Zouma Stronghold lay in the mountains of Baiji Ridge. Not deep mountains—just mountains.
Because mountains too deep were hard to travel on horseback or by cart, making it inconvenient for bandits to go out and rob or transport supplies, most strongholds actually would not choose such inaccessible places.
Zouma Stronghold was a standard small mountain stronghold, staking out its territory with a simple wall of stone and wood, gathering several dozen bandits inside to raid homes and plunder.
A mountain stronghold was naturally different from a regular village. They had no need for labor tools or production facilities. Simply put… the stronghold did not farm, produce, or engage in small trade; all they needed was a place to eat and sleep, plus space for horses, weapons, and a grain storehouse, so it did not occupy much land.
When supplies ran low, they went out to rob; when they lacked women, they went out to rob. Most women they dragged back were abused for a few days before dying, and some killed themselves the same day—all common occurrences. Anyway, they just tossed the bodies into the mountains, and wild beasts would pick them clean within half a day.
And Zouma Stronghold did not merely harass Nanyuan Village—after all, there were over fifty bandits in the stronghold, equivalent to over fifty do-nothing lords who only ate, drank, relieved themselves, and created no wealth. A small village like Nanyuan could not support them. In the Baiji Ridge area there were three other villages at varying distances, all frequently robbed and oppressed by them; it was just that Nanyuan Village, being closest, suffered the most.
There were many reasons why Zouma Stronghold was so rampant.
First, they deliberately chose a place where the authorities exercised no control to set up their stronghold—that was smart.
During the Yongtai reign, the imperial court might not be called extremely dark, but there certainly weren't that many officials who loved the people like their own children and hated evil like an enemy. In the bureaucracy, where "if a matter can be left alone, it absolutely will be left alone," few people would actively manage something not clearly within their jurisdiction… because if handled well, no one would thank you, but if botched, it would hurt one's career.
Second, whenever Zouma Stronghold went out to rob money, grain, and women, they observed a certain "measure." They knew exactly where the common people's bottom line was, because the vast majority of them had originally been local hoodlums and bullies from nearby villages. They understood that as long as you didn't kill or rob too much at once, and gave the common people time to recover after each raid, the villagers would not rebel.
Occasionally, one or two households would go to report to the authorities, but it would not cause any waves. Mountain villagers could not afford legal scribes, could not write petitions, and when they ran to the county office and beat the drum of grievances, whether they had a grievance or not, they would first receive forty lashes. Ordinary people would be beaten to death before even filing a complaint.
If they went further—abducting a family's wives and daughters, killing the husbands, elders, and children, wiping out the household—then even fewer people would dare to complain.
Could neighbors risk their lives to file a complaint for you? Impossible.
That was human nature: as long as they themselves were still alive, as long as the fire had not reached their own roof, they could endure some things.
So today, the people of Zouma Stronghold would not really exterminate every villager of Nanyuan—they did not dare. If they actually did that, the authorities would have to act even if they did not want to.
They only wanted to scare these villagers, and use yesterday's incident where Wang Shi was rescued by Sun Yixie as an excuse to rob more things and kill a few outspoken resistors, to "remind" these villagers and achieve the effect of killing the chicken to scare the monkey.
…
As agreed yesterday, as the hour of Wei was drawing to a close, Stronghold Chief Ma Si gathered his men and stood ready to depart.
From the preceding text, it is not hard to see that this Stronghold Chief Ma Si was something of a figure.
Though not exceptionally wise, he had some intelligence. Zouma Stronghold's ability to run rampant here for many years relied entirely on his planning; otherwise, with just that pack of hoodlums and scoundrels under him, they would have been wiped out long ago.
In martial arts, Ma Si also had some skill. In his teens, he had studied under "Hui Prefecture Hundred-Jin Blade Zhao Bozhao" for a full ten years, mastering Zhao Bozhao's true teachings. But his master never imagined that Ma Si was a beast in human form, had long lusted after the beauty of the Zhao family's daughter, and one night sneaked into the young lady's boudoir. When the rape failed, in anger and shame he killed her. Then, not stopping at one crime, he ambushed at night, slaughtered all eight members of his master's family, set a fire to destroy the evidence, bundled up the Zhao family's valuables, and fled overnight. After that, he committed many more crimes in various places until a few years ago, when he came to Baiji Ridge, raised a mountain, and became a mountain king.
The bandits of Zouma Stronghold, after joining, had all learned a move or two from Ma Si, so they basically all used sabers. Their combat ability… was about what Huang Donglai had estimated—not particularly strong, but certainly more formidable than completely untrained ordinary people.
