Chapter Sixteen: Resentment

The battle lasted less than half an hour. Leaderless and disorganized, the bandits quickly scattered under the cavalry’s charge. After two passes, the horsemen withdrew, leaving Liu Chengzu and Cao Yao to lead the infantry in the final pursuit and slaughter of the remaining enemies.

When the fighting ended, Liu Chengzong tied the red flag to the grain cart. He tore a strip of cloth from the White Hawk’s corpse and carefully wiped the blood from his goose-feather saber. The most valuable skill he possessed was not weaponry, but rather the blade-sharpening technique he learned from an executioner in Mizhi.

The old master who taught him always insisted a blade should never be sheathed while stained with blood. Blood, he said, was the essence of the human soul; sheathe a bloodied blade and resentment would fester within it.

Most people were half skeptical of such beliefs. Liu Chengzong didn’t believe it at all. Another part of his memory knew well that the world contained bacteria; a blade that had tasted blood, left unsanitized and tucked away in an airtight scabbard, would breed rust and a foul stench.

That stench was the so-called resentment. When it got to that point, the blade was useless.

This was when good sharpening skills became vital. A blade honed by Liu Chengzong could serve as a mirror; blood wouldn’t cling to it, and a simple wipe with a cloth left no trace of rust. A touch of oil afterwards sufficed.

If it hadn’t been for He Renlong outside the martial exams, who described the benefits of being a household retainer so enticingly—matching his six years of martial training—Liu Chengzong had intended to open a sharpening shop in Yan’an.

With his skill, perhaps great riches weren’t in reach, but he would never worry about feeding a family.

The infantry now swept the battlefield, tallying spoils and supplies. Cao Yao, with time on his hands, searched around the village. Spotting Liu Chengzong, he hurried over, excitement in his voice. “Did you catch him?”

“He’s dead.”

Liu Chengzong finished cleaning his blade, his thumb running over the tiny nicks on the edge. He sheathed the saber, jerked his chin at the corpse, and tapped his own nose. “Arrow hit him here. Quick death—didn’t suffer. His bow and saber are on the red flag’s back. There’s seven or eight pounds of gunpowder too. See if any of it’s yours?”

At this, Cao Yao beamed, squatting beside the corpse for a long look, then returned to pat Liu Chengzong on the shoulder. “Good shot, very good! What would I want? It’s all yours—did the blade taste blood?”

Liu Chengzong nodded, but before he could reply, another voice chimed in from the crowd, “When your sister-in-law gets here, I’ll bring you some blade oil. We’ve made a good haul this time. Once we’re on the road and settled somewhere, brother here will treat you to a fine meal!”

With that, Cao Yao found the saber that had belonged to the White Hawk on the back of the red flag, drew it, inspected it, and spat a curse at the corpse. “This bastard had a fine blade—pattern-welded, too. If it hadn’t been for the cavalry being bogged down, not a single bandit would have escaped.”

It was a goose-wing saber—its curve much like Liu Chengzong’s own goose-feather waist saber, though the tip had no false edge and sported three small “wings” near the point.

The hilt was an inch longer, bridging the gap between single and double-handed grip, equally suited to one or two hands.

The pattern-welding, which Cao Yao called “wrong flowers,” referred to the blade’s jagged, saw-toothed grain—horse-tooth steel, similar in appearance to true crucible steel.

True crucible steel was said to come from the Western Regions, but most of the horse-tooth steel sabers found in northern Shaanxi were the work of Shanxi smiths, thus commonly dismissed as “imitation crucible steel.”

Yet, even as an imitation, the market price was high.

A blade of such quality was not merely a weapon, but a collector’s piece.

Listening to Cao Yao, Liu Chengzong gave a soft chuckle. “That bandit didn’t deserve a blade like this. It was the saber of a respectable youth from the stockade, and that scoundrel only held it for an hour at most.”

“I plan to take it home. The only flaw is the fittings are ugly—once I replace them, it’ll make a fine heirloom. As for use—”

He thumbed open the copper, four-petal guard of his own saber and drew the freshly polished blade. “The government-made blades suit me best. It pains me to see that Shanxi saber chipped.”

No matter how fine the weapon, it was still a consumable. Skill might preserve the blade, but chips and nicks were inevitable in combat, even for the most expensive swords.

To be honest, Liu Chengzong was reluctant to use high-quality weapons.

Battle was a matter of staking one’s life; it demanded full focus, no room for distraction. If, in the heat of combat, he worried about damaging a precious blade, death would not be far behind.

His goose-feather saber, now polished to a mirror shine, bore two small repaired notches along the edge—a souvenir from last year’s campaign beyond the frontier, where he had clashed blades with Mongol fighters by the Yellow River.

As for this battle, though he had drawn his blade after shooting the White Hawk, the bandits were undisciplined, panicked further by the cavalry’s charge.

He could have announced his intention to draw his blade and still none of them would have been able to stop him; from horseback, he merely swept his blade as he passed, no need to hack with force.

The saber only picked up a bit of blood—plus two faint scratches, courtesy of some unlucky soul who had an iron trinket on him.

Cao Yao was still basking in the thrill of killing the White Hawk, turning that goose-wing saber over and over in his hands. “I think this Mongolian crossguard isn’t bad at all. Such a fine blade, and it ended up in a bandit’s hands.”

“Lion, isn’t it strange—the way of the world? The poor have to sell their wives and daughters just to survive, and still go hungry. Many will die without leaving a single heir.”

He raised the saber, squinting to admire the horse-tooth pattern, then glanced at Liu Chengzong. “And look at the wealthy. They don’t have to be nobles or officials—just a local landlord in some remote village, and see the quality of their blades—”

“In the old days, back in Baoding, even the most useless guards of the capital’s nobility could fetch fifty taels for a blade like this, just by putting an edge on it.”

But that wasn’t his point. He sheathed the saber and hung it on the red flag’s back, patting it twice. “The people who survived are already angry. When the time is right, today’s village will be every village tomorrow.

If chaos spreads from Liaodong to Shaanxi, the whole world will fall into disorder. Times will only get worse. Anyone who thinks like your postman friend Li Hongji, content to be a compliant subject, will starve to death.

By the time hunger robs you of strength, it’s too late to think of anything else. If you’re going to act, you’d better do it while you still can—rob others before you starve.”

Liu Chengzong laughed, nimbly leaping down from the grain cart. The squad leader was still clinging to his united front rhetoric.

Today’s battle had proved one thing beyond doubt: these two squads of border troops, though considered troublemakers at Yuhe Fort, utterly outclassed two or three times their number of rabble.

To be blunt, a squad of border troops half-starved could crush three hundred bandits; once they ate their fill, who knew what they might accomplish?

They might even be able to take a county seat.

Liu Chengzu guessed that was exactly what the man wanted. He grinned broadly and waved it off. “Let’s just get back to Black Dragon King Temple Hill first. It’s normal for the poor to envy the rich—anyone would, and everyone wants to better themselves. That’s not the problem.”

“The problem is, nowadays the poor have no way to get better.”