Once all the Joseon people were inside the walls, I checked to see if anyone was missing, then sent all the women and children inside and handed out rifles to the men.
There were several women who knew how to shoot, but we decided they would stay with the women and children just in case.
I cautioned the men who had received rifles once more.
“Everyone, stay calm and just do as you were trained. We will handle any of them who try to rush this way, so don’t worry about those who might use ladders to jump inside; just focus on the bandits outside. And keep in mind, you must never let your rifle barrels protrude through the embrasures in the wall.”
The reason people didn’t ignore the words of a ten-year-old child was because of the track record I had shown so far, the fact that I had overseen their marksmanship training, and because every rifle they used was one I had purchased.
Both the people who had crossed the border with me and the Joseon people who had lived here before had received marksmanship and combat training.
Furthermore, they no longer used the Matchlocks or muzzle-loading rifles they once relied on; they now all used Modern Rifles.
A Modern Rifle is incomparable to conventional Matchlocks or muzzle-loading rifles in terms of range, accuracy, and ease of operation.
Unless the bandits were armed with a large number of modern firearms, this was a fight we were guaranteed to win.
The afternoon passed as we made various preparations, and even as the darkness of night completely obscured our vision, there was no sign of the Honghuzi appearing.
People of this era, whether Joseon or Russian, usually went to bed around 8:00 PM, and they slept even earlier during winters like this. Because of that, when the Honghuzi hadn’t appeared even by 9:00 PM, some people began to yawn widely, looking sleepy.
Watching them, I thought that even if the Honghuzi didn’t show up today, I should recommend that people sleep during the day and stay awake at night for the time being.
Since it was winter and there was nothing to do anyway, it wouldn’t matter if they slept during the day and stayed awake at night.
Just as I finished that thought, I heard the ground vibrating.
Naturally, I wasn’t the only one; everyone leaning against the walls heard it too. We hurriedly stood up and scanned the outside through the embrasures. Even those who had been nodding off snapped awake.
Since Sidimi village had the sea to the east and north, any attack had to come from the west or south.
The terrain made the path from the west the easiest to travel, so there was a high possibility they would attack from that direction, and indeed, the Honghuzi attacked from the west.
The Honghuzi didn’t just target Russia’s Primorsky Krai or northern Joseon; they often targeted landlords or the wealthy in Manchuria.
In fact, those attacks were far more frequent, so most wealthy people in the Manchuria region built high walls around their estates, turning them into fortresses to prepare for the Honghuzi.
Naturally, the Honghuzi would prepare long ladders to scale those high walls and break through.
Assuming we weren’t prepared and that we were all asleep, a few of them crept toward the wall carrying ladders.
During the day, we had pre-stacked firewood and poured oil at a spot about 20 meters in front of the west and south gates, where an attack was most likely.
When I gave the signal, the people on top of the walls lit torches and threw them onto the woodpiles, and flames surged upward.
The area around the Honghuzi brightened instantly, revealing their scale.
Among the Large Mammal Command given when I fell into this era was Superior Dynamic Vision, and I instantly identified that there were 54 Honghuzi in total, and six of them were carrying Modern Rifles.
The Honghuzi usually formed groups of 10 or 20, so this was a larger number than expected.
However, we were behind walls that bullets couldn’t penetrate, and since the Honghuzi were under the bright light, they weren’t at a level to be feared.
I didn’t hesitate and aimed at the ones holding Modern Rifles first.
If the leader had been obvious, I would have shot him first, but for now, I couldn’t tell who the leader was.
Still, the leader was bound to be among those with Modern Rifles, and since they were the greatest threat, I targeted them first.
As soon as I fired the first shot, the people waiting behind the walls fired simultaneously.
The marksmanship training hadn’t been in vain, and over ten Honghuzi collapsed in an instant.
Among the training we had done was rapid reloading training.
Not a single person among us had a repeating rifle, and except for four double-barreled shotguns, they were all single-shot rifles.
I had repeatedly drilled them on keeping bullets between their left fingers and reloading quickly until they mastered it and their bodies remembered the motion.
Since this training involved loading and immediately removing the bullets, it was also good because it didn’t waste expensive ammunition.
And the effects of such training were fully displayed in this moment of crisis.
Before the bandits could grasp the situation and properly hide, about twenty had fallen, including three of the ones with Modern Rifles.
Of course, those three were the ones I had taken down.
Realizing they were targets in the light, the remaining bandits retreated much further.
“Hide behind the fire! Then they can’t see us either.”
“Twenty have already fallen.”
“The horses were spooked and ran away too.”
They were shouting raucously, and I quickly signaled a cease-fire.
Our ammunition was limited, and it would be problematic to waste it by firing blindly.
“What should we do?”
“Twenty have fallen, shouldn’t we just run?”
“We lost twenty, we have to get our money’s worth.”
“How, from here?”
“The Daedangga is dead, shouldn’t we retreat now?”
Perhaps they thought no one understood Chinese, or maybe they just lacked discipline and didn’t know how to act in such a situation, but they were arguing among themselves.
Listening to them, I learned that the leader was among those I had killed, and I realized their threat had almost vanished.
Thieves like them wouldn’t have proper discipline to begin with; they might move correctly when a leader is present, but once the leader is gone, they become a disorganized rabble.
Then someone shouted.
“If we scatter just because the Daedangga is dead, those Joseon bastards will look down on us. We can’t back down like this.”
“Judangga, then what do you suggest?”
“They’re all gathered on this side, and there’s no fire between those two gates, so it’s hard to see. If we quickly take the ladders and go over the wall there, we still have a chance.”
Since we had dealt with it in a hurry, the firewood hadn’t been stacked meticulously, and just as they said, there were dark spots that weren’t clearly visible.
I quickly relayed their words to the people, and Gwi-hwan, Jae-ho, Hong-i, and I ran toward that section of the wall.
However, even when looking through the embrasures, it was dark outside, and because I had been looking at the bright fire, my eyes hadn’t adjusted, so I couldn’t see properly.
Although I had received a shooting skill, I apparently hadn’t received a night-vision skill, so my marksmanship was useless in this situation.
Thinking of them scaling the wall with ladders, I changed the plan to taking them out once they jumped inside.
Sure enough, a short while later, I heard footsteps and the sound of something leaning against the wall, followed by figures jumping over.
These guys were experts at jumping over such walls.
As soon as they climbed the wall with ladders, they hooked ropes, controlled their speed, and jumped inside.
I shot and killed one of them, but Gwi-hwan, Jae-ho, and Hong-i, despite the various training I had given them, couldn’t respond properly to the situation and missed them. To be precise, they fired, but because the targets were moving so fast, they couldn’t land a hit.
Honestly, it was too much to expect them to hit anything in this situation without having received skills like I had, and I ran inward, following the Honghuzi.
They ran toward my house, where the women and children were gathered.
Even though all the houses inside the walls were lit up, they managed to pick out the house where the women and children were and ran toward it.
If they took the women and children hostage and opened the main gate, things would become truly difficult.
It wasn’t just a matter of winning or losing. We hadn’t suffered a single casualty so far, but suddenly there could be a mass of victims.
However, I had been underestimating the Russian women of this era.
As the Honghuzi who jumped the wall ran toward my house, gunshots rang out from inside, and all four Honghuzi who had reached the front of the house collapsed.
Oksana, the wife of Fridolf Gek, and Olga, the wife of Mikhail Yankovsky, who were protecting the other women and children inside, had finished them off at once with double-barreled shotguns.
A shotgun is naturally a spread-fire weapon that hits anything at close range, and since it can fire two shots in succession—one from each barrel—they were able to eliminate them perfectly.
Both Oksana and Olga were excellent shots; they hadn’t wavered, waiting for the Honghuzi to come within range before taking them out in one go.
I hurried over to check if anyone was hurt, confirmed that the fallen Honghuzi were definitely dead, and then ran back toward the west where the rest were gathered.
The bandits on the west side were also diligently firing shots, perhaps as a diversion.
Of course, they didn’t have a single Modern Rifle left; they were just firing Matchlocks or older muzzle-loading rifles.
But then, the sound of a Modern Rifle suddenly came from that direction.
