Chapter 344: Five Thousand Phantom Warhorses

Cen Yunhan was slightly taken aback.

Lin Qian said, "Let's go take a look at the finished goods warehouse."

"This way, please." Song Yingxing led the way.

The group left the oil-pressing workshop and arrived at a new factory building, situated on slightly higher ground to keep river dampness from seeping in.

Inside, the floor was paved with bluestone slabs, and at intervals along the walls were piles of quicklime.

Wooden crates were neatly stacked two layers high, about as tall as a man, with workers constantly moving them in and out.

The crates were crude—just boards and wooden wedges knocked together haphazardly, with fine gaps visible between the planks. Whatever they held clearly couldn't be camellia oil. Lin Qian had a crate brought over, and a worker pried it open with a crowbar. Inside was a layer of wax paper, and when that was unfolded, neatly arranged blocks of earth-yellow material were revealed.

Song Yingxing took one out and displayed it: "This is the factory's final product. It's called soap."

The chieftains looked at it—the soap was angular and well-formed, palm-sized, uniform in texture, like a piece of amber.

Cen Maoren asked, "Is it a soap ball?"

Song Yingxing said, "The function is similar, but it's easier to use than a soap ball and stores better."

A soap ball was the common cleaning implement used by the common folk of the southwest—made from plant ash mixed with grease, plus rice water or fine yellow clay and other assorted ingredients. The shapes and sizes varied, the color was mostly gray-brown, the interior porous, the surface pitted, the texture soft and loose. In essence, it was soap that hadn't fully undergone saponification.

The biggest problem with native soap balls was that they didn't store well. In ventilated conditions they'd go bad within a month or two; carried on campaign and soaked with sweat, they'd soften, crumble, and ooze sticky liquid within five or six days.

As for the thin lather, weak bubbling, skin irritation, hand damage, and poor cleaning power—compared to the storage problem, those were all minor flaws. Song Yingxing had someone bring a basin of clean water and a towel, then said, "Compared to native soap balls, the feel of this soap is much better too. Who wants to try?" The chieftains hesitated, so Song Yingxing added, "Don't worry, one of these is very cheap—the cost is about twelve wen."

This price had been calculated using modern accounting methods, already including raw material costs, equipment depreciation, and labor expenses.

In the future, as output expanded and the technology improved, costs would drop even further.

By comparison, a native soap ball of equal weight cost about four to five wen—the soap was more than twice as expensive.

But the soap's performance was a solid improvement of nearly tenfold!

At that time, the upper class of the Great Xia used fragrant soap cakes as their cleaning implement. Simply put, these were refined native soap balls—meticulously crafted by skilled artisans using excellent oils and alkalis, with large amounts of Chinese herbs and fragrances added. One cake could cost one tael, and better ones could sell for five taels, or even ten. The soap's performance was far superior to fragrant soap cakes, and by comparison, its cost was cheaper by a factor of thousands or tens of thousands.

Cen Maoren volunteered: "I'll try it."

He wet his hands, worked up the soap—at first the cake felt very dry, but soon fine, dense foam surged forth. When he dipped his hands in the water, the foam dispersed; after scrubbing a few times and pulling them out, his hands felt slightly taut, clean enough to squeak when rubbed together, and he could smell a faint fragrance of camellia oil.

"How is it?" a chieftain asked.

Cen Maoren stared at his hands, savoring the feeling for a long while, then said, "Strange! This is truly strange! It doesn't feel like it washed through, yet it's clean beyond belief—truly strange!" Song Yingxing explained, "What you call 'washed through' is actually the sensation of tightness left on the hands after using a native soap ball, because it leaves a lot of alkalinity behind.

Great Xia soap neutralizes most of the alkalinity, so after washing, it naturally feels smooth and moist."

"Really? Let me try too!" Another chieftain stepped forward eagerly, reaching straight into the water Cen Maoren had used. After washing, he stared at his hands and said in disbelief, "This feeling is incredible!"

"I'll try too!" Another chieftain came forward, and before washing, he deliberately wiped his hands on the ground, coating them with oil and grime—drawing angry shouts from the chieftains behind him: "Hey, Tian! You got yourself that dirty—how are we supposed to try it now?"

The Tian chieftain looked embarrassed for a moment, then said, "I'll just buy this one! You all use a fresh one!"

