Chapter 510: - Terrible News

At dawn, Count Pingye woke to find He Chunlai preparing breakfast.

This former Jin restorationist, after encountering Fan Li, had been forcibly developed into an entirely new profession.

His skill with food was first-rate. Once he became familiar with Count Pingye’s tastes, he could immediately produce dishes to match.

When all was said and done, even after a thousand years, food had not really changed all that much. Delicious and refined would always remain the eternal standard.

Of course, “had not changed much” referred to the ruling and wealthy classes.

You would discover that what the powerful ate a thousand years ago was, more or less, what the powerful ate a thousand years later.

Count Pingye’s breakfast was simple without lacking refinement: two fried eggs, cooked fluffy; four golden slices of fried mantou; and one cup of goat’s milk.

A separate corner of the military camp was specifically used to raise the chickens that laid Count Pingye’s eggs and the goats that produced his milk.

That was one benefit of fighting a war so close to home. Besides, Count Pingye did not think he was being wasteful or extravagant. Rather than eating exactly the same food as the common soldiers just to perform some show of sharing their hardships, it was far more practical to find ways to improve the soldiers’ own rations. They would be much more grateful for that.

While he was eating, the Blind Man arrived. He sat down without ceremony, picked up a slice of fried mantou, took a bite, and said, “Master, Xu Youcheng’s force has finished setting up in the camp behind us.”

There were simply too many Savage slave soldiers. On the battlefield, they were expendables. Since ancient times, examples of armies driving slaves into battle were too numerous to count.

But the method came with instability. Mishandle it, and it could hurt you instead.

If the slave soldiers were camped near your central command camp, then the slightest disturbance, or a panic inside their own camp, could easily trigger a chain reaction.

So they had been placed in a rear camp instead, kept in reserve and drawn out as needed. That reduced the risk to a minimum.

Most importantly, this was siege warfare. Both attacker and defender were constrained. The fighting itself would be rigid and methodical, which was why Count Pingye could arrange them this way.

In an encounter battle or a wide flanking campaign, arranging the army like this would amount to exposing your weakest link completely to the enemy.

The First Prince had lost the First Battle of Wang River in exactly that manner. The Marquis of Jingnan had once kicked him to the ground and demanded to know why he had not broken up the Left-Wing Army and mixed other troops into it. If ten thousand Zhenbei soldiers had been distributed through the Left-Wing Army at the time, the Savages would never have been able to drive the whole force into the Wang River.

“Mm. Can we keep up with the armor and weapons?” Zheng Fan asked.

The Blind Man shook his head. “We can keep up with armor and weapons for the auxiliaries. It will be difficult for the slave soldiers. Besides, preparing weapons for them in advance would make management inconvenient. When we drive them against the walls, the men behind can simply pick up the blades, bows, and crossbows dropped by those who die in front and keep going.”

Count Pingye took a sip of goat’s milk and nodded.

The Blind Man continued, “This subordinate recommends delaying Gou Moli’s arrival at the front a little longer. Wait until we are actually ready to begin the assaults, then have Fan Li escort him here. Gou Moli understands those Savages and knows how to incite them into throwing their lives away. If we bring him over too early, this subordinate worries something may go wrong. Once he has already persuaded several batches of Savages to charge the walls and die, the chances of him creating trouble will become much smaller.”

“Mm. Next time, wait until I finish breakfast before discussing this kind of thing. You know how it is. I wake up refreshed, then after talking about all this first thing in the morning, I suddenly feel depressed.”

“Yes. This subordinate was careless.”

“No. I’m the one being melodramatic. Heh. Want anything else to eat?”

“This subordinate ate before coming. One of our mounted scouts captured a Chu soldier alive yesterday. I interrogated him this morning but got nothing useful.”

“Good. Then let’s take a walk outside.”

“Yes, Master.”

Count Pingye and the Blind Man left the main tent.

