NOVPUB...
Liu Bei’s Talent Recruitment Order gave Gan Ning a glimmer of hope, so he gathered his water pirates, preparing to pack up and join Liu Bei. Poor Gan Ning had yet to understand that it wasn’t because of his abilities or his bandit background that no one had recruited him.
As for Lul Jun and his party, they were sheep stolen along the way by Gan Ning; there was no helping it—a cargo of salt, strategic goods worth a million coins, perhaps even more. It wasn’t that Gan Ning hadn’t seen the world, but rather that the reality was such, salt was indispensable, and not to mention, this was a cargo of refined salt.
Gan Ning, who had already decided to quit being a bandit, saw red the moment he heard the news, deciding to rob first and talk later.
Gan Ning maintained a certain amount of decorum, and since the Lul family had few clan members, all the males were raised within the clan, there was no opportunity for bullying men and domineering over women. They kept a good family reputation. Moreover, Lul Jun’s exemplary behavior made Gan Ning feel like he wasn’t a bandit at all, he was the lord, able to make any demands as long as he didn’t kill anyone.
"This ship of salt now belongs to me!" Gan Ning roared at Lul Jun after boarding the ship with a half-moon slash that severed another vessel.
"As long as you spare our lives, brave sir, we are willing to help transport the salt to where you need," Lul Jun replied, not with the usual pleas for mercy but with an offer. The goods could be taken, as long as their lives were spared.
Lul Jun would have given up the salt even if it had cost him money; facing such circumstances, the direct lineage of the Lul family, combined over three generations, did not amount to more than the number of fingers and toes—one could not afford a single death. Money lost could be earned back, but a lost life spelled the end.
Lul Kang’s education was indeed powerful, for when the Lul family encountered bandits, they immediately declared surrender. Whether it was money or manpower assistance they demanded, the Luls were willing, as long as no harm came to anyone. If no harm was done, the Lul family could later pay a ransom to redeem themselves.
Look, isn’t that compliant? But even a family as compliant as this managed to avoid being robbed most of the time. When Zhou Tai and Jiangh Qin saw them, they would escort them part of the way. They had robbed them in the past, but as time went on and the Lul family passed regularly, showing some respect with each crossing, far-sighted water bandits like Zhou Tai and Jiangh Qin were happy to accept little tributes. The targets never resisted, but if they pressed their luck too far each time, they’d soon be cut off from their supplies—it was better to coexist peacefully.
Since the water bandit leaders of the middle and lower Yangtze River had spread the word, the Lul family could travel the river after paying a toll. The water bandits, content with the gift, would leave their merchant ships unharmed. Despite knowing the Lul family’s ships were easy targets, you couldn’t ravage them completely—what would subsequent bandits live off? What would sustain them in the future? Living on the edge of a blade was not as profitable as collecting tolls.
Over time, this became an unwritten rule. A single trip could yield hundreds of thousands, maybe even a million, coins, and there were only five or six notorious water bandits on the Yangtze River. Each got twenty thousand coins, the small fries ten thousand—a total of two hundred thousand would be distributed and everyone was pleased, resulting in safe passage. If the ship hit a snag, the water bandits, noticing the absence of the Lul family’s timely arrival, would even search for them—genuinely harmonious relations.
In such a manner, the Lul family continued to be pushovers, yet they still managed well on the Yangtze River. Just the same as other merchants, when water bandits were robbing the Gu Family’s vessels upfront, the Lul family, unable to pass, would just watch. They saw the Gu family killed off, their ships towed away, leaving nothing behind. Then, after paying some money, the water bandits would see the Lul family safely through that area with no trouble at all...
Lul Jun pulled a boat full of salt, preparing to go upriver to Jingzhou against the current, and incidentally to share some profits with the water bandits. It was tough for everyone these days, with the situation in the world being so precarious—who knew when problems might arise? It was possible he’d need their help in the future, so he decided that the refined salt he was carrying, which was basically given away for free in exchange for five zhu coins, was an investment for the future. He might as well distribute it all to the water pirates on the Yangtze River who relied on these waters to make a living. After all, Mi Zhu had said that once the salt was delivered, he’d send three more boats of his own. It seemed better to use this boat to build connections with these people since they had never been found ungrateful anyway.
That’s also why, three years later, when Sun Ce breached Lujiang City and sought to annihilate the Lul Family, twelve-year-old Lul Xun and the barely ten-year-old Lul Ji were able to escape Zhou Yu and Sun Ce’s manhunt and flee to their old home in Eastern Wu.
All the water bandits on the Yangtze River remembered the kindness of the Lul Family. Sun Ce might be the Little Overlord and the bandits were no match for him, but they could still lend a hand to the Lul Family, now left with only women and children. Having paid tolls to the Luls for over a decade, the thieves of the green forests valued their honor. If they didn’t help now and simply watched the Lul Family get wiped out, they could no longer thrive among their kind with any dignity!
Lul Jun guessed that the disappearance of his merchant fleet on the river was already causing the water bandits enough distress—they might have already mobilized to search for his ships in the lower and middle reaches of the Yangtze.
Indeed, he was not wrong. Zhou Tai had already contacted Jiang Qin to start searching for the Lul Family ships. By all accounts, they should’ve already reached Zhou Tai’s territory by now. Yet as Zhou Tai waited and waited, he realized the Lul ships hadn’t arrived, which definitely wasn’t good news. He hoped they hadn’t sunk...
So, as usual, Zhou Tai ordered the patrolling water bandits to help search, saying that if the Lul ships had hit a reef, he’d pay an extra twenty thousand coins to pull them out—a good deal. But when the ships couldn’t be found, Zhou Tai was truly at a loss. If they had sunk, that would be hard to explain. This time it was the legitimate sons of the Lul Family—if they were gone, the Luls might cease using this route in the future. Would they have to resort to robbery to survive? Zhou Tai laughed off the very idea. Robbery was an uncertain way to live, and with all the fees for labor, settlement, and funerals, it was nowhere near as dependable as the stable salaries from the Lul Family each month!
All the water bandits on the Yangtze River sprang into action, causing Cai Mao of Jingzhou to shudder with fear. There were over a dozen water bandit groups along the Yangtze, amounting to a force nearly five to six thousand strong. While not seeming like many, the navy was a force that relied purely on expertise and could not be overpowered by numbers alone. If these five to six thousand water bandits banded together, Cai Mao could not guarantee that his Jingzhou Navy would emerge victorious.
After reporting the situation, the entire Jingzhou Navy went on high alert, and as intelligence came in, Cai Mao broke out in a cold sweat. He had not expected that the loss of a single Lul Family member would throw the entire region of the Yangtze into chaos.
When word of this spread through secret channels, everyone began to view the Jiangdong Lul Clan—a family that outwardly seemed harmless and docile—with wariness. Losing a direct descendant had stirred up such unrest on the Yangtze River... what else did they want? Theirs was a prime example of playing the pig to eat the tiger!
Gan Ning, sheltering from the rain against a wall, was still unaware that because he had robbed the Lul Family, now all the water bandits on the Yangtze wanted him dead. He had truly provoked the anger of the masses. 𝘯𝑜𝑣𝑝𝑢𝘣.𝑐𝑜𝑚
The Lul Family had been the only ones who had reliably paid the tolls on the Yangtze River. Other families would avoid the bandits whenever possible, sometimes even concocting small schemes. But the Lul Family, docile as sheep, would stop and wait when passing the territory of some water bandit who was not in their usual place to collect the toll. The most obedient had been taken, challenging the rules of all the water bandits on the Yangtze River. Wasn’t that just asking for trouble?
