The chaos outside Gaojia Village wasn't a mystery for long.After watching for a moment, Li Daoxuan finally understood why the sentinels nearly fell off the wall and why San'er—who normally panicked at spilled water—was suddenly barking orders like a half-baked general.
What they'd seen was the kind of scene that, in any dynasty, made officials send out urgent memorials:A tide of refugees stumbling across the wasteland, dragging children, wailing, shouting for their mothers—followed by a pack of bandits hacking down the slow ones with all the enthusiasm of men who had absolutely nothing to lose.
It was a landscape painting titled "Central Plains, Late Ming Edition: Please Abolish the Ministry of Justice, It's Useless Anyway."
When someone lagged behind, a bandit's blade flashed.Blood sprayed like a festive ribbon-cutting ceremony.The refugees screamed louder; the bandits laughed harder.
Frankly, if there weren't a newly built city wall, a divine statue, and a resident Tianzun secretly watching over them, half the villagers would've fled into a cabbage patch and tried to bury themselves alive.
The Village Arms Up (in the loosest possible sense)
"Get up the wall! Hurry!"
"Bow and arrow! I've got the one we looted last time—still works, I think!"
"I've got a rusty knife!"
"I've got a bamboo pole!"
"I've got… a broom?!"
In short: Gaojia Village prepared for battle exactly the way an inn prepares for a food inspection—frantically, and with tools not meant for combat.
The two blacksmiths finally emerged, each wriggling into a set of crude armor they'd hammered together.Well… "armor" was generous. It looked like someone had lost a fight with a wok and decided to wear the remains.
Still, in a village where most defense relied on yelling loudly, the two smiths suddenly looked like twin war gods. Dozens of villagers flocked toward their shining wok-armor like iron filings to magnets.
Nearby, the tall brutes Gao Chuwu and Zheng Daniu hefted their axes. In crisis, height matters—if not for combat effectiveness, then at least because people assume tall men know things.
The defensive line—rough, uneven, slightly ridiculous—was formed.
Refugees Arrive — and Decision Time Begins
Soon the first refugees burst into Li Daoxuan's miniature field of vision. The fastest among them weren't actually runners at all, but a family in a carriage bouncing along the pitted earth like a boat in a typhoon.
A middle-aged man in a blue scholar's robe—clearly someone who had once believed the civil service exam was the correct career path—leapt off the carriage, shouting:
"Open the gate! Let us in! Bandits—killing—everywhere—help!"
Before he finished, San'er blinked and shouted, "Eh? Isn't that Master Bai?!"
The man looked up, as startled as a mandarin caught cheating on grain tax records."San'er?! Is this… Chengcheng County already? No… no, the county seat should still be far!"
San'er waved. "Open the gate! Let Master Bai's family in!"
The wooden plates turned, fishing lines pulled, and the village gate slowly creaked open.
But then—
"Should we… close the door?!"the gate-keeper shouted anxiously.
A good question.The kind of question generals and emperors face in bedtime stories.
Let Master Bai in? Easy.Let the hundreds of fleeing commoners behind him in? Harder.Let the bandits rush in behind them? Fatal.
And suddenly the fate of Gaojia Village rested on San'er's panicked, sweating forehead.
He froze, trapped between morality and survival, like an honest official deciding whether to report corruption or pretend he didn't see it.
Li Daoxuan: "Don't test human nature."
But Li Daoxuan took pity.
Human nature, he thought, really cannot endure examinations.Especially not open-book exams involving death.
He puffed out his cheeks, blew toward the ground, and unleashed a swirling dust storm that rolled across the plains like divine breath.
A wall of yellow sand rose, swallowing the bandits and blanketing everything behind the fleeing people.
The refugees didn't need to see—they just had to run straight.The bandits, however, needed to see their prey, and without visibility they might as well have been swinging blades at ghosts.
Within seconds, distance opened between the two groups.
Li Daoxuan raised a hand, ready to swat the bandits flat like unruly mosquitoes…Paused.Lowered his hand.
Killing them was easy.Too easy.
But if he solved every crisis personally, the villagers would never gain experience. Then one day when he wasn't watching the box, someone would sneeze and the entire village would die.
So he let the scene unfold.
The Gate Opens — And So Does the Village's Chaos
"Let everyone in! Then close the gate!" San'er shouted with confidence—restored only because the danger was obscured behind sand.
Master Bai leapt off his carriage, scrambled up the wall with surprising agility for a scholar, and began shouting commands:
"Those with bows! Fire! At least pretend to have aim!"
Rude? Yes.Useful? Also yes.
The villagers didn't care who shouted orders.Someone with lungs was better than no one at all.
They loosed a few arrows. None hit anything. One didn't even clear the wall.But the bandits, seeing arrows rain down, stopped fifty meters away and started mumbling nervously.
Meanwhile the refugees poured through the gate, collapsing like sacks of grain in the courtyard. The winch spun, and with a heavy bang, the gate shut.
Master Bai exhaled."Fortunately, I practiced the Six Gentlemanly Arts—especially driving. Otherwise the carriage would have flipped twelve times."
San'er gulped."Master Bai… what happened?"
The scholar's face tightened with grief.
"Baijiabao has fallen."
San'er's eyes widened.Baijiabao—a family fortress known for its militia, its fortifications, its stubbornness—broken?Impossible.
And yet—
Master Bai pointed toward the bandits, who were still nervously huddled beyond the dust.
"That small group is only the tail," he said grimly."Behind them are hundreds—perhaps thousands. My family's fortress resisted for under two hours before being overrun…"
The wind howled outside the walls.
Gaojia Village suddenly felt very small.
Very fragile.
And painfully aware that the Ming world beyond their wall was collapsing faster than a government budget in the hands of corrupt officials.