The meeting at the Prince’s command tent was not until dusk. Leaving now would be far too early.

“The weather has actually cooled down nicely these past few days.”

Count Pingye stretched as he spoke.

“Master, the rainy season is coming. Yingdu and the Wang River region should already have entered it. It should reach us soon as well.”

“I asked A’Cheng about that. Rain won’t affect us too much during a siege. Whatever effect it has will hit both sides, and the defenders may actually lose the use of some of their defensive equipment and preparations because of the rain. The Chu military camps will be more troublesome. Once the ground turns to mud and becomes a swamp, our horses won’t be able to build up speed at all. If the men dismount and charge as infantry, the mud will slow them down too.”

“Yes.”

“Also, prepare more medicine. Once the rainy season comes, people get sick easily.”

“Master can rest assured. This subordinate has already prepared it. I also sent men into the Tianduan Mountains to gather medicinal herbs. Supplying the entire army is impossible, but for our own force, it should just barely be enough.”

“I’ve always trusted you to handle things. Mm? What’s happening over there?”

Not far away, a group of laborers and auxiliaries had gathered together. From inside the crowd came the occasional sound of weeping.

Count Pingye beckoned to an armored soldier ahead. The soldier immediately hurried over.

“What happened?”

“Answering the Count, a laborer unit went out to cut timber yesterday and ran into a group of Chu mounted scouts. Several laborers were killed. Their bodies were only brought back today.”

“Oh.”

Count Pingye nodded. Liang Cheng had mentioned the incident to him yesterday.

The Chu were unwilling to curl up like turtles from the very beginning, so for now they were displaying the last of their stubbornness. Skirmishing between mounted scouts was one expression of that.

They did not send out large formations, only small groups of cavalry to harass and infiltrate. It represented no grand strategy. They were simply trying to disgust and irritate the Yan.

The Yan army was not without things to do either. Before attacking the fortifications, the first step was to compress the Chu army’s operating space. As Liang Cheng had said yesterday, ideally they would shave the Chu clean until only Zhennan Pass remained.

“The dead man was one of the leaders of the Gu County laborers. His son is in the auxiliary camp.”

“Oh.”

Count Pingye waved his hand, and the soldier immediately withdrew.

Then Count Pingye said, “Blind Man, do you know something? When I heard that just now, I felt absolutely nothing.”

“People inevitably die in war. Master has experienced too much and seen too much. Naturally, that is how it becomes.”

Count Pingye shook his head. “No. It shouldn’t be like this. What I mean is, back then, I was one of the laborers too.”

The Blind Man considered this briefly.

Was Master remembering his youth?

Count Pingye drew a breath and said, “Back then, Li Qian used two thousand laborers as bait, lured out the Sha Tuo Tribe, and then wiped them out. I’ve always remembered that.”

“Master feels that without noticing it, your mentality has gradually moved closer to that Commandery Princess’s? That was probably inevitable. Take right now. If sacrificing ten thousand laborers allowed us to swallow one of the Chu army’s main forces in a single bite, it would probably still be a profitable exchange, and we would probably still do it. Master has nothing to feel guilty about.”

“It isn’t guilt. I’ve always said what Li Qian did gave me my first real lesson in understanding this world. I’ve never hated her. Not once. I disliked her because she was a madwoman with powerful backing. I can be crazy myself, but I don’t like interacting with people who are just as crazy as I am. But I never criticized the choice she made back then or the way she did it. Because even when we were nothing more than ordinary people running a little tavern in Tiger Head City, somehow my ass had already planted itself on the side of the ruling class. I could actually understand her... Tell me, am I sick?”

“Master, that is perfectly human.”

“Is that merely an excuse for me to comfort myself?”

“Then what does Master want?”

“I just feel that my heart should not be this calm right now.”

“A general must inevitably have a heart of iron and stone.”

