Chapter Forty-Two: Bribery

When Liu Chengzong’s parents met Cai Zhongpan, their joy was beyond words. Hearing of the hardships Sanyuan had suffered, they felt even greater sympathy. Blood ties ran deep, and with the world outside in chaos, how could they turn away a relative with nowhere else to go? Even though their own clan in Xingpingli was barely able to protect itself, it was still better than being adrift amid bandits in northern Shaanxi.

The household bustled happily as they prepared a meal for Cai Zhongpan and his brother-in-law, Chen Ruji. Unfortunately, the last old hen had been slaughtered for soup just the day before by Liu Chengzong, so there was no meat to offer. Still, it was a rare event for the Liu family to have such a lunch.

After the meal, unease crept into everyone’s hearts. Even the old patriarch, Liu Xiangyu, walked out into the courtyard several times, gazing toward the north.

“What’s happening up north? Still no sign?”

Judging by the time, if the government troops clashed with the bandits in the morning, then by now the fighting at Laomiao Village should have ended. The villages were only seven or eight li apart; even if they couldn’t hear the sounds of battle, surely there should be at least a plume of black smoke.

Liu Chengzong could no longer sit still. He went to the stable to fetch his warhorse, intending to ride north and see for himself, but Cai Zhongpan stopped him, saying, “Lion, let your uncle come with you—find me a tael or two of gunpowder.”

“Gunpowder? Uncle, do you have use for it?”

In answer to his question, Cai Zhongpan leaned his eight-foot polearm against the door, turned, and pulled a double-barreled hand cannon from his pack. “This is even handier than a bow.”

Seeing his uncle produce such a thing left Liu Chengzong dumbfounded. He took the weapon, examining it again and again in surprise. “Where did this come from?”

The hand cannon was finely made, with two parallel barrels of equal length and bore, each about a foot long and a quarter-inch thick. Underneath were twin triggers linked to two matchlock hammers, and beneath the barrels, the wooden stock housed a brass cap concealing the ramrod.

The curved wooden grip felt heavy in the hand, and at the bottom was a small wooden cover that, when opened, revealed more than a dozen lead balls, several of which tumbled out, sending Liu Chengzong scrambling to pick them up.

He had never seen a pistol like this before, and certainly never with two barrels. Yet somewhere in the recesses of another memory, he recognized that this was not native to these lands, and blurted out, “A Western firearm?”

“Ha! Lion, you know more than most outside Yan’an Prefecture. This is a genuine Sanyuan-made piece, a reward from Mr. Kui Xin for your uncle for fighting bandits. The gentleman has been baptized into the Church of the Lord of Heaven and has close ties with the Westerners—he’s learned quite a bit from them.”

Cai Zhongpan smiled and added, “The gentleman has another one, even finer than this—it was a gift from the Westerners themselves.”

Liu Chengzong’s other set of memories left him with a strong impression of foreigners, especially Westerners, but he had never expected to hear of their church even here in Shaanxi. He could not help but ask, “Uncle, have you met any Westerners?”

“I’ve met a few. Other than being a bit warmer-looking, they’re no different from us.”

“Warmer-looking?”

That was an odd way to describe someone’s appearance.

While Liu Chengzong puzzled over this, his uncle’s expression grew solemn. “Hairier.”

Liu Chengzong couldn’t help but laugh at this explanation. Then he heard his uncle continue, “But they all call themselves Western scholars, and they study the Four Books and Five Classics more diligently than our own students and scholars. Since some gentry have joined the church, many common folk in Sanyuan have followed suit.”

Western scholars?

He turned the phrase over in his mind. It clashed with the image of Westerners from his other memory, in which such people were painted with words like thief, pirate, brigand, colonizer, opium dealer, and slave owner—hardly anything to do with Confucianism.

Still, Liu Chengzong didn’t dwell on it. He had asked out of passing curiosity and quickly lost interest. Handing back the double-barreled pistol, he mounted up, fetched two taels of gunpowder from his saddlebag, and led another horse as they set off north together.

He had his own views on scholars embracing the faith, and some guesses about the missionaries’ motives. He suspected both sides had different dreams while sharing the same bed, each using the other for their own ends.

As Cai Zhongpan had said, the missionaries courted the upper classes to win converts among the commoners; the scholars who were curious or willing to join were mostly reformists, hoping to use foreign knowledge for the benefit of the people and the state, and were mainly interested in translated books.

Both sides were shrewd, taking what they needed—no one was anyone’s fool.

As for himself, Liu Chengzong felt it had nothing to do with him. He didn’t expect to meet a missionary anyway, and if he did, he would deal with it then.

The uncle and nephew rode north, swapping stories from years past—one speaking of Yuhe Fort to the north, the other of Sanyuan County to the south—and found much common ground, though their experiences were tinged with sorrow.

Following the traces left by the troops for five li, Liu Chengzong was surprised to find that the wagon and hoof prints suddenly vanished.

How strange! With a detachment of two or three hundred soldiers, they wouldn’t have bothered to hide their tracks. How could they simply disappear?

They searched the road for a long time. Suddenly, they saw figures on the west bank of Panlong Stream waving to them—a group of five or six people emerged from between earthen ramparts and hurried toward the east bank.

As they drew nearer and waded across with pant legs rolled up, Liu Chengzong recognized Lu Bin, who had parted from them only the day before, serving as a guide for Captain Zhang.

The people behind him, men and women, wore ragged, filthy clothes; the children’s noses ran, and all were covered in dust and dirt.

Filth was common in such waterless conditions, but ragged clothes were not, especially when the mountains still carried the bite of cold despite the warming weather. Clearly, wherever they had come from, it was in haste.

After crossing the river, Lu Bin saluted with the others and introduced them, “Second Master Liu, this is my elder brother and his wife. When the bandits broke into Laomiao the other day, they escaped with their lives by hiding in a cave on the cliff.”

Liu Chengzong returned their salute and asked, “Weren’t you guiding the government troops against the bandits? How did you end up here alone? Where are the troops?”

At the mention of the government troops, Lu Bin’s face twisted in anger and frustration. He beat his chest and stamped his feet. “Second Master Liu, you don’t know. I was guiding Captain Zhang; scouts rode ahead. Halfway there, for no reason, the scouts came back and the captain refused to go on. He led the troops west across the river and wouldn’t let me wander, even posted three or five soldiers to watch me.”

“I thought something was wrong, so I slipped away in the night. This morning, bandits brought several carts from the north, covered with straw mats so you couldn’t tell what was inside. The government troops retreated west of the river and returned to Fushi.”

“At noon, I mustered my courage and went back to Laomiao Village—there wasn’t a bandit left, but the villagers…”

Lu Bin’s voice grew choked. His brother took over, “None of the villagers were left intact. The bandits withdrew with no hurry or fear. Now the village is gone and our family destroyed. My brother and I would like to borrow some hands from Xingpingli to bury our loved ones—would that be possible?”

Liu Chengzong had never expected such an outcome and was at a loss for words. He turned aside, muttering, “What on earth were the government troops doing?”

“Ran away, most likely bribed by the bandits. What do you think was in those carts?” Cai Zhongpan, still on horseback, gestured with his hand above his throat, out of sight of the Lu brothers, and shook his head. “I saw plenty of that in Sanyuan… My advice is, let’s go back to the hills and think things over.”

Note:
The hand cannon is based on the antique Shuangguan pistol of Dashun’s Chief Eunuch, found in the Funiu Mountains of Luanchuan, Henan.