Chapter 59: Strategy against the Mount Tai Bandits

To actually pull off a double update—this is the legendary, wrathful double update!

Hua Xiong delivered a single stroke with his saber, cleanly severing Chang Xi's head. He then spun around and swiftly dispatched all of Chang Xi’s so-called trusted aides. Chen Xi had briefed him thoroughly beforehand: while some of these Mount Tai leaders were local tyrants, others were chivalrous swordsmen forced by circumstance into a life of banditry. Chang Xi alone, despite bearing the title of a Mount Tai bandit, was actually the Administrator of Donghai in Xuzhou.

Naturally, Hua Xiong did not give this fellow a chance to boast of his identity. To a third-rate nobody who had allowed an Inner Qi outflow grandmaster to close in, his head was lopped off before he could even utter a dying breath.

Before Chang Xi’s subordinates fully grasped what had happened, Hua Xiong drove his heavy saber deep into the earth. "Listen up! From this moment on, I am your new boss!"

"Avenge Boss Chang—" a burly, bearded fellow seemed to snap out of his trance in that exact instant. Roaring at the top of his lungs, he charged straight at Hua Xiong, only for Hua Xiong to casually flick his saber from a distance, cleaving the man directly in two.

"Anyone else looking for revenge?" Hua Xiong asked, a sinister grin plastered across his face.

"No one? Good. Hear this loud and clear: from now on, I am your boss, and my name is Hua Hu! Remember, Mount Tai is our territory from here on out. If anyone dares to step out of line, I’ll split them in two with a single strike!" Hua Xiong roared with savage ferocity, sending a wave of ringing ears and golden stars spinning before the eyes of those standing at the front.

"Boss Hua! Greetings, Boss Hua!" Following Chen Xi's pre-arranged plan, the plant agents hidden among the ranks snapped to attention just as everyone was left paralyzed in shock, shouting their agreement at the top of their lungs. Human nature tends toward blind conformity; with the first voice came a second and a third, until roars echoed continuously across the hillside.

"Good! Your boss is going to take you to plunder other bandits. Tell me, where are the rest of those brigands?" Hua Xiong bellowed.

Through the chaotic chorus of overlapping replies, Hua Xiong managed to piece together a rough idea. He shouted aloud, "Let's go back to the stronghold, muster the troops, and I'll show you what true bandits look like!"

***

Upon returning to the stronghold, Hua Xiong unleashed another round of slaughter. A band of bandits devoid of proper command and capable of nothing more than mindless charging stood zero chance against an Inner Qi outflow grandmaster. Afterward, he heavily promoted a new crop of subordinates, planting his own sleeper agents into high-ranking positions. In short order, the entire stronghold was brought to heel.

Hua Xiong pulled the silk brocade pouch written by Chen Xi from his tunic. There were no divine strategies inside—just step-by-step instructions telling him exactly what to do at each stage. Having successfully subjugated a stronghold, the next step was to begin training according to the pouch's dictates.

Frowning, Hua Xiong stared at the characters brushed onto the white cloth. There were no precise training regimens, only a single objective accompanied by a brief hint.

The objective was straightforward: train the men in your stronghold until they were mindless. When you gave an order, their brains shouldn't even process it before their bodies automatically carried it out. The accompanying hint read: Do not treat them as human beings. If there are no difficulties, manufacture difficulties. Train them to the point of death.

Naturally, to maintain an aura of boundless compassion, Chen Xi had tacked on a concluding remark: I am doing this to offer these bandits a chance to wash away their evil past and turn over a new leaf, as well as to discourage kind-hearted commoners from ever turning to banditry. Since they chose to be bandits yet desire redemption, surrendering might suffice under other warlords, but under my command, these bandits must be made to thoroughly understand the gravity of their past mistakes!

Hua Xiong failed to comprehend most of this lengthy nonsense, but he grasped the objective and the hint well enough. As for the training—well, since the military strategist said to train them to the point of death, then he would train them to the point of death. Besides, they weren't his own regular soldiers anyway, merely bandits; if a few died, they died.

Clearly, Chen Xi had utterly miscalculated. His phrase "train them to the point of death" was merely a figure of speech, but in Hua Xiong's hands, it was interpreted literally. Since they were bandits, he didn't view them as human beings at all. On the very first day, over a hundred died...

