From starving to emperor: The Holy Tang Dynasty in the late Qing Dynasty

Chapter 14 Murder

Sun Deshan froze, his body pressed against the edge of the well. He had traveled far and wide his life, rising from a lowly porter to a foreman in the镖局 (镖局, a type of security escort agency), not because of his muscular physique, but because of his ears that could hear the ground tremble. He had led镖局 in northern Henan before, and he dreaded hearing this kind of hoofbeats—not too fast, not too slow, but carrying a sinister, encircling feel.

"Chief Li, they're defeated soldiers. Their origins are questionable." Sun Deshan's voice was extremely low, carrying a chilling aura that seemed to seep from his very bones.

The "defeated soldiers" he referred to were those lightly dressed, unarmored, but armed with sharp knives and muskets—unruly soldiers or bandits. In the chaotic world of Xianfeng, these people were more troublesome than regular troops because they disregarded rules and were only concerned with seeking wealth and taking lives.

Li Qian didn't speak. In his eyes, scorched red by the sunlight, was the reflection of the yellow dragon rising on the northern horizon. The yellow dragon stirred the cracked earth, drawing ever closer.

"Everyone, get into the fort."

Li Qian's voice wasn't loud, but it carried an undeniable dullness, like a rusty heavy sword slamming into the ground.

Old Zhao and Awang scrambled into the remaining side room of Qing Shi Fort. Half of the side room had collapsed, and the black tiles on the roof had fallen to the ground, providing some shade. Wang's wife, clutching the blue cloth bundle, still had a vacant look in her eyes and mechanically muttered something. As she entered the room, she tripped on the threshold, her knee bleeding profusely, but she didn't utter a sound of pain.

These days, pain is a luxury; survival is the only instinct.

Li Qian looked at Su Mo'er. The girl had just drunk two mouthfuls of mud soup, and finally a blush the size of half a fingernail appeared on her face.

"Go, pull down the well rope, and push that half-rotten wooden stake to the edge of the well to create the illusion that it's been dead for over ten years," Li Qian ordered.

Su Mo'er bit her lip and nodded, her withered little hands gripping the rough hemp rope tightly. She knew that at this moment, every second counted.

"Deshan, let's go to the top."

Li Qian swallowed the military knife stained with dark red blood and put it in his mouth, his hands gripping the crumbling stone bricks surrounding the fortress. This stone fortress was a proper post station in the early years of the Xianfeng Emperor's reign, before the Qing Dynasty completely collapsed; officials came and went, horses neighed. But now, only a few dead willow trees remain, like unmarked tombstones.

The two men climbed onto the roof beam. The crossbeams of this old-fashioned building were made of sturdy locust wood, and although they had some holes from insects, they could still barely support the weight of two large men. Li Qian lay in the shadows, looking outside through the gaps in the tiles.

The sound of horses' hooves is getting closer.

There were five riders in total.

Leading the group was a soldier dressed in a disheveled manner. He wore a faded blue cloth vest, the character for "soldier" on his chest obscured by grease and bloodstains. He wore a leather hat with a broken red tassel and carried a matchlock musket, clearly discarded by the Imperial Workshops. This was obviously a common type of "defeated soldier" during the Xianfeng era—those who lost battles would roam in groups, burning, killing, and looting in the refugee areas, even more ruthless than bandits.

The four people following behind were even more shabby in appearance. Some of them were wearing long silk robes that they had stolen from some wealthy family, but they had a dirty horse girth belt tied around their waists.

"They're rogue soldiers who fled south," Sun Deshan mumbled in Li Qian's ear. He used to be a镖师 (bodyguard/escort), and he hated these leather-clad men the most. Soldiers and bandits were one and the same; in their eyes, the lives of refugees were worth less than horseshoes.

Li Qian stared intently at the leader. The man reined in his horse and stopped outside the Dead Willow Grove.

It was an old horse, so thirsty it was foaming at the mouth, and its legs were trembling.