“You have to distinguish the details. I came from the laborer ranks myself, yet now I can see laborers die and feel nothing. That isn’t right. I used to hear phrases like ‘go deep among the masses’ and ‘become one with the masses’ and think they were empty slogans. Now that I really think about them, there’s a lot of truth there. I came from among the laborers, but I’ve completely forgotten my roots.”

“This...”

The Blind Man, who was usually so good at analyzing the human heart, suddenly discovered that he could not keep pace with Master’s thoughts.

In the end, he could only conclude that Master’s breakfast had perhaps been both too good and too filling.

“If I really become completely cold and icy, that doesn’t seem very interesting either, does it?”

“But a cold and icy Master is exactly the ideal Master we want.”

“Tsk. I haven’t had enough fun yet. If this life is a new beginning, even if it’s only a game, then since Heaven gave me the ridiculous good fortune to restart the whole thing, I ought to throw myself into it completely. I should see more of the scenery I never had time to see in my previous life and experience more of what I never had time to experience.”

The Blind Man was beginning to suffer.

He finally understood.

This was pure melodrama generated by eating too well and too much for breakfast!

And in truth, the Blind Man was not wrong.

There was nothing to do right now. The military conference was still far away. The moment a person became idle, he began digging for sorrow and exploring sentimentality.

“It makes no sense. One by one, all of you are becoming more human, going from flat characters to three-dimensional people. Why am I the one who has to go from three-dimensional back toward flat? That isn’t fair.”

“Yes, Master. It truly is unfair,” the Blind Man replied perfunctorily.

“I want to embrace life more fully.”

“Yes, Master. Life is, after all, so beautiful,” the Blind Man continued perfunctorily.

Count Pingye tapped his own forehead.

“Ah. Come to think of it, the man is dead and I’m standing here babbling endlessly about myself. Isn’t that another kind of indifference?”

The Blind Man closed his eyes.

“Laborers go out to cut timber for the needs of the army camp. That is one of their duties. Just as soldiers die on the battlefield, this is an entirely normal outcome. Master could go over and comfort them, raise their morale, and turn their grief and sorrow toward the Chu. Besides, it was indeed the Chu who killed the man.”

Count Pingye shook his head. “But today, I don’t want to do that.”

“Then please instruct this subordinate.”

“I’m making things difficult for you.”

“Master, saying that makes us sound like strangers.”

“You really want to hit me right now, don’t you?”

The Blind Man fell silent.

“Do I look extremely punchable right now?”

The Blind Man nodded.

“Mm. You’re blind.”

“This subordinate can smell it.”

“Heh.”

Count Pingye shook his head, then asked, “You said you interrogated a Chu mounted scout this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Still alive?”

“He is being held.”

“Bring him over. Didn’t you say the dead man has a son in the auxiliary camp? Let the son kill that Chu soldier with his own hands. What does all this crying look like?”

“Yes, Master.”

Before long, the Chu soldier was brought over.

Yan, Jin, Qian, and Chu had all inherited their dress and hairstyles from Great Xia. In that sense, they came from the same source.

But across the long centuries that followed, each had developed its own changes.

Yan people favored simplicity and had simplified the original Great Xia hairstyle. Qian people were fond of elaborate coiled hair. Chu men, whether nobles or commoners, liked to leave the hair on both sides of their heads deliberately long after reaching adulthood. Ideally, once they removed their hats, the side locks would cover their ears, and the longer the better. The length elsewhere was less restricted.

So although this Chu mounted scout had been stripped of his armor, his hairstyle alone made his identity unmistakable.

One of Count Pingye’s personal guards stepped forward, pointed at the several laborer corpses laid upon racks, and asked:

“Which one has a son here?”

Many eyes immediately fell on Guo Dong.

Guo Dong took two steps forward, wiped the tears from the corner of his eye, and said:

“Me.”

The guard drew his saber and threw it onto the ground. Then he pointed at the Chu soldier being restrained behind him by two comrades.

