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Under the Power - Chapter 121

Published at 13th of October 2022 06:58:56 AM


Chapter 121

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By this time, the pirates had retreated. Shangguan Xi let out a sigh of relief when she saw no damage was done to the city. At this moment, she noticed Cen Shou on the side, with a frown on his face, therefore she hastily walked over and said, “Cen Daren, have you seen Fourth Brother?”

“He’s with Jinxia and YangYue, they’re leading a group of people by the Qingbo river. Hiding and planning, not sure what they’re doing.” Cen Shou was more worried about the shortage of rifle bullets. He was in the middle of thinking if he should visit Dong San’s house, maybe there were still some leftover weapons.

“Qingbo River?” Shangguan Xi fell silent. The past couple of days, she’d been staying in her room, therefore, she didn’t know what was going on around the city. 

“Are you looking for him? Just follow me, I also happen to be going there.” Cen Shou called out to her. 

Shangguan Xi was about to step forward, when suddenly A’Rui came forward, bent down and carefully lifted her up, following Cen Shou afterward. 

Cen Shou watched the whole scene, let out a smile and didn’t say anything else. 

***

By the Qingbo river, under the big pagoda tree. 

YangYue led a group of citizens, who were disguised as soldiers, walking back and forth along the river. Jinxia hid on one side of the river, while Xie Xie hid above the tree, so he could give them signals as soon as he noticed any movements. At the entrance of the Qingbo river, there were originally two fences, but they were still afraid the pirates would be able to notice their movements inside, so they deliberately increased the thickness of the fences. 

Everything was ready and now it was just a matter of waiting for the pirates to arrive. 

Shangguan Xi was led down a small path by Cen Shou. When he noticed Jinxia on the edge, he reached his hands to pat on her shoulder, “What are you doing, being sneaky like a thief? ”

Jinxia turned her head and immediately raised her hand to signal him to be quiet. While her eyes were on Shangguan Xi, she noticed A’Rui behind her right away… She was taken aback by what she saw. 

“Sister Shangguan, why are you guys here?” She asked in a low voice. 

A’Rui put Shangguan Xi down, quietly stepped back and stood beside her. Jinxia hurriedly ran up to support her. 

“Where is Fourth Brother?” Shangguan Xi asked, “He’s fine, right?”

“He’s alright, he’s right over there up in the tree.” Jinxia whispered, “His eyesight is much better than mine, so in case there’s any movement in the water, he can immediately let us know.”

“What’s in the water?” Shangguan Xi asked.

“Currently, the pirates don’t know what’s happening in our city, so they might send people to sneak in here very soon, and they might use the river to enter, that’s why we’re here guarding it.” Jinxia said. 

Just as she finished talking, Xie Xiao threw a small pebble at her, which fell on Jinxia’s shoes. Jinxia raised her head, and he gave a hand signal as ‘there’s something’. 

Jinxia used her hand to ask him back, “Are there people?”

Xie Xiao deeply stared at the water for a while, and then said, “Yes! Two people.”

‘They really came!’ Right now, Jinxia couldn’t leave, she could only listen carefully to the movements being made in the water. Then she looked at Xie Xiao again. Xie Xiao signalled to her ‘they see our soldiers, they do not dare to come up on land, but it seems like they are finding opportunities’ 

Even though YangYue couldn’t see the people in the water, he could still see Xie Xiao signalling him, which indicated that the pirates were trying to get in. YangYue cleared his throat, and loudly said to his people, “We still have about thirty to forty thousand soldiers within General Qi’s troops, why don’t we all go out there and kill all the pirates, what’s the point of patrolling here?”

Following the instructions that were given to them earlier, one soldier loudly shouted back, “Who said we can’t? But Madam Qi wants to save General Qi’s face, since those pirates are nothing important, she wants to let General Qi handle them.”

“There’s no need to defend this city, just invite the pirates in and we can close the city door, trapping them like fishes in a bowl, then we make dumplings and eat it with rice!*” YangYue said. 

*[fishes in the bowl, make dumplings and eat = trapping enemies and killing them, TN]

One person let out a loud laugh. 

Xie Xiao silently raised his thumb towards YangYue, indicating that he did very well. Then he turned back to check on the movements in the water. 

Jinxia on the other side also nodded in agreement, things seemed to be going very well, now they just had to get rid of the pirates without letting them figure out their plan. Therefore she raised her hand to signal YangYue. 

YangYue understood, and immediately shouted, “Everyone pay attention, there’s movement in the river!”

