The Courtyard House: The Little Red Devil Returning from the Peninsula

The morning after Black Cloud Village was breached, a makeshift platform was erected on the open ground outside the village.

The platform was made of door panels and tree trunks tied together; it wasn't high, just high enough for everyone to see. Behind the platform stood a row of soldiers from the Independent Regiment, rifles slung over their backs, their backs ramrod straight. The wind swept in from the mountain valley, carrying the smell of dry grass and earth, making the hems of the soldiers' gray cloth uniforms sway.

More and more people came from nearby villages, crowding the half-acre open space to the brim. Some were leaning on crutches, some were holding children wrapped in tattered cotton quilts, and one boy was gnawing on half a hard cornbread.

Everyone's face was tense, the kind of tension that had been building up for years, like grass trapped under a stone, finally waiting for the day the stone would be removed.

Zhao Gang stood in front of the platform, holding account books and a register of victims.

Xie Baoqing and more than thirty real bandits with blood on their hands were brought onto the stage, their hands tied and their heads bowed.

Zhao Weiguo stood to the side of the platform. He wasn't dressed in any particularly imposing attire; he was still wearing his gray military uniform, sleeves rolled up, with a short pistol tucked into his waistband. He waited until the crowd had mostly gathered before speaking.

"Fellow villagers of Heiyunling, I am Zhao Weiguo, commander of the Baimaling Independent Regiment."

The audience fell silent.

"Yesterday, the Independent Regiment attacked Black Cloud Stronghold. Xie Baoqing and his men are here now."

His gaze fell on Xie Baoqing on the stage.

"There will be no trial today. We're letting you speak. Those with grievances, speak out; those with grudges, settle them."

He stepped aside, giving up the platform.

Zhao Gang stepped forward and opened the notebook.

"The first one is Zhang Liushi from Heishi Slope."

The crowd below stirred. A woman with a limp was helped out.

She was in her fifties, thin, with a sallow complexion, and old scars still visible on her ankles beneath her trousers. One leg was noticeably shorter than the other, causing her to sway to one side when she walked; she had fallen while climbing Black Cloud Village to find someone years ago.

She walked to the front of the stage, not looking at Xie Baoqing, but at Zhao Gang first, her withered hand gripping the arm of the young man who was supporting her.

"Can you speak now?"

"Yes, I can speak."

The woman turned around and faced the people below the stage.

"My husband was captured by Black Cloud Village the autumn before last. They said he stole grain from the village, but that's not true. He just picked up a bundle of firewood at the foot of Black Stone Slope, firewood that Black Cloud Village had cut, without his knowledge."

Her voice trembled, but she enunciated each word clearly. Her fingers dug at the hem of her cotton-padded jacket, picking at the patches until they curled up.

"They hung him from a tree at the village entrance for two days. The second night, I climbed up the mountain in the dark to find him. I saw he was still alive, so I kowtowed to them until my forehead was bleeding, begging them to release him. Xie Baoqing said he would release him, but I had to give him twenty silver dollars. I didn't have any silver dollars. I sold the pigs at home, sold three mu of land, sold..." She suddenly choked up, her throat moved several times, and she couldn't say the next sentence for a long time before finally managing to say, "I sold my daughter's dowry silver bracelet that she had kept for three years. I scraped together eighteen dollars."

She paused, swallowed hard, and struggled to move her throat.

"When I delivered the money, the bandit guarding the gate told me the man was dead and had been thrown into a ravine behind the mountain to feed the wolves. I searched for three days before finding half a bone with a piece of his clothes still attached. He was buried yesterday."

No one spoke from the audience. The wind swept across the empty space, stinging people's faces.

The woman stood there, not crying, but her lips trembled so much she could barely speak, and a little blood seeped from the cut at the corner of her mouth.

Zhao Gang jotted down a few notes in his notebook and looked up at Xie Baoqing.

"Xie Baoqing, do you admit it or not?"

Xie Baoqing lowered his head and didn't say anything.

"This transaction is recorded in the ledger. September of the year before last, Black Stone Slope, Zhang Liu's family, eighteen silver dollars. You accepted it."

Xie Baoqing's lips moved slightly, but no sound came out.

Zhao Gang turned to the audience.

"I've got it."

He turned to the next page.

"Next up, Wang Dehou from Liushugou."

An old man with only one arm walked out. His right sleeve was empty, blowing in the wind and then falling back down. He walked to the front of the stage and raised his empty sleeve.

"I ruined this arm myself."

His voice was hoarse, as if he hadn't spoken much for years.

"The winter before last, people from Black Cloud Village came to the village to steal grain. I tried to stop them, and they beat me. After they finished beating me, they tied me to the millstone at the village entrance and left me to freeze overnight. The next morning, my arm was useless."

He put down the empty sleeve.

"The grain was stolen. My family went hungry all winter, and my youngest daughter didn't make it."

