Weighing and Dividing the Gold and Silver

"Sorry for the trouble."

Qing He Miao nodded, made no polite refusal, and sat down at once.

The fur cushion felt somewhat soft beneath him.

He leaned against the back of the chair, closed his eyes slightly, and let his thoughts sink into the system interface.

The first things that entered his awareness were the experience bar and level LV11.

Next came the battle log, which he quickly scanned entry by entry.

"Only a little over twenty..."

He silently calculated how many he had killed with his own hands.

At first, there had indeed been a long-awaited thrill at gaining experience.

But as the number rose, he found that the feeling actually faded.

Later, he even grew weary, his head a little foggy and his energy gone.

It wasn't disgust.

Rather, it was like the tedium that set in after grinding monsters for too long while playing games in the past.

"I thought, after being pent up for so many years and finally getting a chance like this, I'd stay excited for a long time!"

Qing He Miao mocked himself inwardly:

"I never thought doing too much of this would actually make me uncomfortable. A mountain hog really can't stomach fine bran..."

Some madmen would have been beside themselves with excitement by now.

Then he suddenly remembered something and turned his attention to the status bar.

The [Killing Intent] status was still there in plain sight.

Moreover, it had neither faded nor disappeared because of this battle.

On the contrary, the color of the icon representing the status seemed a shade darker than before.

"This status... it seems the psychological problem isn't so simple."

Qing He Miao hadn't paid it much attention before, thinking it was simply from being pent up. Now he was beginning to take it seriously, and he felt somewhat troubled.

As his thoughts turned, he recalled the battle just now.

Although he had an ability as practically unfair as his stand, he had also realized there was another problem.

He still needed a weapon.

The human body was tougher than he had imagined.

And those people hadn't even been wearing armor!

Pounding them one by one had already been quite strenuous.

Frequently controlling his stand to exert force for an extended period for the first time had drained him mentally far more than he had anticipated.

He could hardly imagine the might of thousands upon thousands of soldiers like that, capable of defending and dodging, all properly clad in armor.

He suddenly understood a little how the Hegemon King Xiang Yu had lost in the history of The Outcast.

And those were only ancient soldiers.

At that moment, Huang Wulang's preliminary inventory yielded results, and he came over with irrepressible delight on his face.

He first cupped his fists at Qing He Miao, then said excitedly in a low voice:

"Daoist priest, your foresight was divine. We've reaped a rich haul! There's a bit less grain because the bandits used it to get through the winter, but they only consumed half. There are still piles of it!

"Although most of the weapons and armor are damaged, there's still plenty of leather armor and even some iron lamellar armor. It seems those fellows also found ways to replenish their supplies."

That was without mentioning the gold, silver, valuables, bolts of cloth, and goods the bandits had plundered and amassed...

"Many thanks to you this time, Daoist priest!"

Qing He Miao merely nodded indifferently. Under their agreement, most of these supplies belonged to Huang Family Fort, so he had nothing to be happy about.

His gaze swept over the captives in the open space, bound together in a line with ropes by the Huang Family members.

Excluding the twenty-odd he had killed earlier and the few Huang Wulang had taken down when he broke in,

the bandit lair, which had housed about a hundred men, had roughly forty-odd left. Every one of them was ashen-faced and trembling.

It had been wiped out completely.

Qing He Miao reached out and began toying with a crossbow that had been found in the search, then asked:

"Is that all? Nothing related to martial arts?"

Hearing his question, a Huang Family member hesitated, then trotted away. When he returned, he had a few scraps of paper in his hand:

"Fort master, Daoist priest, these are probably all we have related to martial arts."

Qing He Miao picked up the papers and casually leafed through them.

He found that the information displayed on the system's appraisal interface was:

[You have viewed an incomplete, crudely copied fifth form of a military saber technique. Would you like to learn it?]

[You have viewed an incomplete, crudely copied first form of a military saber technique. Would you like to learn it?]

[You have viewed...]

Not only was much of the content repeated, but it was so incomplete that it could not be put together into a full set of moves.

Moreover, judging by the descriptions, they were merely a few isolated moves from the most basic military-camp saber technique, with no internal cultivation method or other subtleties.

Qing He Miao was disappointed.

