Zhang Sheng smiled, “Don’t be afraid. I don’t need you to fight them head-on. I want you to act as negotiator. Tell them that Miss Cui is now in mourning for her deceased father, and if her present state is disrupted then she must start again and all their efforts will be in vain. If Sun Feihu wants to marry the daughter of the Cui family, he must withdraw his army to the distance of an arrow shot. When the mourning period is concluded in three days time, the young lady will remove the mourning dress, don her bridal robe, and marry him.”
“And after these three days? Will she really become his wife?” “Don’t worry. I’ll get around and have everything under Control.”.
The abbot went out of the temple and demanded an audience with Sun Feihu. Already impatient and irritated, the bandit leader rode over to the abbot in rage.
“Surrender Yingying now or I’ll kill you and everyone else in the temple!” he boomed.
The abbot answered, “Calm down, General. Upon the order of the Madame Cui, I must give you some information.” He then repeated what Zhang Sheng had told him.
Sun Feihu thought over the proposition. The abbot’s words seemed to make sense; perhaps acting reasonably was the best course of action. Regardless, there was no way that Yingying could escape.
“Deal! Since the Madame has made this request, I’ll give you three days. But if I don’t get Yingying then, no one in the temple will survive! Tell the old lady she better live up to her word, or you’ll all suffer the consequences! And let her know that it’s very difficult to find a well-mannered son-in-law such as myself. She’d better consent to this marriage as soon as possible,” the bandit
difficult to find a well-mannered son-in-law such as myself.
chieftain said. Then, as promised, he withdrew his troops to a reasonable distance from the temple.
The abbot went inside the temple and informed Zhang Sheng of what had happened.
“Although they’ve pulled back, if we don’t hand over Miss Cui in three days, none of us will live,” the abbot told him.
Zhang Sheng told the abbot and Madame Cui that his friend Du Que, also known as the General on White Horse, led a troop of a hundred thousand soldiers guarding the Puguan Pass. If he could get a letter to him, the General would come to their rescue. However, Puguan Pass was over twenty kilometers from the besieged temple.
The abbot remarked, “If the General Du comes, we have nothing to fear from Sun Feihu. Don’t worry about the letter. I have a disciple named Huiming. He is rash and often takes to alcohol and fighting. If I were to ask him to deliver the letter as a favor, he would surely refuse me. But if I challenge him and explain the difficulty of the task, he will surely want to attempt it.”
With these words, the abbot turned to the gathering of people around him and shouted, “I have an extremely dangerous task for one of you: to break the bandit encirclement and deliver a letter to General Du. Who among you has the guts to attempt such a mission? Anyone?”
Before he could even finish his sentence, Huiming immediately rushed forward and yelled, “Me! Let me do it!”
Despite being a monk, Huiming had no interest in reciting ure or meditation. Rather, he was interested in weapons like sword, spear and cudgel. What’s more, he would never give up in the face of hardship. A mission such as this, where he could put his heroism on display, was just what he had been waiting for. After getting the details from the abbot and Zhang Sheng, he told them that they need to do nothing but await his good news.
Huiming tucked the letter away, picked up a broad sword, and strode out of the temple. A couple of soldiers standing guard gate yelled at him to get back, but he whirled the broadsword in such a dazzling display of swordsmanship that the guards cowered back and allowed him to walk past. Huiming then made a dash for Puguan Pass, where he presented the letter to General Du. The letter described the dangerous situation at the temple and asked for a speedy rescue. Zhang had written that such an act would be in accordance with the emperor’s expectation that it was the soldier’s responsibility to save the common people from calamity.
For a high-ranking general like Du Que, mobilizing troops without an explicit order from the imperial court was a move that could carry serious consequences. However, Zhang Sheng had been his best friend from childhood, and he could not stand idly by while such a friend was in trouble. Moreover, he reflected, it was his inherent responsibility to save ordinary people from peril, and a righteous act of bravery at that.
As the saying goes, a general at the front can refuse even the emperor’s order. Despite not having an imperial order to dispatch his troops, Du Que immediately set out with an army of five thousand men, and arrived at the temple that very night.
Though equal in number, Sun Feihu’s mob of bandits was no match for the disciplined and highly trained soldiers of the General Du. The chieftain was quickly captured and the leaderless bandits defeated and fled into the wilderness.
