He had said not to take too many lives, not that they must kill no one. There was a world of difference.
It seemed Zhang Bancheng was no softhearted soul either!
As Tang Changsheng pondered this, the guards sprang into action. With a shout, they loosed a volley of arrows. Barely a dozen shafts flew, but they killed two or three Refugees.
The other Refugees shrieked in terror and turned to flee, drawing even more unrestrained laughter from the guards.
Zhang Bancheng sighed softly. "There are Refugees even in the capital region. It seems the situation..." He shook his head.
When the spring river warmed, the ducks knew first.
It seemed high officials and nobles like Zhang Bancheng and Zhang Qiuyan had been the first to sense Wu Hou State's instability.
It was not that they had turned disloyal, but they had at least begun thinking of how to protect themselves. Otherwise, they would not have searched far and wide for Daoists and invited them into their homes.
They were preparing to put some distance between themselves and Marquis Wu!
As Tang Changsheng's thoughts raced, he suddenly saw the twenty-odd guards who had chased off the Refugees fleeing back in disarray.
Had they run into an ambush? Was there an expert among these Refugees? Tang Changsheng's eyes sharpened.
At the outset, the Refugees had always been the easiest to deal with: an utter rabble. Education had always been hard to come by, so when the Refugees first rose in revolt, they were often ignorant and sorely lacking in strategy.
But if the Refugees were not crushed early and had two or three years to hone themselves, they could become a formidable army.
And if they joined forces with educated scholars, they could quickly become a force capable of toppling a