"Brother, this place is called Qingshibao. I heard from the elders that there's a deep well here," shouted a soldier with a flat nose from behind. His voice was even more unpleasant than the cawing of crows on the wasteland. "The horse is exhausted. If it doesn't drink some water soon, it'll collapse here before we even reach the mountains."

The leader of the thugs wiped the salt from his face; his face was fleshy and rugged, with a notch at the corner of his eye. He stared greedily at the dead willow trees, sniffing the air like a dog.

"It smells like a stranger."

The leader suddenly blurted out this sentence. It was an intuition that came from spending too much time among piles of dead bodies.

Li Qian's heart sank. These ruffians possessed an almost eerie sensitivity to the presence of living people.

"Scatter! Go check that well." The leader waved his musket.

Five mounted soldiers began to slowly circle around. The horses' hooves crunched and cracked on the scorched, withered grass. Inside the fort, Awang trembled with fear at the sound. He covered his mouth tightly, but the clanging of his teeth sounded particularly jarring in the deathly silent side room.

At this moment, the pawn with the flat nose had already ridden to the well. Su Mo'er's previous disguise was excellent; the well opening was covered with messy dead wood and stones, making it look like an abandoned well.

But the pawn was also a seasoned veteran. He dismounted from his horse and didn't rush to move the wood. Instead, he squatted down and looked around the stone circle.

Then, he reached out and touched the ground.

That was a tiny damp stain that had accidentally spilled while fetching water. Although it dried quickly in the bright sun, the soil was still a little darker than the surrounding area.

"Big brother! This is interesting!" the flat-nosed man exclaimed. "There's some water that was just sprinkled here!"

That shout sounded like a death knell.

Li Qian knew he couldn't hide any longer. In this vast wilderness, once discovered, if he didn't kill the enemy first, and the enemy's muskets were aimed, not a single one of the people in this room would survive.

He patted Sun Deshan on the shoulder, their eyes meeting. The ruthlessness of a "chief bodyguard" in Sun Deshan's eyes was instantly ignited, a ferocity born from years of killing for his bodyguards. The broken wooden stick in his hand was gripped between his thumb and forefinger with the unique technique of a bodyguard; although he wasn't carrying any hidden weapons, this piece of wood was still a deadly weapon in his hands.

"The one with the gun is mine." Li Qian's voice vibrated deep in his throat, barely audible.

"The remaining four, shall we split them in half?" Sun Deshan's lips curled into a ferocious smile, the kind of cold laugh a bodyguard habitually gives before a desperate fight.

"One for each person, the remaining two are up to fate."

Just as the flat-nosed pawn below was about to reach for the dead wood, Li Qian suddenly kicked off the roof beam, his whole body like an eagle swooping down from the shadows.

With a "crack," the rotten tiles on the roof shattered.

The leading thug reacted extremely quickly; he suddenly looked up and instinctively flicked the musket in his hand upwards.

But Li Qian was faster.

Without any fancy movements in the air, he exerted all his strength—over two hundred pounds—on his knee, slamming it heavily onto the opponent's shoulder. The soldier staggered from the impact, and the musket exploded with a muffled "bang," leaving a cloud of white smoke in mid-air.

At the same time, Sun Deshan pounced from another direction. He used the most authentic close-quarters combat technique from the escort agency, crashing into the flat-nosed soldier like a block of iron. The sharpened wooden stick in his hand whistled through the air and pierced the man's side of the neck with a soft thud.

That was the sound of flesh being torn apart.

Blood splattered instantly onto the bluestone well ring, so red it was blinding and so hot it was scalding.

"There's an ambush!" The remaining three soldiers were terrified and drew their swords.

Li Qian had already sprung to his feet, the military knife in his hand arcing through the air, flashing a blindingly cold light under the blazing sun. His swordsmanship had no set pattern; it was all deadly moves honed on the battlefield. The buzzing sound of the blade cutting through the air drowned out the wind on the wasteland.

The three soldiers clearly hadn't expected that such two ruthless characters would be hiding in this seemingly abandoned fortress. The leader of the soldiers let out a strange cry and swung his sword.

Li Qian neither dodged nor evaded, but suddenly lowered his body, and the military knife in his hand drew a vicious diagonal line from bottom to top.

"laugh--"

That was the sound of a sharp blade cutting through coarse cloth and the abdominal cavity.

Before the soldiers could even see Li Qian's movements, they felt a chill in their abdomen, followed by a wave of excruciating pain. The knife in their hands clattered to the ground, and they clutched their stomachs tightly with both hands, but they couldn't stop the warm sensation from escaping. They curled up on the ground like a boiled shrimp.

On the other side, Sun Deshan was already entangled in a fight with another man. He had no knife, relying entirely on his hands and the wooden splinter. The head镖师's skill lay in "entanglement." He clung to his opponent's side, sliding like an eel behind him, grabbing the man's chin with his backhand, and twisting it sharply.

A crisp cracking sound echoed through the deathly silent forest, sounding particularly startling.

There are two left.

The two rogue soldiers were finally terrified. They looked at each other and, disregarding their comrade's life, turned around to steal the horse.

"Don't let them mount their horses!" Li Qian roared.

On the vast wilderness, once they are allowed to mount their horses and run away, within half a day, hundreds or thousands of rebel soldiers will follow the hoofprints and come over. At that time, this Qing Shi Fort will become their execution ground.

Li Qian casually grabbed a piece of broken bluestone at his feet, gathered all his strength, and hurled it at the figure running ahead.

The blue stone whistled out.

With a loud "thud," it struck the man squarely on the back of the head. The soldier didn't even utter a sound before collapsing to the hard, dry ground.

The last soldier had already grabbed the reins and was about to leap onto his horse.

A thin, blood-stained short spear—actually the wooden spike Sun Deshan had just thrown—swooped through the air. Sun Deshan used his trump card technique from his days as a镖师 (bodyguard/escort), throwing darts; although the wooden spike was slightly off-target, it still managed to pierce the old horse's rump.

The old horse, in pain, suddenly reared up and knocked the soldier who hadn't even settled in to the ground.

Li Qian strode over the corpses on the ground, his black cloth shoes making a sticky sound as they sank into the blood and mud. He walked up to the disheveled soldier who was lying in disarray, his eyes devoid of any pity.

"Spare...spare my life..." The soldiers were so frightened by Li Qian's blood-splattered face that they almost lost control of their bladders.

Li Qian didn't speak, but slowly raised the heavy military knife.

"These days, if we spare you, who will spare them?"

A flash of light.

A head with messy braids rolled a few times on the ground before finally coming to rest at the edge of the dead willow grove.

The wind seemed to pick up, whipping up the yellow sand and quickly covering the fresh, thick liquid.

Sun Deshan walked over, panting heavily. His chest heaved violently, and his hands were still trembling slightly. The less than one minute of fighting had exhausted the last bit of his strength.

"Five." Sun Deshan wiped the blood from his face. "Boss Li, we've stirred up a hornet's nest."

Li Qian sheathed his sword with swift and decisive movements, though his hands trembled slightly. He turned to look at the five restless old horses, then at Awang and Su Mo'er, who were peeking out from the side room, their faces filled with terror.

"Keep the horse. Throw all the men into the well."

His voice was cold and flat.

"The water in the well..." Su Mo'er exclaimed in alarm. That was their lifeblood; if the bodies were soaked in it, the water would be undrinkable.

"The bodies are piled up on the well platform to draw water first. Once enough is drawn, the bodies are stuffed back in. This is called 'sealing the well.' If the pursuers come and see the dry well and the corpses, they will only assume that there was a famine and people died here, and they will not dare to stay here any longer. As long as they think there is no water here, we can live for a couple more days."

This is the secret to Li Qian's survival in Red Dead Redemption.

"Ah Wang, come and move the body!"