By the second day, a semblance of military discipline had emerged. On the third day, those who couldn't endure it were dragged out and buried. On the fourth day, a mutiny broke out, resulting in three to four hundred deaths. Hua Xiong rounded everyone back up and resumed the training. The strategist had explicitly stated that they were to be trained for a full month, after which they would be led out to clean up the remaining Mount Tai bandits, followed by three days of rest before resuming the cycle—all to be repeated continuously for six months.

Well, after twenty days had passed, Hua Xiong suddenly realized that these bandit subordinates of his handled troop formations far more fluidly than his own regular troops. It was obvious these fellows didn't truly understand military formations, yet whenever Hua Xiong issued a command regarding a specific sector, all the bandits reacted instantly with the adrenaline-fueled zeal of seasoned veterans, adjusting themselves flawlessly.

He also noticed that these fellows no longer ran away day after day as they had in the beginning, nor did they clamor to rise up en masse and finish off Hua Xiong. During drills, whatever Hua Xiong commanded, they executed without the slightest hesitation.

***

Since these fellows proved so obedient, Hua Xiong dispensed with his exceptionally inhumane training methods—such as forcing them to scale precipitous cliffs with three-hundred-jin boulders strapped to their backs or starving them if they missed time quotas. Every day, their meals were guaranteed to be filling. Well, as a result, all the bandits became profoundly grateful to Hua Xiong, leaving him deeply unsettled and unaccustomed to such adoration. Out of sheer awkwardness, he leaked a few extra perks through his fingers for the bandits, such as extra rations...

Chen Xi missed this spectacle entirely; had he witnessed it, he would certainly have suffered a twitch. This was practically mass-producing patients with Stockholm syndrome. Still, one could call it a happy accident—using the wrong method had somehow achieved the intended goal. Though if this were done in the twenty-first century, it would undoubtedly draw international condemnation for humanitarian violations...

Hua Xiong continued his training regimen. By now, he had whipped the bandits into such a state of absolute compliance that if Hua Xiong announced there was a pit ahead and ordered them to jump in to fill it, men would leap right in without a moment's hesitation. This wasn't out of reverence or anything of the sort, but purely because Hua Xiong had trained them into a condition of pure reflex. They didn't process Hua Xiong's words through their brains; their bodies simply obeyed by instinct. The chilling shadow of death had relentlessly forged this rabble into an elite force.

Calling them an elite might be an exaggeration, but in terms of strict obedience and absolute execution of orders, they were first-rate—far surpassing any ordinary military unit. If Hua Xiong gave the order to shift formations, they would execute it even if there were sharp blades waiting right in front of them. These men had been trained to the point of blank-mindedness, yet under the psychological conditioning unwittingly inflicted by Hua Xiong, they had developed a fierce, instinctive devotion to him...

Naturally, Chen Xi had no inkling that Hua Xiong's misinterpretation had inadvertently molded a band of bandits into the most compliant, obedient troops in the contemporary world.

Even if he had known, there was nothing he could be done about it. While he recognized this as a form of psychological disorder and knew how to alleviate it, he lacked both the time and the energy; besides, why would he waste effort on something so idle? Who would be foolish enough to care?

Who would know how these loyal soldiers were trained unless Hua Xiong spoke of it? Furthermore, if he cured them, wouldn't he be weakening his own strength? In this era, who paid attention to such trivialities? Providing them with a meal already marked one as a good person; at the very least, Hua Xiong had steered these bandits toward a righteous path. From the perspective of both ordinary commoners and former bandits alike, Hua Xiong had performed a meritorious deed, rendering any correction entirely unnecessary.

"Yide, go to Mount Tai and find Zijian. Tell him to drag Sun Guan back to me! How dare he intercept our grain supplies? I haven't even gone looking to settle scores with them yet, and they actually have the nerve to provoke me," Chen Xi fumed with indignation. He hadn't even bothered to clean out those mountain bandits, merely using practical pressure to force them down the mountain to become honest farmers, yet Sun Guan was so lacking in tact that he dared to rob his grain transport—eighty thousand Dan of it! If he hadn't dispatched troops to escort the convoy, Sun Guan would have actually seized the lot.