“The Count said: a man does not shed tears lightly. On the battlefield, the sons of Yan shed blood, not tears. Whoever makes me shed tears, I make him shed blood.”

Once he finished, the guard took two steps back and exchanged glances with the two men restraining the prisoner.

He let out a quiet breath of relief.

He had expanded the Count’s message himself.

A personal guard needed to possess that kind of awareness when relaying words.

Of course, if he did it well, it added flowers to brocade. If he did it badly, it was drawing legs on a snake. When conveying words to important figures, there was no room for him to improvise like this. But before a crowd of auxiliaries and laborers, he could.

On the way to fetch the Chu soldier, he had already been composing the lines in his head. Delivering them this smoothly now had not been easy.

Guo Dong stared blankly at the saber on the ground, while the surrounding laborers and auxiliaries began searching with their eyes.

At last, they spotted the man in plain black clothes standing in the distance.

The Count.

It was the Count!

Guo Dong swallowed.

He picked up the saber, turned his head, and looked once at his father’s corpse lying on the rack.

Then he roared at the Chu man before him and hacked downward.

The first blow went wide.

The edge struck the man near the shoulder blade. When Guo Dong tried to pull the saber back out, it stuck.

A veteran in that situation would probably have gripped the hilt with both hands, planted a foot against the man, and kicked him away while wrenching the saber free.

Guo Dong had no experience killing people.

His recent training had consisted of running drills and holding shields.

So he tried several times and still could not pull the saber out. The Chu soldier screamed in agony, which only made Guo Dong even more frantic and furious.

At last, Guo Dong simply threw himself into the prisoner.

He knocked the man down, abandoned the saber completely, and wrapped both hands around his throat.

He squeezed.

Squeezed.

Squeezed!

The Chu soldier struggled.

Then his body spasmed twice in quick succession and went still.

Guo Dong climbed off the man with his mouth hanging open.

His gaze returned to the black figure in the distance.

Thud!

Guo Dong dropped to his knees.

He shouted:

“Count! Count! Guo Dong of Gu County is willing to die in your service!”

Xu An stood nearby watching him.

He knew exactly what kind of person the tentmate beside him was.

Lazy.

Cowardly.

And rather self-important, always believing himself cleverer than everyone else.

But here, in this moment and this atmosphere, Xu An could feel the sincerity inside Guo Dong’s shout.

His father was dead.

His mother and crippled second brother were still far away in Gu County of Yan.

Here in eastern Jin, Guo Dong had already worshiped Count Pingye.

And now, Count Pingye was the only thing he had left to lean on.

Many auxiliaries and laborers around them also dropped to their knees and shouted toward Count Pingye:

“We are willing to die for the Count!”

“We are willing to die for the Count!”

In the distance, Count Pingye watched all this and merely said calmly to the Blind Man beside him:

“Ah. Auxiliaries really are just auxiliaries. Liang Cheng arranged things correctly. Better keep having them practice shields and pushing scaling ladders.”

Count Pingye felt a little melancholy.

He should probably forget about raising a grand banner proclaiming an “army of one hundred thousand.”

Apart from the sixteen thousand combat troops reorganized and trained at Snow Sea Pass and sent here as his core force, the fighting strength of every other component still needed a question mark beside it.

A very guilty-looking question mark.

So more soldiers were not necessarily better, especially when there was no way to improve their quality. Expanding troop numbers too far would not increase combat power proportionally. It would simply crush the logistics.

Fortunately, this was a siege.

Siege warfare made war more brutal.

It also made it simpler.

You needed lives to fill the gaps.

You needed living people to do the work.

“Master didn’t hear them cheering?” the Blind Man asked.

“I heard them.”

“Master had no intention of putting on a show, but the effect of this performance is far better than if you had personally walked over and shown your face. This subordinate is beginning to admire Master. Is this perhaps what Tian Wujing makes the soldiers under him feel?”

