The wind and snow cut like knives, sending shards of ice whirling through Hirado Harbor.
Outside the Matsura residence, a dozen samurai hunched against the northwestern gale as they helped Li Sheng into an ox cart.
“Tonosama! Sugoi! Another day, Old Li will drink his fill with Your Highness!”
Li Sheng’s face was flushed, his eyes bleary with drink.
Half his body hung out of the carriage, and he shouted at the top of his lungs while waving around a half-eaten shrimp claw.
As the group gradually disappeared into the distance, the driver flicked his whip. The ox cart rolled slowly onward, its wheels crunching over the thin snow.
Inside the carriage, Li Sheng leaned against the armrest and hummed a tune from the pleasure boats of Qinhuai River in Jinling. The greasy melody seeped through the gaps in the curtains.
The samurai handling the cleanup outside naturally couldn’t understand the song, but they could certainly understand the vulgar expression on his face.
They exchanged glances, curled their lips, and returned to the residence with their swords sheathed.
After rolling down half a street, the ox cart turned into a pitch-black alley and entered the rear courtyard of the Great Qian Maritime Trading House.
The instant it crossed the threshold, Wang Laoliu pressed his ear to the door and listened for movement outside. Then he slid the bolt into place.
Li Sheng, who had been humming obscene songs in the carriage moments before, let out a long belch. His lean body climbed out of the cabin.
The moment both feet touched the ground, his murky, slitted eyes suddenly cleared. The cold gleam within them was even more piercing than the wind sweeping through Hirado Harbor.
At the same time, every trace of oily ingratiation vanished from his face.
“Bah!”
Li Sheng spat a thick gob of phlegm into a drift of snow.
He grabbed the collar of his silk brocade robe and tore it off roughly, along with the heavy smell of fish and cheap liquor clinging to it. With a look of utter disgust, he balled it up and threw it onto the ground.
Wang Laoliu hurriedly handed him a black wool cloak.
Li Sheng took it and draped it over his shoulders.
The main hall of the trading house was dimly lit.
Several wind lanterns hung from the rafters, swaying in the draft.
Three shop assistants responsible for purchasing pig iron and lumber knelt trembling in the middle of the hall.
Several blue-covered account books lay scattered across the floor.
Li Sheng strode into the main hall, his robes stirring up a gust of cold air.
He walked to the seat of honor, dropped heavily into the grand chair, and casually picked up the solid copper abacus used as a paperweight on the table.
“Speak.”
The lead assistant’s face was ashen. He crawled forward half a step, kowtowing repeatedly.
“Chief Steward Li… we followed your orders and went to enlist some local ronin to open up the dock.”
“But who could’ve known? Those island brutes took the five hundred taels in advance, then not only refused to let us through, they seized all three thousand cedar logs we’d just purchased!”
The assistant swallowed hard, his voice breaking with tears.
“They’ve announced that if we want the lumber left alone, we have to pay another two thousand taels for ‘handling fees.’ Otherwise… otherwise they’ll burn everything to the ground!”
The hall fell so quiet that the only sound was the pop of a lamp wick.
Li Sheng remained silent, not moving a muscle.
The assistant assumed his superior was weighing the pros and cons. Gathering his courage, he ventured, “Chief Steward, we’re new here. Even a powerful dragon can’t suppress a local snake. Why don’t we… pay them off and make the trouble go away?”
Before he could finish speaking—
Li Sheng suddenly rose to his feet. He seized the solid copper abacus, which weighed at least seven or eight pounds, and slammed it down in front of the lead assistant with a violent gust of wind.
Bang!
Sparks flew. Several copper beads broke loose and went rolling across the floor.
The lead assistant let out a terrified scream and immediately collapsed facedown, not daring to breathe too loudly.
The other two assistants were equally ashen. They pressed their foreheads to the ground, their entire bodies shaking like sieves.
Li Sheng looked down at them from above.
“A soldier of Great Qian can lose his head on the road to the charge. His guts can spill out across the sands of the northern frontier. But there is one thing he will never do—swallow a humiliating loss at the hands of these Japanese midgets!”