With that, he eagerly worked up the soap, scrubbing his hands until they squeaked, then dipped them in the basin to rinse off the foam. In moments, the water in the basin had turned black.

Chieftain Tian raised his hands to look—they were spotless white, every fingerprint on his palms clearly defined, not a trace of oil or grime. He praised, "Incredible! My hands have never been this clean! Just like when I was a newborn babe!"

At these words, the other chieftains scrambled to try it themselves. Song Yingxing simply handed each person a bar of soap and had more water brought.

Lin Qian was in high spirits and personally demonstrated the correct handwashing procedure, emphasizing that places like between the fingers and the wrists had to be washed too.

The chieftains all studied with great seriousness.

To put it elegantly, these chieftains loved imitating the lifestyle of Han Chinese literati—it was their means of displaying status and refinement.

When it came to noble status, who could be nobler than the King of Xia?

The handwashing ritual personally taught by the King of Xia naturally demanded careful study.

On a more practical note, maintaining cleanliness was extremely important in the southwest region. What was called miasma was in fact mostly bacteria and viruses, most commonly transmitted through hand-to-mouth contact.

The native peoples of the southwest had lived here for generations, and even without knowing about bacteria or viruses, they could observe and conclude that people who didn't keep clean and lived in filth died faster—otherwise, native soap balls couldn't have sold for four or five wen apiece.

Limited by their cleaning implements, most people at the bottom of society couldn't actually clean themselves thoroughly; their bodies often carried new grime layered over old, one stratum covering another. Now, with soap, everything was different.

After washing his hands, Cen Yunhan also noticed that the used soap dried on its own shortly afterward, remaining as hard as wax. Picking it up, it felt like a little brick—he thought that the Han people's claim that this soap could be stored for a long time was certainly not groundless.

He immediately sidled up to Lin Qian, cupped his hands, and said in a low voice, "Your Majesty, your subject begs permission to sell soap in Sicheng Prefecture, for the benefit of the people."

Though his voice was kept very low, Cen Maoren heard it anyway and said loudly, "Only you get to sell it? The rest of us don't?"

Cen Yunhan was furious enough to grind his teeth, but there was nothing he could do.

Cen Maoren also stepped forward, cupped his hands, and said, "Your Majesty, if this item is to be sold, your subject is willing to lead the way—without taking a single coin!"

Seeing this, the other chieftains all rushed to cup their hands and declare their intentions as well, also wanting to sell soap in their own territories, likewise claiming they'd take no profit—some even offering to cover the shipping costs.

These chieftains—each one looked simple and honest, but in truth they were shrewder than monkeys.

When Lin Qian had demonstrated the mechanized oil-pressing factory, they'd only marveled and felt awe—not a single one had proposed cooperation.

Because Nanning and indeed all of Guangxi abounded in oil-bearing crops; the market was a red ocean. Selling oil locally simply didn't make money, and even with Lin Qian's mechanized production cutting costs, the profits were razor-thin.

The real money was in river transport—getting the camellia oil to Guangzhou—but that raised new problems: camellia oil was hard to transport, prone to spoilage, suffered heavy losses in transit, and carried high risk. It wasn't a great business either.

Selling soap was different. This product was utterly unique on the market—a blue ocean with extremely high profit margins. Everyone needed it, and the market potential was enormous.

Soap was durable, easy to transport, and suffered low loss rates—per unit, shipping costs were far lower than transporting camellia oil directly.

Moreover, the chieftains were all imperial officials and understood deeply the underlying logic of Chinese power games: money begets power easily, but power begets money with difficulty. Distribution rights were also power. As long as they secured distribution rights and controlled the supply, there were a hundred ways to monetize it, enough to fill their coffers to overflowing. Lin Qian said, "No need to fight over it. Since you've all come today, everyone present gets a share—each of you can take goods to sell. However, the soap factory has just begun production, output is still low, and most of it must supply the front lines. Each person's quota is small—only ten thousand bars before year's end. As production expands later, quotas will increase."

With industrialized production, expanding output was actually very easy. Lin Qian had only shown the chieftains the oil-pressing workshop; in reality, the soap workshop had also been industrialized, but it needed to be kept secret, so he hadn't shown them that.

Hearing that everyone would get a share, the minor chieftains beamed with joy, while the major chieftains felt the quota was insufficient—but with so many eyes and ears around, it wasn't convenient to negotiate. They could discuss it later with the King or with the soap factory's manager.

