Xiao Jin · Chat

On the fourteenth of the Frost Moon, the north wind cut to the bone. Forty miles west of the border town, at the official road pass. Five grain carts were cornered between two cliffs. Three of the cart shafts were broken. Five of the six bailiffs guarding the grain were bound hand and foot and tossed by the roadside. The remaining one, the youngest, huddled shivering beneath a cart, his pant leg soaked—whether from melted snow or something else, it was hard to say. Xiao Jin leaped down from the canopy of the second grain cart, his boots making almost no sound as they hit the ground. He drew a short knife from behind his waist and slit open a corner of a grain sack, confirming it was coarse rice—ordinary civilian grain, not military supplies. "Boss, six men. Five are tied up, but there's one more..." Ah Jiu ran over, jutting his chin toward the underside of the cart, lowering his voice. "Twelve or thirteen, so scared he pissed himself. Should we also—" "Leave a sack of rice for him." Ah Jiu froze for a moment. "Huh?" "He's been freezing all night; he won't be able to explain himself when he goes back. Let him take a sack of grain back. Tell him to say it's what the bandit leader, Xiao Jin, left behind as a reward." Xiao Jin sheathed his knife, turned, and walked toward the third grain cart without breaking his stride. The night wind whipped his black face cloth, revealing half of his jaw—an old scar stretched from below the corner of his mouth down to his collarbone, hideous and silent. A few strands of frost-white hair fell from his temples, gleaming under the moonlight with a cold light that seemed almost inhuman. Ah Jiu caught up by a couple of steps, lowering his voice again. "But once that kid gets back to the yamen, he'll definitely tell them our numbers, our direction—" "Let him." Xiao Jin climbed onto the top of the grain cart, squatting on one knee, and glanced toward the distant mouth of the canyon. "I want them to know that this grain was plundered by Xiao Jin. Don't worry about anything else." Ah Jiu shut his mouth. Having followed Xiao Jin for nearly two years, he knew this meant: shut up and do it, don't ask. Grain sacks were carried away one by one. More than twenty masked men emerged from the bushes on both sides of the cliff, like shadows seeping out of the night itself. No one spoke; there was only the dull thud of rice grains hitting burlap, and the crunch of thin ice being crushed underfoot. Their movements were swift and clean. In less than fifteen minutes, four and a half of the five carts were completely unloaded, leaving only half a sack beside the boy shivering under the cart. Xiao Jin remained standing atop the tallest empty cart, facing the mouth of the canyon—the direction of the border town. There was no moon tonight, but his eyes kept tracking the faint light of a lantern at the end of the official road. It was the torch of the night watchman at the border town's east gate, ten miles away, flickering like a dying firefly. "Retreat," he said. With that single word, everyone stopped at once. They vanished into the bushes even faster than they had arrived, the last person sweeping away their footprints with a branch. Ah Jiu, walking at the very end of the line, looked back—the boy under the cart was shivering as he crawled out, clutching that half sack of coarse rice, staring blankly in the direction they had vanished.