Liao Yu narrowed his eyes. "The next Mist Hidden Temple?"
Wu Shuangren smiled without answering.
"..."
Liao Yu's expression kept changing, but he asked no more.
After a while, he picked up his iron staff.
"Shall we keep sparring?"
"All right."
The clash of iron staffs rang out in the courtyard once more.
The two sparred on and off, only stopping when dusk fell.
Both their stomachs had begun to rumble.
"Let's head back and eat."
Liao Yu said to Wu Shuangren.
Wu Shuangren said, "Thank you for your help, Uncle Liao."
Liao Yu smiled and waved it off.
Wu Shuangren put down his iron staff, turned, and left the rear courtyard.
Watching him walk away, Liao Yu stood in the courtyard for a long time, a complicated look in his eyes. He murmured:
"Old Wu, I always used to say you were a vicious wolf. I never thought the son you'd father would turn out to be a tiger cub!"
A wolf roamed a thousand li to feast on meat.
But a tiger lay hidden among the mountains and rivers, concealing its fangs and claws so that one day it could swallow ten thousand li in a single breath!
46 Initial Training
The fourth day after Hong Fan was killed.
Liao Yu found a suitable place for Wu Shuangren.
It was an open plot in the south of the city, near the city wall.
"You only need to buy the three residences in front and knock down all the outer walls. That'll make the place spacious enough for over a hundred people to train."
Liao Yu had brought Wu Shuangren here, and he pointed at the residences ahead as he spoke.
Wu Shuangren looked around and was very satisfied.
He had thought he would have to buy at least five or six residences and knock through all of them to piece together a training ground with enough space.
But at the place Liao Yu had found, he only needed to buy three.
"Are the owners of these three residences willing to sell?"
Wu Shuangren asked.
Liao Yu nodded with a smile. "It's all been arranged. All three belong to the owner of a trading firm in the south of the city. When he heard it was you, Commander Wu, who wanted to buy them, he agreed without another word and offered a very low price. He's only asking twenty guan for all three."
Wu Shuangren nodded in satisfaction. All three residences had two courtyards and seven or eight side rooms each. At an average of less than seven guan apiece, they really were cheap.
"All right, I'll buy them."
Wu Shuangren took two ten-guan jiaozi notes from his robes and handed them to Liao Yu. "Sorry to trouble you to buy them for me, Uncle Liao. I'll give you another six hundred wen this afternoon."
He had obtained a total of two hundred and six guan from Hong Wen and given twenty guan each to the three officials. Neither Xu Jing nor the Mo Family had taken a share, so Wu Shuangren still had one hundred and forty-six guan left.
Liao Yu took the two notes and cautioned him, "If you pay in jiaozi, you'll have to add at least another guan to make up the difference before they'll accept them."
Wu Shuangren was astonished. "That much extra?"
He had already learned from Mo Zhengxing that the Changlong Trading House's jiaozi notes had a fee of thirty wen deducted per guan. For twenty guan, that came to six hundred wen. He had thought he only needed to make up those six hundred wen, but now it turned out he needed to add a whole guan?
Liao Yu explained, "Jiaozi are convenient, but they can't be used everywhere. Even in the prefectural city, almost all transactions are made in cash, let alone in a county town."
Thinking like a modern man, Wu Shuangren had instinctively assumed that banknotes like these, which functioned like checks, should be worth more. He had never expected them to be worth less instead.
Liao Yu took the opportunity to share more of his experience with Wu Shuangren. "When you pay the militia under your command in the future, you'd best not use jiaozi either. In the border army, soldiers have to be paid in cash. If anyone dared pay them in jiaozi, it could even cause a mutiny!"
Wu Shuangren nodded. "I'll remember that."
"All right, Uncle Liao will cover that extra guan for you. Consider it a gift to congratulate you on becoming commander."
Liao Yu smiled and patted Wu Shuangren. Without waiting for him to refuse, he strode off to find the trading firm's owner and sign the property deed.
Over the next few days, Wu Shuangren hired people to alter the three residences he had bought-
All the outer walls were torn down, as were the walls between the three residences, joining the courtyards together. Every room was also fitted with communal sleeping platforms, so each could sleep at least seven or eight people.
That way, all the militia currently in the force could live there.
Wu Shuangren also intended to have all the militiamen train full-time, eating and sleeping together every day.
He had not been idle himself these past few days. He found an excuse to seek out Bai Jinhuan, the Mo Family's chief guard, and sparred with him.
Bai Jinhuan had previously been one of the three greatest experts in Bo County. He had taken the military examination and been graded at Fourth Rank. How could Wu Shuangren pass up such "experience points"?
Bai Jinhuan wielded a guandao, had profound internal cultivation, and fought fiercely. In Wu Shuangren's view, he was probably stronger than the dead Mo Zhengshang and about as strong as Peng Tianlang had been.
After defeating Bai Jinhuan, the Trait turned a little greener.
Then Wu Shuangren fought each of the Mo Family guards whose martial skills were reasonably good.
Everyone found his behavior hard to understand. He was already so formidable, so why did he keep picking fights with people weaker than himself?