The people of the southwest loved cleanliness, and soap was a low-value consumable with a massive market—nearly every household would have to buy it. It was needed for washing hands, faces, baths, and hair, and for washing clothes too. Its market scale was almost second only to salt, tea, and cloth.

Cen Maoren had risked his head smuggling arms to Pu Mingsheng and had only made a few tens of thousands of taels. How much could selling soap make?

It was impossible for the chieftains not to be tempted.

Cen Yunhan asked, "May I ask Your Majesty, what is the daily output of soap?"

This was the question the chieftains cared about most—at the sound of it, they all looked over.

Lin Qian looked at Song Yingxing, who said, "Based on a daily output of eight hundred sixty jin of camellia oil, the factory can produce five thousand four hundred bars of soap per day. If externally purchased camellia oil is included, daily output can reach ten thousand bars.

If an additional full set of saponification kettles, clarifying tanks, hydraulic presses, and other equipment is added, another ten thousand bars can be produced."

In other words, the oil press in the soap factory was only set up to make up for the shortfall in civilian tea-oil production. Great Xia did not want to compete too fiercely with the people for profit—it still had to leave the traditional pressing method a way to survive.

"Ten thousand cakes?" Cen Yunhan murmured. He had never imagined that his entire year's distribution quota would amount to merely a single day's factory output! At the same time, the chieftains all confirmed that this trade truly had enormous potential!

Within a single day, the chieftains' mentality shifted from shock to fear and then to greed—truly a turbulent ride of emotions.

Lin Qian had the factory managers negotiate with the chieftains over pickup methods and distributor terms.

For Great Xia, lacking both the ability and the energy to control distribution channels, it was better to simply let these chieftains handle distribution.

Moreover, drawing on the Yongzheng Emperor's experience with replacing native chieftains with regular officials, success required exchanging benefits with these chieftains.

What the Yongzheng Emperor offered was silver compensation, tax exemptions, judicial privileges, hereditary privileges, and so on—one could say it was extremely generous, making them local emperors without armies.

The soap business was the bait Lin Qian cast out, prepared for the future replacement of native chieftains with regular officials.

Chieftains stripped of military power would otherwise become reincarnations of Ming princes or local tyrants—better to turn them into distributors instead, so at least they could contribute to industry and the people's livelihood.

Of course, distribution rights alone were not enough leverage. How exactly to trade in the future, and how to carry out the reform, would be Zhu Xieyuan's concern. The chieftains finished their negotiations, took their leave of Lin Qian, and departed.

Lin Qian then said to Song Yingxing, "Come, let's go look at the salting-out workshop."

With outsiders gone, Song Yingxing spoke much more freely, praising Great Xia's industrial system all the way.

As the saying goes: amateurs watch the spectacle, professionals understand the craft.

In Song Yingxing's view, things like building waterwheels, hydraulic oil presses, and bearing transmission were nothing remarkable.

What was truly remarkable was the ability to harness water power at will through precision design.

For instance, in the salting-out workshop, every soap cauldron had a water-powered stirring paddle connected to the main drive shaft through a wooden clutch, allowing each to be started and stopped independently.

The clutch gears used beveled chamfers—when tooth crest met tooth crest, the bevel would produce a radial force component, letting the tooth crest slide into the tooth groove and avoiding hard collision. This technique could only be used on low-speed gears; the stirring paddles turned at twenty revolutions per minute, which was just right.

And for adjusting the speed between the waterwheel and different gears, there were change gears.

Where speeds were truly too high for clutch-gear connection, there were also soft belt connections.

The factory also had a layout of high load first, light load behind—the pressing, saponification, and squeezing processes were all at the front end of the drive shaft, while material mixing and conveying were at the rear end.

One water source, multiple uses, layer upon layer clearly arranged—exquisitely ingenious.

The learning contained herein was far greater than that of the sage's books. Song Yingxing immersed himself in it daily, discussing factory layout and gear design with the engineers trained at Civilization University—truly a boundless joy.

Along the way, at every stop, Song Yingxing would explain the reasoning behind the factory layout and what transmission structures were used inside.

Every word and sentence revolved around technical terms: rotational speed, torque, horsepower, power, transmission ratio, load, and so on.