“Pay them off to make the trouble go away? When I was earning military honors with men’s heads beyond the frontier, these ronin were still eating tree bark on their island! And you want me to pay them a ‘handling fee’?!”
Just then, a commotion suddenly erupted from the front courtyard.
With a bang, the side gate of the trading house was kicked open.
Seven or eight Japanese ronin swaggered into the courtyard, their waists bearing long swords and the stench of cheap liquor pouring from their mouths.
Their wooden sandals splashed through the snowmelt covering the courtyard as they shouted crude phrases in stiff, broken official speech.
“Qian people! Come out!”
The leader had a jagged scar across his face and an air of arrogant menace.
He walked to the center of the courtyard, glanced at the crates piled up like a hill, and drew half his sword. Its blade glimmered coldly in the torchlight.
He pressed the tip against a wooden crate packed with porcelain and shouted with wild abandon, “Protection money! Two thousand taels! Don’t pay, and we burn everything tonight!”
The ronin behind him joined in with ugly cries. One of them even pulled out a fire striker and made a show of moving toward the ropes binding the crates.
Inside the main hall, Li Sheng sat back down in the grand chair. His eyes settled on the band of shouting ronin in the courtyard.
He raised his right hand and made the slightest gesture.
Killing intent erupted from the darkness.
Behind the corridor pillars on either side of the hall, atop stacks of cargo crates, and within the gaps between the lattice windows of the side rooms… more than a dozen dark figures revealed themselves like ghosts.
Every one of them was a veteran of the Northern Garrison Army!
More than a dozen divine-fire thunder guns rose in unison, their black muzzles locking onto the seven or eight ronin in the courtyard.
The fuse cords had already been lit. Orange sparks flickered fitfully in the wind.
The leader had never seen such a formation. His arrogant curses caught in his throat, his sword hand trembled, and his eyes bulged wide.
Before he could react, Li Sheng had somehow appeared outside the main hall. In his hand was a compact repeating crossbow, specially crafted for the Northern Garrison Army.
He didn’t even bother to aim carefully. He raised the weapon and pulled the trigger.
Twung!
The bowstring shuddered with a short, muffled thunderclap.
A steel armor-piercing bolt tore through the night wind, tracing a line too swift for the eye to follow. It punched cleanly through the ronin leader’s throat.
Splurt!
Blood sprayed into the air.
The bolt’s immense force sent the man’s body flying backward.
The ronin leader’s feet kicked twice. Both hands clutched at the bloody hole in his neck, as if he could somehow stem the flow.
But he could feel the blood gushing out in torrents. Within a few breaths, he fell still.
The strike had been so swift and thunderous that no one even had time to cry out.
The remaining seven ronin changed color in terror. Much of the liquor left their heads, and they shrieked as they reached for the swords at their waists.
“Move,” Li Sheng said.
Not a shot was fired.
The Northern Garrison veterans hidden in the darkness sprang forward like wolves descending from the mountains.
The fire guns had been meant only as a threat. These hardened soldiers, who had clawed their way through piles of corpses, hardly needed to waste precious gunpowder on a few pathetic rookies.
The veterans hurled themselves forward. Two or three seized each ronin.
One locked a throat. Another twisted an arm.
The sound of joints being dislocated rang out across the courtyard in rapid succession. The ronin who had been so arrogant only moments before couldn’t even draw their swords fully before they were all forced face-first into the muddy snow, howling like slaughtered pigs.
The entire process took no more than ten breaths.
Li Sheng strode over to the ronin who was screaming the loudest.
The man writhed across the ground in agony. One of his arms had been broken, the fingers bent backward at an unnatural angle.
Li Sheng raised his foot without expression and brought it down with tremendous force onto the ronin’s severed finger, grinding it hard into the snow.
The bone was crushed to powder. The ronin’s eyes rolled back, and he passed out from the pain.
The wind and snow continued to howl.
Disgusted, Li Sheng scraped the blood and mud from the sole of his boot against the snow. Without looking back, he headed toward the inner courtyard, leaving only an order behind.
“Stuff every one of the survivors into sacks, tie iron weights to them, and sink them into the water to feed the turtles before dawn.”
