Chapter 275: So Fat It's Leaking Oil [Seeking Annual Tickets]
After a fierce battle, the bandits still failed to capture their target.
Kang Shi lifted the carriage curtain and glanced at the chaos outside.
He sighed, "They're not taking the bait."
After a delay, no reinforcements arrived.
This meant that these bandits were no longer of any use. Commander Yang raised his hand and lightly tapped the wooden frame of the carriage, the rhythm varying in length and intensity. As the last syllable fell, a series of chilling screams rang out from outside the carriage.
Thump thump thump—
There were several sounds of heavy objects falling to the ground.
A few breaths later, it became completely quiet outside the carriage.
Commander Yang clutched his warm cloak tightly, lifted the carriage curtain, and stepped down, with Kang Shi following closely behind. He politely declined Kang Shi's help, jumped down from the carriage, and the servants all bowed. Commander Yang glanced casually and saw dozens of corpses lying on the ground.
He indifferently shifted his gaze: "Where are the survivors?"
Soon, two "servants" were holding down a disheveled bandit who was drooling and covered in blood. Kang Shi could tell at a glance that the bandit's hands, feet, and jawbone had been violently dislocated to prevent this "lucky guy" from committing suicide.
If he commits suicide, wouldn't all this effort have been for nothing?
Tanuki wiped the blood splattered on her face.
He stepped forward to ask whether he should take the person away for interrogation.
Commandant Yang laughed and said, "No need for such trouble."
The bandit's face turned deathly pale with terror, clearly imagining some inhuman torture. He kept shaking his head, trying to beg for mercy, but his temporomandibular joint was severely dislocated, and he couldn't speak. Instead, he spat out a lot of turbid saliva.
The "guards" escorting him frowned in disdain.
Secretly kick him to signal him to stay still.
Tanuki asked, puzzled, "No need?"
“Even prisoners can lie, why waste this time?” Commandant Yang bowed to Kang Shi and said with a smile, “The rest will be up to Ji Shou. We need to act quickly.”
Kang Shi smiled calmly and said, "It's a small matter."
Getting people to tell the truth is very simple.
Before half a cup of tea had been brewed, Kang Shi, his face beaming with barely suppressed joy, exclaimed, "Lord Yang, what a joyous occasion!"
Commandant Yang hurriedly asked, "How is it?"
Kang Shi said, "There is a military camp in the mountains!"
Even the well-informed Commandant Yang was taken aback, exclaiming, "A military outpost? No wonder, no wonder they're using such methods to force merchants to take detours and commoners to stay away..."
Martial arts practitioners and scholars are, after all, a minority.
On the battlefield, the majority of people are still ordinary people.
They also need armor and weapons to fight.
Although the world was in chaos, Zheng Qiao was still the nominal ruler, and running a military workshop in private was tantamount to "treason".
No wonder they're so cautious.
After saying that, Kang Shi seemed to have something else to say.
"Besides the military workshops, what else is there?"
Kang Shi, with a "get rich quick" expression, exclaimed: "There's a mine!"
Commander Yang: "..."
This fat sheep was indeed dripping with oil.
Commandant Yang then asked, "What is the scale of the military outpost?"
Kang Shi could barely suppress the upward curve of his lips: "It's not small. The military workshop will be transporting five thousand arrows down the mountain in the next two days."
Commander Yang clicked his tongue and said, "Five thousand arrows?"
Regardless of how long it took to collect these arrows to make them, the sheer quantity is enough to make anyone envious.
For martial artists with unwavering courage, such as Gong Xichou and Zhai Le, arrows and bowstrings are practically free. They can transform martial energy into a bow in one hand and arrows into feathers in the other. As long as their martial energy isn't exhausted, the arrows will flow endlessly, and they won't feel the pinch no matter how many they fire.
In theory, as long as there are enough brave warriors who can transform their bows, a volley of arrows can cover the entire battlefield, with a barrage of feathered arrows comparable to a rainstorm.
But what is the reality?
Ordinary people cannot create something from nothing.
Arrows are very expensive.
The difficulty in making arrows doesn't even lie in the arrowhead; if you're poor, you can just sharpen one end of the arrow and use it. Nor does it lie in the selection and polishing of the fletching; the fletching is only there to make the arrow's flight trajectory more accurate, and it's not a necessary part.
The real cost and difficulty lie in the arrow shaft.
The arrow shaft used for arrows cannot be made by simply finding any piece of bamboo or wood, whittling it down, and using it.
The straighter the wooden stick, the better; ideally, it should be dried-out wood. If not, it needs to be heated and dried, then sanded and straightened according to the arrow's condition, aligned, and painted to make the arrow more durable and easier to preserve. All of this requires considerable skill.
There are also requirements for the length of the arrow shaft; otherwise, what can you do if you draw the bow fully but find that the arrow shaft is not long enough?
