Chapter 32: Buy Out All the Rat Poison
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The air reeked of blood.
Inside the wooden chest before them lay ingots of silver, white as snow.
There was a full thousand taels in all.
Hu Dayong crouched down and brushed his fingers over one of the ingots. Suddenly, he spat on the ground.
“Banner Captain, this silver is stained with the blood of the government’s grain! Who knows how many brothers stationed along the frontier have starved because of this filthy money?”
Lin Chuan nodded. He lifted a concealed panel at the bottom of the chest, revealing several account books.
Tucked between the pages was half a yellowed letter, its handwriting crooked and hurried:
“Seventeenth day of the first month: thirty carts of government grain; eight hundred taels paid as hush money…”
Lin Chuan snatched up the ledger and flipped through it rapidly. His pupils contracted.
The book was packed with detailed records of every transaction—from the quantity of government grain and the division of the silver to the meeting places and passwords used by the Tartar caravans.
“Master Zhang certainly has a healthy appetite…”
Lin Chuan closed the ledger with a cold laugh.
“This thousand taels was probably meant to buy our lives.”
“What do we do now?” Hu Dayong gripped the hilt at his waist. “Go back and arrest Master Zhang?”
“Arrest him?” Lin Chuan shook his head. “No. Arresting him would be letting him off too easily.”
“Letting him off?” Hu Dayong stared blankly. “If we don’t arrest him, then what do we do? Go straight back?”
“The Tartar caravans will come for the grain carts tomorrow.”
Lin Chuan fixed his eyes on Hu Dayong.
“Want to do something big?”
“Of course!” Hu Dayong said excitedly. “Master…”
He glanced at the soldiers outside, stuck out his tongue, and hurriedly changed his address.
“Banner Captain, shall we kill the Tartars?”
“No. We aren’t going to kill the Tartars.”
Lin Chuan began to chuckle.
“We’re going to do something even bigger…”
…
At the foot of the northern slopes, in Eaglebeak Village.
The wooden clapper had already sounded the third watch when Village Head Wang jolted awake from a nightmare.
Those figures in broad straw hats had come again. This time, they carried no silver—only curved blades.
As a village headman paid by the imperial government, he knew better than anyone the provision in the Great Qian Code: “Those who collude with the enemy shall have their entire clans executed.”
Yet whenever he remembered the villagers gnawing on bran-mixed steamed cakes during the day, or saw the coarse clothes his wife had patched again and again, the little backbone left in his chest softened into mud.
Eaglebeak Village…
It was desperately poor.
So poor that even the tax collectors sent by the county office could not be bothered to stay long.
Caught in the narrow space between two countries, the village was no more than an ant that could be crushed at any moment.
The previous winter, Blackstone Town next door had accidentally wandered into a Tartar cavalry patrol. Not a single one of the several dozen villagers had survived.
The day Master Zhang’s carriage entered the village, Village Head Wang had been filling in a new grave at the entrance.
“Village Head Wang, would you like to take part in a business that brings ten thousandfold profit from a single investment?”
That was the first thing he heard. The second was:
“We’ll guarantee your village peace, and we’ll even get your son into the prefectural academy.”
He clutched his sweat-dampened coat and hesitated for three days.
Then, on the night of the full moon, five large carts draped in black cloth stopped soundlessly outside his courtyard.
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The dull rumble of wheels over the ground mingled with the creak of the cart shafts, making one’s heart tremble in the silent night.
At noon the next day, more than a dozen men in broad-brimmed straw hats rode into the village.
Village Head Wang’s face turned deathly pale.
The animal-hide decorations on their boots and the shape of the curved blades at their waists unmistakably marked them as Tartars.
Only when a heavy silver ingot was pressed into his palm did Village Head Wang recover his senses.
“You’re a clever man, old brother.”
The man patted his shoulder, his fingers cold as a venomous snake.
“Clever men… live long.”
As the days passed, the torment grew ever heavier.
Every two months, a convoy would enter the village under cover of darkness—sometimes from the south, sometimes from the north.
The goods on the carts were wrapped in canvas soaked with tung oil, weighing the wheels down so deeply that they sank into the mud.