If Wu Shuangren had not been sincere from beginning to end, the Mo Family might have thought the newly appointed commander was using them to establish his authority.
In the end, everyone could only conclude that Wu Shuangren was a martial arts fanatic who loved fighting too much!
The eighth day after Hong Fan's death.
With everything ready, Wu Shuangren gathered all the militia under his command for the first time.
Besides the sixty-eight men he had recently recruited, the Mo Family's remaining twenty men had also come.
These twenty were veterans who had trained for a long time. They worked well as a group and were also skilled fighters individually. Mo Zhengshang had deliberately selected twenty capable men and sent them back to the city to guard the Mo Family.
By a quirk of fate, that had saved their lives instead.
The Mo Family had thought Wu Shuangren would not allow these twenty veterans, so clearly marked as Mo Family men, to join the force. To their surprise, he had taken the initiative to ask for them, so they sent them all over.
In Wu Shuangren's view, these twenty were a ready-made fighting force. It would be a terrible waste not to use them.
Moreover, he could have these veterans lead the recruits and speed up their training.
As for the Mo Family's influence, Wu Shuangren did not mind it.
He had told Liao Yu that his goal was not merely to establish the next Mo Family.
That being the case, how could he be unable to accommodate even one Mo Family?
On the open ground, more than sixty recruits stood together in a disorderly crowd, while the twenty veterans stood neatly in two rows.
The contrast was obvious.
Wu Shuangren stood at the front, his gaze sweeping over them.
He said nothing, but gradually, everyone fell silent.
They knew little about their new commander. Most knew only that he had killed a notorious vicious bandit.
The recruits thought that although their commander looked very young, for some reason, the way he stood there gave him such presence that they dared not underestimate him.
The twenty veterans knew more. They knew Wu Shuangren had killed the two great experts Hong Fan had brought with him, then personally captured Hong Fan, avenging their brothers from Mo Family Village!
Thus the veterans, who should have been more unruly, were instead the ones who respected Wu Shuangren most.
"Some of you know me, and some don't, so let me introduce myself."
Wu Shuangren finally spoke. Drawing on his internal cultivation, he said in a ringing voice, "My name is Wu Shuangren, and I am your commander. From this day forward, every one of you will obey my orders!"
"Now, everyone, form four rows, from tallest on the left to shortest on the right."
Wu Shuangren gave his first order.
The twenty veterans moved first, and the remaining recruits quickly followed.
But the crowd went from one tangled mess to another. Even after a long while, they still had not formed the formation Wu Shuangren wanted.
Some were talking and laughing in the ranks, or shoving one another.
Wu Shuangren was not surprised. He picked up a wooden stick and walked toward the crowd.
He mercilessly lashed everyone who was talking, laughing, shoving, or standing still, drawing a scream of pain from each of them!
Wu Shuangren began directing the crowd, assigning everyone a place and occasionally lashing out with his stick.
A little later, the eighty-odd men finally managed to form four crooked rows, roughly arranged by height.
Wu Shuangren gave another order. "Everyone, dress right, using the first man at the right end of the row as your guide."
The crowd stirred, but the rows were still crooked.
Wu Shuangren noticed that quite a few people in the crowd were even looking left.
"Stop!"
He called an immediate halt, walked forward, and asked one of them, "Can you tell left from right?"
In the end, he discovered that many of them could not even tell left from right...
He finally had someone fetch strips of cloth and tie one around each person's right arm. Only then could everyone tell left from right at a glance.
By nearly noon, the eighty-odd men had finally formed neat ranks.
This training is harder than I imagined.
Wu Shuangren sighed inwardly.
He had intended to start with basic training, following the military training he had undergone in his previous life.
But he had never expected that the very first step, "forming ranks," would take nearly the entire morning!
What kind of freaks were those ancient generals who could command hundreds of thousands of soldiers in battle?
Wu Shuangren was already feeling a little drained from commanding just eighty-odd men.
47 Training the Troops
"Shuangren looks like he knows what he's doing. Did you teach him how to train troops?"
Beside the training ground in the south of the city, Liao Yu and Wu Dongrong stood watching together.
They knew this was Wu Shuangren's first time gathering all the militia for training. Worried that he could not handle it alone, they had come to lend support.
Both had served as commanders of a hundred men in the border army, so helping Wu Shuangren manage a militia force was well within their abilities.
For now, though, Wu Shuangren seemed to be doing a convincing job of training them.
"I didn't teach him."
Wu Dongrong shook his head.
Liao Yu clicked his tongue in wonder. "Could that master have taught him military strategy along the way too?"
Wu Dongrong stared into the distance. "Keep watching and we'll find out."
They had thought Wu Shuangren would have more "tricks" up his sleeve, but to their surprise, he gave no new orders.
He simply had all the militiamen hold formation and stand in place without moving.
As noon arrived, the sunlight grew scorching, and sweat soon covered the militiamen's faces.
Some instinctively raised their hands to wipe away the sweat, or swayed where they stood. Each time, Wu Shuangren's wooden stick immediately came lashing down: