Xiu Battalion Suppresses Bandits

Breathing in the fresh air rich with the scent of plants and gazing out over the endless emerald expanse of the Guqi Mountains, Zichuan Xiu and the three banner commanders were filled with emotion, yet none knew where to begin. In their hearts, they could only sigh softly: Back in the Far East again.

From east of Valen Fortress onward, the devastation war had inflicted upon this beautiful land of the Far East was everywhere to be seen. The front lines had already moved forward. Amid the fierce fighting, peaceful villages had been set ablaze, bustling cities reduced to ruins, verdant forests turned into lifeless scorched earth, fertile fields into deserts, with white bones strewn everywhere.

Great masses of refugees and beggars staggered westward along the roads. There were humans among them, as well as other races of the Far East, but most were women, children, and the elderly. Emaciated and hollow-eyed, they barely lifted their eyelids even when large human army columns passed by. Then they would swarm around the officers and soldiers of Xiu Battalion, begging for food. Sometimes, the troops could only force their way through with whips. To them, whether it was the Allied Forces crying, "Independence for the Far East—let us build our own homeland!" or the Zichuan Family proclaiming, "Suppress the rebellion and restore peace!" neither had anything to do with them. All they wanted was a hundred grams of bread, enough to keep them alive for one more day. Without it, they died.

When Sterling's troops had passed through, Sterling too had wept at the refugees' misery and done his utmost to settle them west of Valen Fortress, where the flames of war had not reached and they could at least struggle on living. But Sterling was overwhelmed with military affairs and had little time to deal with the matter. In the end, a great many refugees still remained homeless and displaced.

It was Lei Hong's ambition that had brought such catastrophe upon the Far East.

Roger, Shirakawa, and the other officers born in the Far East wore grave expressions. From the refugees, they had learned that places such as their hometown of Minsk had been razed to the ground, and whether their families were dead or alive was unknown. Shirakawa could not stop crying at the refugees' plight. Finally, Zichuan Xiu decided to take part of the army rations and distribute relief to them. It was a foolish measure, one that could not solve the problem at its root, yet no one objected. Seeing the joy on the refugees' faces as they clutched their food, everyone felt a little better.

Just three weeks earlier, Sterling's forces had fought a fierce battle with Lei Hong's rebels in Gudisa Province. Lei Hong's troops had retreated in defeat, leaving behind more than thirty thousand corpses. A large number of the defeated soldiers had also been scattered, fleeing into the deep mountains and ancient forests, refusing to come out. Most had become bandits who seized hills and built stockades. They dared not provoke large Zichuan Family army formations, but whenever they encountered supply convoys or postal parties, they would rush in to rob them. These mountain bandits were as numerous as hairs on an ox; no matter how many were exterminated, more remained. Most hid deep within dense forests amid treacherous terrain, vanishing without a trace whenever a large army arrived. Fang Jin, stationed at Gollum Fortress, had racked his brains over the problem. With no spare regular royal troops available, he eventually remembered that Zichuan Xiu was from the Far East and was more familiar with the terrain, so he sent Xiu Battalion over.

On the very day they entered the province, a messenger came galloping up with a report: a group of Beastmen had just attacked a supply convoy, and Xiu Battalion was requested to reinforce it at once. Zichuan Xiu immediately led his men there, only managing to see the Beastmen's backs vanishing into the distance and the wreckage of the convoy strewn across the ground. Pursued relentlessly by the cavalry, the Beastmen fled into a dense forest. Xiu Battalion immediately surrounded the entire woods so tightly that not even water could seep through.

"Brothers of the Allied Forces, you have nowhere left to run! Come out and surrender at once! The Family's royal army treats prisoners well—stop hiding!" Roger stood alone before the woods, shouting at the top of his lungs.

"That's it! Louder!"

"Tell them we'll feed anyone who comes out! Those who don't will be killed without mercy!"

"Oh, and remember to shout it in the Beastmen's language! They can't understand you when you yell like that." Far behind him, Zichuan Xiu hid behind a shield, filing his nails as he cheered Roger on.

Shirakawa and Changchuan were having a very serious conversation.

"I hear Beastmen's homemade javelins are incredibly sharp. One throw can skewer a man straight through."

"Right! They're so strong—and I heard they smear poison on those javelins too. Draw blood, and your throat seals shut!"

"Then... let us begin praying for Roger's soul!"

