Chapter 37: The Righteous Bandits of Yushan Mountain

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Li Gui raised the great banner of “Acting in Heaven’s Name.” At first, few people believed him; everyone assumed it was merely the usual trick of mountain bandits.

But after Li Gui repeatedly descended the mountain to carry out his business, killing only the gentry while leaving commoners unharmed, his reputation gradually began to spread.

The old farmers might never have studied, but they were no fools. They were shrewd—very shrewd indeed.

All it took was a few words of praise for the Elm Mountain bandits. It cost them neither money nor effort, yet made them a little safer, so naturally they had no objection to praising him as enthusiastically as possible.

Better that a fellow Daoist die than a poor priest; better that the gentry die than the poor. No one knew how secretly delighted the farmers were.

When the autumn harvest arrived, the lackeys who had swaggered over in previous years to collect the rent had vanished without a trace. This made the farmers even more elated. They quietly hid away the grain they had harvested, and even if the masters returned with murderous intent, they would not find a single morsel of food in their homes.

The few members of the gentry who refused to accept reality offered generous rewards and sent household slaves to investigate. The farmers secretly reported them, and before two days had passed, the heroes who came down from the mountain had chopped off their heads.

The farmers naturally did not dare kill anyone themselves, but they had no qualms whatsoever about passing along information.

As for the stronghold, ever since the Great Chieftain’s words had spread from the Hall of Oath Brothers, no one had dared risk losing his head by oppressing the common people.

They were all poor wretches. Not only was there little profit to be gained, but the danger was considerable. No one was stupid enough to oppose a god of slaughter.

Their own Great Chieftain was no benevolent soul. He possessed a fierce bloodlust, and whether he was leading troops into battle or exterminating the gentry, he showed no mercy. Wherever he went, heads were bound to roll.

He truly lived up to his title as the Heaven-Killing Star. In his eyes, there was no crime more deserving of punishment than beheading. Once a man fell into his hands, death was his only possible end.

Now, whenever someone in the stronghold committed an offense and could not escape punishment, he would voluntarily go to Zhu Fu and the others to confess, terrified that he might fall into the Great Chieftain’s hands and lose his head.

This was also intentional on Li Gui’s part. He dealt only with serious crimes, while pretending ignorance of ordinary offenses and leaving them to several others to handle.

Most people under Heaven respected power but felt little gratitude toward virtue. He wanted them to fear him, not revere him.

Yet the affairs of this world were strange indeed. The more he behaved that way, the more others respected him.

Li Gui hated the gentry, but neither did he care for the farmers, who shifted with the wind.

In his eyes, these people lived merely to stay alive, meekly accepting whatever fate imposed upon them, without the slightest awareness of resistance. Whatever treatment they received, they deserved.

As for enlightening the masses and awakening them—that was the work of heroes and men of principle. A mountain bandit like him possessed no such awareness.

When poor, one should preserve one’s own virtue; when prosperous, one should surround oneself with wives and concubines. As for benefiting the whole world, whoever wished to do it could do so. He certainly had no intention of taking on the task.

The reason he had forbidden the oppression of decent people was simply that he found it too low. They were a pack of paupers, and there was no oil to squeeze from them anyway.

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If the farmers had been wealthy, did anyone really think he would have waited seventy years before collecting their taxes?

But the people of the stronghold saw things differently.

Everyone believed the Great Chieftain was a heroic champion who loved the people as though they were his own children—though he was a little tsundere.

Judging by the Elm Mountain stronghold’s conduct over the past several months, its reputation for acting in Heaven’s name was thoroughly deserved.

With legitimacy came authority.

The local farmers still kept a slight distance from the bandits, but they no longer avoided them like snakes or scorpions. If a farmer happened to encounter a bandit head-on on a country road, he would invariably praise the fellow a few times, smile, and step aside. No longer did everyone shout for the bandits to be beaten or try to seize them and deliver them to the authorities for a reward.

When had the bandits ever received such treatment?

At first, they were merely flattered and bewildered. Gradually, they grew accustomed to it.

They were not fools, of course. They knew exactly why this change had occurred, and for that very reason they felt even more embarrassed about harming the poor.

