On the day Li Yunlong caught up with Black Cloud Stronghold, Xie Baoqing didn't die. Instead, he and five of his men stumbled into the thirteenth year of Chongzhen.
The six of them had a few guns, half a copy of Kong Jie's political reeducation manual, and a sniper rifle stolen from the Japanese, with only five bullets left.
Xie Baoqing had only wanted to find a meal. But the first cart of grain he stopped was marked "Relief for the Starving," and underneath it was a grain-procurement imperial envoy who had nearly been killed to silence him.
Gu Tingjian had an imperial edict and account books, but couldn't get a single person to listen to him. Xie Baoqing had guns and men, but didn't know the way and had nowhere to get more bullets. Each needed something from the other, so they had no choice but to join forces.
From then on, the bandits opened the granaries, while the imperial envoy brought the guilty to justice. Half a manual kept the men in line, while sack after sack of grain won over the people. The upright gentry, so fond of pledging loyalty to the emperor and pontificating about the fate of the realm, soon discovered that this bandit didn't listen to fancy words. He had only three questions:
Where's the grain? Who took it? When are they paying it back?
In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, can the Ming still avoid its fall?
The answer lies in five bullets and a group of desperate people with nowhere left to turn.
