Mister Bai was genuinely shaken this time.
The feeling was almost identical to Shan Shier's first day in the village, when disbelief slowly got strangled by reality and then buried without ceremony.
At first, he had dismissed this so called Dao Xuan Tianzun as just another folk belief, something in the same category as the so called Unborn Mother that wandered around harvesting incense money and gullible minds.
Now he was no longer laughing.
In fact, he was reconsidering several life choices, including every time he had ever rolled his eyes at superstition.
After all, people of this era might argue about which god was more reliable, but almost none of them truly believed in having no god at all.
All it took was one undeniable miracle, and a lifetime of skepticism would politely pack its bags and leave.
Meanwhile, Gao Chuwu, Zheng Daniu, and the others had already gathered around the catapult, circling it like a group of villagers inspecting a suspiciously intelligent cow.
Gao Chuwu scratched his head and spoke with complete sincerity.
"This thing threw once and now the big spoon is standing straight up. It looks like it retired after one job. Is it broken already?"
Li Da, who had the most experience with tools as the village's unofficial professional craftsman, stepped forward and pointed at the mechanism.
"You have to pull the arm back down and lock it into this catch. Only then can it fire again."
Everyone nodded as if they understood, even though most of them clearly did not.
Gao Chuwu continued with admirable persistence.
"So how do we pull it down?"
Li Da looked at him as if the answer was so obvious it bordered on insulting.
"You climb up, tie the divine rope to the neck of the spoon, then all of us pull together. What else did you think, ask it politely?"
Gao Chuwu grinned.
"Good plan. I prefer not negotiating with spoons anyway."
He climbed the arm like a monkey that had suddenly found a meaningful career, reaching the top in moments despite the height being close to two zhang, which for him was just a slightly ambitious tree.
He tied the rope securely and slid back down.
Several villagers grabbed the rope and began pulling together, shouting rhythmically as if they had collectively decided that teamwork required sound effects.
"Heave. Heave. One, two, three."
The arm slowly came down under their combined effort, and Li Da along with Gao Yiyi the blacksmith stepped forward, raising their hammers.
With a loud clang, the mechanism snapped back into place.
"Success!"
The villagers cheered like they had just unlocked a secret technique.
"We have learned how to use an immortal weapon."
Mister Bai finally snapped out of his daze, and for the first time since entering the village, he had completely stopped questioning whether this was a cult.
At this point, if someone told him the catapult could recite poetry, he would only ask what style.
"Bring more people," he said quickly, shifting into command mode. "Push this catapult behind the gate and aim it outward. When the bandits charge, we will crush them with stones."
"Alright!"
A crowd gathered to push, and Li Dao Xuan briefly worried that they might not have enough strength, only to watch the villagers casually solve the problem in a way that made modern engineering look slightly embarrassed.
They brought thick branches, laid them under the machine as rollers, and moved the catapult forward with surprising ease.
Li Dao Xuan blinked.
Fine.
No formal education, no theory, but decades of manual labor had apparently granted them a level of practical physics that required no textbooks.
Mister Bai, however, was thinking about something else entirely.
One catapult was powerful.
One catapult was also not enough.
The thought had barely formed when Gao Yiye suddenly spoke.
"Dao Xuan Tianzun says that since everyone has learned how to use it, more will be provided. Those behind the wall, please step aside."
Mister Bai's head snapped toward her so fast it almost made a sound.
The villagers quickly scattered.
Then it happened.
Another catapult descended from the sky, already positioned perfectly, landing with a thud that sent dust into the air.
Then another.
And another.
And another.
Within moments, twenty catapults stood neatly arranged behind the wall, forming a lineup that looked less like a defensive setup and more like an exhibition of excessive generosity.
Their colors were… questionable.
Green, blue, gray, red.
Bright, mismatched, and unapologetically chaotic.
They looked exactly like the wall itself, as if whoever designed them had a deep philosophical commitment to making sure nothing matched anything else.
Mister Bai stared at the scene, his mind trying very hard to remain functional.
He failed.
So this wall was also divine.
Of course it was.
Naturally it was.
At this point, the only surprising thing would have been if something here was normal.
The villagers, now fully accustomed to divine logistics, dropped to their knees again in perfect synchronization.
"Thank you, Dao Xuan Tianzun!"
Mister Bai turned his head and noticed, with growing disbelief, that even his own tenant farmers had joined in without hesitation.
They knelt, shouted, and blended seamlessly into the village's rhythm like they had always been part of it.
Even his household guards were visibly struggling to remain standing, their knees trembling as if loyalty was negotiating with instinct.
Before Mister Bai could process this social transformation, Shan Shier tugged at his sleeve.
"Mister Bai, we now have twenty catapults. Someone needs to operate them. You should assign roles."
Mister Bai blinked, forcibly compressing the chaos in his mind back into something resembling order.
Right.
War.
Focus on war.
He raised his voice.
"You two blacksmiths, once the battle begins, do not go to the wall. Stay behind and handle the catapults. When I give the signal, strike the trigger with your hammers."
Li Da and Gao Yiyi nodded immediately.
Mister Bai then scanned the crowd and pointed at a group of elderly villagers and women.
"You join them. Your task is to reload the stones."
They hesitated.
Not because they lacked courage, but because they had a very reasonable concern about their physical limitations.
Mister Bai pointed at the rope tied to the catapult.
"You do not need strength individually. Together, you can pull the arm down. Then place a smaller stone into the scoop. That will be enough."
They tested it.
It worked.
Apparently, collective effort had once again defeated individual weakness, which was both inspiring and slightly inconvenient for anyone hoping to avoid labor.
Li Da and Gao Yiyi looked at their new positions, then at Gao Chuwu and Zheng Daniu standing proudly on the wall, and without hesitation, they removed their armor.
"Chuwu, Daniu, come here. You wear these."
The two young men accepted without ceremony, putting on the armor with wide grins.
They were already strong and tall, and now, with armor on, they finally looked like something resembling actual soldiers instead of enthusiastic participants in a village argument.
Mister Bai watched this and felt a familiar headache forming.
Privately forging armor was a capital offense.
Then again, so was forming large scale bandit armies, and that seemed to be going quite well without any official intervention.
He imagined the governor's likely response.
"Villagers forging armor to fight bandits. Let them. By next spring, everything will settle itself."
He almost laughed.
Time passed slowly.
The sun dipped toward the horizon, swaying in the sky like a drunk who had misplaced his sense of direction and dignity.
Li Dao Xuan's food delivery arrived.
Sweet and sour shredded pork over rice, with a complimentary three hundred milliliter cola.
He ate happily, one bite of rice followed by a sip of cola, living a life that felt suspiciously disconnected from the chaos unfolding below.
Then the noise started.
Shouting.
Movement.
A rising wave of tension from inside the box.
Li Dao Xuan glanced down.
"Oh."
The main force of the bandits had arrived.