Chapter 138 Astonishingly Heavenly

During the Song Dynasty, the state implemented a strict salt monopoly system, placing the production, transportation, and distribution of edible salt under its direct control. Due to the poor quality and high price of government salt, corrupt officials exploiting the salt monopoly for personal gain, and the artificial division of distribution zones which led to severe shortages, the phenomenon of illicit salt inevitably arose.

So-called illicit salt referred to private merchants illegally trading salt to reap exorbitant profits. Outlaws of the greenwood and salt smugglers banded together in factions, forming what were known as "salt gangs."

These salt gangs typically traded illicit salt while heavily armed. Whenever they encountered government patrols, a single disagreement would lead to a standoff or even a violent clash. In severe cases, they would commit murder, plunder, and even openly rebel against the officials. These individuals were often called "salt bandits."

The band of outlaws gathered at Naizhi Mountain were salt bandits active in the Guangnan Circuit. They primarily made their living by smuggling salt, but whenever opportunities arose, they would also engage in highway robbery, kidnapping, and extortion.

The leader of the Naizhi Mountain bandits was named Zhang Bu, who bore the martial moniker "Flood Dragon Scaling Mountains." It was said he earned this nickname because he traversed steep mountains and rugged paths as if walking on flat ground.

The second-in-command of the bandits was named Zhu Ming. Young men in the Song Dynasty were fond of wearing floral ornaments in their hair, but normally people only wore one or two flowers. Zhu Ming, however, liked to wear five floral ornaments at once. Coupled with a complexion of a frightful, ghostly white, he was known as "White Fifth Young Master" or "Five-Flower Young Master."

"Stop!" Seeing that the outlaws were restless and about to beat Li Sanjian, "Flood Dragon Scaling Mountains" Zhang Bu opened his mouth and shouted to halt his men.

"What manner of man is he? Why was he tied up and brought here?" Zhang Bu asked, casting a glance at Li Sanjian, who was putting on a calm front.

"Who knows what manner of man he is?" an outlaw answered angrily. "This subordinate only knows he is a chatterbox and a nuisance, endlessly spouting nonsense along the road. He is like a constant buzzing fly, driving the brothers mad enough to want to eat him alive..."

Zhang Bu glared at the outlaw and turned back to Li Sanjian. "Who on earth are you?"

Zhang Bu felt truly uneasy. They had brought someone back without even figuring out who he was. If this person had any connections to high-ranking officials in Lingnan, it would spell utter disaster.

After all, their primary trade was smuggling salt. Once they smuggled the salt in, they traded fairly and reasonably with the local people, trying their best to avoid tangling with the government so as not to invite trouble upon themselves.

Though some members of the gang occasionally engaged in extortion or kidnapping, they only targeted ordinary wealthy households or well-to-do commoners. They rarely targeted government-affiliated individuals, as this was the baseline for their survival.

Especially the second-in-command, who looked like a pale ghost from the netherworld yet always fancied himself a dashing romantic. For no reason at all, he liked to kidnap pretty young maidens up the mountain to serve as captive mistresses, only releasing them down the mountain after he had grown tired of playing with them.

"Who I am matters little," Li Sanjian said, pointing at Cai Rongxue, who wore a look of anxiety by his side. "She, however, is someone you cannot afford to provoke."

Li Sanjian had no other choice. He had to expose Cai Rongxue's identity so that the bandits would exercise restraint, thereby temporarily ensuring her safety and protecting her chastity from being defiled by the rogues.

As for the risk that exposing Cai Rongxue's identity might make the bandits view her as a rare commodity and thus make it even harder for her to escape, Li Sanjian could only take things one step at a time and deal with whatever came.

At this moment, the sole hope for both Li Sanjian and Cai Rongxue was that Cai Rongxue's maid, Xiaoqin, who had escaped the dragnet, would promptly notify the Guizhou authorities and bring troops to their rescue.

"And who is she? Why is she veiled?" Zhang Bu asked upon hearing this.

Ignoring Cai Rongxue, who was frantically shaking her head at him, Li Sanjian thought for a moment and replied, "She is the daughter of a high-ranking minister of the imperial court, and the niece of the current prime minister."

Up until this point, Li Sanjian still did not know the exact name of Cai Rongxue's adoptive father, nor did he know Cai Jing's official title. However, Cai Rongxue had once mentioned to him that her paternal uncle, Cai Bian, was the Left Executive of the Secretariat-Chancellery.

Normally, the relationship between Li Sanjian and Cai Rongxue had not reached the point where he needed to risk his life for her; they had merely crossed paths by chance a few times. Yet at a critical juncture, wasn't it an innate instinct for a man to step forward and protect a woman?

Hearing this, Cai Rongxue was instantly consumed by anger. She had seen fools, but never one quite this foolish. If an ordinary wealthy family's daughter were kidnapped, perhaps the bandits would release her in exchange for a ransom. But by exposing Cai Rongxue's background, the bandits would inevitably view her as a rare prize, make numerous additional demands, and perhaps even resort to silencing them permanently...

In her panic, Cai Rongxue failed to realize that Li Sanjian was merely trying to buy her temporary safety.

Upon hearing these words, Zhang Bu and the others were thoroughly startled. They looked at each other in dismay, speechless for a long time.

Zhang Bu was so furious he nearly fainted. He thought to himself that they were completely finished. These bastards had actually gone and committed a random kidnapping on their way back from a salt run, and of all people, they had snatched the daughter of a court prime minister? If this got out, a catastrophe of monumental proportions would surely befall them.

Ordinary wealthy merchants or even common officials were one thing, but could the prime minister of the Great Song Dynasty be trifled with? If they provoked such a figure, what kind of good end could they expect?

