Near dusk, the carriage of the Twin Xies and Lei Buji left Liu Village again and headed east.
Though they had explained to the villagers that they were not the scammers, and the villagers seemed to have believed them, the earlier incident had left a sour taste. There was no way anyone could make them stay overnight at the village inn now.
After all, there were only three of them, while the number of villagers who had been cheated was no less than a few dozen—if not a hundred. Who could say whether some stubborn villagers might sneak over at night to launch a sneak attack or stir up trouble?
In short, as long as they remained in the village, the three of them could not possibly sleep soundly.
So the three of them simply asked the innkeeper and the villagers for information about the two scammers from before. Then, using the excuse that they “had to pursue the scammers at once,” they turned around and set out once more.
It was not too late yet, either. If they left now and drove fast along the main road, they should be able to reach the next post station not long after dark.
Their carriage went east all the way, traveling until the sun set and dusk gathered on all sides. By then, even the horse had slowed of its own accord.
As the sky darkened, Lei Buji hung a lantern from the front of the carriage and held it up with a pole as they continued on their way.
After traveling by lantern light for about another half a shichen, they finally reached the post station.
Fortunately, the post station was not doing much business today, and many rooms were still empty. Once the three of them had gotten the gate open and asked for three rooms, the attendant’s attitude became warm enough.
The attendant ushered them inside and closed the door again. The teapot had not even been brought over yet when Lei Buji’s stomach began to rumble.
Lei Buji had had a hard day too. He had been driving the carriage all day and had not stopped for a proper meal, only gnawing on some dry rations with his two older brothers. Now that he had sat down, he naturally hoped for something hot—preferably something with a bit of soup or broth.
The attendant had a good eye. When he brought the tea, he looked the three over and asked, “Gentlemen, the cook here stays up late... Would you three like...”
Sun Yixie knew how to handle such situations. Before the man could finish, he had already taken out some silver and pressed it into his hand. “Waiter, you see what you can arrange. If there’s anything left over from this, keep it—consider it a drink on us.”
The attendant glanced at the amount of silver in his palm and immediately beamed. “Eh, eh! Right away, gentlemen! You wait here—I’ll go tell the kitchen to prepare food and wine!” With that, he ran off toward the back kitchen as if flying.
Once the man was gone, Huang Donglai suddenly smiled. “Brother Sun, why are you being so generous today? This isn’t like you.”
“Heh...” Sun Yixie said. “You’re asking a question you already know the answer to.”
Lei Buji did not have as good a rapport with them, nor was he clever enough to guess what they were talking about, so he asked, “Brother, what are you two talking about?”
“Ah, don’t be impatient. You’ll know soon enough.” Sun Yixie kept him in suspense.
A short while later, when the attendant began bringing their dishes, Lei Buji understood. The silver truly had not been spent for nothing.
Before Lei Buji could even pick up his chopsticks, Sun Yixie stopped the attendant and began asking about the two scammers.
Do not think him merely a waiter. A servant of an official post station was not the same as a waiter at an ordinary private inn; he had an official position and, strictly speaking, fell under the army’s jurisdiction. People like him hated nothing more than so-called jianghu bigshots putting on airs in front of them—what jianghu figures? In their eyes, were they not just commoners? What were they being so arrogant about? If anyone dared put on a show or cause trouble here, it would take mere minutes for soldiers to come and wipe them out.
So Sun Yixie, being a “commoner,” was quite tactful and simply used silver to open the way.
There are few in this world who can bring themselves to turn their backs on silver.
As the saying goes, the hand that takes a man’s silver is bound to oblige him. The attendant had received these “tips,” so answering a few questions was not asking too much, was it?
Thus Sun Yixie struck while the iron was hot and asked everything he wanted to ask until it was perfectly clear. Unfortunately... after asking around for a while, he had gathered quite a bit of useful information, but regarding the whereabouts of those two scammers, the attendant truly did not know.
Clearly, the fake Sun Yixie and fake Huang Donglai had not stopped at this post station before.
That made sense. This post station was too close to Liu Village. The two scammers had fled overnight; they would not have stopped after escaping only a countryside li or two. At the very least, they would have reached the next large county town and blended into the city before feeling even slightly at ease. A county town had many people, and it was easier to dispose of stolen goods there. Unlike this post station, which had only a handful of people from top to bottom, if two men carrying a large amount of gold, silver, and valuables knocked on the door and checked in at midnight, even if no one reported them to the authorities, the attendant would certainly remember them.