He dared not ask, nor even look.
During each exchange, he merely kept his distance, allowing cold sweat to soak his coarse shirt and leave behind salt stains.
An owl’s cry came from outside the window, and Village Head Wang shuddered all over.
There were far more carts this time. The main courtyard could not contain them all.
Several had even been hidden in the graveyard.
More carts meant more silver for him.
And yet he could not shake the unease in his heart.
An inexplicable panic.
Click.
A faint sound came from the outer room.
Village Head Wang stared blankly into the darkness.
Perhaps the rats were running wild again.
Ever since the family had acquired silver, there had been more grain in the house—and more rats as well.
Even his wife had grown considerably plumper.
She turned over beneath the quilt.
Village Head Wang placed a hand on her ample chest, and his heart settled somewhat.
But at that very moment—
Click.
Another faint sound rang out, unmistakably from the door latch.
Village Head Wang’s hand froze. Even his breathing stopped.
That was not a rat!
A rat could not make a sound like that!
Trembling, he reached beneath his pillow, where he kept a short knife used for slaughtering pigs.
“Husband…” his wife mumbled drowsily. “Why aren’t you asleep yet…”
“Hush—”
Village Head Wang clapped a hand over her mouth.
She let out a muffled cry.
Bang!
The door was kicked open, and several dark figures rushed inside like ghosts.
A firebrand was struck and blown alight.
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Before Village Head Wang could react, a heavy fist smashed into his face, sending stars bursting across his vision.
“Don’t move!”
A cold blade pressed against his throat.
“Move once, and you’re dead!”
His wife trembled violently. Just as she was about to scream, Hu Dayong slapped her silent.
The oil lamp was lit. In its dim yellow glow, several men stood in the doorway like iron towers.
They were dressed exactly like the men of the Green Ram Mountain Stronghold.
The tension abruptly left Village Head Wang’s shoulders. A dry laugh escaped his throat.
“So it’s our own brothers…”
But suspicion churned in his heart.
Why were these men behaving like this?
Footsteps sounded outside.
A figure entered, clad in armor.
The style was not that of the prefectural troops. It was…
A frontier Banner Captain?
Village Head Wang’s head began to hum.
Warm liquid surged uncontrollably from between his legs.
He knew all too well what this meant. Colluding with bandits was punishable by death; secretly dealing with the Tartars was an even greater crime, one that could bring execution to his entire clan.
“B-Banner Captain…”
Village Head Wang’s voice shook beyond recognition.
“I’m innocent, sir! They forced me to do it…”
Lin Chuan stared at him coldly without saying a word. He merely drew an account book from inside his robe and waved it before Wang’s eyes.
Village Head Wang felt as though he had fallen into an icy abyss.
It was the very record of the exchanges he had written himself.
“Seventeenth day of the third month: ten large carts…”
Lin Chuan read slowly, each word cutting into Village Head Wang’s heart like a knife.
“Twenty-third day of the fifth month: ten living persons…”
At that, Lin Chuan suddenly shut the ledger.
“What does ‘ten living persons’ mean?”
Village Head Wang collapsed like mud. His lips trembled, but no words came out.
In the corner, his wife suddenly began struggling violently, terror filling her eyes.
“Husband!” she cried. “It’s all going to come out! Those girls were all sent north…”
Hu Dayong’s expression changed drastically. He seized Village Head Wang by the collar.
“You were selling people as well?!”
“Mercy, sir!”
Village Head Wang slumped on the heated brick bed, the crotch of his trousers already soaked through.
“The silver—the silver is all in the cellar…”
“You think you can buy your life with silver?”
Lin Chuan gave a cold laugh.
“Fine. If you want to live, do exactly as I say.”
“Anything, sir! Just give the order!”
Village Head Wang banged his forehead against the headboard of the bed again and again.
“You have one day.”
Lin Chuan spoke coldly.
“Buy me every packet of rat poison in all the nearby villages.”
“…What? Rat poison?”
Village Head Wang sat frozen on the bed, trembling.
The other men exchanged bewildered glances.
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