“Old Tian did tell me not to keep believing those stories about generals eating with their soldiers or sucking pus from a soldier’s wound. Those stories sound reasonable, but they were written by literati who knew nothing about armies. Still, I genuinely wasn’t playing tricks just now.”

Count Pingye raised both hands to display his innocence.

“The highest technique is having no technique,” the Blind Man sighed. “That is the true winning move.”

“No. That isn’t it,” Count Pingye denied.

“Oh?”

“When you stand on a stage, even if you are not acting, the audience sitting below still watches with the mentality of people seeing a play.”

“Incisive.”

“Enough. I’ve indulged in sentimentality long enough. Are the booklets ready?”

“A’Cheng mentioned them to this subordinate yesterday. They are already packed.”

“Good. I’ll take them to the Prince’s command tent later.”

“Will the Sword Saint accompany you?”

“Forget it. Ever since that enlightenment, the Sword Saint has looked a little too eager to try his sword. I’m afraid that if I bring him to the command tent, he won’t be able to stop himself from challenging Old Tian first. Better take A’Ming. Speaking of which, where is A’Ming?”

“Probably asleep somewhere. Oh, most likely inside his coffin.”

Whenever people recounted Count Pingye’s deeds, they often remembered one particular detail:

Whenever Count Pingye went to a major battle, he brought a coffin with him.

In the early years, that coffin had carried Sha Tuo Queshi.

Now, while recovering from his injuries, A’Ming had grown far too comfortable sleeping in a coffin. So this time he had brought one along to use as a bed.

Considering A’Ming would need to block arrows for him on the battlefield, Zheng Fan had approved it.

After the walk, Count Pingye returned to the command tent and began reviewing detailed inventories of grain, supplies, weapons, and equipment.

Reading them was not particularly useful.

But with a major war about to begin, he at least needed to create the feeling that he was doing something serious.

That afternoon, Count Pingye gathered his things and left camp with A’Ming and several dozen riders.

As they passed the auxiliary camp outside, where the men were continuing their shield drills, the cadence of their shouted counts abruptly doubled in volume.

What had happened that morning had already spread throughout the camp.

For the soldiers originally from Snow Sea Pass, Count Pingye’s behavior was something they had long since grown accustomed to, yet they were still moved by it.

The newly arrived Yan and Jin laborers, meanwhile, had developed the feeling that a man would die for someone who truly recognized him.

The example was simply too perfect.

A father had been killed by the Chu.

Count Pingye threw over a Chu soldier and let the son kill him in revenge.

Open and upright.

Grievance repaid with vengeance.

It was almost a replay of Count Pingye stealing the princess.

Once people in the camp heard the story, every one of them found it exhilarating.

Count Pingye and the Blind Man had previously discussed something similar.

Why was it that whenever Zheng Fan casually threw out a little bowl of motivational chicken soup, men like Hero Chen or the Sword Saint could immediately gain some insight from it?

They had reached two conclusions.

First, those men were already exceptional, dragons and phoenixes among men, holders of protagonist templates.

Second, they were comparatively pure.

Like a cup of clear water. Add a single drop of ink, and the color changed immediately.

Count Pingye himself had drunk far too much chicken soup in his previous life. By now he had almost developed immunity to every poison.

The same principle applied to these soldiers.

So pure.

This was not even scheming.

Count Pingye had been too lazy to perform today and had merely stumbled into an unexpectedly good result.

But even if it had been scheming, even if it had been a show, so what?

When everything was stripped down, whether it was Emperor Yan high above, the Prince of Jingnan, the Savage King, or Zheng Fan himself, what they did was nothing more than persuade people to die for the ambitions of kings and lords.

If people were going to die anyway, then letting them march to their deaths willingly actually seemed a little more humane.

The Yan army’s camps were broadly divided into three major sectors.

The central camp where Tian Wujing personally sat was unquestionably the strongest and formed the absolute core of the army campaigning against Chu.

Count Pingye’s eastern camp formed one wing.

