The principle he believed in was: either don’t do it at all, or if you do it, be NO.1.

Of course, once this NO.1 was picked up by Frank Reed, it turned into your damn “Nanbo”—extremely difficult. He couldn’t be bothered to explain anymore; if he didn’t explain, Frank Reed still understood, but if he did, Frank Reed would only get more confused.

Adam Carter was certainly not Adam Carter; he had almost forgotten his own name. His name had already come to a full stop more than a thousand years later.

He used to be an equestrian—a rather obscure, yet noble profession. With just one horse race, he could rake in a fortune every day. He loved horses, even more than he loved his lovers.

He was more familiar with the physique and temperament of horses than with those of women. So, as he lay beside his warhorse, he was filled with affection and fondness; he was as sincere with horses as he was with friends.

Besides loving horses, there were plenty of other things he liked—he loved to let his imagination run wild even more.

He had once fantasized about using the Moonlight Box to travel through time, but he never dreamed that during a wilderness adventure, while searching for the legendary blood-sweating horse, he would end up in the Sui Dynasty without relying on the Moonlight Box at all.

Of course, it wasn’t his body that arrived, but his soul. This was a phenomenon that was hard to explain, yet quite marvelous.

So he became the young master of a mountain stronghold, with an old man called Peter Carter as his father. He had dozens of brothers, scheming every day about robbing fat sheep to get by.

The chief was old and couldn’t lead the team himself, so this glorious yet arduous task fell to Adam Carter.

He weighed the pros and cons of banditry and developed some simple and easy-to-use equipment, like catapults and such. He liked to take shortcuts and be lazy in his work, but the prerequisite for that was intelligence—otherwise, you’d just end up being stupid.

Sensing the admiring gazes of these bandits, Adam Carter felt a bit wistful amid his contentment.

Holding the bow and arrow in his hand, Adam Carter was not unfamiliar with them, since horseback archery had always been a required skill for him. But killing people as if they were mere grass still left him somewhat bewildered.

But in this era, in this place, there was no law, no reasoning; most of the time, whoever had the harder fist had the “reason” on their side.

This place wasn’t too far from the Sui border town of Mayi. The terrain was treacherous—a long, narrow passage between two mountains—truly an ideal spot for an ambush.

From the Turks to the Sui, or from the Sui to the Turks, this was an important trade route.

All the trading along this road was obviously unofficial; smuggling here could even get you beheaded. But because the profits were enormous, there was no shortage of merchants willing to take the risk.

Adam Carter was the bandit of a nearby stronghold, and right now he was leading about twenty subordinates, lying in ambush halfway up the mountain, waiting for the fat sheep to walk right into their trap.

Being a bandit wasn’t his choice. When he arrived here, he was the young master, and he couldn’t resist even if he wanted to. After his soul crossed over into Adam Carter’s body, he was somewhat lost and panicked. His father, Peter Carter, worried about him so much that he even invited a Taoist priest to exorcise evil spirits for him. If he didn’t want to keep drinking that concoction of mud, incense ash, and yellow wine, he had no choice but to admit that he was indeed Xiao, Bu, Yi.

The horse lay quietly beside him, as calm as its master. Not only was Adam Carter’s horse like this, but the twenty or so subordinates and their twenty or so warhorses were the same—this was all thanks to Adam Carter!

He treated horses as he would friends or lovers, so the horses treated him the same way. Even though he had only been a bandit for a few months, just by virtue of his horse-taming skills, all the brothers in the stronghold respected him, which made his father beam with pride.

The previous Adam Carter was just a frivolous, unruly rascal, but now, whenever anyone mentioned Adam Carter, they would give a thumbs up and say, “That’s a real man, capable—chief, your son is going places.”

Thinking of this, Adam Carter didn’t know what to feel. Staring at the green grass in the distance and the white clouds on the horizon, a trace of a bitter smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

“Young master, there’s a fat sheep,” someone beside him said.

That man had a very gloomy face, but Adam Carter knew his name was Samuel Harris. Samuel Harris had exceptional hearing—he could hear pheasants jumping several miles away just by pressing his ear to the ground. When others couldn’t see anything, he had already heard it.

Adam Carter snapped out of his daze, squinted into the distance for a long while, and his expression changed. “It’s the Turks.”

The bandits grew a bit restless, and even the warhorses seemed uneasy.

Everyone knew how fierce the Turks were. Whenever they came to the border, it was always to raid, burn, kill, and plunder, then leave after a big score. In that sense, they and Adam Carter’s bandits were cut from the same cloth.

But Adam Carter clearly didn’t acknowledge this kinship. With a wave of his hand, he said, “Stay sharp, everyone. Get ready to do a big job.”

“But they don’t have anything—what are we going to rob?” Brian Cooper asked nervously. They weren’t afraid of the Turks’ ferocity, since they weren’t raised on vegetables either, but there was really no point in doing something with no profit.

“How could they have nothing?” Adam Carter looked into the distance and said, “They have more than a dozen warhorses. We need those too.”

The group nearly tumbled down the mountainside, but they already understood the young master’s intention. Whatever he wanted to do, no one could stop him now.