After he finished speaking, he didn't look at Xie Baoqing, but turned and walked back into the crowd.

Zhao Gang made another note and looked up at Xie Baoqing.

"Do you admit it or not?"

Xie Baoqing remained silent for a long while.

"recognize."

His voice was low, as if it were being squeezed out of his throat.

Someone in the audience cursed. Zhao Gang raised his hand to silence it, and the cursing stopped.

"continue."

Another person walked out from below the stage. He was a young man, wearing an old mourning garment. The white cloth sash was dirty and the edges were frayed.

He stood at the front of the stage and looked directly at Xie Baoqing.

"How many lives have you taken? Do you even know the exact number?"

Xie Baoqing didn't answer. The young man waited a few seconds, then turned and went back.

"continue."

The next person to come up was a young woman carrying a child.

She was young, in her early twenties, wearing a blue cloth jacket covered in patches. The child, small and swaddled in a cloth sling, was still asleep.

She stood on the stage, neither howling nor crying, but simply looking at Xie Baoqing.

"Xie Baoqing, do you still remember the person you dragged up the mountain to dig a pit eight months ago?"

Xie Baoqing didn't look up, but his shoulder twitched.

"My husband was one of those people." Her voice was flat, so flat it sent a chill down your spine. "You made him dig trenches, he dug for three months, and the last group starved to death in the pits. When I went to collect his body, his eyes were still open."

She paused here, then looked down at the child in her arms.

"The child has never seen his father."

The audience fell silent.

Zhao Gang took notes very slowly in his notebook, as if afraid of missing something.

After he finished writing, he looked up at the audience and turned to the next page.

One victim after another.

Some talked about the stolen grain carts, some about the brothers who were beaten to death, and some about the houses that were burned down. Not everyone can speak well. Some people stood on the stage and hesitated for a long time, only managing to utter, "He ruined my whole family," and then they couldn't say anything more.

Zhao Gang didn't rush them. He waited for each of them to finish speaking, wrote down what they said in his notebook, and then verified it with Xie Baoqing.

Xie Baoqing initially stubbornly insisted, saying with his eyes downcast, "It was done by my men" and "I had no idea," while picking at the seams of his trousers with his fingers, making the coarse cloth fabric fray.

Zhao Gang then flipped through the account book, reading each entry aloud. Every entry had a date, a name, and Xie Baoqing's signature.

When he got to the fourth stroke, Xie Baoqing shut his mouth, and sweat trickled down his collar from the back of his neck.

When he got to the eighth stroke, his shoulders slumped and his legs started to sway. He almost knelt down if the soldier next to him hadn't been supporting him.

When he got to the twelfth stroke, he stopped arguing, lowered his head even further, and the sweat on his forehead dripped into the soil at his feet, leaving small wet marks.

After the last victim finished speaking, Zhao Gang closed the notebook with a loud thud. He glanced at Zhao Weiguo.

Zhao Weiguo walked onto the stage and stood in front of Xie Baoqing. His boots crunched over a small pebble on the ground.

"Do you have anything else to say?"

Xie Baoqing raised his head.

His face was ashen, as if covered in dust; the fierce glint in his eyes was long gone, replaced by a murky panic. He remained silent for a long time, his voice hoarse as if sandpaper had been ground, before finally uttering a single sentence.

"Give me a dignified death."

Zhao Weiguo looked at him, his eyes as cold as ice in a mountain valley.

"Decent?"

After he finished speaking, the room was so quiet you could hear the wind rustling through the grass; no one dared to say a word.

"Did those people you killed have any dignity?"

The audience erupted in cheers.

Some people cried out, some cursed at Xie Baoqing, and some clenched their fists and pushed towards the front of the stage, their knuckles turning white. Soldiers from the Independent Regiment quickly stepped forward to stop them, but not too much; they just prevented them from rushing onto the stage.

Zhao Weiguo didn't suppress them; he just stood there and let them curse and cry.

After the sound subsided a bit, he turned to Zhao Gang, raising his chin slightly.

"Let's vote by raising our hands."

Zhao Gang stood at the front of the stage, his hand gripping the notebook tightly.

"Those of you here today who believe Xie Baoqing deserves to pay with his life, raise your hands."

Almost everyone in the audience raised their hands, like a forest that had suddenly appeared.

No one spoke. But among those raised hands were the hands of an old farmer missing a finger, the hands of a woman holding a child, and the hands of a teenager. Half of them were trembling, trembling like poplar leaves swaying in the wind.

Zhao Gang glanced around and nodded.

"It's on record."

The execution took place on a barren slope outside the execution ground.

Old Zhou led his men to escort Xie Baoqing and the seven confirmed murderers to the execution site. Old Zhou was to carry out the executions, and Zhao Weiguo demanded a strict and orderly process. No disturbances, no torture, and no onlookers allowed to get too close.

Old Zhou followed the rules.

The people lined up, and Lao Zhou checked the ropes over and then glanced at Zhao Weiguo.

