It took Li Daoxuan a while to figure out why the sentry had been so badly shaken, and why Shan Shi'er had ordered every villager to grab a weapon and get up on the walls.
Then he learned what the sentry had seen.
A huge crowd was fleeing for their lives, dragging their children along and crying for their parents. Right behind them came a horde of bandits, blades flashing as they hacked wildly at anyone unlucky enough to get in their way.
Every so often, someone would fall behind. A bandit would catch up and cut them down, sending blood spraying across the sand.
The people in front ran even faster. Meanwhile, the bandits behind them grew more savage with every kill, laughing like maniacs as they chased down their victims.
Who wouldn't panic at the sight of that?
If Gaojia Village hadn't had its walls to protect them, with Tianzun hovering overhead to boot, the villagers would probably have wet themselves and started looking for the nearest escape route.
"Get on the walls! Hurry! Everyone, move!"
"I've got a bow! Picked it up from the bandits last time!"
"I've got a rusty blade!"
"Bring whatever you've got! Bamboo poles too!"
The villagers scrambled up the walls, clutching whatever they could pass off as a weapon.
Over at the blacksmith's forge, Li Da and Gao Yiyi actually managed to dig two sets of liangdang armor out of a corner. They strapped them on, grabbed their heavy iron hammers, and promptly became the best-equipped fighters in all of Gaojia Village.
Granted, that wasn't exactly a high bar.
Both men were sturdy to begin with. Now armored up and hefting iron hammers, they took their places on the wall like a pair of unshakable pillars. Before long, a good number of the weaker villagers had gathered around them. Apparently, standing next to the biggest men available counted as a battle plan.
Gao Chuwu and Zheng Daniu drew their own crowd, too. Neither had any armor, but both were tall, broad, and big enough to make anyone hesitate. Each carried an axe, and soon dozens of villagers had clustered around them as well.
Just as everyone settled into their makeshift defensive positions, the fleeing crowd finally entered Li Daoxuan's field of view.
The people at the front didn't look like ordinary peasants. They seemed to belong to a well-off family. They even had a horse-drawn carriage.
Unfortunately, there wasn't a proper road in sight. The carriage bounced and lurched over the rough ground so violently that it barely outpaced the people running on foot. All that money, and the road still refused to cooperate.
The carriage reached the gate first.
To everyone's surprise, the man holding the reins wasn't a servant. He was a middle-aged man dressed in a blue robe, clearly someone with a bit of status.
He craned his neck toward the wall and shouted, "May I ask where we are? Please open the gate and let us take shelter! Bandits are slaughtering people behind us! They're absolutely—"
"Hey! Isn't that Master Bai?" Shan Shi'er suddenly called out.
The man looked up.
"Ah! Master Shan! Have we reached the county seat of Chengcheng already? No, that can't be right. We should still have quite a way to go!"
"Open the gate!" Shan Shi'er ordered. "Let Master Bai and his family in!"
The villagers hurried to turn the wooden winch, slowly hauling the heavy gates apart. Master Bai snapped the reins, and the carriage lurched through the entrance.
"Can we close it now?" shouted the villager operating the gate.
Shan Shi'er looked outside.
Thanks to their carriage, Master Bai's family had pulled well ahead of the others. Letting them in and shutting the gate behind them would be easy enough.
The trouble was everyone else.
The refugees on foot were right on the bandits' heels, the two groups barely a step apart. If the villagers let them through, the bandits might charge in right behind.
And then they'd have a real problem.
Sweat poured down Shan Shi'er's face.
Should he close the gate to protect his own people?
Or leave it open to save more lives, even if that meant putting the entire village at risk?
Shan Shi'er wasn't a military commander. Faced with a decision like this, he couldn't think straight. His mind was a mess. Every option in front of him looked wrong.
Fortunately, Li Daoxuan wasn't about to leave him twisting in the wind.
Human nature can't withstand being tested.
Li Daoxuan had no desire to force a decent person into making a terrible choice. If he could solve the problem himself, why force someone else to carry that burden?
He puffed out his cheeks, aimed at the sandy ground outside the village, and blew.
Whoosh!
