Chapter 131: Aggressive Bandits Create Chaos

Another day passed, and as night fell, amidst Li Zhan's anxious anticipation, the NPC merchant Wan Huai finally returned to Yanhuang Village-town.

Over the past two days, everything in Yanhuang Village-town had progressed orderly and with continuous, stable development. Various buildings in the military zone, economic zone, and processing zone had all been successfully planned and constructed. Two more stables had been built, granting the players in the village-town another skill to learn: horsemanship. However, because the maximum troop capacity of the village-town was already full (a limit of 20 units: 11 swordsmen, 5 foot archers, 1 archer cavalryman, and 3 arrow boats), no new cavalry was produced.

Under the joint consultation of Li Zhan and "Donkeys Are Recalling the Past," the blueprint design of the garment factory was completed and constructed within the processing zone. The main building served as the garment production workshop, a tall and spacious two-story structure neatly arranged with tables capable of accommodating four hundred people producing garments simultaneously. Currently, there were fewer than forty garment processing personnel in the village-town, occupying only the first floor, while the second floor remained temporarily vacant.

Flanking the main building were two slightly smaller, single-story structures: the employee cafeteria and the cloth processing workshop respectively.

Building a separate employee cafeteria for the garment factory was meant to alleviate the pressure on the village-town cafeteria, allowing all more than one hundred female villagers engaged in garment production to dine right there instead of walking to the main village-town cafeteria. Like the main cafeteria, this one also hired wandering players' subordinate female villagers to cook, but these villagers maintained a long-term employment relationship and were selected exclusively from wandering players who permanently resided in the village-town. The cloth processing workshop was also very spacious, capable of accommodating over a hundred weaving workers at the same time. Inside the workshop, over sixty looms were now set up, and all former spinning workers had been transferred to become weaving workers, thereby increasing the pace of cloth production. Meanwhile, all spinning work was completely handed over to villagers belonging to wandering players. Compared to other stages of the garment production process, spinning was extremely simple and easy to control in quality; the cotton thread spun by these wandering players' subordinate villagers fully met the requirements for weaving cloth.

At the main entrance of the garment factory stood a tall, three-sided ventilated structure designated as the dyehouse, where cloth was dyed and dried. The operations of the dyehouse were managed by three experienced cloth-dyeing workers supervising seven long-term employed villagers, dyeing over a hundred bolts of cotton cloth for the garment factory every day while also undertaking external cloth-dyeing commissions (at 50 copper coins per bolt of cotton cloth). Wu Fan's Lingyun Tribe had recently succeeded in cultivating perilla, increasing the available colors of dyed cloth in Yanhuang Village-town to four: blue, red, yellow, and purple.

As night descended, Li Zhan, Ruoyan, Bounding Fish, Ocean Girl, and Donkeys Are Recalling the Past had just finished touring the newly built garment factory. Stepping out through the central front entrance of the dyehouse, an on-duty night guard approached Li Zhan to inform him that the NPC merchant Wan Huai had returned and was waiting for him in the village-town hall.

Li Zhan led the group back in haste to the village-town hall's first-floor reception parlor. After exchanging polite greetings, Li Zhan introduced Bounding Fish and Ocean Girl to Wan Huai, who then began to recount in detail his experiences during this trip to E Family Village...

Upon Wan Huai's arrival at E Family Village, his maternal uncle, village chief E Teng, was overjoyed and hosted a lavish banquet to welcome him. Chatting about family matters over wine, Wan Huai eventually steered the conversation toward the purpose of his journey: garment production.

After listening to Wan Huai's proposal, E Teng pondered for a moment and stated that since garment processing brought mutual benefits, it was naturally acceptable. However, this matter needed to be postponed for a while. The reason was that a powerful faction of bandits had recently emerged in the border region between Xuchang's Yingchuan County and Yang'an County, rallying surrounding player tribes and villages to openly defy the imperial authorities. They declared their intention to capture Yingchuan and Yang'an counties to establish their base of operations. The official government troops of Yingchuan and Yang'an, having initially underestimated the enemy, had launched a joint exploratory attack against these bandits, only to suffer a crushing defeat. Consequently, they hastily petitioned their respective prefectural capitals for reinforcements and ordered all official village-towns and law-abiding player tribes within their counties to remain in a state of constant combat readiness, awaiting dispatch at any moment...

Wan Huai further detailed the comparative strengths between the bandits and the government forces to Li Zhan, with various data indicating that the official forces of Yingchuan and Yang'an counties were clearly at a disadvantage in this conflict against the bandit faction.

Among the bandits, a leader was exceptionally formidable, skilled not only in troop deployment and tactical formations but also possessing supportive leadership skills that caused the government troops endless misery.

The bandits had already captured several neighboring player villages and tribes that refused to submit, while all other player villages and tribes surrendered upon hearing their approach. E Family Village was situated just over a hundred miles away at the border between Yang'an County and Yingchuan County. If things continued at this rate, the flames of war would soon reach E Family Village. By then, not to mention garment production, whether E Family Village could even survive remained an unknown.

Finishing his account, Wan Huai pleaded with Li Zhan:

"Village Head Li, I know that you have allied with seventeen tribes in Danyang County and that your military might is second to none in the Danyang region. I earnestly request that Village Head Li dispatch an army of justice to E Family Village for rescue. Once this battle is won, not only will my uncle E Teng be endlessly grateful to you, but the officials of Yang'an and Yingchuan counties will also hold you in deep appreciation."

