Chapter VIII: Trap in a Buddhist Monastery

Piao Zhen is furious; how could he, considered one of the great Kung Fu masters of
his age and being Sect Leader of Kunlun Sect, one of the largest Martial Arts Sects in
China, be unable to capture a girl and a simple bandit? However, Hong Long's
lightness skill was excellent, so how could he capture them?

Piao Zhen's eyes emit the light of fire in them and his face is red. When Piao Zhen
enters the Office of Magistrate Chao, the Magistrate sees how furious he is and cold
sweat runs on his face.

"Please Master Piao, come in.", the Magistrate says and leads Piao Zhen to a silk mat.
Piao Zhen sits on the mat and Chao quickly brings a cup of tea.

"Please, drink this tea. It is one of the best in all of China. It is called 'Green Dragon
Tea'."

Piao Zhen sips the tea and gets the pleasant feeling of warm liquid entering his
stomach. He also feels that his throat is better and that he will be able to speak even
more clearly than before. But, most of all, he absolute loves the taste of this tea. For
Green Dragon Tea has a very sweet taste and is indeed one of the best Teas in all of
China. This tea is very rare to be found and Piao Zhen had never tasted before. Being
a great lover of tea, Piao Zhen feels his anger retreating and calms. It is not hard for
him to calm. After all, he is the "Gentleman Swordsman", a swordsman who never
gets angry and is always a gentleman.

Magistrate Chao is relieved to see that the tea had the expected influence on his guest;
Chao had given the tea to Piao Zhen in order to calm him down.

"Master Piao, what can I do for you?"

"You know what I want you to do. You must find the whereabouts of the bandits!"

"Sir, it is not my wish to offend you, but I really cannot find the location of the
bandits. My soldiers have searched all of the city and they have been unable to find
anything suspicious."

"Maybe, instead of trying to find out their location, we could lure them to come here.
Have you heard of a man called Hong Long?"

"Yes. He is the self-proclaimed leader of the bandits."

"Announce to all of the city that he has been captured and shall be executed in public
in two days."
"But, this bandit must have returned to his stronghold by now. So, his comrades shall
not be fooled."

"It is impossible for all bandits to have returned to their stronghold and to know where
their leader is. Some of them must have remained here, and one of them should be
loyal enough to try and rescue his leader. So, we should be able to capture at least one
bandit. Hong Long is a loyal and chivalrous person, so I am sure that he will try to
rescue this fool who will fall in our hands, especially since he would have been
captured while trying to 'save' him."

Meanwhile, in a bamboo forest outside Luchow, Hong Long and Wu Lan are walking.
Hong Long had taken Wu Lan to the stronghold of the bandits and allowed her to rest
there. Now, they are taking a walk a few miles away from the stronghold.

"Miss Wu.", Hong Long says. "I saved you from this Piao Zhen. So, I want to ask you
for a favor. "

"What favor? I will do my best to repay your help."

Hong Long gives Wu Lan the map with the locations of the Ming armies.

"Please take this map and leave this place. This map should not fall to Piao Zhen's
hands."

"I will do my best to protect this map. I bid you farewell."

Wu Lan walks away and Hong Long gazes at her, silently praying that the map will
be safe with her. If that map were to fall in the wrong hands, it would be disastrous.
For if that map was given to an enemy of China, the enemy would know the exact
locations of all Ming armies and thus would be able to easily defeat the Ming Empire,
by surprising and encircling all of it's armies in the frontier and would know the exact
routes which the Ming armies would have to use in order to counter the invasion, thus
giving the invader the chance to prepare ambushes. Although, to say the truth, even if
the map did not fall in the wrong hands, the Ming Empire would still be very likely
defeated by a foreign invasion, considering how corrupt and incompetent the Generals
are, how the Imperial Court believes in slanders and executes the few competent
patriotic Generals, like Yuan Chonghuan, and how untrained and undisciplined the
Ming soldiers are.

At the same time Hong Long thinks about the desperate situation of Ming China, the
soldiers of Magistrate Chao have set up a platform in the middle of Luchow. Two of
them bring a hooded man onto the platform. They kick him and spit on him, shouting
insults at him, like "You bastard Hong Long, you though that you could escape us?
Now we shall drink wine using your skull! Hahaha!"

Suddenly, a middle-aged man wearing a brown gown somersaults onto the platform.
Three soldiers charge at him with their swords, but the man sends out his palms at
them, creating a gust of wind which sends the soldiers flying miles away.

