The pirate ships, disguised as merchant vessels, left Baohe without incident, then sailed upstream past the government patrol vessels. They docked at a quiet river inlet, far from prying eyes. More than a hundred men from the Brown Boar squad safely disembarked and crossed the forest along paths known only to them. When the silhouette of the Earth Dragon fortress appeared in the distance, the bandits grew livelier. They were eager to boast of their exploits in the large city and to see the envious looks of those unlucky enough to be left behind on the mountain.

  Tang Gui rode through the gates first, mounted on horseback, wearing a genial smile. He had managed to sell the looted goods at a fair price and, during the voyage, struck several deals with the pirates for the future, including the purchase of a batch of slaves. His mood was excellent. Behind him came the bandits on foot, hauling crates filled with goods from the large city on their shoulders. The procession headed straight for the warehouses.

  More than two weeks had passed since Zhang Ming had left the fortress. Nothing here had changed, the same dusty lanes and crudely built structures with thatched roofs. The materials had long since lost their color, leaving the mountain settlement bleak and gray. Still wounded, Zhang Ming was not trusted with carrying cargo and walked empty-handed at the very rear of the squad.

  “Old Lao Yu!” he called out when he spotted a man in the distance, his hair sticking out in all directions.

  “Alive! Just look at that!” the man replied.

  “What, you’re not happy to see me alive?” Zhang Ming asked in surprise.

  “Because of you, I lost fifty coins! You owe me!”

  “Huh? You bet I’d die? You won’t get a single copper from me!”

  “Hahaha! How could I dare?”

  “You did bet, you did!” Lin Bo walked up and clapped Zhang Ming on the shoulder. “I never doubted you’d come back!”

  “That’s how you greet someone! How’ve you been, Uncle Lin?” Zhang Ming smiled.

  “Strong as an ox. That’s all that matters.”

  “Nothing strange happen while I was gone?”

  “If you don’t count the fact that Enchanter Yin Hua bought all the captives, and then the Horned Serpent squad took them out of the fortress - nothing,” Lao Yu remarked lazily.

  “Isn’t that the one who turns people into mummies?” Zhang Ming tensed.

  “That’s him. Nothing good awaits them,” the shaggy drunk said indifferently.

  “That’s all nonsense. Something more important happened,” said Lin Bin, Lin Bo’s younger brother, in a mysterious tone.

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  “What?” Zhang Ming’s heart skipped a beat.

  Did they find the girls? he thought.

  “The four of us were moved out of the communal barracks. We got a house of our own.”

  “Huh? What are you talking about?”

  “One of the boss’s trusted men noticed that the chickens under our care are laying better, and all the sows gave birth. Now the pigsties and chicken coops are entirely ours!” Lin Bin boasted. “As long as we manage them well, we won’t have to risk our necks outside. Hehehe.”

  “They gave each of us ten silver as well,” Xiao Bai added.

  “They settled us closer to the pens. A big house just for the four of us,” the farmer Lu Han clarified.

  They left me in the communal barracks, Zhang Ming thought. So Tang Gui no longer considers me one of the farmers. What is he planning?

  “Oh! Everything turned out just the way you dreamed!” he congratulated them.

  “Mm.”

  “What are you all talking about? Everything’s the same as ever. Nothing but boredom,” Lao Yu snorted. “By the way, I haven’t seen Tu Hama and his people,” he suddenly recalled. “Didn’t they come back with everyone else?”

  “No. And they never will.”

  “What?” The shaggy drunk stared at Zhang Ming in disbelief. “Don’t tell me you sent them all to the other side?”

  “Are you kidding? Where would I get that kind of strength?” Zhang Ming laughed, then repeated the same story he had told Mo Dushi’s assistant, word for word. He saw no reason to tell the truth even to friends.

  After the return of the Brown Boar squad, the fortress buzzed like a disturbed anthill. People scurried everywhere, including the livestock yard, while Mo Dushi’s assistant kept a vigilant watch over all of them. Zhang Ming couldn’t slip away unnoticed to check the underground hiding place where the three girls were concealed. Only at night, when most of the fortress had gone to sleep, did he make his way to the pigsties and glance from afar at the old shed, but he didn’t dare go any closer.

  “There are no fresh tracks around the shed. That means the girls haven’t come out and are still waiting for my return,” he thought as he headed back to the communal barracks. “Damn it. I need to get them out of there as soon as possible.”

  The next day, word spread among the bandits about the death of Tu Hama and half of his group. As the sole survivor, Zhang Ming found himself at the center of attention, sitting in front of the barracks surrounded by curious bandits. He had to answer the same questions again and again, sometimes even showing his healing wounds for credibility.

  “We never got along and had just left the camp…” Zhang Ming improvised on the spot. He had no intention of telling the truth. “I managed to escape. What happened to them after that, I have no idea. You know the rumors as well as I do.”

  “Lucky,” one of them remarked. “You took a beating, but at least you’re alive.”

  After the death of their leader, the remnants of Tu Hama’s group fell apart quickly, as if they had long been waiting for such a chance. They no longer cared about Zhang Ming. Any thoughts of revenge or hatred vanished at once, and some even looked at their former enemy with gratitude.

  The lively bustle in the fortress didn’t subside for several days. All that time, Zhang Ming kept his distance from the old shed, though under the pretext of helping friends, he often lingered nearby. Lin Bo’s success in raising livestock inspired Tang Gui to build a new chicken coop and repair the pigsties. People were constantly moving around the livestock yard, leaving Zhang Ming no chance to see the captives. A couple of men even went inside the old shed.

  “In two breaths, I can reach them. One more to take both their heads,” Zhang Ming calculated as he watched from afar. “I grab the girls and go straight over the walls into the forest. Then we run… hopefully luck will be on our side.” He rested his palm on the hilt of his sword, ready.

  “There’s nothing here. Just a reeking stink,” the wind carried a fragment of the bandit’s words to him. “Sounds like a rat croaked… under the floor.”

  “Yeah. Smells like a corpse,” the second agreed.