With all these restrictions, the production cost naturally goes up. Without the participation of martial arts masters, anyone capable of unleashing a volley of arrows must be incredibly wealthy! And now, we've stumbled upon a real goldmine—a real money-grubber with a mine and five thousand arrows!
Commander Yang was well aware of the production cost of feathered arrows.
He made a mental estimate, and his eyes lit up.
If he missed this fat sheep, he would regret it to the point of despair and slap his thigh in regret. He had to seize it! Commander Yang glanced at the soldiers disguised as "merchant guards," his eyes flashing with an inexplicable light. He knew he had a problem making choices; he could lead troops into battle but not command them. In order not to delay, he directly asked Kang Shi.
"Ji Shou, what do you think we should do?"
Commander Yang feared the easy prey would escape, but he also didn't want to engage rashly, lest he misjudge the enemy's strength and needlessly lose his dozen or so men. After all, it was a mine with a military workshop; its overall strength was far from weak.
For a moment, he hesitated.
Kang Shi didn't have this problem, and immediately made a decision: "Hold your positions and continue the pretense. I will send a message to call for reinforcements."
Commandant Yang said, "Won't this alert the enemy?"
Kang Shi shook his head: "Probably not."
If we alert the enemy, they will either send a powerful and courageous martial artist to silence us or quickly relocate our garrison.
A cunning rabbit has three burrows; I don't believe these people don't have backup secret locations. But none of the dozen or so soldiers, including Tanuki, used their martial arts, and I haven't made a direct move either, so the enemy probably hasn't discovered them yet. We just need to hold our ground and remain calm.
Commandant Yang nodded.
He waved to signal a dozen or so soldiers to deal with the corpse.
He and Kang Shi returned to the carriage.
Using the carriage as cover, Kang Shi transformed into several small and graceful bluebirds, which flew towards their destination under the cover of night.
Commander Yang mentally calculated the location and distance of everyone and said, "It should be Qi Yuanliang and Zhao Dayi who are coming."
With Zhao Feng and Qi Shan arriving, things are stable.
but--
It will take them at least two hours to get here.
There were still three hours until dawn.
There should be enough time.
Take over that military workshop before dawn.
Compared to that, Commandant Yang was even more curious about whose workshop it was—that was five thousand feathered arrows! Even if those arrows were all of medium quality, the cost of one arrow would be around fifteen to twenty coins. Now, with a year of famine, the production cost had increased, so a conservative estimate would be twenty-five coins. Five thousand feathered arrows would cost one hundred and twenty-five thousand coins… Commandant Yang's eyes lit up just thinking about it.
Keep in mind that when he was still serving as the garrison commander of Sibao County, there were all sorts of disputes every year, and military supplies were delayed, embezzled, and reduced in various ways... The military arsenal had less than 100,000 arrows in stock, and that was the stock accumulated over several years...
A small mountain armory has five thousand guns!
How could Commander Yang not be tempted?
He asked Kang Shi, "Besides feathered arrows, what else is there?"
Kang Shi said, "There should be, but that petty thief hasn't been here long and hasn't been given important responsibilities yet. He can only do peripheral tasks, so he doesn't know the real situation inside. He only found out about the feather arrows when he was filling in for someone else."
To see the whole leopard from a single spot.
This military camp is absolutely rolling in money.
Commandant Yang then asked, "Which family?"
Kang Shi's expression became somewhat strange.
“The Zhang family, the Zhang family of He Yin.”
Tsk tsk tsk—
I really don't know whether to say that the Zhang family of Heyin is lucky or unlucky, how come there are families like this everywhere?
Shen Lang had originally planned to target this family, but before he could make a move, they ran into him first. What a coincidence!
only--
The Zhang family of He Yin, as Bai Su described them, were relatively easy targets. They had a great reputation in He Yin but only average overall strength. Now, having stumbled upon the military workshop by chance, it was clear that the Zhang family of He Yin had more to offer than they thought. Kang Shi was somewhat worried that Shen Tang would run into a brick wall.
Seeing Kang Shi frown, Commandant Yang thought something was amiss.
He then asked, "Why is Ji Shou so worried?"
Kang Shi expressed his concerns.
Commandant Yang asked, "Is there something wrong with Bai Su?"
Kang Shi shook his head and said, "That's unlikely."
When Shen Tang came to the position of Prefect of He, very few people knew about it.
On the surface, Shen Tang has neither manpower nor financial resources, with only mostly elderly, weak, women, and children by his side, and a little over a thousand "elite" men of varying skill levels. Is it really necessary for such a makeshift team to expend so much effort and devise a roundabout scheme?
The possibility is extremely slim.
Kang Shi, however, believed that Bai Su Niangzi was innocent.
Commander Yang then said, "That Bai Su Niangzi is a thief. Although thieves have their own code, the Zhang family of He Yin is still a powerful local family. If they were really so incompetent as to let a thief figure out their strength, how could they have survived until now?"
Can something that's easily revealed still be called a trump card?
