Ragtag Rabble
Thud... thud...
An emergency had broken out—flames were rising from the garrison. Yet Baekjak trusted my divinations so completely that, reassured by having sent Gyeonbun, he led the troops toward the village himself.
But he had it all wrong. Gyeonbun had gone to catch enemies supposedly hiding in the hills. Of course, what waited there were not enemies at all, but Ubun’s own allies.
“We’ve reached the village!”
A scout reported that they had arrived. Baekjak turned to me and asked,
“If we attack this place, they’ll all come pouring out in a panic, right?”
“Of course. They’ll rush out unprepared and get picked off one by one. Besides, a county this small couldn’t possibly have any real troops.”
Even if they were government soldiers, our side was made up of hardened ruffians who had survived every kind of scrap. We outnumbered them too—there was no way we could lose.
“Good! Attack the village at once!”
Waaaaah!!!
The bandits, thrilled that the chance to plunder had finally come, poured into the village. They kicked in door after door—bang, bang!—and stormed inside, only to find…
“Uh… there’s no one! Not a single villager in sight!”
“What are you talking about? You must have just stumbled into an empty house by chance. With this many houses, there’s no way—”
Waaaaah!
That was when it happened. A great clamor rose from the eastern hills outside the village, as if a full-scale battle had erupted. At last Gyeonbun’s unit had met Ubun’s, and in the darkness the two sides had begun slaughtering each other, each believing the other was the enemy.
“Wh-what’s that? We never sent troops that way! First the garrison suddenly catches fire, then we charge into the village only to find everyone already evacuated as if they knew we were coming…”
“…”
Baekjak turned toward me without thinking. After all, I had been the architect of every plan, and every plan had rested on my divinations—which had never once been wrong.
Yet every single one of those divinations had missed. Even a fool like Baekjak could only reach one conclusion now: from the very beginning, those fortunes had been deliberately wrong.
“N-no, right? Hoji, you didn’t trick me, did you? Right?”
“…”
I gave no answer. Instead I simply waggled the fingers clasped behind my back, sending the signal I had prepared.
Crack!
Someone had been waiting for that signal more eagerly than anyone. I flicked my fingers only once, and in the next instant Zhao Yun’s spear punched clean through Baekjak’s throat.
Aaaargh!!
The Black Mountain bandits froze where they stood, screaming as they watched their chief’s neck tear open right before their eyes. I lunged forward, catching Baekjak’s collapsing corpse, and shouted,
“Enemy assassin! Seize that woman at once!”
“Waaaaah!!!”
Just like that I succeeded in diverting every suspicion that might have fallen on me straight onto Zhao Yun. The bandits finally scrambled for their weapons and gave chase, but she had already vaulted onto the rooftops and vanished.
“We have to catch her! Catch that bitch and avenge the chief!”
I kept whipping them up, insisting they had to take Zhao Yun. All those months of careful conversation and rising favorability must have paid off—the bandits decided my words were right and charged after her without a second thought. Which meant it was about time for our side to show itself…
Waaaaah!!!
Another roar went up, this time coming precisely from the direction of the county office. To everyone’s shock, Guan Yu’s three hundred perfectly ordered troops stepped into view.
“Th-the enemy!”
“What do we do? How are we supposed to fight?”
These men had never received proper training to begin with—they were a pure ragtag rabble. With their only commander dead, it was only natural they fell into complete disorder.
Whoosh! Crack!
In contrast, Guan Yu came crashing down on the Black Mountain bandits, recreating the same astonishing martial skill Zhao Yun had just displayed. She swept her Green Dragon Crescent Blade and took two heads in a single stroke, then charged out alone and began carving a path of slaughter.
When Liu Bei’s highly trained sworn soldiers slammed into them, the bandits—already scattered from chasing Zhao Yun—sank into even deeper chaos. Time for me to step in again.
“I-it’s no use! It’s over! We’re all going to die like this!”
“What are we supposed to do, Hoji? What now—”
“Surrender! If we surrender first we can at least keep our lives! Everyone throw down your weapons and give up!”
I screamed myself hoarse, urging them to yield. The reputation I had built inside the Taihang mountain stronghold, the handful of company captains I had grown close to, my position as the trusted fortune-teller of both Baekjak and Gwak Daehyeon, plus a respectable Charm of 70—all of it worked. The bandits began to waver and follow my lead.
“S-surrender! We surrender!”
Only I knew that Guan Yu’s force numbered a mere three hundred. Facing the enemy in the dark, the already fragmented Black Mountain bandits were certain they could never win.
Clatter! Clatter!
They flung their weapons aside and raised empty hands. Guan Yu ordered her soldiers to attack only those who still resisted.
Crack! Crack!
Meanwhile Zhao Yun returned as well. She had moved first to draw attention after killing Baekjak, but in the end she was simply staying true to her original purpose: protecting me.
“Now! Bind every man who surrenders!”
Lu Zhi appeared. With him came the farmers who had been evacuated from the village earlier. Sick to death of bandits, they armed themselves with farm tools and began disarming the surrendered Black Mountain men.
Kraaagh! Kraaagh!
After watching Guan Yu and Zhao Yun’s one-woman rampages, the bandits lost all will to fight. A few fled, but they were only a handful.
And so Baekjak’s main force was annihilated.
From that point everything proceeded with smooth efficiency. Gyeonbun and Ubun, still locked in combat under the belief they were enemies, only realized they were allies after suffering enormous casualties.
