Lujing Village Kill Zone
Ma Gou grinned. The expression revealed uneven, yellow teeth, illuminated by the dancing torchlight.
A fortress.
These pathetic little farmers had built a fortress.
He saw the gaping ditch. He saw the earthen rampart. He saw the thirty-odd thin men trembling behind it, holding sharpened sticks as if they were real weapons.
"Hah!" he spat onto the ground. "Look at this, boys! The sheep have grown wooden teeth!"
The thirty-five bandits behind him laughed. They were real wolves. Men who had killed actual Yellow Turban mercenaries, men who lived by pillaging and burning. And this... this was a joke.
"They think that little ditch can stop us?" sneered his shifty-eyed lieutenant.
"It's cute," Ma Gou said. He raised his heavy steel sword, the blade glinting in the light of the full moon. "Alright. We'll play with them. Horse team! You're up! Jump their ditch and cut down those stupid farmers! Show them how wolves hunt!"
The six mounted bandits in the front—his shock troops—grinned. They spurred their horses, screaming savagely, and charged across the open field toward the single entrance.
On the silo roof, Long Wei didn't move.
He just watched.
Prediction: Fail. Trained warhorses might jump it. Untrained bandit ponies? No.
The six horses charged at full speed. The lead horse, ridden by a massive bandit with an axe, reached the edge of the ditch. The animal detected the massive hole at the last second. It neighed in panic, trying to stop, but its momentum was too great.
It fell.
Not a graceful fall. It was a horrific, cartwheeling tumble. Its forelegs snapped with an audible CRACK!. The rider was thrown forward, flying clean over the rampart, and landed... directly in the middle of the waiting spear formation.
He didn't even have time to scream.
The first rank's spears (kneeling) impaled him from below. The second rank's spears (standing) impaled him from the front. He was turned into a sieve in a fraction of a second.
The second and third horses slammed into the first, creating a pile-up of screaming horses and cursing riders. Two other horses managed to swerve at the last moment, but their unbalanced riders became easy targets.
"THROW!"
Long Wei's command roared out, cold and clear.
On the roofs, the women—led by Chen Yue—and the elders lifted their cauldrons. They didn't throw rocks first. They threw liquid.
"WHAT IS THIS—AARRRGGGHHH!"
A bandit's shout turned into an inhuman shriek of agony. The disgusting, boiled concoction of animal waste and urine hit him full in the face. It didn't kill him, but the overwhelming stench and pain made him drop his weapon and claw at his own face. Another bandit, trapped under his horse, was doused with hot oil.
Chaos erupted at the ditch. The bandits in the rear—the foot soldiers—stopped, confused by the carnage. They were trapped in the open.
"ROCKS!" Long Wei yelled.
A rain of fist-sized stones slammed into the bewildered bandits. They raised their flimsy wooden shields, but it wasn't enough.
Ma Gou watched the small-scale slaughter, his eyes wide. His grin was gone, replaced by rage. "Fools! You're all fools! Don't go that way! Use the entrance! The damned entrance!"
He pointed to the narrow land bridge—the single entrance Long Wei had intentionally left. "Off your horses! Charge them! Kill them all!"
The bandits, now furious at their comrades' humiliation, roared and surged forward. About twenty of them rushed the narrow funnel.
This was it. The moment Long Wei had trained for.
The bandits ran up the earthen rampart, leaped over the top, and met the wall of sharpened wood.
"HOLD THE LINE!" roared Chen Fu, who was in the second rank.
The first bandit, swinging a machete, met Li Er's spear. The young man, trembling violently, thrusted just as he'd been taught. Straight ahead. The fire-hardened tip punched through the bandit's thin leather armor and sank deep into his gut.
The bandit's eyes widened in shock. He looked at Li Er. He tried to raise his machete, but he had no strength.
"PULL!" Long Wei yelled from the roof.
Li Er froze. He couldn't get his spear out.
Chen Fu, next to him, cursed. He broke formation for a second, thrust his own spear into the bandit's neck, then kicked the corpse off Li Er's spear.
"BACK IN FORMATION, DAMN IT!" Chen Fu yelled.
And then, hell opened up.
The bandits smashed into the phalanx like a wave. But the narrow bridge forced them to attack only three or four at a time. They were met by the twelve spears of the first and second ranks.
It wasn't a fight. It was a meat grinder.
"THRUST! PULL! THRUST! PULL!" Chen Fu roared, his voice hoarse with adrenaline.
The farmers, once sheep, had become a deadly hedgehog. They didn't fight as individuals. They fought as a unit. A bandit managed to hack one spear aside, only to be impaled by three others from the side and below.
Bodies began to pile up in front of the rampart, creating a gruesome second "wall." The bandits in the back had to climb over their own dead friends just to be slaughtered.
Ma Gou watched in horror. His men... were being butchered by farmers.
"Bastards!" he snarled. He looked around, his blind eye rolling wildly. Where... WHERE...