Having learned nothing about the scammers, Sun Yixie and the others could only let it go. The three ate their fill and drank their fill, then returned to their rooms to sleep. Early the next morning, they still had to continue on their way in pursuit of those two.
Some readers may ask at this point: how did they know to chase eastward?
Here the book explains: this was not something the villagers told them, but something Huang Donglai had deduced earlier through investigation.
The villagers, after all, had limited abilities, but Huang Donglai was different. The moment he heard that the two scammers had left on horseback, his first thought was to inspect the stable. Sure enough... once he went there, he found two sets of marks clearly different from normal hoofprints.
Wrapping a horse’s hooves in cloth and making the horse walk slowly could indeed eliminate the sound of hoofbeats to a certain extent, but when both riders were carrying very heavy luggage, moving the horses like that would inevitably leave behind two rows of deep, irregular hoofprints. Huang Donglai... had followed those two sets of hoofprints and learned that the fake Twin Xies had fled from the east exit of the village.
Earlier, after they left Liu Village and were traveling along the main road, Huang Donglai had deliberately sat outside the carriage with Lei Buji for a while, following the two rows of abnormal hoofprints all the way. He wanted to confirm whether the two scammers had turned off the main road. As it turned out, shortly after leaving the village, he discovered that the two sets of hoofprints stopped at a certain spot, then became two rows of deeper and fresher hoofprints, gradually merging with the other normal hoofprints on the main road.
From this, it could be seen that the two fakes had untied the cloth from their horses’ hooves not long after leaving the village, then whipped their horses and headed east.
After exiting the east side of Liu Village, there were two choices. The first was to follow a small path and turn into a stretch of woods—yes, the woods where Sun and Huang had encountered the black inn. From there, one could pass through the woods and cross the water, go through another village, then follow the north bank of the Ying River for half a day to reach Zhoukou.
The second was to follow the official road. In terms of straight-line distance, it was somewhat farther than the first route, but the final destination was the same... Zhoukou.
Therefore, barring the unexpected, the two scammers’ next stop had to be Zhoukou.
According to the rules of jianghu scammers, after a successful job, they either went to dispose of the loot, split the spoils, rest for a while, and wait until the money was almost spent before preparing their next “business”; or they struck while the iron was hot, using the gold, silver, and valuables swindled from the previous job as capital for their next con, then pulled off an even bigger job.
Of course, this referred to the rules among gangs that ran large-scale fraud. There was another kind of racket that used women to swindle people, called “releasing the falcon” or “leaning in close”; its variant was what we know today as the honey-trap scam... With that kind, because it relied on “surprise attacks” and was half scam, half extortion, and half robbery, the amount of money obtained each time was quite limited. They did not follow those rules and usually swindled one victim before moving on to another place, going from one job to the next without stopping.
Back to the main story...
Early the next morning, Sun Yixie, Huang Donglai, and Lei Buji were all well rested, and the horse that pulled the carriage had eaten and drunk its fill. The party set out once more on their “pursuit of scammers.”
They were rather anxious about this matter. Although it currently seemed that the two impostors were only swindling people out of money and valuables, if they were left alone, there was no telling whether one day they might do something like seize men and women, murder travelers, or commit robbery. When that happened, it would all be laid at the feet of the Twin Xies, and how stifling would that be?
So that day their carriage traveled fairly quickly, covering dozens of li in only half a day.
Yet for all their speed, there was something faster still.
As noon approached, the official road suddenly burst into billowing dust and thundering hoofbeats... In the blink of an eye, a band of about fourteen or fifteen hard-riding men came galloping up from behind Sun Yixie and the others.
The man leading them was fair-faced, with a long beard, dressed in a dark blue robe and cloak, with a five-ring broadsword strapped to his back. The mounted men behind him were all burly, with fierce looks on their faces, and it was obvious at a glance that they were not good people.
While they were still some distance from Sun Yixie and the others, the fair-faced leader immediately spotted the trident behind the carriage.
When it came to Brother Sun’s signature weapon, it truly was “signature”—at least among the more famous figures in the jianghu at present, he was the only one who used it. So the moment people saw it, they thought of him. Earlier, in Liu Village, that inn waiter’s expression had changed precisely because he had glimpsed the trident behind the carriage...
There was no doubt that the two who had impersonated Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai had also made a fake of this weapon. In fact, one could say that the fake trident was the key prop they used to impersonate the Twin Xies.