Beside him was another camp of Zhenbei troops with roughly fifteen thousand combat soldiers.

After Li Bao died in battle, his original command had been split into three pieces.

One part went to Li Bao’s son, who also inherited his father’s post of Chief Commander along with his noble title.

One part went to Li Bao’s son-in-law.

The final part was transformed directly into the permanent garrison of Quhe City.

But after Li Bao’s death, both his son and son-in-law saw their standing in the army shrink dramatically.

So in the two years since the Battle of Wang River, neither force had received much replenishment.

They had acquired the distinct air of children loved by neither grandmother nor uncle.

Count Pingye’s neighbor was Li Bao’s son-in-law.

While Li Bao had still lived, the man had used the surname Li.

After Li Bao’s death, he changed back to his original surname, Gongsun.

His name was Gongsun Zhi.

Count Pingye’s other neighbor was named Gong Wang, a pure Jin man.

Very few Jin generals in the Jin lands were permitted to command an independent camp outright.

The Yan were conquerors, and they had always maintained a degree of vigilance toward Jin troops.

The Gong family had been hereditary retainers of the Situ Clan.

Years earlier, when Situ Lei was still building prestige at Zhennan Pass, Gong Wang had already been one of his generals and could be considered a true core retainer.

After Situ Lei died, Great Cheng passed to Yan in accordance with his final edict.

Gong Wang surrendered to the Great Yan Dynasty as well.

Situ Lei had specifically named Gong Wang in a separate final message to Emperor Yan, advising that he was trustworthy and could be used.

Together with the court’s own assessment, that recommendation ultimately allowed Gong Wang, despite being a Jin man, to continue commanding a force of his own under Yan rule.

If Count Pingye remembered correctly, Gong Wang was nearly fifty.

He could already be considered an old general.

When Count Pingye left his camp for the central command tent, he did not arrange to travel together with either neighboring commander.

This was not a school outing where everyone held hands after class to go catch loaches together.

Besides, the different camps were separated by real distances.

There was no reason to gather in one group and give some Chu force that had penetrated deeply into their lines the chance to sweep up every commander at once.

By the time Count Pingye reached the central command area, he discovered that he had actually arrived rather late.

As usual, before the Prince of Jingnan held a military conference, everyone first ate.

The food was not refined.

This was no victory banquet.

There was flatbread, sauce, and vegetable soup.

Almost every Yan or Jin general present held at least the rank of Chief Commander.

Inside his own camp, each man was the sort whose word was law.

Yet here they all looked like old farmers from the fields, squatting on the ground, taking one bite of flatbread and one sip of soup.

Whenever they saw someone familiar, they showed their front teeth and chuckled.

Count Pingye’s arrival immediately drew a great many eyes.

Many commanders came over on their own initiative to greet him.

That was prestige.

Prestige meant people beneath your level naturally looked up to you, while men at your own level could not avoid respecting you.

Men younger than you instinctively treated you as the standard.

Men older than you not only felt embarrassed to lean on seniority before you, but had to tread carefully in the hope that someday you might lift up their sons, nephews, or younger descendants.

Count Pingye first exchanged greetings around the gathering, then said:

“This Zheng is untalented, but I wrote a few notes on the essential methods of siege warfare and points worth remembering. I did not do it to show off or seize the limelight. Our Yan army has always excelled in field battles and been weaker in sieges, so I can only ask everyone not to laugh at my clumsy effort.”

There were two especially efficient ways to offend people and lose friends.

One was to flaunt how well you were living in front of them.

The other was to openly display your own strengths and talents.

So modest words had to be spoken first.

Otherwise, after these booklets were handed out, people might very well mock him behind his back.

At that moment, Li Fusheng, who was squatting deepest inside the gathering eating flatbread, shouted:

“Little Brother Zheng, what are you being polite for? Everyone here fought his way out of a sea of soldiers. Who doesn’t understand the principle that one incompetent general can work an entire army to death? You received our Prince’s true teaching, and you wrote the *Zheng Treatise on War* yourself. When it comes to fighting, I’m convinced by your ability. Come, come, give me one.”

