Chapter 0132: A Law Full of Loopholes? Master Angler Xie Chengze!
After leaving the county office, all the brothers of Qianjin Zhai had changed into Xiangbing leather armor and hung Standing Army waist tokens on their belts.
This undoubtedly sent a signal to the outside world:
Heaven is high and the emperor is far away; even a county magistrate can act like a king. The so-called national laws wouldn’t be strictly enforced. As long as you were willing to use some means, even without delivering the full hundred dan of coal mine, you could still become part of the Standing Army in advance.
Yet another loophole to exploit!
The bandit leaders of Coal Mountain immediately grew restless.
If they could obtain Standing Army waist tokens now, they could legitimately join the local troops in suppressing bandits. Then they could bring these captured bandits to their own territories to mine coal—not only avoiding labor costs but also eventually conscripting them into their own Standing Army units to strengthen their forces!
Truly a strategy that kills two birds with one stone!
Thus, the mountain bandit strongholds that hadn’t mined coal immediately became coveted targets in the eyes of the coal bandits.
And these coveted targets themselves had clearly realized this life-or-death issue.
One group of mountain bandits wailed and cursed:
“Boss, if we don’t surrender soon, our enemies from Green Saber Zhai will lead the local troops to suppress us! They won’t go easy on us when that happens!”
“That’s right, boss! Strike first and gain the upper hand; hesitate and suffer! Besides, it’s hard to rob people in this severe winter anyway. Why not join that so-called Standing Army for now? At least we’ll get a monthly salary! We can always escape later if needed!”
“Even if we pretend to be ordinary civilians and voluntarily mine coal, we’d still get paid! We can’t be foolish enough to work for free after having our hideouts destroyed!”
Another group of mountain bandits was eagerly preparing for action:
“Damn, this is a great opportunity, brothers! Follow me to accept amnesty, and let’s destroy that Axe Zhai who stole our territory!”
“Iron Blood Zhai has about twenty people, right? Let’s capture them all to mine coal for us—saving money while getting revenge!”
“Let’s go! What are we waiting for! Once we become Standing Army, I’ll be both an official and wealthy! I’ll definitely get wives for all you brothers!”
Amid the shouts and cries, the mountains trembled.
The mountain bandits of Liaozhou grew increasingly endangered.
“The weather is about to change.”
At the peak of Qiantai Mountain, a noble youth draped in a red fur coat watched the increasingly dense dark clouds over Black Mountain in the distance. Lightly tapping a gold-threaded red fan against his palm, he spoke and laughed as if mountain bandits could be annihilated in an instant.
The snow fell more and more fiercely.
Heaven and earth transformed into a chessboard, countless snowflakes becoming white pieces that all landed within the dense grid lines. Like towering waves, they pressed toward the black pieces hidden in the thick fog, seeking to swallow and sweep them away, restoring the chessboard to a pure white state.
—
Recently, the coal bandits had been busy to the point of balding, vomiting blood, and suffering from stress-induced constipation.
During the day, they busied themselves joining local troops to suppress bandits in the mountains; at night, they rushed back to their strongholds to inspect the coal mines. By the time they collapsed onto their heated beds, they’d close their eyes and sleep like the dead, utterly drained, with no time to think about anything else. Upon waking the next day, it was another “wonderful” day of beast-of-burden labor.
Yet the sense of accomplishment was unparalleled.
Before becoming mountain bandits, they too had been ordinary commoners. Driven up the mountains to become bandits due to harsh taxes and various other reasons, they had lived lives of licking blood off blades.
Now that he had a profitable coal mine under his command and the Standing Army token hanging at his waist, with no worries about food or clothing, he actually found such a life quite agreeable.
On a mountain ridge, after tying up the last fleeing bandit, one of the leaders raised a hand to catch the falling snowflakes and asked the local army soldier beside him, “Brother, don’t you think the snow is getting heavier?”
“Yeah, there was already snow on the ground when we came, and now it’s almost a hand’s breadth thick,” the local soldier wiped the blood from his face. Days of fighting side by side had forged a deep camaraderie between them. “Who knows how long it’ll keep falling? Let’s call it a day here, before the snow gets too thick for us to make it back.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
The Standing Army soldiers tidied up the aftermath and headed down the mountain with their confiscated goods.
The snow on the ground grew thicker, and the falling flakes were as large as goose down. The bone-chilling winter wind swept through, seeping into the soldiers’ leather armor, making them yearn for the warmth of their homes, where coal fires burned.
They wanted to go home.
With this thought, everyone quickened their pace.
Not only had the bandits noticed the snow was growing heavier, but Xie Chengze had noticed it too. Time was running short—he had to arrange his men and horses before the first blizzard arrived.
In Qianjin Zhai, he crouched before a bucket, gently touching the cylindrical ice block frozen inside.
The ice formed in the bucket was crystal clear, a result of Xie Chengze boiling the water, stirring it occasionally, and keeping a close watch until it solidified into such a transparent, gleaming mass.
However, he couldn’t get the ice block out.
“Shen—Daqiang!!!” Tilting his head back, Xie Chengze let out a shout.
Before long, Shen Yuan approached through the snow, holding an unfinished wooden scroll. His refined and elegant demeanor stood out in the snow like a plum blossom lord, forming a stark contrast with the disheveled, stunning young man crouched on the ground, clumsily clutching a large bundle of red fur coat hem.
Looking down at the young man feigning innocence, Shen Yuan curled his lips slightly, his tone teasing, “It seems Your Highness is quite eager for this subject to call you Little Yuanyuan. But your method of hinting is a bit too subtle—I almost didn’t catch on.”
Xie Chengze: (ˉ3ˉ) Don’t talk nonsense, that’s not it at all!
“Help me hollow out part of the middle of this ice block and then take it out,” Xie Chengze directed, rubbing his hands together with visible excitement and anticipation. “Later, I’ll make something ugly for you~”
Shen Yuan: … “Your Highness is truly honest.”
Placing the scroll in Xie Chengze’s hands, Shen Yuan crouched down, drew an exquisite dagger from his boot, and began carving a square hollow in the center of the ice block. When it was nearly done, he slowly channeled a thin layer of inner energy into the bucket, causing the ice to slightly melt and form a slick surface, allowing it to slip free from the bucket.
Then, he gently tilted the crystal-clear ice block out.
Xie Chengze quickly turned and rummaged through the nearby pots, pans, and bowls, pulling out a red candle and a fire starter. He lit the candle.
The candle flame flickered in the wind, on the verge of going out. Shen Yuan stood up and shifted his position, blocking the wind from the flame completely. Xie Chengze then inserted the candle into the hollow of the ice block, packing some snow around it to secure it firmly in place.
The flickering amber candlelight, filtering through the translucent ice, cast a faint yet gentle glow—as if the dazzling summer sunlight had been meticulously unraveled and preserved within the winter ice. In this silver-clad world, it wove an illusion where frost and light intertwined.
“This is called an ice lantern. Not bad, is it?”
Xie Chengze’s fingertips lightly traced the crystalline surface of the ice lantern, his bright eyes shimmering as if already visualizing the scene in his mind. “If we could carve it into the shape of a rabbit, it would be absolutely beautiful.”
Shen Yuan lowered his gaze, his eyes resting on the glistening ice lantern.
A rabbit ice lantern, huh…