Chapter 2167

The front-rank riflemen's volley stunned the bandits at the hillbase. No one had anticipated an attack from their rear. Before the stunned mob could react, a cascade of hand grenades arced into their midst. Thick smoke erupted across the formation, and the bandit reinforcements rushing to defend the village entrance disintegrated into bloody fragments.

The Right Detachment surged down the hillside in a thunderous assault, their momentum shattering the bandit position instantly. The follow-up wave swept through enemy ranks like a breaking dam. War cries, curses, and death screams merged with the metallic clashing of blades—the cacophony filled the entire valley.

Li Dong abandoned all pretense of formation control. He knew only one thing would steel the raw recruits' nerves now—leadership by example. He roared, command saber raised high, and charged into the scattering enemy before anyone else could follow.

Behind the gun emplacement, panic consumed the bandits. Some fled outright; others waved swords and spears while screaming inarticulate defiance. Li Dong closed on a short bandit clutching an oversized dao—the man seemed paralyzed by terror. Only when Li Dong stood practically upon him did the bandit remember to raise his weapon.

Li Dong's diagonal slash descended toward the man's head. Though ceremonial in appearance, the machine-crafted blade forged from tool steel matched the finest combat sabers of the era in toughness, strength, and edge retention. It cleaved the short bandit from shoulder to neck in a single stroke. Arterial blood fountained.

"Ah Ma..." The bandit's death scream pierced the din—shrill and clear, almost feminine. The sound made Li Dong's skin crawl.

No time to process it. He waved his bloodied saber overhead. "Brothers, charge!"

His blade work and battle cry electrified the soldiers behind him. They roared as one and surged forward.

Yang Erdong, veteran of house guard service, possessed genuine close-quarters experience. Unlike the trembling "rookies" around him clutching their spears like drowning men cling to driftwood, he remained composed. Spotting the bandits in disarray, he recognized the perfect opportunity for taking heads and earning merit. He rallied his spirits immediately, spear thrusting as he charged with calculated aggression. Stabbing methodically as he advanced, he swept aside all resistance and plunged into the gun emplacement. Inside, a musketeer had already shouldered a bird gun and was swinging the barrel toward him. Yang Erdong bellowed and hurled his spear with devastating force, pinning the man to the ground.

By now he'd found his rhythm—killing became smooth, almost mechanical. He drew his machete and hacked down a large bandit who'd turned his back while engaging a comrade. Surveying the emplacement, he found corpses heaped everywhere, the stench of gunpowder and blood overwhelming. Among the bodies stood several stunned rookies, faces drained of color.

"Don't just stand there gawking! Get out there and kill!" Yang Erdong vaulted over the emplacement wall. Unexpectedly, loose rocks littered the far side. He lost his footing on landing, stumbled, and went down hard. When he tried rising, searing pain shot through his left foot—the ankle refused to bear weight.

"Fuck your mother..." Yang Erdong spat a local curse. He quickly dragged himself to the emplacement wall's base and propped himself against it. Lying prone on the ground meant getting trampled by the chaotic melee—which would either kill him or skin him alive.

Luo Mao, commanding his squad, bypassed the gun emplacement entirely and charged straight at the disorganized bandit reinforcements clogging the road. Having lost his spear in the initial thrust, he now wielded his machete while leading from the front.

Though the bandits had descended into chaos, a few hardened fighters refused to break. Luo Mao spotted one bandit with refined blade work cutting down two National Army soldiers in rapid succession. He pounced immediately, swinging for the man's waist. His blade rebounded—armor beneath the tattered clothes. Thinking fast, Luo Mao converted his momentum into a tackle, slamming into the armored bandit like a bull goring an ox. They went down together. Luo Mao rolled atop the enemy and finished him with a throat slash.

The Right Detachment's surprise assault shattered the village entrance defenses in mere minutes. The surviving bandits broke and fled toward the northern exit.

Seeing the battle decided, Li Dong sprinted to the gun emplacement's edge and blew the prearranged whistle signal for the Left Detachment. Within minutes, Zhu Si arrived with his troops.

"Status?"

"Enemy's retreating toward the north entrance!" Li Dong was still riding the combat high. "If we pursue now, we can annihilate them completely!"

"Excellent! You take your men and clear the village. I'll lead the pursuit!"

With the enemy fleeing north, Lieutenant Mi's plan was essentially complete. Once the bandits ran beyond the village perimeter, they'd enter the Fubo Army's encirclement under Mi Longtao's command. No escape. At this critical juncture, Zhu Si naturally wanted to appear "heroic" before Mi Longtao and the leadership.

"Yes, sir!" Li Dong harbored none of Zhu Si's political calculations. After a full day of marching and fighting, his flat feet throbbed mercilessly. Being excused from the pursuit actually felt like relief. He accepted the village-clearing assignment without hesitation.

