20demayo Chapter 2 Seizing Grain
Chapter 2 Seizing Grain
"hiss--!!!"
The mournful neighing of the warhorse was like a rusty, dull knife, tearing apart the sweltering, almost fiery air of the tenth year of the Xianfeng Emperor's reign.
The moment the broken wooden stake pierced the horse's eye socket, Li Qian felt an extremely strange reaction—not the hardness of wood, but a resilient, warm, damp coldness. Immediately afterward, a torrent of scalding horse blood, like molten lava, gushed out along the grain of the wood, instantly covering his entire face. The blood carried a strong, pungent smell of grass and rust, stinging his eyes.
The warhorse's immense momentum was like a collapsing mountain, slamming into Li Qian's thin shoulder along the wooden pole. He even heard a dull "crack" from his collarbone; the excruciating pain, like a bolt of lightning, instantly shattered his already blurred consciousness.
He didn't back down, and he couldn't back down.
He was lifted up by this tremendous force and rolled down the slope beside the official road all the way to the bottom of the dry ditch, which was full of white ash and dry grass.
The warhorse, its eye pierced, went berserk on the official road, its hooves kicking up blinding sparks on the bluestone slabs. The sergeant, who had been sitting steadily on its back in his greasy, gray-blue uniform, felt the most relentless pull of gravity in that instant. His two-hundred-pound body, like a sack of rotten flesh, was violently flung from the horse's back, tracing a pathetic arc through the air before crashing heavily into the stone boundary marker beside the road.
"Thump!"
It was the sound of skull colliding with bluestone, a dull thud that sent chills down one's spine. The sergeant didn't even utter a groan before half his face swelled up instantly, and he slid limply into the muddy pit at the bottom of the slope, his yellowish braid lying crookedly in the mud like a dead worm.
"Corporal!"
"They've rebelled! These lowly people have rebelled!"
The two remaining soldiers on the official road wore ill-fitting short jackets, the character for "soldier" on their chests worn so thin the edges were barely visible. They were so terrified by the sight that they nearly dropped their reins. In their entire lives, refugees were roadside weeds, ants easily crushed. Who could have imagined that this pile of withered grass harbored a lone wolf, ready to devour its prey?
Li Qian lay prone at the bottom of the ditch, gasping for breath. With each breath, his lungs felt like they were swallowing burning charcoal. But he couldn't care less; his eyes were fixed on the corporal a few steps away, who was half-dead from the fall.
More precisely, he was staring at the heavy grain sack at the corporal's waist, from which golden millet was peeking out.
"Bang!"
A muffled explosion rang out on the official road, accompanied by a pungent smell of sulfurous fumes.
One of the soldiers fired a matchlock musket. But these were old, worn-out weapons, and at this distance, their accuracy was extremely poor. Plus, he was swaying on horseback, so the lead bullet only popped up a two-foot-high cloud of yellow smoke on the earthen mound above Li Qian's head.
The smell of gunpowder made Li Qian's pupils shrink sharply. He bit his tongue hard, using the excruciating pain to forcefully suppress his fading consciousness. Like a lizard crawling through mud, he scrambled towards the corporal.
His hand touched it.
That was the hilt of an official's knife, with a dark blue hilt and a smell of grease from years of neglect.
"Clang!"
The sound of the blade being drawn was more beautiful than any heavenly music at that moment. Li Qian rolled over, holding the heavy official's sword horizontally in front of his chest. Because his body was so weak, the blade trembled slightly in the sunlight, but the fierce look in his eyes made the soldiers who were about to dismount and charge stop in their tracks.
"Chop him up!" a soldier roared from the top of the slope, his long sword drawing a bright arc, but he didn't dare to jump directly into the deep ditch.
He was a seasoned veteran, and he could tell that the ragged, blood-covered vagrant wasn't just "robbing," he was "risking his life."
"Come on..."
Li Qian managed to squeeze out those two words. Due to extreme dehydration, his voice was hoarse, like two pieces of sand grinding against each other. He ignored the people on the hilltop and instead pressed the tip of his knife against the neck of the unconscious corporal.
"Take one step forward, and I'll send him on his way first."
The soldier froze, veins bulging on his forehead. Under Qing law, if a squad leader died at the hands of refugees, his follower would surely die upon returning to camp. This humiliating sense of being held accountable made his fleshy face appear particularly ferocious.
Li Qian sneered, his modern soul perfectly taking over this primitive body at this moment. He freed his left hand, grabbed a handful of raw millet mixed with mud and horse blood from the torn grain sack, and without even glancing at the soldier, stuffed it into his mouth and chewed it raw.
"Click, click."
The sound of teeth grinding grain husks echoed across the desolate wasteland. The hard millet sliced through Li Qian's mouth, and blood trickled down his chin, but the expression on his face revealed an almost morbid satisfaction.
In that instant, Li Qian felt a warm current slide down his esophagus into his empty stomach. The hunger that had almost driven him mad was finally being filled little by little.
"Take this brat and get out of here."
Li Qian swallowed the blood-stained grain, his knife tip as steady as a rock.
"Go back to camp and report that you encountered the advance guard of the 'Long-haired Rebels' and fought a fierce battle to save your lives. The squad leader was wounded, and you have done a great service in protecting him."
He stared at the soldier, his eyes revealing a chilling insight into human nature. He knew that these men who received rations and pay were far from loyal warriors. In the desolate wilderness of the tenth year of the Xianfeng Emperor's reign, the soldiers who survived were more ruthless than the refugees, and more afraid of death than they were.
The soldier stared at Li Qian for a full three breaths, his gaze shifting back and forth between the knife in Li Qian's hand, the grain sack, and the unconscious corporal. Finally, he spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva.
"Kid, you've got guts. Within a hundred li radius of Baoding Prefecture, you've survived today. I'd say you're blessed with good fortune."
After saying this, the soldier sheathed his sword, grabbed the corporal, and dragged him towards the main road like a dead dog. Another soldier, terrified, rushed to help, and the two horses fled in a sorry state amidst the rising dust.
Only when the sound of horses' hooves completely disappeared at the horizon did Li Qian suddenly lose all strength and fall into a "spread-eagle" position on the bloody mud.
The refugees who had been lying on the ground waiting to die, numb as rotten tree roots, now resembled a pack of wild dogs that had smelled carrion.
A strange green light suddenly appeared in all their previously cloudy and unfocused eyes. They stared at Li Qian, or more precisely, at the grain sack in Li Qian's arms.
Li Qian gripped his official sword tightly, watching the gray shadows slowly closing in, a bitter smile playing on his lips.