The valley had devolved into a choir of wailing ancestors.
Wang Zuogua's army—once loud, numerous, and aggressively confident—had long since been reduced to a flock of startled birds. They'd already learned that grenades in open terrain were bad news. Grenades in a sealed mountain bowl were something else entirely.
Rock walls on all sides.
Nowhere to climb.
Nowhere to run.
Grenades kept falling, blooming in the crowd like malicious flowers. No tactics. No formation. Just physics doing what physics always does.
Only now did Wang Zuogua begin to regret choosing this "excellent hidden campsite."
Camping, after all, was a skill.
Even the lowest-ranking Ming military officer knew better. The imperial martial exams tested command, encampment layout, and logistics before they ever cared how well you swung a blade. You could fight like a demon, but if you couldn't place a camp, you didn't even get through the door.
Wang Zuogua had never seen the door.
Yet here he was, commanding tens of thousands—proof that history sometimes hands the steering wheel to pigs and calls it destiny.
Boom.
Boom.
The valley screamed again.
Miao Mei panicked. "Brother! What do we do now?!"
Wang Zuogua couldn't fight, but he could flee. Instantly, his mind produced a plan.
"All troops—charge the valley entrance!"
Then, without missing a beat, he grabbed his closest confidants and hissed, "We retreat the other way. There's a ditch, leads through a narrow cave. That's our exit."
The inner circle understood at once. Miao Mei did too.
He shouted outward, "Third Brother! Fourth Brother! Charge the entrance! Charge!"
Fei Shan Hu and Lang Si were already half-deaf from explosions. Their brains—simple but functional—arrived at the same conclusion.
"This is the only way out! Don't scatter! Push through!"
Thousands surged toward the narrow mouth of the valley.
Cheng Xu had been waiting for this moment like a patient accountant.
Three hundred musketeers leveled their guns.
One word: "Fire."
The valley mouth flashed.
Bandits dropped in heaps, bullets punching through bodies that momentum refused to stop. This was not a breakthrough. This was an execution queue.
Meanwhile, Wang Zuogua and Miao Mei slipped away with a hundred elites, crawling through the ditch, squeezing through the narrow tunnel, and emerging on the far side of the mountain.
The explosions faded behind them.
Wang Zuogua looked back.
An army of tens of thousands had become one hundred men.
Third Brother gone. Fourth Brother gone.
Only Miao Mei remained.
He felt displeased—but alive. And alive was negotiable capital.
"Fine," he muttered. "I'll go to Yichuan, rebuild, and come back for revenge. Bai Fortress—just you wait."
A head popped out from behind a tree.
Flat-Rabbit.
Sword in hand. Grinning like destiny had personally wronged him.
"Wang Zuogua," Flat-Rabbit shouted cheerfully, "where do you think you're going? I calculated this escape route three lifetimes ago."
Wang Zuogua's blood went cold.
This wasn't one man. This was an ambush. It had to be.
"Trap!" he roared. "All of you—charge him! Kill him!"
A hundred elites rushed forward.
Flat-Rabbit did not retreat.
He raised his sword and bellowed, "HEAVENLY—RABBIT—DOMINATING—SWORD!"
Everyone froze.
Then they noticed the grenade in his left hand.
He tossed it.
Boom.
The front ranks vanished.
The survivors didn't finish the charge. They scattered sideways, fleeing without even glancing back at Wang Zuogua.
The world had explained itself to them very clearly.
Flat-Rabbit laughed. "Now it's two-on-one. Wang Zuogua. Miao Mei. Easy work."
He charged.
Wang Zuogua and Miao Mei both felt it at the same time.
This man was confident. Too confident.
At the precise moment fate required betrayal, Miao Mei acted.
He kicked Wang Zuogua squarely in the back.
Wang Zuogua stumbled forward—straight into Flat-Rabbit's blade.
Steel flashed. Blood sprayed.
Miao Mei ran.
He made it two strides before another figure leapt out.
Zheng Gouzi.
Blade raised.
They clashed once—metal rang—and Gouzi's saber flew from his hands. He rolled desperately.
"Rabbit! He's strong!" Gouzi yelled. "Help!"
Flat-Rabbit sprinted in, sword high.
Miao Mei turned, resigned. This was it.
He countered.
There was no technique. No variation.
Flat-Rabbit didn't know any.
Steel met steel.
Flat-Rabbit's sword flew.
Miao Mei kicked him flat.
"…That's it?" Miao Mei roared. "This idiot?!"
Regret slammed into him like a brick. If he'd known earlier, he never would've betrayed Wang Zuogua.
Too late.
A crossbow twanged.
Miao Mei dodged.
Flat-Rabbit sprang up, grabbed Gouzi, and leapt backward into the ditch.
"RUN," Flat-Rabbit hissed. "This guy's terrifying."
They vanished.
Miao Mei stood alone, blade lowered, staring into nothing.
We… lost to people like this?
He turned and fled toward Yichuan.
History later recorded this neatly.
Wang Zuogua accepted amnesty and was eventually executed.
Miao Mei refused amnesty and was later killed by a local militia scholar.
Neither death was unjust.
Early rebel leaders like them lacked vision, discipline, and legitimacy. They burned villages, not systems. When confronted by organized local militias—by ordinary people—they collapsed.
Empires don't always fall to heroes.
Sometimes they fall to farmers who are tired.
Chapter Trivia
Poor encampment kills more armies than poor swordsmanship.
Grenades are weapons of belief-collapse; once morale breaks, bodies follow.
Betrayal is not immoral in chaos—it is simply late survival math.