As he finished his words, he raised a gun and aimed it at the river, shooting multiple times. After seeing that YangYue had initiated the first attack, everyone raised their weapons and followed along. 

Bullets and weapons started hitting the surface of the water as the two pirates under the water swam over the edge of land. One of the weapons perfectly hit one of the two pirates’ shoulders, making it impossible for them to continue hiding. When the other pirate saw his partner getting hit, he grabbed one of the soldier’s legs and pulled him into the water. 

These soldiers were normal people, they didn’t have any survival skills. YangYue quickly noticed the situation, and rushed over to help. At this time, Xie Xiao also saw what was happening, quickly jumping down from the tree. Only Jinxia and the others were dumbfounded by the situation. 

YangYue knew he was not as skilled at swimming as Xie Xiao. It was as if a dragon found its home as soon as Xie Xiao entered the water. Standing on land, it was difficult to tell who was who in the water. Xie Xiao was seen pulling someone from the water, it turned out it was one of their soldiers, and luckily no harm was done. 

“Fourth Brother!” Shangguan Xi was afraid that Xie Xiao might lose since he didn’t have any weapons. She quickly ran to the side of the river and threw a spear in the water, “Take this!”

Because they had been in the same school for years, growing up together, they had developed an extraordinary mutual understanding, so Xie Xiao responded by jumping out of the water and grabbing the spear. After twisting his body, the weapon was directly stabbed into one of the pirates’ left shoulder, causing him to jump out from the water.

Xie Xiao pulled back the spear.

Blood spurted out on the surface of the river, while the pirate slowly sank to the bottom of the river.

After seeing his comrade dying  and the impressive number of Ming troops, plus Xie Xiao’s high kung fu skill, he didn’t dare continue fighting. Therefore he dived into the water and was about to swim away. His intention was clear to Xie Xiao, so he threw the weapon at the pirate without thinking.

“Brother, don’t!”

Jinxia hastily exclaimed with wide eyes, seeing the wolf spear stuck in the pirate’s back. The pirate’s body trembled, but still desperately tried to swim away. 

Xie Xiao dragged his wet self out of the river. 

“Brother Xie!” Jinxia said angrily, “Didn’t you say you would let them leave? Why did you throw the weapon at him?”

Xie Xiao said with an innocent face, “I threw it pretty lightly.”

“So light that it could stab him to death?!” Jinxia said worriedly.

“If I wanted to stab him to death, I would immediately throw it toward his head.” Xie Xiao said casually.

If this conversation had continued, Jinxia would throw a weapon at Xie Xiao herself. She turned around and walked toward the soldier that got pulled up by Xie Xiao. 

Seeing that Xie Xiao was safe, Shangguan Xi let out a sigh of relief. She was about to walk towards them, when suddenly, out of the water, appeared the pirate who everyone thought was dead; in his hand he was holding the wolf spear, his whole body flowing with water.  He carefully aimed it at Xie Xiao. Unaware of the danger, Xie Xiao’s back was facing the river, since he was busy shaking the water out of his ears. 

“Fourth Brother, watch out!”

Shangguan Xi yelled loudly and ran toward Xie Xiao, but suddenly fell down due to her leg injury. 

A shadow quickly appeared in front of Xie Xiao, blocking the spear — It was A’Rui. Despite being stabbed by the weapon, A’Rui managed to pull the spear out of his body. He then lunged it hard into the left part of the wounded pirate’s chest. With his last breath, the pirate shot a glance at Xie Xiao and, vomiting black blood, was finally swallowed by the water. Cen Shou feared that the pirate was still alive, so he used a long spear to drag his body out of the water. Noticing that the pirate was now motionless, Cen Shou felt relief. 

The situation had changed, the commoners that disguised themselves as soldiers had hidden themselves in the distance because of fear. 

Xie Xiao turned around to support A’Rui, looking at his chest that was injured by the spear. The last attack was very harsh, making it hard to stop the blood from spurting out. 

“A’Rui, A’Rui…” Shangguan Xi didn’t expect A’Rui to save Xie Xiao. Seeing how heavily injured he was, she had already forgotten everything he had done before. 

A’Rui looked at her and smiled weakly, saying slowly, “YangYue said, as long as I’m still here, I can still help… I did something good. “

“Don’t talk anymore. Quickly take him to my aunt’s place!”

Jinxia had already ripped and gathered as much fabric as she could to suppress the bleeding. Xie Xiao hurriedly carried A’Rui on his back and ran back to Chun Yumin’s Residence. 

