Don't Put Human Nature to the Test

Only after quite a while did Li Daoxuan understand why the sentry was so panicked, and why San Shier had ordered every villager to take up a weapon and get onto the walls.

What the sentry had seen was a terrifying sight.

A great crowd fled with their children in tow, crying for their fathers and mothers, while a horde of bandits chased behind them, brandishing blades and hacking wildly at the fleeing people.

Every so often, someone fell behind and was cut down by a pursuing bandit, blood spraying far into the air.

The people ahead fled in even greater panic at the sight, while those behind grew more savage after drawing blood, descending into a frenzy, laughing madly as they chased and hacked.

Who could see that and not panic?

If the villagers of Gao Family Village hadn't had a wall protecting them and a Heavenly Venerable hovering overhead, they would probably have wet themselves at the sight and already started thinking about how to escape.

"Onto the walls! Hurry, hurry, hurry! Everyone onto the walls!"

"Bows and arrows! I have a bow I picked up from the bandits last time."

"I have a rusty saber."

"Bring them all! Bring bamboo poles too."

The villagers climbed onto the walls carrying all sorts of odds and ends.

Li Da and Gao Yiyi from the blacksmith's shop actually dug two sets of Two-Panel Armor out of a corner. They put them on and picked up heavy iron hammers, instantly becoming the "best-equipped" warriors in all of Gao Family Village.

Both were strongly built, too. Once they stood on the walls in armor with iron hammers over their shoulders, they immediately became like pillars that could still a raging sea. Many of the weaker villagers gathered around them.

Two others had no equipment, but were built like oxen and stood tall as horses, looking imposing all the same. They were Gao Chuwu and Zheng Daniu, each holding an axe, with dozens of villagers gathered around them too.

Just as they finished "taking their defensive positions," the people outside ran into Li Daoxuan's "field of view."

Those at the front didn't look like ordinary commoners, but rather a wealthy household. They actually had a horse-drawn carriage, though it struggled badly over terrain without a proper road, jolting so violently that it wasn't much faster than the people running on foot.

The carriage reached the gate first. Surprisingly, the driver wasn't a coachman, but a middle-aged man in a blue-green robe who clearly had some standing. He looked up at the wall and shouted, "May I ask what town this is? Please open the gate and let us take shelter inside! The bandits behind us are killing people, they're vicious..."

Before he could finish, San Shier called out, "Huh? Isn't that Mister Bai?"

The man looked up. "Ah, Third Secretary! Have I reached the Chengcheng County Seat? No, that can't be! The county seat should still be far away, shouldn't it?"

San Shier said, "Quick, open the gate and let Mister Bai's family in."

The villagers hurriedly turned the wooden wheel. The fishing line pulled the two wooden doors slowly open to either side. Mister Bai flicked both hands, and the carriage rushed into the village.

"Can we close the gate now?" the villager in charge of opening it asked loudly.

San Shier glanced outside. Thanks to their carriage, Mister Bai's family had pulled far ahead of the people behind them, so opening the gate to admit them had been easy, with plenty of time to close it afterward. But the people fleeing on foot weren't much farther ahead of the bandits.

They were practically on one another's heels.

If they let the people in front into the village, the bandits behind might charge in right along with them, and then...

In that brief instant, sweat began pouring down his face.

Should he protect himself and order the gate closed immediately?

Or should he save more people and make all of Gao Family Village bear the risk of the bandits breaking in?

San Shier wasn't a military officer. Faced with this situation, he couldn't make a calm judgment at all. He was utterly panicked.

Fortunately, Li Daoxuan didn't give him a chance to make that decision!

Human nature couldn't withstand being put to the test.

Li Daoxuan didn't want to use something like this to force a man who wasn't all that bad into becoming a bad person. I have the power to solve this, so there's no need to test human nature.

He puffed out his cheeks, aimed at the yellow sand outside the village, and blew.

Yellow sand rose into the air, enveloping the people behind and the bandits.

The bandits needed to see their targets to chase them down and hack at them, but the fleeing people didn't. They only needed to run straight ahead.

In a little over ten seconds, the fleeing people burst out of the yellow sandstorm, putting some distance between themselves and the bandits.

Once they had opened up a gap, Li Daoxuan could swat the bandits like mosquitoes with his palm, or flick their foreheads...

He raised his hand, thought for a moment, then lowered it again.

I can swat them dead whenever I like. There's no hurry, and pampering the little people too much isn't good either. The villagers need experience handling this sort of thing. Otherwise, if I'm absent one day, there won't be a single person in the village with combat experience. They'll be helpless the moment anything happens. Even with sturdy walls, they'll get overrun in one attack and die without a place to be buried.

Activating Heavenly Venerable's cold-eyed observer mode. Let's see how Gao Family Village handles things now.

Once the fleeing crowd used the sandstorm to pull away from the bandits, San Shier no longer needed to put his humanity to the test. He shouted, "Let everyone in before closing the gate!"

He had barely shouted that when Mister Bai actually came up onto the wall too. After his family's carriage rushed inside, he had immediately jumped down and hurried up onto the wall. Standing beside San Shier, he shouted, "Anyone with a bow, fire a few arrows at the bandits! Give them a scare!"

As an outsider, he had climbed onto the wall and started issuing orders without the slightest ceremony. Interestingly, though, the villagers didn't care who was giving the orders. As long as someone was directing them, they would listen. They drew the bows taken from the bandits last time and sent arrows flying at the bandits outside.

A sparse handful of arrows flew out feebly, failing to hit so much as a hair.

But they were enough to scare the bandits. The whole group stopped several dozen meters away, looking up at the enormous wall before them and murmuring among themselves.

The fleeing people seized the chance to stream through the gate. The villagers hurriedly turned the winch, with several others helping push, and shut the gate with a boom.

Only then did Mister Bai breathe a sigh of relief. "Luckily, I learned the six arts of a gentleman reasonably well, and in particular never neglected the art of driving. I drove the carriage myself and fled all the way here. And luckily you were here, too, or I would have met my end in the Yellow Springs."

San Shier was a little rattled. "Mister Bai, what... what happened to you?"

Mister Bai sighed. "White Family Fort was breached by bandits."

San Shier: "[Utterly shocked]!"

White Family Fort was, as its name suggested, the White Family's fortified estate.

The White Family wasn't a particularly powerful clan of scholar-officials, only a minor family. Their ancestors had included a prefect and a county magistrate, but in the current generation, no one in the family held office at court.

Thanks to the foundation their ancestors had left behind, the White Family still carried considerable weight in Chengcheng County. They had a sturdy fortified estate, dozens of household guards, and over a hundred tenant farmers. The White Family had also continually contributed money and effort to organize the nearby villagers into a militia to resist bandits. They were no weak force.

The small bands of mounted raiders and mountain bandits nearby had never dared provoke White Family Fort.

San Shier had truly never imagined that bandits could breach White Family Fort. What fucking bandits were powerful enough to do that?

Mister Bai pointed at the bandits outside, who were discussing the wall among themselves, and shook his head with a sigh. "These few dozen who chased us are only a small handful. There are hundreds, perhaps a thousand more behind them. My White Family Fort held them off for less than four hours before they broke through. The militia is finished, and the household guards suffered terrible losses too. Only these few of us escaped..."