Most of these terms did not exist in the Great Ming—they were basically coined by Lin Qian, convenient for linking to his own knowledge system. The definitions given were just not very precise, because after all, he was a man of action, not a theoretician. No one could recite definitions from memory, and in this era, everything was rough-and-ready, so precise definitions were unnecessary.

Seeing Song Yingxing speaking with such enthusiasm, Lin Qian could not help but want to test him, and asked, "What is the total horsepower of the entire factory?"

Song Yingxing answered without hesitation: "Twenty-two horsepower."

Lin Qian asked with a smile, "How did you arrive at that?"

Song Yingxing perked up at the question, picked up a small tree branch, and was about to explain with words and gestures.

He drew a simple sketch on the ground—a short-legged horse pulling a cart.

Song Yingxing said, "The one horsepower defined by Your Majesty is the work one Jeju horse can do in a day, including the time spent resting, eating grass, and drinking water."

This definition differed from Watt's definition of horsepower, but it was more intuitive and easier to compare with reality.

Lin Qian laughed and said, "When I gave lectures, I don't recall ever saying it had to be a Jeju horse."

Song Yingxing was taken aback and said, "Is that so? In any case, it must be a Jeju horse—specifically a four-year-old adult stallion, weighing roughly four hundred catties, in good health, fed normally with black beans and hay before work."

Lin Qian praised him: "Very rigorous. Continue."

Song Yingxing said, "The university did measurements—one such Jeju horse can do eight hours of work per day."

As he spoke, he drew a new diagram on the ground: a horse lifting a heavy object, the object secured with a pulley system, which changed the direction of force and minimized the effect of friction as much as possible.

"The university designed an experiment where such a horse uniformly lifted a hundred catties of goods to a height of three zhang, measuring the time with a water clock. The pulley system was coated with large amounts of tea oil for lubrication."

Song Yingxing annotated the data conditions on the diagram as he spoke.

"A total of ten horses with identical conditions were used, each tested ten times, for one hundred tests in all. The average time came to seven and a half drips. From this, we can derive that the total work is—"

Then Song Yingxing began furiously writing formulas on the ground. For ease of calculation, and to align with Lin Qian's knowledge system, the formulas used quite a few Latin letter symbols—all part of the university's science and engineering curriculum. It was remarkable that Song Yingxing could master it all in such a short time.

"It's 300 jin-zhang." Song Yingxing's brush flew like a dragon as he continued verifying, "So the horse's power is 42.67 jin-zhang/drip." These so-called "jin-zhang" and "jin-zhang/drip" units were things Lin Qian had never taught—they were original units created by the university.

From the calculation process, Lin Qian could tell that "jin-zhang" corresponded to the later era's "joule," and "jin-zhang/drip" corresponded to the "watt."

It was just that the units of measurement had changed, and the correspondence between different units was by no means one-to-one anymore—this was a scientific metrology system that Great Xia had pioneered on its own. Song Yingxing continued: "So one horsepower—that is, the total work a single horse does in one day—is the Jeju horse's power multiplied by eight hours, which is twenty-eight thousand eight hundred drips... The final result is one million two hundred twenty thousand jin-zhang—that is one horsepower!

As for the horsepower calculation of the two waterwheels on the Eight-Chi River, it is—"

"Alright, alright..." Lin Qian hurriedly rubbed his brow to stop him. He already understood the principle of the calculation—it was just these Great Xia system units that gave him a headache. In simple terms, the difference between Great Xia horsepower and imperial horsepower was that Watt's definition did not account for the horse being a living creature that needed rest, food, and water, so its value was on the high side.

The twenty-two horsepower of the Eight-Chi River soap factory was closer to the actual number of horses needed, letting people intuitively feel how formidable the factory was. In a word, a single waterwheel at the Eight-Chi River soap factory was worth eleven horses.

The currents near Nanning were neither too fast nor too slow—perfect for waterwheel operation. Thus, no fewer than three hundred waterwheels of various sizes had been built in Nanning, almost as if three thousand adult draft horses had appeared out of thin air.

And the advances in gear transmission could minimize the waste of strength of these three thousand draft horses to the greatest extent.

It was equivalent to three thousand draft horses having to carry goods up mountains while pulling carts, with a person riding on their backs—as long as they weren't worked to death, they were worked to the bone. Every day after work they were exhausted like dead pigs, sleeping as if in a coma, then the next day they had to revive at full strength and work relentlessly year-round without a day off.

Horses are delicate creatures—if truly driven like that, they probably wouldn't last long before dying of injury or illness.

So if you also counted the time and silver lost to injury and illness, these three hundred waterwheels could match perhaps five thousand or even six thousand draft horses. This was the terror of industry.

Great Xia's industry was still a newborn taking its first stumbling steps, yet it was already enough to frighten the chieftains.

Once this industrial beast grew to maturity, it would make the whole world tremble.

As Lin Qian was lost in these thoughts, he arrived at the entrance of the salting-out workshop. The workshop's great door was tightly shut. A vertical plaque hung on the left reading "Jia Yi." The vertical plaque on the right bore two large blood-red characters: "No Entry."

"Jia Yi" was the formal name of this workshop.

Why not simply call it the salting-out workshop? Because the words "salting-out" were themselves top secret.

One could say that the entire security apparatus of the Eight-Chi River soap factory existed to protect this salting-out workshop.

Even if the chieftains never entered this workshop, they could ponder for a lifetime and still never figure out how to turn crude soap lumps into true soap.

Soldiers stood guard all around the factory grounds, and at the door there were two guards, each carrying a flintlock musket with a fixed bayonet.

After verifying his identity, the guards opened the gate and let Lin Qian inside.

The moment he stepped through the door, his skin felt a warm, humid salt-mist sensation, his nose caught a mixed scent of salty astringency and tea-oil fragrance, and his ears were filled with the rumbling roar of wooden gears.

As Lin Qian's eyes gradually adjusted to the light inside the workshop, he saw eight cast-iron soap cauldrons lined up in a row, each roughly four chi tall, filled with a milky-yellow saponification liquid.

The stirring paddles that Song Yingxing so highly praised were inserted into the cauldrons, rotating at a steady speed without pause, churning up rings of fine foam.

Fires burned beneath the soap cauldrons, large barrels of saltwater stood nearby, and workers beside them periodically scooped out saltwater and poured it into the cauldrons. After prolonged feeding and stirring, a milky emulsion formed, which was then poured into settling tanks to stand still.

After settling for two hours, the emulsion separated into three layers. The topmost layer was a milky-white congealed fat—this substance, once collected and dried, became true soap.

Using salt to separate the soap grains from the other solution—this was why the workshop was called the salting-out workshop.

To be fair, the ideas for how to make soap and how to salt out soap grains in the first place had come from Lin Qian.

But as the saying went, having a theory didn't mean you could actually produce it.

How high the temperature in the soap cauldron needed to be, what concentration the saltwater required, how long the settling needed to last—all of it was worked out through trial and error, bit by bit.

Even if you could make it, improving the process, reducing costs, and finally putting it into mass production—each step was separated by a chasm.

The current soap production technology had been developed only after over a thousand experiments at Civilization University, consuming over ten thousand jin of oils and fats.

Even if a chieftain came to see the salting-out workshop with his own eyes, it would still take him five or six years to make soap of the same quality. And if he wanted to match the low production costs of the Eight-Chi River Soap Factory—a hundred years wouldn't be enough.

Song Yingxing walked ahead, explaining the function of each piece of equipment to Lin Qian. Finally they reached the settling tanks, where a worker was collecting the different liquids. The soap grains from the upper layer had already been gathered. The middle layer was a rice-yellow, semi-turbid liquid—this was a transitional state, with soap grains not yet fully separated out. It was collected and poured back into the soap cauldron for further use.

After the middle layer was collected, the bottom layer abruptly revealed itself as a transparent amber liquid.

Song Yingxing said, "This is glycerin. All the lubrication for the gears and main shafts in this workshop relies on it. We've also discovered that it retains moisture and locks in water, can treat burns, and can condition leather."

Lin Qian smiled without saying a word, because he knew this substance had an even greater use—after purification, it could be made into nitroglycerin.

A single light touch to this liquid could trigger a massive explosion. With simple processing, it could be made into explosive charges, extremely convenient for blasting mountains and clearing roads—and in extreme circumstances, it could even be used for military purposes.

However, unlocking nitroglycerin required concentrated sulfuric acid and concentrated nitric acid, and those acids required modern chemistry, which in turn could not develop without glass. To obtain glass technology, they would need to attack Batavia. And before that, they needed to end the war in Yunnan as quickly as possible.

Everything was interconnected, link by link.

And Lin Qian's secret weapon for swiftly taking Yunnan was the co-product of glycerin—this small, unassuming bar of soap.

