Zhao Hanzhang lifted her head to look toward the mountain, squinting as she said, “Listen, is there some commotion on the mountain?”

Fu Tinghan, who was drawing a map, raised his head to look at the mountain, then closed his eyes and listened carefully. After a moment, he shook his head. “I only hear birds calling and insects chirping.”

Fu Tinghan paused, looked around, then said in a low voice, “I’ve long had my doubts—your hearing seems to be…”

“Beyond normal?” Zhao Hanzhang smiled. “It is a bit more sensitive than average people.”

Fu Tinghan nodded and commented, “Although I know very little about history, I also know that many accomplished historical figures had abilities beyond the ordinary.”

Zhao Hanzhang said, “Like Shi Le’s great strength and imposing stature?”

She was still fixated on Shi Le. She lowered her head to look at her own palm. After a year of practicing martial arts diligently, she wondered if she could now fight Shi Le.

While she was thinking about this, a scout came running down from the mountain quickly and reported, “Vice Administrator, Senior Young Master, they’ve started fighting on the mountain!”

Zhao Hanzhang raised an eyebrow, her expression becoming animated. “Why did they start fighting?”

How would the scout know? He only knew they’d started fighting because he’d risked getting close to the stronghold. If he’d gotten any closer, he feared he wouldn’t have been able to return.

Zhao Hanzhang didn’t really need to know the reason anyway. After thinking for a moment, she said, “Send people to scout ahead and find where their lookout posts are.”

Fu Tinghan marked the already discovered lookout posts on the map, looked at the diagram, and told the scout, “You go to ten o’clock… northwest—well, two-fifths of the distance from west toward north, look for it between two hundred and three hundred zhang upward…”

Fu Tinghan gave the scout two locations. The scout memorized them and immediately went to carry out the orders.

They had previously been very successful in locating the mountain lookouts watching them without being discovered, precisely because of Fu Tinghan’s guidance.

After they left, Zhao Hanzhang moved closer to him and asked, “Should we convert the school’s measurement standards?”

Fu Tinghan shook his head. “The measurements of this era are all standardized. Only the two of us are different. There’s no reason to make everyone change their measurement units for the convenience of two people.”

He said, “What doesn’t exist, we can standardize. What already exists, we should adapt to them.”

Although it was a bit difficult at first—after all, he’d learned a different set of measurement units from childhood—with his intelligence, converting between them wasn’t hard.

He had no intention of making things difficult for others.

Zhao Hanzhang nodded. “The measurement system could be made more precise though. Now that glassmaking techniques are becoming more mature, we can already make measuring cups with very high transparency.”

Fu Tinghan nodded, thinking they could write to the glassworks when they returned.

The scouts quickly located two lookout posts. They noted their positions, didn’t alert them, and circled back down again.

Their eyes were bright as they stared at Zhao Hanzhang and Fu Tinghan, especially Fu Tinghan. The scouts were eager to try, “Should we take action?”

Zhao Hanzhang glanced at them and said, “What action? Didn’t you say they’re fighting? Let them finish fighting first.”

As for why they were looking for lookout posts at this time, it was naturally to better understand the situation on the mountain.

Zhao Hanzhang narrowed her eyes as she looked toward the mountain, both hoping they’d fight a bit longer and worried they’d fight too fiercely and the casualties would be too great, which wouldn’t be good.

After all, she wanted to pacify them. Converting it, the people on the mountain were all hers!

Zhao Hanzhang waited until evening. The commotion on the mountain gradually subsided, and the scout who had snuck up to the edge of the stronghold also quietly came down the mountain to report, “They’ve stopped. The casualties shouldn’t be too severe.”

Zhao Hanzhang breathed a sigh of relief and said to Wu Erlang, “Shout up the mountain and tell them that if they’re done fighting, they should hurry down the mountain to welcome me!”

Wu Erlang immediately went forward to shout.

Fu Tinghan looked stunned. “How do you know the winning side favors you?”

Zhao Hanzhang said, “Whether they do or not, after I say this, they’ll have to favor me.”

Indeed, when Wu Erlang’s words reached the stronghold, Wei Dayi, who was holding a cloth to his arm to stop the bleeding, sneered continuously as he looked at the people who’d been beaten down in the great hall. “Did you hear that? Our stronghold is this far from the foot of the mountain, and we’ve arranged so many scouts and lookouts around it, but as soon as we finished fighting, they immediately received the news. Obviously, they also knew when we started fighting.”

“With such capabilities and methods, do you think we can beat her?”

The faces of the injured people below turned even paler.

Wei Dayi said, “It’s not that I’m boosting others’ morale while diminishing our own prestige, but this Vice Administrator was already famous when she was county magistrate in Xiping County. She’s someone who could repel Shi Le and the Xiongnu’s Liu Jing!”

Those who had opposed softened their attitudes considerably, not to mention they’d just lost the fight.

Seeing them soften, Wei Dayi said thoughtfully, “Inviting her up the mountain is impossible, but we can go down the mountain to meet her.”

“Right, go down! If she dares to go back on her word and detain Big Brother, we’ll rebel directly!”

“Right, take the brothers from the mountain and charge down. We have more people—I don’t believe we can’t beat them.”

Wei Dayi had a headache. “We only rob things—who among us has actually killed anyone?”

He said, “But those soldiers at the foot of the mountain have been on battlefields and really killed people. They also have weapons. Do you think our three hundred-plus people can beat them? Oh right, how many of them are there?”

“We don’t know. We can’t count either. We didn’t dare get too close. Anyway, it looked like not many people—maybe about a hundred?”

Wei Dayi was speechless.

In the end, after Wei Dayi bandaged himself and changed into a new set of clothes, he brought along over ten tall, sturdy bandits who looked very capable and went down the mountain together.

Zhao Hanzhang was sitting on a rock eating flatbread. It was dry rations, not very tasty, so she took one bite of flatbread and two bites of water. Seeing Wei Dayi and the others brought before her by the scouts, she couldn’t help but sigh and wave to them, “Since you’re here, sit down and have something to eat together.”

Wei Dayi, who had been undecided about whether to bow, froze, then stepped forward in a daze and accepted the flatbread Zhao Hanzhang handed him. He also squatted to the side and started eating.

Wu Erlang brought over a bundle and, opening it, distributed flatbreads to the ten or so bandits.

So the group of bandits who had come down full of fighting spirit to negotiate with Zhao Hanzhang all ended up squatting on the ground eating dinner with the soldiers.

Even their conversation was down-to-earth. Zhao Hanzhang asked, “How’s the flatbread?”

Wei Dayi said, “It’s good.”

Zhao Hanzhang said, “I think it’s a bit hard, but these are military rations—they need to be drier to store well. Do you have any good dry rations on the mountain?”

“No,” Wei Dayi said. “We don’t have much grain. We’re hungry one meal and full the next. When we go out, we basically don’t bring dry rations—we find food along the way.”

Zhao Hanzhang held her flatbread and asked, “Shouldn’t robbery be quite profitable?”

Wei Dayi said gloomily, “But we have a hard time robbing grain. The money and goods we rob are also hard to exchange for grain. Plus people in the county town know we’re fencing stolen goods, so things are hard to sell, and grain prices are high.”