"Chief!!", the man shouts and charges at the two soldiers which hold the hooded man.
The soldiers are scared out of their wits; they throw away their weapons and run
away. The man bows before the hooded man and says: "Chief, are you alright?".

Instead of replying, the hooded man seals the Vital Points of the man with a swift
move. He then takes off the hood, revealing that he is in fact Piao Zhen, not Hong
Long! Piao Zhen laughs. "Soldiers, take this man to the Office of Magistrate Chao!"

"Yes, sir!", fat Colonel Li says and two soldiers grab the middle-aged man.

A few hours later, Piao Zhen and Magistrate Chao talk once again about the bandits,
sitting on the silk mats and drinking Green Dragon Tea.

"Master Piao, I want to ask your permission to take the prisoner to an other place."

"Why?"

"You see, by searching for the bandits, we have already disrupted once the peace in
the city. If we were to hold the bandit here in my Office, the bandits would surely try
to rescue him. And since my Office is in the center of the city, there will be civilian
casualties and businesses here would take a heavy blow. And this will be bad for the
local economy. If the owners of the shops do not have any money, who can I
blackmail for gold?"

"And where do you want to take the bandit to?"

"To a Buddhist Monastery a few miles away from the city. I will then have some of
my soldiers to go to a tavern here, pretend to be drunk and reveal that we have moved
to bandit to the Monastery. Thus, the bandits will try to save their comrade and shall
fall into our trap. Also, hiding the bandit in the Monastery will make it more unlikely
for the bandits to suspect that we are setting up a trap."

"You are right. Very well, do as you say. But if anything wrong happens, both you
and your Colonel shall be beheaded!"

"I will do my best to serve you, Master Piao!"

Indeed, three days later, one the bandits that was staying in the city and was used as a
spy by the bandits, comes to the stronghold of the bandits. He enters the Main Hall
and bows before Hong Long, who is sitting on a wooden throne and is surrounded by
his comrades.

"Talk!", Hong Long orders.

"Sir, I have learned that the bastard soldiers have taken Comrade Peng to the Buddhist
Monastery."

"How did you learn this?"

"I came to a tavern in the city to scout for news about Comrade Peng and heard two
drunken soldiers bragging about how they will force him to reveal our whereabouts
and how we shall never find out that they have hidden him in the Monastery."

One of the comrades of Hong Long, a very fat man who wears only purple trousers,
allowing everyone to see his naked huge belly, and who is nicknamed as the "Fat
Zhuge Liang", whispers to Hong Long's right ear: "Chief, I believe that it is a trap.
We should not go to the Monastery. Those soldiers may have been bragging in order
to lure us to go there."

Hong Long shouts: "How can I not go there?! I would go even if I knew that it was a
trap! Comrade Peng put his life in danger in order to save me, how can I not do the
same? Will I be a real man and hero if I hide here like a coward and let my comrade
be tortured to death?"

"But, Chief, you should think carefully of how we can save Brother Peng."

"You are the 'Zhuge Liang'. So, why do you not think of some idea?"

"I have an idea! Monk Chaoxiang and Scholar Jue, come here!"

A young handsome Buddhist monk in his mid twenties and a middle aged scholar
covered with dirt and oil and holding an old and broken black oil paper fan in his
hands bow before Hong Long. "Chief! We await you orders!"

Hong Long says: "Fat Zhuge, tell them your plan."

"I will, Chief! You two, listen well. You, Chaoxiang, will pretend to be a Monk in the
Monastery.". Chaoxiang, before joining the bandits, was actually a Monk in that
Monastery, so not only he knows the ways in the Monastery, but he is also friend with
many of the Monks and so the chances of the soldiers discovering that he is not a
Monk in that Monastery anymore will be minimal. "You, Jue, will pretend to be a
poor scholar who wants to take shelter to the Monastery for a day. Of course, Piao
Zhen will suspect you and the soldiers shall be spying on you. Your job will be to
sneak out of the Monastery in the middle of the night. The soldiers that spy on you
will follow you and will be lured away from the Monastery, allowing Chaoxiang to
save Peng."

"Excellent plan!", exclaims Hong Long, in awe of Zhuge Liang's brilliant plan.

The two bandits follow Zhuge Liang's plan; Chaoxiang sneaks into the Monastery and
pretends to be a Monk while Jue asks the Monks for shelter for a day in the
Monastery. The same night, Jue sneaks out of his room and with slow steps he moves
towards the Monastery's outer stone wall. He then uses his Qinggong to somersault
and jump above the wall, landing outside of the Monastery. He looks around for a few
moments and then runs away. As expected, ten soldiers follow Jue, but Jue pretends
not to have seen them.