Li Dong returned to the gun emplacement. The Right Detachment soldiers had ceased fighting, everyone breathing heavily—less from exhaustion than from the adrenaline crash after extreme tension.

"Clean up the battlefield! Collect weapons and treat the wounded!"

Roughly forty bandit casualties littered the narrow road and emplacement perimeter. Some lay dead; others groaned. The soldiers began clearing bodies. Those too grievously wounded to survive received mercy strikes from daggers.

Walking behind the emplacement, Li Dong spotted the short bandit he'd cut down first. The body lay facedown. Li Pudun and another soldier had turned it over and were searching the clothing.

Since the operation targeted bandits—who typically carried plundered wealth—Mi Longtao had ordered all captives and abandoned corpses be searched when time permitted, with personal valuables confiscated for the public treasury.

The bandit's face, like the others, bore smears of pot soot or paint rendering it grotesquely dark—meant to intimidate. Blood-splattered now, the effect appeared even more monstrous.

The two soldiers pulled the clothing open. An emaciated torso emerged beneath the setting sun's amber light. Li Dong's attention snagged—those arms were impossibly thin. And the hands, pitifully small.

"Wait!" He stopped the soldiers preparing to lift the corpse. Moving closer, he studied the body carefully, then poured water from his canteen onto the face and wiped with a rag. The grime came away instantly, revealing a child's features.

Li Dong's heart lurched. The face before him—twisted in death, pallid with final terror—undeniably belonged to a boy. Eleven years old at most. Perhaps twelve.

Li Dong originated from humble circumstances. Before reaching Hainan, he'd witnessed seven-year-olds herding cattle, teenage boys laboring as porters, five-year-olds stealing at the docks... He'd seen life's full spectrum of degradation. But a ten-year-old child turning bandit? That constituted a first.

The two soldiers sighed heavily. One muttered, "Someone who hasn't even grown his hair out yet, playing 'Great Heaven's Second'? It's a sin."

"What could his parents have been thinking..."

"Thinking? They're dead, probably. No one left to raise him proper—so he went wrong. What family with choices sends their son to this?"

"Anything on him?"

"A string of cash, five mace of silver, two changes of clothes in the bundle," Li Pudun reported. "And one hairpin—wooden."

Li Dong looked down at the child he'd killed, feeling a constriction in his chest. Not guilt. He wasn't maudlin like the Senators, forever pitying the old and destitute. He came from poverty himself—had witnessed every variety of ugliness and cruelty while clawing survival from the bottom. Besides, on the battlefield, blades knew no mercy. In life-or-death combat, there was no room for hesitation.

He picked up the hairpin, remembering the cry of "Ah Ma" in the boy's final moments. Probably in that last breath before darkness, he'd thought of his mother. This worthless wooden trinket served as his keepsake. What catastrophe had destroyed his family? What desperation had driven him to smear pot soot and paint across his face, heft a combat sword nearly as long as his own body, wander homeless, sleep exposed to wind and dew, and risk death as a bandit?

"Turned bandit so young—couldn't have been a kind sort," another soldier observed. "Probably harmed plenty of common folk. Deserved what he got."

Li Dong shook his head. "He probably did harm people. Maybe killed them. But that's not his fault..." He couldn't finish, memory flooding back—childhood scenes while fleeing famine, watching seven-year-olds strangle younger children for a single bowl of gruel outside the relief shed. "If there's fault, it's that his parents birthed him into this living hell... Bury the wooden hairpin and clothes with him. Maybe he'll find his 'Ah Ma' in the underworld."

Once the bodies were cleared, the National Army casualty count emerged. Despite the Right Detachment's breakthrough momentum, the close-quarters melee had claimed two dead and seven wounded. The Left Detachment's frontal assault on the village entrance cost three killed and over a dozen wounded.

"Quick! Get the seriously wounded to Xugang immediately," Li Dong ordered urgently. Some injuries were catastrophic—without rapid transfer to the field hospital in Fengchuan County seat, most wouldn't survive.

A dozen captured bandits knelt motionless on the ground. Several bore minor wounds. Li Dong instructed the medics to bandage them as well, preparing for evacuation together.

Yang Erdong looked somewhat surprised. "Not killing them is generous enough. But treating their wounds too?"

"What's the point of killing them? Makes fertilizer?" The medic laughed. "Cure them so they can work for the Senate instead! You keep judging others—didn't you serve as a Ming house guard yourself?"

Yang Erdong flushed crimson and protested forcefully. "I was a government soldier... Ming army. These scum are bandits!"

"Bullshit!" someone behind him cursed without ceremony. "Government soldiers are worse than fucking bandits!"

Yang Erdong bristled. True, government troop discipline left much to be desired. But he'd served as a house guard—well-paid, well-fed. He'd never killed civilians for bounties or raped women. Unwilling to accept the slur uncontested, he turned to look back.

(Chapter End)