Sun Yixie's kung fu wasn't much, but his bearing had a jianghu big-brother swagger that seriously didn't match his age and strength.
With those brazen words, he cowed the two underlings on the spot.
Besides, this was an official road, and it wasn't dark yet—carts and horses could pass at any moment. The two mountain bandits, guilty as thieves, conferred and actually lost their nerve.
"Good… good one, Sun Yixie, we'll meet again! You'd better not regret it!" An underling was an underling—while spitting threats, he was already backing away, afraid that if provoked, the other side would chase them down.
No sooner had the words fallen than the two mountain bandits retreated into the woods, then turned and ran.
Seeing them leave, Sun Yixie breathed a sigh of relief, but he didn't immediately go to help the woman lying on the ground. He wasn't sure whether this scene with two men and one woman was an act put on for his benefit—what if it was a honey-trap scam or some fraud? The moment he drew near, she might pull out a poison needle or lime powder or something to hit him with, and he couldn't take that.
"Miss… are you all right?" Sun Yixie asked cautiously, standing more than a meter away.
"Th-thank you, young hero, for saving me." The woman had by now mostly caught her breath and slowly sat up from the ground.
Just then, Huang Donglai appeared from the woods on the other side of the main road, hurrying along.
He glanced left and right, quickly saw what was happening with Sun Yixie, and quickened his pace over, opening with: "Impressive, Brother Sun—I step away for five minutes to take a dump, and you can't hold back from abducting a civilian woman?"
"Get lost! I was doing a righteous deed!" Sun Yixie knew the other was joking, and replied with his nose in the air, "You have no idea how heroic I was just now—barely showed a hint of kingly overwhelm and scared off two burly bastards."
"What kingly overwhelm? I heard every word you shouted from far away." Huang Donglai had indeed heard them, first because Brother Sun shouted loudly with a shrill voice, and second because his own hearing was decent. "It's just that the other side was weak, so they got scared."
"Cut the crap," Sun Yixie said. "I was risking my life to cry out against injustice on this side while you were doing what?"
"Fine, fine, Brother Sun is awesome." Huang Donglai wasn't out of replies—he just noticed the young woman's gaze toward them growing increasingly strange, so he stopped his improv routine with Sun Yixie.
Since things had come to this, they naturally couldn't leave the woman alone and go after their carriage, so they simply helped her to sit on a rock by the roadside and asked about her ordeal.
It turned out she was indeed a country girl named Wang Shi, already a mother of two. Of course, in Da Ming, it was common for girls to marry at fifteen or sixteen, and having children in one's twenties was nothing unusual.
Nearby there was a village called Nanyuan Village, and Wang Shi was a villager there. The village lay in the mountains of Baiji Ridge, right at a borderland of multiple prefectures where no one had clear authority, so it often suffered mountain bandit raids.
And "Zouma Stronghold" was the most rampant mountain stronghold in this area.
The mountain bandits of Zouma Stronghold would come to harass Nanyuan Village every now and then, but these small-scale raids involved only a few people—usually five or six—and they could only carry off chickens, ducks, fish, meat, and old wine by hand; the villagers didn't dare offend the bandits, so they endured it.
But among the few bandits who came to harass the village today, two were especially lecherous—the very two Sun Yixie had scared off earlier. Earlier that day, after eating their fill of free food in the village, the two underlings were heading back to the stronghold when they happened to see Wang Shi at the village entrance. They lusted after her at first sight and wanted to abduct her to the stronghold.
Wang Shi was alert, though. Seeing the two men approach with lewd grins, she knew trouble was coming and turned to run. Mountain women were unlike city misses who never stepped beyond their gates: they didn't bind their feet, and they often helped with farm work, so they could run fast. Besides, Wang Shi knew the mountain paths well, so for a while the two bandits really couldn't catch her.
Wang Shi knew full well that if she fell into those lechers' hands, she was finished. She had made up her mind to dash her head against a tree if necessary, and with that resolve, she feared nothing. She stumbled along toward the official road, and finally, exhausted, escaped to the roadside—just in time to meet Sun Yixie.
"Young hero saved me; this common woman is endlessly grateful." Wang Shi said this with a sob in her voice, "But after this, I fear those mountain bandits won't let it rest—tonight at the earliest, or tomorrow at the latest, they'll gather men to come retaliate against the village, and my whole family will suffer… What am I to do?" As she spoke, tears fell.
Hearing this, Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai were both outraged, but outrage was one thing; they seemed able to do nothing.
Leaving aside that they were on a journey, even if they could spare a day or half a day for this meddling, the two of them certainly couldn't take on an entire stronghold of bandits head-on.
"Damn it, this is really troublesome," Sun Yixie said, cursing as he spoke. "Or else…" He thought for a moment. "Should we hurry back to Hangzhou Prefecture to report to the authorities? I can't speak for other places, but the Hangzhou prefect still owes the Sun family some face. Asking him to send troops to wipe out a mountain stronghold shouldn't be a problem."
"That might be too late," Huang Donglai, more thoughtful, said. "We've already come this far, and we have no horses. By the time we get back, it'll be dark, and the prefect is probably asleep—are you going to beat the drum for justice at midnight?" He paused. "Even stepping back, even if you really went to report at midnight and the prefect didn't dare offend you, by the time he dispatched troops it might be tomorrow night or the day after, and the bandits would have already taken their revenge and fled… Also, are you sure the prefect has authority to send people here? This place is so lawless precisely because it's at the border of multiple prefectures and counties, and no one wants to manage it."