Chaoxiang, being a 'Monk' in the Monastery, is able to move more freely and so he
heads quickly towards Jue's room. Seeing that Jue has left his room, he understands
that he must act fast and heads towards the Back Hall of the Ten Buddhas, called so
because that Hall has ten golden statues of Buddha in it.

Chaoxiang sneaks into the room and, hiding behind one of the ten statues of Buddha,
sees twelve soldiers guarding Peng, who is tied with a rope. Chaoxiang work a
number of darts into his right palm and flings them at the soldiers, silently killing all
of them. He then unties his comrade.

"Brother Peng.", he whispers. "Are you alright?"

"I think so.", Peng replies.

But before the two of them can walk away, Piao Zhen, along with twenty archers and
ten spearmen, enters the Hall. The soldier surround the two bandits, making it
impossible for them to escape.

Piao Zhen laughs. "When my spies reported that the scholar was sneaking out of the
Monastery, I immediately understood that you wanted to lure my soldiers away. And
so, I prepared this trap for you."

Chaoxiang and Peng know that any further resistance is futile, so they allow
themselves to be arrested. Jue kills six of the ten soldiers that follow him and, after
waiting for the whole night Chaoxiang, goes back to the bandit's stronghold the next
morning. He bows before his Chief and with tears in his eyes, he informs him of the
situation: "Chief, our plan failed!"

"Dammit!", Hong Long shouts. "I will undertake myself the task of saving them. All
men, prepare for battle!"

The bandits are quite powerful in that area. Hong Long is able to muster up to 100
men, all well trained fighters. The soldiers march in battle formation towards the
Monastery. Jue had confirmed that the Magistrate had send only 65 soldiers to the
Monastery. But the real strength of the soldiers is lower, since Jue had killed six of the
ten men that followed him the previous night and Chaoxiang had killed twelve
soldiers in his failed attempt to save Peng. Surely, Piao Zhen would not expect that
Hong Long would be rash enough to attack openly with all of his men the Monastery.

Hong Long leads the men on horseback, riding a black horse. Soon, they reach the
outskirts of the Monastery. Hong Long sends Zhuge Liang, who is on foot, along with
two horsemen to scout the enemy forces. The horsemen ride froward and Zhuge Liang
uses his excellent lightness Kung Fu to follow them. Zhuge Liang, being so fat,
cannot ride a horse, for it will not withstand his huge weight. A few minutes later,
Zhuge Liang and the two other scouts return and report that the Monastery is guarded
on the outside by twenty-eight archers and thirteen spearmen.

"Attack!", Hong Long shouts and more than 100 bandits charge with their swords at
the few Ming soldiers. The soldiers expected the enemy and were on high alert, but
they also expected only a few pugilists, not an entire mini army of bandits. The
archers quickly take positions and form three straight lines. The archers of the first
line are on their knees and are almost almost bowing, in order to allow the other two
lines of archers behind them to fire their arrows. The archers of the second line stand
up, but because those archers are shorter than the ones of the third line, the archers of
the third line are able to fire their arrows.

The archers shoot their arrows, killing tens of bandits, but soon more bandits come
and the formation is broken. The thirteen spearmen try to repulse the bandits, and to
their honor, they fight quite bravely, unlike most Ming soldiers, who are usually
untrained and lazy.

Soldiers fight on top of tens of dismembered bodies. Heads, hands, chests, even eyes
and ears are lying on the ground, all covered in blood. The soldiers on both sides fight
their enemies with every weapon they can find. They use rocks to break the head of
their enemies. They even fight with their bare hands. But, the Ming soldiers are
heavily outnumbered and so they are defeated.

The bandits charge into the Monastery, only to see that aside from the corpses of the
Monks, who seem to have been massacred, there is no one in the Monastery. Zhuge
Liang immediately understands that something is wrong, but before he can inform
Hong Long, the Monastery becomes engulfed in fire. It seems that Piao Zhen had
moved away Chaoxiang and Peng the previous night and was expecting the attack, so
he sacrificed the soldiers guarding the Monastery in order to lure the bandits into it
and burn them alive. And he had also massacred the Monks in order to make sure that
no one would inform the bandits or help them find a way out of the flaming hell that
the Monastery has become. What a brilliant plan!

Will the bandits be able to escape the flames alive? Or shall they be burned to death?
Will Piao Zhen manage to reclaim the map? What is Lung Chang doing all the while?
Find out in the next chapter!