Chapter 2705: The Capital (Part 61)
Hot iron sand sprayed into the big man's eyes, nose, and mouth. He let out an agonized scream, dropped his spear, and clapped both hands over his face—yet somehow still managed to keep his feet as he stumbled backward.
Seizing the advantage, Zhao Liangjian bounded forward in pursuit. He swung his steel whip with all his strength, driving it straight into the man's face.
A muffled crack echoed as the whip struck the sturdy man square on the frontal bone. Under that crushing blow, the forehead visibly caved inward. The violent concussion stripped him of all capacity for thought or reaction.
After landing the strike, Zhao Liangjian did not press the attack. He shrank back immediately, retreating into the Escort Bureau's formation.
Two guards bearing rattan shields stepped forward from left and right, closing ranks to form a shield wall that protected Zhao Liangjian behind them.
The sturdy man stood rooted in place, swaying like a wooden puppet. The dense capillaries in his scalp burst one after another, and streams of fresh blood instantly turned his head into a crimson gourd.
As intracranial hemorrhage set in, two dark rivulets of black blood ran from the man's nostrils. He reached up to wipe them away, but it was futile—more blood immediately flowed out.
Across from him, Zhao Liangjian had already discarded the steel whip and switched to a pudao. He laughed loudly. "How was that? This is my unique technique, called—hmm, called this... called 'Facial Squirting' (Yanshe)."
The big man stood rigid, coughed, and spoke with difficulty. "Cough, cough... filthy old dog... no... martial virtue."
After those words, his eyes rolled back, and he toppled heavily to the ground, stiff as a board.
The sudden turn of events stunned the bandits. Martial Yama was the first to recover. Flying into a humiliated rage and hopping with fury, he roared, "All forces, charge! Kill them all—leave no one alive!"
A bandit in Martial Yama's squad immediately blew a long whistle.
Martial Yama turned to look at the roadside, waiting for his ambushing accomplices to surge out.
Hearing the whistle, Zhao Liangjian and Liu Chang both realized he was summoning reinforcements. Their hearts clenched in unison, and they turned together to scan the woods on the right.
At the sound of the whistle, a cackling pheasant burst up from the roadside woods. Immediately after, a muffled boom came from within the trees, and a puff of white smoke rose into the air.
The whistle's echo faded away. The ambushers Martial Yama expected never poured out. The repeating gunfire Zhao Liangjian hoped to hear from Liao Sanniang never rang.
Nothing. There was nothing. The scene fell into an awkward, eerie silence.
Everyone on both sides exchanged bewildered glances, unable to comprehend what had happened. An unsettling chill crept through them. Liu Chang asked nervously, "Brother Zhao, what happened?"
Zhao Liangjian could only shake his head in confusion.
A moment later, everyone suddenly remembered their professions: bodyguards and robbers.
As if waking from a dream, they shouted as one, raised their swords and spears, and crashed together in chaotic combat.
Outside the woods, Zhao Liangjian's voice rang out. The sounds of shouting stirred old memories, instantly recalling ten years of wind, rain, and flashing blades. His thoughts turned to Lingao, to the Escort Bureau.
On a branch in the tree opposite, a single remaining leaf swayed silently and fell. Watching it drift down, Liao Sanniang found herself entranced.
In a moment of life and death, one should never let attention wander. Yet her mind drifted, emotions surging like a river breaking its dikes—uncontrollable.
She had lived in Guangzhou for seven years before going to Lingao. There, she saw a train for the first time, a telegraph for the first time, a post office for the first time, a bank for the first time.
That day, she understood: the road of the Escort Bureau had reached its end.
A single freight car on a small train held as much as several escort convoys; mule teams could never compete with such capacity.
Banks offered universal deposits and withdrawals, connecting the world.
Post offices handled logistics and delivery, with outlets everywhere.
Telegraphs transmitted messages instantly, making a thousand li feel like a face-to-face conversation.
Liao Sanniang possessed keen insight. Though she couldn't fully comprehend everything she witnessed in Lingao, she was deeply shaken.
