The Wind Rises in 1898: Becoming a Warlord Starting in Southeast Asia

Chapter 6 All crows are black

The village is small, with twenty or thirty wooden houses scattered at the foot of the hills. Thick smoke was still billowing from a small portion of the houses, while the fires in the remaining houses had been extinguished, but they were charred and ruined, with broken walls and rubble everywhere.

At the village entrance stood a middle-aged man in a tattered long gown, loudly directing the villagers to fetch water from the stream, his face full of anxiety.

"Father......"

Upon seeing the figure, Zhang Xiuwu shouted and rushed over, oblivious to the blood seeping from the wounds on his face as he ran.

Chen Feng helped the limping Zhang Xiuwen and followed slowly.

"Where have you two been today?!" Zhang Peisheng was furious when he saw his sons.

But in the blink of an eye, when he saw his sons covered in injuries and looking disheveled, he swallowed back the reprimand that was on the tip of his tongue, and all that remained was heartache in his eyes.

"We went hunting... We didn't expect to be ambushed by the natives... If it weren't for Brother Chen's rescue, we probably would have..." Zhang Xiuwu lowered his head and recounted the events of the day in detail.

After he finished speaking, Chen Feng clasped his hands in a salute and said, "My name is Chen Feng. I was unfortunately shipwrecked and ended up here. I hope the village chief will take me in for the night."

Zhang Peisheng returned the greeting solemnly, then bowed deeply: "Young brother, what are you saying! If it weren't for you, my two good-for-nothing sons would have already perished at the hands of these natives. What's a night's shelter? In the future, if you ever need my help, just let me know!"

"It was nothing." Chen Feng sniffed the air, the smell of burning mixed with a strong stench of blood. He asked with concern, "What are the casualties in the village? The fire in the remaining houses was too intense; I'm afraid it can't be saved."

"well......"

Zhang Peisheng sighed deeply, remained silent for a long time, and then said in a hoarse voice, "Eight people died and more than twenty were injured!"

Upon hearing the casualty figures, Zhang Xiuwu's eyes instantly turned bloodshot, and he roared, "Which tribe did this? We'll wipe them out tonight!"

"It's the Balangai tribe! We'll take revenge tonight!" A man in his early twenties, with a sorrowful face, strode over, carrying a large ring-pommel sword, his eyes burning with rage.

Immediately afterwards, six or seven more strong villagers, armed with weapons, surrounded them, shouting in unison:

"Kill all these indigenous scum!"

"Avenging every wrong must be done, until death do us part!"

"Let's fight them!"

Zhang Xiuwen's lips moved as if he wanted to dissuade them, but faced with the overwhelming anger of the crowd, he ultimately did not dare to speak.

"Don't act impulsively."

Zhang Peisheng's sharp shout, carrying its own authority, instantly quieted the noisy crowd, leaving only a few people still whispering among themselves.

He glared fiercely at the whispering crowd, and only spoke slowly when the entire room was completely silent: "A gentleman takes revenge even after ten years! The Balangai tribe is far stronger than us, with at least fifty able-bodied men. We only have a dozen or so men left who can carry weapons. Going there tonight would be suicide, wouldn't it?"

An elderly villager with white hair stepped forward to add, "Last year, Lijia Village fought a fierce battle against Balangai. Twelve people went, but only three came back, all with broken arms and legs... Now we have more than twenty injured. How can we possibly fight back?"

Zhang Xiuwen chimed in, "Those natives will definitely be heavily guarded tonight. Even if we want revenge, we should wait until they relax their guard before making any plans. Going now would be like walking into a trap."

Upon hearing this, the crowd's anger gradually subsided, but they still gritted their teeth and cursed under their breath, their eyes filled with resentment.

Seeing that everyone had dispersed, Chen Feng leaned close to Zhang Peisheng and whispered, "Uncle Zhang, the indigenous people didn't suffer many casualties this time. What if they launch a counterattack?"

Zhang Peisheng stroked his beard, his expression grave: "That's possible. We must increase our vigilance tonight."

He immediately instructed his two sons: "Xiuwen, take two men to stand guard on the left ridge; Xiuwu, take two men to stand guard on the right ridge."

"Father, rest assured! Your son will never let a single native set foot in the village!" Zhang Xiuwu immediately replied.

Zhang Peisheng frowned and reprimanded, "I told you to stand guard, not to block the way! If you spot anything, just sound the alarm immediately. No one is allowed to act on their own!"

"I understand!" Zhang Xiuwu shrank back and said, "Brother Chen's companions and Feng Qinlan are still outside. I'll go and bring them back."

