Two years later, Meng Hao was thirty-five years old. It had been nine years since he left home. However, during that entire time, he had only lived in two places, the river and the forest.
This year, he ran into a gang of bandits.
Bandits are generally killers, but they didn't kill Meng Hao. Perhaps it was because of his worn scholar's robe, or the scholar's pack that he wore on his back. He certainly looked down on his fortune. The bandit leader was a beautiful, seductive woman. She asked him a single question.
"Can you keep financial records?"
Meng Hao shook his head. However, they took him anyway. They led him to their mountain fort, which was really a stockaded village where more than a thousand people lived. Most of them were the family members of the bandits, including quite a few children.
