Distant Mountain Battle Song

Chapter 2 The Distant Wolf-Paddled Water
Langpaoshui, also known as Langpaoshui, is a small village on the Gobi Desert at the eastern end of the Hexi Corridor. The mountain on the left is dark black and is called Black Tiger Mountain, while the mountain on the right is reddish and is called Furnace Ash Mountain.

One year, a severe drought struck the Northwest Plateau. A pack of wolves came from the distant northern grasslands. They ran and ran, and finally, the wolf king stopped at the huge canyon of Wolf Run Water.

Driven by extreme hunger and thirst, the wolf pack became restless. Suddenly, the alpha wolf began to dig at the foot of a red sandstone mountain, and the rest of the wolves followed suit.

Although red sandstone is a weathered rock and not very hard, it still poses a significant challenge to a wolf's horny claws.

So the wolf king used its sharp teeth to gnaw and its sharp claws to dig. They dug and dug pits day and night. When their claws were worn down and their teeth were broken, they would spit blood to moisten the red sandstone. When they were hungry, they would eat their dead companions. When they were thirsty, they would suck the blood of their dead companions.

Finally, on a rosy morning, a clear spring gushed forth from the red sandstone, and the wolf pack opened their blood-stained mouths as the wolf king howled to the sky.

The Gobi Desert is a magical land. As long as there is water, barren land can immediately grow grass and form an oasis in a very short time.

The earliest tree was a jujube tree, brought by a bird that landed on the oasis to eat grass seeds. When it excreted, it left behind a jujube pit, which took root and sprouted on the moist grass, eventually growing into a jujube tree.

After the jujube trees bear fruit, more jujube trees will grow on the oasis.

A hundred years later, a large grove of jujube trees has grown along the stream here.

When the northwest wind carries sand through this jujube forest, the jujube trees block some of the soil and leave a thick layer of yellow soil for the oasis.

As a result, the vegetation here became increasingly lush.

With trees, various wild animals came to live here, providing the wolf pack with a variety of food.

Many, many years have passed, and it's unknown how many wolf packs came to the Wolf Run Water Land or how many wolf kings died. In the end, it was the descendants of that wolf pack who dug out the clear spring with their claws and teeth that protected their territory.

Of course, this is related to the fact that the sunk costs the wolf pack paid for that spring were too great, and in this respect, there is no difference between humans and wolves.

There's no question that a wolf pack can defeat another wolf pack if it's large enough, united enough, and fierce enough.

Until one day, an even stronger pack of wolves came to the water. Almost all of the wolves were killed in battle, and the wounded wolf king had no choice but to flee in panic with the pregnant female wolf and her cubs who had not participated in the battle.

They completely lost the territory and hunting grounds left to them by their ancestors.

Those who can drive away wolves are naturally more ferocious, brave, cunning, and treacherous than wolves themselves.

To survive in the Gobi Desert, one must be more patient than a camel, more resilient than an ox, and more intelligent than a fox.

Humans, this animal, perfectly fit all the above conditions, especially the Yun clan, who were forced to leave Shaanxi and wander around due to the Hui Rebellion in Shaanxi and Gansu.

The Yun clan could not have emerged unscathed from the battle with the wolves. After paying a heavy price, the Yun clan buried their fallen members and then remained on this oasis with water and fertile land to continue their lives.

Oppressive government is more ferocious than a tiger!
This is why the Yun clan was willing to abandon the rich Guanzhong Plain and come to the ends of the earth to make a living.

There are no government officials here, only many people like them...

Thus, the battle transformed from a conflict between humans and beasts into a battle between humans.

They fought against their neighbors in the Gobi Desert who coveted the oasis, against countless bandits and horse thieves, against caravans that were indistinguishable from bandits, and in their worst times, they even had to fight against government officials who came to collect taxes.

For the sake of the oasis of Langpaoshui, countless descendants of the Yun family died. Fortunately, they protected their women, children, food, and land, and even built a tall rammed earth wall outside the oasis.

In the Langpaoshui area, the Yun family's reputation for ferocity was widespread. Whether it was bandits, horse thieves, or government officials, they all knew that the Yun family was not to be trifled with. If you offended the Yun family, it would be a fight to the death.

Gradually, no one provoked the Yun family anymore, and people began to form marriage alliances and engage in trade with them...