It wasn't firearms that would eliminate escort bureaus—it was transportation and communication.
The Song people paved roads with steel rails and wooden sleepers. The engineering effort rivaled the digging of the Grand Canal, a project that had exhausted national strength and drained the people's lifeblood—the sort of undertaking associated with Emperor Yang of Sui, the kind that destroys nations.
Yet the Song people were miraculous. They birthed money from money, iron from iron. The more they spent, the more they earned. Stations rose one after another, becoming nodes that revitalized local regions. Wealth flowed along the railways like water, nourishing the land. Slogans appeared painted on every village wall: "To get rich, build roads first."
At Women's Federation meetings, the Song Chiefs spoke with fiery passion, faces flushed, flecks of saliva visible as they loudly proclaimed the dawn of the industrial age. They declared: Iron roads had already covered Lingao, and eventually, they would cover the entire country.
When the Manchus crossed through the pass and dynasties changed, the resulting social stability brought population growth; market expansion promoted commercial development. Shanxi merchant banks rose, large quantities of silver circulated, and Shaanxi established its position as a financial center during the Qing Dynasty.
Relying on those merchant banks, escort bureaus should have had another two hundred years of prosperity ahead.
The arrival of the Song people changed everything, accelerating the demise of escort bureaus and a host of traditional industries.
In the original course of history, after escort bureaus faded away, some practitioners switched to running cart inns, lingering on for a few more decades.
Guangdong's Qiwei was also striving to adapt to the new situation, restructuring into a security company while concurrently operating cart agencies and chain hotels. This paralleled the cart inns that escort bureaus had run in the old timeline—different paths leading to the same destination, demonstrating history's powerful inertia.
The coming twenty years would not merely bring a change of dynasty, but a composite revolution—system replacement, technological leaps, and ideological transformation all at once. Heaven and earth themselves would be remade.
The small workshop-style enterprises and traditional business models of feudal society would be swept away by new forms of industry. Many old trades, with escort bureaus foremost among them, would become victims of this earth-shaking revolution. After a brief existence, they would sink into the sea of history like grains of sand.
Zhao Liangjian had called out the route in plain language.
Escort masters could match martial arts with Greenwood strongmen and trade cant with robbers.
The Escort Bureau's words carried weight because blades backed them up.
The Escort Bureau was a business built on people. Reputation formed the foundation on which they stood. Fame was earned through skill; what they sold was martial prowess.
If cargo was robbed or lost, it had to be recovered with real swords and spears. If one bureau was robbed, the entire Escort League would share the grievance and fight to the death.
Once a name rang loud enough that people recognized it, there was human sentiment—renqing. This was accumulated prestige.
Upon arriving at any new place, escort masters had to "pay respects to the mountain," sending greeting cards and gifts to local powerhouses as a show of respect. After all, a strong dragon does not suppress the local snake.
The gifts need not be extravagant—a few boxes of pastries, a few bottles of Song wine. Before departing, demonstrating a unique skill would draw praise from all present, confirming that the reputation was no empty boast. This was the warrior's glory.
From then on, escorts and bandits shared a connection. At their next meeting, they were friends.
The robbers who commanded mountain fortresses, the powerhouses who controlled the land—they became friends. Friends were water; the Escort Bureau was fish. Without water, the fish would perish.
Whether thieves or escorts, when speaking trade jargon, outsiders understood nothing. This gave the speaker the satisfaction of being an insider. Within the Jianghu, a professional pride and quiet arrogance naturally arose.
Chaotic times were different. Everything was replaced at a frantic pace. Arguments shifted like flags on city walls. Today's king might be tomorrow's severed head dangling from a pole.
Chaotic times allowed nothing to accumulate. Everyone became flying sand caught in a hurricane. The warrior's vain reputation scattered like mist; no one remembered.
Calling out the escort route was meant for insiders to hear. In chaotic times, there were only armies, rebels, and refugees—no insiders remained. Announcing the cargo could only be done in plain speech. Without blades to reinforce the words, no one listened.