And so, over forty bandits and twenty horses set off toward Nanyuan Village in a mighty procession.
Why wasn't everyone on horseback? Because giving every bandit a horse would cost too much… A horse trained to let you ride and slash was different from an ordinary riding horse, and saddles and hooves needed regular maintenance at nearby villages' leather and blacksmith shops—very troublesome. If you were bandits on the scale of Mount Liang, you might afford it, but a small stronghold having twenty or thirty horses was already good. Like in those TV dramas… over a hundred people in a stronghold, all charging out on horseback—that's utter nonsense. If you had that kind of professional operational capacity, you'd be better off switching to horse trading, which is more profitable than being a bandit.
Digressing again… let's get back to the subject.
At the hour of Shen, Ma Si led the cavalry to the village entrance first. He took one look and saw not a soul, not a wisp of cooking smoke in the village.
Seeing this abnormal scene, Ma Si naturally felt suspicious: "Hmm… are they playing the Empty Fort Strategy with me?"
Ma Si was no Sima Yi—he would not turn and flee just from overthinking. He just waited at the village entrance for a while. After the twenty-plus people on foot arrived behind him, he ordered five underlings to enter the village first to scout the road.
Those were five bandits, not a regular army. Bandits, when executing orders, had to assess the situation… They also understood that if there were any ambush in the village, they themselves would be cannon fodder, dying for nothing. So they scouted very cautiously, timid and hesitant, dragging their feet.
After about the time it took to burn an incense stick (about half an hour), those five guys were still loitering at the village entrance, having broken into and checked only a dozen or so houses total.
Ma Si, sitting on his horse, was getting weary. Finally he could not hold back: "That's enough! Stop searching! All of you, enter the village. Grab whatever you see! Whoever grabs the most gets the most!"
No sooner were these words out than everyone, especially the five who had entered the village first, was like they'd been injected with chicken blood, rushing into the village and beginning to plunder wildly.
This looting continued for quite some time. This gang had nearly emptied the village's stored grain and the valuables from the common people's homes. Of the twenty who had ridden in, apart from Stronghold Chief Ma Si, all had dismounted, because the backs of those nineteen horses were piled high with heavy goods… The faces of all the bandits showed satisfied smiles. Even the two underlings who had been scared off by Sun Yixie yesterday had forgotten their original purpose today.
Ma Si thought to himself: "Maybe the villagers have been scared silly and all ran into the mountains to hide to save their lives, thinking that since we robbed their grain and money, we wouldn't bother them anymore."
Having reached this conclusion, he no longer cared much about this "Empty Fort Strategy."
Unexpectedly, just at this moment…
"Stronghold—chief—!" A roar suddenly came from the road outside the village.
Soon after, a soot-stained bandit with ash marks all over his clothes came tumbling and crawling to Ma Si's side, crying with a choked voice: "Stronghold Chief! It's not good! Our… our stronghold has been taken! You'd better hurry back and take a look!"
"What?" Ma Si was shocked to hear this, then anger surged, and he bellowed: "What's going on?"
"Haah… haah…" The underling had run in a hurry. He took two heavy breaths, then said, "You… not long after you left, a man named Sun Yixie and one named Huang Donglai came to the stronghold gate, shouting that they wanted to take your dog's life… The brothers saw there were only two of them, so they opened the stronghold gate and came out, wanting to capture them and hand them over to you to be sliced by a thousand knives. Who knew these two had excellent martial arts, the brothers were no match for them, some dead, some injured. They also set fire inside the stronghold, and this humble one risked his life to escape and report to you…"
"Outrageous!" Ma Si did not wait for the underling to finish before roaring at the men around him: "You lot! Follow me back to the stronghold at once! Leave the goods on the horses for now, we'll collect them later!"
This time the bandits really did obey, because they were truly anxious… Their old home had been taken, how could they not be anxious? Not to mention their hidden valuables were gone—if the stronghold was burned down, where would they go?
So Ma Si took the lead, spurring his horse on at full gallop, flying back toward the stronghold.
And the remaining forty-plus bandits threw the things they had just robbed onto the horses' backs or onto the ground, and hurriedly began running back along the road.
The two places were neither close nor far. Ma Si had gone a short distance when he saw thick smoke rising in the sky ahead. Anger rose from his heart, and rage made him bold. He thought he absolutely could not let those surnamed Huang and surnamed Sun off.
However, when he rushed back to the stronghold, he discovered… this so-called "fire" was just a pile of firewood and straw, set up and burning in the middle of the stronghold. The stronghold wall and houses had not caught fire at all.
He walked closer and saw ten corpses lying haphazardly on the ground inside the stronghold gate—all his own men.
