The Meanness of Human Nature

Ben'an County.

A small county town. A canal ran through the city, connecting north to Ningzhou Road and south to the ports of Shang'an Prefecture, while a straight road linked Mozhou Road, Nanlin Road, and Ningzhou Road.

Wealth traveling north and south hurried through the county town every day, yet left nothing behind for the local people. The terrain around the city was flat, and to keep the canal clear, they had not even built a moat. It was a typical place easy to attack and hard to defend.

Thus, General Li had stationed his troops at a post station in a strategically dangerous area outside the city, but that had played right into the rebels' hands. Less than a day after the troops settled in, some soldiers began vomiting and suffering diarrhea. Even the Qi practitioners in the army could not cure them.

Yet General Li was a ruthless man. The moment he discovered it, he forcibly suppressed the news, then dispatched swift riders to report to Jinhuai Prefecture City. Afterward, he decisively executed all the severely ill soldiers and the post station officials.

Only then had the rebels ended up confronting him as they did now. Otherwise, they would already have surrounded and attacked him.

Even so, the more than two thousand remaining prefectural soldiers under his command were still in grave danger without reinforcements. The rebels numbered at least ten thousand, and more importantly, they possessed dozens of heavy crossbows.

The top of the waterwheel originally used to draw water at the post station had now been converted into a temporary watchtower. General Li, clad in simple chainmail, stood before a thick wooden board and surveyed the rebels surrounding him from three sides.

"Where the hell did these rebels come from?"

Judging by the ornament on his