Behind the three of them, several thousand officers and soldiers of Xiu Battalion held their breath as they watched Banner Commander Roger's heroic bearing from afar, all murmuring among themselves. "Look, look, Commander Roger's face is getting whiter and whiter—white as dead pork!"

"On such a cool autumn day, the sweat has soaked through the back of his clothes—and he looks like he's shivering from cold."

"His voice is so soft when he shouts. It's like he's afraid someone might hear him—it sounds like he's crying!"

"Commander Xiu, could you send a couple of brothers over to stand with me? It would look more imposing... Like this, I feel a little outnumbered..." Roger's voice trembled slightly.

Zichuan Xiu turned to look at the soldiers. "Which of you is willing to go up there and call out with Banner Commander Roger?"

Several thousand soldiers shook their heads firmly in unison.

Zichuan Xiu encouraged Roger. "Don't be afraid. We may be standing far away, but in spirit, we stand with you!"

"Commander, I think I'd like to stand a little farther back. It'll be less tiring for everyone to talk..."

Without even thinking, Zichuan Xiu said, "No need. My hearing is very good." He turned to Shirakawa and Changchuan. "Can you two hear him? Do you need to move closer?"

The two immediately declared that they could hear him with perfect clarity.

"Commander Xiu, I've been shouting for so long and there's still no response. The enemy must have run away! I should come back."

"Go a little closer to the woods and shout louder."

Changchuan secretly whispered to Shirakawa, "At dinner that night, Roger somehow angered His Excellency. The next day, His Excellency went out and bought twenty life insurance policies for him, all with his own name listed as beneficiary."

After Roger had shouted for nearly twenty minutes, rustling sounds came from within the woods. A group of Beastmen carrying javelins and clubs appeared and charged toward them, shouting, "Waguli waguli! (Kill!)"

Roger scrambled and crawled back to Zichuan Xiu's side. "My lord, they're coming!"

Zichuan Xiu shouted, "Charge!—Roger, you take the lead!" With one kick, he sent Roger flying to the very front.

The two sides swiftly closed in. Zichuan Xiu shouted, "Surrender and you'll be spared! Why aren't you surrendering? We have thousands of men!"

A huge uproar and cries suddenly erupted from behind him. "Run!" "We're dead!"—thundering and earth-shaking at first, then growing softer and more distant. Xiu Battalion's eight thousand soldiers vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving only a faint line of retreating figures on the horizon and great clouds of dust. As the wind blew past, faint cries could still be heard: "Run! Run for your lives!"

Only Zichuan Xiu and his three subordinates remained at the scene, surrounded by dozens of murderous Beastmen.

Both sides were dumbstruck by the sight. After quite a while, someone among the Beastmen finally spoke—and in human language at that. "You want us to surrender?"

"No, no, no." Zichuan Xiu hurriedly lowered his saber. "I was asking whether you would accept our surrender?"

"But when you were shouting just now, didn't you say something about killing without mercy?"

"He said it!" Zichuan Xiu, Shirakawa, and Changchuan all pointed at Roger together. "It has nothing to do with us!"

"Hehehe, Guangming Xiu. After all this time, you're still as wicked as ever." A burly Beastman stepped out from the crowd, his dark face covered in a smile.

"Old Deren!" Zichuan Xiu cried out in delight. Before he could say anything else, the Beastman had swept him into a bear hug.

Back when Zichuan Xiu had served as a Minor Banner Warrior, he had been stationed at Blue Village in Wag Province. He taught the villagers medicine and farming, taught the children human language and knowledge, and forged deep friendships with the Beastmen there. The villagers called him "Bringer of Light." Deren was the village chief. At the time, he had fallen gravely ill, and Zichuan Xiu had saved his life by finding him an army doctor. The two had been close friends ever since.

The two warmly exchanged punches. "You old fool, of all things to do, you had to go learn from others and rebel!" "Hah! You don't know! After you left, they replaced the commander of the garrison. He and the lord wouldn't let anyone live. Even though disaster had struck, they still demanded such heavy taxes from us. If we couldn't pay, they beat us. They've already crippled several young men. We had no choice but to do this."

Zichuan Xiu frowned as he listened. "How are the villagers doing?"

"Not well. Only old people, women, and children are left at home. No one is there to work the fields. All the men came out, and many have died away from home. Both of Moody's children died beneath Valen City. Sam's men died too. And Dru's family—four children came out, three have already died, and the last has vanished without a word. Even now, no one knows where he is, whether he's dead or alive—oh, look, many people from the village are here."

