After Iron Can Mountain fell, the Tiger Head bandits loved to gossip about it whenever they had nothing to do. Sooner or later the talk always turned to catapults and heavy crossbows.
Back then most of them sneered, inventing a dozen clever counters.
Now, with stones crashing around them like a summer hailstorm, they finally understood how the Iron Can lads had felt.
“One!”
“Two!”
The lieutenant on the ridge did not care what they felt. He simply counted.
Inside the gulch, Xu the chief knew surrender meant his own head. “Tiger Head breeds no cowards! First man to drop his blade gets my steel!” he roared, waving his sabre.
A heartbeat later a single crossbow bolt hissed down the valley and pinned him to the dirt like a moth to a board. Dead before the echo faded.
“Run!”
Panic exploded. More than half the bandits scattered like startled chickens, sprinting for the sealed exits.
Another whistle of incoming stone. The frontrunners were pulped mid-stride, legs folding the wrong way.
The rest skidded to a halt, too terrified to advance or retreat.
“Twelve!”
“Thirteen!”
The voice from above never paused.
Hand-to-hand, the bandits might have found courage. Here they saw no enemy, only their chief nailed to the ground and friends smashed by invisible hammers. Despair tastes metallic.
At “fifteen” the first blade clattered down. Then another. In moments nine men out of ten were kissing dirt.
A stubborn handful stood tall, sneering at the crawlers.
The count reached twenty.
Both cliffs erupted. A horizontal storm of bolts scythed across the gulch at knee height. Every upright man sprouted feathered shafts. The few who dodged dropped flat, bladders loosening.
“Bandits playing hero, give me a break,” Zheng Fang snorted. “Mark those last fools. Chop them when we tidy up.”
“Captain, they surrendered…”
“Sir Jin says bandits respect fear, not kindness. Spare them and tomorrow they haggle. One mistake, one price: death.”
“Understood.”
“What about the rest?”
“Catcat Mountain pens, first. Sir will want them alive. Corpses to the coroner.”
Zheng Fang flicked dust from his sleeve. “Shadow the Twin Camel fugitives and that snake Feng. First clean shot, send word.”
“Yes, sir!”
…
Xihewan village bristled with spears and grim faces. Women waited for the assault that never came.
Xiao Yu was about to send scouts when a veteran pelted downhill.
“Brother Qiang! I thought you were guarding caravans in Guangyuan?”
Qiang caught his breath and spilled the whole ambush, from bait to bolt.
“So Feng-ge knew days ago? Tiger Head is caged, Twin Camel scattered?” Tears welled in the old chief’s eyes. A minute earlier he had been in hell; now paradise felt too bright.
“That man! Planning the fate of hundreds and telling no one. Nearly stopped my heart,” Xiao Yu grumbled.
“Girl, a soldier obeys, not second-guesses,” the chief scolded. “Orders first, questions never.”
“Yes, yes.” Xiao Yu rolled her eyes and slipped away.
Relief did not breed slack. Sentries doubled. Patrols quickened. Two full days of coiled-spring alertness.
Then, on the afternoon of the second day, horns sounded. Jin Feng marched home at the head of the column, having just seen off Lieutenant Shaw.
He had tried to press silver on Shaw; Shaw refused, but happily accepted a hundred cakes of soap.
Soap was daily gold. Guangyuan’s first batches were gone, Iron Can stocks exhausted. County town shops stood empty. Ladies scratched imaginary itches; brothels sent frantic orders, for without sweet-scented skin there was no custom. Black-market cakes hit twelve taels each, still unobtainable.
Shaw’s help had been priceless; a hundred cakes were cheap.
In return Shaw appointed a sharp-eyed centurion, Iron Hammer’s old drinking mate, acting county lieutenant pending paperwork. That night the new lieutenant arrived with gifts and gratitude.
Next evening the “recovered” magistrate called, hinting broadly for Jin Feng’s backing.
Lieutenant and magistrate in his pocket, Jin Feng now steered the county from the shadows.
Veterans reclaimed posts, women soldiers stacked spears, looms clattered before sunset. Order slid back into place like a well-oiled bolt.
That night, in Jin Feng’s lamplit meeting room, the circle gathered again: Qing Muluan, Tang Dongdong, the village chief, and three new faces, tall hunter Han Feng, short hunter Tang Fei, one-armed elder Zhao Laoshan.
When the last chair scraped home, Jin Feng rose.
“Comrades, a few matters to settle. Let us begin.”