Thus, a virtuous cycle came into being.

The bandits did not harm the poor; the poor treated the bandits courteously; the bandits became increasingly willing to live in peace with the farmers; and the poor grew ever more supportive of the bandits.

Under this virtuous cycle, the rules Li Gui had established became much easier to enforce.

Now, whenever the bandits traveled through the countryside, they held their heads high, clearly proud to belong to Elm Mountain.

The stronghold’s cohesion grew stronger by the day, and more and more people came to join it.

Most of these newcomers were displaced wanderers from the surrounding counties, people who had been forced by one misfortune or another to become refugees. With nowhere else to go, they had either eked out a living in the mountains as bandits or cleared a patch of woodland and cultivated it, becoming wild men of the forest.

Now that Li Gui had wiped out the bandits in the surrounding area, they had nowhere else to turn. Having heard of the Elm Mountain bandits’ righteousness, they came specifically to surrender themselves.

Li Gui kept the able-bodied men who were willing to become bandits, while driving away the honest people who still wished to farm.

The soil in the mountains was barren. The crops they grew were barely enough to feed themselves and offered the stronghold no assistance at all. Worse, Li Gui would have to worry for no reason about their clothing, food, lodging, safety, and every other need.

Those who entered the stronghold and became bandits were his men. Those who refused to join and remained obedient commoners were outsiders. All of them could get lost.

Whoever wanted to manage them could do so. He certainly would not.

Who could have guessed that these farmers were so sly? Not far behind the stronghold, they felled trees, built houses, cleared the land, and stubbornly settled there.

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Because of Li Gui’s previous prohibition, no one in the stronghold dared drive them away.

When Li Gui learned of it, he cursed a few times and then stopped paying attention, leaving them to do as they pleased.

By the time the autumn harvest was over, Elm Mountain already had a population of several thousand. Besides more than a thousand men, the stronghold was also home to their wives, children, and other family members.

Believing that those with secure property possessed secure hearts, Li Gui provided every bandit who had rendered meritorious service with a wife.

Although every household in Yishui County enjoyed a bumper harvest that year because of the Elm Mountain stronghold, and everyone was able to live and work in peace, there were still countless impoverished farming families around the county who could barely survive.

The name of the Elm Mountain bandits might have sounded unpleasant, but their reputation for righteousness had spread far and wide. For poor families who could no longer make ends meet, marrying a daughter to an Elm Mountain bandit was not such a bad arrangement.

No matchmaker was needed. A poor family had only to bring its daughter along the road to the foot of the mountain and leave her at the tax station. It could then return home with a generous “dowry.” To outsiders, they would simply say that the girl had been abducted by the Elm Mountain bandits. Surely the authorities would not trouble the victim’s family.

But everyone knew the truth perfectly well. They simply chose not to say it aloud.

The Elm Mountain stronghold was satisfied so long as it acquired wives; it cared nothing for empty reputations.

To ensure that this “bridal route” remained open, Li Gui led his men in repeated sweeps of the main roads within the county. They exterminated every wolf, tiger, leopard, venomous insect, and wild beast they could find. They also repaired the roads, cleared away the brush, filled in the mud pits, and made travel more convenient for passersby.

The large number of merchant caravans this attracted was an unexpected bonus.

At last, the tax station began to fulfill its proper function. Merchants paid a fixed tax and received a flag proving that their dues had been paid. With it, they could travel freely throughout the county without worrying about being robbed.

And if anyone dared show disrespect to the Elm Mountain stronghold, Li Gui’s great axe would be only too happy to profit from the encounter.

Although everything had now settled into a proper routine, Yishui County was not a large place to begin with. The commercial taxes collected were still pitifully small, wholly inadequate to support the stronghold.

There was no helping it. Li Gui had to think of another way to rob the rich and aid the poor.

All the wealthy gentry who could be exterminated had already been dealt with in Heaven’s name. Those who had fled into the county seat had already had their homes confiscated. There was not a scrap of wealth left to strip from them.

After carefully studying the “List of the Hundred Wealthiest Families” compiled by Zhu Fu for quite some time, Li Gui’s gaze finally settled upon the names of the local strongmen listed at the very bottom.

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