Hearing this, Sun Yixie had to admit it was true. "So what do we do?" He scratched his head anxiously. "I just stepped into the jianghu, and dammit, I run into this kind of injustice right at my own doorstep, and I can't even handle it? How am I going to survive in the jianghu in the future?"
Huang Donglai thought for a moment. "Or… we could first take Miss Wang back to her village, assess the situation when we get there, and think of another plan on the way."
"I suppose that's all we can do," Sun Yixie sighed.
Wang Shi thanked the two young heroes profusely, rested a little, then set off with them weeping.
They traveled in silence, and after about an hour, they reached the entrance of Nanyuan Village.
Before they could even enter the village, a crowd of men, young and old, rushed out with pitchforks and clubs and surrounded them.
It turned out that after the two underlings were scared off by Sun Yixie, they were unwilling to let it go and returned to the village, telling the villagers: "Wang Shi hired a thug outside and actually declared she'd wipe out Zouma Stronghold. If this reaches the stronghold chief's ears, the old chief himself will surely lead men here to slaughter every man, woman, and child in this village. If you know what's good for you, tie up Wang Shi and that thug by this time tomorrow, along with money and grain as compensation, and deliver them to the village entrance. Otherwise, tomorrow will be the day your whole village dies."
After saying that, the two returned to the stronghold, and the moment they got back, they exaggerated today's events to the stronghold chief, saying plenty of bad things about Sun Yixie and the villagers. Mountain bandits had nothing much to do normally—their main job was robbing men, ravaging women, and plundering money and grain—so the chief naturally didn't mind leading a trip to the village tomorrow.
On the other side, the villagers were dumbfounded…
Some bolder villagers even quietly suggested capturing the two bandits and silencing them, but others talked them out of it, because the result would be the same: Zouma Stronghold would see their men missing from the village and come demanding answers, making things even worse.
So after the two bandits left, the villagers gathered for an emergency discussion and decided to wait until Wang Shi returned, learn the full story, and then decide what to do.
That was how things had come to this standoff.
Of course, the villagers weren't unreasonable. After Wang Shi explained what had happened, they let down their guard.
After all, Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai were doing a righteous deed. Even if the villagers weren't grateful, they wouldn't be so shameless as to want to harm them. Furthermore, the fear and hatred that Zouma Stronghold's bandits had long inflicted on the villagers had accumulated over time, and indeed many in the village were already resolved to fight to the death against Zouma Stronghold.
After briefly exchanging with the villagers and learning more, Huang Donglai quickly came up with an idea.
He pulled Sun Yixie aside and whispered, "Brother Sun, I have a plan."
"Oh? Let's hear it," Sun Yixie said.
"You know I use poison, right?" Huang Donglai asked.
"Of course I know," Sun Yixie said. "But the villagers say Zouma Stronghold has over fifty bandits. The poison you have on you probably isn't enough to kill them all, right?"
"You're overthinking it, Brother Sun," Huang Donglai said. "The poison and antidote I carry are premium stuff, with expensive ingredients. I keep them for self-defense in critical moments. Never mind that I don't carry much—even if I carried a lot, I couldn't use it for an area attack on the bandits."
"So why tell me about poison?" Sun Yixie said.
"I can use the materials already at the village pharmacy to make cheap poison in bulk, and use it for traps and ambushes," Huang Donglai said.
"Oh?" Sun Yixie suddenly understood. "Great, so they'd be wiped out before even entering the village? Hahaha!"
"Don't get too excited yet," Huang Donglai said. "I just talked to the pharmacy owner. A small village pharmacy doesn't have many types or quantities of herbs, so it can't make the kind of poison that kills just by being sprinkled in the air. Besides, it's uncertain how much of a trap poison they'd even inhale. So at best, traps would weaken their strength; killing them all with poison is impossible."
"So how useful would that be?" Sun Yixie asked again.
Huang Donglai thought for a moment and replied, "I asked around. Apart from the stronghold chief, the bandits' martial arts are mediocre. They're basically small fry with no internal force who know a few moves…"
"Wait… what do you mean by 'also'?" Sun Yixie interrupted.
"Come on, don't worry about such details." Huang Donglai waved his hand impatiently, signaling Brother Sun not to interrupt, and continued, "Based on my experience, these small fry, holding knives and swords one-on-one, would have about a seventy percent chance against a farmer holding farm tools… This village has over a hundred people. Minus the old, weak, women, and children, the able-bodied men should number around forty. If they fight to the death, they won't be so easy to exterminate.
"Zouma Stronghold certainly knows this, so I estimate they won't send few people tomorrow—at least forty, to have enough deterrence and strength.
"But they won't expect to run into my poison traps on the way. By then, at least twenty-something of them will be poisoned… Those poisoned small fry won't be able to swing a knife, much less stand steady. Any grown man could knock them down."
Sun Yixie understood at this point. "Oh, so when they come tomorrow, you handle the stronghold chief, and I'll lead a bunch of able-bodied men in a swarm. We can at least fight them."
"You're right," Huang Donglai said. "What do you think? Is my plan any good?"
"Good, good. Brother Huang has something going for him," Sun Yixie said, laying on the praise at the right moment.
"Hmm, if you think there are no problems or flaws, I'll go tell them," Huang Donglai said.
"Hold on…" At this moment, Sun Yixie seemed to suddenly think of something. "Your plan is good, but I think there's room for improvement on this basis."
"Oh?" Huang Donglai asked curiously. "What good idea did you come up with?"
Sun Yixie's small eyes twinkled, and he revealed a lewd smile. "Hoh… I have a plan—swap families."',
Chapter 8