The sound of a Modern Rifle is distinct from Matchlocks or muzzle-loading rifles, so there was no mistaking it.
Suddenly, screams erupted from the bandits.
“There are enemies behind us too!”
“Three are already dead!”
“They’re shooting from behind!”
I quickly relayed what they were saying in Russian and Joseon dialect to the people guarding the west.
“Someone is shooting the Honghuzi from behind!”
And we also fired toward the location of the bandits, whether we could see them or not.
Overwhelmed by the fear of being surrounded, the Honghuzi hiding in the darkness began to flee in all directions.
Of course, we weren’t just going to let them go.
We fired at the backs of the fleeing bandits and saw several fall from their horses.
Just as it seemed the Honghuzi had all fled, a figure appeared from the distance, and the Joseon people shouted upon seeing him.
“It’s Four-eyes!”
‘Four-eyes’ was the nickname the Joseon people gave Mikhail Yankovsky, who often wore sunglasses, which were very rare in this era.
Mikhail Yankovsky had been out hunting deer and was returning after catching two live deer when he saw the fire we had lit from afar.
Seeing that, he realized something had happened and hurried over.
Seeing the Honghuzi flee and Mikhail Yankovsky approach, we opened the gate and went out to welcome him.
At that moment, perhaps hearing something move, Mikhail Yankovsky spun around and fired toward somewhere in the back.
Then, one Honghuzi, who had been too afraid of Mikhail’s rifle to flee properly and was only just trying to escape, fell from his horse.
Seeing that, the Joseon people cheered in unison.
“Four-eyes has eyes in the back of his head!”
“Long live Four-eyes!”
“Four-eyes Ura!”
‘Ura’ is the Russian word for hurrah, and since the Joseon people knew that much Russian, they would shout ‘Ura’ whenever something exciting happened.
Mikhail Yankovsky also knew well that ‘Four-eyes’ was the nickname the Joseon people called him, so he raised his rifle high in response to the cheers.
After warmly welcoming Mikhail Yankovsky, we collected the bodies of the Honghuzi.
The bodies in front of the fire were the ones we had handled, but all the bodies behind the fire had been taken down by Mikhail Yankovsky, numbering over ten.
Compared to the six I had handled, including the one from the group that jumped the wall, Mikhail had taken down twelve—twice as many as I had.
When we dragged the bodies of those who had jumped over and gathered them all together, there were 37 corpses in total.
I asked.
“What should we do with these bodies?”
Mikhail replied.
“We can’t just dispose of this many bodies on our own. When it gets light tomorrow, we should contact the nearby Russian Army.”
In Russia at this time, killing Honghuzi was not a problem.
Setting aside things like self-defense, it wasn’t even a legal issue, held on the same level as avoiding a natural disaster or killing an attacking wolf or bear.
We gathered the evidence they left behind: Matchlocks, muzzle-loading rifles, and the horses that remained.
All the loot became ours, except for a few Matchlocks the Russian Army took as evidence the next day, and the same went for the horses.
The Russians took a cool stance on this, saying, “They’re yours since you got them by defeating the Honghuzi.”
By the next day, Mikhail Yankovsky and I had recovered a total of 35 horses. Since there were 37 bodies but only 35 horses were found, it seemed some horses had fled to places we didn’t know, or someone had made off with them in the chaos.
Due to this incident, the reputation of our Sidimi region soared, and Mikhail Yankovsky made a name for himself throughout Primorsky Krai with the nickname Four-eyes, who had eyes in the back of his head.
Combining the horses obtained this time with the ones I already had, we now had 45 of these local horses, and we decided to let them graze freely.
You might worry that they would freeze to death if left to graze in the middle of winter in this freezing Primorsky Krai region, but that’s not the case.
The horses of this region—and the same goes for Western Horses brought from Russia—survive on their own if left to graze in the winter without building a stable.
Most of them dig through the snow-covered ground to find food, but since they lose a lot of weight this way, if you scatter hay bales and grain feed for them, they live well on their own.
It becomes very convenient as there’s no need to clean manure or change straw in a stable.
In this way, our Sijimi Ranch became a ranch that raised local horses even before Western Horses.
***