Zichuan Xiu examined them closely and indeed spotted many familiar faces. He gave everyone a wry greeting, his heart heavy: when he had been ordered away from the Blue Village garrison, the villagers had been so distraught that they wept as they escorted him for dozens of miles. He had never imagined they would meet again on a battlefield.

The Beastmen responded warmly to Zichuan Xiu. Most had received his kindness back then. A few younger ones had never met him, but they had heard his stories. Shyly, in clumsy human speech, they called out, "Uncle Guangming Xiu."

It had been a long time since they had seen one another, and everyone had much to feel. The reunion of old friends should have been touching, but Roger interrupted it. "My lord, once you're done catching up, could you let me down from the tree?" Roger, hung from a tree by Beastman soldiers and beaten with more than a dozen strokes, asked in a dying voice.

When Zichuan Xiu and Deren's group returned to camp, that pack of sleazy hoodlums from Xiu Battalion was writing a eulogy: "With boundless grief, we mourn the passing of our most, most, most respected good superior, loyal guardian of the Family, valiant warrior, Deputy Commander Zichuan Xiu! In the fierce battle against the rebels on October 8th, Lord Zichuan Xiu led from the front and fought the enemy with fearless courage, only to tragically perish in glorious battle! His last words were: 'Brothers, divide up all my property!' Filled with longing for our lord, we shall take up his banner and continue to fight steadfastly onward! Deputy Commander Zichuan Xiu's spirit shall forever inspire us to advance! He shall live forever in our hearts..."

The eulogy stopped there. Because Zichuan Xiu promptly made the fellow writing it "boundlessly grief-stricken" and "deeply mournful," then handed him over to Roger, whose aching flesh had left him with a bellyful of fury. "He's yours to deal with—just leave him breathing!" Roger immediately caught his meaning and carried the soldier away.

Deren shook his head. "You're still letting a man like that live? By Zoe custom, anyone who flees before battle gets hanged." The Beastmen called themselves the Zoe Clan.

Zichuan Xiu smiled bitterly. "Heads aren't leeks. Once cut off, they don't grow back. Besides—I can't very well order half the army to hang the other half, can I?"

Deren burst into laughter, his broad mouth splitting wide. "This is the first time I've ever seen Zichuan soldiers like this! It would be wonderful if all the Zichuan Army were like yours! If men like you ran into Sterling, one of his companies could crush all several thousand of you!"

Interested, Zichuan Xiu asked, "You've fought Sterling's troops? How were they?"

The Beastmen all shook their heads. "Terrifying!" Their faces showed lingering fear. "They aren't human—they're gods of war reborn!"

The young Beastmen all scrambled to tell tales about Sterling: Sterling was as tall as two pine trees put together! His eyes shone like lighthouses, and every night they breathed fire! He possessed the art of splitting himself, able to appear in different places thousands of kilometers apart at the same time; blades and spears could not harm him anywhere on his body, and one roar from him could shake an entire division to death! And he knew dark magic too. Every night, he would take out a flute and play it, and then the corpses of Zichuan Family soldiers who had died during the day would climb back to their feet, return to the ranks, and fight even more fiercely!

They talked about Sterling for a full ten-odd minutes, and one Beastman even sang a song about him on the spot—but strangely, amid all these absurd and fantastical tales, Zichuan Xiu sensed that the various races of the Far East felt a peculiar kind of "love" for Sterling, their destroyer.

"You tell me," Deren finally summed up, "how could we possibly defeat 'him' when fighting a god!?" What he meant was: it was not that the Zoe Clan lacked courage, but if their opponent was a "god," they could hardly be blamed for losing!

"Yeah, how could we possibly win?" A group of Beastmen echoed pitifully.

Shirakawa held back a laugh. "Then why not simply follow Lord Sterling? Why rebel at all?"

"Heh, if we really could follow your Sterling, that'd be a fine job!"

"Heh heh, no thanks. The elders said that if any of us Zoe people so much as dared look Lord Sterling in the eye, we'd be killed without mercy."

"I've heard Lord Sterling is a fine commander, though. He doesn't ravage our Zoe villages."

Ignoring the young men's endless argument, Zichuan Xiu asked Deren, "So what do you plan to do next? Keep rebelling and fighting? The Family will send more and more troops to the Far East."