Roving bandits were locusts. They would gnaw escort masters and merchant caravans down to skeletons—not metaphorical skeletons, but real ones, stripped of blood and sinew.
Roving bandits didn't compete in martial arts; they competed in numbers. They surged forward like tides, overwhelming the few with the many. And so transport failed, escort routes were severed, and escort bureaus closed their doors.
Before leaving the city, Li Rufeng had visited various escort bureaus to borrow men. The escort business had seen no work for a long time; everyone was eager for employment.
Head Li of Heliansheng had money and provided full meals. It was good work. A pity he wanted so few people.
Unable to wait for the arrival of trains and telegraphs, the chaotic times had already buried the escort business first.
Seeing those down-and-out escort masters, sorrow overwhelmed Liao Sanniang. She was witnessing the sunset of a profession. Standing in its midst, she had a premonition: there would be no more escort bureaus in the world.
Liao Sanniang blinked, suddenly alert. The remaining leaf across from her had only just left the branch, falling no more than a sliver. Time had barely flowed at all.
It was said that before death, a person's entire life condenses into a single instant. She had never believed it before. But just now, listening to Zhao Liangjian call out the route, her thoughts had taken concrete form, flashing back scene by scene like a film, as if she were witnessing events with her own eyes.
Past and future, all contained in a single flash of thought.
So the legend was actually true.
Warriors are superstitious; for a living person to experience the state of death was an ill omen.
Liao Sanniang drew the pistol with her right hand. Her heart was calm as a mirror, exceptionally clear. Every movement the enemy made registered in her eyes. At this moment, with sword and gun in hand, life and death rested with her alone—fortune and misfortune no longer mattered.
Through the fish-scale gaps between the leaves, she could vaguely make out Zhao Liangjian in his standoff outside the woods.
Before the age of thirty, Zhao Liangjian had possessed the courage and strength to wield a thirteen-section tiger-tail whip carved from red sandalwood. Each knot bore twelve ridges, hard as steel. By Lingao measure, the whip weighed three jin and eight liang—extremely heavy for a whip. Any heavier, and the wrist could not bear it.
The thinnest metal whip weighed over ten jin, far too heavy for practical use by human strength alone—suitable only for performance, not actual combat.
Zhao Liangjian had sustained a waist injury. He had stopped using the whip a year ago and switched to the pudao.
His Thunder Fire Whip was made of metal and weighed over ten jin. He relied on footwork to maneuver it. When firing, he gripped it with both hands; when attacking, he discharged it at close range, catching enemies by surprise.
The Senate had produced disposable handheld spray tubes years ago with similar effects but far lighter weight. Yet Zhao Liangjian had not chosen them.
The Thunder Fire Whip was his memorial to years gone by. Using it depended on flashy tricks to blind the eye, then a sudden strike. It wasn't martial arts—it verged on magic tricks, difficult to call honorable.
However, in the Jianghu, once hands moved, life and death were decided. Honor could not save a life.
Within a few breaths, a gunshot sounded and the confrontation ended. A sharp whistle pierced the air outside the woods. The ten ambushers in front of her simultaneously hunched their backs, preparing to rush out. All their backs faced Liao Sanniang, as if extending an invitation.
Liao Sanniang had plugged her ears with cotton beforehand. The gunshot was deafening; hearing it directly might not destroy the ears, but it would inevitably impair hearing for a day or two. For someone who might face danger and combat at any moment, such a handicap could prove fatal.
Liao Sanniang leaned out from behind the tree, cocked the hammer of her pistol, and took a step forward. She raised her right arm level to aim. Her arm strength was formidable, allowing her to shoot single-handed.
Pu-leng-leng—a pheasant burst up from beneath Liao Sanniang's feet without warning. The ambushing bandits, startled by the sudden movement behind them, flinched and turned their heads in unison.
Humans grow cunning with age, horses grow wily. The longer an animal lives, the stronger its ability to adapt to its environment.
Remaining still is a natural self-preservation instinct for many creatures.
When hunters or predators approach, old pheasants and hares do not flee immediately. They hide and observe quietly, waiting for the threat to leave on its own.
(End of Chapter)