The chaos outside Gaojia Village did not remain a mystery for long.
After watching for a brief moment, Li Daoxuan finally understood why the sentinels had nearly fallen off the wall—and why San'er, a man who normally panicked when someone spilled water on the floor, was suddenly shouting orders like a half-trained battlefield commander.
What they were seeing was the sort of scene that, in any dynasty, caused officials to draft urgent memorials with shaking hands:
A flood of refugees staggering across the wasteland, dragging children, crying, shouting names already swallowed by distance—
and behind them, a pack of bandits hacking down the slow ones with the enthusiasm of men who had absolutely nothing left to lose.
It was a landscape painting titled:
"Central Plains, Late Ming Edition: Please Abolish the Ministry of Justice, It's Clearly Decorative."
Whenever someone fell behind, a bandit's blade flashed.
Blood sprayed like a celebratory ribbon-cutting ceremony.
The refugees screamed louder.
The bandits laughed harder.
Frankly, if Gaojia Village hadn't recently acquired a city wall, a divine statue, and a resident Dao Xuan Tianzun quietly watching over them, at least half the villagers would already be hiding in cabbage fields, attempting to bury themselves alive and hoping fate would overlook them.
The Village Arms Up
(In the Loosest Possible Sense)
"Get up the wall! Hurry!"
"Bows and arrows! I've got the one we looted last time—still works, I think!"
"I've got a rusty knife!"
"I've got a bamboo pole!"
"I've got… a broom?!"
In short, Gaojia Village prepared for battle the way an inn prepares for an inspection:
frantically, loudly, and with tools that had never been intended for combat.
The two blacksmiths finally emerged, each wriggling into a suit of armor they'd hammered together overnight.
Calling it "armor" was generous.
It looked like someone had lost a violent argument with a wok and decided to wear the evidence.
Even so, in a village where defense normally relied on yelling and optimism, the two smiths instantly appeared like twin war gods. Dozens of villagers clustered around their gleaming wok-plates like iron filings drawn to a magnet.
Nearby, the tall brutes Gao Chuwu and Zheng Daniu hefted their axes.
In times of crisis, height mattered.
If not for combat effectiveness, then at least because people instinctively assumed tall men understood what was going on.
Thus, Gaojia Village's defensive line was formed.
Rough.
Uneven.
And only slightly less ridiculous than expected.
Refugees Arrive — And Decisions Become Fatal
Soon, the first refugees entered Li Daoxuan's miniature field of vision.
The fastest among them were not runners at all, but a family crammed into a carriage, bouncing along the rutted earth like a boat in a typhoon.
A middle-aged man in a blue scholar's robe—clearly someone who had once believed the civil service examinations were a sensible life plan—leapt from the carriage and shouted:
"Open the gate! Let us in! Bandits—killing—everywhere—help!"
Before he could finish, San'er blinked hard.
"Eh? Isn't that Master Bai?!"
The man looked up, startled, like a magistrate caught falsifying grain records.
"San'er?!" he cried. "Is this… Chengcheng County already? No—no, the county seat should still be far!"
San'er waved both arms. "Open the gate! Let Master Bai's family in!"
Wooden plates turned. Fishing lines pulled.
The village gate creaked open.
And then—
"Should we… close the door?!" the gate-keeper shouted, voice tight with fear.
A good question.
The kind of question that filled imperial bedtime stories.
Let Master Bai in? Easy.
Let the hundreds of fleeing commoners behind him in? Hard.
Let the bandits rush in with them?
Fatal.
In that instant, the fate of Gaojia Village rested on San'er's sweating forehead.
He froze—trapped between morality and survival, like an honest official deciding whether to report corruption or pretend he hadn't seen anything at all.
Li Daoxuan: Do Not Test Human Nature
Li Daoxuan sighed.
Human nature, he thought, truly could not endure examinations.
Especially open-book ones where the penalty for failure was death.
He puffed out his cheeks and blew toward the ground.
A swirling dust storm surged across the plains like divine breath, rising into a wall of yellow sand that swallowed the bandits and blanketed everything behind the fleeing refugees.
The refugees did not need to see.
They only needed to run forward.
The bandits, however, needed to see their prey—and without visibility, they might as well have been swinging blades at ghosts.
Within seconds, distance opened between the two groups.
Li Daoxuan raised a hand, ready to swat the bandits flat like unruly mosquitoes.
Then he paused.
Lowered his hand.
Killing them would be easy.
Too easy.
If he solved every crisis himself, the villagers would never learn. And one day, when he wasn't watching the box, someone would sneeze—and the entire village would be wiped out.
So he let the scene continue.
The Gate Closes — The World Does Not
"Let everyone in! Then close the gate!" San'er shouted, his confidence restored only because the danger was now hidden behind sand.
Master Bai leapt from his carriage, scrambled up the wall with surprising agility for a scholar, and immediately began shouting orders:
"Those with bows! Fire! At least pretend to aim!"
Rude? Yes.
Useful? Also yes.
The villagers didn't care who issued commands.
Anyone with lungs was better than no one at all.
A few arrows flew.
None hit anything.
One didn't even clear the wall.
But the bandits, seeing arrows rain down, halted fifty meters away, muttering uneasily.
Meanwhile, refugees poured through the gate and collapsed in the courtyard like sacks of grain. The winch spun. With a heavy bang, the gate shut.
Master Bai exhaled deeply.
"Fortunately, I practiced the Six Gentlemanly Arts—especially driving. Otherwise the carriage would have flipped a dozen times."
San'er swallowed. "Master Bai… what happened?"
The scholar's face tightened.
"Baijiabao has fallen."
San'er's eyes widened.
Baijiabao—a family fortress famed for its militia, its walls, its stubborn refusal to yield—fallen?
Impossible.
And yet—
Master Bai pointed toward the bandits still hesitating beyond the dust.
"That group is only the tail," he said grimly. "Behind them are hundreds—perhaps thousands. My family resisted for less than two hours before being overrun."
The wind howled outside the walls.
Gaojia Village suddenly felt very small.
Very fragile.
And painfully aware that the Ming world beyond their gate was collapsing faster than a government budget placed in the hands of corrupt officials.