Li Fusheng clapped the crumbs from his hands, walked over, took a booklet, and raised it.

“Gentlemen, whose soldiers aren’t precious? They’re all boys who rolled through battlefields with us. A booklet like this might save some of them from spilling blood that never needed to be spilled. Besides, I, Li Fusheng, have personally seen Little Brother Zheng’s skill at siege warfare. There’s nothing to say against it. Let me say something some of you may not enjoy hearing. In the past, when it came to war, apart from Prince Zhenbei and our Prince, I never submitted to anyone. Now there’s one more. Him. I’m convinced! Stop standing there. Come take one. What do those literati call it, a teacher for a single word? Hahaha! We military brutes don’t need all that sour ceremony. Just treat it as owing Little Brother Zheng a round of wine and a night at the Red Tents. Once the war is over, remember to invite him out and show him a good time!”

The Chief Commanders immediately surged forward to take booklets.

Every man thanked Zheng Fan in turn.

At that moment, the flap of the Prince’s command tent was raised.

A personal guard announced:

“His Highness orders all commanders to enter.”

“Yes!”

“Yes!”

...

At that same moment, far, far away from eastern Jin, at the seat of Liang Circuit in the State of Qian’s Three Frontiers, an urgent dispatch arrived from Chen Circuit.

When the messenger entered the city, five-colored flags were fixed behind his back, signifying military intelligence of the highest urgency.

The gates were opened ahead of schedule.

He galloped directly through the city.

In the end, the letter landed on the desk of Yao Zizhan, Governor-General of Qian’s Three Frontiers.

At the time, Yao Zizhan himself was teaching in the rear courtyard of the yamen.

He really was teaching.

Among his students were children only just beginning their studies, as well as young men already around twenty.

Not long after taking office as Governor-General of the Three Frontiers, this Literary Saint of Qian had opened a private school.

Every student he accepted was the son of a military family from Qian’s Three Frontiers.

The ruler of Qian had begun raising the status of military officers, but how could Qian’s ingrained social and official culture of honoring civil officials while suppressing the military change in a day?

Even the Son of Heaven could not remake “all beneath Heaven inside people’s hearts” in an instant.

So to enter Teacher Yao’s school was an enormous honor.

Later, on a man’s official career, it would be an exceptionally brilliant line in his record.

That was true even for sons of literati.

For sons of military families, whose status normally stood several levels lower, the opportunity was enough to make them frantic with envy.

Yao Zizhan knew perfectly well that he did not understand military affairs.

So after becoming Governor-General of the Three Frontiers, he never interfered with battlefield matters.

Whenever something involved military intelligence or operations, he sent men to consult Old Lord Zhong and let him make the decision.

Grand Commandant Yang, after returning to court, had soon been appointed Prefect of Chu Commandery, which lay close to the Three Frontiers.

From time to time, he also helped advise them.

Yao Zizhan focused on teaching, gathering loyalty, bringing the generals of the Three Frontiers into alignment, and smoothing over the conflicts among them.

In truth, what he did was no different from what Count Pingye did at Snow Sea Pass.

Let professionals handle professional matters.

And since Yao Zizhan took office, the atmosphere throughout Qian’s Three Frontiers had visibly tightened and improved.

He really had done very well.

When a servant came to report urgent military intelligence, Yao Zizhan hurried back to his signing room without even taking time to change clothes.

He tore open the letter.

His eyes swept over the extremely brief message inside.

Yao Zizhan’s whole body seemed struck by lightning.

He staggered.

Then collapsed backward into the grand armchair behind him, face completely drained of color.

He cried out:

“Heaven does not bless my Great Qian! Heaven does not protect my Great Qian!”

[End of Chapter 510]