After waking, Liu Cheng sent out all his letters, then reflected on himself. He would stop bothering with any other damned business and concentrate on dealing with Liao Xiong first.
No quarry that demanded a fight to the death could be taken lightly.
On the twenty-fourth day of the eighth month, the troops ignored the Xu Lake Chief right under their noses and Immortal Maiden An Miao, who was reportedly appearing at both Gui Lake and Tai Lake at once. They advanced to Tai Lake's northern shore and made camp ten li from Yixing.
That same morning, Liu Cheng met Fan Ning, Xie Xuan, and Shen Jin, who had come from the south.
The last of them began defending himself as soon as he arrived:
"Liao Xiong can enter and leave Wuxing freely not because our Shen Family indulges him, but because his entire clan follows the Way of the Celestial Masters. Whenever they aren't raiding out on the lake, they all wear crimson headscarves. Ordinarily, when people encounter these crimson-scarved Liao, everyone gives them certain conveniences..."
Only half of that could be believed.
Liu Cheng believed that Liao Xiong's entire clan followed the Way of the Celestial Masters, and that they wore crimson headscarves when they were not plundering. That was common throughout the lands south of the river; the Wuling Man over on Huan Wen's side wore crimson headscarves too. But to say that the Shen Clan of Wuxing, which occupied almost half a commandery, constantly let eight or nine hundred Liao bandits come and go through the commandery merely because they wore crimson headscarves was rather a perfunctory excuse.
*You can't use this to fob me off just because I once relied on a crimson futou of the Way of the Celestial Masters to make that arduous