By afternoon, as the sun began slowly sinking toward the horizon, all the bandits of the fort had woken up and were gathering at the site of yesterday’s feast to cure their hangovers or continue the revelry. The kitchen stoves smoked, the smell of food spread everywhere, and dishes along with a bit of wine appeared on the tables. People drank and chatted, but the chieftain and the leaders were absent this time, and the captives had been locked away in a separate storage building, as if in a livestock pen.

  The number of people in the fortress had noticeably increased; many unfamiliar faces flickered here and there. Heavily built swordsmen appeared on the streets among the rank-and-file bandits. Several men in black clothing identical to Yin Hua’s, watched over the square in front of the chieftain’s large pavilion like guard dogs. Bandits stood constant watch at the gate and on all the lookout towers along the wall. With the chieftain’s arrival, the situation in and around the fortress had changed drastically.

  Drenched in cold sweat, Zhang Ming sat with his unit, the Brown Boar Gang, forcing a smile and pretending to join the conversation, though he didn’t drink a drop, only faked it. Hiding his face behind a tangle of overgrown hair, he listened closely to the talk around him. Fortunately, no one mentioned the previous night’s brawl or the missing girls. Seizing the right moment, Zhang Ming slipped away unnoticed.

  Pretending to be drunk, he made his way to the storage building where the captives were kept and, finding a secluded spot from which he could safely observe the guards, hid himself. He immediately noticed how nervous the men responsible for the captives were. Sweaty and disheveled, they came and went, replacing each other as if in great haste. Four of them passed very close to Zhang Min’s hiding place, and he managed to overhear their quiet conversation.

  “We've looked everywhere. Where are we supposed to hide three girls? They’re not exactly needles.”

  “Don’t worry. They’ll turn up. There’s a forest all around. Nowhere to run,” one of them reassured the other.

  “Yeah, true,” the third agreed.

  “Did you check yesterday’s corpses?” asked the first speaker, apparently the leader.

  “We counted them several times! I’m sick of looking at them.”

  “I’ve got a feeling that if we looked into Tai Gui’s house, we’d find the missing ones fast.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense! He could’ve taken them openly and no one would’ve said a word.”

  “Maybe he forgot to tell us, or he’s testing us?”

  “That’s why I told you idiots not to get drunk!”

  “Let’s do this—keep quiet unless someone asks. There are more than hundred captives. Three might not even be noticed,” the head guard suggested. “Tell the others to keep their mouths shut too.”

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  “Agreed. They’ll hand them over to that… ahem, Lord Yin Hua soon enough.”

  “Not all of them. A few lucky ones will be sold as slaves.”

  Watching them from the shadows, Zhang Min saw the bandits’ silent agreement. Their reluctance to stir up a hornet’s nest gave him at least a little time to find a solution.

  If more than two people know a secret, it’s no longer a secret and here there are several blockheads, Zhang Ming thought. I just hope they can keep their mouths shut for at least a week. I wonder how much their empty heads are worth to them.

  By evening, when the bandits were once again drunk and shouting at the top of their lungs, he quietly slipped away to the barracks, carrying a few empty wine jars. They were scattered everywhere, in all shapes and sizes. One he filled with food, including meat. Away from the torchlight, near the barracks, Zhang Ming sat down as if to meditate, but in truth, he was listening, alert to every sound around him.

  After his recent breakthrough into the Body Tempering Realm, all his senses had sharpened. Amid the general noise he could easily make out the rustle of leaves, the whisper of wind, the distant voices of bandits, even the soft snoring of someone in a nearby barrack. Once he was sure no one was following him, Zhang Ming grabbed two large jars and sped toward the old shed behind the pigsties.

  The door gave a piercing creak, making him freeze in place. For a moment, he didn’t breathe or move, eyes glinting bloodthirstily from beneath his tangled hair. Like a drawn arrow seeking its mark, or a bared blade ready to strike, Zhang Ming tensed — prepared to kill anyone who might appear. Coming here a second time, he was ready to fight to the death.

  Damn it. My heart’s about to burst out of my chest, he thought, closing the shed door behind him. The leaders aren’t ordinary men, who knows what level of tempering they’ve reached, or what they’re capable of? Maybe they’re watching me right now, laughing.

  Moonlight filtered through cracks in the walls, illuminating his strained face. Once his eyes adjusted to the dark, he dug up one side of the door covering the pit, then pushed it aside with his feet, moving both earth and wood. Through the opening, Zhang Ming pulled the girls out one by one. After a whole day without food or water, they were so weak they didn’t even react to him. They smelled faintly of urine, and their damp clothes clung to their skin.

  Damn it! Just don’t get sick, flashed through his mind.

  “Hey, not a sound, if you want to live,” he warned in a whisper.

  One by one, Zhang Ming seated the girls in a row against the wall, then untied their bonds and removed the gags. Hearing the youngest draw in a sharp breath, he clamped his hand over her mouth so fast her head thumped against the shed wall. The girl kicked and struggled weakly, but she had no strength left. The oldest captive understood better, she began gently stroking the younger one’s shoulder with her numb hands, trying to calm her down, though tears streamed down her own face.

  “Shh, quiet now. Don’t cry,” she whispered.

  “If you still want to live, you’ll have to stay in the pit,” Zhang Ming told them. “I don’t want to scare you, but many of the captives are already dead. The rest will be sold into slavery. You want to go back to that?”

  “No,” the older girl shook her head. She didn’t know how their current situation was any better, but fear kept her from arguing.

  “I brought rice and meat. Eat,” he said, slowly removing his hand from the youngest’s mouth. She still trembled, but didn’t try to scream.

  After an entire day without a bite to eat, the captives fell upon the food greedily, forgetting everything else. Their numb hands trembled, barely able to hold the pieces of meat. Zhang Ming watched them for a while, then fetched two buckets of water from the trough near the pigsty. When they finished eating, he told them to wash up and tidy themselves.

  “Don’t make a mess in here,” he ordered coldly. The three nodded obediently and kept eating. “The bamboo flask there, that’s drinking water.”