After thinking for a moment, Deren said, "We don't want to fight anymore. We can't beat Sterling." He said, "Now we just want to go home. We've been gone so long—we don't know how our wives and children are, or whether our villages are still there."

They told Zichuan Xiu that these Beastmen from Blue Village in Wag Province had long wanted to return home. But every road along the way had been sealed off by the Zichuan Family army. Near the main routes in Deya Province, Lakes Province, and Yun Province, massive bodies of Zichuan royal troops had gathered, numbering no fewer than several hundred thousand. They had cut off every route, east-west and north-south alike. And fresh reinforcements arrived in an endless stream every day. A small force of a few dozen like theirs would be wiped out the moment it was discovered, before it could even travel ten kilometers beyond the forests where it hid.

Zichuan Xiu clapped his hands. "That's easy! I'll take you back!"

The Beastmen erupted in celebration. Deren wrapped Zichuan Xiu in his arms and squeezed him fiercely. Shirakawa turned her face away, unable to bear the sight of Zichuan Xiu being hugged until he could barely breathe, his face flushed crimson.

Only after the rejoicing died down did Zichuan Xiu suddenly remember something. "But I don't have time right now, either. I still have to clear out this area..."

Deren slapped his chest. "Guangming Xiu, you're a true friend of us Zoe people! Say no more—I'll help you! Zoe people everywhere are one family! I know most of the people around here, and I know the terrain too!"

The next day, Xiu Battalion resumed its bandit-clearing operation. Deren had not lied. He really did know the Beastmen nearby, and they were all related to one another in one way or another—not too close, not too distant.

Deren first went to find his cousin De Kun, the village chief of a village near Blue Village. Seeing several thousand troops arrive, and with his own cousin guaranteeing that surrender meant they could go home, De Kun readily agreed to lead his men in surrender. De Kun then found his cousin De Bu, who also agreed to surrender. Then they went together to find their mutual cousin De Lin—Shirakawa was left dizzy and cross-eyed by the heap of De-thises and their tangled kinship—and on the very first day, they brought in nearly a thousand rebel soldiers who surrendered.

Zichuan Xiu treated surrendered rebel soldiers with great gentleness. Whenever one came, he asked no questions and first gave him a bowl of food. Since their defeat, these rebel soldiers had been hiding in deep mountains and old forests, trembling with fear and filling their stomachs with leaves and grass roots. Now, holding bowls of fragrant rice, they were so moved that they nearly wept.

The rebels were truly starving. In some places, where diehard rebels still refused to surrender, Zichuan Xiu merely ordered a huge pot of meat soup boiled. When the wind carried the scent over, the rebel soldiers immediately crawled out of hiding and cried, "Waxi li!" (I surrender!) There were even large groups of rebel soldiers who caught wind of it and hurried day and night from other provinces to surrender to "Guangming Xiu." After one week, Zichuan Xiu's "battle results" shocked even himself: he had accepted more than seventy thousand rebel soldiers, nearly ten times the size of his own force.

Shirakawa was deeply worried by this situation: if such an enormous number of rebel captives rose up, they could wipe out Xiu Battalion, pot and all, within an hour!

She resolved to fulfill her duty as an aide and give that "little idiot" a thorough warning.

Shirakawa said, "My lord, shall I tell you a joke?"

Zichuan Xiu was astonished. "Well, well, Shirakawa, I never thought you could tell jokes too! It'd better be something exciting!"

Ignoring him, Shirakawa began:

"During a battle, a Far East Army soldier shouted, 'Captain, I caught a Devil Race prisoner!'

"The captain said, 'Good work! Bring him over.'

"The soldier said, 'I can't! He's about to take me away!'"

Zichuan Xiu laughed uproariously. "That's a good joke!"

Shirakawa prompted him. "My lord, after hearing that joke, don't you have any thoughts? Don't you think it resembles our present situation?"

Zichuan Xiu scratched his head, thought very seriously for quite a while, and answered, "No. I don't." Then he left.

Shirakawa was left behind, cursing, "Idiot! Big idiot! Super idiot! Super-duper idiot!"

But Changchuan, who oversaw logistics, worried about another issue. He reported to Zichuan Xiu, "There are too many mouths to feed. Our provisions will only last another week!"

Zichuan Xiu gave the order: "Immediately summon all officers from battalion commander upward. We're holding Xiu Battalion's first military council."