Chapter 959: High Savages

“The Savages are coming!”

“The Savages are coming! Run!”

Amid the screams of Chu farmers, a band of Savage cavalry burst out from the northeast. There were not many of them, only a little over twenty riders. Apart from their leader, who wore a crude suit of leather armor, the rest were dressed entirely in animal hides.

Compared with their lack of armor, their sabers were standardized issue. The bows and arrows strapped across their backs were also recognizably of old Yan military make.

In the early years, apart from all flying the Black Dragon Banner and favoring black, Great Yan’s armies had been a bewildering patchwork when it came to standardized weapons and armor.

The Zhenbei Army had its own system. The Jingnan Army had its own style. Local forces each possessed their own characteristics.

Even now, that remained true.

Maintaining an enormous army was already extraordinarily difficult. Reequipping one was even more expensive. Armor and certain specialized weapons, such as horse lances, could be treated as family heirlooms and passed from grandfather to father to son.

Yet there was one place whose ruler had always pursued military equipment with almost unreasonable exactitude. He also happened to enjoy standing atop a review platform and admiring the sight of an army whose appearance was perfectly uniform.

Eastern Jin’s large-scale reequipment program had actually begun six or seven years earlier.

The foundries outside Fengxin City had long since expanded to a frightening scale and developed highly mature forging techniques. Add the various mineral deposits constantly being discovered in the Tianduan Mountains and even deep inside the snowfields, and only then did Prince Pingxi Residence possess enough capacity to reequip eastern Jin’s entire regular army.

In truth, the Savages had always been living atop a treasure vault. The more godforsaken a place seemed, the more likely something valuable lay buried beneath it.

Unfortunately, the Savages lacked both the ability to survey and mine those resources and the skills needed to smelt and forge them.

For the Demon Kings, neither was a problem.

In earlier years, Great Yan’s Ministry of War, Ministry of Revenue, and even Ministry of Works had sent eastern Jin more than one official request, exhausting every polite phrase they knew in the hope of purchasing military equipment.

In the end, aside from three hundred sets the Regent Prince gifted to the Emperor’s personal guards for appearances, they failed to pry loose so much as a single additional suit.

Even the Emperor could do nothing about it. Eastern Jin’s commerce might be flourishing, but military equipment was never permitted onto the open market. It was contraband in the truest sense. Besides, eastern Jin’s own army could barely get enough. How could there possibly be surplus for export?

Moreover, eastern Jin nominally belonged to Great Yan, but in practice its relationship with the court resembled a tributary arrangement. On festivals and holidays, both sides exchanged gifts.

The court sent eastern Jin neither military pay nor grain, while eastern Jin had never shown much interest in fawning over its nominal Emperor.

If their Prince had not kept everyone suppressed, if Chu had not remained next door as a threat, and if unifying All Xia had not become an almost unspoken common objective, the eastern Jin generals and middle-ranking officers might well have wanted nothing more than to cross the Wang River and gallop their horses beneath the walls of Yanjing.

The great reequipment program naturally left enormous quantities of obsolete weapons and armor behind. Most of it was redistributed downward layer by layer.

For example, when the two Qin brothers became auxiliaries, the military equipment Old Qin obtained from the local fort Lieutenant came from this accumulated stock.

As for the Savages, Gou Moli’s direct Savage army at Fan City naturally received full equipment. There was no reason to station men in such a dangerous place and then skimp on their gear.

But these temporary Savage auxiliaries drawn through the pass were another matter entirely.

No one was going to give them good equipment.

They were cannon fodder by definition.

Even the most basic auxiliary equipment had to be earned with military merit.

Prince Pingxi Residence’s attitude was simple:

If you wanted the dogs to work hard, you had to keep them hungry.

Serve the Residence well and there would not only be weapons and armor to earn, but other rewards too.

The greatest reward of all... was Standard-Household status.

For nearly ten years, the Residence had spared no effort in enriching and elevating the spiritual civilization of the snowfields.

The results had been outstanding.

A great many Savages had already begun to understand their own identity in a new way:

The stars were lowly.

The cold wind was lowly.

And they themselves... were lowly too.

In its earlier years, Great Yan had followed a kind of Great Xia ethnic chauvinism:

Those not of our people could never share our heart.

Back then, the Commandery Princess of the Zhenbei Army would casually go exterminate other people’s tribes. Li Fusheng liked wiping out tribes for amusement. Those were perfect examples.

Even Prince Jingnan, when leading troops into the snowfields, had followed a policy of slaughter.

Prince Pingxi Residence did not favor that kind of physical extermination.

More accurately, there were two ways to destroy a people.

The first was the simplest and least profitable: physical removal.

The second was the cheapest and most efficient: spiritual annihilation.

First destroy their faith.

Then help them rebuild a new “faith.”

You might clearly be trampling and exploiting them, yet they would accept it gladly, kneel with complete sincerity, and cry from the heart:

“My old father!”

The Blind Man was an expert at this.

Over the years, his repeated frustrations in the great cause of rebellion had somehow failed to drive him mad or sink him into depression largely because he had poured so much energy into the snowfields.

Today, many Savages on the snowfields had already come to believe that their hairstyles, their language, and even their skin color were filthy.

Only by entering Snow Sea Pass, becoming a Standard Household, and becoming one of the Prince’s people could they obtain true salvation.

This strategy worked especially well when there was a vast gap in basic material living conditions between the populations on the two sides.

The “stuffed mantou” designed by the Prince already held tremendous attraction for commoners throughout All Xia.

For the people of the snowfields... the temptation was even stronger.

Two years earlier, Chen Daole had personally submitted a secret memorial praising the Prince’s far-reaching design.

He had even pointed out that those mantou were not merely stuffed.

They were stuffed with blood.

In the memorial, he gave the Residence’s entire snowfield policy a single name: the “human-blood mantou” policy.

When the Prince himself read the memorial... for once, he genuinely did not know what to say.

The Blind Man, standing beside him, smoothed things over by saying Chen Daole had learned under him and had finally understood the essence of the teaching.

The student had graduated.

...

“KILL!”

Mandun led his men in slaughtering the Chu civilians.

After killing every Chu person they could see, they dismounted and cut one ear from each corpse, stuffing the trophies into their sacks.

Those ears were proof of military merit.

They would use them to claim rewards from the Residence.

Because of the present battlefield situation, Prince Pingxi Residence did not worry in the slightest that these Savage auxiliaries might kill civilians and pretend they were enemy soldiers.

Because right now... they were being rewarded for killing civilians in the first place.

“Back!”

Mandun had already spotted the silhouettes of Chu troops not far away.

The military merit for killing actual Chu soldiers was tempting, but Mandun understood that taking what remained of his men into a head-on clash with regular Chu troops would be foolish.

A month earlier, he had commanded more than fifty men.

Now fewer than half remained.

He felt no particular regret.

A portion of the military merit earned by his subordinates was credited upward to him.

At this point... he was getting closer and closer to becoming a Standard Household.

After the Savages withdrew, the Chu soldiers who arrived a step too late found the corpses of commoners sprawled across the ground, each missing one ear.

The officer leading them was so furious that he drove his saber deep into the earth just to vent some of the rage boiling inside him.

For nearly a month, large numbers of Savages had flooded Moya, Wenqiu, and Shangyang Commanderies.

It was autumn harvest season.

They specifically targeted commoners trying to bring in the crops.

Although the Chu army was following a strategy of contraction and defense against eastern Jin’s main forces, it had never stopped hunting and intercepting these Savage cavalrymen within its own lines.

But they were like weeds.

Cut down one batch... and another soon appeared.

Most infuriating of all, at the beginning the Savages had naively imagined themselves capable of wrestling directly with Chu’s army and had fought several head-on engagements.

After suffering for it, they learned quickly.

Now, the instant they saw Chu regulars, they fled early.

Once the Chu troops moved away, they circled quietly back.

The moment they found commoners trying to harvest crops... bows came off their backs and arrows went onto the string.

The Chu army had organized several cavalry-heavy pursuit operations.

But after fleeing, the Savages had also learned how to “invite the gentleman into the jar.”

More than once, Chu cavalry chased them and chased them... only to run straight into rested eastern Jin regular cavalry waiting ahead.

The results... were naturally not ideal.

...

Mandun led the men who remained with him wandering through the countryside for several more days.

Once they had collected enough ears for this batch, they finally withdrew from the “hunting zone” and returned to the rear.

The so-called rear, however, was still inside Moya Commandery.

More accurately... one quarter of Moya Commandery was now completely controlled by the Yan army.

Because the Chu did not dare attack proactively, eastern Jin had mobilized large numbers of laborers to build military forts and fortified camps.

Some cities the Chu had previously abandoned were now being reclaimed and repaired by the Yan.

First, they were needed for the current campaign.

Second, once built or repaired, these facilities would not be disposable. They could continue serving a purpose in the future.

Third, and most importantly... if there was no battle to fight, everyone would simply be sitting around eating for free.

Better to keep them working.

When Mandun’s group was still some distance from the military fort, he signaled his men to dismount and lead their horses.

Before long, an eastern Jin cavalry patrol rode out to inspect and verify their identities.

Only after everything checked out were Mandun and the others allowed inside.

One section of the fort had been designated specifically for counting the Savages’ trophies.

Their corresponding rewards were issued there directly.

The two rewards most popular among the Savages were simple.

The first allowed military merit to be exchanged for Standard-Household points.

Accumulate enough points and one could become a Standard Household, with permission to bring one’s wife and children into eastern Jin and register there.

The second allowed military merit to be exchanged for Trade Vouchers.

These vouchers let them purchase goods exported by Prince Pingxi Residence to the snowfields at half price.

By now, the Residence had established nine licensed markets across the snowfields.

They sold an enormous variety of goods, many of them necessities for life there.

Savages who possessed ambition, or small independent groups who entered the war on their own, usually pursued the first reward.

Savage contingents gathered and sent by entire tribes tended to prefer the second.

Mandun dumped all the ears he and his subordinates had collected onto an empty table.

Three clerks were responsible for counting them.

Two other counting stations stood nearby, both currently occupied by other Savage groups.

A man with no ears walked between the tables carrying a cup of tea and inspecting the work.

When he reached Mandun’s table, Mandun immediately bent low in salute.

“Good haul this time. Almost there?” Guo Dong took a sip of hot tea and casually struck up conversation.

“Replying to my lord, almost. One more trip outside should be enough,” Mandun answered with extreme humility.

“Congratulations.”

Guo Dong offered the polite remark and moved on to inspect the next table.

Logically speaking, having an earless man supervise the counting of ears should have created a bizarre impression.

No one here dared treat him lightly.

His position in army logistics was genuinely high.

Many people also knew he had a good brother who now held a senior military post and oversaw military discipline.

Guo Dong felt no discomfort at all.

His ears and nose had been cut away on Nian Yao’s orders.

Back then, he had been hung from a flagpole and left on the edge of death.

The Prince had ultimately arrived with troops and saved his life.

Some people who suffered visible disabilities spent the rest of their lives shrinking beneath other people’s gazes, becoming insecure and sensitive.

Guo Dong had gone the other direction.

The experience had made him more mature and open.

Originally, he had managed the granaries north of Zhennan Pass.

Now that war had begun, he had been transferred into the army and placed in charge of one section of logistics.

Looking at the piles of Chu ears before him... he felt no twisted pleasure.

But he felt no sympathy either.

At that moment, one of his subordinates approached.

“My lord, General Xu has arrived.”

“Oh.”

Guo Dong set down his tea and walked over.

When Xu An saw him, he asked:

“Tired?”

“Having fewer pieces attached to me makes me lighter. How could I be tired?”

“Heh. I just came over to handle two disputes among the Savages.”

Several Savage groups had actually started preying on each other over ears.

That tendency had to be crushed hard before it spread.

“Handled?”

“Mm. Cut off a few heads. Then I came by to see you.”

“Good.”

At that moment, one of Guo Dong’s men brought over a sack as previously instructed.

“Your sister-in-law made roasted flour. She put plenty of ingredients in. Take it and eat.” Guo Dong handed the sack to Xu An.

Xu An accepted it without hesitation.

This did not count as bribery.

Once a man entered the regular army, Prince Pingxi Residence provided everything for him while on campaign.

Even so, families were still allowed to send things through intermediaries.

Every so often, army clerks also helped write batches of letters that designated couriers carried home.

“How much longer do we have to wait?” Guo Dong asked.

“What?” Xu An smiled.

“Heh. What else could I mean?”

“That’s a matter for the people above us to decide. More accurately, it’s the Prince’s decision. Besides, the Chu are the ones hiding and refusing to come out. All we can do is keep waiting.”

“Pity all the grain we burn through every day,” Guo Dong sighed.

“Human lives are more valuable than grain,” Xu An said.

Guo Dong shook his head.

“I’m surprised to hear that from you.”

Xu An’s parents had once been captured as “two-legged sheep.”

He had lived through a time when human life was worthless.

Xu An raised a hand and patted his bracer.

“Back then, our lives weren’t worth anything. Now the Prince says our lives are valuable.”

“Oh?”

“Anyway, we’re not short of grain,” Xu An said.

“Of course we aren’t. I just hate seeing it wasted.” Guo Dong rolled his neck. “I spent too many years managing granaries. I’ve grown attached.”

Xu An patted Guo Dong on the shoulder.

“It was stockpiled precisely so we could use it now. Think about the Chu across from us instead. Their grain should be tighter than ours. We’ve practically ruined the autumn harvest of three whole commanderies.”

Then Xu An bent down and moved close to Guo Dong’s ear.

“In future, don’t casually ask people questions like that.”

“What do I have to fear?”

Guo Dong genuinely had little to fear.

His background was impeccable.

His father had died at Chu hands.

He himself had been tortured by the Chu.

The Prince had once even bestowed upon him the title of “Tomb-Raiding Commandant.”

The badge still hung from his waist.

“What about the people around you?” Xu An asked.

“You mean...”

“Some nails hid very well before. Now they can’t keep hiding. We need to comb through everything again.”

“All right. I understand.”

“Mm. I’m leaving. Take care of yourself.”

“You too.”

When Mandun saw Guo Dong returning, he immediately smiled obsequiously.

Guo Dong nodded to him and picked up his tea again.

It had gone cold.

He did not care.

He kept drinking.

Once the counting and verification were complete and military merit had been calculated, Mandun happily led his men toward the mess area.

The cook camp was crowded.

Everyone needed to present his own identification badge to receive the day’s food.

Because this was a logistics fort with people coming and going constantly, mealtimes were not fixed.

When Mandun and his men entered, they happened to see several Savages who had just finished eating sitting on wooden stumps nearby.

One of them, a scar-faced man, was picking his teeth.

Those Savages... were wearing brocade!

Mandun immediately led his subordinates over and prostrated themselves before the Brocade-Clad Savages.

“Heh.”

The Brocade-Clad Savages showed contemptuous expressions.

There were Savages among the Prince’s Brocade-Clad personal guards.

Not many.

With Savage auxiliaries now being employed on a broad scale, members of the Brocade-Clad personal guards were frequently dispatched to inspect logistics camps like this one.

Naturally, Brocade-Clad guards of Savage origin were the ones most often sent.

They themselves... loved coming.

That brocade robe was not merely a symbol of honor inside the eastern Jin army.

Before members of their former people... it brought ten times, a hundred times the pleasure.

Watching these Savages risk interception by Chu troops while fighting in the crudest weapons and equipment imaginable, desperately scraping together pitiful scraps of military merit... only made the Brocade-Clad Savages feel prouder of themselves.

And more grateful than ever that years ago they had voluntarily abandoned the so-called stars and their traditional hairstyles early, swearing loyalty to eastern Jin and to the Prince.

Now the snowfield pastures, the snowfield people, even the sunlight on the snowfields... could make them feel physically uncomfortable.

Everything there seemed filled with backwardness and ignorance.

Only in eastern Jin... even the wind seemed sweet.

They could not be bothered to acknowledge Mandun and the others kneeling before them.

What qualification did these lowly Savage commoners possess to speak to them?

Mandun and his men did not dare act presumptuously.

They rose cautiously, still bent at the waist, and walked past the Brocade-Clad Savages one by one.

Every pair of eyes... was filled with envy.

To become men like them... was the greatest aspiration of their lives.

More importantly... it was an aspiration visible with their own eyes.

Two years earlier, Gou Moli had briefly returned to Fengxin City to report on his duties.

The Blind Man invited him to drink.

At the table, the Blind Man said:

“The Savages of eastern Jin are becoming more and more like our own people.”

The former Savage King, loosened by drink, asked in reply:

“Are the Savages of eastern Jin... and the Savages of the snowfields... still the same people?”

[End of Chapter 959]