“Waaah! We surrender right now!”
But by then Zhang Fei’s troops had already arrived—government soldiers hastily drawn from Wen County, where administrative authority had been stripped away.
“Hey! Gyeonbun! Ubun! Stop that and just surrender already!”
When I myself appeared and urged them to yield, Gyeonbun and Ubun were left speechless. Realizing they had been completely played, they bellowed,
“You bastard Hoji! You betrayed us?!”
“No. I’ve been on this side from the start, so there was never any betrayal. Don’t waste your strength—surrender. It’s easier for everyone.”
“Shut your mouth, you son of a bitch! I’m going to kill you for sure!”
“Doubt it. You forget I know the way to the stronghold by heart? Every last one of you is out here right now. What do you think happens to the families you left behind if government troops hit the place at this very moment?”
“…”
The cheap threat against their families left both of them mute. Even if the two of them still wanted to fight, their own Black Mountain subordinates had already been seized by terror.
Clatter… clatter…
One after another they laid down their weapons and begged to surrender. Zhang Fei ordered his soldiers to bind them.
With that, the Taihang mountain stronghold lost its entire fighting strength in a single night.
The battle was over in less than one shichen—under two hours. Of the three thousand troops, more than half surrendered. Several hundred were dead or wounded; the rest had either fled under cover of darkness or simply vanished.
“Who went to the garrison?”
“Sima Lang led the Sima clan’s sworn soldiers. Nearly several hundred of them—anyone fleeing that way will be completely suppressed.”
According to Lu Zhi, the shortfall in troops had been filled by the Sima household. Sima Lang, together with Sangrim, had led them in a raid on the garrison. With almost no defenders left, the place surrendered almost at once. Then they set fires nearby to throw the Black Mountain bandits into confusion.
“There are too many prisoners! What do we do?”
Zhang Fei approached, fretting over the fact that the captives outnumbered our own forces. I casually turned my head toward Guan Yu.
“Do as you see fit, Lady Guan Yu.”
“Why are you suddenly asking my opinion? You’ve always just done whatever you wanted.”
“Still, you contributed the most to taking the prisoners, so we should follow your judgment. They’re worthless lives anyway—shall we just kill them all?”
“Don’t say such things so lightly. Even if they are enemies, those who surrender should be accepted first. We’ll bind them, feed them well, and demand they change sides.”
I had expected Guan Yu to order a massacre, but that was a serious miscalculation. This was the same woman who, historically, lacked the ruthlessness to execute the seventy thousand of the seven armies she captured and thereby ruined a great enterprise—she was secretly soft-hearted.
“Very well. Have the farmers and soldiers take turns standing guard. Threaten them with the families still in the stronghold and they’ll obey without a fuss.”
She might hesitate to kill prisoners, but when it came to threats Guan Yu was more confident than anyone. She immediately turned with Zhang Fei to handle the captives.
“Ah… Lord Do Yeop, you have finally returned!”
In the distance I saw Yu Bi running toward me. Glad myself, I started forward to greet her.
Whump!
Instead Yu Bi simply threw herself into my arms. I was happy to see her too, but what was this in front of everyone?
“Hic… I thought I would never see you again. How could you do something so dangerous?”
“It wasn’t all that dangerous… More importantly, there’s someone I want to introduce, so could you let go for a moment?”
“I refuse! After two whole months apart, am I not even allowed this much joy? Sniff… sniff…”
That doubled Charm buff of hers was simply impossible to resist. I had no choice but to pat her back and soothe her for quite a while.
“Lady Yu Bi? Now that I think of it, I don’t see Wang Guang anywhere.”
“Ah… word came from Lord Yuan Shao. He may come to Henei soon and told us to prepare, so I sent him back to Huai County.”
True enough—the coalition army would be forming before long. Wang Guang had suffered quite a bit staying here; it was time to let him go.
“Ah, right! This is Zhao Yun of Changshan, courtesy name Zilong. Not only did she help me infiltrate the Black Mountain bandits, she also slew their chief Baekjak—today’s foremost merit.”
“A pleasure to meet you! I am Yu Bi, magistrate of Yawang! You have accomplished a truly great deed today.”
“…”
I immediately introduced Yu Bi and Zhao Yun to each other. Zhao Yun merely glanced at Yu Bi once, then spoke to me without answering her.
“Is this person your master?”
“That’s right. And soon she’ll be your new master as well.”
“I never said I would do that.”
“Come on, at least talk with her. You might suddenly find the answer you’ve been searching for.”
“…”
Zhao Yun remained coolly distant. Yu Bi, awkward at having her greeting ignored, quickly hid behind me.
“Sh-she doesn’t seem very talkative.”
“True, but she also has a surprisingly soft side.”
“Ah… how do you know that so well? Did something happen between the two of you?”
“…!?”
Something had, but the moment I said it Yu Bi would be disappointed. I pretended otherwise and spoke to Zhao Yun.
“Then the two of you chat a bit. I’ll go help Lady Guan Yu and Lord Zhang Fei—”
Whip!
That was as far as I got. Zhao Yun, apparently no longer interested in Yu Bi, turned and walked away without so much as a farewell.
What was this? I had known she was a little different from my expectations, but I had assumed that was only because she had not yet met Yu Bi.
I had been certain that the moment the two of them met, some hidden compatibility would shine forth and she would declare, “At last I have found my lord!”
Yet Zhao Yun showed not the slightest interest in Yu Bi. Why?
Where exactly had I gone wrong?