***

The situation had unexpectedly turned into the NPC merchant Wan Huai begging Li Zhan to rescue his uncle's E Family Village, which came as a great surprise to Li Zhan.

Without rushing to answer Wan Huai's plea, Li Zhan asked:

"You mentioned that both Yang'an and Yingchuan counties petitioned their prefectural capitals (Xuchang and Runan) for reinforcements. What was the attitude of the prefectural administrators upon receiving the appeals?"

Wan Huai replied:

"The administrators of the two cities seemed to act in tacit agreement; they cursed the magistrates and military commandants of the two counties unmercifully, and afterward drove away the petitioning officials without specifying whether reinforcements would be sent."

Li Zhan found this very strange. According to the official website's game mechanics, whenever bandits disrupted stability within their jurisdiction, prefectural administrators attached great importance to it, either ordering subordinates or personally dispatching troops, with the ultimate goal of exterminating the bandits. Only when a lord player's renown reached a certain level—surpassing the combined renown values of the county magistrate and military commandant—would the prefectural administrator adopt a blind-eye attitude should they attack a county seat.

The reason was simple: renown was an extremely important metric in this game. The higher a player's renown, the greater their influence on NPCs. When their influence surpassed even the county magistrate and military commandant, the player could replace them to become the next magistrate or military commandant. The prefectural administrator would tacitly accept this without intervention. However, if a lord player attempted a forcible takeover while their renown was lower than the combined total of the magistrate and commandant, the prefectural administrator would never condone it and would immediately dispatch troops to suppress them.

As for bandits, they were forever diametrically opposed to the imperial authorities. The higher a bandit's renown, the more bandit factions it would attract to submit, without altering the government's hostile stance toward them. For the administrators of Xuchang and Runan cities to withhold immediate military aid when their subordinate counties were attacked truly seemed suspicious.

Li Zhan sensed that there must be some hidden story behind this, or perhaps it was a trigger-based quest where this bandit faction served as the prerequisite condition, and players who got involved would have the opportunity to trigger this quest.

If even the government's military forces struggled to contend with them, his own forces would be negligible by comparison. However, Li Zhan believed that the bandit faction would ultimately be defeated—the prefectural administrator would surely dispatch troops to annihilate them at the crucial final moment; otherwise, allowing his own jurisdiction to become a bandit stronghold would directly threaten the security of his own position (as a drop in renown would allow a magistrate or military commandant to usurp his seat). E Family Village was his premier garment "branch factory" in the Central Plains; abandoning E Family Village meant abandoning the competition with the Dead Leaf Tribe for the Central Plains garment market and choking off his own financial lifeline. Even for this reason alone, Li Zhan had to send troops to E Family Village to investigate.

After weighing the pros and cons, Li Zhan told Wan Huai:

"Although my military forces are quite limited, since your uncle's village-town has fallen into crisis and we are about to enter into garment production cooperation, no matter how difficult it may be, we must go and take a look."

Hearing these words, Wan Huai was deeply moved and immediately stood up to bow in gratitude.

Li Zhan helped Wan Huai to his feet and instructed Bounding Fish to notify Zhao Ming and Zhang Feng to bring their troops and assemble immediately in front of the village-town hall, adding that the missionary should be summoned as well. There was no time to lose; they would set out for E Family Village tonight.

He then briefed Ruoyan on the affairs of the village-town and used the friend channel to inform Radish Stick, Thunder Dragon, and Fengxing that he was about to lead troops into the Central Plains, asking the three of them to help keep an eye on his village-town during this period. Surprised, the three of them immediately asked for the reason. Li Zhan gave them a rough explanation, upon which all three expressed their willingness to lead troops along with him.

Li Zhan thought for a moment and told them that since the enemy and friendly situations were still unclear, it wouldn't be too late to call upon them once he had figured out the situation.

Having settled the village-town's affairs, Zhao Ming and Zhang Feng led seventeen soldiers to stand at the plaza before the village-town.

These soldiers had all equipped themselves with ordinary leather armor (Defense +7), appearing full of vigor with their defense greatly increased. Even if militia were equipped with iron swords, they could only inflict a forced -1 damage against them. On top of universally wielding iron swords (+7 Attack), Zhao Ming and three other swordsmen were equipped with superior iron swords (+10 Attack), which, combined with basic swordsmanship and intermediate combat, gave each sword strike around 25 to 35 damage—making them formidable indeed. Due to level limitations, the foot archers could not equip hardwood bows (Level 12 Basic Archery) and still had to use short bows, but they had all been equipped with fletcher-produced feathered arrows (Attack +4, Accuracy +1, Range +1) to replace their original unfeathered arrows.

Notes:

Stables:
Stables: (Feudal Age or above architecture, Building requirement: 5 fine horses)
Construction cost: 500 wood, 150 gold
Durability: 1750
Functions:
1. Can produce [Patrol Cavalry], [Light Cavalry], [Camel Riders]
2. Class advancement for NPC soldiers: Patrol Cavalry -> Scout Light Cavalry -> Knight -> Heavy Knight -> Paladin; Camel Rider -> Heavy Camel Rider -> Mameluke (Central Asian civilization can upgrade this unit type)
3. Learn related professional skills: Swordsmanship (Level 10), Shield-work (Level 15), Spearmanship (Level 15), Horsemanship (Level 17), Scouting (Level 25)