Shangguan Xi froze, not knowing what to do, at the same time, her tears uncontrollably flowed out. As a gang leader, she had encountered countless situations, making many decisions, but she’d always hidden her soft side. Therefore, it was very rare for her to shed tears in front of a crowd, but for some reason, she couldn’t help it. 

“Sister, even though the wound is deep, it didn’t hit the vital spot, don’t worry!” Jinxia, who saw her cry for the first time, was dumbfounded on how to act and what to say. She quickly turned to YangYue and said, “Da Yang, why don’t you carry Shangguan Sister home? I’ll take care of things here.”

YangYue nodded his head, reminding her, “You have to be careful, remember to lower the sluice again.”

“I know.”

As soon as YangYue and Shangguan Xi walked away, Jinxia and Cen Shou worked together to turn the sluice wheel vigorously, returning the heavy gear back to its place, then leaving people to watch over it. These were ordinary people, they wouldn’t know how to fight, so Jinxia quickly taught them a few tactics. If someone entered the water, they would have felt a vibration right in the palm of their hand. The sluice was thick and heavy and sawing it was no joke. Therefore, it would have been easy to send people to report the situation as soon as it occurred.

After arranging it properly, Cen Shou saw Jinxia still staring into the water surface. He giddily asked, “What are you still thinking about?”

“The pirate who was stabbed by Brother Xie… Did he actually make it out safely?” That pirate’s life and death was related to the empty city strategy; they needed to maintain this plan until General Qi and his troops returned. Jinxia was really worried; she kept pacing back and forth, wanting to know the situation, “I’m going into the water to check it out.”

As soon as she finished speaking, she had already jumped into the water, took a deep breath then dived to the bottom of the river.

Cen Shou couldn’t swim, therefore he couldn’t help her; his inside couldn’t help but feel irritated.

Because it was still night, it was very dark under the water, luckily Jinxia’s ability to identify the location was very good, remembering which direction the pirate went, and carefully examined each area.  

After waiting for an entire hour, Cen Shou became a little worried, only then he saw the surface of the water move, and a head popping out: It was not only Jinxia, ​​but someone else.

“Get him out!” Jinxia pushed the person to the edge of the river.

After Cen Shou pulled him to the land and checked his breath, he frowned and said, “He’s dead!”

The drenched Jinxia walked out of the river and said: “I already know. Brother Xie launched a heavy and merciless attack, it must’ve stabbed him in the vital point in the back, he was dead before he could swim anywhere.”

Cen Shou kicked the dead pirate’s body, sighed and said, “Then it can be said, this big charade of yours is futile.”

“It’s a waste of half a day…. The pirates outside don’t know the situation inside the city yet, if things don’t go well they might try to attack the city once again.” Jinxia was really very annoyed, “We’ve run out of gunpowder, what do we do? If they attack again, we won’t be able to survive.”

***

The sky slowly brightened.

A’Rui’s chest was bandaged well, the wound was quite heavy, forcing him to become unconscious. Shangguan Xi was beside him, watching him silently — without moving or making any sound.

YangYue, Xie Xiao and Jinxia, after changing out of their wet clothes, had already returned to the city entrance in a haste.

Jinxia saw that Madame Qi was still standing on the city tower, wearing a protective suit inherited from her family; her eyes were far ahead, not knowing if she was waiting for the reinforcements or if she was thinking of something else.

Staying up all night, the soldiers weren’t too troubled, but some of them began to tumble.

Under the city tower, people’s voices slowly grew louder, each lady was bringing food to her family. Jinxia leaned against the stairs by the tower, smelled the food around her, and saw a bunch of hot smoke rising from the food. She couldn’t help but feel hungry. 

“How long before General Qi and his troops returned?” A lady said in a low voice, “It’s been one full night, could it be that something happened?”

“Don’t speak recklessly!”

“I’m not speaking carelessly, I heard that General Qi has a lot of concubines, and some of them even gave birth. This Madam Qi couldn’t bear any children, what if General Qi doesn’t want to come home to help.”

“Keep your voice down a bit! Stop talking about General Qi. I’m done eating, go home, and don’t say anything!”

Jinxia held her stomach, and carefully listened to the gossip, remembering the appearance of Madam Qi standing on the city tower, she suddenly sighed. ‘In Madam Qi’s heart, is she also thinking the same thing?’ How hurtful would that be.

“Ms. Yuan! Ms. Yuan! “

Someone called out for her, and in an instant it snapped her out of her thoughts. After listening carefully, Jinxia realized it was Chun Yumin’s voice. 





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