Zhao Weiguo stood at a distance and nodded.

A shot rang out.

The birds on the barren slope were startled, circled in the air a few times, and then flew away.

When Xie Baoqing fell, he was facing the hillside, his face buried in the soil.

Zhao Gang ordered the body to be properly buried.

"Killing is for justice," he told the new recruits in the replenishment company beside him. "Burying is a matter of discipline. Just because we killed bandits doesn't make us bandits ourselves."

The recruits didn't speak, but they all listened.

After the execution, Zhao Weiguo returned to the open space outside the village.

The farmers who had been coerced into joining the group stood in a row, and Zhao Gang was distributing travel expenses and millet to them.

"Take the grain and go back to farming," Zhao Gang said. "If you encounter any difficulties in the future, you can go to Baimaling to find the Independent Regiment. Don't go back up the mountain again."

An old man took the bag of millet, gripping the edge of the bag with his fingers for a while. He looked up at Zhao Gang and nodded.

"Thank you, sir."

Zhao Gang shook his head.

"Not an officer. They're from the Independent Regiment."

The old man paused for a moment, then gripped the bag of millet even tighter.

Zhao Weiguo organized about a hundred able-bodied men who were willing to reorganize into a supplementary company. For the time being, they were not issued formal weapons, but instead received military discipline lessons and basic training. Each man was given a hoe and was tasked with clearing the land destroyed by Black Cloud Village alongside the local people.

While Zhao Gang was giving them a lecture, Zhao Weiguo walked to the edge of the open space, took out his pipe, lit a pipe, but didn't smoke it; he just held it in his hand.

An old man in a black cotton-padded jacket stood there, carrying a bamboo basket with the edges worn smooth and shiny.

The basket contained about twenty eggs, all lined with straw, still warm from the chicken coop.

When the old man saw Zhao Weiguo coming over, he put the basket on the cooking cart of the Independent Regiment and wiped the dust off his cotton-padded coat.

"This is it." Zhao Weiguo lifted his tobacco pouch.

"They were laid by my two old hens," the old man said. "Not many. Take them and use them to help the wounded."

Zhao Weiguo looked at the basket of eggs, twirling his pipe halfway through his hand.

"Old man, the Independent Regiment has discipline; they don't take anything from the people."

"This isn't something I took. It's a gift." The old man's eyes reddened slightly. "My second son was captured by Xie Baoqing and taken up the mountain three years ago; he never came back."

The old man patted the basket, turned and left, his back hunched over badly.

After walking a few steps, he stopped again, turned around and said something, his voice not loud, but very clear.

"You can now travel at night on Black Cloud Ridge."

He left, his steps lighter than when he arrived.

Zhao Weiguo stood beside the kitchen cart, watching the figure disappear into the crowd. Only when the tobacco pipe burned his hand did he realize what was happening and put out the cigarette.

That evening, Zhao Weiguo ordered his men to remove the black flag belonging to the chief of Black Cloud Village from the pole.

The flag was made of black cloth, the edges of which were worn and frayed. In the middle, four crooked characters were embroidered in red thread: "Black Cloud Village Chief".

He had someone set up a pile of dry firewood at the entrance of the village.

When the flag was thrown in, the flames first licked the edges, then quickly enveloped the entire black cloth. The cloth rolled up in the fire, emitting black smoke, its edges turning white from the heat, before turning into fine ash. The red thread flashed briefly in the fire, like burning blood, before finally burning away as well.

Zhao Weiguo stood beside the fire, watching the sparks being whipped up by the wind, drifting into the air before falling back down. Only when the flag was completely burned to ashes, leaving not a single scrap of cloth, did he turn away.

"That concludes the matter of Black Cloud Stronghold."

He walked back to the temporary cave dwelling at the regimental headquarters. The curtain was lifted by the wind, bringing in a smell of burnt cloth.

A map lay open on the table. He drew a heavy line in red pen over the Black Cloud Ridge area and wrote a single character next to it: Qing.

Standing beside them were Zhao Gang, Lao Zhou, and Zhi Zi. The light from the oil lamp cast their shadows on the earthen wall, which flickered.

Zhao Weiguo sat down.

"The supplementary company will begin training tomorrow. As for the deputy commander of Wolfskin Village, Zhi Zi, take the special operations company to investigate. If you can negotiate, then negotiate; if not, report back."

Gardenia nodded.

Zhao Weiguo looked at the map again.

His finger stopped on the red line of Black Cloud Ridge, paused for a moment, then moved a few inches north and stopped at an unmarked spot.

I pressed my fingertip there, leaving a faint fingerprint.

Zhi Zi looked in the direction he was pointing. Old Zhou looked in the same direction. Zhao Gang turned to a new page in his notebook and waited.

Zhao Weiguo remained silent.

A gust of wind blew outside the cave dwelling, the lamp wick trembled, and the red line on the map swayed in the lamplight before settling back down.