Chapter Twenty-Three: Caressing the Calf

On the soaring peak of Mount Sunset Glow, there stood a mountain stronghold known as Flying Cloud Fortress. Within its walls lived some fifty or sixty bandits, most of whom were desperate common folk with nowhere else to turn. Some had run afoul of the law, others were buried under debts they could never repay, and still others were so poor they hadn’t a decent pair of trousers to their name. Besides these downtrodden souls, a handful among them hailed from the ranks of local ruffians and bullies—old hands who had followed the chief, Shi Jianduan, since the fortress’s founding.

The chief, Shi Jianduan, was once the son of a wealthy landowner. From childhood, he trained under skilled martial instructors hired by his family, and grew up to possess formidable skills in the martial arts. Yet he fell in with a band of rogues, spending his days in drunken revelry, gambling, and debauchery, bullying the weak, and exploiting women. Thanks to his prowess, he soon became the leader of these ne’er-do-wells. But one day he offended a powerful enemy, who, seizing his absence, slaughtered his entire family. In a fit of rage, Shi Jianduan retaliated in kind, wiping out his foe’s kin. Branded a wanted man, with no place left to go, he gathered his wealth and fled to Flying Cloud Peak, where he became the bandit chief.

The second-in-command, Sun Dasheng, was a straightforward and honest man who, in a moment of fury, had killed an infamous bully and been forced to flee into the mountains. There he cro