While Lin Qian was intimidating the Guangxi chieftains, the Eight-Chi River Soap Factory was running at full capacity.

Tea-oil seeds, well salt, plant ash, quicklime, tung oil, kaolin, and graphite powder all flowed continuously down the river, converging on the factory.

Tea-oil soap was loaded onto boats by the crate, shipped up the Yu River and the Zuo River to Taiping Prefecture.

Based on the frontline battle situation, Zhu Xieyuan flexibly allocated supplies, loading tea-oil soap together with grain, fodder, and medicine onto oxcarts and mule backs, transporting them northwest along the tamped-earth official roads.

Thirty thousand conscripted laborers and six thousand oxen and mules worked day and night without rest, passing through Xialei Zhou and Guishun Zhou, then transshipping through Fu Zhou, Guangnan Prefecture, and Weimo Zhou. After enduring countless hardships, they finally reached the front lines.

At Wangnongshan Si, which Ma Xianglin had just captured, the quartermaster pried open a wooden crate with a crowbar, tore off the wax paper, and the neatly stacked tea-oil soap inside saw the light of day for the first time. The soldiers waiting all around let out a collective "Wow!"

Someone said, "Smells great! That tea-oil scent! How do you eat this stuff?"

The quartermaster laughed and scolded, "Eat? What's there to eat? This is tea-oil soap—it's for washing your face and hands."

"Oh." The soldiers deflated at once upon hearing this.

Before entering Yunnan for the campaign, every squad of ten had already brought one bar of soap, but those had been handmade, with uneven quality. After more than half a month, they were mostly used up—this batch of tea-oil soap came just in time to replenish the supply.

The quartermaster called for people to collect the supplies and distributed them throughout the entire army.

With the water-powered factory in production, tea-oil soap output had greatly increased, and Ma Xianglin's vanguard forces could manage one bar per person.

In the central command tent, Ma Xianglin was discussing with Wei Wenkui how to deploy troops against the Jiaohua Sanbu Chiefdom and the Bazhai Chiefdom.

The so-called "chiefdom" was an administrative unit combining military and civil governance, similar in scope to a "county" in the interior. It generally consisted of one administrative stronghold-city, a dozen or two dozen fortified villages, and numerous large and small settlements.

The maps of the three chiefdoms were spread on the table before the two men. From them, one could see that the terrain of these three chiefdoms was extremely fragmented—large armies could not maneuver—and every mountaintop, fork in the road, and valley entrance was fortified with strongholds, making them extremely easy to defend and difficult to attack.

In the age of cold weapons, the only option was to besiege the cities bit by bit and grind them down.

For the sake of rapid movement, Ma Xianglin's vanguard had only brought tiger-crouch cannons and three-pounder cannons, which were useless against the chieftains' fortresses.

Fortunately, Qin Liangyu's main force had brought mortars. These cannons packed tremendous power but had short range and poor accuracy—often as useless as a chicken rib—yet in the southwest, they could display their full might.

Wei Wenkui said, "Of the three chiefdoms, Bazhai has the most perilous terrain. Its administrative city, Aya City, is built atop Old City Mountain, with over seventy percent of its surroundings being sheer cliffs, and there's even a mountain spring within the city walls.

The Long clan chieftain has held this place for over a hundred years, forging the city into something impregnable and extremely difficult to conquer."

Ma Xianglin confirmed, "Over seventy percent sheer cliffs?"

"Correct. There are only four narrow winding paths to leave the city and descend the mountain."

"Haha." Ma Xianglin let out a big laugh. "Then we just surround it! The roads are so narrow—if it's hard for us to attack them, it's just as hard for them to attack us!" "Uh..." Wei Wenkui was stunned; he had never once considered that possibility.

Throughout history, imperial armies entering Yunnan for campaigns had always been plagued by insufficient provisions and soldier casualties from illness, so they were compelled to seek swift victories—siege warfare was considered the worst possible strategy. Wei Wenkui was trapped in this fixed way of thinking, believing Aya City to be extremely troublesome, requiring a terrible price to take.

But one sentence from Ma Xianglin woke him up.

Indeed—since the Great Xia army had entered Yunnan, they had lacked neither food nor clothing, and illness and injury had been rare. Under such circumstances, wasn't a siege as easy as watching over children at home?

Yahei

Fenyuan

Pen