belly with his neck tucked in, groaning on the ground... A closer look showed he had taken a slash across the abdomen earlier. That saved some trouble. Indeed it did... According to the original plan, Liu Cheng had intended to execute someone to establish authority, so he could gather these down-and-out wretches into a basic workforce and fighting force. But recalling Brother Qi's father during dinner, and then witnessing the sheer ineptitude of these thieves firsthand, he had felt a twinge of pity. Since he had baited them into the trap himself, there was no absolute need to kill. Yet with this fellow already badly injured, even if spared, he likely wouldn't survive the winter. Now that things had reached this point, there was no reason to reveal such second thoughts. "Kill him," Liu Cheng said tersely, then glanced toward Liu Jili and Liu Huzi... not necessarily ordering either to do the deed, but because he was reluctant to waste a crossbow quarrel. Catching his drift, Liu Huzi was about to step forward with his saber, but Liu Jili beat him to it. Leveling his spear, he thrust directly at the thief's curled neck. The first thrust went wide, prompting a piercing shriek from the young bandit called Long-Neck Wang, which scared several children in nearby shelters into tears. Fortunately, the spear was clearly a military-grade weapon. After three to five more thrusts, Liu Jili finally put an end to him. "And now? What next?" Withdrawing his spear, Liu Jili gestured with his chin toward the trembling thieves on the ground. His meaning was clear: given how pitiful these men were, did they even need to go through the rest of the planned protocol to win them over? Just hand out the clothes and assign them work. Unexpectedly, Liu Cheng offered a surprising reply: "Hand out clothes first and assign them to mess units. But since we've killed a man, shouldn't we report this to the authorities?" *** In the past, when the gentry and commoners of Pengcheng were stranded in Jingkou, winter arrived. The authorities provided no relief, and the various members of the Liu lineage all departed. Yehu knew that Taizu had compassion for the lonely and widowed and would surely not leave, so he came by night asking to follow him. Taizu wondered at this and said, "The other day I gave you a bolt of cloth, quite enough to see you through the winter. Why must you follow me and suffer the cold?" Yehu replied, "Half a bolt became the clothes on my back; the other half was my fee for the widow in the next shelter. Having nothing left, it is only right that I follow you." Taizu asked again, "Do you not pine for the widow in the next shelter?" Yehu replied, "Having received my half-bolt of cloth and sought another half-bolt from someone else, the widow has already joined the Way of the Five Pecks of Rice and will pass the winter without worry." Taizu laughed and granted his request to follow. —*Shishuo Xinyu*, "The Bold and Untrammeled," Chapter Thirteen