“Ah!” The fair-faced man stared for a few seconds, confirmed that he had not misseen, immediately cried out in shock, and then roared, “You in front, don’t go! Stop right there!”
In truth, his shout was not audible at all.
Never mind that the open road made sound scatter easily; the chaotic hoofbeats on his side alone were enough to drown out the words he shouted.
Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai, up ahead, had only vaguely heard what seemed like someone shouting amid the hoofbeats behind them, but they had not caught a single word. Naturally, they paid no attention.
Seeing that his roar had been like no roar at all, the fair-faced man’s heart burned even hotter, as if oil had been poured on the fire. He immediately whipped his horse and led his brothers in fierce pursuit.
No matter how fast a carriage was, it could not outrun a horse. In less than a minute, the group caught up, stopped the carriage, and surrounded it.
Lei Buji took one look at the lot of them and thought: Fine, they’re definitely here to pick a fight again. Since we fought our way out of Luoyang, we’ve basically been stopped or surrounded every day. I’m almost used to it. Judging by the expression of the man leading them, his face pale but flushed red, he’s clearly burning with fury. Looks like this time I really will have a fight.
“You in the carriage, don’t make Grandpa get rough—roll out here yourself!” The fair-faced man was not polite either. Having stopped the carriage, he shouted loudly.
At his shout, Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai naturally could not keep huddling inside the carriage. After all, this was a carriage compartment, not the cabin of an armored car; staying inside would only be less safe...
“What are you doing? It’s broad daylight—are you trying to rob us?” Huang Donglai asked as soon as he got off.
“Rob?” The fair-faced man repeated the word through gritted teeth, then flipped his beard, swung down from his horse, and snorted coldly. “Hah! Who’s robbing whom?”
After dismounting, he stood there, and the three of them—Sun, Huang, and Lei—looked him up and down. They found that this man truly had an extraordinary appearance.
Apart from his heroic features and the long beard that passed his throat, the fair-faced man stood over seven chi tall, with a narrow waist and broad shoulders, built like a fan spread wide. Add to that the weapon on his back and the calluses on the web of his hand, and anyone could tell that he was a trained martial artist.
“Oh? You surround us like this—could it be that we’re robbing you?” Huang Donglai retorted.
“Don’t play dumb with me!” the fair-faced man shouted angrily. “Tell me—are you Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai?”
At that question, Sun and Huang exchanged a glance and understood... Most likely, the two impostors had stirred up trouble again, and it had come looking for them.
“Brother, you seem to be from the same circles as us. Before asking someone’s name, shouldn’t you first announce your own?” Sun Yixie took over the conversation at this point, testing him back with an affected tone.
The fair-faced man sneered and replied, “Good. Today I’ll let you die knowing why!” He paused, patted his chest, and said, “Far lands, perilous mountain roads; even eagles may fly, yet men can scarce follow... I am Mei Chiyang, the Five-Ring Blade of Eagle City, chief of Mei Family Stockade. Remember it well!”
His words contained more than a simple self-introduction. The first two lines were the cant of the Thirteen Paths, indicating that he belonged to the ‘Earth’ branch of the ‘Heaven-Earth-Dark-Yellow’ ranking, placing him among the second tier of forces on the land in the greenwood way.
Sun Yixie naturally understood this jianghu cant. He calmly replied, “Oh~ So it’s Chief Mei. I’ve long heard of you...” In truth, this was the first time he had heard of him, but that did not matter. “Since you are a hero of the greenwood way, not some wild bandit by the roadside, then this can be discussed...” He paused for half a second, then continued, “I am Sun Yixie, and these two are my brothers Huang Donglai and Lei Buji... I wonder why Chief Mei has blocked us with such force today. What is this about?”
“What is this about?” The corner of Mei Chiyang’s mouth twitched. “Heh... You’re still playing dumb at a time like this?”
Huang Donglai knew that even if Brother Sun replied a few more times now, what came back would most likely be circular talk, and there was no telling how long it would take before the other side got to the point.
So Huang Donglai simply cut in and made it plain: “Chief Mei, let me put it this way. Right now, we three are also chasing a pair of fake ‘Sun Yixie’ and ‘Huang Donglai.’ As far as we know, these two scammers have recently been impersonating us and swindling people everywhere. As for how many places they’ve been to and how many people they’ve cheated, we only know of Liu Family Village so far... My guess is that you’re also a victim, or you’ve come to stand up for the victims. So don’t bother bickering with us—just get to the point and don’t waste everyone’s time.”
Chapter 83