The Yun family was a renowned family of farmers and scholars in Lantian, Guanzhong. Even during the difficult period of fighting wolves, the descendants of the Yun family all had a basic understanding of writing.

Once things settled down, the Yun clan chief immediately opened the clan school. After the children in the clan school had learned enough, he spared no expense to send the outstanding children of the clan to study outside.

The problem arose from sending outstanding students to study elsewhere.

I don't know what they learned outside. They refuse to become officials to protect their clansmen and bring benefits to their families. And they keep talking about wanting democracy and saving the country!

The patriarch Yunfang was the last Jinshi (a successful candidate in the highest imperial examinations) in the last imperial examination of the Qing Dynasty, the Jia Chen year. He had his own insights into reform, democracy, and other such matters.

Before passing the imperial examination, Yunfang was a supporter of Tan Sitong. At that time, he was not yet thirty years old and, like the gentlemen of the Hundred Days' Reform, believed that the Qing Dynasty needed comprehensive reform and that the Empress Dowager needed to completely return power to the Emperor.

Therefore, Yunfang, who was not yet the clan leader but just an ordinary scholar at the time, was willing to be a pawn for the Six Gentlemen. After returning to Gansu, she actively campaigned and called on her friends to advocate for the reform.

Just as they were riding to Xi'an to petition the Governor-General of Shaanxi and Gansu, Sheng Yun, and claiming their willingness to dedicate themselves to reforming the Qing Dynasty, Tan Sitong died.

That elegant and charismatic young nobleman was beheaded, leaving behind nothing but the poignant lines of poetry: "I laugh as I brandish my sword to the heavens, my heart and soul remain loyal to the Kunlun Mountains."

Tan Sitong was dead, and his Hundred Days' Reform was over. From the day Yunfang heard the news of Tan Sitong's death, she lost all her spirit.

Later, shortly after the previous clan chief spent a lot of money to get him out of prison in Xi'an, he became addicted to opium.

Fortunately, his academic foundation was solid, and five years later, he passed the imperial examination and became the last person in the third class of the Jia Chen year.

Originally, he could have become the magistrate of Danyang County, but he did not go. Instead, he returned to his hometown, Langpaoshuibaozi, and became the new clan leader of the Yun family.

Over the decades, he turned a deaf ear to all the various ideologies and doctrines that swept across China, focusing all his energy on strengthening his clan and educating his children, which gradually turned him into an old clan chief.

In those few decades, the Yun family transformed from a middle-class local family into one of the few powerful local clans in the Northwest.

The old patriarch was a broad-minded man who genuinely loved the children in his clan. After understanding what democracy meant, he felt it wasn't a big problem and could grant the children democracy.

At worst, we can let them have democracy, and then let the larger group of adults veto it. Anyway, we've given them democracy, and they've tried it out. If they still don't listen, we'll have to resort to family discipline.

If they're disobedient, a good beating will turn them into well-behaved kids; a few bouncy, aggressive ones will only need a couple of beatings.

They're all well-behaved kids I've watched grow up; they can't be that bad at heart.

Is saving the country so easy?

That would require taking lives, and those lives would all belong to these foolish children.

Over the years, the old clan chief has seen too many ideologies and doctrines, all of which are utter nonsense. They've risked the lives of fools to save the country, only to make it poorer and poorer, while they themselves have a house full of wives, concubines, and children, none of whom are good.

The children have been scammed; the area outside the castle is full of con artists!
However, outside the fortress, ideologies were rampant, and he found several of them quite seductive, not to mention those overly enthusiastic young people.

Having understood this principle, the old clan chief felt that his children were in great danger outside and should all be gathered around him. The Northwest was vast enough, with enough enemies to allow his children to make their mark.

Telegrams were sent from Lanzhou to Xi'an, Beiping, and Shanghai, reaching every member of the Yun family studying abroad, urging them to drop everything and return immediately.

The reason was simple: he was dying and wanted to see the children one last time.

They are all filial children. Even if they are badly deceived outside, they will definitely come back when they hear of their own death. The old clan chief was very certain of this.

While waiting for the children to return, the old clan chief busied himself searching for good women to marry off the children. He planned to arrange the marriages when these little rascals returned, then lock them up for a year or two until the babies were born.

