Chapter 101: Occupying the Thirteen Villages

Dang Na Men’s mind raced. The other two mountain paths were narrow and difficult to traverse. The enemy had already seized the advantage, occupying the high ground, their firearms powerful. A mere dozen of them could hold off a large force. Only the terrain at Dataipo was flat and wide. If they all charged through, they might have a chance to survive.

The others, seeing the logic in his words, quickly discarded their cumbersome valuables and swarmed towards Dataipo.

“Detonate the first group!” Pan Da ordered, seeing the black mass of bandits charging into the mine’s killing zone.

Only eleven of the fifteen directional mines detonated, and at different times, but the violent explosions sent shrapnel and stones flying into the charging bandits, leaving them bloody and broken. Many were killed on the spot; more were left half-dead, groaning and writhing on the ground.

The chain of explosions and the piercing screams shattered the bandits’ will. They broke and fled, bleeding and crying, running like headless flies. Yang Zeng, with the platoon’s marksmen, began to calmly pick them off at a distance of two hundred meters. The sight of a single shot felling a man stunned the raw recruits of the education battalion. They crowded around to watch, disrupting the formation.

“Form ranks! Form ranks!” the NCOs shouted desperately, using their bayonet scabbards to beat the chaotic new soldiers back into line.

Pan Da coughed repeatedly, his eyes stinging from the smoke and dust. It seemed there would be no need to use those dubious grenade launchers. But the state of the education soldiers made him shake his head. Fortunately, the enemy was few in number and weak in spirit; otherwise, they would have been unreliable.

Some of the repulsed bandits retreated back towards the stronghold, intending to make a stand. But it was already engulfed in flames and could no longer be held.

With no way to the heavens and no gate to the earth, the sound of gunfire and shouts of killing were deafening. The bandits were like stray dogs. In front of the stronghold, Dang Na Men managed to gather more than a hundred men again, preparing for another charge through Dataipo—to stay here was certain death.

But before they could move, they were intercepted by the first platoon, which had come to occupy the stronghold gate. A round of grapeshot from a 12-pounder howitzer tore through them, followed by three consecutive rifle volleys. The newly gathered force was instantly scattered, fleeing in all directions.

Dang Na Men, under the desperate cover of Zhao Haiqing and a few trusted followers, managed to escape to a secluded spot on the hillside behind the stronghold. Only four or five of his men remained. Zhao Haiqing had been shot in the back and was being carried, constantly spitting up blood foam. It was clear he wouldn’t make it.

“Boss Dang… run… avenge the brothers—” Before Zhao Haiqing could finish, he spat out a mouthful of blood, his head lolled to one side, and he died.

The distinctive crack of the Australians’ muskets grew closer. Shouts of killing, screams, and groans echoed everywhere. It was the Australian army, slaughtering his brothers. Behind him, the fire in the stronghold had become a raging inferno. Ten years of hard work, destroyed in a single day. Now, he was at his wit’s end. Though he still had some men in the “Thirteen Villages,” it was all for naught if he couldn’t escape. The only plan was to hide until dark and then run. Having made up his mind, he told his men, “Find your own way out!” With that, he abandoned his followers and scrambled into the dense forest.

The first platoon, having broken into the stronghold, quickly secured the key points. After clearing the enemy inside and out, they began to organize the education soldiers to fight the fire. The blaze had become difficult to control. The platoon leader had no choice but to order the nearby houses torn down to create a firebreak, which finally brought the fire under control.

At noon, as the main hall collapsed into a pile of charred wood and ashes, the fire was basically extinguished, and the battle entered the mopping-up phase. He Ming led the command post into the stronghold. It was a mess, with valuables dropped by the fleeing bandits scattered everywhere. The granaries that had survived the fire were full, enough to last for months. The eaves were hung with all kinds of charred, dried, and cured meats.

In a row of houses behind the stronghold, they found thirty or forty women and a dozen or so old men and children locked up. The bandits had not unlocked them when they fled, and they had nearly been burned to death. These people all claimed to have been kidnapped. Seeing the transmigrator army, they were terrified, kneeling and begging for mercy.

