Unparalleled Duo

Zouma Village, nestled in the mountains of Baiji Ridge.

Not deep in the mountains, just in the mountains.

Deep mountains are not suitable for horse riding or driving; it would be inconvenient for bandits to conduct robberies or transport goods, so most bandit strongholds do not choose locations with extremely poor accessibility.

Zouma Village was a standard small mountain stronghold, fenced in with simple walls made of stone and wood, home to dozens of bandits engaged in pillaging and plundering.

The stronghold was naturally different from ordinary villages; they needed no agricultural tools or production facilities. Simply put... the stronghold did not cultivate land, produce goods, or engage in trade; they only required places to eat and sleep, stables for their horses, weapons, and storehouses for their grain, thus the area it occupied was not very large.

When supplies in the stronghold started running low, they would go out to rob; lacking women, they would go out to rob as well. Most of the women they captured were violated and died within a few days, and some committed suicide the same day—they were all common occurrences. In any case, the bodies were tossed into the mountains, and within half a day, wild beasts would have picked them clean.

Zouma Village did not merely trouble Nanyuan Village; after all, the stronghold housed over fifty bandits, each of them a burden who consumed without creating wealth. A single little village like Nanyuan could not sustain them; there were three other villages in the vicinity of Baiji Ridge, each at varying distances, all regularly subjected to their robberies and oppression. Nanyuan Village, being the closest, simply bore the brunt of their incursions.

The reason for Zouma Village's unchecked brazenness was multifaceted.

Firstly, they had smartly established their base in an area neglected by the officials.

Although the Yong Tai era's court could not be considered utterly dark, not many officials genuinely cherished and defended their people. In a bureaucratic world where "if you can avoid meddling, by all means do," few would take the initiative to address problems not clearly within their jurisdiction... because with matters like these, doing a good job would garner no praise, while botching it could damage one's career prospects.

Secondly, when the bandits of Zouma Village went out to rob, they had their own "measure" of restraint. They understood the limits of the common folk well since most bandits were originally local thugs and bullies. They knew as long as they didn't kill or steal too much at once, and gave the villagers some time to recover after each raid, there would be no uprising.

If occasionally a household went to report to the authorities, it caused no real stir; rural villagers couldn't afford lawyers, nor did they know how to draft petitions. If you went to beat the grievance drum at the office, regardless of the merits of your complaint, you were likely to receive forty lashes first. Most would be flogged to death before their grievance was even heard.

If they went further and pillaged a family's wives and daughters, killing the husbands, elders, and children, leaving no survivors, there would be no one left to report the atrocities.

Would neighboring villagers risk their lives to report for you? Impossible.

That's human nature: as long as one is alive and the fire hasn't reached one's doorstep, some things can be endured.

Therefore, today, the people of Zouma Village would not actually exterminate the villagers of Nanyuan. They wouldn't dare, for if they did, the officials would be compelled to act, unwilling or not.

They merely wanted to frighten the villagers, using yesterday's incident where Ms. Wang was rescued by Sun Yixie as a pretext to steal more goods and kill a few who dared to resist, delivering a stark reminder to the villagers, serving as a warning to others.

...

Just as agreed yesterday, by 1 p.m., Ma Si, the leader of the stronghold, had gathered his men, ready to set forth.

As can be inferred from the previous text, this leader, Ma Si, was quite a character.

Not overly shrewd, but he had some intelligence; his planning was the reason Zouma Village had thrived for years. Otherwise, the rabble underneath him would have been wiped out long ago.

In terms of martial arts, Ma Si was skilled; he had begun learning from "Zhao Pozhao of the Hui Province Hundred-Pound Saber" at a young age and studied Sword Skill for a full ten years, mastering Zhao's teachings. Little did his master suspect that Ma Si had the heart of a beast, coveting the beauty of the Zhao family's daughter. One night, Ma Si sneaked into the young lady's chamber, attempted assault, and in a fit of thwarted lust and rage, killed her. Not stopping there, he launched a night ambush, slaughtering Zhao's entire family of eight, erased the evidence with fire, and fled with the Zhao family's valuables. In the years following, he committed numerous crimes, until several years ago when he arrived at Baiji Ridge, gathered a group of men, and declared himself king of the mountain.

The bandits of Zouma Village had also picked up a move or two from Ma Si, becoming proficient in wielding sabers; their combat strength was, as Huang Donglai had estimated, moderate—not particularly strong but definitely fiercer than unarmed common folk.

So, a group of roughly forty bandits and twenty horses set out for Nanyuan Village, an impressive sight.

Why didn't all of them ride horses? Because equipping every bandit with a horse was too costly... these trained horses, unlike ordinary ride horses, required maintenance to their saddles and horseshoes at the local leatherworker and blacksmith, which was quite troublesome. If you ran a bandit operation as large as those in Liang Mountain, it would be possible to afford it, but small strongholds were doing well to have twenty or thirty horses. As for those scenes in TV dramas where every single one of the hundred men in a bandit stronghold would ride out on horseback, that was pure nonsense. With that kind of operational capability, they might as well switch trades and become horse dealers, a far more profitable venture than banditry.