Eagle’s Beak Mountain was tall with deep forests, making travel difficult. Merchants avoided it, and there were hardly any towns or villages.

Being a mountain bandit here was not an easy life.

Ding Dachui was originally a hunter. Because he had made enemies with local gentry and powerful families, he fled and became an outlaw. He had fantasized countless times about one day returning triumphantly with his brothers, with the gentry family kneeling before him begging for mercy—

Unfortunately, ten years had passed and that scene had yet to appear. Moreover—

“Boss!” Someone beside him excitedly slapped his arm, squeezing out a low voice from between his teeth, “Wild boar, wild boar—”

Ding Dachui slapped the man down with one hand: “Quiet.”

He held his breath watching a dark shadow appear in the dense forest opposite them. The shadow had been leisurely eating grass and bumping into trees when suddenly it stepped on a trap mechanism. Two wooden spikes shot up from the ground, piercing into the shadow’s throat—

The wild boar let out a terrible scream and the entire mountain forest trembled, but the boar didn’t fall. Instead it charged wildly, and by unfortunate coincidence, headed straight toward where Ding Dachui was.

The man Ding Dachui had been holding down nearly jumped up: “Boss, run!”

Ding Dachui released him, and the man ran off like a rabbit. After running a few steps, he looked back to see Ding Dachui hadn’t followed.

“Boss!” he shouted, eyes wide as he stared at Ding Dachui.

Ding Dachui still stood in place, raising his hunting bow and aiming at the raging wild boar charging toward him—

Had he gone mad?! The man’s voice cracked: “Boss, don’t—”

The wild boar got closer and closer. A fierce wind mixed with rank stench and the smell of blood rushed forward. Ding Dachui let out a great roar and released two arrows that steadily pierced through the boar’s eyes—

Accompanied by the man’s cracking cry, the wild boar toppled in front of Ding Dachui. The earth shook as it struggled, then after a moment it convulsed and moved no more.

The man also collapsed to his knees with a thud. Despite the cold of deep autumn, his back was covered in cold sweat.

“Big Brother.” He finally recovered his senses and stumbled over. “You scared me to death.”

Ding Dachui’s expression was calm as he waved his arm: “Nothing to fear. Wild boars just look frightening.”

What do you mean “just look frightening”? The man looked at where the boar had passed—it was as if the ground had been plowed, and trees as thick as rice bowls had been knocked down—

“What happened!” “What prey did you catch?” “That was quite a commotion—”

Seven or eight people now came running from all around. Seeing the wild boar on the ground, they exclaimed with delight.

“It’s a wild boar!”

“Amazing!”

“What a skilled hunter!”

Ding Dachui accepted the first two compliments calmly, but hearing the third, he became displeased and scolded the person: “What are you saying! We’re bandits!”

He was a bandit—how had he become a hunter again!

The speaker looked embarrassed and quickly shouted praise: “Boss is the most formidable bandit!”

But hearing this, Ding Dachui wasn’t pleased. Instead his expression grew more gloomy as he said: “I’m not the boss now. We have a new chief now.”

The men’s expressions also became complicated.

Someone said indignantly: “Boss, you’ll always be our boss. I only recognize you as boss. How can a woman be the boss?”

But others turned their heads, avoiding looking at Ding Dachui. Their averted gazes fell on the wild boar’s carcass. This old boss was very skilled at hunting wild boars, but that new boss—even though she was a woman—could beat Ding Dachui until he looked like a dead pig—

Ding Dachui also saw these evasive looks. He didn’t get angry or scold them. What right did he have to scold? He was inferior in skill. That he could keep his life now was that person’s mercy.

Thinking about it, the whole thing was still somewhat incredible.

A while ago, several people had suddenly appeared at their stronghold and said they were robbing them.

Robbing them.

Even now when Ding Dachui thought of that moment, he found it laughable.

They were bandits, true, but they couldn’t pull off more than a few robberies in a whole year.

Eagle’s Beak Mountain was remote and the roads were difficult. Rich people all traveled near the commandery seat where there were wide, flat roads, prosperous towns, and imposing garrison troops. Here, not many people passed through in a whole year, and those who did were poor people from nearby.

Out of ten robberies, five times they couldn’t even get a tattered piece of clothing. If their luck was bad, they’d even get entangled—the people they robbed would cry and shout wanting to become bandits, just begging for a meal—

He would often wonder who was really robbing whom!

Who would have thought that now someone would actually run to the bandits’ stronghold to rob them.

What was even more ridiculous was that among these people was a woman.