He saw him.
On the silo roof. The pale man. The "Mad Dog." He was just standing there, observing. Like a god of death watching a show.
"HIM!" Ma Gou screamed. "It's the sorcerer! The brains! ARCHERS!"
The five bandits with bows, who had been held in reserve, finally had a clear order. They broke from the chaos, seeking firing range.
"Kill the man on the roof! NOW!"
On the roof, Chen Yue saw them. "Long-dage! Arrows!"
Long Wei didn't even flinch. "I... see... them," he said softly.
THWACK!
An arrow embedded itself in the wooden beam next to Long Wei's head.
THWACK!
Another arrow grazed his wounded shoulder. A sharp pain made him hiss.
"Get down!" Chen Yue shrieked, pulling at his robe.
Long Wei pushed her back, gently but firmly. "Stay... down."
He sighed. He had hoped not to use this. He had hoped the spear line would be enough. He was wrong. It was time to end this.
He raised his M4 rifle.
Distance: approximately 90 meters. The archers were nocking their next arrows.
He didn't use full auto. He didn't have the ammo to waste. He flicked the selector switch to semi-auto.
He held his breath. His mind went cold. The world narrowed. There was only him, the sights, and the target.
First archer.
He squeezed the trigger.
CRAAACK!
The sound ripped the night apart. It wasn't the sound of a bow. It wasn't the sound of a sword. It was the sound of thunder. The sound of a god's anger.
The entire battlefield—farmers and bandits—froze.
Ninety meters away, the first archer's head exploded like a watermelon hit by a sledgehammer. His body stood for a second before collapsing.
Ma Gou stared. What... what was that?
The second archer, confused, saw his friend fall. He looked at the silo roof, trying to understand.
CRAAACK!
The second bullet hit the archer square in the chest. The kinetic force of the 5.56mm round lifted him off his feet and threw him two meters backward.
"SORCERY! IT'S BLACK SORCERY!" screamed one of the bandits at the ditch.
The third and fourth archers panicked. They dropped their bows and turned to run.
CRAAACK!
The third archer fell, a bullet in his back.
CRAAACK!
The fourth crumpled, clutching his shattered leg.
Four shots. Four bandits dead or crippled. In less than five seconds.
Silence.
A deafening silence now fell over Lujing Village. The sounds of battle stopped completely. The farmers stared at the roof. The bandits stared at the roof.
They saw Long Wei standing there, his strange weapon smoking slightly, silhouetted by the full moon. He didn't look human. He looked like a god of war.
"A DEMON! HE'S A DEMON!" shrieked a bandit.
That was the trigger. The bandits' morale shattered.
Their discipline broke. They weren't fighting anymore. They were screaming. They threw down their weapons and turned, scrambling to get away from this cursed place. They jumped into the ditch, trying to claw their way up the other side, only to slide back down the steep earth. They ran back down the path, pushing each other.
Ma Gou, their leader, was the first to panic. Sorcery? He could fight swords. He could fight spears. He couldn't fight thunder that killed from a distance.
He scrambled for his horse, leaped onto the saddle, and spurred the animal away. He didn't care about his men. He just wanted to leave.
Long Wei watched the leader flee.
"No," he whispered. No witnesses. No one to come back.
He flicked the selector switch to burst. Three rounds.
He aimed at Ma Gou's retreating back. He led the target slightly.
He squeezed the trigger.
BRRT-BRRT-BRRT!
Three quick cracks that blended into a single rip of sound.
In the distance, Ma Gou was thrown from his horse as if he'd been hit by an invisible carriage. He hit the ground and didn't move.
The remaining bandits, seeing their leader executed by the demon's thunder, now completely lost their minds. They ran blindly.
Some of them ran... into the forest.
"Formation! Hold!" Long Wei yelled. He didn't need to waste any more bullets.
A few seconds later, new screams echoed from the trees. Screams of agony and horror. The bandits had found the "Dragon's Teeth." The punji traps were doing their grim work, punching through thin leather boots and crippling the escapees.
The battle was over.
In less than ten minutes, thirty-five bandits had been annihilated.
Long Wei lowered his M4, the barrel hot. He felt his body trembling—not from fear, but from the adrenaline finally receding.
Silence returned to the village. This time, it wasn't a tense silence, but a stunned one.
Below, Chen Fu and the other farmers stared at the pile of bodies in front of them, then at the forest, then back up at the roof. They had won. They had slaughtered the Yellow Wolves.
Chen Yue, who had been hiding behind the chimney, slowly stood up. She wasn't looking at the bandits. She was looking at Long Wei.
His face was pale in the moonlight. The man she had nursed. The man she had thought was "funny." The man who had taught her a language.
That man now stood like a statue of death, holding the thunder stick that had reaped so many lives from so far away.
They had been saved.
But they now realized they had welcomed something far more terrifying than any bandit into their village.