A great cloud of yellow sand swept into the air, swallowing both the fleeing crowd and the bandits pursuing them.
The bandits needed to see their targets if they wanted to keep hacking at them. The refugees, on the other hand, didn't need to see much of anything. They just had to keep running straight ahead.
A little over ten seconds later, the fleeing crowd burst out of the sandstorm with a healthy gap between themselves and their pursuers.
Now that the bandits were safely out of reach, Li Daoxuan could swat them like mosquitoes or flick them on the forehead if he felt like it.
He raised his hand.
Paused.
Then lowered it again.
There was no shortage of opportunities to kill them later. No need to rush.
Besides, he couldn't keep bailing the villagers out of every mess. They needed to learn how to handle danger themselves. Otherwise, what would happen if he wasn't around one day? The entire village might find itself without a single person who knew how to fight.
Then, the moment trouble showed up, everyone would panic. They could have the strongest walls in the world, and the enemy might still smash through them in a single attack, leaving the whole village dead and buried.
A sturdy wall was only as good as the people defending it. Sadly, stone couldn't swing a sword.
With that in mind, Li Daoxuan switched into Tianzun's cold-eyed observer mode.
Let's see how Gaojia Village handles this.
Thanks to the sandstorm, the refugees had gained enough distance from the bandits that Shan Shi'er no longer had to wrestle with his impossible choice.
"Let everyone in first! Then close the gate!"
He had barely finished shouting when Master Bai, who had just arrived inside the village, moved fast. He jumped down from his carriage, hurried up the wall, and took his place beside Shan Shi'er as though he'd been part of the defense team all along.
"Anyone with a bow, aim at the bandits and loose a few arrows! Just keep them at bay!"
An outsider had barely made it through the gate before taking charge of the defenses. He certainly wasn't shy about it.
The funny thing was, the villagers didn't seem to mind. They didn't care who was giving the orders. If someone was willing to take charge, they were happy to listen.
They grabbed the bows they'd taken from the previous batch of bandits, drew the strings, and fired.
A handful of arrows flew toward the enemy, scattered and feeble.
Not one hit a thing.
A magnificent display of marksmanship. If the goal had been to miss every target, they'd have nailed it.
Still, the arrows did their job.
The bandits stopped several dozen meters from the wall and stared up at the towering fortifications, muttering among themselves. Whatever enthusiasm they'd had for charging forward seemed to have cooled considerably.
The refugees took the chance and flooded through the gate. The villagers cranked the winch while several others threw their weight against the doors.
THOOM. The gates sealed shut, dust shaking loose from the wall.
Only then did Master Bai finally breathe again.
"Thank goodness I haven't neglected the Six Arts of a Gentleman, especially the art of handling a carriage. I drove the whole way here myself. And thank goodness you were here, too. Otherwise, I might well have died out there."
Shan Shi'er was still rattled.
"Master Bai, what exactly happened?"
Master Bai let out a long sigh.
"Bai Family Fort has fallen. The bandits broke through."
Shan Shi'er stared at him in disbelief.
Bai Family Fort was the Bai family's own stronghold.
The Bai family wasn't some mighty aristocratic clan, but neither were they nobodies. Their ancestors had produced a prefect and a county magistrate. In the current generation, however, no one in the family held an official post.
Even so, the family had inherited enough wealth and influence to still hold real power in Chengcheng County. They had a sturdy fortified residence, dozens of household guards and retainers, and more than a hundred tenant farmers.
The Bai family had also spent money and effort organizing the surrounding villagers into a militia to keep bandits at bay. They weren't exactly helpless.
The small bands of horse thieves and mountain bandits in the area had always known better than to mess with Bai Family Fort.
So how in the world had these bandits managed to take it?
What kind of monsters were they dealing with?
Master Bai pointed toward the bandits outside the wall, who were still gathered below, staring up at the fortifications and muttering among themselves. He shook his head with a bitter sigh.
"These few dozen chasing us are only a small part of their force. There are hundreds more behind them, perhaps a thousand or more."
"My Bai Family Fort held out for less than two shichen before they broke through."
"The militia is finished. The household guards and retainers have suffered terrible losses."
He paused, his face grim.
"Only this handful of us managed to escape..."