“These bandits have harmed so many people,” He Ming said, ordering the warehouses sealed and the scattered loot collected.

“What about these people? Let them go. They are all poor people who were kidnapped…”

“How do you know there are no bandits or their families among them?” Luo Duo shook his head. “Besides, if we let them go in these mountains, what if they encounter criminals or wild animals? Wouldn’t that be harming them?”

So it was decided to send them all back to Bairen for screening.

The education soldiers, led by veterans, conducted a combing search of the area around the stronghold. The pikes they had brought proved unexpectedly useful. A scream would occasionally erupt from the grass as the pikes were thrust about, and a bloody figure would be dragged out. If the man was stabbed in a non-vital area, he might receive medical treatment. If he was stabbed in the stomach, a kind-hearted soldier might finish him off with a bayonet. Otherwise, he was left to die a slow death. Many bandits hiding in the grass, hoping to slip away at night, saw this terrible fate and surrendered. By evening, they had captured fifty or sixty prisoners and killed as many. Only three careless education soldiers were killed by bandits who suddenly leaped out. But Dang Na Men had not been found, his body not among the dead.

He Ming saw the education soldiers cutting off heads and tying them together by the hair, hanging them from their waists or pikes. Some had seven or eight heads hanging from a single pike.

“What is this?” He Ming frowned, disgusted by the medieval practice. “We don’t reward based on headcounts. Bury the bodies and the heads!”

In the end, only the heads of the leaders were cut off and taken away. Though the transmigrators disliked the method, it was necessary to display the results of the battle to the people of the county.

In the evening, the battlefield cleanup was completed. He Ming withdrew some of the troops, giving the few escapees a chance to flee. But the roads were already ambushed by special reconnaissance soldiers. Wearing night vision goggles, they conducted a night hunt for the bandits trying to sneak through the blockade. In the endless, pitch-black mountain forest, a gunshot would ring out from time to time, and the dying cries of the hit would echo through the valley. In a hunt in the early morning, Dang Na Men was shot and killed in a gully. The prisoners later identified the body. His head, most of the skull blown off by a 7.62mm NATO round, was carefully cut off and placed in a wooden box filled with lime.

The next day, the raid on Daolu Village, commanded by Xue Ziliang, was launched. Led by special reconnaissance team members, a company of infantry marched through the night and sealed off the village. Then, Xue Ziliang led his team straight to the Dang family ancestral hall.

This ancestral hall had been newly built after Dang Na Men became successful. The Dang family had only settled here for two generations; it was too early to build an ancestral hall. His ancestors had all been ordinary farmers, with no official titles or honors to display, so the hall looked rather empty. But the building itself was made of brick and tile, with three courtyards, quite grand not only in the small village but by the standards of the entire county.

After the team had secured the front and back entrances, Xue Ziliang ordered, “Little Ye, you and your men take the high ground!” “Taking the high ground” was reconnaissance slang for getting on the roof, a common tactic for controlling the high points of a building in the single-story villages of old China. Xue Ziliang personally led a team to charge in through the main gate. An old caretaker, seeing the gate being broken down, hurried out from the gatehouse. “This is the ancestral hall of the Dang family—” Seeing a group of strong men in colorful clothes, holding various iron rods, he was so scared that he stumbled back and fell to the ground, speechless and trembling.

Xue Ziliang, seeing he was an old man, ignored him and rushed straight inside. According to intelligence, the bandits were gathered in the second courtyard.

Suddenly, the old man behind them shouted in a shrill, inhuman voice, “Someone’s breaking in—”

The native team member behind him had no such respect for the elderly. A swing of his dog-leg machete split the old man’s head in half.

At the gate stood two bandit guards. Seeing the situation was not right, one ran straight inside, while the other held his knife horizontally and shouted, “Who are you? How dare you—”

Before he could finish, Xue Ziliang rushed in, and with a swing of his military knife, finished him off.