In his wrath, the prime minister would inevitably issue strict commands ordering the authorities in Lingnan to hunt them down relentlessly. With such a mandate pressed upon them, would the Lingnan authorities dare not to move with lightning speed and suppress the bandits? If that happened, their entire gang was doomed.

"Motherfucker, is this true?" The second-in-command of the Naizhi Mountain bandits, "Five-Flower Young Master" Zhu Ming, half-believing and half-doubting, asked Li Sanjian viciously. "Speak the truth quickly! Who on earth is this woman? If there is a single word of falsehood, Grandpa will hang you from a tree and let the mountain wind blow you dry until you die."

Not only was Zhu Ming skeptical, but Zhang Bu and the others felt the same way. Forget about a court prime minister; they rarely, if ever, even laid eyes on ordinary high-ranking officials of Lingnan.

Why would they go out on a kidnapping run and accidentally capture the niece of a Song court prime minister right here in such a desolate place like Lingnan? What on earth was she doing in Lingnan?

Yet some observant outlaws noticed that Cai Rongxue's bearing indeed marked her as a young lady of wealth and distinction from a prominent household.

*Perhaps she is just the daughter of some ordinary wealthy family,* Zhang Bu thought to himself, clutching at a straw of wishful thinking.

"Believe it or not, as you please," Li Sanjian said, shaking his head. "Don't wait until the catastrophe strikes before you regret it. By then, it will be far too late!"

"Hey, Young Lady Cai, do you have any proof?" Li Sanjian asked, turning to Cai Rongxue.

"Give it to you..." Hearing this, Cai Rongxue fished out a token and handed it to Li Sanjian.

Things had reached this point; Cai Rongxue had no choice but to play along with Li Sanjian's narrative. Otherwise, if the bandits concluded that Li Sanjian was lying, his fate could be easily imagined. He might genuinely be strung up from a high tree and left to dry into a withered corpse in the wind...

"Ha..." Li Sanjian took the gleaming golden token, weighed it in his hand a few times, held it up before the outlaws, and said, "This is an imperial transit token. None but the prime minister's household may hold it. Well? Was I telling lies?"

In truth, any high-ranking official on imperial business would be issued such a token when traveling, but Li Sanjian was banking on the fact that these illiterate bandits could not tell the difference.

All the bandits stared wide-eyed, fixing their gazes intently upon the token. They looked at each other in silence, no one speaking for a long time.

"Second Brother, it's it... It must be real. Could what this fellow said be true?" Although Zhang Bu could not tell whether this golden token actually came from the prime minister's residence, he had seen many high-ranking court officials carrying such tokens back when he used to trade salt openly.

"This..." Zhu Ming was now seventy or eighty percent convinced, yet he felt profoundly unwilling to let it go.

Zhu Ming loved women; every night he had to sleep in the company of beauties, but how could those ordinary, powdered-and-rouged women compare to Cai Rongxue? The difference was like heaven and earth; they weren't even worth a single finger of hers.

Although Cai Rongxue's face was still concealed behind a thin veil, through the gauze Zhu Ming could catch glimpses of her radiant complexion, allowing him to imagine her celestial beauty.

Moreover, while a face could be hidden by a veil, how could her slender, graceful figure be concealed? From her occasional glimpses of jade-like hands, he could easily picture the rest...

As the saying goes, seeing a single spot gives one a glimpse of the whole leopard. Zhu Ming felt an itch in his heart that he simply could not suppress; he longed to sweep Cai Rongxue behind the bed curtains immediately and ravage her to his heart's content.

Thus, Zhu Ming said to Zhang Bu, " Eldest Brother, this matter requires careful deliberation. Let me question her once more."

Without waiting for Zhang Bu's reply, Zhu Ming turned to Cai Rongxue and demanded, "Take off that veil and let me see who you really are!"

*If Cai Rongxue truly is a beauty of celestial grace, I will cast caution to the wind; at worst, we can hide deep in the mountains. Even if this girl is truly the daughter of a high-ranking court minister, I reckon there's nothing they can do to us. But if her appearance is ordinary, we'll treat her as a minister's daughter and simply let her go,* Zhu Ming calculated silently in his heart.

Hearing this, Cai Rongxue turned pale with fright. She pressed her lips tightly together and involuntarily shrank behind Li Sanjian.

"Take it off quickly, or Grandpa will strip your clothes off along with it!" Zhu Ming growled fiercely, stepping forward with his blade in hand.

With that, Zhu Ming reached out to touch Cai Rongxue's veil.

Li Sanjian, standing between them to block the way, tried to intervene, but he was shoved violently to the ground and pinned down by two sharp blades held against him, rendering him utterly powerless to stop Zhu Ming.

Seeing the terrifyingly pale face drawing closer and closer, Cai Rongxue felt an irrepressible wave of revulsion. Helplessly, she turned her head, looked at Li Sanjian, and softly murmured, "You are the first man in my life to behold my face."

Slowly, Cai Rongxue pulled down her veil, revealing half of her countenance.

Yet even this half-face left Li Sanjian utterly speechless for a long time.

It was an exquisitely delicate oval face, with lean cheeks that appeared even more slender. Beneath a smooth forehead lay a pair of willow-leaf brows resembling indigo smoke, their tips exceptionally long and curling slightly downward at the ends. Her bright, expressive eyes curved like two crescent moons, and her straight, refined nose possessed a tip that tilted upward ever so slightly. Her upper lip was very thin, but her lower lip was full and plump, while her teeth were as white and neatly aligned as sea shells.

This woman was not merely beautiful—she possessed a celestial grace—and her entire being exuded a gentle, virtuous aura, though a trace of lingering melancholy hung faintly at the corners of her brows.

Even the delicate and captivating Li Qingzhao, when compared to her, fell slightly short, her looks ultimately inferior to Cai Rongxue's.