That woman wore a conical hat with a hanging veil covering her face, but one could still tell she was a delicate lady—

They had been both angry and amused at the time, wanting to teach these people from who-knows-where a lesson, but they hadn’t expected—

The six of them had knocked down more than thirty of them, and moreover had managed to injure without killing. The injuries weren’t even flesh wounds, but rather made them twist tendons and dislocate shoulders—

And that delicate lady, with just a few flicks of her whip, had dislocated both of Ding Dachui’s arms—arms that could shoot arrows a hundred paces and hit the mark—and twisted his tendons. The burly man had been hung from a treetop like a rag doll.

Thinking of that scene, even at this moment Ding Dachui felt both shame and fear rising.

Looking down from the treetop at those people, especially that woman—she was like a demon from hell.

Was this the government coming to suppress bandits? When did the authorities have such terrifying people?

But after the entire stronghold had no power to resist, those people didn’t take their heads to the authorities for a reward. Instead they said the stronghold belonged to them now, and that woman even said that from now on, she would be the new chief.

Her veil hung low, her long whip coiled at her waist, the gold thread glittering like a beautiful belt, outlining a slender waist that seemed it would break with a shake. Her voice was gentle as she said: “This is what’s called robbery.”

In this world, even being a bandit meant getting robbed, and robbed by a woman at that. What else could Ding Dachui and the others do? They submitted to their fate. That woman indeed didn’t take their lives, restored their tendons and bones to normal, and thus became the new boss.

Not only that.

The other two strongholds on Falling Eagle Mountain didn’t escape either.

This stretch of mountain range was like an eagle crouching on the earth, with the scattered peaks each named according to their shapes.

Because the mountains were large with abundant game, Ding Dachui’s group wasn’t the only hunters—bah, bandits. Because the mountains were tall and forests deep, easy to defend and difficult to attack, suitable for ambushes, there were also other bandits hiding within.

Speaking of it, the three strongholds had fought each other plenty, each wanting to swallow the others, but because they were evenly matched, in the end they could only mark out territories and mind their own business.

Who would have thought that today all three of their strongholds would be robbed and swallowed by someone else, merged into one.

“Alright.” Ding Dachui put away his complicated emotions. “The brothers are still alive and still together. Being the boss or not doesn’t matter.”

Having said this, he indicated for everyone to lift the wild boar “—take it back to the stronghold—salt it!”

The men lifted the wild boar, and one of them couldn’t help saying: “I wonder what the boss looks like. She must be beautiful—”

Before he could finish, Ding Dachui kicked him.

“If you don’t want to die, talk less nonsense.” Ding Dachui said coldly. “That she can be the boss has nothing to do with what she looks like.”

The man quickly shrank back, not daring to joke anymore.

The group carried the wild boar forward. They had only walked two steps when they heard a sharp bird call from the mountain forest.

This bird call made everyone present freeze. Ding Dachui instantly remembered that when the new boss had arrived, the mountain forest had made this kind of bird call—urgent, high-pitched, sharp, as if clutching at one’s heart.

What had happened?

Immediately after the bird call stopped, then the entire mountain forest erupted with bird calls, overwhelming and heart-trembling.

“Something’s happened.” Ding Dachui shouted. “Drop the wild boar, get back quickly.”

The men dropped the wild boar and followed Ding Dachui running toward the stronghold. Before reaching it, a figure first appeared before their eyes.

This was also a woman, but different from the new boss—small in stature, still a teenage girl.

“Who’s here—” The bird call transformed into a sharp shout as she yelled loudly, “Who is it—”

The long blade in her hand glinted as she charged toward the stronghold.

Ding Dachui stopped in his tracks. The current stronghold was not the same as the previous stronghold.

Around the stronghold, deadly traps were hidden.

He had witnessed them before.

At the time, not all the bandits had truly submitted. Mangy Chang from the neighboring stronghold had come for a night raid, but just as he reached the stronghold entrance, it was as if he’d crashed into a large net. That glinting golden net was sharp as knives, and in an instant had dismembered Mangy Chang into eight pieces—

That bloody scene had thoroughly ensured that no one dared have any other thoughts.

This girl wanted to break into the stronghold. The next moment she would also—

The next moment, in Ding Dachui’s view, the girl cut through the void and entered the stronghold.

At the same time, a woman’s figure flew out from within the stronghold, the veil beneath her conical hat fluttering in the wind.

Ding Dachui clenched his hands. When the two women met, who would prevail?

But there was no clash of blades, nor flying flesh and blood.

“Auntie! Why have you come!”

“I was worried about you.”

“Auntie—I’m so glad you’ve come—she’s so dangerous—wuwuwu—I was so scared.”

The urgent and gentle female voices intertwined, then there was only crying.

The girl threw herself into the new boss’s embrace, like a lone bird returning to its nest.