In that instant, a thought flashed through his mind: "I only left ten people in the stronghold. Then the one who just came to report… uh-oh!"
Ma Si knew he had fallen for a stratagem. He quickly turned his horse's head and galloped back toward Nanyuan Village again…
…
This "swap homes" stratagem today was devised jointly by Huang Donglai and Sun Yixie.
First, early this morning, while the bandits were still sleeping in, the villagers of Nanyuan Village had already collectively left the village.
The elderly, weak, women, and children, under the village head's organization, had hidden in the mountains. The remaining forty or fifty sturdy farm men carried the "poison bomb" and weapons prepared yesterday, following Sun and Huang toward the bandits' necessary route.
At the hour of Shen, when the two groups of bandits passed along the road one after another, the villagers hid in the forest and watched, staying put.
After those bandits had passed, Sun and Huang led more than ten relatively sturdy villagers and sneaked toward Zouma Stronghold.
With Huang Donglai's lightness skill, climbing the uneven stronghold wall of Zouma Stronghold was easy. And among the ten bandits guarding the stronghold, only two were on watch at the gate. Even if they saw Huang Donglai climb over the wall, they could not stop him.
After entering the stronghold, Huang Donglai knocked down four underlings with three punches and two kicks. The remaining six, seeing this, wisely knelt and surrendered. Then Huang Donglai ordered them to open the stronghold gate.
Sun Yixie and the dozen-plus villagers filed in. The villagers, full of hatred and grief, seeing the enemies kneeling and subdued on the ground, instantly rushed up like madmen and beat those bandits who had already thrown away their weapons to death with sticks.
Sun and Huang did not stop these villagers—they were never any saints, and they also knew they had no right to stop them.
After the villagers had vented their anger, Sun Yixie directed them to gather some firewood and straw from the stronghold (the bandits needed to light fires for cooking every day), start a fire, and create the illusion that "the stronghold was burned."
Meanwhile, Huang Donglai found a set of bandit clothes, and at the cooking stove used pot ash and charcoal to simply "apply some makeup" to himself. Then he immediately went to "report to the stronghold chief."
Not long after he left, Sun Yixie led the villagers out of the stronghold, returned to the previous ambush site, met up with the other villagers, and prepared for the next step…
They waited a while, and Ma Si arrived alone on horseback.
Sun Yixie was very patient. Seeing that only Ma Si was alone, he decided to let him pass first, then wait a bit longer and see.
After a while longer, they finally waited for those forty-plus bandits on foot. These people… by the time they arrived here, they had already seen the thick smoke in the sky. So they were all anxious and impatient, panting for breath. Moreover, because they had expended a lot of strength moving goods while robbing in the village earlier, they were now spent.
Sun Yixie saw the moment was ripe. With one order, the villagers hiding on both sides of the road suddenly rushed out, throwing dozens of "poison bombs" that Huang Donglai had taught them to prepare into the crowd.
Those bandits were focused on running forward and had no attention to spare for the sides. So they were startled by the men and horses suddenly rushing out from the woods. Many lost their footing themselves and fell to the ground, then tripped those behind them, trampling each other. In a blink, forty people were in utter chaos.
Meanwhile, the villagers all covered their faces with uniformly colored red cloth and threw poison powder packets—made from the backing paper of dog-skin plasters and fine string, wrapped with "Huang family's secret formula"--into the midst of the bandits. For a time, coughing and screams rose without cease. Some bandits inhaled the poison powder and collapsed on the spot. Some had their eyes blinded by poison dust, tearing uncontrollably. In panic, they swung the knives in their hands at their companions beside them, hacking wildly…
When the poison powder gradually dispersed, of those forty-plus bandits nearly thirty were either lying unmoving or injured. The rest were panic-stricken, looking at the masked figures around them and thinking they were being attacked by their own side—thieves preying on thieves.
At this moment, Sun Yixie seized his trident and shouted: "Follow me and kill!"
Those farming men, roused by this shout, had their morale greatly boosted. From both sides of the road, wielding various long weapons (mainly farm tools), they rushed in to kill, pouring the hatred and anger accumulated over many years onto these already routed bandits.
They were killing with great enthusiasm when Huang Donglai arrived. He had washed his face clean in the village, and for safety's sake—fearing being hacked by his own side gone mad with killing—he had even changed his clothes.
Huang Donglai's arrival completely extinguished the bandits' hope of counterattack.
Soon, these Zouma Stronghold bandits who had run rampant in the Baiji Ridge area for many years were completely wiped out here.
And just at this moment… Ma Si, one man and one horse, appeared on the hill at the end of the road.
Chapter 9