Chen Feng looked at the horrific wound on his left cheek that ran from his ear to his mouth and shook his head, refusing, "You should take care of your wound quickly, I'm going to pick someone up."

Zhang Xiuwu touched the injury on his face, his eyes revealing the stubbornness of a young man: "Brother Chen is an outsider, how could I trouble you? I am the son of the Zhang family, it is my responsibility to take care of things in the village, this injury is nothing. Besides, Sister Qinlan ran away to deliver a message, I will feel at ease if I go to pick her up."

An hour later, darkness fell completely, and the last spark of light was extinguished.

In the open space at the village entrance, several strong villagers wrapped the bodies of the victims in straw mats and gently placed them on a wooden board, while a woman stuck a few branches next to them.

Beside the campfire, Feng Qinlan was washing Zhang Xiuwen's leg wounds with boiled stream water, causing him to grimace in pain.

Not far away, several women were cooking thin porridge in an iron pot that hadn't been burned. The porridge contained only a few wild vegetables and a few scattered grains of rice.

The entire village was shrouded in a stifling busyness; no one spoke, except for the occasional muffled sobs.

"Brother Chen, have something to eat." Feng Qinlan handed over a piece of greasy roasted meat. Her eyes were red and her hands were trembling slightly. She didn't even notice the oil dripping from the roasted meat onto the ground.

Chen Feng remained silent for a moment, but still waved his hand in refusal.

He really had no appetite for monkey meat.

Seeing that his senior brother wasn't eating, Wang Muning also refused the roasted meat that was brought over and picked up some dry rations to eat.

"If you're not going to eat it, then I'll eat it."

Wu Dequan, who had been starving all day, grabbed the roasted meat and stuffed it into his mouth, mumbling between chews, "Delicious! So fragrant!"

Zhang Peiwen suddenly walked over and said in a low voice, "Young man, I've asked around, and there is indeed a timber merchant in Manila surnamed Yang, but I don't know if he's the one you're looking for. Our village also needs to rebuild, so we need to sell some grain. We can go together tomorrow."

Do we need to rebuild?

Chen Feng glanced at the burned-out house next to him and shook his head inwardly.

There was no law in this place. With the colonial authorities' indulgence, the natives would attack the Chinese from time to time. They were afraid that after the reconstruction, they would be attacked again.

Wang Muning asked, "Uncle Zhang, why don't you move to live in the city?"

"It's not necessarily safe inside the city either." Zhang Peisheng's face was full of helplessness. "Large families are better off because they can protect themselves, but those scattered Chinese people have nowhere to escape when there is a riot, and they die even more tragically."

"Is this place even darker than the Qing Dynasty?" Wu Dequan asked in surprise.

An elderly villager with a braid glanced at Chen Feng's short hair and whispered, "Even in the darkest Qing Dynasty, at least there was a rule of 'keep your hair or lose your head.' Here, there aren't even any rules. If you had short hair like that in the Qing Dynasty, you would have been arrested and beheaded long ago."

Zhang Peiguang shook his head slightly: "All crows are black. Qing officials were ruthless, but the Spanish were even more vicious! Last month, the locals stole our village's sugarcane. When we went to complain, they just said the locals also needed to eat and told us to negotiate ourselves. In the end, the locals thought we were easy to bully, which is why they dared to burn down our houses this time!"

"Didn't you ever think about resisting?" Chen Feng asked, voicing a question that had been lingering in his mind.

"How can we resist? How can flesh and blood withstand foreign guns and cannons?" Zhang Peiguang seemed to remember something, a hint of fear flashed in his eyes, he touched the half of the ancestral jade pendant at his waist, his eyes darkened: "My great-grandfather watched as his clansmen took knives to fight the Spanish muskets, and fell to the ground one by one... The Zhang family only has this one lineage left, I can't let Xiuwen and Xiuwu follow the same old path."

"Spain is that brutal?" Wu Dequan gasped.

Chen Feng said softly, "The Qing Dynasty wasn't much better in how it treated the Han people back then. The Jiading Massacre and the Yangzhou Massacre were bloodbaths, but you may not have heard of them."

"I have indeed never heard of it!" Wu Dequan shook his head slightly.

Zhang Peiguang nodded and said, "I know about this. The Zhang family's ancestral home is Yangzhou. After our ancestor came to Luzon, he still maintained contact with his relatives in the old family. However, after the Qing Dynasty took over China, the contact was severed. After making inquiries from various sources, we learned that they were all killed by the Qing army."