Commandant Yang had also dealt with many powerful families in Sibao County and was somewhat familiar with their ways of doing things. He only cared about one thing, and said with a slightly complicated expression, "Is your Lord Shen really planning to go head-to-head with the local bullies right from the start?"
He wasn't very optimistic about it.
These local tyrants, entrenched in their territory for years, all possess a few venomous fangs capable of delivering a fatal blow. Commander Yang acknowledged Shen Tang's formidable skill, managing to escape unscathed even from a powerful enemy like Gongxi Chou, but some contests were invisible to the naked eye—
It's not on the battlefield, but in people's hearts.
Kang Shi countered with, "Are there any other options?"
Commander Yang was stunned, then sighed, "That's true..."
In this world, there is no turning back.
If Shen Tang wants to take control of He Yin and establish himself there, he will inevitably have to seize resources from the other local strongmen. Even if Shen Tang doesn't want to take the initiative, the local strongmen will unite to destroy him.
The logic is that simple: it's either you die or I die.
Shen Tang chose to take the initiative.
The initiative is in your own hands.
The camp was hidden on the mountain.
From time to time, you can hear clanging sounds coming from afar, and by the moonlight, you can see a few busy figures.
This is the military outpost that the Zhang family, the governor of He County, secretly built in the mountains. There is a mineral vein in the mountains with quite good purity.
Zhang dared not make a sound.
So, by cooperating with the bandits, they swallowed up this huge pie, secretly accumulating enough military strength, preparing to respond to the call and rise up in rebellion when Zheng Qiao's royal court completely collapsed! At that time, they could smoothly annex the other families of He Yin!
That's how the founding ruler of the Xin Kingdom did it back then.
If they can do it, why can't we do it ourselves?
To ensure their plan went unhindered, they deliberately slaughtered passing merchant caravans, using methods as cruel as possible, even targeting commoners gathering firewood in the mountains. They released one survivor, and with their men's deliberate propaganda, the mountain path became virtually deserted. Their clandestine development plan proceeded smoothly, and everything seemed to be progressing in a positive direction.
They didn't want to be so cautious.
Unfortunately, the governor of Heyin wasn't the only one who could have the final say; there was also a king named Zheng Qiao above them. If word got out, the lightest consequence would be the extermination of their entire clan. They thought they could finally rest easy, but then some insects infiltrated.
It was also a traveling merchant caravan.
It was quite a large operation, with more than ten guards.
Just to be on the safe side, thirty or forty men were dispatched—the first batch of arrows from the military workshop was about to be delivered, and there couldn't be the slightest mistake! To eliminate any future trouble and prevent any word from getting out, leaving no survivors was the safest course of action. But, to everyone's surprise, there was no reply for half a day.
"Did you take down that group?"
The person speaking seemed somewhat anxious.
He was inexplicably anxious tonight. The Zhang family wasn't among the top tier in He Yin. If word got out about the military workshops and the other families found out, the Zhang family might face a joint crackdown, which would be nothing short of annihilation.
The other person replied in a low voice, "Not yet."
"Not yet?"
A dozen or so caravan guards, their weapons were probably dull, while his own thirty or forty men were armed with fine weapons. How could they not kill them? The man's heart was pounding erratically, and his inexplicable panic and anxiety were becoming increasingly apparent.
He paced back and forth in the room.
Sometimes he sat down, sometimes he stood up.
Then he asked, "Has the person returned?"
The other person continued, "Not yet."
"Useless! All of you are useless! What are you good for!" He blurted out a few curses, and was about to call someone to urge them on when a series of hurried footsteps sounded outside. He frowned unhappily and said, "What's the rush?"
He replied, "Something terrible has happened—"
His heart skipped a beat: "What?"
"Everyone who went there is dead."
"Dead???" The man seemed to have heard something absurd and roared, "What do you mean, dead?"
"The men I sent down were all killed."
The man's face turned ashen: "Have we encountered a martial arts master?"
Even the lowest-ranking martial artists are not people that ordinary merchants can afford to support.
Even if the caravan guards did include some low-ranking nobles, it was impossible for them to kill everyone and not a single one escape to report back.
"It shouldn't be, no martial energy was used."
The man became even angrier upon hearing this: "You're saying a bunch of ordinary peasants killed thirty or forty of us?"
The person who was being criticized didn't dare to say a word.
He could only endure the barrage of spittle and insults, suppressing the urge to turn away, until the other person's anger subsided slightly. Only then did he say, "Should we send someone else...?"
"Nonsense! Of course we're going!"
"Should the people in this workshop be moved?"
The man laughed in anger after hearing this.
There were only a dozen or so capable merchant guards. Sending two brave martial artists down would have been enough to handle them. We were busy rushing to finish our work and had tight deadlines, so why would we need to move?
(︶.︶)
Does anyone have any votes for the year-end rankings?
Could you please submit your copy of "After the Big Boss Retires" to Mushroom?
I want to climb the charts.
The new book was serialized for too short a time, so it didn't make it onto the annual bestseller list. Sigh.
(End of this chapter)
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