Look at these little bastards talking about democracy and saving the country. Save your mother's country! Feed your wives and kids first before spouting these wild words.

As for baseless love affairs, the old clan chief always scoffed at them.

Watching these silly children who had run back for the funeral being carried into the bridal chamber one by one, the old clan chief was extremely pleased with himself. He smoked two pipes in one go, feeling blissfully intoxicated.

Next year, there will be dozens more children in the clan, and fifteen years later, there will be a large group of strong laborers in the clan. At that time, they will take over all the land near the Wolf Run Water.

Just as the old clan chief was proudly arranging for these obedient children, who were living a life worse than death, to start working and earning money in the clan's various industries, a group of bandits came from the east. They were said to be called Red Bandits, and they were very powerful, causing the government to cry out in despair.

The government offered a reward of five silver dollars for each head, which the old clan chief thought was a good opportunity. He heard from the government that the group had fled tens of thousands of miles away and had long since run out of ammunition and food.

Our kids are different from other kids' idiots. Several of them are graduates of the Military Academy. While other families only have a few broken muskets, our kids have newly bought foreign guns, cannons, and oh, seven or eight machine guns. The kids say that with these things, no matter how many bandits come, they will all die.

The items were good, and given the chaos of war, there was nothing wrong with the kids buying them. It was just too expensive, costing a full 50,000 silver dollars, which was five years' worth of the clan's income.

Just in time for the Red bandits to arrive, killing some of them will at least allow us to recoup some of our losses.

Watching the two hundred spirited young men carry guns, cannons, and lead horses away... the old clan chief proudly lit two more cigarettes.

Unfortunately, the profits that the old man had longed for never came to him, nor did he see his beloved children return.

Because his good boy also became a Red bandit, and the most powerful one at that, he fought his way through checkpoints and killed Ma Laosan, who fled in terror.

Ever since hearing that his beloved children had become Red bandits, the old clan chief coughed up a lot of blood and his health quickly deteriorated. Before he died, he was still worried about his beloved children who had been lured away by the Red bandits.

As a result of this incident, Langpaoshui Fortress became a target of the government. With its best fighters gone, it quickly became a target of bullying. Even the magnificent fortress walls were shaved down by two meters.

Later, the village chief surnamed Yun from Langpaoshui Village waited for those children to return.

However, what they received were 137 wooden boxes. Some boxes contained a set of tattered clothes, some contained tattered notebooks and broken pens, and some contained the bibs that the women had given them before they left. The bibs had many holes and were stained with a lot of blood.

Later, a new country was established.

Many of the Yun family's sons became officials, and it is said that some of them even hold official positions in the capital. However, the once prosperous Langpaoshui Village has become increasingly dilapidated. The towering fortress walls have been gradually stripped away by the winds of the Gobi Desert, and finally, after a rainstorm, the western wall collapsed with a crash.

From then on, the walls of the fortress could no longer provide shelter from the wind and rain for the Yun family members who remained there.

When the walls of the fort collapsed, many people with the surname Yun migrated to other places, especially the families of officials who left the fastest and earliest.

The centuries-old fortress gradually fell into disrepair and was neglected. After all, this place was originally a wasteland, a paradise for wild animals but a shackle for humans.

Fortunately, there are many graves here, and many people still come back to pay their respects during the Qingming Festival every year. However, as the mourners get older, it won't be long before no one comes anymore, and the place will return to its primitive state, and wolves may once again become the dominant species here.

Many years later, Langpaoshui Village gradually gained access to electricity and the Yellow River, and a flat and wide asphalt road passed by the village, bringing some vitality to this dilapidated and desolate village.

The original adobe houses have long since disappeared, having been transformed into a garden-like place by a wealthy merchant surnamed Yun. However, he did not touch the few tiled houses next to the cemetery.

The messy graves on the edge of the village have been relocated, and a tall monument clearly states that this place has become a martyrs' cemetery, a mausoleum, no longer a grave.

The village has internet access and solar streetlights, making it brightly lit at night, but there are hardly any people around.

At this point, it has come to the 27th day of the sixth lunar month in 2024.

Suitable for: weddings, sacrifices, prayers, religious ceremonies, groundbreaking ceremonies, burials, and long journeys...

(End of this chapter)