The scoundrel named Xie Youcai looked thirty-two or thirty-three, though half his face was now swollen as if he had a goiter.
Li Long had put a lot of force into that earlier punch. The fellow felt as though half his jaw was almost broken.
Li Long wondered how the man could still speak so clearly. That was quite a talent.
Xie Youcai walked ahead, with Li Long following behind, gun in hand and backpack on his back.
"My dad liked dealing in antiques, and through that he made a connection with someone who was supposedly an adjutant or something in Usman's old forces. The man had no descendants. He'd been persecuted during those special years and was in poor health. He died two years ago, and my dad handled his funeral.
"In the diary he left behind, he wrote that when Usman was looting this area, he sensed the tide had turned against him, so he buried some of the weapons and loot in the mountains, planning to make a comeback if he got the chance later..."
Li Long found this rather interesting, because Usman had been publicly executed after his capture, but his son Xie Erman had later rebelled again-the same son who had killed Luo Shaowei, a deputy division commander in the People's Liberation Army. Not long after rebelling, though, he had negotiated a surrender and even become some sort of official.
Neither Usman nor his son Xie Erman was any good. They were both sly as could be, so setting up a fallback hideout like this seemed perfectly normal.
Besides, according to later accounts, the Wusiman Bandits Gang had roamed Southern and Northern Xinjiang, robbing and looting. The Soviet Union had initially been involved behind the scenes, and later the Americans had supported them too. None