“Not good, someone’s crashing the party!” the bandit who had run inside shouted, stumbling and crawling.

The room exploded like a hornet’s nest. Many half-dressed men ran out with knives and guns. The special operations team members on the roof fired their handheld grapeshot cannons into the courtyard, which was instantly filled with cries of pain and screams.

However, the drawback of this weapon was also obvious. The entire courtyard was filled with gunpowder smoke, making it impossible to see. Xue Ziliang cursed inwardly, “What a piece of junk!” He had no choice but to take cover on both sides of the courtyard entrance and shout, “Don’t move! Surrender and you won’t be killed!”

This was shouted in the Lingao dialect he had learned in a crash course. The people around him repeated it in Cantonese and Hokkien. The army, trained by a group of former PLA soldiers, had inevitably picked up many of their habits, such as this pre-battle crash course in shouting.

The response was a musket shot. Iron pellets hit the wall with a thud. Xue Ziliang and his team quickly shrank back. The sound of rifle fire had already begun from the roof. Suddenly, a figure shot out from the courtyard gate like lightning. The team members couldn’t react in time. The figure flickered a few times and was already more than a zhang away. Xue Ziliang swung his Remington, and a huge flame shot out from the muzzle. The person screamed and fell heavily to the ground.

“This kid probably knows qinggong,” a young transmigrator soldier next to him said. “He’s pretty fast.”

“No matter how good his qinggong is, he still eats bullets,” Xue Ziliang said with a contemptuous smile. “Prepare to clear the area!”

“Team Xue! Why did you steal my target?” Ye Mengyan poked his head out from the roof. “I had him in my sights!”

“You can have the head.”

“I don’t want it,” Ye Mengyan said, waving the SKS in his hand. “This thing is too long. It’s a pain to use as an assault team member!”

After another round of gunfire, the courtyard fell silent. The special reconnaissance team members went in to search from house to house, throwing both the living and the dead into the courtyard. A gunshot or two and a scream were heard at the front and back gates—probably a fish that had slipped through the net.

The nearly thirty people who lived in the ancestral hall, apart from those who were killed, were all kneeling in the courtyard, their hands above their heads, scared stiff. One of the bandits, who had tried to pull out a small dagger from his leggings, had four of his fingers and half of his palm cut off by a soldier’s machete. He was rolling on the ground, his wails tearing at the heart, terrifying the other prisoners.

After being identified by the prisoners, the figure who was as light as a swallow was Wang Wushu. At this time, he was lying in the middle of the courtyard, his body riddled with holes. A soldier swung his knife and cut off his head.

“Hang it on the gate of the ancestral hall,” Xue Ziliang said, feeling a little nauseous, though he had seen many similar cruel scenes.

After counting the prisoners, they found that the last of the Four Great Heavenly Kings, Xin Nari, was missing.

“Where is Xin Nari?”

“He’s not among the prisoners, nor among the dead,” a team member reported.

“He actually managed to escape from us?” Xue Ziliang found it hard to believe. “Search, turn the place upside down if you have to.”

In the end, they couldn’t find him even after turning the whole village upside down. After repeated questioning, they learned from the prisoners that Xin Nari had left the day before to visit a lover.

“It doesn’t matter if one escaped. We can have the county issue a wanted notice,” said Xiong Buyou, who was in charge of coordination. He brought an important piece of news. “Magistrate Wu wants us to send the heads of the bandit leaders to the county as soon as possible to be displayed to the public.”

When Wu Mingjin learned that the Australian bandits were going to launch a large-scale bandit suppression campaign, he knew his opportunity to improve his performance evaluation had come again. He was gradually becoming less hostile to the “Australian people.” Especially after they had handed over a large number of pirate heads to him last time, which he had reported to his superiors as his own achievement of “personally leading the local militia to attack with all their might.” This report of victory had actually won him a lot of praise from the prefect. It was not uncommon to report victories in suppressing bandits, but it was rare to have so many genuine pirate heads and confiscated material evidence, which even gave the prefect face.