Then again, in reality, what ordinary person didn't know their bread-and-butter skills inside out and keep them in their head?

It was just like memorizing ancient poems: once you knew them by heart, who would still carry a textbook around every day?

For someone of Mount Luba's level, the martial skills he relied on to survive had long since been drilled into him.

Unless he encountered some opportunity and acquired a new martial arts manual,

he naturally wouldn't have any martial arts manuals on paper.

As for these few scraps of paper found in the search, they were things that Mount Luba and his men in the stronghold

had drawn from memory to win over or reward able-bodied young men newly joining them,

and coax them into risking their lives.

"Daoist priest, Mount Luba was a routed soldier from the Jin army. As far as I know, any proper unit would teach these skills after a few months of training."

Huang Wulang looked curiously at the papers from the side and confirmed it as well:

"If you're interested in saber techniques, Daoist priest, I could get a few complete sets from the army later and give them to you."

Chapter 54: Weighing and Dividing the Gold and Silver

"No need. I was just looking."

After hearing him out, Qing He Miao fell silent for a moment, then casually tossed the scraps of paper onto the ground beside his chair.

Sure enough, they were nothing good.

He didn't even have time to practice what he had already learned and raise his proficiency!

Farewell.

The night wind swept through the mountain stronghold, carrying the lingering smell of blood and ash.

The Huang Family members worked efficiently. The corpses had been dragged to one side and gathered together, the captives were under close guard, and men had been posted at key locations such as the granary and armory.

By now, the situation was basically under control.

They looked together at the captives in the firelight and the young Daoist sitting in the animal-hide chair with his eyes closed, resting.

Seeing that they were finished, Qing He Miao raised his hand and picked up the crossbow he had been toying with earlier.

The crossbow's construction was not complicated. For someone from the modern world, a little fiddling had been enough for him to grasp the basics.

"Sorry to trouble you all, but I need your help with something."

He raised the cocked crossbow in his hand and aimed it at the forty-odd captives remaining in the open space:

"Identify anyone among you whose crimes, under Great Tang law, merit immediate execution by beheading. Remember the rules: when one person identifies someone, at least two others must confirm the accusation. The accuser may live. If two people accuse each other, it will be treated as collusion and deceit, and both will die. Anyone who falsely accuses the innocent or makes an untrue accusation dies."

His voice was not loud, but it carried clearly to everyone's ears in the relatively quiet night.

He sounded as though he were stating the most ordinary of trifles, but what he said made every captive shudder, a chill shooting from the soles of their feet to the tops of their heads.

Then Qing He Miao turned his head slightly and looked at the armed Huang Family members standing guard around them:

"And you. If you recognize anyone among them who has committed many evils in the area, you may also come forward and testify."

Hearing this, Huang Wulang quickly understood what Qing He Miao intended to do.

He opened his mouth, about to plead, "Daoist priest, now that the dust has settled, there are plenty of able-bodied young laborers among them. Why do this?"

But then he remembered that, according to their earlier agreement, these people were indeed the Daoist priest's to deal with.

In the end, he forcibly swallowed the words.

The place fell deathly silent, save for the crackle of the torches and the whimper of the night wind.

The captives stole glances at one another, their eyes darting, but none dared speak first.

For a long while, no one answered.

Qing He Miao seemed to grow a little impatient. He raised the crossbow, aimed not at anyone but at the empty ground in front of the captives, and pulled the trigger.

"Twang—whoosh!"

The bowstring vibrated, and the bolt flew free, sinking deep into the frozen earth, its fletching still quivering.

Under everyone's frightened gazes, Qing He Miao calmly cocked the crossbow again.

As he worked, he said indifferently:

"Winter nights are truly hard to endure. Standing out here in the wind, you must all be terribly cold. I have little patience, so don't test it."

That completely shattered some people's mental defenses.

"I... I'll name someone!"

A young bandit huddled at the edge of the crowd suddenly raised his hand:

"Him! Zhao Si! Last time we went down the mountain to raid, he was the first to violate a man's wife, and he killed an old man who refused to hand over his grain!"

As he spoke, he pointed a trembling finger at another man beside him.

The accused Zhao Si's eyes nearly split with rage, and he burst into curses: